The Bialy Pimps (41 page)

“You’ll want to see this right away,” said Captain Dipshit, who didn’t think Dicky was ever a very fun person. He pushed past him into the living room. He was holding a VHS cassette tape, and he knelt down and slid it into Dicky’s VCR.
 

“I was flipping through the channels and saw a preview, so I grabbed a tape so that I could record it when it came on,” he told Dicky.

“Record what?”

The foyer light was on but the living room light was off, and the only light came from the TV. In its blue glow, Captain Dipshit looked somehow different. Worse. The word that came to Dicky’s mind was
unhinged
.
 

“Just watch,” he said. And then he inhaled and exhaled slowly, as if trying to center himself, to remain calm.

The video began with a dog food commercial. Captain Dipshit picked up the remote and sped through several more commercials, stopping when the MTV logo appeared on the screen. Below the logo, a line of text promised that what was about to follow was a WORLD PREMIRE VIDEO.

“I know you’re weird, but I don’t care if you think Madonna is unhealthy or some other bullshit,” Dicky said.

“Shhh!” Captain Dipshit hissed. This took Dicky by surprise. The kid was always so submissive. He’d never cut Dicky off or shushed him before.

Some titles came up in the corner of the screen. A scene faded in, and some kind of a rap beat followed. Someone was chanting “Uh-oh, uh-oh uh-oh...”

Some scantily-clad women danced onto the screen. There was steam in the air, and the steam was coming from big metal boxes that sort of looked like...

Uh-oh.

Dicky watched, already suspecting what he was about to see. Six-foot paper-maché bagels rolled across the screen, and there were dancers in the background, grinding in unison. What had those titles said at the beginning?

And then, uh-oh... here came the manager.

It was Philip, decked out in a sequined jumpsuit and high-top basketball shoes. His curly hair was teased up into a white man’s afro. He had lightning bolts shaved into it above his ears, and he was badly breakdancing like his life depended on it, spinning on the tips of his shoes, swinging his arms like waves, and twirling around on the floor on his back.

Uh-oh,
Dicky was thinking.

Uh-oh, uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh – here comes the manager.

Then the rest of the Bingham’s crew danced onto Dicky’s television, all of them twirling spatulas and mouthing words which had obviously been sung by other voices. Captain Dipshit was at his elbow, voice somewhat shaky but with a businesslike calm. This was a parody of an M.C. Hammer song, he explained. Dicky could have cared less. His jaw was hanging open.

Now the crew was outside, strutting to the beat along the streets of downtown Columbus, high-fiving urban hip-hop and breakdancing crews, clasping their hands and slapping them on the back in camaraderie. Philip was walking in the lead, but then another figure joined him. At this, Captain Dipshit visibly recoiled. The newcomer on the screen was Little John, the homeless dwarf with the fiery red beard. Everyone clasped hands with Little John and you could see him mouthing
I own this fucking place
.
 

Then Philip was front and center again, now dressed in a brightly-colored jogging suit and wearing pearled sunglasses, thick gold chains, and a prominent four-finger bridge ring that read BAGELZ. He was walking like John Travolta in
Saturday Night Fever,
stepping lively and getting props from his boys in the hood.

Dicky’s face was long, shocked. He’d never been so baffled. He could feel the anger deep inside, changing and becoming something worse.
 

“You know what I never understood about the original version of this song?” said Captain Dipshit. “They say, ‘Uh-oh – here comes the Hammer.’ But isn’t Hammer benevolent? It should be like, ‘Whoopie! Here comes the Hammer!’”

Dicky didn’t hear him. He couldn’t take his eyes off the screen.

The manager continued to come along: now in the deli, highstepping along the countertop. Now on campus. Now in a bagel bakery, engaged in some sort of bagel-throwing fight. All the while, the baseline warned,
Uh-oh, uh-oh uh-oh uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh – here comes the manager.
And here he came. Again. And again. Now in spandex. Now in aluminum foil. Dicky couldn’t move.

When it was over, he could only blink. Captain Dipshit allowed him a minute and then removed the tape from the VCR.

“Dicky? Sir?” he asked.

The jaw remained down and open.

“Sir?”

“Oh God.”

“Dicky?”

“Oh God. Oh, Jesus.”

“Sir? The plot?”

“What?”

“Your plot to destroy them?”

The memory of the plot jarred him back to presence. Hatred resurfaced with it. This had to stop. One way or another, it had to stop. Bingham’s – and Philip – were being celebrated by the nation for being lazy, intolerant, inconsiderate, and conceited fuckups. They were undoubtedly making a lot of money, and would surely make a lot more. Just before the video had clicked off, the veejay had come back on and said that the video was bound to be very popular, given the “Bingham’s mania” that was beginning to creep up on the nation, slapping spatula in hand.
 

The plot.
 

Yes. It was time.

Dicky grabbed the phone book and looked up the number for UltraClean Hygiene. They wouldn’t be open of course, but he could leave a message for Tony, who did the campus route, to call him immediately.

“He’s getting skinnier.”

“Bullshit.”

“No, really. Look close next time. It’s starting to look like his head doesn’t belong on his body.”

The Anarchist let the image swim in front of his mind’s eye. Darcy must be wrong. Philip was by his very essence fat; it was what made him Philip.

“That’s ridiculous,” he told her. “This is our Toby we’re talking about. Philip runs through fads like Smooth B runs through forties. His weight loss tactics don’t make sense. They never have. Remember his salad?”

The Anarchist did not need to elaborate. Darcy knew perfectly well which salad the Anarchist was referring to. During the store’s brief and unproductive flirtation with romaine lettuce, Philip had proclaimed one day that in an effort to be healthier, he was going to eat a salad. The announcement, coming from Toby of the Lard, had all the intrigue of a celebrity coming-out. The employees who were working at the time lined up to watch as Philip smothered a few leaves of lettuce with several ounces of ham, three kinds of cheese, bacon, and pastrami. He topped it off with two packets of ranch dressing.
 

And of course, those were the times of Frydays. They were the days of three Egg McMuffins, a pack of smokes, and a beer for breakfast.

“This is different,” Darcy told the Anarchist. “He’s actually being healthy.”
 

The Anarchist thought again, mentally working through Philip’s other attempts at healthiness: not drinking milk, switching his two-pack-a-day habit to “Lites.” But doing something that wasn’t a fad, that was sustainable and actually healthy? No way.

He voiced his disbelief.

Darcy shook her head, resolute. “Well, then his head is growing. Because it’s too big for his body.”

Philip without obesity? Philip without vices? It was too horrible to imagine. Yet the rumors abounded: Philip is quitting smoking. Philip is cooking broccoli and peas in the steamers for lunch. Philip isn’t eating red meat. Philip is taking Tai Chi.

Tai Chi? That one was the hardest to believe. The Anarchist could see him now, dressed in a starched white
gi
, swaying with deliberate slowness and dancelike grace through moving meditations.
 

All with a head that was too big for his body.

Everything was changing so fast. With all the chaos in the store, the Anarchist had thought that at least Philip’s unhealthy paunch could be counted on. Regardless of what its departure could mean for Philip’s health and longevity, it was sad to think of the paunch leaving. Philip’s gut had been with the store for as long as the store had been in existence, and a decent case could be made for its seniority. It was a part of the crew. It had clout. If Mike or Jenny or even Darcy wanted the same weekend off as Philip’s gut, the gut would win. The gut was what inspired William to draw a piece of art on the dry-erase board entitled “Toby in his larval stage,” which showed Philip’s blocky head drawn leading a larva-like body with scores of legs.
 

“I’ll be damned,” the Anarchist said, shaking his head.

He looked outside. November was coming on quickly, whistling along the sidewalks and streets in the insistent way it always came, ushering in the latter phase of autumn. The Anarchist watched leaves blow by in a gust. This dying fall was the last that he would see at Ohio State, and next year he’d be off to grad school. The thought bothered him, but he’d get used to it. Time marched on. All good things must come to an end, and all of that.
 

There was an academic smell in the air each fall as the leaves yellowed and reddened on the trees and students began to bustle across the Oval in light jackets. There was something magical in the air at those times. He had never appreciated it fully before, during the rush of classes and petty annoyances, but now that his time here was waning, he saw that it was in fact very beautiful. It was an aura that suited the college very well.

He thought:
This is no way to be thinking.

But he couldn’t help it. A real bastard of a storm was threatening, and as a result, the streets were almost empty. The absence of chaos felt odd. The store was peaceful. It was serene in its vacancy. It was never this way anymore. Never. The place was always packed to capacity, with a line out the door, from open to close. It took a real threat to scare people away, but the storm was doing it. There was even a tornado watch, and it seemed likely to become a warning. The crew, of course, could have stayed home too. But everyone seemed to notice the way time was speeding up, and home alone suddenly felt like no way to be.
 

In the quiet, pondering Philip’s gut, the Anarchist felt a tightness in his own. He’d seen his last full Bingham’s summer, and now, half of his last Ohio State autumn. They were on a rollercoaster that was approaching its apex. This was the time of their lives...
eh, kid?
But a question remained: If you were having what would turn out to be the time of your life, what came next? And would it suck, relatively speaking?

He had no answer. He couldn’t see beyond the next few days and weeks. Would the current pandemonium last into the new year? Probably. Would it last through the whole of the next year? It seemed unlikely. Their new celebrity was based on nothing. Pop stars came and went, but at least they usually had some talent going for them. The Bingham’s crew had food-serving ability going for them. Once the nation’s attention went elsewhere, what would happen?

If he was honest,
this
was why he hadn’t filled out his grad school applications yet. Part of him was hoping that the Bingham’s train would roll on forever. If he worked in the entertainment biz as one of the sensational Bialy Pimps, that was a career. If he worked at plain old Bingham’s Bagel Deli as a steamer jockey, that was a dead end. The trick was that he didn’t know which scenario applied. If the freak train rolled on, he’d want to stick with it, and screw grad school. If it ended, he’d have to move on. He couldn’t remain a clerk because it was fun in the short term.
 

He didn’t know what would happen and when, but he had to make most of his decision now, or very soon.

Time. The storm outside. The storm inside.

Philip’s gut.
 

Too many changes, too fast.
 

Philip had come up from behind and was snapping at him, the noise too loud in the empty lobby. Skinnier Philip. Philip with the too-big head.

“Are you lost?” Philip asked.

The Anarchist answered without thinking. “Not yet.”

The rats were huddled together in the basement in what looked like a grand assembly. The bodies upon bodies writhed against one another, directionless and random as individuals but unchanging as a collective whole. The streets were mean today, owing to the coming of a strong storm. The dry, dark rooms beneath Bingham’s were the rats’ sanctuary from it.

Squeaky III stood at the head of the assembly, perched on top of a box of plastic forks. He surveyed his army and was pleased. He had never seen all of the rats together in one place, and now thanks to the storm driving those who lived outdoors inside, he could. There were many hundreds, maybe even a thousand of them. They scurried between one another in a living mass – all of the store’s original tenants plus the newcomers upon newcomers who came for the food and stayed for Squeaky III’s promise of retribution against the humans above.

The numbers were growing. Soon, it would be time for action.

Very soon.

The Anarchist sat on the curb outside of Bingham’s as the storm grew.
 

He could actually see it coming, looming angrily over the buildings of Columbus’s city center. The sky was darkening from every direction at once, eclipsing the blue sky with ravenous insistence. Shadows that had been prominent in the sun folded into the ubiquitous pallor as the clouds gathered. The leaves remaining on the trees rustled, and even in their malnourished autumn state turned over to expose their undersides.
 

The Anarchist watched the black clouds with interest. Looking down, he intermittently sketched his shadow when it appeared, on and off as the clouds moved, with the toe of his shoe. He watched the sharp lines vanish as the street was immersed in grays, then watched as they reappeared in one of the rare patches of sunlight. It felt like an early dusk. Or rather, it felt like Armageddon. The streets were empty, and High Street looked like a road running through a ghost town.