Episode #6
Scandal on Skid Row
I was finally on welfare. It has taken me a long time. I'd become involved in so many James Bond maneuverings that the real purpose on my mission had become obscured like a tall dog blotting out the sun in some small dirt town where the corn won't grow anymore. The CIA hadn't hired me but they'd let me be hired by a KGB killer. Then they'd saved me from the same guy just in the nick of time by poisoning his cigs. It sounds redundant but trust me. Then they'd taken me up in an airplane and dropped me on Lubbock, Texas like a pigeon unloading on a windshield in the rain. I thought about getting out while the getting was good and running away to the relative safety of my past existence in the Cleveland jock factory, but the jock was on me. I couldn't get my old job back. That's how I finally accepted my divine mission and got on welfare.
"Are you know, or have you ever been a member of the Central Intelligence Agency?" a worker who had never looked up from her typewriter asked in the Cleveland Social Fallout Intake Center.
"Who, me? Hell, no! In the, what'd you call it?" I was acting like Kirk Douglas only dreamed of until he got that part in Spartacus and had to hang on the cross for two hundred takes.
"The CIA." That's what she had called it.
"The CIA? No, never. I tried getting into FFA once, but they caught me trying to milk a baby bull." That was pure wishful thinking.
"Why do you wish to receive government assistance at this time?" She still wasn't looking up.
"Why? Because I'm broke and I lost my job at the athletic supporter factory." It was, as chance would have it, true.
"You mean they make people who go games and cheer for the team?"
Suddenly my welfare worker literally fell on the floor in a paroxysm of laughter. She was laughing without any regard whatsoever to her breathing or personal safety. Finally some of her co-workers came over and threw a wet blanket over her. I guess being a welfare worker can be kind of tough. She finally calmed down enough to continue the interview.
"Where are you staying now?"
"I found this old Photomat booth that no one uses anymore." Actually I was staying at the Cleveland No-There-There Hyatt on my CIA American Express Moneycard."
"What do you eat?"
"Used Tourist carbohydrates," I uttered, referring to the vast mass of unwanted crapola that could make a human body function. She knew what I was talking about immediately. There was even a box for it on the form she was filling out. She put a check by "UTC."
"It sounds pretty grim, Jack, but I think we can set you up with the bare necessities of life. How does $142.15 a month a five free bus tokens strike you? C'mon, let's hear it!" She was not only soliciting a response; she was the executive producer.
After a short wait during which I spent my time reading the forties and fifties congressional record, I was given a bus token and a chit for rent at a hotel called The Missing Arms. I flipped the token in the gutter with a guttural chuckle and hopped a cab down by the freezing river.
The Missing Arms wasn't much to look at. The cabby refused to park in front of it. I realized too late that it had once been called The Mossing Arms. Albert Mossing had been a turn of the century decade pivoter in what was then tits Cleveland. But now someone had axed out the "o" and nailed a missing arm up for an "i". Sort of an arm for an eye. I felt like bolting. I liked the feel of the wrench in my hands and the metallic squeak of the nuts locking into place. But I didn't have time for that now. I had to check into The Missing Arms.
The desk clerk dressed in black. He'd been so long on lonely street he'll never get back.
"I feel so lonesome, baby. I feel so lonesome."
He felt so lonesome he could die.
What could you do after you'd checked into a welfare room? What was the big draw? Why were so many people willing to threaten the security of their great and proud nation by spending all the money in the kitty to hang around in rooms like this? Where was the hook? The cheese? The cake?
There was an arthritic knock at my door.
"Hey Smith, you got a phone call. It's at the pay phone on the second floor.."
I didn't know who could be calling me except maybe my social worker checking to see if I'd checked in like I was supposed to.
"Hello?" I tried to sound meek, but I'm just not by nature the sort of person who is going to inherit any earths.
"Smith, this is Philanthropist." The voice sounded familiar, like an airline pilot telling you to fasten your cocktail belt.
"That's right, the same guy who dropped you on Lubbock last week. You're doing fine. You're right where we want you, on welfare. Now we want you to go ahead with plan "Nectar".
I was afraid to ask.
"Look, I'm on welfare because I'm broke. I don't think I want to work for your outfit any more. Where should I mail my American Express Moneycard?" The thought of giving up that plastic hit me with more than just a twinge of patriotism.
"There isn't much time, Smith, this phone is probably tapped."
Yeah, right. If they added enough wire to the superstructure to tap the phone, the building would fall down.
"Be on the look-out for Agent Honeypot. She will fill you in on Nectar. Watch out for the Bumblebees. I'll be in touch." The line went dead.
I stood there wondering how did I get into this? Why did they want to stop welfare anyway? Was Agent Honeypot a looker? Could I live without my Moneycard? Couldn't I stand to do something for my country just once?
The phone rang and I picked it up.
"Two dollars and eighty-three cents overtime please?"
I was willing to bet Honeypot has those big fat gams I love.
Back
