the Last Buffoon Read online

  I see a sink and cracked mirror in the corner, push myself from the all, and swerve in that direction. It’s an old steel tub shaped like an orange crate. I lean my thighs against it and in the fading daylight look at the mirror. Good grief — is that the Amazing Frapkin? Unless I’m looking through a hole in the wall at a bloody old derelict, it is indeed the Amazing Frapkin. Gingerly I touch my nose. Ouch! It looks straight — maybe nothing’s broken. I bare my teeth and see they’re rinsed with blood but all present and accounted for. If I had broken ribs I couldn’t have walked over here. It appears that I’m still in one piece and relatively sound.

  I’d better not hang around — those maniacs might decide to come back and finish me off. I’ll bet that thirteen-year-old daughter is a hot little number. Stop thinking about that! My insatiable lust will be the ruin of me yet. Maybe God’s trying to tell me something.

  I turn on the faucet to wash up, but no water comes out. This isn’t my day. I guess I’ll have to return home like this, and I’d better get going while I’m still able. Stumbling to the doorway, I see my mangled Borsalino on the floor. I bend to pick it up and nearly black out. Steady, Frapkin, don’t make fast moves. I harvest it, knock out the crown, and with the blade of my hand smack in my traditional Mafioso crease. It’s smudged with filth but its shape is still perfect; there’s nothing like a real Borsalino. My sunglasses are beyond salvage, I’ll have to buy another pair at Sex Fifth Avenue or maybe Bazoomingdale’s. I fetch my wallet and drop it into my coat pocket.

  Hanging onto the bannister and wall, I hobble down the creaky stairs. Should I take a chance and report this savage beating to the cops? I’d better not, because if those brutes did what they did there’s every reason to believe they’ll do what they said. No cops.

  I open the downstairs door and step onto the crowded sidewalk. Pedestrians glance at my bloodied face and clothes and keep walking. People like me are common sights on the sidewalks of New York. I walk into the street and hold up my hand, but two empty cabs pass me by — they don’t want me to bleed or die in their back seat, and who can blame them? The closest subway is at Sixth Avenue and 42nd Street, so I lean in that direction, my head still taking whacks, a few rats still scratching in my guts. America doesn’t appreciate her great hack writers — that’s for sure. Like a ragged soldier in the Army of Lost Souls, I make my way to the subway.

  I’m standing on the subway platform watching my train thunder into the station. The engineer hits the brakes, a million vampires scream, the train slows to a stop, the doors crank open. I stumble aboard and collapse onto a bench. I think I’ll close my eyes and sink into a deep state of Buddhist meditation that’ll help my poor body heal itself. Wait a minute — the woman sitting opposite me looks familiar. She’s tall and rawboned with a face like an owl wearing glasses. I think she’s one of those lady reporters I coped with during my illustrious press agent days.

  “Stop staring at me!” she screams, gnashing her teeth and making fists.

  Everybody on the subway car looks at bruised and battered Alexander Frapkin, and I turtle into my coat collar. “You look like somebody I used to know.”

  “I couldn’t possibly know anybody like you!”

  I close my eyes and escape.

  At the door of my apartment I’m assailed by the odor of soap, ammonia, and perfume. My wife, in a mauve bathrobe, sits on the sofa, knees in the air, heels against her ass, doing her fingernails. When she sees me she jumps up and lets out a cry.

  “What happened?”

  “I got mugged.” I slam the door and snap all the latches.

  She runs toward me and looks in my purple eyes. “How did it happen?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  She heads for the phone. “I’ll call Sidney.”

  “Whatever you do, please don’t call Sidney.”

  Her pretty brown eyes dart around excitedly. “But we have to do something!”

  “We will do something. I’ll take a shower and go to bed, and you’ll be quiet like a little Argentine mouse.” I stagger toward the bedroom-office.

  “Can I make you some coffee?”

  “If I drink coffee I won’t be able to sleep.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help you?”

  I stop, turn around, and grab her shoulder. “Kiss me.”

  She squirms away. “Don’t touch me.”

  I continue to the bedroom and can’t help noticing that my apartment is spic and span. Maybe the cleanliness and order will help me think more clearly and improve my work. When I turn on the light over my desk, I notice that she’s dusted its top and rearranged my papers and materials. “Mabra!”

  “What?”

  “Get in here!”

  She runs in on furry pink slippers. “What is it?”

  “I thought I told you to leave my desk alone!”

  “I just cleaned it up for you a little.”

  “I’ll never be able to find anything!”

  “Everything is right where you put it. I just made it neat.”

  I want to murder her in cold blood, but my head is banging fiercely. “I’ll talk to you about this tomorrow. Please leave so I can get undressed.”

  “I am sorry to make you upset.”

  I point to the door. She spins and runs away. Everything is going against me all of a sudden — my ascending star has lost its momentum and is falling into hell. Undressing, I drop my clothes in a corner, take a fresh towel from a drawer and make my way past my fretting wife to the bathroom, where I turn on the shower and notice that the window hasn’t been fixed. That fucking no-good Shapiro. God, there goes my head again — I’d better think nice thoughts. I stand under the pouring water and watch my blood sacrifice drip down the drain. What have I done to deserve this?

  When finished I climb out of the tub and glance in the mirror. Now I resemble my old man on the night he set fire to his girlfriend’s porch, and her younger brother beat the piss out of him. Undaunted, he went on to incinerate her car, just as I shall continue to write despite this unfortunate episode. A Frapkin may be laid low, but he never surrenders.

  Normal toweling produces sharp pain, so I daub myself carefully, trying not to curse, trying to think of flowers and babies. I wrap myself in the towel and proceed to the bedroom.

  “You are all right?” Mabra asks as I pass her on the sofa.

  “Yes.”

  “There is something I can do?”

  “Come to bed and kiss me all over.”

  She looks exasperated. “You should get married, I think so.”

  “I happen to be married to you.”

  “I mean to a real wife.”

  “You are my real wife.”

  I limp to the bedroom, shut the door, put out the light, and fall onto my king-sized used waterbed. The ocean slogs and rocks me to sweet sleep.

  Chapter Seven

  At two in the morning I have to take a piss. Aching everywhere, I roll off my waterbed, put on my thonged sandals and gray hospital bathrobe, tippy-toe to the door, and open it silently, for I don’t want to disturb my little wife.

  I enter the living room and see her sleeping tummy-own on the sofa, moonlight streaming through the window onto the lower half of her body. She’s thrown off her covers and her nightgown has risen high on the leg closest me, revealing its beautiful strong shape and the bottom of white underpants. The palms of her hands are on the pillow, her face turned away and covered by a profusion of black hair.

  In the bright moonlight the scene is enchanted. Gingerly I sit on the old leather chair facing the sofa and feast my sleepy blackened eyes upon my wife as she slumbers, air sighing in and out her mouth and nose.

  Is my little Argentine gypsy dreaming of Dr. Sidney Siegel striding across the heavens in his white coat and stethoscope necklace, or perhaps of the pampas at midday, horses grazing on yellow grass? Might she be wrestling with an old goat, symbolic of her new husband, or is the Lord telling her she shouldn’t have violated the marriage sacrament fo
r a paltry green card?

  It’s strange, but my desire isn’t specifically sexual. I want to do more than merely hold her in my arms and stick in my cock. I want to dissolve my entire body into hers, mix my blood with hers, unite with her beauty, and become beautiful myself.

  My bladder distracts me. Arising quietly, I pass through the darkness to the bathroom, turn on the light that momentarily blinds me, and close the door. Taking out Charlie, I piss into the bowl. There are no traces of blood in my urine; I appear to have survived the vicious beating with no more than superficial bruises and pains. Five hundred years ago they burned people like me at the stake, but now they only beat us up once in awhile. Things are getting better all the time.

  On the way to bed I’m halted once more by the sight of Mabra in dreamland. She’s moved into the fetal position with her bare kneecaps toward me and her face still hidden by the tangled net of her hair. She’s sort of loveable with her mops and brooms and Latin bullshit; her beauty surely indicates merit won in past lives. Sleep well, my princess of the pampas.

  Silently in the moonlight I bow and gently touch my lips to her hair.

  The car turned onto a rough country road. In the trunk, Ripelli gripped the tire iron in his right hand. He didn’t know how many of them were in the car, but he was ready. If he got out of this one he’d track down that French broad and strangle her with his bare hands.

  The car continued for another mile, then turned to the right and stopped. Ripelli moved himself into a position where he could swing the tire iron soon as the trunk opened. He heard them talking, heard them get out of the car and walk back toward him.

  “We’ll just dump him over the cliff here,” one of them said.

  They shuffled around and a key scraped into the trunk lock. Ripelli saw a shaft of moonlight and a man with a nose like a turnip lifting the lid. Behind him was a hoodlum in a blue jacket and a dapper guy in a homburg, all with guns at the ready.

  Ripelli swung the tire iron with all his might at the hoodlum opening the trunk. The nub of the iron caught him in the eye, crushing it and cracking his cheekbone. He fell back screaming horribly, and Ripelli bounded out of the trunk, got set, and thrust the sharp end of the tire iron six inches into the fat stomach of the hoodlum in the blue jacket. Blood gushed out, the hoodlum’s eyes rolled into his head, and Ripelli snatched away his gun and used his body as a shield against the bullets being fired in wild panic by the dapper guy in the homburg.

  Ripelli took aim around the sagging bleeding twitching body and fired two rounds at the dapper man. The first blew apart his mustache and most of his face, the second made a big dark splotch on the collar of his white shirt. Ripelli fired again and

  Rrriiiiinnnnnggggggg.

  “Hello?”

  “This is Jake — haven’t you forgot something?”

  “Oh yeah. I was supposed to pay you some money a few days ago.”

  “You haven’t got it?”

  “Of course I’ve got it, but I had an accident and I’ve been staying home in an effort to recuperate.”

  “What kinda accident?”

  “I fell down a flight of stairs.”

  “You’re not tryin’ to con an old con man, are you?”

  “You’ll be able to see with your own eyes. Do you want me to bring the money over right now?”

  “If you can get up out of your sick bed.”

  “I’ll have to go to the bank first. Can I see you in about an hour?”

  “I’m having a little scene over here, so you might want to bring a bottle of something.”

  “Any broads there?”

  “Would I have a scene without broads?”

  I hang up the phone and realize I should stay home and finish today’s fifteen pages before going to Jake’s, but a debt is a debt and should be discharged as soon as possible, and I’m three days late as it is. What shall I wear, my normal uniform being torn and filthy due to my date with Betty Herndon? I look through the closet, now smelling of Mabra’s fragrant clothes jammed in with mine, and see my choice is between blue jeans or press agent clothes. I’m too old to walk around like a hippie, so it’ll have to be a press agent outfit. If William Burroughs can wear suits all the time, so can I.

  But which suit? There’s my glen plaid, the brown herringbone, the basic blue, the blazer and gray pants combination, the houndstooth number, and my stunning movie premiere tuxedo which of course is out of the question. I think the basic blue might be the best all-round selection since its styling is least out-of-date, and I’ll match it with a light blue shirt and maroon tie. Over everything shall drape my black Joe College raincoat lined with zipout golden fleece, and on my head shall sit my genuine gray Irish wool floppy-brimmed hat, Secret Agent Frapkin’s favorite back-up hat. I’ll look like a respectable but somewhat eccentric gentleman, and might even be invited to join the local Chamber of Commerce, where I shall plant a bomb.

  I dress quickly, feeling the pangs of my old press agent responsibility as I don the garments. Putting the Alvin Jones check in my breast pocket, I gather together what must go to the cleaners, and walk into the living room, where my little wife has set up her ironing board and is doing a blouse.

  “I have a business appointment,” I tell her. “If there are any calls for me, write down the person’s name, the time he called, and the message if any.”

  She looks up from her ironing, is wearing jeans and a sweater. “I have to go to a job interview today, so I won’t be home much longer.”

  “What kind of job interview?”

  “At New York University Hospital?”

  “To do what?”

  “To be a nurses’ aide.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No.”

  “Nurses’ aides empty bedpans and bathe people who’re dying. Is that what you want to do?”

  “I have to make some money.”

  “Why don’t you smarten up and make Dr. Siegel take care of you?”

  Her iron makes fast erratic movements. “I am not that kind of woman, and I do not want to talk with you about it because I do not want to have an argument.”

  “If you have to work, why don’t you get a job in a fancy boutique on the East Side? You’ve got class — you shouldn’t be carrying bedpans full of shit around.”

  “Thank you very much for your advice.”

  “I can get you a job as a topless dancer, if you want.”

  “A what?”

  “You know — you take off all your clothes and dance on top of a bar.”

  “Are you crazy!”

  “It pays very well.”

  “No!”

  “I was just trying to be helpful.”

  “Please don’t give me your helpful.”

  I look at my watch. “I’d better get going.”

  “I hope your business goes very well.”

  “Thank you, and happy bedpans.” I slap her ass and run for the door.

  “Keep your hands away from me, you stupid crazy!”

  Hurtling down the stairs, I nearly fall onto Mary, the old Italian lady who lives alone in the apartment directly beneath me, and who likes to take walks in the dark hallway. She’s wearing a dirty black dress, puffs a cigarette, looks like a retired witch who eats too much. “How’re you doin’, Frapkin?” she asks in a crackly voice.

  Evidently her vision is bad and she can’t see my face too well. “I’m okay. How about you?”

  “So-so. You gotta goil livin’ witcha up there?”

  “I got married again.”

  She wrinkles her forehead and turns down the corners of her mouth. “Again?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You ain’t gotta lie to me — I know young people live together these days without getting’ married. You think I’d get married if I was young today? What for? Look at Mrs. Castelango on the third floor — her husband gets drunk and beats her up, and she stays with him because the priest says she’s gotta. If I was her I’d tell the priest to go to hel
l, wait until my husband falls asleep, pour a little lighter fluid on him, and make a bonfire. Why should anybody be stuck with the same person for the rest of her life?”

  It never takes much to get her going. “I’ve got to get to the bank before it closes. Speak to you later, Mary.”

  “Yeah.” She raises her cigarette to her mouth.

  Down the stairs and out the front door I go. The sun is a silver ball behind the blanket of clouds, and the sidewalk is loaded with cowboys. You expect to see a stagecoach come thundering by, followed by a gang of bandits, but then you realize that Christopher Street cowboys wear eye shadow and reek of cologne, this being fag alley, not Abilene.

  However I’m not anti-faggot — don’t get me wrong. No one should be barred from any job on account of sexual habits. If a man wants to get fucked in the ass, that’s his business. But I wish these looney bastards would find another neighborhood to hang out in because they’re driving me nuts.

  My first stop is the dry cleaners, where I must make arrangements to have my clothing repaired and cleaned, and my Borsalino blocked.

  “Vhat happened to you?” asked the dry cleaner.

  “I tripped and fell.”

  “You musta fell down a mountain. You sure some guy didn’t catch you in bed mit his vife?”

  “I should be so lucky.”

  He takes the clothes and gives me a little slip of paper, which I put into my wallet. Next I stroll to the Chemical Bank on Sheridan Square, where I maintain a perpetually troubled special checking account. Pushing through two bulletproof glass doors, I enter the great hall of money, money, money.

  An old guard who couldn’t shoot his way out of a pastrami sandwich looks at me suspiciously although he’s seen me here a thousand times and should know by now that I’m harmless, although I’m not. As an authority on criminology, I think this bank could be knocked over quite easily. Often I’ve thought of getting together with a few desperados and trying it, but with my luck that senile guard would try to be a hero, take a wild shot, and score a direct hit on my foolish heart.