“Diplomate. What the hell is a diplomate?”
“It’s the same thing as a diplomat, isn’t it? Well, never mind. Dr. Dong has all sorts of degrees and testimonials—”
“Bought and paid for, no doubt.”
“—from satisfied patients like myself. He cured my digestive problems and he did wonders for my sciatica. You couldn’t do anything about my sciatica, could you?”
“I could have if you’d let me use proper chiropractic techniques. But no, you screamed every time I tried to—”
“You were hurting me. The pain doubled every time you poked and twisted—”
“You’re a double pain sometimes,” Andrew muttered. “And not in my sciatica.”
She skewered him with the famous Hanley glare. “How dare you talk to me like that in public. You’re drunk, aren’t you? Gin on an empty stomach. How many times have I told you—”
“Let me count the number.”
“I’m warning you. Andrew...”
I edged away from them — they didn’t even notice — and joined the party flow. Anything was better than listening to the Hanleys imitate that old radio couple, the Bickersons.
I was now a floating island, but nobody paid any attention to me. I looked around for another corner in which to drop anchor, spotted one, and was on my way when two things gave me pause. Both were part of the same individual, a skinny, ascetic type in tinted glasses and a polka-dot bowtie. The bowtie was one of the things that stopped me; it made him even more of a dinosaur than me. The other was his voice, which he was using loudly to an audience of two older women.
“The advertising racket,” he was declaiming, “is a prime example of what’s wrong with modern society. Strip away the fancy veneer and what have you got except hype and bullshit? Same bottom line for the federal government, state and local governments, big business, the media, the entertainment industry, pretty much anything you can name. Hype and bullshit, that’s what the country runs on nowadays. We’re bombarded by it, it shapes everything we see and hear and do. There’s no truth anymore, no sincerity, humility, honesty. All there is exaggeration, distortion, out and out lies. Hype, hype, hype, crap, crap, crap. You remember the Peter Finch character in Network? Saying he was sick and tired of all the bullshit? Well, that’s exactly what I’m saying. I’m sick and tired of all the deceiving, loudmouth, self-aggrandizing bullshit. I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. Every chance I get I’m going to stand up and shout it like it is. You remember the John Goodman character in The Big Lebowski? How he kept telling the Steve Buscemi character, ‘Shut the fuck up, Donnie,’ every time he opened his stupid yap? Well, every time I hear somebody shovel up another load of hype and bullshit I’m going to stand up and say—”
“Shut the fuck up, Harlan,” one of the women said.
“We’re sick and tired of all the bullshit,” the other woman said. “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.”
The two of them left Bowtie standing there with his mouth open. It was one of those pristine little moments, made all the more satisfying by the fact that he seemed to have no idea whatsoever of how thoroughly he’d been squelched.
I took up residence in the new corner, feeling slightly better than I had before Harlan got his. No one bothered me at first, which allowed me to pretend I was a hidden observer, like a spy camera in a potted plant. I spotted Kerry twice; she tried to make her way over to me and was accosted and sidetracked both times. Then Anthony DiGrazia found me and spoiled my peaceful illusion. He bent my ear about the sausage business, then launched into a diatribe on capital punishment. He was in favor of it; in fact, he seemed to believe that all felons, including pickpockets and hubcap thieves, ought to be subjected to lethal injection for their transgressions.
His ten-minute harangue was winding down when we were suddenly confronted by an intense young woman — not, thank God, a sexy blonde but a too-thin individual with brown hair that looked as if it had been cut with a weed-whacker. She fixed each of us with a glazed eye and said, “Which one of you is Anthony DiGrazia?”
“That’s me, little lady. You like my party?”
“No,” she said.
“No?”
“No. I just want you to know I think it’s disgusting.”
“What, my party?”
“That stuff you make. That sausage.”
“My sausage is disgusting?”
“Absolutely.” She tapped his clavicle with a bony forefinger. “Made out of dead animals. Poor defenseless pigs and cows and goats.”
“Goats? Hey, we don’t use—”
“Blood, ground-up bones, strands of hair—”
“What? In my sausage? Hair?”
“—and all sorts of disgusting organs. Fat, cholesterol, sodium, malonaldehyde, aflaxtons... don’t you know you’re giving people heart attacks and cancer?”
“Cacchio! Heart attacks, cancer? Listen, lady, all I give people is good meat, the best meat. My sausage is so pure you can feed it to a baby.”
“What a horrible thing to say. Isn’t it bad enough you feed your poison to adults? A feast of bacteria! Germ warfare!”
“By God, we don’t allow no germs in my factory—”
“Why don’t you manufacture food that’s healthy and nutritious? Soybeans, tofu—”
“Gaah!” DiGrazia said.
“Soybeans and tofu are healthy foods.”
“You say food, I say crap.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“Hah. You, you’re for shame, you crazy food nazi.”
“Better a food nazi than a mass murderer,” the woman said, and made it her exit line.
DiGrazia watched her stalk off into the throng. “Pazzo,” he said, tapping his temple. “All those vegetarian animal rights food nazis, crazy in the head. Germs, heart attacks, cancer — you know how many times I heard crap like that. Phil? Ten thousand times, I heard it once. It don’t even bother me much anymore. Life’s too short, you got to take the bad with the good. So what’d you think of her ass, eh?”
The non sequitur made me blink. “What?”
“Her ass. Not bad for a skinny cogliona. Not much in the tit department, but a nice ass and plenty of fire. Fire in the mouth, fire in the ass — you know what I mean. Phil?”
“Is that all you ever think about?”
The words were out before I could bite them back, but he didn’t seem to notice my annoyance. Or to be offended by it if he did. “Sure,” he said. “Roseanna, she says I got sausage on the brain. ‘That’s all you ever think about,’ she says, ‘your sausage.’ She don’t know how right she is, eh? I see a good-looking woman, nice ass, plenty of fire, that’s just what I’m thinking about. DiGrazia’s sausage.” He laughed and winked. “I think I go find that food nazi, talk to her some more. Don’t hurt to try, eh. Phil? You never know. Cogliona like that, hates you one minute, you talk to her right and the next minute maybe she changes her mind. Bada boom, bada bing, maybe she ends up sampling my sausage after all.”
He winked again and waddled off, leaving me mercifully alone and wishing I were in Fresno or even wandering in the middle of Death Valley. I moved over against the nearest wall and looked at my watch, with hope at first and then in disbelief and dull dread.
It was only twenty til six. I’d been here less than forty-five minutes.
And the party swirled on.
And on.
And on...
8
In the morning I woke up with a headache, a fuzzy taste in my mouth, a sour stomach, and enough gas to power a modern version of the Hindenburg. Hangover supreme, courtesy of Anthony DiGrazia. Not so much red wine- or party-induced as the product of a heaping plateful of fried peppers, garlic, and DiGrazia’s Old-Fashioned Italian Sausage. He’d insisted we have dinner at a North Beach restaurant owned by a friend of his, and then insisted we all have the chef’s house special. With garlic bread, naturally, and three or maybe six bottles of vintage Rubbino Chianti. In addition to having a heart full of unrequited lust and a head full of reactionary ideas on crime and punishment, the man was of the same breed, different genus, as the intense young woman with the weed-whacked hair — a food nazi.