The Bialy Pimps (44 page)

Smooth was perched on the counter next to him, swinging his legs back and forth. The stubble on his head was short now, and the small beard that he had grown bled up into it seamlessly. He was wearing a rubber glove on his head like a shower cap, the fingers pointing skyward like the comb of a rooster.

“Do you think it might not have been a dream? I mean, it was so real, and a flier appeared the next morning.”

“And Ted was really in your house? Shit. I can’t say, man.”

“Have you ever had a dream so real that you didn’t know if it was a dream or not?”

Smooth paused for a minute, rubbing the thin almost-beard on his chin thoughtfully. With the rubber glove on his head, he looked like a cross between a gangster and a high school lunch lady.
 

“I can’t say,” he said after a pause.

“What
can
you say?”

“Don’t know, man.”

“Can you say: ‘How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood’?”

Another straightfaced pause. “No. Can’t say that either.”

“How about: ‘I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit, and on the slitted sheet I sit’?”

“Naw. But I can recite the Pledge a’ ‘legiance.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“‘I pledge a legiance to the flag...’”

Jenny interrupted him. “Drinks,” she said, coming through the front door.

“Hey-o,” said Tony, who had followed her in.

She screamed.

“Oh, gee, I’m sorry!” he blubbered. “I thought you saw me walk in the door behind you.” He touched her shoulder. She recoiled.

“That guy is a creep,” Jenny said after Tony had grabbed the restroom key and gone to work. “Maybe
he’ll
get hit by a COTA bus.”
 

Fifteen minutes later Roger arrived, wearing his Bogart hat and trenchcoat. He looked sublimely hip. Bricker had specific instructions to let Roger in whenever he wanted, and the throngs of waiting customers outside of the nearly-empty store seemed to resent it. They looked as if they were probably yelling about the injustice, but thanks to the new soundproof glass that Philip had ordered for the front windows, the lobby remained serene.

“Hi, Roger!” called the Anarchist. He was both happy and surprised to see him. Roger hadn’t been around much at all lately. The Anarchist tried to think of the last time he’d seen Roger, and realized that it’d been before Wally had arrived the first time. That had been months ago now. He missed Roger. Roger was a piece of the old Bingham’s. He wondered if Roger missed him too, and when Roger replied, the answer became obvious.

“Diet Coke! Medium!” he said.

Before Roger could reach the counter, Tony came out of the bathroom, and the Anarchist saw a rare thing from Roger: a reaction. Roger’s eyes widened. He pivoted on the spot, never losing speed, and made steadily for the door, chanting one monotone syllable the entire way: “Bad bad bad bad bad bad bad...”

The Anarchist looked from the closing door to Tony, then to the final retreat of Roger outside, then back. Roger had kept his cool much better than when he had Not Been Able To Take It Anymore, but he had obviously been disturbed by something.

The Anarchist frowned. Why did Roger think that Tony was “bad”?

Bricker was positively gleaming, and Slate was irritated with him.

“Authors,” Slate sneered.

Bricker had ensconced himself in a comfortable chair in the back corner of the main room, near the entrance to the restrooms. His chair, which he called “The Throne,” was decorated extravagantly with gold lamé fabric. A bust of George Washington sat atop its high back.

Darcy had been curious.
 

“Where did you get the George Washington head?” she asked him.

Bricker always wore sunglasses now. The mirrored lenses looked expressionlessly up at Darcy and replied, “I had it lying around.”

“You had it lying around?”

“Yes. Yes I did.”

“I see,” she said. “Did you by any chance notice that a similar bust which used to be on a pedestal in the lobby of the main library disappeared recently?”

“It did?”

“Yes.”

“Shame.”
 

Bricker had been reading Edgar Allan Poe. From the first moment that the head was introduced to the decorated chair, Bricker insisted that the bust was not of Washington, but of Pallas. He referred to it as “The pallid bust of Pallas” and balanced Swannie, the huge plastic swan, precariously atop it. When he was questioned about the arrangement, he would only recite one of Poe’s lines: “And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting / On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door.”

Slate was angry about Bricker and the slicer. He asked derisively: “Who is Pallas?”

The sunglasses regarded him with indifference. “He is pallid,” the lenses told him.

“Uh-huh. And what does ‘pallid’ mean?”

“‘A quality of Pallas.’”

“Right. And why is your raven a huge, white plastic swan?”

Bricker never broke his stare. “I’m sorry. You’re going to have to ask my agent about that.”

“No more questions,” said Bricker’s agent.

Slate glared at him. “Authors,” he mumbled again. He couldn’t believe the audacity of the whole slicer thing.

Bricker folded his hands behind his head and leaned back in the Throne. There was a folding table set up in front of him, and on it were neat stacks of Bricker’s new book. It was entitled
It Looked Like Someone Set Her Face On Fire And Tried To Put It Out With A Pitchfork.

Bricker smiled broadly at the first person in line to have a copy signed by the author. “How would you like me to address it?” he asked.

The fan craned his neck to peek past the high back of the Throne and the pallid bust of Pallas at its apex. “Is this the line for the bathroom?” he said.

“Tell me,” Bricker asked the fan, scribbling his autograph on the inside cover of one of his books, “how long have you been interested in my work?”

“I have to piss,” the fan told him.

“Great, great,” Bricker replied with a smile. “Thanks for coming out today.”

The fan looked down at the book that Bricker had handed him. “Can I squeeze past your chair and get back to the bathroom?” he asked.

“No more questions,” the agent told him.

Despite Slate’s derision, which was more than likely a manifestation of his anger about the thing with the slicer, Bricker’s book was already sitting at number three on the
New York Times
bestseller list. The achievement was a monument to the notion that people were stupid, following trends with brainless devotion. Bingham’s was a sensation. Bingham’s was “hot.” And Bricker’s book was a collection of Xerox copies of his butt.

The reviews were spectacular, having been written by critics unable to disagree with an increasingly Bingham’s-crazed nation. One review suggested that “Mr. Brickhouse’s buttocks are a symbol for our society – divided by a massive chasm between the rich and the poor. The title itself refers to vanity and the violent response which it can draw, mirroring this wonderfully-conveyed ‘Haves vs. Have-nots’ symbolism.”

Bricker was riding the popularity like a wave, and Slate hated it.

Perhaps in mocking, Bricker began to rub the dull silver motor housing of the slicer like a genie’s bottle. He had commandeered it and moved its massive bulk to his book-signing table, asserting that he absolutely required it and that since the slicing was completed, he should be allowed to have it for the rest of the day.

Slate was jealous, and spent most of his time sneering at Bricker. Bricker never seemed to notice. Instead, he sat in the Throne, his straightfaced agent at his side, and petted the slicer. It stood at his right arm. At his left arm was a small A-frame placard which had read MEET THE AUTHOR until Bricker had scratched it out with a large marker and neatly re-lettered it SUCK MY DICK.

“Why do you need the slicer?” Slate asked him.

“Why do
you
need it?” the mirrored lenses retorted.

“I asked you first.”

“I need it,” Bricker told him.

“What for?”

“No more questions,” the agent decreed.

As Bricker’s meet-and-greet had completely blocked access to the bathrooms, a line of crossed-legged customers began to beg for access at his table. He greeted each with a smile.

“Thanks for coming by,” he would say, opening a new book and shaking his pen. “How would you like this signed?”

“I need to go to the bathroom,” one girl told him huffily.

“How about, ‘To a girl who might have inspired the title of my book’?” Bricker suggested.

The girl began to dance. It had been nearly three hours since Philip had locked everybody in the store, and bladders were getting restless.
 

“Let me through!” she demanded with a slam of her fist.

Bricker looked down at the open book and began to write, thinking aloud. “‘To a huge bitch. Love, Tom ‘Bricker’ Brickhouse.’”

She began to scream at him.

Philip poked his head from behind the pallid bust of Pallas. He had just entered the restroom hallway from the other end, from the back room. “I’m just going into the bathroom for a second,” he told Bricker.
 

“Sure.”

Philip left the door open and was making loud, exaggerated sounds of relief. The customer was getting more agitated by the second.

“Thanks for stopping by,” Bricker told her, extending the book.

Rich had put on a new-age stress-relief CD which consisted mostly of the sounds of rushing rivers and waterfalls. The customers were dancing.

“Why won’t you let us in there?” one man asked.

The agent swiveled his head toward the man. “No more questions,” he said.

Riding the Bialy Pimps wave, it didn’t take long before the merchandising schemes of the others began to bear fruit as well. Nick’s action figures were selling like mad, and Tracy began to sell bootleg copies of their CD single and the tape of the “Here Comes the Manager” video.

“You see,” Mike tried to explain to him, “the more bootlegs you sell, the less of the real CDs and videos we will sell.”

Tracy closed his eyes and shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

“How do you figure?”

“Because my ‘Here Comes the Manager’ bootleg CDs are actually recordings of hilarious answering machine messages to which my machine and I have been privy. And the videos are really
Leave it to Beaver
reruns.”

“Ah.”

“Oh, that crazy Beaver,” Tracy said, giggling.

Mike’s expression did not change under his everpresent baseball cap. “Do people ever come back and complain?” he asked.

“Sometimes. Especially with the videos. I tell them that their money is unfortunately nonrefundable, but that I am sorry for the mix-up. Then I give them a real bootleg copy of the video.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Unfortunately, I tell them, there is a small return fee that is passed on to me by the distributor of the videotapes, and that to replace the bad copy, I will have to ask them for more money to cover this fee.”

“And the fee is...?”

“The cost of another bootleg.”

“Interesting coincidence.”

“Indeed. But once I have the new fee, I can give them the real bootleg video.”

“What’s on the real bootlegs?”

“Home movies of my brother’s tenth birthday. You should see what mom got him that year! Ha!”

Mike shook his head.
 

Slate was still staring at Bricker. He was certain that he had commandeered the slicer because he knew that Slate was infatuated with it. As Slate looked over, Bricker turned it on, watched the hypnotic back-and-forth motion of the meat tray as it passed the spinning blade, and turned it off, bored. He found it neat. Everything about fame was neat.

Except for drug addiction, that is.

Everyone was concerned about the Anarchist and Philip. They had developed a serious addiction to cherry-flavored Alka-Seltzer.

Darcy was pleading with them to seek help. “You’re over the edge!” she told them.

“No way, man,” Philip told her groggily, tearing open a new packet and dropping one of the two pink tablets into each of two small cups of water. “I can quit any time I want.”

“Oh yeah? Then quit for a day.”

“No way dude,” he said. “You’re not going to bring me down.”

“Please! There are other ways to deal with fame and fortune!”

The Anarchist raced around the corner and plowed into the office with a paper bag. His eyes scanned the room.

Philip looked up. “Did you get it?”

“Yeah, but I had to go all the way over to the Ohio Union. Everybody else only had the regular flavor.” He unfolded the top of the bag and withdrew a gigantic multi-pack of cherry Alka-Seltzer. Darcy realized suddenly that the dainty red cherries on the box looked like bombs.

“Woah,” said Philip.

“Seriously.”

“I poured you a shot, man,” Philip told the Anarchist. He pointed at the Dixie cup on his desk. “Hit it.”

The Anarchist fired half of it down. Then, noticing Darcy, he extended the cup to her and said, “You want some?”

“That’s medicine!” she told him, aghast. “It’s for when you’re sick!”

“Come on,” he said, jiggling the cup. “It tastes like Cherry 7-Up.”

“No!”

Philip came closer. “Come on, Darcy. It’s effervescent.”

She turned and ran out of the room screaming.

The Anarchist finished his shot, feeling the fizzy action rocket to his brain. “Remember when I sprayed those people with a fire hose?” he drawled to Philip.

Philip chuckled. He waited a beat, then finished his own shot.

“Remember when I killed The Rat with a plunger?” he drawled back to the Anarchist.
 

The Anarchist chuckled.

“He hasn’t come back, has he?” asked Philip. There was an odd note in his voice, and it took the Anarchist a moment to place it. It was concern.
 

The Anarchist waved a dismissive hand. “I’m sure he’s around. Spry. Healthy and disgusting. As disease-ridden as ever.”