The Sirena Quest

by Michael A. Kahn

  Huh?

  LOU

  He can do a comedy routine that looks like a speech. He’s the funniest guy on campus. He won’t win, but people will love it, especially chicks. Cheer him up.

  RAY

  You think he’d do it?

  LOU

  We’ll make him do it.

  Gordie returns from the bathroom, head still shrouded in the towel.

  RAY

  Gordo, we got a great idea for you.

  Gordie trudges past and disappears into the bedroom, slamming the door behind him

  LOU

  I’ll bring him around.

  Lou goes over to the bedroom door and opens it. He peers in.

  LOU

  Gordie?

  GORDIE

  (off screen)

  Leave me alone.

  Lou looks back at Ray and winks. Then he steps inside the bedroom and gently closes the door behind him.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  The highway curved southeast out of Chicago into Indiana, the dark waters of Lake Michigan intermittently visible off to the left. Their first goal was Ohio: get across the border, find a motel, catch some Z’s. Then they’d figure out their next move.

  They saw the sun rise over Gary, Indiana—or rather, Lou did. The rest were asleep—Ray slumped against the passenger door, snoring; Gordie and Billy in back.

  As he drove through Indiana, alone with his thoughts, Lou marveled over what they had done. The four of them, the goofy James Gang. Search parties spread literally across the globe, here they were, cruising along I-80 with the legendary Sirena in the back of his minivan.

  And, incredibly enough, as Gordie announced before he fell asleep, waiting for them at Barrett College was three million dollars—$750,000 for each of them.

  “A recipe for happiness!” Gordie had declared.

  To which Ray responded, “Don’t be a douche bag, Cohen. Anyone who thinks a lot of money will make them happy has never had a lot of money.”

  To which Gordie answered, “I’m happy to test that hypothesis.”

  Lou, however, had been thinking about another possible use for that money. But he didn’t dwell on it, reminding himself not to tempt the gods.

  Cruising along the interstate as the sky began to lighten, Lou drove past a high school football field on his left. It was an older field with concrete stands that reminded him of his own high school football field. His thoughts drifted back to the summer of 1969, to that afternoon in late August during the last week of two-a-day practices. He’d been waiting for the huddle to form. As his teammates trotted back, he glanced toward the sidelines, where the cheerleaders—all wearing short shorts and gold-and-black U. City T-shirts—had just arrived and were now practicing.

  “Push ’em back, Push ’em back, WAY BACK! Push ’em back, Push ’em back, WAY BACK!”

  She was the third from the right, a pom-pom in each hand. She had dark curly hair, a deep tan, and long athletic legs.

  “Who’s that?” he’d asked Steve Becker, his fullback and best friend.

  “Which one?”

  “Curly hair, tan.”

  Steve had straightened, squinted toward the sidelines, and leaned back into the huddle.

  He removed his plastic mouth guard. “Andi Kaplan. A junior. Moved here from Baltimore last Spring.”

  Lou called a play-action pass to the right and rolled out almost to the sidelines for a better look. He trotted back to the huddle alongside Steve.

  “She’s pretty.”

  “Yeah, but I hear she’s stuck-up.”

  She wasn’t, but it took Lou more than a month to find out—two weeks to get up the nerve to ask her out, and several more weeks of asking before she finally had a free Saturday. They went to the Brentwood Theater to see Midnight Cowboy and then to the Steak ‘n Shake on Olive Boulevard for cheeseburgers and Cokes. She was funny and smart and had lovely green eyes. She kissed him good night at her front door—a good kiss with a hint of musk. He’d wandered back to his car in love.

  Gordie and Billy began stirring around eight o’clock. Lou pulled off the interstate just beyond Elkhart for breakfast at a Denny’s. They made sure to get a table by the window with an unobstructed view of Lou’s minivan, which he’d backed into a parking space alongside the restaurant.

  Perhaps it was lack of sleep—he’d been up for more than twenty-four hours—but the whole Denny’s ambiance felt surreal to Lou. There on the table before him was the bright plastic menu with its profusion of Slams—Grand Slam, Farmer’s Slam, Lumberjack Slam, French Slam. And out there on that most ordinary of asphalt parking lots in the back of that most ordinary of minivans sat that most extraordinary of statues, still wrapped in the burlap that had swathed her for more than three decades. Staring through the plate-glass window at his van, his vision blurred by a wave of fatigue, he felt as if he’d been beamed into an alternative universe.

  “We can reach Barrett by tomorrow night,” Gordie said. “How do we protect her once we get there?”

  Ray looked up from the road map spread on the table in front of him. “We can try to make an arrangement with one of the local banks. See if they’ll let us put her in their vault. If not, maybe rent a storage locker. We’ll figure something out.”

  He looked down at the map again. After a moment, he pointed at a dot along Highway 80.

  “Let’s shoot for Milan,” he said. “We can be there by lunch.”

  It was a quarter to one when they pulled into a McDonald’s near Milan. Ray had driven the last seventy miles with Gordie riding shotgun and Billy and Lou in back trying to sleep. They took a vote as they waited in line to place their orders, and agreed to press on after lunch. Their new goal: the Pennsylvania border.

  Ray unfolded the roadmap at the table and studied it as he ate his sandwich.

  Gordie held up his McRib sandwich. “You ever wonder if the people who come up with these names get their jollies from making adults sound like buffoons?”

  Ray looked up from the map and frowned. “What the fuck are you talking about now?”

  “What are you eating?” Gordie asked.

  Ray glanced down at his sandwich and back at Gordie. “What’s it look like? A Big Mac.”

  Gordie grinned. “See?”

  “See what?”

  “The name, dude. You’re an adult.”

  “So?”

  “Listen to it, Ray. Big Mac. It’s ridiculous. Same with the others.” He gestured toward the menu posted on the wall behind the counter. “Egg McMuffin. Chicken McNuggets. And not just McDonald’s. Don’t forget Burger King.”

  “The Whopper,” Bronco Billy said. “And the Whaler.”

  “And America’s favorite drink,” Gordie said. “The Big Gulp. That’s democracy in action, boys. The great equalizer. You get in that drive-thru lane at Jack in the Box, wait for a voice inside the clown head to ask what you’d like, holler out an order for a ‘Jumbo Jack,’ and by the time you pull up to the window you’re just another grinning butthead.”

  “Gordie,” Ray said, “how ’bout shutting your trap before I shove a Happy Meal up your McAsshole.”

  ***

  About an hour into Pennsylvania, somewhere between Sharon and Clarion, they pulled off I-80 and got a room at the Thrifty Dutchman Motel. It was almost four in the afternoon.

  They covered Sirena with the tarp, lugged her into the room, and set her on the carpet near the corner. There were two twin beds in the room. They took the mattresses off the boxsprings, set them on the carpet, and flipped for who got what. Gordie won a coin toss, flopped face down on his mattress, and uttered a lengthy groan of exhaustion.

  “Wake me tomorrow,” he said.

  “Hold on,” Lou said. “Before we crash here, let’s take a look at her.”

  Ray heaved himself up from his box
spring. “Yeah. Why not?”

  “I can’t move,” Gordie said, still face down.

  Billy, Lou, and Ray unwrapped the burlap. It was a slow and messy process, with chunks of rotting material crumbling in their hands or tearing away. But eventually they removed it all.

  Ray stepped back, crossed his arms over his chest, and gave her an appraising look. He bowed slightly. “Greetings, Your Highness.”

  “This is neat,” Billy said.

  Lou felt a mixture of elation and disappointment. The elation was obvious. To be face-to-face with Sirena—well, it was extraordinary. By the time of Lou’s freshman year, she’d been gone for more than a decade, and as the years passed the world came to seem so vast a burying ground that her disappearance took on the permanence of death. But here she was. And here he was—one of the first four people to stand in her presence in thirty-five years.

  But it was also disappointing, the letdown perhaps the result of seeing too many movies. When he’d tried to envision Sirena’s return—when he’d finally acknowledged that Ray’s crazy quest might actually succeed—his imagination choreographed a Busby Berkeley arrival with rolling tympani and blaring trumpets and swirling lights as a camera zoomed up the tiered catwalk to a gleaming white goddess.

  But instead of a rousing soundtrack there were the muffled sounds of a marital spat through the thin wall separating their tacky motel room from the next one. Instead of brilliant multi-colored spotlights, there was murky light from a table lamp. And instead of a towering Art Deco icon—well, she was sure smaller than he’d imagined. The sculptor had posed her in a seated pose, but even standing Sirena would barely reach four feet. A bit on the short side for a goddess. Also a bit on the dingy side—more gray than white, with rusty streaks and stains and dents. Yes, this was their goddess—but she was in her morning-after condition, sans makeup.

  He reached out to touch her bare shoulder. It was cold and hard.

  “One rule,” Ray said. “We got to make sure it’s unforgettable.”

  “What’s unforgettable?” Billy asked.

  “Her return to the college. We’ve got to make her entrance an event they will always remember.” Ray paused as he looked at each of them. “Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Gordie said.

  Ray slapped Lou on the back. “I told you this’d be awesome, didn’t I?”

  Lou nodded.

  Ray turned to Billy. “Give me five, Bronco.”

  Actually, Lou thought to himself as he studied her, the rusty streaks aren’t so bad. Gives her character. He smiled. All things considered, she didn’t look so bad for a hundred-year-old gal who’d spent the last thirty-five years wrapped in burlap inside a metal box.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “Chow time!”

  Lou rolled over in bed, squinting in the light. The tangy scent of hot pizza filled the motel room as Gordie entered carrying three takeout boxes of pizza. Right behind him came Ray with a case of Rolling Rock. Lou glanced over at Bronco Billy, who was on his boxspring trying to find his glasses. Lou checked his watch. 6:45 p.m. He sat up and looked around the room. Over in the corner, Sirena seemed lost in her own reverie, oblivious to them.

  The pizza was delicious, the beer ice cold.

  “There’s a roadhouse about a hundred yards away,” Ray said. “Right next to that water tower. Looks cool. They got beers on tap and an awesome jukebox. Bartender told me it gets pretty wild after dark. What say we go over there after dinner? We can do it in shifts—two at a time with the other two standing guard back here.”

  Lou and Billy drew short straws, which meant they had guard duty for the first two hours. It was still light out when Ray and Gordie headed off to the roadhouse. Lou had brought along a Frisbee. He and Billy sailed it back and forth on the motel parking lot until they’d worked up a sweat.

  It was a pleasant night. There was a pair of folding chairs on the concrete walkway just outside their room. They each grabbed a beer and came back out to cool down and watch the sunset.

  Lou opened his beer, smiled at Billy and shook his head.

  “What?” Billy said.

  “I still have trouble picturing you as a guerilla fighter for the Sandinistas.”

  “I wasn’t a guerilla for that long.”

  Indeed, he’d lasted only three weeks in the camp before Carlos sent him back to Managua, trying to soften the blow by explaining that some men had special talents to contribute to the revolution. In Billy’s case, that meant poring over newspapers and diplomatic journals from around the world to prepare reports for the Sandinista high command on the likely reactions of various world leaders to Somoza’s impending overthrow.

  As short as his stint had been, though, it had been long enough for one moment of sheer horror. The moment occurred one afternoon during the second week. Bored after four days of storms and depressed by the steady drum roll of rain on the green plastic covers suspended overhead, he wandered over to the mess area for company. He’d lifted the flap to the kitchen tent just as the cook was lowering what appeared to be the headless, skinned body of a child into a large cooking pot. It turned out to be a monkey that one of the patrols had shot for dinner, but the image would haunt his nightmares for years.

  “Do you miss those days?” Lou asked.

  Billy leaned back in his chair and studied the green bottle of Rolling Rock. It gleamed in the fading light.

  He took a sip of beer. “No, but sometimes I miss the feeling.”

  Lou studied his friend. “How so?”

  Billy gazed at the setting sun. “Do you remember that concert you and Ray took me to freshman year?”

  “Which one?”

  “Jethro Tull. Down in Springfield.”

  Lou vaguely recalled it. “Okay.”

  “There was a guy down front—I don’t know how it started—but all of a sudden he was up in the air getting passed around. He was kind of sprawled on his back, totally relaxed, big smile on his face, eyes closed, floating along on a current of people’s hands. I watched him with such envy, trying to imagine what it would feel like to be so connected to the moment, to be so in sync with others around you.”

  He took a sip of beer and shaded his eyes. The sun was now an orange ball hovering just above the horizon.

  Billy said, “I’d never had that kind of experience, Lou. Never. Not at pep rallies in high school, not at church services, not even at camp. I was always outside the circle watching the others.”

  “Until Nicaragua,” Lou said.

  Billy nodded. “That was the first time I wasn’t a spectator.”

  “Until last night.”

  Billy looked puzzled at first, but then he smiled. “Right. Until last night.”

  They watched the orange sun slide beneath the horizon.

  “Last night was neat,” Billy said.

  “Tell me something,” Lou said.

  Billy looked over at him.

  “After all you went through down in Nicaragua, how did you end up a public school teacher in Chicago?”

  Billy stared for a while at the empty horizon as the sky started to darken.

  “I suppose,” he said, “I’d always thought about becoming a teacher, especially after the Literacy Crusade down there.”

  “But what made you finally do it?”

  Billy looked down at his beer bottle. “Hollywood.”

  “Huh?”

  Billy gave him a sheepish grin. “A movie. A Man for All Seasons.”

  “The one with Paul Scofield?”

  Billy nodded.

  Lou said, “That movie came out a long time ago.” He tried to remember exactly how long. “When we were in junior high.”

  “I never saw it back then.”

  Lou leaned back in his chair and studied Billy. “Tell me what happened.”

  Off in the distance
was the hum of the traffic on I-80. Billy frowned as he thought back to that day seven years ago.

  After Somoza’s downfall, he’d landed in the Sandinista equivalent of the State Department. It was thrilling at first. After all, Nicaragua was on the world stage, Ronald Reagan was rattling his saber, Castro was blowing kisses. Diplomacy was the place to be in those days—the white hot center of the revolution.

  But after a few years, the bureaucracy resurfaced. He was surrounded once again by backstabbers and opportunists—a Latin American version of Foggy Bottom. And even though he kept moving up the ladder, the constant scheming and in-fighting was discouraging. He tried to keep to himself, to avoid being sucked into the intrigues, but one morning an aide-de-camp to one of the faction leaders came into Billy’s office and closed the door behind him. In a low voice he explained that his boss needed Billy’s assistance in toppling the head of the department. If Billy went along, they would certainly remember him after the power shift. If not, well…

  Billy paused, took a sip of beer, and shook his head. “I was so…bummed.”

  “What did you do?” Lou asked.

  “I didn’t know what to do. I left the office at lunch and wandered through the streets of Managua, trying to figure out what I should do.”

  In his wanderings, he’d found himself in front of the Cathedral on the Playa de la Revolución. Depressed, he’d thought back to the glory days of the Revolution. At that same plaza, just a few years earlier, he’d joined the ecstatic crowd celebrating the overthrow of Somoza. The Cathedral was still in ruins from the 1972 earthquake—roof gone, walls crumbled, dusty grass growing in the empty pews and on the floor of the nave. Suspended over the outer wall was a huge portrait of Augusto César Sandino in a cowboy hat and ammunition bandoleer—the revolutionary hero from the ’20s, namesake of the Sandinistas, future namesake of Billy’s only child.

  Billy had wandered on, eventually coming to a movie theater. It was showing A Man for All Seasons. He bought a ticket and went inside. It was mid-afternoon, the darkened theater was practically empty. He took a seat on the aisle, his thoughts in turmoil.

  Billy paused to finish his beer. He leaned over and placed the empty bottle on the concrete next to the chair. Lou waited.