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RAFFERTY'S TOES

a Novel by

Ron David

CHAPTER ONE

March 29

 When Mister Whipple came on the TV, Mabel Fakas shook her big red bowlingball head in disgust, mumbled "Goddam toiletpaper-squeezing moron," turned off the TV, opened the front door of her basement apartment and looked into the hallway—her son was not there.  She dragged her big ugly self back to the kitchen, took another four aspirins and sat at the kitchen table staring up at the ornately stamped tin ceiling, one panel after another, exactly the same.  The same.  The same.  The same. 

          Mabel was bored.  Mabel couldn't concentrate.  Nothing interested her.  Mabel felt lousy but she would not pity herself.  All she needed was something interesting to do, something to take her mind off her problems, anything, so she tried painting the kitchen table yellow but when she cleaned the brushes she accidentally looked too long at the yellow water screwing itself down the drain and her head started to screw itself down the drain too. 

          It didn't make her go crazy but it did make her extremely dizzy.  She didn't like being dizzy so she tried to stabilize her mind by painting everything in the kitchen yellow—the chairs, the sink, the refrigerator, the floor, everything—then she slapped the mirror in the face and started waving her arms around like airplane flags and she thanked God for finally having something interesting to do that she didn't have to force herself to concentrate on.   

CHAPTER TWO

June 2

Rafferty didn't look surprised when he hit his thumb, he just dropped the hammer and climed down the ladder with the thumb in his mouth, pacing, shaking the thumb like it was an extremely sore thermometer. 

          Rafferty thought that feeding his fish might change his shitty luck but when he opened his apartment door the first thing he saw were his plants and he was so freshly amazed at all the colors green has that he forgot about his ignorant fish and stuck his sore thumb into the fine dirt of his rubber tree plant. 

          Bing bing, the door.

          "Yes?"

          The landlady opened his door and stuck her fuzzy little grey head in.  "Sorry to bother you, Mister Rafferty, but Fontecilla in 4C has a busted wall and needs it sheetrocked soon as possible.  How do you get all them plants to grow in the basement?"

          "Nothing special.  What apartment you say that was?"

          "4C."

Rafferty wasn't the world's greatest sheetrocker so it didn't help his nerves when Mr. Fontecilla and the German Shepherd stood alongside the ladder and scrutinized his every move.  He didn't give a hoot what Fonetecilla thought but he didn't want to look bad in front of the dog.

          "Why it's taking so long?" Fontecilla grumped.

          "Actually," Rafferty said, snapping his fingers at the dog, "I been seeing these two people up inside my head and they aren't exactly making love but they're doing a lot more than talking but they always have their backs turned to me so I..."

           "Enough!" Fontecilla howled, and started cursing at Rafferty  in Spanish.

          “Why do people ask questions if they don’t want you to answer them,” Raf mumbled under his breath.

          “What you say?” Fontecilla said pissed-off-edly.

          "I said, ‘You from Puerto Rico or what?’”

          "I, Senor, am from Cuba!"  Fontecilla made some kind of speech but Rafferty lost track because when the noon siren went off the German Shepherd started howling.  There is something about the sound of howling dogs that makes Rafferty close his eyes.  Fontecilla looked like he couldn't believe what he was seeing.  "Why does a man on a step ladder close his eyes?"                     

          "Your dog's got some beautiful voice on him," Raf said.  "What'd you say his name was?"

          Fontecilla called Rafferty a lunatic in two languages and told him to get out of his house.  Raf ignored him and finished the sheetrock.  A few minutes later, Mr. Fontecilla (go figure?) brought Rafferty iced tea and asked Raf to change the light bulb in his dining room. 

          In the process of changing Fontecilla's lightbulb, Rafferty broke the entire light fixture.  Raf jammed the light fixture up toward the ceiling but before he could sneak down off the ladder the fixture fell halfway to the floor.  Fontecilla waved a cane that looked like an upside‑down golf putter and screamed, "This must be repair by Friday, you imbeeecile!"

          The dog, whose name was either Ralph or Rolf, pointed his nose toward the hole in the ceiling and howled so beautifully that Rafferty, in a fit of ecstacy, nearly fell off the ladder.

           Fontecilla screamed at the howling dog and hit Rolf or Ralph  in the ass with his cane.  As the dog ran and the furious old man limped after him, Rafferty felt the swelling of three heads inside his head growing this huge Alabama piss off and Rafferty wished from atop his ugly, rickety, paint-splattered wood ladder that once, just once, he could make himself mean and nasty enough to hit another human person.  Not that he'd want to make a habit of it but damn if he wasn't dying to come upside that old gopher's head.          

          Rafferty came down off the ladder.

          "Please stop," he said, putting himself between the ugly man and the beautiful dog. "My God, he's only a dog."

          Fontecilla, amazingly, did not cave Rafferty's head in with the cane.  Rafferty kissed the dog, repaired the light fixture, lit up a Lucky Strke and congratulated himself on one hell of a run of good old macaroni fucking luck.

His luck had improved but his aim hadn't.

          He was in the basement fixing the ceiling when he hammered the thumb again.  Raf looked around: there was nobody present, no one had seen it, it never happened.  He left the hammer on top of the ladder and put a rag over the damned thing so he didn't have to look at it.  He climbed down, took a utility knife out of his  leather belt and put in a new blade, a Craftsman, a real beauty.

               Rafferty, proud as a papa of his new blade, strutted around a little, measured and cut the sheet‑rock, peeked at his wrist‑watch, thought about an old girlfriend, wondered if he'd see any tugboats tonight and before he could say "Oh shit" the blade went through the sheetrock into the tip of his unfortunate index finger.  Raf wouldn't look at the finger—he took the sight of his own blood very personally—so, deeply insulted, Rafferty looked at the ceiling and wondered what in the hell to do.

          He never even noticed Mabel Fakas standing six inches away from him, fumbling around her white mesh shopping bag, until she  said, "You seem to be a natural leader of men Mister Rafferty have you ever considered the priesthood may I borrow one of your Lucky Strikes?"

          Raf gave her a cigarette and told her she shouldn't sneak up on people.  She was still looking in the shopping bag so he gave her the once over.  Her legs were as thick as fireplugs.   (And those feet.  I don't even want to think about those feet.)

          Mabel Fakas found what she was fumbling for in her bag—a box of Band Aids—and began bandaging his finger.  Her touch was so rough and heavy that Rafferty squeaked but he looked at her face before he decided if he was hurt.  One thing Rafferty knew for sure about Rafferty was that if you wanted to hurt him, all you had to do was want to—it was all over the second he saw your face—but Raf could tell by her face that she wanted to comfort him so, despite the fact that she was about as gentle as a goddam gorilla, Raf felt comforted.  The trouble was, now her face had all Raf's pain and the poor crazy woman looked like she'd crack into tears any second.  Say something to snap her out of it, Rafferty.

          "You remind me of someone.  Do you have any relations in the midWest?"

          Mabel Fakas, apparently in no mood for small talk, slammed one eye shut, then the other, and fell, all one‑hundred‑and‑seventy‑five lbs of her, to the basement floor.  Raf wanted to run for his life—hurt things terrified him—but he noticed the comforting fact that she was accompanied by an elderly, potbellied dog.  The fat old dog crossed his two front paws and wondered.  (Rafferty crossed his own two front paws and wondered.)  He said, "Lady?"

          Nothing.

          "Please, Lady?"

          Same.

          Raf tried to slap her face to revive her but his hand kept stopping—he couldn't bring himself to hit her—so he got down on his bony hands and knees and straddled her.  He thought that's how you gave artificial respiration but when he got there it just didn't seem right.  While he was trying to picture artificial respiration in his mind, Rafferty got mixed up and pictured her feet and he sprung an erection like a one-eyed Jack‑in‑the‑box.             

          Before Rafferty could unstraddle her, she woke up. 

          "I said," she said, "may I borrow one of your Lucky Strikes?"

          Rafferty, suave as a Frenchman, lit two cigarettes at once and gave her one of them.  She smoked out of the corner of her mouth like a private detective.  Halfway thorough the cigarette, she said, "Have you ever noticed that the nuns never sweat despite their heavy blue suits?"

           Rafferty didn't mean to ignore her but the dog stuck his ass up in the air and wiggled his front paws like he was playing the piano.  "Pardon me, what'd you say?"

          "I said, 'May I borrow another one of your Lucky Strikes?'"

          "Sure.  What nuns?"

          She lit the new cigarette off the old one.

          When she started to sit up, Rafferty's Jack‑in‑the‑box poked her in the belly.  "Well, Monsignor Rafferty," she said, grinning like the cat who jerked off the canary, "it appears that one of us has a hardon.  And they said you didn't have a sense of humor."                

          Rafferty said "Shit" and stood up.

          She sat up abruptly and announced to his erection, "I'm a widow, my husband died March 9th.  I live in the other basement apartment."

          Rafferty didn't laugh.  He took a step backward and said, "Who says I don't have a sense of humor?"

          She said, "Have you ever noticed the similarity between a foetus and a lima bean?"

          Raf thought that might be a trick question so he didn't answer.

          She said, "There's never any moon, is there Mister Rafferty?  When you need it most, there's never any moon?"

          Rafferty had reached his limit.  He was about to tell her she was nuts just in case the fact had escaped her but when she stuck out her hand for him to help her stand up he noticed his blood on her arm. 

          His blood on her arm. 

          Rafferty said, "I'm very sorry about your husband."

          "It'll take more than the death of one fat drunk to get me  down, Mister Rafferty."  She tried to smile when she said it but she looked like she'd been whacked in the head with a shovel.

          "I really am sorry.  He ..."

          "Fuck him, he's dead."

          "And you don't care?"

          "I don't care about anything dead."

          Rafferty wondered if he cared about anything dead but he didn't understand the question, let alone the answer. 

          He said, "Was it a heart attack?"

          "No," she said, "it was God." 

          She put her face three inches from Rafferty's face.  Raf tried to back away but her face was bigger and infinitely more committed.  "I don't care if He is God," she said, "I don't take that kind of shit off anybody.  He'll regret the day He ever fucked with Mabel Fakas." 

          She went into her apartment without another word.

          Rafferty stared at her door.      

          He stood back a ways just in case she got struck by lightning.