“You have to speak to Dave,” she says.
“Who’s Dave?”
“The owner.” She points past the small round tables to the long bar that sits against the far wall. The bar is empty, save for one stool on the far left, upon which sits a large potbellied man with thinning steel wool hair and a beard that seems to have been trimmed specifically to show off the triple chin hanging like a rucksack beneath it. “That him?” I say.
“In the flesh,” she says before wandering off to peddle some more of her own.
“Excuse me,” I say to the man. “Dave?”
“If you’re asking, then you already know,” he says, sipping at his drink. He looks like someone who might have wrestled professionally in another life.
“We need to see Delia.”
He turns on his stool to look me over. “You here about the kid?”
“That’s right.”
He looks at his watch and frowns. “She’s on in ten minutes.”
“Then we’d better be quick.”
Dave frowns as he pulls himself off his stool and leads us through a door to the right of the runway, down a hall, and into the dressing room. A handful of naked women sit at a bank of mirrors, adjusting their makeup, emptying out industrial-size aerosol cans into their hair, and dispassionately propping up their synthetic breasts in lacy undergarments. Other women strut back and forth in dangerously high heels and little else, hurriedly pulling on and off minuscule spandex skirts or tube tops, conversing easily with each other as they prepare to go on. Henry is sitting on the floor in the corner, oblivious to the writhing jungle of long legs and thonged asses that surrounds him. He has his Thomas the Tank Engine train clutched in one hand while the other is busy with a crayon, coloring in a flyer with the club logo, an outline of two naked women bending over in opposite directions.
“Henry,” I call to him. I can tell by his expression that he recognizes me. “Do you remember me?”
He nods, pulling the train against his chest. I can feel Matt and Pete behind me, staring at him. Before we can get any closer, Delia steps away from a full-length mirror and positions herself between us. She’s dressed in a sequined bra and panties, her face so garishly made-up that she looks like a marionette. “Hey,” she says. “Zack.”
“Yeah.”
“They’re here for the boy,” Dave says.
“I know what they’re here for,” Delia says, looking over Matt and Pete. “You have some way of proving your identity?”
Matt and I produce our driver’s licenses, which she expertly peruses before handing them over to Dave. “What do you think?” she asks him.
Dave gives her back the licenses without looking at them. “I think this is a business, not a day care center. If they’re here for the boy, settle up with them and get your ass out there.”
I kneel down in front of Henry, who is following the action with wide, intelligent eyes. “Henry,” I say. “Do you know who I am?”
He nods. “Zack,” he says.
“That’s right,” I say. “And these are my brothers, Matt and Pete.”
Henry nods, reaches into his pants pocket, and hands me a bent and weathered photo. I open it to find a picture of Matt, Pete, and me on a fishing boat in Miami. Lela had gone down to see her mother through some back surgery, and I’d used the opportunity to treat my brothers to a small vacation. It was about six years ago, and I have no idea how the picture wound up in Norm’s possession. “That’s right,” I say. “That’s me and that’s Matt and that’s Pete.” I look at Henry. “You’re our brother too.”
“I know,” Henry says.
“How would you like to come and live with us?”
Henry considers the invitation with the air of someone for whom drastic changes in living arrangements are nothing out of the ordinary. “My mom died,” he says matter-of-factly.
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“Do you know where my dad is?”
“He’s gone away for a while.”
Henry nods, looking down at his Thomas train. “He always goes away.”
“I know. He’s my father too. That’s why it’s good to have three other brothers, right? This way, you’ll never be alone.”
Pete comes over and crouches down to join us. “I have trains too,” he says. “Lots of them. And tracks and a bridge and a service depot.”
“Do they have batteries?” Henry says.
“Some.”
Henry nods and sticks out his hand. “Can I have my picture back?”
I hand him the picture, and the way he folds it like a talisman, with loving precision along its creases, before depositing it back in his pocket brings a lump to my throat.
“Fine,” Delia says. “Just give me another thousand dollars and we’ll call it even.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Matt says.
“I gave you two hundred yesterday,” I say.
“And that bought you one more day,” Delia retorts. “I’ve had the kid for over a week. I’ve had to feed him and clothe him, not to mention all the work I missed.”
“Your deal was with Norm,” I tell her. “Not us.”
“Listen,” Dave says. “Both parties had better come to an understanding immediately, because I need her ass on that stage in two minutes or my business starts to be affected, and you do not want to start affecting my business. Do you get me?”
“Fuck this,” Matt says to me. “Let’s get him out of here.”
“She’s entitled to something for her trouble,” Dave says, planting himself in front of the door.
“Okay, fine,” I say, pulling out my wallet and going through my bills. “I’ve got one hundred and eighty-three dollars on me. Matt, what do you have?”
Matt flashes me a look that says Be real.
“That’s not acceptable,” Dave says. Apparently, he’s taken over the negotiations for Delia.
“I’m not a charity,” Delia says. “I’m a businesswoman.”
“You get paid to show your tits,” Matt says hotly.
“Fuck you, you little punk!”
A shouting match erupts between Matt, Delia, and Dave, but I’m watching Henry, who has backed up to the wall, frightened by all the yelling. He stares at me for a few seconds, eyes wide with fear, and then, with no warning, he suddenly runs at me and jumps into my arms, burrowing his face into my shoulder as if he’s done it a million times before. And as I wrap my arms around him for the first time, stroking his back as his curly hair tickles the underside of my jaw, there’s something viscerally familiar about it, like a memory of the future. The argument dies down as Matt and Delia turn to stare at us, and suddenly the room is preternaturally silent.
“Please,” I say, looking straight at Delia. “Let us take him home.”
Delia looks at me for a long moment, then shakes her head and grabs the cash out of my fist. “Fine,” she says, and then surprises me by leaning over to plant a kiss on the back of Henry’s head. “Take good care of him.” I turn to Dave, and after a tense few seconds, he yields his position and we exit the dressing room. Matt and Pete flank me like blockers as I walk through the club carrying Henry, who doesn’t lift his head from my shoulder, holding my neck in a death grip until we make it to the parking lot.
We’re passing Egg Harbor, about a half hour out of Atlantic City. I’m sitting in the back with Henry, who’s fallen asleep in the booster seat, his head against my shoulder, when I suddenly lean forward and hit Matt’s shoulder.
“Stop the car!”
“What?”
“Just pull over,” I say. “Now!”
“What the fuck?” he says, pulling onto the shoulder.
“Shh!” Pete says to him, indicating Henry’s sleeping form. “No curse words.”
“Sorry.”
I step into the chilly night, staring intently into the woods off the shoulder. I climb the grassy slope, moving diagonally forward, toward a large radio tower. This is the place, I’m certain. I haven’t been back t
his way since, but I remember that tower rising up over the trees like a dragon against the night sky as they carried me away from the wreck. I move urgently through the trees, looking for broken branches or mangled auto parts, anything to pinpoint the exact location, but in the darkness there’s nothing to be found. Then, in a small clearing, I come upon a tree trunk stripped of its bark at the bottom, the pearl flesh of the tree showing through like an exposed wound. I search the ground around the tree, but there’s nothing there, the woods having expelled or swallowed up any last remnants of the wreckage. I sit down with my back against the tree and look out at the surrounding woods. There’s a rustle to my left, and a rabbit ventures out from the undergrowth, trembling on its haunches as it surveys the area nervously. Its eyes lock on mine, and we stare at each other for a long moment, each of us contemplating issues of survival in the manner of our respective species. I pull my cell phone off my belt, flipping it open to search through the memory until it comes to Rael’s cell phone number, which I could never bring myself to delete. Still watching the rabbit, I push Send, an eerie breeze blowing through my gut. The display indicates no active cells, but after a few seconds the phone rings. This is Miguel. I’m not available right now. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I can. Adiós.
“Hi, Miguel,” I say. “This used to be my buddy’s phone number. He died in a car crash about two years ago. You’d think I would have erased his number by now, but there it is. I guess I was kind of hoping that maybe, if I pressed the button at just the right time, I might have gotten him, but I guess not. Anyway, I hope things are fine with you, and that the number’s working out for you. His name was Rael, by the way. Whatever. I’m sure you’ve got your own problems. I’ll let you go. ’Bye.”
I look down at the glowing screen and hit the requisite buttons to delete Rael’s number. Are you sure you want to delete Rael’s cell? the phone asks me. I click Delete again, and the number disappears. The next number that comes up is Rael’s home. Tamara picks up on the second ring. “Hey,” I say, but it’s one of those one-way connections where I can hear her, but she can’t hear me. “Hello?” she says. “Hello?” I say hello back, but she doesn’t hear me, so all I can do is listen to her say hello a few more times, sounding mildly irked, before she hangs up, which is fine, because I don’t know what I would have said to her even if she could hear me.
Chapter 41
Matt is in the living room, covering Sesame Street songs on his electric guitar, putting some punk into them, while Henry, dressed in a Buzz Lightyear costume, sits on the floor, laughing hysterically. They stop to look me over when I enter the room, dressed in an old monk’s habit and a rubber goblin mask. Henry looks a bit nervous about the mask, so I pull it off, my hair tingling with static electricity. “It’s just me,” I say sheepishly.
“I knew it was you,” he says, but he still looks relieved.
Matt plays a distorted version of “Elmo’s World” on his guitar.
“You ready?” I say to Henry.
He stands up. “Don’t wear the mask.”
“Deal.”
Matt gives Henry a kiss on the top of his head as he gets off the couch. “Gotta go,” he says. “We’re playing the Halloween Ball at Irving Plaza tonight.”
“That’s a step up,” I say, impressed.
“There was a last-minute cancellation,” Matt says with a shrug. “Jed knew a guy.”
“Good luck.”
“Don’t need it.” He throws his guitar over his shoulder and heads for the door, stopping to point an admonishing finger at Henry. “No drugs and no underage women, you hear me?”
Henry nods seriously, in a way that makes us smile.
The streets are filled with roving gangs of pint-size trick-or-treaters and their accompanying chaperons. Henry holds my hand tightly, stopping every so often to marvel at the ghosts, monsters, ’droids, and hobbits moving past us on the street in the dim glow of the porch lights. After only two weeks, his trust in me is absolute, like a longtime burden he’s finally found a safe place to deposit. For probably the thousandth time since we picked him up from Tommyknockers, I silently vow that I will be worthy. Making this vow in the dark, in my hooded monk’s attire, seems to lend it some added weight.
“Why didn’t Pete come?” Henry asks me.
“He likes to stay home and scare the trick-or-treaters.”
“Oh.”
We brought Henry directly back to Lela’s house and turned my old room into his. We still haven’t figured out exactly how we’re going to configure everything, but in the interim, the prevailing idea is to surround Henry with family at all times. I’ve been staying there, sleeping downstairs on the sofa bed recently evacuated by Norm, and Matt comes by pretty much every day as well. A few days ago, Jed arrived in a rented van, introduced himself solemnly to Henry as Uncle Jed, and then proceeded to unload what appeared to be the entire inventory of the local Toys “R” Us while Henry looked on with unconcealed glee.
We left Henry and Pete to sift through the toys, and joined Matt, who was smoking a cigarette out in the backyard. “Hey, Matt,” Jed said. “Did you tell Zack about my vision?”
“No,” Matt said, stubbing out his cigarette. He’d announced his intention to quit in Henry’s honor, but so far it hadn’t been going well. “I figured I’d leave that to you.”
Jed nodded and turned to me. “I was shopping for some new guitars with Matt, when I had a vision.”
In the aftermath of what will forever be referred to by my family simply as Zack’s Party, Matt and Jed reached some convoluted arrangement wherein Jed would serve as manager for Worried About the WENUS, booking their gigs and lining up a solid producer for their first demo. His first move was to buy the band all new equipment.
“You’re having visions now?” I said.
“He’s definitely onto something,” Matt said.
“Or just on something.”
“It’s kind of like a musicians’ superstore,” Jed plowed on, ignoring my wisecrack. “A fully stocked, full-service musical equipment store with recording studios in the back for bands to cut demos, and a café with a stage to showcase local bands.”
I nodded, thinking about it. “Interesting.”
“The opportunities for cross-promotion are endless,” he continued excitedly. “You’ve got four or five converging revenue streams under one roof: the café, the instruments, the recording studios, and the concerts. You host events to showcase new talent, and they come in and buy gear as well. We’ll help bands make demos, and offer discounts on studio time when they buy equipment from us. And we can negotiate with the instrument vendors to underwrite the studio time in exchange for in-store advertising and advantageous brand placement. I’ve got a few VC guys I know who will be all over this. I’m putting the finishing touches on the business plan—oh, and once we have the prototype done, we can expand to other cities.”
“It’s going to be awesome,” Matt said enthusiastically as he fired up another cigarette, already banking on his freebies.
There was a time, I recalled, when Jed used to sound like that all the time, animatedly pontificating on the latest company his hedge fund had discovered, why their product would revolutionize a particular industry, what his end would be. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it until that very moment, and I wanted to hug him and welcome him back to the living. Instead I just said, “Sounds great.”
“I’ll finish the plan and raise the money,” Jed continued. “You’ll negotiate the lease and handle all the vendor contracts.”
“Oh, so I’m a part of this?”
He gave me a serious look. “You have something better to do?”
I grinned. “Count me in.”
“Good,” Jed said, shaking my hand. “Because we’re turning your room into our office.”
After an hour or so of trick-or-treating, Henry’s bag is bulging with hard candies and chocolates, as well as the toothpaste and toothbrush set self-righteously prese
nted by one well-meaning party pooper. A group of little kids race past us, laughing as one of their fathers sprays Crazy String all over them. Henry stops where he is, watching the kids with a happy smile, enjoying their antics, and it makes me wonder how often he got to play with other kids over the last year with Norm. I make a mental note to find him some friends in the neighborhood.
Back at the house, Dracula opens the door and growls savagely at us even as he throws Milky Ways into Henry’s bag. “Hi, Pete,” Henry says.
“Hi, Henry,” he says. “Looks like you got a load of candy.”
Henry nods, holding up his bag for Pete to inspect. “I got so much,” he says enthusiastically.
“We still have one more stop to make,” I say. “We just need your car keys.”
“You can have them. But first,” Pete says, grabbing Henry and hoisting him up into the air. “I’m going to suck your blood!”
“Dracula,” I say. “Have a heart.”
“Don’t mind if I do!” Pete yells in his best Transylvanian accent, burying his masked face into Henry’s chest while Henry convulses with laughter.
“Whose house is this?” Henry asks me from the backseat.
“They give good candy here.”
“Oh,” he says, nodding.
With Henry’s permission, I am once again wearing the goblin mask underneath the monk’s hood. Tamara answers the door in jeans and a cable sweater, her hair pulled haphazardly out of her face with some randomly placed plastic clips. “Buzz Lightyear!” Tamara says, kneeling down to examine Henry’s costume. He nods, smiling shyly at her. I watch Tamara through my mask, the rubber, slick with my saliva, sticking to my face. It’s a strangely disembodied feeling, being so close to her again while she has no idea. I’m dying to reach out and touch her face, to bury my hands in the thick rings of her hair, but she would no doubt find the advances of a satanic monk alarming, so I stand quietly, impotent in my disguise.
“What’s your name?”
“Henry.”
“Here you go, Henry,” she says, tossing some Hershey’s Miniatures into his bag. She looks up at me as she does, and I’m suddenly positive she can see me, right through the mask. But if that were true, she’d be angry, wouldn’t she, at this violation? And the expression spreading across her face is anything but angry. Suddenly, impossibly, she steps forward and hugs me. I hug her back, too shocked to say anything. After a few seconds, she whispers into my rubber ear. “Please, just tell me it’s you.”
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