HANCH
I was on the corner of 157th and Amsterdam, waiting for one of those vendors of delicious roasted sauerbraten. My eyes were casting down the long street, catching sight of many typical things for this neighborhood: two elderly Jewish men arm wrestling over a piece of steak, a line of five children marching toward the sunset, some kind of green quadraped loping over the tops of parked cars… I smiled. I knew my time was a-comin’.
But then something else got in the way. It was a man wearing a long satin gown who whispered in my ear from behind me. All he said was, “I can get you great games, pal. The eternal wing-ding. Dice in a cup, new place to hang your plate.”
I turned quickly and eyed the stranger, scrutinized him. He seemed on the level, in fact he seemed to be toting a sack of automatic problem solvers: for not only was I down to my last three dollars in cash, but I would need two more to even get the delicious condiments that I savored most of all. I nodded and silently followed him.
Where would we go? Some underground den where cards were sliding over black cloth and men with drinks were cursing loudly over disco music? I don’t know this neighborhood very well. The windows make me feel like I’m on a stage, and the name of the show is “Frankly Boisterous” with special guest star Jack Lemmon.
He took me around two brick wall corners, and led me into a deli. I thought, this is novel. How am I going to cash in on meat, except maybe if there’s a mouse race in the basement? Then I got excited. The first time I won on a mouse race, I spent the whole night looking for a place to buy heroin. Then I fell asleep at a bus stop and someone pulled the money out of my breast pocket. As an added insult, they left a hunk of half-chewed bacon, which had attracted a single bee by the time I was coming to. Now I was going to get some of that $33 dollars back.
“Mr. Maninadress,” I addressed him, “What are we doing here? I thought there might be a chance for some gambling in the basement.”
His eyes were angry looking. “This is no gambling trip, you twit. I want you to kill a man, and I’m prepared to offer you sixty thousand dollars. I have it all at home, and more too.” He spat on the floor after cautiously looking all around him. “You see,” he leaned in to whisper, “If my uncle, let’s call him Bryan, kicks off within the year, I stand to make a lot of money. Much more than I have now.” I was surprised, but that must mean a lot of money if I was to get $60,000. So I leaned in, interested.
He went on: “Oh, anyway, it has to be from cancer, but I think a boating accident involving stabbing will fit the bill.”
“What?” I blurted. “How will that get us fat with money, peabrain?”
“You dolt! Listen up! There’s two ways it could work. First off, I will go into his house and get the money while you stab him on a boat. I’m even willing to buy a boat. Secondly, Jewish people like my uncle never get cancer unless they catch it from someone. So what else can be done?”
Someone pulled out a chair at our table, and I figured he was taking it someplace else. Instead, to my visible chagrin, he sat down—and the new stranger nodded at me and began to speak.
“I would do it if I were you, kid,” his voice was husky with wisdom, and his moustache was flecked with little bits of white powder. “I was just over there having a kolache, trying to figure out how I was going to get myself some grands to put in the crank-bank, and now I think I know how to get those green nachos in both our bellies. I’ll help out on this thing, you betcha. Name’s Hanch, Bryan Hanch.”
The repetition of the name Bryan disturbed me: a little too much, in fact. “Wait a minute,” I waved a finger between them, “I don’t like how this is going. A fishy setup, followed by weird coincidences that seem like some kind of plot that wasn’t concocted all the way. No way am I taking a deal from you guys.” I shook my head a firm no and pursed my lips, not letting anything in. My body language was rigid and unpersuadable.
They sat there, looking at each other: beaten, at last. I had to make a choice, and I did. That was what I always did when something like this came up. I knew I would have to turn the ship around and solve the mystery of how to thaw the frozen drink that Life had given me: the answer is by urinating on the side of the cup. Like that time, I knew immediately what to do.
“But,” I injected to the barren field of dialogue that had suddenly stretched out before me, “Have I got something for you guys.” Their eyes lit up like a couple of streamers fresh from the can, and I worked out the details in my head as I was flushing out the memories of my fat aunt Candace’s gout-stricken hips brushing against me in the hallway so many decades ago.
“There will be a sauerbraten man coming down 157th in about ten minutes.” I looked at my watch. “No! Five minutes, if that. OK, listen close, you little eggshell dwellers. Let’s all go outside, and you two hide behind the corner. When the sauerbraten man comes up, I will break him in the head with this sugar shaker here. Blinded by sugar, perhaps unconscious from the unexpected blow, he will tumble into the street and lie there quiet. That will give us ample time to take his apron, roll him down a rain gutter, and move over two blocks. We’ll have his money, his cart, but most importantly of all—” I could hardly speak for the smile that played upon my face: “We will have his clientele. And that, you hairdoes on a stick, is like money in action. It’s money raining from a paper sky is what it is specifically.”
They looked at each other and smiled. We all knew what to do, finally. Problem solved. And what’s more, I had worked the deal my way, in my favor. These guys didn’t even know how much I would be eating, as well as selling. But screw them, they would learn the rules of Yahtzee by watching a pro.
On the street, I noticed immediately that my two cohorts lacked a sense of situational coordination. They both wanted to hide in the same place, they bickered like idiots over who would get to hold the vendor’s arms while the other fed his body into the rain gutter. I silenced them both and gave firm orders, orders so firm that my cohorts disappeared immediately, like handicapped people often do on Mt. Kilamanjaro.
I waited nervously, sweating and trying hard to look like I wasn’t. The spring evening was especially mild, and it was well past 10 pm. My eyes kept to the long street, and I saw the green thing cavorting again. Would it ever stop? I almost wanted to leave my friends and go chase after it. At least see what it was all the way. But then the cart appeared, gently wheeling from two streets over.
Showtime. I whispered aloud, “All right, stay down. Give me a second with him.” I held the sugar shaker tight in my fist; it was sticky, and I loved thinking about it bursting with a cloud of sparkly mist, obscuring the crime and sprinkling these sour streets with something pure and refined. My own ghost hovered over me, wishing me luck and telling me to watch out for that hot spot, watch out for that hot spot. I liked it at first, but then I turned off my mind. Here came the guy, after all.
“Hi there,” I said enthusiastically. The Dominican vendor looked my way, smiled gently, and set down his cart. I read the side of it: Sauerbraten A-Yum Yo Yeah, perfect. The man’s face was sweaty, like my own, and I think he liked that. Perhaps he would ask me what steam I had been exposed to, and we could share a moment of cart tales, and talk of dusk in the bad part of town where nobody will give you cotton if you get some wine on your jaw.
“Hello, friend,” he said gently. He started to say more.
“Friend MY ASS!” I shouted, pulling out the shaker, which the man looked upon with terror. Then, when he realized it was too white and cylindrical to be a gun, he chuckled softly.
I lifted it high and brought it down on the man’s skull, fast and hard: like I was pulling a lever from above me that needed to go down to my knees, and it had about one hundred pounds of resistance. Just like in the dream I had last night, it shattered above his forehead and white dust filled the air. Broken glass cut the man’s head, but delicious sugar sealed up the wounds and made delicious scabs here and there. He tottered off balance, his eyes closed and arms waving. Sugar was all over his goddamn face, and I saw the man in the night gown had his mouth wide open, staring in shock from behind an old computer piled against the wall to my right. Next to him, just standing there the whole time out in the open, Bryan Hanch was smiling and nodding his head in agreement.
The Dominican vendor finally went over the curb, blind and dizzy, and he slammed uncomfortably against the street below and was silent. Sugar was still all over his face, and blood dripped from his mouth. I turned to my team. I watched the vendor for only one second, then turned toward my team.
“Guys!” I hissed, but they were gone. Not gone, but running away. Laughing. Bryan Hanch turned to give me a peace sign, which I angrily returned. Jobbed on my own job. Like something out of Wittgenstein. Then I looked about me. No one now. All alone. Better make the best of it.
I opened his cart and peered in. The steaming water inside blinded me, but after I got used to it I stuck my head right down in the opening.
“Jesus,” I murmured. “It’s empty.” I turned and looked down at the strange man, the vendor with his face covered in sugar, limp and lifeless on the sidewalk. What was his game? This could be the end of my life, and the medicine chest was empty. I closed my eyes and strolled away.
Hopefully no one had seen, and I was not being tailed as I took odd turns and tried to place myself outside the reasonable perimeter of blame. This had been a strange night, I thought to myself. What’s even stranger is that the night before was exactly the same, except with two black guys in army clothes instead of these inferior crime pals I just parted ways with. And I remembered as the two black men had run from me, leaving me boiling in the stew of crime, the one named Lawrence had turned and pointed at a pair of shoes sitting exposed on top of a garbage heap. I had taken that to mean, “Why don’t you beat it yourself?” I had, but then I was left with the distinct feeling of a job not done all the way.
Even now as I walked along the lanes, it was driving me crazy. What about tomorrow night? Am I going to get one of these sauerbraten, or do I have to go all the goddamn way to Germany and rub the backs of people with power?
The windows were laughing at me as I walked under them, just another seed on the tongue of this city, looking up at the rotten teeth all around me.
But then something else got in the way. It was a man wearing a long satin gown who whispered in my ear from behind me. All he said was, “I can get you great games, pal. The eternal wing-ding. Dice in a cup, new place to hang your plate.”
I turned quickly and eyed the stranger, scrutinized him. He seemed on the level, in fact he seemed to be toting a sack of automatic problem solvers: for not only was I down to my last three dollars in cash, but I would need two more to even get the delicious condiments that I savored most of all. I nodded and silently followed him.
Where would we go? Some underground den where cards were sliding over black cloth and men with drinks were cursing loudly over disco music? I don’t know this neighborhood very well. The windows make me feel like I’m on a stage, and the name of the show is “Frankly Boisterous” with special guest star Jack Lemmon.
He took me around two brick wall corners, and led me into a deli. I thought, this is novel. How am I going to cash in on meat, except maybe if there’s a mouse race in the basement? Then I got excited. The first time I won on a mouse race, I spent the whole night looking for a place to buy heroin. Then I fell asleep at a bus stop and someone pulled the money out of my breast pocket. As an added insult, they left a hunk of half-chewed bacon, which had attracted a single bee by the time I was coming to. Now I was going to get some of that $33 dollars back.
“Mr. Maninadress,” I addressed him, “What are we doing here? I thought there might be a chance for some gambling in the basement.”
His eyes were angry looking. “This is no gambling trip, you twit. I want you to kill a man, and I’m prepared to offer you sixty thousand dollars. I have it all at home, and more too.” He spat on the floor after cautiously looking all around him. “You see,” he leaned in to whisper, “If my uncle, let’s call him Bryan, kicks off within the year, I stand to make a lot of money. Much more than I have now.” I was surprised, but that must mean a lot of money if I was to get $60,000. So I leaned in, interested.
He went on: “Oh, anyway, it has to be from cancer, but I think a boating accident involving stabbing will fit the bill.”
“What?” I blurted. “How will that get us fat with money, peabrain?”
“You dolt! Listen up! There’s two ways it could work. First off, I will go into his house and get the money while you stab him on a boat. I’m even willing to buy a boat. Secondly, Jewish people like my uncle never get cancer unless they catch it from someone. So what else can be done?”
Someone pulled out a chair at our table, and I figured he was taking it someplace else. Instead, to my visible chagrin, he sat down—and the new stranger nodded at me and began to speak.
“I would do it if I were you, kid,” his voice was husky with wisdom, and his moustache was flecked with little bits of white powder. “I was just over there having a kolache, trying to figure out how I was going to get myself some grands to put in the crank-bank, and now I think I know how to get those green nachos in both our bellies. I’ll help out on this thing, you betcha. Name’s Hanch, Bryan Hanch.”
The repetition of the name Bryan disturbed me: a little too much, in fact. “Wait a minute,” I waved a finger between them, “I don’t like how this is going. A fishy setup, followed by weird coincidences that seem like some kind of plot that wasn’t concocted all the way. No way am I taking a deal from you guys.” I shook my head a firm no and pursed my lips, not letting anything in. My body language was rigid and unpersuadable.
They sat there, looking at each other: beaten, at last. I had to make a choice, and I did. That was what I always did when something like this came up. I knew I would have to turn the ship around and solve the mystery of how to thaw the frozen drink that Life had given me: the answer is by urinating on the side of the cup. Like that time, I knew immediately what to do.
“But,” I injected to the barren field of dialogue that had suddenly stretched out before me, “Have I got something for you guys.” Their eyes lit up like a couple of streamers fresh from the can, and I worked out the details in my head as I was flushing out the memories of my fat aunt Candace’s gout-stricken hips brushing against me in the hallway so many decades ago.
“There will be a sauerbraten man coming down 157th in about ten minutes.” I looked at my watch. “No! Five minutes, if that. OK, listen close, you little eggshell dwellers. Let’s all go outside, and you two hide behind the corner. When the sauerbraten man comes up, I will break him in the head with this sugar shaker here. Blinded by sugar, perhaps unconscious from the unexpected blow, he will tumble into the street and lie there quiet. That will give us ample time to take his apron, roll him down a rain gutter, and move over two blocks. We’ll have his money, his cart, but most importantly of all—” I could hardly speak for the smile that played upon my face: “We will have his clientele. And that, you hairdoes on a stick, is like money in action. It’s money raining from a paper sky is what it is specifically.”
They looked at each other and smiled. We all knew what to do, finally. Problem solved. And what’s more, I had worked the deal my way, in my favor. These guys didn’t even know how much I would be eating, as well as selling. But screw them, they would learn the rules of Yahtzee by watching a pro.
On the street, I noticed immediately that my two cohorts lacked a sense of situational coordination. They both wanted to hide in the same place, they bickered like idiots over who would get to hold the vendor’s arms while the other fed his body into the rain gutter. I silenced them both and gave firm orders, orders so firm that my cohorts disappeared immediately, like handicapped people often do on Mt. Kilamanjaro.
I waited nervously, sweating and trying hard to look like I wasn’t. The spring evening was especially mild, and it was well past 10 pm. My eyes kept to the long street, and I saw the green thing cavorting again. Would it ever stop? I almost wanted to leave my friends and go chase after it. At least see what it was all the way. But then the cart appeared, gently wheeling from two streets over.
Showtime. I whispered aloud, “All right, stay down. Give me a second with him.” I held the sugar shaker tight in my fist; it was sticky, and I loved thinking about it bursting with a cloud of sparkly mist, obscuring the crime and sprinkling these sour streets with something pure and refined. My own ghost hovered over me, wishing me luck and telling me to watch out for that hot spot, watch out for that hot spot. I liked it at first, but then I turned off my mind. Here came the guy, after all.
“Hi there,” I said enthusiastically. The Dominican vendor looked my way, smiled gently, and set down his cart. I read the side of it: Sauerbraten A-Yum Yo Yeah, perfect. The man’s face was sweaty, like my own, and I think he liked that. Perhaps he would ask me what steam I had been exposed to, and we could share a moment of cart tales, and talk of dusk in the bad part of town where nobody will give you cotton if you get some wine on your jaw.
“Hello, friend,” he said gently. He started to say more.
“Friend MY ASS!” I shouted, pulling out the shaker, which the man looked upon with terror. Then, when he realized it was too white and cylindrical to be a gun, he chuckled softly.
I lifted it high and brought it down on the man’s skull, fast and hard: like I was pulling a lever from above me that needed to go down to my knees, and it had about one hundred pounds of resistance. Just like in the dream I had last night, it shattered above his forehead and white dust filled the air. Broken glass cut the man’s head, but delicious sugar sealed up the wounds and made delicious scabs here and there. He tottered off balance, his eyes closed and arms waving. Sugar was all over his goddamn face, and I saw the man in the night gown had his mouth wide open, staring in shock from behind an old computer piled against the wall to my right. Next to him, just standing there the whole time out in the open, Bryan Hanch was smiling and nodding his head in agreement.
The Dominican vendor finally went over the curb, blind and dizzy, and he slammed uncomfortably against the street below and was silent. Sugar was still all over his face, and blood dripped from his mouth. I turned to my team. I watched the vendor for only one second, then turned toward my team.
“Guys!” I hissed, but they were gone. Not gone, but running away. Laughing. Bryan Hanch turned to give me a peace sign, which I angrily returned. Jobbed on my own job. Like something out of Wittgenstein. Then I looked about me. No one now. All alone. Better make the best of it.
I opened his cart and peered in. The steaming water inside blinded me, but after I got used to it I stuck my head right down in the opening.
“Jesus,” I murmured. “It’s empty.” I turned and looked down at the strange man, the vendor with his face covered in sugar, limp and lifeless on the sidewalk. What was his game? This could be the end of my life, and the medicine chest was empty. I closed my eyes and strolled away.
Hopefully no one had seen, and I was not being tailed as I took odd turns and tried to place myself outside the reasonable perimeter of blame. This had been a strange night, I thought to myself. What’s even stranger is that the night before was exactly the same, except with two black guys in army clothes instead of these inferior crime pals I just parted ways with. And I remembered as the two black men had run from me, leaving me boiling in the stew of crime, the one named Lawrence had turned and pointed at a pair of shoes sitting exposed on top of a garbage heap. I had taken that to mean, “Why don’t you beat it yourself?” I had, but then I was left with the distinct feeling of a job not done all the way.
Even now as I walked along the lanes, it was driving me crazy. What about tomorrow night? Am I going to get one of these sauerbraten, or do I have to go all the goddamn way to Germany and rub the backs of people with power?
The windows were laughing at me as I walked under them, just another seed on the tongue of this city, looking up at the rotten teeth all around me.