The Futility Experts

by Margaret Broucek

  “Hold on a second,” he told her. Out of the corner of his eye, he’d seen, just at the next intersection, a silver BMW, now clearly with George and Mona in it and about to turn his way. “Hang on.” He scrambled over to crouch behind a car, one cheek to the cold driver’s door, until he heard it pass. “You okay?” Blondie whispered.

  Sometimes they went to concerts together, George and Mona, and had a little dinner beforehand. George wanted her expert assessment of the singers, he told her. He was developing a real relationship with her. She mentioned him often, clearly thought about him on many occasions. Tim felt a familiar panic take hold of him, that sudden recognition of another obsessive desire that was all delusion—he was a fat, married man kneeling in dog shit. He stood up, and the one knee was smeared with it. He was the same as those stolen valor creeps who wear fake uniforms around shopping malls. Not Rusty. Not real. And, while he was at it, had he been such a great musician if he’d been turned down by twenty orchestras? It was bad enough to involve Blondie, but he was also a fraud to himself. He couldn’t even satisfy himself. Of course George looked great by comparison.

  “Do you need to go?” Blondie whispered.

  “Something I gotta tell you.” His heart was pounding, but he needed to get the ball rolling. “There’s a mission coming up. It’s a tricky one. Might be kinda like walking into the lion’s mouth.” When he tapped off the phone, he started to run.

  # # #

  Later that night when Mona came to bed, she lay in the dark for a long time and finally said, “He has nine sisters.”

  “What?” Tim tried to sound like he’d been startled awake.

  “George does. What does that do to a boy to have nine sisters?”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tim knew she was imagining that having nine sisters would make a man the perfect companion because he would have been scolded and redirected enough to know very clearly what women do not want.

  “Good concert?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said and then turned away from him. “We both enjoyed it.”

  Tim imagined George kissing her in the car. Slipping his fingers into her hair. George’s car hadn’t been there when Tim made it home, but there’d been enough time for a kiss. He could see the shape of her now in the glow from the streetlight. Mona still had a fine body, and George would probably soon be rewarded with it for all of his help, for the banishment of her worries. Tim ran a finger down the back of her neck. After a moment, he did it again, which made her turn onto her back. “What?”

  He took her hand in his and massaged her open palm with his thumb.

  “Are we doing this?” she asked, finally looking at him.

  “Yeah.”

  She turned the last half turn toward him and slipped her foot over his. He was catching a ride in George’s wake.

  # # #

  “If there’s a camera, I figure it’s focused on the front,” Tim said over the thumping of the wipers and the applause of the steady rain as he turned onto the street just beyond the shelter. Miles had the cage tilted into his lap, with the three dogs licking his bony fingers through the grill. Tim parked and shoved open his door. “Let’s go.”

  Miles lugged the cage through someone’s side yard and onto the animal shelter property, his posture defeated, more shepherd’s crook than shepherd, while Tim swung his arms, fast-walking like he was approaching some longed-for confrontation. He looked back at the drowning boy, threw a finger toward the back door. “Hurry!” Then they settled the crate on the wet cement pad, the dogs’ shudders showering them anew. Miles flashed Tim a look of disgust, took off his trench coat, and draped it over the cage. As they ducked back to the car, Miles shouted, “You’re gonna call and let them know, right?”

  Shut into the truck cab, they were sodden. “They’ll be open in an hour,” Tim assured him. Then, in a moment, the rain lightened up, and Tim took his hand off the key. “You know what? I’m gonna run, you drive.”

  “In the rain?”

  “It’s passing.” Tim shucked his rain gear and dropped onto the road in his T-shirt. As he ran, the headlights reached beyond him into the gloom, and the blowing trees still let loose great whips of water. Seemed like he was leading the way to something bad, something recently discovered. A horrible thing.

  # # #

  Maniacal pumpkins lined the entrance ramp to the rehab center, their features seeming gouged out by unsteady hands. Tim knew these would add to Miles’s depression. The boy sulked behind him. Tim gave his mother’s name at the desk, and a shaggy young man loped ahead of them to her room and said “Ta-da!” when they arrived at the door to view Tim’s mother, deflated in the far bed.

  “Hey, Ma, how’s it going?” Tim asked her.

  She looked much older than before. She turned her head slowly toward them like a robot powering down and said softly, “Do they know I’m seventy-six?”

  “Why?”

  Then at normal volume: “They’re pushing me to do things!”

  “Seventy-six is not so old anymore, Ma. They know what you can do.”

  “I can not get up to go to the bathroom,” she stated.

  “What do you mean? Are you wearing diapers?”

  “Does Miles have to hear this?”

  “No,” Miles said and evaporated.

  “You’re wearing diapers?” Tim shook her railing. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be here if you need diapers. You can’t walk four steps to the bathroom?”

  “I had hip surgery. I’m seventy-six!” Now she managed to lift her head.

  “Fine.” He settled into a chair and looked at the whiteboard with the current nurse’s name on it. “Nurses nice?”

  “Who’s taking care of my dogs?”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “Of course, I worry.” Then she turned her focus upon the flashing television. Tim looked to find where the tinny sounds were coming from and saw a small speaker lying beside her shoulder.

  “How’s the food here?”

  She shook her head. “Can’t eat it.”

  “No.”

  “It’s like they’re serving food they cooked days ago. Everything’s gray. Congealed.”

  “Next time we’ll bring you Kentucky Fried.”

  “That would be nice,” she said, her glassy eyes not leaving the set.

  “But we’ll leave it in the bathroom so you have to go in there to get it.” This was disregarded.

  “Is Miles coming back?” she gasped, as though asking about the brakes in a speeding car.

  Tim looked out the window at Miles sitting in the truck. “I don’t think he’s coming back in. He has a girl now, you know.”

  “He told me. Could you ask her if she’d like some really cute dogs?”

  Miles had the rearview mirror cranked toward him and was squeezing at his chin.

  “He’s not so bad. He’s nice to people,” Tim told her. He could hear her game show, like someone ringing a front desk bell, nonstop. “So, your son knocked a guy out the other night,” Tim said.

  “Miles?” she tried to sit up.

  “No, your son, me. I protected a woman from rape. Knocked her attacker out cold.”

  “What? Where was this?”

  “Outside the bar across the street. She was screaming for help, and I went down and took him out with a flashlight to the back of the head.” Tim demoed his underhand swing and then made a tock sound for the impact. “I think he’s gonna be fine, though.”

  “She must have been grateful.”

  “Asked me what she could do to thank me. Know what I said? Bring me a sandwich sometime.” This is how it would have gone had the lady had any sense.

  “Is that all you want, a sandwich? I’ll make you a sandwich. That’s all you want?” Applause from the pillowed speaker.

  “If I’m still alive when you get out, you can make me one, Ma.” He walked over and set his hand on her blanketed calf.

 
She half covered her face with her hands. “I just want to be home!”

  “I know,” he said, and looked up to see two Os flip into place on a big game board. It was clear to him, immediately, that once the blank letters were in place, the phrase would be “Jump for joy.”

  # # #

  Mona’s father’s living room still had the orange-sherbet walls on which hung giant framed photos of the grandchildren as dolled-up babies. And still on every flat surface stood the porcelain statuary his wife had collected: three Virgin Marys; the Infant Jesus of Prague; and St. Anthony, patron saint of lost items, carrying Jesus as though returning him after some mishap.

  “The Beretta?” Mona’s father looked pained.

  “Just for a little while until things calm down with the brothers at the bar.” They were crowded together inside the front door.

  “You ever shot any gun?”

  “I can take that Beretta apart and put it back together,” Tim said, and nodded toward the man’s bedroom. “Get it and see.”

  The guy went down the hall to his room, and Tim heard a drawer open and shut and then the shout. “I want all these bullets back!”

  When he emerged, he said again, “I want all of the bullets back,” and handed the clip to Tim. “How many are in there?”

  Tim counted. “Ten. And you’ll get ten back.”

  “Don’t get cocky with this thing.”

  “I promise I’ll only shoot it if it looks like I’m about to be killed.”

  “Or Mona. Or Miles.”

  “Goes without saying.”

  “Double-action trigger,” he said, handing the gun over.

  “That’s a hell of a nice gun. You know where I got that?”

  “Yeah,” Tim told him. “I heard the story.”

  “So how about the parking space?” The man still blocked Tim from coming in further.

  “Working on it.”

  “What do you mean? You got the price.”

  Tim slid the gun into the pocket of his anorak. “If the man will give the woman health insurance, and if she will sign his tax form, and if he will let her have all of the money from the sale, and if she finds a goddamn notary public in the middle of the Mexican desert, and if the full moon lines up with my left nipple, then we shall have our driveway.”

  The old man flapped a hand at him, like he was saying good riddance.

  When Tim got back into the truck, he slammed the door angrily and pulled out his phone to call Mike, who answered quickly, saying, “That last piano tore my groin.”

  “Like hell,” Tim answered.

  “Seriously, I’m on fire.”

  “Listen, Mike,” he said in the flat tone that everyone knows means disaster. “I gotta tell you something. Since you’re in touch with Blondie and all, I need to get you in on this. I’ve decided to kill Rusty.”

  There was a sound like a hard candy clacking against teeth. “I don’t know what you want me to say, but I think it’s a good move.”

  Tim’s father-in-law was peering at him through a fingered dent in the blinds. “I don’t care what you think; I just need you to tell her I was killed. I already mentioned a big mission to her. It’s like Ganjgal, so that’s how you can describe it. I couldn’t get out. It’s happening in a couple of days.”

  After a sigh, Mike said, “Sorry, man.”

  Tim looked away from the old man’s slotted eyes, over at his own reflection in the rearview. What a blotchy, knobby face. It did credit to no one. Just as well his dad didn’t have to see it.

  DAVIS

  After sliding his coelacanth into the back seat, Davis reentered his house and moved on to the kitchen, where he riffled through her personal bills. He knew she’d been paying on their mutual accounts because he still had access online, and in fact their savings was quite robust at the moment, since she’d deposited his inheritance check. He was hoping to find her personal credit-card bill, which might have incriminating charges on it, but it wasn’t among the stack. Then he mounted the stairs to their room and heard her voice. She must have parked in the garage, he realized. Wait—on a school day? He nearly ran back down and out the door, but then he stopped. Was that her laughing? As he closed in, he recognized the zizzing sound of the exercise bicycle, so he knew he could open the bedroom door a bit, and she wouldn’t see him, since the bike faced the far wall. When he cracked the door, he could hear a man on speakerphone: “So if you want, we could go there, take a walk along the beach.”

  “I’d love it!” she said in this odd, breathy voice.

  “All right. I’ll tell you, though, my mom isn’t going to be too thrilled that I’m heading out of here so quick after getting home.”

  “Well, don’t make your mom mad!” She sounded like one of his ninny students!

  “I just think, you know, we need to meet.”

  “I do, too!”

  “When you get off the bus in Portland, I’ll be outside in a white Jeep. I don’t know if I can drive right up or if I’ll have to park, but it’s a white Jeep Wrangler.”

  “And I know what you look like.”

  “Only with my shirt off! Hey, bring an overnight bag if you want to stay over down there. There’s plenty of room and all at my friend’s place in Kennebunkport. I know your family’s kinda messed up, so if you need a break. I’ll be staying there anyway.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Okay, well, guess I’ll see you at two twenty-five on Saturday!”

  “Can’t wait!”

  Internet dating. He wouldn’t have guessed that. And choosing a man with a shirtless photo, that wouldn’t have been his guess either. He wanted to confront her, but the fact that she was on the bicycle stopped him. She hadn’t used it in ten years. She was going hard and seemed to be doing her best to speed away from him. He almost expected her to look back to see if she was in the clear. He clicked the door closed. During the call, a bowling ball had dropped into his stomach, and it seemed to sink further as he crept back down to his study.

  Flipping the light switch started all of the display-case lights buzzing. He glanced over the contents, moving quickly. There wasn’t anything in them that he treasured any longer. Truth be told, some he didn’t really believe in, like the Fouke Monster. But he did want his gun and, of course, the skull of the Ebu gogo, which fit easily into his other pocket.

  TIM

  In the middle of the night, Tim’s phone dinged. He picked it up, expecting an insane Phyllis communiqué, but it was Blondie.

  So happy about Mike but wish it was you.

  “Who is it?” Mona asked.

  “Phyllis,” he told her, then typed back:

  Sorry?

  On leave!

  Right. Lucky bastard. We can’t all go at same time.

  Will be nice to meet him.

  “What?” Tim asked his phone.

  “What?” Mona repeated in high alarm, whipping over to see, but Tim held the phone away.

  “Don’t worry about it, Mona. I’m taking care of this.” He got out of bed, still naked, and walked into the hall to type:

  I want to think of you guys meeting. When?

  Saturday! 2:25 if my bus isn’t late.

  # # #

  “Four weeks until the big day!” The Publisher reminded Tim. Then she popped a load of M&M’s into her maw and swished them around.

  Tim sighed himself deeper into her guest chair. “Got your questions lined up?”

  She sucked and nodded.

  “Great.”

  “Guess where the party’s going to be?” Bells Up always hosted a party during the convention.

  “Hmm.”

  “Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The one that was robbed of all those paintings.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Rita fixed it. Very dress-up.” She scolded him with a finger.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Bring Mona. Maybe she could sing something.”

  “She’s never turned down a request before, but unfort
unately, she’s got a gig that night.”

  “It’s going to be lovely.” The Publisher set her chin upon her clasped hands and got dreamy-eyed. “I may have to retire after this. How would I top it?”

  “Hey, how about doing something in Angela’s honor this year?”

  “Yes!” She bolted upright. “What?”

  “We should invite her family and offer a toast to her and have a large photo there with her name and some sentiment on it.”

  “Rita!” The Publisher yelled. “Rita, please come in here!” And then she instructed her to make all of this happen and said that Tim would write the sentiment.

  As Rita started to leave, Tim said, “Hang on a minute, why don’t you present Angela’s family with an oversize check, like they do for lottery winners. It’d be for her final earnings, plus maybe you round up.” He’d wanted Rita to be there when he proposed this, because The Publisher was all about saving face.

  “Isn’t it too crass?” The Publisher made sour lips.

  “Not for the people who get the check,” Rita said.

  “Picture the room when this check appears, which is for quite a bit more than anyone is expecting. This is the sort of thing that makes everyone cry. It’s munificent.” Tim nodded.

  She ran her thumb around the face of the phone she was holding, like a worry stone, and shifted her pupils from Tim to Rita to Tim to Rita without moving her head. She appeared cornered.

  # # #

  Once Tim and Rita were on the other side of The Publisher’s closed door, Rita said, “Hang on a minute,” and she took a small sheaf of pages off her desk and held them out. “People who want to be in your band. I’m getting five a day. They all have a lot of questions. Maybe we should put an FAQ on the website.

  He sorted through the stack. He’d known they would come. This was only the beginning.

  # # #

  Portland, that’s where the Concord bus from Greenstown arrived at 2:25 on a Saturday, and from there it would be a quick drive for Mike to drag Blondie to all of The Publisher’s empty beds in Kennebunkport after telling her Rusty was dead. Tim set his cell phone showing the bus schedule back down on his desk. Now he would patiently await one of the big dolt’s daily office visits, and when the guy appeared, the door to the photo archive room would close and lock for the very first time. Tim would come at him from both directions, blowing the head side to side against his wall of cement. He couldn’t be Rusty, but like hell this sicko was going to be his driver, or hers.