The Fantastic Adventures of Lefty Feep, page 21
“Such language!” said a voice at my ear.
I turned my ketchup-decorated nose up and peered into the face of Lefty Feep. The angular man who knows all the angles was surveying me with a look of extreme disapproval. “What’s wrong?” I inquired.
Feep draped himself in a chair at my side. He made little clucking sounds in his throat. “Mustn’t say such things,” he said.
“I never knew you objected to profanity,” I told him.
“It is not safe to say such things,” Feep told me. “They are liable to come true.”
I stared at Lefty Feep. This sounded very odd, I wondered if he had been drinking. “Where in blazes have you been?” I snapped.
“Everywhere,” said Feep.
“Where everywhere?”
“Like you say. Everywhere in blazes.”
“What in perdition are you talking about?”
“Everything. Everything in perdition,” Feep answered.
“The hell you say!”
“That’s right. The hell, I say.”
“Listen, Lefty,” I sighed. “I’m having one devil of a time understanding you.”
“That is nothing. You should see the time the devil had understanding me,” Feep grinned.
I looked Lefty Feep straight in the eye. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve talked with Satan?” I demanded.
“Satanly.”
“Feep, that’s a lousy pun. What kind of a gag is this anyway?”
“No gag at all,” declared Feep. “I am on the level about the devil.”
“You talked to him, eh?”
“Do you think I would lie to you?” Feep accused.
I didn’t answer that one. But there was no need to. For Lefty Feep suddenly gripped my collar. “It is lucky for you that I’m here,” he announced. “I got a tale to tell about Hell.”
I broke free. “Some other time. Lefty. Right now I can’t stop to listen. I’ve got a date with an angel.”
“Tell her to go play a harp. You got a date with a fiend,” declared Lefty Feep. “What happens to me makes Dante’s Inferno look like a kindergarten picnic.”
“But—”
Lefty complied. He butted me back into my chair. “You gotta hear this,” he breathed.
“It looks that way,” I sighed.
Fixing me with a devilish leer. Lefty Feep gulped, gave his tongue a practice flip, and plunged into his story.
I have a date with an angel the other night myself. If she is not exactly an angel, at least she is one of the heavenly bodies. To be specific and terrific, I am hep to step out with a little number by the name of Kitten Carter. Her real name is Clarice, but she is called Kitten because of her lovely puss.31
When I meet Kitten at first she is working in a Five and Ten,32 but gets kicked out because she cannot remember the prices. So I advise her to get a job in a defense plant, and that is where she is now planted. Naturally Kitten is most happy about all this, and when I invite her out for the evening she agrees at once. In fact I am just talking to her in a phone booth, but somebody else wants to use it and we have to get out.
“Let’s us go to a restaurant. Lefty,” suggests Kitten, in her elegant manner, “And put the chew on some goo.”
I smile sweetly and nod, but I do not feel so good about it. Because at the moment I am as broke as a Japanese promise.33 I am in a fine way to take a ginch out and show her a good time. All I got in my pockets are a couple of pawnshop tickets, and who wants to take a dame to a pawnshop?
But if Kitten Carter wants to eat, she is going to eat. I will figure out an angle.
So I steer her down the street and pretty soon we are in front of a spaghetti joint. “How about some of that?” I inquire. Kitten nods her head, and we go in.
The place is not exactly snooty, being a sort of cross between a dive and a joint, with just a touch of dump about it. But it looks cheap enough, so we sit down at one of the tables and brush macaroni crumbs off with the menu. We are the only customers in the place, unless the flies are spending money tonight, so we get quick service. In less than an hour the one waiter in the dive figures out that we might want something to eat. He power-dives over at a speed of at least 2 miles per hour.
“What’s it gonna be?” he asks.
“Probably ptomaine from the looks of this place,” I answer. “But we’ll take some spaghetti.”
He gives me a look from the black book. I stare right back. The waiter is a little, shrivelled-up specimen in a tuxedo that isn’t pressed since it comes from the funeral parlor, back in 1906. He is very dark and swarthy, and there is five o’clock shadow on his face, and also under his eyes. But mostly he is a walking mustache. The bristle under his nose would make any janitor grab him, turn him upside down, and use him for a broom.
But he forces a very anemic smile and takes my order and dashes away at his usual speed, like a racing snail that gets retired for old age. Kitten sits there and makes with her mouth, and I sit there and scurry over a worry. This waiter is going to be a tough customer when he finds out I am a broke customer. He looks like a member of the Bomb-Thrower’s Union Number 7, Mussolini Local.
More likely he is a Black Hand. This I decide when I get a look at his fingers as he comes back with the spaghetti. I stop worrying for a while and begin to tangle with the spaghetti — which is very good, if you like shoelaces with Vaseline.
Kitten and I are all wound up in our meal, and the waiter stands off at one side watching us trying to untie the Boy Scout knots in the noodles. After we bounce the last meatball down our throats, he comes over. This time he really moves fast, because he is bringing the bill.
I take a look and gulp. Then I gulp again. The price for two orders of spaghetti is $4.50.
“What gives this $4.50?” I inquire.
He slides a sneer out from under his mustache. “Cover charge,” he answers.
“I am not buying any covers,” I explain. “All I want is the spaghetti.”
“The price is $4.50,” he comes back.
“Well,” I sigh, “I have not got $4.50.”
“So?” He glares at me. “Then you gotta see the cashier.”
“All right with me.” I walk over to the cashier’s desk.
He follows me and takes off his apron, then slips around the desk.
“What you want?” he asks, like he never sees me before.
“Why, the cashier.”
“That’s me.”
“You’re the cashier, too?”
“Why not?”
“Well I am still the same guy who hasn’t got $4.50.”
He glares again. “You insist, ha? Then I call the boss.”
“Call him anything you like.”
“Follow me.” He turns around and walks back to an office marked Manager. I trail along and go in. The same waiter is sitting behind the desk.
“You’re the boss, too?”
“I am the boss,” he growls. “And I want $4.50.”
This is very embarrassing to me. I think of Kitten sitting back there at the table, wondering where I go. I also think of something else when I see this guy pulling a little blackjack out of the desk drawer and twirling it around his head. He is not going to play bean-bag with me, I guess.
“Can’t we settle this thing peacefully?” I suggest.
“$4.50 settles everything.”
I am stuck with this clip-joint price. All I can do is shake my head. Also my knees, because he gets up and starts to wave his blackjack. All at once he stops. “I give you your choice,” he says. “Either I break your neck or else —”
“Or else what?” I snap, hoping to make a better deal. “Maybe just both legs, huh?”
“Or else you can work out the price of the meals.”
“Work it out?”
“Sure? Why not? I am tired of all this business,” he says. “Suppose you work here until 12 o’clock and we call it a deal?”
This sounds better. It is already after 9 p. m. and I am amazed at such a generous offer. Also I cannot understand why he has such a grin on his face, when there is hardly enough room for the mustache. “I’ll do it,” I agree.
We turn around and walk back. Kitten is standing up at the table. “Hurry up. Lefty,” she pouts. “Let’s get out of here. I want to go places and do things tonight.”
“Well,” I gulp, “I don’t know. I am sort of going to stick around here until midnight.”
“But I want to go out stepping like you promised me,” she says.
“Let me explain —” I begin. Then a hand pushes me out of the way. “One side,” says the waiter-cashier-boss. He bows real low and the bristles of his mustache dust his knees. “I will have much pleasure in escorting such a beautiful lady as you,” he gurgles, giving Kitten the eye. “I admire you. You have the face of an artist. Let us therefore go out and paint the town red.”
“Why you —” I say. I have a swell name all picked out for him, but I never get a chance to express it, because Kitten interrupts me.
She giggles at the waiter. “I accept your invitation,” she smirks.
“But Kitten —”
“It serves you right. Lefty Feep,” she tells me. “If you are going to stand me up, I might as well start toddling with this kind gentleman.”
Kitten is very dull in the skull, understand? Because anybody taking one good look at this fink wouldn’t walk anywhere with him except as an escort to the electric chair. He is rough, tough, and gruff, and a ticket to the hot seat is just about his speed. I try to tell Kitten all this in a few short sentences, but the waiter just taps his hip pocket where the blackjack is and I shut up.
“I am the boss,” he whispers. “You work for me until 12 midnight, understand? So no back talk from the hired help.”
That is why I only stand there when he walks out with Kitten. I give her a little smile and wave my waiter’s apron at her, but no response. Except that a piece of spaghetti on the apron hits me in the eye. And there I am, stuck as a waiter in a spaghetti jetty until midnight.
It is quiet. It is lonely. Nothing is buzzing but the flies. My girl jilts me. I am broke. And on top of it, the spaghetti! On top of my poor stomach, I mean. Because all at once I get a very peculiar feeling. I am suddenly quite dizzy. Everything starts whirling around. I start to sit down. That is all I do, just start. Because I don’t sit down. I fall down.
Fall on the floor.
And further.
I get the feeling that I fall through the floor. Of course I am unconscious, but I have that horrible feeling of falling. Dropping down, down, down. All at once there is a bump, and I wake up. I blink my eyes.
It seems I am standing in a dark, dingy cavern. I blink again, because after all the spaghetti joint is dark and dingy. But this place is different. Worse. Nothing around me but rocks and a reddish light.
Besides, it is extremely warm here.
I turn my head and notice a guy standing next to me. It is quite dim and I cannot see him, but misery loves company. So I give him a nod. “Hotter than hell here, isn’t it?” I remark.
“Can’t be,” says a deep voice.
“What do you mean?”
“Can’t be hotter than hell. This is Hell!” says the voice.
“Oooooogle!” I tell him. And for a very good reason. Looking close, I see his face.
It is a red face, and it does not look natural to me. In fact it would only look natural on a bottle of Pluto Water.34 The face is equipped with slanted black eyes and a long mouth. The mouth has white teeth as big as watch charms. The face grins at me and I shrink back. I get a blast of hot breath, like brimstone. I recognize it.
Hellatosis!
Sure enough, I am standing next to a fiend! The thing is red and scaly, like dishwater hands, only all over. And he gives me a scare and a stare at the same time. “You’re being sent for,” he tells me in a voice that rumbles like volcanoes.
“Me? Sent for?”
“He wants to see you.”
“Who?”
“Who in Hell do you suppose?”
I shiver. It is true, after all — those predictions people are always making about where I am going to wind up. I am dead and I am on the dirty end of the Styx.
“Come along,” says the fiend. He pulls me over the cavern floor.
I do not keep my grip when I think about the trip. We go along through the bowels of the Earth, if you pardon the expression, and all around me is this awful heat. I do not see any flames, but I can feel them on the other side of the rocky walls. I can also hear sounds. Crackling noises of fire. A lot of screams and laughing. The whole thing is like a Girl Scout marshmallow roast, only on a grand scale.
“What goes on there?” I ask the fiend.
But he does not answer. He hops along the ground ahead of me like a skinny red monkey, and I follow like an organ-grinder. Only I would not pick up any pennies if I could, because they will be plenty hot at this temperature. “Where are we going?” I gurgle.
“Short cut,” cackles the fiend. “Keep moving.”
I take this advice. It is so warm that if I stand still on this ground I will give myself the hot foot. The fiend doesn’t worry, because I notice he has cloven hoofs instead of sports shoes. I am busy noticing things this trip, and every time I notice something new I shiver again, in spite of the heat.
At last we round a bend in the cavern, and we stand in a big chamber. It is nice and bright here because some obliging guy sets the joint on fire, or something. The walls shoot flames out and the floor is just a lake of leaping crimson. I take one look and get ready to sing Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. I take another look and then wish smoke would get in them. So I wouldn’t have to see the figure sitting on a rock in the middle of the pool of flames.
It is the devil, naturally. Or unnaturally. Why bother with words? I can’t get them out anyway, with my heart in my mouth. He is perched on the crag in the center of the roaring blast, smiling at me. I groan right back at him.
Satan has diamond-bright eyes, a heart-shaped mouth, a spade beard, and a club foot. Quite a card. More exactly, he looks like the devil. And he is. He stares at me out of his deep eyes for a long moment. I just wait, hopping up and down to keep from frying my toes. “Well I’ll be blessed,” he says, at last. “You must be —”
Just then another fiend comes out of a cavern at one side. “Please, Sir,” he begins.
The devil frowns. “What are you horning in here for?”
“Well,” says the fiend. “It’s about those California people who get here yesterday.”
“California people? What’s with them?”
“They don’t like our climate.”
“Ha! Go back and let it rain pitchforks for a while,” says Satan.
Then he turns to me.
“You must be Regretti,” he says.
“Regretti? Who’s Regretti? I’m Lefty Feep, and I want to know why in Hell I’m in Hell.”
“But Regretti is the one I send for,” snaps the devil. “He must come when I command him. It’s a duty! I own his soul!”
“Regretti? Is he the guy who runs a spaghetti parlor?” I ask.
“Correct.”
“And he sells his soul to you? So that’s why I get here.” It begins to dawn on me now. I yell out above the crackling of the flames.
“You are cheated when you get a customer like Regretti,” I tip him off. “From what I see of him he was a lousy soul and is probably all heel.”
“That’s my business,” the devil comes back. “The soul-buying business. I’m in it quite a while now — ever since the days of old Doc Faust, one of my first customers. And I know a bargain is a bargain. When I send for Regretti he ought to come. He must obey me.”
“But I’m not Regretti,” I remind him.
“Then why are you here?”
“Damned if I know.”
“That’s an idea.”
The devil snaps his fingers. There is a crackling noise, and a book appears in his lap. A black book. He squints at it. Then he calls into the air. “What’s wrong out there? I ask for the letter F. Fee, to be exact. Send me the right volume.”
The first book disappears.
“Curse those bookkeepers of mine,” he grumbles. “Ah, here we are. Just a moment please.” Another book flashes into view. He opens it with his long red claws moving over the pages. The flames light up for his convenience. He reads and shakes his head. He closes the book. “No,” he announces. “You are wrong. You are not damned. At least your name isn’t in the book.”
I am not altogether disappointed at being left out of Satan’s hit parade. I smile, but he shakes his head. The horns waggle. “Very peculiar,” he grunts. “Lefty Feep comes when I ask for Regretti. Why?”
Then I understand. “I am working in Regretti’s place until midnight,” I suggest.
“How so?”
I explain about the deal I make to pay for my meal.
Satan smiles.
“Of course,” he says. “Well that’s splendid. Splendid! Matter of fact, there’s a little job or two lined up for Regretti. If you’re taking his place until midnight you can do the work for him. Temporarily you’re one of my fiends, you know.”
“Wait a minute!” I object. “I don’t want to stay here in Hell.”
“And why not, may I ask?”
“I can’t stand it here! I can’t stand all these imps and fiends and demons.”
“What about gargoyles?”
“I use Listerine.”
“Well, you aren’t going to stay in Hell,” the devil tells me, tugging at his goatee. “I have a job for you. I always find work for idle hands to do.”
I stare at the hellish fires around me. “What’s cooking?” I ask.
“Sinners, mostly.”
“I mean, what’s the job?”
“It’s an assignment back on Earth,” he says. “In fact, you will return to exactly the same spot you came from. You will do what Regretti should do, under my orders.”
