Fontoon E-Book

John Schoneboom

• Herausgeber: Dedalus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

A zany satire about the absurdity of life set in New York

Das E-Book wird angeboten von und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:

Leseprobe

To sinkholes, supernovas, and spontaneous combustions

To the Tom Zmoos Wrecking Company and the Fred Meuser Futon Factory

To Abby and Oscar and Maisie

Dedalus Original Fiction in Paperback

FONTOON

John Schoneboom is a New Yorker who now lives in Newcastle Upon Tyne.

He has studied international affairs, played the funky bass guitar, sold ice cream from a van, sneaked into numerous venues, and foiled a purse snatching.

His play Dreams of Jimmy Bannon won the Artist Fellowship Award from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Fontoon is his first novel.

Contents

Title

Dedication

Novel

Chapter God

Chapter Hang

Chapter Rewind

Chapter Buttocks

Chapter Jail

Chapter Stomach

Chapter Space

Chapter Light

Chapter Key

Chapter Neighbours

Chapter Hurt

Chapter Sticky

Chapter Moustache

Chapter Family

Chapter Diary

Chapter Tits

Chapter Snap

Chapter Quit

Chapter Enclave

Chapter Buhongo

Chapter Miguel

Chapter Influence

Chapter Tick

Chapter Sun

Chapter Music

Chapter Magic

Chapter Gravity

Chapter Poetry

Chapter Strongman

Chapter Spat

Chapter Feather

Chapter Wreck

Chapter Brothers

Chapter Recovery

Chapter Jar

Chapter Doreen

Chapter Love

Chapter Work

Chapter Tremble

Chapter Busted

Chapter City

Chapter Crashing Smash of Breaking Glass

Chapter Weasby

Chapter Mom

Chapter Mosura

Chapter Cantonese

Chapter Greatness

Chapter Catch

Chapter Tea

Chapter Meteorite

Chapter Bacon

Chapter Switch

Chapter Dark

Chapter Chance

Chapter War

Chapter Next

Chapter Now

Chapter Heaven

Chapter Spoon

Chapter Bongos

Chapter Bloat

Copyright

Chapter God

General Rule 34. Any balls potted or leaving the table as a result of non-Player interference including Acts of God, shall remain out of play (pocketed). Any remaining balls that were so moved are to be respotted as close as possible to their original positions.

General Rules of Pocket Billiards Billiards

Congress of America

Chapter Hang

I am not, nor will I ever be, a morning person, mused Admiral Fontoon, subliminally noting that it was perhaps the only thing of which he felt truly certain. He winced and made a sucking sound through his clenched teeth as he gingerly touched the bump that had risen on his head.

He was hanging upside down, swaying gently now after swinging wildly for some time. His arms hung limply in mute surrender. One leg extended to the side and bent like a branch that did not know where to grow, drifting half-heartedly, searching to no avail for a plausible position in which to await death or redemption. The one straight and rigid limb was his other leg, which had a tightened noose around the ankle. From there the rope looped through a pulley attached to the ceiling, and routed thence to a spinning spool at the foot of his bed, anchored firmly to the floor with steel bolts. It was the furious spinning of the spool that had yanked the rope so suddenly, resulting in the tightening of the ankle noose and the unceremonious hoisting of Admiral Fontoon. The entire apparatus had been triggered electronically by Fontoon’s alarm clock; more specifically, it had been triggered by the seventh sounding of the snooze alarm, a result, in turn, of Fontoon’s obstinacy, and of his lethargy.

Son of a bitch, thought Fontoon, dangling. He was supposed to have gotten out of bed before all this. That was the whole idea: a clock to inspire fear, ergo motion. Fontoon spoke several profanities aloud to his uncaring apartment, and punched the air viciously, which caused him to spin.

He felt the lurch of nausea and struggled to control it. He did not think he could bear either the sound or the sight of his vomit hurtling out of his mouth and splashing onto various of his possessions some nine feet below, and he especially did not relish the thought of cleaning it all up. Agh, or the taste of it, he thought, which only made it harder to control.

Admiral Fontoon looked around the room while the spinning gradually subsided, trying to get a fix on something for as long as he could in order to combat the dizziness. He admired his good oak table, against which his head had slammed as his body was ripped helplessly into the air. As always he remembered the good price he had gotten on it, even though that had been many years ago. Directly below him was an imitation Oriental rug that had caused bitterness at how quickly it had begun to look dingy. Must everything be cheap? Must everything be tawdry?

Partly on the rug was a huge and disorderly pile of newspapers, three months’ worth, which he had been meaning to take down to the recycling centre as required by law. How inconvenient it all was. That pile of papers made him feel a sense of futility, and disgust as well, disgust with the disorderliness that made his whole life seem contemptible.

A good part of his kitchen was exposed to his view, and although he could not see the sink itself, it reminded him that he had not washed his dishes from the night before. He tucked his chin to his chest and looked at his captured foot. It was beginning to go numb. His sense of futility spread a little more, starting from just below his sternum and claiming territory in all directions outward, filling his chest, spreading towards his nether region. He looked out of his window at the kaleidoscope of changing colours and twisting shapes. He knew it was a mistake to have looked.

It was always foolish to engage any aspect of the city while in a state of infirmity or irresolution.

Once he felt the first tiny taste creep through, it was all over. He immediately disgorged the contents of his stomach, here we go, this again, the terrible sudden yielding, the wrong-wayness, the taste, the warmth, the picturing yourself as others would see you, the whole awful pitiless spectacle. He believed that his ears got the worst of it, all in all. In the anticlimactic silence that followed, Fontoon swayed gently from his rope, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and determined to get himself down.

He tried to reach up to grab his foot, thinking that he might free it manually. But then what? It was a moot point; he could not reach it; his stomach muscles weren’t strong enough. He looked at his flabby belly, which hung now unnaturally in the direction of his head, quivering just ever so. Sucking in his stomach, he peered at it until he could almost see the vague indentations that would have been where muscle definition would go. Thus satisfied that his physical condition was not so terrible, certainly not beyond reclamation, Fontoon felt a moment of contentment before a surge of real concern at his plight annihilated his serenity.

He had felt inconvenienced, to be sure, but had sub-consciously assumed that there would of course be a way for him to get down. Now he was beginning to question that assumption. How would he get down? What if he couldn’t? It was a horrible and absurd possibility, but surely history was nothing if not a relentless continuum of the horrible and the absurd. People died in all manner of ridiculous ways. What if this was his destiny? No way to get down.

How would it happen? What exactly would get him? A slow death from starvation, followed by decay until his skeletal foot finally slipped through the noose and sent his bones clattering into an untidy pile on top of dried vomit? Or would the pressure from the blood pouring into his head get him first, causing his brain to haemorrhage, or his neck arteries to burst? Perhaps a heart attack, for some reason, or a stroke. The stress might cause some sort of clot to form, or a kidney to fail. There was nobody who might save him. His few friends were far too self-involved to worry that something might be wrong, even if he hung there drying for months. He couldn’t complain. He had been a poor friend too. How often did he take the initiative to call? The chickens had come home to roost. How terrible it was to be lonely. How terrible to acknowledge the merciless justice of it all. How strangely satisfying to oscillate idly and indulge in self-pity.

He might just do one quite personal thing to pass the time. Yes. Yes well why not? It would certainly be a novel way of going about it, if he could manage it. It would be a good experiment, if nothing else. His mind could return to his predicament afterwards.

It was possible that his mother would call, but of course he would be unable to get to the phone. It would go to his answering machine and she would think nothing of it for a long time. She might never think anything of it. He might not survive until her second call. Or she might become obsessive and vicious, full of blame. He might receive dozens of rapid-fire, increasingly insufferable calls from her, unable to do anything but listen and rage impotently. And her calls would be in the slightest German accent, as almost everything she said had been in a slight – slight but distinct, and to a German ear, wrong German – accent since the day decades ago it first appeared from out of some clear dark suburban psychosexual wormhole. It had only been questioned once, early on.

“Fot accent?” she had replied.

It had never been mentioned again.

There was no way to tell which way it would go, and it really didn’t matter. She would never believe he was really dead, although it would certainly rank high among her accusations if she turned on him. Even when she was eventually faced with her dismal, piteous, pile-of-bones son, she would only tell the story as the tale of a lamentable imbecile. And jesus god, he thought, she’d be right. From all vantage points, his tragedy would be ignominious.

His neighbours, he knew, would laugh. Yes old Ed and Marla would have themselves one of their big old country-style laughs all right. At least Arthur and Minnie downstairs would have a kind word; they were originally from overseas and north of the Tyne, and they always said nice things over a cup of tea. Everyone called them Uncle Arthur and Aunt Minnie.

Desperate. Desperate now. Something must be done and done while there’s still strength left, but what? The first job, certainly, was to quell the rising panic that along with the unpleasant smell from below threatened to nauseate him once again. He dedicated his powers of concentration to this task until he heard the first creaking sound from the ceiling. He looked up and saw that the plaster around the screws that held the pulley was bulging and cracking. Oh god. He looked down at the rancid puddle of vomit far below him. No!

Admiral Fontoon shut his eyes as the creaking grew more urgent and the first bits of plaster powder began gently to rain.

And then, with a disappointingly weak crumbling sound, in a hail of plaster and rope, he plummeted earthward.

Chapter Rewind

“Gentlemen, let’s call this meeting to order. Jenkins, what have you got for me?”

“Right JB. We’ve confirmed that he definitely bought the alarm clock, which means that right about” – Jenkins paused here to look at his watch – “now, he’s probably wondering what the hell hit him.”

The whole room broke out into self-satisfied chuckling.

“Excellent work, that’s tops. Are we monitoring him at all times? Edgars?”

“We’re getting reports almost hourly now, sir.”

“Good, good. Let’s see if we can confirm that the clock has been activated.”

JB pressed a button on the intercom in front of him at the head of the long, mahogany executive meeting table. Out in the reception area, his secretary Shirley was ready in case the big man needed her like he needed her now.

“Shirley hon, can we get a read on Fontoon’s current situation please?”

“I’ll get Sheila on the phone pronto, Mr. Bentley.”

When Shirley had a task to do for Mr. Bentley, she always did it right away rather than find other things to do first or think up reasons not to do it. It was one of the reasons Bentley valued her as an employee. She also showed up on time very dependably, although she generally took a bit more than the mandated thirty minutes for lunch. Bentley noticed, but looked the other way. Bentley knew as well as anyone that it was almost impossible to get lunch and eat it within thirty minutes. The thirty-minute rule was something of a convenient administrative fiction that nobody apart from Alison in human resources took terribly seriously. Bentley was the sort of boss who knew when to be strict and when to cut a little slack. Shirley’s forty-minute lunches were something to be tolerated with detached amusement and filed in the back of the mind for possible use as a weapon should Shirley ever complain about time or cross an unspoken line in some other way.

Bentley was above all else a professional and he knew where to draw the line between employee and sex partner. Shirley and her hips and her special skirts were off limits. Bentley took the philosophical view. Sometimes when you’d really like to do a thing but you know it’s complicated and wrong, you’re able to refrain from doing it by overcoming it mentally.

Shirley picked up the telephone within one second of finishing her intercom conversation with Mr. Bentley and dialled her friend Sheila. Shirley had only made friends with Sheila because Mr. Bentley had asked her to do so.

“Hi Sheila, Shirl. So!”

Sheila and Shirley had a giggly-gossipy-girly conversation, which Shirley cut off after only a few minutes, having gleaned the information requested by Mr. Bentley.

“Listen, I have to go, I’m at work. Good to talk to you, babe.”

Shirley hit the button on her intercom so she could report back to Mr. Bentley.

“Yes, Shirley, what have you found out?”

“Mr. Fontoon has definitely triggered the alarm clock, sir. Sheila can see him very clearly.”

“And he hasn’t found some way to escape yet?”

“Not at all, sir. He’s stuck up there but good.”

“Good, good. Any other information?”

“Well…”

“What is it, Shirley?”

“Apparently he’s been, you know, at it again.” Shirley blushed. “Right there in the trap. Upside down.”

“Did you hear that, boys? Fontoon’s been at it again! Upside down this time!”

The room broke up into hearty laughter and clapping. Finding out about somebody else masturbating was always an hilarious event.

“That’s all for now, Shirley, thank you. Top work, top drawer. All right then, what’s the employment report? Adams?”

“Thank you, sir. His position is quite stable at Wossafocken Point, and he doesn’t spend much time in focused critique of his situation. He thinks big, real big. I think we can safely assume that he’ll be parked in his useless dead-end job for some time to come.”

“Top drawer. Love life? Watkins?”

“Feeble, sir. He is one hundred percent alone and has no realistic prospects. There’s a girl at the grocery store he has a bit of a crush on. A very young, very pretty girl who has plenty of men available to her of any sort she might want. She smiled at him because she is une créature souriante. She looks right at you and smiles, and if that sort of thing impresses you, you’re done for. No, there’s nothing to report here. It’s the café counter girl story all over again.”

“Excellent, excellent. Gentlemen, I commend you. Everything seems to be in very good order indeed. Work is so easy when you’ve got a good team around you. It’s just tricks and horizons left now I think. Let’s have tricks first. Weasby?”

“Just small things really. The lab has developed a way of making his toenails grow faster by focusing infrared magnetic waves on them. He cuts them, you see, and then forgets about them. He thinks he has so much time before attending to them again, but they are growing faster now. Soon, he must cut them again.”

“And that annoys him.”

“Oh, very much sir. Close to rage at times. We’re having an effect.”

“All right, Weasby, that’s fine, that’s fine. Horizons? Horn-bottom? Any major humiliations upcoming?”

“Thank you, sir. We’ve been setting up a fairly elaborate fatelet for him that’s sure to end in financial and emotional disaster if he bites. It’s his grad-school fantasy, wanting to do international relations or poetry – we’ve been encouraging it, sent him a couple of brochures about programmes at local universities. This is a low probability event, but if he does bite, we’re looking at a two-year journey to nowhere, and a ton of money and emotional capital drained. I hardly need explain to this group how long those loans are going to be in the picture.”

“About as long as the shame, I’d say.”

“Not quite! Not quite!”

Laughter all around.

“I like it! Well done! Well, let’s move…”

“Sir…”

“Yes, Hornbottom?”

“There is one more thing, sir. We’ve detected something potentially troubling on the horizon as well.”

“Very good, what is it?”

“We’re not sure. We do know he’s being watched, and not by us. But we’ve been unable to find out anything else so far.”

“Hmm. Can we think of anybody who might want to help him?”

“Not a pigeon, sir. But at this point we’re not ruling out anything.”

“Well, that’s fine, that’s fine. I’m sure it’s nothing you boys can’t handle. Continue to monitor the situation and let us know as soon as you learn anything, that’s all. Gentlemen, that’s enough for now. This meeting of the Fontoon Wrecking Company is adjourned.”

Chapter Buttocks

Admiral Fontoon felt like a complete idiot and he knew his feeling was right. His rude awakening had left him in a state of profound inanition. He had drawn a mental line at one o’clock in the afternoon, a time after which he felt getting out of bed was demoralising. Well, what if he did sleep all day? Why shouldn’t he? Nobody would blame him because nobody would know because nobody would care. He wasn’t expected at Wossafocken Point for hours.

Fontoon sat numbly now at his kitchen table and pressed Cheez Bombs, which actually burst in tiny explosions upon contact with saliva, into his mouth. He had showered and made desultory cleaning motions, not so much tidying as pushing everything into a centralised quasi-Olmec pre-Columbian mound before which to collapse in ceremonial despair. He had sustained no injuries worthy of medical attention, but his left knee and forearm had both received impressive bruises, and he could legitimately limp. His head was still tender from its encounter with the oak table. A vomitous aroma lingered.

You must face yourself strictly, with severe eyes. That’s what the handsome Japanese man ahead of Fontoon had said to the sprouty nose-hair corner grocer as Fontoon waited to pay for his spaghetti and sauce one day. Fontoon didn’t know the context but he always remembered those words, which seemed true, and ruthless. It was almost as if, once you knew a fierce axiom like that one, you didn’t even have to face yourself strictly with severe eyes any more. You could simply state the axiom and create an effect serious enough for most purposes.

Fontoon also remembered the words of pocket billiards champion Willie Mosconi, who had started his classic work on the game, right at the beginning of chapter one (Fundamentals), with the timeless phrase: There’s only one way to play pocket billiards – the right way. How true those words were as well, and how equally unforgiving and generally applicable to life itself. Fundamentals indeed. It was about getting serious. It was about cutting the fat, the distractions, the excuses. Fontoon didn’t need to face himself particularly strictly nor with especially severe eyes; even from a timid sideways glance he knew he wasn’t playing the pocket billiards game of life the right way. With a sigh he looked out of the window at the always-unfamiliar view of the city outside, the very sight that had made him cross the line into nausea.

He stood up and approached the window, that he might gaze through it while striking a reflective pose with his hands clasped thoughtfully behind his buttocks. As he stood there, Fontoon secretly enjoyed the effect created by his own posture, standing so thoughtfully and quietly before a window like that. He felt somehow romantic. He bet himself that history’s best philosophers no doubt stood in similar attitudes while pondering the meaning of life. He felt in the perfect mood to have an insight of his own. He sniffed the air around him with grave dissatisfaction, and frowned.

“Alone I stand,” he said solemnly in the emptiness of his apartment, secretly enjoying the dramatic sound of it despite his real sense of ruin, and straining to hear its faint reverberations in the room.

Fontoon watched as the building across the street went through its continual permutations. It was of no fixed colour, but changed constantly according to combinations of its internal chemistry, the mood of the viewer, and the way the light would hit it. The patterns into which these colours fell also continuously changed, as did the shape of the building itself. It remained more or less a top-tapering rectangular box, but would oscillate like a huge building-shaped elastic tube full of thick liquid, as if there were an enormous building-sized woman belly dancing very slowly inside it.

The streets and sidewalks rolled along in waves, usually subtly, but sometimes with such force that it was hard to keep one’s footing. Beyond one’s immediate vicinity, the city blended into a bubbling backdrop of melted crayons, with colourful balls emerging, spreading, breaking into smaller balls, joining to form larger ones, or sinking away entirely. Overhead, multi-hued clouds formed and dissipated like time-lapse films, and mirages appeared and faded everywhere. And down on those rolling streets, people moved, synchronising their body motions as best they could to the motion of the city itself.

Admiral Fontoon was beginning to get hypnotised. His eyelids, which had been fixed narrowly in an attitude of wisdom and perceptiveness, had relaxed and were drooping. Likewise, his jaw had gone slack, and indeed saliva was pooling beneath his tongue, and rising to such a level that spillage was imminent. Sometimes when this happened he would start awake, with some hurried imperative in his head, such as ‘Action stations!’ Other times, like now, he simply gazed until his saliva pool flooded over the banks of his lips, setting off a sudden shamefest of wiping and slurping. He shuffled across the room and sat back down at his kitchen table.

On the table was a swell of bills and junk mail that Fontoon had been accumulating and avoiding for several weeks, if not months. This unkempt splash of envelopes needed tending badly. Fontoon resisted the urge to do nothing. Instead, he made a very orderly stack out of the dishevelment and pushed it neatly to one corner. Hmmm. Some brochures for graduate courses in poetry. Interesting. He had long harboured poetic ambitions and fancied himself a latent talent of potentially great repute. Statistically speaking, the peak of his fame, were it coming, ought most likely to have been well over a decade ago. Fontoon extinguished this disturbing inkling the very moment he noticed it arising. Impudent thoughts of this kind only create needless anxiety. Brash, young, sexy, and self-confident were only four among innumerable possible qualities of an emerging poet. Taking the world by storm was only one way to make an entrance. Surely there were plenty of examples of less grasping people slinking onto the poetic stage quietly through side doors at uncharismatic later stages in life. Well then Admiral Fontoon could be one of those.

Fontoon greedily imagined himself now giving a public reading in a bookstore full of devoted fans, now at a fancy party on an equal footing with famous celebrities from other walks of life. It is true that he had never written a poem that he felt was a success on his own artistic terms, and indeed he had produced only three or four failures. The fact of greater importance was that he was living his life, accumulating the sorts of experiences and thoughts and attitudes that would one day serve him so well in the world of poetry.

He had nearly started hundreds of poems, mostly in random snatches of words that would occur to him during the course of the day and would have the magic ring of poetry. For example, he might combine the word ‘vanishing’ with the word ‘distance’ and consider there was a phrase with poetic possibilities, or the word ‘gabble’ with the word ‘wahine’ and reckon there was something in there somewhere. It was never convenient to write these down, but he felt reasonably confident that these promising beginnings remained trapped in a subconscious netherworld and could be retrieved once he simply sat down with a sharpened pencil, a clean sheet of paper, and an entire free afternoon ahead of him with no masturbating. All he needed to do was dip into this vast well of dissociated snippets and allow them to coalesce before his gently coaxing mind’s patient eye.

Fontoon spent nearly a full additional minute basking in imprecise reverie. He thought of the word ‘nabob’ and the word ‘kaput’, and nodded his head earnestly. The immediate afternoon was nothing if not full of tightly constrained possibilities. I should start now, thought Fontoon, a thought that somehow triggered a profusion of other things he ought to do that afternoon as well. Where to begin?

I’ll make a list, Fontoon decided. A list always clears things up. Fontoon felt that finally he was about to get things organised. Without a list, it was impossible to do anything, but once you had one, all you had to do was go through it and tick things off. I should have done this a long time ago. He got up to try to find a pen and a piece of paper. He could have sworn he kept some blank paper on his kitchen table, but if so, it had moved elsewhere. He looked all over his apartment, starting with the places he could have sworn he kept blank paper and then moving on to places he knew he never kept blank paper. It was infuriating. He had only just barely embarked on his organisational crusade and he was already being driven up the wall by it. Was it too much to ask that a piece of blank bastard paper could be found when it was wanted? Must everything be stupid and irritating?

“Dammit!” he suddenly yelled. He intended to punch the soft fleshy bit of his other hand, but somehow the back of a chair got in the way. Fontoon dropped into a pained crouch and indulged in a few moments of feeling angry and stupid before rising with the decision to make his list on the back of an envelope. There were loads of envelopes right there on the kitchen table. Now he needed a pen or a pencil. Where to look? By the phone? No, nothing there except a pad of blank paper. Stuck on a bookshelf somewhere? No, no, nothing. Ah. Pencil. On the floor by the laundry pile. Success. However, he discovered he was unable to hold a pencil very happily now in his swollen red writing hand. Placing the pencil awkwardly in his left hand, he attempted some uncoordinated scribbling, only to break the fragile point. He hurled the implement across the apartment and it rolled under his refrigerator, where it remained for the rest of eternity. Fontoon put his head down on the kitchen table until realising there was something he could easily do without thinking. Thank god for egestion. It would take up some time and nobody could blame him for doing it.

He had an uneventful time of it, producing the sort that anyone could understand, went through his rather thorough cleaning ritual, and then he did something relatively unusual. He opened up the little cupboard under the sink, and took out an empty glass jar and a strainer. Using the latter, he dipped into the toilet water, held his breath, fished out his not insubstantial prize, placed it carefully into the glass jar, and screwed the cap on tight. Only then did he flush the toilet. Only then did he breathe.

He looked around the apartment furtively, even though he knew nobody else was there to see, except of course, as always, the invisible omni-connecting tendrils of the all-feeling universe. His knuckles whitened a bit as he clutched his jar and went for the special cupboard.

Fontoon opened the cupboard. There they were – some thirty jars of impounded bowel movements of various vintages. I need to get rid of some of these, he thought. Cull the herd. Fontoon felt dirty in a fascinating way as he placed the newest recruit among its brethren and paused to look at them all, some nearly as unsullied as the day they were made, others wholly desiccated and crumbling. It sure was interesting. How strange they looked. Look at that one, three years old. Crusty little thing. Fontoon shut the cupboard door and exhaled decisively. He was very ashamed of himself, and quietly thrilled.

I could do the dishes, Fontoon considered, looking at the pile still twiddling its thumbs in the sink, a pile that was obviously prepared to wait forever. A glance in the other direction yielded only the pile of puke-soaked newspapers. Piles everywhere. Smells. People were supposed to take their recycling down to the Recycling Centre. It was clearly a tedious and untenable system. They ought to make it easy for people, very easy. Do you want the recycling done or not?

Enough. He stood, and in an act that already felt heroic, he set his jaw, held his breath, and grabbed a large, lawn-sized garbage bag from under the sink in the kitchen. He began stuffing the papers into the bag. It felt good. The triumph of filling the first bag was followed by the disappointment of discovering that it was the last bag he had.

No matter. Fontoon fixed his eyes on the sink and permitted a thin smile. He removed some of the papers from his garbage bag to make room. Two minutes of clinking and crashing later, the dishes were gone. I have more dishes, he said to himself, giddy with the liberating feeling of ‘anything goes’.

He lifted the big bag and cradled it in his arms. It was heavy, and he was already feeling faint. He narrowed his eyes and looked both ways, as if he were about to cross Secret Agent Street. He fumbled with the front door knob until he succeeded in opening it, and staggered out into the hallway of his apartment building.

Nobody. Fontoon made his way along the corridor and over to the rubbish chute, got it open, took a look at the ‘No Newspapers!’ sign and one last look both ways, and then wedged the big bag into the opening. He had to push as hard as he could to force it through the hole. The bag plummeted for long silent seconds before landing with an earthenware smash at the bottom of the chute.

Hah, he thought.

He hurried gleefully back to his apartment, where he grabbed a large armful of newspapers. Before entering the hallway, he poked his head out and looked both ways. All clear. As swiftly and quietly as he could, he approached the rubbish chute again. A few papers slid off the top of the unwieldy pile and landed on the floor behind him. Again he got the chute door open and shoved the papers inside. Again he looked around. Still clear.

Just as he was retrieving the fallen papers, however, he looked up to see a pair of eyes peering intently at him through a door that was opened just a crack.

“I see what you’re doing Fontoon,” said the voice attached to the eyes, “and I’m calling the police.”

It was Tommy ‘The Fink’ Pinkston from down the hall.

Tommy was eleven years old. He was called The Fink because he had blown the whistle on Culoso one school day back in third grade. Culoso was a charismatic child who could lead less self-assured others astray. Culoso had a naked lady pen, the kind where she has an ink bathing suit that drains away down to one small strategic triangle. That’s how Culoso originally roped in Tommy.

The pair of them, Culoso and Tommy, kept claiming to have to go to the bathroom, and when they got permission they’d go to the bathroom all right, only not on official business. They’d just lean against the sink and look at Culoso’s pen for a few thrilling minutes. Then it was arguing about who was bigger, King Kong or It from Mad Monster Party. Tommy was a Kong man; Culoso shot him down. Tommy objected at first, but Culoso was adamant. Tommy had no choice but to concede that compared to It, King Kong was fairly small.

The teacher, Mrs. Dubin, a beautiful woman with dark sweaters full of bosom, caught them and was angry. Culoso and Tommy had lied to her and taken her for quite a little ride. For the first half of the year Mrs. Dubin had been Miss Kirschner, but then she married Mr. Dubin. All the students preferred Miss Kirschner. She used to belong to them, but now she had come under the spell of this Dubin. Unspoken tension crimped the shoulders of everyone in the class since the wedding day. Even so, Tommy was genuinely remorseful upon seeing Mrs. Dubin’s indignant face. He understood all at once that Miss Kirschner was still there below the surface, kindly and warm and accessible, only she was wounded and felt forced against her own loving nature to draw a disciplinary line in the sand.

However, he did really and truly now have to go to the bathroom, and she wouldn’t let him. He gave her a pleading look and clutched his penis imploringly through his trousers, but no; she was in a punishing, Dubinesque mood.

To his credit, Tommy had refused to beg. He didn’t say for the love of god, Mrs. Dubin, I’m going to wet my pants, punish me however you like, but please in the name of decency don’t make me wet my pants in school. In her anger she probably hadn’t considered the idea that Tommy might realistically wet his pants if he couldn’t get to the bathroom. It’s probably not what she really wanted. It was probably just the Dubin in her.

Tommy held out as long as he could, but the day was young and eventually he had to let go. The ensuing pants infusion changed how everyone perceived him from then on; his job prospects and future happiness suffered accordingly. Tommy turned against Culoso that day; he blamed him for everything and told on him about the naked lady pen, which was promptly confiscated. It was Culoso who named him The Fink.

Fontoon had never met Tommy’s family and wondered if he lived alone. He wondered if the boy’s parents were perhaps living a slapdash life of moral relativism. In fact, they were a sneaky little couple, but their worst actual crime had been placing a bag that said ‘meter broken’ over a functioning parking meter – actually they always did it, and always had plenty of marked bags.

“Don’t call the police, Tommy,” said Fontoon now in a measured tone, “because if you do I’ll…”

“You’ll what?” taunted Tommy. “What’ll you do?”

“I’ll make you regret it.”

“Big man! I’m calling the police.”

A scowl took Fontoon’s face as he turned to confront the boy, his arms still full of newspapers. He was immediately blinded by a succession of bright flashes, as Tommy blasted him with a dozen rapid-fire rounds of snapshot.

“You little bastard!” yelled Fontoon, dropping the papers and rushing the door, which slammed in his face. He could hear the sound of a chain sliding into place. He could see only spots.

Chapter Jail

“I’ll have your badge for this! You’ll be spending the rest of your life giving out parking tickets!”

“Oh, I’m sure,” said Officer Malone, locking Fontoon into a cage of steel bars and nodding as if he had seen everything there ever was in the world. “You’ll have my badge. I’ll be giving out parking tickets. I can see it all now.” Malone took off his cap and scratched his manly head. Fontoon grabbed the bars of the cell door and rattled them.

“Throwing his papers away, was he?” asked Officer Farrell as he strode purposefully up to Fontoon’s cell. He put his hands on his hips. He was chewing gum, and wore a frown on his handsome face. “Piece of shit.”

“Throwing them away like dirt. Like you’d throw away a goddamned banana peel.”

“Let me tell you something, dickhead. You don’t throw your newspapers away. They’re not garbage. What the fuck?”

“He’ll think twice before doing that next time, won’t he?”

“You better fucking think twice about it, asshole.”

“They were covered in vomit!” shouted Fontoon. “I had to get rid of them!”

“And throwing away your dishes, for god’s sake!” exclaimed Malone. “What is that? You don’t throw away your dishes! You wash them! Wash them and put them away!”

“Punk-ass motherfucker. Just remember one thing, dirtbag. You’re not just throwing away some dishes here. You’re throwing away your life.”

You’re throwing away your life. The words echoed in Admiral Fontoon’s mind as the policemen walked away, still clucking. It was a definite sore spot. It had taken years of tortured half-attempts at self-examination for Fontoon to approach the broad outlines of that same conclusion, and still he had never perceived it with the beautiful stark clarity that Officer Danny Farrell so instantly had.

“O that some Power would give us that little gift,” a voice sang out from behind Fontoon, “to see ourselves as others see us. It would from many a blunder free us, and foolish notions as well, oh yes!”

Damn, Fontoon thought. Roommate. He turned around reluctantly to survey his surroundings for the first time. It was a small cell, with bars for a front door and three of the four walls. The fourth, outer wall was concrete and had bars on a tiny square window narrower than one of Fontoon’s thighs. The floor was concrete, with a small hole in the middle of it that served as a toilet.

A metal bunk bed took up one wall, with some sort of square-jawed criminal sitting up top. His strangely bright blue eyes sat moist and blinking in a field of deep creases, a filamented topography of recklessly ill-conceived plans. Fontoon’s mind raced through a threat assessment. They had poetry in common. They would probably get along all right.

The criminal reached a meaty hand under his mattress and pulled out a toilet brush with a sharpened bit of metal taped to the end of it. He pointed it in the general direction of Fontoon’s stomach.

“I’ll chiv ya!” he spat, grinning maniacally. He repeated it: “Heh heh, I’ll chiv ya!”