TVA BABY and Other Stories

by Terry Bisson

“Then you’re in luck,” I said. “She’s your mother now. And I’m your new dad. We’re on our way to get married as soon as we find a preacher.”

  All white lies, of course. I’m a TVA baby, not about to marry her or anybody for that matter. But the last thing I needed was a homesick kid on my hands.

  “Isn’t that right, honey?” I asked.

  She was no help. Her eyes were closed. We were doing about ninety. I could see the kid in the back, in the rear-view mirror. His eyes were wide open. “You killed my dad,” he said.

  His was a real one-note song.

  “The Navy sent me,” I persisted. “I’m a Blue Angel. I’m your new dad. And she’s your new mom. It’s all going to be OK as soon as we find us a preacher.”

  “It was OK before,” he said. I could tell he didn’t believe me.

  “Just shut up,” I said. I looked for something on the radio. To my surprise, they were already going on about the plane and the door and all the people falling out. Apparently there were others. I figured they must have radioed down the news and got everybody all stirred up.

  Sure enough, there was a roadblock up ahead—two cop cars in a V formation, and a bunch of “smokies” with those hats and vests and the like. Luckily, I was prepared for just such an eventuality. How many guys carry blue lights in their carry-ons? I stuck mine on the dash and it confused them just long enough for me to crash through on cruise control. The smokies all jumped out of the way, all but one. The restwere shooting but they can’t shoot worth a dime. I thought things would settle down once we got past, but the ones that survived insisted on following like a swarm of angry bees.

  My left rear tire was thumping so I guess they weren’t such bad shots after all. Apologies, etc. Luckily, there was a Wal-Mart just ahead. They carry everything.

  One thing I hate about Wal-Mart is the way they are all over you as soon as you walk in, saying, “How can I help you today?” It’s like they are in a hurry to get you out of there. They don’t bother you, though, when you are waving a shotgun like a magic wand. Everybody sort of melted away as soon as we came in. It was almost like the place was empty, except I figured there were people ducked down here and there in the various aisles.

  I dumped the kid into a shopping cart and made the girl push it. Her legs were still tied together, so she had to sort of hop. How often do you see a girl in a bikini in Wal-Mart? She looked cute and I told her so, but she just glared at me. I got some cereal and milk for later, and some bullets and a little hiking tent. It was time to give up on the car. The bullets were hollow points. “Do you know how to set up a tent?” I asked the kid.

  He wasn’t speaking either. Believe me, I was getting tired of these two! There was no time to waste, so I raced to the check-out area. They have several lanes but they were all empty; no check-out girls.

  I wasn’t about to stand on ceremony. “Looks like we get a freebie,” I said.

  Then I saw the check-out girl hiding under the counter, her make-up all smeared. I made her stand up and reachedinto my pocket for my billfold. I wanted to make things as legal as possible under the circumstances, as long as it didn’t take too long, but wouldn’t you know it, my billfold was missing! I figured it must have fallen out of my pocket somewhere in the descent from the commercial airliner, earlier. That’s why parachutists wear special pants, with all those special pockets, I suppose.

  “J-just g-go,” the check-out girl said. She was also afflicted with a stutter. I was running out of patience, so I made her give me all the money out of the cash register, and gave her two twenties back.

  “Keep the change,” I said. It was a joke but she didn’t get it. Neither did the kid.

  “You can’t pay her with her own money,” he said. “That doesn’t count.”

  Now he was mister logic. He was all folded up in the cart, like a rubber midget, with his eyes wide open. “Navy Seals don’t steal,” he said.

  “Sometimes they do,” I said. “I’m a Blue Angel anyway.” I did my hands like wings.

  “No you’re not,” he said. “You’re a TVA baby.”

  He said it with a certain admiration in his eyes, so I told him the truth, which was that indeed I was. I was tired of pretending anyway. “Now you know why that ‘dad’ of yours had to die,” I said. “He had it all wrong.”

  He just stared at me, all owl-eyed. I peeled off another twenty, to make it up to him. His fingers weren’t broken but his arms were, so I stuck it in his wet shirt pocket. That took some doing. Meanwhile, I had forgotten the girl in the bikini. She was trying to hop away. I caught up with her, no big deal,and herded her back with the shotgun and said, “Now, let’s get the hell out of here, on the double!”

  Easier said than done. We started out the door but the parking lot out front was filled with police cars, all with blue lights flashing. There were Darth Vader types in black helmets crouched behind them, looking ready for action.

  “Change in plans,” I said.

  “N-no shit, Sherlock,” said the girl. She was getting saucy. I liked that. I gave her a twenty and she stuck it down the front of her bikini. I liked that too. I gave her another, then steered her and the cart toward the back of the store. It was slow going with her hopping, but I couldn’t help push the cart since I had my carry-on in one hand and the shotgun in the other.

  It wasn’t my job to push anyway.

  “Y-you’re t-toast,” she said. She was still stuttering, or maybe it was the hopping. I decided to ignore her. Besides, I had other things on my mind. I knew that if I could get to the loading dock I could escape into the woods out back. There’s a woods behind every Wal-Mart.

  Unfortunately, the loading dock was also filled with pissed-off-looking Darth Vader types.

  “T-trapped!” she said. She seemed pleased. I was getting tired of her shit. “Don’t be so sure,” I snarled. I poked her in the butt with the shotgun and we headed for the TV section, which is, in my opinion, the nicest part of the store. All those TVs going at once, all tuned to the same station. It’s almost like home.

  They were all showing the “Breaking News,” which was the scene out front, the parking lot crowded with copcars with blue lights flashing. There was even a helicopter. It was Live.

  “You’re toast,” she said again. I never liked that expression. Toast always seemed to me like something nice. I was explaining this to her and the kid while I was setting up the tent (they were no help) when she said, “I don’t know why you keep talking to him. He’s dead.”

  I stopped, taken aback.

  So that was it! The open eyes had fooled me. But what about all the things he had said? Had I only imagined he was talking to me? It was entirely possible, I knew. Perhaps he had been dead all along. There was no way to know for sure. He was cold but that could have been the water. His clothes were still wet.

  “So what?” I said, to give the impression that I had known all along. I made her get in the tent and topped off the pistol with the hollow points. The shotgun still had four shells.

  Meanwhile, on the TV, all the Darth Vader types were coming in the front door. I turned around to look and, sure enough, I could see them toward the front of the store, darting around the aisles, trying to stay out of my line of sight.

  They were moving in from the loading dock, too. Luckily, I still had a trick or two up my sleeve.

  How many guys carry a universal remote in their carry-on? (Raise your hand!) I flipped around until I had Oprah on all the screens. I was waiting for her to stop talking when one screen exploded. They were shooting.

  I stood up and emptied a clip and sent a bunch of shit flying, and that quieted them down again. They are kind ofchicken, really. But there was a bunch of them and they were getting closer. I really needed to get out of there.

  Oprah was still yakking away. I crouched down and flipped around till I got Ellen. That’s more my kind of show anyway. I watch it all the time. You can’t even tell she’s a lesbian, not that that matters to anybody anymore.

/>   “You,” Ellen said. “What do you want?” She didn’t look pleased to see me, but I’m used to that. I’m a TVA baby.

  “I want to be on your show,” I said.

  “I told you, I don’t arrange that,” she said. “That’s all arranged through the producer.”

  “It’s an emergency,” I said. “Can’t we make an exception just this once?”

  I pointed toward the front of the store, where the Darth Vader types were still filtering in, all crouched down. But of course, Ellen couldn’t see out of the TV.

  “It’s not up to me,” she said. “It seems to people like it is, but actually it’s not.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?”

  “Try Wild Kingdom.”

  That was an idea. I flipped around till I found it. Two lions were eating an antelope, one from the front and one from the back.

  I flipped back to Ellen. “No way,” I said. I told her what I had seen and she gave a little shudder. “I can’t believe that’s what they call appropriate programming for children,” she said.

  “Meanwhile, we have a problem here,” I said. “They’re closing in and there’s at least a hundred of them.” That was an exaggeration but not by much. Down every aisle I could see crouching shapes, darting here and there.

  “I have a guest,” Ellen said. Sure enough, she was standing up to hug some guy in jeans and a sport coat. Some lucky dude.

  “What about me?” I asked. “What am I supposed to do?”

  She shrugged. “Shoot it out?”

  That was no help. Oprah would have said the same. I was beginning to see that they were all cut out of the same piece of cloth. They want no surprises on their shows. I could even understand their point of view but meanwhile I had enough to worry about, with the Darth Vader types showing up down almost every aisle.

  I fired off another clip, my last.

  “You’re trapped,” said the girl in the bikini. She was peering out the window of the tent. I made her zip it shut from inside and told her to shut her pie hole while I went to the guns & ammo section. I had to crawl. I had to break the glass. I was reloading with hollow points when I heard a voice over the store’s PA system:

  “Drop the gun and come out with your hands on your head!”

  It’s usually used to announce sales and such. I guess they figured it made them sound more official, and to be perfectly honest, it did. It gave me a shiver.

  I was getting worried.

  I crawled back to the TV section. A guy tried to stop me on the way but he was too slow, and I wasted him with one shot. The hollow points expand. Somebody pulled him out of the way, sliding him back in his own helpful blood. The dudes were everywhere.

  I had a sinking feeling when I saw the tent, and when I picked up one side to look underneath, sure enough, the girl was gone, bikini and all. She had somehow split the scene.

  Now there was just me and the kid, who was still in the shopping cart, and dead besides. “Ned” was no help. Another TV exploded but there were still plenty left.

  I tried Ellen again. “What about the studio audience?” I suggested.

  She ignored me, as was often her wont. Meanwhile, bullets were flying all around. Not one to stand on ceremony, I squeezed on through, and just in time. Bullets were smacking into my flesh.

  The chairs for the studio audience were arranged in rows, on low risers. None had arms. Everybody was watching Ellen, who was holding a puppy on her lap.

  “Scoot,” I said, but all I got were blank looks. Scoot, it turns out, was the name of the puppy.

  “Scoot over!” I said in a loud whisper, to which I added a snarl, and over they scooted, all of them at once.

  And just in time for the commercial break. The lights went weird. I took my seat just in time as Ellen looked up from her puppy and asked, pretending to be interested (they are always pretending), “And how many TVA babies do we have in our studio audience today?”

  Mine was, as always, as ever, the only hand raised.

  Private Eye

  “Spare one of those?”

  “Of course.” I shook a Camel out of my pack, which was sitting on the bar as a reminder of better days. She was wearing a raincoat—Burberry; we notice such things—over jeans. It matched her hair, almost; it wasn’t buttoned, only belted at the waist. She was three stools away, but I caught a glimpse of a narrow black strap on a narrow pale shoulder when she leaned down the bar to take the cigarette from my fingers.

  We notice such things. Especially in a quiet bar on Eighth Avenue, on a rainy Thursday autumn-in-New York afternoon.

  She was careful not to touch my fingers; I was careful not to touch hers. I have a lot of respect for cigarettes, these days.

  “Thanks.”

  Her hair was what they used to call dirty blonde, cut short. Full, red lips and a low, smoky voice with eyes to match: dark, deep Jeanne Moreau eyes, filled with a certain sorrowful something. Regret? Loss? Perhaps. She was coasting, like me, on the high side of forty and her face looked it, which I found appealing, and her body didn’t, which we find appealing. So many young girls have empty eyes.

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  She sat back and examined the cigarette as if it were a fish she’d caught. Holding both ends in long fingers, very deft. Great hands. A dancer’s hands.

  Then she lit it!

  She tapped it on the bar and put it between her lips and struck a match and lit it.

  Inhaled.

  Exhaled.

  I turned on my stool, alarmed, but the bartender was paying no attention. The little faux bistro—there’s one on every block in the west twenties—was empty except for us.

  “Excuse me,” I said, sliding my drink down the bar and taking a seat next to hers. “But I thought you couldn’t smoke in New York bars anymore.”

  “You can’t,” she said. “But Lou cuts me a pass every afternoon at about this time, when the lunch crowd’s gone.”

  It was ten after two.

  “Extraordinary,” I said, tapping a Camel out of my pack. “Perhaps if I pretended to be with you, Lou would cut me a pass, too?”

  “Depends.” She eyed me sideways. “Are you a good pretender?”

  “Good?” I contrived to sound like I was trying to sound insulted. “I’m the Great Pretender. Plus you’ll probably want another anyway.” I laid the pack down like a high card. Maybe even a trump, I was thinking.

  “As long as we are pretending,” she said. “Just don’t get any ideas.”

  “Ideas?” My head was filled with ideas. “I never get ideas.”

  “I’m here to take a break,” she said. “Not to get hit on. As long as you understand that, we can pretend we are friends. I’ll even pretend to enjoy your company.”

  Not to mention my Camels.

  “Not to mention your Camels,” she added.

  Lou did, indeed, cut me a pass. And she did enjoy my company, or at least pretend. And I hers. She was an “Internet worker bee” (or so she called it, then) who worked at home, right around the corner. I was, well, whatever I told her I was.

  “Burberry,” I said. “An old boyfriend?”

  “All my boyfriends are old,” she said. “The young are too needy.”

  “So many young girls have empty eyes,” I said, and ordered us both a wine. White for her, red for me.

  Her coat fell open when she leaned forward to pick up her glass. I saw the top of a slip, black silk, or something very like it. The strap was loose which told me that her breasts were probably small. But we couldn’t see enough to tell.

  “What is it with you guys and straps?” she asked, lighting another Camel off the one she was smoking. “It’s not like you’re actually seeing anything.”

  Busted. Even honesty is, sometimes, the best policy. “Extrapolation,” I said.

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “Each part suggests the whole. That inch and a half of narrow strap, seen as if by accident, suggests the lacy cup to which it leads, which
in turn suggests that which it cups, shapes, presents. That little strap takes the mind’s eye to where the eye alone can’t, quite, yet, go. Extrapolation.”

  “Well said,” she said. I thought so too. She blew analmost-perfect smoke ring, then looked me straight in the eye and asked: “How many of you are there?”

  Busted again. I glanced at my Fauxlex. “Sixty-seven, as of now. They come and go. How’d you know?”

  “I read about it in Wired,” she said. “Cyberhosting. Private Eyes. It’s the new new thing. And a girl can tell. There’s a certain—intensity of regard.”

  “Well said,” I said. “And you don’t mind?”

  “On the contrary, it’s kind of appealing.” She leaned forward and the Burberry fell open, just enough. “Especially since regard is all that’s involved.”

  “There are Protocols,” I said. There was that lovely intimate little strap again. “Appropriate for just such an occasion.”

  “Well said,” she said, sliding off her stool. “It’s almost three. Tell you what: you may come up till five.”

  She picked up my Camels and left the bar. Scarcely believing our luck, I touched my Fauxlex to the bill strip, beeped Lou a fifty to cover the tip, and followed.

  Her name, she told me in the elevator, was Eula. I didn’t realize, then, what it meant. Her place was a mess. It was a studio filled with computers, monitors, cables, drives, all the apparatus with which I am, ironically, so unfamiliar. One high window (dirty), one houseplant (dying), one futon couch facing a cluttered coffee table on a faded fake Persian rug.

  With a nod, she sat me down on the rug. Then she slipped off her Burberry, hung it carefully on the back of a chair stacked with computer manuals, and disappeared intoher tiny kitchen. She came back with two white-wine glasses and a bottle to match. Pinot Grigio.

  She sat on the couch with her long legs tucked underneath her. “So you are cyberhosting,” she said. “There was an article in Playboy too. What’s it like, being a Private Eye? Been at it long?”

  The strap, both straps, led down to a black slip with lacy cups tucked into tight, faded jeans. High-end tank top.