WHATSIZNAME

 

Whatsizname

What Ever Happened to Ol' Whatsizname?

        I would like to be famous among long-ago friends and acquaintances, not necessarily among the faceless masses.  I would like the girl that I adored in high school to note that the whole world has discovered me, and to say, “Oh, My God, we grew up together, and look where he is now.”

 

What if there were no strangers?  What if the world’s population was small enough that everybody knew everybody by name?  How might that impact morality, crime, the arts, sexuality?  Would humanity be allowed more liberty, or would it be more oppressed?

        Assuming that the human species multiplied from a factor of one, then two, and so forth, it is interesting to speculate at what point the number became too big to maintain universal familiarity.

         

THE FIRST DRESS CODE

                     

The First Dress Code

Eve ate half of the apples on the Tree of Life and I gobbled down the other half.  Eve was feeling fine when she rushed out of The Garden a little while ago, but I'm stuck here at home under the tree because I've got a terrible belly ache.

The thing is, God says that from now on Eve and I can't go walking around The Garden in the buff.  So Eve said she was going to get herself a wardrobe. Skirts, blouses, stockings, fancy shoes, all that nonsense.

Well I don't know where in Hell she thinks she can get those things.  On the other hand, maybe Hell is exactly where.

And God says I've got to do the same.  He commanded me to get a fancy gentleman's suit, and to put on a tightly binding shirt, and to choke off my air supply by knotting a silly decorated rag around my neck.

So it looks like my happy, carefree days in Paradise are coming to an end.

Here comes Eve now, and she's pushing a wheelbarrow that's piled high with dresses and skirts, and blouses, and even some trousers and shirts for me.

"Where did you get all this stuff, Eve?" I demand angrily.

Eve smiles smugly.  "Where else?  From Lucifer."

"From Lucifer!" I scream.  "From Lucifer!  You know God's not going to like this at all, don't you?"

"Well what else could I do?" she whines.  "God says we have to wear clothes.  So where else can I get clothes?  There's only you, and me, and Lucifer.  And besides, God has already damned us because we ate those apples."

"Yeah, right.  And who cajoled us into eating the apples? It was your pal Lucifer."

Eve giggles.

And now I notice a strange mark on her neck.  "Hey, what's that blue squiggly thing?" I ask.  "It looks like the Serpent."

"It is The Serpent."  She smiles, pleased that I have noticed.  "Lucifer put it there.  It's a tattoo.  And I'm the first woman on the planet ever to have one."

 "Well of course you are.  You're the only woman on the planet."

"For now I am, my dear," Eve replies, smiling coyly and patting her belly.  "But maybe I won't be for much longer."

Oh My God!!!

  

 

 

THE ADULTERESS

 

THE ADULTERESS

 

 Three private detectives, armed with telescopic lens cameras, had failed to snare Burt Cello’s wife while she was in an adulterous embrace with her paramour, and so the wealthy cuckolded husband decided to deal with her infidelity in a different way.

He contracted me.

        His wife’s lover was no mystery man.  He was a vice president in Cello’s company.  Cello instructed me to have a chat with the Casanova and to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse.  I made the offer, and he did not refuse.

        Sandra Cello had expected that she would be with her lover that same evening.  They had planned to have their rendezvous in an abandoned taxi shack on the outskirts of town.  She was to ride the elevated train to the last stop on the line, Bowdoin Station, and then she would have to walk nearly a mile along Bromley Avenue, which was mostly a stretch of long-ago condemned apartment buildings and burned-out shops. 

         The blight of the area had become so severe that the city fathers had ballyhooed a plan to tear down all the structures and create a connector to the interstate highway.  But, of course, like most bureaucratic blarney, it never happened.

       

 Early that evening, I roosted myself at a table by the window in a coffee shop across the street from Bowdoin Station, and watched the trains arrive every thirty minutes. 

Sandra Cello’s train screeched to a halt at seven-thirty.

        The Cello woman was easy to spot.   I watched appreciatively as the gorgeous blonde moved along the platform and came down the steps to the street.  She was a tall, sturdy woman, and even though she was wearing a bulky trench coat I could tell that she had a fine figure.  There was a scowl on her pretty face as she moved past my window and started on her trek through the slummy neighborhood.

         Sandra Cello was a beautiful woman, and I had no doubt that her beauty was the reason that Cello had married her, because I knew he didn’t love her.  Men like that don’t love anyone but themselves. 

He owned her.  And he wasn’t about to let anybody steal his property.

        I gave Sandra Cello a good head start before I left the coffee shop and tagged slowly along behind her.  There was no worry about losing the tail because I knew exactly where she was going.

        The thing was, though, she didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get there.  She just plodded along, gazing at many of  the destroyed buildings and the piles of rubble.  She did stop in front of the shell of a three-story tenement house, and for quite a few minutes she just stood there staring at the building. 

I figured that she had probably once lived in that house, since I knew that she had been raised in this foul neighborhood.  But because Sandra Cello was beautiful and wily, she had found a way out.  She married a wealthy man and traded in the dumpy tenement for a palatial mansion.  And now she was throwing it all away for nothing more than a fleeting passion with a dippy office clerk. 

Sandra Cello moved on and I moved on behind her.

She was not more than a few yards away from the taxi shack when she stopped and turned around so quickly that I had no chance to duck out of sight.

“Don’t worry about it, detective,” she said cheerfully.  “It’s not as though I wasn’t on to you.  I’ve been followed many times by many detectives, and I know the drill.”

I grinned harshly.  “It’s been a pleasant stroll,” I said.

“Oh, yes, I like to walk through the old neighborhood,” she agreed.   “Especially when I know I have company.  You know there have been at least three other private detectives before you, and I’ve disappointed all of them.”

“You won’t disappoint me.”

“Oh? And why is that?  My husband did hire you to catch me with a boyfriend, and probably take some pictures.  Do you see a boyfriend around here?”

“He’s not going to come, you know.”

“Who?”

"Who the hell do you think?”

“So, what are you anyhow?  Just another goddamned detective.”

I moved towards her, and she backed up a step or two.

“I’m not a detective,” I told her.  “Mr. Cello says he’s all done with detectives.”

Sandra Cello’s eyes widened, and she stiffened.  She backed up some more, until she was right in front of the taxi shack.  I moved forward and backed her right into the shack and I followed her inside and closed the door behind me.  I put my hand in my pocket and brought out my business tool.

A press of the tiny button on the handle of the stiletto announced the gleaming presence of a long slender blade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE DOWNSTAIRS APARTMENT

 

THE DOWNSTAIRS APARTMENT

             “He wears funny shoes,” Rebecca’s mother offered as a sufficient reason for her daughter not to marry Dan Chase.  The elderly mother was terrified that her daughter would go away and leave her on her own.

        “It’s too bad you don’t like him, Ma.  Because I love him,” Rebecca retorted, “Dan and I are going to be married.  We’ve gotten an apartment, and bought furniture.”

        “You’re going to live with him now?”

        “No, of course not.  Not until we are married.  And that will be soon.”

        Later that morning, while Dan was at their one-bedroom apartment, overseeing the installation of a new stove, Rebecca phoned him from her office.

“Something’s come up,Danny,” she announced excitedly. “Can you meet me for lunch.”

An hour later they were eating cheeseburgers at MacDonald’s.

“I don’t like that idea at all,” Dan protested.

“But it’s such a nice roomy apartment,” Rebecca pleaded.  “Oh, Danny, Ma was sobbing when she told me that the Baxter sisters said they were going to move out because they intend to buy a house.”

“Those two old crows have lived there for more than ten years.  And all of a sudden they want to buy a house?”

“My mother is seventy-one,  and she’s not in great health.  She’s scared to death of being in that big house all alone.”

  “Yeah, well I don’t know.”

“And think of all the money we could save,” Rebecca persisted.  “And there’s a second bedroom, and a dining room, and a huge back yard.”

“But what about our privacy?”

        “Oh, Danny, it’s not like we’d all be in the same apartment.  She’s upstairs.  We’re downstairs.”  Rebecca smiled mischievously.  “And Ma assured me that she’ll never hear the bed squeak.”

        That very afternoon, Dan arranged to have their furniture transferred to the roomy apartment in Rebecca’s mother’s house as soon as the Baxters moved out.

        Two days later Dan and Rebecca got married.

        Two years later they got divorced.        

Now, in the Folsom Funeral Home, Rebecca sat near the bier and accepted the condolences of friends and neighbors.  She was tearless and seemed detached from the event and unconcerned about the dead woman in the casket on the bier.

She did not love her mother anymore.  Ma had never shown anything but disdain for her husband.  She had treated Dan as though he were an interloping villain who had come between her and her daughter.

Even still, Rebecca understood that it was her own fault that the marriage had failed.  If only she had not talked Dan into taking that apartment.  If only she had never allowed her mother to have so much presence in her and Dan’s world.

“Seems like she’s always in our kitchen,” Dan had complained.  “Does she have to wander down here six or ten times a day.  I mean it kind of wipes out any chance of an afternoon delight, doesn’t it?”

Rebecca wished that she had spoken up to her mother and had expressed her irritation about how often her mother complained that Danny was not doing enough to help with maintenance of the property.  He should do a better job of mowing the lawn.  He should rake the leaves.  He should do this.  He should do that. 

“I swear to god I’m on the edge,” Dan had warned Rebecca many times.  “I try to keep it in check, but your mother is too much in our faces.”

“Just let it go, Danny,” she would say.  “Ignore her.  We’ll never have a better home than this.  And anything else would cost a fortune.”

But, inevitably, Danny went over the edge.  He’d had enough, he told his wife.  “Becky, I’m done with this.  I’m done with your mother, and I’m done with this apartment.  We’re moving out of here.”

“No, we’re not.  That’s ridiculous.”

“I’m not staying here for another day.”

“Well I am.”

“Then you may be staying, but I’m going.”

And so he went alone.

Oh, my god, Rebecca mourned, as she stared at the flower-laden bier.  Why did I not go with him?

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Martha Baxter said gently, and sat down next to Rebecca.

Rebecca nodded at the woman who had vacated the downstairs apartment to buy her own house.  “We all die,” she said coldly.

“Forgive me for saying this, dear,” said Martha Baxter.  “But at first I resented your mother for making us give up that apartment.  But I got over it.  I realized that she had to do for her daughter.  Family comes first.”

“What do you mean she made you give up the apartment?”

“My sister Abigail never forgave her.  That’s why she’s not here.  After all, we were her tenants for more than ten years. And then to be pushed out like that.  Well.”

“What are you talking about?  My mother said you left because you wanted to buy your own house?”

“I’m sure she only claimed that was so because she knew that you would never have wanted to take the apartment if you had known we were being forced to leave.”

“My mother forced you to leave?”

“Oh, yes.  Of course she did.  Abigail and I could never have afforded to buy our own house.  We loved our apartment.  We would never have left if we’d had a choice.”

Rebecca wanted to scream.  The affection she’d once had for her mother had been diminishing ever since Dan left her, and now she felt only a red-hot hatred for the woman whose controlling “love” had cost her a husband and the hope of ever having a family of her own. 

LADY OF THE SWAMP

 

LADY OF THE SWAMP

Jimmy Doucette is dead in his bed at age 54.  The past thirty years had been a constant anguish of tortured conscience, and, for him, death could not come soon enough.  He had smoked and boozed himself to this slow death because he did not have the character or courage to end his life quickly with poison or a gun.

But Jimmy, my dear boy, death is not the finish, and for you the horror and torment has only begun.

        I’m here, watching your soul rise from your dead body, and now you stare at me, wide-eyed and horrified.  Do you still want to have sex with me, Jimmy?  No?  I thought not.  Well, you belong to me now.  Your free will died with your body, and you will do all that I command. 

Come over here to the window.  You’re shivering.  You feel colder than you ever felt in your life, don’t you?  Well don’t bother to put your robe on.  It can’t help.  You’ll never be warm again.  Never.

To be looking so frightened and contrite won’t help either.  It is only I who can forgive you, and I will never do that. You must pay for what you’ve done. 

Look out of the window, Jimmy.  No, not at the moon, you fool.  Look down to your driveway.   What is it you see?  Yes, it’s my Mustang.  Isn’t it a beautiful car?

Remember when we walked out of the USO club, you whistled and said what a great car it was, and how you’d love to own something like that.  Would you like to drive it? I offered.  You couldn’t get behind the wheel fast enough. 

Of course you remember the dance at the USO club.  You asked me to dance and  told me that I was the sweetest and the prettiest girl you’d ever met.  Oh, you were so smooth, Jimmy.  I knew that I wasn’t pretty but you made me want to believe that I was.

When the music stopped and the USO club was getting ready to shut down, you suggested that we could go someplace and maybe have a snack and some coffee.   I was so excited, because I liked you so much and I didn’t want the time with you to end.

But we didn’t go to any restaurant. 

Where did we go, Jimmy? 

Damn you, don’t shake your head and cry.

We’re going to take the Mustang back to where you left it that night.  To a place that is a thousand miles away, but we’ll be there in an instant.  Time and distance have no meaning for us anymore.

Remember these woods?  Remember this road?  Up ahead is the Pickett Swamp.  The swamp that was in your head every moment of your life since that awful night.

You stopped the car.  You squeezed my hand gently.  Then you kissed me.  A soft sweet kiss.  You told me how happy you were that we had met, and how much you cared for me, and how sad you were that you had to be going away, because you were in the Air Force and they were soon to send you overseas.

I was sad too. I let you kiss me again.  But then you kissed me more forcibly, and you pushed your tongue into my mouth.  I became afraid and shoved you away.  You grabbed at me and tore my blouse.  I screamed at you and demanded that you stop.  But you didn’t stop.  You wanted to rape me, and when I screamed and struggled you punched me in the face so hard that I lost consciousness and slid down to the floor.

And what did you do, Jimmy?   Instead of trying to help me, you panicked.  You thought I was dead.  So, instead of rushing me to a hospital, you started the car up and drove straight ahead to the edge of the swamp.

See the swamp.  Look at it, damn you. 

        You put the shift in neutral and jumped out of the car while it was still rolling, and you watched it drop into the swamp.  You were desperate that it should go completely under the muddy water, and when it did you ran out of the woods and never looked back.

You should have given a damn, Jimmy.  You could have saved my life.  You should have loved me.

But you didn’t.

So now I’m going to give you the Mustang that you wanted so much to own.

Yes, you’re behind the wheel now, as the coveted Mustang rolls back into the swamp where you will spend all of eternity.

 Goodbye, my dear sweet boy.

 

THE KISS

 The Kiss

Elton Chase was taking his evening walk in the park and was halfway around the loop when a woman's lyrical voice halted him in front of the bench on which she was sitting.

"Excuse me, sir.  Do you remember rock and roll?" asked the elderly woman who sat alone.  "And Elvis Presley?"

"Oh, yes," he replied, and smiled wistfully.  "Don't we all remember Elvis?"

"Remember all the protest our parents made over him?  They said he was destroying the youth.  And his music was sinful and evil."

The poor lady is a bit addled, Elton thought.  His mother had been like that in the months before she died.  He was surprised and grateful that he still had all of his faculties.  He was, after all, eighty-one years old.

"Oh, I'm sorry for imposing on you, sir.  It must be very annoying to have a perfect stranger get on your ear uninvited.  But I'm old you see, and the only friends that I usually would talk to are already in their graves.  Sometimes I even talk just to myself."

"I'm old too," Elton said, "and I often talk to myself."

He took the liberty of sitting next to her on the bench, and got a better look at the woman.  She was quite attractive for someone who might also be in her eighties.  And then, after a startling instant of sudden recognition, he proclaimed, "My gosh, imagine this!  Why I know you.  You're Dorothy Craig.  And do you know that I've thought of you almost every day of my life for the last sixty years?"

A brief look of fear crossed the woman's pretty face, but fear quickly turned to curiosity, and then to recognition.  "Oh, my.  Can this be true?  Elton Chase?  After all these years.  And I can still see the boy in you."

"I think not.  It's been a very long time since I've been a boy."

"Oh, it has, hasn't it?  It's been a long time for everything.  Imagine us meeting like this in our old age.  Such a coincidence."

"Maybe not such," he said.  "I walk here in the park every night.  I live right across the street in the Rosedale Seniors House."

"Why so do I.  For a month I've lived there."

They both looked across the park at the four story red-brick building on the other side of the avenue.

"Then it's not such a coincidence, is it?" Elton said.  "I took an apartment there because I thought it would be some kind of comfort to live in a building that had once been our high school.  Is that maybe why you live there?"

"Not exactly,"  Dorothy smiled at him affectionately.  "It was my daughter Margaret's doing," she explained.  "I was living with her until she started her second marriage.  Her first marriage had ended very badly, and I did not want to be an impediment her second time around.  Margaret knew that Rosedale High School had been converted to apartments for seniors, and she thought I would like the idea.  And I do."

"Well I'm very glad you're here.  It's a joy to see you again."

"And you too, Elton."

"Dorothy, do you remember that party at Betsy MacFarlane's house?  We were just kids.  And we played that silly game."

"Oh, yes, I certainly remember that.  It was called 'We Dare You'.

"Right. And the other kids voted that you and I should do a joint dare.  I was ordered to kiss you in front of all of them.  Remember?"

Dorothy nodded.

"Well, it may seem bizarre, but I think about that challenge just about every day.  And I regret very much that I did not kiss you when I had the chance.  Everything might have turned out differently if I had."

"But you did kiss me, Elton."

"That was no kiss.  That was just a quick peck on the cheek.  I mean I should have really kissed you.  Like a man kisses a woman."

"Elton, we were only sixteen."

"We were old enough."

        "Perhaps."

"I didn't dare kiss you.  Because I was afraid you might resist me, or even scream."

"Now you know that wasn't the reason," she replied gently.  "It was just that you were too shy.  And I certainly wouldn't have gotten upset.  Actually I was disappointed that you didn't kiss me like a man kisses a woman.  It would have been my first time too."

"If I had only known that," he lamented.

"Kiss me now, Elton.  Kiss me like a man kisses a woman."

What?  Why that would be so ridiculous.  I'm an old man and she's an old woman.

And yet!  He suddenly felt those long-inactive juices tingling in his body.

"Close your eyes," Dorothy said.  "Please.  Just for a moment."

Elton closed his eyes.

"Now open them, dear Elton.  And you will see me as the girl I once was, just as I now see you as the handsome boy you were."

Elton opened his eyes and gazed at the beautiful teenager girl with long sandy hair and the wonderful brown eyes that could pull a guy's heart out of his chest.

"Kiss me now, Elton.  Kiss me like a man kisses a woman."

The jogger arrived at dawn, just as the light of day was  seeping into the park.  He had only begun his trot along the rotary pavement when he saw the couple on a bench far down the path.  They appeared to be locked in a passionate embrace.

When the jogger reached the bench, he gasped at its occupants, and immediately pulled out his cell phone.

The police arrived quickly.

"I don't understand it," the sergeant said to the other officer. "This boy can't be more than seventeen. And the girl about the same.  For a couple of kids to die just like that.  And no signs of violence.  And look at the way they're dressed.  The boy's wearing mouse-trap shoes for god's sake."

"Well, what do you think of this, sergeant?"  The other officer handed him the driver's license that he had removed from the boy's sport jacket.

"Date of birth is March 11,1940," the sergeant said as he studied the license and noted that the photo was of an elderly man. "This kid had no ID of his own, but I can see a strong resemblance to the old man.  Guess he must have snatched his grandfather's license, don't you think?"

 

MAGGIE'S CHILDREN

 

Maggie’s Children

                                                      
            Maggie Charlton propped two pillows behind her back and sat up in the bed.  She clutched the blankets in her fists and pulled them up around her neck.  

Soon the police would come.  She waited resignedly in the dark of the bedroom and looked out the window at the blackness of night that would soon be illuminated by the inevitable flashing blue dome.

Out in the front room, her drunken husband and his three drunken pals were cursing and screaming at each other.

Maggie had endured this madness before. 

And each time, there had been a warning by the authorities.

          “Something has to be done.”  “This situation is deplorable.”  “We may have to take the children away from you.”
          But he can’t help it, she had pleaded for her husband.  It was the war.  My god!  Don’t you understand what he went through?  He has already lost so much.  And now you want to take our children!
          Certainly they understood, the authorities told her.  And of course it was very sad.  But the well-being of the children must come first.
           One pompous lady, a social worker, had said very nasty things about Maggie.  “The mother should  be examined for mental competency,” she had insisted.  “The woman may not be insane or committable, but she is lazy and shiftless.  All you have to do is see what a pig pen her house is.  And she seems somewhat muddled.  I don’t think she’s capable of taking care of her children.”
          Sooner or later, Maggie had known, they would come for her children.
          And now the dazzling blue dome whirled across the bedroom window. Sooner had come.
          There was a vicious pounding at the apartment entrance.  Maggie could not get out of the bed quickly enough to open the door, and the men in the front room were too drunk to care, so the door was forced open.  

When Maggie had managed to wobble out to the foyer, she was looking at two huge police officers and a stocky woman in civilian clothes.

          One of the police officers pushed open the door to the front room and herded the four suddenly docile drunks out of the apartment and into the police wagon which was behind the cruiser.
          The officer who remained in the apartment noted Maggie’s bloated stomach.  “You’re Mrs. Charlton?”  he asked rhetorically.
          Maggie nodded.
          The officer turned to the stocky woman.  “This is Mrs. Beatty.  She’s with the Child Welfare Department.”
          Mrs. Beatty spoke softly and smiled gently.  “You must get the children ready now.  I’m very sorry, but they’ll have to come with us.”
          It was then that Bobby, age eight, came drifting sleepy-eyed into the living room.  “Is Daddy arrested again,” he whined.
          The twin girls, age seven, and a boy, age three, were taken out of the one small room where they had all been sleeping in the same bed.  Mrs. Beatty grimaced as she watched Maggie dress her children in shabby, smelly clothing.
          “We’ll all have to go now,” Mrs. Beatty said.
          Maggie walked silently past Mrs. Beatty, and went into the front room where she collapsed onto the couch.  She groaned and then screeched sharply, and Mrs. Beatty thought that she was distraught because the children were being taken away.
          “No, that’s not it,” the police officer snapped.  “It’s time!  Is it time, Mrs. Charlton?”
          Maggie Charlton winced and nodded.

          Two mornings later, Maggie Charlton and her fifth child were settled in a bed in the State Hospital, and she was gazing at the sunshine beyond the barred windows.  The room was filled with natural light and, as her newborn slept beside her, Maggie felt an unwarranted serenity.
          Her only visitor that morning was her unmarried sister, Eleanor, who was very rich and very influential in the city government.
          “They’re going to keep the children,” Eleanor announced coldly.
          Maggie did not speak, or show any response.
          “They will want to find foster homes for them,” the sister went on.
          “What about the baby?” Maggie said flatly.
          “Do you want the baby to stay with you?”

           Maggie nodded.    
           “Charlie won’t be coming home for a long, long time,” Eleanor said. “They took him back to the Veterans Hospital.  He’ll be having shock treatments, and he’ll be kept there indefinitely.  He’s become completely disconnected again.”
          “What about my new baby?”
          “Do you really think you can take care of the baby, Margaret?”
          “Yes.”
          “Well, maybe you can, with only one child to look out for.  You do understand you may never get custody of the other four children again?”
          “I know.”
          Eleanor stood up, and moved away from the bed.  “I’ve applied to be appointed guardian for all the children,” she said. “In time, when Bobby is old enough to be responsible for himself, I may ask to have him placed with me.  But I can’t take all of them.
          “The baby can stay with you, as long as there’s no more trouble.  And if Charlie does come home, he’ll have to be watched like a hawk.  We’ll talk more about it later.”
          Eleanor turned abruptly and went out of the hospital room.
          Maggie gazed at her sleeping baby, and suddenly felt a deep and painful anxiety.  She would have liked to cry, but could not make any tears.  She could never make tears, no matter how much the inner pain required them.