My Greatest Day of Parenting

 Lots of people advocate various books on parenting. That’s fine. Do what you do. I learned everything I needed to know about raising a child from reading Calvin and Hobbes.

 

One that sticks in my mind is a strip where Calvin asks his dad (my spirit animal) why old family pictures are black-and-white. My Spirit Animal goes on to explain how those photographs are in color. It’s the world that was black-and-white. MSA explains how color evolved in the 1930s, though it was spotty and grainy at first. When Calvin asks how paintings from hundreds of years ago can be in color, MSA tells him they were always in color. We just couldn’t see it until the 30s.

 

As a divorced father, I lacked many of the opportunities MSA had for influencing Calvin, so I had to cluster them when possible. One weekend, The Sole Heir was messing with her malfunctioning iPad ear buds. She did a little online research and learned the issue was probably with the magnets and that any local Apple Store would swap them out.

 

She turned to me as we left for the excursion to ask, “Why do ear buds have magnets?”

 

“To keep them in your ears.”

 

That brought her up short. Old enough to know I wasn’t always trustworthy on such matters, not sufficiently mature to reliably recognize when. “I thought magnets only held metal together.”

 

“You never heard of bone magnets? They keep the earbud close enough to the little bones in your ear so you can hear, but no so close it clogs up your ear canal. That’s probably what’s wrong. These are either too strong or too weak.”

 

That prompted a look I came to know and love: she knew I was full of crap, but lacked the ammunition on hand to call me on it and win the argument.

 

We were watching baseball that same evening when the standard disclaimer came on: “Any rebroadcast, reproduction, or other use of the pictures and accounts of this game without the express written consent of the office of the Commissioner of Baseball is prohibited.”

 

She should have known better after the morning’s earbud episode, but the idealism of youth was strong in this one. “Hey, Dad. What does the Commissioner of Baseball do?”

 

“He signs all the baseballs.”

 

A moment’s thought. “That’s all?”

 

“Watch the game. See how many balls they go through. Multiply that by fifteen games a day. Signing balls is a full-time job.”

 

I got That Look twice in one day. Maybe the proudest I ever felt as a parent, including at her wedding.

 

 

You Think I’m Funny? Funny in What Way?

I am a huge fan of Ray Banks. I’m working my way through the Cal Innes stories (read Saturday’s Child earlier this month) and believe him to be the current master at the novella e-books are so well suited for. (Gun and Wolf Tickets are brilliant, if you haven’t read them.)

This is why I sat up fast enough to cause a whiplash headache when I read his essay, “Five Noir Lessons from Charles Williams” on the Mysterious Press blog. Not only because his thoughts on the topic would be of inherent interest to me, but because he and I agreed on so much. The key section had to do with the importance of a GSOH (a Good Sense of Humor):

My favourite writers—or at least those authors who inspire and whose work lingers in the memory—tend to be inherently funny people with something serious to say. And while Williams was apparently something of a melancholic (and ultimately suicidal) in the flesh, he clearly possessed a wit and humour that informed his writing.

If you're under the impression that a sense of humour and a sense of noir are mutually exclusive, think again. A great tragedy relies on the same wicked timing that drives a great joke, and a writer who appreciates wit and wordplay is more likely to turn out sentences that bristle with energy. Williams is one of those writers: a dry, sharp stylist with a gift for stiletto description. And when he ventures into full tilt comedy—as he does in the screwball nonsense of The Wrong Venus—he does so with considerable aplomb.

Life is full of funny things. Even things that aren’t funny—violence, illness, even death—may be funny in retrospect, and may even be funny to some sick bastards as they happen. Even better, funny things happen in the most serious situations. Things happen, or are said, that have to be laughed at, no matter how stressful the time. It may even be the stress that makes them so funny.

Few things are as tedious as a story with no light touches. I’m not talking about jokes, but levity. Elmore Leonard was the master, bringing smiles through inadvertent character comments or actions. (Inadvertent for the character; Leonard knew exactly what he was doing.) A poorly chosen word, a statement made without full knowledge of the facts, someone whose pretentiousness exposes his ignorance; all can lend realism to a character. My favorite example is from—of course—Get Shorty, Bo Catlett talking to Chili Palmer about screenplays:

“You’re asking me,” Catlett said, “do I know how to write down words on a piece of paper? That’s what you do, man, you put down one word after the other as it comes in your head. It isn’t like having to learn how to play the piano, like you have to learn notes. You already learned in school how to write, didn’t you? I hope so. You have the idea and you put down what you want to say. Then you get someone to add in the commas and shit where they belong, if you aren’t positive yourself. Maybe fix up the spelling where you have some tricky words. There people do that for you. Some, I’ve even seen scripts where I know words weren’t spelled right and there was hardly any commas in it. So I don’t think it’s too important. You come to the last page you write in ‘Fade out’ and that’s the end, you’re done.”

Chili said, “That’s all there is to it?”

“That’s all.”

Chili said, “Then what do I need you for?”

Leonard laid out the key traits of both characters in 179 words, and you laughed. He said he wrote dialog heavy novels because he wanted to leave out the parts readers skipped, and they don’t skip dialog. They don’t skip humor, either. No one wants to miss a chance to be entertained. We’ve all read books, six hundred pages of unrelenting dreariness that had us rooting for the protagonist to die, already, put us out of his misery.

Another excellent use of humor is scene reversal. Start a scene off light and let the bad news hit even harder. Finally, something good happens to the character, and—boom!—the hammer drops. Wading through pages of despair, waiting for other shoes to drop, pretty soon it’s just one more tragedy. Give him some hope, a smile, maybe even a laugh, then crush him. That hurts.

That door swings both ways. Why would a character put up with such an unrelentingly dark life? I’ve read books where I thought about killing myself, and I was only reading about it. Who would put up with that? Even better, why? Because every so often something good happens. It might be as simple as watching a pompous ass slip and fall. Probably not funny to the guy who fell, but that’s the thing about humor: everyone sees it in different things.

Food Noir

Restaurants aren’t just snow white tablecloths and smiling hostesses. While you’re out trying to have a good time, eat a nice meal, the owner is treading a thin line between giving you what you paid for and making a profit. Sometimes they cross that line. That’s where I come in. My name’s Sundae. I’m a health inspector.

It was hot the way only the Strip District can be hot. The seams in the pavement were as tacky as freshly chewed gum on the soles of my shoes. The smells of Restaurant Row were everywhere, Italian and Chinese, Indian and Mexican, burgers, ribs, and one joint advertising Cambodian hot dogs. No one ate there.

It was a little after two when I rolled up on Manella’s Ristorante at the corner of Grant and Warburton. Complaints had been made about the lettuce in the Caesar salad being old enough to have heard Antony’s speech. It was the kind of call I handle every day.

The place brought back memories. Guido and Sal Manella opened it almost thirty years ago and built it into the capo di tutti capi of Italian restaurants on the Strip. Sal went away a while ago to study large group catering for seven to fifteen years at state expense on a sauce dilution rap. Guido had his fingers in too many other pies to run the place himself, so he had to get a manager.

I pushed through the door and paused inside to let my eyes adjust to the light. It was always dim in Manella’s, but today it was two shades past romantic. Not even the dining room’s murk could disguise the dish standing at the hostess’ station.
She was tall enough without the three-inch pumps that were probably red. Her hair was black and lustrous, hanging past her shoulders and trailing behind her head whenever she moved it. Her almond-shaped eyes made every glance a seduction, even if you could ignore the dress that showed every contour of her body without revealing anything. She was hotter than the plates in a Mexican restaurant.

“Yes? How many in your party?” She had one of those Italian accents that are learned through years in the restaurant business. She’d never been closer to Italy than the bottomless salad bowl at Olive Garden.

“Just me, but I bring my party with me.” I flipped her my tin. “Sundae. Board of Health.” Her smile disappeared quicker than the “all you can eat” buffet at a Weight Watchers convention.

“I get the manager.” The accent was heavier now. She made sure I got a good look at the melon patch when she turned. It had been tried before, by women with more talent for it. Not many, though, and not for a long time.

“That’s all right, I know where to go. I’ll just follow the flies.” I pushed past her and walked toward the kitchen like I had a purpose in life. She was one step behind me all the way.

The kitchen wasn’t any brighter than the dining room and a lot less romantic. The lunch rush had been over for an hour, but any signs of clean-up were as miniscule as the nutrition in a wad of cotton candy. The stainless steel countertops were fighting a lonely battle to remain that way.

“You really should speak with the manager,” she said loud enough for everyone in the kitchen to hear. The accent was slipping. Jersey, maybe. Big surprise.

A busboy moved for a door across the room as soon as he heard her. “You! In the apron!” I called. He stopped with one hand on the swinging door. I crooked a finger for him to come to me. “Over here.”

“Me? Who are you to boss me around?” He had an accent, too, but it was as Italian as a jalapeno.

I got in his face and gave him the look the farmer gives the turkey on the fourth Thursday in November. “Just show me what I want to see, or your butt is lettuce and I’m the Cuisinart. Where’s the olive oil?”

He didn’t want to show me. It was as obvious as a piece of spinach stuck to a tooth at a formal dinner. He was straining himself to think of something to say when another voice cut through the murk like a Ginsu knife through rotisserie lamb.

“Show him the oil, Tino. We got nothing to hide.”

Eugene Coli had started out as a busboy in a hash joint on Newberry and moved up quickly. He earned a reputation as someone who wasn’t fussy about what went in the trash and what got recycled. We pulled him in a few times for sending garnishes out for a second or third go-round, but he always had enough juice to beat the rap. Contact with him was considered bad for your health. Everyone called him E.

The hostess drew in her breath and went from cantaloupes to watermelons. Tino looked at E. Coli, then at me, and smiled his smug little minion smile. “Right here,” he said. “Extra virgin, just like the sign says.”

I had lost interest in Tino as soon as Coli entered the room. “Hello, E. You still trying to pass off crayfish as petit lobster?”

“I heard you were checking the sneeze guards at Denny’s, Sundae.”

I’d heard them all before. “I got a promotion. Now I’m in charge of seeing that the fish aren’t rotting from the head down. That’s how I drew you.”

There wasn’t much he could say to that, I was the one with the cheap star in my pocket. The hostess was watching me now, her tongue running over her lips like she had a bowl of spumoni no one else could see.

I looked at the bottle of oil Tino was holding out for me. “No. Not this one. Back there.” I jerked my head toward a barred door in the back.

That woke up Coli. “Just a minute, Sundae. I’ve been a good host so far, but you can’t have the run of my place without a warrant.”

“A warrant?” My laugh was genuine. “Sure, I got one here somewhere. Betty Crocker signed it.” I turned on him directly. “I’m not looking for criminal activity, just health violations. I don’t need a warrant.” I turned back to Tino. “Open the door.”

He didn’t want to open that door any more than Emeril Legasse wants the Number Four combo at Popeye’s. I didn’t have any friends in the room and a standoff was as imminent as flatulence at a chili contest.

The tension was thick as a Guinness draft when the hostess walked past me and opened the door. Coli gave her a look as hard as a year-old jawbreaker. “What are you doing, Cinnamon?” he asked.

“There’s no need for anyone to get hurt over this,” she said to him, but she was looking at me the way a gourmet eyes the menu at Spago.

I pushed past her before Coli could recover and scooped the first bottle of oil I found. I had my field testing kit with me, but I knew I wouldn’t need it as soon as I opened the bottle. I stuck a finger in and tasted the Pomace used to dilute the oil.

“This stuff’s as virgin as Madonna,” I said to no one in particular, staring straight at Coli. “Lock the doors. Everyone gets the rest of the day off.”

He was still staring at the hostess as the others filed out. “How could you do this to me, Cinnamon?”

I answered for her. “Some restaurateur you are. Everyone knows that cinnamon, when properly prepared, is an effective weapon against E. Coli.”

She and I walked out together. We stopped at the corner where I was parked. The sun gave her cheeks the glow of early-ripening apples. We waited a bit to see who would speak first. Our eyes were exchanging enough heat to broil a porterhouse. I looked at my watch. “I’m through here, and you have the rest of the day off. What say we get something to eat?”

“I’d like that. I seem to have developed quite a craving for dessert. A nice, big sundae, maybe. I just hope it won’t go soft on me if things get hot.”
Her heels made her almost as tall as I was, and I could feel my appetite rising as our gazes met. “Don’t worry, Sugar. I’ll bring the banana, you bring the split.”


(Food Noir was originally published in New Mystery Reader.)