by SK Dyment
“But you had sex with me this morning!” shouts Wanda. “And with yourself last night!”
The owner of the motorcycle store, who had, until this comment, been standing in the doorway proudly admiring their excitement, withdraws quickly into his shop.
“Hop on!” says Wanda, and they pull out onto the street. A few moments later, Natalia enters the shop and asks to buy a Harley. “I told someone I had one, and maybe I should. What do I do if I have no license?” she asks, looking disarmed.
“How much are you willing to pay?”
Natalia spends the rest of the afternoon training with the owner of the cycle shop in the parking lot of a gas station. When they are finished, they both open a can of Dos Equis, and the owner takes her into the back.
“I don’t normally do this,” he tells her, snapping a photo and laminating it with her vital information on an outdated licensing machine. It was his father who first showed him how to do it, but his father is now more interested in art and artifacts and runs the gallery next to the World of Shoes. He has never regretted the day that he bought the phoney-making machine. He charges Natalia four hundred dollars.
“Before the days of holograms and such,” he tells her. “All you needed to carry was one of these.”
Wanda and Gus are speeding along the highway at quite a quick clip, and Gus finds his mouth forced into a smile. With a top speed of over 200 klicks, the Guzzi cuts loose like only a real racing machine can do. It was a wise decision, he tells himself. He needs an indulgence. He feels like the men gambling together in Cézanne’s painting series of the ‘Card Players.’ He loves risks and gambles. His memory examines the painting as he experienced it, and something tells him one of the players is someone he thinks he recognizes from a portrait, Cézanne’s Uncle Dominique. How wonderful that he is an Uncle as well. And now he feels free as the girl Courbet painted with the naked feet.
In Jackie’s pickup, Michelle Shocked’s music is rattling from the dashboard radio. “Mimi, for goodness sake, wake up!” Jackie glances over to see that Mimi’s eyes have rolled back in her head and her lids have fallen open. Jackie is glad she did not let her drive. Despite herself, Jackie has to admit that there are some aspects of Mimi she does not find perfectly attractive.
Mimi, spun out in a trance, has released her spell over Jackie, and is travelling from tree to tree, until she finds a man, sitting in a canopy perch among animals, with a small computer and piles of dew-damaged books. Her vision hovers, and she looks down over the man. He is in danger, but not in the way that he thinks. Instead, he is about to be consumed by his own childhood terrors. This is what attracts Mimi to him. A powerful soul that is dying of doubt has always been her special interest. There was a time when she would have reached out to help him. But since she has been sustaining Vim’s love, a gear has slipped in Mimi’s good character. In fact, she has become more and more interested in the bad. She hovers over the man and wonders how long it will take before he destroys himself in the dire search that has taken a wrong turn.
Rudy feels a chill and pulls his jacket closer, looking up to the sky for signs of change in weather. He sees only a squirrel as Mimi darts away, returning to her body and the pickup truck on the road.
“No,” thinks Jackie, “she has been asking too low a price. It is an insult. She should not have even been asking me if she could buy the Squirrel. It was crafted in silence; the precision parts were fitted and machined in an action of friendship and trust. Its construction represents the breaking of two solitudes. Mimi should understand, she has been in prison. The Squirrel is not for sale. “
When Swan sees Ben jiggling the tumbler lock of Natalia’s apartment using a small wire pick and then flipping it open as if it were never there, he is struck by his grace, like a lion charging after and then striking down an animal running across the savannah.
“I didn’t know you could get into everywhere so easily,” says Swan. Vespa puts her fingers to her lips.
“Ben can, darling, but you cannot. It’s something he learned. It’s dangerous and you must not do it.”
Swan sees in a flash the sinister game of trust and treachery that orbited Ben and Rudy’s adolescence, and he looks away.
“Let’s get on with it,” he answers.
The inside of Natalia’s unit is just like the inside of Olesya’s, only it is has much more furniture. There is more art and electronic equipment than most people would cram into twice as many rooms. In the confusion of lamps, vases, flowers, drapery, and imported rugs, they locate Natalia’s desk.
A computer sits on top of it, and Swan sits down in her chair. Activating it, they search for the folder that is the most important in Natalia’s life, her exchange between Rudy and herself. Because they have not much time, they are only able to scan the notes.
“They are in love,” declares Swan.
“Rudy’s going mad!” declares Ben.
“Just find the button that sends him the email,” Vespa cuts in, in a practical way. Swan races the little arrow cursor across the screen, as if it is a little Cupid’s arrow that he commands to heal a man’s heart. Swan, who has always been a lover, finds his way through the maze of Natalia’s messages to a screen where Cupid can record his letter of love. He swaps seats with Ben, and Ben sits staring at the screen, unable to respond with love to a poetic threat to kill him.
“Oh, for pity’s sake! Writer’s block!” says his sister, and she reaches over his arms to hunt and peck out the letters.
“It wasn’t Ben,” she types, and then she snaps the arrow to “Send.”
“Okay, good enough?”
“I guess,” says Swan. “What else is there to say?”
“Here, this is where he is posting from! He’s in the Adirondacks.” Natalia has drawn an extremely rough map of Rudy’s location based on information in his correspondence.
“We’ll never find him like this,” says Swan, while Ben scribbles down the notations Natalia has made.
“We are talking about a six- million-acre park,” Swan adds.
“We’ll find him.” Ben finishes his scribbling and jams the scrap in his pocket.
“Do you think Natalia will miss her sticky note?”
“She’ll recover,” says Vespa, “Let’s get out of here!”
38.
“DO YOU ALWAYS roll your eyes back into your head and leave your lids open when you sleep?” Jackie asks Mimi.
Mimi smiles. Her indisputable charm back on the maximum available heat, sizzling enough to melt both Jackie’s common sense and her ice cream if Jackie drops her guard.
“Because it looked kinda weird,” said Jackie, focusing on the road so that she is not focused on the eye-rolling woman to her right.
“I was envisioning a man who is sitting in the forest. A powerful man who builds towers that rise into the sky. He built the building where you have been living, the same building that the cat fell from.”
“I was just seeing a lady with her eyes rolled back in her head, who thinks she can charm me into selling her my glider for next to nothing.”
“He is past the Blue Mountain, near the number twenty-eight. He is in love with the man who built the glider with you and with a woman at the same time. The woman you are in love with was once in love with him, but now she is going to see him. He is in danger, and so are all the animals that walk near him. He has made a terrible mistake, and many of your friends may die. You can change the future by selling me the glider that you built with the man he once loved, but you must sell the glider for twenty-eight bucks.”
“You are so full of it. I can’t believe I ever called you a friend.”
“Animism. Giving a soul to inanimate things. Unexplainable by science. Unexplainable except perhaps in supernatural terms. You won’t love the glider. You wouldn’t even comb the tail.”
Jackie narrows her eyes and accelerates the tr
uck. Mimi continues. “You must take me to the mountain place where this man is hiding. He is near a place called North Creek. His car is parked on a utility road. There is a deer trail that leads into the woods, and it is marked by a book, an open book, lying on its face.”
“I don’t believe you. What is the book?”
“The book … the book is called, The One Minute Manager.” She rolls her eyes back a second time with her lids open wide.
“The trail will fork eight times. Turn left, turn right, turn left, turn right, turn left, turn right, turn left, turn right, and there you are.”
“What kind of a secret route is that? Quit that!” says Jackie.
“Oh cripes, that’s so hard on my ocular muscle tissue,” says Mimi. She returns to consciousness and smiles engagingly at Jackie.
“What do you mean, the woman I was in love with is also in love with him and is going to see him?”
“Yes, and she is in danger, as are all the animals that walk near him.”
They sit in silence for a moment.
“Does that mean she is still in love with me?”
“Don’t make me do that again. My oculars aren’t as flexy as they used to be.”
“It’s okay,” says Jackie. She is nearing Olesya’s building. “Mimi, where is Vespa right now?”
“She’s on the F 750 Norton, going to see … the man in the forest. Vespa is going to the forest, and she is … Vespa is in mortal danger.”
“You’re not kidding?”
Jackie slides the pickup truck up next to Olesya’s building.
“Well then, you better get out of the truck. You may be able to see things beyond the range of normal people, but I have my powers as well. And I am about to break through bricks and rocks and concrete with my will.”
39.
NATALIA, HAVING SPED up the I-87 without incident, stops her Panhead along the side of the New York State Route 8. She is wondering suddenly why it seemed as if someone had been meddling with her sticky notes. She wonders, and then she tells herself to stop dreaming things up. She wants to shake her hair out of her helmet. She wants to see Rudy. The Panhead is nice, and it can easily carry a second rider on the pillion back of the puckered leather seat. She powers it up again, and it hesitates for a moment before kicking in to the familiar, distinctive Harley growl. Natalia catches her breath, thinking she has been given a dud, but now the Panhead is purring as before.
She also recalls her pencil was set to the right. But she is left-handed. She must be less compulsive than she thought she was under stress. She relaxes and powers on.
Rudy has just finished distributing the last land mine around the area of his tree. They will not be detonated by the light step of an animal, and he is gambling that even a deer will leap away before it can be disabled by the charge. If it does not, he is primed and ready with his rifle to make a quick business of any suffering caused to the forest life around him. He feels himself a humane man, but he is fed up with being persecuted. The email from Ben’s sister had been from Natalia’s terminal. It was intended to read, “It wasn’t Ben.” Instead it Rudy reads, “It bent Swan.” Rudy does not have the slightest idea who Swan is, but if he is a lover of Natalia, he had better beware. Beware assassins, thinks Rudy. He is too confused to unbend the meaning that was intended to exonerate his childhood friend.
Mimi is riding to The Blue Mountain area of the Adirondacks when she is troubled by an image that blurs before her eyes. She is seeing a man pouring gunpowder into cans and wrapping the tops with flint and wire. She does not understand the energy that is around him— an electrical flow of confusion and heartbreak. She sees a guardian that cannot help, and a responsibility dismissed.
Mimi’s eyes snap to awareness just as they are about to roll under her lids.
She regains her concentration on the road and repeats to herself the things that she knows about bikes. All the Triumph riders in England and even America used to wear jackets that said “Rockers” in the 1950s and 1960s. There were many bike gangs, but people who simply loved the motorcycle were no longer inclined to join obvious gangs.
Mimi knows a rhyme that she sings to herself as she speeds along. Every now and then, the bike begins to wander to one side, and she has a funny feeling that she is slipping in and out of her trance-state instead of focusing on steering the Squirrel.
She flies past hills and farmland and she chants in order to keep herself calm.
Too much whine is not so fine
sounds like your rollers have lost their bearings.
Hearing knocks on idle Rockers?
cylinders and pistons wearing!
If you hear singing, go see what’s ringing.
That’s the timing, how are you doing?
What’s that pinging as you start speeding?
What’s the danger? Is trouble brewing?
What can fix a bad fuel mix?
If it gets louder with carbon powder
it’s burned-up combustion parts your sparing!
If there’s a clatter, the valve’s the matter!
A knock on start-up, bad shell bearings!
Extract sparkplug, press down finger
on start-up, seal compression’s play.
If compression is flaring, you won’t stand staring.
The pressure will push your pinky away!
If then no broken rings you’re wearing,
the beast’s alive and off your tearing!
No piston holes just one highway,
the Rocker’s free to chase the day.
The vehicle Mimi is driving is not a Triumph, but Mimi is fairly certain that the rhyme she has memorized will help if her Squirrel starts to choke.
She spots Natalia up ahead, stopped by the side of the road, and pulls over behind her.
“Hey!” says Mimi, pouring on the charm. Natalia feels as if this woman can see right through her, and she feels comforted by her and full of desire to burst into tears in her arms at the same time. The Panhead has made some terrible noises, and Natalia has stopped, not being sure what they mean.
Mimi is overcome with empathetic loneliness for companionship, expressed by Natalia’s face and her desire to be with Rudy. The two of them stand there, love-lost, trying to hide it from each other.
“Engine trouble?” asks Mimi. Natalia neatly folds her hands together in front of herself as if she is about to begin a dance recital and nods.
“It won’t turn over at all,” she tells them, and she smiles, her hair pressed into an interesting wave by the helmet.
“Could be your battery,” says Mimi. She looks at the Harley.
“Yep, probably the electrical system, maybe just the ignition circuit…. Do you have water with you?”
“Yes, I have a small jug of spring water,” says Natalia.
“Is it spring water, or is it glacial runoff that can never be renewed?”
“I don’t know,” say Natalia hesitantly. “They’re both bad. I should stop buying bottled water entirely.”
“True, true. Could you go get my tools from under the seat?” asks Mimi.
When she comes back, Mimi is fooling with Natalia’s ignition and trying to reach back to the battery behind her engine to check water levels. Shinny sets down the tool kit and looks Natalia up and down. She smiles at her and Natalia grins. Mimi scratches the back of her head, and then opens the gas cap on Natalia’s tank.
“You’re out of gasoline.”
The two women begin to laugh. “I won’t pull your whole electrical system apart quite yet,” says Mimi, “because you just ran out of gas.”
Natalia turns to Mimi who is now standing. “Could you siphon off a little gas from your tank, and I’ll pay you for a fill-up at the next station? It can’t be that far from here! We’ll ride like a convoy….”
Mimi begins to say t
hat it would be no problem at all and her lips extend in a smile as she sees the energy force of the man who is hiding in the forest, circling Natalia. Mimi begins to shake, and her eyes roll back into her head, so that she can get a better look. Because this is the way she can contact psychic channels, overpowering curiosity has often been her social downfall. Natalia takes a step back in surprise.
“Hum, hum-hum...” says Mimi. She thinks she sees that Natalia is in love with the man in the forest. Yet there is another force. A man in a pleated white shirt and teal-blue leotards. It is her dance instructor. He has been using a pheromone-based cologne. It is attracting Natalia, but Natalia fears the dance instructor only wants to stick her hard with his leotard-laden lingham. Natalia is angry with the man in the trees. So far, she has remained faithful. But the cologne and those tights are driving her to her limit. If Rudy does not shape up, she may have an affair.
And Rudy is paying for the dance lessons! Mimi sees that this has created a conflict. She sees Camelia, Rudy’s secretary, first dropping a spoon and touching Natalia’s leg. She sees Camelia boogie-woogie down a New York discothèque in an attempt to seduce her while drunk.
Suddenly, she realizes she is standing at the side of the Interstate, shaking and rolling her eyes. As usual, she has left her lids open. She rolls her eyeballs back into focus, and notes she is being stared at.
“Are you alright?” asks Natalia, holding up a half litre of siphoned gasoline.
“Fine,” says Mimi, straightening up in a winning way with a smile.
Natalia takes the siphoned gasoline and pours it from her half-litre soy-milk box into the Panhead’s tank. She throws her drinking straw at Mimi’s feet.
“You were shaking, your eyes....”
“It’s nothing. Just energy. It sent me into a sort of a trance. It’s stupid really. I can control it if I want.”
Natalia smiles in a worried way.
“I don’t believe you were in a trance, I think you would have looked more entrancing. I think you were having some sort of seizure, and I’m not at all sure you should be on the road in your condition.”
