Hard Bite and Other Short Stories (5 page)

All the living room furniture got moved out right away. Said I couldn’t stand the sorrow of looking at it. Really, it was to make room for new stuff, soon as I’m done with the black dress. The only thing I don’t like is the living room got a funny echo in it without the recliner and hide-a-bed.

When I walk past the living room, out of the corner of my eye, I still see him stretched out in the recliner. Makes me jittery as a squirrel. Words flash on my tongue, “Turn that TV down!” Or, “Stop drinking that beer and put the garbage out!” But I have to fight it back. Only a crazy person would shout at an empty room.

Sometimes I do it anyway.

An old saying keeps coming to me; To a widow the sweetest sound this side of heaven is a man snoring. Mama and I used to laugh at it, taunt Daddy with it, that we’d never feel that way. So I can’t understand why I’m thinking about it, like it’s tormenting me...

To a widow the sweetest sound this side of heaven is a man snoring.

To a widow the sweetest sound this side of heaven is a man snoring.

To a widow—

Sleep is gone, seems like forever. I walk past a mirror and hardly know that woman with straw hair and dark hollows under her eyes, so black they match her widow dress. I lie in bed waiting and don’t know what I’m waiting for, remembering the sound of him coming up the stairs to bed, with a sucker in his mouth.

Tinkle,

Tinkle,

Rattle,

Clank.

Here it comes, it’s coming to me...why Mama died so suddenly after Daddy...

The screams rise in my throat and keep on and on until they bounce off the walls and jump back down my throat. “EEEEEEEEEEEE!!! Mamaaaaaaa!

I never heard the neighbor thumping at the door, nothing but my own screeches ricocheting off the empty walls, bouncing around my skull. I only remember when the paramedic bashed through the door with a hypodermic needle outstretched, I was howling with all my force, like I was staring death in the face and trying to scream it away.

“
Mamaaahhh! HOW DO I LIVE WITHOUT A MAN TO HATE? MAMAAAAHHH— †

Organic Chicken Tortilla Soup with Chopped Finger Garnish

San Francisco, a fancy pants restaurant; and there’s a finger in my soup. Not the kind attached to a waiter with his thumb sloshing in the broth, either. A real finger, chopped off, with a cross tattoo between the first and second joints, and black knuckle hairs.

If it weren’t for the black hairs, I might have eaten the soup in my semi-starved state and then alerted management, but I couldn’t get past the hairy knuckles. So I sounded the alarm and stayed around for the action.

The restaurant owner, an imposing man with muscles bulging under his bib-apron, appeared beside my table, his granite face whitening. A cooler-headed waitress plucked the finger from my soup and announced, “It’s a joke. It’s not real. He said he wasn’t really going to do it.”

She waved the finger, splattering drops of soup which proved not the best move in a crowded restaurant, and several diners dialed 911 during the stampede for the exit.

Turned out, it was a prank. My waiter attended one of those San Francisco art schools with an emphasis on self-expression. The soup stunt was part of his graduate thesis. He’d carefully crafted the finger from real chicken bones, filed down, wrapped in raw meat and covered with realistic latex “skin.” Even the police admitted it was impressive.

After a dither over pressing charges (I didn’t), a stern warning from police to the young self-expresser, followed by his instant dismissal by the owner, I was still hungry as a she-bear. Even though the restaurant was long past closed, the grateful owner insisted on serving me a multi-course, 5-star meal, which I accepted.

L’Organique Carotte is renowned world-wide for its cuisine. The owner, in a delightful French accent, regaled me with descriptives of free-range, grain-fed meats, spring-watered hydroponic vegetables, and hand-harvested wild spices. With each sumptuous dish served, he recited the ingredients like a psalm. By the third course, he pulled up a chair.

“’
Ow did you hear about my restaurant?”

“
How could I not? The food world raved when Organic Chicken Tortilla Soup was served at your opening. ‘An unparalleled complexity of flavor’ I believe they said. Is it true Brad flew a serving to Kenya during Angelina’s pregnancy?”

(I was gushing shamelessly, but if you only knew how difficult, how nearly impossible life is for a food purist like myself...I’d lost friends over it! And here was I, little Calley Westerberg, bookkeeper for the Wholistic Groceteria franchise, Seal Beach store, on my first solo trip to San Francisco, with the owner of L’Organique Carotte all to myself!)

He looked down bashfully. His name was Henri, and he had a wonderfully husky voice. “Oh, I could not comment on Brad and Angie,” he demurred, “But do have a piece of pie filled with hand-gathered boysenberries from the top of MachuPichu, with a side of triple-pasturized ice-cream from a pre-dawn milking of Alpine cows.”

While I scarfed, he asked about me. I shared every detail; my excruciatingly careful diet and supplement intake, my exact percentage of healthy body fat. He playfully squeezed my arm, and I fantasized what the muscles filling out his bib-apron would feel like under my fingertips. I must have talked for hours, and he hung on every word, asking all the right questions. A man who cared! I was falling in love...

Finally, a pause for the ladies room was necessary. As I rose from the table, his smiling eyes were kind.

The Ladies’ was all the way in the back, across from a heavy, unmarked door. It swung open, leaking cold air, and out stepped the art-student waiter. I was dumbstruck. “What are you doing here!“

He tried to slam the door but I’d already glimpsed the unseeable: flayed, swinging carcasses of meat on hooks. Not beef, pork, or any kind of animal....they were hu—

A strong hand closed on the soft flesh of my upper arm. Henri’s sandpaper voice caressed my ear, “I see you ‘ave discovered the secret of our world-famous soup.” †

RETURN of the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD MONKEY from SUNSET BOULEVARD

Judge, there’s a good reason I was trespassin’. It’s on account a my friend, see. He showed his mug in a talkie, way back when. That flick with the old movie-star broad creaking around a crumbling mansion on Sunset. A real movie director played the manservant, bald as an egg and stiff-backed as a Prussian general. Maybe youse remember? Saps and suckers can’t recall anything happened before last Tuesday, but standup guys like you n’ me, we remember, huh Judge?

The actor I’m referrin’ to, he played a corpse laid out on a massage table. One hairy arm swung down, limp as death, when the movie star pulled back his shroud. I guess by now ya got it figgered he was the monkey, right?

Since 1950 he’s been buried in the back yard ‘o dat rotten old mansion. I knows for real, see. His only company is a pair of goats next door. Yeah, goats. It’s an eco-freak thing; goats eat the grass insteada mowin’ it. Those dang goats are noise sensitive. The slightest thing sets ‘em off bleatin’ and baain’ all night.

Drama students useta love goin’ up that old place, practicin’ lines under the moon. But they disturbed the goats so much neighbors called the coppers. I had a hot tip a coupla them were goin’ up there, on account of it bein’ the anniversary of the monkey’s death. Which brings me to the legend of my story.

See, the old chimp knew he wuz goin’ ta kick the bucket, but said he was comin’ back. Return he called it. Alls he needed was a few magic words recited by a young, virgin actress, and he could spring back to life an’ take revenge on all those lousy Hollywood mokes that made him a star and then dropped him like a chump. He was a chimp, not a chump, dammit.

An’ now it’s been sixty-one years and tanight’s the night. If the magic line gets said by a virgin dollface over his grave at midnight, he’ll come back. The magic woids is the ones SHE spoke at the very end a the movie, “All right Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close up.” What a dame! You hoid it before, didn’t cha Judge? Cause if ya can’t finish dat line by heart, yer nuthin’ but a patsy from Palookaville in my book. And if ya can finish it, yer a stand-up jake.

Anyways do I need ta tell ya how hard it is finding a virgin in Hollywood? It’s harder than gettin’ a clean piss-test from Charlie Sheen. Harder than the implants in Jenna Jameson’s chest. Harder than translatin’ Norse runes into Urdu. But I done it. I found her in a little acting class. Chickadee she calls herself. An’ I tole the whole class that a couple a C-notes was waitin’ if they showed up at the old place before midnight and ran lines from the movie.

It’s around eleven in the pee-em, and I’m already at the old mansion. I hear the kids comin’ in, walkin’ past the empty, rat-choked pool and trampin’ through the weeds. I warned ‘em about the goats, so they knows to be quiet. So far, no bleats from next door. Lady Luck is runnin’ wit me so far.

I sez hello to the actors, shows ‘em the C-notes, and they warm up a little. Finally Chickadee gets her chance. She stands inches from where my monkey pal is buried ‘an I sez to her, “Chickadee, I wanna hear the greatest movie line in the woild. An’ call me Mr. DeMille, like I’m really him. ‘Kay?”

Chickadee flashes her gams and tosses her curls. “All right Mr. DeMille…I’m going to screw the quotes up!”

“
C’mon doll,” I sez, “Try again.” It’s a minute to midnight, and under the earth, I imagine my zombie monkey pal’s dusty ear twitchin’, dried like an old leaf but slowly comin’ to life.

Chickadee screws up her face and sez, “Alright Mister, be chill. I’m ready for my close up.”

An’ then I hears it. I swear, I can hear Zombie Monkey’s teeth chattering. He’s wakin’ up!

I say, “Get it exackly right, sweetheart. A little louder.”

Chickadee takes a deep breath and shouts, “All right, Mr. DeMille…I’m ready to wake the goats up!”

I fergot about the goats. Bleating starts to beat the band. The neighbors start screamin’. I yell, “Cheese it, da cops!” and we all stampede outta there.

Sirens was yodelin’ in the distance and searchlights was piercin’ the sky, an’ the Zombie Monkey gnashed his teeth and sank into the big sleep for another sixty-one years.

Judge, dat’s nuttin’ but the truth, I swears. Let me go and I’ll be on my way if ya don’t mind… Judge? †

Killer Orgasm

She has nerve, that woman, looking like that. Chopped, frizzy hair and a no-name purse. Flat shoes. Him beside her. They’re together like a cop and handcuffs. He looks like a goddamn starved dog on a leash. Silvery hair and a gut starting, but the blue eyes and rugged chin still blaze. I can tell he still gets hard but she’s dry as a bone. He probably doesn’t ask for it more than once a month. And here I sit, on hot lava, and no man in my bed. Things couldn’t get any wronger. I better stop staring, even though I got my Celeb-U-Dark eyewear on. Stir some sweetener in my coffee, pretend I’m not watching. It’s good this restaurant is packed. Couples everywhere, dammit.

For a long time I thought something was wrong with me. Then I realized women like her get men like him fresh out of high school, when he still finds the missionary position exciting. They marry, have kids and somewhere after her 39th birthday, she decides sex is done. Add a decade of marriage on top of that, and there he is, house paid off, kids in college and retirement just over the hill. Doomed. Well not anymore, Bucko. Baby girl’s coming to get you.

The minute she takes a big drink out of that glass of iced tea, he’s mine. I fixed it before the waitress served it to her. Arsenic. Works fast. Looks like food poisoning at first. You’re thinking I’ll get caught, right? Nope. I have no ties to these people, none at all. This is a public place with at least a hundred other diners, and before she turns her toes up, I’ll be gone. Until the funeral, of course.

Forgive me if I sound harsh. Life hasn’t been easy, and I thought my man hunting days were over. Used to be, before Franklin rocked my world, I was sooo upset that all the good men were taken. It was after another affair with a married man—I could never tell they were married until waaay too late, and I’d already been kicked to the curb a dozen, yes, TWELVE times—that it suddenly dawned on me if the problem was all the good men were attached, then I should just unattach them. Problem solved. It was my bolt of lightning, maybe the only one I’ll ever have.

Let me explain a sexual fact; an aroused woman releases oxytocin, the hormone that triggers orgasm. No oxytocin, no big O—females can’t get off without it. Oxytocin makes women get easily attached, even addicted, to a man who satisfies them. Guys can just zip up and walk away, but oxytocin keeps a woman wanting. Dr. P told me that kicking an oxytocin addiction is like coming off heroin for some women. It was like that for me, TWELVE TIMES IN A ROW. Did I say that already? I was physically addicted to each man and the cravings nearly drove me mad. At one point I was going to kill myself, but then I got the lightning and forgot all about suicide.

After that, time was spent looking for just the right situation—a restless man with a contented wife. So contented she was downright complacent. Complacency is a sin. It’s a major ingredient of sloth, which is on God’s greatest hit list. I never worry about adult children or grandchildren because everybody, even Moms, have to die sometime. She just exits a little earlier than expected. In the movies, it’s usual for a femme fatale like me to get the man to do the killing--I have a nice nose, now, and implants, real eyepoppers--but I’ve always been a go-getter and believe in the do-it-yourself approach.