Kill Two Birds & Get Stoned (3 page)

Now Fox was whirling around with some invisible partner, twirling his robe exaggeratively, keeping the music going. And the manager was dancing with Clyde.

" '—my huckleberry friend,'" Fox sang. " 'Moon Riv-er-and me.'"

When Fox had run out of lyrics, he came over and stood beside me. Clyde and the manager continued to dance silently for a moment or two, the manager struggling vainly to conceal a slightly confused and bright-eyed smile. Clyde's face looked positively angelic.

"Want to hear something really funny?" said Fox. "It's not even her birthday."

four

I had a hangover the next day but also a rather strange and happy afterglow. There had been something about that Mad Hatter Tea Party atmosphere surrounding the worlds of Clyde Potts and Fox Harris that threatened to draw me into their orbit, into a universe that I suspected might be quite different from my own. I didn't know where they lived, if they lived together, what exactly their relationship was, what they did, or who they really were. I just knew that I liked them and maybe a little bit more. All I had to show for knowing them at all was a letter from the bank coldly critiquing the kind of person I was, threatening my firstborn, and closing out my account. And a hangover. And, of course, the rather strange and happy afterglow. It seemed like a pretty good deal at the time. I didn't hear from Clyde for several days. Indeed, I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever hear from her again. Then, on the third day, just as I was manhandling my recalcitrant toaster, the phone rang. I walked over to my desk, nervously lit a cigarette, and picked up the receiver.

"Sunshine?"

I was relieved to hear that voice. "Yes."

"Are you all right?"

"Now I am."

"Good. I'm calling a meeting of the Three Musketeers tonight at seven-thirty. Will you be there?"

I said I would and she gave me an address in midtown and told me to meet her and Fox on the street outside. I said I would. She hung up before I could say anything else. If the truth be told, I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Clyde and Fox seemed to be the two liveliest people I'd ever met in my life. That seemed like a pretty good reason then. Even now, it doesn't seem like a bad one.

It was balefully obvious to me by this time, of course, that I'd taken a fairly severe tumble off the old AA wagon. Beware the company you keep, my mother always told me, and she wasn't wrong. But sometimes the company you keep keeps you. Sometimes the company you keep keeps
you
from being a sheep. I smoked Camel filters that afternoon, drank coffee, and gave up on the toaster. I was unsure how many tequilas I'd drunk three days before because Fox had no proprietary sense at all and had drunk some of mine. I'd drunk enough, however, to remind me that, in a battle with a toaster, man will always lose. A little alcohol in the system will occasionally give you new insights. Now I realized that man cannot live on bagels alone. So I went out for lunch.

At a little before seven, I took a cab uptown, found the address Clyde had given me, and waited around on the sidewalk. It was Friday evening and people were rushing to get home or to the bars or to wherever they go. I had forgotten that people went out in the evening. The whole scene was vaguely reminiscent of a recently agitated ant colony. About the only people in New York who weren't there were Clyde and Fox. I took out a cigarette, lit it up, paced the sidewalk a bit, and waited. By seven forty-five, I was beginning to wonder if the two of them were up to something that did not include me. Again I felt the unwelcome, irrational stirrings of jealousy, which I knew was crazy and self-defeating. As Fox would tell me later, "Jealousy is not always unfounded or irrational. It's just possible that everybody
is
better than you."

Two cigarettes later, a few minutes after eight o'clock, they both came walking up the sidewalk together, laughing. Clyde came up to me immediately and gave me a light kiss on the lips followed by a warm and lingering hug. Fox, I noticed, was wearing the same royal blue robes but at least he'd changed his pants. The pair he was wearing now looked like a hand-me-down from Professor Harold Hill in
The Music Man
but it was cleaner than what he'd worn earlier in the week. Not that I was a clothing maven of any kind but the last pair he'd worn had revealed a little more of Fox than anybody wanted to see. Clyde was dressed rather seductively in a tight black-leather outfit that made her look like a biker chick in a very upscale gang. For myself, I suppose I looked casual but well turned out, like a novelist who wasn't writing but still dressed the part.

You may wonder why I'm nattering on about sartorial matters. It's just something I learned from Clyde Potts. "What you wear is of very little concern. How you wear what you wear is everything." Fox and I may have made a few mistakes in our time, but in my experience with Clyde, I've never known her to be wrong. Except possibly, of course, about me and Fox.

"Sorry we're late, Sunshine," she said lightly. "It was all Fox's fault."

"Don't try to shift the blame to me," he said. "It was all your fault."

"When are you ever going to learn," asked Clyde, "to take responsibility for your own actions?"

"Only a madman would take responsibility for my actions," said Fox indignantly.

"You're right, darling," said Clyde. "And that's why we love you. Don't we, Sunshine?"

Fox appeared to be staring at me expectantly, like a small child waiting for his mother's approval. I didn't exactly love Fox back then, but in time, incredibly perhaps, even that would change.

"Of course," I answered generously. "By the way, don't tell me we're going to Bennigan's?"

"Careful what you say about Bennigan's," warned Clyde. "It's one of Fox's favorite places."

"I don't believe it," I said. "Fox likes Bennigan's?"

"Judge ye not," Fox intoned, "lest ye be a tourist from Kansas. It is true that I have little in common with the chain people who've made Bennigan's one of our country's most popular chain restaurants. But the chain people and I like Bennigan's for
very
different reasons. As you shall soon see."

But before I could see what Fox was yapping about, I saw something else. I saw Clyde move very close to me and hook her trim arm around mine. It made my arm feel warm all over. Then I saw Fox lock elbows with Clyde on the other side and suddenly the two of them were skipping down the sidewalks of New York dragging me along with them and singing, " 'We're off to see the wizard—the wonderful Wizard of Oz!'" I wasn't sure if I was meant to be the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion—or Dorothy. It was one thing to drink an ungodly number of tequilas and help devour a no-hands birthday cake in a half-empty restaurant. But it was quite another to be stone-cold sober and frolicking like a young schoolgirl before the jaded, judgmental eyes of a crowded block full of New Yorkers. I knew, of course, that New Yorkers had seen just about everything, but I didn't really feel as if they needed to see this particular spectacle at this time. And there was no gracious way to stop the event until Clyde or Fox ran out of energy, and the two of them appeared to be in some kind of competition to see who could keep going the longest. I felt like a shy young boy taking his first dance lessons. When the ordeal was over at last, we'd passed Bennigan's by a good two and a half blocks.

"That's my aerobics for the week," said Fox. "Got a cigarette?" I gave him a cigarette.

"Me, too, Sunshine," said Clyde. I gave her a cigarette.

"Got a light?" asked Fox. I took out my lighter and lit his cigarette.

"Me, too, Sunshine," said Clyde. As I lit her cigarette, she cupped her hand around mine and stared directly into my eyes. When the cigarette was lit, she tapped my hand once gently with her index finger. Then she winked a beautiful wink I will never forget. As an author, even one with spiritual constipation, you may well expect me to be able to describe that wink. Unfortunately, I've never been very good at describing winks. But this one sailed as silver and simple as a hummingbird at dawn or a bullet to the heart.

"Okay," I said. "Where do we go now?"

"Back to Bennigan's, of course," said Fox. "What would cause you to think otherwise?"

"Don't try to follow Fox's logic," said Clyde. "He doesn't have any."

"You don't need logic," said Fox, "once you successfully mistake your own sick fantasy for wisdom."

"See what I mean?" said Clyde. Then she took us both firmly by the arm, and this time, calmly and leisurely, we all walked back to Bennigan's.

If anything, the sidewalks seemed to be even more crowded now, and when we approached the entrance to Bennigan's, I could see that it was fairly swarming with the clientele Fox liked to refer to as "the chain people." I wasn't sure if Fox included me in this unfortunate grouping or not. I like to think my spiritual stature grew in his eyes over the time we were together but I never really summoned the courage to ask him.

"Ah, the teeming masses," said Fox, flicking his cigarette into the gutter, "yearning to breathe smoke free." Smoking was allowed at the bar and the little tables in the vicinity of the bar and this was the area in which we were told by Fox to reconnoiter. He made sure that we staggered our entrances with an almost military precision.

Clyde went first, then me, then Fox, at intervals of several minutes. At last, we rejoined Clyde at a small high table without chairs near the bar surrounded by a sea of chain people.

"Do we know each other?" I asked, only half facetiously.

"The human soul is unknowable," said Fox. "You got a hundred-dollar bill?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "Why?"

"Give it to me," said Fox.

I cast a quizzical eye at Clyde but she had on her world-class poker face. It told you nothing but made you want everything.

"Do what the man says," she said.

I took out my billfold, found a hundred-dollar bill, and handed it to Fox. It sounded like some kind of shakedown, I'll admit, but it felt all right because I trusted Clyde. Strange as it may seem, I trusted the woman who'd talked me into permitting her to put a dead fish in my safe-deposit box. Would I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death for this woman? I wondered. At that moment, it appeared to be an open question.

I handed the hundred-dollar bill to Fox, who snapped it once between his finger and his thumb and then gave it to Clyde. Clyde took the bill and put it facedown on the table in front of her.

"Got a pen, Sunshine?" she asked sweetly.

"Of course he does," said Fox. "Every big best-selling novelist carries a pen. It's their weapon of choice."

"Don't let Fox get under your skin," said Clyde. "He's just testing you."

"He's doing a pretty good job," I said. I handed the pen to Clyde.

"Go with the social security number," said Fox. "That always plays well."

Clyde began marking her numbers down on the back of the bill. When she'd completed the little task, she gave the bill back to Fox. He gave it back to me.

"Put it back in your wallet," he said.

I put the bill in my wallet. "What happens now?" I asked.

"Now it's your turn, Walter," said Fox.

"Why me?" I asked, trying to mask an incipient state of mild nervousness. "Whatever it is we're doing, it looks like you both have done it before."

"That's why it's your turn," said Fox.

"And you're right, Walter," said Clyde seriously. "We have both done this before. We've done it countless times before. But each time we do it, it's an adventure all its own."

"Anyway," said Fox, "you've got the easy part. All you have to do is go up to the bar, order us all a round of drinks, and pay the bartender with that marked C-note."

"I think I can handle it," I said. "Is there a name for this particular exercise?"

"Well, the cops call it something else," said Fox. "I like to call it the ol' switcheroo. It's just a little thing I learned when I lived with the Gypsies. It helps keep you on your toes. Lets you know you're alive. It also is not without some practical applications. You'll see. Now go order the drinks."

They were both drinking scotch that night, so I decided to go along with them and keep us all on a Chivas Regal wavelength, realizing that it was to be my first Chivas in almost seven years. I ordered doubles from the bartender, figuring whatever we were about to do might go off a little more smoothly if we all had a little buzz going. When I got to know Fox and Clyde a bit better, I realized that I needn't have been concerned. They needed no artificial stimulation of any kind. They always had a little buzz going.

I paid the much-harassed bartender with the designated bill, received the change, and took the drinks back to the table.

"My name is Walter," I said as I placed the drinks in front of them. "I'll be your server this evening."

"Out of the mouths of babes," said Clyde.

"Great job, Walter," said Fox. "Phase one is now complete."

"What's phase two?" I asked.

Fox took a healthy sip from his glass. "Phase two is we drink the scotch," he said.

Clyde's face had softened and now she looked at me warmly. Her eyes were still impossible to read, but at least she seemed to be acknowledging what I believed to be a growing friendship between us.

"Phase two is my favorite part," she said, sipping the scotch. "Except for phase three, of course. It just keeps getting better."

"That's the whole point of living," said Fox.

"I liked the way you handled yourself, Sunshine," she said. "You could be really good someday."

"At what?" I asked, still fairly mystified about the whole scenario.

"Ah," said Fox. "That's the question."

If that was the question, apparently there was not going to be any immediate answer. Fox and Clyde each bummed a cigarette and the three of us smoked and drank in silence for a time. All around us moved a rolling ocean of gray, oblivious, practically interchangeable mortal units that I did not know and that I did not really want to know. Whatever native sensitivity I had told me in no uncertain terms that I was with two of the most colorful, exciting, soulful people in the world that night and that this was only the beginning of my journey. I do not think I was wrong in my assessment of the situation. If I made a mistake, it was to err on the side of being human. And, as Fox often pointed out, to err on the side of being human is never a mistake.

"This is so nice," said Clyde. "I haven't felt this close to anybody in such a peaceful way since I was a little girl under the comforter in my mother's bed during a terrible thunderstorm with my older brother John and my dog Toulouse. It felt so safe and warm and right. Through all the storms and travels and adventures when I was a kid—and I'm still a kid—I was always thinking back to that moment and I knew I was at home base."