Basket Case Page 9

  I sign off, lock the desk and head for home. While driving by Carla Candilla's place I see lights in the window and pull a U-turn. I call from a phone booth and she says to come on over, she's all alone and coloring her hair.

  "Orange!" I say at the door.

  "No, 'Lava,'" Carla says. "Because I'm worth it. Get your ass in here, I'm dripping all over the place."

  She's wearing a full-length bathrobe appropriated from the Delano Hotel. I follow her to the kitchen where she toils with her soggy tendrils at the sink. I deliver a compressed but colorful account of my penthouse interview with Cleo Rio, and the celebrity scene at Jimmy Stoma's funeral.

  Carla is an avid interrogator.

  "What'd she look like?"

  "Tan and glassy-eyed."

  "The Case of the Suntanned Widow? Was Russell Crowe there?"

  "Not that I recall."

  "Come on, Blackjack. Rumor has him bonking Cleo."

  "I saw no bonking."

  "How 'bout Enrique?" Carla demands.

  "Enrique who?"

  She shrieks from beneath her marinating dome of hair. "How can you be so ... out of if?"

  "Cleo's supposedly bonking this Enrique, too?"

  "You should've taken me along, Jack. You let me down," Carla teases. "You let me down, you done me wrong."

  I feel obliged to inquire about the lava-hued tresses. "For a special event?"

  "Saturday night," she says. "Every Saturday night is a special event."

  "New boyfriend?"

  "Nah," Carla says. "New mood."

  She has completed some critical phase of the tinting process. Now we move to the living room where she trowels moss-colored clay on her face. Only eyes, lips and nostrils remain visible.

  "So. Blackjack."

  "Yeah."

  "Think Cleo offed her old man?"

  "I honestly can't say. Nobody performed an autopsy and now the body's been cremated so we might never know. Maybe Jimmy drowned just like they said, or maybe he had help. In any case, the widow is making the most of the moment."

  Carla says, "I can't fucking believe she sang at the funeral."

  "To plug her new CD."

  "Skank. What's your story gonna say?"

  A damn good question. "Well, I hope it'll say that Jimmy's sister wants a full investigation of the circumstances of his death. I hope it's going to say there are inconsistencies among the witnesses."

  "Who are ... ?" Carla asks through her frogskin cast.

  "Cleo, of course, and Jay Burns," I say, "one of the old Slut Puppies. He buddied up with Jimmy for the dive."

  "What if he backs up Cleo's story?"

  "Then I drink myself silly and crawl back to the cave of dead rabbis."

  Carla points to her face. "Can't talk. It's hardening."

  The phone rings. She signals for me to pickup.

  "Candilla residence," I answer in a British butler accent.

  "Who isthis?"

  "Oh hi, Anne." Voice skips. Heart flops. Tongue turns to chalk.

  "Jack?"

  "Carla's in her mud mask. She can't move her mouth."

  On the other end I hear a familiar sigh. Then: "What are you doing over there?"

  Twitching like a junkie, I'm tempted to say.

  "We're gossiping about fashion, music and models. Carla says I'm 'out of it,' which is surely an understatement. Now I've got a question for you: Why bother your hardworking offspring so late at night?"

  A soft laugh. "I just got in, Jack."

  "Oh."

  "From out of town," she says.

  How clever of me to ask. Smoothly I drop the subject.

  "Well. You doing okay?"

  "I'm good," Anne says. "How about yourself?"

  "Better," I lie. "I'm surviving age forty-six just fine. No more obsessing. And this was a heavy year for bad karma—JFK and Elvis."

  "And don't forget Oscar Wilde," Anne tosses in.

  "Wilde? I thought he was forty-five."

  "No, forty-six," she says. "I wouldn't have known except I just saw one of his plays in London. They had a biography in the Playbill. How're things at work?"

  I find myself rattled by the Oscar Wilde bulletin, and also by the idea of Anne traveling to England without me.

  Meaning with somebody else.

  "Jack?"

  "Everything's great at the paper," I say. "Big story in the oven—actually that's why I dropped by to see Carla. She knows the cast of characters."

  "As long as she's not one of them," Anne says. "I'm glad you're doing well, Jack."

  I hear myself blurting: "I'll be doing even better if you have lunch with me tomorrow."

  "Can't, Jack. I'm afraid I'm busy." This is followed by a pause, during which I foolishly convince myself that Anne is reconsidering the invitation. But then she says: "Tell Carla I'll give her a shout in the morning."

  "Will do."

  "Bye," says Anne.

  I set the receiver down very gingerly, as if it's made of Baccarat crystal.

  "Wanna drink?" The lovely dark eyes staring out of Carla's mud face are brimming with sympathy. Worse, they are Anne's eyes.

  "I've got beer," Carla says through fixed lips.

  I tell her no thanks. Standing up, I say, "Well. Your mother sounds terrific."

  "Surry," Carla mutters, endeavoring not to crack the facial plaster. Either a smile or a frown would do the job. She snatches a notepad from the dining table and scribbles these words: Least she knows how you feel.

  "And that's good?" I ask.

  Carla nods consolingly. Those eyes are killing me. I give her a quick hug and head for the door.

  Next morning, Emma calls and commands me to appear in the newsroom.

  "But I'm ill! Stricken! Indisposed!"

  "You are not. Buckminster spotted you at the funeral."

  "Fuckweasel," I remark.

  "Pardon me?"

  I stage a coughing fit worthy of a pleurisy ward, and hang up.

  Forty minutes later comes a stern knock—Emma! This is unpardonable, accosting me at home. I greet her in my sleepwear, a rank Jacksonville Jaguars jersey and a pair of baggy plaid boxers. She is not as horrified as I had hoped.

  "You the truant officer?"

  "Enough, Jack." Emma charges past me and plants herself on the least stained and faded of the twin armchairs. She is wearing a sharp-looking Oxford blouse, black slacks and a pair of sensible low heels. Her toenails are concealed, but I'll bet the farm she has repainted them since Monday afternoon; a muted ochre, I'm imagining, something serious to match her mood. Never have I seen her so torqued up.

  "Mr. Polk is slipping away. The doctors say it could happen any day," she begins urgently. "Any minute, really."

  I stretch out supine on the floor and shut one eye. "I'm onto a possible celebrity murder, Emma. I've got a distraught sister who suspects foul play and I'm the only one who'll help. What am I supposed to do, slam the door in her face? Tell her the paper doesn't care that her only brother got whacked?"

  Although I have liberally exaggerated Janet Thrush's state of mind, Emma remains unmoved.

  "I told you once, Jack. It's Metro's story if they want it. You did your job; you wrote the obit. You're done." She's glaring at me, really glaring.

  "What are you so afraid of?" As if I don't know.

  "Don't be such an asshole," she says.

  I pop up, wide-eyed and beaming, and jig from foot to foot like a Polynesian coalwalker. What a breakthrough!

  "Did you call me an onerous name? Yes, I'm sure of it. You did!"

  "We're not in the workplace." Emma, reddening. Then: "Look, I'm sorry. That was unprofessional."

  "No, I'm glad. It means we're making progress. Breaking down walls and so forth. You want some fresh orange juice? A decaf?"

  Emma says, "Old Man Polk wants to see you, Jack."

  I stop prancing and suck a short breath. "What? I thought he was fading fast."

  "He wants a deathbed interview, believe it or not. To jaz
z up his obituary."

  "Dear Jesus."

  "This was not my idea, I swear."

  "A perverse final request."

  "I couldn't agree more," Emma says, "but Abkazion already said yes."

  "Dipshit," I mutter. "Fellator of mandrills."

  "I'm begging, Jack."

  "Why me?" I growl, pointlessly.

  "Evidently the old man admires your writing."

  A side effect of the Halcion, no doubt. I peel off my Jaguars jersey and toss it over a lampshade. Next I tug absently at the waistband of my boxers, Emma eyeing me warily. She is in no mood to deal with a naked employee.

  "Don't get cute," she advises.

  "Don't flatter yourself." I stalk off to the shower. Twenty minutes later, I emerge to find Emma still encamped. This, frankly, throws me. She has put on her reading glasses to study an obituary I recently cut out of the Times.Wrapped in a towel, I stand there dripping on the floor like some incontinent nuthouse savant.

  Emma glances up, waves the clipping. "This is a fantastic headline."

  "That's why I saved it."

  The single-deck head on the obituary said:

  Ronald Lockley, 96, an Intimate of Rabbits

  Emma says, "How can you notlook at that story?"

  "Precisely."

  "Even if you aren't a fan of rabbits, which I'm not." Then, as if she's reading my mind: "For God's sake, why couldn't I write headlines like this?"

  I say, "Here's one: 'MacArthur Polk, 88, Wealthy Malingerer.'"

  "Jack, please. I'm begging you."

  Swathed in my damp bath linen, I lower myself carefully into the armchair across from Emma. My hair is still sopping and now I feel a droplet of water elongating itself on the lobe of my left ear. I pray Emma won't be distracted.

  "Don't you worry. I'll deal with Abkazion," I venture brashly.

  "It's not just him," Emma grumbles. "Mr. Maggad has taken an interest, as well. He went to see the old man at Charity and believes he's delirious, in addition to terminal."

  Exultantly I tell Emma there must be a misunderstanding. Race Maggad III, who despises me, would never recommend me being assigned to a story as important as Old Man Polk's obit.

  Emma drums her fingers on her knees. "Abkazion is baffled. I'm baffled. You're baffled. Yet here we are."

  I stall, racking my brain. "I get it. Maggad, that conniving yuppie fuck, he's setting me up."

  "For what, Jack? Setting you up for what?"

  There is a tender note of pity in Emma's question, implying that I've already been so thoroughly shafted by management that there's no place left to fall. My chin drops. Scrutinizing the sparse, south-running trail of hair on my belly, I notice a few shoots of gray.

  Emma says, "I'm sorry, Jack. Now go put on some clothes."

  I lift my eyes to meet hers and say: "Jimmy Stoma for Old Man Polk."

  "No deal." She shakes her head vigorously.

  "Emma, do you know how much sick leave I've piled up?"

  "Don't threaten me. Don't you dare."

  "Tomorrow you will receive a letter from a prominent board-certified health care provider," I say, "attesting to the seriousness of my condition, namely chronic colorectal diverticulosis. By the time my recovery is complete and I am deemed able to resume a full work schedule, Mr. MacArthur Polk will be worm chow, darling. An intimate of maggots, to steal a phrase."

  Emma stands up, fuming and spectacular. "You're unbelievable, Jack, getting a doctor to lie for you!"

  Murkily I confide to having heavy connections in the gastrointestinal field. "But give me ten days on Jimmy Stoma," I say, "and I'll go see Old Man Polk at once."

  "A week. That's all you get," Emma relents. "And we never had this conversation, understand? I was never here."

  "Right. And you never ogled my bare alabaster calves. Hey, I'm about to pulp some oranges—stay for juice."

  "Rain check," Emma says curtly.

  At the door I hear myself thanking her, for what I can't imagine. She pockets the reading glasses in favor of snazzy blue Ray-Bans, new driving shades. "Look," she says. "I really am sorry about that a-hole remark."

  "Nonsense. We're bonding, that's all. We're a work in progress."

  "Juan says you keep a lizard in your kitchen freezer. Can that possibly be true?"

  "An extremely large lizard, yes. Would you care to see?"

  "Under no circumstances, Jack," Emma says with a guarded smile. "Though I wouldn't mind hearing your version of the story."

  "Maybe someday," I say, "when I'm not feeling so puny."

  11

  When Anne moved out of my apartment, Carla gave me a baby Savannah monitor lizard. She said I wasn't responsible enough to take proper care of a puppy or a kitten, or even a parrot. Lizards require no companionship, only grubs, water and sunlight. "Even you can manage that," Carla assured me.

  I named him "Colonel Tom" because he joined the household on January 21, the anniversary of the death of Colonel Tom Parker, the man who made a king of Elvis Aron Presley. Carla provided a terrarium and a starter bag of mealworms, which Colonel Tom the lizard gobbled down in three days. Quickly he advanced to crickets, palmetto bugs and beyond—hunger incarnate, a perpetual eating machine. Before long he outgrew the terrarium, so I moved him to a fifty-gallon dry tank with a bonsai tree, a water dish and a vermiculite beach.

  Lizards are not strung with the high emotions of, say, a cocker spaniel. On a good day Colonel Tom's mood ranged from oblivious to indifferent. Only at mealtimes would he respond approvingly to a human presence, blinking a cold eye while cocking his knobbed saurian head. The rest of the time he skulked inside a toy cave that Carla had found for him.

  One evening, after a few beers, I took him out to show Juan, who sensibly armed himself with a mop handle. We watched a baseball game on television, and Colonel Tom lay across my lap for five innings without so much as twitching his tail. "He looks parched," Juan observed. "Fluids, Jack, ahora!"

  I poured the lukewarm dregs of a Sam Adams into an ashtray and raised it to the monitor's scaly mandibles, and to my wonderment he gingerly extended a tongue as pink and delicate as a Caribbean snail. My lizard, it turned out, had a thing for beer. Inspired, I offered up the remnants of a Key lime pie, which Colonel Tom inhaled savagely. The frothy dollop of meringue clung to his chin like a jaunty white goatee. Juan and I were both drunk enough to be enthralled.

  From then on I brought the lizard out on TV nights for beer and dessert. Sometimes Juan would drop by on his way home from work, and a few times he even brought dates to see Colonel Tom in action. The young monitor grew rapidly, soon surpassing three feet in length. The unnatural diet began to soften his prehistoric countenance and bloat his once-chiseled flanks to droopy saddlebags. In retrospect I should have recognized the transformation as plainly unhealthy, though Colonel Tom's disposition had never been rosier. Juan swore the lizard manifested a fan's appreciation of baseball; the fundamentals, if not the finer points. Certainly Colonel Tom was most attentive and bright-eyed when draped across my lap, but I always suspected his spirits were elevated not by the heroics of the Marlins' bullpen so much as the promise of more pastry and distilled hops.

  Late one Saturday night, as the Marlins played the Dodgers on the coast, Colonel Tom came down with a brutal case of what I diagnosed as lizard hiccups. Symptoms appeared shortly after he downed a cold Heineken and a slice of rich German strudel that Juan had brought from a renowned bakery in Ybor City.

  By my wristwatch I timed Colonel Tom's shuddering burps at eight-second intervals. Discomfort was evident in his lethargic demeanor and blotched, blackening cheeks. Juan had already gone home, so it was left to me to soothe the tremulous reptile. When I tried stroking his corrugated shoulders, Colonel Tom wheeled and snapped percussively. Then, for good measure, he raked a hind claw across my cheek, drawing blood.

  "You ungrateful little shit," I muttered, too harshly.

  In response the monitor balefully reared his brick-sized noggin and dis
played a well-armored maw, featuring rows of fine needle-sharp teeth. A large opalescent bubble of lizard saliva appeared, then popped moistly on the ensuing hiccup. From the TV set rose a hometown cheer as Gary Sheffield hammered a hanging curve into the left-field bleachers, sinking the Marlins in the bottom of the ninth. Colonel Tom promptly fluttered one eyeball and flopped over dead in my lap.

  I didn't move for fifteen minutes, frozen partly by shock and partly by the fact that the lizard's glistening jaws had come to rest two centimeters from the crotch of my boxer shorts. A death-spasm chomp of those fangs would have sent me to the emergency room (where, I knew, no innocent explanation would be accepted for a deceased lizard affixed to one's scrotum).

  Once it was evident that the colonel had drawn his final breath, I pondered my options. The balcony offered a clear shot at the Dumpster, but that seemed a cold and indecent goodbye. This was, after all, a gift from Anne's daughter. So I resolved to give the lizard a fitting send-off as soon as arrangements could be made. In the meantime I endeavored to preserve his mortal remains, which, given his bulk, wasn't easy. The only way to fit the beast into the shallow freezer compartment of my refrigerator was to pretzel the long limp corpse into the shape of an ampersand.

  To this day there he sleeps, Colonel Tom, frostily coiled beneath my ice cube trays and chocolate Dove bars. Every time I think about burying the poor bastard I get depressed.

  Out of guilt I lied to Carla and told her the monitor broke out of the tank and escaped. Only Juan knows the truth, and I'm surprised he spilled it to Emma. I suspect she was pumping him for inside information to use against me in the annual employee evaluation. Even though Juan is my best friend, he'll tell Emma whatever she wants to know if he thinks there's a chance she'll sleep with him. At least that's how /always operated in the early stages of a relationship.

  Maybe it's better that she knows about the dead lizard in my freezer. Maybe it will upend her set notions about me, and make her wonder what other distasteful secrets I've got.

  MacArthur Polk looks like death on a Triscuit. "He can't speak," the nurse informs me.