Hob Broun - Odditorium

Lounging amid shadows and smoke at the Kenilworth, Tildy and Christo argued over where to go for dinner.

“Anyway, I don’t like Greek food,” Tildy said. “It’s too greasy.”

“I heard you the first time.”

She stretched herself across the bed until her palms were resting on the warped brown floorboards. She wore a green baseball cap, flowered panties and a plastic lei rescued from a garbage can.

“I love these little pork chops,” Christo said, petting her shoulder blades.

A photographic rendering of this scene, the kind of grainy enlargement brought into a courtroom and mounted on an easel, might be advanced as the image of two young citizens in a state of postcoital entrancement. That would be an unscrupulous frame-up. In truth, bodily contact had been negligible. Tildy was bewildered, having expected more, some show of possessiveness after she’d spent a second night at the Chemikazi loft.

“How about seafood? You got to like shrimp.”

Tildy jumped up, shook herself. Balanced on the balls of her feet, one arm shielding her breasts, she scanned the twilight street framed by the open window.

That New York mystique had thus far escaped her. Another city just like the others; bigger, with each rudiment carried to a further extreme, but adding up to not very much. A cannon and a peashooter, were pretty much the same.

“What are we doing in this fleabag anyway?” Tildy wanted to know. “There’s all the money from Pierce for the grass we brought up, but then you hole up here like you just got out on parole.”

“What is it you want, a place with a view of the park? I can send you on a tour to the Statue of Liberty tomorrow, if that’s what you’re after.”

“Don’t strain yourself missing the point, Jimmy. This was supposed to be a holiday. I left all my aches and pains to go on a spree, but here I am with the mildewed room and the cold hamburgers and I might as well be back on the road with the Cougarettes. So what’s the story? Am I being punished for getting it on with Looie?”

“We got no ties. You don’t owe me one little crumb of fidelity. And don’t call me Jimmy.” Christo spoke in freeze-dried tones. “Far as the money goes, that’s my business, my score. It’s capital. Always I’d build a little roll, then fritter it away, but this time I’m going to make the right moves. Nothing to do with you one way or the other.”

“So you’re a pretty conventional asshole after all. You make with that gaudy outlaw routine, but it’s all a shuck.”

“Wish you could see how you look coming on all righteous in panties and a plastic lei.”

“Get bent.”

There followed several minutes of arctic, high-tension silence. Then Christo gently asked if she still wanted to go out and eat. Tildy replied that in her present mood whether they huddled mutely in the room or went for an all-night hike, stopping for beer and pretzels in every bar en route, was of no interest at all to her.

Before Christo could counterpunch, there came a vehement pounding at the door. Just as glad of the interruption, he slid off the bed. “Probably room service with our lobster Newburg.”

Tildy buttoned herself into Christo’s denim jacket as the door opened. A pop-eyed individual in a rumpled trench coat darted into the room and pointed his finger like a gun.

“Bingo. How’s the little shortstop getting along?”

“Vinnie.” She spoke the name with tired, unsurprised disgust.

“Vinnie?”

“Vinnie Sparn, ex-manager of the Cougarettes.”

“Want me to bounce him?”

Vinnie backed toward the window, staking out some territory. “I see I came at a bad time. Sorry to spoil the party but it can’t be helped. Sure, I could come back later, but think how I’d feel having to start all over again ’cause you’d skipped out in the meantime. After coming all this way to find you.”

“If this is a social call …”

“Hey, do yourself a favor, Johnny. Put on your pants and get out of here. She won’t be turning any more tricks tonight.”

Christo bore down on him, looking from side to side for a heavy object. “I think I would like to drop you out the window.”

“Stay out of my way, Johnny.”

They were inches apart and breathing on one another, but Tildy interposed herself, pressing a shoulder into Christo’s chest and pushing him back.

“Butt out. I can cope with this flunky.”

“Hey, watch that talk.”

Pulling at the brim of her cap, “Don’t play like you came on your own. What does Pete want from me?”

“An apology to start. When you jumped the team like that it really hurt his feelings. We looked after you and we gave you whatever you wanted. Didn’t I always let you bat leadoff? And then you go AWOL in the middle of the season. The ingratitude really got under Dad’s skin. He’s just that kind of guy. Dad believes in a kind of basic decency and when it’s flouted he gets very upset. That kind of stress isn’t good for a man his age, you follow me?”

“I’ll write him a letter.”

“Okay. You had your screen time, asshole. Now beat it.” Christo had edged back within striking distance.

“I said I’d handle it. It’s my problem.”

“And a letter just won’t cover it. Not nearly.” Vinnie stroked his sideburns, glowered. “It gets into a legal and moral area. Dad sees the idea of the contract as very crucial to our society. It’s not just a piece of paper, it’s a symbol of something much bigger, a complex system of cooperation and mutual trust. When you break a contract with Dad it’s kind of like spitting in church, you know what I mean? No, I’m afraid you’re going to have to come back to Florida and work this out with him face to face.”

“This is a joke, right? Are you really going to these lengths because Pete couldn’t turn out one of his girls as a shortstop?”

“I think I’ve explained it.”

“Not at all. You can start by explaining how you tracked me down.”

When he smirked, Vinnie’s eyes became little slashes in his sandpaper face. “No big miracle really. A pretty short order once I talked to your husband. A real good old boy, by the way. A great sport. We sat around and had a few and he let slip you were up here. In another little while I was able to make him see it would be to everyone’s advantage to be a little more specific. Then I caught the first plane out. Nice. I got prime rib and a movie.”

“You knocked him around. You leaned on him, didn’t you, fuck-face.” Tildy hurled a glass ashtray; it whistled past Vinnie’s ear and exploded against the wall.

Vinnie swept ashes from his lapel and popped his lips. “I hoped things wouldn’t develop this way. I hoped you’d come with me voluntarily.” He slipped one hand inside the trench coat and came out with a snubnosed.45.

“Lovely.” Christo subsided onto the bed and took a cigarette from behind his ear. “I used to have one just like it. Got it by selling a hundred and twelve tins of White Clover Salve.”

“Go fry your head, Johnny.” Though he’d practiced all his moves in front of a mirror, Vinnie was close to wetting himself.

“You don’t remember White Clover Salve? Used to advertise on the back page of the comic books. They sent you a consignment and depending on how much you could unload you’d get an archery set or a pair of binoculars or a model airplane or a cheezy little tin bank that was supposed to be like a miniature safe with this plastic combination dial—”

“Shut up! You shut up.” Vinnie hopped from one foot to the other, gesticulated meaninglessly with the barrel of the gun. “Come on, Soileau, shake it. We got a plane to catch at LaGuardia in two hours.”

“Vinnie, this is really too ridiculous. And I’m not getting on any plane with you.”