Lars Manhattan and the Toast of the Town

1

When Lars Manhattan walked into the place, the joint stopped jumping.

The band went flat, and the buzz of conversation toddled over to the edge and dropped off a cliff.

All the slick, swarthy guys in their dark, three-piece suits sitting on the stools at the bar and at the nearby tables turned to look at the recent arrival who, with his arrival, had messed up what they all thought was a good time. They were the toast of the town. The crisp, snappy, well-tanned toast that kept everything running smoothly.

The few poptarts standing at the bar between the stools or standing next to the tables weren’t quite as slick or quite as swarthy, though they were doing their best to look the part.

They weren’t crisp or snappy either. They sagged a little, like anything filled with soft jelly will do. And they were anything but well-tanned, or tanned at all. They were a pasty bunch, mostly mewling with inadequacy and doubt.

The poptarts were what you might call aspirants. Someday, they hoped, they would be toast too. Someday one of the older slices of toast, with a flick of a manicured fingernail or an all-but-imperceptible nod, would indicate a tiny bit of respect. Then the transformed poptart would be invited to sit. Maybe.

With ice-blue eyes beneath huge, bushy eyebrows and the polished black brim of a Thin-Blue-Line cap like bus drivers wear, Lars slowly swept his gaze from left to right. He didn’t spend any length of time on any individual table or on the bandstand. But by the time he’d shifted his attention to the far end of the bar, everyone in the room had been personally forewarned. Screw with me, and it’s all on you. Got it?

With the rest of the room effectively neutered, when the gaze reached the far end of the bar, it took the briefest pause. Then it moved more slowly, more intensely, but still left to right.

There he was. The skinny Lanky Louie, his eyes twitchy and his fingers and hands nervous, as if they operated on a current nobody else knew. Some poptart was standing next to him. The gaze didn’t linger on the poptart.

Then Raúl and Ramon, the Cisneros boys, AKA Rusty and Raunchy, who had somehow found their way to sitting on barstools despite their lack of a Sicilian heritage.

Then Dago Dogg, maybe the only Black Sicilian known to mankind. Nobody knew who had punched his ticket to sit at the grownups’ table, and the rest of the toast didn’t care to ask. The poptarts didn’t dare. And care or dare, it was all the same, one letter off.

Next to Dago Dogg was Hefty Louie. He differed from Lanky Louie by about 80 pounds, but also with his demeanor. Except for when he didn’t, Hefty Louie almost always displayed a calm demeanor.

Then two more poptarts. They were snuggled up, standing as close as they could get to Hefty Louie, like they were using him for shade. Except the bar was dark. Probably they were comfortable with Hefty Louie because so much slid off his back, and if it happened to be butter, hey, they wanted to be there. Or maybe they stayed within reach because they’d never seen him go through The Change. When he went through the change, he was more like Lanky Louie except in size, and it was a lot worse because Hefty Louie looked a lot like an apartment building on legs.

Next were the Franco boys, Manny, Moe and Hector. Nobody knew quite how Hector had become part of the family with his brownish, reddish, blondish hair. But all the whispered rumors held that the family’s milkman was found face-down, naked and staked out over an ant hill three weeks after Hector was born. And some patriotic soul had planted a flag.

Manny and Moe said, “Hey” a lot.

Hector usually settled for “heh-heh.”

The lone female at the bar, Maria de Suza de Ordinarie Especial, occupied the stool next to Hector. She kept whispering, “Now stop it, Heck-Tore!” in his general direction. But she never moved away.

Each time she hissed, her split tongue flicked and her gaze shifted past Hector’s shoulder to Moe, as if she secretly hoped Moe would intervene. But even tainted blood is thicker than water, and everyone knows women are all water. So for his role in the concocted drama, each time Maria hissed and flicked her tongue, Moe rolled his eyes, shrugged, and spread his hands a little. When he did that, his palms even faced heavenward just as if he knew where that was.

Lars paid no attention to the woman with the split tongue after he witnessed her signature move, the flick and hiss. Instead, the gaze stopped just after Hector, moved up, across, and down just short of Round Roberto, AKA Rotundo the Magnificent. Rotundo resembled a thin garden hose with a drowned warthog stuck in it. But some of the toasts whispered that maybe he’d drowned that warthog himself after he’d stolen the warthog’s face and slapped it over his own. And then he hid the warthog in the hose because nobody wants to get busted for drowning a warthog. The boys up at the big Place with the Striped Sunshine would laugh you out of the joint, and then you’d be shot for escaping.

Anyway, the new face improved Rotundo’s looks, so nobody said anything. Also, some of the toasts called Rotundo the Magnificent “Mag” or even “Magnum,” which refers to a kind of revolver, though Rotundo was never known to fire one. And the nickname, especially that second one, made some of the dimmer bulbs in the group of toasts think maybe Rotundo was related to that cop guy, that Magnum PI guy, only the first group of toasts tried to explain a PI is a private investigator, not a cop. They even threatened to get Magnum PI—the real one, though, not Rotundo—to come address the loaf.

But no matter how hard they searched that stupid island somewhere out there off the other coast they could never find Magnum PI so they could never ask him to come explain what was going on. Which gave birth to another conspiracy theory. Secretly, they figured he probably didn’t want to have to also explain his personal relationship with the guy who looks like my wife’s ex-husband only with a wimpier moustache.

Anyway, then after Rotundo there were Tutti and Frutti with the extra sugar coating, twin pastries who didn’t mind standing at all because it was easier to attract something called The Look. One of them was round like Rotundo and one was basically a stick drawing. But both of them had curly, tall but close-cropped on the sides, springy, gleaming white hair on which they’d perched solid black fedoras to match their suits, one of which was tan and one of which was light grey. And because the fedoras were perched so high, Tutti and Frutti were also the only guys in town whose fedoras had stampede strings. Neither of them knew what a stampede was, but they both had their own ideas and they both hoped to someday get trampled.

Of Tutti and Frutti, half the members of the toast took turns saying, “Y’know, somebody really ought’a tell’em,” to which the other half of the members replied, “Yeah, only Somebody ain’t here right now” or “Why?” The toast membership swapped roles back and forth each day like that. You know, unless they forgot.

And then there was the rest of the loaf, the truly big-deal toasts. Those consisted of the two heels, one special heel, and a couple of aspiring, second-wheel heels, but in no particular order until I get to the next paragraph:

There was Joey the Axe, a second-wheel heel, not named after a tool or an implement, but a word indicating his seemingly constant need to question orders; then

Paolo “Big Pauley” Picaneiri, a regular heel, mostly because he was one and also because he had a really cool nickname like that guy on that show on the television about those guys, you know; then

Salvatore “Sally Shorthairs” Bombaste, also a regular heel, who was also called “Sally Bomblast” by the toast who thought they were witty but weren’t smart enough to figure out why he was called “Shorthairs” by the others, and never mind him spitting hard every twenty seconds or so and always dragging his fingernails over his tongue; then

Rico “The Racoon” Rigoletto , a second-wheel heel, mostly because of the cool dark arcs under his eyes and his constant chattering admonition that, “Hey, them ain’t circles, they’re freakin’ arcs, a’right?” as he thudded the offender on the chest with his right index finger, which he did once to Pietro “Big Poppy” Piglieri and that’s why Racoon’s right index finger is now missing, but hey, Big Poppy said it was really good only he wished he’d had some ketchup; and

Pietro “Big Poppy” Piglieri himself, a very special heel, partly because of what he did to The Racoon without even a bottle of ketchup. Well, and then partly because of that time when the ex-police commissioner, Sergio “Snarky” Sigliotti of the Florence Sigliotti’s, while he was accepting a bribe, slipped and mispronounced Piglieri’s nickname as “Pig Poppy.” Because when that happened, Big Poppy uttered, “No, you ah” and then popped the commissioner between the eyes with a stun gun usually reserved for use in slaughterhouses. That was the first time any of the toasts realized Big Poppy was actually from Rhode Island instead of, you know, where the rest of the toasts are from. Well, except for Raúl and Ramon Cisneros and the Dago Dogg. Oh, and also because Big Poppy would sell smack to a four year old in exchange for his pacifier and all without even a little bit of remorse.

So anyway, Lars peered from beneath the shiny black brim of his Thin-Blue-Line cap like bus drivers wear and pointed one thick, meaty finger at Joey the Axe. “You. You’re done. Get back in the book.”

Whereupon Joey the Axe glanced at Paolo “Big Pauley” Picaneiri and said, “I gotta go somewheres now? I didn’ do nothin’.”

Whereupon Big Pauley figured he wasn’t really all that big, that was only his name, so he looked at Joey the Axe, wagged a hand in the general direction of Lars Manhattan, who is roughly the size of the Empire Freakin’ State Building, and shrugged. “Hey, you know. Whatever.”

Whereupon, still focused on Big Pauley, Joey the Axe frowned, leaned forward a little and spread his palms. “But why I gotta go somewhere, Pauley? I’m axin’, y’know? I like it here.”

Whereupon Big Pauley ignored Joey the Axe and held his empty glass up so Philip “Flippin’ Philipino” Fererra could see it.

And Lars pointed again, harder this time, and when he did he flexed his shoulders and his chest so two colorful medals sprang right off the precisely pressed Thin-Blue-Line shirt of his service uniform and popped Philip “Flippin’ Philipino” Fererra in the forehead so that he dropped Big Pauley’s glass, which shattered on the bar. Then Lars bellowed, “That is it! All of you, back in the damn book now!”

And just like that, they all left.

Well, except for the split-tongued hissing hussy, Maria de Suza de Ordinarie Especial. She tried to blend in, but Lars pulled his service revolver and shot her through the right temple, whereupon she vaporized because in actuality she had never existed anyway, even in the book, so now she was really nowhere fast.

The end.

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About the Author

Harvey Stanbrough was born in New Mexico, seasoned in Texas and baked in Arizona. For a time, he wrote under five personas and several pseudonyms, but he takes a pill for that now and writes only under his own name. Mostly.

Harvey is an award-winning writer who follows Heinlein’s Rules avidly. He has written and published over 100 novels, 9 novellas, and over 270 short stories. He has also written 18 nonfiction books on writing, 8 of which are free to other writers. And he’s compiled and published 27 collections of short fiction and 5 critically acclaimed poetry collections.

These days, the vendors through which Harvey licenses his works do not allow URLs in the back matter. To see his other works, please key “StoneThread Publishing” or “Harvey Stanbrough” into your favorite search engine.

Finally, for his best advice on writing, look for “Harvey Stanbrough’s (Almost) Daily Journal.”