The building swelled for an instant like it was filling with water and then it erupted in a ball of smoky orange flame. Bricks smashed into the wall on either side of where Fortunato stood but he wouldn't look away, not until his eyebrows had been singed to the skin and his clothes had begun to smolder. The roar of the explosion shattered windows up and down the street, and when it finally died the bleating of sirens and alarms took its place.
He wished he'd been able to hear them scream.
Eventually, a cab stopped for him. The driver wanted to take him to the hospital but Fortunato talked him out of it with a hundred-dollar bill.
Climbing the stairs to his apartment took longer than anything he could remember. He went into the bedroom. The pillows still smelled of Eileen's perfume.
He went back to the kitchen, got a fifth of whiskey, and sat by the window, drinking it down, watching the red glow of the fire slowly die over Jokertown.
When he finally passed out on the couch he dreamed of tentacles and wet rubbery flesh and beaks that opened and closed with long, echoing laughter.
1985
After he had locked up the newsstand for the night, Jube loaded his shopping cart with newspapers and set out on his daily round of the Jokertown bars.
With Thanksgiving less than a week away, the cold November wind had a bitter edge as it came skirling down the Bowery. Jube trudged along with one hand on his battered old porkpie hat, while the other pulled the two-wheeled wire cart over the cracked sidewalk. His pants were big enough to hold a revival meeting, and his blue short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt was covered with surfers. He never wore a coat. Jube had been selling papers and magazines from the corner of Hester Street and the Bowery since the summer of 1952, and he'd never worn a coat once. Whenever he was asked about it, he would laugh around his tusks, slap his belly, and say, "This is all the insulation I need, yes sir."
On a tall day, wearing heels, Jube Benson topped five feet by almost an inch, but there was a lot of him in that compact package, three hundred pounds of oily blue-black flesh that reminded you of half-melted rubber. His face was broad and cratered, his skull covered with tufts of stiff red hair, and two small tusks curved down from the corners of his mouth. He smelled like buttered popcorn, and knew more jokes than anyone else in Jokertown.
Jube waddled along briskly, grinning at passersby, hawking his papers to the passing cars (even at this hour, the main drag of Jokertown was far from deserted). At the Funhouse, he left a stack of the Daily News for the doorman to hand out to departing patrons, along with a Times for the owner, Des. A couple blocks down was the Chaos Club, which gave away a stack of papers too. Jube had saved a copy of National
Informer for Lambent. The doorman took it in a gaunt, glowing hand. "Thanks, Walrus."
"Read all about it," Jube said. "Says there they got a new treatment, turns jokers to aces."
Lambent laughed. "Yeah, right," he said, riffling the pages. A slow smile spread across his phosphorescent face. "Hey, looka here, Sue Ellen's going to go back to J.R."
"She always does," Jube said.
"This time she's going to have his joker baby," Lambent said. "Jesus, what a dumb cunt." He folded the paper under his arm. "Have you heard?" he asked. "Gimli's coming back."
"You don't say," Jube replied. The door opened behind them. Lambent sprang to hold it, and whistled down a cab for the well-dressed couple who emerged. As he helped them in, he gave them their free Daily News, and the man laid a five against his palm. Lambent made it vanish, with a wink at Jube. Jube waved and went on his way, leaving the phosphorescent doorman standing by the curb in his Chaos Club livery, perusing his Informer.
The Chaos Club and the Funhouse were the class establishments; the bars, taverns, and coffee shops on the side streets seldom gave anything away. But he was known in all of them, and they let him hawk his papers table to table. Jube stopped at the Pit and at Hairy 's Kitchen, played a game of shuffleboard in Squisher's Basement, delivered a Penthouse to Wally of Wally's. At Black Mike's Pub, under the neon Schaefer sign, he joked with a couple of working girls and let them tell him about the kinky nat politico they'd double-teamed.
He left Captain McPherson's Times with the desk sergeant at the Jokertown precinct house, and sold a Sporting News to a plainclothesman who thought he had a lead on jokers Wild, where a male hooker had been castrated on stage last week. At the Twisted Dragon on the fringes of Chinatown Jube got rid of his Chinese papers before heading down to Freakers on Chatham Square, where he sold a copy of the Daily News and a half-dozen Jokertown Crys.
The Cry offices were across the square. The night editor always took a Times, a Daily News, a Post, and a Village Voice, and poured Jube a cup of black, muddy coffee. "Slow night,"
Crabcakes said, chewing on an unlit cigar as he turned the pages of the competition with his pincers.
"Heard the cops are going to shut down that joker-porn studio on Division," Jube said, sipping politely at his coffee. Crabcakes squinted up at him. "You think so? Don't bet on it, Walrus. That bunch is connected. The Gambione Family, I think. Where'd you hear that?"
Jube gave him a rubbery grin. "Got to protect my sources too, chief. You hear the one about the guy married this joker, just gorgeous, long blond hair, face like an angel, body to match. On their wedding night, she comes out in this white teddy and says to him, honey, I've got good news and bad news. He says, yeah, so give me the good news first. Well, she says, the good news is that this is what the wild card did to me, and she whirls around and gives him a good look, till he's grinning and drooling. So what's the bad news? he asks. The bad news, she says, is that my real name is Joseph."
Crabcakes grimaced. "Get out of here," he said.
The regulars at Ernie's relieved him of another few Crys and a Daily News, and for Ernie himself he had the issue of Ring that had come in that afternoon. It was a slow night, so Ernie stood him to a piiia colada and Jube told him the one about the joker bride who had good news and bad news for her husband.
The counterman at the all-night doughnut shop took a Times. As he turned up Henry to his final stop, Jube's load was so light the shopping cart skipped along behind him.
Three cabs stood outside the canopied entrance to the Crystal Palace, waiting for business. "Hey, Walrus," one of the hacks called out as he passed. "Got a Cry there?"
"Sure do," Jube said. He swapped a paper for a coin. The cabbie had a nest of thin, snakelike tendrils in place of a right arm, and flippers where his legs should be, but his Checker had special hand controls and he knew the city like the back of his tentacle. Made real good tips, too. These days people were so relieved to get a cabbie who spoke English, they didn't give a damn what he looked like.
The doorman carried Jube's cart up the stone steps to the main entrance of the three-story turn-of-the-century row house. Inside the Victorian entry chamber, Jube left his hat and cart with the coat-check girl, gathered the remaining papers under his arm, and walked into the saloon's huge, highceilinged barroom. Elmo, the dwarf bouncer, was carrying out a squid-faced man in a sequined domino as Jube entered.