10

The cops cut him loose without much more hassle. He agreed to a slap on the hand, a visit and apology to Amoco, a dollar and sixty nine cents plus eight months of interest. None of it involved the courts. In a way, J felt, it was almost as if the police were trying to circumvent their own system. He had to admire that.

The bank cut him loose with even less hassle. Or they would have if they’d had any way to reach J. The phone number he’d left them had been bogus. The human resources department considered writing a letter, but somehow it got lost in the shuffle. When J, didn’t show up for the work that everyone had already accepted that he didn’t have, no one blinked an eye. Except for J’s new clothes, it was as if the interview never happened. For the next week, J wore the Tuxedo jacket around his apartment while he sulked. He was all class in his holey boxer shorts, “Free Leonard” T-shirt and tuxedo jacket. It wasn’t the arrest or the loss of a job he never wanted, it was Matty. He’d managed to distract himself for three weeks, but as he approached a month without a word from her, he started to unravel. The love-sickening adventures of Ben and Sherri weren’t helping him any either. He knew they were doing their best to spare his feelings, but he could sense the lust in the air and it made him want to vomit. They hadn’t kissed on New Year’s as far as J or Sid had seen, but J had a feeling there had been a lot of sleeping over. Judging from the influx in turtleneck wear, a lot of what his high school gym teacher had always called “extra-curricular activities,” had transpired, or else there had been a big sale on turtlenecks and somehow he’d missed it. So far, J had kept quiet on the matter, but there’s nothing like rotten jealousy, bitterness and anger to spoil the charming nature of new love. J had his share of all three and he didn’t see how he could keep quiet for much longer. Every time the four of them were at Sid’s he could feel his insides start to boil. The closer their stupid heads got together the more he wanted to grab them both by the collars and slam some sense into them.

He wondered if they knew what kinds of heartache was before them. Oh sure, he thought, it’s so perfect now. To Ben, Sherri’s skin is like satin, but in six months he’ll realize that she picks her scabs until they bleed and it leaves little scabs all over. And sure, his breathe makes them both giggle now, but in six months, his every breath will send little bolts of anger lightening down Sherri’s spine. She’ll think about spitting in his food and he’ll try to find ways to breathe more annoyingly. At first it’s all teeny tiny puppies and flowers, but every caress, every kiss, every longing stare is paid back ten times in petty arguments, shouting matches and pure unadulterated frustration. Then just when they thought they were through that mess, finished with all the shouting and all the pettiness, just when he thought they had finally found the rhythm that he remembered from the beginning she’d go and find some big oaf to fuck around with. It would turn out that there truly was a calm before the storm. The calm was her falling out of love and the storm was Hurricane Hulking Ignormaus blowing through and wiping out any last trailer park of a chance that the two of them might have.

“J? Earth to J.” he heard Sherri say from some faraway place. He snapped back to Sid’s kitchen and looked at Sherri and her funny little smile. It almost made him cry, she looked so happy.

“I’m here.” he said a little too loudly. Sherri moved back to give his voice space. He found his inside voice and said, “What are we talking about?”

“Look, J, if you want to talk about it, it’s ok,” Sherri said soothingly.

Her confidence was starting to get on his nerves. She used to be so much simpler. The addition of Ben had added layers.

“There’s enough talking in this world. There are whole branches of government who spend all of their time talking. We aren’t here to talk. We’re here for action.”
The word action caused Ben to steal a glance in Sherri’s direction. She was stealing one in hers at the same time. They both blushed as they turned away.

“Oh for Fuck’s sake,” J exclaimed as he pushed his chair out from the table. “I’ve got take a walk. You two make babies, I’ll be back later.”

Poor Sid just stood frozen in the corner, his eyes dancing between the new couple and an angered J. Before J could get too far down the stairs, Sid grabbed his coat and followed suit.

Sid had to break into a jog to keep up with J’s brisk walk.
“Where you going?” Sid asked as he tried to catch his breath.
“Matty’s.” J answered as briskly as he walked.
“But why? You haven’t talked to her in a month.” Sid whined.
“Doesn’t matter, Sid. There are things I need to say and they all start with ‘You dirty rotten whore’ and end with ‘take me back.’” J explained.

Meanwhile back in the kitchen, Ben and Sherri had both peeled off the turtlenecks so they could get down to examining their handiwork from earlier that morning. Sherri made a grab for Ben’s belt buckle but he squirmed away. She made another grab, but Ben again dodged her. She made one last pass and then realized that his little dance wasn’t just a game. She may not have a lot of experience, but she knew enough to know that a man trying to keep his pants on was not a good sign.
“What’s wrong?” she asked as gingerly as she could as she curled up against his chest.
“Nothing,” Ben told her as he unconciously puffed himself outward.
“Boys with nothing wrong don’t fight girls taking off their pants,” Sherri teased with a smile and a look up into Ben’s eyes. “You can tell me, “ she said and made that pouty face that Ben had already grown to fear. How so much power could be in the curl of two little pink flabby pieces of skin, Ben would never know.
“I’m just worried,” Ben said. “I think we’re bothering J. Maybe we should cool it a bit,” he said with a shrug that had the effect of a small earthquake on Sherri’s nuzzled head. It was only a tremor, but with a foundation like Sherri’s, she had reason to be a little concerned.
Her eyes narrowed as she pulled away from Ben. Two little slits stared at Ben waiting for more. He had thought he was done, the “cooling it a bit” being entirely self-explanatory, but from the looks in her slits, Ben realized he had to find more words.

“Uh, well. I just mean. We haven’t done much since the whole ‘Reading Rocks’ thing. And well, by we, I mean the four of us, not you and me, because, well, you and me have done lots,” Ben said “lots” with a big goofy grin on his face. The big goofy grin had no visible effect on the slits staring at him, so he plundered on, “And well, I just thought that maybe for J’s sake, we should focus more on the four of us and less on the two of us. Please stop me and agree,” Ben offered somewhat desperately.


“I don’t understand,” Sid whined. “If she’s a dirty whore, why would you want her back?”
“Sid. Don’t call my girlfriend a dirty whore.” J replied sternly.
“But”
“Just don’t. I’m sure there is a perfectly good explanation why she was with that guy wearing no pants and why she hasn’t called to apologize, well actually she hasn’t called because I don’t have a phone, so it’s only my stubborness that has prevented our reunion and look we’re here.”

They stood before the door. J stood at the ready. Any moment he was going to release his hand from his pocket and ring that buzzer. Any moment now. Sid just watched. J waited, but nothing happened. Sid waited and looked at J strangely.

“Let’s walk back,” J said quietly as if the idea had arrived word by word.
“Ok.” Sid replied obediently.
“Sid, Why?” J asked, “Why do men go mad for a woman and then as soon as we’ve got her we just go mad?”
J had prepared to carry on, but Sid spoke up, “I think it’s the same as any thing else,.really.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” said Sid taking a deep breath, “When you plan an operation for us you go mad about that operation. You sit and you stew and you can’t stop thinking about every way that some company has offended the country, the working class, or you. Then by the time we’re ready to take action, you’ve lost interest. You’ve started in on something else.”

“Hmm.” J replied. “I don’t think that’s it at all. I think it’s a matter of losing interest. Things are exciting at first, but then once I’ve been around them a while I get bored. I need a lot of action to keep me excited.”

Sid frowned, but he didn’t say anything.

“But Ben, I need a lot of action to keep my interest,” Sherri offered playfully.
“I really think we can hold off a little while,” Ben told her as he pulled his turtleneck back over his big black curls. “Let’s come up with something to get started on for J’s return. He needs something to get his mind active again.”

Sherri reluctantly returned to her cotton shell, but when her head popped through and her hair was covering her face, Ben gave her a little nudge and a smile that made her see that things might not be so bad.

J and Sid returned to Ben and Sherri seated at the table, heads huddled together in obvious planning mode. Both J and Sid surveyed the room carefully looking for evidence of wild animal sex, but found none. Neither was sure whether to be disappointed or pleased.

“What are you two planning?” J asked.
Ben stood and J heard Sherri titter nervously.
“We know you’ve been down lately. And we know we haven’t had a campaign that has been both successful and anti-establishment in several months, so Sherri and I put our heads together,”

Now it was Sid’s turn to titter nervously.

All three turned to Sid, but Sid clammed his lips shut and made a funny face as he blushed.

Ben continued, “We were thinking that we might be able to kill two birds with one stone...er...not that exactly, but take care of two of your er...well, setbacks, at one time.”

J considered Ben carefully. He wasn’t sure what the other setback Ben was referring to, but he had a funny feeling that it was the recent Matty situation. While he appreciated that Sherri and Ben had this whole ‘new love’ thing going on, the thought of them somehow sharing that with him didn’t sit well. What were the options after all? Set him up with a friend at a protest? He wasn’t sure they had other friends. Start an anti-establishment dating service? That seemed a little unlikely. Or worst of all, somthing along the lines of a menage-a-trois to save the dolphins. He was pretty sure even the dolphins would prefer death.

Ben had been waiting, trying to judge J’s reaction to his vague description. He couldn’t read J’s face, except he thought he recognized the eye scrunch that often indicated doubt. Before J could get too far in that line of thinking Ben knew he should say something, but he suddenly lost his nerve. At that moment, Sherri spoke up, “What Ben is trying to say is that we think we can combine sticking it to “The Man” with sticking it to that other guy.”

J gave her a puzzled look.

“We think with a little Sherlock action we can find out who the guy with Matty was and then make his life and his employer’s life just a little more miserable. Like old times.”

The tiniest hint of a smile started to creep onto J’s face.
“It’s so crazy, it just might work,” J whispered. It might work so long as the punk wasn’t working for some nonprofit or something equally righteous.

Sid let out a little yelp and then blushed again. He didn’t know why he had so many sound effects on this evening.

The phone rang in Sid’s apartment. Everybody jumped. Sid looked around bewildered. The only people that called were already in the room. Then he got worried. Maybe it was something horrible. His face fell and he stood frozen. J picked up the phone when he realized that Sid wasn’t going to make it in time.

“This is J.”
“No.”
“Is he ok?”
J made the universal symbol for get me something to write on which he thought was hold a fake pencil and write fake illegible cursive through the air, but he must have had his universes confused because nobody reacted. He tucked the phone under his ear, held out his hand like a notepad, gestured with the other hand to indicate he had a pen. He dabbed the fake pen on his tongue and began to write invisble squiggly marks on his hand. Sherri understood and she grabbed a nearby pen and paper. When Ben realized what was going on he exclaimed, “Who licks their pen? Is this 1790?”

Sherri shot him a dirty look while J wrote down parts of his conversation. He hung up the phone and looked up at the expectant faces.

“McCormick is at Bethesda Oak Hospital. He had a stroke.”

“What?” Sherri asked in mock shock. She knew the answer, since she’d heard clearly, but when words fail people they often resort to one word questions. As close as J was to McCormick the other three only knew him by name, so any sense of shakenness they felt was purely sympathetic.

J seemed especially calm. “I’m going to go see how he is,” he told them. “You three should probably get to work finding out where Matty’s boy toy works. When I come back I want to get busy on this one.”

Ben bit his tongue. He so desperately wanted to say, “like he got busy on your girlfriend,” but knew that he was better off holding that in. There is a certain age in a young man’s life when he is almost fully capable of deciding when to throw out a zinger and when to leave it holstered. Ben wasn’t at that age yet, but luck was on everyone’s side at that moment.

Ben grabbed a bus and headed to the Good Samaritan Hospital. He wondered if everyone there was as good a samaritan as McCormick. The bus got him within three quarters of a mile of the hospital. From there he ran. His sneakers were better suited to the pounding than his dress shoes had been. He remembered he’d lost those shoes. Maybe they were still there and he should return to get them. The cold crisp air was refreshing when it wasn’t freezing. J’s rush to get to McCormick and the chill of the evening air meant that J covered the distance to the hospital in excellent time. He still had a little of the stuff that had made him a fine junior varsity soccer player in high school. If his coach hadn’t been such a drill sergeant maybe he would’ve stuck with it. “Probably not” he panted as he arrived at the hospital doors.

The doors peek-a-booed open to let him into the lobby. He rushed to the desk and breathed “McCormick” heavily.

“New Bornwick?” the nurse asked gruffly.

J held up a finger to ask for a moment. “McCormick,” he said, a little too loudly this time. It’s human nature to confuse volume with clarity. That’s why when people are in foreign countries they shout at each other.

“You don’t have to shout,” the nurse replied unhappily. J wanted to tell her about human nature, but she said, “607” before he had the chance. “But only family is allowed.”

There are certain things that shouldn’t be said to certain people. Some lawyers don’t appreciate lawyer jokes. Some runners don’t like to be called joggers. Some Belgians don’t like to be called French. Most Belgians actually don’t like to be called French. Some dental assistants don’t like to be called honey. Some people don’t like to be told the rules. J wasn’t a lawyer. He may have just run to the hospital, but he wasn’t so much a runner. He was neither Belgian nor French nor did he practice any assistance to any dentists, but J did not like to be told the rules, especially not when they were rules of bureaucracy.

At the announcement of this rule, J smiled a wicked smile. He thought of all the protests he’d been in that involved just such bureaucracy. He thought of the many ways he’d handled just such rules, sit-ins, yell-ins, ordering pizzas for people who didn’t want them, lemons, wedgies, letter-writing, making the most annoying sound in the world, signs, hallucenogenic drugs, paintballs, rats, mice, gerbils, and a variety of other means as necessary. Not having time to plan an all out attack, he decided to turn to the charming three stooges.

“Look!” he shouted as he pointed in the opposite direction of which he was planning to run.

When the nurse looked, J took to running again. When the nurse turned with “What” half-formed on her lips, she couldn’t help but notice the commotion heading in the other direction.

J was sprinting like mad, dodging people, nurses and wheelchairs all at break neck speed. He found it comforting that if he did break his neck, at least he would be able to get to the hospital quickly. The gruff nurse was hollering, but J had only one goal in mind- 706.

Rather than risk the elevator, J charged up 6 flights of stairs. Then exhausted he pulled himself slowly up the last flight. He hadn’t had this much exercise since his run from the police. Had he made physical fitness one of his New Year’s resolution, he would have been off to a fine start.

Breathing heavily, he dragged himself to 706. He burst through the door with what strength he had left only to find empty beds. He ought to strangle that nurse, he thought. Then as his breath settled he thought again. Maybe he should strangle himself since he should have given out when his stair-charging legs had. “607,” she’d said, not “706”. J took the elevator down and made his way to McCormick’s room.

11 is the new 10