Yellow Mama E zine

Mickey and Mickey

 

by Dale Scherfling

 

         Calling it a dive would've been flattery. Three doors down from the Roxy Burlesque on Short Vincent Street in Cleveland, where the steam was neon-red and polite people never went. A reporter's paradise. My kind of place.

         But that came later.

         The evening started uptown, civilized, on the Allen Douglas radio show—one of those studio setups where the microphones looked like chrome angels and everyone pretended literature mattered more than the lunch special at Stouffer's. Douglas had billed it as a meeting of minds: Frederic Morton, author of The Rothschilds, all Old World gravitas and footnotes; Mickey Spillane, who'd sold more books than God had commandments; and me, the local newspaper writer who covered crime scenes and city council meetings with equal distaste.

        Douglas introduced us with the kind of reverence usually reserved for visiting dignitaries. "Two eminent authors and a prominent local newspaper writer."

        Spillane barked a laugh—harsh, genuine, the sound of a man who'd heard every variety of bullshit and catalogued it for later use. He leaned into the microphone, his trench coat draped over the chair like it was part of his skeleton.

       "No," he said. "There's one author here—and two writers." He jabbed a thumb at Morton. "An author's a scholar who writes for other scholars. Footnotes and German nouns. Very important people reading very important things." Then he gestured to me, then himself. "Dale and I write for money. But Dale gets his in a paycheck. I get royalties and movie rights and just happen to make the most."

        Morton smiled, thin as a cancelled check, and the conversation lurched forward into the swamp of Literary Significance. I half-listened, the way you do when you're trying to decide if you'll need a drink after or during. Spillane answered questions like he was dictating sentences to a court stenographer—short, brutal, exact. Morton performed. I filled space.

        Afterward, Morton shook hands and disappeared into whatever genteel cocktail party awaited men who wrote about Austrian banking dynasties. Spillane turned to me, eyes flat as a gun barrel.

        "Wanna drink?" I asked.

        "Is the Pope Catholic?"

        "Good. I know a place."

***

         The cab smelled like wet wool and desperation. I gave the driver the address on Short Vincent, and we rode in silence, the city scrolling past in streaks of light and grime. Mickey studied the passing scenery with interest and nodded appreciation as we rolled through the neighborhood.

         Short Vincent was Cleveland's id made flesh—strip joints, jazz dives, bars where the health inspector took bribes in the alley. The Roxy Burlesque sat there like a queen on a stained throne, its neon sign flickering promises it had no intention of keeping. Three doors down was our destination: a place with no name on the door, just a street number peeling off in brass flakes.

         Inside, the air was thick enough to chew. Cigarette smoke, cheap perfume, the ghost of spilled beer from 1947. A jukebox hammered out something with too much brass and not enough mercy. The bartender—bald, suspicious, built like a retired enforcer—looked up when we walked in, then looked away just as fast. Spillane had that effect.

         "Bourbon," Spillane said, dropping onto a stool. "Two."

         He didn't ask what I wanted. I didn't correct him.

         "First things first," I said, sliding off my stool. "Where's the can?"

         The barkeep pointed toward a curtain in the back, pulling on his cigarette. I pushed through, jukebox rattling my teeth, and picked the wrong door. The Kotex machine should've been a clue, but by then I was committed. Sometimes you just plant your foot against the door and let nature take its course. Philosophy can wait.

         When I got back, two glasses sat on the bar, amber and anonymous. He slid one my way without looking.

        "Put your money away, writer. Drinks are on me."

        Before I could protest—or pretend to—the lights dimmed. The jukebox choked mid-note and died. A woman took the stage.

        She had legs that went all the way up and sequins that caught the light like broken glass. Confidence for days. The kind of woman who'd seen every trick in the book and invented a few more. She grabbed the microphone, and when she spoke, her voice was honey poured over gravel.

       "Good evening, boys." She let it hang there, every syllable a promise. "I'm Mickey Spillane. And this one's for the Coast Guard!"

        I almost spit my drink. I turned to look at Spillane—the real Spillane, standing next to me in his fedora and thousand-yard stare. He didn't blink. Didn't smirk. Just watched her, foot propped on the rail, like a man who'd been cataloguing human absurdity since the day he learned to read.

        She danced. Not the mechanical grind-and-hustle you got at the uptown places, but something with rhythm, like she'd found the beat somewhere deep and personal. The sequins threw light around the room like shrapnel. When she was done, the applause was genuine—scattered, drunken, but genuine.

       I waved her over. She came down off the stage, still carrying that electric charge performers get when they've nailed it. Up close, she was younger than I'd thought, and older. Glitter clung to her collarbone. Her eyes were sharp.

       "Mickey Spillane," I said, motioning between them, "meet Mickey Spillane."

         She looked up at him—way up; Spillane was tall in the way that made doorways nervous—and her face lit up with something pure and unguarded.

        "Hey!" she said, like she'd just won a radio contest. "We got the same name!"

I swear to God, she meant it.

       Spillane gave her a single nod. The kind of nod that said he'd heard everything—twice—and filed it alphabetically under "Strange But True." His face didn't move. Hers didn't stop. She launched into a story about how she'd picked the name off a paperback cover because it sounded tough and glamorous, and wasn't it funny how the world worked, and did he want to buy her a drink?

         He did. Bourbon, same as ours. She talked; he listened. I stayed quiet, watching the room and nursing my glass. This was the kind of scene you didn't interrupt. The jukebox fired back up—something slow and mournful. A couple of sailors wandered in, loud and optimistic. The bartender wiped down glasses that would never be clean.

I needed another leak. The drinks were catching up.

        When I came back—this time through the right door—both stools were empty.

Spillane's glass was drained, the ice melted into nothing. Her seat still carried warmth, a ghost of her perfume. A fresh bourbon waited in front of my stool, sweating cold, beads running down the glass like it had somewhere to be.

        I looked at the bartender. He shrugged.

        "She left?" I asked.

        "Both of 'em. Together. Five minutes ago."

         I sat down and stared at the drink. From him, from her, or maybe from the bartender—I never found out. It didn't matter. The story was over, or it was just beginning, and either way, I'd missed the final chapter.

***

        I still think about that night. The Kotex machine. Two Mickeys. The woman with the legs and the sequins and the absolute conviction that coincidence was magic. Spillane with his trench coat and his silence, handing out nods like papal blessings.

Maybe they went somewhere. Maybe they didn't. Maybe he walked her to a cab and tipped his hat. Maybe she showed him the rooftop where she practiced her routines. Maybe they argued about the Oxford comma over eggs at an all-night diner. Or maybe—and this is what I choose to believe—they just walked, two strangers with the same name, until the city swallowed them and they became part of the mythology of Short Vincent Street.

       But that's the deal with bar stories. They never end clean. Somebody always gets up to piss, and when they come back, the world's rearranged itself. The jukebox is playing a different song. The bartender's forgotten your name. And the people who mattered are gone, leaving nothing but a cold beer and the memory of sequins catching light.

I finished my drink. I left a tip. I walked back out into the neon and the rain, back toward the newspaper office where deadlines waited and nobody cared about the strange small moments that make up a life.

        The Roxy's sign was still flickering when I passed. Somewhere in the city, two people named Mickey Spillane were doing whatever people do when coincidence runs out of script. And somewhere else, I was already turning it into a story, because that's what writers do. We take the truth, dress it up in a trench coat, and send it out into the world to fend for itself.

         This one's for the Coast Guard.

​

          Dale Scherfling is a newspaper veteran of 30 years, serving as a sportswriter, columnist, editor, and photographer and a retired Navy journalist and photographer. His work has appeared in Third Act Magazine, Does It Have Pockets Magazine, Lost Blonde Literary, All Hands Magazine, Pacific Crossroads, Daily Californian, Naval Aviation Magazine, Propeller Magazine, and Buckeye Guard Magazine. He is the recipient of three U.S. Army Front Page Journalism Awards. He is also a college lecturer and photography and music instructor.

​

      Hillary Lyon founded and for 20 years acted as senior editor for the independent poetry publisher, Subsynchronous Press. Her horror, speculative fiction, and crime short stories, drabbles, and poems have appeared in more than 150 publications. She's an SFPA Rhysling Award nominated poet. Hillary is also the art director for Black Petals.