Me and My Manny (3 page)

Humanizing Wolf

My ire toward Wolf didn’t last long. Wolf was an innocent victim of my own odd choices. Still, I began relating to Wolf on an emotional level, something I achieved by talking to him in affable terms. My words were aimed at convincing him to look on the bright side, be happy and cheer up. Little did I know that in conditioning myself to think of him as more than a dummy, I’d soon be considering his feelings.

And along with that, I’d begun noticing another change. Something was going on beneath that hard exterior. I couldn’t say exactly how it happened. Perhaps one night a magical moonbeam came through the window, or maybe a falling star had inadvertently dusted him on its plunge toward earth. But something had penetrated Wolf’s rigid framework.

Appearance aside, Wolfgang was no longer just another incompetent dummy; he was his own manny. Wolf’s subtle alteration reminded me of my earlier notions about images. In particular, I reflected on Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that turned into a flesh-and-blood boy. To my mind, Pinocchio was the perfect metaphor for Wolfgang. And I wondered: Would he, too, take on a life of his own?

While I hadn’t considered myself akin to Geppetto, the woodcarver who created the wooden puppet and who, among other curious places, ended up in the belly of a whale, we shared a certain lack of comprehension. Much as the endearing woodcarver, in this instance Geppetto and not Gippo, I could not comprehend by what alchemy my marionette had begun to morph from the unreal to the real.

Renting Out Wolf

Strutting down the forth-floor hall with my manny in tow, I bumped into Ruthie Pritchard, my next-door neighbor, back from walking Spike, her gargantuan Rottweiler.

“Judy, there you are. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about Wolfgang.” She yanked the leash back as Spike raised his hackles and snarled at my manny. “Would you mind if I borrowed him?” She nodded toward the dummy. “I won’t keep him long.”

“I don’t know, Ruthie.” I watched Spike strain against his choke chain, his thick nails digging for traction in the threadbare carpet. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to him.”

“I’ll keep him safe, I promise.” Ruthie winced when Spike, agitated by the restraint, whipped around and snapped at her hand. “I just want to sit with him awhile.”

“I’m not sure, Ruthie. It’s not like I can replace him.” Knowing that Spike had gnawed gaping holes in every one of his toys, I added, “I wouldn’t want to see him all chewed up.”

“I’ll take him to the pool area where Spike can’t get at him.”

Since dogs tend to dig up plants, swim in the pool, and crap all over the well-kept lawn, the pool area was off-limits to them.

“In that case,” I began with my eyes on Spike’s jaws now clamped on Wolfgang’s right leg. “I could let you have him for a four-hour minimum at no less than twenty dollars.” I figured this a sort of token payment toward future repairs.

“You got it.” Ruthie handed me the leash and reached into her shoulder bag.

Spike released the manny’s wooden leg but hung onto the trouser’s bell-bottom. Growling, he shook his massive head, causing Wolf to flop on his stand like a rag doll.

“Stop that,” I said, doing my best to get between them. “It’s okay, Ruthie; if you haven’t got it, you can pay me later.”

Taking money from Ruthie troubled me. Ruthie’s husband, a schizoid agoraphobic, pretended that he didn’t work because he was independently wealthy, not because he was afraid to go outside the building. If not for the inheritance Ruthie received from her late mother about a year ago, the couple would have been destitute.

“It’s right here.” Ruthie took the leash and gave me the twenty. “This means a lot to me. When Jason and I first got married, I thought he would complete me and make me whole. Instead, with all his imaginary fears, I feel more like he’s taking me apart piecemeal.”

“I’m no marriage counselor,” I said, sorry for Ruthie. Everyone knew that Jason’s phobia led him to tolerate, if not encourage, Spike’s mean disposition, something he rightly assumed scared people off.

“I know
you’re
not. I wasn’t thinking of you.” Ruthie focused on the wooden sailor. “Like you suggested at our little gathering last month, I’d get my own manny if it weren’t for you-know-who.”

Nodding, I again sympathized; Spike had clearly intimidated her. I had once, and only once, been inside her apartment, a place that Spike had trashed. While I visited, sitting on the torn-up sofa, Ruthie attempted to occupy the seat next to me. Before she could claim it, Spike jumped up and growled at her, taking the spot for himself.

“You shouldn’t let him bully you like that,” I told her. “You got to stand up to him. Show him who’s boss.” Spike must have disliked the comment. With homicidal rage in his eyes, he stood on the adjoining cushion and pressed his twitching muzzle against the carotid artery in my throat. Should Spike ever get hold of my manny, it would end up a pile of go-fetch sticks. Once the beast seizes an item, you’d lose a hand trying to get it back.

“About the you-know-what,” I said, agreeing with Ruthie’s tacit observation that a manny would not likely survive a perpetually pissed-off Rottweiler. “Maybe you could keep one somewhere other than your apartment.” I thought the storage cabinets reserved for tenants in Whitehall’s subterranean parking garage would be a good place. “Like in a garage locker. That’s where I stowed my manny’s crate.”

Ruthie sighed. “Just storing him wouldn’t make much difference. I’m almost as housebound as Jason.”

A former travel agent, the woman loved going on trips far and wide. Though always up on the best hotel rates and airline deals—brochures from resorts all over the world spilled from her mailbox—she could go no farther than a radius of about two miles. Given the attention demanded by her husband and the dog, she might as well be the one collared and leashed.

Ruthie thanked me for the input and promised to have Wolf back before dinnertime, right after she finished running a few errands.

Having rescued Wolf from the jaws of death, I arranged to leave him in the garden on a lawn chair beneath an umbrella near the pool out back. With Spike again locked in Ruthie’s apartment, and clawing the inside of the door to get back out, I checked Wolf’s leg, riled that it was chewed like a wooden pencil during a difficult math test.

Back in my own apartment, I apologized to my manny and thanked him for making us twenty bucks richer. “Suit up, Wolfie. You’re going out,” I said, preparing him for his first date.

About half an hour later, Wolf sat amid the backyard greenery, looking trendy in a black shirt, white tie, and, thanks to Goodwill, a secondhand Panama hat slanted dashingly over his right eye. He and Ruthie would get along just fine; Wolf didn’t bear grudges, not even against the owners of very bad dogs.

The Manny Ranch

One evening, while goofing around, I dressed Wolf in a red paisley cravat and the gray smoking jacket that I’d given Harry as a honeymoon gift that he refused to wear. I switched on a DVD, pressed my cheek to Wolf’s, and danced him across the living room, singing my own version of the Percy Sledge song playing on the stereo: “When a manny loves a woman, she can do no wrong.” Part way through the tune, Lisa Smith, whom Wolf had already met, tapped on the front door.

“Hi, I just came up to tape a keep-closed sign on the fire escape door. I heard the music, and I just had to take a peek.” She came inside, shut the door behind her, and set her role of adhesive tape on the console. “How’ve you two been getting along?”

Showing off, I did a bit of fancy footwork, dipping Wolf and pushing him back and forth in time with the music. “Care for a drink?”

“Make it a white-wine spritzer,” Lisa said.

On my way to the kitchen, I heard her talking to my manny in a low, seductive voice. By the time I returned to the room with wine glass in hand, Lisa had managed to engage Wolf in a sultry tango.

“He really can move, can’t he?” she said, circling him around.

“I just greased his wheels.” I set her drink on an end table next to a small can of household oil.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if he were a bit more mechanical?”

“You mean automated?”

After a quick review of Lisa’s previous interests in androids, I guess I should have known that sooner or later, she’d find her way back to the subject of a better-endowed, more sexually active manikin.

“Somewhat. But only to a degree. We wouldn’t want him getting up and walking off, would we?”

“No, we wouldn’t. That’s why I like him the way he is—a low-tech one of a kind.”

“I envy you, Judy.” Lisa placed the back of her hand on her forehead and made a swoony dance move. “If only I were lucky enough to have a manny as a companion.”

“I don’t see why you can’t have one.”

“Ernie would never go for it,” she said as the music came to an end. “My apartment
is
the manager’s office. It’s like public property. People come and go, paying the rent, picking up packages, making requests, and lodging complains. What would they think if a pair of mannys resembling Siegfried and Roy sat down there as if forever on duty?”

“Siegfried and Roy?”
To each her own.
I watched Lisa lift my manny from his stand and hold him in a passionate embrace.

“I’ve always had a thing for them, like together. Not that anything’s wrong with Ernie. He’s always there for me, provided there’s something in it for him.”

Since a manny wasn’t required to resemble a spouse, and since nothing would be in it for Siegfried and Roy either, I saw no reason to argue with her.

Lisa dragged the manny over to the sofa and sat next to it. “If I got one, much less two, of my own, I’d have to explain that the whole idea was yours. Before long, rumors would fly. And it all could be avoided, if only you’d let me borrow this one for awhile.”

“I don’t know, Lisa. It would be like lending you Harry.”

Then Lisa pulled out the big guns. “As you know, your lease allows for only two occupants. Should someone or
something
else move in with you, I’d have to increase the rent.”

“You wouldn’t! It’d be like charging for a statue.”

Lisa reached to press her hand over my lips. “Hush your mouth. You know better.” Her eyes again on the manny, she smiled.

All at once it hit me. One dance and she was hooked. “Lisa, believe me, it’s all a matter of perception. You start imagining Wolf is real, and you’ll begin to believe he is.”

“It’s much more than that, Judy. Wolf has a certain
je ne sais quoi
, that’s French for ‘I don’t know what,’ which doesn’t mean that I in particular don’t know what.”

I glanced at my manny, concerned that if I didn’t let her borrow him, she’d follow through on her threat to raise my rent.

“You understand that while my manny has oodles of those I-don’t-know-what qualities, he’s missing too many vital parts to possess raw sexual energy.”

Lisa nodded, her adoring face close to Wolf, sitting beside her, looking suave, though empty headed. The woman seemed infatuated with him and, as I rid my mind of visions of her tossing him in her car and taking off on a wild cross-country spree, my own wheels began spinning.

“Tell you what,” I said. “For twenty bucks, you can borrow him for, oh, up to two hours. I’ll just excuse myself, fold the laundry, and take a shower.”

Lisa rooted through her skirt pockets and handed me a twenty. This time, accepting money for the use of Wolf should have made me feel like a pimp, but it didn’t. On the contrary, I’d begun to realize that I had stumbled upon a promising new financial endeavor. I fancied myself a fledgling entrepreneur in something remotely akin to the sex industry. Not for a moment did I anticipate operating anything like a Nevada-style bordello staffed by dummies. Those desert dives with their tacky western décor couldn’t hold a candle to what I had in mind. My operation wasn’t only legal in every state; it was also exceptional—the ultimate in fantasy. I’d start out small, right here in the Pacific Northwest. I’d run it like a doll shop. A client comes in, chooses her own manny, and spends quality time alone with him. No questions asked.

My head filling with the idea that asexuality sells, I returned to the kitchen and toyed with a few names appropriate to my new establishment. Judy’s Joint. Hmmm, catchy but squalid. Wolfgang’s Woodies? Too suggestive and very misleading. For the time being, I settled on The Manny Ranch.

While Lisa appropriated Wolf, I worked out the pros and cons of my new business plan. Forget the problems connected with infidelity, none of it can happen. Forget the difficulties linked to sexually transmitted diseases, none of it ought to happen.

My business acumen peaking, I grabbed a pad and pencil and began scribbling notes. Let’s see. Wolf cost what? Six hundred bucks plus a few extras. Rented out about four hours a day—for starters, I figured I’d work him only part-time—at twenty bucks a stint…that’s eighty a day times five days a week…that’s—Whoopee! In less than a year, I could buy enough mannys to staff an entire brothel and quit pretending to look for a day job.

I began trying on the managerial titles appropriate to my new enterprise. The word
madam
didn’t fit me any more than the word
pimp
had. I could no more envision myself donning a feathered headdress and waving a jeweled cigarette holder than I could see myself be-bopping to hip-hop behind the fur-covered steering wheel of a purple pimpmobile. I was about to launch a career in the world’s newest, not its oldest, profession. I therefore had to come up with a more sophisticated name. Rather than leave it TBD, to be determined, I settled for CEO— that’s chief executive officer for the uninitiated.

I then ran my mind over some of the derogatory terms often applied to the employees of customary houses of ill repute. Wolfgang might be something of a no-account, but never could I think of him as a hooker, a floozy, or a slut. In his new position, he would at the outset be the chief moneymaker. So I elected him CFO, or chief financial officer.

Moving right along, I mulled over a list of the pejorative labels for customers of traditional establishments. My venture was to be strictly on the up and up. In lieu of calling my female clients johns, I preferred to think of them as patrons. Sexual fantasy is, after all, more of an art form than an activity.

Standing only a few yards from where the ever-dopey, but now somehow debonair, Wolf was plying his trade, I began to see him in a whole new light. He wasn’t only an unassuming minimalist; he was an investment. Nothing but good could come from our mutually rewarding relationship. And it was clear to me why.

Wolfgang had the Midas touch, something that appealed to the gold digger in me. Wolf was more than an oversized version of Barbie’s boyfriend Ken. He was the stuff of fairy tales with a well-buffed patina.

I eyed Wolf’s athletic outfit atop the folded clothes in the laundry basket, and went over what the well-dressed mannys-to-be might wear. In thinking of a mannys’ wardrobe, something I’d already begun to purchase secondhand, I was struck by what a low-overhead operation manny-pushing would be. Mannys require no food, water, or medicine. They have no need for heat, light, you name it. And here’s where it really gets cool: their parts are interchangeable.

A couple of hours later, as I left my bedroom to drink a glass of milk before turning in, I heard Lisa switch off the stereo. “Goodnight,” I called through the living room doorway.

In the foyer, Lisa retrieved her tape dispenser and started out. “You say nothing about this, got it?”

“Our lips are sealed, right, Wolfie?”

As the front door snapped shut, I smiled at him sprawled in his recliner. About customer confidentiality, clients should be treated with the utmost discretion. There would be no little black books, no credit-card receipts, no videos of the action made on the sly. All procurements at The Manny Ranch would be done quietly on a low-key, cash basis only.