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  The Return of Marvin Palaver

  Peter Rabe

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  Chapter 1

  A Close Call, and Then Death

  I died at the worst possible moment in life, just when I was coming out even. I’m not talking you come out ahead, let’s be realistic, but to come out even with Sidney Minsk, may he live to be a poor man forever, that is worth a lifetime of troubles.

  After all my suffering and humiliation from the likes of Mister Sidney Fershtunkener himself, suddenly everything comes up roses, and then what happens? The worst possible thing happens, I die from success.

  Was I felled by age, by cholesterol, by a little too much of this and that? Forget it. Felled by happiness is the truth of what happened.

  And why me, I ask? Did I make a couple of million by screwing everybody in sight, like Mister Sidney Macher has done it? Did I, like Mister Sidney Potz, rob my closest friend of everything? Never.

  But if you’re going to be such a terrible person, at least have the decency to show a little guilt. What does Sidney do? Business as usual, is what Sidney does, which means — what else — give the shaft to poor Marve all over again, if at all possible.

  He sat there looking short and busy and with his stupid moon face turned my way, sweating from the effort to look smart.

  “Marvin,” he said to me from the other side of his crummy desk, “I don’t know why I trust you, Marvin, but I think you got yourself a deal.”

  He didn’t pick up the fountain pen right at that moment, but I was starting to die from joy already. At the time, of course, I was thinking figuratively. I started to tremble a little, which Sid could not see on account of my bulk, a little inside shiver from suffering joy unexpressed, but don’t let the enemy know about it. Not yet. Instead, I looked at him grateful and maybe I’m willing to kiss his feet from devotion.

  No easy job, all that, while I’m sitting there on this chair like from a doll house. Maybe one for each cheek would be nice, but no, not in a crummy office like one that belongs to Mister Sidney Considerate.

  Meanwhile, at this delicate point in the maneuverings, I thought I would just let Sidney dangle a little. Not act eager. So I shifted myself around on the torture rack which was all this time screwing itself into me from below, and gazed out that crummy window with the dried up sticker on the glass from the time when they put the window in maybe twenty years ago.

  On the other side of the window was Lot #1, he called it, piled to the Brooklyn sky with carcasses of cars squashed flat like latkes.

  This used to be just Auto Wrecking, S. Minsk, Propr., but not now anymore. There is Lot #1 because now there is also Lot #2.

  How come S. Minsk, Propr. has Lot #2 which used to be called Palaver’s Heavy Salvage, plain and simple, a wonderful place right next to the Lot #1 wrecking dump? Because Sidney is a ganef. A bum what steals.

  May I be forgiven a little nostalgia. This yard of heavy salvage was nothing tinny like squashed cars. This was serious, the big stuff from dismantled factories, old railroad gear, a bridge now and then. Ah well —

  “Marvin, hey — ”

  “What, what?”

  “I just said you got yourself a deal and you’re falling asleep! Maybe you got a condition what’s serious? Maybe I should worry about your health?”

  “Fine, Sidney, fine,” and I shifted around again on that terrible chair which was unmanning me from below.

  “Don’t kid me, Marvin. You’re looking at Lot #2 and you’re sick, right? That’s it, am I right?”

  He started to cackle but had the decency to turn it into a cough. Then he started to run a dry palm over the skin of his skull, a sign I knew about. It meant that he was enjoying himself.

  “Look at it this way, Marve. You got rid of a headache and I took it off your hands. You’re not sore, are you?”

  “Who’s talking sore? If I got sore everytime the business goes up and down, I wouldn’t have time to do business. Like right now, Sidney.”

  “You’re not sore. I’m glad, Marvin.”

  “Sure. Look at it this way, Sid. I undertook a change in my cash position and alleviated an inventory situation,” which I threw in because I knew that Mister Sid Smartass didn’t know the word alleviate. If he did, by some chance, he probably thought it meant to relieve yourself as in urinate.

  “That’s the way, Marve. Piss on the problem and relieve yourself. Improve the cash flow, I always say.”

  Instead of signing the contract, he was sitting there giving me his crummy philosophy. Then he just sat there resting himself from the heavy thinking, looked across his own yard to the one that used to be mine, and tugged the points of his shirt way over the lapels of his jacket so that I could look at his naked chest with the different lengths of gold chain hanging down.

  When Mister T was done preening himself, he started up with the small talk again and I still didn’t know what he was after.

  “The new job, you like it?” and he tried to smile at me like an uncle, at me ten years older than him and fifty years smarter.

  “It’s not a job, Sidney. I’m an entrepreneur, like always, except without the headache of running a yard. I’m brokering, Sidney, like this special deal of equipment I’m offering you.”

  “None of the headaches, that’s nice.”

  “So you going to worry about my job or you going to make yourself some money and sign?”

  “Don’t worry, I feel good about that, Marve. A fine deal, the best in years.”

  “What do you mean, the best in years? Maybe you didn’t get a wonderful deal when you took over my yard? Maybe by you highway robbery isn’t a wonderful deal?”

  “Don’t get excited, Marvin. It’s good. I take the tzurres with the good. That’s business and I don’t complain.”

  Now I could smell it. It always started with all the troubles he had which nobody knew about because he never talked about tzurres or complained or was the kind who asked for sympathy or — may God strike him dead — for a favor. So I tried to head him off with a little more flattery.

  “But I am excited, Sidney dear, and so happy for you to get such a wonderful deal, first the yard, and now this great bargain where you sign on the paper right there in front of you, such a deal I would only get for you and nobody else.” Which was true.

  “I’m happy too, Marvin. I never complain, you know that. I never said a word about the state of the inventory and records but just took the mess and all the rest off your back when you needed a hand.”

  “What’s that about inventory? You got a problem with inventory?”

  “Don’t always get excited, Marvin. All I said….”

  “Is that I gave you a problem. If you don’t know how to read a stock list, ask Schlosser. You took him when you took my yard and Schlosser knows everything about where everything is.”

  “I didn’t take your yard, Marvin. I bought it. To help you pay your debts.”

  “Do I have to sit here and listen to you telling me what a sweet person you are? If you’re such a sweet person, Sidney, how come you’re rich? Do I have to sit here and listen to nonsense or are you going to sign and buy the carbon steel, the very high carbon steel I struggled to find for you che
ap?”

  It was a long speech, not the best thing for a pitch at this point of the game, but I was very nervous now, very nervous with that inventory talk by Sidney, may he live to be a pauper. Then I knew he was finished pretending and playing around, because he was patting himself for a cigar. He always did that when he came around for the kill, even though he wasn’t carrying those stinker things anymore on account of his crummy lungs, but he was patting himself where they used to be, and me hoping he’d find one so the killer thing could do its work. Not very nice, but true.

  “I’ll buy it,” just like that.

  Of course I knew better. Then he added,

  “And maybe you could do me a little favor, on account of the spot I’m in. There’s this great outlay on Lot #2, which has to do with the inventory…”

  “Sidney, listen to me, sweetheart. I couldn’t go any lower, even for old times’ sake or because we’re such friends. Already you’re getting eight hundred thousand worth of prime scrap from a deal what costs you just two hundred thousand which on the Japanese market where they’re making cars like rabbits day and night….”

  “Stop talking, Marve. Am I trying to quibble? I never quibble, Marve, you know that.”

  When he starts lying like that it was time to go to the heart of it.

  “What favor?”

  “Nothing, Marve. With your experteeze, you could do it in your sleep.”

  Do anything in your sleep with Sidney, and you wake up a very poor man.

  “What favor, Sidney?”

  “The way you left the yard in a mess, run that inventory for me, Marve.”

  “No.”

  “Marvin. I got a crew coming in and they took one look at the records you left and the way you got things stored in the yard and this stock man tells me, this is such a private system, or what I call a mess, that no sane person can figure it out in less than one hundred years.”

  “No.”

  “Marvin, maybe I shouldn’t take on this deal till I know what I’ve got over there?”

  It wouldn’t be good for business, if Sidney noticed how I was getting nervous. So I looked up at the ceiling, as if I were seriously thinking about all of this, and wiped with my handkerchief where I was wet on the back of my neck and under one of my chins near the collar. That was alright. Fat men are supposed to sweat.

  “You don’t need some outside crew to do inventory,” I told him. “Ask Schlosser, he knows. I’m not in the inventory business, Sidney, I’m sitting here in the business of selling….”

  “I know, I know. You want me to sign here where it says I’ll take delivery of stock worth two hundred thousand, ten grand up front, but I gotta tell you, Marvin dearest, where am I going to get ten thousand up front now that I got to hire a team that’s going to cost every day while they take forever just sorting out your mess? I ask you.”

  “Sidney, please. If I don’t sell to you, on account of your haggling, I’m selling someplace else. Today. My time happens to be money.”

  “Who’s haggling? Do I ever haggle? I’m not buying until after inventory, is all.”

  He said more, of course, Mister Sidney Motormouth always did, but I wasn’t listening anymore. The fix was in, or the shaft, or that chair I was sitting on, who cares, I was dying again, still talking figuratively at that moment. Because if he didn’t buy that two hundred grand of iron from me before inventory time, he for sure wouldn’t buy it afterwards. Why would Mister Sidney Bargain Hunter buy it once he found that he already owned it?

  “And the way they charge, stockmen, accountants and all, how can I afford ten grand cash money down? Are you listening, Marvin?”

  I coughed first, to get some authority in the voice. “When’s inventory, before or after you buy?”

  “I can only let you have five thousand, Marve.”

  “Okay, okay, when?”

  “When what, the money? Right away,” and he picked up his fountain pen where he had left it on top of the contract.

  “The question I asked you, Sidney, when does the crew come to do inventory?”

  “In ten days, with or without you. What’s the hurry?”

  “I deliver now to you, or to Carlotto in Jersey, or to Hanks in Pittsburgh, I don’t care. I got my obligations and cash flow to consider, that’s that,” and I snapped my fingers which did not work because they were wet.

  He looked a little worried which I thought was a good sign, except I felt such a commotion and shooting pains from the stress of doing this deal on Sidney, I couldn’t enjoy how he was looking worried.

  “You don’t look good, Marve,” he said and leaned forward a little. “Like an egg plant in the face. You should lose some weight, you know that?”

  “Now or what?” I should have coughed first, because what he got there was no authority in it, the way I wanted, but more of a wheeze.

  “Three thousand down?” I heard that unspeakable ganef whisper from the distance between us.

  “Three already, sign it!”

  And then I held my breath watching him pick up his Eversharp fountain pen, the Presidential Model with the metal filigree like an anti-macasser around the barrel, I hated that but I loved it enough right then to kiss it — Do it, Sidney, do it, boobele my dearest and sign already, sign me the life’s ambition victory deal, to sell the thief what he already stole, I’ll take that deal!

  So I quivered with ecstasy hidden inside my bulk while I watched him change the ten thousand down to three thousand, may he shit gold pieces all his life so they should flush right away down the toilet, and then I watched him sign the whole thing.

  Tears of joy made my eyes swim. I knew happiness supreme. Then something else happened.

  There came a bump in my chest and the insides of my head turned black. I leaned to one side on that crummy chair and felt embarrassed because I could not help falling. But thanks for small favors, I was dead before I hit the floor.

  Chapter 2

  Heaven, the Big Deal

  You have a question how is it possible I should keep talking like this? Take my word for it, it’s possible.

  You have a question what goes on here, what it’s like when you’re dead?

  You must have heard the phrase, The Mystery of Life. Well, now you know there is also such a thing as The Mystery of Death.

  First of all, I didn’t come here because I wanted to know all about the place. When I’m busy, I don’t think about traveling, what it’s like in Acapulco and should I bring a bathing suit. What’s the point, I got no incentive. Which brings me to reason number two.

  Incentive means to do a deal on Sidney, or — even more incentive — to have him almost by the kishkas but not yet. And that was my situation. So, dying meant only one thing. I was interrupted with a lot of incentive not used up, so much of it that I’m here to tell you there was no way I could stop going after Sidney now. Falling off a crummy chair may be a little awkward, but nothing big enough to forget about a masterful Schwindel to be done to Sidney.

  Meanwhile, what I noticed first off, I was lying on the floor in that crummy shack and the chair had rolled over. Then I saw Sidney at his desk, and his face so white like he was ready to join me. As for me in that regrettable state, it was strange to see a dead person lie on the floor. I was also a little shocked to see how fat I was. But then, I had never been much on appearances, like Mister Sidney Brummel with the gold chains on his little chest.

  Then Sidney got out of his chair. He went over to me and stuttered a little, wanting to know if I needed a glass of water. Then he tried to turn me over, but Mister Sidney Atlas he’s not.

  He went back to the desk, shuffled papers around like a man who’s not certain about the future, and then he picked the contract up and shoved it under the blotter. The strange thing was, just about at that moment I lost interest. I think that’s when I knew I was dead, when I lost interest. And then other things started to happen.

  Where was I? That’s a little bit like walking down Ramsey Street and somebody s
ays, what is this? What can I tell you, it’s a street. Here’s the asphalt, there’s the houses, and some trash cans by the stoop.

  Now, this place was the same, except no asphalt, no houses, no trash cans by the stoop. But there it was, a space like a street, what can I tell you. There was one surprise which was the light.

  When Missus Capp had her kidney stones out and was lying there in the hospital getting well, she all of a sudden had a heart attack and everybody right away thought she was dying. Missus Capp all of a sudden looked like she was having one big schreck with her eyes real wide open from surprise, then her head flopped to one side, her teeth dropped out, and she sort of got flat. Then she was dead.

  Except, this was in the hospital. So they came rushing in with an electric machine and shocked her back to life so hard, Missus Capp made the bed bounce. And what does she say after she recovers from coming alive? I saw the light, I saw the light!

  For the next two years, after which she died again, Missus Capp told everybody about the white light waiting for her at the end of the tunnel. And her daughter who is a meshuggene married to a weird person who was teaching at City College, he and she both kept egging her on about the beautiful light which is the entry to the higher realm where you go, what used to be called the Pearly Gates, and everybody had to listen to that nonsense.

  Of course there is a light, stands to reason. When it’s dark over here, it’s going to be light over there, and if it’s a pretty good light, let’s say maybe 250 watts but bigger than a bulb, then naturally the rest of it in the dark is going to look like a tunnel. But there isn’t any tunnel any more than there is a street. You just think so, if you’re impressionable plus getting egged on by a meshuggene daughter.

  It’s all nonsense. Besides, I had no interest in the place, as I said, because I had unfinished business. Even so, a few other things did catch my attention, nothing big or important, but there they were.

  Other people were walking around, no big deal. When you’re alive, you’re never alone either. But I do have to admit, it wasn’t one hundred percent normal all the time.