by Diane Munier
She’d said they couldn’t go to bed mad. She said that was the secret, not to let it pile. Not to let shit pile, is what she’d meant.
“If we can’t do it, be together…make love…if you don’t want it…then you tell me, but not because you’re mad,” he’d said. He wanted a better reason, like she was sick, or having her girl time, or she was tired. But not mad…like stewing around. That was shit that led to more shit, and he didn’t want that, so yeah, not going to bed mad made sense.
“What if I’m mad, but I know I have to get over it and I will, but I’m not there yet, and you want it, sex…” she said.
He thought for a minute, “No, that’s too—it doesn’t sound real. If you’re mad, we gotta talk so you get over it. Then we make up—Tarzan and Jane, you know?”
“What if I can’t?” she said, laughing.
He kissed her. “Don’t make trouble that ain’t there. I’m saying I want you and me to be good. All the time.”
“I won’t ever stop wanting you, Jules,” she’d told him. Sincerity, she had it in buckets, and he needed that. God, he wanted it. Here she was, sitting on the bed beside him, legs tucked beneath her. It was hard to concentrate on her words. “Will you always want me, Jules?”
“I married you because I want you all the time,” he said.
That was that. They weren’t going to be like everyone else. They were going to figure this marriage stuff out and succeed at it. Period. All they had to do was keep the crazy going—the insane happiness they felt right now.
The light out the window was good. It still held the magic he’d felt the day before, his wedding day. He laughed a little looking out there at the busy street that was lined with various businesses and places to eat. Hot Springs was paradise for the shady population. This was the place gangsters came to vacation. That moog Cabhan would be right at home here, not that he had any class. Every mom-and-pop shop on this strip had illegal gambling right out in the open. This little city thrived on it. And this is where he got married. That’s what would always put it on the map for him.
When he finished dressing, he walked carefully to Isbe’s side of the bed and took a long look at her. He kissed two of her fingers and pressed them lightly to her cheek. He wanted to touch her lips but was afraid he’d wake her, and then she’d want him to wait for her, and she’d ask a million questions.
But he had a man to find. Well, two of them—Seth, and the orangutan they’d sent to look for him.
He opened the door to step out, and Bobby was there, his knuckles raised, ready to knock.
He said Jerry had found Seth.
Seth sat in Jerry’s truck, passenger side.
Jerry was beat-up, so Jules knew Seth had to be. Seth had it coming, not only for stealing, but for knocking Redver out of his chair, knocking him out. He had some hits coming for that, and looked like Jerry had delivered.
“What happened to you?” Jules said like a proud papa. He was proud of this damn monkey.
Jules and Bobby stood with Jerry by the truck. It was caved in a little in the front.
“Seth hit a deer on the way up,” Jerry explained, seeming subdued now that he’d had his revenge and got hamburgered in the process.
“Get your radiator?” Bobby asked.
“No. This thing can take a hit,” Jerry said.
“Looks like you can too,” Jules said.
Jerry explained he’d found Seth asleep in the truck’s bed at the park. He’d been in a private game and bet heavy. Most of the money he’d kept in the springs of the truck’s seat. There was nearly a grand unaccounted for, though.
“No to dat,” Jules said. He stepped to the window and looked in at Seth. Orangutan got him good in the face. “You owe me,” he said.
“Owe you what? You owed me! I’m the one made you and them that money,” Seth said.
“Think so? Well, you spent the twenty-five dollars I was gonna give you when you knocked Redver out the chair.”
“Then get me a fight. I’ll make it back,” he said.
“No, fooker. You like the ones can’t hit back. Ain’t no one gonna bet money on you,” Jules said. “You get your ass home. Got a job?”
Seth glared Jerry’s way. “I don’t know.”
“Oh…you hit the boss man? Dumped his old man in the kitchen like some trash? Yeah—you probably need to get your ass back to Chicago and read the want ads. Paying off a thousand bucks at what—thirty, forty cents an hour, yeah it’s gonna take you a while. I tell you what, you miss a payment, you will have that fight. My foot up your ass? Yeah. I want a hundred bucks a month, due first of the month.
“You pay Redver, and I’ll collect. And for the same amount of time you owe me, you owe Redver. I mean, he wants to spit on the floor, you’re there to lick it up and make sure it shines. And you got a truck to fix, cowboy. You got a question for me?”
Seth glared at him.
“You thinkin’ about not coming home? Then don’t ever come home. Don’t ever show your face in the old neighborhood. Cut your ties, cause I find you—any one of us finds you—sayonara, baby,” Jules said. “Your old lady—don’t even try it. You’re dead to her; you don’t come home and try to be a damn man, you sucker.”
Jules yanked the truck’s door open, and Seth yelled and held his arm, which he’d had propped against the door.
“Jules,” Jerry said, “his shoulder is hurt.”
“Oh,” Jules said, “dat so?” He gripped Seth’s shoulder, and that one tried to wrench free, but Jules held on. “This one right here? Dat so?”
They tussled some and Seth fell over on the seat, holding his arm, sweat on his forehead, teeth gritted. “It’s broke,” he choked out.
“You do this? Outstanding,” Jules said to Jerry.
Jerry looked worried. “He—he got into some trouble.”
Jules looked back to Seth and slapped the side of his face. “Oh. Underhanded shit with the big boys? Didn’t fly then, huh? They take you out of the game?”
“Get the hell away from me!” Seth yelled.
Jules stepped up in the truck, slapping at Seth. “You talkin’ to me like dat? You talkin’ to me?” He gave one last push against that shoulder, and Seth yelled, and Jules backed out of the truck.
“Shit.” Jules stood next to Bobby.
“Jules…” Jerry began. Jules knew he was about to make an appeal for this moog. He didn’t want to hear it.
“Sit up,” Jules said, and Seth slowly raised up and sat there cradling his arm, breathing heavy out the mouth. “How’s it feel to be helpless and have someone hitting on you? How’s it feel, big man?”
Seth looked at him, then away. Jules could see the anger. And hopefully some shame. That would be the best thing Seth could show right now—shame.
Jerry handed Jules the bag of money. “Hey,” he said to Jerry as he reached in for a few hundred, “me and Isbe got married yesterday.”
“She married you?” Orangutan said, with the pissy attitude.
Jules stopped rummaging. “What—I stutter?”
Jerry swallowed big. “Clark…”
“I don’t want to hear that copper’s name,” Jules warned, holding the money inside the bag.
“She’s a great girl.”
“Yeah,” Jules agreed. “No one like her. And she’s my girl. My wife.”
Jerry had flushed a deep red. His hands were on his hips. He nodded then.
“Yeah. It’s my honeymoon,” Jules said, and he resumed counting.
“You’ll treat her right?”
Jules dropped a hundred out of the bundle of money in his hand.
“Here’s your money,” he said.
Jerry didn’t know that look had cost him a hundred bucks.
But Jules knew. He’d been feeling lovey dovey, but now…forget it.
So, the money Redver had made on Baboon and Gorilla’s fights was still intact but for a grand. And that was good; that was Jules’s money. On top of that, there were still the uncollected winne
r’s purses for Audie and Bobby. Jules hadn’t been declared the winner for his fight. He’d jumped the gun and knocked Potato Two out cold when he’d only meant to ring his bell a little. He had no pride in a fight. He used the room, the whole damn thing. The brick wall—yeah, it was too much. So he hadn’t been declared, and he knew Cabhan would use it, but he deserved something for the win. Just ask him.
Seth was indebted, and Uncle Cabhan needed to pay up, too.
Later that day, after they’d sent Seth and Jerry down the road, the six of them were walking down the main street on their way to take a big-deal bath. At a public bathhouse. Dorie and Francis had insisted. Wedding present. And Isbe had been excited, and Jules went along peaceably just to show moogs like Blake and possibly Audie that he could and would do a heck of a lot—for Isbe. His wife.
Now, he would have loved this if he and his bride could be bathing together in private. But the way it went, he and the monkeys were taken in a side door in the lobby by some suspicious poofer named Fluffy. Now, what kind of a man keeps a handle like that?
Audie looked at Jules and tiptoed a little, behind the moog’s back of course, and Bobby was shaking his head, not cause he was worried about Fluffy losing the soap on him; that wasn’t Baboon’s style—worry—but because he wanted them to shut up and go along with it. So it must be the towels old Fluffy was named for. Bobby would see it that way.
The girls had been taken up to another floor in an elevator. Jules wanted to strangle Francis and Dorie for getting him into this. But for his part, he peeled down in the booth and wrapped the towel around his ass and followed his guy, Jack, a way better guy than Fluffy at least, to a big claw-footed tub.
A loud engine sat beside the tub, hose snaking into the water and shooting a powerful load, roiling the water like a gator was rolling around in there. He had to drop the towel and get up on a stool and swing his leg over the tub’s side. Jack got a view, but Jules didn’t turn around like Jack said because he wasn’t giving him his ass just in case Fluffy showed up. So he went in and turned around and sunk down in that boil, and sheesh, everything went for cover down there.
Would Isbe have to do this? They had women attendants up there, surely. Did these bums around here get a peek? Some secret hole in the wall? He had to stop wondering, or he’d grab this Jack and hold him under.
Jack worked over his feet and legs, one at a time, of course, with a coarse sponge like he was some filthy-rich gangster. When he lifted Jules’s leg, that steaming water jetted right up his chute. The hose had been pointed right there by some comedian, no doubt, and he laughed like a crazy man and tried to slide his ass a little to the side so he wouldn’t get an enema. Jack didn’t comment, and that was good.
He heard Audie whoop about then, and it made him guffaw.
It was weird, this whole thing, but man, it felt good. A hundred degrees in that water, and every sore spot on him curled right up and said, “Yeah.” He figured twenty minutes wasn’t going to be enough, but they were, because he was tired of holding his foot in front of that forceful stream to keep it away from his personals.
He thought of how in Europe, the mines had these big shower rooms. They’d go in those and have a shower, and man, it was luxury after weeks, months without a wash.
Every time they’d approach one of those mines, Baboon would try to meet up with him. He’d send Jules a note saying, “Meet me on Wednesday.” No date, no time. That was Bobby. He laughed now to think of it.
After twenty minutes in that tub, Jack was there, giving him a little cup of mineral water, cold as frozen shit all the way down. Jules climbed out, and next he passed a couple of booths where first Audie sat, his ass in a deep sink, his feet sticking straight out. “Oh, Chimp,” Audie groaned, his face red as a cherry.
Bobby was next—same thing, his long-ass legs hanging over the deep lip on that sink, not sticking out like Gorilla’s. Bobby had his head back, eyes closed. He looked out for the count.
Jules followed Jack and sat his ass in a big sink full of hot-as-shit water and soaked his cheeks like a turkey in soup or some shit, stewing there, thinking over their recent deeds—how they’d finally been put to use as God intended, like in that garden where Adam ruled all the beasts, mostly himself probably, or not, running around naked with his naked woman. Who cared about the animals then? Good thing they were self-controlled, cause if it were him and Isbe, he knew who he’d be focused on, and it wouldn’t be zebras.
What’d he ever do to be given such a goddess? He imagined hers up above, getting a hot soak after the endless attention he’d given them. They were his now; she was his.
When it was time to raise himself out of that hot bath, he had to laugh at the dreams he’d entertained.
From there it was the hot box, the sweat box. Like before, he passed Audie’s booth, that beet-red gorilla head the only thing showing from the top of that box. Sweating like he was under a tap. Bobby once again looked asleep.
They closed Jules in his box, just his head out, and that heat, that steam rising up from the floor, slow-turning spit is what he thought of, and him the hog on it—or in this case, in it. He didn’t like it…the old feeling…some of this sweat from that…the old feeling of being trapped. He didn’t want to bring the old man there, but that moog was always in him, like his liver or something, stuck somewhere in his body, that moog just waiting for a chance to shout out, “Remember me?”
He didn’t want to give in. They said eight minutes, and he watched that clock on the wall, and twelve minutes later he didn’t see that moog Jack or even Fluffy, and Audie and Bobby were long gone, but he kicked his way out of that box then and oh, then Jack came running. Audie probably slipped him a fifty just to screw him around. He’d believe it if Audie had pockets.
Next, he lay on his back on a table, Bobby and Audie already down the row, covered in towels like a couple of mummies. Jack went back and forth to a big sink and wet towels, which he kept covering Jules with until just his face was left, and it got wrapped in a towel that was ice-cold. A very nice contrast, he had to admit, and he almost let it go that this slug had let him steam until he was mush.
He couldn’t wait to tell Isbe about this, swap stories. He wanted to see her, tell her about the water trying to shoot up his intestines. Was it like that for her? He couldn’t wait to ask. Douche, they called it for girls, filling the lady parts. He’d been a nasty kid, listening to all the talk he could. Girls—man, when that hit big-time, he was up for anything. But that bath water had the force of a fire hose. He wondered if she’d kept it out…of her places.
It was a cold-needle shower then, standing in a circle of calcium-crusted cylinders that spit sharp streams of icy wetness against his body, and even his brain froze.
He was snapped out of it when he heard Gorilla’s hoot from the shower in the next room. It made him laugh.
After that, it was another room and a big guy named Hans with hands that kneaded the living shit out of his sore muscles. Now this…he didn’t like a bastard touching him, but he made himself relax, and he could hear Gorilla again moaning and groaning, and he laughed like hell at that cause that ape would have no trouble being served like this. But him, it wasn’t easy to submit to it. Good as it felt, it hurt too, cause he was sore, but someone touched him like this, another man, he wanted to punch him so bad; he just did. He wanted to yell, “Fook you!” a couple of times, too. And he knew it was his own twisted shit, but knowing what it was didn’t make it go away.
It never went away; it just lay down now and then, but it never went away.
That guy was working on a spot in his back.
“What is that?” Jules asked, because he could feel it in there, a doorknob or something.
“A knot,” Hans said, and he kept digging.
And Jules grit his teeth, held onto the table, and Hans dug and wiggled his fingers there, deep in—and shit, it hurt.
And Jules felt tears in his throat, wanting to come out. And shit, tears? What the hell were
these tears?
He was happy. He’d been happy.
“Stop it,” he said, loud.
“It’s tension here,” Hans said, still digging.
“Leave off,” Jules said, his right hand clenching.
“I almost—” Hans said.
His father—there he was. That knot was the old man. He was in him like poison. He’d confronted him already, before the war—but he hadn’t gone away—and feeling him so weak, his old man, overpowering him, hadn’t cleansed him, hadn’t fixed him. He couldn’t get free of that bully. He couldn’t get rid of him. What if he was like him? What if being married brought it out? What kind of father would he be? He’d better start thinking about it…all the people he could…hurt.
“I said no!” Jules shouted, knocking Hans’ hand away as he sat up. He stood and gathered the sheet around his waist. “I’m done now. That’s all,” Jules said.
Hans put his hands up, like surrender. Jules walked out then, fumbling around until he found the right way to the locker room and his clothes.
He should go back and apologize, tell that guy…he just…he didn’t like to be touched. Except by Isbe. Just her. He should go back, tip that guy some; no hard feelings. But he knew he wouldn’t.
When they were dressed and downstairs, he paced while the other two sat like stuffed bags of potatoes, slumped in chairs awaiting the girls.
“Jules, what does it take with you, man? Relax!” Audie said.
When the elevator came down, the three of them there, they were stunning together, but Isbe, he felt his heart clench. She always made him feel better. The minute he saw her—better.
They hugged and kissed, and he looked her over. Her hair was tied up, still wet, but her skin all blush-pink and so soft. A little cotton dress—pink. He moved his lips over her cheek.
