Merlot (9 page)

* * *

Osborne paced back and forth across his
office floor while Milton kept his nose buried in the middle of the
sports section. None of the dancers had reported for work.
Customers stared at an empty stage for Sunday’s ‘Brunch and
Buns’.

“What is the point of clever promotion if
none of your employees arrive for work? Just who do they think is
going to entertain that rabble down there coming to view female
anatomy with their scrambled eggs?”

It was a question Milton hoped was merely
rhetorical. He grasped the newspaper a little tighter. His right
hand felt stiff and hot this morning. The bite wound puffy and raw,
with a broader purplish tinge.

“Milton, get up to the Fat Farm, have six of
them go down there and dance while I get this situation
straightened out.”

“Dancers? From the Fat Farm? Are you
sure…?”

“Will you please cooperate! I’m losing money
by the minute here and no one, no one seems to care. Will you
please, please not think, Milton. Just do as I ask, for God’s
sake.”

When Milton returned twenty minutes later he
held no doubts as to the wisdom of Osborne’s decision. One minute
into Daphne from the Fat Farm dancing and the place had cleared
out.

“And?” Osborne asked, standing imperiously
behind his desk.

Milton shook his large head, aware of a new
throbbing in his swollen, purple hand.

“Whatever do you mean? Speak!”

“Everyone just ran out. They left.”

“Ran out?”

“Yeah, they ran out the door, left drinks on
the table, food on their plates. There’s still two guys sitting
close to the stage, but I think they’re just waiting for a cab to
show up. Otherwise there’s no one down there, cept them fat broads.
Oh yeah, and your bartenders.”

Osborne seemed to deflate on the spot.

“Find me this Sassie’s phone number,” he said
disgustedly.

* * *

Billy Truesdale was as good as his word and
was lying low all day. He promised himself he wasn’t going to give
one thought to the week from hell waiting for him tomorrow when
they began hauling the fair cash to Central. He set down a plate of
French bread next to a bucket filled with ice and three
nonalcoholic beers. He stretched his feet out in front of the
portable television he had just dragged onto the sun porch.

The grass was cut, the sidewalk swept, two
salmon steaks were thawing in the kitchen. There was nothing for a
guy to do but drink cold beer and watch the game in air-conditioned
comfort. He’d tested his blood sugar then grabbed the remote.

He had a feeling this was the Vikings year.
Of course he felt that every year. Talk of a home town rookie had
the preseason cranked up. Purple pride baby, he thought, sipping
his beer. Time again for purple pride.

* * *

Every Sunday for years, DiMento’s had an
all-you-can-eat Sunday brunch. Merlot’s father had started it,
turning an otherwise flat business day into a lucrative event, and
in the process guaranteeing that he would have to work seven days a
week.

Merlot had been working the brunch crowd,
bussing tables, seating folks, glad-handing people, asking about
kids and grandkids, checking the buffet lines. The brunch went from
11:00 until 2:00, and his eyes were continually checking the clock,
willing the thing to move faster so he could get home and squeeze
in a decent nap this afternoon.

A little past noon, he made his way through
the all-you-can-eat crowd, thinking, come on clock, tick!

“Merlot, you forget about purple pride?”
Dickie yelled from a Lounge booth. Wiener and Victor along with a
blind attorney, Andrew, sat with him. Smothered by Dickie’s massive
size, Wiener was crammed into the far corner of the booth. His
shoulders squeezed together, he looked like he was fighting for
oxygen.

Dickie wasn’t just dressed, he was costumed
in plaid shorts and perhaps the largest purple jersey Merlot had
ever seen, number thirty-five. A good eighty pounds of Dickie’s
right side hung dangerously into the aisle.

“Oh no,” Merlot groaned.

“You didn’t forget again, did you?” Victor
asked.

“Hi Andrew,” Merlot said grabbing Andrew’s
hand. “We met before, I’m…”

“Yeah, I know, Merlot. Hey, I’m only blind,
not deaf. Recognize your voice, how’s it going?” directing his head
about two feet to Merlot’s left.

“Good Andrew, really good,” he lied.

“So, did you forget we’ve got tickets to the
game, dipshit?” Dickie shouted.

“No, I didn’t forget,” wondering how in the
hell he could have forgotten.

In Dickie’s mind the final preseason game had
taken on a life of its own, one of those major occurrences in life
by which time and events become forever measured. Oh, that was
before the final preseason game or, that was just after the final
preseason game.

The reason was Dickie’s third or fourth
cousin, Jerry Cardy Jr. from Chisholm, Minnesota. He was making his
debut as a rookie wide receiver for the Vikings. And to hear
Dickie, you would have thought he had personally coached the kid
for the past twenty-four years.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, local sports
media came up with a name, dubbing him the ‘Wild Card’. Dickie had
taken up the chant to a nauseating level.

“The Wild Card is gonna deal us into the
Super Bowl. The Wild Card is gonna run the table. The Wild Card is
gonna stack the deck in our favor.”

It went on and on, and they all promised to
go to the final preseason game for the Wild Card’s debut if only
Dickie promised not to mention him for the two weeks preceding the
game.

Two weeks officially ended last night at
midnight and so, wasting no time, Dickie said, “Come on Merlot,
let’s get going. The Wild Card is gonna trump Seattle’s ass today,
baby.”

Across the aisle, a grandmother surrounded by
her extended family looked over with eyes shooting daggers. Two
guys, probably her sons, smiled into their coffee cups.

“Let’s hope so, Dickie. Let me just finish a
couple of things here and we can take off.” Merlot answered
weakly.

“Well, don’t take too damn long, I want to
get there on time, you know what a pain in the ass traffic is gonna
be. Hey, while we’re waitin’ who’s up for a couple more?”

Merlot felt the slightest twinge of impending
disaster.

* * *

Lucerne woke, too hung-over to search for the
remote and turn off the television preacher harping on the ravages
of sin. He groaned and pulled a pillow over his head, beer cans
clattered to the floor. He was aware of Mendel’s heavy breathing on
the other side of the bed and an irregular grunt from the walk in
closet where Elvis had passed out.

Hungover, flat broke and out of beer. Hell of
a way to start a Sunday.

* * *

Cindy groped her way back from the bathroom.
She tossed a discarded top over her digital clock and pulled the
covers back up over her head. Maybe by 5:00 she might be ready for
a bath, hot soup and a very quiet night

* * *

Otto was pulling away from the bank parking
lot after placing another deposit in the night-drop slot. The day
was going better than he’d planned, and if things kept up at this
rate he would have to make another bacon and batter run about
mid-afternoon.

He was taking his time driving back to the
handicap lot, listening to Johnny Cash sing about Sunday morning.
His feet felt fine, his stands were busy, and he thought that bank
teller must sure like to party. Yep, things were looking up and
Otto sang a duet with Johnny about the beer he had for
breakfast.

* * *

“Woo, hoo, hoo, purple pride baby! Purple
pride!” Dickie yelled out the window of Victor’s Escalade as they
drove west on I-94 into Minneapolis. Seated directly behind Victor,
the Escalade leaned heavily to the left.

He was yelling out the window to anyone they
passed, currently two women in the next lane.

“Purple pride, you cute little thing. You
hear me baby? It’s the big man talking, purple pride!” slapping the
outside of the car door with a gargantuan paw.

Merlot could read the woman’s lips in the
passenger seat. She stared at Dickie in his gigantic purple jersey,
blond hair and chins fluttering in the seventy-five-mile- per-hour
breeze. A look of utter disbelief or was it just fear?

“Oh my God, what a fucking idiot,” her lips
formed as they quickly accelerated and left Dickie in the dust.

Victor began slowing, putting his blinker on
after bypassing four or five miles of bumper to bumper game traffic
crawling toward the same exit.

“Yeah, baby, woo, hoo, hoo, Wild Card, honey.
Deal me in, baby. The Wild Card!”

“Dickie! Don’t dent the damn door and settle
down,” Victor cautioned.

“Wild Card,” Dickie sang to the tune of
“
Wild Thing”
, the old Trogs classic, pounding a semblance of
the beat on Victor’s car roof,

“
you make my, err, ahh, um…”

Sputtering, not coming up with anything that
rhymed, before beginning anew.

‘
Wild Card, you make dick hard,

You make everything groovy!

Come on, come on, Wild Card!’

“Okay, Dickie, that’s enough now, just settle down
big boy.”

“Here,” Andrew said, pulling a handicapped
sticker from his pocket thrusting it in Victor’s general direction,
“hang this on the rearview mirror. I’ve got a card to get us into
handicap parking so we don’t have to pay. Just take the Fifth
Street exit, then where the road T’s, you make a sharp right and
haul ass all the way across the main lot and into the blue zone. We
can park right next to the stadium for free.”

Merlot wondered how a blind guy knew street
directions.

* * *

“How about some brewskis, boys?” Dickie
yelled plowing through the crowd. He was three paces ahead and
clearing a broad path as he waddled in his plaid shorts and tent
sized jersey. The four of them followed in his massive wake.

Andrew held Victor by his left hand, with the
white cane in his right. Wiener and Merlot walked behind them,
watching people’s reaction to Dickie, number thirty-five, steaming
his way to the nearest beer stand.

“Hey, hey thirty-five,” some guy called,
jumping out of Dickie’s path. “Jerry Cardy, man, Minnesota proud!”
as if Dickie needed any encouragement.

“Eight beers,” Dickie said, throwing down a
hundred dollar bill.

“I’ll carry Andrew’s” Merlot volunteered.

Dickie drank a twenty ounce cup standing at
the counter. Poured it down never taking the cup away from his
lips.

Their seats, compliments of Victor and
Andrew’s law firm, were on the fifty yard line, about six rows
up.

“Dickie, you’re in the end seat,” Victor
yelled back as they filed into the first five seats, nodding to
ensure the wide-eyed woman in seat number six that everything was
under control, for the moment.

* * *

“Oh my God, camera one, get a shot of the
huge guy on the fifty-yard line. Six or seven rows up, see him, in
the Vikings jersey, number thirty-five? Man, look at that guy,” the
pregame ground director said into his mouthpiece.

“See him? Look at the size of that guy! You
can’t miss him!”

“Yeah, yeah, I got him.”

“Okay, and main shot on camera one, it’s all
yours” he said, glancing around a wall of monitors.

They focused in on the thirty-five of
Dickie’s jersey, then gradually pulled back for a larger shot just
as Dickie drained another beer on television screens across the
nation.

“That is one big boy!”

“Hey Dickie, look, up on the monitor, it’s
you!” Weiner yelled.

Dickie followed Wiener’s outstretched arm
until his eyes rested on his twenty foot image.

“Purple pride, baby,” Dickie screamed rising
to his feet. Multiple images on the giant screens around the dome
flashed his image.

“Come on, come on, Wild Card, you make…”

“No, Dickie, we don’t need you on national TV
singing that, okay, these are the firm’s seats,” screamed
Victor.

“Yeah, yeah okay, Victor, I know.” He raised
a meaty paw over his head and screamed “Wild Card, Wild Card!”

The sold-out crowd rose to their feet as a
half dozen Dickie images waved them on.

“Wild Card, Wild Card!” he screamed.

“Do you believe this shit?” Wiener yelled
into Merlot’s ear.

“Christ!” whined Merlot.

“Well they’re certainly ready up here in
Minnesota to play football this afternoon.” The voice over said as
the camera switched off Dickie’s fifteen seconds of fame, refocused
on a pair of sultry blondes chanting “Wild Card” to each other.

“Everyone’s here this afternoon at the
Minneapolis Metrodome screaming Wild Card. That’s a reference to
rookie wide receiver Jerry Cardy, the Viking’s number thirty-five
out of the University of Colorado and a local Chisholm, Minnesota,
native. So we wish Jerry Cardy and the Vikings all the best this
afternoon, and we’ll be back with the kick off, after this message.
It’s the Minnesota Vikings versus the Seattle Seahawks in today’s
final preseason NFL Sunday game.”

* * *

“You see that fat bastard,” Lucerne rolled
halfway over to face Mendel on the bed. He sipped a warm Colt 45
from the night before.

“By rights you ought to share that, you
know,” Mendel reasoned, furious at himself for not checking under
the bed for the can.

“Share? Hell, you coulda grabbed her
yourself, you just didn’t have the brains to look around and now
that’s my problem? I don’t think so,” he slurped.

* * *

It was a painful first seven minutes of the
game. Seattle marched down the field in increments of five and ten
yards, scored a touchdown, then an extra point, before Minnesota
native and rookie Jerry Cardy, the Wild Card, took the field.

Number thirty-five, Jerry Cardy Jr. strutted
onto the field for his first appearance as a Minnesota Viking.
Number thirty-five, Dickie, rose to his feet, and got the stadium
chanting once again.