Buddy Cooper Finds a Way

by Neil O'Boyle Connelly

  I rise up, step between this joker and the NFL. I gather his shirt front in one fist and yank him out of my La-Z-Boy, spin him hard, and jack him up against a wall. I say, “You’re gonna tell me who you are or I’m gonna beat hell out of you right here before the national television audience.”

  “Who I am is a complicated question,” he says, not at all worried that I might smash his face to pulp, which is absolutely my plan. And suddenly I feel the weight of the tire iron in my hand, cocked up behind my shoulder like a hatchet. I squeeze to be sure it’s no illusion, and the grip is certain. It’s real. I don’t remember getting it from under the front seat of the truck. I don’t remember carrying it inside.

  “Oops,” says Buddy. “And who’d we bring that in here for?”

  The answer hangs in my head. “This isn’t happening,” I say.

  “That’s one possibility. Or this could be one reason Dr. Collins told you not to drink while you were taking the brain candy.”

  I lower the tire iron, let go of Buddy. Behind me I hear the crowd cheer and turn to see Brian Bosworth flattened in the end zone. Bo Jackson, always a gentleman, hands the football to the referee. I reach for my beer and down it in two gulps.

  Young Buddy straightens his shirt. “That’s not gonna help,” he says. He looks at his watch, a Timex that Alix gave me for our fifth anniversary. “Hey, I’ve lost track of time here. Look, we were supposed to cover a lot of ground but I’d better cut to the chase. You know Brook’s dancing tomorrow night, right? Eight o’clock.”

  “Tomorrow tomorrow?” I ask. “Or four years ago tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow tomorrow. Trevor’s benefit deal. You have to be there. Brook wants you to come and it’s important to her.”

  I look him in the eye. “But what about the match Friday?” I ask. “What should I do about Hardy Appleseed?”

  “Believe me. It’s important you go see Brook dance tomorrow.”

  “If you’re really me,” I say, “you’re the last person in the world I want to believe.”

  He shakes his head. “I came a long way for this. You try to beat me up and drink premium beer in front of me. Geesh, exactly when did I turn into such an asshole?”

  “We were always an asshole,” I say. “I’m just the one who figured it out.”

  He shakes his head, turns to the TV. Standing side by side we watch the point-after attempt. It’s good.

  I say, “Listen, I’m sorry. This is all just weird, you know?”

  “No blood, no foul.” He offers me his hand and I shake it.

  Young Buddy sits back in the La-Z-Boy. Feeling guilty I head for the kitchen, planning on handing over one of Trevor’s Heinekens before trying to figure out any more of this. But from the hallway I hear a car pull up out front. I go back to the living room for a view of the driveway and the TV table is empty, a dusty field with a clean square. My La-Z-Boy is gone. A corner curio cabinet displays a tight flock of Wild Turkeys, one clearly missing from formation. I’m alone in the house. Alone with my tire iron. Outside a car door slams, and I hear voices and the jingle of keys. I don’t know if that’s Alix and Brook and Trevor coming in late from Dairy Queen or Alix and Brook loaded with groceries four years ago. But either way, I decide I don’t want to be here when that door opens. I haul ass through the kitchen, through the sliding glass door, through the backyard and the fence I installed. And in no time at all I’m back in the gully sloshing through stagnant water, stumbling through the hot darkness with a rusted tire iron and no plan at all.

  -----

  A Rude Awakening. Evaluating Crucial Evidence.

  Taking a Spin at the Big Wheel. Watching Waves Crash.

  Our Hero Tries to Explain.

  I dream of explosions, being pursued as I weave across a field of burning bodies and smoldering craters. Overhead, bombers float low, drop their load, and coast away in the orange bloom. From the forest behind me, the enemy lobs shells. When I sit straight up in my bed, it takes a moment for me to realize that the source of the crashbangs is not bombs or mortar fire but someone pounding the glass of my bedroom window, twenty-five feet above the ground. I flip back the sheets, stumble across the room in my boxers, and tug the cord that raises the miniblinds. Dr. Bacchus perches in the branches of an elm tree and looks like a well-fed but eager squirrel. “Open up,” he hollers through the pane. “This is your wake-up call.”

  I rub my eyes and wish for bombs. My head feels heavy.

  Palms in, I hoist the window and Bacchus barrels through. “Have you seen Dr. Winston?”

  I pull on a pair of jeans that reek of bar smoke. The cuffs are still damp. “Should I have seen Dr. Winston?”

  “Crap crap crap.” Immediately he starts poking around my bedroom, as if Winston might be hiding in my closet or beneath my bed. When he spins around to me, his eyes take in the goose egg on my forehead and the bruise on my chin. “That shade really works for you.”

  “Matches my life,” I say. We stare at each other. I scratch the back of my head. “So, is there a reason you’re here?”

  “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question of life, now isn’t it?” With this, he scoots into the living room and zigzags, confirming that nothing is under the brown couch or behind the TV. Then I follow him into the bathroom where—with dramatic flair—he yanks back the shower curtain. Except for the grimy tiles, it’s empty. “A little Formula 409 could go a long way here.”

  At the bottom of my toilet, two dozen pink pills nestle like tiny eggs. I reach for the handle and flush. Without comment, Bacchus watches them get sucked down the vortex. I grab some Tylenol from the medicine cabinet, and when I close it, Bacchus is unzipping his pants. “You wouldn’t begrudge a man a little hospitality?”

  “Aim for the middle,” I ask.

  On my kitchen counter a note waits for me. In my own handwriting it reads: Brook’s Dance. 8:00 Tonight. Be There. I have no memory of writing this, but I doubt it’s a reminder composed by Phantom Buddy. Here’s one thing I’m sure of: Doctors’ precautions about the interactions of drugs and alcohol should be taken very seriously. So I’m not regretting last night’s decision about the pills, however hazy it may be now. As of today, I’m off my medication.

  I open the fridge and drink from a carton of orange juice, wash down the Tylenol that I’m hoping will loosen the clamps on my skull.

  The toilet flushes and Bacchus reappears. “Nothing like two-ply,” he says as he walks past me toward the door. With all that’s going on in my head, I’m grateful that he’s leaving. But when he opens the door, Gladstone stands in the entrance, WORLD’S #1 DAD hat still on his head. Apparently Gladstone reads the failed expression on Bacchus’s face. “I told you he wouldn’t be here.”

  “Nobody likes a know-it-all.” Dr. Bacchus comes back into the room and opens a cupboard, pulls down a mug, and goes to the sink.

  Gladstone steps up to me. His eyes are soft and desperate. “Dr. Cooper. They’ve got Winston.”

  I fold my note into my pocket. “Hold up. Who’s got Winston?”

  “Where do you keep your coffee?” Dr. Bacchus wants to know.

  “No coffee ’til I know what’s going on.”

  “That could take a while.” “The ones he warned us about,” Gladstone says. “We should have listened. We should have believed.”

  I look over at Bacchus, who has found my Folgers crystals and is stirring them into cold tap water. “No chance for a little sugar, huh?”

  Gladstone pushes his face into his hands. “Go ahead and don’t believe me. But I have evidence. I’m the one with proof.”

  Bacchus and I glance at each other and shrug. It’s hard to argue with evidence.

  Moments later, Gladstone leads us onto my porch, where the brightness of the Carolina sky brings my hand up to shield my eyes. Even so, tiny splinters work into my brain. A mockingbird twitters at us as we descend the stairs. Admittedly, last night’s darkness seems distant. Then we pass the Ford, and I see the tire iron in the bed of the
truck. I turn away. It was the pills last night that made me see what I saw and do what I did. The pills.

  “Coffee’s a bit crunchy,” Bacchus complains.

  We cross the alley and step up onto holy ground, pass the fading city signs posted on wooden stakes: NO TRESPASSING. THIS PROPERTY CONDEMNED.

  Following the boys, I climb the collapsed rubble wall, and when I get to the top I see Bob Barker on the altar. He’s got his arm around a blue-haired woman. “Which do you think is less expensive,” he asks, “the fabric softener or the smile brightener?”

  Bacchus votes for the fabric softener.

  “Mock me all you want,” Gladstone says. “Winston is in terrible danger.”

  He leads us into the church, which seems somehow more tragic in the light of day. Sunlight illuminates the few stained glass shards—red and blue still clinging to the windows, but their broken fragments litter the ground. Everywhere are muddied pieces of colored glass, puzzle pieces with bizarre half images, a saintly finger, the gold curve of a halo, one letter orphaned from a sacred inscription.

  “Here,” Gladstone shouts, pointing to the ground behind some rotted pews. Bacchus and I huddle on either side of him and look down—there’s a clearing of weeds and dirt, an immaculately clean space in the shape of a perfect circle. Inside the sphere, the bright cobblestone shines. Just outside the perfect circle are the shattered pieces of Trevor’s Wild Turkey.

  “He was holding the bourbon when they beamed him up,” Gladstone explains.

  Bacchus lifts the mug. “This is the good part.”

  “Their ship was shaped like a croissant,” Gladstone says, dreamy-eyed.

  “Maybe the alien abductors are French.”

  “Maybe if you weren’t passed out, we could have saved him!”

  “Guys,” I say. “This sounds like a situation. Let’s not start pointing fingers.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Gladstone shouts, storming up the aisle, snatching the baseball cap from his head and clutching his hair. He stops in front of the altar, and while a leggy blond fondles a Salad Shooter, Gladstone screams into the wide sky, “They took Dr. Winston! And surely, he was the best among us!”

  Bacchus leans in to me. “He’s been like this all morning. We checked Second Chances. We checked the shelter. You were our last hope.”

  Gladstone starts weeping softly, a strange sound beneath so blue a sky. A mockingbird, maybe the same one, maybe a new one, flies into the church and lands on a pew. It nags me until my feet start moving. I walk up to Gladstone and lay a hand on his shaking shoulder. “The ship,” I say. “I saw it.”

  “What?”

  “Last night in the sky when I was coming home. It passed out over the ocean.”

  “You believe me?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll contact the authorities. Maybe the airport radar picked up something. We’ll call WAOK, the FBI, whoever we have to.”

  “Not NASA!” he urges.

  “No way. They’re clearly not the ones to get involved with this. Maybe we could get the Air Force to investigate.”

  “They have fighter planes. They have rockets.”

  “Right,” I say. “Heat seekers.”

  When Gladstone hugs me I almost feel guilty. But I’m convinced that by nightfall, Winston will have returned. Bacchus walks past us while we’re hugging and gives me a look. He chases the mockingbird away to witness the Showcase Showdown, where an elderly man with Coke-bottle glasses steps up to the big wheel, ready for his chance to spin.

  Coming up my steps, I hear my phone ringing so I charge through the kitchen and into the living room, yank the receiver up quick and say hello.

  “Metricius?”

  “What?”

  “Let me talk to Metricius.”

  “Wrong number.”

  “I know he’s there. You put him on.”

  “Pal, you misdialed.”

  “Fine. That’s how we play this then.”

  “Fine.”

  “You just tell Metricius I know what’s what.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “You tell him I’m coming, and you know who’s coming with me.”

  “Absolutely,” I say. “We’ll all be waiting.” After I hang up, I regret not asking the guy if he’d seen Dr. Winston. Suddenly, anything seems possible.

  I notice the red light on my answering machine blinking away and figure this moron actually left a message for Metricius while I was outside. Then it occurs to me with the way my head feels like a bowling ball that I could’ve slept through a whole telethon of phone calls this morning. I push the button and Quinn’s voice pipes up. “B. C.? We need to expedite Plan X. If I have to activate a contingency, I need to know that. But because I still value your input and feel confident you can bring a unique contribution to the project, I’m prepared to discuss additional incentives and compensation. Respond.”

  Erasing that one’s a pleasure. I don’t know what to tell him. But I sure as hell don’t want to do that match tomorrow night.

  I push the button for a second message. “Hello? Mr. Cooper, sir? Are you there? It’s me, sir. I was hopin’ we could maybe talk. Are you there?” After ten seconds of silence, Hardy hangs up.

  I push the button for the third message. “It’s me,” Alix says, then the beep. Today is Thursday, the day she runs errands when she’s not on a shoot. Her call means she’ll be over.

  I get into the shower and the hot water feels fine on the back of my neck. I splurge with a new razor so my shave is tight and neat. After I get dressed I move on to the apartment. I squirt blue liquid in the toilet so it smells nice, stuff the laundry into the closet and close the door, check the sheets before making the bed. While I’m straightening the living room I click on Waves Will Crash, just to see what’s going on. But I get sucked in and find myself taking a break from cleaning detail. The brown couch welcomes me again. At Mercy Hospital, Lauren Gales emerges from her three-episode-long coma only to discover that amnesia has stolen her memory. So when Stack and Longley Worthmore both show up claiming to be her true love, she doesn’t know which brother to believe. The truth of course is that Longley sabotaged the elevator in the first place, after Lauren told him she had to follow her heart and leave him for Stack. I was glad when she made this decision. All Longley ever wanted was her money.

  Matters are further complicated after a hemorrhoid commercial, during which I run the vacuum. Mercy’s top doctor announces that Lauren is pregnant. Both Worthmores immediately claimed to be the daddy, but the doctor explains that because they are brothers, the standard paternity test would be useless. I recognize this for the clumsy plotting that it is, but still maintain my disbelief. As Stack and Longley look on, Lauren lays her bandaged hands on her stomach and starts crying. The credits roll.

  I click off the tube and get back to work. But as I’m finishing the vacuuming, I decide Lauren’s looking at this amnesia thing the wrong way. It’s a free ticket. This could be a chance to start life again with a clean slate. Imagine the liberty that not having a past could grant somebody.

  I give the kitchen floor a quick sweep, then check the dishes in the sink for significant food deposits as I stow them in the dishwasher. I make a mental note that Bacchus still has my coffee mug. All the while I’m working I never think about Alix being here. I don’t care if she shows up or not. The place needs a cleaning anyway.

  I’m almost through the stack of dishes when gravel crunches outside. Then comes a car door and Alix’s footsteps clacking up the stairs. She’s wearing those black, knee-high boots.

  I slam-dunk the last few plates in the Maytag and snap it on, knowing that I’m forgetting the detergent but not wanting Alix to catch me fixing the place up. I’m standing just inside the door but I make her knock. Casually, I open it. She asks, “You not taking calls today?”

  I tell her I was at Whitey’s for breakfast.

  “Hhmph,” she says. As she strides past me, I look down at her auburn hair, cropped short these days,
and I see the darker brown fur along the back of her neck.

  “I saw the Trinitron from your porch. That’s a precious touch, Coop. Please tell me those bums weren’t in the house with Brook. Just tell me that much.”

  “Hey. Trevor shouldn’t have given my stuff away.”

  “Trevor carried the boxes. I drove the car.” She marches through the living room, and I follow. Even from behind her, I can tell her hands are working the buttons on her white blouse. “I told you six times to make a pickup. Your choice to ignore me. By the way, we’ll be contacting the insurance company about the other night, and to do that we need to fill out a police report. Fair warning.”

  I ignore the implications and wonder if she looked through the boxes before she gave them to Second Chances. Did she see the WORLD’S #1 DAD hat and think back? “What’s the rush anyway?” I ask her. “You planning on finishing the attic all of a sudden?”

  In my bedroom doorway, she pauses and turns to me. The top buttons of her blouse are undone. Her bra is white lace. I lift my eyes to her face, and it is still. “We’re putting the house on the market, Coop. I thought Brook would tell you.”

  I shake my head. “That didn’t come up.”

  Alix shrugs. “Any leads on a green cell phone?”

  I head back to the kitchen and my jacket, hoping it’s in the pocket. I’m picturing the house on Asgard with a FOR SALE sign staked into the front lawn, and I find myself calculating how I could purchase it myself.

  When I return to the bedroom, she’s flared her shirt free of her jeans. Her abs are four tight boxes, the result of a stuntwoman workout program that involves two hundred crunches a day. I hand her the cell and she nods. “Thanks. You make any long distance calls?”