The Art of Disposal (17 page)

Oh how it felt—like God was pinching the second hand of the universe's master clock. The shuffling of people outside, not seeing us at the back of the store; not sharing in our secret moment. Then she pulled away from me, and she looked disoriented, like she'd taken a bad drug. She put her hands up to her face and looked at me through the spaces between her fingers, like she was building a wall.

“No, no,” she said. “You go now.”

She twisted her wedding ring, checking its fit along the bottom of her knuckle.

I gathered my things and started off to the front door, wondering if it had even happened at all. Some moments exist in an ether, not quite along the same everyday road, and they leave you questioning everything about them.

I opened the door, and the chimes sang their melancholy tune.

“Elephant!” she called out to me. “Make everything better.”

Back on the city streets, walking to my hotel, licking the taste of her honey lip balm off of my own lips, and smelling her perfume on the backs of my hands, I wondered what would've happened, days, weeks, years from now—if we would've loved each other and died of old age in a house full of teapots and jasmine flowers. It was nothing. It was everything. You can live a whole lifetime in the matter of a few seconds, if your imagination is good enough.

“Sometimes Mudcap wears a marble in that eye-socket,” Eddie said, clipping a cigar and toasting its foot.

“You mean a glass eye?” I said.

“No. A marble. An actual marble, with wavy lines and shit.”

“Can he crack heads?”

“I heard one time he put a guy into a cardboard baler, in the back of a Mom and Pop grocery store. Smooshed him.” Eddie took a puff. “Conese was good to you, eh? Twenty-five… that ain't chump-change, mister.”

“I won't get my electric turned off, I guess.”

“When I was a kid, my old man told me to stay away from Uncle Joe. 'Uncle Joe is family,' he said, 'and we love him—but we don't condone what he does.' My old man, you see, he worked as a letter carrier for the Post Office. He was on the level. I never seen a guy so square. So of course my Uncle Joe, wearing his suits and shiny watches, well, he looked like he had a hell of a lot more fun than my old man.”

“Joey Bones, right?”

Eddie nodded and ashed his cigar into a blue-glass tray. “Joey Bones. But to me he was always just Uncle Joe. Never acted like a big shot.”

Joe Bocci was an old-time gangster, well known for his kindness. They say he never killed a guy. That's doubtful though: I've never met a mobster with clean hands. He killed guys, or had guys killed, no doubt about it; but it's a credit to his business acumen that he could perpetrate such a legend about himself. He was boss for a year or two, but he got whacked by a gung-ho De Luca member. They never found Joe's body.

“You know why Joe Bocci got hit?” Eddie said.

“Some kind of mutiny.”

“Tell me about it,” Eddie said coarsely, with a flash of hatred in his eyes. He played with the brass latch on the lid of the cigar-box from Frank Conese; his lit cigar sat quietly in the ashtray, a blue line of smoke climbing up and away from it like the ghost of a snake.

Eddie stared at that box of cigars from Frank Conese. “You know what? This worries me,” he said. He held up the box and turned it this way and that. “Frank Conese gives
me
a box of cigars—and not just cigars, but Davidoff Millenniums.”

“And what's the problem?”

“They're too nice,” Eddie said, examining the wrapper of the burning cigar.

“They good?” I said.

Eddie took a puff, tilted his head back, opened his mouth, and let the smoke crawl out. Then he moved his nose around through the cloud and drew in breaths of it, like a dog sniffing at a fine patch of grass. “Are they good? he says… they're Davidoffs, for crying out loud.”

“Maybe he's making amends,” I said.

“Or maybe he's saying goodbye.”

Eddie's eyes grew black as coal, and he wouldn't take them off of me. I scratched my neck. Eddie set the cigar back into the ashtray and leaned forward; put his elbow on the desk and cradled his face in his open hand.

“We're stuck with Carlino?” he said.

I nodded. “And Max Finn.”

“Frank tell you why?”

“No,” I said.

“I don't like them.”

“Me neither.”

“Good,” Eddie said. “Watch 'em, Champ. Like crackheads going through your garbage at two in the morning. Let 'em pick through the trash on the curb, but make sure they don't get too close to the house, if you know what I mean.”

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

“Shoot.”

“You and Frank…”

“What about it?”

“You know, why he—”

“—why I never got made? That it?”

“That's it,” I said.

“You want the long or short version?”

“Up to you.”

“Short it is,” Eddie said. He puffed the cigar and looked into the ashtray like it was a crystal ball. “Back when my Junebug died, I lost it. Down the rabbit hole. That's why I don't touch the stuff no more. Me and Frank, we came up at the same time, in the same neighborhood, so he cut me some breaks. Still, a guy can only go so far—and if he goes too far, even if he backpedals, well, people don't forget. Think about an ex-con. He gets out of the joint, and all he wants is to live a clean life and take the smallest little bite of the American Dream. But do you think Mister and Misses Jones are gonna hire him? Let him move into the house next door? No way. It's hard to shake your past, Champ. The Corporation… it takes a vote on its members. I didn't make the vote. My Junebug: you know how old she was?”

“Nine,” I said.

“Nine,” Eddie said, like he was watching her swing on some invisible swing-set a few feet in front of him. I could almost see her going back and forth, gripping the chains, in his glossy pupils.

“When she died, it broke my heart. That's one of those lines you hear a lot:
broke my heart
. And you hear it so much that it don't mean shit anymore. But when it happens to you—and I hope it never does—you'll know what it means. Like when an egg breaks. You can't fix it. And it hurts. I mean, it
hurts
. But you keep moving forward, and you say to yourself, well, with a pile of horse manure this big, there's gotta be a pony in there somewhere. But there ain't. When Junebug died, me and Peg—my first wife—we kind of died too. I drank. I always had a problem, but I never knew how far it could go. Guys like me, we don't just drink. We make love to the booze. We buy it roses. Meet it at cheap motels. Peg… well, she got fat and raggedy. Stood there in the laundry room, folding the clothes. That's all I remember: her standing there in the laundry room, just folding the towels and clothes. Not saying a goddamn word. She aged ten years in a year and a half. Her heart was broke too.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

Eddie laughed. “He's sorry, he says. That's a hoot. You don't know shit, Champ.”

“I can see why you don't talk about Junebug.”

“Frank thinks he's tough. Huh. Lose a kid and find a way to keep on going… then you're a tough guy. Some mom that lost her kid, and still shows up to work with a smile on her face?
There's
a tough guy for you. Thugs like Max and Carlino don't know a dog turd from an ice cream sundae. Frank's got some nerve sending them here.”

Yep. I was the middle man all right.

I calmed Eddie down. Reassured him that Frank Conese was all right and hadn't said a damn thing to me. I was tempted to tell him about Frank's unsavory plan, of course, but what good would it do? I took my Uncle Carl's advice and decided to do nothing at all—not until I had a better handle on the situation. Eddie puffed on the Davidoff, and told me a funny story about how he stole a Ford Galaxie 427 when he was a teenager, and dropped it back off after joyriding it. Bullfrog stopped by and dropped off his weekly dues. Then Dan the Man walked in, and I could see how Eddie was thinking the same thing as me: that Dan was touching Death's right hand. We probably wouldn't spend another Christmas with him.

“Goddamn shame,” Eddie said. “You'd think the government, scientists, colleges—whatever; you'd think they could at least come up with a cure for cancer.”

“No dice,” Dan said, a little out of breath. He took a seat and watched the angelfish drift by for a moment.

“They'll probably find it the day after they plant you in the ground,” Eddie said.

“I ain't goin' in the ground.”

“You ain't for cremation,” Eddie said.

“I am. And I'll tell you why. Years ago, I went to my Bubby's funeral outside of Boston. She died of cancer too. Anyways, there she lay, her mouth all pursed up and her eyelids pushed shut, and a couple of creepy little girls on the steps by the casket, daring each other to touch the corpse, and giggling like it's the zoo. That was enough for me.”

Dan the Man paused, but then he was electrified with another thought.

“And the casket. White and glossy. Hand-painted roses. Handles with gold trimmings. Like a Beaner's Cadillac or something. Out at the cemetery, I got to sit in the front row. They played some corny music. Had us family members throw Holy Water on the coffin, and pluck a flower from the arrangement on the top. Then the whole shuh-bang goes into the ground and gets covered up with dirt, and there it sits—with Bubby, pickled inside of it—for a thousand years. That's a waste, right there. Of money. Land. A waste.”

“Mister Greenpeace over here,” Eddie said. “Pretty soon he'll be riding a bicycle to work. What about the resurrection, you dummy? If you're burned to a crisp, Jesus ain't taking you nowhere.”

“Jesus don't want me,” Dan said, lighting a smoke.

“What about Dotty? She'll want a standard funeral. Broad like her needs closure,” Eddie said, and folded his arms like he'd just won.

“Ehhhh. Dotty. Dotty, Dotty. I ain't sure how to break it to her. She's mighty traditional. But I'm telling you guys what I want, and it ain't to be spread out, open-faced, like a sardine in a goddamn can. Make sure they don't do that to me.”

We promised him they wouldn't.

Then Eddie started having a weird fit. His whole chest heaved in and out, like his soul was trying to get out of his body—and then he started to cry. It's not easy to watch a grown man cry, and it's not easy to be the grown man doing the crying. When a grown man breaks down, I mean really breaks down, you almost wonder if you should call the guys in the white coats.

The angelfish floated back and forth in peaceful ignorance of the horrors that happen every day on the other side of the glass. Eddie rubbed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He moaned, and worked on getting himself back together. Maybe he was thinking about Junebug. Wondering what kind of job she'd have, and what his grandchildren would've looked like if God threw some better dice.

“It ain't fair,” Eddie said, wiping off his eyes and desperately taming his emotions. He shook his head back and forth a few times and called out, “Goddamn it!,” like it was a wizard's spell to toughen him up again.

“You guys are worse than Dotty when she watches Doctor Phil,” Dan said, giving me a sideways glance that said: I told you Eddie don't do well with death. “Anyways, it ain't so bad, how I'm gonna go. You wanna see bad, Ronnie? Let's go see Griffin Shaw.”

Eddie blew his nose.

“You got him?” I said.

“It's me you're talking to.”

“Weren't they ready for someone?”

“Not me,” Dan said, and cracked his knuckles. “Let's just say he's a little short-staffed at the moment. It's wide-open in Sturgis.”

Eddie blew his nose again, crumpled the tissue, and did a free-throw shot to the wastebasket a few feet away. He missed.

“Let's roll,” Eddie said.

“Now?” I said.

“Trust me—you're gonna want to see this.”

“We been waitin' for you to get home, just so you can see what we done with him,” Dan said, standing up and putting his arms into the sleeves of his jacket. He zipped the jacket-front closed, and the sound was short and loud. Eddie picked up the tissue, and dropped it in the can. Then the three of us went out to Dan's Camry and headed up into the wooded hills.

The wiry road that runs up to Eugene's house is called Huckleberry Lane. Every time I pass the crooked street-sign, I think how the name is far too wholesome, and I wonder if there are, or ever were, any huckleberries growing along those tarnished hills.

“Hallo, hallo!” Eugene said to us, a bit wobbly on his feet.

“How's our friend?” Eddie said.

“He veeshing he never keel dog, much for sure.”

“Where's your truck,” Eddie said. “You sell it?”

“Ha! Me selling my truck, no vay. Problem vith engine. I take it to city for to look at.”

Eugene's forehead reddened. Eddie stared at him for a minute, then he softly punched him on the arm. “Next time you have engine troubles, you call me. I know a mechanic. He would've done it for half the price.”

“Okay boss,” Eugene said.

Then we heard a soft scream, like something stored in a tin can far away. My mind drew twisted sketches, with Griffin Shaw in various states of living death down in that basement.

“Get me one of them beers,” Dan the Man said.

“Me too,” I said.

“Iced tea?” Eugene said to Eddie.

“What is this, a goddamn diner?” Eddie said.

Eugene fetched the beers (and a spare can for himself) and we walked down the basement stairs. Every few steps I took a quick nip of the Olympia, ice cold and bitter, and I prayed that Shaw was at least in one piece. I've never gotten any pleasure from torture. I'd rather just kill a guy quick and be done with it.

Griffin Shaw was locked up in an industrial grade extra-large dog kennel: the all-metal kind, with thick steel tubes that look like they could hold a gorilla. He was naked and his eyes were wild. When he saw us, he grabbed the bars and shook them as hard as he could. But the effort was pathetic. Eddie laughed.

“It ain't the Hilton, but the price is right,” he said to Griffin. “Enjoying your stay? It's peaceful out here. Kind of a nice B and B vibe we got going on.”

“What's a B and B?” Dan said.

“Bed and Breakfast,” I said. “Like going to a hotel, but it's someone's house. And they serve you breakfast in the morning.”