Chapter Seventeen: Tolerance

Tolerance: recognize the divinity in others even when it’s hidden behind the walls of apparent ignorance and stupidity, or residing in the bowels of lust, greed, and power…pontificators are people, too.

Sam Killian flies in a pink cloud fueled by high-octane notoriety. His bravado, triglycerides, and vodka infusions are also peaking, pegging, diming. Soon enough there will be no room at the top for Sam, but for the moment, the only thing low about Sam is his tolerance for his housekeeper, a fellow Friend of Bill, for waking him up. “Damn it, Margaret, you’re not supposed to be here! What the hell day is this? It’s not Wednesday, it’s Monday!”
Margaret is a chubby, sweet ex-lush who used to like bowling, but preferred to participate drunk and naked. Now that she’s four years, three months, and six days sober, her extracurricular activities lean toward your garden variety entertainment – WWF wrestling and tractor pulls, you know, family sports. She powers her way past a tile floor’s grungiest grout better than Mr. Clean. “Don’t you remember I asked last week if it would be okay for me to change your day and time? I’m going to the beach tomorrow.”
“Nope,” Sam says. “I wouldn’t have agreed to that.”
Margaret used to be a pushover; not anymore. “Well, you did, and we’re here.” She takes a look around and is disgusted. Sam’s bedroom looks and smells like a bus terminal bathroom after twenty-four hour’s hard use by drunks and junkies who can’t shoot straight. “You might want to put that bag of pot away; it’s sitting on the table by the back door for the whole world to see. My God, this place is a wreck.” She turns to Sam and studies him before continuing. “Have you been sick?”
“Yeah, sick with the flu.” Sam drops his head and looks away; Margaret looks right through him, and it’s embarrassing. “Yeah, right,” she whispers. “Sweetie, you’re back on the bottle hard, aren’t you? Look, get dressed, and you and I’ll go to a meeting right now. Nancy can start cleaning while we’re gone. Then, I’ll come back and help her while you have lunch or something.” Margaret takes another look around and quickly assesses Sam’s environmental wasteland. “It’ll take us at least four hours to deal with this mess.”
Sam quickly recovers his misplaced pride. “Fuck, no! I’m not going anywhere. And speaking of pot, a bag was stolen the last time you were here. I’m missing some other things, too. Like money.” Margaret is used to Sam’s paranoia; she gives him the same old song and dance each week. “Sam, we’re bonded; we’re not stealing from you.”
“Get out of my house and take that skinny-assed skank Nancy with you. I don’t want you back in here, you bunch of drug addicts. Give me back my key.” Margaret moves in to touch Sam carefully on the arm. “Sam, wait,” she gently cajoles. “I know you, remember? Come on, let’s go to a meeting. Let me help, or let me call your sponsor.”
Sam pulls away as if her touch burns. “I fired my sponsor, and I’m firing you, too! Go run your scam on somebody else. Now get the fuck out of my house!” Venomous white spittle forms at the corners of Sam’s mouth, and, for the first time, Margaret is afraid of him; his actions are far heavier than her experience. Hell, she was always a nice drunk; slutty, but sweet. She quickly walks out of Sam’s bedroom and into the kitchen, where Nancy’s busy eating leftover chicken she lifted out of the refrigerator. “Lord, Nancy, stop eating the poor man’s food. Let’s get out of here.”
“Did that asshole call me a skank?” Nancy throws a leg bone in the kitchen sink. Her world is simple: she believes in the Bible, by only in the “call to action” verses; she likes the eye for an eye-type verses best. “Forget it, Nancy, the man is sick. Let’s go, we can’t be around him right now.” Margaret turns around and yells. “Good luck, Sam, you’re gonna need it. Call me when you’re ready, and I’ll help you anyway I can. We’re leaving now.”
“Here, smell this.” Nancy’s face is buried in Sam’s bag of pot. “Now, that’s some serious skank,” she says as she tucks it into her bra and walks out the door. “Much better than the last batch.”

Sam moves into the large, sunny, and well-appointed den because his bedroom, smelling like four Boer goats in rut, is trashed. He sleeps on the overstuffed, newly stained cream tapestry Victorian sofa, Mimi’s old reading spot – good call there, Mimi, Sam thinks – rather than in his king-sized bed; the bed is only for company, only for those weekly Saturday night special performances, compliments of Jesse. The sheets need to be washed, but Margaret hasn’t been around for, I don’t know, Sam thinks. Where’s my housekeeper, Sam wonders? I’m gonna have to fire her ass.
Within a week Sam’s new room is one big garbage dump filled with vodka bottles, used tissues, dead flowers rotting in murky green water, hard porn movies, soft porn magazines, and, as of last night, a puddle of urine in the threshold between the den and the kitchen; Sam forgets the bathroom is to the right. As Sam steps into his own void, he looks to the ceiling in search of a leak.
But, the kitchen is clean; the kitchen is a shrine, a grapefruit-scented paradise, and as Sam makes his Vitamin V breakfast on Sunday morning, the phone rings. “Speak,” Sam barks. Hello is too gentile a word for Sam.
“Sam Killian, please.”
“You got him.”
“Mr. Killian, this is Vanguard Security; the alarm just sounded at 462 South Hamilton. Is that your business address?”
“Stupid question, of course it is.”
“The police have been dispatched, sir.”
“Damn it, on my way,” Sam retorts, and hangs up abruptly. Just another Sunday morning aggravation, Sam thinks. Everything aggravates Sam. It takes him two minutes to drink breakfast, brush his teeth, gargle with cool mint Listerine, don a clean but permanently stained tee-shirt, and shove a Firefly baseball cap over his crusty head. Ten minutes after receiving the call, he arrives downtown just in time to watch the Fire Department soaking down his lobby; someone has thrown a Molotov cocktail through The Firefly’s front window and his restaurant is on fire. Sam bypasses two policemen standing on the corner watching the action and heads straight for the smoldering front door. “You, stop! You can’t go in there!”
“I own this place, get the hell out of my way!”
“I don’t care who you are, you’re not going in!”
“The hell I can’t! Shit, get off of me,” Sam whimpers under the weight of a large cop’s body slam. “Okay, okay, I won’t go in. Let me up.”
“What’s your name, sir?”
“Sam Killian.” Sam checks himself for cuts and bruises as he awkwardly picks his body out of the street gutter. He finds one bloody scraped elbow and a severely bruised ego; could have been worse, he thinks. That brute flattened me like an aluminum beer can run over by a diesel four by, and looks like he’d enjoy doing it again. The cop isn’t smiling. “You know I could arrest you for endangering the life of an officer, don’t you?”
“Look, I’m sorry, uh, Officer Dunwoody. It’s just that I have a payroll deposit in there, and I have to get it. It looks like our hardworking civil servants have the fire under control.” Sam makes another move toward the door.
“Stand down, sir!” Dunwoody breathes heavily with anticipation; physical exertion is his aphrodisiac. “Look, man, the fire’s about out!” Sam whines, but backs away, taking a closer look at Dunwoody’s three-story body; getting whipped by a uniformed man half my age and double my weight, Sam determines, is not in my best interest – a sobering and accurate judgment for a man on the brink of disaster. He stands down as Officer Dunwoody’s partner steps in; Officer Smith is half his partner’s size and twice his age, and prefers playing the role of nice cop. “You can’t just walk into a crime scene, Mr. Killian; somebody deliberately tried to burn your restaurant down.”
Sam looks hard at the older man and grimaces. “Well, that doesn’t surprise me, Officer Smith. Make note of that – I’m not surprised. Now, I’ll just go through the back door and get out of your way.”
“Go ahead, but only if you want Junior over there to throw you in the street again before I arrest you. Do you want that?” Smith smiles coldly, and Sam knows he’s bested. “Because if that’s the route you want to go, I can make that happen for you, and you can spend the day in jail.” Dunwoody closes in again. “I advise you to stay right here, Mr. Killian.” Sam quickly apologizes for his bad temper. “I’m sorry, Officers; I’m a little stressed right now.”
“Officer Smith motions Dunwoody to back off. He lowers his voice. “I know you’re upset, but you need to pay attention to me now; I need to ask you some questions.” Smith holds a cheap pen and an official-looking clipboard. Sam’s wary of anything official, especially when it holds a triplicate form. Salesmen carry something similar, he thinks, and all they ever want is money.
“What kind of questions?”
“Well, let’s start with the obvious. Who might want to burn down your restaurant?” Sam doesn’t hesitate. “My ex-wife Mimi,” Sam snarls.
“Why?” Officer Smith looks up from his notes.
“Because she’s a crazy bitch.”
Smith hesitantly writes this down, and much to Sam’s entertainment, demands that he watch his language. “Has she threatened you in any manner?”
Sam sighs. “No, forget it; it’s probably not her.”
“Okay, who else?”
“Do you watch the news? Read the paper, or maybe Playboy Magazine?”
Smith’s mouth widens with recognition, forming a smirk rather than a smile. “Oh, yeah, now I know where I’ve seen you; you’re the Vodka guy, right?”
“Right. That’s me.” Sam preens briefly, but catches himself; he needs another breakfast cocktail before he can become truly obnoxious. “Well, Mister Killian, you have a lot of enemies.” Smith isn’t impressed by Sam’s notoriety.
“Most of them Baptist, I think. The Moral Majority crawls up my ass all the time. Oh, I’m sorry Officer, did I offend you?” A red-faced Smith turns back to his notebook and takes a deep breath. “I doubt anyone truly affiliated with the Lord would do such a thing; in my church, we pray for you.” Smith silently prays for strength to refrain from cold-cocking this arrogant sum-bitch as Sam turns up the volume on his rant. “Not a day goes by without a dozen people waving Bibles in my face and yelling at my customers. ‘Burn in Hell,’ they scream, over and over, like it’s a fucking, uh, freaking football game and they’re the cheerleaders. You’d think they’d be over it by now; I’ve even heard a few obscenities fly from their side, but that’s usually after I offer them discount shots.”
A controlled but seething Smith looks up from his clipboard. “Anyone else you can think of?”
“No, but on second thought, question Mimi; she probably hired someone to do it.”
“Do you know how to get in touch with her?”
“Yeah, and if you let me in, I’ll get her number and address for you. We can go through the back entrance and not disturb a thing.” Smith observes Sam cautiously before acquiescing. “Dunwoody, come over here; escort Mr. Killian inside through the back, and make it quick. Mr. Killian, it looks like you’ll have to close for a couple of months or so, but your insurance will cover the damage. You’ll be back in the headlines before you know it.”
Sam smirks. “There’ll be some happy Christians celebrating my misfortune; what does Jesus think of that? Think he’s kicked back to a glass of red wine about right now, high-fiving the Father and the Holy Ghost? Think I should blame this fire on Jesus?”
Officer Smith’s jaw and fists clench and release. “Mr. Killian, you really shouldn’t talk about Jesus that way; it’s sacrilegious.”
“Jesus Set Me on Fire – my new theme song.” Sam laughs maniacally. “Maybe I’ll put that slogan on a tee-shirt and sell them. Or, how about this one: Jesus Burnt My Bar Down – Holy Smoke!” Dunwoody steps in between the two men, saving his boss’s job and Sam from the fast track through a black hole.

…

Julie purchases a condominium in a large singles complex, home to three thousand residents and The Pelican, a local member’s only shag club. Finally, she thinks; music and dancing I can move to. Finally, people who appreciate beach music. Late at night, when Julie sends her latest Mr. Right Now home, she paces and smokes, smokes restlessly, lighting one from the end of the other. The hole in her heart is so profoundly and invisibly deep that even sixty-minute men are incapable of finding and filling it, regardless of the size and shape and precision of their smoothest moves.
Julie works, but not with passion. She makes no friends at the hospital and is unattached from eight until five. But, on five of seven nights, Julie drinks, smokes, and dances to a one-and-two, three-and-four, five-six beat; and on weekends, she soaks up multiple Nutty Monkey banana drinks and chases them with a Midnight breakfast buffet of eggs, bacon, hash browns, and the Pelican’s artery-shocking chipped beef gravy on biscuits. Julie gains twenty-two pounds in three months. Unable to wear her designer clothes, Julie shops off the rack at a local department store, but as long as the lipstick matches her nails and the shoes remain polished and the men continue to move the right foot at the right time, she is satisfied. Julie’s hairstyle doesn’t change, but many of its strands go AWOL and make a run for the shower drain.