Call Me Charles
by Robert Walton
Mark Cruz looked glumly at his glass of red wine. “I’ve had parasites before, but never any that talked back to me.”
I whispered to his inner ear, “Please don’t refer to me as a ‘parasite.’ The word has negative connotations.”
“What shall I call you, then?”
“You may call me Charles. Consider me an internal valet.”
“Well, Charles, can I fire you?”
“I require two weeks’ notice.”
Mark’s wide shoulders slumped. “Consider it given.”
“Right. Until then, or until I take up a new position, would you mind not drinking?”
Mark considered his glass: “You’re a teetotaler?”
“Not at all. That’s just a wretched vintage, not even in shouting distance of ordinaire.”
“You don’t like my wine?”
“You have execrable taste. I can suggest suitable labels, if you wish.”
“Sure,” Mark sighed, “why not?” He put down his glass and rose.
I surveyed a cluttered, New York street scene of taxicabs and harried pedestrians through Mark’s eyes. “Where are we going?”
“Nowhere in particular. Why do you care?”
“I have some knowledge of the Village. Please turn right at the next corner.”
“What is this?” Mark complained, “Driving Miss Daisy?”
“You’re not Jewish.”
“And you’re not Black.”
“You couldn’t know that,” I snapped, “but you’re right. I’m multicolored, really quite dashing.”
“This corner?” Mark stopped. “Right, you said?”
“Yes.”
“What’s down this street?”
“One of my favorite shops.”
“How does a para...” — Mark paused — “an internal valet have favorite shops?”
“I traveled widely in New York with previous companions.” I considered how much to tell him. “My last host, though quite happy with our partnership, had foreign obligations. When she caught a plane to Kathmandu, I preferred to stay here.”
“And now you’re my passenger. By the way, where are you? You sound like you’re riding inside my ear.”
“Not possible. I’m larger than you think and am currently wrapped around your—”
“Stop!” He covered his eyes with his hands. “Don’t tell me!”
“Your choice.”
He nodded, “Definitely don’t tell me!”
“You won’t notice me, I assure you... until I depart.”
“Hey!” his eyes shot open. “This doesn’t end like Sigourney Weaver and the alien, does it?”
“Not at all.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely,” I paused, “you provide me with locomotion and concealment, not nourishment.”
“You’re an outer space alien?”
“Yes.”
“Plotting an invasion?”
“No. I’m more of a tourist.”
“A tourist?”
“An extraterrestrial tourist.” I reached for a simple enough explanation for my presence. “I wish to explore your curious world without disturbing the local culture and habits.”
Mark scratched his head, possibly hoping to dislodge me. “I provide transportation and camouflage?”
“Yes.”
“What do I get out of it?”
“Beyond erudition?”
“Come again?”
I sighed: “I’ll provide an ample fee in the negotiable currency of your choice.”
“How ample?”
“Would twenty thousand dollars recompense you adequately for the next two weeks of cohabitation?”
“Whoa!” He stopped walking. “You can get twenty thousand bucks?”
“Easily.”
“How?”
“After we visit the shop ahead, I’ll tell you where to pick up my Citi-bank ATM card. Would two thousand dollars be an adequate retainer?”
Mark raised an eyebrow. “Four would be better.”
“Fine,” I sniffed, “because that’s the daily limit on the card.”
“How about if we stop at the ATM first?”
“The shop I wish to visit is on the way.”
We strolled up MacDougal Street, passing beneath red and white striped awnings. Graceful lindens shaded us and dappled the sidewalk with a chiaroscuro of leaf shapes. I began to relax, monitoring Mark’s sensory input as I did so.
Freshly baked bagels, an unmistakable aroma, wafted from a nearby doorway. Mark barely noticed. It surprises me still how unaware most humans are of their own senses. Perhaps humans don’t have the capacity to process all the data they receive?
“Hey,” he intruded, “is this the place?” He had halted at the door of In Vino Veritas, a most reputable Village wine shop.
I sighed, “It is.”
“Wow, it looks expensive!”
“It is.” This new host will become acceptable only if he learns to keep his mouth shut. “Anything we purchase will accrue to my account.”
“On top of the twenty thousand?”
“On top of the twenty thousand.”
“Well, let’s go on in!”
Two rows of wooden wine cases, stacked three high, formed an aisle leading to the shop’s interior. Only the top boxes were open. Elegant bottles — Burgundies, Bordeaux, Médocs, Pomerols, Champagnes — nestled and gleamed in golden packing straw.
“I’m Scott Libby, manager and chief sommelier.” A man in a dark blue suit who looked very much like Dick Cheney glided up to me. “May I be of assistance, sir?”
Time to assert temporary control over my host. “Yes, please,” I answered.
Mark’s eyes bulged in surprise and his mouth made gasping motions as he tried to speak but failed.
Libby squinted warily. “Are you well, sir?”
“Perfectly.” I smiled... and so did Mark.
“What may I offer today?”
“I need several bottles for a dinner party later, but I understand you possess some true treasures. Might I view them?”
“Of course.” The manager smiled. “Come this way.”
Still in temporary control of Mark, I followed Libby to a thick glass and metal door. He produced keys, unlocked it and ushered me into a climate-controlled room. Dark bottles rested on padded shelves. Above these were several locked cabinets, each containing one bottle of wine. He flicked his hand and overhead lights suddenly illuminated them.
“Ah.” I made Mark breathe in appreciatively. “Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, marvelous!”
“Our price is nineteen thousand dollars, including delivery and — if the wine is to be consumed — expert de-corking.”
“A bargain!” I exclaimed.
“Precisely.” Libby motioned to the case on his right. “And here we have an Egon Müller Scharzhofberger Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese for only fourteen thousand dollars.”
“With the appropriate cheeses, an unmatched experience!”
“Exactly!” Libby enthused.
A deafening crash — glass shattering, metal twisting — staggered us, and the building shivered. The front of the shop had been replaced by the dented front end of a red Chevrolet Tahoe. Doors heaved open and six figures dressed in black with balaclavas pulled low, leapt through the gaping window.
“Smash and grab!” shouted Mark, again able to speak due to my inadvertent release of control.
“What did you say?” I queried.
“It’s a heist!”
“They are thieves?”
“What else?”
A not at all displeasing aroma of wine swept over us. The Tahoe had crushed several cases before it came to a halt. “What a pity!” I muttered.
Mark’s eyebrows shot up. “What are you talking about?”
“Those broken cases of wine are Château Mouton Rothschild 2019, unless I miss my guess.”
“Expensive?”
“Six hundred dollars a bottle, at least.”
Two of the men in black seized us by our shoulders. “Chill!” snarled the one on the left. “Nobody needs to get hurt here.”
The leader of the robbers accosted Libby. “You’ve got the keys. Let’s have the good stuff.”
“But, sir—”
The robber produced a slender knife, placing its gleaming tip in Libby’s left nostril. “Unless you’d like to argue with me.”
“Not at all, sir.”
Libby turned to the cabinet housing the Romanée-Conti. The other three robbers busied themselves heaving cases of wine into the back of the Tahoe. The gang leader produced a padded rucksack with several bottle-sized sleeves. “Right in here, bozo.”
Libby reverently tucked the Romanée-Conti into the rucksack, followed by two bottles of the Trockenbeerenauslese, and a bottle of Domaine Dujac 2019 Puligny-Montrachet Les Folâtières Premier Cru. “There, sir,” he breathed out heavily. “You have our greatest treasures.”
“What about that one?” The robber pointed to a dusty cabinet at floor level.
Libby’s eyes went wide. “That’s a disused cabinet, sir. It’s empty.”
“Well, let’s just check it anyway, shall we?”
“Please, sir.” Sweat sprang out on the manager’s forehead. “The contents of this cabinet are not remotely marketable.”
“You’d be surprised what I can sell. Open it.”
Libby swallowed.
The robber twisted his blade so it caught the light. “Go ahead.”
The manager bent, fumbled with his keys, and finally pulled the cabinet’s door open.
“Look what we have here!” the robber crowed. “Two bottles of 2005 Domaine Leroy Musigny Grand Cru. Eighty grand a bottle, no?”
Libby did not reply.
“My client will give me that price and maybe a bonus.”
The manager raised his hands in protest. “These bottles are privately owned and stored here as favor to our best customer. I can’t let you take them.”
“Well, that’s unfortunate.” The robber again raised his knife to Libby’s face.
“We should intervene,” I murmured to Mark.
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“I do have means of self-defense,” I murmured.
“Any time you’re ready.”
“I thought I’d alert you.”
“Why?”
I hesitated. “you may feel a twinge when I activate my proboscises.”
“Proboscises?”
“Activating!” Two needles, each attached to a monomolecular filament, fired from the fatty flesh above Mark’s hips. He screamed and fell forward on one knee. Each needle lodged in a black-suited robber and administered a paralyzing charge of electricity.
The robber chief whirled in surprise and took a step toward Mark.
Mark, not as disabled as he appeared, waited for the robber to close and then thrust up hard with his right fist, catching the fellow beneath his chin, snapping his head back. The villain toppled to the floor unconscious.
“Well struck, Mark!” I exulted.
Sirens sounded in the distance. The remaining robbers clambered into the Tahoe, slammed it into reverse and exited the wine shop in a shower of glass.
* * *
A line of police cars, lights blinking, nosed at the wineshop like piglets nudging a sow. Mark watched crime scene officers gather inscrutable bits of evidence. He muttered, “I think we can go now.”
“Yes, you’ve given your statement and left your contact information. We can be about our business.”
“Hey,” he grumbled, “those proboscises of yours really hurt!”
“Don’t be a baby.”
“You’re not the one with extra holes in your sides.”
“Hardly larger than hypodermic punctures!”
“Just don’t do it again,” he warned, “or my price goes up, way up.”
“Needs must.”
His ensuing silence shouted disgruntlement. I decided to change the subject. “At least we now possess several most acceptable wines, a Château Lafite Rothschild 2020, a Louis Latour 2018 Corton-Charlemagne, Grand Cru, and a Dom Pérignon Champagne cuvé vintage rosé 2008.”
“Yeah, for free, sort of.” Mark brightened. “That dude Libby was pretty grateful that we stopped those wine-muggers.”
“As he should be.”
“It didn’t hurt that the cops caught the other three before they got to a bridge.” Mark took a deep and satisfied breath. “I’ve got to admit that we make a pretty good team, Charles.”
“A fortuitous blending of capabilities indeed.”
He smiled. “I could get used to drinking good wine.”
I took in our location through his eyes and mused, “I’m also interested in cheeses, you know.
“Cheeses?”
“Bitto, an Italian cheese, and Wyke Farms cheddar, to be precise.”
“Where do we get those?”
“There’s a shop around the next corner but one.”
Mark’s inner voice became cautious: “You think somebody might try to rob it?”
“Who steals cheese?
Mark shrugged. “A right turn?”
“Right.” The scent of bagels again tickled Mark’s olfactory receptors. “First,” I murmured, “a bagel would go well.”
“I don’t like bagels.”
“Perhaps you’ll acquire a taste for them.”
“In your dreams.”
“I’ll pay.”
Mark asked, “How much?”
“An extra fifty?”
“Make it a hundred...” — he paused — “per bagel.”
“Done.”
Copyright © 2024 by Robert Walton
