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The Poisoned Grapevine
by
Harry Buschman
From The Westlake Village Collection.
When you write for a newspaper, even one as disreputable as "The Guardian,"
you write when you're told to, not when you want to. You cover stories.
Break-ins, (few) Real Estate sales, (even fewer) births and deaths, (more of the
latter than the former). These mundane signposts along life's highway are the
bread and butter of the suburban newspaper man.
In my final sweet November years I often think how nice it would be to write
a work of lasting literary merit. A timeless work with full narrative
expression, scintillating dialogue spoken by fascinating characters caught up in
a
riveting story of universal appeal. The thought usually pops into my head when
things are slow down at the Guardian. I start making notes and planning a story
line. That is about as far as I get; it seems to be a signal for something to
happen.
The phone will ring. Lucas will answer it and say, "Your kidding! Drove off
in the Mercedes, huh? Bet'cha Danny had a shit hemorrhage, huh?" Then he'll
turn to me and say, "Here, it's for you." At that point the literary world must
go back and sit in the corner. It is a newspaper after all, even if it's only
published twice a month. I must follow each fading, fetid scent like an
arthritic old bird dog, balance the facts on the scales of propriety, and decide
whether or not to tell the good folks of Westlake Village why Marcy Spivak
packed
her bags and drove off in Danny's Mercedes.
Such news should not be unexpected to anyone who knew the Spivaks. It is news
their neighbors will savor in the dark places of their minds. We all knew it
would come someday -- and although if asked, we would deny it ... we even
hoped it might come. Now that it has come we want to know why it came ... who
lit
the fuse? I'm not suggesting the Guardian is a tabloid or an organ of smut and
adultery, but our ears are always open for a good juicy story. It is a well
known fact in the newspaper business that advertising revenues increase in
direct ratio to the amount of scandal contained in its pages.
We don't print gossip, particularly the unsubstantiated gossip for which
Aggie Rindepest is notorious. That way lies litigation. Though not alone, she is
our chief contributor to the "dirt" file, as we call it. She insists her
information is 'gospel' not 'gossip'. Her inquisitive nose, laser like eyes and
sensitive ears are at work everywhere, at the supermarket, behind the whispering
couple in the church pew ahead and at her observation station behind the
see-through curtain of her living room window. Even her dog is a part of her
information gathering network, he is walked much more than he needs to be.
Late every afternoon, with a scotch and water by her side she laboriously
dials the Guardian and reports her findings.
"Hullo! Who'm I talkin to?" It will be Stacey, Lucas or me. If it's not me,
it soon will be. I'll be given the call because I seem to have a knack with
ladies like Aggie Rindepest.
Lucas took this call ...
"There wuz a police car outside the Spivak's all afternoon. I seen it first
around 2 o'clock when I passed by the livin' room winda, just happened to look
out, y'know? I looked later and it wuz still there."
"How much later Aggie?"
"Oh, I guess around ten after two."
"O.K., Aggie thanks for the tip."
"Wait! I ain't done yet!"
"Well, I'm on my way out right now, Aggie. Why don't you talk to Harry
Buschman?"
This is what Aggie was hoping for. I'm a good listener and she will tell me
in exquisite detail, not only what she has seen and heard but her personal
interpretation of the evidence as well.
"The way things are goin' with those two, I wouldn't be s'prised if she walks
out on him."
Then she'll go on --"I tell you they have a very unfriendly dog, I can't get
near to that fence lessen he barks his head off."
And on --"No decent Christian woman wears black underwear. I'll tell you that
right now."
Now, that's the kind of news I'm looking for! "Imagine that, Aggie. How'd you
know they're black?"
"First off, when a decent woman hangs her wash out she puts her inamit
apparel inside the sheets. But, oh no! not Marcy Spivak, she just hangs it out
there
... like, er ... well like ... here it is come on in an get me!"
Aggie lives diagonally across the street from the Spivaks, and their life
style differs greatly from hers. She watches them constantly. She would watch
closely in any case but Marcy is a rather young 44 while Danny Spivak looks ten
years older than his 50. The discrepancy is not lost on Aggie. She senses an
impending crisis.
"Anything new from Aggie?" Stacey asked me.
"Well, I guess Marcy's left town, and I learned a few intimate details." I
brought my 'dirt file' up to date, then I turned and stared at Stacey. "Where do
you hang your underwear up to dry?"
"I don't, my Mom's got a dryer. Why, what's that got to do with Marcy?"
"Well, Aggie says Marcy wears black underwear and she doesn't hide it inside
the sheets when she hangs it out to dry."
Stacey chewed on that choice bit of information along with her bubble gum for
a while. She was on the point of speaking to me a couple of times but held
her tongue. Finally she seemed to come to some kind of conclusion.
"Y'know, I don't know who's worse ... you or Aggie! What difference does it
make where she hangs her underwear ... and why do have to write that rubbish
down in your dirty 'dirt' book? The paper's never gonna print that stuff in
the first place."
"All great journalists keep notes, Stacey. A little piece of information like
that, however small, might be a key in a chain of documentation ... the
paper might need that in the future." My argument sounded weak, even to me, so I
added, "Also I plan on writing a book you know."
She shook her head and mumbled, "Yeah I heard," then went back to her word
processor, typing as though she had a personal grudge against the keys. Finally,
with the natural curiosity that all women are born with, regardless of age,
she turned to me again.
"Where'd she take off to in the Mercedes?'
"I dunno Stacey, Aggie wasn't able to chase her on foot. By the way there was
a police car there earlier, too."
She paused in her typing with her two index fingers poised over the keys.
"Neat-O, that's more like it! Looks like splitsville, huh? ... and all because
she didn't hide her underwear inside the sheets."
Her eight other fingers suddenly sprang to life and her typing went from
twenty to ninety words per minute. Now that her mind was occupied her fingers
were
unchained -- Vladimir Horowitz would have been impressed.
Stacey has been engaged to Murray Feldman going on two years. Murray is a
china buyer for Cosmo Imports and I suspect Stacey had first class visions of
spending her summers on the Mediterranean and wintering at Biarritz. Instead,
Murray goes tourist class to places like Korea, the East Indies and Calcutta. In
addition, Murray cannot live more than five miles from his mother while Stacey
must live as close to Bloomingdales as she can get. Their romance is stormy
at times. She has bad days, and when she does, it can be dangerous to rub her
the wrong way, so to speak.
Occasionally a juicy tidbit will come in from Aggie Rindepest concerning
Stacey. At such times Lucas and I must be very careful to keep the intelligence
from her while at the same time discussing it on the q.t. between ourselves
without her hearing.
"I wuz out walkin' my dog, and they wuz out there in the car together. Must'a
been 11:30. The winders were so steamed up I couldn't see in."
"Gee, Aggie, if you couldn't see in how did you know they were in there?"
"Oh I ain't been born yesterday, I know'd what wuz goin' on. So'd my dog ...
he commenced to growl and I wuz afraid he'd start to bark."
Aggie has also spotted them in the back row of the movies when she went to
see "Titanic" -- and in the liquor store buying champagne -- and checking out
mattresses in "Sleepy's." She seems to catch everyone at the worst possible
moment.
Out of professional consideration for a co-worker, these tidbits concerning
Stacey do not go into the 'dirt' file. However, this does not stop Lucas and me
from discussing them in detail. Like two adolescent schoolboys we savor the
almost forgotten menu of young love. As you might suspect, it isn't long before
we begin to make fools of ourselves ...
"Do you think they -- er --?"
"How the hell do I know! -- Wouldn't s'prise me."
"Aggie's told me a few things about you, y'know."
"What kinda things?"
"Never mind."
"Oh Yeah! Well, she's got her eye on you too y'know."
"ME!!"
"Yes you."
Well, that put an end to it! Lucas dragged his jumbo shredder over to the
locked file cabinet where we keep the 'dirt' file.
"Stace! -- Guess what?"
"Now what," she answered abstractedly.
"We're shredding the 'dirt' file!"
It marked the beginning of a new day at the Guardian. With the sticky
fingered threat of slander hanging over all of us, we decided to go legitimate.
Now
our ears are no longer open to calumny and idle surmise. It has left our
'reliable sources' high and dry, however, and the most vocal among them is Aggie
Rindepest. She has found herself talking into a dial tone when we hang up on
her.
Maybe now I'll get that book written after all.
©Harry Buschman 1999
(1670)
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