Stuart Dybek - Paper Lantern - Love Stories

The clonk of trousers full of keys and coins hitting the floor wakes me. The mattress sags, and reeking of whiskey and kerosene, Frank that sumnabitch slides in on what was his side before he started sleeping on the porch.

Ah! he goes, the homey scent of mothballs when a chill’s in the air. How about sharing some covers?

I’m turned away from him and make like I’m asleep.

I remembered the song, he says, then in his hoarse voice sings: Drink Edelweiss, it tastes so nice, it tastes so nice, drink Edelweiss. Catchy, huh?

I don’t say anything.

Hey, he goes, it can’t all be “Wild Horses.” You notice how in one song, Edelweiss gets rhymed with nice , and in the other, Oscar Meyer rhymes with desire . Think it’s just coincidence that the beer that’s nice goes bankrupt, but the wiener that people desire makes a fortune?

I lie still, and outta nowhere the name of the scent the priest wears comes to me—sandalwood.

No comment? Frank asks. Sorry to bore you. All right, then what would you guess is the number of times people the wide world over did it to that song?—“Wild Horses,” not “Drink Edelweiss.” When’s the last time we listened to it?

The whole time he’s talking, he’s pressing closer against my back, running his hands over my hips, down my legs, over my boobs.

Of all the songs ever written, which one do you think people fucked to the most? he whispers. And don’t try telling me it’s M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E.

I can feel him hard through my flannel nightgown.

Take those titties out. Still like it rough? he asks, and I remember he’d clamp plastic clothespins on them. He tugs up my nightgown, rakes his fingernails across my ass, then slaps it so I cry out.

That wake you up?

The handprint’s burning. There’s more coming, but he’s holding back, which makes my body tremble waiting for what’s next, and I already know once it starts I won’t care about the gun or HESHEMEHOPELESS or the four deuces I’m holding.

Did you forget you have to tell me what you want? he asks.

And suddenly it comes to me where our props are, and maybe everything else, too. He took them over to her house.

I seen the owl, Frank, I say.

Huh?

I seen the owl.

Was he with the pussycat? Frank asks, but he stops touching me. Last I heard, he says, they’d gone to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat. They took some honey and plenty of money.

Get up and check, Frank. That owl’s looking in at us from across the alley right now. I know who put it there.

What are you talking about, Rosie? Go back to sleep.

I know you’re asking her her secrets.

He rolls away and sits up on the edge of the bed, and pulls on his trousers. I slide my nightgown back over myself.

You’re sick, Rosie. You need to see a doctor. Your head’s not right.

How about I know you killed Lester? You ain’t fooling no one, Frank.

That shuts him up. The way he’s breathing reminds me of Father Julio.

I know you did it, Frank.

How would you know that, Rosie?

You forgetting my powers, Frank?

Your powers , if you ever had any, and that’s debatable, been long gone, Frank says.

I wouldn’t bet on it. Whatta you think the police will make of my powers when I tell them to check their files for James Lester and to match the night he was shot with the records of who won big that night at Sportsman’s? Think maybe they’ll ask, Where would an old black man on disability get a thousand dollars to play a Pick 3? Whatta you think they’ll figure when they find out a few days later we bought the Four Deuces? Maybe the IRS would be interested in what you didn’t pay in income tax that year.

I hope you haven’t told this crazy shit to anyone, Rosie, and not just cause your signature’s on our tax returns, but cause people have been committed to the loony bin for less.

I confessed it to the priest.

What priest? Wrobel?

Wrobel’s a drunken lech. He should be confessing to me. I told it to the young priest at St. Pius, the one with the stigmata. I told him if anything ever happened to me, you did it, Frank, and he should tell the police.

You really think I could ever hurt you, Rosie?

Whatever would give me a loony bin notion like that, Frank?

It’s hard for me to live like this, Rosie. It’s been hard for a long time. I want you to know, despite my failures, I tried to hang in there.

It’s hard for me, too, Frank. It’s kind of like that’s what we have to share.

A day later, he’s gone.

He’d been drinking all that day. And that night, after he closed the bar, he went out and didn’t come home. Drunk, hungover, sick—in all the time we’d owned the Deuces, Frank never wasn’t there to open the bar.

That morning, pounding wakes me, a delivery probably. Let them bang. When it’s quiet, I go downstairs and unlock the dead bolt, but the bar door won’t open. I go out the back, past our rustmobile Mustang still parked with the hood up in the backyard where Frank was supposedly putting on new belts. The open engine’s full of dead leaves. I walk around to Twenty-second, and there’s a boxcar padlock on our tavern door and a hand-printed sign taped in our window. THANKS FOR YOUR PATRONAGE CLOSED FOR RENOVATION.

The back porch smells like winter, not kerosene. I can see my breath. The space heater’s off. First time ever his desktop’s clean, all the papers stuffed in the wastebasket. No note. Only thing on the desk’s a checkbook with a fresh block a checks. I look if there’s a balance. He’s wrote in $22,000—half what we won on Cool Bunny. Money I won. The sumnabitch musta figured he earned half for killing Lester.

Sumnabitch! I’ve taken to talking to myself, and only when I hear the echoes through the empty rooms and wonder who’s screaming do I realize it’s me. Maybe I been screaming like that inside a long time. It’s like my own voice has become one of those desperate voices I’d hear at Sportsman’s. They probably thought they were whispering, too, under the noise of the PA and the crowd and the horses, but I heard.

I check his closet. His old, worn boots and leather jacket’s gone and his duffel bag. He ain’t gonna get far on that.

Okay, I say, as if wherever he is the sumnabitch can hear me. I see your f-ing game: I upped the stakes, and now you’re raising me back, calling my bluff, trying to outpsych who you can’t outplay. I’m holding all the cards and you can’t stand it. Well, I’ll be goddamned if you’re gonna scare me into thinking that without you all we worked for goes up in smoke. The Deuces is my place now, sumnabitch, whatever it takes to run it will be worth it just for the look on your face when you come slinking back and see you weren’t needed.

Sign says we’re rehabbing. Okay, make a to-do list: (1) CALL WORKMEN … Like who? Illegals maybe. Frank always said they work hard for cheap.

(2) REUPHOLSTER THE BARSTOOLS, NEW JUKEBOX, NEW MUSIC, NEW LIGHTS, TAKE DOWN THOSE DEPRESSING XMAS DECORATIONS THAT BEEN UP ALL YEAR ROUND SINCE HARRIET … or maybe not … the holidays aren’t that far away … come back to that later …

(3) INVENTORY: LIQUOR, CIGARETS, HOT DOGS, MUSTARD, BUNS, CHIPS, KRAUT, BEER NUTS … come back to that later …

(4) GET A LAWYER … not Urbowskus, Frank’s crooked drinking buddy — find your own lawyer, someone with your interests at heart who you can trust …

(5) WHERE YOU GONNA FIND THAT PERSON?

There’s so much to list. It don’t ever cross my mind to put down CALL MISSING PERSONS .

Whenever the phone rings I think it’s Frank that sumnabitch, but it’s bill collectors, salesmen, attempted deliveries, so I stop answering. The mail’s all bills, so I let it pile on his desk like he did. It starts looking like he’s still around. People pound on the door, so mostly I stay upstairs, cause everyone’s waiting to ask questions about where the sumnabitch is. I start a list for that: (1) Gone to Mayo for his asthma. (2) In Canada, searching for his birth mother. (3) Don’t tell no one, but he’s in the Cayman Islands, keeping our accounts secret from the IRS while I hold down the fort …