Michael Jauchen

Stealth Roberts II: Hot Memory, Cold Blood

What makes the man behind the counter at the costume shop dream of Peruvian women at night? His body lays there prone and motionless, his eyes shut tight, as his thoughts take wing over crumbling bridges, past waterfalls, roaming through the mountainside shanties of Lima where he finally discovers a long ago love, on the floor, husking corn in a twilit room, holding three ears in the lap of her skirt.

She finally asks him:

“And why have you come back here, Stealth Roberts? Have you not been told you are a wanted man throughout these shanties? Do you not know Fujimori’s men are looking for you?”

“Well,” he says, “you see darling, that’s quite a funny thing. After winning the Illinois Powerball lottery, I honestly can’t think of anything better to do with my time than to trek the world on international adventures of intrigue. And that is what brought me back to you. That, and revenge too. Lots of revenge. Mounds of revenge.”

And she smiles, reluctantly welcoming him, offering him a hiding place somewhere in the dark corner of a makeshift closet. The man behind the counter at the costume shop thanks her, suddenly spying the halfway-husked corn lying in her lap. He crosses the darkening floor to the place where she sits. He bends down, and, as numerous other lovers throughout Lima’s shacks simultaneously sigh around them, he sticks his tongue deep into her right ear, savoring the sweat of her day’s work.

* * *

The man behind the counter at the costume shop is tight under a black T-shirt. It looks as if he is a faithful weight-lifter on his off days, pushing that metal up and off of his chest, exhaling, holding on, pulling from somewhere deep within his body to finish out his third set of ten reps. He looks almost Mexican, though not quite dark enough to be absolutely convincing. His voice, when speaking to my sister and me, seems to come deep from some outside source of earthmoving authority.

“And how can I dress you today?” he asks us.

* * *

After work each day, the man behind the counter at the costume shop goes home to his second-story brownstone flat and his Tall Dog, a twelve year old Irish Wolfhound who chain-smokes Benson and Hedges and has written a semi-autobiographical series of children’s books entitled Tall Dog, Tall Dog Where to Put Your Bone? This series, though Tall Dog’s reading public is still unaware of it, is actually a subtle retelling of The Kalevala, the Finnish national epic detailing the song of Kalevala which brought the world into existence with a burst of first flowers. Tall Dog, though very confident in his own talents, has always remained genuinely humble about his literary successes, seeing them more as something fortuitous than as a prize truly earned. Oftentimes, through a blooming cloud of menthol, he will take time to offer the man behind the counter at the costume shop sardonic advice on his ever-failing attempts at romance.

“Stealth,” Tall Dog will generally start one of their tête-à-têtes, “it’s been a long, long time since you’ve gotten laid, hasn’t it?”

* * *

With the sounds of machete-carrying vigilantes echoing over the trash of the busted alleys, the man behind the counter at the costume shop, whispering to a love now peeling an orange, details the history of his outlaw origins:

“What you see before you is the product of a mother and a nameless Japanese street puppeteer who captured my mother’s body during one of his endearing (though still a bit slutty around the edges) street corner shows in the midst of an afternoon in which every single person walking around the city seemed to be happy at the same time. And even though this street puppeteer made most of his money performing in or around a park that was a haven for addicts, he was not your stereotypical unclean man with a draining habit himself. We know he dutifully slotted time each morning for calisthenics, meticulous hygiene, and meditation without a religious affiliation. And it was this puppeteer’s genuine and evident self-care that apparently made my mother care about him. Unfortunately for her (and her name, “Murial,” rings with the constancy of wind chimes through the back streets of my own memory), there were two things our street puppeteer didn’t particularly care about: leaving his phone number with the women he picked up with his act, and bothering to wear rubbers. Thus, nine months later, in the calculated mess of a Methodist Hospital, my mother birthed me into the sound of clapping, banging hands. And though the surgeons were masterful craftsmen all, they could do nothing to stop the diapason of blood coming from my screaming mother. At least this is the story I have been told. Before I knew her, she was dead. A black space in my heart and the place that holds my heart took root that day and grows still. And that’s what it’s doing now, even as I sit here, doing my best to chat you up.”

The man behind the counter at the costume shop looks up to his love, sitting there distracted, stuffing her face with orange slices. When she finally looks up at him, her mouth full of citrus, she opens her eyes wide and blows her cheeks out like a puffer fish.

* * *

For Olga in Fiddler on the Roof, he offers my sister a brown burlap sack, a bandana, and a brown vest.

“Close your eyes and think back,” he says, a subtle, slithering hypnosis working somewhere in his voice, “you just have to imagine what they were wearing at the time.”

My sister and I take time to wonder why the man behind the counter at the costume shop is working here and not teaching Russian history at the local city college.

* * *

“Just between you and me, Tall Dog, I think Darlene’s got a thing for you.”

Tall Dog climbs slowly into his easy chair, brooding and cranky, lights a Benson and Hedge, takes a hefty puff.

“Stealth, you jackass,” Tall Dog says, “Darlene doesn’t come to dogsit me every time you’re out of town because she wants to get into my pants. Lord knows my best bone-burying days were over some sixty-two dog years ago.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Tall Dog. You’ve still got a long way to go.”

“My Christ,” Tall Dog says, “Sometimes, you can be so dense. Take a look at it, Stealth. You’re young. She’s young. You’re single. She’s single. You’re a man of means. And she’s definitely working on you as if you have a fortune.”

“What are you saying? Do you mean Darlene’s dogsitting you because she has a thing for me, Tall Dog?”

“What’s this? Oh, can it be, ladies and gentlemen? Oh! Why yes, I believe it is! The joy of announcing that Stealth’s head is officially being pulled out of his ass! Why yes! There it is now! Like its own lovely, miniature birth!”

Tall Dog removes another cigarette from the pack, using the previous one to light it.

“Darlene has a thing for me,” the man behind the counter at the costume shop says to himself, repeating the words in the hope that they will stay longer.

“Now, Stealth, the real question becomes,” continues Tall Dog, “just what it is you’re going to do about that.”

* * *

At night, his love busying herself in the other room with the mending of a torn skirt, the man behind the counter at the costume shop removes the ragged list, written at the crest of his adolescence, stashed under the inner lining of his hat. He takes a small piece of charcoal loose on the table top and traces over the letters once more, etching them again on the deepest tabula of his mind:

		Things in the Way->

		1)	Find Fujimori.
		2)	Avenge mother.
		3)	Give Poor the sense of worth they should have.
		4)	Spend lonely year fleeing from proper authorities,
			time spent retreating over the mountains in ocean
			of grief.
		5)	Come back. Eventually come back to her, keeping
			all promises. Yes, keeping all promises.

The man behind the counter at the costume shop places the list back into his hat, looks into the next room where his love sits concentrating on the thread, the needle, now the needle and thread. He can sense his heart palpitating and he thinks of regret. He quietly pushes the front door open so as not to be heard, whispers, “bye-bye,” lifts his right hand to wave but decides against it, and slips away into the darkness.

* * *

The man behind the counter at the costume shop gets somber with my sister.

“No, no, no, no, no, no,” he says. “Pirates are way out. Didn’t you watch that horrible miniseries about them recently on PBS? You want to know the true nature of pirates? They were pillagers, plunderers, rapists, selfish with liquor, generally hard to please, hardly the company to keep at one of your more cordial, suburban soirees. No, darling, pirates are all of the previous falls. Pirates of Penzance was over at the high school. Peter Pan was on cable. I watched it twice myself. But those were all of the previous falls. Do you want to know what the rage is this fall, what everybody’s going to be wearing this fall? Come a little closer, little lady. I don’t tell this to just anybody, but I know I’ve seen you in here before, and my love life’s taken off and I’m in a good mood, so I’ll make an exception. What you really came in here for today wasn’t a pirate outfit was it? Was it? Was it? What you really came in here for today was a throwback 1920s ensemble with those great open-toed high heels. But even that my dear, here, come a little closer, is old. That’s this fall, for sure, but what I want to give you here today is a head start on next fall. Next fall now is what I’m going to do for you. Next fall now. And let me lay it on you in one simple word: cowboys and cowgirls. Now, I can see from your eyes what you’re thinking. But have you ever seen Annie Oakley or Calamity Jane? I mean, have you ever really looked at them and really seen them? First, they’re great looking and keep in mind that at the party you go to you’ll be sans dust and avec shower if you know what I mean. Second, and just envision this, just imagine going to a party with these two girls there, okay? Okay? I close my eyes and the only thing I can see is these two girls being the life of any and all festivities they took part in. Everybody loves two great looking women who can shoot a gun and drink with the boys. You know, come closer, I don’t want just anybody to know about this. Annie Oakley once shot the ashes off a cigarette perched in the mouth of the great and powerful Kaiser Wilhelm. Now, don’t ask me how the party got to that point, because I don’t know that, but just close your eyes again and think about how things were at the time and it all seems to fall into place. Knowing Western women, and I like to think I might just know a little bit about them, Old Annie just shot it, put that gun right back in its holster, and laughed her belly full right afterwards. And it was one of those strong laughs, just close your eyes and think about it, full of life and friendly condescension and warmth and anything else you can think of that might go into a great laugh. And that’s why cowboys and cowgirls are going to be in next fall. You see, come a little closer, shut your eyes, cowgirls can do anything, I mean anything, and then laugh about it afterwards.”

* * *

“Love, Stealth,” begins Tall Dog, standing in front of an easel with the word ‘LOVE’ etched on it in large, black letters, “is dangerous because love is not a static thing. This should not worry us too much. After all, nothing in this universe is a static thing (cf. 2nd law of thermodynamics). But in the face of this non-stasis and perpetual deterioration, any and all of your success stems from one thing and one thing only, and that thing is a mastery of manipulation. In the daunting face that is ever recurring destruction and movement and fluidity, your task as date, as lover, as eventual co-dependent, is solely a task of recurrent and incessant pinning downs. An example. Darlene shows up at your apartment wearing a new dress, full of small and yellow flowers. When this happens, you must, quicker than a blink, say something to this effect: ‘Oh, Darlene, I see you are wearing a new dress which is very elegant and agreeable to the latest fashions.’ This compliment, seemingly innocuous upon a first gander, nevertheless acts as a pin, fixing that dress in its proper place, thus deftly avoiding any potential it has for deteriorating later on. Without that pinning, without that fix, your night will progress and it will all seem pleasant at first, but trust me, the wild, untamed presence of that unpinned dress will grow, slowly morphing into a larger, messier, ever more entangled glob. And once that happens, once that hits a particular point, watch out because it won’t be too long before full-blown godforsaken entropy takes over. And when it does, Stealth, you might as well give it all up and pack it all in, because the whole big fat bottom of your entire operation is about to go down in a billow of ash.”

* * *

Inside the palace now, in a room colored purple, the man behind the counter at the costume shop gets grave, undergoes the latest sinister fight for his life.

“President Fujimori, allow me, if you will, to get this straight. If I beat you in this one game of ping-pong, you not only will free me and my lover Juanita Bonita from this Peruvian hoosegow of yours, but you’ll also give $200,000 to the orphans huffing gasoline outside the palace gate?”

“Si. Si, Señor Stealth Roberts.”

“And if I lose, I die.”

“Claro Señor.”

“And my beautiful, my compassionate Juanita (so lovely in the morning light) will no doubt become one of your many mistresses.”

“Claro que si, Señor Stealth.”

“And the children outside? What about the gas-huffing orphans outside?”

“Oh, you must not worry on them, Señor. I will take sure something dreadfully accidental will befall them all. Claro.”

“Do you normally make all of your decisions over the bounce of a tiny ping-pong ball, President Fujimori?”

“Si, Señor. Y ahora, Stealth Roberts, I believe it is my serve. Ahora, dame esta pelota.”

* * *

In his downtime at the shop, he often thinks back with nostalgia to his favorite costume of all time: the lion in a Jr. High musicalized and simplified production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He can still clearly see the brown socks with six-inch protruding iron nails standing in for claws, the blonde wig so suddenly transformed into a mane, and the vampire teeth. It was not an easy sell, and it took some real convincing, but the customer eventually came to believe wholeheartedly that this is what lions running around Elizabethan England were wearing at the time.

* * *

Tall Dog, his bowels having announced themselves, begins the slow and sideways process of making his way down the brownstone steps, swinging one of his legs down to each progressively lower level, gingerly letting one of his hips drop, and then repeating the slow and painful procedure, this time with the other hip, over again. And to do that for each of the seven steps of the brownstone got to be quite a chore. Completely out of breath after the fourth step, Tall Dog looks down and surveys the inexhaustible three left to go, thinks sadly about the joy that was once his active past, and then wonders how the hell he is supposed to get back up.

“So this is what my life has come to,” Tall Dog says to himself, “This not being able to make it down seven tiny stairs. This admitting to myself that I would rather defecate right here on these bare, concrete steps in front of all the strangers passing by rather than force my hips to swing out even one more time. Good Christ, I’ve read Pliny in the original Latin. I’ve translated certain portions of Faulkner into French. And this, this right here, this portrait of me, old and exhausted, straddling the third and fourth step, giving honest and serious thought to the possibility of adult diapers, this is what all that has come to. Everything in my entire life has come to this right here. Well, I’ll be a fuckered Tall Dog.”

Tall Dog taps the pocket of his smoking jacket.

“And I left my Benson and Hedges inside on the table by the davenport. Well, I’ll be a fuckered Tall Dog all over again.”

“All done, Tall Dog,” the man behind the counter at the costume shop calls from the front hall. “Let’s make it quick. Don’t forget, I’m heading out to meet Darlene tonight.”

* * *

My sister and I can overhear him talking to a woman from the local Baptist church, telling her that the bear costume she wants is reserved already for someone else on the night she wants it. The woman explains to him that she cannot see any reason why someone would need a bear costume on the very night her church is planning a Fall Festival. The man behind the counter at the costume shop nods in agreement. He doesn’t tell the Baptist woman that a Fall Festival is a religious alternative to Halloween, a holiday in which everyone else gets into a costume and collects candy. He simply smiles at her, looks back over his shoulder to see that his shift manager is nowhere to be seen, and whispers, “Ma’am, if you can find three more people, I can set you up half-price with a barbershop quartet ensemble to die for.”

* * *

Just past the corner of some dark café, the man behind the counter at the costume shop can hear the echo of some love’s voice calling out his name. It is a calling rich with familiarity and deep, true longing. A calling of warmth. My Christ, he thinks, it’s a calling that sounds like the sunlight lying over the top of the ocean. He follows the sound of his name deep into the hills surrounding the city, running until his side feels on the brink of explosion from the cramping, that voice edging closer, ever closer. He can feel himself somehow catching up. The man behind the counter at the costume shop opens his arms wide and runs further on into the mountains, out into the steep darkness.

* * *

“Now,” Tall Dog says, continuing his lecture after a smoke break, “after the pinning of the various objects of love has successfully occurred (and this is a hypothetical situation, of course, that I’m using solely for the sake of explanation—always remember: the objects of love are always increasing, always needing pinning, forever regenerating, perpetually escaping), but after the pinning of the various objects of love has successfully occurred, a subtle swerving must take shape and begin, ironically adding entropy to the very thing you’ve tried so desperately to rid of it. For without the swerve, without the introduction of this self-inflicted entropy, one runs the risk of, nay, is asking for, the ennui, malaise, and stagnant co-dependency you see everyday plaguing the street corners and couples of our city.”

“Excuse me, Tall Dog,” the man behind the counter at the costume shop interrupts, “but as to my personal relationship with Darlene.”

“Yes, quite an uninteresting case, Stealth.”

“Well, you see, I’ve done what you’ve told me so far concerning the pinning down (cf. my compliments to Darlene about her new dress). And I’m not complaining at all or saying that your advice didn’t work because all of that pinning stuff was a wild success. But, even with all that, I can sense the romance between Darlene and me beginning to grow slow and fallow. So I guess my question is this: what concrete advice can you give me concerning this particular problem? In other words, what exact ‘swerve’ would be appropriate to this particular case?”

“Your question is neither new nor interesting, Stealth, and the answer is something many, many dolts are drastically chasing after. Oh what is this great swerve, this great key to keeping love afresh, they all ask. And, Stealth, the answer is this: The great swerve is whatever a particular love will take and hold without breaking open into a shattering, unstoppable disintegration. Some loves can handle only the smallest swerve of bad poetry, given as a gift for Valentine’s Day perhaps. For some other loves, the swerve of philandering is not out of the question. In the end, it’s whatever the love will hold.”

“Whatever the love will hold,” the man behind the counter at the costume shop says, making detailed notes in his spiral.

Tall Dog rolls his eyes, feeling the frustration deep down in the joints of his hips.

* * *

And how do we know the man behind the counter at the costume shop is not wearing a costume himself? Wearing a mask, a wig? What if he is a woman with a wonderful knack for makeup and lowering her voice?

* * *

On game point, the man behind the counter at the costume shop lobs a soft return that comes down deceptively, freezing Fujimori, finally grazing the farthest outside edge of the table.

“Dos out of tres, Señor Stealth Roberts.”

“With all due respect, President Fujimori, you and I had a deal. Now pay up. Sin dinero para me, things have a tendency to get mucho messy muy rapidamente.”

* * *

After work one day, the man behind the counter at the costume shop comes home to find a note scrawled on the back of a napkin:

Dear Numbnuts (Stealth, that’s you):

After thinking some more about your question of two nights ago re: how to swerve with Darlene, I can only conclude that you are doomed to fail in all attempts at romance you might make. Not that the pinning and hammering in is hard for you. After all, you are a man, and putting the correctly shaped blocks into the correctly shaped holes has never presented a problem. What you lack, and what you will always lack, is any and all capacity to swerve, because, in the end (when facts are facts) you have no inborn sense of empathy and, as this is something you cannot get, you will never have an inborn sense of empathy.

THEREFORE ALLOW ME TO DO THINGS ONCE AGAIN FOR YOU: DARLENE’S BIRTHDAY IS COMING UP! BUY HER A BEAUTIFUL AND NEW DRESS! THAT’S THE SWERVE, YOU NUMBNUTS!

Your ever decaying, ever aging,

Tall Dog

p.s. please leave door unlocked as I’ll return late. Tonight is bridge and cognac with Max, Tuffy, and Princess.

* * *

Holding a short blade to the throat of President Fujimori, the man behind the counter at the costume shop shouts instructions to the guards all standing around, their faces full of fear:

“Each of you must go to the safe, locate the bags with the dollar signs drawn on them, and fill your hands with the money. Next, climb to the palace roof and throw it all over the gate to the gas-huffing orphans outside. And make it look like a rain shower. I want to see their open arms wet with the money.”

The guards leave the purple room, fearful of their own lives.

“Son. Hijo. I knew who you were the whole time. Hijo,” President Fujimori pleads.

“Though I could have been, I was never your hijo. And though you could have been, you were never mi papa.”

“Stealth. Hijo. Hijo.”

The man behind the counter at the costume shop runs the blade deep into the president’s neck. He shears a lock of Fujimori’s black hair, placing it into the lining of his hat. He leaves the room in shambles, running through the halls of the palace, searching everywhere for his lovely Maria Varia (her hair so lovely in the late autumn light), intensely prepared for any and all approaching trouble.

* * *

One evening, just on the brink of sleep, the man behind the counter at the costume shop hears violent coughing coming from his laundry room. Following the sound, he finds his Tall Dog, lying in a still heap on the floor, his front paw lodged in the pocket of his smoking jacket.

“Tall Dog? Tall Dog? Are you okay?”

“Stealth,” Tall Dog coughs.

The man behind the counter at the costume shop can hear Tall Dog wheezing, digging farther within himself each time to draw breath.

“Tall Dog?”

“Stealth. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Don’t…you…ever…forget…to swerve…ever.”

And Tall Dog closes his eyes, digging farther for the very last time.

* * *

Again, rummaging through the shacks of Lima’s hillside at twilight, the man behind the counter at the costume shop comes across a group of children, some traipsing around with gas-filled garbage bags in their hands, playing a pick-up game of soccer. A young woman, the older sister to one of the goalies, plays as well, running barefoot among the children, holding the hem of her skirt so as not to trip in the dirt.

The ball of rags is kicked high above the game and the surrounding huts. And for a split second, looking at this fabricated orb and the eyes of this new and startled beauty, the man behind the counter at the costume shop considers dropping his nomadic life completely, settling down, perhaps exchanging it all to become a worker of leather.

One of the children kicks the ball again and it sails quickly through the air, bonking the man behind the counter at the costume shop in the head. He feigns a great pain and does a dance-like routine, falling to the ground in a crumpling heap. He grabs the wads of money remaining in his pocket and blindly throws them into the air. With the background noise of the children giggling and shouting (“Hurrah Stealth Roberts,” they cry and cry) and gathering the money, the man behind the counter at the costume shop opens his eyes upward toward the actual moon, which is now reflecting somewhere deep there in the eyes of the beautiful goalie. And he can see she is smiling too. The man behind the counter at the costume shop rises, empties his pockets of their remaining change, throws it high into the air, turns around, and sprints away into the night.

* * *

For his 35th birthday, and because he is sad about Tall Dog’s death and his failure with Darlene, the man behind the counter at the costume shop gives himself a trip to the mountains of Chile. He rides in a taxicab to the airport, but when he thinks about the size of the plane that will be taking him over the vast water, he is suddenly overcome with a great diapason of fear. He exits the cab at the terminal and walks into the airport toward the monitors marked “DEPARTURES” so as not to look unnatural or ridiculous to the man who drove him there. While looking at the various names—“Mexico City, Santiago, Tegucigalpa”—he thinks of Darlene again. He reads the name of one more city. Then he exits the airport and hails a different cab for the ride back home.

* * *

My sister and I leap over the counter in a calculated move of surprise. We try to pull the wig off the head of the man behind the counter at the costume shop. Writhing in a fit of panic, he rings the bell atop the counter and his shift manager comes running from the storeroom, laughing.

“Oh,” his shift manager laughs, “if only I had a nickel for every time this happened, I’d be a rich, rich man!”

The shift manager pulls a long blowgun from the inside pocket of his trench coat and takes aim at my sister and me. We release the man behind the counter at the costume shop, leap over a display case, duck down and crash through the glass doors, somersaulting onto the dusty pavement outside. We make our way down the street underneath a hail of speeding darts. Finally rounding a corner, finally safe, my sister and I find ourselves running directly into a rainstorm of coins falling from the sky. We smile and clasp our hands together. Then my sister and I run on, our arms open wide, both of us quietly proud of all the secret pictures we had just taken with the clandestine cameras hidden in the heels of our shoes.