The Bialy Pimps (37 page)

The Anarchist was in no mood to put up with this pervy bullshit on the dawn of their nationwide triumph. He kept hiding, and left Mike and Darcy out front to deal with Tony. But even after the cleaning job was done, Tony’s voice still drifted back around the old grill hood for ten solid minutes. It was like he was trying to torture the Anarchist, refusing on principle to leave.

“You have it nice,” the voice said. “All of these pretty girls in here to work with...”
 

The Anarchist had seen Tony’s gross schtick enough times to be able to see the scene in his head. Tony had been looking at Darcy when he’d said that, but then he’d looked over at Mike and winked. Because he and Mike shared this lust, of course, and needed to bond over it.

“Yeah,” said Mike’s dry, uninterested voice.

“I tell you,” Tony continued, “I like coming in here just to
be around
these beautiful ladies.”
 

“Yeah,” said Mike.

Tony chuckled. “Shucks, I’m just fooling with you. I’ll stop now. You probably think that I’m just a dirty old man.”

“Yeah,” said Mike.

When Tony was gone, the Anarchist walked out from his hiding place and took in the store in all its unchanged grandeur. The ass photos welcomed the sunlight. The sloth cavorted. The vibrations of the dildoes sounded like cicadas in the morning dew. The morning lull was still relatively unbroken, and in the spirit of the new day, the early customers had been tolerable and had hence been more or less left alone.
 

The Anarchist looked at Darcy, who was wearing a shirt on which she had outlined her nipples. “Ready for the national spotlight?” he asked.

Enunciating carefully, eyes serious under her jet black bangs, Darcy said, “Cool... motherfucking... beans.”

The moment Roger sat down in one of the many empty chairs at Big Bagel Bill’s, he regretted it.
 

He’d found the place three months ago when, while walking home from Bingham’s, a passing car had splashed his pants with mud. This was unacceptable. Roger was a dignified man. He’d fought in Korea, and he’d played saxophone in a jazz club. He’d always been either cool or a hero. And even while he was being a hero, he’d been cool. In the army, everyone knew him as the cool black guy. That’s what they’d called him, too. “Hey cool black guy,” they’d say, “you’re sitting on my waffle.”

Roger took pride in his wardrobe and its coolness, so after the car had soiled his trousers, he’d taken them off and slung them over his arm. Then he’d walked the three blocks to Chittenden in his boxers so that he could drop the pants off at his old dry cleaner’s.

“Dress pants! Starch!” he’d announced as he walked through the front door.

But it hadn’t been his dry cleaner’s at all. It was a deli. But he was sure he’d already left the deli.
 

He’d draped the pants over the counter. The clerks must be in the back, but he didn’t have time to wait. He’d left the pants there and had walked home, where he put on another, identical pair of pants.

On further reflection, he’d realized that the place must have been a deli after all. This occurred to him after he’d gone back for his pants and had been served a bagel. It was too much trouble to sort the issue out, so he’d left with the bagel and decided to let the pants go.

But as things got crazier and crazier at Bingham’s, his mind kept returning to the deli on Chittenden. Bingham’s was always too loud nowadays. He never got to talk to Beckie anymore. He never got to talk to anyone anymore, because the music was too loud. People kept throwing things, and he could no longer get his normal table.
 

Eventually, Roger decided that as much as he liked Bingham’s and its crew, he simply couldn’t take it anymore. He decided to try 3B, but as soon as he’d arrived, he’d known that it was no good either. The employees at 3B were stiff, unengaging, and all male. He couldn’t carry on conversations with them as he did with the Bingham’s crew. The atmosphere was sterile and cold. The chairs were hard and there were no pretty girls to chat with, to sit near, or even to look at. He’d tried whistling while waiting for his order (he hadn’t lost his musical ability over the years), but the man behind the counter had glared at him until he stopped. The man behind the counter had cold, dark eyes like that man he’d heard of who’d burned down that orphanage. And Roger had been in the army, so he knew the look of a killer. If the man behind the counter
wasn’t
a killer, it was only because he hadn’t been pushed hard enough yet.
 

There were no mirrors at 3B in which to admire his reflection.
 

There wasn’t enough smoke in the air to cause him to clear his lungs, which he needed.

There wasn’t even anything funny to laugh at.

Roger sipped his medium Diet Coke. The drink was almost gone. He’d been here too long, and as soon as he finished it, it was time to go and never come back. He didn’t like being alone with the man with the killer’s eyes.
 

How long had he been here, anyway? He looked down at his watch. Over two hours. He hadn’t wanted to sit near the counter, so he’d taken a booth close to the door and behind a half wall. He didn’t move around. He just sat and smoked and drank.
 

He had, in fact, been sitting at 3B so long that the employees, unaccustomed to having customers, had forgotten all about him. Dicky Kulane, who had other things on his mind, barely remembered serving Roger, and Paul didn’t notice him when he walked back in from his daily trip to Bingham’s.
 

“They’re open,” Paul told Dicky, “but they haven’t changed things back.”
 

Dicky stared at Paul. Paul backed up a step.

“What did you say?”

“It’s still a nuthouse in there, same as before,” said Paul.

Dicky couldn’t believe it. Paul had been in the restaurant when Wally had arrived two days earlier. This was not an accident. Ever since mailing off the “come here now” email, Dicky had been waiting for Wally’s arrival as eagerly as a kid waiting for Christmas. Paul had been in the store from open until close every day between the email and Wally’s arrival, and had suffered every abuse Bingham’s had to offer during that time. Paul didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he told Dicky that he’d be there even if Dicky hadn’t ordered him to be there. The new Bingham’s was Paul’s kind of place.

Two days ago, Paul had told Dicky what had happened when Wally arrived. He’d told Dicky what he’d overheard, then what he’d snooped out when he’d tailed the two to the Mexican restaurant and sat in the booth behind them. The next day the place was closed, just as Philip and Wally had discussed, and at night, the crew had had a meeting to convey Wally’s orders about reverting to normal.
 

And that in itself was a disappointment, because Wally’s arrival was supposed to herald the firing of every single employee and the closing of the store. But at least a back-to-normal rival was something that Dicky could deal with. He could always formulate a new plot, and when he did, he’d be fighting normal food and normal service. He wouldn’t have to contend with this zoo, this obscene, disgusting celebrity circus they’d gotten themselves into recently.
 

Dicky thought he might even be able to come up with a reasonable competition strategy if Bingham’s went back to normal. Maybe he could find a way to poison their food so that customers got deathly ill. Or maybe he could go down there with a chainsaw.

But if Paul was right? If they’d been caught, had closed for a day, and then had opened their circus right back up again? It didn’t make sense. It was unthinkable.

Captain Dipshit wandered in from the back room. He now worked at 3B. He was paid in coupons, which Dicky told him were better than cash because you could trade them, like playing cards.
 

“You,” said Dicky, pointing at Captain Dipshit. “Your old friends are up to their old tricks.”

Captain Dipshit thought Dicky meant the hippies. One of them did a trick where he could suck his testicles up into his body, and you could kick him over and over in the groin and he wouldn’t care. It was a fantastic trick.

“I wish I could do that,” said Captain Dipshit. “I keep getting mine grabbed and twisted.”

“I meant Bingham’s,” said Dicky.

“Oh,” said Captain Dipshit. “They can suck their balls in too? They must be ninjas.”
 

Dicky’s eyebrows furrowed.

“Oh,” said Captain Dipshit.

Paul seemed to have something to say, but it was obvious that he was reluctant to tell Dicky, who he was openly afraid of.

“What?” said Dicky, looking at him.

“There’s more,” said Paul.

“What more?”

“I don’t want to say.”
 

“
What
more?”

“They’re going to be on
60 Minutes,
” Paul said.

Dicky’s eyes turned red. Both Captain Dipshit and Paul saw it. It only lasted a second, but it happened.

“
What
did you say?”

Paul abandoned all pretense and sprinted toward the back room, leaving Dicky and Captain Dipshit alone. Well, almost alone. Roger, immobile and barely visible in his corner booth behind the half wall, was watching the entire thing.

“They’re going to be on
telemotherfuckingvision?”
Dicky said, his voice quavering.

“Actually, they already have been on telemotherfuckingvision,” Captain Dipshit told him. “I saw them on channel six.”

“But not motherfucking like this!” Dicky spat. “This is
60 Motherfucking Minutes!!”

“Actually, the name of the show is...”

“Motherfucking
FUCK!”
Dicky screamed. His composure broke and he kicked a chair hard enough to send it briefly airborne, then ripped two of the tall tables to the ground with a crash. He grabbed a stone ashtray off of a third table and, with something like a growl, threw it hard into the glass front of the drink cooler. One of the bottles inside shattered and splashed the floor with apple juice. The interior lights flickered, then went out.
 

Dicky stood for a moment, breathing heavy, trying to regain his composure. Then he remembered something, and he smiled a frightening smile as he looked at Captain Dipshit.
 

“What?” said Captain Dipshit.

“I just realized what we’re going to do,” he said.
 

“What?”

“I went into Bingham’s every other week for a year,” said Dicky. “I got to know everyone there.”

“And?”

“And I always got along really well with Tony, who services their bathrooms.”
 

No lights went on in Captain Dipshit’s eyes. But why would they? To guess what Dicky had in mind, he’d have to know Tony. He’d have to know one of Tony’s biggest secrets, which Tony shared only with a very few people. He’d have to know something else about Bingham’s that wasn’t widely publicized. And he’d have to know how to put all of those pieces together.

“Let me explain,” said Dicky.

He did.
 

And after the two were done talking and had retired to 3B’s back room, Roger got up and shuffled through the door as fast as his legs would carry him.

The
60 Minutes
interview went even better than expected. The producers (who, despite their hard-journalism exteriors, thought Bingham’s concept was beyond hilarity) were happy to give the piece a favorable angle. In just over a week – on the day Wally would be returning from his vacation – the segment aired.
 

It took no time at all for a second wave of reporters and photographers to descend on the store like locusts. The No-Longer-Ghetto Phone rang off the hook. Philip developed his own paparazzi following almost immediately, and threw things at them when they took his picture – not because he was annoyed (he wasn’t), but because that’s what celebrities were supposed to do whenever the paparazzi stalked them while they were busy being fabulous.

The new publicity was great, but the swelling crowds that came with it made business difficult and, if possible, made the average customer even more annoying than usual.

To deal with the problem, Bricker was given free reign over store security. His first act as security chief was to hire the entire football team to act as his auxiliary bouncer squad. Philip referred to the newcomers good-naturedly if not uncreatively as “The Meathead Pageant II,” and Bricker called them “The GoonSquad” as a rebuttal. All were well-compensated, and all enjoyed the task of throwing people across the alleyway, reporters included.

Wally was less than thrilled. The day after the interview aired, he stormed in, yelling at the top of his lungs that Philip couldn’t do this and that everyone’s heads would roll, his own and Philip’s included. He swore at Philip for betraying him... and all of this after Wally had trusted him. He ran around the store in a fury, tearing decorations from the walls and hyperventilating. Eventually, for his own good, Bricker was forced to glue him to a wall until he calmed down – which he did after a few hours of immobile introspection. The piece
had
been positive, he decided, and he
had
heard nothing but good things. Philip even took Wally’s cell phone from his pocket, found Bingham’s phone number among the contacts, and made the difficult call to the owner himself. Bingham, who everyone seemed to think was senile, turned out to be not senile but hilarious. He’d seen the
60 Minutes
piece. He was insured. The company was a distinct entity from him personally, and he had all the typical legal safeguards of any rich man. He’d worked in foodservice in his youth and, he told Philip, had always dreamed of the kind of things that Bingham’s was doing. Wally settled down entirely when Bingham told him all of this while Philip held the phone to his ear, and he really liked the idea of pitching a Bingham’s management book once Philip proposed it to him.

The new wave of popularity was exhilarating. The employees found it hard to restrain themselves and, with managerial and popular approval under their belts, didn’t really need to. Rich turned his wrestling into a no-holds-barred, full-contact sport. Dungeonmaster Eric and Nick began chasing customers around the store with tennis rackets and slingshots. In a venture that seemed likely to be illegal, Philip procured a large supply of the rubber “knee-knocker” bullets used by local riot police to quell disturbances, as well as a cornucopia of guns with which to fire them. Mike used them from the regulation safe distance to cripple people who did not tip, while Philip preferred to see if he could use them to knock buttons off of people’s shirts, which he was never able to do.