Spin Dry

by Greg Hollingshead

  Rachel went back upstairs and called Cam Wilkes, to whom she explained the situation, adding that she had good reason to believe that Leon’s connections with Mortprop Investments would soon be severed. Wilkes listened in silence. When she had finished, he said, “Thanks, Rachel. This is an awful lot to take in at one time. I hope you’ll understand if I don’t feel too much like talking right now. But I have to say I’m terribly disappointed in Leon.”

  “Me too, Cam. Me too.”

  After work the next day Rachel nosed the Civic up to the garage door alongside the Subaru. Climbing out, she thoughtshe had left her lights on, but it was the Subaru’s. Strange. She switched them off. Leon could be pretty distracted sometimes.

  The front door was standing open. He was just leaving—? “Leon!” By the front closet was a pile of random folds: Leon’s coat. At first, in the gloom, she thought he was in it, shrunken. In the kitchen his good shoes had been kicked off and just left there, one of them in a corner, vertical. On the counter his Gucci tie was curled around a butter wrapper. “Leon!”

  She found him downstairs in his little den beside the garage, reclined in his old leather La-Z-Boy. In a saucer on his chest was what remained of a pound of butter. She set the butter on the floor, out of reach. He did not object; the spoon she extricated from loose fingers, saying kindly, “You never wanted to sell real estate anyway.” Kneeling, she laid a hand on his arm.

  “Did too.”

  “You saw Sirocco today?”

  “Secretary.”

  “His secretary? What did she say?”

  “Help myself.”

  “Yourself—?”

  “Coke.”

  “Ah.”

  “Machine in reception area. No coins required. Coke Classic, Diet, Tahiti Treat, iced tea.” Pause. “Hate Coke.”

  “I know.”

  “Chose iced tea.”

  “The Think Drink.”

  “Check. Read magazines. People, Newsweek, Housing Today, American Builder. Even Maclean’s.”

  “A lot of magazines.”

  “Two hours of magazines.”

  “And you had an appointment?”

  Leon’s eyes closed, meaning Yes. “Finally see Moe.”

  “Moe?”

  “Joke on me. Thought she said Moe Mortprop.”

  Leon, Mortprop’s not somebody’s name—?”

  Leon raised a staying hand. “Thought: Second meeting and already to see Mr. Big. Mahogany panelling, heavy broadloom. Moe big guy. Neck thicker than head. Thought: Can’t judge cover. First thing Moe said: Got five minutes. Thought: Tight schedule necessary to go-getter like Moe. Outlined efforts. Unfolded plans. Bared mind. Guaranteed willing seller in three weeks. Moe taking notes. Head of Moe lolled for look at watch.”

  “Had to go.”

  “Got it. Stood up. Stood up too, hand extended. Moe did not shake. Saw then, upside down, on pad, Moe’s ‘notes.’ Doodle. Stick woman. On knees. Balloon bazooms. Cock in mouth. Big cock.”

  “I guess Moe was thinking about something else.” When Leon did not reply, Rachel added, “Moe doesn’t sound like a very nice person.”

  “Wasn’t supposed to be nice person. Supposed to be Mr. Big.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Quote: ‘Don’t call us, huh, Bozleman? We’ll call you.’”

  “Oh, poor Leon!” Rachel cried.

  “Poor Bozleman.” Leon’s right hand came up holding the remote. The TV crackled and came on.

  Rachel climbed the two flights of stairs to the bedroom, where she sat on the bed. After a while she went over onto her side and continued like that for some time, staring into the darkness of an open closet.

  It was the phone on the bedside table that winched her from many fathoms of sleep. “H’lo—”

  “Rachel? I’m calling from a pay phone across the street from my house.”

  “Cam? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I’m in costume. It’s my birthday.”

  “That’s wonderful! Happy birthday!” Here Rachel noticed that she was fully dressed. “How nice of you to call and tell me. What time is it?”

  “Five a.m.”

  “Shit, Cam! What’s up?”

  “Leon traced the original driver of the old Downtown 16 from Madison. His name’s Big Phil, and he’s coming out of retirement to drive me and the Girl on My Bus around the Millpond all day, not in our old bus, which of course is at my place, dismantled, but in one from the same company that Leon rented from before.”

  “Uh-huh—” Rachel had just noticed that the bed was still made on Leon’s side and he was not in it.

  “Big Phil’s picking her up first, at Flume Fields. They’re due by here at 6:07. Sleep’s out of the question, so I’m waiting here. Anyway, the reason I called. Why don’t you ride around withus a bit before you go to work this morning—Get acquainted before tonight—”

  “Tonight—?”

  “Give her a chance to relax with you. Smooth out her day. It’s a total marathon date for us. Going to the taping of the Alex Silver show tonight with you and Leon is definitely the highlight, but by then we’ll be into the thirteenth hour of our date. By the way, it was Leon getting us the Share That Dream tickets that really started me wondering what he was up to.”

  Leon! Pretzelled with a coronary in the light of a test pattern! Doctor, he ate a pound of butter, and the next thing I knew—”Listen, Cam. Leon hasn’t said anything about this to me. And right now I have to go and look for him. He hasn’t come to bed—”

  “OK, we’ll be waiting! Tell you more then!”

  “No, don’t do—” But Wilkes had hung up.

  Rachel went down to the den, which was dark, stepped in the saucer, the last of the butter squelching between her toes. No Leon. She checked the driveway. No Subaru. She went back to the den. Felt the TV. Cold.

  Rachel got dressed. Afraid that in the dark she’d never find it herself, she called a cab to take her to Wilkes’ bus stop. The cabby, a squat, somnolent man with a partially eaten bologna-in-a-kaiser on the dash, had never heard of Hillock Rise, and the print on his greasy Millpond street guide was so smudged, the morning so early, the light from his dashboard so fitful, that they ended up driving around for twenty minutes completely lost. And then Rachel spotted one of the phosphorescent ribbons that Leon hadonce tied on selected lampposts to mark the way. With difficulty they followed the few that kids had not torn down until, up ahead, there blossomed the rear window of an idling bus. “That’s our baby,” the cabby said.

  Under the chill grey sky of pre-dawn, that rear window emanated a homey warmth. As they pulled up behind, Rachel could see Cam Wilkes in the rear seat of the bus with an arm around what appeared to be, oh dear, a young girl. Rachel tumbled some balled fives into the cabby’s lap and scrambled out.

  An expulsion of air, the rubber slap of bus doors, and she was boarding the bus. The driver kept his face averted. She could not tell if he was The Mucal Snuffler. “I know you, don’t I?” Rachel said, glancing anxiously towards the rear seat.

  His knuckles tightened on the wheel. “Never seen you before in my life.”

  “The Downtown 16 from Madison?”

  He gave a start, eyes all over the place. The doors whapped shut behind her, and the bus started to move. Rachel nearly fell.

  “It could have been the 19—” she admitted, grabbing a pole.

  He jabbed a finger at the sign over the windshield: Do Not Attempt to Engage Driver in Conversation While Bus in Motion.

  “Rachel!” Cam Wilkes, in raincoat and dark glasses, was coming up the aisle. He was chewing gum and carrying a cane. When he reached Rachel he tipped forward, confidential. “Rachel, she’s not lively like you and Leon. But she’s coming out of it, a bit more every day. This date is a major step for her. I know you’ll be understanding.”

  “Cam, she is—of age?”

  “Past it, I’m afraid—”

  And Wilkes turned and led Rachel down the aisle to meet t
he Girl on His Bus.

  “Rachel,” Cam Wilkes said proudly, “I’d like you to meet my very good friend Jane!”

  Jane was a timid, frail woman with uplifted blue myopic eyes set wide in a small head covered with soft, thinning yellow hair, her narrow hands folded demurely in the lap of a pretty pink pinafore, shiny red shoes positioned side by side, soles flat.

  Wilkes sat Rachel next to Jane, positioning himself sideways on the seat in front, twisted uncomfortably to talk. “OK Rachel,” he cried. “Guess who Jane’s in costume as!”

  “As Jane, of Dick and Jane,” said Rachel, with goosebumps.

  “Right!” Wilkes cried. “And do you know why?”

  “I’ve heard about you, from Cam,” Jane told Rachel, her smile tremulous and vague and not exactly warm.

  Wilkes reached back and placed a hand on Jane’s. “Because not only is Jane the Girl on My Bus, Rachel. She’s also the Jane of Dick and Jane! I’ve been in love with her from the moment I opened my first reader. You can imagine my astonishment when I realized the two were one and the same. No wonder I fell so hard!”

  “I don’t understand—” A TV series?

  “Then I’ll explain it to you,” Jane said in a voice straight from the fridge. “Dick and Jane are the creation of a University of Chicago professor of education named Gray. William S. Gray. Graybelieved in measurement, testability, facts. Graduated word repetition. One new word per page, each used a minimum of fifteen times, and so on. Numbers. The man was a goddamnn behaviourist. We happened to live next door. Chicago suburb. And that’s all there is to Dick and Jane.”

  “And now,” Rachel said stupidly, “you live here—”

  “If by ‘here’ you mean over on Smutter Circle with my brother Dick, when, that is, I’m not medicated to the gills at Flume Fields, the answer is yes. I live here. So does Sally—”

  “Why, I met Sally!” Rachel cried. “And that means—I met Dick too! He wears a fedora! This is incredible!”

  “Hardly,” muttered Jane. “And I suppose they told you what a nuisance I’ve been.”

  “Not nuisance. Sally’s so worried—”

  Jane nodded, grim. “And now you’re going to try to talk me out of it.”

  “Absolutely!”

  “Well, screw off.”

  “Cam!” cried Rachel, ignoring this. “You can’t let them give Jane shock treatments!”

  “We’re stopping in for lunch at Smutter Circle today, Rachel. I’ll be having a word with Dick. Jane says he’s a mule, but that makes two of us.”

  Here Wilkes was interrupted by Big Phil, who shouted into his mirror, “OK, what’s the big tête-à-tête back there? If my driving isn’t good enough, why don’t you just say so! I can take abuse!” “Same old Big ‘Paranoid’ Phil!” Wilkes called amicably, and added, “Hey Big Phil! Grind us a pound!”

  “It’s the whispering!” Big Phil complained. “It’s driving me crazy!”

  “The reason Big Phil’s on call with the bus company even though he’s retired,” Wilkes revealed in a low voice, “is he’s saving up to move to the open prairies. No place out there for people to hide while they’re talking behind his back—He thinks about the prairies all the time.” To Big Phil, Wilkes called, “Hey Big Phil! You already are crazy! How about a franchise? PAGO West! Of course as a simple paranoid you yourself don’t qualify for membership. On the other hand, you might contribute perspective!”

  “Some day, Wilkes, you’ll tell me what you’re talking about and then we’ll have a nice long chat!”

  “Hey, Rachel,” Wilkes said. “Aren’t you going to ask me who I’m in costume as?”

  Rachel had forgotten to notice that Wilkes was in costume. “As yourself?”

  “Close. As a PAGO person! See? Sunglasses—The raincoat because I prefer rainy weather. Gum because chewing makes me feel more secure. And see? A cane—And I’ve even brought along a collapsible shopping cart, for that extra bit of psychological support. Get it, Rachel? I’m disguised as what I no longer am!”

  “But why, again, are you both—”

  “Leon really didn’t tell you? We’re all going to the Alex Silver show tonight, Share That Dream. You dress up as somethingfrom a recent dream. Leon should have said something. You’ll be needing to get your costume together.”

  “Cam, Leon didn’t come to bed last night.” She told him about Leon’s rejection by Mortprop Investments and how devastated he had been.

  “That explains why he forgot to tell you about tonight, Rachel,” Wilkes replied. “He’s disappointed, understandably. And yet perhaps it’s all for the best.”

  “But what about you, Cam—?”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ve dealt with those goons before. I’m used to keeping my eyes open.”

  Soon they were approaching Village Green, and it was time for Rachel to disembark. She said goodbye to Wilkes, Jane, and Big Phil. Wished them all a happy day on the bus. Wilkes she told to be tough with Dick.

  As soon as Rachel got to work she called home. No answer. Of course he could have come in and fallen asleep. At 9:20, pretending to be a customer, she phoned Bi-Me Realty. Sorry, Mr. Boseman had not been in yet this morning. Repeatedly that day Rachel called home and Bi-Me. Nothing. She could of course have called Gretchen but did not want to find out that badly.

  Back at 201 Dell after five, no sign anywhere of Leon, who if he had been home even just to pee would have left a trail.

  Rachel was not exactly sure of the quickest route to Village TV. It was a clear, cold night, the kind that up on Village Drive North would have stars fastened like penlights to the mistedblack crepe doming the fields. Here in the Millpond the magic was handled by street lights: crisping lines and shadows, Stretch ‘n Sealing surfaces, turning live grass to Astroturf, making shiny monoliths out of the cars on their licorice pallets of driveway.

  Soon she had no idea where she was. On her left was a deserted playground like a detention compound. Chainlinks of refusal: No Bicycles. No dogs. No Active Games. No Loitering. No Entry After 11 P.M. In the sky above, a glow. At first she thought night tennis courts a few streets over, and then she realized it must be Hopperboy High Street, a shopping strip to the southeast. Reasonable working hypothesis, anyway. Except, next she passed Millpond Collegiate, rising like a fortress across unfeatured darkness, yellow walls floodlit against vandals. And then a building she had always imagined being in some totally different part of the Millpond, the A-frame Presbyterian church, with its floodlit cedar shakes, red and amber glass-brick fronting, obligatory House of God façade: impressionistic welding. Sunday’s sermon, “The Church in a Rapidly Changing World (Part 14): Facing Some Implications of the Millennium” by Dan Mauserhamlin (D.D.). After that, homes again, architecturally uniform, varied occasionally by landscaping differences, incorrect black stable boys holding carriage lamps, etc. Pickups now and again instead of cars in the driveways.

  Frankly lost, Rachel gave up her eyes to the passing windows. For the first time she realized that the picture in picture window is what the passerby gets to see, not the resident. At night the thing is one-way, especially when illuminated by proud floodlights. Spoilsports had their drapes drawn, but most residents offered the minimum of a teasing glimpse, and many wondrous sights did Rachel see: sad gold chandeliers with hundreds of glass teardrops, grand pianos, a fat man in jockey shorts asleep in a beanbag chair, brocaded sofas, framed weed arrangements, frazzled Leon look-alikes doing paperwork at dining-room tables. Through one window she saw what appeared to be a white rabbit staked out on an altar before a velvet painting of Elvis. These sights suggested even greater treasures in the rooms beyond. Routine Millpond homes revealed themselves to Rachel that night as honeycombs of promise, of astonishing display. Tombs of the pharaohs. Not much from the outside, but inside … look out!

  It wasn’t until she had twice driven past the entrance to Village Market Square that she recognized it and from there figured out how to get to the Light Industrial Park, home of Village T
V, whose studios, situated near the mouth of Endosperm Circle, a loop of mostly high-tech small businesses, had the appearance of a Frank Lloyd Wright mink ranch. On taping nights for shows as popular as Share That Dream, the cars overflowed the parking lot to both sides of the street all the way around Endosperm Circle. Rachel was forced to leave the Civic beyond the circle and hike the rest of the way.

  Inside the front door no one was around, just lots of fluorescence, desks, and partitions with posters of kittens tumbling out of seaboots or saggy-eyed beagles captioned, “There oughta be a law against Mondays.” Finally, somewhere deep in a warren of low-ceilinged corridors, she came to a door with a green light over it.

  As Rachel took that door the light flashed red, and she found herself in total darkness. She was pushed into a seat. She thought of a theatre where the ushers are too violent to be issued flashlights. And then the lights went up.

  Amidst furious clapping, Rachel was blinded. Those kleigs. When she could see, a manic in safari jacket and headphones was eliciting applause from an excited audience in costume. Clapping, they raised eyes, masks, visors to a pair of TV monitors located at the sides of the stage. Made a travelling flurry of eagerness and hope.

  As Rachel scanned the audience for Leon, a disembodied voice announced that it was time to Share That Dream! with Your Host, Dr. Alex Silver! Theme music then, derivative game-show fanfare, and onto the stage bounded Silver in those scarlet glasses and a luminous purple suit. Enthusiastic applause.

  “Hi everybody! Welcome to Share That Dream! The show that helps you, get in touch, with your unconscious mind! I’m Dr. Alex Silver, and I’m here to, find out, what makes you, tick!”

  Here Silver left the stage and came running up an aisle. It was one of those moments Rachel avoided all theatre to be spared. She started from her seat, but the red light was on, and an usher stood guard with folded arms. And then she realized that between the last dozen rows of the audience and the first dozen was a low barrier. The wild, elaborate dream costumes were to be found in the front rows only; back here people were interested in the monitors all right but were ordinarily dressed, not so keen to share their dreams.