COO-COO-CACHEW
The bio you requested: Jack Phillips Lowe is a native Chicagoan. His latest chapbook is Cold Case Cowboys (Middle Island Press, 2013). And yes, we think Lowe watches too much TV, too.
It’s
Saturday morning and Buchman’s working
the
Returns and Exchanges counter
at
the Pricemaster Department store.
By
11AM, Buchman tires of the bullshit storm
and
stops fully listening to customers’ complaints.
Instead,
he just stares at each patron,
inventing
a backstory for him or her
based
on their looks and demeanor.
“To
hell with your two-week return policy!”
shouts
an old man holding a vaporizer.
“Two
weeks was up just yesterday!
I’ve
been shopping here since 1982. . .”
Buchman
studies the senior closely.
He’s
a little bastard, no more than 5’5”.
His
white, neatly-combed hair is thinning.
He’s
got a large pointed nose and wide brown eyes.
Buchman
decides the old man resembles Dustin Hoffman.
“This
is an outrageous violation of my customer’s rights!”
snarls
the old man. “My cousin is a lawyer. . .”
Buchman
decides the old man isn’t Dustin Hoffman.
He’s
actually Benjamin Braddock, the character
Hoffman
played in that movie, The Graduate.
The
idea puts a slight smile on Buchman’s face.
“You
think this is funny? You snotty brat!” the old man barks, pointing.
“You
won’t be laughing when I sue this dump for six figures!”
Buchman
chalks Ben’s anger up to frustration.
The
plastics company Ben spent the last 47 years
slaving
for put him on permanent layoff
just
as he was ready to retire---
totally
screwing Ben out of his pension.
The
old man pulls out a pocket notebook and a pen.
“I
want your name, smartass!” he growls.
“Your
company president’s going to hear of this!”
Buchman
figures Ben is still smarting over Elaine’s
coming
out as a lesbian and divorcing him 20 years ago.
Or
maybe it’s because Mrs. Robinson, still spry
at
age 85, refuses to ‘friend’ Ben on Facebook.
“Smartass!”
bellows the old man. “I want your name!”
“No,”
replies Buchman, emerging from his reverie.
“I
never liked what you did to Mrs. Robinson.”
GODSPEED,
MYRNA
By
his fourth month of unemployment,
former
magazine fact-checker Lon Colfax
had
discovered a most pertinent truth---
just
because you’ve left the job
doesn’t
mean the job has left you.
For
example, details remained important to him.
Over
the course of a week, watching daytime TV,
Lon
spied the same brunette actress
in
three widely divergent roles:
a
lonely widow kidnapped by a bunch
of
orphaned boys needing a mother on Wagon
Train;
the
super-villainess Blaze on Batman;
and
an accused murderer, seemingly doomed,
but
vindicated at the last minute on Perry
Mason.
The
actress’s name: Myrna Fahey.
Lon
found himself intrigued by
Ms.
Fahey’s Elizabeth Taylor-like beauty
and
hands-off-horndog sense of self-worth.
One
day in the public library, instead of job-hunting online,
Lon
immersed himself in the actress’s backstory.
Myrna
Fahey, Bing informed him,
was
a small-town girl who worked constantly,
but
was always a step shy of stardom.
Still,
she rose to featured roles
in
nearly every notable TV show of the 1960s.
Her
suitors included George Hamilton and Joe DiMaggio.
Lon
smiled as he read that
a
favorite hobby of hers was playing the stock market.
His
research though, like his subject’s career,
came
to an abrupt and sad end:
Myrna
Fahey died of cancer, at age 40, in 1973.
It
was this sadness that impelled Lon,
trailing
a white helium balloon on a string,
into
a nearby park at noon the next day.
Folded
twice and tied to the end of the string
was
a newspaper page of stock market results.
Written
on that page in red marker:
“Godspeed,
Myrna. Love, Lon.”
Lon
paused for a second, then released the balloon.
He
stood, shading his eyes and watching,
until
the balloon vanished into the clouds.
Then
he said, quite aloud, to himself:
“Lon old boy, you’ve got to find a new
job.”The bio you requested: Jack Phillips Lowe is a native Chicagoan. His latest chapbook is Cold Case Cowboys (Middle Island Press, 2013). And yes, we think Lowe watches too much TV, too.
