Doubling Down: Two Novellas, Two Stories

By Frank Wolak

This superb collection exhibits Mr. Wolak’s strange, unforgettable characters superbly in stories both long and short.  “Glass Eye” is the story of love that comes too late.  Will aging Simon Morgan finally find a lover to replace his beloved Marlene in his mysterious neighbor in a low-income housing project for senior citizens?  Or is it a delusion?  In “The Shortcut,” Sam Ames tries desperately to reach his lover Grace who is dying of lung cancer.  Does he survive nearly drowning, or is he destined to become a “Lamp Lighter,” those who lead others into the Great Beyond?  “The Author” pits spiteful Morris Graggle, soon to be a famous author, against film location scout, Jennifer Marvel, soon to launch a career as a Hollywood film director who needs Graggle’s consent optioning one his books to make her directorial debut.  And “Black Marvel,” the second novella, tells the story of a war between a psychotic heroin kingpin and his lubricious Asian partner with the oddball set of characters, including a once famous sculptor, a car restorer, and his enigmatic, loyal friend who are patients of pain management doctor prescribing opioid medications.  These are all ironic masterpieces of their genres.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rose Thorn Publishers
• Release date: Jul 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9780991235834

Frank Wolak

Mr. Wolak is a reclusive, very strange individual who loves writing and cats.  He is a graduate of Monmouth University where he studied British and American literature.  He is the author of the brilliant first novel, A Magnet for Misfortune, also available on Kindle Select and Nook Books.  This is his first collection of novellas and short stories, and he is rumored to be writing his second novel. 

Book preview

DOUBLING DOWN: TWO NOVELLAS, TWO STORIES

BY

FRANK WOLAK

CONTENTS

GLASS EYE

THE SHORTCUT

THE AUTHOR

BLACK MARBLE

Doubling Down: Two Novellas, Two Stories

Copyright © 2015 by Frank Wolak

Published by Rose Thorn Publishers

Editorial and Production Management: Janet Spencer King, www.bookdevelopmentgroup.com

Cover: Lisa Hainline

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for brief quotations in articles and reviews.

To contact the author, e-mail [e-mail].

Printed in the United States of American for Worldwide Distribution

ISBN: Mobi -- 978-0-9912358-2-7; E-Pub -- 978-0-9912358-3-4

GLASS EYE

Chapter One

I’ve lived in many places in my long life, but these days I live in what my good friend Francis Duffy calls the concrete mausoleum. The town council’s name for it is the senior citizen projects. Each town in this state is required to set aside a certain number of low income housing units for their elderly residents of limited financial means, better described as low-rent boxes for poor old farts.

One morning, feeling tired after passing through the lobby on my way home from the library, I took our unreliable elevator rather than climb the stairs to the second floor. I hoped I’d run into my neighbor, Mrs. Kim, but no; instead I was joined by a young Catholic priest with an altar boy. That meant one of our residents was in need of the Last Rites. The kid, cheeks rosy from the outdoor cold, wiped his nose on the back of his coat sleeve. The priest, noticing this, lent him his own handkerchief, reminding him to conduct himself with decorum appropriate to the situation.

Yes, Father, he said dutifully.

At that point, our elevator car shuddered and stopped between floors. The priest began pushing buttons in the vain hope of restarting the recalcitrant machine.

Please don’t bother, Father, I said, this machine is possessed by demonic forces, and stops and starts at random.

He looked over at me smiling a pragmatic practiced smile. I don’t believe I have had the opportunity of the pleasure of your acquaintance before, Mister--

My name is Simon Morgan, Father--

Robert Trout, Mr. Morgan, he said holding out his hand. We shook hands, his grip strong and self-assured.

May I ask to which order you belong, Father Trout?

Of course, sir. I am a member of the Society of Jesus.

Ah, the Jesuits, a regimented order, Father. Rather like joining an army of God’s soldier ants.

He smiled again. Are you a Catholic, sir?

To quote one of my favorite authors, Father, ‘You behold in me a horrible example of free thought.’

Hummm, Father Trout said, with mild perturbation, "Ulysses is it not, by James Joyce?"

Yes, sir. I said. Mr. Joyce was educated by members of your order, Father.

I don’t recall ever seeing you at any Sunday Services, Mr. Morgan. If you were brought up in God’s one true Church, have you lost faith?

I’m afraid I don’t approve of the celebration of the mass in English, Father Trout. I miss the mystery and reverence of the original Latin.

Having lost faith in the service of the elevator, the young priest pushed the Emergency Alarm button, to no avail.

That doesn’t work either, Father. I fear we are at the mercy of chance. But don’t despair. That’s a sin against the Holy Spirit. In time, the elevator restarts by itself.

If I’m not mistaken, I sense a bit of mockery in your words, Mr. Morgan, he said smiling, Perhaps you are having fun at my expense.

Not at all, Father. My mother taught me to respect all religious beliefs, no matter how outlandish. In fact, I often visit your church, pay a fee, and light a candle in memory of lost loved ones. The last time I attended a Sunday service, a man in a jacket and tie kept interrupting my attempts to pray by shoving a round basket on a very long handle under my nose. I noticed others placed personalized envelopes, or cash or coins into the basket. I guessed he expected me to pay a cover charge for the morning’s magic show. Unfortunately, I happened to be cash poor at the time, and when I returned to ask for and pay the normal fee, the sexton had locked all of the church doors. I wasn’t even permitted to light a candle for one of the souls of my dearly departed, all doing hard time, no doubt, in Purgatory.

Are you an atheist, Mr. Morgan?

You ask me to accept a label, Father, and make it easier for you to cancel me. But I can’t accept that label. I’d say I was agnostic. I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to be absolutely certain God exists; yet I hope your side is right and I’m wrong.

The boy, with a look of sublime cherubic innocence on his face, was busily picking his nose. I snickered, but the priest, glancing down, wasn’t amused.

Charlie! He said, too loudly for the confined space, Stop that disgusting habit at once! If you must clear your nostrils, use the handkerchief I gave you.

With a lurch, the elevator started going up again. I smiled and took out a twenty-dollar bill from my pocket. I apologize for my impertinence, Father. I sound too much like my friend Francis Duffy. The elevator bobbed to a stop. This is my floor. Here, Father, I said handing him the bill. For your poor box. Goodbye, Charlie.

The kid stuck out his tongue at me.

~~*~~

Once inside my euphemistically called studio apartment, I had a passing thought about warming my chilled core with a healthy dose of whiskey. But now in my eighth decade between bookend unknowns, I take pain medication, and I’m forbidden strong waters. Instead, my medication is a constant, how I begin each morning, be it winter, spring, summer, or fall.

Since sleep is a function I find difficult to sustain throughout one entire night, I am always awake between 4:00 and 5:00 AM, when I take my morning pills. I eat twelve pills from the pillbox I leave on the night table, swallowing them in groups of three with water from the bottle I keep on the floor by the night table’s leg. There are times when I must pause until a wave of nausea passes. It’s paramount not to puke the first of five painkillers, and the first of four anti-anxiety pills. Both are irreplaceable.

When I feel the medicines kick in, first soothing the edge of my anxiety, then gradually masking the relentless chronic pain in my lower back, while I am still sitting in bed, I dress. My clothes lie where I shed them the night before, beside the bed on the folded threadbare blanket I use in place of an area rug. Before pulling on my toasty warm socks, which I stuffed into the heater vents the night before, I pick up the long-sleeved gray tee-shirt inside my black cashmere sweater that fits neatly under my gray Irish wool sweater, so as I sit up in bed I can pull all three on at once. The tee-shirt is often so cold from the night chill that it feels almost wet against the tender naked skin of my torso. I then swing my long legs out from under the bed blankets, and slowly pull on my warm socks, jeans, and shoes.

I often watch myself fumble through this routine from a point over my head, as if in an out-of-body experience. This is either a side effect from the combination of medicines I take or the glitches in my brain. I feel what I call glitches as very eerie empty spaces that I often mistake for the onset of a stroke, almost as soon as I’m on my feet. Along with soft sounds, zith-zith, inside my head, my brain hiccups, as it were, and I feel lightheaded, almost ready to faint. Imagine almost losing contact with your body by the simple act of standing. Suddenly, I hover far above my feet, as if my head might actually graze the ceiling. A philosopher might suggest they are mirror-like spaces in the brain that allow the mind to reflect, to think about thinking. A geriatric specialist might identify them as symptoms of incipient Alzheimer’s syndrome. Whatever they may be, I consider them an intriguing puzzle.

I live alone in the town’s housing project for the elderly, last stop but one. But happily, I am not another lonely old fart wallowing in nostalgia, or living to complain about health problems, and how lonely his winter years are. I can still walk, after a fashion, and get myself around to do my errands, making understandable noises to the younger set behind sales counters and cash registers.

Last week I was off to the pharmacy, where I ran into Francis Duffy. He looked gaunt and taller standing in a line in front of the counter, scratching his ass, and hung-over. I was about to greet him when without turning around he said, as if he had eyes hidden in the shaggy white hair on the back of his head, Morgan, you abstentious old buzzard, hasn’t sobriety killed you yet? His unkempt gray hair, bushy eyebrows, and beard stubble add five years to his wizened face.

Drinking less wouldn’t do you any harm, Francis. How are you?

I’ll tell you after these pharmacists finish skinning me alive. In front of us at the counter, stood a superbly built young woman wearing spike heeled black suede boots, a denim miniskirt, and a fur jacket. Apparently not noticing – or caring – about the lengthening line behind her, she insisted on grilling the pharmacist with one insipid question after another.

Rummaging in her voluminous black leather shoulder satchel for nearly a minute, she glanced up at the young Asian woman behind the counter who politely asked her twice for her last name and date of birth. The birth date fixed her, as all of us in the line discovered, at age thirty-one.

Damn! I can’t find my reading glasses, she said, removing her fur-lined leather gloves revealing, on her right ring finger a plain gold wedding band as well as a huge sparkling diamond in an ornate setting on a platinum ring, I must have left them at home.

We have two prescriptions for you today, Mrs. Comstock, the girl said, having entered the woman’s name and birthday into the cash register’s computer. She went to fetch them in the alphabetized racks. The stylish woman drummed her long fingernails on the counter, showing off a diamond as big as the Ritz.

Blood diamond, Francis muttered to me, "Very pampered white hands, never touched hot dishwater. Look at those fingernails, Simon." Each fingernail bore an intricate elaborate design, a single artistic motif as in abstract art. She reached back into her satchel, brought out a collection of brass keys and dumped them onto the counter before searching through the contents of her satchel again, futilely.

Porsche logo on her keychain, Francis said, And can you smell that intoxicating provocative perfume she’s wearing, Simon? Fifty dollars an ounce or more, I’ll wager.

How could I not? All around her, in an invisible nimbus that seemed a part of her beauty’s magic, a bewitching fragrance as suggestive and as diaphanous as a negligee.

The pharmacist’s girl brought over the two packets containing her pill bottles. Stapled to each was the information folder including her name, the medicine, the prescribing doctor, quantity, instructions on how often and when to take it, a complete list of side effects, etc. The woman picked up both, holding each at arms’ length in vain attempts to read them with her farsighted eyes, she finally had to ask what each one was. Francis and I, along with the growing line of other customers behind us grew restive.

I left my reading glasses home, she said, Tell me what these are.

The counter girl read her the two names.

And what do they do?

The girl began a halting tentative explanation. The head pharmacist finished filling the script he steadily worked on, and hurried to take over at the counter.

Oh goody, the woman said, Good morning, Mr. Matel.

"Patel. Good morning, Mrs. Comstock. May I assist you? Go see to the people waiting at Drop-Off, Katy." The girl obediently sidled over to process the short line of customers grimly waiting with their state prescription forms in hand.

"Yeah, Mr. Patel, the woman said, Can you explain to me what each of these two---medicinaries does?"

Patel, a short dark Indian with a phone device attached to his ear, basked in Mrs. Comstock’s statuesque beauty. He was obviously infatuated.

This one is Norvasc, your basic blood pressure regulator. Your doctor found your blood pressure is higher than normal,

What’s the other one? She asked.

Luminex, it’s a sleeping pill.

"Oh, yeah. That shit--oops, excuse my French--really works. I love my Luminex. But the co-pays are high. Isn’t there a genetic available for Luminex?"

"Generic. No, and Luminex will remain protected under United States drug patent laws, which means no cheaper generics will be available for years to come, Mrs. Comstock. Unless you leave the country. Go to Canada, for instance, where their laws allow the Canadian government to negotiate a lower price if the American manufacturer of Luminex wishes to sell it to millions of sleep-deprived Canadians."

But that’s not fair to us, Mr. Patel.

I quite agree, Mrs. Comstock.

"Well, I only take one at bedtime. It’s my husband’s money anyway, and he can make it in his sleep. Now let me see, how do I want to pay for these? I have my choice of cash, credit cards, or a check. No, wait, there’s also my debit card, except my husband always says that’s the dumbest way to pay for anything, or cash, credit, or check. Decisions, decisions. I’ll use my Amex card. It’s my husband’s favorite."

The townspeople grew as restless as a mob. Would they fall upon the beautiful but heedless Queen, drag her from the apothecary’s shop, cart her off shackled in a trundling tumbril, to jeer at through the filthy streets to Execution Square? The nasty mood was growing and Francis had certainly had enough.

It is my great misfortune, Simon, he said loudly, whenever I join a queue, to find myself behind one of the planet’s many cretins, oblivious that I and others languish behind them, and insist on asking endless inane questions, including what ‘take orally’ means. But at least this specimen has a nice ass and a fine pair of legs.

Several people behind us laughed. The woman turned around, looked up at Fran angrily, ready to fire back. I watched her knit her brow, with her face flushed in the first heat of her anger, yet despite the desire to give back better than she got, she couldn’t find words worthy of eclipsing his. Instead, she murmured, Shut up, fucking nasty old prick.

Too bad, Francis actually did shut up thus depriving onlookers of one of the sharpest tongues and quickest minds this side of the grave.

Case in point: I happened to be in Fran’s delightful small house one bitterly cold night when his doorbell chimes pealed interrupting our conversation. Though Fran discouraged visitors, he dutifully answered the door. His unwanted visitor identified himself as a reporter from the local newspaper. Ever a hospitable host in the Irish tradition, Fran invited the reporter inside. Fran’s cozy little living room, cluttered with his two grand passions, exotic flowering plants and books, barely left room for two large comfortable reclining armchairs. I automatically fetched his guest a kitchen chair, while Fran offered the man a drink.

Thanks, Mr. Duffy. I’ll take a Scotch on the rocks.

I knew it, Fran muttered. He hated the flavor of Scotch, and distrusted anyone with a taste for it. The reporter draped his overcoat over the back of the chair. He took his seat just as Fran brought him his drink. Before he could take out his notebook, Fran asked to see his Press ID. Looking it over, Fran passed it to me with a hint of a mischievous smile playing about his lips. It was a photo ID. The man’s name was Salvatore Grasso. I gave it back to its owner.

Fran asked, What’s this about?

I’m doing a series on the famous men and women who made this county what it is today, and I think one of them is the patriarch of your family, Mr. Duffy. Your Grandfather, Sean O’Connor Duff--

Stop right there, Mr. Grasshole. I’ll answer no questions about my family. My decision is final.

Mr. Duffy, I plan to write about your family with or without your participation. I believe it would be in your own best interests to cooperate, sir, especially if there happens to be some embarrassing evidence regarding your Grandfather’s illegal activities…

"As my Uncle Aloysius was fond of saying, ‘Reporters are like mushrooms. They do best when kept in the dark feeding on old dead shit.’ All I will say on the subject is if there’s even a whiff of the stench of libel in anything you publish, Mr. Grasshole, I’ll have you in a courtroom facing the likes of Seamus Muldoon, Esquire, the famous attorney, also known as ‘The Great Extractor’ for his ability to win large judgments against defendants. Now kindly remove your ass from my premises."

Need I add no such series ever appeared?

Back in the pharmacy, the woman gave Francis a dirty look.

I suspected as much, Simon, all superficial beauty and no depth, no brains, he said clearly enough that the irate woman could hear him.

Let it go, Francis, I said laughing, before she throws a fit straining to think of a comeback.

Once outside, we stood close to the building for protection from the frigid cold. The gray frozen earth, the bare tree limbs flailing in the wind, the overcast, gray sky, and the fierce cold formed the somber monochrome motif of winter. Francis sniffed the air. I don’t mind the cold, Simon; it’s the fucking wind that makes winter intolerable. We’ll have snow before this week is out.

The weather prophets predict record low temperatures, cloudy skies with blustery winds, but no snow, Fran, I said mildly perplexed. They claim there isn’t a trace of a storm across the entire continent.