by Dan Chaon
But it was weird. He wheeled abruptly, irritably, and then said nothing. Jonah was looking at him with a kind of focused, unblinking concentration that seemed almost like a trance. It took him aback.
“Hello?” Troy said, loudly but uncertainly, and Jonah startled slightly, blinking at last as if he’d been asleep with his eyes open. “Hey, man, are you awake or what?” Troy said.
“Oh!” Jonah said. It seemed to take him a moment to lift out of whatever staring rhapsody he’d been in, and Troy shifted a little, uncomfortably. He noticed that there were even more scars etched along the backs of Jonah’s hands, trailing along as if something had raked a claw across his skin. What happened to him? Troy wondered again, and for a moment a kind of shadow passed over him—something chilly, flapping like a sheet on a clothesline.
“Sorry,” Jonah said. “I kind of spaced out for a minute.”
“Yeah, well,” Troy said. He cleared his throat. “We’re kind of busy, if you hadn’t noticed. Would you mind getting out there and clearing off the tables? If it’s not too much trouble.”
“Oh!” Jonah said, and Troy watched as he put on a kind of professional smile, like a mask. “Of course! Sorry!”
What was it? Troy thought. He watched as Jonah loped out onto the floor and began to collect empty glasses. Something was wrong with the kid, something beyond the scars, but he wasn’t sure how to pinpoint it. A kind of actory stiffness? Troy had the paranoid idea that maybe Jonah was an undercover agent for the DEA or something, planted here to spy on him. Then he dismissed the thought—he had no connections, nothing worth spying upon, and in any case, whatever this Jonah was, he was no undercover agent. Troy observed as Jonah gathered the dirty beer glasses and arranged them neatly on the end of the bar, lining them up in a careful pyramid, like bowling pins.
“Thanks,” Troy said, and Jonah looked him in the eye briefly, then nodded, as if they both knew a secret.
——
Closing time was approaching and the unexpected crowd began to thin out. The feeling of being watched faded as well, and every time Troy glanced behind him Jonah was busy with something or other. Not staring anymore—and Troy found himself wondering if he’d just overreacted, if he’d just imagined that Jonah had been watching his every move. He’d been feeling so self-conscious lately. He thought he’d get used to the ankle monitor, that it would come to be something he hardly noticed, but instead it seemed like it was worse, day by day, to the point that he sometimes felt like it glowed, or gave off waves of heat or radiation. He looked through the order window and saw that Jonah was dutifully scrubbing the grill with a charcoal pad, his head down, his hand moving like a painter. Troy cleared his throat, but Jonah didn’t look up.
Troy leaned against the bar and rested his forehead against the ham of his palm. He heard the door to the bar open and slam shut several times as people left—headed out, headed home—and he didn’t even look up. He imagined Loomis, asleep in Judy’s house; Carla, somewhere in Las Vegas, tilting her head back as she drained a drink; Ray, opening a forty-ounce beer and tucking it between his legs as he drove home from some bachelorette party, his windows open, angry rap music tub-thumping from his speakers. My life is ruined, he thought, distinctly.
——
By the time two o’clock came around there were only two people in the bar: a man and a woman, French-kissing in a corner near the jukebox, their hands underneath each other’s clothing. “Last call!” Troy said loudly in their direction, and the couple lifted their heads like animals surprised from grazing. “Last call!” Troy said, more softly, and the two of them got up and walked out wordlessly.
Troy turned back to look at Jonah.
“I think that’s it,” he said, remembering the official capacity Vivian had given him, to train Jonah. “Let me lock the door. Then we just finish up the side work, and we’re done. Unless you have, like, questions or anything.”
Jonah looked up from his sweeping and blinked.
“Questions?” Jonah said, and he had that unnerving, frozen expression again. It was almost like stage fright, Troy thought. His eyes flicked back and forth, like someone who was trying to quickly come up with a good excuse, and his expression tightened. It was as if he were hurriedly scanning for something inside his head, a panicked shuffling through stacks of blank pages on which he’d expected to find words.
“I mean,” Troy said. “About the job? Do you have any questions about your . . . duties or whatever?”
“Oh,” Jonah said, and Troy watched him hesitate, then relax a little. “No, not really. I think I’ve got a pretty good grip on it. I’m . . . I’m sorry I spaced out earlier. About clearing the tables.”
“No problem,” Troy said.
“I get a little . . .” And Troy watched as Jonah gestured, wiggling his fingers at the side of his head. “I space out, sometimes. When I’m nervous. But not, you know, often.”
“No worries,” Troy said. He gave Jonah an ironic half smile. “I do that sometimes myself.”
“Oh, really?” Jonah said, and again there was that silent, disconcerting sense of inner struggle. “We’re alike, then, I guess,” Jonah said at last, and smiled broadly.
For a moment there was a glimmer of—what?—in Jonah’s expression, and Troy hesitated. It was like that itch he got when doing crossword puzzles, that elusive flick of a word in the back of his mind when he couldn’t quite think of it. It was like that feeling that is the opposite of a premonition: Did I forget something? Something important?
And then it vanished. Jonah turned and began to sweep.
16
September 28, 1996
More than a week had passed since he and Troy officially met, and still Jonah had said nothing.
He thought about it.
He thought about it all the time, in fact. In the morning, pulling a razor through the shaving foam on his face, mowing a shaft along the line of his jaw, he stared into the mirror. Troy, he said, watching his lips move, I have something to tell you. He sat in the furnished trailer he had rented, sipping coffee, flipping through a textbook from a math class he’d dropped out of. He read: “The Swedish mathematician Helge von Koch hypothesized that an infinitely long line surrounds a finite area.”
Troy, he thought. I need to tell you something.
And yet he couldn’t think of what would come next. He wanted to find the movie of the moments, to see each day as a series of carefully framed scenes, but instead there was only a blank screen. Instead there was a slow drift into daily routine. “Action!” he imagined a director shouting from the sidelines, but he sat still in his car, with his key in the ignition. He closed his eyes briefly.
He arrived at the Stumble Inn that morning before anyone else, read Vivian’s menu instructions, and went through the freezer and the refrigerator, checking the stock. Alone in the kitchen in the morning, there was no camera running, only himself, silent, concentrated. Burgers, Cheese fries, Wings. He noted the items on the shelves. Soup—Chili, Vivian had written, and he began to systematically set out the ingredients—a large can of kidney beans, two containers of tomato juice, some hamburger and pork sausage, some onions, a head of garlic. He found the soup pot in a lower cupboard, uncovered among a clatter of lids and utensils.
I think we are related, he thought, setting the oversized pot upon the stove. I’d like to show you some information.
The cans of tomato juice made soft, metallic sighs as he pressed the opener into them, cutting triangular mouths into their tops. He stood there for a moment, staring at them. Breathing.
The chili was on the stove when Troy came in, a little after nine-thirty. Jonah felt his back stiffen when he heard the door open, and he watched as Troy walked past the kitchen without a word, loping quickly, his shoulders hunched, white shirt, black pants, his curly hair still wet from a shower. Troy went directly to the pay phone in the corner near the jukebox and Jonah observed as he scooped up the receiver and punched the numbers, as he reached down, self-consc
iously, and tugged at the front of his pants, and then, after a pause, mumbled something into the mouthpiece.
Jonah had guessed what this was about already. Vivian had told him little things—about parole, and house arrest, and so on—and so had the other bartender, Crystal. He had overheard conversations as well, things that Troy or Vivian or Crystal had said in passing. He had even, once, caught sight of the parole anklet itself, when Troy had bent down to scratch his calf.
But he wasn’t sure if Troy was aware that he knew, and this was awkward. Troy had an almost supernatural ability to sense when he was being watched, and when Jonah saw him sharply lift his head from his phone call, he bent down quickly, back to his duties in the kitchen. He liked to imagine that eventually Troy would confide in him—relating his own version of the events that led to his arrest, etcetera—and Jonah would act surprised. I’m sure Vivian must have told you, Troy would say, and Jonah would widen his eyes. I had no idea! he would exclaim.
So far Troy had shown no inclination to exchange any personal information. It would take some time, perhaps. They would need to establish some common ground, some shared interests, and Jonah was still waiting for those to emerge. He tried to seem oblivious. He kept his head down, and didn’t look up until he heard the soft clack of liquor bottles being examined, the sound of Troy preparing the stock.
“Morning,” Troy said, as Jonah peered out through the little window between the bar and the kitchen.
“Good morning,” Jonah said cautiously. He was cutting up mushrooms, which he had decided would be an interesting addition to the chili soup, but he didn’t need to watch his hands. The movement of his knife, after years of practice, was automatic. He cleared his throat. “It’s nice out today, isn’t it? Beautiful, um, leaves.”
“Uh-huh,” Troy said. And then he turned, and Jonah heard his footsteps pound hollowly down the stairs as he went to get ice.
Troy, I have a confession to make, Jonah thought. He tested this several times in his mind, but by the time Troy came up the stairs it sounded ridiculous.
——
Troy didn’t want to be talked to, that was part of the problem. Once he’d gotten his preparations for the day’s business settled, he folded himself into a distant and unsocial place, hunching over the surface of the bar with the day’s newspaper, emanating silence. Jonah observed as Troy bent toward the headlines and columns of newsprint, tracing his middle finger over line after line. Then he read the comic strips. Then he took a pen from behind his ear and began to work on the daily crossword. After a time, Troy checked his watch and went out to the front of the bar, his keys dangling musically from his clenched hand, to open the door.
“So, well then,” Jonah said. But Troy didn’t hear, didn’t lift his head.
They were clearly related. Jonah knew that, at least. No question.
It was almost unnerving, actually. Looking at Troy, he wasn’t sure what to do with the small, circling memories that Troy’s physical presence evoked, since in fact Troy had much more in common with the Doyle family—Jonah’s mother, Jonah’s grandfather, the various relatives he’d seen in pictures—much more than Jonah himself did. He found himself thinking of the way his mother used to joke about his own pale skin and blond hair. “I can’t believe you came out of my body,” she used to say, and looking at Troy, he couldn’t help but feel that if she were alive, she would find Troy more convincing as her offspring. Here were the black, heavy eyebrows, his mother’s very own, and Jonah’s grandfather’s long, firm-jawed face. There was even a certain kind of heavy, faraway frown that reminded Jonah of those long-ago times when his mother reclined on her bed and listened to records. In Troy, he recognized the distantly gazing gloom that he’d observed as a child. He recalled standing in the doorway, watching her, and how she would lift her head, almost dreamy in her haze of unhappiness. “Get out of my room,” she would say, and Troy, glancing up from his crossword puzzle, might be on the verge of saying the exact same thing, with the exact same dull, unwelcoming inflection.
“Did you say something?” Troy said, turning to look over his shoulder, and Jonah raised his eyebrows.
“Oh,” Jonah said. He swallowed. “I was just . . . wondering,” Jonah said. “Is this considered slow?” he said, at last, after a hesitation. “I mean, in terms of the typical Saturday?” And Troy looked at him wryly.
“I’d consider it slow,” Troy said. “Unless you can have customers in the negative numbers, zero is about the worst that it can get.”
“I guess so,” Jonah said, and chuckled politely. Say something, he thought, say something funny, but all he managed was a sound in his throat, like phlegm. Troy regarded him curiously for a moment, then turned back to his puzzle.
——
As anxious as he was for things to move forward, Jonah knew he had to control himself. He was aware that it would be very easy to ruin everything: the wrong words, the wrong moment, the wrong approach, and it would all be over.
I have something to tell you, he thought, and he could picture the very look on Troy’s face, the way he would close up, shuttered and inscrutable, the way his eyes would narrow as Jonah relayed his secret. The more time he spent in Troy’s presence, the more he felt sure that he needed a clearer strategy. It wouldn’t be enough to simply blurt out the facts and wait for them to sink in. He almost shuddered, thinking back to that moment when he’d been on the verge of walking up to Troy’s door: Hello, my name is Jonah Doyle, and . . . What a disaster that would have been, he thought, and he looked back with irritation on the person he had been a week ago. How naive, he thought, to imagine that Troy would simply open his arms wide, cheerfully accepting this stranger who claimed to be his half brother.
Looking at Troy now, such an idea was almost laughable. But this had been what he’d honestly imagined: All he had to do was come face-to-face with his brother, and everything would flow smoothly from that moment. I have some information. I need to talk to you. I want to talk to you, I think I have some information that you’d be interested in, I have something I need to tell you.
With each opening line that came into his head, he got a clear image of where it would lead. Troy would be blank at first, disbelieving, and then as it slowly settled on him, his face would harden. Jonah could imagine Troy recoiling, his eyes lighting with anger. You’ve been watching me all this time? he would say. Get away from me, you creepy little sneak, he would say, outraged. Or even worse, he might simply not care. So what? he might shrug. We have the same mother. Why does that matter? What’s the big deal? And he had no response—nothing to say to Troy’s anger, nothing to say to Troy’s indifference. That was the biggest problem: Where to begin? How to explain? An infinitely long line surrounds a finite area, Jonah thought, and he imagined that in his movie Troy would drift into the distance, as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope: a small, moody silhouette.
Then he lifted his head as the door to the bar opened and light poured into the dimness. The first customers of the day.
——
By eleven-thirty the Stumble Inn was moderately busy. Jonah’s chili was popular, as were the hamburgers, and he found himself working steadily, given over to the immediate tasks at hand. There was a kind of urgency to the simple facts of the job that he had always liked: People need to be fed. They are waiting for their plates to be delivered, waiting to eat.
And Troy liked the simple pressure of waiting customers, too, he could see. They were alike in that way. As the bar filled up, Troy came alive, focused as he hadn’t been an hour before, while filling out his crossword puzzle. Now he was alert, brisk, full of sharp-witted banter with the patrons, efficiently moving. And this new energy even extended to Jonah. “Order!” Troy called, and grinned wolfishly as he thrust a check stub into the pickup window.
“Getting lots of compliments on the food,” Troy said, and his smile was so good-natured and easy that it seemed, for a single moment, that they really could become friends. An understanding could develo
p between them, and then when Jonah told him the truth, it wouldn’t be a surprise. This all came together in a flash, in a brief exchange of eye contact. Then, as if Jonah had imagined it, the smile was gone; abruptly, Troy turned back to the customers.
For a moment, holding the order slip, Jonah felt that he was in possession of some kind of secret message. Then he looked down at it. “2 CBs w/fry,” the note said, in Troy’s careful block letters. “1000 isle dress on side.” He put the hamburgers on the grill.
If they worked together long enough, he thought, such exchanges would accumulate. They’d become acquaintances, they’d get to know each other, and after a while, a level of trust would develop. A few weeks, a few months, and then, perhaps, it would be easier to say: I have a confession to make.
He slipped a spatula under the circles of hamburger, pressing the juice out of them as Troy brought two glasses of beer to a pair of heavyset blond women—twins? Best friends? Jonah wasn’t sure, but Troy seemed to know them. Both wore blue jean jackets, and both had been given perms that, now fading, made their hair look brittle and sharp, like fiberglass. Troy put his elbows on the bar and spoke confidentially to the women, and they all laughed together, happily.
When Vivian came up the stairs, Jonah was in the process of arranging the two plates—the hamburgers tucked neatly into buns with crisp lettuce and tomato, the fries spread opposite, the dill pickle between them: simple but aesthetically pleasing, Jonah thought, and Vivian, observing him, seemed to approve. “Order!” Jonah said, setting the plates on the sill of the kitchen window, and Vivian peered out curiously as Troy took up the plates.
“Hi, Rona! Hi, Barb!” she called warmly to the two blond women, and they called back in voices almost distorted by niceness: “Hi, Vivian!”
But when she turned back to Jonah, Vivian made a sour face. “God, I hate those bitches,” she said to Jonah, softly. “I wish they’d find some other bar to stink up.”