The Other Mr. Bax

by Rodney Jones

  She pushed the blankets away, sat at the edge of the bed, going over the past so-many-days, searching again for an affirmative thread, arriving once more at the morning before.

  “You fucked up,” she whispered.

  “Did I?”

  “You did.”

  “I did.” She sighed, then pushed herself to her feet.

  Friday… Another sigh. Club night.

  A dim, smoky bar entered her mind. She pictured herself alone at a table in the back corner—another cover band from Scottsdale—Mustang Sally, Brown Eyed Girl, Smoke on the Water. She mulled over the idea of asking her co-worker, Robert, to again cover for her, but pride, or guilt, or some abstract work-ethic would not let her.

  She adjusted the temperature of the water in the shower, stepped in, closed her eyes, and turned her face up into the hot spray.

  Chapter twenty-four – the blue hole

  After his shower, Roland walked down to the motel office to return the room key. He asked the man at the front desk, “Do you know of a restaurant nearby, a place I can get a decent breakfast?”

  The man’s smallish features were drawn too much to the center of his evangelistic face. “Right there across the street.” He pointed toward the door Roland had just come through. “Across the street, and jus’ a li’l ways down, you’ll see The Route 66. Use to be The Dino Diner back when this was Route 66. And there’s an irony for ya, I reckon. They’ll fix ya up with some eggs or pancakes if you like.” He coughed, then said, “You jus’ passin’ through, or’d ya come to see the Blue Hole?”

  “On my way home,” Roland said.

  “Where might that be, if ya don’t mine me askin’?”

  Roland hesitated before replying. “Indiana.”

  The man’s eyes stayed with him as though he might be waiting for an address.

  Roland said, “Thanks for the info,” then turned toward the door.

  He sat in a booth sipping hot coffee from a heavy tan-colored mug. A paper place mat with Santa Rosa attractions and ads from local businesses lay before him. “See Nature’s Jewel,” read one of the ads, “the eighth wonder of the world, The Blue Hole.”

  The waitress stepped up. “Folks around here are prone to exaggeration.” She nodded toward the place mat. “What can I get for ya?”

  Roland was still reading ads when his breakfast arrived. Having skipped dinner the night before, he ate with more than his usual vigor, leaving nothing but a smear of egg yolk on his plate. He dropped a tip upon the table, stepped up to the cash register, paid the bill, and was once again on the road, ready for another day of blurry landscapes and wind.

  Just east of Santa Rosa, the dream he’d had earlier that morning pushed its way to the front of his mind. From the moment he woke, the girl on the bus was there in the shadows—a ghost whose loyalty depended upon his unbroken will. The dream was silent; not a word was spoken. And, though the girl had at no time revealed her identity, he knew who she was. He had denied her a name and a face, but he knew. She had long been the faceless girl on the bus.

  Skipping back to ‘63, those first days, after learning of Joyce’s move, were still accessible—the rides home from school, the bus, a bench to himself, sitting there, thinking of her, realizing he’d never see her again. He’d never experienced pain like that before—like he’d lost a physical part of himself, a piece of his heart, leaving a hole in his chest. It worried him that he might forget her face. If only he’d had a photograph. But he didn’t. He took out some paper and a pencil with a dried-out eraser attached to its end, and did his best to create a likeness of her. All he could manage, however, was an awkward looking caricature with no resemblance to Joyce whatsoever—a frustrating effort, ending in despair.

  He pulled off the interstate, at the first exit to come along, and brought the car to a stop at the bottom of the ramp. Why the ramp was even there, he couldn’t guess. There was nothing, and no sign there was ever anything but desert there. Tumbleweed hesitantly rolled across the asphalt in front of him. The road to his right rambled off toward some barren hills in the distance. On his left, the rise of the overpass hid the view to the north. He turned, drove slowly up the rise, then stopped at the top. Ahead of him was the same as behind him, an empty road stretching to seemingly nowhere. He stepped from the car, walked to the other side of the road and stood there looking out over the waist-high, concrete rail of the bridge. The sky was a solid sheet of smoky gray. Four lanes of interstate highway, divided by a wide medium of dead grasses and tumbleweed, came to a single point on the western horizon.

  “I still love her.”

  If someone had been standing next to him, they would not have heard him say it. He watched a car speed toward the overpass from below. It beeped twice, then disappeared beneath him.

  “I don’t know,” he said, thinking aloud, “maybe it’s just that old illusion, the perfect relationship, the one you can only desire but never have. And perhaps it’s better left that way. Otherwise you’d spoil it.”

  Throughout the years he’d spent with Dana, he’d occasionally wonder about Joyce. He had convinced himself that his and Dana’s relationship was fine, that it was as good as any, and perhaps better than most. Perhaps it was. How can one know? But he’d often drift into fantasies where another fate existed—Joyce rather than Dana. He’d wonder, Wouldn’t it be the same? As good as any? Perhaps better? But with Dana gone, would she now become that other relationship—his love for her, forever preserved by the impossibility of having her?

  His eyes followed the tail end of a faded blue Mustang—its left rear tire, narrower than its right.

  A fantasy—a very accessible, perfect, and useless fantasy. The person you can only want, but not have. It had always existed and had always interfered with his ability to surrender himself, completely. His loyalty had at all times been firm, but his devotion never congealed. Perhaps there was something to those feelings or doubts that he had continually dismissed: is she, or is she not the right one?

  He slipped a hand into the pocket of his jeans and touched the stone Joyce had given him. He pulled it out and examined it. He imagined her hand, her fingertips opening in his palm— the cool stone—her warmth.

  “Where are you going?” he whispered, turning, considering for the first time that the roads before him were as varied as the points on a compass, and there was nothing preventing him from choosing any direction. The sky, the desert, the highway, the overpass, the car. It wasn’t some hazy fantasy drifting about in the back of his mind. He turned and looked off toward the east. His fingers closed around the stone, squeezing it. “What is it you really want?”

  A truck passed beneath him, its rush and rumble quickly fading—the sound of wind, like a breeze passing through a tunnel, filled the space left behind. His world had become as ethereal and surreal as a story in a book. He had been harvested, his roots severed, and then was dropped here by mistake, or so it seemed. The air felt real, and smelled curiously familiar, leaving him uncertain.

  Which way?

  PART TWO

  THE OTHER MR. BAX

  Chapter twenty-five – Stelle

  Every time Dana thought of him now, she’d hear him saying, “You know where the door is.” She had only recently divorced her husband of ten years and moved to Stelle, Illinois, leaving behind everything, including her three young children—until the end of the year, anyhow. She was staying at the home of a widow, from whom her little brother, Paul, and his girlfriend, Natalie, were renting a room. Mrs. Dutch’s house had only two bedrooms, but she kindly allowed Dana the use of the hide-a-bed in the living room while she hunted for a more suitable home.

  One evening, Dana, Paul, and Natalie were seated around the kitchen table, snacking, engrossed in conversation, debating, of all things, fate and destiny, when the phone rang. Dana, being closest to the phone, answered. “Hello?”

  “Hi, May I speak to Dana?”

  “This is Dana.”

  “Oh, hi, this is Roland Bax. We me
t at the party at the Community House a couple weeks ago.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Do you have plans for Thursday evening?”

  The question, coming from a married man, as it was, would either lead to an invitation to another party—there seemed to be no end to them—or a solicitation for volunteers for another community project—dido. Though there was yet one other possibility, however slim.

  “Well…” Dana pulled up a mental image from the party where she’d met Roland. She enjoyed his company, but would never have entertained possibilities beyond a casual acquaintance, a friendship perhaps. Yes, he was married—and had impressed her as a loyal husband type. Thursday? She could think of nothing she had planned. “Well… no,” she said.

  “Will you have dinner with me at my house?”

  An alternate picture of Roland came to mind—him sitting across from her at a candlelit table. Dana quickly erased the image, but then the memory of the party returned. Yes, she liked him. He was gentle, intelligent, and attractive, but this, she wouldn’t have figured him for. “Uh, could you hold on for a minute?”

  She cupped a hand over the receiver, and whispered to her brother, “It’s Roland Bax, asking me out for dinner. He’s married, right?”

  “Sort of,” Paul said.

  “He is. You think his wife will be there too… for the dinner thing?”

  He shrugged. “I kind of doubt it.”

  “Should I ask him?” She tilted her head and squinted.

  Paul raised his hands. “It’s a free dinner, Dana. Did he say you’d have to screw him afterwards?”

  Dana rolled her eyes.

  “Ask him what his intentions are.”

  She stood near the phone—her palm still covering the receiver—oblivious to the two infinitely distinct fates teetering on her indecision. She lifted the receiver to her ear, realizing that at this juncture in her life she had nothing to lose.

  Later, that same night, as the glow from the walkway lights outside the window reflected off the ceiling above, Dana lay in bed worrying about her children. She’d left them after having made arrangements with their father to have them delivered to her, a few days after Christmas. At the time, all things seemed possible, but then, a mere six weeks later, she worried about not having a home for them, or the means to support them. Up to then, she’d found only a few odd jobs around Stelle—nothing even close to steady.

  She pictured her nine-year-old boy, Josh, and Linda, only eight at the time, getting on the school bus, their faces framed by the bus windows as they waved to her. Mitch, her youngest, not yet in school, would often join her in seeing his brother and sister off to school. She smiled at the image of him in his little yellow boots, still in his pajamas, standing at her side at the end of the driveway. From the day they were born, a day had not passed in which she’d not seen her children. She missed them profoundly, but far worse than that was the awareness that they were feeling the same—a day had not passed, within their entire lives, that their mom’s presence was not taken for granted… until now.

  A ball of pain rose in her throat. She was lost without her children. She recalled a not too distant evening, when she’d gathered the kids upon her bed and calmly explained the new arrangement to them. The confusion in her youngest boy’s eyes was burned into her memory. She pressed her face into her pillow to muffle her sobs. She cried both for the suffering she knew they were shouldering and for her own loneliness.

  Dinner with a married man? It’s beyond stupid. I can’t do this.

  The following day, she informed her brother of her second thoughts regarding the dinner commitment. Paul however had a talent for seeing things from fresh perspectives. He could make the prospect of one’s own death seem insignificant—nothing was sacred. Dana argued her case, but in the end she came away confident that her original decision was just a harmless distraction, something to temporarily take her mind from larger concerns.

  Thursday evening arrived too quickly. She showered, then tried on a dozen combinations of skirts, blouses, and slacks—everything seemed to emphasize her cautious, middle-of-the-road blandness, however. It had been so long since she’d bought new clothes, so long since she’d dated, so long since she cared. Glaring at herself in the mirror, she finally surrendered to her reality.

  Just before stepping out the front door, she called, “I’ll be back later.”

  From somewhere in the house, came a response. “See you tomorrow!”

  She pulled the door shut behind her, paused—her hand still gripping the knob—then pushed the door open a crack and shouted, “Later!”

  The Kempton high school was ahead and to the left, then, around the corner from that was the elementary school, which Roland had told her to watch for. She pulled over in front of an old, gray-green Victorian, opposite the grade school, put her car in park, and sat there—her hand waiting on the key in the ignition switch. A vague form, no more distinct than a shadow, passed behind the screened front door of the house. It was him, she realized. Perhaps he was finishing up dinner, setting the table—expectant, committed, hopefully nervous, possibly aware she was out there thinking about ditching. The moment she turned the key, the drone of cicadas rushed in to fill the space left by the silenced engine. Taking a deep breath, she pushed the door open, climbed out and pushed it shut. Thump! Then, feeling watched, aware of each passing moment, of each step she took, wondering if her nervousness was as obvious as it felt, she followed the walkway leading up to the house.

  Roland stepped out from behind the front door onto an open porch. “Hi.” There was a smile in his eyes.

  Dana let her shoulders drop as she returned the greeting. So far so good. She had been perfectly comfortable in his presence, three weeks earlier, at the party. And here again, without realizing it, she was back in that same space, as though it had only been the moment before.

  “You hungry?” Before she had a chance to respond, he added, “I hope so.” He grimaced in mock guilt. “Because dinner’s ready.”

  “Am I late?”

  “No no no. I’m early. Sorry.”

  She sniffed the air. A savory, spicy scent came from inside. “Smells good.”

  “A yes?”

  She nodded.

  “My keen sense of intuition,” he said. “Come on in.” He held the door for her.

  She stepped into a large room, which had an unusually long pedestal-table positioned in the middle. A vase of daisies was placed at the center of the table, and slim, white candles to either side of it. To the right was a cast-iron woodstove with woodland scenes in thick relief adorning its sides—green, viny, potted plants spilled over from its top.

  “Have a seat.” Roland pointed to a chair facing into the house, then disappeared into the kitchen, returning moments later with a tray piled with an odd assortment of condiments: small mounds of chopped scallion, cashews, pineapple, raisins, and green bell pepper. He poured the wine—“Just a few things more”—and again left the room, this time returning with a large bowl of brown rice. He lit the candles, then took the seat opposite hers. Dana scrutinized the spread in front of her, puzzling over what it was meant to be, and how one should go about eating it.

  “Oh…” Roland hopped up from his chair, and glided around to her side of the table. “I’ll serve.”

  “Thank you. I wasn’t, uh… What is this?”

  “I’m not sure it’s anything. Asian? Polynesian? Zukulian? I don’t know, but I like it. I hope you do.” He spooned a chunky, yellow sauce over a bed of rice. “Is there anything here you don’t particularly like?” He held the tray of condiments before her.

  “I’ll try a little of everything.”

  Roland sprinkled the chopped vegetables, fruits, and nuts over the mound of sauce and rice. “And, there you go.” He slipped back to his side of the table and began assembling his own dinner. “Go ahead, dig in.”

  She took a bite. It was bitter, and spicy—but then the bitterness gave way to the sweetness of
the pineapple and raisins.

  “You made this?”

  Roland chuckled. “I don’t know if I should claim credit or not.” He then confessed that his wife, Nancy, had prepared the curried chicken while he was at work, and then had left to spend the night with a friend in Indiana. “The moment I got home, I went into the kitchen and tasted the sauce. It was bitter.” He made a face. “I mean, pungent—like dishwashing liquid. Have you ever tasted Palmolive?” He glanced down at the concoction on his plate. “It amazes me that she’d think I’d serve that to a guest. She had to have tasted it.” He shook his head, rolled his eyes. “So, anyway, I dumped it into a strainer, rinsed off the chicken, and started over. I hope I’m not spoiling your dinner, with all this.”

  Dana lifted a fork with a chunk of chicken stuck to its tines and examined it. “Maybe she poisoned it.”

  Roland took a bite from his plate, chewed—an almost mischievous smile in his eyes. “It seems funny now, but I wasn’t laughing an hour ago.”

  “You think she did it on purpose?”

  His gaze drifted about the space before him. Tapping his cheek with his index finger, he gave his head a tiny shake. “I really don’t think so.”

  She tilted her head to one side. “Hmm.”

  “My guess is, she hurried it together, eager to be on her way, botched it and said to hell with it, or something to that effect, and then left it for me to deal with.” He laughed. “No, I don’t believe it was spite or anything like that. It’s more like she just doesn’t care.”

  Dana smiled, which only partly hid her bafflement. A word her brother recently used to describe Roland and his wife came to mind: interesting.

  As they continued eating, Roland further enlightened her in regard to his and Nancy’s relationship, making no apologies for the unorthodox nature of the dinner invitation, but instead, giving credit to his soon-to-be ex for the consequences he presently enjoyed. Without realizing it, he’d set a precedent for the evening: talking openly, honestly, hiding nothing, as though, like herself, he’d reached that point where he had nothing to lose. At first, it appeared complicated and messy—his story, her story—but she slowly let go and allowed herself to be drawn out. It felt good, being out.