“Well, this is something new,” Wilton Hoxley said, sounding pleased. “Up until now, I’ve always felt that I was the one who was wet. All wet. The wet blanket. Wetback. To wet one’s pants. Wet behind the ears. Not a very nice word, is it?” The match guttered and died, and my lungs collapsed, releasing enough air to inflate the Goodyear blimp.
“I guess not,” I said over the torrent of air.
“And that’s interesting, isn’t it?” Hoxley said serenely. “I mean, in a purely linguistic sense. What’s life, after all, except a little pocket of wet, a little envelope of wet that’s trained itself to move around? ‘Don’t dehydrate,’ life says to itself. ‘If you dehydrate, you’ll die.’ Not fish, of course. Fish don’t worry. But the terrestrials. What are they afraid of, hmmm? All these little dirt-dwelling bags of water, what are they afraid of? That the sun will dehydrate them? Or are they afraid- hold on a moment”-a match bloomed behind me- “of this?”
“Yes,” I said instantly, cravenly. The gasoline fumes clogged my nose.
“And what’s this?” he asked dispassionately, addressing some debating team from the moon. “A spark. A drop of the sun’s sweat. Are you sweating, Simeon? I can think of only one phrase that addresses the issue.” He touched the cold end of the match to my ear, and my reflexes yanked me away from it. “ ‘No sweat,’ kids say to each other, don’t they? ‘Dry up.’ Do you think this is what they mean?”
“I don’t know,” I said, my lips so dry that they made popping sounds as they slid over my teeth.
“Did anyone ever tell you to dry up?”
“Oh, come on, Wilton.”
He poked the match against my ear again. “Not my name,” he chided. “You haven’t earned the right to call me by my name. Did they ever tell you to dry up?”
“Sure,” I said, “sure they did.”
“I doubt it,” he said. I heard him take a step back, and then a little puddling sound, and then a stream of something hit my neck, and the smell of more gasoline crowded into my skull. “Half a liter,” he said conversationally as the stream trickled down the center of my back, “not much, considering the relative abundance of fossil fuels, but it should be enough. Do you know how often people told me to dry up? How many men and women told Wilton to dry up? Well, they’d all want to be wet now, wouldn’t they?” I was waiting for the match, but even so it was impossible to miss the note of self-pity that threw his tone of triumph into a minor key, and I knew that I’d been playing the wrong card.
I forced myself back onto my knees and turned my head toward him. “They didn’t say it often enough,” I said. “Dry up, asshole.”
There was a silence. Outside I heard the remote music of the carnival, a recording giving evidence of life on another planet, as I waited for the match. When the scraping sound came, it was his voice instead.
“A new tack.” He sounded like he was being held together with baling wire.
“Oh,” I said, driving my fingernails through my palms and trying for a note of command, “just light the fucking match, you pathetic slug.”
“You don’t know who I am.” His tone was almost plaintive.
“Listen up, Wilton,” I said, counting down to my last moment, “who gives a shit?”
There was a booming sound, some bold soul hurling himself against the pair of doors that opened out.
And Hoxley laughed. “We never know, do we?” he said.
“You never know,” I said, waiting for the match. “Most of us do.”
“We never know,” he said, “how important we are to others. The slightest thing we do or say, something we forget a minute later, can take root in the other person’s soul. You clown. You never think about me?”
“About as often as I think about the United Arab Emirates.”
He jostled me with his knee. “On your feet,” he said. “Time to think about Wilton.”
22
Mother’s Hour
The back door to the Haunted Castle slammed shut behind us with a deceptively solid sound, and Hoxley located my sacroiliac with the barrel of the automatic and nudged. “Servants’ entrance,” he said, with a wobbly giggle that suddenly veered off in the direction of a sob. It was a new, and not particularly encouraging, giggle. He shoved the gun into me aggressively enough to make imaginary exit wounds bloom on either side of my naval like softballs hit into a screen. “Straight ahead,” he said.
The gun, poised between where I thought my kidneys might be, shook more than his voice did. The portion of the fairgrounds behind the castle was untended and untransformed, a desiccated southern California field of brittle brown weeds. The pageantry, and the comfort of the crowd, were behind us.
“To the catering truck?”
“Don’t get cute,” he said, kicking a heavy shoe against my ankle and clipping my Achilles’ tendon. I stumbled drunkenly. “This isn’t the Age of Cute yet. We’re still poised on the edge of the Age of Discovery.”
“The thirteenth?” I guessed, knowing it was wrong, just wanting to keep him talking, to keep his foot slamming my ankle, if necessary, and his hands away from the trigger and the matches. In my own nostrils, I smelled like a trillion shares of Exxon stock.
“Late fifteenth,” he corrected me pedantically. He came up beside me, one hand still trying to bore the gun barrel- my gun barrel-into my back and out through my navel, and I glanced over at his face, a sweating skull with the death’s-head makeup dripping into vertical smears. He was limping along, perspiring profusely, the sweat carrying the greasepaint along with it in pewter-gray rivulets, and he didn’t seem to be able to keep his eyes focused steadily in front of him. “America hasn’t been discovered yet,” he said, his voice rising in pitch, “and stop looking at me.” I did. “Isn’t that nice, no America? No truncating the rhythms of life into patterns of convenience, no convenience stores, no convenience restaurants, no one-hour dry cleaning, or even wet cleaning, to return to an earlier theme. And yes, the catering truck, perspicacious of you, the late Mr. Moreno’s catering truck. Poor Mr. Moreno. An enterprising gentleman. Catering trucks and a convenient concession license for the wonderland through which we now stroll, although Mr. Moreno didn’t know about the concession license.” He licked his lips with a pink tongue. “It’s amazing, here in America, what you can do with a phone, a checkbook, and the number of someone else’s business license. Mr. Moreno was even more of an entrepreneur than he knew. And newly arrived in the Land of the Free, too. Isn’t immigration wonderful? One of the dynamics that drives America, I always say. Well, I don’t always say it, of course. Wouldn’t that be boring? On the other hand, he served microwaved burritos, Mr. Moreno did, and to his own countrymen.”
We were most of the way to the catering truck by now, and although there were a few people in sight, here on the wrong side of the attractions, no one had even glanced at us. We were just Death and his good buddy Imminent Death hiking through the scraggle of weeds, and Death’s little gun was hidden inside his long black sleeve. Whoever had banged on the door of the Haunted Castle hadn’t followed us.
“So what happened to Mr. Moreno?”
“He got microwaved.” The gun wiggled upward, seeking a soft space between my ribs, and found one. “And now shut up and walk.” Hoxley fell back a step behind me, and I concentrated on doing what I was told.
“How’s life in a catering truck?” I asked as we neared it.
“All the conveniences of home,” Hoxley said from behind me. “Look at the light shining through the window. Here we are, the lonesome travelers cutting their way through the snowdrifts in a Book of Hours, heading for the homely candle.”
“This isn’t going to work,” I said, with more bravado than I felt.
“Oh, please,” Hoxley replied, pityingly. “I know that. This is my swan song. ‘Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.’ Do you recognize the quote?”
“No,” I said, without thinking.
“Well, it’s a classic, and tough shit,” Hoxley said. �
��I’ve long given up the idea that you might do anything but disappoint me. To the right, now, and watch the step.”
We’ d rounded the corner of the catering truck, and sure enough, there was a set of fold-down aluminum steps waiting for us to climb up. “Upsy-daisy,” he said, wiggling the gun between my ribs.
“Wilton,” I said. He poked me twice, hard. “Sorry,” I said, “but what happens now?”
“The end of the comedy,” he said. “Up the stairs.”
“This is a comedy?” I was already at the door.
“Comedies, as you should know from your study of literature, don’t have to be funny. They’re just stories that end happily.” He reached around me and fitted a key to the lock, the other hand pressing the gun into my back.
“But you said this was your swan song,” I said as the door swung inward.
“In,” Hoxley said, prodding me again.
“So what’s so happy?” I said, stepping inside. “You’re dead?” I heard him behind me, one foot heavier than the other. “That’s a happy ending?”
“One can get bored,” Hoxley said, pulling the door closed, “even with ecstasy. Hard to believe, but true. Hold still.” An electric light went on, and I found myself looking at a world made entirely of aluminum.
The inside of the catering truck was a single dimly lighted metallic corridor: stoves and microwaves and cooking areas to the left, a counter across the wide door at the far end, across which food would normally have been served. A wooden block bolted to one wall held ladles and long wooden-handled forks and knives, the knives positioned sharp edge out and ready for business. The counter was littered with Hoxley’s possessions, and the black trench coat was tossed into the corner behind the door. The straw-blond wig peeped out from the folds.
“Keep moving,” he said. I heard him lick his lips, a small, dry popping sound that sounded like a snake’s tongue looks. “Between the stoves,” he said. “Then turn and sit on the counter, facing back. Don’t look at me, hear?” I hesitated, and he shoved me again. “I said, hear?” His voice had taken on a tightwire shimmy, a quaver that threatened to broaden into an uncontrolled tremolo.
I said I heard and did as told, facing three quarters toward the rear of the truck. Opposite me was a line of tinted windows. Through them, in the exaggerated dusk, people drifted back and forth on business. Someone moaned in front of me, and in the darkness under the counter at the back of the truck I saw a large black plastic trash bag, two of them, actually, held together by a long spiral of fiber tape.
“You’ve met Mom,” Hoxley said, extinguishing the kerosene lamp. He emitted a burst of sound that turned out to be a laugh.
He stepped to the left. “Okay, sit on the counter. Don’t look at me. Just sit on the counter and be quiet.”
I hoisted myself up onto the counter. Around me, like cosmetics on some grand and peculiar lady’s vanity table, was an apparently random assortment of kitchen and bathroom objects: spoons, knives, heavy frying pans, soap, combs and brushes, deodorant, shaving cream and a razor, hair spray, toothpaste.
“You’ve made yourself comfortable,” I said, sneaking a peek at him.
“It seemed like fun at first,” Hoxley said without turning toward me, gazing instead at the tightly wrapped garbage bags, “like camping. And it was a nice way of getting them out. But, like everything else, it got boring.”
“I wouldn’t think you were the camping type.”
“I’m not. And, because you’re correct, you may look at me.” I did, focusing on the sweat-smeared death’s-head. His eyes were jumping like peas on a skillet.
“Imagine the Grim Reaper as a child,” Hoxley was saying as though lecturing to a class, “way too skinny to be popular, not so much ugly as odd-looking, these terrible clothes”-he looked down and plucked at his robe-“probably hand-me-downs from his uncles, the Four Horsemen. Who’s going to play with him? Too weird even for the Middle Ages.”
I couldn’t keep my eyes on his face, so I turned and gazed through the windows opposite me. Nothing seemed to be happening outside the truck.
“So what was he supposed to do with his youthful energy?” Hoxley mused. Then he coughed sharply. The muscles in my back leapt at the sound. “Auden says, ‘Human beings are creatures who can never become something without pretending to be it first,’ or something like that. I like to imagine the lonely little Reaper when he was still a black-robed tyke trying out his power, knocking on the doors of people’s huts to give them the flu or strolling solo through the woods, obliterating ant colonies with a frown.”
“You’re the Grim Reaper now?” Outside, there was no sudden posse of Canadian Mounties riding to the rescue. No Hammond in his tight suit.
“This is makeup,” he said, “remember?” I looked around to see him rub at his brow, the tight, hopeless gesture of someone with a migraine months old, and his hand spread the paint down the left side of his face, dragging his features down and sideways until he looked like a moon that had been ripped into fragments and reassembled itself amateurishly out of sheer will and gravity. The only things left in their correct places were his eyes, poisoned raisins in a botched Christmas pudding. “I’m the Gay Reaper,” he said through the smear, “or, rather, given the corrupted state of the language at present, the Happy Reaper. And it’s still boring, now that I’ve done it all. Well, almost all.” He jerked his chin at me, an abrupt upward tic. “I’ve changed my mind, turn around. You’ve tried my patience enough in the past. You don’t want to do it now.”
“What about her?” I asked, facing out the window again and gesturing in what I hoped was the direction of his mother.
“I was thinking of cooking and eating her,” Hoxley said, calming himself. “I’ve got all the equipment. How’s that for religious symbolism? Enough to win your poor little psychologist, the one I saw on TV, a second Ph. D. But I’m afraid she’d be tough. She always was tough.” He gave me the laugh again, sudden as a breaking violin string.
“Changing the subject,” he said, “it always amazes me, a society as advanced as ours is supposed to be, playing host organism to psychologists. The most pernicious of social parasites. Paying money to priests and drug dealers I can understand, we have to have some fun, but psychologists? I could outsmart my psychologist when I was ten. He sat there getting off on my aggression at eighty dollars an hour, pretending to take a note or two whenever he remembered, and I made stuff up just to keep him breathing hard. I never burned any little animals, whatever she might have told you. For one thing, I hadn’t thought of it, and for another they’re not satisfying enough.”
“Well, that’s something,” I said. “I figured every time you broke a shoelace, you set fire to a sow bug.”
“That was later,” he said, contradicting himself, “and it was just a phase, like acne. The things with exoskeletons explode, which is kind of cute, but they don’t feel it. No nerves in an exoskeleton. With mammals, all the nerves are in the skin, and that goes first. Besides, most little animals don’t have vocal cords. Vocal cords are essential.”
He paused and looked down at the gun as though he’d forgotten he was holding it. “My head hurts,” he said to the gun.
“Blow your brains out,” I suggested.
He looked up at me quickly, and I glanced away. “Mr. Used-to-Be-Clever. Your paper was really good, you know.”
“What paper?”
“ ‘Faces of God.’ I broke into Blinkins’s office one night and read it. It infuriated me. I had spots in front of my eyes. I knew how little work you’d done. You broke appointments with me, yawned when I gave you facts and even pictures, wonderful pictures, probably cranked the whole thing out the weekend before it was due. And it was better than anything I could have written. Graceful, you know? All airy and light. If I’d written it, it would have taken me months, and there would have been quotes everywhere and footnotes speckled all over the pages like someone sneezed on them with his mouth full. You didn’t even put a colon in the title. Didn�
�t you know that all serious academic papers have colons in the title? I’d have probably named it ‘The Faces of God: Representations of the Divine Visage in Post-Carolingian Northern Europe’ or something like that. You just called it ‘Faces of God’ and said the hell with it.”
“I barely remember it,” I said.
“You don’t have to tell me that.” His voice was louder, and I could feel him looking at me. “I know that you were more important to me than I ever was to you.”
“And why does that matter?”
“It doesn’t,” he said shortly. “Not any more.”
“You haven’t got much longer,” I said, hoping it didn’t sound wishful. “Sending Eddie out to meet me was like calling the cops yourself.”
“We’re waiting for the cops,” he said. “Have you been shaving points off your IQ or something? Maybe people are right to avoid reunions, they’re always a let-down. Here I’ve been thinking about you for years-not often, but from time to time and bang, you surface in the newspaper, and what are you doing? You’re a detective. Well, I think, could be he’s remained interesting, although so few people do. Aging seems mainly to be a matter of getting duller. Do you think I’ve gotten duller?”
“Not at all.”
“Well, you have. It’s actually funny. You’ve gotten little and pinched and tiny, and I’ve gotten, well, enormously interesting, and you’re the one who doesn’t remember me. Don’t you think that’s funny?”
His mother moaned again. I heard Hoxley’s feet scuff against the floor as he turned toward her, and I put both hands on the counter and swiveled toward him, ready to leap, and found myself looking into the end of the gun.
“Not yet,” he said. Then he smiled, his teeth yellow in the smeared gray-and-white face. “We’ll just ignore Mom for now. I’m sure she’d prefer that to the alternative.” He looked around the truck. “It’s sort of cozy, just the three of us. You never came over to my house when we were in school, did you? No, of course not. I never went over to my house when I was in school. Not with the little Hebe there. ‘What a falling-off was this.’ Another quote. The beast with two backs and so forth. Not much of a quoting man, are you? I should have known from your paper.”
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