Crazy Debbie

Crazy Debbie was a stand-up, sit-down, knock-out dame. Oh brother, let me tell you about her.

I first met Debbie in the hallway of a house-fire. This was back in the early 60’s. Third floor of a brownstone walkup, flames everywhere. I’d just smashed my way through a locked fire door with nothing but my axe and my boots. It was hot as hell in there. The inside of my uniform felt like the inside of a kettle. I was steam-room sweating, pumping adrenalin and stag musk out of every gland. I know those moments well. In my line of work you make a friend out them, those animal moments.

Half of the building was gone already, just twisted beams and charcoal. The floor of the fifth storey had fallen straight through and the ceiling of the third wasn’t going to hold out much longer. All the doors in the hallway were burning and black plumes filled the air. It was an inferno.

Debbie was just standing there in her bunnygirl costume: long blonde hair under rabbit ears, cherry-red lips, fishnets on legs of forever and a cottontail on the top of her perfect ass. She was Marilyn Monroe’s better-looking girlfriend, peaches and ice-cream, the kind of girl the Gods would send down just to drive freams like me insane.

I felt like a superhero, getting to rescue a broad like that “I’m here to save you,” I said “My name is James.”

So she jumped into my arms, squashed her paper-shakers against my chest, whispered “Oh, James,” into my ears and made me cream my pants.

That’s how I met Crazy Debbie.

I had to knock out the window and carry her down the Seagrave tower ladder, her body bouncing on my shoulder all the way down to the ground. Her cottontail rode so close to my mouth I could have turned around and bit it.

Yeah, dream on schmuck, I said to myself, you scoring with a chick that hot is like Charlie Brown kicking that football.

So I didn’t waste my pride trying anything. I just set her down softly on the pavement, same as anyone else. I couldn’t just leave her standing out on the street with all those crowds dressed like that, though, so I grabbed a blanket from the fire truck and wrapped it around her shoulders. She hugged the corners and shivered at the sudden cold. I reeled the rest of my willpower in and turned back to face the fire “Don’t go, James,” she said. I must have melted into a puddle of tar and vim.  “Don’t go, James,” she purrs. A guy like me and she says “Don’t go.”

She put her little hand up on my chin and wipes the soot out of my eyes. Then she pouts a little-girl pout like she’s weighing up a pony or something “There’s a handsome man underneath the battlescars here, hotshot” she said “You look a little like George Peppard.”

Little being the operative word.

Mr Peppard, sir, if you ever read this, I’m sorry if there’s insult to you in the comparison but the girl was platinum kooky, if you know what I mean. Don’t get me wrong, though, she was sweet as candy and her body was the most, but Debbie was a real space case if she thought I was anyplace this side of Uglytown. I didn’t even try to say anything back to her. What could I say? I was too busy dealing with all that cheerleader stardust her tingling fingers had traced over my face. She leaned in closer “Everybody remembers Nero, you know?” she said “But nobody remembers the Roman fire brigade. I mean, the Vigiles are the ones who tried to stop Rome from burning. But why does everybody remember the one man who didn’t care enough to do something? I’m going to be the one who remembers you!” 

I’m looking down at her in my arms when the Battalion Chief taps me on the shoulder “Jim,” he said “Does this woman require medical attention?” 

“No, sir,” I told him. 

So then the Chief smacks me on the back of the head, hard enough for me to feel it through my helmet and he shouts “Well we got ourselves a real shitstorm going here, Jim, feel free to pitch in some time!” and he marches off to the back of the truck. 

The air was raining ashes and flakes of wallpaper in the night. 

“I’m sorry ma’am,” I said to her, sorrier than she could ever have guessed at “I have to attend to the search and rescue.” 

“I’m waiting right here for you, baby!” 

Wow. All the muscles in my body popped and I stood ten foot tall and six feet wide. I tore back into that building and started pulling out people like fries off a hot plate, one after another, all of them safe and well. I was the king of the world. Just as I came out with the last tenant over my shoulder, the boys on the hose wagon were tearing up the front steps to take the fight to its source. Somebody popped into a second hydrant and water spurted everywhere, hosing down the block with ice-cold H2o. We’d got the fire tamed. From that point forwards it was just cleaning up, no kind of scene for a guy like me. 

“Good work, Jim,” the Chief shouted “We got this bitch licked. You can get back to the station.” 

Debbie was standing on the tailboard, cheering, jiggling. The other guys were looking at us with horns in their pockets and murder in their eyes. So hate me, then, you green-eyed bastards. Sure, they could tell she was insane but who cares? They’d still chew off their own arm just to get a piece. Fireboys get a lot of crazies on the job but we also get a lot of grateful women. Sometimes you got two-in-one, the double-whammy. Sometimes the chicks were hot, sometimes they were even chrome-plated, but aint nobody ever seen a skirt like Debbie before. I walked over to the truck and lifted her down off the tailboard. My hands around her waist… it was crazy, like a construction crane picking a rose. 

“Can I stay with you tonight, James, baby? My apartment’s kind of… on fire.” 

“Ma’am, you can stay with me anytime you like. Right now I gots a few hours left on my shift so I’m gonna put you in a cab over to my place, okay? I’ll be back just as soon as I can.” 

“You promise?” 

“Hell yeah.” 

                                    * 

The next two hours waiting to go home were the longest in my life. I almost prayed for another fire somewhere just to keep busy. I took about twelve showers to try and get myself clean. I sat upstairs on my cot in the station, trying to read, trying to lie down, trying to get up, trying to drink coffee and trying all the time not to think too much about that sweet, sweet parcel waiting for me at home. 

                                    * 

So an eternity and a half later, I’m pulling my ‘57 Chevy into the condo’s parking bay.  

The parking bay was in the basement. My apartment was on the 10th floor. The lift was out so I had to take the stairs. It took me about three seconds to jump the 20 flights between the car and my front door. I was sweating again before my feet touched linoleum. 

I’d given Debbie my key so I had to knock for her to let me in. That felt weird, knocking on my own door. Made me feel like I was someone else. Knowing what I had on the other side of the door made me feel even less like myself. There was no answer at first but I could hear music and the sound of voices coming from inside. I knocked again. Just a couple of taps, nothing heavy, a polite reminder. I had to remember to keep my cool if nothing else. After a real long pause, the door opened a crack. I steadied myself to greet her again, clean and scrubbed this time. Except it wasn’t Debbie. It was a fat Turkish guy wearing a pinstripe suit and a fez. He had a fondue tong in his hands. “Yes?” he said. “Yes?” 

I’d never seen this guy before in my life “I’m James,” I said “You’re in my apartment.” 

He blinked at me. The door stayed open just a crack. There I was standing in the hallway in front of my own front door, incredibly ready to bump hips with the most gorgeous girl I had ever seen and some two-ton Turk wasn’t letting me in. I was about ready to take his fez and beat him to death with it. But I had to be cool. I didn’t know what the scene was yet and I didn’t want to risk blowing things. 

“Listen: where’s Debbie? I gave her my key.” 

“Ah!” he said, waving the fondue tong like he’d remembered something “Debbie. I back to her.” 

And he slammed the door in my face. 

Two seconds go past and I’m redder than a Frenchman’s steak. I’m beyond beating him to death with the fez now. I’m going to make him wear it like a sleeping bag and feed him to the polar bears in Central Park Zoo “Heads up, bears!” I’m gonna yell “I brought you a sausage roll!” 

Then suddenly the door opens again. Only this time it doesn’t suck. This time it’s like the Pearly Gates swinging back on hinges greased with butter and cum; a choir of black angels singing doo-wop; sweet chariots swinging low as lowriders and Veronica Lake lying on silk sheets with her back arched and her legs wide open. 

“James, baby!” 

Debbie squealed and threw me inside. I still had no clue what was going on but I couldn’t give her any friction, she was just too soft. I let her steer me into the lounge.  

“James, baby,” she said “I want you to meet some fascinating people,” and then she whispered into my ear “I hope you don’t mind me having company over, James, I just got so lonely waiting for you.” 

The way she had of saying “lonely”, her hot breath in my ear, her tongue wetting her lips, I was powerless to resist. I just smiled dumbly and nodded at the strangers sitting around my lounge making free with my drinks cabinet and my fondue. They were a real bunch of oddballs, let me tell you; kind of people I didn’t usually get in my pad, if you know what I mean. My tastes were pretty square, I guess, just me and my TV most nights. I had some leather furniture, a few black velvet paintings, nothing fancy. I barely ever even used the sound system but these people had it cranked right up; some loony-tunes be-bop record I didn’t even own. 

“This is Fezman,” Debbie said, pulling the big Turk up out of the sofa “He told me his real name is Abdul Mohammed Mohammed, but nobody believes him so we just call him Fezman. He owns the yellow taxi company in Istanbul.” 

“Hello Mister James,” he said “Here is Fezman. How you are doing?” 

“Yeah, I’m just the ginchiest, pal,” I said. I tried to shake his hand but he dived back to the fondue before I could say “Put it there”. 

And he was just the start of it. There were a pair of Ivy-League types drinking Martinis and playing cards on my kitchen table. She introduced me to them and they waved “Hi,” and then went right back to their game. In the bathroom I was presented to a trio of kooks in roll-neck sweaters drawing pentagrams on the mirror in toothpaste and arguing about Aleister Crowley “Hey, take it easy on the toothpaste fellers,” I said. They apologised for about five minutes and then they switched to shaving foam without another word. 

By the time we got back to the lounge there seemed to be even more people in there than before. I even recognised a couple of cats from the brigade. Where the hell were all these people coming from? I stuck my head around to check the hallway and there was a coat-check girl by my front door. Debbie grabbed me by the face and pulled me back into the room. I was just about to say “Enough is enough,” when she plants one right on my lips. 

Her kiss shut me up but good. I was a skin-diver rushing through a warm current of pillows and starfish; a balloon on a trampoline; a rollercoaster train plunging off the rails and into a warehouse full of jelly roll. Who gives a shit about a few weirdoes in your apartment? She was the money. They could have moved in permanently for all I cared. 

Debbie stepped back and her lips popped away with a smack. Wow. She tasted like hot cherries. I put my hand out to rest on the curve of her waist “Okay, hotshot,” she said, one knee bending slightly so she turned in towards my hand and let it slip around to her back “You going to be alright for a few minutes? I have to say hello to some people.” 

“Yeah, sure, okay,” I go; stupefied like I was Goofy or something. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t tossing those freaks out the window and tearing off my clothes. I was just going along with whatever that crazy dame threw at me and I just couldn’t say “No” to a good goddamn thing. 

Debbie turns away, pauses, looks back over her shoulder like she really means it, lowers her eyelids and then blows me a kiss. 

I’m knocked back to the far wall by the force of it. I slump against the wallpaper, a limp hulk, as Debbie disappears into the growing crowd. Someone hands me a drink. I don’t even look at it and I don’t even look up at them. I just slug it back hard and dangle the glass in my fingertips. People are crawling in through the windows from the fire-escape. Somebody’s brought a tame monkey. I think I hear breaking glass. There’s a party happening right there in my apartment and I have no idea what’s going on. 

“She’s quite a girl, isn’t she?” 

I look up. A thin, waif-like chick has slid across the wall to stand next to me. She swirls a little ice around a cocktail glass. 

“Sure is,” I say. It’s not much but it’s all I can manage. 

“So how did you meet her?” she asks me with a voice that says smart, urban, bored. 

I pull myself up straight and turn to face her. She’s wearing a black zoot suit like she’s some kind of dyke but serious “ball me” high-heels like maybe she aint. Her hair’s gamine, short; she wears it like a naughty kid. She’s cute in a continental way and she smokes with a cigarette holder like she’s stroking the clouds, but I just can’t stop staring at her eyepatch. 

“In the middle of hell, ma’am,” I says back to her “I pulled her out of a house-fire”. 

She laughs and plays with her drink, teasing the ice-cubes out of the glass with her long white fingers “Yes, sir, we’ve all got our Crazy Debbie stories.” 

“Crazy what?” 

“That’s what they call her in Manhattan anyway,” she says, wry and with one corner of her mouth upturned in a foxy smile “I’m Sabrina, by the way,” she holds out her hand so I shake it gently. There’s a cool trace of melted ice on the tips of her fingers “She’s collecting us, you know. That’s what I think. We’re her travelling menagerie.” 

I’m not too sure what a menagerie is and I don’t really get it, but I figure maybe she’s fixing to tell me her ‘Crazy Debbie story’, so I ask her: “Sabrina, so, how do you know her?” 

“I don’t!” she slid one of the ice-cubes into her mouth and let it toboggan down her tongue “Nobody does. She just sort of accumulates acquaintances like us in increasingly strange situations. It’s all perfectly random of course, but I do wonder sometimes if she’s orchestrating it all like some Machiavellian princess,” she laughed again and ran a gloved hand over my biceps “No, I’m joking: James, isn’t it? No, please don’t think I’m being cruel. I know this is your first time at one of Debbie’s parties and I really don’t want to give you the wrong idea about her.” 

“Lady, I don’t think I got any idea about her at all!” 

People had cleared a dance-floor in the middle of the room and were starting to do the Madison. We got pressed up together in the crush of bodies and she leaned in closer to whisper to me. I smelt her hair, like almonds “I heard that she was in love with an astronaut, a real genuine American hero, and she was his real blonde bombshell but he got shot out into space and he never came back. They don’t know what happened to him: he might still be out there, alive and alone up there in the sky and maybe he’s going to come back again but maybe, you know, maybe he’s dead and it’s just his body, lifeless, still up there in his spaceship, just going round and round the Earth.” 

“Well, gee, that’s plain awful.” 

“Damn right it is. I heard she went a little cuckoo on account of it. Broken heart and traumatised, never gotten over it.” 

I didn’t know what to say. I felt real sorry for Debbie right then. I wanted to find her and see if I could make her feel any better about it, but the party was haemorrhaging bodies and you could hardly find yourself. While I was thinking about it, the situation took me in hand. It made no difference: I’d been on some other rudder all night. The crowd heaved in waves, washed over to Sabrina and me and drew us out from the wall to the middle of the room. Suddenly I found myself dancing. It was pretty wild. I don’t normally dance at all, not ballroom, rock and roll, nothing, I’m too big, I just never feel right. But this was different. The whole place was dancing, everybody in there was going insane and it wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen before. This wasn’t like city people dancing, this was like, like Spanish peasants drunk in a field at night, or like wolves if wolves could dance. 

We reeled around in circles, sometimes with our arms over each other’s shoulders, sometimes alone, sometimes with strangers, sometimes people we knew. There wasn’t individuals doing steps, though, it was like the dance was just one big life-form, a spider or something. The dance was alive, for sure. It seemed to spiral out in lines from some central point in the apartment and we all revolved around it. Of course, I knew before I even saw, it was Debbie at the centre. 

I passed Sabrina as I tried to bop my way towards Debbie “Hey, Sabrina, is this a freaky scene or what?” 

“This is Bacchanalian!” she shouted back over the music and the laughter. 

“This is say-what?” 

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music!" 

“You lost me, girl!” 

“Friedrich Nietzsche!” 

“No, it’s James! Remember?” 

But the ebb and flow swept me away from her and tossed me this way and that. At one point I was dancing with Fezman the Turk and he was so happy there were tears in his eyes. I could swear I saw half a dozen kids from the old neighbourhood, twisting and skipping to the music like the past twenty years never happened. But every time I tried to force my way towards the heart of the dance it just kind of tossed me back out, until I gave up trying and just surrendered myself to the beat. Then I could feel her magic, sucking me in closer and closer to the centre and I surfed my way in towards her across the moonbeams of the beatnik carousel. 

And then there I was, dancing at her feet and she was a hundred feet tall and the dancers swirled around, melting like ice cubes in a cocktail glass and people were whooping and Debbie was laughing and smiling and she reached up and pulled down her top and exposed her breasts to the world and they were fantastic and the world was filled with light and love. 

                                    * 

It was about dawn when the last of the stragglers tipped their hats and slunk away. The last sheepish clunk of the front door woke me up with a bolt. I was lying spread-eagled on the living room floor. My jeans were still on but my shirt had long since flown away. I pushed tentatively at my recollection of the night before, gently like you might poke at a loose tooth, but I came up with little more than breadcrumbs. I tried to lift myself off the floor.  

All around me was a new stratum of carpet: cigarette ash and unfinished drinks, tectonic plates of gin bottles and playing cards. It was a new geological era in my apartment. The old surfaces were all now buried in the bones of the party, the latest extinction waiting to be turned into motor oil and run out of Detroit. I barely recognised the place. Someone had drawn a moustache on my black velvet painting. They’d also left the monkey behind. Fine. I’d worry about him later. 

Sabrina was curled up on the couch, fast asleep and purring. I dug out my travel rug from the hallway closet and draped it over her. She looked sweet. I guess she’d gotten too stoned to make it home. 

There was a soft hum of static coming from the record player, the needle spinning round the end of a record on an eternal loop, gathering dust. “A menagerie of dust,” I thought to myself. It seemed pretty smart, even though I still didn’t really know what it meant. 

I got myself a glass of water and headed to the bedroom, hoping against hope that Debbie might be in there waiting for me. 

When I got to the door I just stopped right there and couldn’t go in. Debbie was sitting on the edge of the bed, holding something I couldn’t quite make out. It looked like an old photograph. She was facing the window but her eyes looked like she’d gone out of them, lost somewhere out on the highway, in the past. She was silent but I could tell that she’d been crying. Poor kid had probably been crying all night while I’d been face down on the living room carpet like an asshole. 

I knew how it would go. I’d walk in, maybe it’d surprise her a little, but she’d be cool, she’d been expecting me eventually. We’d talk at first, maybe about nothing to begin with but we’d get around to the photo and to her broken heart and she’d cry again but this time she’s have a big dumb lunk sitting there with a shoulder to cry on and something else to do besides which would help her to feel something other than sad and alone and we’d end up making love and it would be the best damn thing that ever happened to my sorry ass. 

But I couldn’t go in there. I just kept thinking about her astronaut. He was up there somewhere, maybe he was still alive, looking down on everything, just watching us all, seeing everything but not able to interfere, not able to just reach out and do something. What if that was me? What if I’d left some killer dame behind and some other me was standing outside thinking about making a move on her. He was a hero. I may not have been a spaceman but I guess I kind of knew how he must have felt. I don’t know. I couldn’t do it to him. 

And Crazy Debbie… she’d have to be crazy to try and jump a guy like me to get over a guy like that. I couldn’t do it to her. It wouldn’t be fair. 

So I turned back to the lounge and looked for somewhere else to finish sleeping. I saw Sabrina on the couch and she was like a little island of almonds and coconuts amongst the debris bobbing in the wreckage. 

I climbed right in under the rug behind her and she didn’t seem to mind “Mm,” she said.” 

“Tell me about the eye,” I said in an easy voice. I guess I must still have been drunk. 

She kind of sighed before she answered me. Not like she was unhappy about the question, more like she was relieved that I’d asked it “I lost it in a swordfight, at the Olympics,” she said “Maybe you saw it on the news? I was the captain of the team and we were supposed to bring back a gold. Only I got a little carried away in the finals, stepped too far to press it home and this incredible Italian fencer took out my eye. She cut right through the mask. My team-mates were ready to disown me; I’d ruined it for all of us. But she understood, my Latin assassin, she knew why I’d done it. You lose yourself in these moments, do you know what I mean? When you’re just a beast and you lose your humanity but in a good way, like you regain the innocence of a beast in these animal moments.” 

“These animal moments?” I said “Yeah, sure, I know,” and I ran my finger over the back of her neck. She moaned quietly and rubbed herself against me. I didn’t stop her so she took me out and pushed me into her, never once turning round “Oh, James,” she said “Oh, James.” 

                                    * 

I never did see Crazy Debbie again but I heard plenty about her. She had adventures all over town and everybody had their own Crazy Debbie story to tell. I never did hear if her astronaut came back to her, though, and the stories kind of dried up after a while. I guess she must have left town. 

I stayed tight with Sabrina. We never married or moved in together or anything like that, but we stayed cool. I guess I’m maybe just too far this side of Uglytown for anybody to seriously consider matrimony, but we got close enough. She digs my style, she says, I’m like a Roman gladiator. Fine by me but I always wonder if she doesn’t like me a little bit more than maybe she should, all on account of a dame like Debbie having one time given me the eye. Girls trust other girl’s judgements, you know, especially the hot ones. 

Sabrina said she heard a rumour that Debbie didn’t really leave town at all, but that she killed herself. Now, I don’t buy that for a second. So maybe I didn’t really know her, maybe nobody did, but that just aint her scene. 

Much later I heard another rumour that she hooked up with an eccentric billionaire at one of her parties who fell madly in love with her. He asked Debbie to marry him but she said she couldn’t even consider an offer like that with her astronaut still lost in space. So this guy pays for them to build Debbie her own private rocket ship so she can go out there looking for him. Hell, now that I could certainly believe. She’s the kind of girl who could get anybody to do anything for her. No problem. 

So that’s where I like to think of her now, boating out across the stars getting all those spacemen hot under the collar. What a girl.