Candy

Down went the rest of the shot. Slosh went another ounce of good Irish whiskey into the shot glass. Whoosh went the bill, clang went the cash register, clinkle went the two dimes that came back home to me.

Glub went the shot.

Just forget you ever met me.

Yeah, tell us another one. Did you ever see a picture that played 42nd Street under the magnificent title of The Giant Gila Monster? It was a picture-and-a-half, one of those horrible horror flicks with a gila monster a good four hundred feet long made out of rotten papier-mache. It kept sticking its little pink tongue out and making sick sounds from somewhere in its abominable abdominal region as it knocked over freight trains and devoured herds of cattle. You get it now, don’t you? Yeah, one of those pictures.

It’s hard to say just what was the high point of the picture. For one thing, it was also a rock-’n’-roll epic and one of the numbers was entitled The Gila Monster Crawl. But even better was a little sequence that went something like this between the county sheriff and the oily juvenile lead:

Oily: But how on earth could a … a gila monster grow so large?

Sheriff: Nature does strange things. Why, I was reading just the other day about a woman in the Ukraine who gave birth to a baby who weighed a hundred pounds by the time he was three months old and was taller than his mother before he was a year old.

Oily: Golly gee!

Sheriff: I suspect this is the case with our gila monster, son.

Oily: Leaping lizards!

Sheriff: You said it. But don’t worry, son. Put the gila monster out of your mind. Just go to the dance and have yourself a good time.

Now you’ve got to visualize this. Here’s this son of a bitch of a gila monster a mile long and two miles wide with a boundless appetite and a great passion for eating people. Oily and his girl friend are right in the middle of all this nonsense. And here’s this moron of a sheriff telling the kid to relax and have a good time at the dance. Just forget the gila monster, that was the general idea.

Now can you picture Oily forgetting the monster?

Or, by analogy, can you picture me forgetting my own private monster, my blonde monster with a mind like a steel trap?

Yeah.

Just forget you ever met me.

I couldn’t forget and I knew that I would never forget. I pictured her putting out for some fat millionaire and my stomach started to leap through the top of my head. I pictured anybody else, any nonentity with a blank face and a shapeless body, doing to her the wonderful things that I had done to her and my gorge rose in my throat.

I thought of me, Jeff Flanders, with anybody else, without Candy.

I had another shot.

“Sir—”

My eyes jumped open like startled sentries. I was still on my stool at Macmahon’s but I must have dozed off for a moment and the bartender was shaking my shoulder gently but persuasively. It’s the same the whole world over, I thought groggily. At a posh place like Macmahon’s they call you Sir instead of Mac or Ya bum ya, but the pervading philosophy remains an eternal constant.

Drink all you want.

But don’t get drunk.

I kept my dignity. I wasn’t drunk, just a little light in the head, but I knew that it was time to bundle myself up and go elsewhere. I smiled agreeably at the bartender who smiled back, scooped up my bills and left him my change, and headed for the door. I did not stagger. I walked very well, all things considered, and when I was out the door and walking downtown on Third Avenue, my arms swinging militantly at my sides and a half-formed whistle on my lips, I possessed the utter serenity of the well-oiled.

Candy Cain.

That’s what I wanted for Christmas.

Or for Thanksgiving.

Or to help me shoot off firecrackers on the Fourth of July.

Or at any other special occasion.

Or at any ordinary occasion.

Candy Cain.

That utter serenity was fading. By the time I hit 34th Street it was gone. By the time my feet, which were growing steadier by the minute, had carried me west as far as Fifth Avenue, any trace of serenity had long since vanished.

It was late—I had drunk my dinner at Macmahon’s and it was probably nine or a little after by now. I flagged down a cab at the corner of 34th and Fifth and gave the hackie my home address. Then, after we had gone a few blocks, a thought found its way into my empty head and I changed my mind.

“Times Square,” I told him.

He nodded without saying anything and I leaned back in my seat and relaxed. I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing Candy, seeing her dressed or naked, seeing all that beautiful flesh, seeing the two of us in bed, seeing us in the elevator, seeing anything and everything. With my eyes open I didn’t see her. Instead I saw the wart on the back of the cabdriver’s neck. This got to be a bore by the time we hit 38th Street so I turned my attention to the placard next to the meter which told me that the driver’s name was Ignatz Bludge. There was Ignatz’s picture on the placard over his name but I couldn’t tell if it was him. It was a mug shot and I couldn’t see whether or not the guy in the picture had a wart on the back of his neck.

I got off at 42nd Street and 7th, tipped Ignatz a buck to preserve the pecuniary emulation, and drifted around until I found a grubby hotel. I settled on one located at 45th Street and Eighth Avenue, a palatial mansion where the roaches scurried across the register while I was struggling to sign my name. The room had more roaches than the lobby and less space, but it had a bed and a washbowl and that was enough.

I sat down on the bed, set fire to a cigarette and asphyxiated three roaches with a single puff of smoke. Roaches weren’t what they used to be. These little bugs took a deep whiff of the smoke, clawed the air vacantly, and fell from the wall to the floor, where they lay on their backs and wiggled all eighteen legs. I got to feeling sorry for them and stepped on them. Then I remembered that I had taken off my shoes and socks and I got hold of a towel and wiped scrambled roach from my bare feet.

I finished the cigarette and lit another one from the butt of the first. The walk and the ride and the walk had taken the edge off that the Bushmill’s had given me and I just felt tired. I was glad I had decided on a hotel instead of going home. I didn’t feel like facing Lucy. Not that night. Not with Candy clogging my brain and Bushmill’s still swimming around in my bloodstream. Better I should sack out on a lumpy bed in a lumpy hotel and fight the roaches for breathing space.

At least it gave me a chance to think.

I did a lot of thinking. The drinks had loosened me up and now that I was practically sober again I was able to relax, to look at things almost dispassionately. It gave me a fresh outlook on the blonde sexpot who went by the name of Candace Cain.

Candace Cain.

Not a woman. A disease. Something that could kill you as quickly as triple pneumonia. Something that left you dead with a smirk on your fat face.

I had had her, possessed her, had her again and again and still been unable to get enough of her. I had Candy with a Bushmill’s chaser, and this reminded me of Ogden Nash’s little poem that goes—

“Candy is dandy

but liquor is quicker”

Candace Cain.

I had had her; now I couldn’t have her any more. I wanted her so badly that I even offered to divorce Lucy to