Saint Oswald by Jay Bonansinga (motivational novels .txt) 📕

and Joseph.” The old man shakes his head disdainfully. “Do your homework.”

Gerbil Goldstein plops down on the shopworn futon with a pained exhalation of air, a lit Camel in her spindly fingers, her black nail polish starting to chip. “That’s just about the stupidest question I ever heard.” She speaks in a sleepy, exhausted voice as she lies back against the headboard.

It’s late afternoon, and the sun is starting to sink behind the west windows of Gerbil’s apartment, the rays shimmering in the dust motes.

“C’mon, it’s a simple question.” Oswald paces back and forth across the living room. Despite the low, hot ache in his ribs, and the constant slow burn behind his left ear, he has done nothing all afternoon but pace Gerbil’s apartment in his girdle and boxer shorts, compulsively popping aspirin and polishing off an entire package of potato chips and half a baggie of skunky weed. Shirtless, his huge belly straining the frayed elastic bands of the orthopedic girdle like a great kettledrum, he scratches his testicles thoughtfully as he grapples with the cosmic. “I mean, if you think about it, what do doctors do?”

“Are you serious?” Gerbil rubs her eyes, slowly shaking her head. “Blow the gunk outta your brain, Chief. Doctors are car dealers, they’re scam artists.” Gerbil chuckles groggily. She has the thick, sleepy slur of a druggie sliding over the peak and down the other side. “Doctors saving lives? That’s a good one.”

“Whattya mean?”

“The grief is making you stupid, Ozzy. You have to see somebody about this. I’m not saying you can’t grieve. Grief is natural, healthy. But you have to be smart about it. You can’t let it make you stupid.

“Okay, sorry, bad example.” Oswald paces some more. “Paramedics, firemen. It doesn’t matter. Just answer the question. It’s a rhetorical question. A hypothetical.”

Gerbil yawns like a cat, stretching her wiry, tattooed arms. “I don’t know—in a month? I don’t know. It’s not like popping people.”

“How’s that?”

She shrugs, rubbing her eyes. “You want to whack somebody, all you gotta do is find ’em, get ’em in your front sight, and bango—problem solved.”

“So...?”

“Think about it for a second. You can’t just, like, save somebody’s life on demand.”

Oswald stops pacing, stares at her. “Why not?”

Another yawn: “Gee, lemme see... well, first of all, it might help if they’re, like, in mortal danger and shit.”

“I already thought of that,” Oswald says. “This day and age, you find shit-loads of people in mortal danger. All over the place. I mean, Jesus Christ, you can’t go to the mall without getting your ass shot off in a terrorist attack. You can’t eat a fucking burrito without getting the trots.”

Gerbil’s eyelids are drooping. “Don’t you think you oughtta sit down or something?”

“I’m fine.”

“Didn’t they tell you to like stay off your feet for a while?”

Oswald paces some more. “Nope. I got no restrictions, got a clean bill of health.”

She closes her eyes, her head lolling back. “Yeah, right, aside from that bullet lodged in your brain.” She yawns again. “And another thing: Could you please take that girdle off? You’re creeping me out with that thing, you look like my third grade teacher.”

Oswald reaches behind the girdle with a sigh, and works the eyehooks open. The thing suddenly pops off like a catapult, flinging across the room, bouncing off the wall and knocking over one of Gerbil’s lava lamps. Oswald hitches up his boxers and keeps pacing. “Anyway... I’m thinking you could maybe save about—what—a dozen? Maybe a dozen in a month, depending on the breaks?”

Gerbil curls into a fetal position on the futon, yawns for the third time. “You gonna tag the Candy Man for setting you up?”

Oswald pauses again, looks at the floor, the dull ache in his ribcage a constant reminder of the pimp’s double-cross. “I’m thinking I might take him to small claims court, breach of contract, I’m thinking.”

Gerbil mumbles into her armpit, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Absolutely, I’m hanging in there, I’m working through the pain and grief and stuff.”

Her mumbling voice is barely audible: “What the fuck happened to you, Ozzy? This seems like a lot more than just the normal grieving process. Did something else happen?”

Oswald takes a deep, girding breath. Should he tell her? Should he spill the whole thing? She already thinks he’s crazy, so what difference does it make? He needs to tell somebody. He needs a friend, and Gerbil is it. Gerbil’s all he’s got. “Interesting story,” he says finally, resuming his nervous, compulsive pacing.

Then he tells her. He tells her everything. He tells her all about Matilda’s strange, rambling last wish, and he doesn’t leave anything out. “She said it was the only way I would ever be able to see her again,” he says finally, after running through the whole crazy assignment. His eyes begin to burn and well up with the thought of never seeing Matilda again. He thinks some more, stares some more, his voice softening. “I don’t apologize for what I’ve done.” Pause, reaching for the right words. “Guy like me.” One last pause. “I guess this is my only shot to get into hit man heaven.”

The faint sound of snoring comes from the deepening shadows behind him.

He turns and sees that his only friend in the world has nodded off.

That night, Oswald dreams that he’s wandering around the periphery of a house, circumnavigating its scabrous yard in his galoshes and rain slicker, alone, soaked to the bone by a needling sleet coming down from the gunmetal sky. In the dream he’s desperate to get inside the place, get out of the incessant cold drizzle, but all the windows are shut tight, locked, the doors bolted, the small, wood-framed, canary-yellow two-story sealed up like a vault. Time is of the essence, for some reason, and the urgency hangs over Oswald like a sword of Damocles.

Part of his dreaming self recognizes the quaint little Cape Cod with its twin dormers and bay window as the first rental that he and Matilda had stretched