by Craig Nova
The Palm, with the sign that said ALL NUDE WOMEN ALL THE TIME—AMATEURS EVERY THURSDAY, still stood in its cracked asphalt lot, still closed. A neon sign stood on the roof, the supports of it crosshatched like an oil derrick. The neon tubes described the trunk of a tree, which was yellow, and from the top some enormous green fronds hung down. I guessed it would look vaguely tropical if it were on, at night, but the place was closed.
“Look at that,” said my father. “Still not open. Pull in here. I can go back in the bushes there. That sumac. To take a leak. I’ve got to do that a lot.”
The inside of the car had the indefinable air of disaster, part of which, I guessed, came from the Xerox paper that gave off a sort of mechanical whiff, a constant air of indifference: It didn’t care, or the machine didn’t care if it copied good news or bad, the evidence of a cure or the results of another study that has come to grief. And along with that a slight breathing sound filled the air, on the verge of something like tears, as though I was imagining my own, and so when I couldn’t take it anymore I got out of the car and walked along those places where the grass was growing through the cracks in the parking lot. My father stood at the edge of the asphalt, the surface sparkling in the afternoon light, the reddish flowers of sumac there with a sort of dusty quality, as though death, which is what I thought of them being a sort of announcement for, wasn’t cold but dusty. My father strained, waited, strained again, and said, “Fuck. It feels like I’ve got to go but I can’t.”
“Can you take something for it?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I can take something for it.”
He zipped up and said to me, “Sorry, Jake. It’s just that you never think it’s going to happen, you know. That this thing that’s waiting is somehow never going to spring on you and then it does.”
The cars went by with a sort of rubbery hiss, the big rigs shifting down and doubling up the rpms, like a thumping that was more final than before.
“I wonder what they’ll be taking up on Furnace Creek,” I said.
“Emergers,” said my father.
He put out his hand, not to take mine, but as a gesture: the futility of this moment, the fact that he loved me but didn’t know what to do, how to die properly, without making a mess. Was he thinking of putting stones in his pockets and walking into a stream? Was that the solution? So we waited in the ebb and flow of possibilities like that, the trucks shifting down as though they were coming up to some barrier, some border that required a complete stop. The sky was a misty blue, as though a fire burned a long ways away.
“Thanks for not saying anything,” said my father.
With my father, sometimes it’s all silence, but it’s not just the silence of nothing, but the silence of restraint. There’s a big difference.
The man with the European leather coat and the hair that looked phony but must have been real, his stomach hanging over his belt, his black pants wrinkled, closed the front door of the Palm, turned, and locked it with a key that was on a ring that held twenty or more, as though he were a trustee in some ancient prison. He stared into the distance, too, beyond the sumac, as though something were there for him, too.
“You missed amateur night. I told you, remember?” he said to us. “Was really something. We’re going to do it again. In another month. That sign is just to bring the geeks in.”
“A month,” said my father. “A month is a long time.”
“Yeah,” said the man. “Here.” He put out his hand. “My name is Judah.”
“A month,” my father said.
So that’s what we were talking about. Everything was becoming more clear, although it was an odd clarity, since while the details were becoming more certain, the implication, that is the disappearing of a human being and where he went, not the body, but the part that told jokes and stood up to things, that was a sort of essence, was more mysterious than ever.
I’d have to track down my mother, out there in the ashram or commune, or whatever the hell they called it now, Crystalville, or Auratown, and let her know. She’d be glad about the insurance money. Her boyfriend would be, too. High times. My father knew, of course, that the boyfriend would get some of the money. His name was Jack Frankel but he had an ashram name, something like North Star.
“Come back then,” said Judah. “You’ll be amazed. Just amazed.”
“It’s a little hard for me to be surprised these days,” said my father.
“Give it a try,” said Judah.
He took a blue handkerchief out of his pocket and held it with his fingers that had a couple of gold rings on them, and blew his nose while keeping his eyes on the distance, on that vague mist beyond the sumac. A semi shifted down, and the little lid on the smokestack opened so that a stream of black smoke, like from a crematorium, came out.
“Those trucks,” he said. “They make too much noise. Smell everything up.”
Judah sat behind the wheel of his Mercedes, his eyes still on the distance, and then he ground the engine, an arrrah, arrrah, arrrah, then waited and did it again and finally he got out and opened the hood and looked in and said, “Those goddamned Germans. Where are they when you need them? You know where I come from? Yugoslavia. My grandfather had some stories to tell about the Germans. My mother came from Yugoslavia.”
He slammed the hood.
“Psssst. Hey. You. Yeah, you,” he said to my father. “Does your car start?”
“I guess so,” said my father.
“I got a favor to ask,” said Judah, moving across the empty parking lot.
“What’s that?” said my father.
“I got to get to my mother’s funeral. And my car craps out.”
My father touched his back. He didn’t say a word: All that was simply between him and me, and we didn’t say a thing about it, even when we were taking someone to a parent’s funeral. Maybe that’s how sons love their fathers: by keeping their mouths shut at particular times.
Of course, it’s the kind of thing you learn from a father you love, such as his patience when he hadn’t gotten a job that he had applied for and then had to listen to his son rave about it. That’s how it worked: I’d make a mistake, see what my father had done when I had been making an ass of myself, and then I’d never do it again. Just the memory of silence was enough.
MY FATHER DROVE and Judah sat in the passenger’s seat, where he blew his nose again and then both of them stared into the distance. I knew, when I pushed my leg against the fleece, who was there, maybe just because of the way the flesh gave, but before I pulled it back, the Xeroxed medical papers about the sloughing of the lining of the esophagus had to be moved back with the fishing things. One study was called “Mortality and Complication: Marrow Transplants.” Liver damage, kidney failure, a rash on the inside of an artery, the usual titles of medical papers. They made a pile next to the fly rods, waders, vests. The fleece was domestic, warm, comfortable, and ordinary. I pinched the corner and tugged. Sara’s red hair and freckles showed as she looked up.
“What’s that?” said my father.
“Sara McGill,” she said.
“Sara McGill,” he said. A statement, not a question.
“You made me a chocolate soufflé once,” she said. “I can still taste it.”
“What a place you were living in,” said my father. “What did you call it?”
“The Gulag,” she said.
“Sure. The Gulag,” he said. “Spam. Instant mashed potatoes.”
Sara bit her lip. A black eye, purple and like the darkness at the bottom of a deep hole, showed on the left side of her face. Some of the dark colors ran into her cheek. I touched her nose, and she pulled away. My father’s eyes moved to the rearview mirror, swept over the black eye, and then he gripped the wheel and stared straight ahead.
“Maybe you want to come fishing with us?” said my father.
“I think I would, Mr. Brady,” said Sara.
“Call me Jason,” said my father. “You know what they’ve got these d
ays? Freeze-dried chocolate ice cream. Not as good as a soufflé but close. We’ll stop to get some.”
My father touched his back.
“And you know something,” he said. “I owe you an apology. I never answered the letter you wrote to thank me for the lawyer. So at least I can take you fishing.”
“It’s what you and Jake do when you’re having trouble, right?”
My father nodded.
“Then count me in,” said Sara.
Sara shoved the pile of Xeroxed papers further into the back. She put her lips next to my ear so her words came in quiet puffs as she said, “So this stuff is about, you know, the lining of the esophagus? And marrow transplants.”
“Yeah,” I said.
My father cleared his throat as though some small thing had gotten in there.
“Jesus Christ,” said Sara.
Judah turned and put his hand in that plastic hair of his. It was as though he thought that by getting ball bearings to fall into the right holes in his head he could understand what was happening on the way to his mother’s funeral, and so he moved his head from side to side to make sense of a young woman, with a black eye, who had been hiding in the back of the car. You’d think that a man who ran a business like his would be able to understand things like this, but he kept moving his head back and forth as he considered the young woman with red hair, freckles, and a black eye, in her soccer mom skirt and blue blouse who now sat next to me.
“Who gave you that?” said Judah. He touched his eye.
“A business associate,” she said.
“What business are you in?” said Judah.
“I’m not so sure anymore,” she said.
The car made a hum. The gauges were all steady. No overheating. Good oil pressure.
“I’m sorry about . . . ,” said Sara to my father.
“It’s OK,” said my father.
“I meant about being sick,” said Sara.
“It’s OK,” said my father. “If I don’t think it’s a big deal, it’s not a big deal.”
“That German piece of junk,” said Judah. “Supposed to be so reliable. Mercedes, schmercedes.”
Sara said to Judah, “I can get you an Outback, all-wheel drive, leather interior, low mileage, still under warranty, for way, way below sticker price.”
“What about a trade-in?” he said.
“I’ll have to have a mechanic look at it,” she said.
“Hmpf,” he said.
“Here’s my card,” said Sara. She passed over one of those business cards that seemed like a small tombstone. Judah thumbed it and stared out the window.
“Go up to the corner and take the first right,” said Judah. “I’ll tell you after that.”
“Great mileage, good rubber, great air,” said Sara. “We can set up your iTunes with it.”
“Maybe I should have bought a Chevy. You can never go wrong with that,” Judah said. “Worst mistake I ever made was to buy that German thing. We don’t have to buy that stuff. But it’s everywhere. Have you bought a TV recently?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Not too long ago.”
“I bet you bought a Samsung, didn’t you?” said Judah.
“Yeah,” I said.
“See? Just what I mean. Everyone is selling the country out,” said Judah. “But you know, we should get out of hardware and into software.”
It took a minute, but I realized that he meant that those women who danced at the Palm were hardware.
“Like a screenplay,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Sara, although it was hard to tell whether she was trying to sell a car or was up to something else.
“Like, imagine this. See, we do a film where the pope is a vampire,” said Judah. “Now how about that?”
“Yeah,” said Sara. “A natural. You can’t go wrong.” She ran her finger over her black eye and flinched. Still tender. “But I’ve got an idea.”
“What’s that?” said Judah.
“Add a character, a woman, who is getting ready to be the first woman pope,” said Sara.
“Yeah. Sure,” said Judah. “Great. She can wear a low-cut thing, you know, make her cleavage show. Now that’s a pope. We have to get a costume designer to work on the, you know, those things the pope wears.”
“Vestments,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Judah. “And the vampire stuff stands in for all those priests who are buggering all those altar boys . . . and just think of all those women who want to be pope. Why, they’d line up in droves.”
“You know what?” said Sara. “There’s an agency in New York that is looking for such a script. TUM. Right there on 57th Street. Have you got a couple of bouncers? You know, guys from your club?”
“Yeah,” said Judah. “I got a couple. One’s an ex-prizefighter. Light heavyweight. Buster. He can open a beer bottle with his teeth.”
“Well,” said Sara. “Take him along with the other bouncers. The security guys at the agency won’t let you talk to anyone. The one who really will push you around is a guy by the name of Peter Mann. You might ask for him.”
“Sure, I never forget a name. Peter Mann,” said Judah. “He’ll talk to me after I’ve let Buster let them know what’s what. What’s the address?”
Sara wrote TUM’s address on the back of her card.
“Yeah,” said Judah. “I’ll take a couple of meatheads.”
“Peter Mann,” said Sara.
“I’ll look out for him,” said Judah. “Go up to the corner.”
The afternoon shadows began to fall across the blacktop, like geometric shapes, and the sky, now a darker blue, had all the ominous and yet perfect promise of fall. The air had the first glow of dusk, too, something that seemed to linger with a softness that always gave me a moment’s pause, an instant when I have a longing for what is just beyond possibility. My father began to sweat, and he wiped his forehead with a blue handkerchief.
“So?” I said to Sara. I put my lips against her ear.
“MD sent a surgeon or a doctor to shop for a car,” she said. “But all he wanted to do was give me a physical . . . you know, blood pressure, pulse, stuff like that.”
“What did he lose his license for?” I said. “I mean the doctor.”
“He didn’t say,” said Sara.
“What about the cops?” I said.
“I’d stay away from cops,” said Judah.
Sara put her lips against my ear and said, her breath moist and hot, “Two guys were watching my house.”
We went down an avenue of gas stations and chain stores, the accumulation of them having that same feeling as always, a kind of weight that is left when the familiar has been replaced by the commercial, or by things we only know through advertising and TV. The burned-out buildings here and there seemed more like rotten teeth than ever and they made the chain stores seem ominous. As though the chains were the zombie versions of the dead hair salons, hobby shops, and hardware stores that had been in a family for three generations before they had been torched for the insurance.
Judah turned to my father and said, “What do you do?”
“I’m a biologist,” he said. “I work in wildlife management.”
“Like animals?” said Judah.
“Birds, fish,” said my father.
“I bet they don’t give you the kind of trouble you get running a strip bar,” said Judah.
“I don’t know,” said my father. “It’s hard to say.”
“What about you?” Judah said to me. “How did you get into astrology? My mother used to like to sit outside and look at the stars. We went to the planetarium and saw a show about the Big Boom.”
“The Big Bang,” I said.
“Well, she liked to sit out there and look at the sky. My mother was always wondering how far away the stars were. Like the stuff that was left over from the beginning.”
“We all are,” I said.
“You haven’t got that figured out yet?” said Judah.
“We’re getting be
tter at it,” I said.
“You know the universe is expanding,” he said.
“Not only that,” I said. “It might be accelerating.”
“Why is it doing that?” he said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Not yet.”
“What kind of trouble do you have in the astronomy business?” said Judah.
“Money. And then I’m trying to get time on the Hubble Telescope. There’s a guy in Maryland, a kind of godfather, who can dole out the time. Either you do what he wants or you are in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble do you have in your business?” said my father.
Judah looked over.
“I don’t know,” said Judah. “This guy comes in the other day, and says he is looking for models. They had to be healthy, you know, like good kidneys. He’d pay me money.”
“What did he look like?” said Sara.
Then she described the doctor who had come in to look at an Outback.
“That’s the guy,” said Judah.
“So,” said Sara. “MD is getting out of cars.”
The engine made a constant rumble and the fishing things still had the air of the stream on them, which was a relief, a perfume I wanted to depend on.
“This afternoon. I was thinking about my mother,” said Judah. “She was really good at getting women to come from Eastern Europe. My mother never let anyone put anything over on her. Except once. That’s what I was thinking about.”
“So,” said Sara. “She made up some stories for those women? To get them to come here to work for you?”
“My mother just died,” said Judah. “I’d be careful what you say.” He stared straight ahead. “You don’t have to make up any stories for young women who are living in Estonia. Just send them a ticket.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your mother,” said my father. Was that a little quavering in his voice? Not a bit. All balls. He was genuinely sorry.