H. Lovecraft - Brooklyn Noir 2

She stripped off all her clothes, until she got down to her hairnet bra and spangled G-string. She wore them even under her street clothes when she went to buy groceries. And when those gossamer items flew from her body, the guys all nodded. They thought they had again seen everything she had, although the funeral parlor wasn’t ablaze in a spotlight, and their eyes weren’t dry, and their view was filtered, on purpose, through the fingers of Frankie’s angel.

Bay Ridge

(Originally published in 1970)

1941

To Arms

McGinn

On Pearl Harbor Day, McGinn heard the news of the attack playing touch football in the playground. The Japanese had done it! There they were out there. Far away. He didn’t quite know what they looked like but they had big swords and shit like that. Rising Sun? They tortured the Chinese a lot. He remembered the War cards he had collected for years.

Naked Chinese charging across a bridge against machine guns. The card’s dominant color was red, for the blood. All the cards had a lot of red in them. Severed heads, children in Barcelona? with ragged holes where their eyes should be. A lot of crazy jigs in the desert throwing spears at Italian planes. Let the boogies an wops kill each other, Cockroach once told him.

Now America was in it. He’d get to go in, too. Get the fuck away from here an kill some fuckin Japs. Or somebody. He was sixteen and could easy make it. The war wouldn’t end so quick.

They were out there. They sneaked in, the yella basteds, right in an bombed the shit outa all the ships, on Sunday! Sunday! They got no rules, rape kids an nuns. There were nuns on the War cards. He thought of Sister Margaret Mary, dirty little basteds running after her. He stood in front of them an kicked their balls off! The rat fucks.

Maybe he could even get in now. School was a mystery to him and his grandma might be able to sign a paper or something. Get to be a pilot and bomb the ass off them, with a scarf. Plenty of snatch back on leave. You could fly off a carrier.

He started to run to Yodel’s where he could talk about it. Jesus Christ! A fuckin war!

1946

Monte the Count

The Baptism

McGinn leaned, drunk, against the bar in Lento’s. His right eye was swollen shut where a cop had laid a nightstick across his face two nights before. Under and around the metal plate in his head there was an unwavering current of sharp pain that wouldn’t stop, that, in fact, the liquor seemed to intensify. I should be dead, he thought. I should be dead far away from here, far away, O far away … she loved him in the springtime and he’s far far away, he sang, and downed his shot. Black Mac turned to look at him. Have another John, he said, I got some money, have another.

McGinn rubbed at his swollen eye tenderly and moved his hand up to the cold, shiny surface of the plate covering his brain. My head hurts me, Mac, he said. Jesus, I mean it hurts me terrible. Ah, ya fuck, ya got all that disability money comin soon for the resta ya life. You got it by the balls. He signaled the bartender for two more boilermakers, then turned to continue talking with Ziggy.

It was red in front of McGinn’s eyes after he had drunk the whiskey. He retched, then calmed, then retched again, but finally kept the shot down. Then he very carefully set the shot glass down, picked up his beer and drank it all slowly. As he was setting the beer glass down, it got very red. He looked at Mac and saw him as if he were looking at him through a piece of red cellophane. Like when they were all kids before the war, looking at the green park through the cellophane, the new world, intense, red and weird before them. It was silent, he saw everybody’s mouth moving but he could only hear the jukebox, clear, day clear, the mouths, the movement of the men at the bar, Frank the bartender drawing two beers. The pain in his head was down in his ears now, in his neck, clean and sharp into the swollen eye. I should be dead.

He was standing on the bar now, surprised to find himself there and the noise of the saloon came back. The pain in his head was gone and he saw them all clearly, they had sent him to the war. You bastards! he shouted, you bastards! You ain’t got a plate in your head! Mac was touching, gently, his ankle, motioning with his head for him to get down, and Frank was drying his hands patiently, giving McGinn time to get down by himself. A good kid he was, got hurt a little in the war but a good kid.

You bastards, McGinn shouted. The bar was dead quiet now, the jukebox stopped, the customers watching him standing there, high above them. He lifted his hand up over his head, gloriously, and saw himself, outside himself, above them all, the men of the king’s guard, McGinn in a cloak, soft boots, a rapier elegant, pointed straight up. He raised his hand high. I am the Count of Monte Cristo! he shouted, I am the Count of Monte Cristo! He kicked at Mac’s drink and smashed it to the floor, then kicked at the glasses next to him on the bar, hearing them break, shouting through the absolute clarity now in his head, I am the Count of Monte Cristo! You bastards, you sent the Count to the war! He was screaming now, and someone at the far end of the bar started for the door. Hold it, you bastard! Hold it! You ain’t callin no bulls on me! The man stopped, shrugged, walked back to the bar. Frank began moving quietly and casually down toward McGinn, smiling sickly. I am the Count! I am the Count, he was crying now, weeping freely, his arms at his side, the pain back in his head, his eye, his ears, the bar had gone silent to him, there were movements, feet scuffling, he saw them through the tears, out there they moved through their lives in dead silence, I am the Count of Monte Cristo, you mothers’ cunts! he screamed, the tears running down his face, dropping down on his faded fatigue jacket, dark stains spreading on its front as Mac and Frank helped him to the floor.

1951

Fading Out

Monte the Count

His open Irish face had become coarsened and brutalized, and he frequently, now, forgot his name, his real name. He always answered to “Monte” or “Count.” A broken nose, reddened face with the ruptured capillaries speckling its surface. At times, through the alcoholic murk, the pain screwing his face up.

Let the pricks jus hit me one good shot on the toppa the head. Jus one, jus one. He would cry at times, racked with sobbing, holding himself together, one hand on his belly and the other on top of his head, squeezing the life back into himself. (Beeoo Gesty! Beeoo Gesty! Cantering down toward Pep.)

Hermes Pavolites, one of three brothers who shot pool in Sal’s, fair sticks, hit him a hard uppercut in the Melody Room one night, while Monte was looking at the bar in a daze, his head on his chest. Some bitter revenge taken at an opportune moment, for some old wrong done in the years just after the war. His two brothers stood near, in case Monte got up, but he simply sagged and oozed across the bar, spilling his beer and change into the rinse water. Everyone watched the Greeks walk out, laughing, then the place emptied.

Monte tried for months to find out who’d creamed him. Nobody had been there. Not me, Monte, I heard about the lousy fuckin thing, musta been some spicks come inna bar. To watch him walk the streets, asking questions, then finally stop, just look accusingly at everyone. One night he hit Frank Bull in Henry’s, and Frank simply tore the arms off his shirt, laughing at him.

A little while later, the cops broke his arm outside Papa Joe’s, one kneeling in the small of his back, holding his face down, pressed into the sidewalk, while the other casually whaled at his arms and legs with his nightstick. He broke Papa Joe’s front window with the cast when he got out of Raymond Street jail.