Is Fat Bob Dead Yet?: A Novel

by Stephen Dobyns

  “I wanted to see you,” says Connor.

  Céline wears a bemused expression to go with her slightly tilted head. “And what do you see?”

  Unluckily, Connor’s mind goes blank. But no, that’s not true. Springing to his lips, as it were, are romantic lines from famous movies.

  Such as: Well, it was a million tiny little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together.

  And: I’m just a boy, standing in front of a girl, asking her to love him.

  And: I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want it to start as soon as possible.

  And: You should be kissed, and often, and by someone who knows how.

  And: We’ll always have Paris.

  But Connor lacks the nerve to say any of this. Instead he shrugs. How pathetic! he thinks.

  Céline twists her face into an I want to spit expression. “You’ve got a lot of nerve to come back here without Danny’s jewelry.”

  Taking strength from all the romantic lines he didn’t say, Connor walks past Céline into the living room with its beige carpet and beige furniture, muted gray lampshades, and a seascape of racing sailboats over the mantel.

  “So this stuff is rented?” He tries to sound assertive.

  Céline faces him again and lights a cigarette. “Even the mice. So if you don’t have the gold, what do you want, or are you just going to stare at me?”

  “No, of course not. I thought we could talk.” This, to Connor’s way of thinking, is a mindless euphemism.

  “You want a drink? It might quiet your nerves.”

  Connor didn’t realize his nerves were so obvious. “That’d be great.”

  “Scotch?”

  “Perfect.”

  “Anything in it?”

  “Just scotch.”

  Céline leaves the room. The swaying of her hips under her caftan strikes Connor with the force of lightning knocking a squirrel off a high branch. He also wonders why Céline has decided to play the perfect hostess. He hears her talking on the phone in another room, but he can’t make out the words. More time passes.

  As he waits for his scotch, Connor studies his surroundings. It’s like a bad stage set. What was her life like with Sal—did they have sex?—and what was her life like before that time?

  But when Céline returns, Connor’s musings vanish. She wears a white, ankle-length, sleeveless nightgown of pleated chiffon with a deep V-neck and needle-lace straps. We say this because the translucence of the gathered pleats takes all of Connor’s attention, especially the shadowy display of her dark nipples. Her skin is only several tads darker than the white of the fabric. As she walks, the chiffon’s pleats eddy around her. Echoes of her suppleness, thinks Connor, still caught up in the world of romantic films. She hands him a crystal whiskey glass of scotch. Light flickers on the facets of the cut-glass surface. Only a reading lamp by the sofa illuminates the room.

  “What do you want to talk about?” she says matter-of-factly.

  Connor’s mind moves as fast as cold molasses. “Who were you talking to?”

  Céline gives a little smile. “I’d just ordered a pizza, and I called to cancel the order. You don’t want to eat pizza, do you?”

  Connor shakes his head and tries not to stutter. “Who … who d’you think shot Sal?” The question doesn’t interest him, but he can think of nothing else to say.

  “Connor—that’s your name, isn’t it?—I’m a bit player. I got a check when I started, and I’ll get another tomorrow. Now can we talk about something else?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like would you like to undress me?”

  Connor is afraid he’ll fall down, but surely that’s an exaggeration. Still, his view of the room is jittery, and his legs feel weak. If he spoke, he’d say, Wow, that’d be cool! And so he says nothing. He takes a step forward.

  Céline holds out a hand to stop him. “Let’s slow it down a little. Would you like some music? What do you think would go best?”

  “No music.”

  Céline walks to a small table by the beige couch. She opens a drawer and takes out a blue velvet box about the length of a finger. Walking back, she hands the box to Connor and steps away. “Open it.”

  Connor juggles his glass of scotch and the blue box, afraid of dropping both. He drinks his scotch, coughs loudly, and puts the glass on a table. Inside the box is a pair of gold-plated cuticle scissors with curved half-inch blades.

  “Use those.”

  “These?”

  “Start cutting at the bottom and work your way to the top.”

  “But it’ll ruin the nightgown.”

  Céline gives a minuscule shrug. “I have others.”

  The scissor handles have two loops of unequal size, the larger being for Connor’s right thumb. Both are too small for him. The scissors fall to the rug. Does she have bigger scissors, like garden shears? He lifts the scissors and wedges his thumb into the appropriate loop. “Tight fit,” he says. He bends over to catch the hem of the nightgown; then he gets on one knee. He glances up, but the alpine projection of Céline’s breasts blocks her face. Connor gathers the fabric and attacks the hem with the curved blades. The fabric bunches, and nothing happens.

  “Do it slowly,” says Céline. Her tone suggests mild interest. “If you stick me with the scissors, all bets are off.”

  Connor pinches a bit of the fabric between his left thumb and index finger and another bit between his left ring finger and pinkie. This is not done easily. He sets the half-inch blades against the hem and squeezes. The hem separates. Connor experiences a droplet of joy. He attacks the fabric again, and it bunches. Once more he holds the fabric firmly and cuts a quarter of an inch. The house is silent except for the sound of cutting, which is no louder than a tail feather falling from a passing sparrow. Only Connor can hear it. The curved blades of the scissors bend to the left.

  Glancing at Céline rising above him, he feels as if he were taking a teaspoon to dig up the Matterhorn. He readjusts the scissors to cut to the right, then to the left again. He zigzags upward one inch. He imagines the heat of her body beneath the chiffon. Connor begins to sweat. He changes his position so he sits on the floor. He’s cut a little higher than Céline’s anklebone, and the fabric keeps bunching. By the time he reaches her knees, he feels as though an hour has passed, but of course it’s only been a few minutes. He looks up, and again he sees the dark shadows of her nipples.

  “Hard work.” A drop of sweat rolls down his forehead; he wipes his brow.

  Céline doesn’t respond. He pulls back to see her face; she’s looking idly at her watch. At least, thinks Connor, she’s not reading a book.

  Connor switches the scissors to his left hand and drops them to the rug. They are right-handed scissors, and his left thumb won’t fit in the loop. He switches back again. He’s getting a blister on his right thumb.

  “Do you mind if I smoke?” asks Céline.

  “No, sure, go right ahead.”

  Céline takes a cigarette from a pack of Salem Slim 100’s and lights it with a silver table lighter. “Helps pass the time.” She blows smoke toward the ceiling.

  When Connor reaches her thighs, he gets back onto one knee, which puts his eyes just above the dark shadow where her thighs terminate. This is revitalizing. He pushes forward, and the fabric bunches. He slows down and readjusts the zigzag. As the scissors rise, so does his sexual desire. He’d like to ask for a glass of water but says nothing. The scissors snip another inch.

  “I’m getting the hang of it,” says Connor.

  Céline doesn’t answer. Looking up, Connor sees she’s studying her nails, which are also green. She’s his height, about six feet tall. From his present position, she looks ten feet tall. With the increase of his sexual desire, the fabric seems to bunch more frequently, and he wants to rip the damn white nuisance off her body. He cuts another quarter inch. The darkness of her pubic hair is six i
nches from his nose. He wonders if he might have a heart attack. Perhaps many of the heart attacks described in newspaper obituaries were caused by games like this. He takes a moment to breathe deeply. Céline’s pubic hair has been shaved into a diamond shape, and Connor focuses on the tight black curls.

  “You know, Céline’s a beautiful name,” he says, trying to distract himself from the mound of curly hair. “I really like it.” He readjusts his pants.

  Céline stubs out her cigarette in a green ashtray. “My real name’s Mabel.”

  Connor stops readjusting his pants as his tumescence deflates. “Oh?”

  “My folks called me ‘Maybe.’ Are you going to be there all night?”

  “Slow but sure, that’s the best approach.” Connor hardly knows what he’s saying. Mabel! he thinks.

  “Which do you like better, Mabel or Céline?”

  “I’d gotten used to Céline.” He sees that Céline has a belly-button ring with a small blue stone.

  “I’m pulling your leg,” says Céline with a giggle. “That’s not my name.”

  Connor exhales. “So what is it?”

  “Shirley.”

  “You’re kidding.” He sees that she’s again looking at her watch. From below, her grin appears carnivorous. “You play that trick on a lot of men?”

  Another giggle. “Some get mad. I was born Shirley but changed it to Céline in high school. It’s all legal. My mom signed the papers. So I’m really Céline.”

  Connor feels reassured. “That’s what I did. My parents named me Juan Carlos, and I changed it when I graduated from high school.” He resumes cutting.

  “Did people call you Zeco?”

  “Yeah, how’d you know?” The loops of the scissors have made deep indentations around Connor’s index finger and thumb.

  “I know things.”

  Connor wonders if she could have heard this from Vasco, but how would she know Vasco? “You know Vasco?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Where d’you get the beautiful nightgowns?”

  Connor feels rather than sees the slight shrug of Céline’s shoulders. “Oh, you know, boyfriends.”

  He has cut through three-quarters of the nightgown, and when he leans forward, he sees the cantaloupe undersides of Céline’s full breasts. He snips more quickly, only to have the fabric bunch again.

  “Don’t you think we have enough?” asks Connor. “It’s basically open.” The cheap beige carpet digs into his knees. Céline arches her back, which raises the bottoms of her breasts out of Connor’s view. He’s impressed he can feel bored and sexually excited at the same time.

  “You’ve got to go to the top.” Céline runs her fingers through her black hair and studies the ceiling. Given a change of clothes, she could be waiting for a bus.

  Connor reaches a difficult section: three inches of ornate needle lace rise from the bottom of the deep V-neck. He’s unsure whether to cut it strand by strand or force the scissors through by spreading the fabric with his fingers. He crouches to approach the dangerous area more directly. In silhouette he resembles a gorilla. He recalls the old days when he and his girlfriends simply held hands.

  Connor has just cut through a bit of the needle lace when Céline says, “Did you just hear a car door?”

  Connor pauses, catching the anxiety in her voice. “Opening or closing?”

  “Both.”

  Connor cuts faster, but the needle lace bunches. He listens again but hears nothing.

  The doorbell rings. In his surprise Connor jabs Céline’s right breast with the scissors. She screams. This is followed by someone pounding.

  “Céline!” shouts a man’s voice.

  “It’s Chucky,” whispers Céline.

  Connor has a sudden realization. “You called him, didn’t you?” He grips a handful of white fabric so Céline can’t pull away. He’s unaware of doing this.

  “I had to. He’d hurt me if I didn’t. He told me to keep you here.” Céline says this all in a rush.

  The scissors have nearly reached the top of the needle lace. Only a few snips left. Connor still holds the nightgown. He notices a speck of blood from where he’d stuck her with the scissors. At last he lets go. He drops the scissors to the rug and readjusts his pants. Céline stumbles back, rubbing her snipped breast.

  More hammering: the door shakes in its frame and cracks.

  “Look, you’re a nice boy,” says Céline, “and you have a nice face. It’d be a pity to have Chucky destroy it. He wants to turn it to hamburger.”

  Perhaps Connor had thought that Chucky might wait patiently on the sofa until he, Connor, had finished his business. We’ll never know. Connor heads for the back door, picking up his coat from the beige sofa.

  Turning, he says, “Chucky calls me Zeco, doesn’t he?”

  Céline nods. “Use the bedroom window,” she whispers. “He’ll have one of his thugs at the back door.”

  Connor veers toward the bedroom. As he reaches the window, he hears Céline shout, “All right, I’m coming! Give it a break, already!”

  Pushing out the screen, Connor scrambles over the sill and hurries into the night. The sky is clear, but there’s no moon. The stars are bright and full of questions.

  TWENTY-TWO

  In Connor’s dream a pileated woodpecker hammers on his forehead. In real time it’s the knuckle of Didi Lobato’s right index finger. Over the space of a second, Connor shifts back and forth between dream and reality, attempting to preserve the dream from the greater annoyance that reality offers. In this he fails.

  “What the fuck happened to the car?” shouts Didi.

  Connor’s eyes remain shut. He has a mental image of the smashed windshield of the Mini-Cooper and a large stone resting on the passenger seat. He’d found the damage after running from Céline’s house to where he had parked the car on Glenwood Place. Then he’d hardly paused to brush the glass from the driver’s seat as he started the engine and accelerated away at full speed with the wind beating against his face like the onset of repressed memory.

  But since Connor didn’t see anyone hurl the stone, he’s able to say, “I’ve absolutely no idea. It was like that when I found it.”

  Didi steps back from Connor’s bed. “You’re lying. You went to see that woman, Céline. You were told not to see her.”

  “I wasn’t there long.” Uttering the words, he knows it’s an absurd excuse.

  “A nanosecond would have been too long.” Didi is on the edge of berating his nephew. He wants to tell him he’s “jeopardizing their endeavor” and “sabotaging the basic principles of Bounty, Inc.” Instead he says, “You’ve disappointed me. You lack the tugo spirit.”

  Connor feels his stomach knot. He sits on the side of the bed wearing a white T-shirt and his undershorts. Eartha stands by the stove making coffee. Vaughn sits cross-legged on the floor with one of his yellow pads. His oversize sweatshirt makes him resemble a beanbag. They, too, look disappointed. Connor can’t think of an excuse that has any bite to it. Yes, Céline had told him to come over right away, but where were his priorities?

  “Did you at least fuck her?” asks Didi sarcastically.

  Connor shakes his head. “She gave me some manicure scissors and told me to cut off her nightgown from bottom to top. It’s harder than you might think.”

  “Oh, yeah,” says Eartha, “I’ve done that. Gets boring after a while. Manicure scissors are no good. You need fingernail scissors—they got a bigger blade.”

  Vaughn’s normally blank face refashions itself into a squeezed, sympathetic expression. “You’re the victim of impecunious dreams.”

  “You get all the way to the top?” asks Eartha, bringing Connor a cup of coffee.

  Again Connor shakes his head. “Someone started hammering on the door. She said it was Chucky.”

  “That, too,” says Eartha, “I’ve done that. It’s part of the routine. The arrival of the stranger. You’re sure it was Chucky and not FedEx?”

  “A black
GMC Denali was in the driveway. I’d parked the Mini-Cooper on the street a couple of houses away. I just ran.”

  “Like an escape goat,” says Vaughn.

  We might think that Connor is as full of shame as a sock is full of a foot, but his main concern is that Céline will learn from Chucky that he’s the one who told Vasco about recognizing Sal Nicoletti, meaning that first action was the beginning of all else. Céline said she didn’t know Vasco, but it didn’t matter. Connor told someone, and two days afterward Sal was shot and a plastic rose was stuck into his forehead. And the reason Connor told Vasco was he didn’t want his brother to think he was boring. How ridiculous! But eating away at Connor’s feelings for Céline is his new awareness that he was looking for Sal’s jewelry not for Céline but for Chucky. Céline was only Chucky’s pawn.

  “I’ll get the windshield fixed this morning,” says Connor, formulating another reason to return to New London.

  Didi pours himself a cup of coffee. “We’re done here. It’s over. Vasco called to warn me about Chucky. He wants us out of here. We’ll empty the New London mailbox and leave. I’d hoped to stay another two weeks. This is your fault, Connor.”

  Eartha protests. “You’re the one who called Angelina Rossi about Orphans from Outer Space,” she reminds Didi. “And she must have told the cops about Connor. What will you do about that?”

  Didi sips his coffee and looks out at the ocean. “I have a plan,” he says.

  —

  Connor’s swimming goggles have blue lenses, which give a little vigor to the late-winter landscape. He bought them in Brewster at a sporting-goods store, and as he drove out of town, the startled looks he got from the drivers of oncoming cars and pickups led to abrupt swerves—but luckily no smash-ups. As it turned out, he was unable to replace the windshield of the Mini-Cooper in Brewster unless he could wait until Monday, which wasn’t possible. His options, as he learned through some phone calls, were to drive north to Warwick or south to New London, where he was going in any case. The goggles protect his eyes from the blasts of cold air that buffet him through the empty space where the windshield used to be. He also wears a blue ski cap, a blue windbreaker, and a green-and-yellow scarf wrapped three times around his head. The temperature outside the car is in the low fifties; inside the car in the area around Connor’s nose, the windchill is below freezing.