Looking for Przybylski

by K. C. Frederick

  Ziggy is facing the spot where he saw her, the exact table, in fact. “Have you ever gone there?” he asks with an attempt at nonchalance.

  She looks up and gives a quick nod. “Yeah, it’s OK,” she says, turning away immediately. “But, really, you don’t have to come here to eat,” she adds. “Actually, being in this place is like being in an art museum: you can stop by and just stroll around, looking at the food.” It’s hard for him to imagine Gloria strolling around anywhere in a leisurely way, taking her time. Just now she makes a sweeping gesture with her arm. “I mean, the seafood by itself is incredible.” She starts walking in the direction of a stall where creatures who recently inhabited the ocean are displayed on beds of ice, and he follows her. “The fresh fish here is marvelous,” she says. “Do you like red snapper?”

  “I can’t say that I know if I’ve ever had it,” Ziggy answers. “I’d be willing to give it a try, though.” He can see that Gloria isn’t very comfortable being so close to the scene of her recent tryst. But this observation doesn’t bring much satisfaction. Where can he take this, after all? He doesn’t have any intention of confronting her openly about her meeting with Roger W., which would just raise more questions than answers. In fact, he’s not sure what he wants, and then, this is really none of his business, is it? They look at the fish for a moment and then move on, with Gloria pointing out cheeses and meats and Ziggy keeping in step, occasionally nodding.

  When they’re in the next building and she suggests they have a coffee, he agrees. So, what has he proved, what’s he got out of it, bringing her here? He realizes once more that he doesn’t know this woman very well. He feels more relaxed at the little metal table, a cigarette in his hand. Gloria takes a sip of her coffee.

  “It’s pretty clear you like living out here,” he observes.

  “I love it,” she concedes. She still seems tense, and answers as if she feels he’s challenging her in some way. “Actually, the whole family likes it out here,” she insists. “We’re all happy we came.” After a moment, she asks, “What about you? What do you think about all this?” She gestures with her hand.

  “It’s different,” he says. “It’s a big change for me.” Admitting it makes him feel his age. He shakes his head. “I guess it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks.” In fact, here among these passing strangers in sunglasses, he suddenly wishes he were back in Connie’s, telling Turk and some of his regulars about his adventures on the coast. Hell, even being stiffed by Prince Eddie would make a good story.

  Gloria looks off into the distance. “I’m sure it’s different for you,” she says. “I know a lot of things changed for you. The thing is, you always had your place back there, even after you lost the numbers.” She turns back to him. “But I wish you could try to imagine for a minute what it was like for me in that environment. Yes, there were colorful traditions but everything was so cramped, there were limits everywhere. Whenever the family got together for a holiday or a birthday I had a role to play, Charlie’s wife, and I could never get out of it.” Her voice is strong and passionate. “Here, I can try new things, I can be who I want to be. It’s my life, after all, and it’s the only one I’ve got.”

  Ziggy checks his first impulse to comment on the kind of things she might be trying out here, like having a secret meeting with a man who drives a silver Mercedes. “Look,” he says, “I know you don’t particularly like me, and the truth is, it’s been hard for me to get used to you.” She looks at him without blinking, her mouth set. “Still,” he goes on, “I can appreciate what you just said. I’m not going to tell you how to run your life because you wouldn’t listen anyway,” he says. “And I don’t suppose the way I’ve lived my life is any kind of example anyone would want to follow. But I just want to say that trying things out is fine, finding out about yourself is fine, but you have to be careful about . . . about losing what you have. I mean, it could end up being awfully dangerous.”

  Gloria has stiffened noticeably, she’s on the alert. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks quietly, aware, he’s sure, that they’re not talking about abstractions, nervous, maybe, about being here where she recently was with the man Ziggy can only think of as her boyfriend. For an instant Ziggy thinks one or the other of them is going to make a reference to her lunch here a couple of days ago, but the moment passes. Gloria looks at him steadily but says no more.

  “I don’t know,” Ziggy tries to make himself clear. “I guess I can understand you wanting to get as much as you can out of life—believe me, I know the feeling. It’s just . . . well, you can lose things too, things you never can get back.”

  She laughs harshly. “God, that’s a gloomy way of looking at the world.”

  For a moment the two of them listen to a couple of passing tourists arguing about where to go to dinner tonight.

  “Well,” Ziggy says, “I sure as hell know about losing.” He sighs. “I know Charlie blames me for letting the numbers dribble away with my drinking. He’s right too. Me, I’m just glad I came out the other side.” That, he knows wasn’t guaranteed, and there were times when the odds that he’d make it would have been very long. “You’re right, though,” he says. “I suppose I’m being gloomy. Maybe that’s just who I am.”

  The fact is, in the last couple of minutes he’s felt a gradual loosening. It’s as if, without spelling anything out, he and Gloria have actually got something settled. He lifts his eyes to the clock nearby and catches sight of the minute hand jerking forward. “Look,” he says, moved by a sudden urgency, “the fact is, I’m going to have to get back to Detroit soon and I could use your help. I came out here wanting to see Przybylski. Maybe the reasons behind it were stupid, but now it looks like that business might wind up in a blind alley. You said you know LA, you said you know the people to ask about things. Would you know anyone who could find out where Przybylski is? I mean, I’m running out of time and I want to get to see this guy.”

  Gloria looks at him for a few seconds. “Why exactly do you want to see him?” she asks.

  He hesitates, knowing that nothing he says will make much sense. “Beats me,” he confesses at last. “He’s part of my story, I guess, and I wanted to know how he fits in, what role he played in that story.” It’s been a long time since he had that feeling in the basement of Connie’s, the unquenchable need to find the undertaker. “Now,” he says, “I don’t know. But I still want to see him.”

  Gloria is silent for a while. Her eyes are clear, though, she seems less clenched than she was just moments ago. There’s even the faintest trace of a smile on her lips. “Let me think about this for a while,” she says. “It’s possible I do know people who know people who could get their hands on that information.”

  Ziggy can’t help thinking about Roger W. “I promise,” Ziggy says, “as soon as I get to see Przybylski, I’m out of here, I’m on the first flight I can find.”

  Gloria doesn’t seem to be listening, though. He’d bet she’s already calculating possibilities, running through a list of names. “I just might be able to do something,” she says.

  Back in Burbank, Ziggy calls Maggie. “I saw Eddie Przybylski,” he says. “He calls himself Edward Prince now. He’s changed: he’s very smooth and sleazy. He’s got a real fancy operation here but there’s something fishy about the whole thing.”

  “What about his father?” she asks. “Did you see him?”

  “No, according to Eddie, he had a stroke a little while after they came here and he’s been in a nursing home ever since.”

  Maggie waits a few seconds before asking, “Are you going to be seeing him?”

  “I want to,” he tells her. “But I don’t know where he is. If you can believe it, Eddie wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Why would he do that?” she asks.

  “Because he’s an asshole,” Ziggy says. “The prince of assholes.”

  Again, Maggie doesn’t respond right away. “Well,” she says, “did you ever think that maybe you weren’t meant to see him?
”

  No, he says to himself. He tells Maggie, “I still have a couple of days here.”

  Faced with his insistence, Maggie gets quiet again for a while. When she speaks again, her voice is distant, as though she’s trying to catch hold of the memory. “Do you know what I was thinking about when I got up this morning?”

  “What?” he asks.

  “I was remembering that story you told me about when you were a kid and the guy from Chicago had a flat that you fixed. The guy with the fur coat.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he says, feeling a momentary disorientation as he touches that distant area of his past. The stranger with the big Packard looked like an Indian, he probably worked for Al Capone. You’re going to go far, kid, he told Ziggy when he’d given him the money after he’d replaced the tire. Ziggy always treasured the statement as a prophecy of his future success. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s strange, though. That you’d be thinking of that.”

  “Well,” she laughs, “he said you’d go far and now you have, haven’t you?” In a moment, she adds, “But isn’t it time to be getting back?”

  “I’ll be back,” he tells her. “Before Easter. I promise.” Przybylski or no Przybylski, he’s going to keep that promise.

  All next day he seems to spend smoking and looking out at the San Gabriel Mountains, waiting to hear something from Gloria. At last she calls in the afternoon. “He’s in Palmdale, at the Oasis Nursing Home,” she says. “He’s there under his old name.”

  “Great, Gloria, thanks,” he says. His heart bangs against his ribs. “How the hell did you find that out?”

  “I told you I know this area,” she says. “If I don’t know something myself, I know who to ask.”

  How did she find that out? he wonders. Hell, he wouldn’t care if the information came from the devil himself. He’s going to see Przybylski at last.

  He calls Lennie right away. “Can you get the car tomorrow morning?” he asks. “Hell, I’ll pay. I need a ride to Palmdale.”

  “Palmdale. Where’s that?” Lennie says.

  “From what my daughter-in-law told me, it’s in the desert, but pretty close, only about fifty miles away.”

  It’s a while before Lennie answers. “I don’t know, that could be tough. I’ll see what I can do.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ziggy can hardly believe it: at last he knows for certain where Przybylski is, and it’s only about fifty miles from this spot where he’s standing in Charlie’s backyard, as close to here as the place on the island was from his own house in Detroit. His heart is racing, but it isn’t just anticipation he feels: when he tries to pull a cigarette from the pack he has trouble controlling his hands. It’s as if he’s afraid. But of what? Finally, after the long and not very comfortable trip across a big stretch of the country, after all his searching with the help of Linda and the private eye she worked for, after the runaround he got from Eddie, Ziggy’s within reach of what he came out here to do. So there’s nothing to be afraid of; instead, he should give himself credit, he has a right to be pleased with himself, doesn’t he? When he’s fished out the cigarette at last and lighted it, he pulls down the smoke and feels the calm settling over him. Yeah, Przybylski’s out there, close by, he has the man in his sights, and he sure as hell isn’t going anywhere soon, at least nowhere in this world. Everything slows down for Ziggy. The nearby eucalyptus trees rustle dryly, releasing their now-familiar scent; the snow on the distant mountains gives them an air of silent repose.

  What can he expect from a meeting with Przybylski when he gets there, though, if the old guy is in as bad shape as Eddie said? At no point in his life has Ziggy had any great desire to visit a nursing home. The thought occurs to him that just finding out about Przybylski could be considered enough. Why take the trouble of driving that fifty miles into the desert anyway? Why not just accept that the undertaker has been located and is obviously in no condition to respond to any of Ziggy’s questions. In fact, given that prospect, it’s kind of stupid to actually go out there, isn’t it? Why not just declare the game over? Couldn’t he still consider himself in some sense the winner?

  But of course he’s going to Palmdale. By now he isn’t even asking himself for any kind of reasons that would make sense to anybody else. This is his trip and nobody else’s. Something in the breeze reminds him of his time on the bus, which seems to have taken place in the last century. It was something, wasn’t it, traveling through those midwestern storms, into the immense sand-colored spaces where the eye was always being carried to the horizon, his fellow passengers leaving him, one by one: the man who made golf balls, Roy Spears on his busman’s holiday, Sharlene with her pool cue, the woman who said she was traveling to the graves of presidents, not to mention the different drivers who’d brought him here. If nothing else, he owes it to them to complete what he set out to do.

  Most of all, he has to see Przybylski with his own eyes.

  But he certainly doesn’t relish the idea of spending more than a couple of minutes in the presence of someone so frighteningly reduced as Przybylski is likely to be. That prospect isn’t particularly appealing, he knows, but it’s the last part of the pilgrimage. Once he sees Przybylski he’ll be free to get back to Detroit, and quickly, above the clouds this time, not crawling across every hill and valley of the land.

  It’s odd, the nervous excitement he feels, a sense of expectation, though it’s hardly joyful, more like what he felt as a very young kid when he was about to go to confession. There was a secret burden of sin he’d been carrying around and he didn’t look forward to those few minutes in the musty confessional, his knees pressed against the hard kneeler as he waited for the slat to slide open, making visible the blurred image behind the grille, the priest to whom he’d have to name his offenses, bringing them out into the open; but he knew that when he left the church his step would be lighter, a Get-Out-of-Jail card in his pocket that worked at least for a while.

  He isn’t going to confession, though, he’s going to Palmdale, and that means he still has to work out the mechanics of getting himself from here to there. Lennie said he’d know within the hour whether he’d be free tomorrow and Ziggy impatiently endures that hour before calling him.

  “Sorry,” Lennie says, “no can do. Not tomorrow anyway. I’ve got a couple of jobs. Thursday’s fine, though.”

  Ziggy’s more disappointed than he’d expected to be. Since it was Lennie who drove him to the Prince Funeral Home, he must have imagined that if there was going to be any followup, it was going to be Lennie who’d be taking him there; and for a couple of seconds he entertains the notion of putting off the visit to Palmdale by a day. But he knows he isn’t going to be able to wait that long, not the way he feels. And a delay wouldn’t be fair to Maggie. He has to get this thing over with, and as soon as possible.

  “Look,” he tells Lennie, “I’m going to have to try to find other arrangements to get me to Palmdale.” Still, he doesn’t want to end his contact with his fellow bus-rider yet. “I’m going to be able to use you Thursday, though,” he says. “When I wrap things up with Przybylski, I’ll be ready to go home. You know your way to the airport, don’t you?”

  Lennie laughs. “Don’t I ever. That’s where I have to go today. Twice.”

  “I’ll call you about it tomorrow,” Ziggy says. The airport, he thinks. It’s really ending then.

  “I can’t wait to hear how that meeting turns out,” Lennie says.

  Ziggy laughs. “I don’t expect to be swapping funny stories with the guy, but I think I have to do this.”

  “I understand,” Lennie says. “Give me a call after.”

  It turns out not to be very hard to work out arrangements in the end. Gloria can’t take him to Palmdale, which isn’t surprising, since she needs her car for work. But, ever resourceful, she’s quick to come up with a Plan B.

  “Why not ride to work with Charlie and take Charlie’s car to Palmdale?” she suggests. “I don’t imagine your visit is likely to be too long, so th
at you should be back at Charlie’s office in plenty of time for me to swing by and ferry you back to Burbank. Unless, that is, you want to hang around the office and watch your son do a root canal.”

  “Hey, she’s right, Pa,” Charlie is quick to agree. “I don’t need my car when I’m working.” He’s obviously enthusiastic about having an opportunity to show his father the place where he practices his profession. It wouldn’t surprise Ziggy if he took his wife’s suggestion about the root canal seriously.

  “Good, then,” Ziggy says. He still wishes he weren’t going out to the desert alone.

  The next morning, father and son set off together. Charlie is in a talkative mood, reporting on his children’s successes in the classroom and in the saddle. And then there’s Gloria. Ziggy isn’t surprised to learn that she’s been honored by the real estate company for her salesmanship.

  “What about you?” Ziggy asks.

  “I can’t complain,” Charlie says. “You’ll see when we get there that I’ve got a very satisfactory work situation. We cater to a pretty high-end clientele.”

  “Sounds good,” Ziggy says, remembering Dr. Zemba’s cramped quarters on Chene Street that smelled unpleasantly of some kind of medicine, or possibly booze, where the shrill whine of the drill could be heard in the waiting room by the squirming unfortunates nervously skimming through old magazines.

  The Tall Trees Dental Center is on a quiet street in Glendale on the fringe of a residential neighborhood. The unobtrusive two-story building faced with light brown brick looks as if it might house insurance offices and a travel agency, which it in fact does. Charlie takes Ziggy on a tour of the suite of offices on the second floor that he shares with his partner, one Edward Hagopian, a tall, dark man in blue hospital scrubs whose smooth diplomatic manner doesn’t quite hide something intense in his eyes that makes Ziggy think of Dracula—he looks as if he could drill a hole in your teeth just by staring at them for a few seconds. “It’s delightful to meet you,” the man says with a voice that could be used to sell caviar, “but I must rush off to a patient now.” As he moves away in a brisk but unhurried glide, Ziggy figures that Charlie is the affable, outgoing member of the duo, his bouncy cheerfulness countered by his partner’s air of quiet assurance. He also has no doubt about who runs the show.