The Merchants of Venice Boulevard

The Merchants of Venice Boulevard

                 Credited to The Old Beatnik 

                                               By    the MUG Man 

Disclaimer:  People, places, ideas, words, names, descriptions, visuals, DNA or smells of any of the characters in this story is purely coincidental and bares no resemblance to any one or place in reality, alive or dead. 

Chapter One 

    It was a cold night in a river town.  The town business meeting was just letting out and Victor Spent, the owner of a small but successful jewelry business, and his partner, Peter Burl, were just leaving what was the usual “yelling and screaming for an hour” meeting.  The cute little old town on the Delaware was being invaded by the worst possible invader…success.  The trouble was that there was no reason this bunch of upriver characters should be anything but happy.  But on a night like this everyone had a beef…it was a rough year.

  “You know, Pete, that’s what I always hear!  Why do good ideas always have to be “revenue neutral?” commented Victor.  He was a little pissed off by the town council’s rebuff of his most recent attempt at a solution to the huge town wide parking problem. 

     Peter, who was always the more reasonable of the two said, “I knew we’d have to find our own answers. That bunch never wants to think hard enough on anything other than the agony of missing a dinner out at McBride’s.”

    “I hate that place!” said Victor as he opened the door of his two-year-old black Lexus and squeezed into the tight leather seats.  “It’s loud, pricey and just not Bucks County at all!”

    Peter got into his side and switched the seat warmer to HI and buckled up as Victor put the car in reverse and backed out of the high school parking slot.  As the lights switched on automatically they beamed directly into the eyes of Mayor Patrick and the town Chief of Police, John (Jackie) Cummings.  Almost simultaneously they shielded their eyes with their arms.

     “Sorry ‘bout that!” yelled Victor without rolling down his tinted window as they sped off into the night.

    “Can I give you a ride, your Honor?” said the Chief.

    “No thanks!  I think I’ll get the exercise tonight, Chief!  Hey, thanks for your help in there tonight.  Can you believe they actually wanted to fire a couple of our guys?” said Mayor Patrick.

    “I know.  You just can’t fix a parking problem by firing cops…even rent-a-cops!” said Chief Cummings in reply. “Wait till there is a big fight or something at any of those South Main bars and see how fast they want a cop there!”

    Just as they reached the Chief’s car, a late 20^th Century General Motors coupe, the full autumn moon came out and the whole parking lot lit up.

    “Hey wait!” yelled a voice from the curb; it was Matt Hartman, the editor of New Lambert’s only newspaper, The Lamp.  “I’m glad I caught you guys.  “Can I get a comment from you about what went on in there tonight?”

    “Sure.” said the Mayor. “What’s on your mind, Matt?”

    “I’d like to know what you thought about Victor’s idea about the parking problem,” asked Matt.

    The mayor thought for all of ten seconds and you could feel a rise in the atmospheric pressure and then he said, “Matt, the town doesn’t have a parking problem.  We do have a drinking problem, though, and Victor Spent wants us to fire two police jobs to pay for his so-called parking solution de jour.  I live in this burg, Matt and there are fifteen liquor licenses in this one square mile of town.  Do these people that come here everyday and drive out drunk every night care that they are welcome or not?  I don’t think so!  I was elected by the people who live here, and I’ll be damned if I am going to cut my police force by even one officer just because the shops in this town can’t make a decent living by selling the tourists more trinkets than fifteen dollar martinis.”

    Matt put the microphone to his own lips and said,  “But sir, this IS a tourist town, isn’t it?  Don’t we all survive by sales taxes and parking tickets?”

    “Sure we do, Matt, but those folks sure don’t vote for me come election time, do they Chief?” said Mayor Patrick looking into the face of his Chief of Police, a man he himself, had hand picked four years earlier to run New Lambert’s struggling police force.

    “They sure don’t!” said the Chief.

    Matt Hartman turned off the recorder and pulled out his digital camera.  “Mind if I snap a picture of you guys?” said the editor.

    “Don’t you have enough of me already, Matt?” asked the mayor.

    “Yea, but not standing with the Chief here and not any without you holding a glass of Champagne in your hand either.” said Matt. “Besides, you look fantastic tonight, Sean, where’d you get that suit?”

    “Off the record, Matt, I bought this last winter down near my place in Florida.  I found this wonder of a Cuban tailor who had it made for me in one week.  I’m just afraid all this winter food here is stretching the old waistband a bit,” said the Mayor quietly so only Matt could hear.

    The camera flash burnt another hole in his retinas.

    “Hey, Matt!” said Sean Patrick, “I really may have sounded a bit harsh there.  I’d appreciate it if you didn’t make me sound too much like…you know…the Ayatollah of New Lambert…Okay?”

   “Don’t worry, Sean.” said the editor.  “I’ve always made you look good, haven’t I?”

    “You’re just too easy to talk to sometimes, Matt, and I’m sure I run off at the mouth a lot when I get pressured. Good Night, Mr. Editor, sir!” said the mayor and with that he waved goodbye and headed off across the parking lot to his house.

    “He’s too worried about everything, said the Chief. “I wish he would let me handle some parts of this job and get himself more sleep.”

    Matt turned to the chief and said, “Jackie, Sean grew up in this town and he knows its people and its history better’n anyone…he’ll be Okay.”

    “I hope so, Mr. Hartman.  He does get worked up sometimes, though.  Good night to you.” and with that he closed the door of his unmarked car and drove home.

    Matt took another look at the full moon and decided he needed a small drink before he headed back to his office to write up his notes from the meeting before he could sleep away his memories of the night.

    He drove the four blocks downtown to Wanda’s, the small but intimate bistro holding down the east end of Venice Boulevard.  Tonight was their Full Moon Party and the place was aglow with people, noise and the thump of some teenage band from the high school.  And they were sounding good, like they knew how to play their instruments.

  Wanda’s was a great place.  First of all, you never knew really who was running the place.  Most of the time Kim Jarrard ran it but somehow everyone who worked there acted like it was the best job they ever had and they wanted to at least act like they could be the owner.

    Tonight was a party night and the bar was packed and the decks were alive with laughter.  Somewhere inside the band played.  They were just the two of them tonight yet they sounded like a band twice their size.  Matt worked his way over to the bar and ordered his favorite beverage…a PBR with lime.  His father used to drink those when he was a sailor and when Matt told his father that he was gay he said to him “Son, just drink one of these and people will never know or care who or what you are…but you will always remember that your Dad loves you and would no matter what anyone else says or thinks!”

    He grabbed a glass and turned back to the room just as the band wound down their Doors set.  His reporter eyes and ears scanned the room quickly but saw mostly what could be called a typical “locals” crowd.

    At a table near the open French doors that led out onto the deck, Kim Jarrard was delivering a trayful of drinks to six couples.  All of them except one non-drinker were having their second “Danni’s Midnight Special,” a special concoction created by Wanda’s premier bartender, the lusty and busty Danielle LaFlamme.  These drinks were meant to be so strong that if you drank one in under an hour, you would be out for the night and unable by three tenths of a point to pass a Breathalyzer test.  Almost two thirds of the people in the room rode their bikes to the place that night just to be safe on the way home, the drink was THAT good!   AND… they only served it after midnight.  But everybody was having at least one.

    “Danni!” yelled Matt over the din of the room.  “What’s with all the townies here tonight?”

    “Ahhh, you haven’t heard,” cooed Danielle in what everyone in town thought was the sexiest voice ever.  “Kalani O’Shay passed away tonight!”

    Matt was stunned.  Kalani O’Shay had been a New Lambert fixture in the community for at least thirty-five years.  Her store on the corner of River Road and Bridge Street had, since the day she opened her doors in 1970, been the absolute most fantastic and popular store in town and had been the main reason tens of thousands of people come to New Lambert for decades.  Her place was a museum of Pop Culture and it was all for sale.  Her window displays alone were known to hold up traffic coming over the bridge from New Jersey.  The displays of period fashion mixed with cultural icons always brought a smile to the faces of passers-by.  You’d always hear someone saying, “I used to have one of those when I was a kid.” or “Man I wish I had held onto the one I had…see what they’re worth now?”

    Jayne Mansfield water bottles to Pee Wee Herman Halloween costumes, furs, wigs, lunch pails, games, models, Gene Autry guitars and Buck Rodgers ray guns, the constantly changing windows were filled with wondrous things of the past.  Only once, that Matt could remember, did anyone complain.  Kalani had left the mannequins naked one night before she could dress them and the breasts of Big Bertha were just too real for a housewife from Secaucus.

    In the past two years Kalani had taken to charging a dime just to get in her store.  You would pay a dime and she would give you a little pink plastic pig.  If you bought something you’d get your dime back and get to turn in your little pig.  This was because most people just wanted to look…to browse…just walk around a bit and show the bratty kids the real toys of their youth.  The plastic barf still looked like someone had just left a fresh batch and almost as popular in 2008 as it was in 1962.

    “See that one?” a father was heard to say to his son pointing at a steamy pile of plastic dog poo in a plastic bag.  “ I used to beg your Grandma for just ONE of those.”

    Half the town hated her and half the town loved her and the third half loved and hated her at the same time.  But all three halves turned out the following day at the service down at the end of Market Street at the river when Kalani’s ashes were ceremoniously tossed into the calm waters of the Delaware.  It was still cold and wet but Mayor Patrick said some nice words and so did a few others but a huge chunk of the soul of the town mixed with the times and turbulence of the current and flowed downriver, away from the little town and out of the life she made and the people she knew there.

    No obituary was written. No prayers were said but the entire town took a deep breath that morning and decided to try and be nicer to each other…for a while at least.

    Then…over the heads of the crowd flew a naked Barbie doll, sailing at least thirty feet out into the river followed, like a flock of geese lifting off the ground, flew at least fifty curly haired wigs.  Finally the entire town, at the same time, threw one tiny pink plastic pig into the air. 

    The next day The Lamp ran a front page color photo of 5000 people huddled at the riverside under what looks to be a pink cloud of piggies.  The headline read “Local Icon Passes into Borough History.”  It was that kind of place.