Layman's Report

by Eugene Marten

  She asks the older one to lead us in grace, like he used to. She is talking to the boy who wrote home. We bow our heads and close our eyes.

  “Heavenly Father,” I hear. Then all I hear is restaurant, and one will get you ten that if you look up, the younger one is looking back.

  And her eyes are still closed.

  The dining room seems to get quieter, like they’re joining us. So he reaches back in the dark and finds a few words.

  From up here you can’t always tell which team is which. Back row, upper deck, behind the visitors’ dugout, as high as it is possible to get here without use of a helicopter. I know we are behind the visitors’ dugout because I heard the older one tell his brother. The older one played in school, follows the game; he knows about RBIs and sacrifices, changeups, checked swings. I would ask him questions. I would ask him if a curveball really curves, but I’ll let the younger one ask for me. The younger one speaks even less baseball than I do, but seems just happy to be here.

  They turn on the lights at the seventh-inning stretch, though it hasn’t gotten dark yet. Though I didn’t know stretch means stretch.

  I didn’t come here to watch TV but I watch the pitcher on the big screen, shaking his head. Sometimes he nods. Sometimes he rubs his nose. He bends, drops his arms, straightens, spits. Digs in the dirt with his foot. Eventually he’ll get around to throwing the thing. I don’t understand but I have great respect for ritual. I like watching the pitcher. I like the green. I like the guy in the bleachers who beats a big bass drum. I buy hot dogs and lemon ice and Pepsi products and even have a beer. The older one says thank you, and the younger one says it because the older one does. The beer is cold.

  It is dark. Someone, one of us or one of them, sends the ball almost straight up into the night. The sound of the crowd says it’s foul, but it’s good enough for me—I’ve never seen anything fly so high on only will and muscle. It rises, arcs, disappears in the glare of the lights, and the high quiet air above them. I wait but I don’t see it again, don’t know where it went.

  I see the white birds we share the sky with.

  * * *

  It smells like a basement, maybe a warehouse. They lead me by the arm.

  Echoes. Cement floor. We turn, slow, stop. They tell me to lift my feet—stepping over some kind of threshold. The floor is softer now, a thin carpet; the air changes, a stillness, dryness. They pat me down, advise me not to use any names. They advise me there is a chair behind and drop me into it. Upholstered seat, armrests. I picture something black. They leave my lunchbox on my lap—they haven’t taken anything from me yet.

  He asks me if I’m comfortable. He sounds like he’s sitting across from me, sounds like someone who looks like Omar Sharif. Whatever his name is.

  “Under the circumstances,” I say. I say, “How long does this thing have to stay on?”

  “While you’re here, I’m afraid.” He apologizes. “We need to build a certain kind of relationship. Next time it may not be necessary.”

  Next time.

  “Can I get you something?” he says. “Some coffee?”

  “Coffee,” I say.

  “Black?”

  “Black,” I say. No sugar, though I wasn’t really asking.

  I hear his first language again. I hear footsteps on the hardness, neither coming nor going, just falling. A rattle like the gate of a freight elevator. I wonder what the man in the video heard, then I think I hear a cat.

  I have no plans for this information.

  “If I may,” he says, and takes the weight off my lap. The other one is still there, every time I take a breath.

  “How much?” he says, as if politely curious.

  “Almost half,” I say.

  “Half for half, then.”

  Four pounds, eleven point three ounces. Give or take.

  The latches click.

  “Ah,” he says.

  “So small,” he says.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “But so heavy.”

  “I wouldn’t touch it,” I say, then I remember he has some background.

  “What’s a little skin cancer between friends?” he says. I hear more clicking then, but it is not the latches. Something clatters down on a surface in front of me. A hand takes mine and guides it to a smooth round edge. Soft, but large, a man’s hand.

  It is a world without women. Look what we’ve done with it.

  “The cup is not full,” he says. They’ve thought of everything.

  I learn a new trick and raise it to my mouth. He closes the lunchbox and speaks to someone else. I hear footfalls again but I think someone else is still there. My eyelids are sweating. The darkness fills.

  He asks me how the coffee is.

  “Never had anything like it,” I say, but in truth I’m no connoisseur. Coffee is coffee, it’s either weak or strong.

  “I don’t drink it, you know. I’m a tea man myself,” he says. I picture one leg hooked over a knee. “Do you have any questions?”

  “How long will I be here?”

  “We can have the results in a matter of hours. As for the rest of it”—I don’t picture anything—“the perfect arrangement would not require trust.”

  He never uses the word money.

  “It’s not a perfect world,” I say.

  “Perhaps that will change,” he says. Till then they have a right to protect themselves.

  I find the cup again, and this time I don’t let it go. Maybe it is like nothing I’ve ever tasted, or maybe it’s just the blindfold.

  “Forgive me,” he says then, “I’m sure it’s none of my business,” and he asks how I’m set financially.

  I think about it. “Getting by.”

  “I’m afraid we don’t have the proverbial briefcase, but a small advance perhaps? A loan between friends?” Once the results are in, of course.

  Like they keep a petty cash fund. I think about it again, but the coffee is enough for now. I thank him.

  I finish the cup and we don’t speak much, but he has a way of saying something without saying it. When it’s time to leave I feel his hand take mine. I squeeze.

  He wears a uniform to the airport. He bought his own ticket—the Army won’t cover his expenses before Baltimore. They don’t pay much but he doesn’t have much else to spend it on. Sometimes he sends money home.

  The ticket agent checks his ID and says, “God bless you.” She says, “We salute you,” and thanks him on behalf of the nation. On behalf of the airline she charges him thirty dollars because his bag weighs over fifty pounds.

  We stand in another line with him. He doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to, but that’s not why he’s wearing green, he says. He doesn’t say why. A family dressed for a tropical vacation—they’ve even tanned in advance—offers to let him cut the line and he politely declines. We get to the table where they check your carry-on in case you’re trying to hijack the plane with a pair of nail clippers. They keep his deodorant. This is as far as we can go. He lets her embrace him, then takes my hand like I’m rescuing him. Maybe that’s why I’m there. The younger one isn’t, wouldn’t leave his room.

  He doesn’t believe in goodbyes but she does, so we stand at the velvet rope. There is a sign and a security guard with a face like one. I have to use the restroom. She has to watch him take his shoes off and empty his pockets and put things in gray plastic tubs. She watches him walk through the metal detector like he’s getting his diploma. It makes a sound. He takes off his belt and walks back through and it makes another sound. He digs deep, finds a coin, but that doesn’t help either. I think she’s rooting for the machine. They take him aside with blue rubber gloves. He doesn’t look back. I tell her I have to use the restroom and she answers without looking at me, like her eyes are all that’s keeping him there. It’s a long walk. Some things take longer than others. When I get back she asks me what took me and says she’s starving.

  There’s Burger King in the food court but she doesn’t want to eat here.

/>   “How’s a blind man tell a black man from a Jew?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Jew’s got a big nose, nigger’s got a big (pause) Deville.” Then he laughs in case I don’t know I’m supposed to.

  He’s working on a stand-up routine. His tag line is: “It all smells the same to me.” And sometimes: “So what are you looking at?”

  He tells me I need to invent myself a sense of humor.

  “So I’m told,” I say, and pull into the passing lane.

  “I tell you they tried to give me one of those seeing-eye dogs?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Said they were giving me a bitch to take me around the block. I told em no thanks, I’ve already been married.”

  “You write your own stuff?” I say.

  “So I tried it for a while,” he says. “Turns out we’re two of a kind…” I look in the mirror. He’s putting something in his mouth so I can’t make out the rest of it. I don’t ask him to repeat it.

  “You’re on fire,” I say.

  “Still smells the same to me,” he says. He says it like a toast but his flask is empty.

  “Well hell,” he says, and I let him talk me into stopping for a pint. He’s had plenty already but not enough to suit either of us. There’s a grocery store in the strip mall. I let him stay in the car while I go inside. It’s too late for Old Crow so I get him a fifth of something cheap, a bunch of grapes on the label like brain cells ready to explode. He’s grateful but doesn’t ask what he owes me. We’ll settle up later.

  He picks up where he left off: “And what about you, sir?”

  “What about me?”

  “You getting any?” he says.

  “This part of the act?”

  “Could be.”

  I tell him I’m working on my second marriage.

  “Well that answers that question,” he says. “How long this time?”

  I tell him. “So you’re in the same boat as me,” he says.

  “How’s that?”

  “We both got to do it in the dark.”

  I take the exit out of the parking lot; he’s too busy coughing to notice which way I turn. What he gets for laughing at his own material.

  “What about you?” I say.

  “Once,” he says, “and that ain’t no joke.”

  I turn down the radio (tonight it’s Area 51). I ask him if he was in love.

  “Love?” he says. “Hey whos’s the fucking comedian here?”

  I turn it off. “They say we can’t live without it.”

  “They,” he says. “What the fuck.” I hear the wine. I hear the word again. “A word people hear themselves say,” he says. “Been in it and had to pay my way out of it. I know what happens to love.” He takes another pill. “What goes up must come down.”

  “I tell you about the time I went skydiving?” he says.

  “Go for it,” I say.

  “I’m working on it.” Sometimes all he has are setups: got into an argument with a deaf-mute the other day, how’s a blind man spell relief?… I hear liquid and silence. Then I hear snoring.

  His sister and her family are gone for the weekend. They’ve learned not to take him places.

  He sleeps the rest of the way to my street. When we pull in he wakes up: “She says in this deep voice, ‘That aint no pussy either.’” Then he goes back to sleep. It’s late, past ten. I turn the key, switch off the lights, get out of the car. Fireflies in the yard. Unlock the garage, go back to the car; unlock, open, unlatch. Screw the cap back on the bottle. He moves.

  “Where am I?”

  “Almost there.” I tell him to keep his voice down, though she took the younger one to West Virginia to visit his grandmother. Pull the fifth out of his lap, help him out of the car. His cane is in his pocket. He leans on me like a crutch and we make our way to the garage. The retired librarian retires at nine. The house on the other side is dark except for the night light over their front steps. I can hear a lawn sprinkler.

  We get inside without toppling over. “Fucking dark in here,” he says.

  I lock the door, click on the light.

  “More like it,” he says. “I can smell lecktrissy you know.” He says it’s stuffy in there. I help him off with his dirty linen jacket and sit him down in a lawn chair. I take off mine.

  “That’s better,” he says. I tell him to relax, have another drink.

  “I’ll get to it,” he mutters, then gets to it and then some. “Where’d you get this shit anyway, Jonestown?”

  I drag the tarp off the wireless. Put on blue rubber gloves.

  “The hell are we?” he says. “This place ain’t her place.” He sniffs, head back. “Goddamn garage.”

  “Say something funny,” I say, and kneel down in front of him, take off his loafers.

  “Where is everybody?” he says. Then he says, “I tell you the time I went skydiving?”

  “I’m listening.” I pull off his socks.

  He uses his nose again. “You got a dog…”

  “Used to,” I say. “Shepherd-collie. He’s not with us anymore.”

  “Rest in piss,” he says, and takes another drink.

  Never felt a thing. I hope he won’t either. You do your best with what comes your way.

  I unbutton, unzip.

  “What the fuck,” he says.

  “I’m doing you a favor.”

  “You’re doing me,” he says, “what you’re doing.”

  “Lift your legs.” I get his pants off and fold them like I’m doing his laundry.

  A ring, a watch he doesn’t need, dentures. I remember a gold chain, then remember someone pulled it off his neck at a bus stop. Said he could smell them too.

  He doesn’t care what I take as long as it isn’t the bottle.

  “Ready?” I’m standing over him. There isn’t a lot of room.

  “I was born ready,” he says. “Ready for what?”

  “You’re going home.”

  “Home?” He says it like some kind of outrage, like love wasn’t bad enough. “I was just getting comforble.” He keeps dropping syllables, a good sign.

  “You can’t stay here,” I say. “Need a hand?”

  “I look like I need help?” He helps himself to the rest of the bottle. Drops it but it’s made of plastic. Grabs me instead and pulls. I have to pull back just to keep from falling, and that’s how we get him out of the chair.

  “Your shirt,” I say, and pull the top button. He brushes me off and does it himself, lets it drop back into the chair. Stands there barefoot in his underwear and dark glasses and finds my arm.

  “So where’d you park, sweetheart?”

  “It ain’t on wheels,” I say, and lead him toward the machine.

  “Easy,” he says. “This one of your”—he swallows something—“projecks?”

  “Kind of a shortcut,” I say. Through time and space. I put him on the scale. “You’ll get there without moving an inch.”

  “Fucking final frontier,” he says.

  “You could call it that.”

  “Alexander Graham Cracker,” he says. “You beaming me up or down?”

  “Watch your step.” The booth is on a riser.

  “‘Where no man boldly…’” He sounds stuck. “How’s it go again?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  He’s in the booth, I’m half out—there isn’t room for two in there.

  “You sure I don’t know me from somewhere?” he says.

  “Where would I know you from?”

  “You tell me…I tell you I was in sales?”

  “I have your card.” I put my hand on his shoulder and sit him down.

  “Easy,” he says. Touches his chest. “We had this saying.”

  I strap him in. Aircraft nylon. No electrodes, no gel, no helmet.

  “Freakin John Glenn in here,” he says. “Neil freakin…fuck.”

  “It’s for your own safety,” I say. “There’s no sense of motion.”

 
“There gonna be a countdown?”

  “If you want one.”

  He starts at ten, makes it to seven and nods off. I close the shackles on his wrists. Maybe it’s the sound that brings him back.

  “‘Today’s the day, this is the place, you’re the man,’” he says. “I like that black bitch that was in there, with that silver thing in her ear. I heard her and Capm Kirk.”

  I kneel down, hope he doesn’t kick me in the face. The ankle straps are leather.

  “I’ll stick it in her ear,” he says.

  I stand.

  “You think Alan B didn’t get some?” he says. “You think that Russian?” I take off his glasses. Lids mostly closed, a little crosseyed.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Trust me,” I say; there’s metal in the hinges.

  “I’m trusting you here. Where’s my goddamn stick?”

  “You won’t need it where you’re going.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “The other shore,” I say. “You’ll see things you don’t need eyes for.”

  I ask him if he’s comfortable.

  “Just gimme a happy ending,” he says, calmer. “Go push some fucking buttons.”

  “I tell you I went skydiving once?” he says. I shut the door and step off the riser but I can still hear him; the booth is miked.

  “It was great but the dog hated it,” he shouts. Then he falls asleep again.

  I turn on the fans, the motor, the electrostatic precipitator. I boot the hard drive. There is a green button on the side of the wireless. State of my art.

  I power up. Somebody has to. The transformer hums for the greater good.

  He lifts his head like he’s wide awake.

  “I tell you I was in sales?” he says.

  I have a screen. I never said they weren’t good for something.

  “We had makes and models,” he says. “We had names: Slo Moe, Az Iz, The Broom with the atomic pencil Ice Man handled the bluehairs. They were there, in the showroom. I was the liner and the closer. I put em together, tore heads off. Took em all to the box. We had a saying.”

  I tap his weight on the keys—it’s not what I thought it would be. I let the computer do the thinking. It comes up with a number.