Robert Stone - Fun With Problems

"Don't you think his eyes look odd?" Margaret said without rising.

"But he has beautiful eyes," Cordelia told her mother. "Angel eyes."

"You're slamming meth, aren't you, dear?"

Cordelia marched toward the apartment door, then turned in rage. Her mother cut off any reply.

"I've tried to persuade you. Your teeth will fall out. You'll age."

"Thanks again, Slim."

"I don't want to sit by and watch you lose your looks." She sat up to address her daughter. "And your mind. Tweakers are the most boring people. Who taught you to fix?"

"I knew how."

"No, baby. I'm sure it was Donny."

Cordelia opened the apartment door and started out.

"Just a moment, dearest. Where to? Leaving mother to babysit? Mother had a tough day."

"Really? Ball some poor dude?"

Margaret raised a despairing hand and waved off the insult. Leaving, Cordelia slammed the door, her second slammed door of their brief evening. Margaret brooded for a while and then decided to call Cordelia's dearest friend. Some people actually called him Slash, but to Margaret he had always been just Donny.

"Hey, Donny." She tried to keep her voice low for the infant's sake. "How's tricks?"

"Yo, Slim," Donny said cautiously.

"Could it be that you've just instructed my baby in the art of slamming?"

"No way. She's a big girl. Either way, see what I'm saying, she gets more independent."

"Are you hearing me, Donno? Don't you dare treat Cordy like some skeeza. I'm cross."

"I hear you," Donny admitted.

"Good. Because if you ever turn my daughter out, I think I'll kill you."

"You are paranoid," Slash told her as firmly as possible. "You're, like, saying things."

Margaret paused to let him reflect on how thin the joke was.

"On a happier note," she said, "I have a joint for us. I've identified this awful man. House full of good things. So be here tomorrow midmorning and don't be hammered. Or is that a vain hope and it has to drop without you?"

"I'm there."

"Okay, and bring my daughter back here. I can't spend all day babysitting. I have a meet with the Smiling Lascar tomorrow."

The man Margaret called the Smiling Lascar was a South Asian pharmacist in Bethesda with whom she could trade in pseudoephedrine. Victor moved it out to some country cousins in West Virginia who cooked it into pseudo-crystal for distribution by bike clubs around the upper South. Victor's overextended family was basically a criminal enterprise, and through him Margaret could maintain a phantom presence from the D.C. suburbs to the remotest hollow and never consort with ruffians.

She did undertake a little discreet consorting, though. Exploiting the average psychopath's lack of social confidence, she was able to reach out past Donny to his own network and had already stolen a number of his supporters out from under him. Their shabby world was often exhilarating — the commerce in ginseng and bear livers, actual moonshine from traditional stills, marijuana, arms and ammunition, cars, speed, motorcycles. Donny's associates seemed to think they rightfully owned all motorcycles, as the Masai thought they owned all cattle. These men, she thought, were irreplaceable, the sons of the pioneers. She even had a certain secret fondness for Slash and understood her daughter's attraction. Still, she considered him needy.

"So you'll take care of that, no? And you'll bring a rental truck and plates? And you want gray coveralls or some neutral color."

"You got it, Slim," said Donny Slash.

"And you'll bring Cordy over here? And you'll show up? Scout's honor? Because this thing needs to be tomorrow."

"I'll come over too, yeah. I haven't seen much of Little Jimmy."

It was annoying the way he constantly referred to the baby as Littlejimmy, as though it were all one snively word. He had got Cordelia doing it. He had not seen much of the child because Margaret had various means of keeping him away.

"No, you haven't," she said.

"I mean, hey. This is my child here."

"Certainly, Donny," Margaret told him. "If you say so."

And that was that, and so, she thought, to bed. But no, the phone began its song and dance, and she had Kimmie on the line. Kimmie was Margaret's schoolgirl chum and former patient.

"Oh, Kimmie," she said. "It's so late."

Kimmie was a professor of composition at a small women's college in New England and a published poet. Margaret had been visiting with her on a business and shopping trip to the Northeast.

"Margaret!" Kimmie said breathlessly. "Did you take my car? My car is utterly gone. Vanished from the driveway."

"We discussed this, Kimmie."

"We did?"

"We certainly did. I borrowed it to drive to the train. I left it at the station. How can you not remember?"

She and Kimmie had planned to shop for early-American art and antiques along New York Route 22. Arriving, Margaret had found her friend, who was seriously bipolar, in a state approaching raving mania. To punish her, Margaret had taken Kimmie's battered '65 Ford Mustang and driven it to D.C. in partial payment to the Smiling Lascar.

"At the station? But I'm stranded. I'm marooned, you see, and I can't…"

"It's autumn break, Kimmie. You don't need to go anywhere." In the end, she had simply to insist. Kimmie had forgotten about the loan as a result of her medication. Or of not taking it. Or something. After a while she pressed the red button on Kimmie and switched the phone off. Then she checked on young Jim and went to bed.

It was midmorning when Cordelia and Slash arrived. Margaret looked them over in their bib overalls and work shirts. Cordelia's getup fit badly. She wore a Depression-style gray tweed cap turned backward.

"You're late. I hope you brought everything?" Then she performed a stylized double take. "By the way, your mustache is rat-like," she told Donny. "What have you done to it?"

Donny Slash, who had come in wearing a suave, cheery smile, lost his composure. He was always trying to impress Margaret favorably. But Margaret's secret attraction to him was a gratuitous grace over which he had no control at all.

"Whattya mean, Slim?"

"Never mind."

Cordelia giggled. The twisted relationship between her mother and Slash amused her.

"I've identified this awful man," Margaret explained. She meant she had acquired bits and pieces of the Bowers' life and documents from an addicted antiques runner who had become aware of Mrs. Bower's collection. The man saw the Bowers regularly at auctions. On the day after Margaret's return from Kimmie's, the runner had spotted Bower at the museum and called her. Although Margaret had actually been a psychiatrist, her name was not Cerwin.

"By the way, Cordy, are you whacked, my darling?" She turned on Donny, who fidgeted and blinked under Margaret's fierce glance. Blinking was his shot at showing an honest countenance.

"Fuck no!" Cordelia said.

"Fuck no? Because your lips are purple. And your friend!" She addressed Donny with a humorless smile. "You're whacked also. And you smell of beer. You're drunk. You've both been up all night slamming crystal. God bless us and save us!"

"No, man," said Donny. "We're cool. We're down."

"Cool? How cool you're cool, you moron!"

"Hey, Slim, man," Donny said, repentant, "it's all good."

"Do you know what this means?" Margaret asked. "It means we'll have to call Desirée." Desirée was a Haitian girl who often minded the baby. "I'll have to cancel the Lascar. I'll have to expose my posterior on the open road. You can't drive." She turned on Cordelia. "Cordy can't drive. She has warrants. Oh, God," she moaned, "the two of you."

"Don't let her come!" Cordelia implored Donny. "It's such a drag when she comes."

"Yeah, sure," Slash said.

"Well, it is," said Cordelia savagely. "Mother." She pronounced the word with the irony of the street.