Maniac Drifter

by Laura Marello

  He held my glance. I thought he could have looked at me forever and not broken his glance. Nothing unsettled him. I wondered if this were the way he was at night; if this were part of his charm. And suddenly it occurred to me that, if he was so wise, maybe he knew — maybe he knew about my amnesia — and just didn’t feel the need to say anything about it. That would be just like Getz.

  “Are you going to come with us when we go paint the mural?” He squinted into the sun to check the water for incoming yachts.

  “Who’s we?” I said.

  “Harper will want me and Joe and Gabe to help. I don’t know who else.”

  “Maybe I’ll visit.”

  After Getz left Joe jumped up on the wall and began to shout: “That’s the one! That’s the one!” — and pointed somewhere out past the breakwater. Getz ran to the back of the jeep, and distributed the champagne bottles. Lydia Street unrolled a large sign that said: WELCOME HOME HARPER MARTIN, PROVINCETOWN’S HERO attached at both ends to wooden posts, and planted them in the sand facing the water. Lance shouted: “You’d think this was the remake of From Here To Eternity.” In all the commotion Sydney Greenstreet’s miniature flag was knocked out of his beak and he began to squawk: “WELCOME HOME HARPER! WELCOME HOME HARPER!” until Lance muttered: “What a pain in the clitoris,” and shoved it back in again.

  The boat was clearly in sight now, and lots of people stood up on the retainer wall to look, waving the champagne bottles, shouting, cheering, blowing whistles and horns. The Voodoo Woman opened two boxes filled with felt fedoras and leather string ties just like Harper’s, and passed them out to everyone who was willing to wear them. She explained she received all sorts of mail order clothes catalogues working at Grace’s djellaba store, even for military apparel and safari gear, so when she saw these she had ordered a few cases of them on the sly.

  Dominic appeared on his windsurfer with Blaine riding on the back; they did a few spins around the St. Mary’s Beachfront and Ice House boat launch before heading out to meet the yacht. When Angelo saw them he howled, jumped down from the retainer wall, losing his fedora, and ran along the water line, taking pictures of them with each of the three cameras he had strapped over his shoulders.

  When Harper was in sight, standing on the front deck of the boat, waving, a television van screeched into the St. Mary’s parking lot, and the camera crew jumped out, running to the retainer wall with their cameras already rolling, like bandits with their guns cocked, come to rob a moving train. “Who told these pencil-necked geeks we were going to be here?” Lance yelled.

  When he reached land, Harper tipped his hat and bowed. He pointed to the people who were wearing hats like his, and read his welcome home sign. Lydia brought Sydney Greenstreet to him. When Harper took the miniature flag out of his mouth, Sydney squawked: “ORANGE JUICE PLEASE!” and, “UNITED STATES OUT OF NICARAGUA!: until Lydia reminded him what he had just learned, and he greeted Harper properly.

  Harper shook Joe’s hand and thanked him for the flowers Joe had sent to him in jail. “Look,” Harper said. “I want to call a meeting at eight tonight. Can you get some people together?” Joe said he would, and Harper explained that he wanted to introduce some painters to the work involved in recreating the Temple of the Jaguars mural, the time it would take, the salaries and personal publicity they could expect, and see who was willing to help.

  “Tell me who to invite,” Joe said, wrote the names on the cover of the New York Times, and showed Harper his photograph.

  While Joe was writing down the names, Angelo cut in and thanked Harper for the book contract on the Polar Bears in Greenland. “The CBS documentary and all the other stuff, it never would have happened without your Temple of the Jaguars Story.”

  Harper tried to tell him to forget it. “Hey, your career marches on to its inexorable conclusion no matter what I do or don’t do.” But Angelo, with his three cameras, just kept snapping photographs of Harper, and thanking him for everything.

  “Whatever happens, it’s all your fault,” Angelo said. “You’ve launched my career.” The Mother of the Year did likewise (except without the cameras), thanking Harper for her modeling contract with the Casablancas Agency. Then Harper noticed Raphael and Antaeus waving to him from the St. Mary’s of the Harbor parking lot. Harper jumped the retainer wall in a dramatic gesture that made the crowd shriek and thrilled the TV cameramen, and hurried across the parking lot to shake hands with the investors of Maniac Drifter Inc. By this time the parade cars were lining up on Commercial Street in preparation to drive Harper through town to the Wharf. Some of them spotted Harper, so all the cars on the street began to honk. The three men decided it was time to join the parade.

  Raphael told Harper: “Your Corvette is parked over at Don’s Café. Run down there and bring it this far, and I’ll drive you through the parade. You can sit on the back and wave.”

  Harper looked around and noticed me sitting on the bumper of the jeep, drinking champagne from a plastic glass. “Ride with me. Raphael offered to drive the Corvette.”

  “I don’t remember what we talked about, Harper,” I said, hurrying over with him to Commercial Street, and waving to everyone in the front of the parade line as they whizzed east toward the end of the line, where Harper’s Corvette was parked at Don’s Café. “If I was supposed to do something for you, I haven’t done it.”

  “There wasn’t anything to do,” he said, and squeezed my elbow so I would run faster. He took the plastic cup and threw the champagne back in one swig like it was a shot of whiskey. “Don’t worry about it now. We’ll talk later.”

  Harper’s homecoming parade was as spectacular as the ones for Blessing of the Fleet and Fourth of July, if not quite as stunning or outrageous as the costume parade the transvestites staged at the end of the season. At the head of the procession, Falzano drove a red Chevrolet Impala with white interior; Paradiso’s singers Paula and Christianne stood in the back, Christianne in her white tuxedo and Paula in a black evening gown. They sang “New York New York,” “When You Get Lost Between the Moon and New York City,” and all the Frank Sinatra songs they could think of.

  The fire engines from Pumpers Number Four and Five carried the soccer and little league teams through the parade, waving miniature American flags and blowing horns. Joshua recruited the skateboarders to catch rides alongside the convertibles and fire engines; hanging on to their bumpers with one hand, and waving to the crowd with the other. Slashette had commissioned a flatbed truck to carry her and her Fashion Espionage escort-spies; they lurked on the flatbed in their black trench coats and sunglasses, their hands in their pockets, eyeing the crowd suspiciously, hiding behind each other and occasionally pulling their squirt guns to spray people. Getz drove the Mother of the Year and the Voodoo Woman in the jeep; the Mother had changed into her Goddess of Sin costume and the Voodoo Woman into her scarf and drapery outfit; they sat in the back of the jeep, tossing the remaining fedoras and string ties to the crowd. Antaeus drove a convertible Thunderbird he had rented up-Cape especially for the occasion; Cosmo and Lydia Street rode in the front with Sydney fluttering between them and screaming: “HARPER MARTIN! HARPER MARTIN!”

  Lance and Angelo rode on top of the Rescue Squad ambulance, Lance shouted: “Sit on A Happy Face!” to the crowd, and Angelo took pictures of their reactions.

  When we finally reached the end of the wharf, a crowd had assembled there, some on the dock itself and others in the boats. Someone threw a squid into Harper’s Corvette, the way an adoring fan might throw flowers onto the stage at a rock concert. Then another fan tossed a lobster into the car, then a cod flew in, then some of the fedoras and string ties that the Voodoo Woman had distributed sailed into the car, then some champagne corks and plastic glasses followed, until whatever spare accessory people had with them were thrown to Harper: fish tackle, bobbins, rubber boots, plastic buckets, clams and scallops, suspenders, old socks, jar lids — whatever was at hand.

  Falzano drove Christianne and Paula up to
the front of the line, where they sang “The Man I Love” to Harper, and then, “I Get A Kick Out of You.” Afterward they gave the microphone to Harper. “All that time in the slammer, I thought about you guys,” he told them. The crowd howled. Harper thanked them for their support. “I wouldn’t have come home from that joint so soon if it hadn’t been for your help during Benefit Week.” The crowd cheered and threw more debris at him. He told them that the investors of Maniac Drifter Inc. had decided to donate the remaining money from the Harper Martin Defense Fund to AIDS research, and to restore the Historical Plaque houses in Provincetown. Everyone applauded.

  Raphael took the microphone away from him. “Don’t you think Harper Martin is too modest,” he said. The crowd screamed.

  “Oh, don’t be a dope,” Harper said.

  “Not only has he brought commerce and success to himself and Provincetown,” Raphael went on, but the crowd was yelling so much it was difficult to hear him. Joe and Getz climbed up on the Corvette, lifted Harper out by his arms, and carried him over to the edge of the wharf. As they held him by his hands and feet and swung him over the water, the crowd yelled the countdown, and on three, Getz and Joe threw him out into the water. On his way down he lifted his hat to the crowd. They jumped in the water after him.

  Raphael was trying to describe Harper as a household word, as a star, as a hero not only for Provincetown but for the nation, not just because he circumvented specious trade regulations to bring the Temple artifacts into the country, but because he cured the nation’s amnesia about its own history, to be precise, about Vietnam, and made Americans aware of their country’s role in Nicaragua.

  But no one was listening to Raphael. Most everyone had jumped into the bay, and was swimming, splashing, talking, climbing into the boats and diving out again. Even the Orca surfaced near Harper and disappeared again. But Lance walked over to Raphael, who was still holding the microphone in his hand, and said to him, “This could only happen now, when a Hollywood movie actor is serving his second term as president.”

  Someone took the miniature American flag out of Sydney Greenstreet’s beak, and he shouted: “SIT ON A HAPPY FACE!” He perched on Lance’s shoulder, and rode on it, while Lance climbed into the Corvette and rummaged through the debris that had accumulated on the jump seat.

  ***

  I took advantage of the confusion to search for Nichole. I could not find her at the wharf, or on Commercial Street, so I went back to her house. I knocked and knocked on her door but no one answered. I could not hear any hammering or sawing, or the persistent disco beat of the Jane Fonda Aerobics workout tape. The house was quiet, and that frightened me. I let myself in, walked through the kitchen, and stood in the middle of the living room, listening.

  I knew Nichole might be gone; I would have been naive if the thought had not crossed my mind. But I never had any idea I would find the house completely empty. I was not prepared for that.

  Everything was gone: the furniture, the rugs, the china from the cabinets, the looms and weavings, the canvases, even the gas and plumbing bills. And the rooms had been washed spotlessly clean, so there was not even a trace of dust, or lint, or crumbs, or wadded paper. In short, there was nothing to remember Nichole by, not even the most miniscule scrap. She had even denied us our grief. She was not willing to imagine us combing the rooms for souvenirs and memories. She had done it on purpose.

  I lay down on the spotless wooden floor, which looked buffed like an old shoe. I stretched out with my feet facing north and my head under the south windows so I could hear the foghorns and see the sky. When I lay my head down I heard a loud click, and then the sound of static, as if a dull needle had been set down on the grooves of a scratched record. Then I heard Nichole’s voice.

  “Give it up, Kate,” the voice said. “You won’t see me again. You won’t know where I am. So just give it up. When you see my father, you can tell him the same.”

  “She always did have a flair for the melodramatic,” Cosmo said. He opened one of the built-in cabinets in the dining room, and pulled out the cassette player Nichole used to play her Jane Fonda Aerobics workout tape.

  I sat up. “I didn’t hear you come in,” I said.

  “She must have rigged up some kind of triggering device over there by the window. She probably figured that, when you were sufficiently shocked, stunned, and consumed by grief, you would walk over to the window and look out, a kind of lonely, nostalgic way to console yourself. And that was the moment she wanted to turn the knife.” He put the cassette player back in the cabinet. “It’s a part of her I’ve never seen before.”

  “What’s on the flipside?” I went over to the cabinet, took the tape player from him, popped out the cassette and turned it over. “It says: Buddy Holly’s Greatest Hits.” I inserted the tape and pushed the play button.

  Cosmo went into the kitchen, opened the cupboards and refrigerator, and looked inside, leaving the doors ajar, then, he sat down on the sink counter. The tape began to play “I’m So Devoted to You.”

  “So did it work?” he said. “Do you feel sufficiently wretched? Guilty? Sorry? Or do you just get mad? I mean what do you do at a time like this?” He looked out the kitchen window.

  “Where’s Frank?”

  “At home. He decided to stay with his wife.”

  I wandered into Nichole’s bedroom and looked out the window at the new porch. Cosmo followed me in. “I don’t know what it’s like,” he began. “I mean I never had anyone close to me die. The worst thing that ever happened to me is when Charlotte decided to move away.” Charlotte was the one Cosmo had had an affair with. “I heard your mother died when you were quite young. So correct me if I’m wrong, but somehow this seems like it would be worse. It seems so willful, so unnecessary.”

  “A lot of things are unnecessary,” I said. I wandered back into the living room. He followed me. The tape played, “Whenever I want you all I have to do is dream.”

  “So should we go after her? Should we find her? Is that what she wants? What should we do?” I lay down on the floor again. Cosmo shrugged. “You don’t give much away, do you?” he said. “Why don’t you tell me what you think of all this?”

  “Can I keep this tape?” I said. “And the player?” I sat up and started to cry.

  “Please tell me.” He sat down next to me.

  “I can’t,” I said. “It’s not my right.”

  “The hell with rights.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m asking you. I want to know.”

  “It won’t help. I just keep thinking that the difference between you and Nichole is that when you had an affair, you didn’t have to leave town.”

  “Nichole didn’t have to leave town. Neither did Charlotte.”

  I stood up and waved my arms around at the empty, polished room. “You think this is just amateur theatrics?” I screamed. “How bad would she have to feel to be compelled to do this? How bad would she have to feel?”

  “You don’t know. She was born here. She grew up in this town. It’s not just the way I reacted to her and Frank. It’s not just your friend Whitney going over to the other side. It’s a whole host of things, from the day she was born. It’s like a bad marriage, 26 years of hurts and wounds that have never been healed. You haven’t lived here. You don’t know.”

  “I don’t know! I don’t know!” I screamed. “Of course, I don’t know! So why the hell does everyone keep asking me things, like I was the Oracle of Delphi or something? You’re right. I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” I grabbed the cassette player out of the built-in cabinet and ran through the kitchen out the door. The machine had been playing “If you knew/ Peggy Sue/ Oh how my heart yearns for you,” but when I ran I pulled the plug out of the socket, and the machine had stopped. It was quiet now. I slowed to a walk, held the cassette player to my ear and listened, as if I could hear whispering.

  ***

  Monday

  When I woke up Monday morning I was at home, in bed with Harper Martin, who was s
itting up with a notebook on his knees, watching the CBS morning news.

  “Hi, doll,” he said when he saw my eyes were open. He kissed the top of my head. “How was your beauty rest?” He continued writing in his notebook.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m looking at the list of painters who are going to the Getty Museum with me, to help paint the Temple of the Jaguars Mural. Everyone said they’d come except Nichole and Cosmo.”

  “Why not Nichole and Cosmo?” I propped my head up on the pillows so I could see Dan Rather on the television set.

  “No one can find Nichole, and Cosmo says he has to stay here and put her house up for sale.”

  “Can he do that? It’s Nichole’s house.”

  Harper shrugged. “Either way, he won’t come.” I was going to insist that Cosmo could not possibly sell a house that did not belong to him, and if Harper wanted, I would try to talk to Cosmo about going to Malibu to help paint the Jaguar Mural, but Harper put his hand on my arm to silence me and listened to Dan Rather on the CBS Morning News. Dan was saying that Harper’s art dealer had thoroughly studied the returned crates and had reported the missing figurine as the lava stone figurine of the fertility god Xipe Totec. An inset photo of the skin-suit man flashed on the screen above Dan Rather’s head. He reminded the viewers that the agreement with the Nicaraguan government stipulated all temple artifacts must be displayed together, so the Temple of the Jaguars exhibit at the Getty museum could not be opened to the public until the missing figurine was recovered.

  Harper put the notebook down and sighed. “I guess we’ll have to make a facsimile or something if the Feds can’t find it.”

  “It’ll turn up. Don’t worry about it.”

  Harper looked at me. “I’m not worried. Listen, babe. You don’t remember what we talked about?” I shook my head. “Well, I think we better discuss it now. I have to catch the plane back to Los Angeles in a few hours.”