Could I quote you on that, Pingo?
No one ever called him that before.
Of course you can! Come over here, Kid.
Olympia backed away for the privacy of it. Abe too. The Kid stooped down, got his face between the bars, and turned his head, giving the Crab his ear. The Crab Man strained forward and whispered something. The Kid laughed, then straightened up. The Crab Man was excited, his one eye gleaming.
If I had arms, I’d give this little sucker a hug!
On their way back to Red Hook, Abe wanted to know what the Crab Man had whispered. Was it the answer to the riddle? The Kid said nothing.
Olympia told him to mind his own business. Abe figured it was his business; he was interested in the Crab Man’s thoughts, the vicissitudes of the spirit, the twists and turns of mortality. But the Kid stayed quiet. It would have to wait.
That night after his contemplations, the Crab Man had a good sleep with a dream in it. It was a sleep from which he would never wake. But before that happened, he dreamt he was in the aisle of a well-lit supermarket and the Kid took him for a fast ride in a shopping cart.
Before there was a Kevin Spacey, there was John Malkovich. Before there was a John Malkovich, there was Zackary Ray. He was taller and more elegant than his successors, but he lacked their range. He was from an older school of acting. No school. He graduated Cornell with a B.A. in business and went to Madison Avenue. At Barnbach Yardhouse & Young, the art department is where he wanted to be, but marketing is what he got. After a year of Maytag and the Jolly Green Giant, he got systolic hypertension, inflammation of the inner ear, and dizzy spells.
It may have been a protracted case of psittacosis he caught from playing with his roommate’s macaw. That’s what the doctor thought, but Zackary knew better: It was the stress from his job. He quit and found a new place to live. In the time it took to recover, he reconsidered his career and went back to his first love, the theater. He would give it a try, and if it didn’t happen he would move on. But it did happen. He was cast in an off-Broadway spoof that led to a Broadway hit that ran seven months. Hollywood took notice, and Zackary was the only actor in the play invited west for the film version.
A year later he married the producer’s daughter and tried to be a family man, but that’s not who he played. He was the best of his generation at catfooted lassitude bordering on the malefic. Best at being obsessed by the impossibility of a lady’s favor. Famous for playing conniving characters, half craven, half courageous, and never showing their hands. The gears of corruption lubricated with honey, as one reviewer put it. The critics loved him and the audiences loved to hate him. He sided with Nazis, made deals with Japs. Ruthless in slippers and brocaded gown, he could whisper something in a lady’s ear, then shoot her with a sigh.
He was Baltimore born-and-bred, but there was something Old World about him, lean and unholy with his icy blue eyes, but he only played Americans, except for once. In the late fifties he was cast as Judas Iscariot in a star-studded biblical epic. For a touch of sympathy he decided to give Judas a limp, but the director nixed it. The only thing Zackary liked about that role was the cloak. And the money. To save some, the studio cheated Utah for Jerusalem and shot in early spring to avoid the heat—but snow was what they got, and it didn’t stop. Millions were wasted on waiting, and Zackary made a bundle doing nothing till July.
He already owned a house in Brentwood, but had to buy another in Malibu, for his wife. No divorce, just separate houses. Their son grew up in both. Then the son was gone, Zackary didn’t know where; even if he did, he knew it wouldn’t help. He felt guilty about this and guiltier still that he didn’t feel more guilty. As a father and husband, he hadn’t amounted to much.
His career expanded then diminished. A slump is what he called it, and it spread. For about twelve years running, he was among the best of the bad guys, but then they had seen enough. For the next twelve, except for a couple DUIs, he couldn’t get arrested.
A life sentence without possibility of surprise. It was boring in Brentwood. Being a specialist at portraying malignity could have an effect on a person. He was a disciplined and reliable actor, but nothing felt authentic anymore. Twelve years was a long time to be washed up.
Sometimes, alone at night and having gone too far with the gin, he wrote letters to his agent. Not his true agent—his true agent was dead. That was Leonard; this was Sid, the son. He’d taken over the agency, and kept Zackary around because it was easier than dropping him. He was twenty-four years old and wore tennis shoes to the office. Zack would write single-spaced, five-page indictments blaming everything from the war in Southeast Asia to his answering service for the slump. Then, trying to be upbeat, would remind Sid that he still got fan mail requesting autographs and eight-by-tens, that he was relevant still and could be brought to the money. Sid didn’t have the stamina to read this shit, but for a laugh, sometimes he passed these letters around to his friends.
Zackary kept a bottle in his Buick and a silver flask in the inside pocket of his coat. Gin. A tough guy’s drink, and a lady’s too. At its best, life was tenuous. No wonder people believed in miracles—but not him, he would take it standing up.
The linen suit. It might be too much. Too much what? He wasn’t sure. But he was on the road before noon. Indio. Not even Palm Springs. The National Radio Advertisers and Broadcasters of America and International Affiliates from the English-Speaking World is what the flier said. No invitation. But he had done some radio work in his day, they knew who he was—he wouldn’t be turned away.
Lorenzo and his wife, Belle, would probably be there. He tried to recall if he had worn the same suit the last time he saw her. The parking lot, Belle in his arms. It happened before, it could happen again. Zackary stopped for a date shake just outside of Indio. Drank half of it in the car. His stomach wasn’t good.
CELEBRATING 55 YEARS OF BROADCASTING, the banner read. It was an airless evening, around ninety degrees, and no place to park near the entrance. Inside, the air-conditioning made his sweat feel like ice. At the buffet he swayed a little, having a bit of a hard time keeping his balance. But just the right kind of hard time. If any of the old flacks recognized him and approached, he would just chew his gum and nod his head, let them think what they thought and move on.
Lorenzo had done well. Standing between tables, they had a conversation, the three of them. Lorenzo was there to give a speech on how to circumvent pitfalls on the road to success, and didn’t ask Zackary a single question. And Zackary only got to ask Belle one. What was she up to these days? Lorenzo answered it.
Belle had gone back to school, going to be an insurance adjuster, big money there. Age had softened her, but not much. If anything it made her more beautiful. Zackary wanted to tell her she looked like Cleopatra. But Lorenzo couldn’t stop talking about himself. Poor asshole, even in his elevator shoes he only came up to her chin. If Zackary was patient maybe he could get her alone, something could happen. It had before.
Go out there and wait in the parking lot, see if she comes. But she never even really looked at him. Hello, you’re looking fit, and that was about it. Not even that. Lorenzo didn’t leave any room for it. Maybe Belle had told him what had happened in the parking lot at Chasen’s three years earlier, or was it four? This was a different parking lot, but after a visit to the men’s room, that’s where Zackary went.
And suddenly there she was. Fifteen feet away, had just come out the back door. She saw him, didn’t move. He came closer.
So how’s life, Belle?
I’m not happy with it, Zack. Not even close.
What are you going to do?
He meant it to be a wide-ranging, all-purpose sort of question, but she was specific.
I came out to have a smoke.
She could have smoked inside. Was she being coy? He came closer to light it. She lit it herself.
You have a fun
ny way of putting things, he said.
What do you want?
Nothing. Been a while since we talked.
What’s to talk about?
Maybe she was drunk. He was fine, a little nervous, but fine. There were lots of things to talk about.
Any number of things. You, me . . .
Back off.
He wasn’t close enough to back off, but he did. She flipped her cigarette.
I’m going back inside.
He liked a little touch-and-go, a bit of mystery, but not this much. He had just wanted to look into her eyes and see her look back like he was something special. When she went through the door, he could hear applause.
He waited in his car, listening to the radio, watching those who hadn’t already driven away drive away. The prospect of going back to Brentwood right then made him empty. What was to go back to? Some he guessed would stay, spend the night in palmy motels, but Zackary was worried about money and ended up at a place called the Bottom Dollar that didn’t have a pool. He woke up at sunrise but stayed in bed till noon.
He drove south through Penstock and Yuings, gaunt little towns with nothing in between, down to Guyacola, a place he had been once before. It was even less than it was the last time he saw it. He parked in front of a bar called the Snake Pit. It was closed, had the dusty look of a place that had been that way awhile. No people, no traffic, except for a pickup parked down the street with a sheepdog sleeping on the roof.
He turned off the engine, lowered the window. It was hot, but he traded the AC for the silence. Overhead the sky was still and blue, but twenty miles to the west a cluster of black clouds hung over the mountains. He could see lightning out there and listened for thunder, but it was too far away.
It was from those mountains, down from a place called Fulgar, that he had come the last time, which was the first time he stopped in Guyacola. Because of a bottle.
A jug really, a half gallon of apple juice that he never opened. Kept it on the shelf above his bed. The label was what he liked. A golden sun over a grove of palms in the luminous style of Maxfield Parrish. He had never taken a close look at the fine print below the illustration. Then one night he did.
THE HAPPY APPLE
FULGAR, CA.
He looked up Fulgar in The Thomas Guide. Found it in lowercase on a row of mountains somewhere between the ocean and the desert, wasn’t even a town. He had an impulse to go, but didn’t, didn’t have the get-up-and-go for a lark at that point. He waited till fall. On the fourteenth of October, his birthday, he got in the Buick and went. Drove down the coast sixty miles, then east for almost an hour up into the mountains and found the place. APPLE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD, a sign said. But he didn’t see any apple trees. Fulgar was basically a gas station plus the Happy Apple, which was a combination country store–café with four stools and a counter.
He ordered the specialty and a cup of coffee. “Known far and wide for our stuffed you-know-what baked in brown sugar, cinnamon, raisins and walnuts melted in country butter” is what the menu said. Zack had one and ordered another to go. No matter how much he ate, he never gained weight. He had the metabolism of a ferret and fucked like one, his wife once said.
That was as close to a compliment as she ever came. He asked the old lady who served him where the desert was. The road he came up on seemed to have ended, but there was another that went down the eastern face of the mountain, and she told him how to get to it and to be careful because it was steep and twisty. It was too; it felt like driving down the side of the moon, and when he got to the bottom the desert was there, went all the way to the great Salton Sea, which he had never seen, but since it was there he drove in that direction to have a look.
Traveling fast and flat through a world of red ants and rattlesnakes excited him, and he was glad he came. There were dunes and silence, no population of people to see, just an occasional car whizzing by. The landscape beguiled and he wanted to walk in it, take off his shoes and socks, feel the sand on his feet. He did park and walk, but not too far from the car. He loved the desert, but didn’t trust it and kept his shoes on.
Through and around mesquite and other thorny things, he walked over the gravelly sand to the dune he came to climb, but changed his mind when he got to the base of it. It was a bad idea to blotch it with footprints; also he didn’t want to get sand in his shoes.
He heard the gibbering of something he couldn’t see. He scanned the sky, the ground. Probably a roadrunner. He spotted a rusted beer can. Some stupid bastard drank it then left it, crushed it too. Zackary could bury it, but what good would it do, where would it end? The lunatic prophets wandering the deserts in bygone days probably left their crap as well. Zackary unscrewed his flask and drank to the extinction of louts and their products, then hollered as loud as he could:
The reptiles will not be conquered!
He had done to the silence what he didn’t want to do to the dune, and looked around to make sure he was alone. Nothing was deserted in the desert; the only thing that didn’t belong was him, yet his presence complicated nothing. He looked over his shoulder to make sure the Buick was still there. Nothing had moved.
Then something did. A turtle the size of a soup bowl was going somewhere. Zackary slipped the flask back into his pocket and went closer. The turtle stopped. Neither of them moved. Zackary yelled at it. The turtle stayed put. Zackary flapped his arms. The turtle withdrew into its shell. He nudged it with his foot. The turtle stayed shut. He bent down for a closer look.
At toy stores, Zackary bought Rubik’s Cubes to fiddle with. He was good at geometry, liked fractional color-coded shapes (he was of Swiss lineage; he liked Paul Klee). The turtle’s shell was oval, but within it there were octagons, hexagons, and nonagons. The welded masonry of its back was moth brown with glimmers of green. He could take this turtle home, put it in the yard, bring in sand, a rock garden maybe, plant cactus. He could call the turtle Euclid.
A jug of apple juice he never drank triggered a trip he had no reason to take and he winds up with a turtle. Anything could happen, things added up. Carefully, he lifted it off the ground, holding it away from himself—a turtle didn’t have many options, but it could piss on you. Zackary set it back down. On its back. Capsized, immediately its head and legs appeared, wagging, thrashing for solid ground. He watched it struggle a moment, then flipped it over, right side down. In no hurry, the turtle waddled away. It wasn’t going to Brentwood.
Zackary was hungry, his back hurt, and he wanted a shower. On the road he had passed a sign that said GUYACOLA 5 MILES.
The Firefly Motel had a thirty-foot pole with a light on top that blinked and seven one-room cabins. Zackary took number seven. He took a shower, a shot of gin, and went back out before the sun went down.
There was the hardware store, a Mexican market, and the China Diner. None of it looked inviting. The Snake Pit was open. That’s where he went.
It was a big hollow place with a concrete floor and stucco walls. Four locals, five including the barman, huddled at one end of the bar. Three of them were young; the fourth was larger, shorter, and older, pushing fifty. He was doing the talking, but stopped when Zackary walked in.
Borrego Bill was big-chested, slit-eyed, and neckless, shoe-polish black hair, pants, boots, and shirt all black, a turquoise ring on his pinky. Zackary had seen the type before; on the sets of Westerns, extras like him were not unusual.
The bar was long, and Zackary took a seat at the lonesome end. And waited. They acted like he wasn’t there.
What did he expect, applause? He’d been around, knew the routine; there was rule of rank in a place like this. Borrego had names for his guys that proved it; called the big one Bonehead, the smallest Peewee, and the one in between Ratbreath. After another minute, Borrego told the barman, whose name was Bob, to attend to the customer.
Zackary ordered a draft please
. No draft, just bottles. On the wall next to the American Legion plaque was a Schlitz ad. He ordered one. Bob brought it without a glass. It was warm.
It felt like Bad Day at Black Rock. Spencer Tracy played a one-armed stranger comes into a two-bit town, and right off he’s harassed by louts. Tracy looks way too old to win a fight and won’t engage, but neither does he back down. He’s insulted, run off the road, threatened, and goaded until he’s had enough. Then his tormentors find out what an older man with one arm can do if he studied martial arts in Japan.
Zackary loved that movie. Who didn’t? Always he wanted to play a part like that, the one who wins at the end. But they would never let him. Now he couldn’t get hired to play one of the bad guys the hero beats up.
Right then a man came into the Snake Pit who never won anything. Reed Fingley was small, twitchy, and needed inclusion. He muttered a salutation not expecting a response and didn’t get one, then took a stool close as he could to the others.
Borrego resumed his monologue. Zackary tried to hear what he was saying, but the acoustics were boomy. The bullfrog talked and the tadpoles listened. Zackary sipped his Schlitz. Life was full of traps, self-made and otherwise; he wanted out, but to leave right then would have endorsed their victory. He would finish his beer first. Although he declined to look, Zackary knew Borrego’s performance was meant for him.
He brought out his phone book, pretended to search for a number. Already in the G’s before he realized Reed Fingley was standing two feet away talking to him. Timid, apologetic, but eager, explaining something about time management. Zackary pocketed his phone book and listened. Reed had been teaching at Yucaipa Community College, until he was forced to retire because of his health. Then he talked about his dog, Royal Gallant. Often racehorses have two names, why not dogs? Zackary agreed, then asked him what breed of dog it was. Reed wasn’t sure, but thought he might have had some Lab in him. Did have. Royal Gallant recently died. Reed had just buried him in the front yard of his trailer. No flowers, no stone, just buried, he said. Then changed the subject, went back to time.
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