Farmer Bob

T H E

C U P

A N D

S A U C E R

A C T I O N

N E W S

Previously:

1. The Department of Regulated Industries vs. Everything good and decent in the world. Plus: how Jill overcame a phobia (hint: it was by passing out.)
2. In which Jill gets in trouble with a temporary staffing service. PLUS: Chico gets hired. ALSO: Paintings of the walking dead.
3. A Season of Baby Ashley
4. Terminal Fatigue
5. Sexxxy
6. Andee is a Genius
7. The Midwest Food Expo, Part 1
8. The Midwest Food Expo, Part 2

Chico was really finding his voice as an artist. There was something fresh and exciting about his approach to zombie portraiture, and his agent, Claudio Fantasma, was starting to book some large gallery shows. Claudio Fantasma had a spotty record as an artist’s agent, but he had a couple of redeeming qualities: He represented Chico for no money, and his credit history was sparkling-clean. Claudio Fantasma also did not exist.

A few years ago, Chico had acquired the Social Security Number of a grocer named Claudio Fantasma who had died in 1954. He applied for, and received, three bank credit cards in Claudio Fantasma’s name, and for about a month, Chico’s life was easier.

Then, two things happened: credit card bills arrived, and Chico realized how hard it was to find other unused Social Security numbers. He had been really lucky to find Claudio Fantasma’s. Because of the bureaucratic difficulty of establishing a new false identity, Chico realized that he would have to preserve Claudio Fantasma’s immaculate credit history, and he started working two jobs in order to pay down the credit card balances.

“Credit fraud sure is hard work,” said Chico one night after working his second job. As the referee at Skateland, he was the guy who skates in the middle of the rink and blows a whistle at kids who race around without the decorum befitting a roller skating rink.

He had to wear a referee’s uniform, and he always came home with green-glowing skin, having been drenched with the chemoluminescent liquid inside the cheap glow sticks they sold at the concession stand. For some reason, survivalist stores and skating rinks make the biggest institutional purchases of glow sticks.

It was all worth it, as far as Chico was concerned. He never missed a credit card payment, and Claudio Fantasma had an unbelievably good credit score. The junk mail sent to Claudio Fantasma’s mail-drop was increasingly high-tone. “Look,” Chico would say, waving his junk mail. “BMW will give Claudio Fantasma a Bose Wave radio just for test-driving a Five-Series.”

It had been about half a year since Chico came to work at the Cup and Saucer, and he’d never learned how to change out the CO₂. Whenever the Coke got flat, he’d just keep serving it until his shift was over and pretend not to hear customer complaints. So I finally took him down to the basement to show him how to swap out the tanks.

The City Market is 150 years old, give or take, and the surrounding buildings date back to the 19th century. The basement under the 400 block of Delaware Street was the length of two buildings. It was dark and creepy with a dirt floor, and piled up with decades of junk. “Crap,” I said, flipping a switch. “The bulbs are all out.”

“No problem, no problem!” said Chico, pulling two glow sticks out of his front pocket. He snapped them both in his hands, a little too hard: they broke open, splashing his face and arms with chemoluminescent liquid. “Dammit!” he yelled.

Chico had stolen an entire case of glow sticks from his night job, and now he absolutely lived for the unilluminated moments when he could whip one out. Unfortunately, they were of the cheapest Pacific Rim manufacture, and he was always accidentally breaking them open and splashing himself. He had been glowing in the dark for a couple of weeks. “It’s like dating a human black-light painting,” said Andee. Which, in this particular subterranean circumstance, was actually okay. We crossed the length of the basement by soft green glow of Chico’s arms and head.

“Wow!” he said, distracted by dust-covered piles of ancient furniture, wooden crates, storage boxes, and stacks of wooden pallets. “Look at all this old junk!” He wandered away from the tank I was changing, leaving me in the dark. From across the dark room, he was a disembodied glowing head floating above two glowing arms.

“Chico, could you please come shine your head on this gauge for just a second?” I said.

He’d pulled a tarp off a stack of paintings. “Hey,” he said. “Whose paintings are these? They’re really good!”

I walked toward Chico’s floating head. The paintings included urban landscapes, subtly executed portraits, and a still-life. “Wow,” he said. “I need to get a better look at these.” I heard a snap, a splash, and Chico said, “Dammit!” His shoes began glowing, but now we could see the canvases better. They were acrylic paintings, and they were all signed by Jill Erickson.

“This can’t be right,” I said.

“Weird. I had no idea Jill was a painter,” said Chico.

I managed to finish changing the CO₂ and we headed back upstairs, Chico carrying the stack of Jill’s paintings in his arms. It was always strange encountering evidence that Jill enjoyed a rich inner life. For instance: her daughter, who had just turned one year old, was inexplicably happy and well-adjusted, as though Jill might actually be a good mom.

But these flashes of Jill’s apparent depth always rubbed immediately against her shallow exterior, and when we got back to the bar with her paintings, she was drinking a martini to celebrate the acquisition of her two 30-day chips from two separate Alcoholics Anonymous groups.

“This ought to make Jen furious,” she said. Here’s what happened: Jen had gotten annoyed at Jill one afternoon for double-parking on Fifth street and blocking Jen’s car for six hours. Jen had called Jill a lush, prompting Jill to dash the remains of a mimosa in Jen’s face, Jen retaliating by dousing Jill with Pabst. Being called a lush really burned Jill up, so for a month afterward, she pretended to quit drinking with two separate AA groups, in order to obtain two thirty-day chips — indisputably official certification that she wasn’t a drunk.

She held them up so Andee could see them. “It’s the equivalent of sixty days!” she said, and dropped them in her martini.

“Hey, Jill,” said Chico. “We found some awesome paintings in the basement.”

Jill looked at the canvases in Chico’s arms, “Oh, I remember those,” she said. She explained that they’d been executed as one of several failed New Year’s resolutions back in 1997. Jill had heard somewhere that the first 500 paintings any artist makes are “just practice,” and she resolved get those 500 out of the way in 1997 so that she could get started on the real paintings. She fell short by about 488 paintings, distracted mainly by opening the Cup and Saucer on Delaware Street, which was, like the AA chips, a complete overreaction to something that Jen had said.

“I thought I’d do painting number 501 in January, 1998,” she said. It was going to be a magnificent stallion rearing back against an orange sunset. Apparently, the urban landscapes, sensitive portraits of friends and delicate figure studies were her idea of preparation for the serious business of unicorn paintings, skeletons playing poker, and matadors on black velvet. Her intended masterpiece would have been a study from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, only instead of the usual Biblical figures, it would have featured Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Elvis Presley, James Dean, and Marlon Brando.

This is in accordance with her theory about art — Jill said that you could tell who the great artists were by the paintings that substituted dead sex symbols for the original figures. Her Sistine Chapel study would also have incorporated, she said, “some kind of neon tubing.” It was going to be rendered with airbrush.

“Jill, can I show your paintings to my agent?” asked Chico. She made a dismissive “whatevs” gesture, meanwhile waggling her empty martini glass at Andee, rattling the two thirty-day chips inside. “Clean and sober is thirsty over here,” she said. “Hit me again. More olives.”

“Comin’ right up,” said Andee. She was flush with the acclaim she’d received for a recent paper on Fibonacci sequences, and feeling magnanimous.

A guy who had been reading the Business section at the bar said, “Is that woman drinking to celebrate her thirty-day chip from Alcoholics Anonymous?”

“Sure,” said Andee. “It’s a milestone!”

“And — I’m sorry, but don’t you have any qualms about that?”

Andee said, “As long as the paychecks keep coming, I’ll even make her daiquiris in the blender.” Blender drinks are a pain in the ass, and Andee was particularly bad at making them — generally, about five minutes after a table ordered a round of strawberry daiquiris, Andee and the bar looked like a scene from a Takashi Miike film.

“You know what I think?” the guy said. “I think that’s disgusting. It’s immoral, and you know what you are? You’re an enabler.” He turned to Jill. “And you’re no better than she is — I honestly can’t believe you’d trick two groups of recovering alcoholics like that. Y’know what? If I wasn’t meeting somebody here, I would get up and leave, and I’d never come back. From now on, I’ll just conduct my business elsewhere.”

“What’s your name?” Andee Asked.

“Clive Criswell,” he said.

“What exactly is your business, Clive?”

“I’m a, uh — I sell merchandise. On eBay.”

“What do you sell?”

“I move, uh, used merchandise… oh, hang on. My appointment is here.”

A shifty homeless guy holding a hammer walked in. Clive stood up and walked over to him. After a few furtive negotiations, he handed the homeless guy a wad of cash, and received a car stereo with speaker wire still dangling from the leads.

“Thanks!” Clive said.

“No, thank you,” said the homeless guy. “Now I’m going to buy some crack!” He turned and walked out.

“So let me get this straight,” said Jill, gesturing splashily with her second martini. “After lecturing me about my quote-unquote immoral recovery program, it turns out that you buy stolen car stereos from crackheads, and then sell them for a profit on eBay.”

“………………………………………….mmmmmmmmmaybe…,” said Clive.

“So what margin are you looking at, exactly?” said Jill. She was all business.

“HEY!” shouted Chico. “That’s my car stereo!” He was pretty outraged, because although he’d paid for it via the credit card of a stolen identity, he’d worked hard to pay the bill in a timely manner.

“No, no,” said Clive. “It’s my like-new refurbished Panasonic CQ-C8303, which I bought from a totally reputable dealer in used electronics. And I can offer it cheaply on the internet by eliminating the middle-man.”

“You are the middle-man,” said Andee.

Chico, meanwhile, had dug a microphone stand out of the beer vault, which he was now brandishing as an unwieldy blunt instrument. He took two steps toward Clive, intending to smash him across the head with the stand’s base, and Clive turned and ran out the door.

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