Slatternly Sluts and Bodacious Bimbos

"Haaaaah!" Helen Garfunkel, let out a brief whimper like a mortally injured animal before slumping to the ground unconscious. When she came to, a rotund, bearded man with pebbly teeth and a bald spot on the back of his head was bent over fanning her with a fully-illustrated, Kaufman’s Field Guide for Birds of North America.

"Feeling better?" The hairy man eased Helen to a sitting position with her back supported against a white birch.

The unfortunate incident happened this way. Helen had gone for a stroll at the Audubon bird sanctuary a mile down the road from where she was visiting with her brother's family in Brandenburg. Meandering down the rock-strewn trail to an open area fronting on a placid lake, Helen was admiring a chokeberry bush ripe with crimson berries, when a man's voice - gruff and threatening - called out, "Don't move!" Helen, who under the best of circumstances suffered from a myriad of silly uncertainties, felt every molecule of breath crushed from her lungs, her legs assumed the consistency of spaghetti al dente, and mind went blank.

"A Baltimore Oriole," the man sputtered, "was perched on a branch no more than ten feet from where you were standing and I - "

"No need to explain." Helen adjusted her wire-rimmed bifocals which had listed at a cockeyed angle on the bridge of her nose. In her late thirties, her frizzy, auburn hair was prematurely graying, the plain features accentuated by a mottled, doughy blandness. "Since childhood, I've always been prone to anxiety and fainting spells."

Gabe helped the thin woman to her feet. "They come up this way every spring to mate."

"Who does?"

"The orioles," he clarified. "The birds summer here, hatch their chicks and migrate south again to Florida and Central America for the winter. I don't suppose - "

Helen waved a hand fretfully, indicating that she had missed the sighting. "Fainting in a bird sanctuary… I'm so embarrassed!" An elderly couple with expensive-looking binoculars and matching safari hats wandered down the trail. Helen suddenly reached out and thumped the man's arm. "I feel like I know you from somewhere, and yet I only arrived here from Cincinnati a week ago Tuesday."

"I'm Gabe Carmody. You probably noticed my picture in the Sun Chronicle. The newspaper ran a feature article in the Sunday supplement about my hotdog stand over by the courthouse annex."

The soft-spoken enthusiasm didn't quite fit with the hotdog vendor's bulk. Helen's eyes brightened. "Oh, yes, I believe I did read something of the sort. You celebrated an anniversary."

"Ten years, same location," he confirmed. "A lot of people think only a lunatic would want to work outside in New England weather, but it's an honest living and I'm my own boss." The man pointed toward a rest area with benches. "He's over there now."

"Who is?" From the outset they seemed to be communicating at cross purposes.

"The oriole. Here, see for yourself." Gabe handed her his binoculars. "In the topmost branch of the sugar maple… an orange bird with yellow markings."

"How beauuuutiful!" Helen gushed. For a day that started out like a Greek tragedy, things were getting progressively better and better.

*****

"You met that weirdo hotdog vendor at the bird sanctuary?" Stuart Garfunkel, Helen's brother, blew out his cheeks and gawked at his wife, Olivia, sitting opposite at the kitchen table.

"Yes, a perfectly lovely fellow."

Olivia, a stout, fair-skinned woman who looked like she had been spray painted with splotchy freckles, grunted disagreeably. "I ate one of his chili dogs last month and it gave me heartburn."

'All this," Stuart interjected, "because the guy gave you a fright at the lake?"

"Well, not exactly. We went for coffee afterwards and had a nice long chat. Gabe attended Boston College and worked as a hospital administrator for a number of years before drifting into food service."

"Selling shitty hotdogs on a street corner doesn't quality as food service," Stuart smaned. "It's not even a bona fide career." Shortly out of high school, Stuart took a position with the Brandenburg public works department, but an 'unfortunate' incident ensued, and the city fired him before the year was out. Sleeping on the job, adultery, rape, incest, slovenliness, drug abuse, alcoholism, pedophilia - nobody in the family ever unearthed the exact nature of Stuart's ‘indiscretion'. Eventually, he landed a maintenance job with section-eight housing. The shabby high-rise building catered to unwed AFDC mothers, marginal types on disability and low-rent welfare recipients. Through the summer months, Stuart puttered about the grounds on a riding lawnmower and shoveled snow from December through March.

"After ten years and a write-up in the local newspaper, it's got to count for something," Helen replied.

"That hotdog vender… he's a malcontent, a crackpot." The riotous freckles on Olivia's cheeks performed an impromptu war dance. "Normal people don't abandon white collar jobs so they can babysit a pushcart, smearing sauerkraut and mustard on wieners for ten freakin' years."

"What Bernie Madoff did… that was an honest living?" Helen replied.

"Bernie who?" Olivia's puffy eyes scrunched together.

"The New York financier who flimflammed all those investors out of billions of dollars."

"The hotdog vendor is pathetic man," Olivia insisted, making a snuffling sound through her nose, "with no life to speak of."

*****

After lunch Helen stretched out on the bed in the spare room and fell asleep. An hour later she woke, threw cold water on her face and sat by the window staring out at the empty street. After leaving the bird sanctuary, Gabe Carmody took her to a small coffee shop just up the road. "A few years back," he confided, I read this book, The Land without Rain by Mary Austin."

"Never heard of it." Helen replied.

"It's about pioneers, cowboys, trappers, gold miners... people who settled the American Southwest in the late eighteen hundreds. They got by just fine living off the land, taking only as much as they needed for their basic needs." Gabe hunched over the table. "Even when I worked at the hospital, I never required all that much to be happy."

"From hospital administration to street vendor… what did you coworkers think?"

"Thought I was having a midlife crisis… losing my mind."

"I'd always fantasized about being a trailblazer, doing something similarly outrageous," Helen interjected wistfully, "but never had the courage to act on my convictions. It's why things turned out as they did." She pressed her lips together so hard the tissue blanched.

"You're not a risk taker but went for coffee with a man you never met before and scared you half to death in the goddamn woods. That's got to count for something." He stared at her fixedly. "What exactly did you do for a living?"

The dour expression deepened with self-loathing. "Reference librarian."

Gabe rubbed his grizzled chin. The beard was almost white; his haggard face studded with crow's feet and sagging jowls suggested an uneven balance between hard and hardy lifestyles. "When I opened the pushcart business I did some heavy-duty soul searching and asked myself, 'What's the worst thing that could happen?'" Gabe grabbed his coffee cup with both hands and stared into space meditatively. "There was the very real possibility I'd fall flat on my college-educated face… crash and burn. But if I didn't quit the cushy job and take the existential leap of faith, I'd spend the rest of my life wondering what might have been."

"Better an eccentric goofball," Helen quipped, "than Walter Mitty."

"Yeah, something of the sort." Gabe erupted in a raucous belly laugh. "Look, who am I kidding," his tone sobered. "Managing a hotdog stand - it's not nearly as adventuresome as Louis and Clarke foraging across snow-covered mountains. But nobody hassles me. If I want to go to work in Bermuda shorts, tie-dyed T-shirt and sandals, no corporate bigwig is gonna read me the riot act. Best of all, with a cash business, those pencil-pushing geeks at the IRS only extort what I chose to declare"

"I closed out my apartment in Cincinnati. For better or worse, I'm here to stay." Helen finished her coffee and stared out the window at an urbane, user-unfriendly society she never quite comprehended. "Got any advice for us habitual neurotics?"

Gabe screwed his features in a muted smile. "I dunno… maybe, like a Zen koan, it's more a matter of letting go. Once you realize you don't really want what you thought was so goddamn essential, things fall into place of their own accord."

"Which tells me nothing," Helen noted morosely.

"So maybe nothing is the sublime achievement."

*****

Tuesday morning, after checking new listings at the unemployment office, Helen wandered over to the courthouse. Gabe Carmody's pushcart was parked beside a slender elm tree. The proprietor grinned when he recognized the woman. "How's the job hunting?"

"I got a few leads."

A gangly youth with a chronic case on acne exited the courthouse, cut across the street at a diagonal and approached the stand. "Chili dog and a Dr. Pepper." The youth kept jerking his head to the right spastically, and his blotchy nose was running but he didn't seem to care. When he was gone, Gabe remarked, "That one with the nervous tic is in and out of juvenile court every few months. He buys hotdogs after each arraignment and then again when he goes to trial. Sometimes the mother tags along for moral support."

"What's she like?"

"Dull normal." Across the street a dozen or so people were loitering on the granite steps of the courthouse. Separating out the shabbily-dressed, chain smoking defendants from their attorneys was relatively easy. Gabe shifted several hot dogs that were fully cooked away from the center of the grille and checked his supply of buns. A barrage of parochial school students converged on the hotdog vendor. The girls were resplendent in tartan plaid skirts and white blouses, the boys wore tan Dockers and blue ties.

Ten minutes later a mother and her teenage daughter crossed over from the courthouse. The mother ordered a hotdog and a salted pretzel. The trashy girl, who looked to be about sixteen, pulled a cigarette from a pack and tamped the loose tobacco on the side of her wrist. Before she could light the smoke, her mother swiped it from her lips and crushed it in a fist. "What the heck!"

"Shut up or I'll do the same to your putrid face!" The mother threw the crushed tobacco in the gutter. "Here comes Mr. Tavares."

A lawyer in a three-piece suit crossed over to join them. "Good news. The D.A.'s accepted our plea bargain for eighteen months. No jail time"

"What else?" the pokerfaced mother grabbed her food and reached for the mustard.
"The parole will be tacked onto what's left over from your daughter’s prior offense," the lawyer clarified. He was a slightly-built man with a pallid complexion and a nervous disposition. "Of course, she's got to make restitution in full."

"She ain't got diddlysquat to pay you much less restitution."

The lawyer cracked a tepid smile, gesturing with his eyes in the direction of the courthouse. "We gotta process paperwork. The district attorney is waiting upstairs in his office."
As they turned to leave, Gabe called out, "Lady, you didn't pay me for the food."

"Oh, yeah." She reached for her purse.

When they were gone, Gabe turned to Helen. "I live a couple of miles down the road and need to run home and grab some extra buns. Would you mind babysitting the cart?"

"What about customers?"

"Tell them we're temporarily closed."

"Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier if I went?"

“Well yes, if you didn’t mind.” Gabe gave Helen the directions. "There's a carton of fresh buns on the kitchen counter. Six twelve-packs should do nicely."

Helen drove eight blocks out of town, took a right on Prince Street and her second left. The Carmody place was a modest cape nestled at the end of a cul-de-sac. The front lawn was freshly mowed and a profusion of flowers - apple blossom amaryllis, lilies, raspberry peonies and moss-colored allium - rimming the mailbox. Helen let herself into the living room which was sparsely furnished but surprisingly tidy. After locating the buns she sat down at the kitchen table. The floor was swept clean. A plate and several eating utensils were drying in a wire rack. A freshly-watered coleus plant with a profusion of crimson-veined leaves rested on the window sill.

Before leaving Helen toured the house. It didn't appear that Gabe owned either a television or computer. In the bedroom, the bed was made; a pair of men's slacks, neatly pressed, hung over the footboard. A bookcase contained a scattering of Audubon Society Magazines plus a hardbound collection, the complete works of the western writer, Louis L'Amour.

Helen tentatively sniffed the air. What was that musky-sweet smell? On the dresser an open flask of Jade East men's cologne stood next to a hairbrush and clock radio. She located the cap, which had fallen on the rug and sealed the container. As she bent down, Helen noticed a girlie magazine sticking out from under the bed. Slatternly Sluts & Bodacious Bimbos - on the cover was a flabby, freckly-faced redhead, who reminded Helen, frighteningly so, of her sister-in-law, Olivia. The woman's enormous chest hung halfway to her bellybutton, and her gelatinous thighs were streaked with purplish, sclerotic veins, the stomach rippled with cellulite and stretch marks. "Hell, I got better boobs than that old hag!" Down on her hands and knees, Helen peered under the bed, noting a pair of bed slippers and nothing more.

Backing the car out of the driveway, a nagging thought prompted her to throw the shift into park and kill the ignition. Back in the bedroom the former reference librarian fished the girlie magazine out from under the bed and checked the publication notes on the inside cover. Two thousand and six - the well-thumbed magazine was five years old. "A momentary lapse of good taste," Helen muttered under her breath. Letting herself out a second time, she locked the door behind her.

*****

"There was another run of late afternoon customers and I’m down to my last bag of buns," Gabe said when she returned. He stored the packages away in the cart, and then pointed toward the courthouse where Mr. Tavares was lounging against a granite column. "Our friend is taking a sabbatical from the legal profession."

"How's that?"

"I've known him for a while now. His brother just opened a carpet cleaning business in Mansfield and needs help."

"The lawyer's gonna walk away from a six-figure salary to steam people's smelly rugs?"

Gabe shrugged. "He's sick to death of cheap punks and welfare cheats."

"A carpet cleaning business?" Helen took a hard look at the gaunt man lingering just outside the entrance to the building. What was it Gabe said at the coffee shop? Once you realize you don't really want what you thought was so goddamn essential, things fall into place of their own accord. Maybe ‘nothing’ is the sublime achievement.

"I had an epiphany," she muttered.

"Is that so?"

"I decided, short term, what I want to do with my pathetic life."

A small Hispanic boy on a dirt bike with absurdly high handlebars raced up the street, popped a wheelie and skidded to an abrupt stop in front of the hotdog stand. "Gimme a salted pretzel and Coke."

"As you were saying," Gabe picked up the thread of their previous conversation once the boy frenetically careened off down the street.

"I want to be a slatternly slut… a bodacious bimbo." When there was no immediate response, she added, "What are you doing tonight after work?"

"Same as always." Gabe eyed her uncomfortably. "Nothing."

She was getting used to the man's cropped speech and brutish mannerisms. The pebbly teeth weren't nearly as offensive. The unruly hair - it seemed to manifest everywhere without any coherent game plan, was just what it was. "Maybe we could spend some quality time together."

He repositioned a couple of glistening, Hebrew National, kosher all-beef hotdogs away from the intense heat. "Yeah, I'd like that just fine."

Five minutes later a criminal trial ended and a flood of jurors, witnesses and court personnel streamed out of the building. The hotdog vendor had all he could do to accommodate the onslaught of customers, replenish inventory and make change. When the bedlam finally subsided Gabe suggested, "I could close up and we could head back to my place now."

"There's no rush." She patted him playfully on the arm. "At some point though, I'll need to call my brother and tell him not to wait up."