Joe's Liver

by Di Filippo, Paul

  Ardy halts at the curbside, having reached a cross-street. Although there is absolutely no traffic, the light is against him and he does not dare cross, for fear of being arrested for jaywalking.

  The cruiser draws up abreast of Ardy. From behind closed windows, two stern faces regard him with neither evident malice nor welcoming civic hospitality—much the look bestowed earlier on him by the easily incensed Johnsons. Ardy attempts a smile. An excruciating itch beneath his left armpit spoils the symmetry of his expression, and only by exercising vast willpower does he refrain from scratching like an ape.

  The malevolent traffic light seems determined not to change. Time stretches like taffy. Icy rain puddles in Ardy’s collar. His grin has frozen in place.

  A car pulls up at right angles to the cruiser and unaccountably stops at the green light, opposite Ardy across the width of the street. His senses preternaturally alert, Ardy takes in the car as a gestalt of impressions. Long, maroon, sleek chassis, featuring a crouching chrome feline of some kind as a hood ornament, definitely not a make ever advertised in the pages of the Digest. White plates with green lettering proclaim its state of registry to be Massachusetts.

  The tinted window is powered down and a woman’s face appears. Although not young, the woman is extremely attractive, with clearly defined features framed by elegantly cut black hair falling gracefully to the level of her somewhat sharp chin.

  “Young man, I need help.”

  “Madam, so do I.”

  “Could you come here, so I don’t have to shout?”

  “Gladly.”

  Ardy steps into the street and up to the car. The eternal traffic light remains unchanging.

  “As it so happens, I’ve lost my way.”

  “You have my entire sympathy, Madam. I know exactly how you feel.”

  “I must get back to Boston today. Do you think you could put me on the highway?”

  “I — I — Madam, I’m heading there myself.”

  “On foot?”

  “The gentleman I was traveling with — a Mister Duncan Armitage — we became separated …”

  “Duncan Armitage? Well, why didn’t you say so! Listen, hop in, and we’ll find the interstate together.”

  Ardy corners around the front of the car so closely that he whacks his right hip on the fender, bounces off, recovers, and is soon fumbling with rigid fingers at the passenger-side door-handle. Open, inside, safe, safe, behind tinted glass, a heater purring, glance out the windshield to see the irrational traffic beacon gone yellow, advising, “Straight through, I believe,” then blessed acceleration, check the rearview mirror for the cops and find —

  Nothing. The road behind them empty as Ardy’s belly, the police having no doubt dismissed the whole affair as part and parcel of the unfathomable eccentricities of all out-of-staters.…

  Ardy releases a gust of breath much as did Mister Enrico upon the departure of the agents Johnson. Only now, Ardy realizes, the cloud of breath trapped in the luxurious car does not bear a whiff of skiff but stale, embarrassing odors of a sour mouth and roiling, acid-churning stomach. The image he must be presenting to this charming and agreeable woman who has had the sheer good-heartedness to rescue him from the steely grip of the law … Ardy squirms nervously in his seat. Suddenly, his whole appearance strikes home, and he feels like an uncultivated savage, unfit ever to have set foot in The First World.

  “Madam, you must pardon my rather bedraggled state. I fear that the rigors of the road have told most upon my wardrobe. Underneath this slovenly façade, however — good gracious me!”

  A shelf of slushy ice, formerly perched upon Ardy s rucked-up collar, has slid off and down, in between his back and the seat. Quickly melting, it has just made its new location known as a large cold wet puddle under his buttocks.

  “Oh my goodness, Madam, it discomfits me to report that I am shedding icicles on your fine leather seats here. Surely they’ll be ruined! What an awful mess this is! Good Lord, I don’t know how any of this has happened. Madam, I insist on paying for whatever damages I incur — although when I might be solvent enough to do so, I can’t say. Do you have a towel perhaps that I might sit on? No, of course not, why should I think you would carry a towel for any inconsiderate stranger who might thrust himself into your vehicle? Perhaps the best thing for you to do would be to drop me off once we reach the interstate highway system, Madam, where I shall make my own way to Boston without trespassing on your charity any longer.…”

  Ardy’s tongue runs down. He has been studying this new person in his life while he frantically speaks, alert to detect the least signs of what he is sure will be a growing repugnance to his presence. But the youthful, albeit somehow worldly profile of this woman betrays no such feelings. Although her eyes perforce remain mostly on the tricky wet pavement, she flicks an occasional bottle-green glance Ardy’s way, a glance which implies not censure but amusement. A ghost of a smile plays upon her delicate lips, tugging up the crimson corners. Left hand remaining on the wheel, she brings one perfectly manicured finger up to scratch with feminine exactitude the delicate hollow at the base of her patrician nose, perhaps concealing a full-blown smile with the same gesture.

  Ardy is baffled. Suddenly, the days of walking and hiding take their toll. All strength and certainty flow out of him, like yolk from a cracked turtle egg, leaving him hollow and purposeless. The only thing he can think of is how good the jolly blasts from the heater feel.

  “There is no way,” says the woman at last, “that I will drop you off in this miserable weather so that you can hitchhike another ride. Why would I want to? Can’t you see how totally wonderful this all is? Here I am, lost in the wilds of Vermont, when who should I run into but a friend of Duncan’s. It was positively meant to be! Can’t you feel it?”

  “Madam, I am having a bit of trouble feeling anything other than the burden of my afflictions at the moment. But I assure you that my normally sanguine nature will soon reassert itself.”

  This time the woman smiles broadly and openly. “I’m sure it will. But listen, this is awful of me. You’re soaked, and we’ve got to do something about it. Let me think a minute.”

  Ardy is grateful to be quiet and let someone else assume the chore of thinking. He spends the next minute or so cataloguing with growing interest the things about this woman that speak of serious money such as Ardy has never known. Glossy hand-stitched leather shoes, sheer black patterned stockings, beige knitted dress with an angora collar, string of what he must assume are real pearls … She is undoubtedly an heiress, an exiled princess, or a member of the jet set.…

  “Okay, I think I have it. The very first thing to do is locate the highway and leave this crummy state behind. We’re not going to find anything open except at the rest stops. Once we’re there, we’ll decide what to do next.”

  “A wonderful plan, Madam! May I enquire as to what a rest stop is?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Ha, ha, ha, yes, of course.”

  Silence. Soppy fields and forest and scattered houses endlessly replicate themselves. The noise of the rain on the car roof reminds Ardy of the tin-roofed shacks of the Spice Island.

  “Madam, I detect a sign on the left there.”

  “Where — oh, I see it. Wonderful! Okay, now don’t say anything. I have to do this my way.”

  The woman drives straight past the indicated left-hand turn for the desirable interstate. At the next intersection not too far beyond she takes a right, then immediately another right, then a third, until, having traversed three sides of a square, they now find themselves barreling through the original intersection and up onto the highway.

  The woman sighs. “We had luck on our side then. Sometimes that doesn’t work out so well.”

  “I assume the car has a steering defect, Madam, and refuses to go left.”

  “No, it’s me.”

  “Please?”

  “Its me, I’ve got the defect. I can’t handle left turns. Even when there
’s no oncoming traffic, something screws me up, a flaw in my spatial abilities. I can’t match up the new lane that’s ninety degrees off with my old one. There’s no telling whether I’ll end up in the right hand lane or the left. And when I have to actually cut across other moving cars — well, I just panic and freeze. So I only make right hand turns. I know its silly, but there’s no use fighting it. I’ve had this problem ever since I was sixteen, and I’m used to it now. But I know it must look queer to someone who’s never seen it before.”

  “Oh, no, not at all.”

  “You’re sweet, but you can laugh if you want. Everyone else does.”

  “Madam, I never would!”

  “Thank you.” A long pause. The woman speaks. “Well, we’re on track now. We could have quite a way to go, but something tells me we’ve got a lot to talk about. Why, we don’t even know each other’s name! Mine’s Roseanna — Roseanna Mountjoy.”

  Ardy almost introduces himself as Spalding Fitzwater, but something stops him. This woman’s inexplicable familiarity with the name of Duncan Armitage does not bode well. Ardy is uncertain of how Mister Enrico acquired the passports they utilized, and whether or not they were of a set. Best to tell the truth in such a case. “I’m Ardy.”

  “Is that all?”

  Ardy considers. He has never really felt the lack of a surname before this woman’s question. Now he suddenly wishes for one, if only in order to have another autobiographical detail to share with this pleasant companion.

  “I’m afraid that the aforementioned sobriquet is it, Miss Mountjoy.”

  “Well, good enough then. By the way, it’s Missus. But seeing that we have friends in common, I would hope you’d call me Roseanna.”

  A married woman! Ardy s pulse pounds, and he feels faint. He is riding in a car alone with a married woman. Stern admonitions uttered by the Sisters — warnings he had long thought subdued by the urbane and cosmopolitan teachings of the Digest — swarm in his head like gnats. Commandments, injunctions, the possibility of traducing another’s lawfully wedded spouse, should familiarity exceed certain bounds …

  “I don’t — That is, etiquette dictates — I simply couldn’t.”

  “I insist.”

  “Whatever you say — Roseanna,” agrees Ardy, feeling deliciously, helplessly, willfully wicked.

  “Now that that’s settled, you must tell me how you and Duncan met. I wasn’t aware that Duncan had any friends of your — I mean, I’ve never noticed you at any of Duncans parties.”

  “To tell the truth, Roseanna, Mister Armitage and I only recently met, in sunny Puerto Rico.”

  “Oh, of course, why didn’t I guess! Were you with Duncan during that awful hullabaloo when he and Spalding had their passports stolen? I understand it took them days and days to get it straightened out. And they never did catch the thief.”

  Sisters of Eternal Recurrence, all praise and glory be thine, for guarding thy own!

  “No, no, I had nothing to do with it. I mean, I didn’t meet Mister Armitage till later.”

  “That’s odd, he left the country right after …”

  “Yes, I know. Do you suppose we could listen to some music, Roseanna?”

  Without waiting for Roseanna’s assent, Ardy turns the radio on, A stereophonic newscast fills the car, drowning out the sound of their own tires sizzling on the wet pavement, and the noise of the surrounding sparse traffic.

  “… fighting has stopped. All members of the right-wing paramilitary organization appear to have been rounded up, except for the ringleader, the well-known Doctor Herbert Spencer, and his second-in-command, an unidentified foreigner. We spoke to a member of the Immigration Agency, who is pursuing the possibility that the mystery guerilla is the same man identified as a notorious international drug-smuggler who broke through an elaborate cordon at the border on Thursday.”

  The voice of the more loquacious of the two Agents Johnson intrudes into the sanctuary of the car.

  “We have reason to believe that these two anarchic figures—the drug baron and the provocateur—are one and the same, and that by nabbing them, or him, we will solve several decades’ worth of open cases.”

  The announcer returns. “A recent development in an old story. Ten years ago, American troops invaded and restored order to the sleepy little country known as Spice Island. Today marks the departure of the final troops stationed on Spice Island, and the Land of the Nutmeg, back on its feet, is attempting to make it on its own, in the tried and true spirit of hard work and intelligent capitalism. The United States is expected to absorb nearly all of the country’s exports in upcoming years.

  “And now, from our studio kitchens, Dolly Matthews with fresh ideas to perk up old dishes.”

  “Hello, listeners! Today we’ll be learning new tricks with an old spice, nutmeg —”

  Ardy snaps the radio off. Roseanna, silent throughout, now asks, “Are you originally from Puerto Rico, Ardy?”

  “No, no, a neighboring island, someplace I’m sure you’ve never heard of. I don’t wish to bore you with the details.”

  “Oh, it would be fascinating, I’m sure.”

  Reluctantly, without naming names, careful to omit certain incriminating incidents, editing where necessary, Ardy speaks a little of his youthful abandoning, his upbringing, his quest. Roseanna nods sympathetically during his tale. At the end Ardy, slightly unnerved from talking so much about himself, looks away from Roseanna and out the window.

  In the mist, by the side of the road, a figure wearing a sodden, sleet-stiffened cheap suit, insignificant mustache, feral eyes, standing with thumb outstretched … then subsumed in a gigantic spray of water from their speeding car …

  Mister Enrico? Bearing Ardy s money? Too late to stop or turn back now, even if Roseanna s driving skills could encompass it. Ardy suspects he and his former guide will not meet again this side of Pleasantville.

  Roseanna is saying something, and Ardy reluctantly draws his attention back within the car.

  “… just knew you weren’t native to Puerto Rico. You’re much too exotic looking. Did you know that, Ardy, that you have an exotic look about you? You look, oh, I don’t know, tragic somehow, but noble too. In fact, you remind me of someone I used to have a crush on, when I was just eighteen. You remind me of a young Harry Belafonte.”

  “Mrs. Mountjoy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Could we please discuss something else?”

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Ardy. Was I too forward? I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I’m afraid I just ramble on sometimes when I have a friendly person to talk to sitting beside me. And I’ve been driving lost for so long today all alone, never knowing if I’d ever see Boston again, that when you showed up, and we found we had shared acquaintances and all, I just let loose.”

  “Roseanna, I find your way of speaking charming. Its only — well, I don’t enjoy talking so much about myself, I find the world around me — the people, the places — a much more interesting topic. My goal is to become fully engaged with life outside my native purlieu. As a man of my race, the author James Baldwin, once said in ‘Quotable Quotes’: ‘The world is before you, and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.’”

  “That’s beautiful, Ardy, just beautiful. What a fine sentiment.”

  “I am only the bearer, Roseanna, of another man’s words — rather like the Digest itself.”

  The car whizzes on, filled for a moment with tremulous silence. Other vehicles pass to left and right, their tires, like fluid Catherine Wheels, spraying water jets. The sun breaks through a rift of clouds, beams down on the travelers for a second or two, then is beaten back by the renewed precipitation, which is now the consistency of Sno-Cone filling.

  “Roseanna?”

  “Yes?”

  “How did you become lost in the first place? Was it a wrong turn back in Boston?”

  Roseanna laughs. “I’m not that bad, Ardy, I hope — at least not yet. No, I had to drop my son off back at co
llege, after Thanksgiving. He was anxious to get back.”

  Thanksgiving! Thursday was Thanksgiving! Ardy stepped over the border on that quintessential American holiday, a pilgrim searching for the New World as embodied in the town of Pleasantville. How could Ardy have so lost track of the calendar as to forget? The excitement of travel, the distraction of Mister Enrico’s dubious strategies, nothing is a good enough excuse. Ardy gives belated thanks right now, for being allowed to pursue this wonderful quest.

  “… Bennington,” Roseanna is saying. “It’s a good school, but I wonder sometimes if it’s right for Roy. He’s not a particularly diligent student, academically speaking, and he’s not too social either, and those two choices are all that Bennington really offers.”

  Making a couple of quick assumptions about what he has missed, Ardy ventures, “Your son, Roy — what does interest him?”

  “Roy is — well, not difficult. But he’s rather attracted to certain romantic notions which, I’m afraid, tend to border on the violent at times. Oh, it’s all so complicated, I can’t explain it now! When you meet Roy, you’ll see. Sometimes I worry about him so, Ardy. I don’t think he knows his own mind. He’s about your age, but without any of your certainty. Maybe you could be a good influence on him, Ardy. Would you attempt that for me?”

  Eyes like chipped volcanic gemstones, lips of coral, pink tongue-tip teasing teeth white as shells, a son my age, how old must she be, a Spice Island woman that age all bent and used-up, can’t figure it, too much to take in, does she mean I’m to stay with her, what to say, can’t say no …

  “Ardy, you’re shivering! Are you all right? Oh, you’re still soaked! How stupid of me, driving slow just to give me more time to chatter away like this, while you’re practically dying! Ardy, look, just hold out a little longer, I know we’ll reach a rest stop soon, and we’ll get you fed and dry your clothes out somehow.”

  “No, Roseanna, don’t worry about me.…”

  “Ardy, why are you itching like that ? It must be frostbite! Is your skin tingling or turning black?”