3.
It was dark when we got back to the body shop, and
the sign was lit, J. LUTHER MERKLINGER, FUNERAL
HOME.
The boss loved to advertise. If he could have
squared it with his sense of decorum, the sign would
have been vertical and flashing.
Inside, Jump and Nadine were working on a particularly
challenging case. Guy and his girlfriend had
been trysting in a twenty-fifth-story hotel room
with a low window and a climate-control unit up
to the sill. He got up to open the window,
put his knee up and leaned out for a look, when
a rat touched his foot—the hotel claimed it could
only have been a mouse—and he pulled up the other
knee with such force that out he went. She
just had time to run to the window and see him go
bump.
Well, that's what she said.
And to add to the mess, there'd been an autopsy.
I won't go into detail about what the coroner's
people do to a joker. Jump had to embalm him
in chunks.
Naturally the widow wanted no suggestion of scandal
or suicide, so she'd ordered an open-casket funeral.
Guy should have been buried in a Tupperware tureen,
but that's what they want, that's what you give
'em, am I right?
Nadine had done a pretty fair facial restorative
working from photographs—that's why she was at Merklinger's!—and
she was waiting until Jump finished assembling the
joker with butcher string before applying the final
touches.
"It's been a long day," I said. "Let's slide
down to the Boot."
"Yah," she sighed, "my systems are kickin’ down,
here."
"Wait," said Jump. He held up both hands.
"Wait. Let me do this. We can all leave
together."
"Why don't you come tonight, Jump?" Nadine
was always working on him. He never wanted
to come out and have any fun. Well, maybe
he wanted to, but he couldn't. He was almost
as terrified of women as he was of the dead.
He was difficult to match. He was the kind
of guy who comes in halfway through the movie and
his body functions are too loud. Too much
hair in his nose. Nadine sent away for one
of those cylindrical snipers and left it lying around
but he never took the hint.
Even so, she'd managed to arrange some encounters
for him. Before each of them he'd sidle up to me
in the work place and ask if I happened to know
the potential partner. I usually did.
He'd polish his glasses and pretend to search for
the question.
"How are her legs?"
I'd shrug. "Could be worse." I mean,
you can't lie!
Almost invariably he got so nervous that he'd throw
up on his shirt before zero hour and have to cancel.
If he made it to actual date time he'd get a nosebleed
over dinner or something. Even the most floppy-eared
of companions was apt to lose interest.
After each failure he went out and had a huge meal,
put on a few pounds. He had to accomplish
something!
"I don't want a date!" he'd lash out when Nadine
raised the subject again. "I'm too old for
a date! I want to get laid!"
"Well that's how it's done, you bozo!"
Indeed, it was our theory that the elaborately neurotic
Jump was so jumpy simply because he never got any
action. You wouldn't like it either!
Predictably, I think, he was inclined to blame his
lack of success on his job, that eek-a-freak attitude
that confronts those who deal daily with the dead.
This was unconvincing.
I mean, all right, the embalmer's social status
is only a notch or two above toilet attendant.
So what? It can still be sort of exotic if
you play it right.
(I must remark in passing, however, that I generally
took the precaution of switching off the sign before
we left. No use discouraging late guests unnecessarily!)
Whenever we could talk him into it, we took him
along with us to the Blue Boot, a downtown retreat
of ours. There, trusting to the spontaneity
of the moment, we tried to coach him towards a score.
"What about her?" Nadine would whisper, "I'll bet
she goes! Try her!"
He would swallow and get to his feet, waddle out
a little towards the dance floor and turn to us
with an air of suppressed awe.
"Don't dork out!" she'd stage whisper, waving him
on. "Just say, Come here, baby, I got love
for you!"
The humiliations were cumulative. One young
woman addressed him as Anus-Face. "What are
you, standing on your head or something?" she asked.
"Your breath smells real suspicious!"
When he protested that he was right side up she
zapped him with her stun gun.
He was too unsnide.
The only other possibility was to have it done professionally,
but when it came to the girls of the game he didn't
feel protected from infection unless he was wearing
a wet suit and gardening gloves. The ladies
kind of liked the gloves but he couldn't relax.
On the whole he found it safer to stay home and
grow his hair.
"Come on," I said. "You've got to get out
once in a while and renew your sense of possibility!"
"Nah. I gotta wash my sweaters."
We checked the viewing rooms for lingering visitors,
locked up, turned off all the lights, made sure
there was nothing an the call sheet, piled into
the lead limo and took Jump home to his VCR.
Then we pointed the prow at the Boot, eager to share
a little joie with others who had managed for the
moment to rise above the mundane concerns of survival,
and didn't take our eyes from the road until we
dropped anchor in the parking lot.
Inside, the scene was foaming. Music, laughter,
shouting smoke. The band was thumping.
The dance floor, aswarm. Waiters wove sideways
among crowded tables. The guitarist peeled
off strings, the sax man portrayed various phases
of sexual joy, the singer knelt and scatted.
On the ramp behind the bar, the strippers whirled
their tassels.
Everything but streamers.
We found a table and signaled a waiter.
"How you doin’, Nadine?"
The waiters were always coming on to Nadine.
She put her-self together—navy-blue hair, sun-lamp
tan, ocher lipstick, anklet under her nylons—with
a tastelessness amounting almost to cynicism, but
she knocked them dead.
She said, "Oh, you know what I mean."
We ordered martinis and food. The former were
dry, the vermouth applied as with an atomizer, and
disappeared quickly. Some people drink spontaneously
and some observe a regimen. I don't know,
I just do whatever.
Between desserts we rose to dance, rolling our shoulders
to the music, pats of butter yielding to the mashed
potatoes of life. I went up on one toe and
leaned forward into an arabesque while Nadine turned
me by the extended foot. There was moderate
applause, nothing like for my dying swan.
"Delmore!" said a voice. I turned. It
was someone from my past, someone whose name I had
once memorized, but it escaped me now.
"Delmore! You come over to my place, you smoke
my grass, you lie in my Jacuzzi, you eat my dinner,
you drink my wine, you fuck me, you watch my TV,
then you go home! You don't even clear the
table! What kind of relationship is that?"
I swam in the rhythm. "My psychiatrist says
I'm in a period of search," I said, and sidestroked
over for some more zabaglione.
Nadine was between suitors and talking to Dog.
"So he was giving her the paddiwacks for her birthday,
and she says, Walter, stop it! she was abused as
a child! and he says, you mean she was autistic?
and she goes, yah!"
Open-mouthed, Dog stared around at the crowd.
"Yah, I used to do terrible things to my dog with
a fork."
I was having my usual difficulty with martinis.
You get all that shaved ice in your mouth and you
either have to spit pellets or filter it through
your teeth, which sounds rude. I found I could
circumvent the problem by drinking straight from
the pitcher. When it was empty I gave it to
a passing waiter to put back under the cow and began
to look around for the main chance.
We were sitting there laughing at everyone, you
know how you do, when the phone went off in my pocket.
I excused myself and went out to the parking lot
to answer it.
"Merklinger's Funeral Home," I said, in my midnight-to-Six
FM mode. I paced for the clearest reception.
"Yes."
"Yes."
"I see."
"Well."
"Of course."
"How long ago?"
"Ah."
"Which hospital?"
"Okay."
"Uh huh."
"No, no."
"Naturally."
"I'm sure."
"All right."
"All right."
"I think we can do that."
"Sure."
"I understand."
"I think that's best."
"Yes."
"Our fees are comparable."
"No, you shouldn't worry about that."
"M-hm."
"Okay."
"We can do it right now if you like, or we can wait
until you're feeling more like yourself."
"No hurry."
"Certainly."
"It's for the best."
"Don't worry about it any more."
"Nine will be fine."
"Try to get some sleep."
"Don't worry."
"Okay."
"Bye."
"No, you mustn't worry."
"Okay."
"See you in the morning."
"Sure."
"Bye. "
"Okay."
"Bye. "
Flipping the walkie-talkie closed I swaggered back
to the aquarium, burst through the doors and hurled
myself onto the dance floor. I achieved various
formations more or less at will. I did the
Hanging Laundry. I did the Karate Club.
I did the Amazing Plastic Man. I did the Runaway
Pogo Stick. I lay down on my back and rotated.
I roamed and pawed at the feet of adjacent women.
"Hey!" said a voice, all tiny, plaintive bells,
"you scratched me!"
Instantly I was on my feet, placing a chair beside
her. "Please," I said.
She sat huffily and I knelt to examine the offended
foot. No wound was detectable but in case
the skin might be broken I removed her shoe and
sucked out the poison.
"Hey! How do I know you don't have AIDS?"
"Too late now," I pointed out. I thrust her
toes into my mouth and attempted to swallow them.
She looked around in disbelief.
Nadine sat in an attitude of sultry so-whatism.
She popped her gum and gave it a few chews.
Dog potato-peeled his finger at me.
My intended drew up her foot and massaged it petulantly.
You could tell she took her legs seriously.
Hard not to.
After a brief convalescence she allowed as how she
might be up to a little sedate hug-dancing.
I drew her up to me and we pirouetted tenderly.
By now Dog had disappeared. He'd found a new
number in a toilet cubicle—so-and-so gives a good
you-know-what—and he always insisted on calling
them up. "How do you know it's true?" I'd ask him,
but I guess you don't get anywhere without an agent.
Nadine had stopped conducting interviews and was
test-dancing a candidate.
I was sinking, flailing at the surface. Frustrated
by the pace of the music, I waved imperiously at
the band. "Play Waltz of the Flowers," I called.
They blew raspberries at me,
"DIE!" I screamed. "I WANT YOU TO DIE! I GOT THE
GUT WAGON RIGHT HERE!"
We exchanged gestures.
Embalmed now, I collapsed into the arms of my entourage.
They carried me toes-dragging to the car and threw
me in the back seat. There I lay with my head
in my date's lap until Nadine clinched her consultation
and they came out and drove us back to the depot.
We talked no shop, dropped no clue as to the character
of the house we arrived at. Time enough for
that in the morning.
Nadine let us off out back. "Night, now,"
she said, and drove away.
We climbed the fire escape to my room in the attic.
There was no moon to illuminate the headstone display.
I got her inside and tickled her toes. When
we unlocked I
fell beside her, combed out and exhausted, and we
should have sunk, into sleep together, but I lay
there thinking about Merrilie.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter
3
Chapter 4
Theme Song
