Leave It to Me - Bharati Mukherjee [60]
He seemed to be eyeing me. I excused myself, holding my greasy hand high.
We were all tourists from outer space, passing through Earth. I locked myself in my room, changed into the T-shirt I wore to bed, stuck one of Larry’s handguns under my pillow and finished the Random House novel.
Before it burned down last week, on Ellis between Larkin and Hyde in the Tenderloin, there was a bar with a green and yellow neon sign that read SNOW WHITE, ALL GLASSES GUARANTEED STERILIZED. That’s where I ended up with Pete Cuvo, the Random House author, the night he read at Borders in Union Square. We started out with a late dinner at Moose’s, browsed awhile at City Lights Bookstore, where Cuvo thrillers were prominently displayed, stopped for brandy-laced coffees at Tosca’s but didn’t run into Ham and Jess as I’d both hoped for and dreaded, watched transvestites shimmy at Motherlode, out-Diana Rossed with my Baby Love at the Mint and then went on to Snow White because around 2:00 a.m. Pete remembered his ex-marine buddy, Chuck aka Stanko; who’d gone through a couple of mail-order marriages before finding happiness as a roving bouncer in the Tenderloin. Chuck’s last-known job, Pete thought, had been at a Vietnamese bar with a Disney name.
A good media escort is one who thinks fast on her feet. I looked for possibles in the Yellow Pages. Clarabell. Donald. Mickey. Minnie. Mother Goose. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. We took my tired Corolla to a Snow White I found on Ellis, and bingo! there was Pete’s former buddy from his marine days, exercising unnecessary roughness on a bounced patron. Face pinned to the sidewalk by Chuck’s boot, the drunk made invisible snow angels. Pete and I stepped over flailing arms and legs.
“Don’t kill him, Stanko. Where’s the fun in killing a neighborhood fuckface?”
Chuck took his boot off the pulpy, bleeding face. “Holy shit! Crazee Cuvo? Mad Dog of Moravia Cuvo? You Saved My Ass Cuvo? Tell me you ain’t a ghost!”
Pete responded with a banshee shriek and howl.
Chuck turned his attention on me next. “Who’s the beaut?” He poked me in the arm as he asked the question, putting me through his version of a ghost-check. Strip-search, Tenderloin style, lingering hands, probing fingers. I karate chopped Chuck. Flash had eliminated a border guard with one chop in The Sadist of San Diego. Flash’s chop had broken the sadist’s neck. I hurt my palm on Stanko’s chest.
Some nights destiny puts up detour signs. Such nights all you can hope is that when the road’s been repaved, it’ll take you where you have to go faster, smoother, safer. I resigned myself to a long night of macho anecdotes. Pete and Stanko would go head to head burning hooches, hunting water buffalo with M-16s, startling Charlie out of his cover and upping the pussycount, which was what they’d fought the war for. For me detours were times to meditate. On bitter Emad, on Loco Larry, on things. Soon, very soon, a grand act of propitiation would be called for. I drank hot water with lemon, and stayed wired for clues.
In place of clues, Larry appeared. I stuck my finger in Larry’s chest; my finger went through. He slid into the cramped, empty space between my bar stool and Pete’s, and asked me, “Et tu?” And when I told him that I had to, he said, “You was my buddy,” then he rocked my elbow into Pete’s, knocking Pete’s glass off the counter to the floor. Jack Daniel’s splashed my dress. The stain unfurled like a flag as I squirmed off my stool. “Beat it, Larry!” I screamed. But he stalked me into the ladies’ room, he forced me down into a crouch—Charlie as POW in an interrogation room—placed my chin on the clammy rim of the toilet bowl, stuck a finger deep, deeper, still deeper, into my throat and kept his finger there until I retched blood, guilt and shame all over the floor.
According to Jess’s agency rules, a ME doesn’t run out on her author. The night at Snow White, I broke Jess’s rule. I left