by Pete Dexter
"You turning this place into a commune or what?" he says.
Jimmy Measles takes a drink and lights a cigarette. His wife is sitting by herself under the stained glass, looking bored.
Peter is suddenly furious, he doesn’t know why. Jimmy does that to him. "Let me ask you something," he says. "How deep you into Michael?"
Jimmy Measles looks around his place, all the stained glass and fresh paint and new furniture. Two waiters are sitting in the new stuffed leather chairs in his restaurant, half asleep, no one to wait on. The bar is slow too. "You know where I was this afternoon?" he says.
Peter waits.
"The proctologist. My doctor sent me to have a proctologist examination. They got an inverted chair that tilts up, gives them a better look at your ass. And while l’m sitting there looking at this thing, a nurse comes in, all sweet and pressed, and starts laying out all these shiny instruments on the table, two at a time.
It takes her six, seven trips. She’s checking them too, kind of holds it up to the light the way you pick out a pool cue . . ."
"Jimmy, I’m trying to get to something here."
Jimmy holds up his hand, as if he is coming back to that. "And then she takes a tube of lubricant out of her uniform pocket," he says, "like she carries lubricant around with her, squeezes it on her linger to make sure it’s coming out, and then she lays that on the table next to the instruments, and then she hands me a gown. She says, ‘If you would just slip out of your trousers and underwear, sir, the doctor will be with you in a moment.’ "
Peter stares at him, wondering where this is going. Jimmy Measles takes a drink and uses the atomizer.
"I came," he says.
"You whacked off in a doctor’s office?" Which is the thing about Jimmy’s stories; at some point they bring you in. Which, he realizes, is also the thing about Jimmy. "What if that girl forgets to lay out one of the instruments and walks back in?"
Jimmy shrugs. "It wouldn’t be the first time."
Peter squints through the smoke and considers him. "You did that before?"
He gives Peter a smile, an awful smile, and Peter imagines for a moment that he is his brother, sitting in this chair trying to break him of his habit of whacking off at the doctor’s. He shakes his head, trying to get rid of the thought.
"If I remember," he says, "all this started, I asked how deep you were into Michael."
Jimmy calls the bartender and points to their glasses. All of Jimmy’s bartenders wear white shirts and black bow ties—real ties, no clip-ons. The bartender’s tie is perfect, and there is a little white streak in the crease at the side of his nostril. He pours the drinks, waits a respectful time to see if there is anything else he can do, and then returns to his station. He puts the bottle back on the shelf and walks to the other end of the bar.
"I got to hire another bartender like him," Jimmy Measles says. "Only a girl. Real young-looking, named Sam or something, some boy’s name. Nothing looks as good as a bow tie on a girl."
"You get another one like him, they’ll be robbing the bricks out the walls."
Jimmy shakes his head, looking into Peter’s eyes. He says, "I always know when a bartender’s stea1ing."
He glances at his wife, who crosses her legs. Her heel slides out of her shoe, and she reaches under the table to fix it, touching things she cannot see. Jimmy Measles smiles again at Peter, that same awful way.
"That girl at the doctor’s office," he said. "I could bring her in here, maybe put her in pigtails, you know?"
Peter puts his hand on Jimmy Measles’s arm, just above the elbow. His arm is soft and thinner than it looks. Peter can feel the bone. "You borrowed money from Michael," he says. "Don’t sit around here thinking it takes care of itself. It isn’t a friendly thing."
Jimmy Measles begins to say something, make one of his jokes, Peter squeezes the arm, cutting him off. "You eat together, make him laugh at your stories, everybody acting friendly, that doesn’t make you friends," he says.
"Let me tell you what happened. He tells you, ‘Jimmy, you ever got a problem, you let me know,’ right? And then one day you’re suddenly having a hard time keeping your wife clear with Nan Duskin, plus the car, plus the business expenses—one of which, by the way, is Otto the chef that couldn’t open dog food—and you borrow a few thousand from Michael. He hands it right over, doesn’t even seem to know how much he gave you, right?"
Peter leans closer; Jimmy tries to pull his arm away.
Peter holds on. "Well, he knows," he says. "He knows what he gave you, he knows what you owe—and you understand those are two different things, right?—and suddenly he doesn’t treat you so well. Suddenly you’re somebody runs errands, somebody he tells you where to be.
"And you do that shit, after all the guy lent you money, but all the errands in the world don’t take cent one off what you owe him. Running you around’s what he does, remind you that the debt’s still there."
He lets go of Jimmy Measles, sorry for squeezing his arm.
"Michael doesn’t like anybody that owes him anything," he says. "He’s been like that since he was in diapers."
The word diapers comes out accidentally, and hangs in the air a moment, growing like some balloon stuck on a helium nozzle. Jimmy Measles doesn’t seem to notice.
The smile again.
"All I’m saying, don’t get into him too deep, Jimmy. You get in, be able to get out."
Peter walks out of the club an hour later, thinking of diapers and his cousin. He does not see the two old Italians sitting in a cloud of cigarette smoke in their Ford until he is close enough, if it were not for the closed window, to touch them.
The one in the passenger seat watches him as he walks past.
Peter passes the car, looking up the street; he feels a cushion under his shoes, as if he were walking on a mattress. He knows if he hears the car door open, he is ruined here on the sidewalk, but there is no sound.
He puts himself in the old Italian’s place.
He is thinking nothing good comes this easy.
* * *
In the morning, Peter finds Jimmy Measles alone in the far corner of the club next to a mound of wet, black carpet. The ceiling and roof are gone in this part of the building, there is nothing overhead but clouds.
Jimmy has found a chair that has inexplicably survived the fire untouched—the rest are in black piles all over the club, indistinguishable now from tables and pieces of the walls and ceiling and floor.
Peter smells the gasoline and imagines the path of the fire. It seems to have begun in the basement, gone up the staircase to the kitchen, then into the dining room and bar, looking for a way out, and then finally followed the kitchen flue to the roof.
Jimmy Measles is sitting in his slippers and robe, wheezing with every breath, smoking a cigarette, a quart bottle of peppermint schnapps between his legs. Fire inspectors—most of them wearing masks against the smell—are picking through the place. Outside, a small crowd is pressing into the restraining ropes the fire department has strung across the front of the building. There isn’t much to see, and the crowd is smaller now than it was earlier in the morning; the firemen have told the television reporters there are no bodies.
Which is not completely true.
The dogs are rolled inside two towels at the foot of Jimmy Measles’s chair, one of them pressed against his slipper. Jimmy’s eyes are bloodshot and watery.
"They should of let the dogs out," he says.
"Maybe they wouldn’t leave." Peter trying to find something to save.
Jimmy Measles drinks from the bottle of schnapps then leans forward and puts his hand across one of the blankets. "Why would they burn up a couple little dogs?"
"If you want, I could take care of them now," Peter says. "You could go talk things over with Grace."
Jimmy Measles takes the atomizer out of his robe pocket, moves the cigarette away from his lips long enough to use it. "She’s asleep," he says. "Her mother called a doctor, in two mi
nutes he was over to the house and gave her something that was in the Valium family."
Peter surveys the room, broken glass everywhere, the smell of burned dogs and burned wood and gasoline. Something sweet—Southern Comfort.
Looking to the front, he can see the fumes in the light from the street. It seems to him that Jimmy Measles cared about the dogs in a different way than he cared about the rest of the place. The dogs were just dogs, they weren’t part of the show.
A policeman comes in, a saggy-faced man in a coat and loafers, stepping over what was left of the front door. He hesitates a moment, taking the room in, then makes his way to the back. "Mr. Katz?" he says.
Jimmy Measles looks up, does not answer. "Mr. Katz," the policeman says, "I wonder if you mind I ask you a couple questions. "
Jimmy looks at himself and then at the ceiling. There is a chandelier up there, hanging from its cords. He smiles in a familiar way that isn’t a smile. The cop stays where he is, waiting until Jimmy is ready.
"What I wanted to ask you," he says, "do you know a reason somebody’d want to fuck with you like this?"
Jimmy looks into the barrel of the bottle. The cop squats until he is sitting on his heels, putting himself in front of Jimmy’s face. "What I mean is, could you have a problem with the neighbors, or maybe you threw somebody out of here, they left mad and come back?"
Jimmy bends into his lap and breathes from his atomizer. He shakes his head.
"Were you experiencing business problems of another kind?"
"Wait a minute," Peter says, and the cop looks up at him, waiting. Peter speaks to Jimmy. "The next thing he’s going to ask, are you insured."
The policeman comes up off his haunches slowly, as if it hurts him to stand up. "I don’t remember asking you nothing," he says.
"He’s lost his place," Peter says. "He can’t tell you a thing sitting here in his slippers that he can’t tell you the same thing later, when he’s had a chance to calm down."
The policeman has another look at the room. "You insured, Mr. Katz‘?" he says.
Jimmy doesn’t answer.
"I don’t mean to put myself in your business," Peter says to the policeman, "but he’s upset. He lost his place and he lost his dogs . . ."
The policeman considers Jimmy a different way. "Is that right, Mr. Katz?" he says. "You lost your dogs?"
The policeman notices the towels rolled up at Jimmy Measles’s feet. "You know, there’s some people, Mr. Katz, would burn up their own dogs."
Jimmy Measles gets out of the chair and heads for the front door. He takes the bottle; he leaves the two rolled packages there on the floor. At the doorway between the bar and the restaurant he stops, dropping the cigarette on the floor and then carefully grinding it out with his slipper. Then he goes outside.
The cop kicks at a piece of the ceiling, and underneath is one of the small glass bowls Jimmy put on the tables. The carnation inside it still looks as if it just came out of the florist’s.
"Those dogs were really his pets?" the policeman says to Peter.
"Yeah," Peter says, "those were his pets."
* * *
The next time Peter sees him, Jimmy Measles is standing on the corner of Ninth and Catherine in his underpants, soaking wet, swinging at a parking meter with a softball bat. It is five-thirty in the afternoon, and his wife is watching from the living room window.
What looks like half of South Philadelphia is in the street with him, rooting him on.
As Peter comes through the crowd, Jimmy stops banging the meter long enough to pick up his atomizer, which he has placed on his front steps next to a fresh bottle of schnapps, and holds it in his mouth while he pumps the trigger.
It reminds Peter somehow of the old Phillies, back before the players used golf gloves, when they’d step out of the batter’s box for a handful of dirt.
"Blood for blood," Jimmy Measles says to the crowd, and moves back to the meter. "There’s going to be Guinea blood on the streets."
The next swing he takes misses the parking meter—more memories of the old Phillies—and he splays across the sidewalk. He lies still, gathering his resources, and then, using the bat to lift himself off the sidewalk, he gets back to his feet.
He sees Peter then. "Hey, Pally. Tell Michael for me that we got something to do."
An announcement.
He tries another swing, but he is exhausted and the bat hits the pole and falls out of his hands.
Peter says, "Jimmy, where’s your pants?"
"Blood for blood," he says. "We’re gonna wash the streets with Guinea blood."
Peter picks up the bat, hands it to Jimmy Measles, and steers him inside. Jimmy Measles steps in the glass from the parking meter and limps to the step. He sits down, drinks from the bottle of schnapps, and then touches his foot, which is bleeding. He inspects the blood on the finger, and then holds it over his head for everyone to see. "Blood for blood," he says, and the crowd cheers.
Peter tries the door but she has it locked. In a moment he hears her working the chain on the other side.
Jimmy Measles walks into his living room to polite applause, trailing the bat, dirt and little rocks falling off his back, and sits heavily in a black leather chair. Peter looks at his wife.
"Guinea blood," he says again.
Peter sits down himself. "Jimmy, you don’t mind, that’s the Italian Market outside."
"Blood for blood," he says, and then he smiles his worst smile and closes his eyes.
* * *
She asks him to help her get Jimmy upstairs. "He’ll wake up if there isn’t a television on," she says, "and he’s going to want his pills."
Peter looks at Jimmy Measles, who is spreading out over the couch like a stain, and considers carrying him upstairs.
"Pi1ls on a load like this?"
"He’ll be awake in half an hour," she says. "The only thing that gets him back to sleep is his pills."
"Jimmy isn’t that strong," he says, "to be taking pills and drinking the same time. He’s better off awake."
"He isn’t better off awake today," she says. She stares at her husband, lying on the couch. "He was over there," she says.
He looks at her, not understanding.
"When it happened."
It takes him a moment.
"He thought he heard the dogs," she says.
Peter pulls him by the wrists up off the couch. His skin lets go of the leather an inch at a time, it reminds him of peeling a Band Aid. He puts his head underneath Jimmy’s arm and moves him across his shoulder, balancing the load, and then stands up. Jimmy Measles smells like the fire. His skin is hot in back, where it was pressed into the couch, and cold and damp against Peter’s cheek.
Peter carries him up the stairs, feeling an unfamiliar panic—something about the weight of the cold skin pressing into his face.
She walks ahead of him and opens the bedroom door. All the furniture upstairs is white. He takes Jimmy Measles to the bed and bends until the weight rolls off him. He covers him with a sheet, and he kicks it off.
Jimmy settles into his pillow and then slowly curls away from the light, his hands buried between his legs. His wife pulls the blinds and the room is dark. Peter has a sudden, transitory thought that he and Grace have finished a bedtime story and the baby has fallen asleep. She is careful closing the door, not to make any noise.
"Can you stay a little while?" she says downstairs.
He is halfway to the front door, she is in the kitchen.
"These guys don’t want him," he says, thinking she is afraid, "and if they did, they wouldn’t come into his house." He sits down on the couch, brushing some of the dirt onto the floor.
She comes out of the kitchen with two drinks. He notices the ring Jimmy Measles gave her. There must have been a scramble in the diamond mine the day they found the stone.
She sits so close to him that he can feel the heat off her arms. Her hair is black, and she has pulled it away from her face. He looks at his watch.
"Just a few minutes," she says, "to make sure Jimmy doesn’t get up and go back outside with the bat."
They are on the couch twenty minutes when the noises start upstairs. There is a bump and another bump, and then a bump that shakes the ceiling. Jimmy begins to yell.
Peter sets his drink on the floor and slowly stands up.
* * *
Jimmy Measles is standing on the edge of the bed when Peter opens the door. He holds out the flat of his hand to warn him not to come any closer, as if it were a suicide.
Peter says, "Jimmy, I refuse to talk you down off a bed."
He dives from the bed to the floor then—dives without arc, the way timid children dive into swimming pools, leaning forward and down to meet the water—and lands on his stomach. The clock falls off the night table. He lies still a minute, as if trying to remember where he is.
Peter sits down on the floor next to him. "The hell, Jimmy," he says, "you didn’t say you were over there when they did it."
Jimmy Measles gets slowly to his hands and knees and crawls back to the edge of the bed. He has scraped the skin off his elbows, and one of them is beginning to bleed.
"They wouldn’t let me get the dogs," he says, pulling himself up. He crawls onto the bed and then, unsteadily, he stands.
"I said to them, ‘I don’t care what you do, let me get my dogs out of here first.’ "
He dives again, and this time Peter thinks he has knocked himself out. Jimmy Measles lies dead still half a minute, his nose pressed into the carpet, and when he looks up again there are rug burns on his chin and his forehead.
"You turn yourself into a human scab, you keep this up," Peter says.
Jimmy drops his face back onto the floor, and his words still seem to be inside his body, something Peter overhears. "I asked him, the guy at the door, could I please have the dogs. He wouldn’t answer. I can hear them in the back, barking at the one in the basement, but the guy at the door wouldn’t let me in."
His face comes up off the rug, and he is fighting for his breath. The atomizer is on the floor near the night table, and Peter reaches it and hands it to him. Jimmy Measles puts it in his mouth and pumps the trigger with every breath he takes for half a minute, until it seems to settle him down.
