The One-in-a-Million Boy

by Monica Wood

  “That’s what happened.”

  “You can call the state tomorrow and get it all straightened out, sir. In the meantime, seeing as how we’re both of the musician persuasion, and seeing as how I’d hate to make that nice old lady’s life any harder than it already is, I’m going to cut you a little slack.”

  The little slack turned out to be an elaborate series of phone calls—first to Rennie, who told him to fuck off, then to Alex, whose phone was off, then Gary, who had just pulled into one of his three garage bays and said he’d be glad to help.

  But it was Ted—Ted and Belle—who showed up an hour later in Ted’s minivan.

  “Gary had some kind of crisis,” Belle said. “Their dogs got out, so he called me.” She was brisk and businesslike. “Officer Kelsey said Ted can take you home in Ona’s car. We’ll get it registered in the morning.”

  “I’ll take the bus from here,” Quinn said.

  “Not with all your stuff.” She hopped back into the van, leaving the men on the street. Rolling down the window, she said, “Don’t make this harder.”

  He looked at her. “I saw Juke tonight. Richard Blakely. The PA.”

  A barely perceptible nod. “How is he?”

  “A mess. One of the worst things I’ve ever seen.”

  “He’ll survive,” she said. “People do.”

  “I’m sorry, Belle. For all of it.”

  “I know you are.”

  “It’s not fixable.”

  “I know. Some things aren’t.”

  She reached through the window, briefly squeezed his hand. Then she drove away.

  Behind the wheel of Ona’s Reliant, Ted looked grim but forbearing, and as the karma of the hour melted into a puddle of unsanctified shit, Quinn regretted not having chosen arrest. He got in.

  “Appreciate it,” he muttered, adjusting the seat.

  “It’s the least I can do after what you’ve done for the troop.”

  “What I’ve done—?”

  “The money was starting to pile up, so Belle had to tell me where it was coming from. She told me tonight, before we came out here.”

  Good old Belle. The knowledge lurched in, fully lighted: she’d been passing the money to Ted, who wittered on about expanded field trips and the future purchase of a sixteen-seat bus. Quinn listened, his face tightening, his fortitude wobbling like a spun quarter.

  Ted stuck out his hand. “On behalf of Troop 23 . . .”

  “Don’t thank me,” Quinn said. “Do not thank me.”

  “You can send it directly,” Ted said. “Belle doesn’t like being the go-between. And it’s easier for the troop to keep a record.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll give you the address.”

  He felt like the mark in one of Ona’s card tricks and nearly laughed—or cried—hearing his mother’s voice drifting in from the misty past: We don’t choose our own punishments. Or maybe it wasn’t his mother. Maybe it was Ona. Sounded just like her.

  PATIENCE

  Longest time spent standing. 17 years. Swami Maujgiri Maharaj. Country of India.

  Longest time spent adrift at sea on a raft. 133 days. Second Steward Poon Lim. Country of UK.

  Longest time in full-body contact with ice. 1 hour and 6 minutes and 4 seconds. Wim Hoff. Country of Netherlands.

  Longest time spent waiting on a hospital gurney. 77 hours and 30 minutes. Tony Collins. Country of UK.

  Longest time to spin a coin. 19.37 seconds. Scott Day. Country of UK.

  Longest square-dance calling. 28 hours. Dale Muehlmeier. Country of USA.

  Longest time lived with bullet in head. 87 years. So far. William Pace. Country of USA.

  Most airplane flights by a cat. 79. Smarty. Owned by Peter Godfrey. Country of Egypt.

  Longest post-earthquake survival by a cat. 80 days. Country of Taiwan.

  Longest time spent in space. 803 days and 9 hours and 39 minutes. Sergei Krikalev. Country of Russia.

  * * *

  This is Miss Ona Vitkus. This is her life memories and shards on tape. This is Part Nine.

  . . .

  Because I don’t feel talkative today.

  . . .

  I have a song stuck in my head.

  . . .

  “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.”

  . . .

  It’s from My Fair Lady. Louise was wild about that movie. She could recite it.

  . . .

  A-c-c . . .

  . . .

  Correct. In the movie, a gentleman sings it about a lady of whom he’s grown fond, much to his surprise.

  . . .

  In fact, I was not thinking of Louise. I was thinking of you.

  . . .

  Because I missed you this week. Which led me to realize, in a way I had not realized for quite some time, that I live alone. And so, I don’t feel talkative.

  . . .

  Answering questions about the Korean War would most certainly not improve my spirits. Your Mr. Linkman is obsessed with wars, does he realize that? You tell him all war is the same: lots of pointless killing and then broken people coming back home. Speaking of war, how are you faring with your enemy?

  . . .

  You know who. The one who kicks your desk and trips you in the hallways.

  . . .

  I know all kinds of things. I worked among young boys for two decades, remember?

  . . .

  Troy Packard. Right. How are you faring?

  . . .

  Hmm. You know, I watched a documentary about Eurasian eagle-owls last night.

  . . .

  You did? Wasn’t it grand?

  . . .

  Do you remember the part about the Eurasian eagle-owl fluffing its feathers to appear larger than its normal size? To intimidate the enemy?

  . . .

  I don’t see why a human boy couldn’t do that. Stand up.

  . . .

  Straighten those shoulders, you tend to slump. Straighter. Now throw them back. Chest out. How do you feel?

  . . .

  On the contrary, you look enormous! Downright ferocious!

  . . .

  Stay like that for a sec. Shoulders back. Now, repeat after me: No!

  . . .

  Oh. All right. Mouth it, then. With a scary face.

  . . .

  Excellent! I’m frightened to death! Now, scarier. Ten times scarier.

  . . .

  There you go! How does that feel?

  . . .

  It took me most of a century to learn that. I’m giving you the great benefit of hindsight.

  . . .

  It will work. People like your bully run like heck from a fluffed-out Eurasian eagle-owl.

  . . .

  Pardon?

  . . .

  Why, thank you. I’ve grown accustomed to your face, too.

  Chapter 21

  After a fitful sleep punctured by phantoms—Juke (Forgive me) and the young cop (You the grandson she didn’t want to call?) and Belle (Don’t make this harder) and Ted (On behalf of Troop 23)—Quinn put the boy’s picture in a drawer, sliding the frame beneath a shroud of T-shirts, intending to outpace his regret. He fished a newspaper from his neighbor’s recycle bin, where he found a quarter-page color photo of Resurrection Lane minus Zack, the Christian-turned-cokehead-turned-Christian-turned-atheist.

  He called Brandon. Then Tyler. Then the Jays. But it was too early to pick up; cleansed souls notwithstanding, they kept musician’s hours. They were sorry to miss your call. They wished you a super day. They wished you the Lord’s saving grace.

  He got through to Sylvie while waiting for the bus, which was late, which meant he’d have to report directly to the floor and skip the cushioning ritual of free coffee in the GUMS lobby.

  “Quinn!” Sylvie said. “For God’s sake! I left you fifty messages.”

  “Something happened to my voice mail. The paper said Zack’s gone. Is that true?”

  “He was a sweetheart once upon a
time, he really was. Now my thoughtful nephew’s in Miami—drug capital of the Western Hemisphere—without so much as a fare-thee-well to the family. Broke my poor brother in two. That kid’s been a heartache since the day he hatched and God forgive me I’m glad he’s finally out of my hair.” She sighed. “Listen, can you come out here? Like, this minute?”

  “I’m on my way to work, Sylvie. W-o-r-k.”

  “Are you giving me lip? Because I’m not in the mood. I get all the lip I care to get, thank you very much, from my sainted sons—who, according to that tweety-bird putz of a reporter, defied their quote-unquote overheated stage mother when they told Warner Records to take a hike.”

  Quinn laughed. “I heard.”

  “I’m not overheated. Or a stage mother. I’m a businesswoman.”

  “An overheated businesswoman.”

  A throaty vocalization—it sounded like the purring of a dangerous cat—emanated from the receiver. “Oh, God, Quinn. Doug’s right, I’m in over my head, I need somebody to talk to, and if I had a phone number for Mr. Jesus H. Christ himself, you can bet your leather pants I’d have dialed it long before this. But absent the great Holier-Than-Thou, I’ll stick with you.”

  “Sylvie? Are you growling?”

  “I’m smoking. And for your information, you’re speaking to the queen of w-o-r-k. I didn’t inherit my nine acres from the king of fucking France.” He heard a long, nicotined exhale. “You have no idea what they put me through, nattering on about ‘artistic differences,’ oh, my God, ‘artistic differences.’ And now, of course, they think it’s God’s will that they ended up with a decent deal from Christ Incorporated.”

  “And they’re a man short. Right?”

  “I’ve got a contract to sign, lawyers to consult, and Doug is being a complete ass, hiding out at the hospital, for all I know forcing people into brain surgery just to fill up his time. It’s not that I can’t handle it, Quinn, I just”—her voice dropped, and he realized she was not scared, as he’d once thought; she was terrified. “You’re the only one I can think of in this business who isn’t a shark with dripping teeth. We need you over here.”

  Hope flamed in his throat. “I get off at four,” he said. “Relax, Sylvie.”

  “I can’t relax! I wish my kids had never gotten on this train. They have this sense of—invincibility. Anything they want, presto, it happens.” She paused. “Frankly, I blame you.”

  Even for Sylvie, this was rich. He said, “Whoops, I guess you forgot who bought them a Winnebago.”

  “I’ll ignore that,” Sylvie said. “I will just ignore that. I was referring to your example. Your stellar, living-proof, inspirational example to these impressionable little—marmots that it’s possible to make a life out of music.”

  Quinn went dumb. This was the kindest thing Sylvie had ever said to him, though she hurled it as an accusation. She hung up before he could say thank you. And before he could remind her that he did not wear—had not once worn, not even in the eighties—leather pants.

  He swung into the GUMS employee lot, which was bordered by small, architecturally notable trees.

  “Welcome, Porter,” Dawna sneered, clipboard tapping at her hip. “What a pleasure to see you.” She scribbled his name on the daily agenda, then handed him a job nobody wanted: hand-stuffing slippery, high-gloss inserts into four thousand brochures for a company that sold hiking gear. The hand-stuffing was a corrective measure that, according to Dawna, resulted from a slip-up on a shift last week, which would not have occurred at all had Quinn reported to his station like he said he would.

  “I was helping a little old lady,” he said.

  Dawna laughed out loud. Quinn didn’t care; he was internally repeating every word of his conversation with Sylvie. We need you over here.

  If there’s a God, he prayed, please let him be a guitar player.

  “I called in,” he reminded her. “Rennie gave me the day off.” But Dawna had a long, malevolent, photographic memory that would not delete the now-weeks-old road trip with Resurrection Lane, the first time he’d ever missed work—any work—without calling first. He realized belatedly how juiced he must have been, how eager to step into Zack’s tainted shoes.

  Around ten thirty, Rennie showed up, ostensibly to check the run. “Hey,” he said, hoisting himself onto a worktable. The pockets of his pants poofed open like a girl’s skirt.

  “Sorry about last night,” Quinn said.

  Rennie looked around. He wasn’t known as a ball buster and his presence on the floor barely registered. “Gary says I should apologize. Not that I’m saying it wasn’t your fault. It was your fault, you’re the one who’s not supposed to let crap like this happen, but I feel like a jackass for losing my temper.” He surveyed his noisy empire. “I don’t know what came over me.” He lowered his eyes. “Playing there is the only fun I ever have.”

  “Forget it, Ren.”

  “You get home all right?”

  “Belle’s new husband gave me a lift.”

  “Huh. Sounds civilized.”

  “Seems I’m buying his Scout troop a new van.”

  Baffled, Rennie looked away. “I know it’s been rough,” he said. “If I lost my kid I’d kill myself.”

  “I talked to Sal,” Quinn said. “We’re back, next Sunday, just like always.”

  “No way!” Rennie smiled all the way up to his eyeballs. “No freakin’ way! Did you tell the guys?”

  “You get the pleasure.”

  “I’ll call them,” Rennie said. Twenty years slid from his face. “Right now. I’ll call everybody.”

  He hopped down, hitting the floor with an old man’s ooof, then all but skipped off the floor. From the back, not counting the waistline melting like candle wax over his belt, he could still be the neighborhood kid from Sheridan Street, the band’s cool black guy, albeit a black guy with flaming acne and high-water pants.

  “That was your break,” Dawna said.

  After lunch she instructed him to feed the reassembled brochures to the ink jet, a machine that made sounds like indigestion amplified through a bad PA. The noise bothered him, even with earplugs, which Dawna told him was pretty ironic considering his normal line of work. She’d been married to a musician once and seemed to hold Quinn responsible.

  As he stuffed the machine’s gullet long into afternoon, Dawna brooded at the foot of the conveyer, catching the coded brochures and slamming them into the tying machine. She wore skinny jeans and a yellow top that looked like underwear. Despite her avian features, she wasn’t a bad-looking woman. She sweated fetchingly, crossing her arms to wait for the next laggardly batch, rolling her heavily inked eyes.

  “It’d be easier on your eye sockets to just tell me to hurry up,” Quinn shouted over the machine.

  Dawna raised her viciously plucked eyebrows. “Really?” She picked her way around the cartons and mailbags, her wiry, Nautilized arms impressively tanned. She arrived within two inches of his face, smelling of cough drops. “Hurry. The fuck. Up.” Her lips made a little pop on the final consonant.

  To nail her point, she hoisted a stack of brochures from the bottomless vat, counted them by feel, squared them up, flattened them onto the conveyer, and as they shupped into the machine she squared up the next batch. This job meant something to her. This job, and her gym membership, and maybe a new boyfriend, and probably a kid. A four-cornered life, one that she cherished.

  “I’ve trained you twice,” she said. “Are you too good for it, or just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill screwup?”

  “Jesus, Dawna, can you give me a break already?”

  “You had your break.”

  “I meant metaphorically.”

  “My ex was a big fan of metaphor. It came in handy when he was running up my Visa bill.”

  “Touché,” he said, honestly hurt now. “Touché to you, Dawna the Supervisor.”

  “What is your problem, Porter?”

  “Life is short,” he said. “That’s my problem.”

  “T
ell me something I don’t know.”

  “Literally?”

  She challenged him: “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry I screwed you up that time. And I’m sorry the brochures didn’t get done last Friday. Because I just noticed that you pretty much run this place.”

  He had to shout over the shop noise, so the compliment sounded more fulsome than he intended. Stunned into silence, Dawna deliberated as the machine belched and gargled, empty of cargo.

  He spent the lunch hour on the phone with the State of Maine, which, as it turned out, had no problem whatsoever with his driver’s license and implied that any suggestion otherwise had been a misunderstanding—on Quinn’s part, of course, not the officer’s. When Quinn returned to the floor, Dawna was still there. They worked in silence for an hour, then two.

  Then Quinn said, “Now you.”

  “What?”

  He raised his voice: “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  Dawna thought a minute. She plucked a brochure from the stack and said, “See this? Somebody’s gonna get sued.” At first he thought she said “soup.” The machine made the kind of noise that mashed consonants.

  “Look at this thing,” she said, flapping it in his face. “Take a look at this guy.”

  Quinn saw nothing but a fake-looking image of children in adorable clothes hiking beneath a sky in which clouds spelled out SALE. “What guy?”

  “This sky. Hello. Take a look at this sky. Are all musicians deaf? My asshole ex was deaf.”

  “What’s your point, Dawna?”

  She flicked the offending brochure. “I’m saying this looks exactly, totally exactly, like the Lands’ End sale flyer from last summer. Exact same layout, exact same color, exact same cloud writing in the exact same sky. They want you to think their cheapo crap is from Lands’ End.”

  Dawna was on a roll now, declaiming with the pride of experience exactly how the hiking-gear company was going to get its ass handed to itself in a lawsuit. As she scorned this outrageous rip-off, flapping this color and this image and this font and this sky at him, Quinn hatched a sickening realization about words.