Fine Dining With Bill and Dave, Part II

“Your Luddite leanin’s is cause for concern,” said Bill, as we flounced into the car.

 

“Better a Luddite than a ‘gear queer,’” I retorted. “Besides, my revolvers never jam. Can you say the same of your faggy, Eye-talian shootin’ irons? I think not, sirrah! Since mine ain’t recoil operated, I can reload with any propellant I want when the zombies an’ Martians an’ Triffids an’ illegal Mexican Body Snatchers infected with that-there Andromeda strain of drug-resistant VD invade. An’ Patton didn’t carry no damned pearl-handled Beretta, by God!”

 

I struck my right thigh with a hammerfist and jammed my left index finger into his face, hoping to approximate the rhetorical style and stage-presence of an Old Testament prophet.

 

“Ye’re hopeless,” he grumbled. Then, without warning, his pitch contour departed from the contralto-to-baritone Finno-Ugric model, switched gears, and rocketed into something more akin to the rising wail of Mexican Spanish.

 

“Rollerblader! Rollerblader! Rollerblader!” he caterwauled, snapping bolt upright and pointing frantically at the rearview mirror. I shouldered the passenger’s side door open with all my might as Bill flung the car into reverse, clothes-lining the hapless skater in the process. Laughing and high-fiving each other, we pulled away from the curb and merged into the flow of traffic.

 

“I don’t know why,” said he, “but for some reason, that just never gets old.”

“Couldn’t agree wi’ ye’ more, bubba. There’s something fresh and new about every one of ‘em. There’s them that somersaults over the door, an’ them that slides under it. There’s some what goes red in the face, an’ others what goes blue in the face. There’s some as shrieks like fishwives, and others as gets knocked cold without even a grunt. The number of combinations, permutations, and even fantasias – if you will – on the general theme is practically infinite. Forrest Gump was right, you know: Life really is like a box of chocolates. A music box of chocolates, even!”

 

“I reckon that particular chocolate had raspberry filling, me bucko. An’ look! It’s a-leakin’ all over the pavement-like!”

 

“What did Bonaparte say about omelets?” I asked (the question being purely rhetorical).

"Just get our asses out o’ here, will ye’? Now let’s see…Whom to make the beneficiary of our next didactic-yet-whimsical jest? So many to deliver from metaphoric reincarnation in the lower realms; so little time…”

 

I opened a local “swinger” magazine and thumbed through it, scanning it for likely candidates.

 

“Wow!” Bill exclaimed, leaning perilously far to the right. “I ain’t never seen an Asura with a lingam that big before! Bet he’s havin’ trouble stayin’ on the Eightfold Path, damn skippy! Hell, he prob’ly trips, every other step he takes! I sure as hell don’t envy him his ‘journey of a thousand miles,’ though I might envy -- ah, never mind. I don’t think modern psychology accepts that notion anymore. But look at the knockers on that-there blonde preta! Wonder iffen she’s hungry for a bit o’--”

 

“Just focus on the road, Bill. Life is a journey, not a destination, after all. And leave the selection to me.”

 

“The waiter was Kasapa, Bill was Ananda, but the snippy li’l peckerhead was just I,” said he, mimicking my voice. He stuck out his tongue, but to no effect.

“Did you hear me?” he demanded, after a moment of not-so-reverent silence.

“Yeah. Get back to me when you finish ‘Jataka-ing off,’ Bubba. It ain’t your medium.”

 

“Can I run over a bum?” he asked several minutes later, as we cruised along Peachtree Road.

 

“Do what?” I asked. I’d become so immersed in the twin streams of my own reverie and the tunes coming over the car’s stereo; I hadn’t heard him. Bill scowled and repeated himself. Gazing out the window, I took in the high-speed museum/movie that was the sidewalk, frame by mortar-and-concrete frame – tramcars and taxis/ like a waxworks on the move… I didn’t see any vagrants -- but then again, Bill’s definition of “bum” was rather a loose one.

 

“I’d really prefer you didn’t,” I replied. “It’s powerful hot today, and them suckers is damned hard to scrub off the grill as it is. That means a lot of work, and in this heat, the leavin’s will be ripe as rotten eggs by the time we get home. Besides, we ain’t had dessert yet, and I simply cannot countenance running over bums -- or even neocons -- on anything but a full stomach. Somehow, it just doesn’t feel right.”

 

“You artistic types is mighty peculiar,” said Bill, fishing for his hip flask and swerving well over the median.

 

“It’s both a gift and a curse,” I sighed. “Kinda like those rock-hard, rubber Super Balls, you see? It’s fun to bounce ‘em off people’s heads, but you know that somewhere out there, some other sick freak’s packin’ one with your name on it.”

 

“Good googly-woogly! Look at the rack on that one on the corner!” Bill exclaimed.

“Oh, she’s certainly built like brick shithouse,” I said. “But she doesn’t strike me as a Super Ball-packing psycho at all. Looks downright innocuous to me -- if somewhat conceited. I wouldn’t worry about her, Bill. I do hate that purse, though. Gives me prickly heat and indigestion just looking at it.”

 

“You know what I mean, you purse-evaluatin’ closet case” he said, scowling and slamming on the brakes. “If yer gonna be a faggot, ye’ kin fuckin’ well walk to the mall.”

 

Something impacted the rear bumper with a crash. A wail followed, and a fraction of a second later, a bicycle courier slid down the windshield and tumbled off the hood.

 

“Now that, Bill,” I said, “Is why following too closely is a moving violation. It’s ‘unsafe at any speed,’ as Nader would say. Of course, it’s also a breach of the law to refuse to stop and render assistance at the scene of an accident. This presents us a moral and legal quandary of sorts – and throws letter of the law into no-holds-barred conflict with the spirit thereof. Technically, we’ve stopped – as the law requires.”

 

“But what if the accident happened because we stopped?” asked Bill.

 

“I was just getting to that,” I said, raising a finger. “Having given the matter due consideration--”

 

“Ye done considered it that fast?” asked Bill, wide-eyed.

 

“Yes. Being a twisted genius confers certain benefits – and I hang out with innumerable twisted geniuses. It rubs off after a while, you see? Now quit interrupting. It’s uncouth and it pisses me off to no end. As I was saying, we’ve obeyed the letter of the law by stopping. And our stopping, incidentally, didn’t cause the accident. His following too closely did. Remember that asshole back in Gilbert?”

 

“Ohhhh yeahhh…” he said, rubbing the back of his neck with his free hand.

 

“Identical situation. Now as for rendering assistance: therein lies the quandary. Clearly, the man lying on the street before us is a criminal, insofar as he’s broken the law. Therefore, if we stop and render assistance, we’re aiding and abetting a criminal -- thereby violating yet another law. That defeats the entire purpose of the law in general, and possibly undermines our own Constitutional guarantee against self-incrimination. There will be questions, Bill. There will be questions. There always are… Do you see where I’m going with this?”

 

“Hmm,” he replied, stroking his chin and staring at the sun visor, “Now that there’s a pickle.”

 

“A vicious Catch-22, Billy-O. We live in a hard, cold, cruel, Machiavellian world. A single misstep could be our last – and besides, if we render assistance, we’re not only endangering ourselves, we’re rewarding antisocial behavior. I’ll leave you to ponder that for a moment. Hey! That siliconed Barbie doll on the corner is staring at us now. Didn’t anyone tell her it’s rude to stare? And yes, it was you who pointed her out to me in the first place. I haven’t forgotten.”

 

Dutifully, I rolled my window all the way down.

“That must be jelly, ‘cause jam don’t jiggle like that!” Bill and I roared in unison.

 

“I thought jaywalking was illegal,” Bill mused, passing me the flask as we nosed around the prostrate courier. “She didn’t even wait for the light to change.”

 

“Some people are just inherently lawless,” I replied “There’s no helping it, and our culture actually encourages it. Now do you understand why I was so adamant about not helping the tailgater? Oh! And where, I ask you, are the cops when you need ‘em? Did you see anyone jacking that overdressed strumpet up against a wall and frisking her -- or even looking at her cross-eyed? Do you have the faintest idea of how often I’ve been lectured by the ‘blue meanies’ for crossing against the light? I tell you, Bill, I’m starting to think I’m a victim of an insidious form of discrimination. ‘SWC,’ I think I’ll call it: ‘strolling whilst Celtic.’ That’s the red-haired stepchild (no pun intended, of course) of the infamous ‘DWB’. This is good moonshine, by the way. We should have had it earlier, as an aperitif of sorts.”

 

“You sayin’ you didn’t like the Mr. Boston and kiwi-strawberry Kool Aid?” he asked, a note of hurt in his voice.

“Oh, it was wonderful,” I said. “And I’m still amazed that you were able to get it in such an expensive restaurant. Maybe there’s something to be said for pointing firearms at people, after all. Somehow, it makes them more cooperative.”

 

“I just like it when they wee-wee in their pants,” he said with a nasty grin.

“Speakin’ o’ pants: Will you look at that?” I exclaimed. “That jogger must have a full two inches of ass-cheek hangin’ out o’ them shorts!”

 

“No shit!” he squalled. “Now that’s downright indecent -- in a boner-inducin’ kind o’ way.”

 

“My sentiments exactly, me boyeen. Displays of worldly sensuality like that serve only to rob the sangha of impressionable and weak-willed novices. Now pull a little closer to the curb. We must needs instruct her in the Dharma, and I can think of no better way than the time-honored Zen method. We must make her and her experience one!”

 

“Her and her? How much you had to drink, bubba? Who else’s ass you gonna make experience a grabbin’?” asked Bill in a puzzled tone. “I only see me one jogger.”

 

“Aaagh! I mean that I intend to make her one with her experience, you dolt!” I said. “Now hug the curb, Billy-O. I’m about to find out what the sound of one hand clapping actually is, thereby elevating my own consciousness, as well as hers. I’ve long maintained that instruction benefits teacher and student equally, you know…”

 

“So how beneficial did your eye find that whole instruction bit?” asked Bill, as we turned into the parking lot at Lenox Square.

“Not very,” I said, still holding a ten-pound bag of service-station ice to it. “But how was I to know she’d see my shadow on the sidewalk, or that she’d have such astonishing reflexes – or so much fast-twitch muscle, for Christ’s sake? Maybe there really is something to be said for that ‘cardio-kickboxing’ shite. P’raps I should reconsider my dependency on Fairbairn, Funakoshi and that bunch. I might even cancel my subscription to Black Belt.”

 

“Nah. Stick to what works. An’ leastways you found out the sound of one hand clapping,” he said with a snicker. “And two ways, at that: Your palm clappin’ against her ass, an’ her backhandin’ you in the eye. There’s jes’ gotta be some kind o’ profound, yin-yang symbolism there.”

 

“I hate to admit it, but you’re probably right – and let’s not mix Asian philosophies, OK?”

“Whoah there, Bubba-Jack! You was the one what made the Zen reference! If Zen ain’t syncretistic as all hell; I don’t know what is!”

 

“Point conceded,” I said glumly. “And damn, but I’m glad you were going slow!”

 

“Unlike that baw’bag over yonder,” he said, pointing at a Jag convertible painted an especially infuriating shade of red. “Fuck me dead iffen that kind o’ os-ten-tatious dis-play o’ material well-bein’ don’t piss me off to no end! And why does every one o’ these assholes seem to think the parking lot’s his personal Dixie Speedway?”

 

“Bill,” I said, checking my eye in the rearview mirror, “has it occurred to you that we’re in a Lamborghini?”

 

“Damn skippy!” he exclaimed. “An’ the onliest Goddamn Lamborghini in the YOO-nited S of fuckin’-A with a trailer hitch, to boot!”

 

“Ah, yes, of course. Very proletarian of you.”

 

“Hey, I side with the workin’ man, by God! If not for the trust fund, I’d be one of ‘em!”

 

“Speaking of that, how far will your next check go towards building that castle you were talking about?”

 

“Not very,” he pouted. “ No thanks to Mott and Bailey, Attorneys at Law. They’re real assholes sometimes.”

 

“Well, bubba, a full-scale replica of Neuschwannstein is a tad extravagant. Perhaps something a bit simpler? Something early Norman, for example?”

 

His shrug was both noncommittal and disappointed.

“Don’t want me no goddamn square keep!” he finally huffed, folding his arms tightly across his chest and sticking out his lower lip.

 

“My ma used to say your face would freeze that way,” I informed him.

 

“So says the man what’s holdin’ a ten-pound bag of ice to a shiner,” he snorted.

 

“It was the smallest bag they had!” I protested.

 

“You coulda got a fuckin’ cup of ice for somethin’ like twenty cents,” he snorted again.

 

“Yeah, but it woulda melted too quickly. It’s hot as a fiddler’s bitch today.”

 

“Melted too quickly for what?” he asked with yet another snort.

 

“Too quickly to relieve the inflammation, you dunce. An’ I’ve thought of other uses for it, as well.”

 

“Ohh, I jes’ bet you have,” he said, searching his breast pocket for a cigarette. Eventually, he found one. Despite the stillness of the air, he cupped his hands around his Zippo as he lit up.

 

“Like what, f’rinstance?” he asked, looking at me sidelong and puffing jets of smoke from the corner of his mouth.

 

“Well,” I said, “consider thermal exchange and mass. This big-ass bag won’t melt as quickly, and since there’s so much more of it, it’ll stay cold a mite longer, even after it does.”

 

“Shit on a shingle, Dave-O! Ye’ only got ye’ a black eye -- not a goddamn nuclear (he pronounced it “new-cue-lur”) flash burn! How long ye’ need it to stay cold?”

 

“Just until we spot another saucy, underdressed jogger, Billy-O. Do the words ‘wet t-shirt contest’ mean anything to you?”

 

“Ohhhh!” he said, his eyes widening in comprehension. He then leaned in and, in a conspiratorial whisper (for all that we were on the far edge of the parking lot, with nary a soul in earshot), asked: “Say, do you reckon them sports bras can keep ye’ from gettin’ a glimpse o’ some…?”

 

I cut him off with a raised index finger and nod, which, while intended to appear sage, probably just looked pretentious. (It is, after all, difficult to nod sagely whilst holding a ten-pound bag of ice to one’s face.) At that moment, Rosie and the Orginals’ “Angel Baby” came over the speakers.

 

“Bill,” I said, “I’ll get back to you in a sec.”

 

“Yeah,” he said. “Best not be talkin’ to each other ‘til it’s over. That would look pretty queer.”

 

“Queer as a football bat, actually.”

 

“Maybe we should just turn off the radio.”

 

“Fuck that noise! I love this tune.”

 

“Yeah, me too.”

 

We sat in silence until the song ended.

 

“I just had me a horrid thought,” I said. “What if us sittin’ here listenin’ to that tune looked even queerer than us talkin’ while it was playin’?”

 

Now there’s a goddamn conundrum!” he said, pushing his baseball cap up and scratching his head.

 

“Well, the nearest person is something like a hundred yards off. I’ll bet nobody noticed.”

 

“Oh, no!” he exclaimed, shaking his head furiously. Staring directly through the windshield, he poked his cigarette at the HO-scale figures entering and exiting the mall.

 

“Now we could run nekkid through this-here parkin’ lot an none o’ them motherfuckers would notice. Hell, we could run nekkid through this-here parkin’ lot, handin’ out crack an’ PCP-laced joints by the Hefty Cinch Sack-ful -- and wheelbarrer’ loads o’ porn involvin’ fat broads and farm animals -- and still none o’ them motherfuckers would notice. But if we sit here talkin’ – or even not talkin’ – with a song like that playin’; every swingin’ dick in Atlanta gon’ notice, an’ conclude that we’s a couple o’ butt-hounds. It’s jes’ the way o’ the world.”

 

“Well, it probably didn’t help that you backed into the friggin’ space…”

 

“Aww, shit!” he exclaimed, slapping his forehead. “I didn’t even think o’ that!”

 

“An’ here I am, holdin’ a bag of ice to my face. Ever’body probably thinks we’re Tinkerbells, and that you’re an abusive sumbitch, to boot!”

 

“That’s jes’-plain ridiculous!” he howled. “What a ‘magination you got! An’ here you was jes’ sayin’ maybe nobody noticed!”

 

“Goddammit, I jes’ don’t wanna be seen as the submissive type!” I roared back.

 

“Keep talkin’ that kind o’ fudge-packer bullshit, an’ I’ll black your other eye!” Bill thundered, clenching and brandishing his fist.

 

“Jes’ keep talkin’ your bullshit, ‘Bigtime,’” I said with a sneer, turning to spit out the window in disgust. “I’ll put both fists an’ both feet up yer ass, mark my words.”

 

The bag of ice had effectively halved my peripheral vision. Therefore, I was taken completely aback when I noticed that my “lung-oyster” had landed perhaps six inches to the right of a pair of hideous maroon pumps. As my gaze traveled ever upward, I inventoried (silently, and with a mounting sense of horror): support hose sagging beneath swollen ankles; near-cylindrical calves, their varicose veins barely visible, like raw shrimp seen through a glaze of caramel; the hem of a floral-print skirt; and then a purse.

 

Like the pumps, it was colored a hideous maroon – all the more hideous for being slightly mismatched.

 

And if pumps and purse were the focal points of a still life rendered in shades of pure horror by a latter-day Goya; their owner was a vision of hell that would have driven Hieronymus Bosch stark, raving mad.

 

She towered and tottered above me, her left hand (sheathed in a faux-silk glove -- yet another shade of maroon) clapped to her left jowl. Rheumy, green eyes glared at me from sockets both purple and puffy. A mouth -- a rough-dug pit, guarded by a palisade of long, yellowed shoe-peg teeth, the dissolution induced by braces having continued well beyond their removal; its perimeter demarcated by two impossibly maroon, slug-like lips -- hung open and undulated wordlessly, like an elliptical Jell-O mold set upon an idling dragster. Beneath it, adipose “stem cells” – the unformed (but somehow malformed) embryos of both wattles and multiple-chins, each a tumescent promise of grotesquerie yet to come -- jiggled like the throat of an outraged, epileptic (and horribly mutated) Tom turkey with goiter.

 

A too-pink, too-smooth spot above and to the left of her (recently waxed) upper lip left me in an ever-descending, Gollum-like spiral of morbid speculation: Moles! Moles, it was, my precious! Was it dark, my precious? Was it unsightly? Hairy? Unflattering? Cancerous?

 

Topping it off like a plastic maraschino cherry plunked atop a rancid, freezer-burned sundae was a surreally awful “Prince Valiant” hairdo. Where age -- like its overused, metaphoric counterpart, winter -- might have left its hoarfrost, thereby lending her a kind of dignity; cosmetic science had only glazed her with faded patina of whoredom.

 

Staring in revulsion at her immobile, faux-auburn “helmet” – which glittered back at me like the eye of a malevolent serpent, from beneath a sun-hat woven by Donatella Versace on a bad acid trip -- I half-screamed, half-vomited the words: “Jesus Christ!” even as she shrieked, “Oh! How disgusting!”

 

“Ye’ kin say that again!” howled Bill as he yanked me away from the window. “I’m sure you got acute angina an’ all that, lady, but you got the scariest tits I even seen in m’ fuckin’ life! Hell, I’m surprised one o’ them suckers ain’t already crawled up yer ass of its own accord, an’ come a-bustin’ through yer ribs like somethin’ outta Alien! Now leave us alone an’ go eat strychnine or somethin’! We’s havin’ a bad day, an’ ye’s only makin’ it worse! Fuck me runnin’! Ye’ even done made Dave blaspheme!”

 

“Frankieeeee!!!” she caterwauled.

 

“Jis’ shaddap an’ git in da caaaaah, Alice,” said a short, thick, New Jersey voice -- which, unsurprisingly, came from a short, thick, New Jerseyite. Bald as a pickled onion and stout as a fireplug, with a chin as aquiline as his nose, he wore his demeanor (and his outdated, pin-striped suit) in a way that suggested a comfortable pension, stoic resignation to his fate, and utter stupidity, in equal measure.

 

“It’s jis’ a coupla faggots ah-gyooin’ wit’ each udda,” said he. “Don’t pay no attention to ‘em. Ya jist gonna encourage da bastids, an’ dey’re brazen enough dese days. Whole woild’s goin’ ta hell, I tell ya. Two growed men sittin’ around tawkin’ about dat ‘fistin’ or whatevah dey cawl it -- in broad daylight, even. An’ climbin’ all ovah each othah, ta boot. Nauseatin’. Jist nauseatin’.”

 

He shook his head, even as I raised the middle finger of my right hand at them.

 

“Fit subjects for a latter-day Juvenal,” I sneered, shoving Bill aside as they drove away.

“Fucking silly crone! And why are you wearing a leather jacket with metal vambraces in this heat? Have you taken leave of your wits, for fuck’s sake?”

 

“Ye’s wearin’ one, too,” he said.

 

To be continued…

Comments

[Sean]

Wow. You certainly haven't let your gifts for description, and invective, atrophy. Or perhaps it's just that eidetic memory, for based on vague, alcohol-sodden memories of days gone by, virtually every word and image is completely plausible.

[Dave]

Just Damn, Sean.

That's very flattering.

The story, incidentally, *is* an exercise in eidetic memory of sorts. My preferred genre is one I call "surreal naturalism." I remember our younger days very well, and the phantasmagoric, "Y'all ain't gonna believe this shit -- and I'd hardly belive it myself if it hadn't just happened to me" quality of our adventures (and misadventures) is very fertile ground, insofar as "harvesting" stories is concerned.

Thank you very much for the compliment.

Any chance of you and Gail making it east of the Mississippi in the near future? It's been a long time...

Love,

Dave

[Aaron]

Southern Hunter Thompson, in a way.