and for weeks they’ve been SEW ing
turned and marched up the hill in long, uneasy lope
ev’ry SUSIE and SAL!
stridulations louder until as if by yelping flames surrounded, he fell down on his march
the bells are ring! in! for me and my
bloodying his bony self, Souls script splayed on asphalt, hand clutching prop-like Uniden to chest
they’re con gre gay! TING!
FOR ME AND MY GAL!
THE! PAR! SON’S! WAY! TING! FOR ME AND
pinned in the road like a bug by the knitting needle of a sky-high heart attack collections man.
Missing the Call.
Perry Needham Howe
It was a drizzly Saturday and he sent his wife to Aida Thibiant for some all-day exfoliatory pampering. As for Perry, he was on his way to San Diego with Tovah Bruchner.
The resolute agent had a new client. Arnold Eberhardt owned an animation house that churned out sarcastic, offbeat cable cartoons along with regular-fare programming for kids. He was a railroad enthusiast who enjoyed renting a few private cars from Amtrak — a coastal no-brainer that got friends and families to Balboa Park around noon. A little low-key first-class fun. The all-aboard crowd was techie and un-Hollywood; Perry didn’t know anyone, and that was always easier on the nerves. The couples played poker on the way down, using Sweet’n Low packets for chips.
Perry and Tovah sat in the dome car lookout with their screwdrivers. He was talking about one of the watches he’d boned up on — it could tell you exactly where the sun would rise or set on the horizon — when a man from another table spoke up.
“The Ulysse Nardin. Friend of mine has one.”
Perry was pleasantly taken aback. “You’re kidding. I never thought I’d hear anyone but a dealer pronounce that name.”
“I’m a bit of a fanatic — or was. Be careful!” he admonished, with a laugh. “That stuff’s crack for the wrist. Though I have to tell you most people consider those Nardins a bit tacky.”
Jeremy Stein was the creator of Palos Verdes, a nighttime soap that was starting to smell like a hit. When he introduced himself, Tovah smiled the infernal, knowing way agents do, as if to say “Don’t fight it — you’re done for. Soon you’ll be mine.” The corner of his mouth subtly drooped, and Perry remembered some controversy surrounding the name. He’d have to wait for Tovah to enlighten.
“I just signed Arnold,” said Tovah, suggestively. Again, the cocky devil-woman grin.
“Yes, I know. He’s the best. We went to college together.” He turned to Perry. “If you’re interested, I can put you in touch with a guy who gets unbeatable prices — forty percent off at minimum, and I’ve seen him go high as sixty. Crichton’s a customer; buys himself one whenever he finishes a project, as a little reward.”
“I’ve been looking at grande complications,” Perry said. “Did you ever have one?”
He shook his head matter-of-factly. “Never. I know Geena just got one for Renny. I should tell you, if you wear the things, they’re gonna wind up in the shop. They’re like Ferraris that way. Renny’s had his in four times—he’s a very active guy! It’s important to know a watchmaker, that’s why Berto’s so great. He’s the guy I was telling you about. I made the mistake of sending one of my Pateks to Geneva for a repair. Here it comes, eleven months later! Berto usually has a three-week turnaround.”
Arnold’s boy came down the aisle, engrossed in a hand-held digital game. Jeremy gathered him up.
“He’s sweet,” Tovah said. “Taking him to the zoo?”
“Absolutely. You know, San Diego has a taipan, if you’re interested — probably the most aggressive snake in the world. Northern Australia. Last time I was there, a kid put his hand to the window and the taipan struck three times. They didn’t realize until the end of the day that the damn thing had broken its nose!”
Tovah sought her client out below while the new friends bonded over the addictive nature of collectibles. Perry mentioned the eighteenth-century “Pendule Sympathique,” a kind of carriage clock crowned with a half-moon berth to accommodate certain pocket watches; when the latter were placed within, they would automatically be reset and rewound by the “mothership.”
“That’s Breguet — did Napoleon have one of those? That kinda thing comes up for auction every now and then. They’re millions upon millions, it just doesn’t end. You can go to Frank Muller — Muller makes one-of-a-kinds — for two hundred grand, they’ll design whatever kind of watch you want.”
“I’d love to get together,” Perry said as they pulled into the San Diego station. “I’ve heard great things about your show.”
“And I’m a big fan of yours. I’ll bring Berto — know where we’ll go? Ginza Sushiko, heard of it? On the Via Rodeo. Probably the most expensive sushi place in the country. You can get fugu there. Friend of mine in Japan took me for absolutely exquisite tempura — you know, one of these places where you eat out of eight-hundred-year-old bowls. Anyway, he said they had something extremely rare that I had to try. I said, ‘Well now, what would that be?’ And my friend Ryuichi says, ‘Cow penis.’ He began to laugh. ‘I think you mean bull, Ryuichi — though cow penis would be rare!’”
They only had a few hours and decided to skip the zoo.
Tijuana was close but not close enough; Tovah said it wouldn’t be such a good thing if they missed the return jog. They cabbed it to Hotel del Coronado for lunch. On the way, Perry had a grim laugh, imagining himself at the border like Steve McQueen en route to a miracle clinic. What ever happened to laetrile, anyway?
Tovah took a while in the restroom. When she entered the lobby, Perry raised a finger from the front desk, holding her off. She smiled and sat down, not really thinking he was up to anything. When he came over, she said, “I’m starved,” but Perry said he felt like eating in privacy so he’d gotten a room and hoped that was all right.
“When do children learn to tell time?” She was trying to get him to open up about Montgomery.
He could see part of her through the door, naked, sitting on the bowl having her pee. He thought of Jersey, being scrubbed with seaweed. God knew how long it had been since he’d watched a woman in a bathroom, other than his wife.
“That depends,” he said, listening to the tinkle. He wondered if she’d done this sort of thing before with other clients — the afternoon delight. Probably not with a dying one, anyway.
She came out in a white hotel robe. They should be getting back, she whispered, kissing him. “Why, yes’m,” he said. He could smell her sex on his face and dreaded washing it off.
Floating past Capistrano, sitting on a depopulated divan, Perry remembered he had brought Tovah’s gift. There was an impulsive purity behind its purchase, but now, after the act, such a gesture would seem old-fashioned and demeaning: reward for a job well done in the sack, a gold watch for fifty minutes of service. It wasn’t expensive enough to give his wife and he wouldn’t want Jersey finding it tucked away in a drawer, either. He’d bury the thing or bring it back to Henri, for credit.
Arnold’s son passed, and then another reconnoitering boy, who stared at him a moment, causing a pang. He looked just like Montgomery — without the seizures, of course, or the medulloblastoma the size of Children’s Hospital. Only six hundred cases a year and Montgomery one of them; he died at the beginning of March, making him number one-oh-eight, or thereabouts. The last few weeks he got chemo through a tube in his chest. When he curled into the fetal position, a doctor had the gall to say kids responded to trauma by “reverting to infancy.” Perry wanted to scream “He is a fucking infant!” but something stopped him short — he was nothing if not civil. He stabbed at himself for months after, always holding his tongue, his whole life he’d been that way, even when it counted most, keeping a neat little room in the back of his skull to house the cheap inventory of unvoiced comebacks and polished, useless retorts, obsolete and carefully shelved. Jersey was the one who got rowdy, while Perry held the world together. He regretted never having had a big Shirley MacLaine Terms of Endearment moment. Instead, he’d capitulated straight down the line. Why had he let them torture his kid like that?