Spitting off tall buildings - By Dan Fante Page 0,11

time for hotel flunkeys.

After Tonya was up the steps and down the hall Shi rocked forward on his elbows, picking up a pencil, and relapsed into his mumble. ‘Rather amazing, isn’t she?’ he hissed.

I nodded but I didn’t mean it. He wasn’t looking anyway. His expression was elsewhere.

Everything changed. He only wanted to talk about Tonya. I was filled in on every fucking detail of the half-conversations and asinine bits of moron shit that had transpired between the two of them. Not even Jesus Christ himself, nails in his hands and feet, strapped to the post with chicken wire and duct tape, would have given a rat’s dick about such nonsense.

My gut built to the point where it was beginning to knot and cramp and I felt a terrible need to punch Shi’s face again and again.

To escape the insanity, I lied and said that I needed a bathroom break, hoping maybe my leaving and coming back might derail this imbecile cocksucker’s brain and get us on some other subject.

When I was down the steps to my apartment I locked the door behind me, smoked half a cigarette, pissed, then took a long pull at the vodka jug I’d stored in the freezer.

But I was a fool. The minute I returned to the desk it started again. ‘You know,’ he began, as if I’d never gone anywhere, glassy-eyed, ‘her first week here she left two pairs of her panties in the dryer. I knew they were hers because I saw her going up and down the stairs to the laundry room. I folded the panties and brought them back up to her apartment. After I knocked on the door and she knew it was me, she opened up and recognized her personal garments in my hand. You should have seen her expression.’

My gut was back in a worse knot than before. My brain screaming at me for the immediate death of this mad nigger.

‘Another time,’ Shi snickered, ‘she clogged the toilet in her apartment with too many paper towels - it might have been Kotex - I had to use the big plunger from the maintenance closet on the second floor. Then a snake…’

My mind’s command was clear; it told me to remove the dullest pencil from the pen and pencil holder cup in front of us on the counter and plunge it deep into the side of this fucker’s neck, watch arterial spurts gush out onto the panelled walls and the flowered carpet until his lips went ashen and he was completely dead and his body no longer quivered.

I stopped him. Interrupted. I said that I’d forgotten something in my apartment, then excused myself.

Back down at my refrigerator, between gulps of air, I hammered more long hits at the vodka jug until finally I felt the click. Before going back up, I squeezed a wad of toothpaste into my mouth from the bathroom cabinet.

‘Another time,’ Shi went on through his moving lips, ‘she saw a man. You know, nobody, a guy in an army jacket…’ I nodded. I didn’t give a fuck anymore…‘Tonya’s funny. She gets paranoid sometimes - about guys. She thought he’d followed her up from the subway stop at Lexington Avenue. It happens - she thinks that men follow her.

‘She’s standing there in the lobby, shaking-like. Afraid…So what did I do? The guy’s still out there, you know…so I close the grate on the front desk and go outside under the awning by the curb and inform this individual lingering there, whatever, actin’ like he’s waitin’ to use the pay phone - runnin’ some kinda pervert game - I look him in his face and I say, “Hey, my man, I don’t know you or your deal but, you’re loitering in front of my hotel, you know? So take a fuckin’ walk.” Then I push my finger up in his chest a few times to make my point, you know. So the guy leaves and moves on down the block, you know. I’ve spooked him. Okay, sure, he’s sayin’ shit as he goes, like “Fuck you” and that but, he’s spooked…

‘Anyway, I’m back inside and Tonya gives me this look. This big wet smile with those cat’s eyes of hers. Man, you know. We really connected. Know what I’m sayin’?’

I nodded ‘Yes’ again. A broad smile because now I was buzzed and couldn’t give a shit even if there was a nuclear war.

Shi wanted to know if I’d noticed Tonya’s moles, above the ‘V’ at the