The last dance consisted of comic routines that had everyone laughing, and Denny watched the action with mounting interest, finally getting on his knees in front of the TV. The song had a recurring verse:I looked over yonder and what did I see?
A great big man from Tennessee.
Whenever these lines came up, the dancers held their arms out around an imaginary expansive belly. Homer actually had such a belly. And every time the lines were called out, he embraced his bulk with a sheepish grin.
Denny knew that grin. He knew it far too well. It was the look of concession. It made him think of the period in his life, a few years back, when he took to heart all the criticisms of his improvers and reprimanders. He did everything they demanded. He stopped calling Chicago “Chitown” and Detroit “Motown” and Boston “Beantown.” He stopped amplifying his sneezes into yelps. When someone said, “You can say that again,” he stopped saying it again.
And he lost weight. He sloughed off 110 pounds and came within striking distance of the top of the average range for his size. But nothing changed. His improvers just found new problems. They would always find new problems. So Denny ate fast and hard and hurried back to his former weight. If they weren’t going to be nice to him, he wasn’t going to be nice for them to look at. Besides, it felt right to be big. When he could see his cheeks again in his peripheral vision, he welcomed them back. Inside every fat person is a thin person—or so people said, and many said it to him. But it wasn’t true of everyone. Inside Dennis Braintree was another fat man.
Yes, Denny knew that sheepish grin. When Homer showed it again and embraced his belly, Denny, on his knees before the TV, embraced his own.
EIGHT
CAN YOU IMAGINE ANYTHING MORE RIDICULOUS THAN A railroad? [Surprised laughter.] Where did it come from? Most transportation ideas spring from nature. The stick floats, the bug rides on the stick, therefore I could ride on a stick—let’s go a-boating! Logs roll—if I could ride on one I could go somewhere. Of course, I would need to be suspended free of the log’s rotation or I would have a rough ride indeed. [Much laughter.]
Denny provided both the words and the laughter. What better way to pass the time on the highway?
No lower-order creature locomotes on parallel tracks, so whence came the railroad?
He loved “whence.”
Did a god deliver the idea to mankind—some stripe-capped, coal-blackened Prometheus? Or did a company inventor of unique intelligence have a brain explosion? But—poor fellow—just imagine his presentation:
CEO: I don’t quite follow, Barclay. Where do these tracks come from?
BARCLAY: We lay them down, sir. In short segments that lie on wooden crossbeams.
CEO: Mmm. Wouldn’t these beams be subject to loosening, rot, and sabotage?
BARCLAY: (pause) Sometimes.
CEO: There are mountains out west. Will these tracks go over them?
BARCLAY: Not directly, sir.
CEO: Oh?
BARCLAY: We’re limited to a gradient of 2.2 percent. Otherwise the train slides backwards.
CEO: 2.2 percent, you say?
BARCLAY: Yes, sir.
CEO: Barclay, my 81-year-old mother sets her treadmill at 10 percent—or she would if they existed.
BARCLAY: Sir?
CEO: My point is that’s no gradient at all. How do you get across the mountains without building an overpass that begins in Kansas and ends in California?
BARCLAY: Tunnels, sir.
CEO: Oh? There are natural tunnels big enough for this contraption?
BARCLAY: No, no, sir. You misunderstand me. We will make those tunnels.
CEO: We will?
BARCLAY: With shovels, dynamite, that sort of thing.
CEO: But . . . won’t they collapse?
BARCLAY (after long pause): Sometimes. [Much, much laughter.]
“Sometimes,” Denny said again. All he needed was a venue. In the past few years he had shopped the sketch around, and once he had been in the running for a slot at an Oak Park train show. When it fell through, he didn’t mind—the material was too good to waste on local yokels. It deserved the big-time, a national convention. Keynoting wasn’t out of the question.
He had a special place in his heart for the inventor, a persistent little cuss in the face of the CEO’s skepticism. Their relationship was based on his and his boss’s. Roscoe liked Denny’s skit but said he couldn’t use his regular position on the convention planning committee to land him a booking because Denny worked for his magazine and that created a conflict of interest. But Denny didn’t work for him anymore, did he? So ha! to that.
Whenever Denny ran through his routine, he felt sorry for all the people who hadn’t heard it. It was like his feeling about his personality. He felt pity for humanity because they were ignorant of Dennis Braintree. “I have so much to offer,” he said aloud. In celebration of himself, he honked the horn several times.
The resulting bleats were as quaint as everything else about Homer’s Rambler, like its “Flashomatic” transmission and its daring push-button shifting—no doubt revolutionary in its day and warmly welcomed by Denny, no friend of the clutch. Homer had upgraded the sound system, adding an AM/FM radio with CD and cassette players and a satellite radio receiver as well. Before leaving the house, Denny had grabbed his train songs CD from his carry-on bag, and he had been listening to it between takes of his skit. The only problem with the Rambler was that it did not share Denny’s love of speed. Its boxy body shook every time Denny went over 70, like an old man shaking his head no at him.
It was dark by the time he exited the highway. He followed the signs to the airport, drove into the passenger pickup zone, and drove right out again. His goal was to retrace the route Nick had taken when he had driven him home—a lifetime ago, it seemed, and in a way it was. He knew exactly where he wanted to “lose” his cell phone. He took a right and a left. A long straight stretch, and there it was, lighting up the night in red and yellow neon: Marvin’s French Fries. He had seen the restaurant from Nick’s car and had whispered a promised return.
Marvin’s was shaped like a flying saucer, with a bustling kitchen in the middle. “Alley-Oop” was playing on the jukebox, and Denny sang along as he sought out a booth. Only one was free, and he scooted into it despite the residue from previous diners. A young waitress passing by with a pot of coffee stopped at his table and frowned.
“Did the hostess seat you?” she said.
“I know exactly what I want,” Denny said. “Three milkshakes—chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla, sort of a liquid Neapolitan”—this gave him the urge to sing “Napoli,” and he succumbed to it for a few seconds, though he had to fake the Italian—“and, to go with it, a vast plate of Marvin’s French fries. With mayo on the side, Dutch style.”
The waitress—untraveled, unworldly—stared at him blank-faced, then looked at the table. “I’ll have someone clear this.”
“No rush.” Denny grabbed a cold French fry from the plate in front of him and popped it in his mouth.
As she left, the waitress flashed the standard bulging eyes that her generation had learned from TV as a comment on anything outside the norm. Denny looked around. Across the aisle sat a lean man working a crossword puzzle. As if to show off his thinness, he sat crossed-legged with the ankle of his upper leg wrapped like a vine around his other leg, just above where his foot was planted on the floor.
“Let me know when you need help with that puzzle,” Denny said. “Dennis Braintree is a man of many words.”
The man looked up, stared at Denny, and returned to his puzzle.
Denny took out his cell phone and turned it on. He identified the phone so strongly with Lance that it was as if he had been carrying the detective in his pocket all this time. As it went through its wake-up routine, he grinned to think of the response he might be triggering in low orbit and in some earthly law enforcement office. He thought about the two phone calls he was about to make, both of them as his former self. H
e planned what he would say but in a relaxed way, without the severe pressure of being Homer. Denny came easily to him, like putting on old slippers. But he was certainly a noisy devil, wasn’t he?
He took a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and punched the numbers on it into his phone. As he waited, he looked at four young teenaged girls chattering in the booth that he faced. The eyes of one of the girls met his. “Dennis Braintree is calling Montpelier,” he said loudly to her.
“B.F.D.,” she muttered, and her friends laughed.
Denny was stimulated. “A code-talker, eh? Try this. S.Y.H.I.T.T.” He said it fast and he could do that because he was smart. She frowned because she wasn’t, and another girl at her booth said, “Did he just spell ‘shit’?” Denny called out a translation for the table: “Stick Your Head In The Toilet.”
“Ah.” This came over Denny’s phone. “Mr. Braintree, I assume. I’ve been hoping to hear from you, though not exactly in those terms.”
“Hello, Betsy.”
“Sir, you have some explaining to do.”
“Did you get my note? You’re charging the room repairs to me, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am. And don’t think I’m not going to pad the bill. But I want the full story. Entertain me.”
Denny took a deep breath and described the events of the night as he understood them: a woman’s visit to his room—he confessed that she had been the one in the Jacuzzi when Betsy had knocked on his door—his errand to buy cigarettes (he omitted the condoms), the woman’s probable chandelier swing and fall in his absence, her departure. In the booth in front of him, the four girls eavesdropped with mouths open enough to display their orthodonture. The two facing him looked away whenever he looked at them. Denny liked playing to the two audiences, Betsy and this gang. One audience was never enough for him.
Betsy said, “Are you aware that a certain detective has a different view of what happened? Marge—let’s call the woman by her name, since I know who you mean—Marge has gone missing, and this fellow believes you pushed her from your balcony and made off with her body.”
Denny would have to act as if he were hearing this for the first time. After all, it was Denny as Homer who had heard this theory from Nick and Lance, not Denny as Denny. He needed to be outraged.
“I’m outraged!”
“Yes, well, I represented you as best I could, Mr. Braintree. I told him you were harmless.”
Denny banged the table with a palm. “That’s exactly what I am.”
“You could no more shove Marge off the balcony than I could. Not that I haven’t been tempted.”
“You know Marge?”
“Everyone knows Marge. She’s our local Calamity Jane. She’s addicted to at least three things I know of: drink, gambling, and men. I’m working on one of them—I’ve been trying to take away her bottle for years. She doesn’t really have anybody else to help her, except for an indifferent sister and a parade of two-legged dogs in heat—and please don’t bark, Mr. Braintree. My guess is that she’s finally gone off to get help and that’s why they can’t find her.”
“Did you tell that to the police?”
“I tried. This one fellow is just negative through and through. He’s bent on seeing it as a murder. He’s desperate for crime in our little town to justify that fancy new detective division. But why haven’t they questioned you? Where are you?”
“If I told you, that would make you an accomplice.”
She made some soft noises that could have been laughter. “You definitely belong in the cubby, Mr. Braintree. I just wish I had kept you there.”
“Betsy, speaking of the cubby, I’m actually calling about your nephew.”
“Homer? What about him?” Her tone was no longer playful.
“The strangest thing happened—I met him at the airport in Burlington. We had the nicest chat.”
“So he is back. Where is he?”
“I was waiting for my flight to Chicago, and he was waiting for a friend flying in from Hong Kong.”
“Where is he now?”
“At the farmhouse. He told me all about the place. He also said he has some problems that he needs to work out. He wants some quiet time there.”
She said nothing for a moment. “He’s got problems all right, but I don’t know how he could be any quieter than he is already.”
“He needs to be alone. That’s the message he asked me to give you. He wants no visitors, and he won’t be answering the phone.”
She said, “That doesn’t sound like my Homer.”
“Well, it’s interesting that you say that, because he said something to that effect. He said, ‘Aunt Betsy will be surprised.’”
“He’s never refused my help. He’s always sought my counsel.”
“‘She’ll be surprised, but she’ll understand.’ That’s what he said.”
“He can’t lick his problems alone.”
“I think he’s hoping that Sarah might be helpful.”
Betsy fell silent again. Denny waited, his lips moving fitfully in anticipation of her words. She finally said, “He’ll get no help from that quarter.” There was a hardness in her voice.
“Oh?” He waited for more. “Why do you say that?”
“When can I talk to him?” The subject of Sarah was closed.
“He needs time, Betsy. Oddly enough, he seems to want to stay in touch with me. You know how you can strike up a friendship and exchange confidences when you’re traveling? That’s what happened to us. He’ll call me again, I’m sure. If I learn anything more, I’ll let you know. I’m afraid you’ll just have to wait until he’s ready to see you. That time will come.”
She made a hmph noise.
“When he’s ready he’ll be back in that cubby just like old times.” Denny said good-bye, waited to receive hers—it came slowly, with much preoccupation—and flipped his phone shut.
He was satisfied that the call would keep Betsy at bay for a while. He looked at the booth of teenagers. The two facing him were watching him and reporting to their friends. He said, “‘He’ll get no help from that quarter.’ What do you make of it, girls? Any thoughts? Ah.”
This last was for the waitress, who had arrived with his three milkshakes and fries. He quickly gobbled half of the fries and downed the entire chocolate shake. He picked up the phone and punched the numbers. To the girls he said, “Now Dennis Braintree is calling his former boss.” He attacked his vanilla shake and got half of it down before Roscoe answered the phone.
“Roscoe, I want to call in a favor.”
“Oh, God.” Roscoe was raising a palm to his forehead. Denny had seen it enough times in the office to know. “The police keep calling me,” Roscoe said. “Why? Because thanks to yesterday’s phone call, I’m your last known contact.” He was talking to himself more than to Denny, who was familiar with this behavior as well. “My hope was to be replaced—surely some new last known contact would emerge. But now the loathsome label returns to me. It is in my interest to say goodbye. Goodbye.”
Denny redialed. Roscoe didn’t bother with a hello. “Denny, I assume you did not actually throw a lady out your hotel window. I know you, to my regret, and I know you couldn’t do this.”
“Correct.”
“So why haven’t you gone to the police and cleared things up? That would be ideal for me. That would make the police your last known contact.”
“It’s kind of complicated. I’m calling about something else.”
“What? Are we done with the alleged defenestration? That’s the only part of this conversation that could possibly interest me.”
“Do you remember my routine about the inventor and the CEO?”
“Oh, God.”
“I want to deliver it at the national meeting in Las Vegas. This business will have blown over by then, and if it hasn’t, I’ll use an alias. I don’t work for you anymore—”
“God be praised!”
“—so there’s no conflict of interest. Can you recommen
d me? You’ve always liked the routine.”
“I’ve always lied.”
“What?”
“It fails on every level.”
“But . . . Maybe you’ve missed the point of it, Roscoe. It takes something familiar and makes it strange.”
“None better than you for that.”
“Just recommend it to the program committee. It’s a small favor, really.”
“Yeah? Do me a favor. Go to the police.”
“Roscoe? Roscoe?” Denny frowned and flipped his phone shut. To the girls he said, “I can’t believe he hung up on me again.” One of them said, “I can,” and there was much shoulder hunching and hair shaking.
Denny left the phone on and put it in a front pocket of his pants, but shallowly. He finished his vanilla milkshake and wiggled a bit, but nothing happened. Then he began to wriggle back and forth in the booth, sliding and squirming, and he raised his hands above his head to make sure he didn’t use them. One of the girls said, “Oh my God, he’s ass-dancing,” but they obviously didn’t understand what he was doing. Eventually he was able to work the phone out of his pocket so that it plunked onto the bench beside him. He wanted to simulate an actual inadvertent loss of the phone as much as possible. He just wanted to do it that way.
He grabbed the strawberry milkshake, downed it, loudly burped the words “All done,” and fished some bills out of his wallet.
As he stood up, one of the girls said, “Goodbye, Mr. Brain-seizure.” Denny hurried over to their table as they erupted in laughter, and he leaned down and barked his own loud laugh into their faces.
He had passed a bank on his way to the airport. He planned to return to it and, using The Fearless Modeler’s ATM card, suck out as much cash as he could. Then he would see if he could find a cell phone store that was still open in order to buy a new one. Then he would do a big shop at the supermarket, followed by a back haul to Horn of the Moon Road. It had been a long day, and he looked forward to snuggling between Homer’s sheets.
From Away Page 8