by Laird Koenig
"Not just like that. I’ve been thinking about it for over a year." He put his cap on the seat between them and his hand ran around the black edge of the steering wheel. "It means I’ll lose my seniority here. I’ll have to start over in San Francisco, but I figure that in the long run it’s the right move."
"No!"
"I’ve made up my mind."
"Is it because of that girl?"
"She likes the idea of living out there, too—"
"But you just said you’d lose your seniority."
"The truth is I don’t see all that much future for me here. Not in this town."
Rynn watched the patch she had cleared on her window streak with fog.
"Without getting technical about it, there’s a board that reviews all officers up for advancement."
"And Hallet’s on that board?"
"No. But I don’t want to wait and find out he has friends who are—"
"You can’t go!"
"I’ll miss you, Rynn."
She sat in the stifling heat feeling sweat covering her brow.
"One of my biggest worries was about leaving you. Does that come as a surprise?"
Rynn, incapable of answering, shook her head.
"I never liked the idea of you being out there in the lane with Hallet hanging around—not when I thought you were all alone." His other hand met the first circling the steering wheel. "I’ll have to confess that up till I met your father I figured that’s what you were—all alone. See, what I really couldn’t figure out was why—every time I came out there—you put on this big act about him being at home. Part of that cleared up the night I found out about you and Mario. You wanted to cover for him. Okay. I mean you two are pretty young, but I guess what you do is strictly your own business. Still, it wasn’t till I finally met your father, that I could relax about Hallet. Coming out there today was just sort of a last check to see if Hallet had got the word. Now, I mean since you’re not alone, I can go and know that you’re safe."
Rynn wanted nothing more than to cry out her need for help. She squeezed back hot tears.
"Knowing you’re all right means a lot to me, Rynn."
They sat in silence.
"I’ll be in to say good-bye to Mario before I go, but I probably won’t get another chance to see you… ."
The girl waited.
"So I guess this is good-bye…."
She pressed her face to his cheek. The slam of the door covered her sob.
18
"I DON’T GO from my home, unless emergency leads me by the hand," Emily Dickinson had said.
Rynn knew the risk she ran by going to see Mario. This town, this hospital, this was the world. She was no longer able to hide in her little house behind the trees in the lane where she could close and lock the door. How could she know who she might meet in there? How could she be ready for the questions they might ask?
They. Mario had once asked who they were. That was the danger the two of them lived with. They could be anyone.
The first person she met, the nurse behind the reception desk, stiff with starch, was one of those large, loud-voiced women Rynn found so fast to laugh, so quick to help, that she was beginning to think it was women like these who kept America running. These women were everywhere, capable, friendly, and terribly overwhelming.
"He’s up one flight and down the hall. Four-oh-seven. Just listen. You can’t miss him. It’s the room that sounds like an Italian wedding." She pronounced the word Eye—talian.
"Has he got visitors?" she asked.
The nurse, who reminded Rynn of a blonde American movie star she had seen once but whose name she did not know, glanced down at a massive arm and a tiny gold watch.
"This time on a Tuesday afternoon? I doubt it. You can go on up. Oh, wait just a minute."
The girl held her breath. Had something gone wrong already?
The blonde woman went into an office and returned to thrust a pot of yellow chrysanthemums at her.
Rynn was not sure what she was expected to do.
"Take them. He might as well enjoy them."
The nurse found the girl’s green eyes wide over the yellow flowers.
"They came for somebody else, but she’s not here any more...."
"Thank you," said Rynn.
The woman grinned. "He’s a real cutie, right? If I were you, I’d get up there before his whole family shows up and starts yelling."
Outside Room 407 Rynn heard nothing, even when she leaned close to the panel to listen. She had decided, if any guests were calling on Mario, she would come back later. Because she heard nothing, she opened the door. Inside, an accordion-fold plastic divider was pushed halfway back. In the bed near the door a fat man looking like an unpleasant Buddha peered through slit eyes at a movie on television. No sound came from the set. A girl of perhaps twelve, who looked as if she had eaten too many spaghetti dinners, squatted on the floor munching chocolates from an enormous gold-foil box, scattering the empty little brown paper cups around her like autumn leaves.
A boy of Rynn’s age, a sturdier version of Mario, sat near the other bed. He did not look up from the full-color pages of a comic book.
Then she saw Mario, very small, almost lost in the bed across the room. His face was not white like the sheets, but a horrible fish-gray that made Rynn gasp. She was sure he could not look more gray if he were dead.
Holding the Rowers, Rynn stared in dismay, only vaguely aware that the girl who had been munching chocolates had looked up and whispered something. She tried to sort out her panic. Mario had been ill, terribly ill, she knew that. He was still in the hospital, but she never imagined Mario, her Mario, Mario the Magician, could look like this....
The girl on the floor seemed compelled to explain what she was doing.
"Mr. Pierce in the other bed’s deaf so he doesn’t mind if the sound’s not on." Her voice was low." And my mother says when we’re with Mario we have to be quiet. Not that we’d keep him awake." She pushed the shiny gold box of chocolates at the girl.
"Have one. Some dumb-dumb sent them to Mario."
Rynn made a sign; she wished none of the candy.
"I’m Terry, his sister. The one over there improving his mind on comic books is Tom. He’s the one who’s really sick."
The boy glanced up from the adventures of Spider Man.
Terry poked among the chocolates, tested one by nibbling at the corner; frowned her disapproval at its caramel contents, and dropped it back in the box.
Would the hospital allow visitors, even his own brother and sister, if Mario were as ill as he looked?
"Pretty flowers," the girl said of the chrysanthemums. "You been here before?"
Rynn managed to move her head, meaning she had not been in this room, she had not seen Mario like this.
"He’s okay now," said the girl digging a nutmeat from her teeth with the nail of her little finger.
Rynn spoke her first words. "Is that what the doctors say?"
"Sleepy though." Terry rummaged among the brown paper cups.
"You know him from school?"
Even the jolt of seeing Mario so drained of life was no excuse for half-considered answers. Rynn told herself she must weigh words. She was considering' how to answer when the comic book spoke. "How can he know her at school?"
Rynn dared turn to the boy before her eyes dragged back to Mario. How much did this boy already know?
"I mean," Tom said to his sister, "he’s a lot older." His next question was for Rynn. "Like how old are you?
"Thirteen," Rynn said.
"Yeah?" The boy rolled the comic book into a tube. "I’m thirteen, too. How come I never see you at school?"
"Perhaps we don’t go to the same school."
"I don’t go to parochial school, do you?"
"No," said Rynn.
"Then how come?"
She looked at Mario and felt her heart would crack. She wanted nothing more than to burst into tears. The questions kept coming, much too fast,
and she hoped to show, by staring intently at the boy in bed, that her mind was on Mario, not on questions about age and school.
"What school do you go to?" demanded the boy.
"Private school I’ll bet," said the fat girl. "They teach them to talk that way."
"Around here?" Tom asked.
Rynn shut her eyes in an effort to block out the lifeless mask that was Mario. She had to think. She told herself these two were not being suspicious, this was the direct way of children. Children werelike this. She reminded herself she knew few children. No. That was not true. She knew none if one didn’t include Mario. He was no child. He was a person, not one of these chocolate-chewing, comic-book-reading creatures, so demanding. Were English children like this?—so terribly outspoken with everyone? She heard the boy speaking, again demanding.
"I asked you"—his voice was an accusation—"around here?"
"No. Not around here."
"You English or something?" asked Terry, dropping another rejected chocolate into the box.
"Yes."
"So where do you know Mario from?" Tom spoke in that flat American way that was neither friendly nor hostile, simply matter-of-fact.
"From his magic shows actually." Putting the yellow chrysanthemums on a bureau she suddenly wanted to scream at these two to get out so she could be alone with her Mario. "Parties," she found herself' saying. "The Saturday before last he did a lovely show."
"Lovely," mimicked Terry, prissing her mouth into tea-party manners.
"He’s a real hambone.” Tom unrolled the comic book and returned to Spider Man.
"You know why he loves doing magic so much?" Terry said without allowing Rynn to answer. "It’s his way of compensating. For being crippled."
"Bullshit," said the voice behind the comic book.
"Psychologically valid. You can ask anyone."
Rynn fought a wild urge to rush forward, to hold Mario against her. Instead, she found herself asking, "The doctors do say he’s going to be all right?"
The voice behind the comic book said, "What do they know?"
"Right now he’s full of antibiotics," said the girl.
"Drugs," said the boy.
Rynn felt if these two would get out of this room, if she could be alone with Mario, she could warm that deathly gray away from his warm, olive skin.
Wistfully, Terry abandoned the gold-foil box to a table. "I guess you must be thinking that my brother’s not too many laughs to visit, being practically asleep and all."
Rynn found herself shrugging her shoulders, hands in pockets, helpless, fighting tears.
Beyond the window in the dusk, street lights were blinking on. A car horn blared.
"We’re only waiting here for our Mom," Terry said. "She’s late."
Rynn felt a chill. Mario’s mother. Here? There would be more questions. They might even offer her a ride home.... She fought a growing sense of panic.
Tom closed his comic book and yawned. "You can go up close to him. He isn’t contagious or anything. He’s just full of so many drugs, he’ll probably get hooked before he ever gets out of here." Laughing at his own black joke Torn left his chair.
"Go ahead. If you can, wake him up. Probably be good for him." He rattled against the plastic room divider. "You want me to close this thing?"
Rynn looked at him through tears. His smile reminded her of Mario’s. He was drawing the plastic folds, making the room private around her as she stood motionless at the foot of the bed.
Once alone, Rynn rushed to the pillow.
"Mario?"
When the mask made no sign, Rynn wept, giving in at last to the utter helplessness she had felt from the moment she had seen his face.
"I love you." She said the words to herself.
Love had never been part of the plan she and her father had talked out in such detail.
Love. In this cold November twilight, without Mario she could not go on alone. She could not do what she had to do. If he had never been with her perhaps then she could, but not now…
Now, the most important thing in the world was for Mario to come out from behind the gray mask.
"Survive," her father had said. But how could she help him?
If she was to survive, what she must do she told, herself, is to stop, stop and try to think. So far Mario’s brother and sister believed she was only a friend. At any moment a woman would pull back the room divider. Mario’s mother would be here in this room. She would ask all the questions which must never be answered.
Rynn kissed the boy. “I love you," she whispered.
Then she pushed out past the rattling plastic divider and ran.
19
LIGHTS OF THE CITY sparkled in the cold evening. Though she had no idea where she was going, Rynn knew she could not face returning to the cold, dark house where Mario’s gray face would be staring at her in every room. Not yet. She rushed to lose herself in the city’s hurrying crowds and warm bright lights.
In a coffee shop indistinguishable from the many glaringly new glass and plastic cafes she and her father had seen dotting American highways and streets, she climbed onto a vinyl counter stool and tried to study a menu imbedded in shining plastic from which a dozen kinds of hamburgers jumped out at her in full color. A waitress not many years older than Rynn, wearing a pumpkin-orange uniform pinned with a plastic lace handkerchief and plastic name tag, took her order and in a startlingly short time very red cream of tomato soup and four white crackers in a painfully tight cellophane pack slid across the counter.
A cheeseburger with a slice of pickle, a scrap of lettuce and a quartered tomato followed immediately.
Rynn shut her eyes against her tears. Mario’s gray face filled her world.
Around her in the glaring fluorescent light voices were loud. The place was full of young mothers and fathers feeding noisy, clambering children hamburgers and French fries splotched with heaps of blood-red ketchup.
Rynn choked down a few spoonfuls of soup, one cracker, and the slice of pickle.
In spite of her trancelike state, she managed to pay the bill and leave, and she found herself walking. The lights were bright. but not warm, and soon she was bitterly cold and shivering, even with her hands deep in her pockets. She walked without plan, drifting, trancelike. Some of the shops were open, flashing with lights and glittering with the first decorations of Christmas, and it was only when she stood in front of a bookshop that she realized this is what she had been looking for. The shop door was locked.
Reflected in the dark display windows Rynn saw not the familiar image in duffle coat and Levis, but Mario’s silent gray face staring at her, and she turned away.
Further along the street a movie theater’s marquee flared white. Rynn, who had never been to a film alone, made another unplanned move and drew two dollars from her wallet to approach the box office.
The young woman behind the glass shook her head. The girl was not allowed to enter. Could not a girl of thirteen go to the cinema?
The woman behind the glass tapped on her window to draw Rynn’s attention to a card. The movie was rated in such a way that children were forbidden entrance, even children, it seemed, with parents.
At another theater, just as full of light, the name Walt Disney encouraged Rynn to try again. Although she was not fond of the kind of fantasy the name meant to her, she believed she would be allowed to pay her money and enter.
At the box office a gaunt man with rimless eyeglasses that glinted in the light demanded a student card, raising in Rynn a lump of fear that only melted as he explained that such a card would entitle her to a discount on tickets. She bought a card and a ticket and soon found herself in the warm dark that smelled of buttered popcorn. She sank down in the hot blackness and let brilliant colors and music surge over her.
But the color and the music could not wash away Mario’s gray face.
As in the coffee shop she felt numb to her surroundings. The ever-changing pictures and sounds on the screen sped by, no mor
e than a patchwork, a meaningless jumble. The picture ended and dim light revealed perhaps fifty people who waited while recorded music that sounded like Mantovani played. A few noisy children pounded up and down the carpeted aisles spilling soft drinks from waxed cups and scattering popcorn from cardboard boxes.
Another picture, a dog and a lot of guns blasting and children screaming, filled the screen.
Thinking of Mario, she wept.
Lights sprang on, startling Rynn into drying her wet eyes as a couple of dozen people wandered up the aisles pulling on heavy coats, trying not to drop their scarves and mittens.
At first as she stood at the bus stop, the night’s cold did not bite too sharply. But by the time the marquee lights went off, and the street was black, and the last of the audience had left her alone to wait for the bus, a razor-wind was cutting through her duffle coat and Levis, forcing her to huddle against a fiercely bitter cold.
She was peering into the deserted street wondering if the bus would ever come when a car with a throbbing motor slowed and edged close to her. She backed away from the curb as the car windows rolled down and boys of high-school age, their faces dead white and splotched with pimples under the street light, whistled and called at her. One held out a cigarette.
Another made an indescribably evil sucking sound.
"You missed the last bus. Come on. Get in. We’ll keep you warm!"Guffaws broke from the car.
Turning her back on the car, Rynn faced the dark windows of a camera store where cold blank eyes of lenses stared at her. In the window’s reflection she saw the car was not moving away, and her heart stopped as a back door opened and a boy in a leather jacket and jeans studded with shining metal emerged, motioning to the others.
The boy slid his fingers through his long hair and ambled across the sidewalk. Rynn peered up and down the street. Out there in the night nothing moved. Another youth uncoiled from the car making the kissing, sucking sound as he crossed the sidewalk to block her way ahead.
In a panic Rynn saw the windows reflect them as they closed in on her from both sides. Too late to run. She shrank into the doorway.