by Jay Hopler
The landlady said, “I just thought so. Why not come down and have a cup of tea and a good chat? It does you good to talk. Really good. A doctor said to me once it clears the lungs. Stands to reason, don’t it? You can’t help getting dust up, and a good talk blows it out. I wouldn’t bother to pack yet. There’s hours and hours. My old man would never of died if he’d talked more. Stands to reason. It was something poisonous in his throat cut him off in his prime. If he’d talked more he’d have blown it out. It’s better than spitting.”
5
The crime reporter couldn’t make himself heard. He kept on trying to say to the chief reporter, “I’ve got some stuff on that safe robbery.”
The chief reporter had had too much to drink. They’d all had too much to drink. He said, “You can go home and read The Decline and Fall—”
The crime reporter was a young earnest man who didn’t drink and didn’t smoke; it shocked him when someone was sick in one of the telephone boxes. He shouted at the top of his voice, “They’ve traced one of the notes.”
“Write it down, write it down, old boy,” the chief reporter said, “and then smoke it.”
“The man escaped—held up a girl—It’s a terribly good story,” the earnest young man said. He had an Oxford accent; that was why they had made him crime reporter: it was the news editor’s joke.
“Go home and read Gibbon.”
The earnest young man caught hold of someone’s sleeve. “What’s the matter? Are you all crazy? Isn’t there going to be any paper or what?”
“War in forty-eight hours,” somebody bellowed at him.
“But this is a wonderful story I’ve got. He held up a girl and an old man, climbed out of a window—”
“Go home. There won’t be any room for it.”
“They’ve killed the annual report of the Kensington Kitten Club.”
“No ‘Round the Shops.’"
“They’ve made the Limehouse Fire a News in Brief.”
“Go home and read Gibbon.”
“He got clean away with a policeman watching the front door. The Flying Squad’s out. He’s armed. The police are taking revolvers. It’s a lovely story.”
The chief reporter said, “Armed. Go away and put your head in a glass of milk. We’ll all be armed in a day or two. They’ve published their evidence. It’s clear as daylight a Serb shot him. Italy’s supporting the ultimatum. They’ve got forty-eight hours to climb down. If you want to buy armament shares hurry and make your fortune.”
“You’ll be in the army this day week,” somebody said.
“Oh no,” the young man said. “No, I won’t be that. You see, I’m a pacifist.”
The man who was sick in the telephone box said, “I’m going home. There isn’t any more room in the paper if the Bank of England’s blown up.”
A little thin piping voice said, “My copy’s going in.”
“I tell you there isn’t any room.”
“There’ll be room for mine. Gas Masks for All. Special Air Raid Practices for Civilians in every town of more than fifty thousand inhabitants.” He giggled.
“The funny thing is—it’s—it’s—” But nobody ever heard what it was. A boy opened the door and flung them in a pull of the middle page: damp letters on a damp gray sheet; the headlines came off on your hands. “Yugoslavia Asks for Time. Adriatic Fleet at War Stations. Paris Rioters Break into Italian Embassy.” Everyone was suddenly quite quiet as an airplane went by, driving low overhead through the dark, heading south, a scarlet tail-light, pale transparent wings in the moonlight. They watched it through the great glass ceiling, and suddenly nobody wanted to have another drink.
The chief reporter said, “I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”
“Shall I follow up this story?” the crime reporter said.
“If it’ll make you happy, but that’s the only news from now on."
They stared up at the glass ceiling, the moon, the empty sky.
6
The station clock marked three minutes to midnight. The ticket collector at the barrier said, “There’s room in the front.”
“A friend’s seeing me off,” Anne Crowder said. “Can’t I get in at this end and go up front when we start?”
“They’ve locked the doors.”
She looked desperately past him. They were turning out the lights in the buffet; no more trains from that platform.
“You’ll have to hurry, miss.”
The poster of an evening paper caught her eye, and as she ran down the train, looking back as often as she was able, she couldn’t help remembering that war might be declared before they met again. He would go to it. He always did what other people did, she told herself with irritation, but she knew that that was the reliability she loved. She wouldn’t have loved him if he’d been queer, had his own opinions about things; she lived too closely to thwarted genius, to second touring company actresses who thought they ought to be Cochran stars, to admire difference. She wanted her man to be ordinary, she wanted to be able to know what he’d say next.
A line of lamp-struck faces went by her. The train was full, so full that in the first-class carriages you saw strange shy awkward people who were not at ease in the deep seats, who feared the ticket collector would turn them out. She gave up the search for a third-class carriage, opened a door, dropped her Woman and Beauty on the only seat, and struggled back to the window over legs and protruding suitcases. The engine was getting up steam, the smoke blew back up the platform: it was difficult to see as far as the barrier.
A hand pulled at her sleeve. “Excuse me,” a fat man said, “if you’ve quite finished with that window. I want to buy some chocolate.”
She said, “Just one moment, please. Somebody’s seeing me off.”
“He’s not here. It’s too late. You can’t monopolize the window like that. I must have some chocolate.” He swept her on one side and waved an emerald ring under the light. She tried to look over his shoulder to the barrier: he almost filled the window. He called, “Boy, boy,” waving the emerald ring. He said, “What chocolate have you got? No, not Motorist’s, not Mexican. Something sweet.”
Suddenly through a crack she saw Mather. He was past the barrier; he was coming down the train looking for her, looking in all the third-class carriages, running past the first-class. She implored the fat man, “Please, please do let me come. I can see my friend.”
“In a moment. In a moment. Have you Nestlé’s? Give me a shilling packet.”
“Please let me.”
“Haven’t you anything smaller,” the boy said, “than a ten-shilling note?”
Mather went by, running past the first-class. She hammered on the window, but he didn’t hear her, among the whistles and the beat of trolley wheels, the last packing cases rolling into the van. Doors slammed, a whistle blew, the train began to move.
“Please. Please.”
“I must get my change,” the fat man said, and the boy ran beside the carriage counting the shillings into his palm. When she got to the window and leaned out they were past the platform: she could only see a small figure on a wedge of asphalt who couldn’t see her. An elderly woman said, “You oughtn’t to lean out like that. It’s dangerous.”
She trod on their toes getting back to her seat: she felt unpopularity well up all around her: everyone was thinking, “She oughtn’t to be in the carriage. What’s the good of our paying first-class fares when …” But she wouldn’t cry; she was fortified by all the conventional remarks that came automatically to her mind about spilled milk and it will all be the same in fifty years. Nevertheless she noted with deep dislike on the label dangling from the fat man’s suitcase his destination, which was the same as hers, Nottwich. He sat opposite her with the Spectator and the Evening News and the Financial Times on his lap eating sweet milk chocolate.
THE HIT MAN
T. Coraghessan Boyle
EARLY YEARS
The hit man’s early years are complicated by the black bag that he wear
s over his head. Teachers correct his pronunciation, the coach criticizes his attitude, the principal dresses him down for branding preschoolers with a lit cigarette. He is a poor student. At lunch he sits alone, feeding bell peppers and salami into the dark slot of his mouth. In the hallways, wiry young athletes snatch at the black hood and slap the back of his head. When he is thirteen he is approached by the captain of the football team, who pins him down and attempts to remove the hood. The Hit Man wastes him. Five years, says the judge.
BACK ON THE STREET
The Hit Man is back on the street in two months.
FIRST DATE
The girl’s name is Cynthia. The Hit Man pulls up in front of her apartment in his father’s hearse. (The Hit Man’s father, whom he loathes and abominates, is a mortician. At breakfast the Hit Man’s father had slapped the cornflakes from his son’s bowl. The son threatened to waste his father. He did not, restrained no doubt by considerations of filial loyalty and the deep-seated taboos against patricide that permeate the universal unconscious.)
Cynthia’s father has silver sideburns and plays tennis. He responds to the Hit Man’s knock, expresses surprise at the Hit Man’s appearance. The Hit Man takes Cynthia by the elbow, presses a twenty into her father’s palm, and disappears into the night.
FATHER’S DEATH
At breakfast the Hit Man slaps the cornflakes from his father’s bowl. Then wastes him.
MOTHER’S DEATH
The Hit Man is in his early twenties. He shoots pool, lifts weights and drinks milk from the carton. His mother is in the hospital, dying of cancer or heart disease. The priest wears black. So does the Hit Man.
FIRST JOB
Porfirio Buñoz, a Cuban financier, invites the Hit Man to lunch. I hear you’re looking for work, says Bufloz.
That’s right, says the Hit Man.
PEAS
The Hit Man does not like peas. They are too difficult to balance on the fork.
TALK SHOW
The Hit Man waits in the wings, the white slash of a cigarette scarring the midnight black of his head and upper torso. The makeup girl has done his mouth and eyes, brushed the nap of his hood. He has been briefed. The guest who precedes him is a pediatrician. A planetary glow washes the stage where the host and the pediatrician, separated by a potted palm, cross their legs and discuss the little disturbances of infants and toddlers.
After the station break the Hit Man finds himself squeezed into a director’s chair, white lights in his eyes. The talk-show host is a baby-faced man in his early forties. He smiles like God and all His Angels. Well, he says. So you’re a Hit Man. Tell me—I’ve always wanted to know—what does it feel like to hit someone?
DEATH OF MATEO MARIABUÑOZ
The body of Mateo Maria Buñoz, the cousin and business associate of a prominent financier, is discovered down by the docks on a hot summer morning. Mist rises from the water like steam, there is the smell of fish. A large black bird perches on the dead man’s forehead.
MARRIAGE
Cynthia and the Hit Man stand at the altar, side by side. She is wearing a white satin gown and lace veil. The Hit Man has rented a tuxedo, extra-large, and a silk-lined black-velvet hood. … Till death do you part, says the priest.
MOODS
The Hit Man is moody, unpredictable. Once, in a luncheonette, the waitress brought him the meat loaf special but forgot to eliminate the peas. There was a spot of gravy on the Hit Man’s hood, about where his chin should be. He looked up at the waitress, his eyes like pins behind the triangular slots, and wasted her.
Another time he went to the track with $25, came back with $1,800. He stopped at a cigar shop. As he stepped out of the shop a wino tugged at his sleeve and solicited a quarter. The Hit Man reached into his pocket, extracted the $1,800 and handed it to the wino. Then wasted him.
FIRST CHILD
A boy. The Hit Man is delighted. He leans over the edge of the playpen and molds the tiny fingers around the grip of a nickel-plated derringer. The gun is loaded with blanks—the Hit Man wants the boy to get used to the noise. By the time he is four the boy has mastered the rudiments of Tae Kwon Do, can stick a knife in the wall from a distance of ten feet and shoot a moving target with either hand. The Hit Man rests his broad palm on the boy’s head. You’re going to make the Big Leagues, Tiger, he says.
WORK
He flies to Cincinnati. To L.A. To Boston. To London. The stewardesses get to know him.
HALF AN ACRE AND A GARAGE
The Hit Man is raking leaves, amassing great brittle piles of them. He is wearing a black T-shirt, cut off at the shoulders, and a cotton work hood, also black. Cynthia is edging the flower bed, his son playing in the grass. The Hit Man waves to his neighbors as they drive by. The neighbors wave back.
When he has scoured the lawn to his satisfaction, the Hit Man draws the smaller leaf-hummocks together in a single mound the size of a pickup truck. Then he bends to ignite it with his lighter. Immediately, flames leap back from the leaves, cut channels through the pile, engulf it in a ball of fire. The Hit Man stands back, hands folded beneath the great meaty biceps. At his side is the three-headed dog. He bends to pat each of the heads, smoke and sparks raging against the sky.
STALKINC THE STREETS OF THE CITY
He is stalking the streets of the city, collar up, brim down. It is late at night. He stalks past department stores, small businesses, parks, and gas stations. Past apartments, picket fences, picture windows. Dogs growl in the shadows, then slink away. He could hit any of us.
RETIREMENT
A group of businessman-types—sixtyish, seventyish, portly, diamond rings, cigars, liver spots—throws him a party. Porfirio Butioz, now in his eighties, makes a speech and presents the Hit Man with a gilded scythe. The Hit Man thanks him, then retires to the lake, where he can be seen in his speedboat, skating out over the blue, hood rippling in the breeze.
DEATH
He is stricken, shrunken, half his former self. He lies propped against the pillows at Mercy Hospital, a bank of gentians drooping round the bed. Tubes run into the hood at the nostril openings, his eyes are clouded and red, sunk deep behind the triangular slots. The priest wears black. So does the Hit Man.
On the other side of town the Hit Man’s son is standing before the mirror of a shop that specializes in Hit Man attire. Trying on his first hood.
“GENTLEMEN, THE KING!”
Damon Runyon
On Tuesday evenings I always go to Bobby’s Chop House to get myself a beef stew, the beef stews in Bobby’s being very nourishing, indeed, and quite reasonable. In fact, the beef stews in Bobby’s are considered a most fashionable dish by one and all on Broadway on Tuesday evenings.
So on this Tuesday evening I am talking about, I am in Bobby’s wrapping myself around a beef stew and reading the race results in the Journal, when who comes into the joint but two old friends of mine from Philly, and a third guy I never see before in my life, but who seems to be an old sort of guy, and very fierce looking.
One of these old friends of mine from Philly is a guy by the name of Izzy Cheesecake, who is called Izzy Cheesecake because he is all the time eating cheesecake around delicatessen joints, although of course this is nothing against him, as cheesecake is very popular in some circles, and goes very good with java. Anyway, this Izzy Cheesecake has another name, which is Morris something, and he is slightly Jewish, and has a large beezer, and is considered a handy man in many respects.
The other old friend of mine from Philly is a guy by the name of Kitty Quick, who is maybe thirty-two or three years old, and who is a lively guy in every way. He is a great hand for wearing good clothes, and he is mobbed up with some very good people in Philly in his day, and at one time has plenty of dough, although I hear that lately things are not going so good for Kitty Quick, or for anybody else in Philly, as far as that is concerned.
Now of course I do not rap to these old friends of mine from Philly at once, and in fact I put the Journal up in front of my face, be
cause it is never good policy to rap to visitors in this town, especially visitors from Philly, until you know why they are visiting. But it seems that Kitty Quick spies me before I can get the Journal up high enough, and he comes over to my table at once, bringing Izzy Cheesecake and the other guy with him, so naturally I give them a big hello, very cordial, and ask them to sit down and have a few beef stews with me, and as they pull up chairs, Kitty Quick says to me like this:
“Do you know Jo-jo from Chicago?” he says, pointing his thumb at the third guy.
Well, of course I know Jo-jo by his reputation, which is very alarming, but I never meet up with him before, and if it is left to me, I will never meet up with him at all, because Jo-jo is considered a very uncouth character, even in Chicago.
He is an Italian, and a short wide guy, very heavy set, and slow moving, and with jowls you can cut steaks off of, and sleepy eyes, and he somehow reminds me of an old lion I once see in a cage in Ringling’s circus. He has a black mustache, and he is an old-timer out in Chicago, and is pointed out to visitors to the city as a very remarkable guy because he lives as long as he does, which is maybe forty years.
His right name is Antonio something, and why he is called Jo-jo I never hear, but I suppose it is because Jo-jo is handier than Antonio. He shakes hands with me, and says he is pleased to meet me, and then he sits down and begins taking on beef stew very rapidly while Kitty Quick says to me as follows:
