the basement was more or less what he had expected. a bare cement floor and brick walls enclosed a hot water heater, a gigantic furnace. an old workbench that hadn’t been used in years, piles of boxes that god only knew what was in them, and a toilet next to a huge cast-iron sink in one corner. he turned on the taps and water came. it was brown but at least he had water. the toilet actually flushed, too.

he piled all the boxes up next to the furnace to make a sort of wall so he could pretend it wasn’t there, swept out the open space that removing the boxes had made, and moved what was left of his stuff down from the third floor. to his surprise he discovered that with the boxes out of the way, even discounting all the room the furnace took up, he had more floor-space than his last apartment. the basement felt roomy by comparison. there was some good in every evil, he thought.

his bed long since sold, he scrounged around in the department store warehouse until he found several large squares of packing-foam, six inches thick. over the course of a week, he hauled them home on the bus one at a time and made himself what turned out to be one of the most comfortable beds he had ever slept in. it was, he reflected every night as he lay there drifting off, like sleeping on a cloud.

he turned the workbench into his kitchen: cooler underneath, a few dishes and pans lined up on top to the far right, toaster-oven and hotplates and a basket of silverware to the far left. the honorable center space between them was occupied by his precious deserts in endless rotation: today a blueberry pie, tomorrow a box of Congo bars, the day after a chocolate roll-cake with marshmallow filling. on the tool shelf above the bench, he put his canned goods, his cereal, and his sugar and instant coffee. it wasn’t exactly home but it could have been a lot worse.

in an odd way, he was actually happy in the basement for the first six months. he couldn’t have said why, exactly, but it had something to do with simplicity and surrender. he had what he needed--in truth, he had what he wanted. it was warm enough in the winter and cool enough in the summer, there were windows looking onto the alley if he needed extra air, and no on bothered him or bothered about him. he came and went as he pleased, and no one seemed to notice. the color and frenzied desperation of his former life receded, the distant memory of an ancient dream. it seemed to him after awhile that his life had always been like this, and he was content.

then one day he found a note on his door from justine. it said that the people on the first floor were complaining about the odor when he used the toilet. she asked him to use the public toilet in the lobby of the building next door instead.

he would have thought it was a joke but he knew very well that justine ermintrude had no sense of humor whatever. it wasn’t a joke. she meant it.

he couldn’t believe she actually expected him to do it. still, he decided for the sake of peace on a compromise: the couple in the apartment above him were young and active, often gone for long stretches of time; when they were gone, he used his own toilet but when they were home, he went next door. he thought it was an admirably practical compromise. though he thought the request itself both unreasonable and unfair, he was grateful for justine’s support these last trying months and this was a way to show his gratitude.

he thought it would be left there but he was wrong. a few weeks after the first note, he found a second. it was an angry scrawl written in red ink.

“i asked you once to use the toilet next door. i explained to you that paying tenants were complaining. you ignored my request, so now i’m telling you. you will use the public toilet next door ALL THE TIME or you can find someplace else to live. i don’t mean just when the first floor tenants aren’t home, i mean ALL THE TIME. i don’t care if you have to go out in a rainstorm or a blizzard or when it’s 20 below, ALL THE TIME. i’ve put up with a lot from you as it is, and i’m letting you stay in my basement for basically NO MONEY because i feel sorry for you, but if you can’t do this one thing for me, i’ll have you evicted. i don’t think my request is either unreasonable or unfair, and i expect you to abide by it.”

he was stunned, both by the contents of the note and its tone. there was no question in his mind but that she was serious, however outrageous it sounded. if he didn’t do what she wanted, she’d throw him out on the street.

he had no option. he barely made enough to pay her the $100 a week for the room; there was no chance at all that he would ever be able to put enough aside for the first/last/security landlords demanded in advance. he spent a good deal of his spare time looking for other jobs, but there wasn’t much around for someone who was still, almost a year later, blacklisted all over town. his age sabotaged the rest--nobody wanted an old man.

he was trapped, alright. live in a dumpster or keep the basement and run next door every time he had to go. it wasn’t a hard choice to make, but there were prices to pay he hadn’t counted on.

in the winter he had to throw on boots, a sweater, and a heavy coat to slog through snow and ice to the building next door, and it was deadly to his immune system. that winter he was sick all the time again and almost lost his job.

then he started to try to put his trips off as long as he could, sometimes holding it in for three or four or even five hours, but that decision played havoc with his body and it started to fight back with pain. he began to have attacks of diarrhea and blistering cramps that felt as if a small army had his organs in a large vise and were squeezing them until the blood ran. one day he looked into the toilet before he flushed it and saw thin tendrils of that blood floating on the surface like ribbons of tomato juice. he abandoned the ’hold it’ strategy right then and there.

that’s where things stood the night i saw him in the uptown bar. i asked him didn’t he have family could take him in?

he shook his head. “they all got it hard enough,” he said, “the ones i’m speaking to. the ones got money to burn wouldn’t have me no matter how bad off i was.” he drained the last of his latest drink and stood unsteadily. “funny,” he said, “what a little money does to people. i used to stick my nose in the air and hurry past all the winos with their hands out. i wasn’t ever going to be like that. i was better than them. i was succesth--successful. yeah. and you know why i thought that? you know why?” his face was an inch from mine, his breath whiskey-heavy. “because i had a little money in my pocket, that’s all. silly, isn’t it? to think you’re better than other people because they got nickels and you got dimes? but that’s just what i thought, snake. i was wrong, though. boy, was i ever wrong. there’s a bigger difference than that. a lot bigger.”

he staggered away and out the door to the dark street, leaving me to wonder what he meant.

snake marchand

harvey nitzinger wandered into the uptown bar yesterday afternoon looking like the seven hounds of hell had dragged him through eight of the nine levels and then decided to let him go because he wasn't fun any more. i'd heard he'd had a reversal of fortune, so to speak, so i sidled up and offered to buy him a drink. you'd have thought i'd offered to take his place on a chain gang, he was that grateful.

"ain't seen you around in a few months, harvey," i said. "where you been?"

"if i told you, you wouldn't believe it," he said, shaking his head. this i had to hear, so i bought him another drink.

eight or nine years ago, harvey had moved into miss justine ermintrude's apartment building. at the time, he was a sales rep for a big computer chip manufacturer and riding high. he took miss justine’s $6000 a month penthouse with the built-in sauna and a bird’s-eye view of the harbor and gold leaf in the window trim. he was in his early forties, wasn’t married, was reasonably fit and good-looking, didn’t gamble or drink much, and had women following him around like dogs will follow a steak. he had a pretty good life, i guess, as these things go.

then, three years back this was, he’d gone and made a little mistake. he’d gotten himself involved with the wife of his company’s chief financial officer, one gary welchick, and gary found out about it. he wasn’t amused. the divorce was messy as hell but that was only the beginning. he wanted harvey’s scalp hanging on his teepee pole (that’s the way he put it), and he fixed the books so it looked like harvey had been stealing from the company for months. they fired him, of course, though gary made sure it didn’t go any further than that (though the odds were against it, you never can tell when you might stumble on a cop bright enough to figure out what really happened, and gary didn’t see any sense in taking the chance), but he did make sure the word got around. Before you could say persona non grata, harvey was. everywhere.

he moved out of the penthouse, of course, and took a small three-room apartment on the sixth floor. he had some savings and he was sure he’d land another good job real soon. miss justine was sympathetic. these things happened. she had suffered herself. life was hard but she was sure he’d pick himself up and be back on top in no time.

at first he managed to get a job selling computer hardware for a small outfit over on mott street, but then they moved their whole operation to india, lock-stock-and-barrel, and harvey wasn’t invited to make the trip. he was out of work for months after that and his savings slimmed down dramatically. he moved to an even smaller two-room apartment on the fifth floor. the rooms were so small you could have fit both of them in one of the 6th-floor rooms. he had to sell most of his furniture because he couldn’t afford to store it any more. miss justine frowned and shook her head when she rented it to him.

“seems like you just can’t get a break, mr. nitzinger,” she said. “a good man like you. it’s a shame. but i’m sure your luck is going to improve any day now. you just keep swinging.”

harvey did keep swinging and eventually, at practically the last possible moment, he landed a job selling computer equipment in a department store. the salary wasn’t much and the commissions not much more, so he moved to an efficiency on the third floor the size of the bathroom in the 5th-floor apartment. there was no room for a bed, so he slept on the chair with his legs stretched out over an ottoman left over from better days. his ‘stove’ was a pair of hotplates and a toaster-oven on a shelf in the tiny closet, and his ‘refrigerator’ was an ice chest like the kind you might use to bring beer to a softball game in the summer. it was hardly an elegant life.

when he moved there, he didn’t even see miss justine. she slipped the re-written lease under his door. he signed it and left it in her mailbox. the only time he saw her after he moved, he said “hello” and she pretended she hadn’t seen or heard him and kept going right on past him without answering, her eyes pointed in the other direction.

it wasn’t much of a life, harvey thought, but it was a life of some kind and better than no life at all. “there’s something,” harvey said as i bought him his third neat jameson’s, “about stripping your life down to the bone. you find out what’s important, really important, to you.” what was important to harvey, it turned out, was chocolate eclairs. and napoleons and creme puffs and whoopee pies and mallomars. he discovered a sweet tooth, and he fed it. he knew where to go to get the thickest baklava, the flakiest apple turnovers, the lightest tira misu. he knew which bakeries did bird’s-nests on mondays and where you could find melt-in-your-mouth chocolate cream pie at 3 in the morning.

he gained some weight, naturally, but he didn’t care. there was no one he needed to impress, no one he wanted to show off for. it was liberating, especially for a salesman. he might even have learned to be happy in a way if it had gone on long enough. but then, last year, he discovered he had cancer.

they caught it early and over the course of the year they beat it, but it meant sessions of radiation and chemotherapy. his hair fell out, he was sick all the time, and he couldn’t work but a couple of days a week for months. he lost his regular job and had to take a succession of part-time temporary positions that barely paid food money. he hadn’t paid his rent in four months when miss justine showed up one afternoon.

he told her what had happened and asked her for just a little more time. the effects of the treatments were beginning to subside; he wasn’t as sick when he got sick and it didn’t last as long. he was getting stronger, and he just needed a chance to finish healing. miss justine sighed.

“i shouldn’t do this. all my friends are going to tell me you’re taking advantage of my good nature and they’re probably right, but i can’t just throw you into the street. you can’t stay here, though. this is an income-producing room. i’ll tell you what. there’s some space in the basement. there’s a toilet down there, and a sink, and you can fix up a corner of it with a bed and some furniture. it won’t be pretty but it’s better than living in a dumpster on morgan street. i’ll let you have it for a hundred a week. it’s the best i can do.”

it was a more generous offer than he had expected, and he took it. when she was leaving, she frowned at him. “you’ve really let yourself go, mr. nitzinger. it’s a shame.”

he agreed.

end of part 1

 

 blind pierre usta play down the gypsy cafe on reggio street," says carl. "i seen him ever saturday night we usta go in there, have a spaghetti dinner with garlic bread and red wine, blind pierre was playing. some fiddle player, blind pierre. them strings, they'd practically light up like stars the way he played, sometimes to make you cry like a babe in your mama's arms, sometimes fast as a bordello handshake, like the cops was after him and he had to finish before they bust in and drug him off to the slam."

"their sauce wasn't so hot," big tony says, "watery, ya know? but the garlic bread? make yer mouth water, make yer hips do a jig."

"what about blind pierre?" i says. "i remember him. I seen him play downtown once--"

"nah," big tony says, "wasn't him. he never went downtown."

"nah," carl agrees. "never. not blind pierre. strictly a morgan streeter, blind pierre. musta been somebody else."

"i'm telling you, i saw him. he was playing jazz with a combo down the old blue moon club. amazing stuff, i wouldn't have believed it if i hadn't heard him myself. what about him?"

"oh, he's dead," carl says around the walnut he's cracking between his teeth.

"dead? when?"

"yesterday, yesterday night, whenever."

seems carl was passing by blind pierre's place on jimson drive just off morgan when he sees all these crowds of people milling around on the sidewalk and they all had these black armbands on, so he goes over to see what's up, he don't think right at first it's got anything to do with blind pierre, he's just curious. you know. but it's got to do with blind pierre alright. it's his funeral.

"son-of-a-bitch," carl says, and goes in to pay his respects. people are all over the place, carl don't recognize half of em. must be customers, he thinks, people who liked to hear him play, because blind pierre kept mostly to himself, didn't get out much, never mixed with the customers. he wouldn't even take requests, in fact it insulted him if people asked him to play something. sometimes he even walked out and wouldn't play no more that night because people kept telling him what to play. "i ain't no 2-bit carnie," he usta say, "i'm an artist and i decide what i play. i must feel it, in the souls of my feet, in my bones, in my heart"--thumping his chest--"or it will not come out here"--tapping his fiddle.

this fiddle, it was an old thing and grimy as a night in the bowery. carl told blind pierre one time he knew someplace blind pierre could have his fiddle cleaned up, do a nice job there, but you woulda thought carl had said to burn it the way blind pierre took on, clutching the fiddle to his chest, his eyes all bugging out. blind pierre wasn't always a whole lot cleaner than that fiddle with his greasy hair and clothes what didn't see a washing machine but once a month or so, so maybe he had a thing against it, cleaning stuff. maybe he thought the dirt was what held that old wood together and if it got cleaned out, it would fall apart like a rickety old chair when you take the pin out. maybe, but carl always thought it was funny how scared blind pierre was.

carl seen blind pierre's old wife, elmarie, sitting by herself in a side room looking at a sheet of paper and because he'd knowed her since he was a pup, carl felt ok about going on inside to say hello and i'm sorry about your old man. elmarie didn't look all that sad, she mumbled something about how everybody knew it was coming what with blind pierre being so sick and all which surprised carl because he didn't know it and he didn't think anybody else knew it and he'd seen blind pierre playing "devil's hayride" the saturday before, and playing it so hard he damn near took down a rack of glasses with his bow. "he sure didn't play like no sick guy," carl says, and then elmarie up and hands him the sheet of paper, she don't say nothing, just hands it to him and he reads it.

"was the damndest thing," carl says. "i didn't know if old blind pierre had gone off his rocker or what." he reads it and what's on the paper is blind pierre's confession that he stole the fiddle fifty years ago off a museum warehouse where he usta work, and it's some famous fiddlemaker made it and it's worth a fortune, blind pierre wrote, and now he wants somebody to return it back to the museum after he's gone.

"will you do it?" elmarie says, and before carl can open his mouth she's handing him that dirty old thing wrapped up in newspaper. "he never had a case," she says, "just carried it around with him." and all of a sudden there he was, walking down the street with a job he never wanted, carrying a fiddle he wouldn't have touched with his bare hand ten minutes ago, not if somebody had bet him a sawbuck.

the guy at the museum didn't believe him, carl could see that, he was just humoring him until the guards came to throw him out, when carl told him about the fiddle. "it's supposed to be a stratimalarias, somethin like that," carl says, feeling like an idiot. "he says he stole it."

"and when did he say he did this?" the guy asks, and he's all but yawning he's so bored.

but then carl says, "fifty years ago april," and the guy perks right up. he unwraps the fiddle real careful and looks at it real close, then he gets a magnifying glass out of a drawer and looks even closer and when his head comes up his eyes are as wide as the hole in pinky waterman's front wall that time he set off a blasting cap just to see what would happen. the guy says, "you say the man that gave you this is dead?" so carl shows him the confession. "i'll be damned," the guy says. "i'll be damned." then he runs out with the fiddle kind of cradled in his arm.

carl don't know what to do, should he stay, should he go, and while he's still trying to decide the guy comes back with a small army of other guys in white coats or three-button suits and boy, have they got questions. none of which carl can answer, none of which anybody can answer cept blind pierre and he's dead.

"turns out," carl says, "that ratty old fart was sawing away for fifty years on a famous fiddle made by a famous guy that's worth almost a quarter-mil cold cash on the hoof."

big tony whistled. "jesus, that's some gold hoof. elmarie gets all that?" and his eyes went all shiny thinking about the side of beef she could buy off him and the freezer to put it in.

"nah," carls says like big tony don't know nothing, which he don't. everything about big tony's big except his brain. "she don't get nothing being as how blind pierre stole the thing. that's against the law, that is."

"oh yeah," big tony says. "i forgot." which ain't hard to believe if you know big tony.

and they went on to other things like crimes and horseracing but i couldn't help thinking about this man who loved the violin so much he stole a stradivarius, not to sell it but just to have it to play, and i got a whole new appreciation for blind pierre, though it was a little late.

snake marchand

one night, belinda c, a woman of substance, a woman of enormities, passed through her back door and into her tiny garden like a warship oozing from the dock and heading out into a sea hardly big enough to contain it. there were noises in the garden, noises that did not belong and that she should not have been able to hear above the surface noise of the street, strange noises like clucking and high-pitched giggles and the sing-song falsetto of a 33 record played at 78.

it's never really dark in the city. the garden was lit by streetlamps on both sides, neon lights from commercial signs on the roofs of nearby buildings, the spill from the rooms where wakeful neighbors watched television with the windows open, and even by the headlights of a passing truck or two. it was about as dark as a very very cloudy day.

she rumbled, the machinery of the warship's cannon searching for a target. the noises had stopped. she stood for a moment, not sure if she had heard anything at all; maybe it was the whiskey whispering low and sultry and playing tricks on her like it used to do in the old days before she got better, before the house of pain. and then the noise came again, off to the right, near the fence. she swiveled carefully, quietly for a woman so large, and focused her guns.

she was prepared for a rat. she was prepared for a kid swiping her tomatoes, dry, shriveled things that they were. she was even prepared for a burglar, though what he might have hoped to steal in a neighborhood like this would bear explaining. of all the things belinda c was not prepared for, at the top of the list was what she actually saw--a leprechaun perched on her chickenwire fence, munching on a lettuce leaf and talking to himself. or maybe that was singing.

"shoo", she said. "shoo. shoo."

the leprechaun--if that's what it was and what else could it have been?--looked up at her with mild amusement in his tiny hazel eyes. "i'm not a housefly," he said. "or a timid field mouse with his racing shoes on at the slightest crack of twig. i'm not that easy to get rid of, if that's what you're hoping. why don't you sit down in that old stuffed chair you threw out last year, and we'll have a talk."

"you know me?" belinda c said as she picked her way through the tiny garden to the old ripped lounge balanced precariously on three legs next to the fence.

"o, darlin," the leprechaun said. "like the back of me favorite head." he munched a little of the leaf and adjusted his small green hat, a sort of homburg-ish thing that seemed to belinda c to be out of place and the wrong color.

"what do you want?" she asked.

"a favor, darlin. a small thing, hardly worth mentioning. it'll be easy."

belinda c, like most people nowadays, had no experience with leprechauns. if she had, those words would have sent chills ripping up her spine like sequential tidal waves, for the only time a leprechaun tells you something is going to be easy is when it's going to be so massively hard that by the time it's over you'll wish you'd moved to new jersey instead. but, as i say, she didn't know that. on the other hand, she had lived in this city long enough to be automatically suspicious of strangers who wanted something. "you look like a leprechaun," she said warily. "because that's what i am," he said. "fergus smalley, at your service." "aren't leprechauns irish?" "the ones in ireland are." "you don't sound irish except every now and then." "that's because i'm not except every now and then. mostly i'm an american leprechaun. my family has been here for three generations--that's almost two hundred years. i'm as american as you."

belinda c grunted. "my people was slaves. we been here four hundred years."

"hmm, which sort of brings us around to what i came to see you about."

"how's that?"

"we think--my people and i--that you are uniquely positioned to render us a small service. in return, we would be willing to offer you three wishes--"

"what happened to the pot o' gold?"

"inflation. terrible. but the wishes are better. trust me."

"what if i wish for a pot o' gold?"

"i wouldn't. really," he shuddered. "the consequences don't bear thinking of."

belinda c smoothed her voluminous skirt and folded her hands in her lap, ready to deal. "and what is this favor?" she asked.

fergus tilted his head. "you're taking this very calm," he said. "if i didn't know better i'd think you saw leprechauns every day."

"i did," she said. "once upon a time. and pixies, too. besides, this is new york. a million impossible things happen here every day. why not a leprechaun? you came over on the boat?"

"hmm. yes, hidden in the baggage of...friends. customs was the hardest part, i understand. my grandfather turned himself into an old watch with a cracked crystal. very painful, so he said. to business?"

"it's your dime," belinda c said levelly, maintaining her bargainer's poise.

"there's a bush out front of your house," fergus said. "it's ours. we want to keep it."

"what do you mean it's 'yours'? it's my bush."

"it's our house. we live there. we have lived there for one hundred and fifty-three years."

"damned if you have. that bush ain't anything like a hundred and fifty-three years old."

"it is, and it's our home. we'd like to stay there."

"so? stay there. i never noticed you before. as long as you don't bother the neighbors i can't see what harm there is."

fergus tipped his homburg-like hat-object. "madam, such a noble and--if i may say so--generous sentiment does you great honor. clearly, we have come to the right person."

"for what? you still ain't told me."

"the city is planning to remove those bushes--"

belinda c stiffened. "what! they can't do that! them's my bushes and they're on private property."

"i'm afraid they can. it's called 'eminent domain'. it means they can take what they want for the good of a community project."

"what 'community project'? they ain't made improvements in this neighborhood since calvin coolidge was in knickers."

"a widening-of-the-sidewalk community project. it's going to get widened right up to your front door step, and the bushes are slated for removal to make room. we want you to stop them."

"stop them? stop the city? are you drunk?"

"madam, the fact that i am of irish extraction does not automatically mean i am an alcoholic, whatever those bastards, the english, might say about us." his feelings were clearly hurt.

"alright alright, don't get huffy. i didn't mean nothing except-- stop the city? that's impossible."

"nevertheless."

"i'm sorry, mr smalley. i'd like to keep them bushes as much as you would, they been there as long as i've owned this house. but i don't see there's much i can do. you can't fight city hall."

"you don't understand," fergus said, shaking his head firmly. "a tribe of fairies live in the next bush--"

"they do? what i got in there, the whole fairyland u.n.? there's a dragon, too, i suppose."

fergus laughed. "no, no, of course there's no dragon."

"that's good cause this is a wood house and i'd hate to think what he might do accidentally when he's snoring or something."

"no, no, you have nothing to worry about. dragons don't like new york. they all went to live in the mid-west. cleveland, mostly. no one even notices them there. they fit right in."

"really. now that's a caution, that is. but anyway, there's nothin i can do for you."

"but you must. i told you, there's a tribe of fairies in the next bush."

"then they'll have to move, just like you. it can't be that hard to find another bush, not even in new york."

"isn't it?" fergus said, and there was bitterness in his voice. "you obviously haven't heard about the housing crisis. they're all occupied. we can't move unless a leprechaun across town dies, and even then we have to compete with every other leprechaun family in the five burroughs who all have the same idea. there isn't an empty bush between here and canarsie, and i refuse to live in canarsie! i don't have much but i have my pride."

"i'm sorry. i didn't know."

"that's alright. i didn't mean to shout but this past year has been very frustrating."

"that's too bad, but--"

"you're missing the point," fergus interrupted impatiently. "fairies are warriors, warriors with powers. they aren't going to take this lying down. whenever a fairy-bush is removed without their permission, there they put a curse, a terrible curse. if those bushes are removed there will be accidents on this corner--"

"we never had no accidents around here."

"you will," fergus answered, grim as steel. "horrible accidents, every day. if you don't stop them, many people will be hurt. badly hurt. some of them will die."

"you gotta be kiddin," belinda c said. "i thought fairies was all peace-loving quiet folk, a little like butterflies or fireflies. like tinkerbell, you know."

fergus was confused. "'tinkerbell'? is that supposed to be a fairy's name? it's ridiculous."

"what are their names like, then?"

"lewis, sharon, glenda. ordinary american names. 'tinkerbell'." he snorted. "i bet that was disney's idea. what an idiot that man was. nasty, too--"

"can we get back to--"

"yes, yes, certainly. we have a plan."

"good, cause i sure don't. what is it?"

"tell them why they mustn't take the bushes."

"tell them why. because fairies live in them who'll get mad and cause accidents."

"exactly. once they understand, they'll have to abandon their plans."

"you want me to go to the city of new york and tell them they can't take my bushes because fairies live in them."

"yes!"

"they'll lock me up. no way, uh-uh."

"don't they believe in fairies?"

"not that kind."

a look of cunning, if not desperation, burdened fergus' eye. "belinda c--think of the pot o' gold."

"you said there wasn't one."

"this is important. we'll make an exception. think of it--college for your grandson, a new house for your sister in l.a. so she can move out of that apartment building where drive-by shootings are a neighborhood sport, a nursing home for your other sister--she needs it, you know she does--and even a little set-aside for the comfort of your own old age, which is not so far away now, is it? and all you have to do is...talk."

"them would be awful good things to do," belinda c said thinking of her grandson jamal in a big school learning how to be a doctor or an engineer or a professor instead of joining a gang and learning how to stamp out license plates. "well," she said, "i reckon i could try...."

and that's how belinda c came to take on the whole city of new york in her 'save the fairies' campaign--an unfortunate name that has caused a lot of misunderstanding.

snake marchand

cat-blonde went into the emporium for a piss and came out with a pile of laundry attached to price tags. she didn't mean it, it was just one of those things, just one of those fabulous flings, a trip to the moon on credit card wings, just one of those things, but she was pretty sure big tony wasn't going to see it that way, big tony being what you might call a bit of a stinge, or cheap, to use the vernacular (and why shouldn't we? it's as much ours as anybody else's). so she went to another emporium and bought a plastic trash can. then she tore all the tags off the new laundry, threw them into a passing egg crate, and stuffed the now tagless new laundry into the trash can. when she got home, big tony was on the porch, sunning himself in the shade (big tony likes the idea of sun, he just doesn't like the fact of it since he insists he has delicate skin that burns easy only nobody knows whether that's true or not because nobody's ever seen big tony go out in the sun long enough to find out), and he says, "what'cha got there, girl?" and she says, "nothin big tony. a trash can is all," and he says, "whad'ja buy a new trash can for, we already got one." and she says, "it's got a dent in it big tony, i'm ashamed for the neighbors to see you carry it out when it looks like that. this one's plastic and it won't never dent." big tony just shakes his head--wimmen--and goes back to sunning himself without taxing its strength by actually being in it and cat-blonde takes the trash can around the back.

now she's got a problem, see, she's got to get the new laundry with the tags missing out of the trash can and into the house without big tony seeing her and there's no telling if big tony's going to pick that very moment to decide he doesn't want to sun himself any more and come back into the house where there's a layer of brick between him and it, so she just leaves it there. which is a good thing because big tony picks that minute to come in after all and he would have caught her with her arms all full of new laundry with the tags missing and they would have had words and cat-blonde doesn't like having words with big tony because he doesn't have any and it ain't a fair fight. so she leaves it there with the missing-tag new laundry in it and goes on into the house where she makes big tony his favorite meal--baked beans and franks with plenty of salted onions--and they watch tv and then after awhile, in the natural course of things, they go to bed and a little while later big tony is snoring like a moose and cat-blonde sneaks out of the house and downstairs to the kitchen and snaps on the outside light and goes to get her new laundry with the missing-because-she-threw-them-into-a-passing-egg-crate tags out of the trash can.

only when she comes out on the back steps she sees, froze there in the light like a scared baby rabbit is all her new clothes setting on a totally different female body other than hers.

"what'chu doin with my new clothes?" she says.

the rabbit says, "new? i found em in the trash can, i thought you was throwun em out."

cat-blonde says, "i wasn't throwin em out, you doofus, them's my new clothes i just bought. i was hidin em from big tony, that's why they was in the trash can."

"o," says the rabbit, "i'm sorry," and she starts to unhook the long silver dress with the white pearl buttons down the back when cat-blonde sees the shopping cart on the sidewalk and the pile of rags kicked off to one side on what passes for a lawn in these parts and she says, "stop a minute," and the rabbit does, and cat-blonde looks her up and down a good long time. then she says, "turn around". well, the rabbit doesn't know what to make of this--is this odd woman going to shoot her in the back or proposition her?--but she turns around--and around--and around--until cat-blonde tells her to stop, for ghawd's sake. and then cat-blonde looks a good long time more with one eye closed, concentrating real hard.

"keep em," she says finally.

the rabbit is suspicious. "you mean it, lady? i can keep these clothes?"

cat-blonde shrugs. "might as well. they look better on you than they ever will on me and who looks good in clothes is the one should have em." then she turns real quick and disappears back into the house. she knew big tony would never look at the credit card statement--cat-blonde pays all the bills--and would never know about the money as long as she didn't wear the clothes and all-in-all she thought it was an elegant solution to a sticky problem.

snake marchand

they say there are 8 million stories in the naked city and i intend to tell every one of them but only if they get some clothes on. it's disgusting. man, i can't look at you when you're like that. at least turn around....

snake marchand