Buddy Cooper Finds a Way

by Neil O'Boyle Connelly

  For this observation, I have no response, and we cruise along in silence. She takes a long swooping exit off the highway and turns us south, I think. Traffic isn’t heavy on this road. Even in the emptiness I take for fields around us, I see no house shapes. “Not far now,” Rhonda promises.

  I’m afraid to tell her the truth, that I cannot forecast her future. I worry that this is my only asset to her. So I remain silent as she drives, listening to a ten-minute saxophone solo and trying to come up with a convincing story. Maybe I could say the planets aren’t in the right alignment, or perhaps I might argue that my pain medication is interfering with my psychic powers. But before I can fully craft my lie, the sax song ends and the Honda slowly turns onto what sounds like gravel. We pass a small gray cabin and then she stops the car. Tiny rain beats on the roof. “Can you see it?” she asks.

  Peering through the windshield, all I can make out is a large white block at the end of a dark field.

  “I can’t imagine who built out here in the middle of nowhere. Must’ve been somebody’s dream.” She opens her door and says, “Let’s go.”

  I unbuckle my seat belt and step out into the drizzling rain. Again, the coolness soothes my eyes. Rhonda takes my hand and we start walking toward the huge white rectangle. I wonder if I hadn’t maced myself if our palms would be pressed together like this. The ground beneath us undulates, rising and falling in mounds like low moguls. Our legs drag through thick weeds, two feet tall.

  “I had my first vision at the Star-Lite Drive-In. Schwenksville, Pennsylvania,” Rhonda says. “This was the night I lost my virginity with Nelson Lee. Later, my mother explained that sex generates a lot of raw psychic energy. How about you, Seamus? When was your first time?”

  “If you seriously want to know your future,” I say, “why not just look yourself? After all, you’ve got the one true gift.”

  “You of all people should understand,” she says. “We’ve got the same problem—can’t see the path in front of us. At least, I presume that’s why you called me in the first place.”

  I nod my head. Her explanation makes a kind of sense, I guess. I want to come clean about the night I called her, tell her of the two moons and the masks I wear and the pink pills I no longer take and the daughter I love and the other Buddy.

  “That night was the starting point, Seamus. Don’t you understand? There’s no such thing as coincidence, only convergence. Your phone call. The dance benefit. The match. The vision I had of you in that pet cemetery. Yesterday afternoon in a trance, I saw you here, standing right in this spot.”

  “But you brought me here,” I say.

  “Only because you got in my car.”

  I give my crooked shrug and let go of her hand. We’ve stopped walking. As Rhonda predicted, my vision is clearing up some. In the giant white screen before us, I can see black squares from where sections have fallen away like rotten teeth or pieces missing from a puzzle. I ask her, “So what exactly do you want to know? If you’ll get back with your ex-fiancé or not?”

  “Ronnie’s out of my life,” she says, and this makes me smile though I try to hide it. “That much I’m sure of. But the vision of you getting shot unsettled me. This is important for you to understand. The night of your match, without clear intention, I went to the Civic Center. Only when I was there did I realize I’d come to break my mother’s golden rule—I was going to alter the future.”

  Something rumbles to our north, maybe thunder, maybe trucks. My jacket is soaked now, and the immobilizer, which I was instructed to keep dry, is taking on water. Beneath my shirt, the gauze bandage that covers my wound feels soggy.

  “So you really knew I was going to get shot?”

  “From my seat, I could sense everything that was about to happen, but I couldn’t do anything. I was forced to witness it all unfold. I was completely helpless.”

  Rhonda’s head hangs, and she sniffles once. I see the hazy shape of her hands rise up to cover her face. I reach out for her shoulder and say, “Welcome to the planet.”

  I hear soft weeping and Rhonda rubs at her eyes. “That’s just it. That night got me thinking. We’re all at the mercy of fate. Like with this asteroid. It could hit us, you know. This is exactly what I’m talking about. What good is seeing the future if you can’t do anything about it?” And now she turns full into me and plants her face in my unwounded shoulder.

  I wrap my right arm around her, tug her into me. Her wet hair chills my cheek. I shake my head. “I don’t know what I can say. I don’t know what I can do.”

  “Can’t you just look?” she pleads. “All of this can’t be for nothing. It must mean something. You must have a vision for me. Look, it’s not like I want stock tips. I don’t want to know if I’ll find true love or become famous. I just want to know that I haven’t screwed everything up. I want to know I’m going to be OK. That’s all. I just want to know if I’m going to be OK.”

  She sobs inside my arm, and I feel tears threatening to rise behind my eyes. What she’s asking for seems so familiar, so small, and I truly wish I could grant her this tiny boon. But I’m only Buddy Cooper, I want to explain, I have no gift of prophecy. I’m not the man you think I am. Yet even thinking this triggers something in me, and suddenly I remember my amnesia. In the wind I hear the flapping of my gold cape. I remember being invincible. I raise my eyes to the giant movie screen and, when finally I speak, my voice is certain as stone. “Rhonda, you never made a decision you knew was wrong. You always did your best. You are standing right now exactly where you are supposed to be standing, doing exactly what you are intended to be doing. And you are not alone.”

  My hand slides inside her wet hair to the back of her neck and I guide her head out of my shoulder, turn her face to meet mine. “Believe me,” I say, and our rain-cooled lips come together. Kissing, we drop to our knees in the tall weeds and Rhonda eases me onto my back into a muddy puddle, then climbs on top of me. My shoulder feels no pain. My eyes burn no more. The features of her face are clearer to me, though everything’s still black and white. When she sees my immobilized hand stretching for my own belt, she undoes it quickly herself and tugs down my pants. My excitement is hard to miss. “This sling?” she asks. “Should we take it off?”

  “I’m fine,” I say, between quick breaths. The wound will not be pretty.

  Dress slacks and underwear tucked to my knees, still wearing my tie, I almost laugh at the absurdity of the image. But when Rhonda slips her panties out from beneath her dress and settles on top of me, her knees squeeze my hips and I shiver at the crazed rightness of this moment. She rocks gently above me, guides my one good hand to her breasts, and I knead the flesh beneath her wet black dress. My fingers trail to the taunt dancer muscles of her belly. Above her, vague gray shapes float past in the sky, birds perhaps. Even with my impaired vision, I can see her smiling down on me, and this makes me smile. I’m aware of a rock beneath my plate-scarred ass cheek and the fact that she is pressing me down into the mud, but this fails to distract me.

  Little by little, our urgency increases, and we buck into each other and she folds over me and her hands grab at the weeds on either side of my head. Her elbows dig into my chest. Rhonda hums, that beautiful song of contentment that only a lover can bless you with, and I squeeze my eyes tight as I feel my release bearing down on me. My mouth opens and I sigh, “Alix.”

  When Rhonda freezes on top of me, I realize what I’ve said. I open my eyes and am shocked by the green fire of her irises, the red shine of her hair restored. “Oops,” she says, trying to force a smile, turning to the blank movie screen.

  “Shit,” I say.

  She slides off me and sits in the mud. She cradles her knees. With my full vision returned, I look at the crushed grass around us and see the plants that have claimed this abandoned lot are not just weeds, but wildflowers as well. Yellow, blue, and purple buds cap the tall stalks.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. Still on my back, I stare into the thickening rain. “It’s been so
long since—”

  Rhonda’s curled into herself, rocking gently. “Don’t explain,” she says. “I understand.”

  “I wasn’t even thinking of her.” This is the truth, and I hope she can sense it.

  She turns to me, presses her lips tight together, and nods. “Look, Seamus, I said that I understand. I’d like it if we could maybe just sit here for a few minutes. That would be good I think, OK?”

  With my silence, I agree, and Rhonda and I look up into the gray sky. The thickening rain falls on us. Beneath a cloudy heaven that could be hiding an asteroid heading our way, we wait in the wildflower weeds, together.

  -----

  Big Questions and the Price of Curiosity. Kissing Fish.

  Two Readings from the Chronicle Wall.

  A Discussion of Svobodian Society.

  When Rhonda pulls her Honda—which really is white after all—to the curb in front of my building, we both sit listening to the engine run. On the drive back, we haven’t said much. I told her I could see colors again and she said it was good. Later, she pointed out an egret spearing a fish. But mostly, we both kept thinking about what we weren’t talking about, the same thing we’re not talking about now. Rhonda’s hands fidget on the steering wheel. I reach across my wounded arm and unbuckle my seat belt. She looks out the opposite window. The dull sun sits low in the cloudy gray sky, but there is no rain. Apparently the summer storm we outran together hasn’t hit here just yet.

  “Thanks for the lift,” I finally say. “Thanks for everything.”

  “No problem,” she says. “Look. What you told me back there, beforehand. Those were good things for me to hear. Really.”

  I nod my head, glad that my fake prophecy provided her with some comfort. “I don’t know what to say about the other thing. Me and Alix, we’re divorced.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Four years. That’s a long time.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It was really just—”

  She holds up a hand. “It happened. It was a not-good moment. But it happened. So listen, am I going to see you again or what?”

  For a moment I think she’s asking for another prophecy, but then I realize it’s a simple question, the kind normal human beings ask each other every day. “I guess that’s kind of up to us.”

  Rhonda faces me and smiles at my response, the single best line of dialogue I’ve come up with in recent memory. She says, “This is a good thing to keep in mind.”

  I climb out but linger inside the open door, leaning into the Honda. I want to stay in this moment, retain the fragile feeling of rightness that eye contact with Rhonda creates. I know I’ll head around back and up my steps, make some tricky phone calls to Quinn about tomorrow and Alix about Sunday before crashing on the brown couch. But for now I just want to stand here, savor the sensation, and try to imprint it on my brain. Oddly, I’m not worrying about the future consequences of my actions or the symbolic meaning of how Rhonda is supposed to fit in the big picture of what I’m caught up in now. I’m just here and feeling fine.

  “You know my number, Seamus,” Rhonda says, looking over the steering wheel.

  The moment I close her door she pulls away. I watch her turn down Market, and even after she’s gone I stand in the darkening street. Finally I walk over to my mailbox, stuffed with a week’s worth of free offers and bills, slip them inside the immobilizer, and head up the side walkway. Around back, I’m surprised but happy to find my pickup parked beneath my deck. Alix, I decide.

  Across the alley a sharp crack, what could easily be mistaken for a gunshot, echoes off the three remaining walls of the Salvation Station. It’s followed by a second, then a third. Piled high outside the collapsed wall is a mound of bulging Hefty bags. A splotchy mutt scrounges through them. While I’m watching, a bag arcs over the crumbled wall as if catapulted and drops onto the pile. A grim notion takes hold of me: The city is finally making good on its demolition warning. Judgment day has come while I was gone.

  I cross the alley and step for the second time today onto holy ground, scowling at the faded THIS PROPERTY CONDEMNED notices stapled to half-rotted wooden stakes. With my good arm out for balance, I carefully pick my way up the collapsed wall. Just as I reach the top, another tossed Hefty bag nearly beans me. I dodge left and turn to confront what I’m sure will be a careless city worker. But instead I’m faced with a black man wearing raggedy painter’s pants and a red bandana. He’s raking debris into the mouth of a garbage bag being held open by another man, this one’s shirtless white back peeling with sunburn. Behind them, another homeless man holds up the arms of a red wheelbarrow. Clear across the church, a thin woman carefully pries stained glass shards from a window like a dentist removing teeth. In the corner, a pale man with a black wool cap drives a pickax into a pile of bricks. There must be two dozen homeless, all working away like content dwarves waiting for someone to start whistling. The marble altar, a week ago buried thick in muck, now rises up immaculate, sharp and bright. The Trinitron on top beams Martha Stewart, who’s hanging a white valance over pink curtains.

  “You’re late!” the man with the red wheelbarrow complains. I tell him I’m sorry and cautiously descend into the church. The other homeless ignore me and I wander uninvited along the aisle, past pews that have been freed from ivy and crud. The wood of the first few rows glows with the dullest of shines, and I pause when I see why. Down one row, a ruddy-faced man kneels over a green bucket. He’s scrubbing the pew with a rag. “Hi,” he says. “I have a lot of work to do.”

  “I see that,” I say back, then ask, “What’s going on here?”

  “Big question,” he says. “Could you be more specific?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m cleaning off these damn benches. I deserve a raise.”

  Next to me, the red-wheelbarrow worker wheels his load over to the baptismal and dumps dirt and rocks into an area a pear-shaped woman just swept clean. I turn back to the man at my feet and ask him, “Who’s in charge here?”

  He dunks his rag in the bucket of dark water. “I thought you were in charge.”

  “No. I’m not in charge.”

  He returns to his scrubbing and says, “We’re in real trouble then. Somebody has to be in charge. Right?”

  “Well, who told you to do this?”

  “It needs to be done,” he says, talking over his shoulder. “Who told you to interrogate me? Just do what you’re told. Curiosity killed the cats.”

  “The cat,” I correct him. “Curiosity killed the cat.”

  Disappointed, he shakes his head and says, “Son, you just haven’t been around long enough.”

  Laughter comes from behind the altar, where Martha Stewart now holds a box and stands by a refrigerator. I ascend the steps, close enough to hear her say, “Don’t make the mistake of throwing away freezer-burned ice cream.” In the doorway of the sacristy stands a bald man wearing khakis and a white shirt. He’s talking to someone inside, swinging his hands and throwing his head back as he chuckles madly. I take him for some kind of city planner or an outreach activist, come to clean up our neighborhood, a community project he can put in italics on his résumé—and he’s figured out a way to draft some cheap help. He’s probably conned them into a day’s work for a few bucks or the promise of a warm bed. Later he’ll take a group Polaroid to prove what a swell guy he is. Meanwhile, I still haven’t seen any of the Brain Trust, which means he probably chased them off. Busted wing and muddy funeral clothes or not—for this, I will not stand.

  I stride toward the stranger, lift my chin, and say, “You in charge here?”

  When he turns, his eyes come directly into mine and he shouts, “At last—Dr. Cooper!” He charges into me with his arms out-stretched, and before I know it he’s got both arms wrapped around me and he’s squeezing me tightly, reigniting my shoulder.

  From the sacristy, Dr. Gladstone steps out, wearing my WORLD’S #1 DAD baseball cap. And only then do I register the voice of the clean-cut str
anger. Dr. Winston. Still embracing me, he says, “It has been so long. I drew comfort from the thought of you so often.” He pulls back and beams, radiant with joy. The last time I saw him, his shoulder-length dirty hair blended into his scraggly black beard. Now his head is shaved Mr. Clean-tight, and gray and white pepper his neatly trimmed beard. His mustard teeth have been cleaned. Beneath brand-new khakis slip the gold of Bull Invinso’s boots.

  “Winston,” I say. “You look different.”

  “Oh, Buddy,” he sighs, “I am different. I’m so much more than I was. I knew you’d see it. You were always gifted with such quick insight.”

  Dr. Gladstone asks me, “Where the heck have you been?”

  “I was sick,” I say, glancing at my immobilizer as proof. “In the hospital.”

  “I was completely right,” Gladstone informs me. He turns to Winston. “Did you tell him I was completely right?”

  Winston looks straight up at the steeple and nods reverently. “The proof of your faith is evident for all to see, Brother Gladstone.”

  Gladstone bows his head away from the tower, as if he’s afraid to glimpse the face of God.

  “Hey,” I say. “Where’s Dr. Bacchus?”

  Gladstone and Winston trade glances, but avoid my eyes. “He’s moved on,” Winston says. “He didn’t believe in the work we had to get done here.” His arms spread out toward the workers in the church. “As you can see, we are rebuilding the temple.”

  “The temple looks just great. But where’s Bacchus?”

  “He expressed concerns that the government had kidnapped you,” Winston explains. “He mentioned Washington, Quantico, and a secret base in the Dakotas for political prisoners.”

  I picture Dr. Bacchus hitchhiking across America in search of me. Sounds like an ABC TV series from the ’70s. Along the way he’ll help the oppressed. Of course, it’s more likely that he’s simply boozed up under the bridge or behind the Greyhound station.