Dog Day Afternoon (2 page)

Okay, he had the experience. He knew the ropes. He could talk bank talk. He had the job in the palm of his hand, even without the interview. These guys sitting around reading their stolen
Newses
were shit out of luck.

But, Jesus, the idea of actually working in a bank again. That day-in-day-out, punch-the-clock, wall-to-wall, buttoned-down boredom. When he remembered how it felt, something heavy and indigestible inside Joe moved up against the bottom of his lungs, like a beast turning over in its sleep and you better not wake it up. It made his lungs smaller. They couldn’t seem to pump enough air. His stomach felt as if it were being wrung out like a dishrag. All the sour juice dripped on his liver.

Don’t wake it up, baby. Cool it. Keep the beast asleep. “Come on cool ’cause you ain’t no fool.” Who used to say that? Some spade cat, some black sergeant back at the copter base in Nam, a mechanic in the Air Force.

Joe’s eyes lidded halfway as he continued to look over his competition for the job. Run of the mill. None of them had a prayer. Not them. He had the job. The only question was wheth—

“Mr. Nowicki.”

Nice-looking legs, small tits. Joe’s glance moved up the young woman’s body. He liked them slender, tender and tall. This one was shorter than he liked. He took his time getting to his feet, because that was his style.

Then he stood there without saying anything. That was cool, wasn’t it? Any jerkball could holler “Here!” or whatever. The four doggies in the room would hop to and hit a brace if you yelled their name. But the girl didn’t seem to understand that he was who he was. Her big eyes locked into his glance.

“Are you, uh, Mr. uh?”

Joe nodded. Just once, cool, but it failed to stop the girl from mispronouncing his name again. Not that anybody ever got it right except another Polack, and this one was no Polack, he thought, not with those big wet eyes and that full, hot mouth. How would those lips feel when he rammed the old Avenger between them?

“This way, please.”

Joe had not expected the interviewer to be a woman, much less one this young. But after the girl had escorted him into the room, she sat herself down behind the big desk. “I’m Miss Panetta,” she said.

How the hell could she be guinea meat with those baby tits, Joe wondered. No hips, either. He sat down across from the interviewer. “I’m here for the systems job you people advertised for.”

For a moment he toyed with the idea of letting her know his mother was a wop. Not only that, but he was tied by blood on her side to one of the really big Maf families. Should he mention it? He decided to hold off awhile.

Miss Panetta nodded, and her dark hair seemed to bounce for a moment after her head was still. Tina’s hair had done that once, years ago, before Joe had married her. Tina had been one cute cunt in those days. Short, like this one, but massive breasts and thighs. That had been back in the days, he remembered, when you could still see the cow’s shape. Nowadays there was nothing to see but acres of soft, drippy meat. Her tits hung down like—

“Could you give me an idea of your experience?”

Where had she learned that trick with the pencil, pushing it against her lower lip until it almost popped into her soft, luscious, wet mouth, but not quite?

“Sure.” He leaned back in the padded armchair they provided for interviewees, the kind of chair made with chrome-steel legs and soft black leather everywhere else. Style was the thing. He knew how to come on with this one, oh yes. Easy. Cool. He dropped one elbow behind the back of the chair and held on to the edge of the back with his hand. Calm. Careless. He crossed his legs. He smiled.

“Sure,” he repeated. He ran the tip of his tongue across his lower lip, to get it as wet as hers. “I used to work for Chase. I did about eighteen months with Chase, as a matter of fact, before I shipped out to Nam. I was teller-trainee for a few months but they realized I had a certain style so after the first week I was put in charge of the other recruits, I was kind of a supervisor-trainee, you could say, and I showed them the ropes in a way because, let me tell you, some of them were nervous, and I’m putting it mild. Some of them were shi—some of them were shaking in their shoes, and I was a steady hand who was their age. I set an example of how you go about that kind of thing. I mean, you get your average teller-trainee, they’re pretty raw. I say they’re fresh out of high school and worried because they think they have to be a whiz with numbers, which I know isn’t so, and I knew it even before they told us, I figured it up front, you might say. I knew machines would do the figuring, because machines nowadays do the whole thing, like, faster and without mistakes. Am I right? And I got that over to the recrui—the new people picked it up from me and in no time at all I had them calmed down. ‘Come on cool ’cause you ain’t no fool,’ I used to tell them. You know, a lot of them were colored, and I had to talk to them in their own language if I wanted to get through on their level. So I said—”

“What branch of Chase were you in?” Miss Panetta interrupted.

Joe’s hand, holding easily to the back of his chair, lost its grip and fell. He repaired his stylish posture and moistened his lip again. “Fifty-seventh and Broadway.”

He was disheartened to see her scribble a note with her pencil. Would she check the reference? Who was she kidding? Nobody checked references any more. “And your immediate supervisor was . . . ?”

He blinked. She was going to check. “Mr., uh, Fo—” He stopped. No sense handing it to her on a silver platter. Fogarty was the bastard who had fired him. “Mr. Fogel,” he lied.

“F-o-g-e-l?” she spelled.

“Uh, double l.”

She nodded. “And the dates you were there?”

He started to sigh, then stopped himself. They didn’t leave you much room, did they? All these interviews were the same. Once they started closing you out, they began slamming doors faster than you could find new ones to open. “That was three years ago,” he said. “Before I volunteered for Vietnam,” he added, stressing the verb.

Her pencil ticked off a few more words. “Volunteered?”

“I know,” he said easily, recrossing his legs the other way. “I sound stupid, don’t I? I mean, what guy in his right mind volunteers for a mess like Nam, right? But I didn’t know that at the time.” He hunched forward in his chair, to try to rivet her attention. “I was a kid. I believed what I read in the newspapers. I was a loyal Republican, too. I believed my President. I thought the President of the United States had to be Number One in everything. What does a kid know? They told me things and I did what I was supposed to do, I volunteered. Call it patriotic. I’m half Italian and there’s nobody more patriotic than the guin—I mean, you know. Three long years. Purple Heart twice. Air Corps Medal for—”

“You were wounded twice?” she cut in.

“Four times, but only two Purple Hearts. I—”

“Did you bring your papers with you, by any chance?” Her big wet eyes looked up at him. “Discharge papers?”

“I, uh . . .” He patted his chest pocket, then stopped the charade. Okay, she had him. The last door was slamming shut. “I can bring them in tomorrow,” he said then. “I can—”

“That won’t be necessary, Mr., uh. We can check it out if we have to.” Slam.

“Right.” He nodded authoritatively. The clock on the table behind her showed close to five o’clock. Joe found himself wondering how many of the dummies waiting outside would be sent home without an interview and told to come back tomorrow. Bastard banks. All alike. Do what they want. License to steal.

No sense letting her know she’d won. “Can you tell me something about the job?” he asked. Best defense is an offense, right?

“It’s in systems,” she said, getting up. “We are looking for a few people who understand work flow and we hope to train them to go to the smaller branches and handle routing and re-check and that sort of thing.”

He refused to stand. “Pushing around pieces of paper, huh?”

She smiled faintly. “That’s just about what everyone does in a bank, isn’t it?” She started past him for the door and swung it open. “Thank you very much, Mr., uh . . .” Her voice died away.

Joe sat there, enjoying her embarrassment. He liked throwing her off base. He was supposed to get up like a good little soldier? Fuck her. She could wait till he was goddamned good and ready to get up. They were all alike, these guinea broads. Tina was the same way, always had been. So was his mother, only not as bad. It’s always whatever they want, not what you want. Never once.

And now that Tina had the two kids, it was even worse. The only people who needed things were her and the kids. Nothing Joe wanted carried any weight. She used the kids like clubs, slamming his head with them, calling him selfish and a rotten father and a lousy provider and all the garbage that collected in her meathead mind, spilling all over him, and the kids watching their old man eat shit until he couldn’t take it any more and just took off for a bar somewhere. Not one of those creep hardhat bars in Queens, where he lived. A bar with class. Like the one down in the Village where Lana hung out. Now, Lana was something else.

He pictured Lana’s figure against that of Miss Panetta. Lana was tall, sleek, like a racehorse or one of those greyhounds. This one here was sleek but small, like a chihuahua or a whippet.

Smiling lazily at her, Joe got to his feet. He moved slowly, insinuatingly, the way he liked to come on with Lana in one of those classy Village bars. There the men moved slow and sure and sleek. Nobody rushed around yakking and hollering like Tina, the pusbag he was married to. Everybody cooled it.

“Thanks a lot, Miss Panetta,” he said, making a point of repeating her name when she had already forgotten his.

“If there’s anything forthcoming,” she said, “I have the form you filled out and we’ll call you. However—”

“However,” he interrupted smoothly, “I have as much chance of getting this job as I have of sprouting another cock, right? But if I do, Miss Panetta, I’ll call you and we can make it two ways at the same time, right? You’ll love it, Miss Panetta.”

He shoved past her so closely that she shrank back, eyes wide. Okay, that was that. Nobody could say he hadn’t held up his end right to the finish. He went on one of these cockamamie interviews almost every day. Jobs were scarce, even jobs that made you puke.

They were all the same, anyway. Qualified or not, you didn’t get the job. Veteran or not, no job. But nobody could say he didn’t go through the motions. Tina couldn’t fault him on that. He tried. He hauled his ass down here and smiled and the dumb cunt couldn’t even remember his name for five minutes. Okay. Cool it.

He strode angrily through the waiting room. The looks on the dumdums’ faces made him want to puke even more than the job did. They were all kidding themselves. None of them had a chance. There was no job. The whole thing was a cruel little s-m gimmick to let Miss Wetmouth get off her rocks making people crawl. He’d love to humiliate her the way she’d just humiliated him.

The picture of himself with two cocks rose in his mind with such hot speed that he tripped pushing out into the corridor. His face burned with excitement. Then he laughed as he walked along the corridor to the elevators. This was one of those very modern buildings where you needed roller skates to get around. Miles and miles of miles and miles.

He shifted from foot to foot as he waited for the elevator. Damned banks, everything slow, sleepy, dead. They didn’t deserve him, not as an employee. The only way they deserved him was raping them with his two avenging cocks. Up the banks. Up all of them.

And that wasn’t such a bad idea, either, he thought as the elevator doors opened slowly. They had all the time in the world, those doors. As the elevator crept down to the main floor, Joe considered the idea of raping a bank or two. Easy. Nothing to do but cool it and rake in the cash.

Solve a lot of problems. Get Tina off his back, pay for everything the kids needed. Lay a few bucks on his mother. Get Lana off his back, too, with that operation she wanted. When you’re loaded, nobody bugs you. They all suck around.

The smile on his face as he walked out of the elevator was a tiny one, almost not there. But it was a smile nevertheless.

2

T
he August heat was a living presence moving soggily beside him as Joe made his way out of the cool bank building to the subway stairs two blocks away. It was after five. The streets were filling with moist, despairing people in thin dresses and shirt sleeves. The heat walked beside them all, making their skin flushed and damp.

Joe squeezed into a D train and tried to shut everything out of his mind: the interview, the heat, the moisture, the smells, the rumps and elbows shoving against him. Like every other subway rider, he avoided looking into anyone’s eyes. The only way this torture could be borne was if you maintained a certain false distance. If you didn’t look at them, nor they at you, and eye contact was thus cut down to a bare minimum, then it was possible to play games in your mind, pretend they didn’t exist.

He got out at the front end of the West Fourth Street station in Greenwich Village, and as he trudged up the stairs the traffic along Sixth Avenue beat at his ears. Its fumes were choking. Its heat was worse than the subway heat.