“How sick?”
“Very sick.”
“Is this,” asked Miss Ogilvy, “a matter of life and death?”
“Yes! Yes, it goddam is.”
“I know you can handle things,” Ronnie says, “but it’s a mother’s job to worry about her children.”
(I want to finish writing about what happened this morning, this scene with Ronnie and her lover Kerwin, the priapic student of philosophy. Then we’ll be caught up with the present, and there’s nothing but kilometres of empty highway ahead.)
I turn toward Kerwin. “So … which province of Mexico are you going to be in?”
“Oh, ah, say, I’m not sure.”
He’s got a slight accent, one I can’t place—at least, I couldn’t finger the country of origin on a map. Whichever country it is, Kerwin and his people come from the poncey upper crust.
“Wait a sec.” I snap my pudgy fingers. “Mexico doesn’t have provinces. It has states.”
“Right, right.”
“How many states does it have, again?”
“Um, ah, say, I’m not certain.”
“Phil …” This from Veronica.
“Thirty-one,” say I.
“Ah!”
“Thirty-one states and one federal district, let’s not forget that!”
“Philip, we are leaving now.” My wife flings her carry-on bag over her shoulder, picks up a valise, nods to Kerwin that he should deal with the big suitcase. It’s a huge thing. I think that when Ronnie packs for a week-long vacation, she thinks along these lines: What if, while I’m away, there is a world war and near-total global annihilation, and I am forced to live out the rest of my life in some strange, desolate land? That is why she has packed her entire wardrobe and most of the kitchen appliances. Kerwin bends down to get the suitcase, but I beat him to it. I suppose my limbic brain is in action here; I lift the thing and start for the door, but what I really want to do is hoist it over my head and let out a few good monkey-hoots. Besides, I really don’t think he could manage it. Kerwin only weighs about eighty-three pounds.
Out the front door, down the steps—my shoulder is aching within seconds, and left to my own devices I would take a little rest, just a short twenty-minute one—and out onto the sidewalk. The limo driver wakes up with a start, pops the trunk, and between the four of us we get the luggage stowed away. Now it’s time for goodbyes, and I’m not at all sure how these are going to play out.
Kerwin offers his hand. He is a handsome enough lad, if that’s what you’re wondering, although the word “wan” springs to mind. “Wan” and “fey.” There is a Keatsian quality to him; he is pinch-chested and his skin is virtually transparent. Kerwin is in his late twenties but seems to have overstayed his life expectancy already—all right, I may be overstating the case, but I’m sensitive to such things. Veronica seems to be announcing to the world, “See? I really don’t like burly guys at all.” At any rate, I accept the proffered hand and squeeze with an ounce or two of unnecessary force, just enough to elicit the smallest, most fleeting of grimaces. I am very pleased.
I turn toward my estranged wife. Before I can say anything—not that I have anything to say—she kisses me on the lips. “When I get back,” she says, “we’ll talk.”
As soon as the airport limo takes the corner, the Dodge Super Bee’s engine howls and it crawls up the street to collect me.
“van der … Glick?”
“Now this is very interesting, friends, here on the line is none other than Philip McQuigge.”
“But I was going to say, you don’t have to—”
“The creator and producer of Padre.”
“—say who I am or what I do or anything.”
“I was expecting Phil to call me at some point, but I assumed that it would be a more private call, but no, he decided to call while I was on the air, so let’s ride this donkey, see where we end up. What’s the deal, Phil?”
“Well, I’m on my cellphone, I’m sitting in a car with my brother, Jay, and my two lovely daughters, and we’re going on a road trip!”
“Uh-huh. And are you fleeing from me, Phil?”
“No, no, not at all.”
“Because I’m a big girl. I don’t do the heartbreak thing. I don’t lose sleep, I don’t skip a beat. I have a couple of extra drinks, move the file to trash and hit delete.”
“Yeah, well … I didn’t think we would discuss, you know, that.”
“That?”
“Our, um, relationship.”
“Oh, was that a relationship? It went by too fast for me to tell.”
“van der Glick, I don’t know what it was. And whatever it was, I never said it was over.”
“Which gets us back to this point, I was expecting a phone call.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And another thing. It’s not an especially optimistic sign that you call me van der Glick.”
“All right. Rainie. I’m calling you now, Rainie.”
“While I’m on air.”
“Right.”
“Okay, so look, the producer is hollering in my ear right now, apparently this conversation is about as interesting as listening to farts dissipate. So. You’re on a road trip, huh? Where are you off to?”
“We’re going to Thunder Bay, Ontario.”
“And what’s in Thunder Bay?”
“Not what. Who. Norman Kitchen.”
“The kid with the nice hair?”
“Do you remember him?”
“No, I read about him in your book that night you and me and Jay were out on the town. So … you guys are going to try to find out what happened.”
“Yeah. Find out what happened to Norman Kitchen.”
“And in doing so, you might find peace. And then maybe your emotional self, your spirit, would not be bitter and twisted. You might be capable of true friendship, affection, even love. You might be able to connect to another human being in some manner more profound and fundamental than a mere bumping of uglies. Is that the idea?”
“Er … something like that.”
“Well, tell you what, Phil. You let me know how that works out for you.”
We stop for coffee and cold drinks in Pointe au Baril. The town sits on the edge of Georgian Bay and services the needs of those with cottages on the sun-spackled islands, which is to say, the hopelessly rich. I am not all that surprised to see William Beckett in the service centre/local store. I am surprised to see him burdened down with the trappings of domesticity, a two-four of disposable diapers and countless bags of homogenized milk. “McQuigge!” he shouts happily. “A fortuitous encounter.”
“Hello, William.”
“McQuigge, as delighted as I am to see you, and eager to engage in chummy colloquy, I must, unfortunately, evoke the dread spectre of commerce and ask once again—”
“Willy?” A woman emerges from the aisles, a spectacular woman who would seem to have been created by a think tank made up exclusively of fourteen-year-old boys. “Do you want to rent a movie?” She has a baby tucked under her arm, red-faced and squalling.
“Yes!” says William Beckett enthusiastically. “We must have a movie! Perhaps a farce or historical melodrama. Or a Japanese psycho-sexual thriller, subtitled of course, I’ll have nothing to do with dubbing.”
“Okay, what they have here is Pretty Woman.”
“Ah. An excellent diversion.”
“Hi, I’m Peg.” She proffers her free, left hand. I introduce myself and my family. My children coo over the baby; Jay is agape and trembling before this woman, Peg.
“At any rate, McQuigge. Mr. Eldritch is scant days away from production, and I have yet to amass a satisfactory writing team. The Room seems empty, Philip, without your presence.”
The Room: more television argot. It doesn’t refer to an actual room, although the Room usually takes place in a room. The Room is what happens when the writing team gets together to bandy about story ideas. It’s a bit like when kids get together to discuss, for example, how
badly Superman would kick Batman’s ass, except that it pays thousands of dollars per day.
“As I told you before, this is an anthology series, not unlike your beloved Twilight Zone. Do you know how hard it was to get an anthology series on the air, Philip? Does that mean nothing to you?”
“And you said before that you’d make me a co-producer?”
“Did I?”
“You did.”
“Well, I … I suppose that could be worked out.”
“Well, as it happens, William, in a few days, I think I’ll be … I’m hoping, praying that I’ll be … at liberty.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Do you love Mommy?”
“Well, sure I love Mommy.”
A few kilometres pass under the tires.
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Does she love you?”
“Well, that gets a little more complicated. You see, um, situations arise … events transpire …”
“Tell ’em, Phil.”
“Keep out of this, Jay.”
“Tell ’em, Philly Four-Eyes.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Why did Uncle Jay call you Philly Four-Eyes?”
“Well, I think he’s trying to make a point.”
“What kind of a point?”
“Sorry, Currer, you can’t say anything. I don’t think this technique works when there are four people speaking.”
“What are you talking about? Why aren’t I allowed to say anything?”
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“What was the point that Uncle Jay was trying to make?”
“Oh, well, by calling me Philly Four-Eyes he was alluding—”
“What’s alluding?”
“He was referring to something else, he was reminding me of something. Uncle Jay was trying to say that when I was a kid something happened and that maybe other stuff that has happened happened because that happened.”
“So, like, I’m supposed to not say anything all the way to Thunder Bay?”
“No, no. Sure you can say things, Currer. But I’m trying to get this down on paper, at least, into the little pooter here …”
“Daddy’s acting weird.”
“Daddy’s acting weird.”
“Daddy’s acting weird.”
“Come on, Jay. This was your idea.”
“You’re acting weird because you never just speak, the kids ask you questions and you sound like you’re answering them, but nothing of emotional substance ever comes out of your mouth.”
“Oh, for god’s sake…”
“He’s right, Daddy. I know I’m not supposed to say anything, but when Uncle Jay said that, I said, That’s right. He’s right.”
“Didn’t I just say that I loved Mommy? Er, um, Veronica?”
“You said, ‘Sure, I love Mommy.’ Like you might say, ‘Sure, I love peanut butter sammitches.’”
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Why does it get more complicated?”
“Hmmm?”
“If Mommy loves you it gets more complicated.”
“No, the notion of her loving me is a complicated one…”
“Jesus, Philly Four-Eyes. Notion? The notion of love?”
“Can’t you just concentrate on driving?”
“But it seems like such a weak, wishy-washy word to use in conjunction with love. Especially with you being a writer and all.”
“Is that a dig?”
“Probably. Everything I say is a little dig. I’m trying to get some profound responses out of you.”
“Why are you trying to do that, Uncle Jay?”
“Because Philly Four-Eyes is fucked.”
“Hahahaha!!”
“Jay. Watch your language.”
“Philly Four-Eyes is fucked!!”
“See now, I have no idea which one of you said that.”
Night falls; we keep driving, through Espanola, Webbwood (population six hundred, but one of those six hundred was Canada’s first woman mayor), through Ironwood. It is nearly ten o’clock when we pull into the parking lot of the Shady Rest Motel. Jay turns off the ignition, leans his huge forehead against the steering wheel and seems about to fall asleep right then and there. The children are in advanced stages of catatonia. I look about. I suspect the motel is employing the word “shady” in its colloquial rather than literal sense, because there are no trees to be seen. Indeed, the terrain looks about as hospitable as the moon. I call out, “We’re here!” with stagy enthusiasm. The four of us tumble out of the car.
The man behind the check-in counter gives the impression that he has just axe-murdered the motel’s owner (and family, and family pet) and is going through these procedures of hostelry so as not to arouse suspicion. He knows where nothing is. In searching for the information cards, for example, he pulls open and then slams shut every drawer he can lay his hands on, then does a second round of searches, before coming up with them. We want two rooms and request a fold-out cot in one. The axe murderer doesn’t process this information, as far as we can tell, but concentrates on chewing his gum. Jay fills out one card, I do the other. (I can see out of the corner of my eye that Jay is giving his name as “Claude Balls,” a joke from our childhood. Mr. Balls is the putative author of a book entitled The Tiger’s Revenge.) “Uh,” says the axe murderer, “do you have a car?” Well, you know, of course we have a car, but the four of us are too stunned by the question to offer up an immediate response.
The axe murderer grows annoyed. “Do you?”
“Daddy,” says Ellis, “I want to go to bed.”
He sat in the middle of the room. There was no one else in the little motel tavern, which, by the way, was called the Luau Lounge. I didn’t know that until Jay and I were steps away from the front door (which still had its summertime screen, dead mosquitoes coating the surface). Then I saw the twisted neon tube suspended there in obscurity, the noble gas all dead or depleted. “The Luau Lounge,” it seemed to read, which was unlikely, given the latitude and the bleakness of the landscape, but stepping into the bar proper, I saw decorative leis and ukuleles hanging on the walls. There was a rather crudely painted mural depicting a grass-skirted girl, her breasts covered coyly by coconut shells. This, of course, is getting mighty close to the Twilight Zone—some of you may recall the eponymous barroom from my play The Hawaiian. But before I could react (bailing seemed an apt response, hurrying back to the room that contained my two slumbering daughters), the stranger yelled, “Hey there, hi there, ho there!”
He sat, as I’ve said, in the middle of the room, even though no other table was claimed. This choice seemed prompted by consideration of sightlines, of conspicuousness, of access to both the centre and the reaches; he was obviously not willing to entertain thoughts of people coming into the Luau Lounge without dealing with him. Even though there was something languid in his pose, he fair bristled with energy and expectation. He wanted interaction.
Todd (I will name him now, even though proper introductions weren’t made for maybe twenty minutes) was a large, doughy man. He seemed preternaturally pale, but that could have had something to do with the lighting. The effect may have been exacerbated by his hair, which was bone white. It was bone white, but Todd had plenty of it, and he attended to it with some care. The sides were swept back, while the hair on top was pushed forward and then rolled into a huge pompadour. This hairstyle, the mere existence of it, made Todd at least sixty years of age, but his face was unlined, his cheeks gleamed like a cherub’s. He looked for all the world like a six-year-old, despite dark bags underneath his light and damp blue eyes.
“Hey there, hi there, ho there!” he hailed us again. Jay virtually bounded over to his table and sat down. I took my time. I felt vaguely ill, so for a moment I imagined, forced myself to imagine, my wife and young Kerwin in Mexico, which made my nausea seem more accountable.
“Know where that’s fr
om?” Todd demanded as we took our seats.
“Know where what’s from?”
“That, um, ‘hey there, hi there, ho there.’ Hey! Answer like in Jeopardy. Know what I mean? Answer in the form of a question. Sometimes,” Todd said, growing serious, “they don’t answer in the form of a question and Alex Trebek doesn’t say anything. Sometimes he does, sometimes he won’t give them the points, but sometimes he doesn’t say anything and I’m like, ‘Hey! That wasn’t in the form of a question!’ Okay? But it’s like anything else, you know, if he likes you, you’re golden. Or if you’re a chiquita, because I’ve heard that Alex Trebek is Mr. Studly Jackhammer. Lay the pud, baby. Lay the pud. So?”
“So?”
“Yeah, so, where’s it from?”
“Oh, it’s from…”
“Answer in the form of question! Because I’m not Alex Trebek and I don’t like you and I don’t want to lay the pud to you. Go.”
“What is The Mickey Mouse Club?”
“Correct-a-mundo. Now, the bartender, whose name is Les, he has diarrhea. If you ate at this place, you’d have diarrhea too. Lucky for you the cook has gone home. But so has Les. But I can get you drinks, because they trust me. What’ll it be?”
We both ordered a beer, and I was very tempted to ask for a double shot of single malt with a cube of ice, but then I was overcome by a vast sense of futility. Only then did I silently broach to myself the subject of my drinking too much. I understand that you have had to weather many binges and hangovers, and I am assuming a patience that you may well not possess. But as I watched Todd lurch toward the bar, it did occur to me that I drank too much, and that to forgo the single malt might well do me a world of good.
“Know why they trust me?” Todd was standing behind the bar now, trying to work out the mysteries of beer fridges.
“Why’s that?” asked Jay.
“Because I’ve been here for seven weeks. In room number twelve. That’s the world’s record. There was one guy who stayed here for like five weeks, he was a truck driver and something fucked up in his truck and they had to ship him a new part and he had to wait for five weeks. I don’t know what kind of truck part it could have been, a dilithium crystal or something.” Todd managed to grab three frosty bottles that he trapped with both arms, pinning them to his chest. He headed back toward our table. “But me, I’ve been here for seven weeks. Over two months. And fucking counting, baby.” Todd pushed a chair aside with his hips, bent over and dropped the bottles. “Brewskis, fellas. Let’s get pissed.”
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