L . O . V . E .

Wesley Bell Jonathan

Description

Magda Ott is a laundress. She manages the second Avenue Laundry on Manhattan's Lower East Side. It is 1977, the lowest ebb of the Lower East Side. From the Laundry to the East river, five long New York blocks, there are now no more than a dozen tenements that are not partially or entirely burned out. This is a dead zone where dealers and whores do their business. Abandoned buildings, cars and people mix. Each day Magda walks to and from work through this dangerous blight. Her own building at the far end of the area is half charred. The difference is that there she has her young son, a treasure among the ruins. The Lower East Side is peopled by the eccentric, the good and the evil. They who converge on the Second Avenue Laundry their bags in tow clamoring for Magda to make them clean. When she came here years ago she'd been on heavy drugs. For her boy she's gone clean of that. Instead she's turned to hash and acid. These days it's pot only. In her druggy time she'd had the tattoos inked in. L . O . V . E . in large letters spread across her knuckles, both hands. Standing at the laundry counter in her tough slut way, customers ask 'what are the periods for.' She says, ' Those aren't periods, honey, they're bullet holes. Better stand back. I'm armed response.'Magda is from Kansas. She's a Mennonite. The dead from home keep her company in this lonely city. For more companionship she picks three or so customers at the laundry to write notes to. She sends these to them folded up in their laundry bags. True, this hasn't worked well so far. Currently she's got three new people to try. Homer Russell, Izzy Thorn and Samson O'Flaherty. She doesn't know it, yet, but they are going to work far too well. Big trouble--terrifying and murderous--is coming for Magda. It has her name on it. To survive she'll be needing her knuckles and L . O . V . E .

Informations

• Publié par: First Edition Design Publishing
• Date de parution: 30 avril 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781506901701
• Langue: English

Extrait

L . O . V . E .
L.O.V.E.
Copyright ©2016 Jonathan Wesley Bell

ISBN 978-1506-901-70-1 EBOOK

February 2016

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217, Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com



ALL R I G H T S R E S E R V E D. No p a r t o f t h i s b oo k pub li ca t i o n m a y b e r e p r o du ce d, s t o r e d i n a r e t r i e v a l s y s t e m , o r t r a n s mit t e d i n a ny f o r m o r by a ny m e a ns ─ e l e c t r o n i c , m e c h a n i c a l , p h o t o - c o p y , r ec o r d i n g, or a ny o t h e r ─ e x ce pt b r i e f qu ot a t i o n i n r e v i e w s , w i t h o ut t h e p r i o r p e r mi ss i on o f t h e a u t h o r or publisher .
1977, Valentine’s Day
New York City, The Lower East Side

Hello I Love You Won’t You Tell Me Your Name
Swaggering down the Second Avenue Laundry aisle the woman belts out “She’s Got Balls,” AC/DC. This is Magda. Coming with arms full of wet clothes, hands dripping, tight jeans tighter than any asshole around. Which she is want to remark.
Magda Ott is one Stone Age Venus. Tits flop free under her faded sweatshirt. “Kansas State Fair Monster Trucks.” Her favorite. It depicts a huge pickup crushing an old Chevy flat. Behind and beyond spreads an ample ass, hers, swinging from side to side. Her second place for wearing to work reads “I’m Proud to be A Slut. How about you?”
She slows down only long enough to convene with her sole, mid--afternoon customer. “Hey there, honey, how ya hanging.”
The young woman nods in reply, both ‘yes’ and ‘no’, dumbstruck as usual by Magda's L .O .V .E. tattoos, a letter for each knuckle of her right and left hands.
Twin L.O.V.E.s. Heart's desire burnt into Magda's flesh in inch--high, faded--red Gothic lettering. Testament to her early years on the Lower East Side.
She’d been inked back in the 60’s. Swallowing the pain with whisky. That was down on St. Marks. A Cuban lady did them still smelling of a Caribe drowning. She had purposefully chosen a strong woman to give them more power. One with a missing arm. From the elbow down. Shark attack.
These tattoos made Magda feel revered. She became a page in her head from great grandma Ott’s pioneer Plautdietsch Bible.
“Why the periods?” people asked, pointing at the heavy red dots that followed each letter.
The reply came in her boom box voice. “Honey, those are my fucks, that is, the first eight of ‘em. I used to keep track until I ran out of knuckles. Anyway they got to be too many and too mean to remember.“
Most times, depending, she’d snarl back, “Shit, those aren’t periods. They’re bullet holes. Better stand back. I’m armed response.”
Onward she comes singing.
But Most Important Of All
Let me tell you
My lady's got balls
She’s Got Balls

Magda liked talking about her tattoos. “Look there, I clench my fists and the knuckles make the letters pop up, go bugs in their own way. My grandma wished I could be a lady. For her sake too bad I couldn’t have been one. Then again she also wanted me to act like a Mennonite, a real fool’s errand.
“When I went in to have them done, no crap like love came to mind. Not at all. The Cuban just went to work having me look the other way until she was done. L.O.V.E. turned out a big surprise, let me tell you. Woman said it was a message she needed to give me. And those big ammo holes she put after each letter? I saw them and whooped ‘fucking far out. That’s great!’ What a dope. I was on acid, but still.”
Magda arrived at the laundry counter, for her a Kansas State Highway Rest Stop beamed down into New York City. A place where customers could briefly pause in the morning hysteria. Rushing in their bags of dirty clothes. Exchanging them for an official looking pink slip.
Try Me
By end of the working day the faces would be washed back by the tide, returning pollutant of drowned faces ashen with depression. Back unless they‘d croaked from heart attacks. Or murder. Or went crazy and got locked up in Bellevue. All of which did happen. People then plopped down their slips, some money, retrieved their bags. Now for sure smelling finer than their underwear.
"Don't tell me. You're the paisley bag." To be heard above clashing washers and dryers Magda yelled the words at this dying youngster. She bellowed because her words were also muffled by the unlit cigarette poked between her lips. Another unfiltered Camel. When she talks The Camel bobbles like an 18 year old’s hard on.
When she did at last take a moment to lightup, smoke blasted thick, a 3--alarm from her nose. From her ears too, so people said.
Magda dumped the arm full of wet clothes on her workbench. She sauntered wench--like. Flat--footed. Her dishwater blonde hair cut so short that people took her for a dyke. Something she wasn’t, although she wouldn’t have cared if she were. Except she liked cock too much, circumcised, middling size, best when kielbasa thick so it didn’t keep slipping out.
Through the green sea, the bad air of the Second Avenue laundry, Magda had arrived. She materialized from the smog of the place, stepping out from the laundry’s fatal humidity. To her it felt like being steamed alive in her own lobster damnation, sweat spicing a long, day--to--day, slow annihilation.
To this she would add the Lower East Side itself from Second Avenue to the East River. Ninety percent burnt out and abandoned by the owners for insurance. Magda called herself a student of this blight, its long blocks of empty tenements, empty streets, empty schools, empty churches, empty people.
Now a new kind of dweller was trickling in. They who didn’t know that the Lower East Side was a killing ground. Didn’t notice its throng of whores pocked over with needle marks and sores. The poverty. The crime. They wanted to call it The East Village. This made Magda snort.
Four monumental decorations graced the Second Avenue Laundry. One pot of plastic daisies placed ceremonially on the counter, covered in shit--brown dust. One nice view through the laundry’s plate glass window smeared by the various excretions of New York City. One heroic panorama of the venerable tombstones clustered about St. Marks in--the–Bouwery Church, an incongruous old beauty lost in place and time.
Most of all there was the fourth, Magda Ott herself, the sometimes famous lady of the laundry.
I Found A Love
This small face before her winced and wobbled a terrified greeting, lank hair cut like Joan of Arc’s. “Readying her for barbeque and stake,” thought Magda. A face featureless except for its pallor. Although not nearly as pale as Magda, the pallid lady of the laundry. Magda mourned most for the girl’s eyes thimble shaped, the horror jackknifed behind them.
"They been waiting good four days. Still want 'em? Another week and you could pay rent."
Because Magda’s voice hadn't a trace of music she let it lumber along low and gangly, letting the language shape itself, keeping as much of Kansas in it as possible, a drawl fifteen hundred miles long, a lifeline to the graves at home. She never sang. Wouldn’t. “Who’d want to sing in this dump? For that matter who would want to hear sing.
Frightened, the kid lost her breath. Hiatus of sickly fumes, hastening the end and therefore a blessing. Her paisley bag sat segregated to one side of the mountain of bags. Magda referred to the spot as The Ward. She was quarantining more and more bags there. An age of plague descended upon them. One thing Magda knew was the Bible, if in Plautdietsch.
Tired, sagging, she felt full to her mouth of the Mennonite past that made her. The stories she grew up on. The life of Menno. Persecutions, tortures, massacres-- the bad Mennonite times in Holland. The bad Mennonite times in Germany. And worst of all the bad Mennonite times in the Ukraine from which they fled to Kansas less than a hundred years ago.
More hard times there to survive, until the miracle wheat from the turkey red seeds they brought with them came in. Magda couldn’t help being proud of it all, even if she did say it was bullshit.
Today she had a note for each of the three chosen bags, three identical messages. Otherwise, her day to confront too dull to bear. Through the years she'd experimented with her selection of recipients, those she sent the notes to. In this she’d found only some fleeting success.
People were suspicious of them. They were frightened by them. And Magda was picky about whom they went to. She’d not once been tempted with this poor creature standing in front of her. Magda's hand written notes went out to the sad and searching. Not to the weak and dying.
With Russell, Thorn and O'Flaherty, yes. Her chosen tribe of the moment. She knew them only by their last names as scrawled on the pink slips.
This passage of notes through the laundry bags kept her heart alive, she said so secretly and gave her mocking grin. No other future she could think of in doing laundry in this city, no other hope -- clean clothes didn't bring you closer to God, she said, not in New York City. Especially since he didn’t exist. Thinking this she slapped her thigh hard enough to startle this kid silly while roaring out her laugh.
Say Hey Good Lookin’
Homer Russell: Basil's underwear was no fortune cookie. Homer sniffed the crotch to be certain. The note waved at Homer. An erotic Warhol record cover for the Stones. Primed to slurp a lick off the old man. No matter, another message had come back from the Laundry, sent by the laundress. He sat down on the pile of clean clothes. Read the note through a second time to be certain. "Oh dear, how pathetic," he cooed. "It's just like Damon Runyon."
Finding another note in the laundry bag --and what a note! -- made Homer pat his tummy in delight. Why, he asked, had Hollywood in its golden age failed to imagine a movie about a laundry on Manhattan's Lower East Side? One run by a blowzy, loud and tattooed woman who on the sly sent ou