Once he had the gun in his hands, Benjamin blew the cop away, turned and smoked a customer who attempted to help the officer, and pulped the face of the customer behind the first just for good measure—
“Here’s your check,” interrupted Nola.
“Thanks,” answered Benjamin as he looked to see the amount.
He pulled out three dollars for the tip. He usually left two for Suzie. Nola was different. Special. It was the eyebrows. The mouth. The eyes.
On his way to the cashier, Benjamin passed the patrolman. The cop was half way through a lettuce and tomato sandwich. “Still watching the calories, Tony?” Benjamin asked the cop.
“Yeah. The doc wants fifteen more pounds off by the end of next month. Hey, Benny, how do you stay so skinny?”
“Surgery, seltzer, and celery. And that’s Benjamin.”
Tony the cop laughed. “Yeah, sure. Later.” He went back to his sandwich as Benjamin handed his money and check to Julio and stepped into the chill that was whistling down the street. He pulled up the collar of his coat against the wind and turned the corner. There, huddling for warmth in a doorway was that same damned bum that whined at him for money every time he passed. The same damned army blanket for a coat, the same damned red stocking cap with the holes in it. The bum did it again.
“Hey, buddy. Can you spare a couple of bucks? I’m really hurting. Can ya, buddy? Huh?” The begging in his voice was not matched by the look in his cold gray eyes. The eyes said, I know I got you. I got you right by the guilts. You got a job. I can see you got a job. The world can see you got one and I don’t. The money is mine. I got a right to it. You owe me.
“Owe you? I owe you?” Benjamin stepped into the doorway and faced the derelict. “Here, you son of a bitch.” He reached beneath the bum’s blanket and pulled out a three quarter’s full bottle of muscatel. “Here’s your god, you bug infested piece of shit! Ask it for money! Ask it for a place to sleep!”
The bum grabbed for the bottle. Benjamin took it and shoved it neck first into the derelict’s mouth. He smacked the bottom of the bottle with the heel of his hand, driving it down into the man’s throat. As the bum choked, Benjamin kicked the bum’s legs out from beneath him. Down he fell, smashing his head on the concrete landing, the bottle still caught in his throat, the cheap wine filling his esophagus. Benjamin hauled back his foot and swung the toe of his jack boot at the bum’s chin, shattering the glass as it struck—
“Thanks, Benny,” said the bum as he took the two dollars Benjamin had given him and tucked it away beneath his blanket coat. “Give those publishers hell.”
“Sure, Freddy. Take care of yourself.”
The bum hid his hands beneath his armpits and stamped his feet against the cold as he looked past Benjamin for the next touch of the day.
“And it’s not Benny; it’s Benjamin,” he muttered.
On his way back to his office, Benjamin Waters forced a middle aged matron to eat her own poodle’s feces, followed by the poodle. He left her hanging in a tree by her dog’s rhinestone studded leash. In addition, he tore out the tongue of a loud cabbie, jammed a coin pot up the ass of a bell-ringing Salvation Army sergeant, cut the throat of a pushy flower lady, and had sex with a cover girl model in the back of her maroon limo.
Just before he entered his own building, he decided that he had had enough. He was fed up and he wasn’t going to take it anymore. At that moment the Chrysler Building imploded, sending the entire column of rubble down to the street in a choking cloud of mental dust. Prior evacuation of the building had not been a particular concern of Benjamin’s, since allowing oneself to work in such a structure in effect condoned the thing, compounding the crime.
Before his desk at the agency, Benjamin Waters mentally flipped a coin. Heads he would call his therapist. Tails he would call the next editor on his worksheet. The mental coin, as it always did, came up tails.
The editor was Colin Dean, a dribbling case of arrested mental development who couldn’t tell Voltaire from a voltmeter. Dean might be interested in the new Roger Parish novel, but Benjamin had been warned in advance not to expect anything near what Roger had gotten for his first novel. Times are lean, budgets are tight, and that’s how that song is played.
Benjamin was convinced that Colin Dean had spent his entire perverted youth watching Baretta reruns. And that’s the name of that game.
At Grover Hill, Dean’s secretary put Benjamin on hold. His ear filled with Bobby Darin’s rendition of “Mack the Knife,” Oh the shark bites, with his teeth, dear, scarlet billows, eek, eek, etc.
Benjamin hated being put on hold, particularly when he knew it was only for effect. He could see Colin Dean, that eternal smirk on his pasty face, looking at the telephone as he left his office to gab with someone or to take a leak.
Enough was enough. It wasn’t all games, deals, and hey baby on the telephone. Roger Parish needed to eat, too. His family needed to eat. No one can spend four years writing a book only to get a fifteen thousand dollar advance and expect to live, support a family.
Put Benjamin Waters on hold. He’s only second string at Merit. A little cool down time on hold will set the proper tone for negotiations. You give us the book; we give you squat. Have a nice day.
Benjamin lowered the receiver to his desk, grabbed his coat, and in moments he was on the sidewalk hailing a cab. How long would he have on hold? The last time Colin Dean had kept him there sixteen minutes. The time before it was closer to twenty.
The cab pulled up to the curb before a familiar structure on the row. Throwing a twenty at the cabbie, he rushed into the lobby and took an express elevator to the twenty-first floor, the home of Grover Hill, Ltd. They used Ltd. instead of Inc. because they thought it lent a touch of class to a publishing house keeping itself afloat through cookbooks and soft core porn. Benjamin pushed his way into the lobby and past the receptionist into a door-lined corridor. Reaching a tee, he turned left. He knew the way to Colin Dean’s office, and he marched toward it with the resolve of a professional assassin prepared to risk all to settle a matter of the deepest honor. “I do not purchase regret at such a price!” he cried.
“Hold it!” shouted a voice from behind. He kept marching until he heard the distinctly metallic click of a gun being cocked. He froze, turned slowly, and looked at the security guard advancing upon him, his pistol held in regulation dual, stiff-armed fashion. He had been hired during the Salmon Rushdie scare because Grover Hill had a Middle East cookbook on the stands with a cartoon of a camel on it. In later editions the Middle East became Manhattan and the camel became a couple of home boys munching baklava and collard greens.
“Stay cool, buddy. Whatever it is, we can talk about it. Okay? Just stay cool.” More late night, Hill Street Blues, I-can-talk-him-down, crisis intervention dialog.
“Death to baklava!” Benjamin screamed as he sprang to his left through an open doorway. As he did so the guard’s gun barked, the slug splintering the door frame. In the office there was a middle-aged woman in jeans, plaid flannel shirt, and bifocals sitting at a one of four desks in the office. Her desk was piled with book manuscripts: wrapped, unwrapped, rewrapped. The hopes of countless pitifully naive writers who wanted nothing more out of life than to share their visions, touch a piece of fame, and eat once in awhile. The woman had long stringy brown hair, wide frightened eyes, and incredible body odor. Her feet were up on the desk, and the manuscript she had spread on her lap slid to the floor as she held her hands to her mouth.