“How can I help you, Mr. Boner?”
“I can’t find my award.”
“Have you misplaced it… or was it lost, possibly stolen?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know where it is, how it got there, or who might have taken possession. So it’s safe to say that its current location is a complete mystery – at least to you – and you were dumbfounded to learn that it was no longer where you had supposed. Is that a fair synopsis of your situation?”
“Yes, I guess.”
“You guess, but you’re not sure… whether you’re the victim of a cynical theft, the dupe of a practical joke, or suffering from senility and memory loss. Age plays games, and the elderly are most apt to lose. One day you’re on the pitcher’s mound, hurling fast balls at the opposing team. Strike one, strike two and you’re out. That’s right, you, not the guy who was holding the bat. He’s rounding the bases to a thundering applause from the bleachers. You’re picking your nose on a grassy knoll in the middle of a baseball diamond, too scared to look into that dugout. It’s not dark and empty, as the name might suggest, but full of angry men in tight caps and high socks, including the general manager of your team…”
The bells above the entrance to the shop jangle and ding, signaling the entrance of a prospective customer.
“Carol, would you see to that patron?”
Boner drops his head and raises his brows, but keeps his hands in his pockets.
“But you pitch something entirely different, don’t you, Bret: a story to the eager-beaver reporter who would take a swing at anything; a new insert for the print edition to revive those flagging revenues – a hit or miss proposition for the publisher, for sure; and for the public, your very own narrative of a newly independent state plagued by poverty, corruption and war. Yes, Bret, you stand alone on the mound of English-language journalism in Kyiv, flinging everything you’ve got at all those unseen Internet readers…”
Footsteps and polite proposals of purchase drift in from the shop floor. Boner gulps.
“I wasn’t standing anywhere, but lying on a couch to recover from my fall during the award ceremony.”
“Pride cometh before a kick in the teeth. Now I don’t want to add to your grief, dig into your wounds, or make light of your loss, but you didn’t end up in here by accident. I find things, as you well know. I search the darkest depths of humanity, probe the most intimate shafts. I delve into places where most men dare not think to go.”
…
The number on the door of the Mississippi Motel room is loose. It’s slipped from its ordinary orbit, come undone and now hangs upside down. Whether it was a “2” or a “5” at one time makes no difference anymore.
Welsh Losser, PR executive and Kyiv-based writer lies inside, in bed with the sheet pulled up tight to his chest. Repose fades to reflection. Evening descends on the parking lot outside, beyond the heavy drawn curtain.
“I’ve been someone else’s man for too long,” he thinks.
The room remains unlit, shadow-play restricted to the street.
“Some have even called me a lap dog, albeit with a bite. But I made my way to Kyiv all by myself, and forgot to leave with no less determination. The Poster was a passing fancy, an intermediate point on an always evolving resume. Even then I knew there was better up ahead. All I lacked was loyalty, the kind one might not unreasonably expect for the oddball uncle type that I purposely portrayed. Friendship flowered with The Ferret. Those fishing trips remain unforgotten, though all I ever caught was a cold shoulder from that apple of my eye in short pants…”
Losser turns on his side, hurt-faced, with the sheet now almost over his head.
“Boss Lard was more of a father figure – whose, I’ll never know, but he gave me a place at the table.
“Indigestion is all I feel now, having eaten my fill and gone back for seconds without an eyebrow being raised in objection. Marriage was inevitable, for propriety and security, too. But ugly is as ugly was. Those twin beds never got any closer.”
Losser curls up tight like a kitten, but keeps the sheet held high.
A large, dark clumsy hand alights on his shoulder, drifts to the flat of his back, probes the sanctum of personal privacy. Gentle but insistent, unoffending and unrelenting, the hand lays claim to its find, savoring the contents of the sheet, relishing the baby-powdered flesh wrapped therein.
Moments later, the large loveable Negro is reclined against a mountain of fat white pillows, his purple toes peeping out the lower ends of the bed linen. There’s a corncob pipe stuck in his face that he chews unlit.
“Land aplenty stretches out beyond them hills,” drawls the older man’s voice in his head. “That’s promised land, and a promising man is what I aim to be,” continues the voice, accompanied by the image of a jet-black country squire in bow tie and straw hat.
Losser looks over his shoulder owl-eyed from the other end of the bed and continues pulling up his socks.
“Now get ya ass back in that there kitchen and warm me up a pie,” hisses the Negro, smiling wildly at the ceiling.
…
The prospective customers exit the shop to the jingle and dang above the door. Boner, left unattended, begins to mosey among the racks of merchandise. There’re ballpoint pens that glow in the dark, and baseball caps with cartoon characters printed on them. He stops in front of the magazine stand: “Kyiv Commix, Volume III”.
“I’ve got the Valentine’s Day edition of What’s Off magazine and the single extant copy of the Kyiv Poster with The Ferret on the masthead as chief editor,” shouts the proprietor from under the frame of the stockroom doorway.
Boner’s face flinches into an angry stare, vaguely recalling Richard Nixon.
“Blow Hard business cards, a tax return for Handwriting International, and the last three editions of the Mississippi Media Medal minus the one you are looking for, Bret,” says the man, now propped up against the doorframe with one leg bent and an outstretched arm.
Filed March 9, 2015