Last Calls and Lucky Charms

II

IIHoratio Albert ‘Hal’ Urban was awoken by the phone. He knocked a good bottle of Jack Daniels over reaching for the phone on the messy coffee table. The clock over the TV was fuzzy but he saw it well enough. “Shit.” He pressed the button on the boxy portable phone. “Yup.”

A velvety voice that made women swoon called to him. “Hal, are you sleeping?” The voice was that of the best friend a guy could have, Book Booker. He was the self-styled heir to Billy Dee.

“Not anymore.” He sat up in his soiled yesterday’s clothes. That was a mistake. “Ow.” There was a caveman smashing rocks in his head.

“A little late even for you,” Hal got up. He’d been through this before and stumbled to the kitchen. His little apartment living room was not much but it was messy. One secondhand chair one couch and one TV stand. There was a desk behind the couch facing the wall. The walls were decorated with uneven sports memorabilia of baseball, basketball and high school football. Yankees, Mets, Rose Thorns--the high school teams; you get the idea. There was more than a few empty pizza boxes and Chinese food containers.

The kitchen wasn’t much better. “I see my column on the desk.” Handwritten and full of errors. What the hell? It was Tuesday. They went to press that night not in the morning.

He pressed the button on the coffee machine and went back through the living room to the open bedroom door. ESPN was still on the TV. He ignored it.

“Monica is gunning for you.” Great. s**t.

“Can you stall her another half an hour?” She was their sports editor.

Why? He didn’t really know. She knew nothing about sports. She wore tight mini skirts and dresses every day, she was a man eating woman in her forties with a Marilyn Monroe look, hair and all. She had the body to match and loved watching her employees squirm.

Ah, s****l harassment. The days before Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton. All in all, Oberon Community Newspapers were a terrible place to work.

“Yeah, I got this. Next round’s on you,” that usually was the way it was with them. Again, the term ‘enabler,’ hadn’t been coined yet.

“Love you brother.” Click. Slowly and painfully the writer looked for his clean clothes of the mess in his little bedroom. He tossed the phone on his twin bed with Yankees sheets. They had been a gift. The dresser was almost as old as he was. There was a bathroom off one side of bedroom and a closet on the other side of the bed. Over the bed was an autographed Mr. October Poster. He pulled on cleanish khakis and a dress shirt.

The coffee mug was a Mets one from one promotion or another and Hal guzzled the hot liquid as he pulled his socks on and tied his shoes. He drank a second cup in front of ESPN taking notes on a notepad from his desk and then, trying to balance the mug on his knee it spilled--on his groin. Horatio Albert Urban screamed a deafening scream and ran around in circles for a minute, almost tripping on the crap in his living room. He then ran into the bedroom and yanked his shoes off, looking for clean underwear and new pants. He pulled the pants from the hamper.

Well, at least he was awake. “Why did I drink this time?” He also wondered when he’d actually do laundry. Urban hesitated at the desk. There was an envelope he hadn’t opened the night before. It was a very delayed letter. He opened it. After reading it he put it in the bottom drawer and went to door leaving his coffee mug on the couch.

The letter had been his 1027th rejection slip, albeit a year late. A novel, poems, short stories and plays--mostly plays. The sportswriter had tried it all. Not one thing published since college and that was in a school journal. Hell, he only got this job because of a letter to the editor and he hated it, he hated every minute of it.

“Keys?” He looked at the TV. They were on the cable box. “Thank Buddha for small favors.” The writer locked the door of his crappy apartment and the sun almost blinded him. The clock was not his friend, however. “Damn.”

He was on the second floor of an exterior entrance u shaped living community. There was a rusting railing that had once been faux ornate. There was a trashed pool in the middle. It was empty. The last door he had to pass before the paint chipped stairs opened. Doubledee damn. A large fat Hindu, barefoot in jeans and a wife beater t shirt came out. He was an imposing sight. “Hal, my lad.” The landlord had been British educated.

“Arty.” The rent had been paid...right? The writer thought back. Yeah, it had.

“Late night? Later morning?” s**t.

“No,” he lied.

“Oh, really?” Had he screamed that loud? s**t.

“Did I scream loudly…?”Arty put a paw on Hal’s shoulder. “Look, there was coffee and I spilled it and…”

“Horatio,” the Hindu softened the ‘a’ for effect HOR-ahhh-tio, “my dear wife Sifa has been dead these two long years.” The tenant looked at his shoes.

“I’m sorry,” his buck sixty-five felt really small. The fat man laughed.

“I’m not. I date sexy Asian now. She’s a lawyer.” Arty belly laughed “Having money is wonderful. Vishnu bless America.” What? “The point is that Sifa probably heard you scream in her grave and almost woke up.” The verbal pressure was deadly. “Now, we wouldn’t want that?”

“I, I,”--for a writer he had few words. “I think I get it.”

“So no more screaming and we will all be happy, agreed?” At least the rent had been paid. Better late than never.

“Right.” The landlord released him.

“Good.” Arty patted his back. “Now, go.” The big man returned to his apartment and shut the door. There was a click.

Hal walked down the stairs. He passed the elderly Mrs. Laponsee in her shawl and gray dress sleeping as if she was sunning by the empty pool. She had been sitting there for twenty years and the pool had been empty most of that time. It made the widow happy, her husband had swam in it.

At the bike rack the writer unlocked three locks and opened the chain. His car was in the shop, again--and he didn’t know when he would have the money to rescue it.