Me and Moby Dick (Part 4)

I got to my feet and began lurching along as fast as I could, away from the elevator and toward the bright sunlight of Irving Place, a dozen or so paces away.

“Come on, Flasher!” I said to myself. “You can make it!” 

But my foot must have been more hurt than I realized, because just as I was about to reach the exit and safety, I stumbled again and fell with a thud to the floor of the lobby. 

Turning to look behind me, I gasped in terror as the dogs bounded down the last steps of the staircase and hit the shiny lobby floor.

Moby Dick was leading the way.

He stopped, and the pack behind him stopped. He looked around slowly, searching with his little black eyes. I lay still, and held my breath. He seemed to look right at me, but did nothing. His pure white body glowed in the relative darkness of the lobby. Then, looking around, he caught sight of my discarded jacket, and scampered down the hallway, stopping with his little nose inches from the jacket, sniffing and smelling. 

As I and the silent pack watched, Moby Dick walked all around the jacket, sniffing at its circumference. 

He was thinking. Remembering. Scheming.

Then he raised his head and began to howl! It was a wild sound that seemed impossible from so small a thing. Spittle flew from his upturned muzzle and his white coat shook with exertion. His button eyes bulged beneath his bangs as he howled and howled.

Now the pack rushed at the jacket and pounced, tearing and ripping in horrible violence as Moby Dick continued to howl his evil song of vengeance and death.

Suddenly from behind I felt strong hands under my arms and I was lifted to my feet! I turned to face Javier, who had returned to help when he discovered I was not behind him, running for our lives on Irving Place. 

“Rapido!” he cried. His panicky eyes darted from me to the dogs. “Rapido!” he hissed again, tugging at me.

“Madre de Madres!” I answered. “I’m with you, mate!”

Javier started running. All I could do was hop, my foot being hurt, and I had difficulty keeping up. I called out but Javier didn’t hear me. He kept running towards Fourteenth Street. At the intersection, he turned the corner and was gone!

He turned in the opposite direction, I noticed, from Empire Messenger Service.

A few paces along Irving Place, I stopped and collapsed onto a public bench. My foot ached and I was exhausted. My shaking hands vainly searched for a cigarette, until I remembered smokes and lighter were in my discarded jacket. My fallen comrade jacket, torn to shreds in the lobby of a midtown apartment building by a snarling pack of vicious lapdogs.

Lapdogs led by a devil. 

With a sigh I dropped my head into my hands and stared down at the pavement. I was tired, and a little dizzy. I must have looked a sight, too. My jacket was gone, my pants were torn and dirty, my foot was a soggy, reddish mess.

Then a little dog trotted into my field of vision. It stopped and sat down, looking up at me.

“Bloody hell!” I screamed, forgetting where I was and thinking I was back in the lobby. “Get it away from me! Argh!”

“Control yourself, young man!” barked a feminine voice. 

“Huh? What?” I said, looking up. There stood a large, matronly woman, staring down at me. She glared at me in a haughty fashion, obviously disgusted by the sight of another bum or drug addict on her neighborhood bench. She wore an expensive fur coat. In her bejeweled hand was a leash, on the other end of which was her tiny pet, a black and gold Silky Terrier, also bejeweled. It was he who had trotted into my field of vision and sat down to stare at me. I’d mistaken him for a member of Moby Dick’s gang.

“Drug addict scum,” snarled the woman. Her eyes glinted with animosity and behind that, deeper but perceptible, glowed a kind of sadistic delight. One could see she believed that whatever misfortune was heaped upon you in life, it was your own damn fault and you were getting what you deserved!

A pitiless creature. Even to herself, probably.

“Come, Petronius,” she commanded in her haughty tone. She gave a little tug on the leash. 

Ah, but Petronius, who had his pride too, was loath to leave, and stubbornly sat where he was. 

“Petronius!” she repeated louder. “Come!” 

With a second good tug that brought a cry of surprise from pop-eyed Petronius, she turned and they were on their way, looking more like a grizzly bear leading a rat on a string than a well-heeled dowager with her tiny dog in tow.   

I laughed in disgust. I was angry. Angry at the dowager who’d mistaken me for a drug addict. Angry at Mrs Harp and Moby Dick and the dogs of apartment 2C who’d tried to kill me. Angry at Javier for slamming the door on my foot. Angry at the boss who’d sent me to Irving Place. Angry at New York City where I couldn’t get a break in animation. 

Angry at myself for trying to catch my dreams. 

Then I started laughing. 

Aw, what’s the use, I thought, in being angry? It wasn’t anyone’s fault that things sometimes go wrong. So what if a few crazy dogs had tried to eat me? I’d lived through it, hadn’t I? This was New York City, after all, and you had to expect a few ups and downs now and then. 

That’s life!

Have a beer and get over it.

After resting a few minutes, I hobbled to the station and caught the subway home.

Me and Moby Dick (Part 3)

Javier and I reached the elevator at the end of the hall. I turned around to look behind us. Down the hallway came more than a dozen tiny dogs, gnashing their teeth and howling for blood! 

“Madre de Dios!” screamed Javier. The sight was too much for him. Leaping from the elevator, he ran past the scattering crowd in the hallway and escaped down the stairs. 

I remained in the elevator. It was an old-fashioned elevator with two sets of doors. An inner sliding door made of hinged iron bars that moved with a concertina action, and a solid outer door that closed in the middle from the sides. I frantically pulled the inner door of the elevator shut and hit the Down button.

Then I felt the bite of tiny teeth on my ankle and looked down to see, clamped to my ankle and looking back up at me with his coal black eyes, the smallest dog of the pack, chewing and gnawing at my ankle like it was a T-bone steak. His coat was pure white without a blemish. He snarled and wiggled with delight, obviously enjoying my tender taste, or perhaps just pleased to have a change from the unsuspecting mail carrier or an elderly, inattentive neighbor. 

I shook my leg and off he flew between the bars of the inner elevator doors and into the hallway, sailing away in a  tumbling white arc. To my dismay he landed at the feet of Mrs Harp. 

“You bastard!” screamed Mrs Harp. “Kick my dog, will ya?”

In an instant the little white dog was up from the place where he had landed at Mrs Harp’s feet, his tiny paws slipping on the polished floor as he struggled for traction. Drops of my blood dotted his pure white muzzle. Unbidden to my mind came the image of this insanely determined, little white dog as Moby Dick, the great white whale, evilly seeking its vengeance not just on me, a hapless Ishmael, but upon the entire world.

“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.” 

 (From Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, by Herman Melville)

Ah, Melville, you magnificent bastard!

The dogs lunged on, Moby Dick at their head. 

What was keeping the outer elevator doors from closing, I wondered? I frantically pressed the Down button repeatedly, mightily cursing the pitiless, heartless gods who had forsaken me.

On rushed the yipping pack. Their tiny teeth gnashed in their drooling red mouths and their little black button eyes bulged with hatred. Seeing no alternative to my imminent, horrible death, I crouched down in the corner of the elevator and covered my head, hoping it would be over quickly. For a moment all went quiet and I saw events from my life replayed before my eyes. I thought of loved ones I would leave behind on Earth. Of Suzie and her smile. Of my first wife, Ethne, and our child and what a poor husband and father I’d been. I thought of my mother. Would I see her soon? Again I cursed the pitiless gods. This was no way to die, crouching in an elevator, devoured by lapdogs! 

Who would survive me to tell of my death by devil dogs in the heart of NYC? 

All this only took an instant. As I crouched there, the elevator doors closed and it started down. I heard a series of whacking thuds as the dogs, unable to slow from their ferocious attack speed, skidded and slammed into the closed elevator doors with yelps and whimpers.

“Serves you right, you little bastards!” I yelled up at them as the elevator descended, shaking my fist. I was so relieved to be alive that I started to dance a little jig of victory right there in the elevator, but the agony in my foot stopped me short. I had forgotten about that. It started to throb painfully. 

I now thanked the same merciless, pitiless, heartless gods whom I was cursing a minute before. 

The elevator sighed and came to a stop. The outer doors opened. There stood Javier, a look of panic and disbelief on his face. He was panting for breath and pointing away to the left, but at what I couldn’t see.

“Come on, man!” Javier shouted into the elevator. “The dogs take the stairs! Madre de Madres! Rapido!”

Leaving the elevator, I caught my jacket sleeve on the inner door latch and tore it from the cuff to the shoulder. 

“Damn!” I cursed. Twisting to free myself, the jacket was pulled completely from my back, spinning me around and causing me to lose my balance. I stumbled to the floor. 

I looked ahead to see Javier running from the building’s lobby into Irving Place and turn left towards Fourteenth Street. 

I looked back and saw my jacket on the floor outside the elevator. It looked eerily abandoned, laying there like a fallen comrade on the battlefield. I shuddered and looked away, strangely upset by the image of my empty, discarded jacket. 

What had Javier shouted when he told me the dogs were taking the stairs? Madre de Madres? It sounded beautiful. I made a mental note to ask Javier what it meant, when I saw him next time. 

Then I laughed at myself. 

What was I thinking? I meant if I saw him next time.

To be continued…

    

Me and Moby Dick (Part 2)

    I hurried down the hall and knocked on the door of 2C.

It smelled of dog poop at this end of the hallway.       

   I knocked again. Mrs Harp emerged, not from the door upon which I knocked, but from the apartment behind me, across the hall, and shrieked; 

   “About time you got here!” 

   I recognized the angry voice I’d heard buzzing over the phone in the boss’s office not five minutes before. It was a very hard, high, irritating sound, especially grating to my foreigner’s ear. 

“Well, whataya going to do about it?” she squealed.

I turned from the door of 2C to greet Mrs Harp. She stood in worn pink nightgown and matching fluffy slippers, her face thickly painted in makeup. In her hand, which more than anything resembled a bloody claw owing to the length and color of her nails, was a half-filled glass which she waved around for emphasis. Behind her stood the neighbor, looking embarrassed and anxious to be rid of Mrs Harp.

“Well!?” she repeated, “Whataya going to do? My little dogs are in there with that fiend!”

The dogs inside apartment 2C, hearing their mistress’ voice, began to bark ferociously. More dogs inside joined the barking, there must have been four or five of them now. 

Changing her tone, Mrs Harp leaned over to say through the door, “My poor, poor darlings. Don’t be frightened. Mommy will be with you soon. The nice man is going to take away the mean, old, bad man.” 

Then, having finished speaking to her darlings, she changed from loving Mommy to angry Munchkin, shrieking at me, “Do something, you idiot!”

I turned from Mrs Harp and knocked again on the door of 2C. Pounded, really, because one couldn’t hear themselves think with all the racket from the howling inside. It sounded as if Beelzebub’s very own hound of hell, three-headed Cerberus, had been shrunk to the size of a Chihuahua and then joined the Lapdogs of the Baskervilles inside, baying for the pure blood of the innocent.

If there be any innocents left. 

I pounded on the door again, trying not to sound like a flabbergasted cop. 

“Javier?!” I called. “It’s me, Flasher! From the office. Open up, will ya? The boss sent me. Hey, Javier!”

“Screw off!” was shouted loudly from behind the door.

“Javier!” I pleaded. “Come on! Open up, mate!”

The door opened a crack and Javier looked out with panic in his eyes. “Tell that loco to get out of here before I come out, man!” he said.

Then, seeing Mrs Harp behind me, he started to shut the door. Thinking fast, I stuck my foot in the doorway just in time to have it nicely slammed.

“OW!” I cried.

I may have been thinking fast, but I wasn’t thinking smart, because seeing the door was impeded for some reason and would not close, Javier pulled it back and slammed it again, harder this time, into my foot.

“OW!” I screamed again. I looked into Javier’s face. He looked crazy.

“She’s crazy!” he screamed.

“Who’s crazy? You mean Mrs Harp?” I couldn’t think for the pain in my foot.

“She tried to seduce me, man! Go on, ask her!”

“I never touched him!” she screeched. “Crybaby!”

“Come out and let’s go!” I pleaded. “There’s a crowd forming.”

“Yeah!” Mrs Harp screeched. “No one’s going to seduce you now, crybaby.” 

The door opened and what seemed like a million little dogs streamed out and began yipping and barking at our feet. Then, timidly, out stepped Javier. He was from South America, Honduras I believe, about forty years old, a small man. He hadn’t been at Empire Messenger Service more than a few days. The dogs at our feet barked insanely. Javier’s frightened eyes stared at Mrs Harp.

“Keep her away!” he ordered. “She’s loco, man!”

“Okay,” I said, “Okay. Nobody’s going to ...” 

Mrs Harp was suddenly upon Javier, strangling him ferociously and kicking at his shins.

“Asshole!” she screamed. “Keep away from my dogs!” 

“Oh! Ow!” gurgled Javier. “I like dogs, lady!”

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, attempting to separate them. Meanwhile, Mrs Harp’s dogs had continued to snip and yip at our heels. We were ankle deep in the little critters. 

“Let’s go!” I yelled and with a tug freed Javier from Mrs Harp. Javier and I ran for the elevator, elbowing aside the curious tenants who blocked our way. 

“Where’s your badge?” demanded the crabby one as I brushed past.

Behind us, Mrs Harp unleashed her lapdogs. 

“Sick em, my darlings!” she cackled. 

To be continued…

Me and Moby Dick

(Part 1) 

New York, 1987.

I was a messenger for Empire Messenger Service.

To their surprise, it turned out I was a reliable employee, and so far nobody had complained about me. That made me unique at Empire Messenger Service, so I could work as many days and as often as I liked. 

But no matter how many days I worked we never had enough money. It went through my hands like water and Suzie was no better. 

We were just a couple of fools in paradise, I suppose.

“Hey Flasher! Put down that book! I’ve got a job for you!” 

It was the boss, out of his office and looking excited, puffing up a storm on his foul smelling, cheap cigar. “Hurry up! Goddammit!” he barked at me, “I don’t mean tomorrow!”

I closed my book and rose from the hard bench where we messengers waited. 

“Okay, okay,” I called back. “Keep your pants on, mate!”

“That’s a fine way for you to talk, Flasher!”

Since my first day there, the boss at Fourteenth Street had called me Flasher. The big boss at Headquarters up on Thirty-fourth Street who had hired me must have passed on his belief that I was a past flasher to my new boss. 

Hence my messenger name, Flasher.

The boss ushered me inside his office and shut the door, not the usual procedure for a simple delivery job. Usually, he just yelled ‘Hey you!” through his open door, you were handed the package to deliver, and off you went.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“We got a situation,” said the boss.

“What do you mean, we?” I replied.

“One of our messengers,” said the boss, ignoring my comment, “Javier, a new guy, has gone goofy or something and he’s holed up in a customer’s apartment over on Irving Place. I want you to get over there and talk him into coming out.”

“Me? What about the customer?” I asked. “What’s he doing about it?”

“Exactly!” answered the boss. “Goddammit, Flasher, you’re a smart one! That’s what I like about you.” He picked the phone up and held it out for me to hear. “Only it’s not a he,” he said. “It’s a she. She’s on the phone from a neighbor’s place right now.” 

Sure enough, I could hear high pitched metallic screeching from the earpiece as the boss held out the phone. It sounded like an angry hornet trapped in a tin can. The boss held the phone up to his own ear for a second before shouting down the line, “Okay, okay! Take it easy, will ya? I’m sending over our best man. What? Yes! He’ll be there in five minutes.” 

He slammed down the phone, causing the stacks of papers on his desk to rustle, before barking, “Javier’s locked himself in her apartment, the meathead! Gone crazy or something. She hasn’t called the cops yet, says she doesn’t want no trouble. I want you to get round there and fix it up!”

“I don’t know how to deal with crazy people,” I claimed.

“Yeah? You’re an artist, aren’t you?”

I was about to protest, but the boss interrupted.

“Besides, you’re all I’ve got. Now get going!”

It was a nice building about halfway up Irving Place. I took the elevator to the second floor, arriving to a crowd of gathered tenants. I was looking for Mrs Harp, apartment 2C. From down the hallway came the sound of a little dog barking. 

No, not one dog. Two dogs, maybe more.

“You a cop?” asked somebody in the crowd. “Where’s your badge?” 

“Do I look like a cop?” I answered. I was flabbergasted to think that I could be mistaken for a cop. “I’m from the messenger company. Please, where’s apartment 2C, Mrs Harp’s apartment?”

“Down there,” pointed an elderly woman, “at the end of the hall. She’s pretty upset.”

“Where’s your badge?” repeated the voice. He was probably the cranky, crabby, self-appointed busybody of the building. “You got a warrant?” he added. “Where’s your badge?”

I started down the hall in the direction indicated.

To be continued…