A Long Walk Up the Waterslide

6

I think there are three trees,” Neal said for the fiftieth time that morning.

“Oi tink dere aaw tree trees,” Polly repeated for the fiftieth time.

“Three trees.”

“Tree trees,” Polly said. “The hell we talking about trees, anyway? Nobody’s gonna ask me about one tree, never mind tree trees. They’re going to ask me about doing ih.”

“Doing it,” Neal said. “There’s a t at the end of the word. Pronounce it. I’m begging you.”

“And we never did ih in a tree,” Polly said. “Ih, ih, IH!”

Neal dropped his head down on the kitchen table and moaned softly.

Six days. Count them, Lord, six days. Six days of “I think there are three trees,” and “Park the car and go the party with Barbara,” and “I like my bike.” Five days of trying to get her to respond to a simple question with a simple answer instead of a stream-of-consciousness soliloquy that would have made James Joyce reach for a nice drink of Drano. Israel won an entire war in six days, and I can’t get one woman to pronounce it.

Neal raised his eyes and looked up at her.

Today’s costume consisted of black toreador pants, a black tube top, and enough black jewelry to dress Scarsdale in mourning for a week.

She made a face at him, lifted her bare foot onto the table, and started to paint her toenails.

Neal watched her make careful, precise strokes until he realized he was being mesmerized by her almost Zen-like concentration.

“Say it,” he said.

“Take me to dinnuh,” she answered without taking her eyes off her task.

“I can’t take you to dinner,” he said, stressing the r. “You’d be seen.”

“I want to go out to dinnuh,” she whined. “Anyways, nobody in this dog-shit town is going to recanize me.”

“Recognize. Say it and I’ll get you a magazine.”

There was a slight hesitation in her stroke.

“What magazine?” she asked.

“McCall’s?”

“Cosmo.”

“If I can find one.”

She leaned forward to check out a possible flaw in the paint job, then slowly and distinctly said, “I think there are three trees.”

“You’ve been jerking my chain.”

“I’m the one on the chain,” she said. “When’s Karen coming home?”

“When she’s done shopping, I guess.”

“Karen’s my bud.”

That’s for sure, Neal thought. The two women were practically joined at the hip. They stayed up half the night watching junk TV and eating ice cream and corn chips. He would lie in bed listening to them giggling and whispering.

Polly put her other foot on the table.

“Time for the TV break,” she said.

“No, it isn’t.”

“Close.”

Neal straightened up in his chair. “Park the car and go to the party with Barbara.”

“Pawk de caw an go tuh de pawty wit Bawburuh.”

Neal whimpered.

“Once again,” she said, “yaw making me say stuff I am nevuh going tuh say adenny troil! What caw? What pawty? Bawburuh who? We nevuh went to no pawties; we just went tuh bed! He’d stick his ting in me; he’d take his ting out-dat was de pawty!”

“His ting?” Neal asked.

She looked up from her toenails.

“You know,” she said. “His ting.”

“You mean his thing?”

“What do you tink I mean?” she asked, frowning.

Neal stood up and walked over to the counter.

“I don’t know,” he said. “His organ? His male member? His penis?”

She sniffed. “I don’t say dose words.”

“Well, you’d better learn.”

“Be nice.”

“It’s not my job to be nice,” Neal said.

“And a good ting, too…”

“It’s my job to get you ready for the trial.”

She leaned way over, blew on her toenails, then said, “I’m telling Karen dose words what you said.”

Neal smiled. “What words?”

“You know, like ting.”

“You mean penis?”

“I mean ting.”

“Penis.”

“Ting!”

“Penis!”

“Ting!” Polly yelled as she stood up. “Ting! Ting! Ting!”

“Penis! Penis! Penis!” Neal yelled as Karen walked through the door with an armful of groceries.

“Diction lesson?” she asked.

“He wants me to talk dirty,” Polly accused.

“Don’t they always?” Karen asked. She set the grocery bags on the counter.

Neal took a deep breath and then said, slowly and distinctly, “When you give your deposition, as you will have to do… you cannot talk about his ting… or even his thing…”

“Why not?” Polly asked.

Karen put her hand on Neal’s arm and said, “Because they won’t take you seriously. Neither would a jury. They’d laugh, and that’s not the reaction you’re looking for, is it?”

“No,” Polly admitted.

Karen asked, “Then can you say, ‘He forced himself on me’? or even, ‘He forced himself into me’?”

Polly thought about this for a few seconds.

“I can say himself,” she decided.

Karen turned to Neal. “Professor?”

“That’s fine. Very dignified,” Neal answered. “Thank you.”

“Happy to be of service,” Karen said. “Isn’t it time for the TV break?”

Polly gave Neal a ‘See?’ look and stalked into the living room.

Karen put her arms around Neal and kissed him on the cheek.

“I love you,” she said.

“But?” Neal asked.

“But you could try telling her why you want her to do something,” Karen answered. “She’s not stupid.”

Neal made a noncommittal murmur.

“She didn’t go to Columbia, and she’s not pursuing a graduate degree in English literature,” Karen said, “but that doesn’t mean you should treat her like the slowest puppy in obedience school.”

“Are you saying I’m a snob?”

“Of course you are,” she answered. “But let me ask you something: You were a street kid, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Where did you get your blue-blazer accent?”

Neal blushed. “Friends sent me to a tutor.”

“Was he as mean to you as you are to Polly?”

Neal recalled the fussy retired Shakespearean actor in the musty old apartment on Broadway.

“Meaner, actually.”

“Then you know how she feels,” Karen said, “actually.”

She kissed him again.

Polly’s voice came shrieking from the living room, “Jack and Candy’re on!”

Karen took Neal’s arm.

“Come on,” she said, “maybe we can get a good recipe.”

Jack Landis smiled soulfully into the camera, a brave no-nonsense smile.

“I’m still here,” he said.

The studio audience went nuts.

“I’m still here!” Jack repeated, enjoying the reaction. “And my accuser has disappeared. What does that tell you?”

Applause, foot stomping, cheers.

Candy sat on the sofa, out of camera range. She smiled at the studio audience.

The camera dollied in for a close-up on Jack.

“Well,” he said, “the lawyers don’t want me to say much more than that, so I guess it’s a case of ‘enough said,’ huh?”

The audience chuckled appreciatively.

“So, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado…” Jack said, giving his trademark opening, “… the lady who shares my life with me and her life with you… Caaandy Laaandis!”

The applause sign lighted superfluously.

Candy rose gracefully from the couch and stepped up to her mark, next to Jack’s mark. The camera switched to a two-shot as Jack put his arm around her and she pecked him on the cheek. Then she turned her smart smile to the camera.

Normally, at this point the director would have switched to a close-up, but these days he was using as many two-shots of Jack and Candy as possible.

“On today’s show,” Candy announced, “we’ll meet a man who was declared legally dead but came back to own his own business.”

“And,” Jack read from the monitor, “we’ll talk to a U.S. senator who is fighting for you, the American family.”

Candy picked it up seamlessly: “I’m going to show you how to spice up that old ground chuck, and…”

“I’ve prevailed on Candy,” Jack said, “to sing one of our favorite old songs.”

“All that, plus a progress report on Candyland, on today’s ‘Jack-”

“-and Candy-’” Jack added.

“Family Hour,’” they said in chorus.

The director went to a commercial.

Polly polished off a salami-and-cheese sandwich, a large bag of potato chips, seven chocolate-chip cookies, and a Diet-Pepsi before Jack and Candy even sat down to her “Red Burger Surprise.”

“Where does all that food go?” Karen whispered to Neal as she looked at Polly’s skinny frame.

“Right to her brain,” Neal answered.

Karen elbowed him.

“By the way,” Polly asked. “Is there a doctor in this town?”

“Are you sick?”

Polly shook her head. “My friend hasn’t visited.”

“What friend?” Karen asked, then blushed. “Ohhh…”

That friend.

“I think we got trouble,” Joe Graham said into the phone.

He was sitting by the window of his fifteenth-floor hotel room in the northern suburbs of San Antonio. The window provided an interesting view of the foothill country, including the access road to the massive construction sight known as Candyland.

“Trouble is our business,” Ed Levine answered, having developed a sense of humor since his divorce. He had his feet on the desk and was also looking out the window, which gave him a picturesque view of garbage blowing across Times Square.

“I’m serious,” Graham insisted.

“Okay, okay. What kind of trouble?”

“Well, for starters, I’m stuck in this room doing this surveillance, so I order room service and I get the tacos. Have you ever tried to eat a taco with one hand?”

“Can’t say I have, Joe.”

“Every time you pick one it up, it shoots hot sauce out the other end.”

“Have you tried picking it up in the middle?” Levine asked.

“Yeah. Then it shoots hot sauce out both ends.”

“This is trouble all right,” Levine said patiently, figuring that Graham was suffering from stakeout syndrome, the combination of boredom, cabin fever, and loneliness that compels surveillance guys to invent reasons to talk on the phone. “What else?”

“It looks like a Teamsters picnic out here,” Graham said. “You got trucks coming and going, coming and going, coming and going all the time.”

“Uhhh, it’s a construction site, Joe,” Ed said. Maybe I’d better think about pulling him, he thought.

“Yeah, but when do they unload?” Joe asked. “I’ve seen the same truck go in, come out ten minutes later, and go right back in.

“You’re taking down the plate numbers, right?”

“No, Ed, I’m drawing pictures of the trucks with my crayons. What do you think?”

Testy, Ed thought. Another prime symptom. He picked up his coffee mug and saw something usually described as a foreign object floating on the top. He picked the foreign object out with his thumb and forefinger and took a swallow of the coffee.

“What else?” he asked.

“I think I’m starting to hallucinate,” Graham said.

Days of sitting by a window staring through binoculars will do that, Ed thought.

“Why is that?” he asked.

“Black limo comes up the road, guy gets out to talk to one of the truck drivers. Guess who the guy is?”

“Jimmy Hoffa?”

“No,” Graham answered. “Get this, Ed. I could swear I saw Joey Beans get out of that limo.”

Is this the coffee I bought this morning, Ed asked himself, or yesterday morning? And Joey Beans?

“You are hallucinating, Graham,” Ed said. “Joey Beans working for Jack Landis?”

“Or vice versa,” Graham observed.

“Naaah,” Ed said.

Joey “Beans” Foglio had been such a loose cannon in the greater New York metropolitan area mob franchise that the old men finally gave him a career choice: accept a lateral transfer down south or be recycled in a Jersey gravel pit. Joey Beans had opted for the sun and fun of the Lone Star state, and Levine had a vague knowledge that he was working card games or something out of Houston. But Joey Beans building water slides and kiddie-car tracks?

“Something is very sick here,” Graham said. “I’ll send you the plate numbers, names on the trucks, all that stuff. Can you get a look at construction invoices?”

“I’ll give it a shot,” Ed answered. Shit, a gangster like Joey Beans hooked up with Landis? No way.

“We’d better give Neal a call,” Graham said. “He’s not going to be happy.”

“He’s never happy.” Ed thought he’d try to cheer Graham up and added, “Hey, speaking of happiness, guess who went to that big tote board in the sky a few days ago?”

“Who?”

“Sammy Black.”

“No shit.”

“No shit,” Ed said. “Sitting in a bar at closing time. Guy walks in while the bartender’s taking a piss, pops Sammy and his bodyguard in the head, and walks out.”

“They must be having parties all over Midtown South.”

“They are. The homicide guys have a nickname for the shooter,” Ed said. “Preparation H.”

“Because he removed that itching burning hemorrhoid?” Graham said. Not that funny a topic, seeing as how he’d been sitting on this chair for three days.

“Listen, I’ll get on this Joey Beans stuff,” Ed said. “You take it easy with those tacos, okay?”

Yeah, okay, Graham thought as he hung up. He was worried. He had promised Neal there was no mob stuff, and now he thought he had seen Joey Beans. And although Ed Levine was very good at chasing paper, mob guys were pretty cute these days. It could be weeks before Ed could unravel the kind of twisted paper trail the mob was capable of leaving. And he wasn’t sure that they had days, never mind weeks. There had to be a quicker way.

Graham put his binoculars away.

Sammy Black in a box, huh? Old Walt must be standing for a round somewhere.