The Bialy Pimps (5 page)

After about a month, at another get-together, he pointed slowly and reverently to the Ficus tree in the corner with a bong leaning against it and said quietly, “What if God is like,
that
plant?”

The room fell into a silence so profound that is was palpable. Nobody dared to breathe, weighed upon by the incredible enormity of Captain Dipshit’s postulate. Then, after a fitting period of respectful quiet, a normally-reserved kid nicknamed Moonbeam walked up to the plant with his head lowered, picked up the bong, and moved it away from the Ficus’s planter. He backed away and returned to his seat, where he resumed his awed meditation.

From that point on, the nouveau-hippie culture recognized Captain Dipshit’s mind as second to none. He organized the construction of a modest but respectful shrine for the Ficus tree and then for the furniture and eventually for the walls as well, since he suggested that God could be any of them just as easily. Soon they left the sanctity of the apartment altogether, reasoning that God in His many forms might not appreciate the noise or the marijuana smoke, even though it was His most divine creation.

It did not take long for the Captain to convert to vegetarianism once he decided that meat was likely not healthy because all animals pooped, and that poop was not healthy to eat. He then reasoned that it was no safer to eat or wear products made in any way from things that pooped, and became a vegan.
 

Shortly after making this decision, he attended several vegan events and explained his philosophies to them, and congratulated them on arriving at the same conclusions. At first they were friendly, but after three or four hours of the Captain’s explanations and arguments, they inexplicably became downright nasty.

At the end of most of the events he attended, he walked out to the parking lot to discover that the other vegans had egged his car – quite a feat at a vegan convention, where eggs were a rarity.

The Captain, thereafter restricting his social circle to his established friends and followers in the hippie culture, refined his healthy habits with a zeal befitting his impossibly busy and rushed lifestyle. He had stopped eating meat and cheese and all animal products, and he wore no animal products except for the leather bag that he carried, which was necessary to make him look wisely “Earthy” enough to do his work of correcting the wrong thoughts of most people. He swore off anything carbonated on the grounds that carbonation was not natural, and swore off anything pressure cooked, which was also not natural. He swore off most grilled foods just to play it safe and swore heavily
on
pot, which was as natural as you could get. When he got the munchies, he ate pot brownies made with vegetable oil, not animal oils or butter or lard. He reasoned that he was the healthiest and most important man alive, as evidenced by his insistence in any situation on whatever was the healthiest and made the healthiest way, and by his nervous impatience in getting whatever was healthiest.

Although he was not a “churchy” guy, Captain Dipshit knew in his own secular way that God approved of his life. He knew that God was impressed with his astute and brilliant perception that He might be a plant, and that He appreciated the way that Captain Dipshit took whatever steps were necessary to keep the Ficus tree free of mealybugs and spider mites, just in case.

Captain Dipshit, whose name was not really Captain Dipshit, was named by the Bingham’s crew in the same way they had named Little Johnny Redbeard, whose name may or may not have been John. All John knew was that that was his building.

“That’s my building!” snapped the dwarf with the bright red beard, liquor breath, and pungent body odor. “I own it!”

Captain Dipshit tried to walk faster without giving up and breaking into a run, but Little John, who scampered like a terrier, easily kept pace with him.

If the High Street Crazies had been a basketball team, Little John would have been its star forward. His insanity and entertainment value surpassed them all – Stinky Ed, Pissy Pete, the Private Dancer... even the fist-pumping Johnny Rocker. He was, in equal measures, both fiery (like his beard) and inviting (like his beard). He could be your best friend, or he could be head-butting you in the groin. But regardless of which extreme he did on any given day, you could rest assured that he was doing it crazily.

It was, in fact, Little John’s hilariously bipolar nature that ensured that he alone among High Street’s crazies was usually welcomed at Bingham’s. Philip liked him because he was confusing to anyone who didn’t know his shtick, and because he made the kinds of customers that Philip loathed so incredibly uncomfortable. Sometimes Philip would even try to tell such customers that Little John was Bingham himself. Whenever he did this, hilarity inevitably ensued.

When Little John was in a friendly mood, he would accost strangers and force them to listen to his stories at great length, keeping them captive by offering them his hand to shake every few minutes. He often did this across the street from Bingham’s, where a stone wall divided the sidewalk along High from a raised grassy area. Someone would sit down to eat their lunch and John would plop down next to them, swinging his short legs and kicking the wall with the backs of his shoes. John’s audience would try to be polite, but would soon get up to leave, at which point John would extend his hand. Most people (and this said something about most people’s politeness versus their revulsion) would shake it, and then John would be free to continue. John’s new friend would start to leave again, John would shake their hand again and tell them that they were an all right guy, John would resume talking, and the cycle would repeat.
 

On a good day, everybody that Little John met was an all right guy. On a bad day, he would cuss and throw things.

It was Little John’s tendency to fly off the handle that gave rise to his notoriety. John was a drinker – a
heavy
drinker – and when he got drunk, he got belligerent and violent. He would punch people. He would jump on furniture until it broke.
 

Little John attended every campus party he could find, invitations to attend be damned. In spite of his violence, people rarely threw him out when he first arrived. This was partially because being only three and a half feet tall, he could surf the undertow of a crowd and go unnoticed – but it was also partly because he was, as the kids say, fucking awesome. Even once someone discovered him (usually in the kitchen, climbing the keg), he was usually allowed to stay and party on in his wasted, dancing, punching, fucking awesome way. Eventually, however, as the night wore on, he would punch the wrong person or yell the wrong thing in the wrong person’s face and be thrown down the stairs. Everyone knew that when there was a party, Little John was sure to be there. He would be there getting his ass kicked.

Most days, he was of a temperament somewhere between “friendly stalker” and “angry drunken dwarf.” He was usually ranting about his affluence.

“That’s my building!” he repeated to Captain Dipshit. “I own all this shit!” He gestured up and down the street. “It’s all mine! You know how much money I have in the bank?”

Captain Dipshit did not respond. He looked straight ahead, moving fast, and kept trying to outpace Little John.

“Ten million dollars! That’s right, I’m Donald fucking Trump!” He paused, thoughtful, and then added, “Not literally, of course.”
 

The Captain, suspicious that the dwarf was either 1.) jealous of his brilliance like the rest of the world or 2.) out to steal his Lucky Charms, began to bob and weave. Maybe the little man couldn’t corner well and he could shake him like a heat-seeking missile.

“Hey!” shouted Little John. “Can you hear me?”

Little John began tugging on Captain Dipshit’s pantleg.

“Hey!” he said, “I’m talking to you!”
 

Captain Dipshit, who would never admit to being in a tizzy, was in a total tizzy as he snaked back and forth down the sidewalk like the dance of a Chinese dragon. This was intolerable. Why did these things always happen to him?
 

Maybe they don’t happen
to you
. Maybe they happen
in this place.

Captain Dipshit stopped. Little John, who didn’t stop, planted his face in the Captain’s ass with a grunt.
 

Damn. He knew that voice. It was God’s voice. He’d heard it in his head for the first time years ago, when God had called to him from the ficus planter. You didn’t mess with God. God told you that He might be a plant and you acted. God told you to steal that waffle that one time at a Denny’s and you snaked it with your fork when its owner went to the bathroom. God told you that it was okay not to pay your taxes and you tore up your 1040. God told you to smoke up, and you fired a bowl until you were shitfaced.
 

Fucking-A right,
said the voice of God.
And I know what you’re thinking. Yes, this is totally God. If it were your own brain, would it know how many fingers you’re about to hold up behind your back?
 

Captain Dipshit put a hand behind his back and held up three fingers.

Three,
said the voice in his head.

Captain Dipshit was flabbergasted. That proved it.
 

Look, broseph,
said the voice of God.
Those things don’t just happen
to you.
They happen
here
. The weird shit isn’t tied to you. It’s tied to this place.

Captain Dipshit looked up at the window in front of him and realized where he’d stopped. Bingham’s.

That’s ridiculous,
he thought.

Are you calling a voice in your head that is clearly the voice of God ridiculous?
countered the voice of God, which sounded at least mildly perturbed.

No, no. Of course not.

Captain Dipshit considered. There was a guy he saw on High over and over – the one who wore huge stereophonic headphones and cut-off leather gloves and power-strutted down the street while singing classic rock at the top of his lungs. That was always here, near Bingham’s. The little man with the red beard was always around Bingham’s; he’d never seen him farther than across the street. He’d seen the Bingham’s manager spring through the front door once and chase a guy with a pipe. He’d seen an elegantly dressed but very dirty woman doing a sinuous dance in front of one of the Bingham’s mirrors, her front smeared with what had to be dried blood. You’d think the employees would intervene in such a gross incident and kick the woman out, but they didn’t. He remembered their indifference quite clearly. They’d sat in the back reading magazines and had ignored it all, as if it were going to stop on its own.

All of it
here
.

A guy had broken one of the mirrors with an ashtray and nobody had blinked until he was gone. The staffers sometimes walked right out front, right onto the sidewalk, and hit bagels across the street with a bat.
 

It all happened right here, at or very near Bingham’s, and the world didn’t notice or care. It was as if Captain Dipshit were the only one who was seeing any of it. And, really, maybe he was. Or maybe others were seeing it but were ignoring it. Maybe it was just apathy. That plus a bit of coincidence seemed more likely than the notion that Bingham’s was some kind of a vortex of evil. Occam’s shaver and all of that.

Maybe it’s just apathy and coincidence,
he said to God.

Maybe you should stop second-guessing me,
God retorted.
I caused a forty-day flood, you know. I could fuck you up right now if I wanted to.

Sorry, sorry. You’re right.

By the way,
God added
, that dwarf just de-pantsed you.

Captain Dipshit reached down, pulled his pants back up, and – quietly, so God wouldn’t hear – considered the possibility. Could God’s voice be right? Could this little part of town be a kind of vortex of oddity and... wrongness, like an Indian burial ground? He didn’t know any Indian people except his neighbor Misha Patel, but he made a mental note to ask her how the burial ground thing worked. You never know.

Here now, with his hand on the door, the notion troubled him. If Bingham’s were, in fact, a den of evil, then he should probably stop eating here.
 

Meh
, said God.
Evil or not, I’m hungry.

How can
you
be hungry?
thought Captain Dipshit.

I mean,
you’re
hungry,
said God, who seemed suddenly flustered.

Little John was tapping him on the backs of his legs, asking just what the fuck was in his fucking ears and if he was a fucking idiotic fucking fuck.

And besides
, God said
, if you don’t go in, that smelly little guy is just going to keep following you down the street.
 

Well, that was true.

But you’ll stay with me?
the Captain pleaded.
Give me resistance to evil? Maybe give me the strength of twenty men or the power to strike down sinners with bolts of righteousness?
 

No, I have to go cause an earthquake in San Francisco. I heard there’s a gay guy living there and you know how I feel about that bullshit.
 

And with that, he was gone.
 

Captain Dipshit took a deep breath, crossed himself, and opened the door. As he did, his left leg became heavy. Little John had wrapped around it in a bear hug and Captain Dipshit, resolutely ignoring the odd and potentially evil situation, began dragging him like Jacob Marley’s chains.
 

“Oh, good!” said Little John. “I own this place too.”
 

Mike, known at Bingham’s as “the new stoic asshole employee with the baseball cap,” was behind the counter. He looked over at the new customers as they struggled through the door. Stoically. Assholishly. While wearing his baseball cap.