The Nirvana Blues (14 page)

The other dreg was a shadowy nameless little fart commonly referred to as Nick Danger. Bearded, belligerent, and preposterously antisocial, Nick was perpetually incognito'd behind and underneath a green Tyrolean hat, a brown Naugahyde trenchcoat, and one-way Acapulco sunglasses. The man carried a battered beige suitcase wherever he crept, and never spoke to a soul. He inhabited room 7 in the decrepit Dynamite Shrine motel and seemed to spend all his waking hours wandering aimlessly about town looking sinister.

Ralph said, “So did you call him up or anything?”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“Hey man, lighten up on the third degree, already. I haven't even had my coffee yet.”

“You brought it up.”

“No I didn't. You asked if the stuff came in last night.”

Darlene Johnson, the World's Greatest Waitress, landed beside Joe, asking, “What are you so cheerful about this morning?”

“There's a law says I gotta walk around with a shit-eating grin on my face twenty-four hours a day? Come on, Darlene, gimme a break. I had a rough night last night.”

Darlene said, “Did you hear about the Hanuman?”

“What about it?”

“Apparently their U-Haul was involved in a six-car crash in a New York tunnel. The statue was shattered and Baba Ram Bang is in a coma in the intensive-care ward of a big metropolitan hospital. Little Om, the Unfugs' daughter, went through the windshield, and a team of neurosurgeons at Mount Sinai Hospital are trying to sew her hand back on to her arm. It's horrible.”

Joe said, “Not only that, but I heard Wilkerson Busbee has to undergo ninety days of rabies shots because he was bit by a rat that fell down through a tunnel vent under the Hudson River.”

“Aw, c'mon, Joe—you're kidding?”

But he liked Darlene. Formerly, she had been a paleontologist connected to the Field Museum of Natural History. In Chamisaville she was always turning up as the chairperson of committees to save things, to Save the Whales, to Save the Farmer's Market, to save the Historical Old Roybal Home (though never the old Roybals). A tall lady in her late twenties whose physical appearance was often called “rawboned,” Darlene had long arms, big expressive hands, and a startlingly powerful face, like Abraham Lincoln.

Joe ordered a fried egg, over easy, two link sausages, one piece of toast, a cup of Sanka, and a small orange juice. Actually, what he said was: “Darlene, gimme a cyclops, OE, side order of squeal—that's link piggies not patties—a small Florida sunshine, one toasted wheat, and a cuppa ersatz Joe.”

She tapped him playfully atop his head with her pencil. “I bet you think you're funny.”

“Who's funnier?” Joe called after her.

“Melvin Morgue! Frankenstein! Dracula!”

Ralph said, “Is she telling the truth about the Hanuman brigade?”

“Rumors. You know this town. An eight-year-old kid falls off his bicycle in front of the Tastee-Freez and scrapes his knee: five hours later Darlene serves Cobey Dallas his coffee and asks did he hear about the kid whose head was crushed under the metal treads of a backhoe in front of its own mother who at the time was gagging on a chicken bone at the Colonel's bucket of toasted pullets.”

“Well, tell me this,” Ralph said. “Is it true you balled Nancy Ryan last night?”

Joe tried not to blanch. “Where did you hear that?”

“Iréné Papadraxis called Natalie Gandolf last night to explain that they might be held up on account of a flat tire in the Holland Tunnel. Skipper and Natalie are throwing that pre-unveiling bash at their mansion Wednesday night, remember? So Iréné wanted to warn them it might have to be postponed. Natalie had a conniption and couldn't find any Valium. So she called Marilyn Tibby up at five
A.M.
to see if she had any, and spilled the whole story. Gypsy Girl and I just happened to be over at Marilyn's.”

“I still don't see where Nancy and me come in.”

“Iréné told Natalie, who told Marilyn, that apparently when Rama Unfug called Nancy to get bail money, a mouthpiece, and a piece of medical script for Baba Ram Bang's insulin, you answered the telephone at her place.”

“I don't believe it! I'm a goner.”

“There's more if you can take it.”

“I can't, but you better tell me anyway.”

“Okay. Soon as Natalie heard, and while she was flailing around trying to turn up a Valium, she decided she had better call Scott Harrison and ask his opinion on what sort of advice, re legal moves, she ought to call back to Iréné, or Rama, or Wilkerson, or whoever's personning the fort back there.”

“Whoever's
what
ening the fort?”

“Please. Scott got pissed because it's five
A.M.
and he was shacked up with Suki Terrell: apparently she had a tiff with Randall at the Hanuman Follies last night and decided to ask Scott to teach her how to be a ULC nun. He told Natalie to call Nancy and ask the Simian Foundation to find somebody else to do their dirty work. So Natalie blurted to Scott that she didn't really want to call Nancy back because apparently she was having a blast shacked up with you.”

“You're joking. You're a sadist telling me lies just for the hell of it.”

“Wish I was, old boy. But Marilyn got a call ten minutes later from Suki Terrell, asking was it true that you and Nancy Ryan were doing a number.”

“And Marilyn replied?”

“She says she told Suki to call Nancy and ask her.”

“Suki didn't call Nancy,” Joe groaned. “Not while I was there.”

“No. But apparently Natalie called Tribby, to see if he would give any advice. So Tribby called a number in New York that I guess Iréné had given and he spoke with Rama Unfug. During their conversation, Rama happened to ask if you and Heidi had gotten a divorce. He was curious, you know, having heard on the grapevine that you guys might be his new neighbors. Naturally, when Tribby said ‘No, why?' Rama told him that when he had called Nancy at five
A.M.
, you had answered the telephone. So right away Tribby called me at Marilyn's and asked was the dope deal off or what? Then he explained to me that you were playing footsie with Nancy Ryan when you should have been entertaining your friend Peter Roth and five pounds of cocaine.”

Morosely, Joe said, “I don't believe this is happening to me.”

“Well, at least you nailed her. That's always fun.”

“I didn't ‘nail' her, Ralph. It was a nice experience,” he lied, swamped with guilt and no doubt blushing crimson. “I actually enjoyed it.”

“Okay. Congratulations.”

“Screw your hosannas. I feel lousy. I never cheated on Heidi before. I wanted to plenty of times, but I never did.”

“It's no big deal. The world doesn't explode.”

“A lot you know.”

“Look around you, dummy. Has the plaza been reduced to rubble? Are all the plate-glass windows shattered? Is Darlene nursing a couple of shiners and bleeding from the nostrils?”

“Thanks for the sympathy.”

“Hey, it's not a big thing. Happens all the time.”

“I don't care. I feel creepy.”

Ralph tapped his shoulder good-naturedly. “Easy, amigo. You're not the first person who ever copped a little nookie out of season.”

“I didn't ‘cop a little nookie,' man. I happened to ball a very nice person, and—”

“What are you trying to say—you're in love with another broad?”

Joe said, “Why don't you refine the language a little? You make it sound so tawdry. Nancy isn't a ‘broad.' She happens to be a very decent and complex human being, who is also sensational in bed.”

“Bueno. So what?”

“This sort of transgression isn't my style. I don't
want
to cheat on Heidi. It feels so improper and … weird.”

“Joe, in 1955, if you committed adultery, you might have had a problem. In this day and age, if you don't bag a few cunts on the sly, people will start thinking you're a faggot.”

“I really wish you wouldn't use words like ‘cunt' and ‘faggot.'”

As Darlene placed Joe's breakfast on the table, Ralph addressed her: “Darlene, I'd like you to meet my friend here, Joseph Miniver, three-time winner of the Mr. Puritan Universe contest.”

Joe threw up his hands. Darlene said, “Don't pay any attention to him, Joe, he's a wise guy. And a cynic. He writes pornography.”

“What am I supposed to do,” Ralph complained, “canonize him for falling from his state of original grace and yet remaining sensitive, compassionate, and concerned about the people involved who are going to be the victims of a terrible tragedy because he had the chance to slip somebody a stiff one and took it?”

Joe sliced open his egg, cut out a piece of it, forked off a chunk of sausage, arranged the egg and the sausage on a corner of his toast, and bit off the corner. Knocking it down with a slug of orange juice and a sip of Sanka, he moaned, “I'm dead. I blew it. What a shlemozzl.”

“Relax. Just lie to her. Tell her you spent the night with me. I'll corroborate your story. We got to drinking and talking about literature up in my office after the bar closed. You got stewed and passed out.”

“Didn't you just finish telling me that everybody from Natalie Gandolf and Scott Harrison to Suki Terrell and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir were informed by telephone, last night, of my whereabouts?”

Ralph said, “Listen to this: ‘A melon farmer in Wyatt Earp, Missouri—'”

“Wyatt Earp, Missouri?”

“That's what it says here … ‘paid his taxes to the IRS by tattooing his check on one of his own watermelons.' The IRS sent the melon to this guy's bank, and the bank cashed it. Know how they then canceled it?”

“I'm talking to you about possibly the biggest crisis of my life, and you have the audacity to start reading me stories about some kook—”

“They ate it.”

“You're a big help. Thanks a lot, man.”

“Here's another one. Dateline Maple City, New Hampshire. ‘Local fish-and-game authorities recently arrested a woman named Ethel Sturgeon for killing a deer out of season. Mrs. Sturgeon said it wasn't her fault. She said she was sitting in her breakfast nook feeding the baby when an eight-point buck walked through the open front door. She was frightened for the child's safety.…' Says here the kid's name was Myron, age two. So she killed the buck. You know how?”

“You're an ugly human being. You really are.”

“She beat the animal to death with a toilet plunger.”

“You're lying.”

“Read it for yourself. Says right here.”

“I'll see you,
pal.
”

“Twelve o'clock at the airport, right?”

Joe fished a sawbuck out of his front pocket, and dropped it on the table for Darlene as he addressed his hardhearted buddy: “Hope you enjoy the paper, knowing that Heidi is probably beating
me
to death with a toilet plunger, a scene you could have avoided by lending a slightly more sympathetic ear.”

“‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be,'” Ralph advised, dismissing his good friend by burrowing ever deeper into the Sunday newspaper. Rimpoche was still snuffling in his shaggy fur, nipping wee bugs.

As he plummeted out the jangling door, Darlene called, “Congratulations on your new relationship, Joe!”

Spinning to give her the finger, Joe didn't see the approach of Jeff Orbison—they collided. “Hey,” Jeff said. “Where's the fire, man?” Sweat glistened on his dissipated plump face. He was wearing a yellow warm-up suit and mandarin-orange Adidas. A beaded headband kept his hair in place. His breath could have blown open a vault.

“No fire, Jeff. Life is a bowl of cherries.”

“Say,” the singer said. “What's this I hear about a gang of thieves that hijacked the Hanuman statue in New York, took Baba Ram Bang hostage, and shot Shanti Unfug in the chest during their escape?”

“What do I look like, the Simian Foundation's press secretary?”

“You were shacked up with Nancy Ryan when the call came through last night, weren't you?”

“Aw, do me a favor.…” Joe staggered down the sidewalk and swung into his bus.

Jeff said, “Wait a sec. I gotta talk to you.”

Joe put the key in the ignition, and sat there, staring dully forward, wondering if he should commit suicide. Or, when he turned the key, would Ray Verboten's auto-bomb expert have done it for him?

“Speaking of Ray Verboten,” Jeff said. “The word's out he's looking for you.”

“I can't imagine why.”

“They say you've got a shipment of smack coming in, and that you're planning to infringe on his market.”

“It isn't smack, it's cocaine, Jeffrey. And it has nothing to do with Ray Verboten. Believe me, he's welcome to the territory.”

“I'll be your bodyguard,” Jeff said. “For two hundred a week. I've got a .357 magnum, and that ain't a Ping-Pong paddle. For an extra hundred a week I'll bring in Tom Yard: he's got a police .38. He actually used to be a cop up in Ouray, Colorado, before they caught him stealing the department's stash of confiscated Mary Jane.”

“Thanks, but I think I can handle it.” Joe felt dizzy.

“You okay? You look a little green.”

“I feel a little green.”

“Listen, I got just the thing for the mean old greenies in my car. You ever done cutworm moths?”

“Cutworm moths?”

“Sure, it's the latest. They pioneered it up at the Milky Way. They put all these cutworm moths in a box with a mixture of STP, PCP, and vitamin C in powder form. Those moths'll eat anything and apparently they really lap that stuff up. You gotta watch 'em close, though, because they don't live too long after they scarf the goodies, and you have to nosh them within ten minutes after they croak. In that time their chemistry does something special to the shit, and the rush that hits you is like taking off from Cape Kennedy for Lunar City.”