Baltimore Noir

Christ, does everyone own a cat? I try to sit up but Ravens kicker Matt Stover apparently teed up my brain for a twenty-five-yard chip shot. Lori applies a heated washcloth on my forehead-I take back what I said about her being old. I called the cops on him, she says, the guy that’s with the realty company that wants me to sell. “Carpenter hands?” I say, somehow finding the strength to rename the prick. Mel closes in.

“Carpenter hands,” she whispers, “prefers we not date.”

Casey’s packs its urinals in ice. Lori says it’s been a tradition ever since her ex-husband’s grandfather opened the bar in 1927. The old man’s initialed whiskey flask still sits atop the cash register. His beat-up flute is still here, too. I’m here three weeks after boyfriend Steve thumped my head and after a particularly tense argument with Mr. Grimes over the appearance of twenty-five copies of Rear Window in the emporium. I had taken the initiative and ordered the shipment because the movie stars Grace Kelly. Mr. Grimes reacted- overreacted, I think-by charging me with a dull oyster knife. My life has become stressful. I don’t want any more intense excitement.

“You’re too old for your age,” Lori says.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you like Grace Kelly and that Paul Desmond guy, whoever he is. You got old people tastes.”

“Your bar is not exactly a youth magnet.”

“You’re here,” she says. She is not being mean.

I go to take a leak in the industrial-strength urinals, where a lumpy tourist in an oversized Black Do sweatshirt says out of the corner of his mouth: “I don’t know why they put ice in the urinals, but it’s fun to make it melt.” One day there won’t be a place in Fell’s Point where you can melt ice-the bubble machine is gone, after all-and I appreciate these facts, but I need to think about changing jobs, think about, I don’t know, doing something. My fellow pisser introduces himself as Albert. I have never met an Albert, but he makes a perfect Albert and he seems perfectly happy melting ice. He’s back from the Duck Tour and visibly disappointed his group didn’t see a homicide.

“Don’t feel bad. It’s just not a good time of year,” I say to Albert. “When the weather gets warmer you might get lucky. And if you can be exceptionally patient, you might see one of the city’s garbage skimmers scoop up a body with the rest of the floating trash.”

Albert stops melting ice.

“You mean those funny-looking boats with the conveyor belt and wings? They drag up bodies? What’s a good time to that?

“Low tide is good, trash heads in at low tide.”

Albert’s spirits improve, and I can’t help hoping that one day the Duck Tour won’t let him down. Listen, the man passionately wants a CSI: Baltimore; he believes that much in Charm City.

Albert leaves Casey’s. I don’t.

“So, Lori, you going to sell?”

“Over my dead body,” she says, planting a Bass Ale for

New Yorker cartoon coaster. She bought a dozen, mostly dog cartoons. She just has the one coaster out, reserved for me.

“Pretty upscale, ma’am.”

“Don’t tell anyone,” she says. “So, what are you going to do, Michael?”

“Do?”

“Yeah, what are you going to about your porno job? What are you going to do about Mel? Or that boyfriend? He knocked you on your ass, and he wants Casey’s, he wants my bar. What are you going to do? What are going to do?… Speak up, Michael.”

I have to work Independence Day, but it will be my last day at The Love Joint. “Mr. Grimes, I resign my position effective immediately,” I announce, as he tapes a sign to the side of the cash register: “We cannot sell waterpipes anymore. You must ask for tobacco pipes.” Quitting is my strongest career decision yet; two years-where does the time go?-is long enough in the adult store business. A pristine shipment of new Pamela videos has put Grimes in a docile, nostalgic mood. He’s even adopted four white kittens from somewhere. He’s wearing his blue tennis shoes.

“You talking to yourself again, son?” Grimes says.

“I said I resign immediately.”

“Then we should discuss your severance.”

One of the white kittens tumbles into the Pamela Anderson video box display, detonating the man’s pyramid. It’s a staggering architectural loss, but Grimes just smiles, quite the foreign expression on him. The front door opens and it’s no customer. I don’t understand the presence of Carpenter Hands nor do I appreciate this unsettling interruption. Hadn’t I just officially resigned?

“Hey, Mikey.”

“It’s Michael.”

“I’m sure it is,” Carpenter Hands says, moving behind the counter. “Mikey, you need to talk to your friend at Casey’s. You need, as an objective newsletter reporter, to explain to Ms. Montgomery the practical benefits of selling her bar. I’ve tried but, frankly, she does not trust me.”

“Fuck yourself.”

“Well-spoken, and it’s not an entirely unattractive suggestion,” he says. “But, as you well know, I’m fucking Mel.”

Grimes burps a laugh (coughing something up), then starts to rebuild the Pamela pyramid to far greater heights. He says something about wanting to expand the operation, make a move to Thames Street.

“You’re not going to interfere, are you, son?” Grimes asks.

I scoop up ten copies of Rear Window as severance before leaving my job at the emporium.

“She’ll sell,” Carpenter Hands says.

“Over my dead body.”

I walk out, past the Broadway Market and Crabby Dick’s and toward my favorite Fell’s Point bar. I’ve always wanted to say “over my dead body,” but I now feel under some sort of obligation. I stand at the railing by the water taxi landing and stare at the brown harbor water. It’s high tide, the trash is out. The Moran tugboats, with their Goodyear tire whiskers, are all tucked in for the night alongside the Recreation Pier. The briny wind, the drinking people, the subterranean sin-Fell’s Point is feeling and looking one quarter French Quarter. Inside Casey’s, I hear Tongue Oil close its first set with Zeppelin’s “The Immigrant Song.” Lori’s six, seven customers are speechless, immobilized. One might be weeping.

“Ah, the unbridled power of rock and roll,” I tell Lori.

“Why no, that’s just my shitty house band.”

“I quit my job at the emporium.”

“I like that decision,” Lori says. “Work here. Help me find good music. Please, help me find good music. You heard what they did to ‘The Immigrant Song.’ Michael, musicians will listen to you-you’re old.”

When Lori gives you a Bass Ale on a New Yorker coaster, when Lori uses your full first name, when Lori offers you a job working with Lori, you don’t need a day to think about it. She tells me to start immediately by advising the management (i.e., drummer) of Tongue Oil that a second set and any future first sets will no longer be necessary. During the transitional period, I insert a pressed dollar into the jukebox to hear Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” and “She’s the One.” Lori reimburses me for the money, a gesture far more intimate and sweeter than having your eyebrow groped. I know she’s scared to sell, scared not to sell, scared of him. And who knows what happened to Carpenter Hands’s girlfriend? Maybe Mel has given topless cleaning another chance; she just needed the right boss.

“Lori?”

“Yes.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-one. Now help me close up.”

The Fell’s Pointer office is on the second floor of a Fell Street rowhouse. Barry Levinson filmed a scene from Diner here, but there’s no plaque commemorating the