Chapter 12
Cookie Monster wore a chunk of technology in his ear, a Bluetooth, covertly, riding in the car on errands, telling Sipe he wasn’t dumb about the technology thing like some of the others, texting and making calls obviously despite all the Old Man’s rules. If pressed to explain, Cookie Monster confident he could make something up about testing out the hearing aid of tomorrow.
Back in high school, Cookie Monster had fucked with some spinster substitute, convincing the woman a spark plug was a joint. He’d made a trip to the office, but the hysterics he’d whipped up saved the entire class from some test.
Cookie Monster said having technology readily available might save their asses if things went bad some times. Being a Luddite just made the Old Man and their business practices all the more prehistoric. Cookie Monster liked the attention, the guys asking him how he came up with words like Luddite. In another life, he said he might’ve been a shop teacher, or computer instructor. Sipe thought him more like the washing machine repairman who had mussed Sipe’s hair and called him ‘Skipper’, smiled standing real close to Sipe’s mother, and met his end with a pitchfork shoved through his torso, part of a three-way murder-suicide on a farm at the other end of the county.
For Cookie Monster, things went bad on a trip up in Alaska. Sipe skipped the trip. Connie’s prom that weekend, and Sipe got the nod to play shadow chaperone. Cookie Monster found in Fairbanks in an alley, ventilated, the Bluetooth nowhere in sight. Tensions with the Russians had been bad, but not really enough for them to intimidate the Old Man that way. Just Cookie Monster’s dumb luck to drink and wander into a mugging, or he’d been obvious about the Bluetooth where he thought the Old Man was blind.
The woman at the Butcher’s Camp Massage front desk wore a hands-free headset, horn rims, and bubble gum pink lipstick. She didn’t smile when Sipe walked up to the counter. She didn’t acknowledge him until she suddenly rolled her eyes, pointed at the earpiece and made some face letting Sipe in on the fact the person eating up her precious moments was intellectually compromised.
She cut them off, hitting a keyboard key, and then issued Sipe a smile. Bonnie Ruchert’s front right tooth was shorter than its immediate sibling like it’d busted or been defective at the word go.
Sitting on the counter edge were two Beepers, a pair of fisherman, one all bulging red eyes – a fish sinking its teeth in his bulbous nose, the companion fisherman’s head tilted way back, his face all gray beard and a skull minimizing yawn. His pole twisted around so the worm – contemptuous to his plight – dangled above the sleeper’s abyss-like black maw. They struck Sipe the same as their brethren in Tiffany’s bedroom. They could be considered cute, but by someone or something acclimatized to lurching in and out of the dark, its moral yardstick alien to the rest of the race.
“How can I help you today, sir?”
“I’ve had some pals of mine that’ve been here. They recommend the place.”
“Oh. That’s nice to hear.”
“Yeah. They’ve told me the one person you got on staff that I ought to ask for is Serenity.” Sipe looking at the ceiling, making it a question almost. Serenity. Celery. Something-y. “Is she here?”
Something rolled over from hairline to jaw, and she faked a glance at her monitor like she might be viewing cameras aimed at essential personnel.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think she’s with us today,” said Bonnie.
“That sounds like my luck.”
“Sorry. I think right now our only available therapist is Faye. She’s good. All of our employees are very accomplished at what they do. Do you want me to buzz her?”
“Please.”
“No problem.” She typed. Waited. Typed again. Nothing. She stuck her index finger up in the air, asking him to wait just a moment.
Getting up out of her seat she looked like film rolling backward, careful to let some coil off her hind end roll into a perfect ‘o’ on the seat. The slack in the headset nearly went taut, plastic thrust up through her hair and lifted her glasses, and she slapped a hand to her head. She slid the headset off and tossed it onto her abandoned seat. Turning on heel cinched it, revealed the baby bulge. She wore a black dress and then a tan vest draped on over the dress. It only accentuated the pending due date. She waddle-walked through an open door into the dim room behind the front desk and Sipe heard another door open.
There was a door in the wall on the customer side of the lobby. Black drapes dangled the doorway length. Several minutes passed. Given the nature of the Old Man’s health and the way bosses always dragged out wrapping up the slightest of business, Sipe had mastered the ability to wait. Younger guys thought he was retarded a little, how patient he could be. Meanwhile they were twitching, muttering beneath their breath.
A slight squeak noise preceded Bonnie’s re-entrance. The sound of mom-to-be weight coming down on the floor. She pushed through the curtains, practiced at discovering and then sliding through the slit.
“Technical trouble,” she said. “Faye’s available. Just this way. Follow me. Please.”
She held the curtain up until he was close enough to take the material in hand. Sipe indicated ladies first, and she smiled and went through the doorway ahead of Sipe. The hall on the other side of the curtain featured unfinished wood surfaces – floor, walls, and ceiling. The walls formed from logs stacked one on top of the other and then lacquered in honey, something glossy.
“Quiet,” said Sipe. Bonnie paused and looked back at him. “It’s quiet,” he repeated. She nodded then said, “Usually is at this time of day. Don’t know what it is. Moon. Tides.”
“Good time to golf maybe.”
Bonnie laughed a short excerpt from a honk. A hon. An onk. The noise you made to satiate the noise someone you didn’t know well had just produced.
“She’s just in here.” Bonnie stopped in front of a shut door. ‘Paul Bunyan’ read the title on the door. Right above the ‘Paul Bunyan’ was a small portrait of a blue ox. They’d passed several doors. Each titled, each featuring a portrait, too. ‘Babe Ruth’. ‘Howard Hughes’. ‘Martin Luther King’. Sipe wondered if men visiting the whorehouse more than once asked for a girl or asked for the room.
Up close, you could see Bonnie’s right upper eyelid sloped down lower than the left. The space between her teeth wide, the half-tooth gray like it’d cocooned itself. A slight tangy odor emanated off of her or clothes. A body spray now past its half-life or its delightful odor over-advertised to begin with.
“Do I pay her? You?”
“Talk it over. Tell her what’s ailing you. Neck. Shoulder. She’ll let you know what you owe.”
“Ok. Great.”
At the other end of the hall she didn’t go through the curtain, but through a door on the right just before the curtained doorway, back into the cubicle.
When he knocked, someone called a greeting from inside. Sipe turned the handle and pushed in, watching the blue ox stare off over his head into the wall behind him.