Is Fat Bob Dead Yet?

by Stephen Dobyns

  We should state, however, that the scooter’s rider is Jack Sprat and that he’s still looking for Fat Bob.

  Fidget sleeps late, and it’s not until nine o’clock that sunlight creeps across the comforter and into his eyes. The room is warm, and he stares up at the ceiling that follows the slope of the roof. The walls are off-white and freshly painted. Fidget wiggles his toes. Although he doesn’t believe in heaven, he feels that a room with sun streaming through the window has a heavenlike splendor. He takes a remote control from the bedside table, turns a dial, and the mattress begins to vibrate. The more he turns, the more it vibrates. The gold chains around his neck jingle, and when his remaining teeth begin to rattle, he lowers the dial to a more restful level.

  Fidget goes into the bathroom to fill the tub. As the water rises, he uses the nail clippers found in the medicine cabinet to cut his toenails, which resemble the thick, dark scales on a nine-banded armadillo. Once his nails are done and the tub full, he lies on his back and admires how his gold sparkles in the darkening water. Half an hour later, clean-shaven and cloud-white, he leaves the tub, dribbling water behind him as he returns to the bedroom, rubbing himself with a towel.

  When Fidget catches sight of himself in the mirror, he receives a little scare. Who’s this naked, beardless man with the trimmed white hair caressing the nape of his neck? Never in all his vague memory has he appeared so virginal. He may still resemble a parking meter, but he’s a very handsome parking meter. He raises his towel in front of his genitals and bows to his reflection. The reflection bows back. Then he skips two steps to the right, pauses, skips two steps to the left, and bows again. He jumps up and down three times, small jumps, nothing too strenuous, just enough to make the gold chains bounce on his narrow chest so they go ching, ka-ching, ching. He pirouettes and then skips again to the left and right. Again he bows, and with this last bow he has reached the pinnacle of self-appreciation.

  Fidget stops when he hears a putt-putt-putt, the same putt-putt he’d heard in the night. He crouches by the window as the sound circles the house. Then it diminishes. Something red is disappearing down Montauk Avenue.

  —

  It’s past nine o’clock Thursday morning, and Connor has walked several miles in search of Fidget. Now he’s taking a breather by a large blue mailbox next to the round archway of Union Station, a two-and-a-half-story redbrick structure where Amtrak and commuter trains discharge and pick up passengers. It’s springish and about fifty degrees. A March wind blows small billows of sand from where it had been scattered by city trucks during Tuesday’s snow. At times Connor wipes sand from his eyes, and to someone across the street it might look like he’s weeping.

  But Connor is moderately happy. There’s solace to be found in stroking the area of a missing hirsute accessory with finger and thumb even if the accessory is only a large black mustache, and as Connor massages his upper lip, he realizes it is nicer with the mustache gone than with the mustache in place. The memory is better than the actuality, which in truth was often a bother, as the mustache imitated the job of a steam locomotive’s cowcatcher, snapping up bread crumbs, raspberry jam, and unfelt kisses. This also is one of Didi’s firm beliefs: Life recalled is better than life lived. The imagination, after all, can edit, revise, and improve. Those ancients who pass to their reward in old folks’ homes with smiles on their lips and songs in their hearts—who knows what illusory achievements and bogus epics warm their last moments? “Isn’t it something to look forward to?” Didi likes to ask.

  But to continue: Yesterday evening and into the night, Connor walked about fifteen miles, all in New London, as he searched for Fidget. He means to appropriate Fidget’s jewelry, though Connor’s verb of choice is “liberate.” He isn’t sure how this will happen, and in his imaginings he skips the theft part to the gratitude part, when Céline shows her appreciation with fleshy thank-yous between soft sheets. Made-up futures and made-up pasts: “Reality,” says Didi, “is no more than a fleeting nanosecond that we straightaway begin to modify.”

  But earlier that morning, Didi had shown irritation as his reality came into conflict with Connor’s over the issue of what Didi called Connor’s irresponsible absences. “You’re supposed to be working for us, not prowling around New London after some woman.”

  Connor rejected this. Céline wasn’t just “some woman” but “an archetype of female sexuality.”

  Eartha disliked this talk. She’d taken out a sizable loan to have her own sexuality heightened, and now it was going to waste on a deserted beach in Rhode Island. To her mind, sexuality must be seen—otherwise her breasts were just a double splop of silicone gel. She scorns Céline, whom she’s never met, as no more than “pussy with bells and whistles,” which conjures up strange images in Connor’s mind.

  As Didi and Eartha made their complaints, Vaughn sat cross-legged on the floor bobbing his head and drawing squares on a yellow pad. When Eartha paused in her gripes to take a breath, Vaughn approached Connor, who sat in the dinette staring into a cold cup of coffee. Vaughn leaned over to whisper in his ear. “You’re in a risqué location. For water’s worth Didi’ll burn you as a steak.”

  “Say again?”

  “Stick your eye on a wheel and your shoulder to a boulder.”

  What was it about Vaughn’s declarations that disturbed Connor? Or was it confusion as to Vaughn’s meaning that gave him a chill, as if his words were hazy broadcasts from the Hermetic Order of Vanished Chances? He felt if he could understand Vaughn, then Vaughn would no longer trouble him. But Connor was unable to articulate the nature of his anxiety—or if a potential threat even existed.

  “You confuse me,” said Connor.

  Vaughn looked kindly at Connor, as if he were a dumb animal in need of comfort. “You’re in a dangerous salutation suffering from impassable dreams.”

  “How so?”

  “Don’t burn your bridges before you come to them. Remember, there’s no time like the pleasant. Don’t take the bad with the worse.”

  —

  Standing in front of the train station later that morning, Connor decides he suffers from a dislocated agenda. He’s not lazy. He wants to help Didi in any way possible, or so he tells himself. But the statue of his self-identity has been knocked askew on its pedestal by a few powerful thrusts, leaving Connor to stare off in new and worrisome directions. The first had been the motorcycle accident. The second was meeting Sal Nicoletti. Third was the moment that Céline had emerged from her house in her white shorts. Fourth had been telling Vasco he’d seen Sal. Fifth was Sal’s murder and the red plastic flower planted in his forehead. And there’d been smaller nudges, such as the confusion between Fat Bob and Marco Santuzza. And snow, how could he forget the snow? Then, in Wednesday’s paper, he’d read about Pappalardo’s murder. Drifting back and forth over these events was Céline, like a hawk in cheap clothing, as Vaughn might say. Lastly came Fidget and the theft of Sal Nicoletti’s gold.

  Only three years ago, Connor had been teaching in Iron Mountain, way up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Two years ago he’d taken a job as a slot attendant at the MGM Grand in Detroit. A year ago he’d taken a job as a slot supervisor in San Diego. In terms of the world, he’d been a baby. Excitement for him was an egg dropped on the kitchen floor. Then he’d been seduced by Didi’s promise to widen his horizons, which included the Winnebago, Eartha’s bare breasts, and Vaughn’s hermetic mouthings. Now, in New England, his horizons seemed as misshapen as a kiddies’ earthquake-struck jungle gym. Even gravity was problematic. As for Connor’s small duties—errands to run, checks to pick up, et cetera—they seemed absurdly immaterial given his present frame of mind. Thus his dislocated agenda.

  Connor is distracted from his disagreeable musings by the growing roar of a motorcycle as its sound reverberates deep in his belly. Up and down Water Street, people turn to look. A bright yellow Harley Fat Bob pokes along past the light at Bank Street and past the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, where a dozen men and women si
t on the steps giving the bike the eye—some positive, some negative—while the female figure of Peace atop the monument’s fifty-foot column keeps her back to the station as if to say, Enough’s enough. The motorcycle slowly passes in front of the train station. The rider wears a black leather jacket and jeans. No helmet, of course. His dark hair with streaks of gray is caught up in a ponytail. He isn’t fat; rather, his body seems swollen into a football shape. His face resembles the mug of a good-looking English bulldog having a thought.

  Connor sees it’s the biker he sat next to in the Exchange. Bob, the waitress called him: Fat Bob. This is who the police were looking for, thinks Connor, because of the accident, because the crashed Fat Bob belonged to Fat Bob, and because Marco Santuzza had ridden the Fat Bob’s Fat Bob into oblivion.

  Fat Bob glances toward Connor and gives him a slow salute. Connor salutes back. Briefly, their eyes lock in a sympathetic exchange, and then Fat Bob continues to poke along down Water Street past the bus station and toward I-95.

  Five seconds later, as Connor wonders if the salute had any special import, he hears a high whine. A red scooter zips down Bank Street onto Water Street. The rider wears a dark red coat and a red-and-black mackinaw cap. He is small, red-faced, and his narrow head reminds Connor of a dull ax. The man leans over the handlebars to decrease wind resistance, because the scooter is only fifty cc’s and its top speed is maybe thirty-five miles per hour. He looks neither right nor left but focuses straight ahead to where Fat Bob is approaching I-95.

  Connor takes two steps into the street. Perhaps he means to pursue the scooter or pursue Fat Bob. But although Connor is a good runner, his action is only symbolic. Not even the fastest runner could catch the scooter, much less Fat Bob. Ahead of Connor, however, are the Greyhound bus station and the police department. Maybe one of these forms his destination, but we’ll never know, because at this moment his cell phone makes its summoning tweedle and Connor comes to a stop. He slaps at his various pockets, discovers the phone, and presses it to his ear as he moves to the sidewalk.

  It’s Didi. “Have you picked up the stuff from the post office?”

  “I’m almost there.”

  “What’s the delay?”

  “Traffic.” Connor wonders if Didi can hear the lie.

  “No more fooling around. Remember, we have an obligation to history. I’ve brought you to New England to train you in the business, and someday you’ll take my place. Eighty years of Bounty, Inc. stretch behind us. Where’re your priorities?”

  This is surprising and unsurprising to Connor. He hadn’t realized he was being groomed, but nor had he understood why Didi should be so insistent that he come on this long trip. Didi’s words clarified his intentions.

  “What if I don’t want to take your place? What if I don’t want to work for Bounty, Inc.?”

  “It’s your destiny. You’re a tugo, I’m a tugo. Now, pick up those checks and get back here.” Then Didi chuckled and his voice changed. “Oh, yes, I wanted to tell you. D’you know what that crazy Vaughn did? He found some black paint and wrote ‘Here lives an orphan from outer space’ on the side of the Winnebago. What d’you think of that?” Didi laughs again.

  “How’re you going to get it off?” Connor began to say it was an irresponsible act, but the term seems inapplicable to Vaughn.

  “Why take it off? I like it.” Didi cuts the connection.

  As he thinks of what it means to be included in Vaughn’s inclusive “we,” Connor has a glimmer of insight as to why he changed his name from Zeco. He hadn’t wanted to get enmeshed in Bounty, Inc., and he still didn’t. Being Portuguese was no reason to become a con man. Bounty, Inc. was a family business. It was the family he wanted to escape, not his family’s nationality.

  Standing by the train station, Connor shifts from one foot to the other. He can go up State Street to the post office or up Bank Street in search of Fidget. He takes a step toward State Street and then pivots toward Bank. Surely the post office can wait half an hour. He crosses to the head of Bank Street with the East Bank Gift Shop on the corner; its display windows are crowded with mannequins in multicolored, floor-length, faux-swank Indian gowns designed perhaps for faux romance.

  Two shops farther along, Connor pauses at the display window of a small travel agency, his eye caught by a poster of the Pena Palace, a gigantic pink-stone confection perched on a mountaintop in Sintra outside Lisbon. He’d once spent a day with his great-aunt exploring its dozens of rooms, as his tongue occupied itself with repeating the word “splendiferous,” the only word that seemed an apt description of what he was seeing. Staring at the poster, he imagines slipping into a small gold-spattered and leather-bound room, maybe a modest library, in one of the palace’s high towers, falling back into an armchair, and taking a deep breath.

  Connor can’t know that his imagined escape duplicates Fidget’s retreat to Fat Bob’s boarded-up house on Montauk Avenue, but we know it and we share it here. Connor feels packed to his ear tips with opposing obligations, distractions, and anxieties. So for a few seconds, no more than that, he sees himself in a quiet, book-lined room looking out through a narrow leaded window over small white towns with red roofs and rolling summer fields to where a line of white selvage indicates the distant surf of the Atlantic. Oh, blesséd escape.

  Then Connor realizes he’s not just looking at a travel poster but also into the face of a young woman staring back. If he were chewing a baseball-player wad of bubble gum, he’d swallow it. Such is his surprise. The woman has short, unevenly chopped blond hair with blond highlights and wears wire-rimmed glasses. It’s a familiar face.

  She comes to the door. “Have you recovered from banging your head on the steering wheel? I don’t see any bruises.”

  Connor likes to think he isn’t someone who blushes, but he feels his face turn red. “No, I’m fine. You saved me from myself.”

  “Well, I’m glad beating your head isn’t a hobby. Collecting stamps would be better. You must work near here. I’ve seen you go by.” She stands in the doorway observing him with birdlike attention. She’s thin, like a runner, and her blue blouse matches her blue eyes. Perhaps she’s four inches shorter than Connor.

  “No, I’ve been looking for someone. Do you stare at everyone who walks by?”

  “Just about. My desk is by the window, and I sit around waiting for people who want to take geographic cures. Are you looking for someone who works near here? Maybe I can help. I’ve been here almost nine months.”

  The woman has an oval face with a pointed chin, and she watches Connor with the good humor of someone telling a joke. A strand of hair falls across her right eye, and she flicks it away. Connor likes how easily she talks to him but thinks if she’s bored with her job, she must be talking to him out of boredom.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Linda.”

  She looks at him inquiringly, expecting him to identify himself. Connor isn’t sure whether he should use his regular name or a Portuguese name or some other name that he might like to assume, such as Rex or Woodruff. “Connor,” he says.

  “Are you Irish?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Connor’s often an Irish name.”

  “Then maybe I should change it.”

  “No, don’t do that. I like it. But you don’t seem Irish—your hair’s too black.”

  “I could be black Irish,” says Connor.

  They both smile and look at each other for an extended moment. Then Connor says, “I’m trying to find a homeless man. I’m told his name is Fidget.”

  “Oh, I know him,” says Linda brightly. “He often walks around asking for spare change. I’ve talked to him several times. I like him, but he smells. I think it’s his feet. I haven’t seen him today, but he might be along the street someplace. Why’re you looking for him?”

  “Do you always ask so many questions?” Connor, whose work with Bounty, Inc. exists on the shady edge of legality, has what we may call “functional paranoia.”
He’s often suspicious of people he meets, especially those who ask questions. “I’d just like to talk to him about the accident on Monday.”

  Linda tilts her head slightly. She’s tempted to ask Connor if he’s a reporter, but she doesn’t want to ask another question. “I heard the crash, but in the office I’m on the far side of where the motorcycle hit the truck, so I saw nothing, luckily. It must have been awful.”

  Connor nods as Linda folds her arms. “Are you getting cold?” he asks. “You should go back inside.”

  “I was just going up the street for coffee when I saw you. I’ll get my jacket.”

  Connor’s functional paranoia resurfaces. He considers walking away, but it would be rude. Anyway, he doesn’t want to. Linda reappears wearing a half-length dark red jacket with a double row of silver buttons, which, on closer inspection, prove to be plastic. It’s the sort of low-cost coat made to look like a high-priced coat.

  “No hat?”

  “They mess up my hair,” says Linda, whose ragged cut looks professionally messed with one side longer than the other, which gives her diagonal bangs. “Do you think I’m pushy? Really, I was going out for coffee anyway. And Fidget knows me. I give him a silver dollar now and then. I always carry a bunch of them.” She shakes her pocket, and there’s a jingling noise.

  “To give away?”

  “It’s much easier than making excuses or pretending I don’t see people, though it costs more in the summer. I’m probably getting a reputation.”

  Connor can’t think of a suitable response. “At least it’s generous,” he says.

  “More practical than generous. It’s like I’m paying for safe passage. But they’re friendly enough, for the most part.”

  “No one bothers you?”

  “Never. Fidget even told me about his tail.”

  “Tail?” Connor thinks he isn’t sharing in a conversation so much as chasing after one.