The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh

I'd never noticed before, a worn naked-man magazine that fell like a severed limb from inside a book on wiring and fuses. It all culminated with a little boy who came and stood beside me.

'Um, mister?' he said.

'May I help you?'

'Yeah,' he said. 'I'm looking for a book about makeup.'

'Makeup?' I said. 'As in, say, cosmetics? Health and Beauty books? You mean makeup?'

'No way!' he nearly screamed, stopping the assault, saving the earth at the last moment from complete alien domination. That wasn't what he meant at all. He meant werewolf makeup and exploding-forehead makeup. I could have fallen to my knees in thanks.

I wasn't, I insist, stupid enough to imagine that the mere fact that I had a gay friend-though I'd never, to my knowledge, had one before-meant that I was myself, somehow, a homosexual. I was, however, insecure (and stupid) enough to imagine that the only reason Arthur had befriended me was to seduce me, that he found nothing in me to admire, as I found in his manners, his intelligence, his clothing, his ease with others; in short, that he didn't really like me. If any of the attempts I made that day to telephone Arthur had succeeded, I would have asked him nothing. I would only have listened to the way in which he spoke to me, listened for accents of friendship: the banality, relaxation, and lack of style that characterize a conversation between two friends.

After their morning fun, the day, for the others, dissolved into utter antihilarity and six or seven reputedly atrocious late-afternoon hangovers. I was watching the clock slowly fold up my last ten minutes like the pleats of a fan, when an enormous BMW motorcycle, I500cc, jumped the curb outside the store and made the plate glass shake. The rider, wearing black leather chaps, black jacket, and an impenetrable black visor, dismounted without cutting the engine. The bike was so loud that Valerie and Ed and Joey came running up from the back, Valerie pressing at the headache in her temples.

He wasn't big, the biker, not tall at any rate, but he had a gut, and his boots thudded as he tore open the front door. Why couldn't you have waited eight and a half minutes? I thought. Usually the bikers went right over to the magazines, to Easyriders, and giggled at the Biker Chick of the Month for a while in the air-conditioning before stealing Hustler and swaggering out; usually they turned off their motorcycles and left their helmets hung over the sissy bar, or whatever, and did not loom at the front counter like symbols of Twentieth-Century Leather Death. I looked at Valerie, who was trying to prepare a stern look, and then turned to face the biker, who had pushed up his face shield. He wore glasses, Clark Kents.

'May I help you?' I said.

'Yes,' said the biker, but he just stood and examined my face without speaking. His gaze drifted up to my hair, which seemed to check with something in his mind, and then back.

'You forgot to turn off your motorcycle, mister,' I said.

'Goodness me,' he said.

'May I help you?'

'I'm looking for Son of a Gangster, by Art Bechstein,' he said. He smiled, big teeth.

For a moment my mind was perfectly blank; all mental activity ceased. Then I felt afraid, and in my bewilderment I opened the cash register, then closed it. I looked at the clock and was unable to interpret its message. And yet I was not at all surprised by the arrival of the Fell Biker. It was as though I'd finally been caught at a crime I had long been committing, and I thought: So.

I was being called to account for my father's sins; old scores were being settled. I decided to do whatever he said. I didn't see a gun, but I didn't have time to give the setup much careful consideration. I simply surrendered.

'Just kidnap me, okay?' I said. 'It'll work. I know how my father thinks.'

'Let's go,' he said. He seemed reasonable. He smiled again. His front tooth was chipped.

'What is this, Art?' said Valerie.

'It's Gangland,' said the biker.

'I might need a few days off,' I said.

He pulled me from the register stand and dragged me out to the sidewalk. I looked back into the store and saw Valerie going to the telephone. Ed and Joey lumbered out behind us and hesitated for a moment.

'It's okay,' I said. 'Don't make trouble. Punch my card for me.'

'Who is that guy?' said Joey. He looked more interested than ready to roll.

'I'm Death,' said the biker.

'Come on, man,' I said. 'Let's go. I can walk.'

'I can walk,' he said in a squeaky voice.

Climbing onto the gigantic black saddle, I began to tremble, and clutched the hot bar behind me. I imagined being taken to some Bloomfield garage and thrown up against the grimy wall and shot. They would have to drag the Monongahela to find my riddled corpse. My father would get on the phone and plead with his bosses for an eye for an eye. My cousin Debbie would play the guitar and sing 'Blackbird' or 'Moonshadow' at my funeral.

We pulled out onto Forbes Avenue, and when we finally hit a red light he reached his right hand around behind him and held it out for me to shake. I shook.

'Art Bechstein,' said my potential executioner, 'how the hell are you?' He laughed, the light turned green, we headed toward Highland Park, he didn't stop laughing: He actually went 'Hee hee.'

' Cleveland,' I shouted.

6. Obedience

Arthur had told me the story of Happy, the most beautiful dog in the world, and of her ruin by Mrs. Bellwether, who was insane.

One day several years ago, Happy had appeared at Jane's feet, collarless, playful; a large puppy, perhaps ten or eleven months old, almost completely white, housebroken, well-behaved, and breathtakingly lovely. The family made no effort to discover who had lovingly trained then lost her, and adopted her immediately into its tortured bosom, giving her her tragic and idiotic name. Wrapped in her extravagant fur, with her long, noble face and elegant walk, Happy was, in every way, the Anna Karenina of dogs, even expressing, Jane claimed, a distinct mixture of fear of and fascination with the trains they would have to stop for in the course of the marathon walks they took together. When Jane took Happy out, people slowed their cars to watch the dog's perfect gait, her leash superfluous, slack, vulgar.

Jane loved the dog and had cared for her well, letting her take the firm white remainders of strawberries from between Jane's own lips, unleashing her for three-hour chases across the Highland Park cemetery (since, she said, dogs love graveyards), and painting pink the collie's black toenails; unfortunately, however, Happy spent most of her days with Jane's mother, so, in time, the dog developed both colitis and a skittish fear of women, even of the sound of their footsteps, and her coat began to turn the tan that now, years later, had become a fragile, shifting brown.

Thus the dog became a genuine Bellwether, visiting Dr. Link, the veterinarian, as often as migrainous Mrs. Bellwether visited Dr. Arbutus, her internist; as eczematous Dr. (of Philosophy) Bellwether consulted Dr. Niyogi, his dermatologist; as imprisoned, fearful Jane went to weep before Dr. Feld, her psychotherapist. Though it may seem a silly conceit to view Happy's consignment to a doctor's care as an inevitable result of her adoption into the Bellwether family, it may seem less so when one learns that Jane one day descended into the basement to rummage among her father's abandoned five irons and woods, and found her mother administering blows to Happy's unbearably beautiful head with a ball-peen hammer, because the dog had managed to void her agonized bowels onto the basement floor.

Well, unhappy families may each be unhappy after their own fashion, but their houses are always alike, at least in my experience. The Bellwethers lived in the only ordinary-looking house in a wooded, wealthy section of Highland Park that was otherwise filled with period pieces, stylistic excess, and eccentric ornamentation. Peaked