The Hearse You Came in On (3 page)

“Not today, Pops. I’ve got a hangnail.”

Pops thought that was the funniest thing he had ever heard. He shoved the lug next to him. “Did you hear what the kid said? He said he’s got a hangnail!” The guy curled his lip. You could see he thought it was a riot.

I left them. At the road Tony was packing his bagpipes into the trunk of his car. I declined the offer of a ride. I wanted to walk. I had a few things I wanted to think about.

I swung by my place—which is four doors down from the funeral home—and took my hound dog Alcatraz out for a walk and a pee. He was ever so grateful. He left his love letters all up and down the block, then I took him over to Aunt Billie’s for cocktails. Alcatraz had soup. He loves soup.

“Who was that girl yesterday?” Billie asked me. “You know who I mean. The crasher.”

I told her I didn’t know. “She said she wanted to arrange her own funeral.”

Billie was at the lowboy, making old-fashioneds. A post-mortem favorite. She muddled the fruit with a little silver hammer.

“Isn’t she a little young for that?”

“I’d say so.”

Billie brought me my drink and she took hers over to her favorite chair. She slipped off her shoes after she sat down, and Alcatraz immediately trotted over and dropped to the floor in front of her. Billie rested her feet gently on his soft wrinkles.

“Did she leave a deposit?” Billie asked.

“It didn’t get that far,” I said, raising my glass. “She changed her mind.”

Billie smiled, bringing her glass to her lips. “Oh, she decided to live. That’s nice.”

I
think I mentioned that on the day that Carolyn James walked into and out of my life, I was in a cranky mood. Saying “yes” when I really mean “no” does that to me. Gets me cranky. And damn my soul to the eternal hell it deserves, that is what I had just recently done, agreeing to slap on a gray mustache and a folksy sort of fedora to play the part of the Stage Manager for an upcoming Gypsy Players production of
Norman Rockwell’s Fever Dream,
more popularly known as
Our Town.
Gil Vance, the visionary behind this inspired choice, stressed my height and my solid good looks (that’s a quote) in his campaign to nudge me out of yet another of my amateur retirements from the nonprofessional stage. He also invoked the local notoriety of my late parents. Gil is also never too shameless to swaddle his cudgel with my parents’ former celebrity when he is hammering away at my ego. And of course ego is exactly the place at which you hammer away when you’re trying to convince someone to get up on the stage.

“Hitch, you have no idea how many lesser talents are after me to get this role. The role of the Stage Manager demands someone of your stature, somebody who can fulfill the sacred contract between the actors and
the audience. I can’t have just any old ham up there, Hitch, I need you. You were born for this role. It’s in your blood.”

“No” is one of the easiest words to form in your mouth; you hardly have to move a muscle. But for reasons only the Laughing Gods know, I had ended up moving too many muscles in my chat with Gil over at Jimmy’s Coffee Shop, and my dozen refusals had culminated in a commitment to do the damn show. All my hopes that my last Gypsy fiasco—the big dopey Swede in
Anna Christie
—might have been my swan song were obliterated.

Good lord. The Stage Manager. Not even the gently wooden Dr. Gibbs. No.
The Stage Manager.
The ringmaster. All those lines. All that corn.

I’m several generations removed from the days when college kids took to the craze of seeing how many of them they could stuff inside a telephone booth or a VW Bug, but thanks to the postage-stamp-sized stage of the Gypsy Players Theater and the brilliant decision to mount a play requiring several dozen warm bodies, I got a whiff of the old claustrophobic pastime at the first rehearsal of
Our Town.
Gil Vance herded his cast up onto the little Gypsy stage then sat back in the fifth row and instructed us “to mill.”

We “milled.” We also bumped and scuffed and knocked elbows and kicked toes. It didn’t feel a thing like a town; it felt like a holding tank. As we stumbled about onstage, I suddenly found myself face-to-face with Julia Finney, my extremely gorgeous semi-nymphomaniac quasi-Buddhist and eternally charming ex-wife. Go figure.

“Well if it isn’t Hitchcock Sewell.”

“Hello there, Julia. What brings you to our town?”

“Very funny, Hitch. I see Gil roped you into this circus, too. What did he do, play on your vanity?”

“Basically.”

“Me too,” she sighed. “I’m a fucking pushover, I swear. Don’t we have better things to do with our time?”

“You’d think so, but here we are.”

Julia shook her head. “You I understand. You’re around dead people all day. What’s my excuse?”

I thought about that one. “You thrive on complications? The bigger the mess the happier you are?”

She squinted at me. “Wait a minute. Wasn’t I married to someone like you?” Before I could parry, she said, “Let’s talk later. I’ve got to mill.”

She slithered off toward the far corner of the stage—all of some fifteen feet away—then turned and cocked an eyebrow and playfully stuck her tongue out at me. Gil finally clapped his hands together. Like a sea lion.

“Very good, people. V-e-r-y good. Could you take a seat please. I want to go over with you my concept of what we’ll be doing in this production.”

The citizens of Grover’s Corners gathered round. I’d say that maybe half of them actually listened to Gil in earnest. The other fifty percent had been through all this before and we took the time to catch up on our daydreaming. Gil’s “concept” probably had some interesting angles, but it didn’t really matter. They’d never make it to the stage. The Gypsy Players have a long tradition of panic. Costumes rip, tempers flare, scenery wobbles, the lighting board burns up, rehearsals
bog down over minutiae, the flu du jour sweeps through the cast just before opening … In all my experience with this outfit, there has never been time for “concept.” Learn the lines, say them in order, pray for a moment or two of panache. That’s the concept. Whatever daring conceits Gil Vance cooks up in the privacy of his own head simply drains through the floorboards. I’m sure it frustrates the hell out of him—if he even notices—but that’s show biz.

So I tuned out while Gil explained exactly how this production would ultimately never be. He kept referring to “our stage manager” and sweeping his hand in my direction, a dozen or so dutiful heads swinging with him each time. As the ringmaster of this circus, I would be playing a pivotal role in bringing the concept to life. I guess I should have been listening, but I just couldn’t. I had other things on my mind. The closest I could come to paying attention to what was going on around me was to imagine the funeral scene at the end of the play. Natch. But in my version, seated there in the cemetery among the dedicated Gypsy Players, playing dead, wasn’t sweet Emily Gibbs. It was Carolyn James.

Bury me.

Julia wasn’t paying attention either. She sat on the edge of the stage fiddling with her long black braid. When our eyes met she held the braid up for me to see. A hangman’s knot. And for the second time in twenty minutes, she cocked an eyebrow at me.

Oh. I see. It’s going to be like that.

Julia’s studio is on the second floor of an old fire station which had—irony of ironies—been gutted by a fire years back while its crew was off battling a blaze
several blocks away. A new firehouse had been built elsewhere, the old one left vacant for a number of years until Julia’s number hit and she started getting big bags of money for her paintings. That’s when she took up work and residence on the second floor of the old fire station and opened up her gallery down below. The old fireman’s pole had remained in place, both a decorative touch as well as a nifty way to sweep down and check on the customers.

In the rear of the studio was Julia’s kitchenette and behind three antique screens, her bedroom, consisting of a bed and a bathrobe. A sculptor friend had designed the bed. Its headboard was a tangle of black steel in the shape of a spiderweb.

My fingers were still laced in it when Julia came in from the kitchenette with a tray. She was wearing the room’s other accoutrement—the bathrobe—along with the devil’s grin that was all too easy for me to translate.
Gotcha.

Julia folded onto the bed and set the tray on my stomach.

“Remind me again why we divorced?” she said.

“We didn’t get along? We fought?”

“I miss our fights.”

“I don’t.”

She sighed. “There it is then. We don’t see eye to eye.”

There were two tiny cups and a brass coffeepot on the tray. Julia poured out two thimbles of mud, took one up and sipped on it. She gave me a rabbit’s wince. “But we schtupped well together. That’s important.”

I agreed with her. I untangled my fingers from the headboard and scooted up. She lifted the tray from my
tummy and set it on the bed. “You schtup well with everyone,” I reminded her. “That was one of the reasons we fought.”

“You are such a prude, Hitch.” Julia’s black braid was snaked around her neck where it disappeared into the cleavage of her robe. “Promiscuity is the last great weapon against the increasing sterility of our culture,” she declared.

“You’re telling me that you screw for the betterment of mankind?”

“Absolutely.” Devil’s grin. “And don’t you feel better?”

I had to admit that I did. Julia’s cobweb bed had a way of inspiring its inhabitants to behave as if they were suddenly endowed with several extra sets of limbs. The hour just passed had been so filled with arms and legs moving in so many directions it might have seemed that the entire cast of
Our Town
had been involved in the bacchanalia.

Why Julia and I had decided to get married in the first place was a mystery. Why mess up a good thing? The divorce—a mere year and a half later—made so much more sense to us both that we had consummated it right here on this very playing field. Since then I had only occasionally found myself drawn back to the web. Sex with Julia was a difficult habit to break. Especially since I was the only one of us trying to break it.

I sipped my mud. Julia sat cross-legged in front of me—I wished that damn braid would get out of her cleavage—and told me about a man she was seeing.

“I don’t want to tell you his name. You’d yell at me.”

“I know him?”

She shrugged. “Not directly, no. But I’m sure you know who he is and you wouldn’t approve.”

“That’s nice of you to care.”

“Oh I do care, Hitch. You’re a good judge of character, and I know you’d judge him harshly. He’s the total opposite of me. But he’s great in the sack.”

“Then he’s not your total opposite.”

“That’s sweet. Thank you.” Julia finally pulled her braid free from the robe and sat stroking it like a cat. “So tell me about
your
love life. Have you scored any beautiful widows?”

“I don’t fraternize with the clientele.”

“But, Hitch, they’re so vulnerable.”

“You are a perverse piece of work, Julia.”

“I’m an artist. I live to explore.”

And to prove her point she slipped the robe off her shoulders, swept the tray onto the floor and launched an expedition that began at my thighs and swiftly branched out in all directions. We ended up in a happy heap down at the foot of the bed, Julia purring like a panther.

“That was nice.” She checked her watch. “I’ve got to get going.”

She took a quick shower. While we were getting dressed I told her about Carolyn James. She was intrigued.

“Did she say why she wanted you to bury her?”

“She didn’t explain a thing. She just said it then left.”

“I see.”

“She’d been drinking,” I added.

“Hmmmm, that’s either celebrating or commiserating.”

“I’m leaning toward the latter. She seemed a trifle lost.”

“So you had a sad drunk girl on your hands.” Julia yanked her belt tight. She had slipped into slacks and a plain white shirt. She ran a lipstick over her lips. “And you say she was attractive?”

“She grew on me very quickly.”

Julia turned toward me, smacking her lipsticked lips. “Good color?”

“Dandy.”

“So Hitch, aren’t you curious?” she asked.

“Yes I’m curious. But there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Well you know her name. Why don’t you try to track her down?”

“How? And even if I could locate her, then what? Tell her I’ve got a nice little plot all laid out for her?”

“You can be such a dud sometimes. This is a reallife bona fide mystery woman. I’d root like a pig until I found her.”

“You can be so elegant sometimes.”

She laughed. “Fuck that shit. Now come on. I’ve got to scoot. I’ll see you in rehearsal.”

I groaned. She followed me out to the studio. The place was a mess of canvases. Abstracts, mainly. Stuff you learned in kindergarten. Julia made a good living. She had been discovered a number of years ago by a social hotshot on the board of the Walters Art Gallery. They had a brief affair. The guy talked Julia up to his crowd and her sales and commissions took off. She was hanging all over town now. She was also, for some reason, a very big deal in Scandanavia.
They loved her over there. A certified “darling.”

Julia kicked loose the wooden slats around the fireman’s pole. “By the way, who are you in the play?” I asked as I took hold of the pole. “Mrs. Gibbs?” She rolled her eyes.

“I’m Emily. Teen teen soda pop queen.” She gave me a challenging look. “Go ahead. Say it.”

“Well, no offense of course. But aren’t you a little old and worn out and gone to seed to play Emily?”

She laughed. “I sure am. And you’re a bit of a wet clueless pup to be the sagely old stage manager, ain’t ‘cha? It’s all a part of Gil’s concept. Or weren’t you listening?”

“No. I was flirting with my ex-wife.”

She grinned at that. “The Stage Manager and little Emily humping it up. Now
that’s
a concept.”