Small Apartments (2 page)

I need to get out of here, Franklin thought as he again stared at the yellow building across the street. Out of this small apartment and away from this crummy city. He twisted his pinky finger into his left ear as his thoughts returned to his brother.

Apparently, Bernard had not always been crazy. He earned his Master’s Degree from the University of Buffalo and worked as an accountant for a successful downtown law firm named Weiner and Fish. Bernard’s skin was the colour of communion wine. His suits appeared more expensive than they were because they were tailored to fit like a second skin. His ties were silk and monochromatic, green was his favourite—it matched his bottle-green eyes. He was 6’3”, 185 lbs., with ink-black hair that he grew long and thick so he could comb it straight back with a smear of pomade. Bernard had come home to 57 Ashland with a crew cut the day before he checked himself into the Buffalo Psychiatric Center on Elmwood Avenue. As far as Franklin knew, his brother still had the same haircut.

Bernard brought home a parade of girlfriends. He would usually take them bowling on a first date. Bernard carried a 160 average, but he would sandbag for the girls. Bernard did not put on airs. He did not care what impressed a woman. “Take them bowling,” Bernard would say. “That’s how you flush out the tight-asses. Uptight chicks refuse to bowl. And if they won’t bowl, they won’t roll. If you know what I mean.”

Franklin was pretty sure he knew what he meant. But not positive.

Bernard brought home many girls but Franklin had his favourites. Frieda had wild, curly red hair. She worked as a waitress in a Greek diner in Allentown. She would sit on the carpet and paint her toenails while the three of them watched rented movies on Friday nights. The smell of the nail polish gave Franklin a headache but he would never ask Frieda to stop. He adored her bony feet from his dark chair in the corner. “Can you see the
TV
all right, sugar?” Frieda would ask. “I can see everything just fine,” said Franklin.

Becca was a short, thin yenta from Suffolk County with spindly legs and freakishly large breasts. She talked and talked, never seeming to require oxygen. It was as if she possessed an internal breathing apparatus that rendered inhalation superfluous. Franklin was fascinated by the foreign cadence of her Long Island dialect. He also liked that she called him Boobala. He didn’t know what Boobala meant, but he would have handed her twenty bucks every time she said it.

There were others, too. Andrea: the yoga instructor from Williamsville; Sarah: the jet engine mechanic from Tonawanda; the other Sarah: the peppy and athletic University of Buffalo senior who was captain of her lacrosse team. Franklin enjoyed the glimpses he got into these girls’ lives: the offhanded snatches of conversation which revealed one to be “on the pill,” or another as “constantly horny.” Bernard’s girlfriends would always chat freely with Franklin while his brother was en route from work, or in his bedroom dressing and applying a liberal coating of musk.

Before he checked himself into a mental hospital, Bernard drove a maroon 1994 Mazda 626 four-door with standard transmission and a six-cylinder engine. Bernard used to drive Franklin all over Buffalo. He would drive Franklin anywhere he needed, or wanted, to go. He drove him to the flea market on Military Avenue the Saturday five years earlier when Franklin decided to buy an alphorn from a skinny old man wearing a short-brimmed straw hat with a loud, floral band.

“You know what that is, son?” the man in the unfortunate hat asked Franklin that Saturday afternoon. Franklin was fingering the horn as it leaned against a fold-out card table with a colour ad for Lucky Strike cigarettes pasted to its top. “That is a gen-u-ine, goddamn alphorn.”

“Is it from Switzerland?” asked Franklin.

“Why, you bet your sweet balls it is.”

Franklin paid the man $200 of Bernard’s money for the horn without dickering. As he and Bernard drove home to 57 Ashland they had to leave the back window rolled down with the skinny end of the horn sticking out because it was too long to fit in the Mazda. Bernard thought Franklin was crazy for buying an alphorn that day. How about that? thought Franklin as he sat on his orange utility chair inside 100 Garner sipping cold tea. It was less than a year from the day when the now famous self-help author and Guru of Mental Fitness, Dr. Sage Mennox, personally diagnosed Bernard as “Nuts.” Dr. Mennox said that without immediate psychiatric care, Bernard would be “miles and miles down the Road to Crazy.”

FRANKLIN GLANCED DOWN
at Mr. Olivetti sprawled out and smiling on the pale yellow, cracked linoleum floor. He rested his flabby elbows on his fat kneecaps and stared at the body. Mr. Olivetti’s head was upside down from Franklin’s perspective and resting between Franklin’s bare feet. What a look Mr. Olivetti had on his face. His eyes were wide open and his mouth was bent into the corniest grin. This old ginny looks like he just won a free trip, thought Franklin. I guess he has.

“Where the hell did Bernard get a Wal-Mart receipt for a hand-held tape recorder?” Franklin asked Mr. Olivetti.

Franklin poured out the rest of his Moxie trying to aim it into Mr. Olivetti’s frozen smile, but he missed. Franklin was never good at those kinds of things, things that required skill and a steady hand. He sat back in his chair and stared at the dead flies inside the fluorescent light on the ceiling.

“This apartment is too small for me,” Franklin told Mr. Olivetti. “Do you know that I am destined for bigger and better things? My brother Bernard always told me that I’m special. ‘You are special Franklin,’ he would say. Maybe I should just leave Buffalo. I’ll bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you Mr. Olivetti? Maybe I’ll just go someplace where people respect me, and they’re not so mean, and they appreciate my music. Someplace where there is no Mr.-fucking-Allspice in 2? banging on the walls. Someplace like Switzerland.”

Switzerland. In every spare moment Franklin dreamed of Switzerland. It must be Utopia, he thought. A land of pastoral serenity where he would be free to lie naked in the tall grass beside an Alpine lake spooning with his mighty horn.

Franklin’s dog sniffed Mr. Olivetti’s face. He started to lick the Moxie from his cheek but balked at the bitter taste. Circling a spot on the floor, he flopped down beside the dead man and heaved a heavy sigh. He then began to lick himself with intense focus.

Dead flies. Dead Mr. Olivetti. Life is short and full of surprises, Franklin thought.

F
RANKLIN’S UPSTAIRS NEIGHBOUR
, Tommy Balls, was baked out of his gourd. Tommy’s project for the day was to construct a device known as a “gravity bong.” Tommy’s best friend Tony, who was three credits away from an Associates Degree in Hotel Management at Erie Community College, had drawn a basic diagram on a cocktail napkin of the components required to make the bong and how those components must be arranged. Over a couple of beers at Mulligan’s Brick Bar in Allentown, Tony gave Tommy Balls an enthusiastic testimonial on the gravity bong’s advanced effects. They had just finished assaulting their eardrums for three hours across the street at Nietzsche’s, with the four chords and confusing lyrics of the local band “Vomit.” They could barely hear each other above the ringing.

“You’re going to love this fucking gravity bong,” said Tony.

“What?” shouted Tommy Balls.

“I said Fucking Gravity Bong, baby!”

“Yeah,” agreed Tommy Balls.

Building the bong was Tommy Balls’ project for Tuesday, but that is not to suggest that he was up and moving around his apartment. No, he was sitting on the faded green corduroy couch his parents let him have when he moved out six months ago. Tommy moved out voluntarily—and rather theatrically—after a poorly conceived, and badly delivered, drug-induced argument with his mother about the quality of her meatloaf. There were deeper issues, of course, and the meatloaf was just a catalyst. Tommy used the opportunity to deliver a fierce monologue on what he perceived to be his parents’ shortcomings. His speech was so venomous that it made his mother dash into her bedroom crying. She spent the rest of the evening reading and scribbling notes inside the dust jackets of her Dr. Mennox books. His father, for his part, put on his hat and drove to the Knights of Columbus Hall. Within the week Tommy had put down a deposit on an apartment at 100 Garner.

TOMMY HAD JUST
finished smoking a joint and was in a pleasant state between consciousness and sleep as he stared into the television. An episode of
Magnum, P.I
. was on. It was twenty-four minutes into a twelve-hour marathon.

As he gawked catatonically at the television, Tommy ran through his mind all the objects he would need to build his inaugural gravity bong. First he would need a bucket. He was pretty sure he had a bucket behind the door in the bathroom. He had a faint recollection of a white plastic bucket with one dark sock in it. Next he would need a two-litre plastic soda bottle. He would need to cut the bottom off of that, so he would also need a serrated knife and a pair of scissors. Tommy knew he had the knife, and probably the scissors, but he was positive he did not have the soda bottle. Although he consumed, on average, three cans of beer and one two-litre bottle of soda pop per day, he had just brought an entire month’s worth (ninety-eight cans and thirty-three bottles) to the recycle machine at the Open 24 Hours convenience store where he was a clerk. He’d applied the resulting $6.55 towards the purchase of a dime bag from Bobo at the pool hall on Elmwood Avenue. Securing a soda pop bottle without making a trip to the 2-4 store may pose a problem, thought Tommy.

Finally, the gravity bong called for weed. He had plenty of that, thanks to Bobo. Tommy budgeted for two things in his life: rent and weed. I have to have weed and a place to smoke it, he reasoned. His job as a clerk at the 2-4 store on the corner of Grant Street and Forest Avenue allowed him to barely afford both.

Bucket. Knife. Scissors. Weed … soda pop bottle.

Tommy blinked and a glimmer of awareness, however faint, crept in behind his eyes. Tommy scratched at his orange goatee. He was positive there were no two-litre soda pop bottles within the confines of his apartment. He ran through his options. He could go purchase a two-litre beverage and purge it of its contents, but that would require him walking the three blocks to the 2-4 store. If Ruiz was working his shift down at the 2-4 store he would surely let Tommy grab a bottle off the shelf at 100% discount. If Buttmunch Artie was working, he could forget about it. What day is this, thought Tommy? Tuesday. Artie worked till six on Tuesdays. That was all beside the point, anyhow. Tommy did not want to go outside. It was his day off and he just wanted to hang out in his apartment and get high.

Tommy Balls shook his head and smiled at the television. Magnum, P.I. was being reprimanded by Higgins, the caretaker of the Robin Masters Estate, for borrowing his camera without asking. Why do I have to live in Buffalo? Why can’t I be living for free in Hawaii like Magnum, thought Tommy.

“Fuckin’ Higgins,” said Tommy Balls.

Tommy got up and stretched his arms above his head until they cracked. He picked up a black, Metallica tour
T
-shirt from the arm of the couch, sniffed it, then pulled it over his tattooed torso. Sure enough, behind the bathroom door he found a white plastic bucket. He removed the dark sock and searched the bathroom for a good place to drape it, settling on the sink. He found a steak knife sticking out from the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and a pair of scissors on the table under a stack of
High Times
and empty plastic
CD
cases. He gave a futile look inside the garbage can for a soda pop bottle. On top of the wet trash was a paperback self-help book entitled
Am I Crazy?
by Dr. Sage Mennox. Tommy Balls had received the book as a gift from his mother, a recovering sippy alcoholic and Born Again Christian. He called his mother a “sippy alcoholic” because that is what she was: a sippy here, a sippy there, all day around the house until the evening news rolled around and she was rip-roaring drunk and looking for conflict. Tommy’s mother was not out the door one minute after giving him the book when he had deposited it in the shitcan. Two years ago his mother had become a loyal and devoted follower of the
TV
talk show mental health guru, Dr. Mennox. Some people need desperately to follow someone, thought Tommy. His mother had been off the booze since she began devouring every book written by Dr. Mennox, and, in Tommy’s opinion, that was good. However, she was infinitely more annoying as a Christian than she ever was as a drunk. His mother was convinced that Dr. Mennox had saved her life. She had dog-eared dozens of pages in each of his books and could recite chapter and verse. She said Dr. Mennox had taught her how to be, how did she say it?
Mentally fit and physically strong
. He was the gatekeeper who kept her off the Road to Crazy. Tommy had seen the good doctor once on one of the daytime talk shows. He thought he seemed stiff and impersonal for a self-help guru. He did have a nice tan on his bald head, though. And his suit must have cost $3,000. He wore cufflinks, too. Tommy always paid attention to whether someone wore button-down cuffs or cufflinks. For Tommy, cufflinks were the dead giveaway that you had money.