Merlot (11 page)

He was an exceptionally thin man, just a
whisker over six feet with thin, wispy tufts of hair combed over a
shining dome. What little color he had was pale, he looked frail.
The brown polyester suit coat, the bank uniform, hung shapelessly
over sharp shoulders, seemed to create a sense of dust about him.
He was never Sid, always Sidney.

“Billy, you want some water or something.
This heat, diabetics like you and me gotta watch it.”

Billy took off his hat, wiped his brow,
looked up at the unrelenting, cloudless sky. Things were only going
to get worse weather-wise.

“Thanks, Sidney but I’ve got some in the
chariot. Just in a horseshit mood after that Vikings fiasco
yesterday, that’s all. You know they don’t have to win all the
time, but how about at least showing up to play. Christ, the
neighbor kids would have given a better showing.”

“Oh, tell me about it, and that guy, did you
see that fat guy there?” asked Sidney.

“That Wild Card guy?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Where’d they dig him
up?”

“Just one of the idiots attending the game,”
Billy said, a touch of yesterday’s fury returning.

“They must have hired that guy, the size of
him, I mean that had to be a special-order jersey. And getting the
crowd to its feet, great fun until it actually came time to run a
play. I told the wife we might be going for some long Sunday
afternoon walks this fall by the looks of things. That guy was a
plant, had to be.”

“Gotta go,” Billy said.

“Everything okay?” Gary the driver asked.

“Fucking Vikings,” Billy responded.

“Christ, tell me about it. And that fat ass!
What an idiot!”

* * *

Otto was on another run to the bank. It had
been a strange day, walking around from stand to stand picking up
deposits. He had the sense people were staring at him perhaps a
little more than usual. It was after the third or fourth group of
kids had given him the finger and called him names, that he
offhandedly mentioned it to one of the college kids working at his
stands.

“Josh, what is it with everyone to day? Man,
talk about getting up on the wrong side of the bed. I’ve seen
nothing but people looking pissed off. A couple of kids gave me the
finger. There something in the water?

“You’re kidding me, Otto, right?” Josh asked,
continuing to roll skewered slabs of bacon through a long pan of
batter.

“No, I’m not kidding, it’s just... There, did
you catch that?” Otto turned excitedly in the direction of two
sixtyish women walking away from the stand.

“See, see, they just sneered at me like I ran
over their dog or something. I mean what is it?”

All of his stands were built a few feet off
the ground. As Josh talked to Otto he looked down on him by close
to four feet.

“You’re serious? Not kidding?”

“Hell no, I’m not kidding, I’m gonna get a
complex if this continues. Go ahead, enlighten me.”

Josh continued skewering thick slabs of bacon
onto wooden sticks, dipping them in the batter and locking them
into a wheel that worked as a sort of rotisserie.

“You listen to the game yesterday?”

“Vikings? Not really, tuned in for a minute
or two but they were down by something like fourteen points.
Why?”

“They lost 63 to 3,” Josh said, slicing open
another twenty-five pound bag of bacon slabs.

“You kidding me? So, why’s everyone taking it
out on me? What’d I do?”

“Otto, man, you got that number thirty-five
jersey on. Dipshit ran the wrong way then basically handed the ball
to the Seahawks, scored against his own team! Folks are trying to
get their lives back together after yesterday. They don’t want to
think about the Vikings let alone Jerry Cardy. I gotta believe it’s
a pretty safe bet you are the only person in the state wearing a
number thirty-five jersey today.”

Otto made his way to the truck, flipped off
by a couple of cute looking coed types along the way. He handed the
kid in the parking lot another greasy paper plate, maple flavored,
keeping the kid on his side.

The kid nodded at Otto’s jersey.

“Yeah, like thanks. Man they suck, eh?”

* * *

“Take us past the bank again,” Mendel said to
Lucerne.

They were on their way to a gun shop. Elvis
sat in the backseat concerned about the wisdom of breaking into a
store full of guns.

He leaned forward, centered between Mendel
and Lucerne, turned his head, and fixed his good eye on Mendel.

“Can’t we just buy some guns?”

“Not likely since we’re felons and broke. I
got a sneaky feeling they wouldn’t be happy with our IOUs.”

“You think they know that was us, with the
dead banker?” Elvis asked.

“Not yet, dumb ass, but why chance it? All
we’re gonna do today is just look around a little. Get the flavor
of the place, then come back after business hours and take whatever
we need, simple as you please, waltz right on outta there,” Mendel
said.

“What about just buying the guns from someone
else, ya know?” Elvis asked.

“No, as a matter of fact I don’t know. Why
don’t you tell me who we gonna buy AK 47’s from, Elvis. Because I
been thinking and I can’t come up with anyone, not that we got any
money, anyway. Lucerne, you know someone wants to sell AKs to three
broke felons who ain’t got a pot to piss in?” Mendel growled.

Lucerne shook his head, checked his mirror
and made the turn onto Como Avenue that would bring them past the
bank.

“Okay, Elvis, I don’t know nobody, Lucerne
here, he don’t know nobody. You tell me, who you know got all these
AKs they want to sell?”

“Well, I…”

“They must be real good friends of yours
‘cause me and Lucerne, we ain’t got a clue, man.”

“I don’t know nobody, exactly, I just think
it’s gonna be hard to grab em from a store is all. Know what I’m
saying, Mendel?” Elvis said.

“Maybe you should wait and see how hard it
is. You just maybe might be surprised. Maybe they got AKs stored in
a box outside, and we can just help ourselves. Maybe I’m working on
a plan for us. Maybe it would be better to see, first, Elvis,
before you go pissing all over a man’s idea.”

“Here, here we go. Pull behind that pickup
truck and wait for me. I’m going into this bank and look around.”
Mendel shouldered the door open before Lucerne stopped. The door
dragged and scraped along the curb.

“Why you get him mad like that, he just gets
pissed off?” Lucerne asked, looking in the rearview mirror at
Elvis.

“I’m worried for all of us, ain’t afraid, if
that’s what you’re thinking, but to break into a gun store, man, it
ain’t that easy. Our luck ain’t been the greatest lately, ya know.
I mean there’s folks with guns in gun stores, get it? I just don’t
think it’s gonna be the cakewalk Mendel says, is all.”

“I think he’ll see that it ain’t that easy
and he’ll forget about the AKs. Maybe forget about this damn bank,
and we can go back to knocking off liquor stores and folk’s homes
like the good Lord intended.”

* * *

It hadn’t been the longest line but it was
the slowest. Figures, Otto thought. All he wanted to do was get a
feel for this party-girl teller he saw yesterday morning coming out
of DiMento’s, so he had stepped into her line and hadn’t moved
since.

“Hi,” he said in response to the stare from a
guy in the line next to him.

“God damned Cardy, that boy’s history. That
takes some brass ones,” the man nodded at Otto’s jersey.

Otto waited for what seemed like an eternity,
cursing the two women ahead of him, eventually he stepped to the
window.

“Hi Cindy,” reading the teller’s name badge
as the hint of a leer crept through the zinc oxide smeared across
his face.

Only Porky would wear a Viking’s jersey
today, she thought.

“How are you today, sir?”

“Fine, just fine,” Otto leaned in close to
the glass, fogged it slightly as he spoke.

“You keep some late hours,” he said, with an
all knowing wink.

Oh, you absolute creep, she groaned to
herself, counting his cash, piling it into stacks.

“Yes sir, open until 6:00.” she said.

“Just wondered if you started early like that
every day?” he half whispered, then snickered at his own crazy
sense of humor.

“Mmm-mmm,” she said, counting twenty, forty,
sixty, eighty, anxious to get him away from her window.

“Go there often and, and do that sort of
thing?” he asked.

Forty, sixty, eighty, hundred, four thousand
six hundred she counted, checking the amount on his deposit slip,
crediting the cash. She shoved the grease stained bag and the
deposit slip back under the glass. Making sure the deposit slip was
at all times between her fingertips and the bag that had touched
his sweaty body.

“Anything else I can do for you, sir?” She
smiled, thinking gross!

He wiped the sweat running down the side of
his face with the back of his hand. He felt a tingle from the tip
of his jungle boots to the top of his head when she spoke to him.
He seized on her double meaning, anything else?

“Well, now that you mention it,” he said
posing, putting his forearm in front of the window, wanting her to
see his Donald Duck tattoo, U.S.M.C. boldly scripted just below
Donald’s ass. He moved his head back and forth, trying to buy time.
He could feel his face blushing and he began to sweat. He waited
for her to ask about Deep-Fat-Fried-Bacon-on-a-Stick.

It didn’t happen.

She repeated the refrain in her head, gross,
gross, gross. Then heard her voice ask sweetly,

“Anything else I can do for you, sir?”

“I guess not, at least not here,” he laughed,
winked, shrugged, waited for a moment before giving her a little
two-fingered salute and ambled out the door.

The woman waiting behind him approached the
counter shaking her head.

“Just a minute please,” Cindy said, then
sprayed a can of Lysol over the window area and wiped it clean with
a paper towel.

“Lord, I don’t blame you one damn bit. And
those dreadful Vikings!”

* * *

As Mendel opened the door to the bank, he was
cut off by the same character he had labeled Porky Pig the other
day. Bastard dressed the same way, Vikings jersey, jungle boots.
White shit smeared on his face. Mendel caught the Donald Duck
tattoo on the forearm; the vague, distant look, sweat running down
his face. He decided to give this nutcase all the space he
needed.

* * *

Merlot had gone to bed thirty minutes after
arriving home from the game. He didn’t have the courage to watch
the news, afraid that he and the others got caught on film. Despite
exhaustion he slept fitfully, waking with a start a number of
different times, frightened by a recurring nightmare of Dickie
dropping his boxers and screaming, “Wild Card”.

He showered, dressed, and drove to the coffee
shop for his doughnut and latte on the way in to work.

Chrissie was spilling out of a T-shirt two
sizes too small and shorts that looked too wonderfully tight.

“Hey, Merlot, was that you on the news last
night with that fat guy at the Vikings game? God, wondered if you’d
even show your face today.”

“Viking’s game, me? No, had to work, I wasn’t
there.”

“Oh, man I could have sworn that was you.
They were showing this gi-normous guy and I thought that was you
right next to him. Oh gee, now that’s really weird ‘cause I yelled
out to everyone in the room. We were watching at my sisters and I
yelled out, hey,” she raised her voice, yelled across the coffee
shop. “I know that guy, that’s Merlot next to that fat dude’s ass.
Isn’t that crazy? You know, like you could have been famous or
something.”

A number of people looked up from their computer
screens or over the tops of newspapers. He smiled weakly, grabbed
his latte and doughnut and ran out the door.

That was only the beginning. He had to walk
past two newspaper vending machines, one for St. Paul’s
Pioneer Press
and the other for the
Minneapolis Star and Tribune
. Both were running a full
color shot of Dickie and company at Sunday’s game. The
Pioneer Press
ran with the headline
Family
Entertainment?
While the Star Tribune took the more subtle
approach,
Biggest Loser!
Pictured next to Dickie, in order
of appearance, Merlot, Wiener and Victor. Andrew somehow managed to
get cropped out of both editions.

Merlot stumbled in the Lounge-room door
downing his Latte, cramming the doughnut into his mouth and wearing
a shell-shocked look.

“Hey, Merlot,” Patti called, pouring a double
for one of her morning regulars.

“You’re famous, saw you on the news last
night. Oh and ah, nice picture in the paper. You made the front
page in both cities, good job,” she laughed, before wiggling her
finger to get him closer.

She reeled him in for more bad news.

“Hey, remember those two creepy guys from
last Friday?” she said, giving her little I’m-so-cute smile.

He nodded blankly.

“Well, they’re waiting for you again in your
office, honey. God, I had to hide the paper from my kids, Merlot.
Like I said, I don’t want them near a guy like you.”

* * *

“Gentlemen, you’re a bit early, didn’t we just speak
Friday?” Merlot walked behind his desk, picked up a slight
medicinal scent and felt his face begin to flush.

“So, what can I do for you this morning? How was
dinner with your nurse friend by the way?” he addressed Osborne,
working to calm himself.

Milton kept his right hand against his sport
jacket. It was clearly swollen with a purplish tinge extending
partway up his fingers.

“Well, if it isn’t the new Vikings mascot.
Taking up a second job to make ends meet?” the hand doing nothing
for Milton’s sense of humor. He was wearing a light blue sport
jacket over a rippled black silk T-shirt. The coat sleeves tight
against huge biceps and thick forearms.