A Collection of
GIVERS AND TAKERS
By
Loretta Giacoletto
Copyright 2011 Loretta Giacoletto
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
An elderly woman forced to live with her daughter views life from
the confused perspective of early dementia.
“Tom” first appeared in the 2006 Fall issue of The MacGuffin
and later in the 2009 February issue of Literary Mama,
which nominated “Tom” for Dzanc Books Best of the Web 2010.
Sleazy paparazzo Lester Best is on the run from a New York loan shark when he hits his stride at Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks where a top celeb is camping out with her latest squeeze.
“The Big Shot” was first published in the 2007 Horror Anthology Damned in Dixie and later in the 2010 Winter issue of Allegory Ezine.
While traveling in Italy with her husband, Lidia Drago convinces him to recapture their prime as a legacy to their unborn grandchild but neither of them is prepared for the bizarre consequences.
“Youthanasia” first appeared in the 2006 November/December issue of
Futures Mystery Anthology Magazine and
later in the 2010 Spring/Summer issue of Allegory Ezine.
Rose and Sal Bianco clash over an early retirement that only one of them is destined to enjoy.
“The Baker’s Wife” was first published in the March 2009 issue of Halfway Down the Stairs.
If only Lucy Gambrelli could hold onto the feeling she and her husband
once shared as adolescents: that blessed feeling of immortality.
Olivia’s love affair with shoes takes precedence over family issues that cannot be ignored.
“My Ave Museo” first appeared in the 2006 winter issue of The Powhatan Review
and later in the 2009 summer issue of ken*again.
Disgruntled Barney Davis plots the perfect escape from his needy wife LaRue
but who will prove the stronger in this test of perseverance.
Givers and Takers” first appeared in the July 2006 issue of The Scruffy Dog Review.
The Bertoni sisters can’t get along with each other in America so why should
they while vacationing in Italy. For Margo it means romancing a hunky mime in
Florence and for Rita, discovering the intrigue of La Spezia and Cinque Terre.
“Beyond the Villa at La Spezia” is an excerpt from
ITALY TO DIE FOR, an ebook slated for publication in 2012.
Francine can’t help herself, which makes her the perfect employee for
Doctor Omar P. Chance, a charismatic diet guru known as The Silver Fox.
“The Meeting Planner” first appeared in the 2004 Winter issue of Enigma.
Copper mining immigrant Pete Montagna plays more than
games such as poker and bocce ball in 1930 Butte, Montana.
A portion of “Playing Games” first appeared in the September 2007 issue of
The Writers Post Journal and later in the novel, Family Deceptions.
After bargaining for a bride from Italy, petty bootlegger Carlo Baggio regrets he didn’t
stick with the headmistress of Night School, Chicago’s most infamous brothel.
“The Arrangement” is an excerpt from an upcoming novel,
The Family Angel.
A young GI from Southern Illinois struggles to survive the horrors
he and his buddies experience during The Normandy Invasion.
“Frankie’s Prayers” is an excerpt from the upcoming novel, The Family Angel.
*****
My daughter never smiles any more. It’s a shame because she always had such lovely teeth. I blame her lack of humor on that crazy job. Teresa calls it a position and claims she needs to work. “Give up the maid and you can afford to stay home,” I suggest. “She’s not worth whatever you’re paying her.” While my daughter furthers her career—Teresa’s words, not mine—the maid and I spend our days watching TV. “Those women in love with each other are called lisbons,” I explain during Jerry Springer. The maid smiles, but I’m not sure she believes me. Later she fixes lunch. What she calls cooking, I call warming up.
This isn’t the first maid Teresa has employed, but the first since I’ve been here. The last one would let the phone ring five times before she got around to answering it. I know because I was on the other end of the line. At the sound of the beep we’d both hang up. Getting through to Teresa didn’t matter then because I knew eventually we’d connect, even when she was traveling. As for the first maid, I never met her and still don’t know her name. To this day Teresa denies the woman ever existed.
The house belongs to my daughter and she has all the say-so. I keep asking, “How much longer before I go home?” The look on her face says she wants me out as much as I want to leave. I’m only here until my apartment gets new paint and carpeting. Teresa’s idea, not mine. I came to dinner one Sunday, for the chicken and risotto I once taught her to make. After we cleaned up more dishes than she needed to dirty, Teresa refused to take me home. I grabbed my pocketbook and ran outside. Such a scene my daughter caused that rainy day: Teresa prying my fingers from the car door and me screaming for help. Decent neighbors would’ve called the police. Teresa’s did nothing. To pacify her and because we were both rain-soaked, I agreed to a temporary visit.
The next day she followed me into the bathroom, handed me a plastic grocery bag, and said, “Your Depends go in here.” After she left, I shredded the smelly thing into the toilet and flushed. I did it my way until Teresa called in a plumber. Now we do it her way.
The bedroom I’m using until I go home has mahogany furniture just like mine. I sleep at the edge of the double bed and only use one pillow. “You’re welcome to sleep with me,” I tell Teresa after the first week. “There’s plenty of room for both of us.”
“I have my own room down the hall,” she says, almost smiling.
“But that man sleeps there,” I reply, not wanting to believe what my ears just heard.
“Mother!” She gives me that look again. “That man is my husband. You know David.”
Of course I know David. He was such a boy when Teresa married him. Their wedding picture sits on the round table in Teresa’s family room and I have another one at home. The man she’s sleeping with now has gray hair and a mustache, a handyman of sorts who cuts the grass and eats dinner with us because Teresa has a good heart, even though she’s holding me against my will. Tough love she calls it, whatever that means. Anyway, about this man, I call him Tom, not because he goes by Tom but because I like the name and it’s easy to remember. Just saying Tom gets his dander up, which pleases me to no end. For a handyman, he shows no concern for safety, always following me around to plug in what I’ve unplugged. He insists his name is David but I know better. And so should Teresa.
*****
On Saturday evening a younger Tom comes over with some Joan girl I don’t care to know. Don’t ask me why; maybe it’s because we’ve never been properly introduced. Teresa and the handyman she’s sleeping with are dressed to the nines and hiding their usual crankiness. “We’ll be back before midnight,” she tells the younger Tom, which means I’m stuck with him and the girl who’s flashing a fancy ring. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they were married because she sits at one end of the couch and he’s at the other. Instead of my Angela Lansbury reruns, we watch baseball and they help themselves to Teresa’s soda and snacks without asking. No wonder my daughter has to keep working.
I bring up these concerns to Teresa during my sponge bath the next morning. “You know that couple who came over last night? I thought they’d never leave and just for spite they didn’t. At eleven-thirty I finally gave up and went to bed. You might want to check the silverware.” The trace of a smile almost cracks one corner of her mouth. If that’s all it takes to amuse Teresa, maybe this Tom should come over more often.
Other Toms come and go, young bucks who smell of aftershave when they lean over to kiss my cheek or pat my shoulder. Sometimes both, if I let them. They all make a stop at the refrigerator, leaving the door wide open to chill Teresa’s entire kitchen so they can raid her leftovers, behavior I no longer question since such wasteful extravagance seems to comfort my daughter. In fact, she actually encourages it.
“A special day would do wonders for you,” Teresa announces one morning while scrambling my eggs. “Halleluiah!” I all but shout, thinking she means just the two of us. Instead, my daughter hurries off to work and I get Maggie the Maid. Again. Maggie’s not her real name, but that’s what I call her now. The real Maggie’s my sister. We don’t get together any more. Poor Sis, she’s younger but I was always healthier. Anyway, Maggie the Maid and I start out at the beauty parlor. I let the operator wrap me in plastic. I let her fuss over me in silly baby talk. But when she pulls out those pointy scissors, I let out a scream and tear off that silly cape. Maggie rolls her eyes, a sure sign Teresa will hear about the idiotic operator, so as soon as we get outside I suggest an ice cream stop. My treat. That evening Teresa cuts my hair.
*****
The weather’s been dry as a bone but today it’s raining so hard I’m glad to stay inside. Maggie and I eat the lunch she takes credit for preparing: chicken vegetable soup my daughter made from scratch last night. To my surprise Teresa comes home from work in the early afternoon. “We have a doctor’s appointment,” she tells me. She doesn’t say what kind of doctor and I don’t ask what’s wrong with her. Maggie tags along, although we don’t need her since Teresa takes the wheel and I sit up front to help navigate. We drive forever, rain pounding the windshield and Teresa hunched over, her brow so furrowed it adds ten more years she could do without. I leave my daughter alone. She has enough worries, what with her job and now health problems. Maybe she’s going through the change, not that I would ever ask.
By the time we arrive at the doctor’s office, I tell Teresa I’m ready to go home. She sighs and talks the nurse into getting us in right away. We follow her into the examining room and leave Maggie behind to read Soap Opera Digest.
“Why me?” I ask Teresa when we’re alone. “I only came along to keep you company.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” she argues. “You’re the one who’s bleeding.”
“Don’t be absurd. I gave that up years ago.”
We go at it, back and forth. Teresa screws up her face, she raises her voice, to me her mother. She refuses to budge from her chair. Testa dura I call her; she knows I mean hard head. Lord knows she’s heard those two words often enough. Neither one of us are on the table when the doctor waltzes in. He’s old enough to be my son, the musician who always made his father and me proud. Teresa too.
“Don’t get so upset,” the doctor tells her. “My grandmother was the same way.”
So get on the table and let’s get this over, I want to tell Teresa, but hold my tongue. She turns her back to me and goes head to head with the doctor. He says something about not being able to help if he can’t examine the patient. I smile at him. He winks at me. We both shrug because Teresa won’t give in. Her face is beet red when we leave, a vein in her forehead pounding. She stomps through the rain and Maggie holds an umbrella over my head as we hurry to the car. During our ride home the only sounds come from the steady swish of windshield wipers and Maggie turning pages from the digest she has pilfered. Teresa keeps her teeth clenched and eyes on the road. When she was young, I taught my daughter to hold her tears, a lesson she never forgot and one I now regret. I try to smooth things over with a chuckle. “Well, I don’t know about you, Teresa, but in spite of the poor weather I certainly had a nice afternoon.”
*****
Time passes and my daughter doesn’t seem any worse but one day I wake up in the hospital. Teresa’s hovering over me, her sweaty palms warming my cold hands. A snotty female who calls herself a doctor pokes around me and then pulls back the sheet. “Holy bejeebers!” she mutters under her breath, as if she’s never seen a fallen uterus before. Years ago I chose not to have mine tied and have since learned to live with the constant reminder between my legs. More white coats gather to gawk and shout questions as if I’m deaf. When they don’t like my answers, they look to Teresa for better ones. According to Doctor Smarty Pants, something else has fallen out and needs immediate fixing. “Over my dead body,” I tell Teresa in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear.
Teresa leaves with the doctors. It occurs to me she might not come back so I get up, yank the needle out of my arm, and ditch the skimpy wrap barely covering my private parts. I take four steps into the hallway and everybody comes running. It’s a hospital, for crying out loud. You’d think these people would be used to blood gushing from a patient’s arm.
Lord, does this humiliation ever end. I’m back in bed, a prisoner under the threat of restrains if I attempt another escape. Teresa won’t leave me alone and now she’s brought in Gina. My daughter, her daughter, and me. For years we made quite a team, shopping for bargains and poking around antiques and eating on the cheap. And then Teresa and Gina got too old for me. They don’t know how to have fun anymore. Instead they have careers. They pull up chairs beside my bed. They talk in low whispers and wait for me to make the wrong move. I introduce them to a new game. We play my way. I keep my hands under the covers, to pick at the tape holding the patch that covers the hole I made in my arm when I yanked out the needle. Every so often they hop up, to lift the sheet and wag their fingers and bawl me out for upsetting them. When we’re not playing the game, we argue and reminisce and talk like carefree schoolgirls at a slumber party. I don’t remember doing this before, not even when Teresa and Gina were at their best.
“What time is it?” Gina asks when daylight breaks.
“Five o’clock,” Teresa says. “What time did you get here yesterday?”
“Three in the afternoon. After fourteen hours Grandma still hasn’t closed her eyes.”
“And neither have you or your mother,” I remind Gina. “Now will you please let me get some sleep.”
After breakfast who should come in but my son the musician. I call him Tom because it’s easy to remember and he doesn’t seem to mind. Teresa and Gina kiss me goodbye and go home. Or maybe to work, they don’t say and I don’t ask. With Tom I play a different game. “Let’s go for a walk,” I say, knowing he’ll get tired of pushing the contraption attached to my good arm, the one without the patch covering the hole. As soon as we get to the lounge, he sits down to read the paper and I mosey on to the nearest elevator where I run into Doctor Smarty Pants. She clucks her tongue, grabs the contraption, and rattles me back to my cell. My red-faced Tom follows in our wake. After a supper of bland applesauce and rubbery Jell-O, Tom leaves when Teresa comes back for the night shift, this time without Gina. We watch Angela solve another murder and then switch off the TV.
“You can sleep with me,” I tell Teresa.
“No, no,” she says, stretching her arms overhead. “The recliner’s fine.”
In the moonlit room we test our wills, each waiting for the other to give in first. As soon as Teresa’s head rolls to the side, I crawl over the bed railing and hit the floor with a thud. My daughter jumps up and the no-nonsense nurse comes running. She gives both of us a nasty bawling out.
*****
Although I spend the next few days fighting mad, Teresa eventually wins the surgery battle. My pooper gets pushed back where it belongs, the uterus they leave alone. I won’t share the embarrassing details since I’ve already purged them from my mind. After the longest ten days of my life—Teresa says the same about hers—she brings me home. I’m starting to think of Teresa’s home as mine too, although it will never take the place of my real home, the one I shared with my husband Tom before he died.
Teresa and I sit in the living room that no one ever uses and drink chamomile tea from china cups I gave her years ago. My daughter is quiet again so I get up and check out a photograph hanging on the wall. There’s Teresa, showing off those perfect teeth I never see anymore, and David is beaming. I wonder whatever happened to him. Gina has on that checkered pinafore dress I bought at a sidewalk sale. She’s the only girl, surrounded by four little boys dressed in their Sunday best. I know I loved them but I can’t remember their names. “Tom, Tom, Tom, and Tom,” I say, pointing to each boy.
This time Teresa doesn’t argue, which makes me think I finally got through to her. I turn, hoping for the best and she doesn’t disappoint me. My daughter is smiling through her tears.
###
“Tom” first appeared in the 2006 Fall issue of The MacGuffin
and later in the 2009 February issue of Literary Mama,
which nominated “Tom” for Dzanc Books Best of the Web 2010.
On a Friday evening in late June, Lester Best eased his customized SUV across the wooden slats of a swinging bridge spanning the Auglaize Creek in the heart of Missouri’s Ozarks. He kicked up white gravel for another two miles before realizing he’d gone too far. Going too far best defined Les Best, that and an absurd name he regretted not having changed early in his career. Les turned around and retraced his powdery route until he found the campground entrance to the state park at Kaiser. He rattled along under the dense shade of canopied trees, dodging deep ruts and cruising past a hodgepodge of trailers and pop-up campers. After reaching the lakefront area jammed with more weekenders, he selected one of the few remaining primitive sites. No electricity, no water, and no flush toilet: the perfect retreat for a deadbeat fugitive nursing a matching set of splinted forefingers.
Les staked his tent as far away as possible from his nearest neighbors, two wannabe hill people who strolled over long enough for first-name introductions before returning to their beer and makeshift setup. Will, whose white beard overlapped his bib overalls, pressed a harmonica to his lips and played a haunting rendition of Ruby for his own Ruby. She wore yards of calico, chain-smoked, and complained non-stop from an aluminum lawn chair straining under her massive weight. After thirty minutes of the audio assault, Les stifled his urge to suggest that Will muzzle both Rubies, opting instead to utilize the earplugs he’d brought from his Lower East Side apartment.
Although Les Best lived and breathed New York, he’d grown up in Missouri, first in foster care and later on a boys’ ranch designed for discards and the wayward. Les qualified as both, then and now. His temporary return to the Show Me State was not out of nostalgia but to avoid settling a debt of ninety thousand dollars he’d incurred through a series of risky ventures. Joey Plastic, the New York mobster who held the note, had arranged for the dislocation of Les’s forefingers to induce an initial interest payment of five thousand bucks, but Les figured the bastard would never extend his pursuit into the fly-over boonies of mid-America. On that Les Best would’ve bet his mother’s life, if he’d ever had a mother. Still, he must’ve since his many enemies and few friends usually referred to him as ‘that sonofabitch’.
*****
That night Les conked out in the back of his SUV. The next morning found him on the pea gravel beach, pushing a rented johnboat into the Grand Glaize Arm of Lake of the Ozarks. Splinters erect, he paddled from one cove to another until he located the ideal fishing spot, one deserted and edged with brush. By ten o’clock, water smooth as glass reflected the cocky blue of a clear sky and Les hadn’t caught a single crappie. At noon he peeled off his sweat-drenched shirt, dropped his knit shorts, and mooned a parade of skiers and speedboats stirring up the wake. “You can all go to hell!” he yelled, before sending his pricey rod and reel to sleep with the fishes.
Back at camp two Generation Xers had squeezed in between his site and the wannabes, who were making honeymoon racket in their tent—a conjured image amusing enough to make Les forget the fishing gear he regretted sinking. To the X couple, he returned an obligatory wave and howdy that seasoned campers felt compelled to offer each other. Still, he kept his distance, watching the Xers struggle with the pegs and canvas of new equipment. At last they stood back, arm in arm, to admire their saggy abode. It burped once and collapsed into a heap. Male X pushed back his red-orange feather cut and appealed to Les.
“What do you say, mister. How ‘bout some help?”
What the hell, Missouri know-it-alls, even those partially disabled, were supposed to be accommodating. Les ambled over. He offered a few practical suggestions and within five minutes the tent stood erect and operational. The sun-deprived stranger stuck out a soft hand accustomed to professional manicures.
“Much obliged. Sorry about those bum fingers,” X said with a grin of orthodontically enhanced teeth. “I’m Josh. Over there’s Betty Sue.”
Betty Sue, as in leggy and trim, nodded from a distance.
“No problem. Call me … Les.” Their encounter should’ve ended on the handshake but that’s when Les noticed Josh’s tattooed wrist: a pissing gargoyle with folded wings. As in the official logo for heavy metal’s Grotes and Gargs. As in Josh Nolan, lead drummer. The revelation prompted a closer look at Betty Sue, as in trying to fade into the background. No make-up, blonde pigtails, tee shirt and khaki shorts: typical back-to-nature but this chick was no typical camper. Les Best, master of deception, could spot a plain-Jane disguise in the most unlikely of locales.
Les didn’t linger with the Xers but Betty Sue hadn’t fooled him. That face and that body belonged to none other than Ivy Sinclair, last year’s nobody who shot up to become this year’s hottest glitz and glamour TV diva. When it suited Ivy Sinclair, the twenty-something preened for tinsel town’s red carpet. But when she wasn’t hustling the public, she kept her private life way too private: another ploy to fuel the fires of her clamoring fans. And before this weekend Josh Nolan had been nothing more than an unconfirmed rumor. Now the oblivious, sexy twosome belonged to Les, exclusively.
Never in a million years could he have plotted a better scenario: Les Best, New York paparazzo of uncensored privacy, tenting in Missouri next to La-La Land’s newest duo. Les had escaped from New York with his only cameras not in hock: the miniature spy and a Panasonic with 600mm zoom lens. From campsite to wooded area to man-made beach, he devoted every waking moment to cursing his splints and plying his craft. Ivy and Josh kissing, Ivy and Josh necking, Ivy and Josh rolling around—the usual predictable stuff. His best shot thus far: Ivy in a modest bikini, her trademark tattoo peeking out the underside. Nice, too nice: translation, boring.
By Sunday evening the primitive weekenders had packed up and returned to their mundane, air-conditioned lives. Only the wannabes, the celebs, and Les remained, bunched up like yesterday’s pioneers anticipating an Indian raid. Will’s musical switch from the melancholy Ruby to the melancholy Moon River again confirmed he hadn’t succumbed to the evils of pop culture. More Moon River prompted Les to throw out a scrap of unctuous chum to the celebs. “If you folks want to spread out closer to the water’s edge, I’ll help you break camp.”
“Nah, that’s OK,” Josh said. “We’re planning to move on day after tomorrow.”
Damn! Thirty-six hours didn’t leave Les much time. He needed a big shot, the shot to end all shots.
*****
Monday morning brought a stir of gentle lake breezes that rustled the leaves in stately red oaks dominating every clump of trees. While a pot of coffee brewed over his pit fire, Les cracked four eggs into four pats of butter sizzling in the cast iron skillet. He added a can of corned beef hash, leaned back, and waited for it all to make sense. Licking his lips, he sucked in the artery-clogging, woodsy aromas and closed his eyes to savor the moment. Then Josh coughed. Photo op! Les grabbed his Panasonic. Snap, snap: Josh crawling from his tent. Snap, snap: Josh stumbling to the john. Les gambled with the next few minutes. He hurried to the celebs’ tent; the flap was open and Ivy, asleep. Damn, in an oversized T-shirt and on her back. He considered using a long stick to lift her shirt but didn’t want to blow his chance for something better. Instead he located her in his viewfinder and got off two shots before his ears detected a distant rattle from the men’s latrine. By the time Josh came shuffling back, Les was hunched over his fire, scraping burnt glob from the skillet.
He poured a cup of muddy coffee and waited with eyes never straying far from the neighboring tent. Finally, his lovely prey emerged from her shelter, still wearing the baggy tee.
Behold Ivy in the morning, an Ozark wood nymph splashing her face with Evian. Les snapped his mini. She stretched her toned arms overhead. Snap, snap. She jumped Josh, played kissy-face, and wrapped her legs around his lean body to reveal the trail of ivy from her bikini. Snap, snap. Ivy and Josh spun around, fell to the ground, and seeing Les, they giggled like love-struck teenagers. He acknowledged them with a lift of his coffee mug.
“Hey, Les, any idea where we can arrange for some horses?” Josh called out.
Les clenched his teeth. Didn’t these people ever think for themselves? In their showbiz realm agents and managers provided the brainpower. Out here the celebs had latched onto him. He forced a smile. “Check out the info packet you got at the welcome station.”
“Damn, now why didn’t I think of that,” Josh said, shaking dust from his hair. “Thanks, good buddy.”
While Josh and Ivy mulled over the park information with the intensity of first-timers planning a European adventure (snap, snap), Les formulated his own plan. After the celebs pulled away in their Navigator, he drove into Osage Beach, parked at a strip mall, and speed-dialed Emanuel Gold on his cell phone. “Manny, baby. What’s up?”
“Don’t what’s up me, you sonofabitch,” yelled the editor of MORE.
Manny being Manny. Les could almost feel the bastard’s spit blasting through the receiver.
“Where the hell you been?” Manny demanded.
“Something came up. I had to leave in a hurry.”
“You left me with garbage too tame for Mother Teresa’s newsletter.”
“Yeah, yeah, mia culpa. But I’ll make it up to you—a thousand times over. For the right price, that is.”
“You get nothing ‘til I see some skin.”
“How about some of Ivy Sinclair’s?”
“No way, you crazy sonofabitch!”
“Remember her in the February issue of SWEET: beach volleyball in a mini bikini, ivy wandering over those oh-so-firm cheeks. Well, I’m sleeping next to that same tattoo in the same location.”
“Ivy Sinclair dumped her latest squeeze for a sonofabitch like you?”
“Let’s just say the three of us are tighter than a virgin’s ass, if you get my drift. They’re splitting tomorrow but not before I get a piece of her.”
“Just make sure you get the real Ivy and not some pathetic knock-off. By the way, big shot, two scum bags have been inquiring as to your whereabouts, which leads me the obvious question.”
No way, Manny. Les hung up and went shopping for supplies. When he got back to camp, no one was around except a uniformed park employee. The dead ringer for the prison matron in Chicago was leaning against a tree, checking her clipboard. “How do,” he said in his resurrected Missouri twang. “Is there a problem, ma’am?”
“Just making my rounds,” she replied without looking up. “Dogging after the outsourcers hired to sanitize and equip our facilities.”
“As in odor-eaters and toilet paper?”
“You got it.”
“How often you empty them suckers?”
“End of the season, unless they fill up sooner.”
As soon as the latrine queen zipped away in her truck, Les opened up the back of his SUV. He removed a telescopic ladder folded to the size of a small suitcase and covered it with brush in the wooded area. The remainder of the day he spent reading entertainment rags and contemplating a triumphant return to New York, after he squared his debts.
*****
By ten o’clock that night the temperature hovered around seventy degrees, and a star-filled sky and quarter moon provided the primitive area’s only light source. The wannabes finally stopped pitching beer cans, a precursor to ending Ruby’s steady harping and Will’s harmonica Ruby. But after he quieted down, she reverted to soft wailing. Any other night Les would’ve sailed his skillet in their direction, but not this night. Tonight he wanted no disruptions. The celebs were snuggled on a log near their low fire (snap, snap) and discussing some stellar configuration, probably basking in the glory of their own shining stars. For Les, the best was yet to come. After extinguishing his campfire with a pail of water and some dirt, he called out through a yawn, “G’night, folks.”
Inside his tent, Les stripped naked. He climbed into chest waders, donned a plastic rain jacket, and slipped a painter’s mask around his neck. Next, the construction hard hat, equipped with an attached light that Les couldn’t risk turning on too soon. As he crept into the dark woods, sweat beaded his skin and clunk to his eyelashes. He retrieved his ladder and headed to the women’s pit latrine where a swarm of buzzing flies greeted him when he opened the door. The almost tolerable odor evoked his whispered, “Thank you, latrine queen.”
Les flipped on his light, secured his mask. He twisted the toilet off its base, extended his ladder down the concrete container, and started his descent along the four-foot width. Five feet down, he stopped to slide the toilet back into the lip of the base. Six inches later he stepped into waste. At eight feet he bottomed out. Whoa! He reeled from the stench. Damn the latrine queen for only going so far with her chemicals. Unlike Les, she didn’t exceed certain limitations.
During his teenage years on the ranch when trucks hauled in cattle, Les usually got stuck with the grunt job of prodding reluctant animals from the trailers. He’d worked in ankle-deep shit then and vowed never again, but Les wasn’t one to keep his word, not even to himself. The greenbacks from these shots would get Joey Plastic off his back, his other cameras out of hock. Maybe garner him some insider celeb tips, a ringside table at some classy watering hole. Most of all, he’d gain the respect of every jerk who ever flipped him off.
Les took pride in catering to an insatiable public who demanded a piece of their adored celebs. Or untouchable royals, even the Queen of England had been fair game. For years the toilet seat she used in one of Chicago’s leading hotels had been displayed on its archive wall of notables. Small potatoes now compared to the recorded affairs of younger royals and the videotaped sex of entertainers and athletes. After tonight Les Best would rank with the best, the most innovative.
Ten minutes passed. Les heard the light crunch of twigs: Ivy, right on schedule. He killed his light, leaned into the splattered wall, and muffled a gag. The door opened, latched closed, and a low, pitiful moan filled the enclosure.
“Heads or tails, which one’s goin’ first,” Ruby said in a voice bordering on baritone. “Okay, lips, you win.”
Ruby’s eyes were squeezed tight as she centered her moon face overhead. That’s when Les directed his face to the wall. After five minutes of gasping and heaving, she turned and plopped her dimpled buns over the toilet, creating a suction that cut off the air supply below. Between her choked-up sobs and torrents of diarrhea, Ruby prayed. She groaned. She shuddered. She went silent.
Down below, Les had prayed too, for the first time in years. His head was spinning; his finger splints got tangled. He lost his grip and fell back into the waste. Still, he managed to hold his camera high. Ruby didn’t even stir when he sloshed to the ladder. Fighting for each breath, he struggled up the rungs. When he topped out, Les poked one splint into Ruby’s sealed posterior. He poked again, this time harder. Finally, Ruby shifted. She wiggled off the seat, allowing Les to fill his lungs before she left.
Les was ready to relinquish his dream for the big shot when he heard footsteps again. This time there was no mistaking Ivy. Her flashlight beam sought out despicable insects and a tidy toilet seat. She planted her sweet tush on the throne. Ever so gently Les switched on his light. The ivy trailing Ivy’s cheeks wiggled as she made a few adjustments. Les held his breath and snapped away, the camera shutter so quiet even he couldn’t hear it as he recorded such delightful anatomical shots: Les Best’s unique contribution to the science of exploitation. Toilet paper fluttered down.
As soon as Ivy lifted her buns, Les killed his light. But instead of the darkness he expected, another flash came from above. The bitch had stolen his image with her own camera.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Lester Best.”
“You knew me before this weekend?”
“Let’s just say your reputation preceded you.”
“Could your turn off that flashlight, Ivy? I can’t see a thing.”
“Not before I get your camera. Just put it in the bucket I’m sending down by rope.”
Damn, she was smarter than he thought. Les had no choice but to part with his Panasonic.
“The film too.” She lowered the bucket again and he gave it up.
“We can make a deal,” he said. “Just you and me and the big shot. I’m not shitting you when I say Les Best has the absolute best connections.”
“Unfortunately, not as good as mine. In fact, my connection made me the star I am today. That’s why he asked me, and only me, to deliver an important message to you.”
Les could see her now, all too clearly—leaning over the opening, a flashlight in one hand and a revolver in the other. He opened his mouth to speak but the last words he would ever hear came from Ivy.
“For Les Best, Joey Plastic sends only his best.”
###
“The Big Shot” was first published in the 2007 Horror Anthology Damned in Dixie
and later in the 2010 Winter issue of Allegory Ezine.
Simon and I were sitting at a sidewalk table on St. Germain, lunching on roast veal stuffed with wild mushrooms, when I suggested we stay in Paris for another two weeks.
“Give me a break," he said. “Strolling around the neighborhood is bad enough but my knees can’t take any more hiking back and forth across the Seine.” He cleaned the sauce from my plate with a bread heel, popped it in his mouth, and chewed through his next words. “What’s more, I hate being a party pooper but this rich food is playing hell with my stomach.”
“In other words, you’re ready for Italy.”
“Only if you agree, my love. I just thought a change of scenery might invigorate us. You know, add some bounce to the old joints.”
Did he think the cobblestones in Tuscany would be easier to navigate than those in Paris, or the Italian spring waters would cure his arthritis? Simon just couldn’t stay put for any length of time and I didn’t feel up to packing again. As usual, I gave in.
*****
That afternoon we checked out of our hotel and six hours later we were aboard the Palatino when it left Paris. No sooner had we settled in our cabin than a waiter came by and took our dinner order. We endured an hour of hunger pangs before wandering through the train in search of our three-course meal, only to find the dining car already jammed with passengers. Simon used his charm and ten euros to garner us the only remaining table. As the train rolled through the French countryside, we sat across from each other, admiring the sun setting over hills and valleys as fertile as those in the Midwest, but when a damp chill surged through my bones, I turned from the window and looked up. Towering over us was a refined gentleman, with silver hair matching his trimmed goatee and a European-tailored gray suit emphasizing his trim physique. He spoke with an indiscernible accent, his voice soothing but not enough to warm the chill I still felt.
“Scusi, Signore, Signora. Parlate inglese?”
“Better than we do Italian,” Simon said, projecting his five-star smile. “The wife and I are from America, St. Louis to be exact.”
“On the Mississippi River,” I added.
“But of course,” the stranger said. “I’ve seen photographs of the skyline and that steel monument to the game of croquet. The wicket city, I believe it’s called.”
“Not in St. Louis. We prefer Gateway to the West.” Simon motioned to the seat next to me. “Please, won’t you join us?”
How prophetic of Simon. At that moment our train swayed as it rounded a bend, almost dumping the stranger in front of me. We laughed to ease the mutual embarrassment before exchanging introductions. No longer a stranger, our dining companion now had a name. Singular and succinct, it was Boswell.