Stingy Brim Trilby, Page 2
Bull Garlington
lot of time on Michigan Avenue. It would read books over people’s shoulders in the bookstore and stand in the pipe shop and breathe the heady Cavendish. Its body was fine and not so much incorporeal as unnoticed. He flitted through crowds invading people’s personal space with the aplomb of a happy retard. He would throw his arm around burly truck drivers and roar “blaaargh!” or stand close to a beautiful girl, breathe her perfume, and tell her in her ear that her lips stole the beauty off of roses.
Finnegan’s soul would hug old ladies. Dora Bosker was his favorite. She was so short she had to rest her chin on the Neiman Marcus counter like a child, pay for gloves for a distant niece, then write the birthday card right there at the register. At Christmas. Seventeen people standing in line behind her, livid and ablaze with indignation while the clerk just dug it. Finnegan’s soul would shush the nattering line nags and throw his arms around her in koala-sized bear hugs. He would follow her around and whisper dirty jokes in her ear. She was one of the happiest little old ladies in Chicago.
Finnegan’s soul would stand in the middle of Union Station at 1pm and roar Elvis Costello songs to the saints hiding in the rafters until at least one person whistled “I Wrote The Book”.
One day, skipping by the JaiPur Palace, he saw Marge sitting at a table with two stylish men. They were completely ignoring Marge, aswish in a discussion of their recent Williams Sonoma purchases, but Finnegan’s soul stopped dead in its tracks.
She was devastating. She wore Greta Garbo glasses and a bowler. She wore a Japanese print black silk vest over a 300 count Egyptian cotton men’s oxford with an obsidian tie. Her skirt was patent leather. Black & white broad striped stockings disappeared into worn Doc Marten low tops. She was studying one of the men so intently she was nearly rude. Finnegan loped across the street to get a closer look, prepared to drink in this new style when Marge looked up, screamed and knocked over her chair. The two men looked at the chair then went on about an apple corer.
“Mr. Finnegan—“
“Marge?”
“Um I um”
“Marge?!”
Marge turned and ran. Finnegan’s soul chased after her. He almost caught up on LaSalle.
“Marge’s Soul!”
She turned around, pale as death.
“Wait,” he said. “I think it’s ok.”
“I’m freaking out.”
“Me too.”
They stared. Finnegan’s soul spoke.
“He’s such an asswipe.”
“You betcha.”
“So I, you know, goof off.”
“Yeah, well—“
“So why do you—“
Marge’s soul rolls her eyes. “She’s sooo boring!”
Finnegan’s soul is aghast. “Those two feather dusters talking about aprons you just left are really on fire, however.”
Marge’s soul almost glares then it turns into a grin. They walk around. Marge’s soul quickly establishes privacy rules.
“We’re like diplomats, right? I can’t tell you anything Marge wouldn’t tell—“
“Shitbag.”
“—Shitbag.”
“Emissaries.”
“Emissaries.”
So they would meet. She called him Henry for no apparent reason. Marge’s soul wore clothing calculated to test Finnegan’s Soul’s ability to remain calm. Garish was her baseline. She always managed a kind of brazen off kilter sexy that distracted him more than it put him off.
As it was all just a dream anyway, he took to showing up dressed as her least favorite dictators and would address her for an entire day in an imperial Scottish brogue as “Kitten”. She would call him sugar daddy and try to talk passersby into getting lewd tattoos.
One day, a day after Marge’s soul had arrived dressed entirely in Ostrich feathers and strands of pearls, smoking a cigarette and talking in a Swedish accent, Finnegan’s soul suddenly realized he didn’t know what kind of shoes Marge had worn since the previous Tuesday. Marge’s soul walked in—albino alligator head to toe—and Finnegan’s soul knew he was in trouble. A soul has no crevices or caches. As soon as she saw him she exclaimed in her most withering “dame”,
“Good Lord, Henry, you’re in love.”
They had “lunch” at the Cape Cod in the Drake. Patrick, the matre de, was busy treating customers like members of the royal court while the French head waiter, Steve, who’s real name is probably Gerardo, was filleting a Dover sole with the back of a spoon and flipping the bones over his shoulder into the bussers station.
Marge’s soul and Finnegan’s soul huddled between a married couple with nothing left to say so they could talk. Marge’s soul was inhaling the fumes from the lady’s Lucky Jim and wearing Yoko Onos and a pink leopard boa.
“Marge, I can’t help it.”
“Henry, darling, you’re not my type. I’m glad we’ve had some fun but really, I don’t like men.”
“Oh,” Finnegan’s soul traced circles in the condensations on the table. Marge cocked her head and grimaced.
“Oh come on. I don’t mean that, you child. We’re not physical! We’re barely corporeal. Look, just to stare in Marge’s window you had to drive Shitbag over in his PJs like a taxicab—“
Finnegan’s soul looked horrified.
“—oh I saw you. I was digging the teen boys next door in their back yard hiding their delicate relationship from their gin drunk parents. You made that poor fuck sleepwalk without any shoes.”
“I was, um—“
“Trying to, um, see, um, Marge, um, nekkid, um.”
Finnegan’s ghost paled to nearly translucent.
“Don’t disappear on me, Henry, we haven’t paid the check.”
--
She seemed to disregard the obvious and they ambled around town carefree and seemingly inebriated. They made up parts for themselves in poplar musicals. Marge’s soul would flirt mercilessly with priests while Finnegan would try to dissuade her.
“It’s unprofessional,” he said.
Finnegan’s soul forgot Marge’s soul’s gadfly retribution of his overture and he fell in love with her again and went to kiss her and she sat down, the feather boas and diamond tiara fading into the smoke of the bar. She went stony and grim. All the light in the room pulled itself into the eaves and left her in a dark cocoon from which she regarded Finnegan with a withering glower.
“Henry, I think of you as a friend,” she leaned forward slightly. “Only a friend.” Then she walked out.
--
Henry rode Finnegan into work the next day to find Marge as soulless as a desk drawer. He glanced at her shoes for the first time in weeks—deep plum Carravagios—and immediately lost interest. He looked for her soul. But she was gone.
He settled back into routine. He slid out of Shitbag like any middle manager stepping off the train. He mostly stared off the Washington Street Bridge into the river.
He’d jumped off once—just to see—and sunk to his neck in viscous clay as green as jade. It took him two hours to climb out and he was poorly affected by the detritus of centuries scattered in the muck, old souls of racketeers and whores calcified into pale effluvial statuary.
He stared into the green river with the same dull dread he felt that day in the muck.
After a while, he started paying attention to Marge again and though in the back of his mind he half expected her to sprout fathers and call him “Henry” in a Greta Garbo drawl, he let Marge’s soul fade and wilt, filling her void with that old fascination for Marge’s quirks.
One-day Finnegan’s soul was startled completely—landing perplexed and agape back in Shitbag’s body. Marge resigned.
She had come in even earlier than normal and packed her desk. Instead of their usual a.m. tango, she stepped backward coldly and presented Shitbag with a letter.
“Dear Mr. Finnegan;
I quit.
Marge”
It hit Finnegan’s soul like a piano. He made Shitbag go stand by the door. Finnegan’s soul took
over.
“But Marge, why? Is it money?”
“No. No sir—nobody pays like you.”
“Am I . . . mean?”
Marge looks up, a little confused, “Yes, absolutely. But I expect that I mean, it’s just: you’re exceedingly professional.”
“Then—“
Marge sits down on the couch virtually in the dent left by Finnegan’s soul. She begins to cry like a guilty child; not demure or careful at all but full tilt Lucille ball open mouthed wailing. Finnegan’s soul is surprised to feel Shitbag leaping forward to offer an expensive hanky, leaving Finnegan’s soul alone by the desk.
“I’ve buh-been stuh-steal heeng from the comp huh knee,” Marge wails.
Shitbag kneels before Marge.
“Marge, I work for criminals and thieves. They pay me five times what a really great lawyer ought to be embarrassed to receive because I never—ever—make a mistake and because I can spot a fuck-up from space.”
Marge is privately stunned by his apparent candor. He has never cursed in her presence. She stops crying.
“If you think these guys are going to notice a few hundred copies a day to cover fresh crawdads and shrimp Etouffee you are dead wrong. They hire me because I create a paper trail that is impenetrable by mere human attorneys. They expect a ton of copies.”
Marge is barely breathing.
“You knew about the Etouffee?”
“It’s the shoes I can’t figure out.”
“My shoes?”
“Every day you have a new pair.”
Marge smiles a completely unhinged ear to ear. She is radiant.
“You noticed my shoes?”
“Marge, I live for that moment when you walk away from me and I can see them.”
“But I walk—“
“Last week you wore a pair of deep plum Carravagios with a garnet sewn into the toe that looked like Russian pastries. I wanted to bite them.”
“My god.”
“It drives me crazy. I actually think about them when I’m brushing my teeth and on the train I find myself looking at women’s feet with this queenly disdain thinking ‘Marge’s feet would walk all over them’—don’t quit, Marge. My world would be empty and cheaply shod.”
Marge stares agog for a moment during which Shitbag, whom Finnegan’s soul is practically cheering for, leans forward, as if to kiss her but instead whispers “don’t.” Marge takes his wrist in her hand.
Finnegan’s soul spins like a cheerleader, his hands to his chest in unvarnished glee. Marge’s soul is smoldering in the doorway.
“Henry you miserable fuckbag!”
‘Damn!”
”Damn is right!”
“Where’ve you been?”
She sits on the edge of Marge’s desk staring at the two lovers looking into each other’s eyes.
“God, look at her.”
“Margie, baby, she’s so happy!”
Marge’s soul pretends to smoke a cigarette and not notice him.
“Fuck.” She hops off the desk and smoothes her flapper skirt. She flashes every look he’s ever seen on her, pulsing like a 3-D fashion video until she becomes a plain Jane English nanny in Burberry and camel hair coat and walks over to stand by Finnegan’s soul.
“Well, maybe it won’t be so fucking boring anymore.”
She reaches out and lays her hand on his arm.
Over by the window, Marge takes Finnegan’s hands in hers and says, “Henry.” But no one seems to notice.
###
About the Author
Bull Garlington is an author and syndicated humor columnist whose work appears in various literary magazines, including Slab, Bathhouse, and the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. He was the humor columnist for Chicago Parenting, New York Parenting, Michiana Parent, Tulsa Parent, Birmingham Parent, and Carolina Parent. He is co-author of the popular foodie compendium, The Beat Cop’s Guide to Chicago Eats. Garlington’s features have appeared in newspapers and magazines across the nation since 1989; he won the Parenting Media Association’s Silver Award for best humor article in 2012. His book, Death by Children, was a 2013 book of the year finalist for the Midwest Publishers Association, and was named 2013 Humor Book of the Year by the prestigious Industry standard, ForeWord Reviews.
Other books and stories by this author
Bullfighter
Largemouth Bass
Many Boats on the Night Ocean
Reliquary
Gone
Jenny’s Parents Are Cool
Out
Birdhouse
Lucky Jim
Chaste
The Beat Cop’s Guide to Chicago Eats (with Sgt. David Haynes)
Death by Children–I Had Kids so You Don’t Have To!
Connect with Bull Garlington
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