The Electron Pencil

BLACK COMEDY

By Michael G. Glab

© 2013

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— Twenty-seven —

[Life is so unfair. All Anthony wants to do is Change the World — and he knows he can do it the week of August 26th when the Democrats come to town to nominate their presidential candidate. There’s so much to do, so many people to call, so many plans to make. Abbie’s depending on him to take care of logistics in Chicago, man. This is important stuff, people! So why’s Anna bugging him? Here’s today’s episode of the serial e-novel, “Black Comedy.”]

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“You owe me,” Anna says. “You owe our child. You owe us. And you know it.”

“I don’t know any such thing,” Anthony says. “Here’s what I know: you’re selfish. All you can think of is your needs. Y’know Casablanca? Where Bogie goes ‘Our problems are just a hill of beans in this sick world’?”

“Please, don’t start quoting movies at me.”

“No, no. Don’t tell me what to do. I’m making a point here.”

The Point

■

“Anthony…,” Anna says.

“Do not interrupt. Our having a kid is just a hill of beans when there’s an imperialist war going on. Changing diapers, giving the baby a bottle — none of it means anything in the scheme of things. We’re on the brink of civil war! The brothers are rising up against The Man!”

“Anthony…,” Anna says.

“What did I say? Do not interrupt. Those are the important things. If I ignore them, I’m just as guilty as Lyndon Johnson or George Wallace. Don’t saddle me with that suburban fatherhood bullshit. This ain’t Pleasant Valley Sunday, man. I’ve got a calling here on this Earth. This is the time for all good men…, y’know what I mean?”

Anthony Pontone is pacing in the living room. Anna sits, uncomfortably, in her usual place, upright on the sofa. The due date is in two weeks. Dr. Francona says it’ll be August 28th. Anna’s sick and tired of carrying a medicine ball in her abdomen. She’s tired of a lot of things, although she really can’t articulate what they all are just now. It’ll have to suffice for her to ascribe all her angst and discomfort to being a fat brood sow.

“Are you finished, Anthony? Can I speak now?”

“I may be.”

“Okay. All I’m saying is please promise you’ll be with me when I go into the hospital on the twenty-eighth, or the twenty-seventh, or whatever. I know the Convention’ll be here and the marches’ll be going on but I really think it can all go on without you just for one day. I’m not asking you to join the Establishment! I’m not asking you to crush the black man! I’m not asking you to drop napalm on little Vietnamese girls!”

■

Anthony is aghast. “Oh, so it’s all a big joke to you, huh?”

“No, no. Please listen to me….”

“I won’t listen to this bullshit, man! I’ve got responsibilities….”

“Yes! Yes you do!”

“No, no, not your responsibilities. You don’t define my life.”

“Anthony — my God! — don’t make this anything more than it is. We’re having a baby! Just be there with me!”

“I can’t reason with you,” Anthony says. “You think like a woman!”

He stomps out of the house and into the middle of the night. Anna hears him open the garage door and get into the old Plymouth. She hears him try to start it.

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He got the thing a couple of weeks ago from some old dude in Bridgeport. “It runs like new,” he told her over the phone from the old dude’s house. The house was only a couple of blocks east of the Amphitheater where Anthony’d been spending the last few days scoping out the area, trying to figure out where to stage the hundred thousand or so protesters that were going to come to Chicago. “It’s a 1963 Plymouth Sport Fury. Blue with white trim. You won’t believe the deal I got on it — a hundred and fifty bucks!” Anna could imagine the big grin on his face but still….

■

“We don’t have two hundred and fifty dollars,” she said quietly.

“No,” Anthony said, “not right now.”

But the guy was cool. He trusted Anthony. He said Anthony could pay him whenever he got the money. Anna thought, Hmm, let’s see. When will that ever be? She even considered actually saying that over the phone but decided against it. Anthony seems to be growing less and less tolerant of her negativity these days. Instead, after she hung up, Anna wondered if she really was being negative these days and, if so, why.

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So Anna sits upright in the sofa, uncomfortable as always, and listens for ten minutes as Anthony tries to crank the engine. He tries at least twenty times. Twice he interrupts his efforts to shout “God damn it!” and “Piece of shit!” She hopes the neighbors don’t hear him even though she should know better.

Curtains are parting ever so slightly halfway down the block, almost as far as the Dudek house.

Finally, Anthony gets the thing started. The Plymouth chugs down the alley sounding like Oliver Douglas’s beaten-up old farm tractor on Green Acres. Anna’s not watching, of course, but she just knows it has to be spewing out blue smoke. She says a silent prayer that the old dude from Bridgeport won’t start calling the house tomorrow and asking where his money is.

As this very moment, Tree stands at her living room window, smoking Pall Malls and staring at Anna and Anthony’s place.

To be continued

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 All fictional characters, descriptions, and situations are the property of the author.

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BLACK COMEDY

By Michael G. Glab

© 2013

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— Twenty-six —

[The 1968 Democratic National Convention is coming closer by the day. Anthony Pontone will be there. So will Sal Sanfillipo. This is the latest installment of the serial e-novel, “Black Comedy.” Read on, babies!]

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The cop Sal Sanfillipo, despite being considered a fine and honorable public servant by the commander of the corrupt Austin District police station, is less esteemed by his own commander at the Shakespeare District. That commander is sick and tired of answering brutality charges leveled against Sal by Puerto Ricans, whom Sal views as only a shade higher on the evolutionary ladder than the fat rats that infest their shithouse apartments.

Not that the Shakespeare commander thinks the Puerto Ricans in his district deserve to be treated like human beings — clearly they don’t — but, Jeez, Sal Sanfillipo never knows when to stop. There was the time he shoved some fourteen year-old punk’s head through the bars of the basement lockup. For chrissakes, they had to call in an iron worker in the middle of the night to come out and blowtorch one of the bars off to get the little fucker out. Then, not six months later, Sal broke both bones in his right forearm — they snapped like dried twigs, one of the other cops who’d been there later said, making a similar sound to boot — on a Latin King’s cranium, again in the lockup. While other patrolmen gathered around Sal to help minister to his bent arm, the Latin King lay on the cold concrete floor with a five-inch long depression in his skull. When they finally got around to tending to the Puerto Rican, the hematoma in his brain had already caused him to fall into a deep coma. Figuring the little jag was gonna die anyway, the patrolmen simply picked up his limp body, brought him up to the second floor, dumped him out the window and then called his mother to break the bad news that her son had died trying to escape.

And there was no way to count how many Puerto Ricans were walking around the district with missing teeth, misshapen noses, and punctured eardrums, thanks to Patrolman Sal Sanfillipo, his nightstick, and his kid leather-gloved fists and palms.

Shoot, the Shakespeare commander figures he could hire a part-time secretary just to fill out the paperwork on all of Sal’s brutality complaints. The commander has had at least a half dozen serious sit-downs with Sal, each time threatening him with disciplinary action, none of which has penetrated that thick skull of his.

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So now the Shakespeare commander holds a memo from the area deputy chief ordering him to assign two patrolmen to a special duty next week, Friday. The commander understands he’s not being asked to send two of his best men; rather, he’ll dispatch two of his biggest pains in the ass. One of them will be Sal Sanfillipo. See, the special operation will take place around Clark and Diversey — Clark and Perversity, as it’s known throughout the force — home of the Mary boys. Every year or so, area central likes to stage a nice bust at some fruit bar. Naturally, no self-respecting patrolman wants to come within twenty yards of those queers so the task falls to officers on the various district commanders’ shit lists.

The commander calls Sal in to tell him the news.

“Commander, wit’ all due respect, that ain’t no place I wanna go. Can’t I get outta this in any way?”

“Sal, whaddya want me to do?” the commander says. “I tole you time and again, watch yer step. Watch whatchyer doin’. Take it easy. How many times, huh? How many times?”

“Yeah, but I been doin’ my best. I’m tryin’, Commander. Honest. Look whaddya want me to do? I’ll do anything to get outta this detail.”

“It’s too late, Sal. You’re in no position to bargain with me anymore. Go report to Captain Kelleher at the 23rd at midnight Friday. That’s it. Now go and sin no more.”

“Yes sir,” Sal says, snapping a half-assed salute, baffled as to why his commander has this hard-on for him.

So, Friday midnight arrives. Sal drives up to 23, also known as the Town Hall station, at Halsted and Addison, three blocks east of Wrigley Field. There he meets three dozen other shit-listers. They’re inspected, given instructions, and then most of them are loaded into two personnel vans. Captain Kelleher’s special duty force is sent off in waves. First, four unmarked cars go out. One car will park directly in front of the fruit bar, a second in the alley behind it. The other two cars will be positioned at either end of the block on Clark Street between Surf and Diversey, effectively closing it off. Next a half dozen blue and white squadrols will descend upon the area. Two patrolmen from each car will gather in front of the joint and then enter it en masse. Once the detail sergeant radios in that the place has been secured, the two personnel vans are to pull up. They contain the two dozen cops who’ll do the dirty work — as in, they’ll actually have to touch the queers.

Fruit Bust

■

Sal Sanfillipo sits on the metal bench of one of the personnel vans, shifting from ass cheek to ass cheek as the vehicle bounces over potholes. Sal’s getting more pissed by the second. Some fag motherfucker’s gonna pay for this shit.

The van stops and Sal and his colleagues pour out. This stretch of Clark Street, normally pretty busy at 12:45am, is flat-out deserted. The fruits and the normal citizens who live around here have seen these raids before. They know the moment they see the advance unmarked cars squeal up to get the hell off the street — hell, nobody wants to get caught up in a mess of pissed-off Chicago cops forced to do a fruit bar raid. Bystanders, nearby restaurant proprietors, hell, anybody with a heartbeat unfortunate enough to be within reach of a cop gets swept up. Once even a couple of nuns out for a walk got pinched.

Sal looks up at the sign hanging over sidewalk. Ma Barker’s Bistro. Fuckin’ fag name. He marches into the place with his mates. It’s dark and smoky. Smells of cologne and gin. Not a broad in the place, the sick fucks. The original dozen cops who went in already have lined the employees and patrons up against the bar and the opposite wall. Looks like about fifty or so people with their hands against the wall, their feet shoulder width apart. “Alright, ladies,” the detail sergeant shouts, “drop ‘em.”
The fifty or so exchange glances. “C’mon, c’mon! Take down your panties!”

One of the fifty — looks like the manager of the place, the den mother — says: “Why?”

The sergeant looks at him as if he’s smeared with dog shit. “Because I say so, Dolores.” Sal and the rest of the guys from the personnel vans now line up behind the men with their hands on the walls. The sergeant adds, “We wanna make sure none a’ you sweetie-pies are carryin’ any pep pills or goofballs. You all look hopped up on somethin’.” With that he clacks his nightstick across the manager’s teeth, three of which are spit in a bloody glob on the floor.

Sal and the boys have been given no specific instructions on how to search the men. They take this to mean they may use their discretion. Nothing makes a certain breed of cop happier. Sal’s breed.
The two dozen cops move in and get to work. Sal’s guy is a blondie with a spit curl. He’s thin as a rail and pale. The piece of shit is soft like a schoolgirl. Never did an honest day’s work in his friggin’ life. Probably got some sugar daddy who puts him up and keeps clothes on his back. Sal feels sick to his stomach.

Sal jabs the pale blondie in the small of his back with his nightstick. By the way, this is his old, nicked-up nightstick. He’s never gonna use it again after tonight’s work. The blondie grimaces and utters a high-pitched moan.

“Sa’matter, you can’t take it, girlie?” Sal says. “Doan worry about my little bat here. This is my contraband probe. Gonna see if you got somethin’ hidden up your ass. You’ll like that, wontchya?” He jabs the blondie again. And again the blondie emits a girl’s moan. “Too much for you, huh?” Sal says. “Your old high school pals over in ‘Nam are gettin’ their legs blown off every day and you’re cryin’ about a tap in the kidneys? By the way, how many of ’em did you blow in the locker room? All of ’em?”

“Please stop,” the blondie whispers.

Sal leans in close. “Huh?” he says. “What’s that? Oh, I’ll stop.” Sal cracks the blondie across the side of his head with his kid-gloved right hand, making sure his palm covers the fruit’s earhole. Perfect shot. The blondie yells in pain. Pop goes the eardrum.

The blondie falls against the fruit next to him. The other fruit turns his head in surprise. Sal thinks: I seen this prick somewheres before. The man makes eye contact with Sal, wordlessly pleading with him. Oh yeah, Sal thinks, I know d’is guy! Da fuck’s he doin’ here?

“Please,” the fruit says. “This is a big mistake. I just walked in here. I didn’t know what kind of place this is. You know me — we’re neighbors.”

Sal does know him. Sal also knows the guy’s full of shit. Three drained highball glasses sit on the bar in front of him, along with his change, his pack of Raleighs, and a gold-plated lighter with his initials etched into it — RB. Rocco Bianco. The alderman. Jesus H. Christ in heaven. Y’stay in this fuckin’ job long enough, Sal thinks, y’see everything!

“Come wit’ me,” Sal says, grasping the alderman’s elbow. He pulls Rocco away from the wall and leads him toward the rear door. “Honest to God,” Rocco says. “What is this, a homo joint?” Sal doesn’t answer. Still, Rocco keeps talking. “This is all a big mistake. Really, it is. You believe me, don’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah. Sure. I believe you. Just shut up and get the fuck outta here,” Sal says as he pushes Rocco through the service entrance door. Rocco stumbles a little. He turns toward Sal. “I owe you one, buddy,” he says. He turns on his heel and walks quickly into the shadows of the alley.

“I know it,” Sal says.

To be continued

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 All fictional characters, descriptions, and situations are the property of the author.

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BLACK COMEDY

By Michael G. Glab

© 2013

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— Twenty-five —

[Early June, 1968. The world outside Anna’s door continues to spin out of control. Where’s Anthony? Oh, you know, he’s out trying to fix that world. Anna is alone, save for her imagination. There must be a place of hope. Anna hopes Bobby can lead her — and the nation — there. Reality gets in the way.]

More than anything in the world right now, Anna wants to cry but she can’t let herself. She knows it’s ridiculous but she can’t shake the old warning her mother and aunts and Nonna Luisa always bestowed upon pregnant girls who were on the verge of tears: Don’t cry or else you’ll dry up your milk.

I mean, honestly, Anna thinks. I read Dr. Spock. This is the 1960s for God’s sake. We should be way past those old wives tales.

But, still, Anna won’t succumb.

That’s why she tries her best not to think about that delicious fantasy she’s been having for months. It started back around March, even before the wedding. Anthony hasn’t touched her since late winter. No, not even on their wedding night. She thought at first, Well, marriage is for life so there’ll be plenty of time, y’know, for that kind of stuff.

So far, though, nothing.

Of course, it’s her fault. Anthony says so. The more her pregnancy has progressed, the fatter a cow she has become. Anthony doesn’t even want to see her unclothed. She has to change in the bathroom, out of his eyesight, unless she wants to hear him piss and moan about how gross she looks.

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So Anna’s mind began to wander. It landed upon Bobby and why not? So good-looking. So exciting. So… valiant. That little tuft of hair that always falls over his forehead, the one he always has to brush back. He even did it at the microphone in L.A. after he said, “… and now it’s on to Chicago and let’s win there.”

The Dream

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This is…, was, Anna’s fantasy: She’d be walking through the halls of the Conrad Hilton. Just walking, you know, because Anthony was outside, of course, screaming up at delegates’ rooms along with the hundred thousand or one million or ten million other protesters, the ones he’s had a hell of a lot more time for than her these days.

The door of one of the rooms would open, and there, a vision, as near to a messiah as Anna would let herself believe, would be Bobby. He’d be tying his tie, his hair mussed from his shower.

“Oh,” he’d say, “pardon me. Is everything alright.”

Anna’d smile shyly and say, “Yes. Sure.”

“You look lost,” Bobby would say.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Please, come in.”

Bobby would run his fingers through his hair. He’d offer her orange juice and maybe an English muffin.

“What is it?” he’d say as Anna sat on the sofa. “What’s bothering you?”

“Oh, you’ve got too much to think about,” Anna’d say. “Don’t worry about me.”

“But I am worried about you.”

And then it would all pour out of Anna. Ma cutting her off. Daddy having to sneak around in back just to see her occasionally and slip her a ten or twenty because…, well, because there isn’t much money in gonzo radical journalism. Anthony being disgusted by her enormous weight. “God in heaven, I think I’ve gained a ton,” she’d say. “Fifteen pounds at least!”

“But,” Bobby would say, “you’re beautiful.”

“I am?”

“Yes you are. Actually, you’re radiant.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Bobby would place his hand on her basketball bulge. He’d gently and innocently caress her belly. “There’s nothing on this Earth more beautiful than a pregnant woman,” Bobby’d say. “My mother always told me that.”

… Nothing On This Earth More Beautiful….

■

At that point, Anna would be totally and incontrovertibly his. He’d kiss her cheek gently and she’d crave more. He’d tell her there was a place for a sensible, sensitive, intelligent young woman like her. He’d bring her to the White House with him, and they would Change The World.

War — ended. Poverty — addressed. Racism — eliminated. She, Anna Claudia Pontone, would stand next to him every step of the way. And, of course, there’d be the fabulous, almost unimaginably good, spiritual sex. For the past three months, Anna had brought herself to climax a time or two or several dozen without even touching herself — well, not every time — thinking such things.

The fantasy was so good, so realistic, that Anna already knew what Bobby’s neck smelled like.
Only right now she can’t allow herself to think about the smell of his neck — otherwise she’ll cry.

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And she doesn’t want to cry. You know, because of Ma, her aunts, and her Nonna Luisa, damn them.

Anna hasn’t turned the TV off since yesterday morning when, at a little past three thirty, the bulletin first flashed that there’d been a shooting at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, Bobby Kennedy’s California primary campaign headquarters. She hasn’t left the house since. Nor has she had any company; Anthony has been out, somewhere, doing whatever it is he’s doing for the Convention in August.

The Dream Lay Dying

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Her emotions rise and fall with the continuing news reports. Before breakfast, Walter Cronkite says that the gunman shot Bobby with a .22 caliber pistol. That’s good news because even though Anna knows only a little bit about guns, she is aware that a .22 is rather small, not like the hunting round that tore a fist-sized hole in Martin Luther King’s neck.

Prior to lunch, Bobby comes out of surgery to remove the bullet and bone fragments from his brain. Anna experiences a feeling that can almost be described as glee, for Bobby’s still alive.

Just before dinner time, Bobby’s spokesman Frank Mankiewicz says the doctors are awfully worried; the Senator is showing no improvement at all. Later comes the report that Bobby’s sisters and even Jackie Kennedy have come to the hospital to be at his side. Now Anna begins to mourn. It is a death watch.

It’s almost four in the morning. Mankiewicz appears on the screen again. The words at the bottom of the screen read, “Live from Good Samaritan Hospital.” She can only catch the last words of Mankiewicz’s statement: “… he was, uh, 42 years old.”

Finally, to hell with Ma and her sisters and Nonna Luisa, to hell with everybody in this goddamned rotten world, to hell with her milk — she can bottle feed her baby — Anna lets go. She cries. Deeply. So deeply she must force herself to stop every now and then so she can breathe. The fantasy — the fantasies — are no more. That tuft of hair, that innocent peck on the cheek, the lovemaking, the world changed. Gone.

Now all that’s left is the life inside her womb. And all Anna wants from Anthony is a little help.

To be continued

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Join us Thursday for Episode 26 of the serial e-novel, “Black Comedy.”

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