The Outer Cape

by Patrick Dacey

  “I like having something to take my mind off of things,” she says.

  “Well, you know,” Bill says, and his hand moves down to her chest, where Irene is sure it will end up on her left tit. Is she supposed to flinch, or smack his hand away? She has time, because he makes time, moving so slowly. Once his hand is covering her breast, she lets him leave it there, wrist bent back, pinky finger twitching, and looks at his childlike face—red, puffy, and stupid. He squeezes once, for good measure, then pulls his fingers away and shoves his hands in his pockets. Irene feels sad. Bill is perspiring on his forehead and under his arms. Last week he ate bad Chinese food and was on the toilet for most of the afternoon.

  “Let’s not do that again,” Irene says, and grabs a stack of folders and pushes them into her briefcase.

  At the diner on Westerly, she buys a small coffee and a doughnut, then drives to the beach and watches the seagulls fly against the blue and white light of morning. “Like a Rolling Stone” is playing on the classic rock station. She doesn’t feel as old as the song. And yet.

  Boys in the lake with their swimsuits on their heads; the robin banging its clipped wing against the sidewalk in pain; her mother with her hair in rollers chasing after Sukie, their dog, who’d eaten through her favorite evening gown.

  She remembers fear, lying awake at night after running from Eddie Prince’s car during a showing of The Exorcist at the drive-in in Danbury. Eddie had found her sitting behind the concession stand, her head moist with perspiration. “It’s only a movie,” he had said. But the way that girl’s head spun and the green goop that flew out of her … who thought of these things? Where did they come from?

  “Eddie,” Irene says, but she is trying to talk to the Eddie then, not the Eddie now. She had heard he was married with four children, all girls, and had recently moved from the city back to Norwalk to open his own real estate company.

  “People make mistakes,” her mother had said soon after Robert left, “some bigger than others.”

  But Irene won’t look at her missed opportunity with Eddie Prince as a mistake. Without that mistake, she wouldn’t have Nathan and Andrew.

  “He brought you home and I saw you two kiss and the way he held you and his face turned red under the light over the front step,” her mother had said, still talking about Irene and Eddie, circa 1973. “You’d been so scared and he didn’t mind leaving and missing the rest of the movie. He even called you when he got home, but you were already asleep and I answered and we talked for nearly an hour about films and movie stars and his family and where he was thinking about going to college. I invested a lot of time in that boy, too, you know? What a shame.”

  She parks at the end of Southbay on the curved road that looks as though it heads straight into the ocean and eats her doughnut and drinks her coffee. Once she has finished, she gets out and heads toward the first house on her list, a modest but priceless nineteenth-century two-story cottage across from the beach. A red Volvo is parked in the driveway. She rings the doorbell and waits several seconds. When the door opens, she sees Linda Blair in the entrance, wrapped in a pink robe, her hair a mess. Irene can’t control herself. In shock, in horror, she shouts and shuts her eyes, the same as when she saw the young Linda Blair’s head twist around on her neck in The Exorcist.

  Linda Blair reaches out and takes Irene’s hand.

  “I’m so embarrassed,” Irene says, cowering slightly, her free hand over her mouth and nose.

  “Don’t be,” Linda Blair says. “I look a sight in the morning.”

  Irene follows her inside and sits down on the couch while Linda Blair fetches her a glass of water. She had heard Linda Blair kept a place on the Cape but didn’t know in which town and guessed she was a private person, like most local legends—not that Irene would have mustered the nerve to seek her out on her own. She goes through her purse and finds her glasses and puts them on. The house is typical of the old cottages in Wequaquet—fine crafted mantelpiece, narrow stairway, hardwood floors of thick, wide pine. There are no photographs of old movie sets or any memorabilia suggesting she’s a movie star.

  Linda Blair hands Irene the water and sits beside her on the couch.

  “I’m truly sorry,” Irene says, flustered still. “You don’t understand how scared I was. I didn’t even stay for the whole thing. And Eddie…”

  “Who’s Eddie?” Linda Blair asks.

  “Oh,” Irene says.

  She drinks her water, then tells a brief version of the story. She feels stupid because millions of people had seen this woman’s head twist around and they all had their stories. But Linda Blair seems intrigued, or acts as much. She crosses her legs and puts her elbow on her knee and cups her chin in her small hand, like an actress would.

  “You know I never even saw the film,” she says, once Irene has finished the story.

  “Really?”

  She nods.

  “I didn’t even want to be in it, but I was pushed and I knew it was going to really scare people and I had never enjoyed being scared myself. And now my entire career, actually my entire life, is defined by something I’ve never witnessed. Life is like that, though, isn’t it? You’re part of the scene but you never see the scene once it’s finished.”

  Linda Blair stands and rolls her shoulders back.

  “Now,” she says. “You have some work to do, yes? And I have to get ready for a luncheon.”

  “Of course,” Irene says with mild disappointment. A luncheon.

  At the door, they shake hands like Hollywood acquaintances, or how Irene imagines Hollywood acquaintances might shake hands—lightly, just around the fingers.

  Irene walks down the step to the end of the drive. She looks at the number on the house and the red Volvo in the pebbled driveway. She gets in her car and lights a cigarette and sits there until her heart stops pounding.

  EIGHTEEN

  In the weeks following his failed run as a professional gambler, Robert’s old life with Irene and the kids keeps him awake at night, the life he has left for the desert and the palm trees and the lights, an entire life that seems more and more as if it had been lived by someone else, some other, still there in the captain’s house on Main, two miles from the beach, where he’d gone as a kid, running on the sand at dusk, destined to be an athlete, a soldier, a millionaire. And he had been all three. But now? Now he is another.

  He calls one night to talk to Irene, to lie to her, or perhaps tell the truth. He misses her. He misses part of how she was when they first met. Her laugh, especially. And her body. But not the weak will she had toward her art, the thing he had loved about her because painting was so foreign to him, and in that way, Irene became a place he had never been to before, open and exotic. He misses the toughness of her now, the way her voice changes just slightly, almost like a coo, when she speaks to the children. And her cooking. But not her sagging breasts, or the egg on her breath, and not the derisiveness in her voice, that he is nothing. If he takes the best of her and the worst of her, then here is his greatest love and his greatest enemy.

  It’s Nathan who picks up the phone.

  “Yo,” he says.

  “Hey buddy,” Robert says, speaking to his son as though he’s three years old, and not thirteen.

  “Dad,” Nathan says. “Is that you?” And then Robert hears a crackling sound, like paper being crumpled against the receiver.

  “Nathan, is your mother there?”

  “I’m having trouble hearing you, Dad. There’s a bad storm here. A tornado. We might have to take shelter in the basement.”

  “Please, Nathan. These calls aren’t cheap.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I said put your mother on the phone.”

  “Dad, I can’t hear you,” and the crumpled paper sound again, then the faucet being turned on and off, and laughter—Andrew is beside him—and one or the other starts banging a pan against the floor.

  Robert is angry, but a part of him is glad his boys are doing well enough to
clown around, even at his expense. There’s a kind of motivation in hearing them laugh, that even when things are bad, they aren’t all bad.

  Robert has recently begun selling a car maintenance package for Imperial Transmission, a string of auto service centers west of the city. If he knows anything, he knows how to make a sale, and there’s a welcoming feeling in returning to an early time in his life when what he sold required him to go to the customer and not the other way around.

  He knows nothing about cars. He wears a white-collared shirt with the American flag stitched on the left sleeve so that when someone answers the door they’ll think it’s the postman. In his side pocket, a tire gauge, pen, and a socket wrench. He only knows what kind of hell it’s like to be in Vegas without one. You have to imagine what a young mother would do if her car overheated on the highway, or how a slick, tattooed dope with a car worth more than his apartment would look in front of his girl if and when the engine quit.

  The pitch goes something like this: Ask them how often they have their oil changed. Once, twice a year? How much does that cost, having your oil changed twice a year? Let them think about it. Seventy bucks? Eighty bucks? This here costs $59.99, two oil changes, plus Imperial will rotate your tires, replace all your fluids, check the transmission, lube the chassis (what the hell does that do?). Look it over. “No.” Comment on their lawn, their furniture, their upkeep of the place. People like to know they’re doing a good job no matter what they’re doing. Are they wearing a hat? Become a fan of whatever team logo is on the front of their hat. Be their friend. Be an actor. Take a look in the house. They keep things they want others to see up front: a photo, a vase, a painting. Is that your son? Yes. He’s a marine? Yes. My brother’s a marine. Really? Where’s he stationed? San Diego. Beautiful there, but I prefer the desert. Who doesn’t? Has he been deployed? Soon. He just finished basic training. He’s young. I pray for them every day. Me, too. Are you religious? Sometimes. Good answer. I don’t usually do this, but, I think we can knock ten dollars off the price here. Military discount. I guess I can have a look. That’s one way.

  Now, if it’s a man, he’ll think he knows everything about his car. He’ll ask questions too difficult for a novice to answer, but more often than not, they’re questions he doesn’t know the answer to himself. He’ll talk about his brother or uncle or cousin who’s a mechanic. He’ll pop the hood of his car, ask, “What’s this belt here?” Call his bluff. Make it up. We call that thing the “Snake” at the shop. It runs smooth until it hits a crag. What about this? That’s the pressure valve. Everything’s got a pressure valve. And this? That’s for your windshield wiper fluid. Make sure to know the answers to easy questions. Everyone thinks they’re a trickster. They might be tempted once the test is passed, but then they refuse. “No.” Wait. My wife and I decide these kinds of purchases. Too easy. Your wife? That’s right—his voice like a whisper. Ask him, “Do you have to check with your wife when you go to work?” Well, no. “Then why do you have to check with her when you want to buy something for yourself?” They could get pissed, but they won’t. They’ll justify it. Let them. She works, too. And how much does she spend on shampoo, nail polish, face cream? A shitload. And all you want to do is keep your car running smoothly, so you can afford to keep her looking good, right?

  If it’s a woman, she’ll put it on her husband. He makes all the decisions. So, I should come back when he gets off of work? It implies she doesn’t work, but she does. She wants to prove it. We have two kids, the young one’s a handful. My wife’s pregnant, I can only imagine. You’ll see. Now, she knows what diapers, baby food, and doctor visits cost. But, it’s still a “No.” Ask, “Do you always have to ask your husband for permission?” She’ll be stunned. She’s thought about it before, her husband spends Friday night at the casino and Saturday morning at the golf course. Let’s take a look. Five nos and a sale. You said ten bucks off, right? Working mother discount? Right. Check, cash, or credit?

  After covering his printing costs, Robert takes home 95 percent of however many packages he sells. His average to date is ten a day, enough to afford him an office on the back end of the Strip and, because he knows he can sell more, he hires a new employee, Benny Torondo.

  He found Benny when Benny found Robert and tried to pitch him one of his own booklets, one he must’ve dropped outside the office. He was a fast talker with enough energy to put him on a twelve-hour shift. He needed some grooming, especially the hair around his ears and sprouting out of his nostrils. Robert didn’t mind the dirt in his fingernails or the black and gray stubble on his face and neck; made him look like a mechanic, a real grease monkey. Benny had been sleeping on the planks of various billboards—“The best penthouse in the city,” he’d say—starting with the Jubilee, descending the ladder when workers had come to put up an ad for a new show. During the day, he looked for work, but no one was hiring known felons—“Three years for auto theft,” he’d said, “and it wasn’t even a car worth stealing.” The day they met, Benny had been awakened at six in the morning by a kick to the stomach while sleeping on the ledge beneath the perfect triangle of a set of legs on an exotic dancer posted to the billboard. He’d found the booklet on his way to the Gold Coast Casino, then spotted Robert smoking outside the small office on Industrial, and approached him for a cigarette, before starting his pitch. Benny was no bum. He’d received a scholarship to Northwestern for electrical engineering, used to own a farm in Wisconsin, had a job researching alternative energy sources sixty miles north in the middle of the desert, where something went wrong. They were not so different, Robert thought. They were in a stage of readjustment, having lived other lives.

  “Commissions only,” Robert had explained, and he gave Benny an Imperial Transmission shirt and a bar of soap.

  Each morning, they map out the routes they’ll cover throughout the city, unafraid to enter any complex, knowing full well that even the rich appreciate a discount, their frugality being what made them so wealthy. They jump walls and run from security like children crossing freshly mown fairways with that same intense pleasure at the idea of getting caught, at the relief and accomplishment when once they are out of sight, together, gearing up for the next rush.

  Word gets out. Other workers eventually follow, mostly men, tattooed or toothless, generally unkempt and undesirable to potential employers. They flock to the office and try on the shirts while listening to Robert’s morning sales pitch. He gives each of them a pack of discount books, a city map, and a small wrench and tire gauge to keep in their shirt pockets. They are ex-cons, junkies, indigent divorcés. Robert is knowledge, hope, and promise. He gives them a rousing pep talk each morning, lays out an urn of coffee and two dozen doughnuts, marks the meeting spot for lunch (a fast-food restaurant with air-conditioning), and rides them out to the complexes. They scale the walls and coerce the gate operators and bargain with the stay-at-home moms who don’t mind living out the fantasy of a muscular, rough-looking walleyed crook in their home. And, most important, they make sales. Robert takes 70 percent commission, and he splits with Benny, who was with him at first, when they had no idea how big the business could get, and as Vegas spreads out across the desert, so does the crew, eventually taking road trips to Phoenix and L.A., conning, acting a neighbor in the community, a family-owned auto shop, rare these days.

  “Give them my name,” they say. “They’ll take good care of you.”

  When their shifts end, the men stand outside the office, smoking cigarettes and drinking the night’s first beer out of tall silver cans. If they have made a half-dozen sales or more each, there’s a joyous atmosphere, talk of which bar has cheap shots and waitresses with big tits. If they have done poorly, they hang on to their two or three book stubs quietly, pacing back and forth, thinking of a way to turn fifty dollars into one hundred. The casino domes shine like beacons of salvation over the maze of office buildings, and though they all know the suffering associated with those beacons, they are still drawn to them and in them they p
ray.

  Robert feels he knows these men, feels he is one of them. He has succeeded. He has failed. Perhaps these men had families, too, and are in a bad way. Together, he thinks, they can get out. He, along with these men, are a community of second chances.

  The men cling to Robert’s morning speeches, and the fellowship of their after-work meetings at the Iron Horse Café, and their weekly outings to the movies or strip clubs, where Robert gives top sellers cash to spread among the rest of the crew, kickbacks shared and appreciated and fought for by discovering new developments, which seem to pop up every week, sometimes taking a bus thirty minutes north just to make a sale. And whether they return or not, more keep coming, until Robert has a solid fleet working for him.

  * * *

  In late spring, he moves into a two-bedroom apartment on Rainbow Boulevard and is able to have the kids fly out and see Vegas. He takes them to the casinos and shopping malls, shows them the fake lava spewing from the volcano in front of the Mirage, the forum as it would first be seen and known to them on Las Vegas Boulevard, the top of the stratosphere, the pyramids of the Luxor, giving them a vision of how limitless the West really is, the reason why he has traveled so far from them.

  The children are too big to sleep in the same bed. Robert sets up the pull-out couch and Nathan stretches across it, complaining about the beam that’s practically up his ass. They eat pizza and watch television, and when the kids fall asleep, Robert looks at them in the disconnected way one might look at a neighbor’s house scattered with pieces of clothing—coats and socks—thrown lazily about. Something is not right, he thinks. We are not supposed to be here together.

  * * *

  Twice the office is broken into. The police claim break-ins are standard practice for thieves in these small complexes off of Industrial, where a block away is the Gold Coast, the Tally-Ho Strip Club, Discount Liquors. A box of booklets goes missing. A week later Robert realizes it’s one of the men who works for him. He’s out on bail or getting hammered by his woman or needing a fix. It doesn’t matter; he knows all their excuses and learns early on not to follow their logic, that it’s best to loan them a hundred bucks so they keep their minds sharp, focus their energy on the next sale, and the next and the next.