“Don’t get testy with me, Sam. You’re the only real friend I’ve got. I’m a sick man.”
“You’ve been a sick man since you joined my fire team in Nam! You’ve been a sick man all your life, I’m sure. But somehow you survive all this by telling me all the screwy loony goofy neurotic fears you have THAT I DON’T WANNA HEAR ABOUT! I tell you I’ll be the one doing the nudie tap dance with your mom in the state hospital!”
“Sam, you can tell your problems to me. I’d love to hear about your fears and…”
“I don’t want you to be my confessor. I don’t need a confessor, Harold.”
“Everybody should tell his problems to someone, Sam, and you’re my best…”
“Don’t say it, Harold,” Sam interrupted, trying to calm himself. “Please don’t say I’m your best anything. We’ve been together a long time, I know. God, how I know.”
“I’m sorry, I’ll never burden you again,” Harold said boozily.
“Oh yes you will. In a day or two you’ll tell me you’ve discovered you’re a sadist and you want me to keep an eye on you in case you start sticking pencils in somebody’s eyeballs.”
“I’m sorry, Sam. I never meant to be a burden.”
They sat quietly for a moment and then Sam said, “Harold, did you ball Carolina Moon Tuesday night at choir practice?”
“Sort of, but only because I was drunk. And first.”
“Well anyone who likes pussy enough to screw that fat bitch can’t be a fruit, okay?”
“You know I never thought of that!” said Harold Bloomguard, brightening. “I never thought of that! Thanks, Sam. You always come through for me. If it weren’t for you…”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” said the bored and disgusted Sam Niles.
Then Harold Bloomguard thought a moment and said, “How do I know I’m not bisexual?”
Harold Bloomguard’s fears of being a bisexual were soon displaced by a more pressing fear when he decided he had cancer. Harold’s discovery of the cancer came as a result of Scuz giving them the vice complaint against the Gypsy fortune teller, Margarita Palmara, who lived in back of a modest wood frame cottage near Twelfth and Irolo. The tiny building had been painted a garish yellow but was otherwise not unlike other homes in the area. The residence of Margarita Palmara was a garage apartment which had been converted from a chicken coop. The husband of Margarita Palmara literally flew the coop one day and left Mrs. Palmara to fend for her five children which she did in Gypsy fashion by con games, shoplifting and fortune-telling to supplement the welfare check. But then she had the good luck to tell a woman thought to be dying of a radium treated cancer that she would soon get well, and lo, she did. From then on Margarita Palmara was called upon by neighborhood women, who hailed from a dozen Latin countries, to cure anything from acne to leukemia. Just prior to the Wilshire vice detail’s receiving a complaint from a disgruntled patient, Mrs. Palmara had quickly earned more than ten thousand dollars from the Spanish speaking women of the neighborhood. Never one to overdo a good thing she was thinking it was time she flew the coop herself before the cops heard about her.
But she waited a bit too long and the cops did hear about her. A middle aged Mexican-American policewoman named Nena Santos was ordered to pose as a neighborhood housewife and attempt to operate Margarita Palmara to get a violation of law.
“I see you will soon be cured of that which you believe to be cancer in your breast,” the Gypsy said in Spanish to the undercover policewoman. “And this thing which is not a cancer, but an evil visitation, will leave your body. And you will feel twenty years old again and enjoy your man in bed as you have never enjoyed him before. And your luck will change. Your husband will find a better job that will pay as much as twelve thousand dollars a year. All this will happen if you keep the charm I am going to give you and if you faithfully say the words I am going to teach you and if you donate three hundred dollars to me which I shall use to support the orphans of my native land.”
But instead of crossing the Gypsy’s palm with three hundred scoots, Nena Santos crossed the Gypsy’s wrists with sixteen bucks worth of steel, and Margarita Palmara was busted.
Harold Bloomguard and Sam Niles were only two of the vice cops detailed to the stakeout across the street, and after getting the signal from Nena Santos, they went inside to meet the Gypsy and drive her to jail where she would be booked and released on bail that afternoon. Ultimately she was made to come to court and pay a fine of 150 dollars before she moved to El Monte, California, where she was able to make fourteen thousand dollars telling fortunes before being arrested again. It kept her and her children in fine style even after an angry judge then fined her 250 dollars to teach her a lesson.
But before she was taken from the house that day she left a curse or two behind.
Harold Bloomguard, along with Sergeant Scuzzi, Sam Niles and Baxter Slate, was roaming around the Gypsy’s chicken coop waiting for the woman to make arrangements with a neighbor to take care of the children until she could bail out. In a little bedroom of the chicken coop the officers found a frightened seven year old Gypsy girl in a Communion dress.
She was a husky child, with a broad peasant face and black hair which grew too far down her forehead. Her skin was so dark it made the antique Communion dress look marshmallow white to Harold Bloomguard.
“Cómo se llama?” Harold Bloomguard asked with an atrocious accent which embarrased Sam Niles and made him snort in disgust.
In fact every time Harold made a good natured attempt to speak Spanish to people it embarrassed Sam Niles who said he knew enough Spanish to keep his mouth shut by not trying to speak it.
Sam argued with Harold Bloomguard later when Harold claimed the homely little girl was beautiful and that her dress was charming, when Sam could see it was a hand-me-down and almost gray from so many washings. Sam said that she was nothing but an ugly little thief who would grow up to be an ugly big thief like her mother.
As they were leaving the house the angry Gyspy turned a sagging chamois face to the gathering of vice cops and said in English, “You believe I not have power? That I cheat people? Very well then. I prove you are wrong. I can cure. I can make sick. You!” And the golden bracelets clanged as she pointed a scrawny finger at Harold Bloomguard. “You shall get the sickness!”
It was a terrified and bleary eyed Harold Bloomguard who was in the district attorney’s office the next day nervously blowing spit bubbles as he filed a complaint against the Gypsy for grand theft. He was absolutely certain that the prosecution of the Gypsy would seal his fate.
It was actually weeks before Harold stopped asking other choirboys to feel his breasts for suspicious lumps he knew lurked beneath the flesh. He only desisted when one night at choir practice Spermwhale Whalen agreed to feel the left one and got Harold in a headlock and stroked his tiny nipple lasciviously and said, “Harold, this’s givin me a blue veiner!” And threw Harold down on the grass, dropping on top of him, making the little choirboy scream for help. After that Harold suffered in silence and never asked anyone to feel his breasts.
Alexander Blaney didn’t know he was going to be an admitted homosexual and arrested at age eighteen and a half, when at the age of fourteen he started noticing the cruel looking men with pasty jailhouse complexions who would stare at him in the park rest rooms. But he became aware early on that MacArthur Park was more than a place for old men to play at lawn bowling or for immigrants to kick a soccer ball or city dwellers to sit on the grass and picnic, throwing crumbs to the ubiquitous ducks in the large pond.