by Mic Palmer
The Russian was frowning. “Internet no good. Not natural.”
“I know some people who swear by it.”
The Russian shook his head. “So they say.”
“Where do you meet all of your women?” asked Jack, more out of politeness than curiosity.
“Anywhere,” said the Russian, with the authoritative quality of a party chairman. “Supermarkets, libraries, even in the street. All you have to do is be honest; show you like them.”
“One of these days,” said Jack.
“He’s quite the gigolo,” interjected his boss.
Staring up at the screen, Jack had enough. “Is there a point to this?”
“Wait,” said Bullick. “It’s coming.”
“What?” cringed Jack.
“Here it is.”
“So what do you do?” Jack asked the Russian.
“I was janitor, but got hurt.”
“So you’re out on disability?”
“That’s right,” winked the larger man. “My back.”
Bullick was amazed. “And yet it still didn’t register!”
Jack was a bit surprised himself. “Are you going to let me go or not?”
“Whatever I’m going to do, I want you to understand – just so there’s no doubt as to who’s to blame here!” Fast forwarding to what he considered the coup de grace, he stared up at the monitor. What it showed was Jack helping the man load steel drums onto the back of a pickup truck.
“They look pretty heavy,” said Bullick.
Knowing that he was finished, Jack felt rather peaceful. “I’d say a good hundred and fifty pounds.”
“Don’t you have your own back problems?”
“He took the heavy end.”
“Congratulations,” said Bullick, “Once and for all you proved he was faking!”
Chapter Three
Nestled between two Chinese restaurants on the corner of Bayard and Mott, Jack’s apartment was decidedly minimalist. There were no photographs, paintings, plants, books, posters, masks, liquor bottles, statuettes, bowls or baubles of any kind, the reason being that he might have been tempted to draw them, and the fact was he had wasted enough time with that sort of thing. Without even realizing what he was doing he’d eviscerate whole evenings sketching the very same wine bottle over and over again, not out of any deeper sense of light or shadow, but for the inane purpose of rendering a perfect reproduction.
“This is crazy!” he finally told himself. Rather than spending all of his time manufacturing the same sorts of things that had gotten him kicked out of art school, he should have been calling friends, making dates, getting out. Thus, he made a pact with himself. From that moment on he would confine his artistic endeavors to the job – but just to make sure, he stripped the apartment of anything that might have tempted him, leaving it just as cold and vapid as the drawings themselves.
“Should I cancel my date?” he wondered. Having just been fired, he wasn’t really in the mood. On the other hand it might have been just the thing he needed to pick himself up. Unable to make a decision, he soon found himself vacuuming.
Always a bit regimented in his personal habits, he’d do his mopping on Saturdays, his laundry on Wednesdays and his vacuuming on Fridays, today being no exception.
Filled with the whirring of the upright, Jack’s mind was happily engaged, but soon he was finished and again faced with the question of whether he should go on the date. “Do I really have a choice?” he finally asked himself, somewhat incredulous that it had come to this.
Just a few years before meeting women had seemed easy. Without the slightest bit of preening or posing he’d find them in bars, coffee shops, pizzerias, bowling alleys, everywhere he turned, and all he’d have to do was put pencil to paper. While others would scheme and posture, Jack would sketch the beatific smile of an infant and that would be the end of it. With wavy blond hair and the cheek bones of an Apache, his youth was filled with women, making the present seem almost incomprehensible. Nowadays, he could have drawn the Mona Lisa on the back of a business card and the result would have been the same: whereas they’d marvel at the product, they’d treat the man who produced it with absolute indifference – as if the rendering had somehow sketched itself.
Ah, who could blame them? Over the years he had grown tired and flabby, and when he did draw in public, his motives were embarrassingly obvious, but more than even this, he just didn’t want to be bothered. His aversion toward work it seemed had spread into the field of courtship, which some might say is toughest job of them all, and even while he would have liked to be involved in a relationship, he was not particularly troubled by the fact that he was not. After years of snubs, infidelities, and outright insults, his affect had become flat and his desire muted. Nevertheless, he knew that something wasn’t right, and with this in mind decided to get ready.
Having received not only his full pay for the week, but a check for his unused vacation time, his first impulse was to blow every cent of it, but then he began to consider the rent and other expenses and nearly began to hyperventilate. “How am I going to live?”
Before his breathing problems graduated into a full-on panic attack, however, he jumped into the shower and let the hot water beat on his head.
“What was I so worried about?” he all at once reflected. “Things’ll work out.” Nevertheless, he couldn’t help but think of how nice it would’ve been to just pick up some take-out and plop down in front of the television.
“What’s wrong with me?” he said out loud. “I’m going on a date, not to war.”
But his thoughts were scampering and his intentions cloudy. “Commit to it,” he told himself. That way he wouldn’t waste the rest of the evening contemplating an escape route.
And yet the air was tempting him with the aroma of black bean sauce and oxtail soup, both of which would have gone perfectly with the Abbott & Costello marathon that was running that night.
“What a mess,” he grimaced, as he surveyed his hair in the bathroom mirror. His first impulse was to comb it back the way he used to when he was a teenager, but that left too much forehead, so he parted it on the side, the result of which was something resembling a comb over.
“Freak’n Gomez,” he grumbled. “Ya got to get out there,” he would constantly tell him, and for the most part Jack agreed, but that was before he realized how lousy he looked.
“Now what?” he miserably ruminated. Unfortunately, the only thing he could think of was the blow dryer. Pulling it out from under the sink, along with a dusty bottle of hair gel, he spent the next five minutes brushing and shaping. The result, however, was something approximating a puffy tuft of thin yellow grass.
Disgusted at this point, he hurriedly rinsed his hair out, put a towel to it, and then pushed it forward with his hands. “Why bother,” he thought to himself, recalling his last couple of outings.
Having resisted the internet for years, he was finally sold on the idea when Gomez took him on a free tour of a website called, “DestinyThroughNumbers.com.” There he saw hundreds of beautiful women, all seeking to meet someone, and for a moment it seemed easy.
“What could it hurt?” he thought to himself, but Gomez’s suggestion to use an old photo was a definite mistake. Sure it had gotten him some dates, but the damage it did to his credibility was irreparable. Half the time the women didn’t even recognize him, and as for the ones who did, all they could think about was how heavy he had gotten, how puffy, how old.
After slapping on some aftershave that smelled like cinnamon and gin, he slowly got dressed, much like a reluctant child on his first day of school. Wearing beige pants, a white shirt and blue sports jacket, he sat down on the couch and turned on the television. His expression was blank, almost as if he were in trance.
“Shit!” he yelled, as he jumped to his feet. Angry yet determined, he hit the off button, snatched up his keys and headed for the parking garage.
Whether it was the impending encounter or the gyro he h
ad purchased earlier that day from a street vender, something didn’t sit right in his stomach. Glistening in the windows, all succulent and savory, even the ducks didn’t appeal to him.
An elderly Chinese man asked him if he wanted to have his shoes shined, just as he had every day for the last three years. Today, however, Jack took him up on it.
Buffing away for a determined four minutes, his sinewy hands slick with polish, the shine Buddhist seemed to make what he was doing the center of the universe, as if nothing else existed.
“Can you use a partner?” asked Jack.
Not really understanding, the old man grinned, his face breaking into a thousand fissures.
Noticing how hunched over he was, how much he strained, and how frail he appeared, Jack was amazed at how energetic he turned out to be. “Good work,” he sincerely commented.
The old man finished up with a brown magic marker. Running it alongside the soles and heels, he removed every mark and scuff. “Done,” he uttered, as he patted Jack’s shoe.
Jack tipped him a five, to which the old man bowed. “I bet he makes a good buck,” he thought to himself, admiring how new his shoes appeared, but within seconds his satisfaction was overwhelmed with the sense that something was wrong.
At first he couldn’t pinpoint what it was. Then it hit him like a sock full of quarters. He had been fired from his job and in all likelihood would not be working for a very long time.
“Maybe I should just cancel,” he again thought to himself.
At that moment a woman approached. Although hardly beautiful and rather small, she radiated an almost tactile sense of wanton sexuality. With raven colored hair, hungry violet eyes, and a body that seemed to have been designed by Masters and Johnson, she annihilated her surroundings, sucked it all in, trapped it in her gravitational field, until all that remained was the all encompassing supercharged singularity of pulsating lust.
Suddenly all of his negative thoughts began to evaporate. “Wow!” he whispered.
Appearing to be a tourist, she seemed to be taking it all in, the slaughtered pigs, the carts of fish, the knock off watches, the faux designer bags, everything but Jack. Passing right by him as if he were invisible, she caused him to consider how rare it was these days for women to even glance at him. Even assuming he wasn’t worth perusing, how would they know this without ever looking at him?
The only thing he could come up with was that women must have developed some kind of supernatural peripheral vision, allowing them to evaluate potential mates without the need to actually look in their direction, and the more he thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense. In the forest primeval the slightest display of interest may have resulted in not only an unwanted advance but an attack. Thus, they adapted, the result of which was that today they could examine men without the risk of encouraging them. Indeed, like most of his gender, Jack used to get all hopped up at the slightest overture, but nowadays, even if a woman did actually look his way, he’d assume it was an accident. People after all do have to look somewhere.
Just then he caught sight of a rather tall sinewy individual in camouflage army fatigues, chunky black boots and a green tube top. “Hi,” said the smiling creature as it passed next to him, its dazzling array of lip, nose and eye piercings shimmering in the deep purple glow of a nearby acupuncture sign. With spiky white hair, a strong chin, thick muscular neck, and protuberant knuckles, it ambled down the sidewalk with all of the grace of a baboon in heels.
“Wonderful,” Jack thought to himself, not at all certain of whether it was a man or woman. “This I get looks from.”
Although appreciating the humor of the situation, he once again seriously considered turning back. If all he could attract were looks from weirdoes, what chance did he have of appealing to the woman he was going out with? Judging from her photo, she was quite a knock out. “Oh, what the hell,” he grumbled to himself.
Having reached the parking garage, he rummaged through his pockets for his keys. With his Mustang on the level above him, he pressed down on the lock button for two quick toots of the horn.
Over a decade before, the vehicle had been broken into and unsuccessfully hot-wired, the result of which was that he’d always make sure to announce he was coming. Why after all risk a confrontation?
While the 1970 Shelby was much larger and more powerful looking than its sleeker looking predecessors, its engine was actually a good seventy cubic inches smaller. Much more the product of Ford than Shelby, the design was both obvious and obtrusive. Nevertheless, Jack loved it, even while he no longer obsessed about it being damaged.
Having purchased it fully restored in 1991, he managed to keep it in mint condition until just a few years before, when he rear ended a cement truck, the result of which was a dented grill and about two hundred pounds of mortar spilling onto the hood. Quickly hosing it off, he assumed everything would be fine; the cement, however, had leaked into a variety of nooks, fissures and mechanisms, not the least of which the struts and belts. After that the car kind of creaked and crackled, as if it had developed arthritis, but even more devastating was the damage to the fender. Owing to the cost of having it repaired, Jack thought he’d leave it for a while, not understanding how fast these things metastasize; sure enough the vehicle was soon riddled with a wide variety of pings, scrapes, dents and chips – not exactly a coach fit for a princess.
Fortunately, the imperfections were not that obvious, especially on the passenger side, which not so coincidentally was the only side his lady friends would ever see. This, along with the fact that he’d never position the vehicle directly under a street light allowed him to create the illusion that it wasn’t quite the piece of junk he knew it to be. The price of all this subterfuge, however, was that he’d invariably have to fend off questions about why he had not taken the closest spot. Among his pat answers were that he had already passed it, didn’t think he could fit, or couldn’t make out the sign, but the impact on his dates was always the same: a kind of vague sense that he wasn’t quite the man they had hoped he would be.
The car door let out a skirl as he pulled it shut. “That’s different,” he thought to himself. It was whinier than usual, more plaintive, even eerie.
Pausing for a moment, he regarded the compass mounted on the dashboard. “With this you’ll never get lost,” his father told him, having just screwed it in, but within about a decade the needle had become permanently stuck.
“Piece of crap,” Jack grumbled, as he gave it a tap.
Dangling above the compass was a pale green, tree shaped air freshener. Jack pulled it toward his nose and took a sniff. “Nothing,” he mumbled.
Feeling as washed out as the cardboard evergreen, he felt impelled to follow through with his plans. Today of all days, something had to give.
Chapter Four
The maitre d’ had an annoyed look on his face, as if online dating were invented solely for the purpose of disturbing his schedule. Nervous yet determined, Pentium lovers sat by the bar with stiff backs and dopey smiles. Having failed to work out the precise details of where they’d meet or what they’d be wearing, they self consciously alternated between searching the room and glancing at their watches.
“May I help you?” the headwaiter would ask, but the answer was always the same. “Just waiting for someone,” they’d meekly tell him, not knowing whether that someone was already there or even coming.
The problem was that no one wanted to make the first move, only to be wrong and divulge the fact that they were on what amounted to a blind date. So they’d pose and wait, with leaden legs and dry mouths. Surveying the bar, the maitre d’ could pick them out in a second. Their expressions were maniacally cheery, practically hypnotic, so as not to look nervous. More telling, however, was the fact that they had absolutely no idea of what to do with their hands or where to look or how to position themselves.
As for the few who were smart enough to sit by the bar and order a drink, they’d often times miss their mouths,
and when they did manage to get a glass to their lips, they’d barely take a sip. It was all posturing, all surface.
Like a statue, Jack held a glass of scotch in his hand, while staring off toward the lobster tank.
“Any word from the rest of your party?” asked the maitre d’ with a definite tone. “The reservation was for seven; in ten more minutes we’ll have to give your table away.”
“So soon?” said Jack, pretending he didn’t appreciate the excuse to leave.
“I’m sorry, sir, but it’s nearly seven thirty.”
“Fine,” said Jack, scrutinizing the odd-looking fellow. Through sheer association or perhaps overindulgence, it seemed he had begun taking on the appearance of the restaurant’s most popular fare. Dressed in a long red jacket, he had a barrel chest, rosy complexion, swollen fists and oversized thumbs. Clawing at a stack of menus, he hurriedly escorted a large group of noisy patrons to a nearby table, while shouting out orders to busboys and waiters. Never blinking he rubbed two of the smallest eyes Jack had ever seen. Perfectly round, they stuck out from his tapered forehead like two black dots. With a bald head and brown handlebar mustache, the antennae of which practically reached his expressionless eyes, he appeared absolutely ridiculous.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Lorenz,” he apologized, “but it’s 7:30.”
“Jack?” commented the blond standing next to him.
“That’s right,” he awkwardly responded. “You must be Michelle. I didn’t expect you to be wearing glasses.”
“I didn’t recognize you either,” she flatly replied, her full lips puckering when she spoke.
“I hope that’s not a problem,” he nervously joked.
Smiling ambiguously, she appeared distracted.
“Shall we sit down,” he pathetically suggested.
