Apologetics
“Got a new case for you, Desole. Real doozy,” shouts the Captain. About goddamn time, too. There’s only so much machine iced tea a man can swill before he starts turning a little funny inside.
“She a live one?” I ask him.
“Oh, she’s lively alright”.
“A dame?”
“Dame and a half. Here, see for yourself.” Cap throws me the jacket. Look inside, and there she is staring back, all blonde and blue, in black and white.
“Can’t be?”
“Wouldn’t have believed it myself had she not brought us the job personally.”
“She was here?”
“Not two feet from where you’re standing now, Jimmy.”
Thumb through the jacket. Her rap sheet reads like old pulp: violence, murder, vampirism.
“Jesus, this chick’s done it all. What’s she need us for?” I ask.
“It’s all in there, Jimmy. Take it home, and work it up. Maybe get some sleep first, eh? You look like shit. I need you fresh for this one.”
Spend the whole evening reading her case notes. Think I’ve got it all figured out, so I prime the Olivetti, and start milking the onion:
Dear everyone,
I’d like to address the recent allegations made against me in the press. It was with considerable concern that I read…
There’s a knock at the door.
“Who’s there?”
Mrs. Dursley from down the hall. Must be hovering around for the rent money again. Buzz off, you old fly. “I’ll have your money by Friday, Mrs D. Got a juicy little worm on my hook just now.”
That does the trick.
Wake up around two. Mongrels are clawing each other to death in the alley. Darker than the devil’s asshole tonight. Just a wound in the sky where the moon oughta be.
The Olivetti’s spit up a page. Or maybe that was me. It reads like cold shit either way. No life, no heart. Losing my touch, maybe. The work ain’t the same now. Nobody’s sorry no more. Except maybe the Canadians, but that ain’t no kinda work. Writing copy for those masochists is like cutting off your own balls. Freaks.
Next morning the Captain calls. Says to do whatever it takes to get this one right. A lot riding on this case, so he says. Whole department could go under if we don’t start reeling in the big fish like we used to. All those dicks on the scrapheap? They’d never make it doing nothing else. Screenwriting? Birthday cards? Goddam one-liners for some late-night clown to regurgitate to a bunch of insomniac idiots? People like us can’t write nothing but apologies. We’re the sorriest sons of bitches this side of midnight.
The words ain’t coming, so I take a walk around the block. It’s quiet out, like a funeral procession just passed through. Used to be kids all around here, noisy bastards. Never bothered me nothing, though. Ain’t a pack of cackling hyenas could keep me from sleeping. Course, the scotch helps some.
Stroll through the alley and one of those mongrels is bleeding out.
“Nothing I can do for you now, boy. Sorry ‘bout that.” He’s twitching like a rabid coon, a white mess oozing from his maw. Cover him up with leaves to keep the cold off, nothing else for it.
“Ambulancia,” he sputters.
“Sorry dog, no hablo.”
The old school on the corner’s a hotdog joint now. Maybe that’s where all the kids went.
Can’t stop thinking about the work, but nothing’s flowing. Never struggled with no apologist’s block before. Usually, the platitudes shoot out of me like silver bullets of pure contrition. Nothing reads sorrier than an old Desole special. Best in the biz, some say. Mutter a few ideas on the go:
To whom it may concern,
Awfully sorry about the recent trouble. You must know, darlings, that it was with the utmost…
What the hell is that? This chick ain’t even British, don’t think. Jesus, gotta get out of my own head. Maybe Ed Rue will know what to do. It’s been a minute, though.
Yell through the mesh screen door, “Hey, Eddy—you in there?” Never understood too well why people have those. And why they always open outward—seems almost hostile, if you ask me.
“Who’s that hollerin’ up a maelstrom on my-” Ed opens the door, peers through the screen, and sees me standing there waving a bottle around.
“For old time’s sake, partner?”
So we’re sitting in Ed’s parlour. It’s cold and hot at the same time, like something from Dante.
“You want ice? Got some in the oven, I think,” he asks, sitting down at the same time so you couldn’t really answer but one way. Ed was always smart like that.
“Nah, I take it raw.”
“Heard that about you,” he quips.
“Hey, that’s just a rumour.”
We shat the shit for a minute. Ed fills me in on the joys of retirement.
“And Thursday’s grocery day, of course. My grandson, Phil, comes and helps me with the bags sometimes. He’s a useless sack of onions, truth be telled. Just like his father. Ain’t a scrap of sorry in either of ‘em.”
“Wouldn’t wish for my people to be mixed up in our shit, Ed. There’s gotta be a better life than cleaning up after thoughtless assholes.”
“You still think that’s the job? The work ain’t about gettin’ ‘em off the hook for whatever deplorable shit they done, son. It’s about forgiveness.”
Ed rattles off his Jesus spiel again. There’s only so many times you can pretend to listen to a person before you start to look insincere about it. Something in the way the eyebrows droop, maybe.
“You ain’t listening to a word of it, is you, son?” Ed says.
“Don’t take it personal, partner. Just ain’t got the time for none of that right now.”
“Tough case?” Pours me another drink. Hasn’t touched a drop of his yet. Maybe he gave all that up with the badge and the gun.
Tell him all about the case, all the sadistic shit this dame has done to be sorry for. Ed’s brows stay taut the whole time.
“Well, sounds like a truly rotten onion, son,” Ed says. “Times are changing, I think. Folk just ain’t sorry no more, is they?”
“Don’t reckon much.”
“Used to be a man was only too ready to fall on his sword if his business got out in the street. I remember scribbling some lines for Senator Morse after word got out about him beasting that poor Mexican girl to death in ‘58. He made the words sing almost. I watched him stand there, alone, in front of those TV cameras and newshounds, delivering my copy. I never felt so proud in all my life. Reminded me of Jesus preaching on the mount. They loved him after that.”
“Fine work, Ed. The Captain still keeps a copy of your script on the wall. Pride of place.”
Slam the shot and stare at the last drops as they slide back down the glass.
“So what’s eating you, son?”
“Can’t find the words, Ed. Really can’t this time. This broad just ain’t sorry. Look in those icey blue eyes and there’s nothing there. No guilt, no remorse. Nothing at all. You just don’t believe she could ever be sorry about any of it.”
“I keep tellin’ you, Jimmy. That ain’t the job.” Ed puts his hands on his thighs and drives himself up outta the chair. He makes a noise that sounds like he might not last much longer.
Comes back from the kitchen holding a big, heavy book. Slams it on the table and wipes away the dust.
“C’mon, Ed—ain’t never been one for all that Bible shit,” I say.
“Bible? Son, you think I keep my Bible under the sink? This here was given to me by my first partner, Carrigan Shameface.”
“Kinda name is that—Carrigan?”
“Dutch-Irish. His brother owned the Catholic clog store on First Street. Or he did until the Belgian-Scots mafia burned it to the ground with him and his young family inside,” he says.
“Jesus.” Ed’s eyes squint like someone stood on his toe. “No offence”.
“Carrigan had to write the apology for the very same goons what torched his brother. Put his gun in his mouth not long after.”
“Shit, he shot himself?”
“Huh,” Ed snaps back outta the past, “no, no—that’s just how the Dutch-Irish pray. No, old Carrigan passed later from the troubles he got fucking all them whores.”
“Syphilis?”
“Leprosy. He was a complicated man.”
Ed turns the book around. The title is The Method, written by one Stanislav Penitence IV.
“So what is this?”
“This here’s the greatest book ever written on the subject of being sorry. Carrigan passed it down to me the day he retired. Got me through some tough cases. Now I’m passing it on to you,” Ed explains.
Say our goodbyes at the door. Shake his hand and he looks me square in the eyes and says, “Never forget, son, everybody’s sorry for something.”
Get home and start reading Ed’s book. Not one for self-help or whatever this shit is, but anything’s better than staring at the Olivetti another night.
Starts off with some nonsense about something the author calls “sense memory”. Reads like the mad ramblings of a schizo.
Gone midnight and the book’s starting to make some sense, finally. Penitence has strung together a whole process for getting inside another person’s state of mind. Says to know how to apologise for another man, you have to walk a mile in his shoes. Know him as though you was him. That way, writing the script ain’t really writing at all—you’re speaking through his own mouth, saying it how it your subject really feels it. Maybe it’s just the booze, but this thing’s starting to click.
Call the Captain and ask him to authorise an extra five-hundred on the expense account. Give him the skinny about Ed’s book and The Method. Signs off and I hit the streets.
Mind’s racing now. Thinking about all the heinous shit from the broad’s back catalog of depravity. Horror, real crimes. Start trying to see things through her beautiful, dead eyes.
There’s a nun sitting outside Café Bruges as I stride down First Street. She’s slurping on a decaf haggis. Think about what the blonde would do in this situation, and without even really knowing it, I’m shoving the haggis so far down the penguin’s throat she starts convulsing like the devil’s really inside her. Walk away and don’t feel nothing. Just a tingling in my undercarriage.
Group of costumed retards are loitering outside the comic book store on the avenue. One of them looks at me funny, so I high-kick him in the mouth. Falls to ground, and I tear the spandex spider off his chest, pull down my pants, and take a stinking beer shit right in his face. The others scarper.
“Real superheroes, eh,” I scream after them. Rearrange my trousers and make off like nothing happened. Take a deep breath and remember all the horrible shit I…I mean she has done in her life. All the money people must have wasted putting her over. All those abysmal romantic comedies. Goddam, this Method stuff really works.
Make it to a club down by the docks. Not somewhere you’d catch an old dick like me, but I’m not me tonight. I’m her.
“Spare any change, mister?” Some rotten old onion’s holding out his paw like the world owes him a bone. People like that ought not to exist, I think. Or, rather, the thought just sorta happens inside my skull.
“Sure, I got something for you,” we tell him. “Come with me.”
We lead him down the alley behind the club. He says, “Thank you so much, mister. I got a little ‘un to feed. Most people don’t-”
“You have children?” we ask, horrified at the thought of something so wretched spawning more of itself.
“Yessir. A little girl, ‘bout four years-” Before he can finish his whining, we swing at his head. A few teeth go flying and ping off the floor.
“Sorry, maggot. World don’t need your kind,” we say, and it even comes out in her voice—that affected, vocal fry. Penitence’s voodoo has bound my soul to the broad’s, and together we smash the hobo’s face into a grey paste against the side of a dumpster. We smear his brain-matter over our titanic tits, and we stab his butchered filth deep inside our holes, and we fuck nature’s mistake out of existence.
Get home and my heartbeat is dancing a waltz. Feel her essence leave my body as the adrenaline starts to wear off. Take a shower and wash the tramp off my groin.
“This is dynamite copy, Desole?” the Captain says. He’s just staring at the page and stroking his chin. Cigar in his other hand is threatening to burn the whole department down. “Wasn’t sure you could handle this one. How’d you do it?”
Tell him, “Just tried to think the way she thinks, that’s all.”
“Well, you did good, Jimmy. Real good. We’ll put this out on the wire asap. You mind if I keep this copy?”
“Sure—all yours.” The Captain tears down Ed’s old piece about the Senator, pins mine there instead. Sorry about that, Ed.
This is downright playful, Joe... filling us in on not only the tangible space, but also its sonic properties, its perfume, truly creating in three dimensions the underbelly of the underbelly.
Beautiful!