Val noticed that the guardian overheard, so she too frowned at the question. “A child is vulnerable,” she told him.
“And alive,” the man she'd named David said.
She watched the woman move away, but not without one final glance over her shoulder. "Is that why we fingerprint them?"
David nodded. "But we don't own them. We don't own anything."
Unexpectedly, he took both of her hands gently, and clasped them together, lacing her fingers, making a ball.
“What are you doing?” Val asked, tensing.
“Imagine that this is your mind. It's about the same size too, by the way." He repositioned her hands, gently. "Now try imagining that your thoughts come out this hole made by the thumbs.”
The wary guardian turned, stopped, and then watched from a safe distance, her disapproval hardening into borderline horror. Val tried smiling, albeit nervously. Yet the woman continued to stare.
“Watch the hole for the next thought that escapes," David continued. "Concentrate on it, and nothing else. The very next thought.”
He released her hands slowly, as if a bomb was inside them. Val looked down. She blinked, staring. After a moment she looked up again.
“Well?” asked David.
“I don't. . .” She glanced up to see who else might be watching. “What’s supposed to happen?”
“Try again. Empty your mind.”
She concentrated this time, closing her eyes until her face relaxed and she felt somewhat calmer. Then she reopened her eyes, and finally shrugged.
“I’m not sure. I had an idea. Sorry.”
“I’m not judging you.”
“Everyone judges,” she heard herself say, then realized she'd almost sounded like a teenager. With the added word me, she would have. “Or prejudges,” she quickly added, instead.
David just looked at her. “Only because they trust their thoughts.”
She opened her hands, looking down at her palms, as though her own fortune might actually be there. Her fate. “For a moment I guess I did blank. For just a moment, I think. I mean. . .”
She smiled, as if tricked, at hearing herself say the word think.
“But my idea,” she added, “is that I should interview you instead.”
3
“The Zen Master of Reid Park?” Val suggested.
Her new David only shook his head.
But she persisted. "Here’s David and his friend Picasso. . . What breed of dog is he, did you say?”
“It’s not important.”
“Doesn’t have to be important. It’s human interest. Is a ball game important? Is the latest movie star matchup or breakup important? I mean, really.”
They watched the children in silence for a while longer. From nearby, a sparrow in a cottonwood tree watched them. Its tiny head angled first one way and then the other as it peered down, like a substitute for the nosy teacher, who now busied herself with the kids.
“Were you in prison, is that it?” Val asked, finally.
“No, not like you mean,” he replied.
He didn’t seem to take offense at the question. She started to ask another, but stopped herself, and bit her lip instead. Better safe than sorry. Finally, she sighed. “I guess there’s no way to do it, then, if you won’t talk about your past.”
She looked back toward the ball field. Two players now stood at the fence, laughing together while looking toward them. One of them even seemed to point her out to the other. Val turned away, hoping David didn't see it. The children began to leave the playground area, so they would soon be alone. Before that final resignation, she turned to him with a plaintive frustration.
“Were you ever married? Can you tell me that?”
“Like I said, it doesn’t--”
“Kids?”
“No. And that does matter.”
“What about the dog? Have you always liked dogs?”
“Dogs are like children. No past or future. And yes, I was married.”
"Was. What happened?"
"I stopped telling that story."
"To who?"
"To myself."
Val nodded, thoughtfully. “So if you can’t have kids. . .” she began.
“But I could. That is if I . . .”
“Had a wife? Someone enlightened, you mean, of course." Like yourself.
“Our relationship wouldn’t be real, otherwise.”
Something real.
“So you really don't have a radio, either.”
“No.”
“That’s odd. Different, I mean. Not much news, then, except the paper sometimes. Too negative for you? If it bleeds, it leads?”
“Insanity is best illuminated by non-participation.”
She chuckled, impulsively. “The prophet speaks. But how can you illuminate the situation without expressing your views to people?”
“I’m doing that now with you.”
“But I'm just one person,” she insisted. "What if you got on the radio or TV, on one of those prime time talk shows? How many people could you reach then?”
David seemed to consider this carefully, and yet still without any visible aggravation. Finally, he said, “People don't really believe what they hear on TV. They have to experience it. If they are just told something over and over, it doesn't--”
“Become real. Like political sound bites, you mean? Hoping you'll go to the polls like a robot?" He didn't answer, so Val sighed in resignation. “I suppose you're right. That pausing that you do. . .those talk show jocks, they wouldn't allow even five seconds of dead air. Anything short of hot debate and confrontation, and they figure people will switch to sports center, like there's a shot clock running.” She laughed to conceal her dismay, then offered what sounded, even to her, like a futile suggestion. “You know, maybe what we need to do is petition to have all the radio and TV stations in town air a moment of silence for a minute, like a kind of public service for frantic people everywhere. Every station, all at the same time. That way no one could change the channel, and at the end you could, like, hit them with one simple truth. Like maybe one sentence that'd sum up your. . . whatever-you-want-to-call-it philosophy." She paused, reflectively. "So, what would that sentence be, do you think?”
“Your thoughts are not who you are.”
“Yeah, that's. . .thought provoking, I suppose!”
“Feel the life inside you, which is part of all life, in this moment which is the only real thing you possess.”
“Humm. Well, that’s actually not bad. I like that. 'Course the advertisers would complain. They’d try to label it religious, or a waste of time.”
David looked away. “Ironic.”
“How so?”
“They waste all their time otherwise. Blind to what really matters.”
“Because they think too much? Want too much?”
He nodded. “Their mind labels everything, automatically, always calculating and scheming. Trying to get to the future while ignoring the present.”
Val nodded back, although she wasn't sure what to ask next, if anything. She tried to imagine what she could salvage from their impasse, but it seemed to be as much of a dead end as hoping to interview Brad Pitt.
They sat solemnly for a time before they witnessed an arguing couple in the distance. The couple was angrily trading recriminations while walking along the sidewalk encircling the pond. It reminded Val of the confrontation she'd had on the phone, the previous night. The one that ended only when she'd hung up.
At this, her antithetical David said, “That lake doesn't exist for them.”
“How do you mean?” she asked, curious.
“If they don’t exist for themselves. . .” He left the sentence unfinished, like momentarily stepping off a bend in a path.
She looked at him, thinking it a curious observation. But her next thought was: sensitive to light, sensitive to love? The significance of the thought scared her, so she looked away.
"You think," she wondered aloud,
"other people have already made their decisions for them, too? Gave them expectations of each other?"
"Yes," David replied. "So when one of them deviated from the script they were given, the other became a disappointment. Invisible as ever."
She nodded in tentative agreement, but then reacted by switching tacks, instinctively dodging certain thoughts before they could gel into something she couldn't brush aside. Although she was aware of her own script for this--a nervous barrage of questions. “Do you read?" she asked him, as if prompted. "Because if you’re anything like my ex, you wouldn’t. You’d just watch TV. Sports, mostly. Not that men don't watch me sometimes on the tube, too, by some of the fan mail I get. If you can call it that. Men are visual, they say, but why is that, exactly? No imagination? Except for you. Do you think you’d ever write me a fan letter for just doing my job? ‘Cause that’s all it is, really, being a fill-in reporter when I'm not a producer. It's visual, though, and that’s the thing these days, I guess. Unlike your job, which is invisible. If you have one. Do you?”
“I’m retired,” David's opposite said.
"Pretty young for that. Are you secretly rich?" She added a grin to the question, hoping it covered her indiscretion.
“Yes,” he responded, unexpectedly. “In ways other than money."
She snickered at that, despite herself. “You don’t give up, do you?”
“Do you?”
“Sorry. I'm trained as a reporter, so I ask questions even on autopilot. Since you won’t tell me anything, though, I guess I'll be forced to make up a history for you. If only to tell my friends.” She paused, considering it. "So, you were a doctor. . . Doctor Who, maybe. Or maybe a missionary doctor from. . . India. Where you aided call center workers who couldn’t afford health insurance. Now you’re back, only to discover there are no jobs left in America, they’ll all been outsourced. Even surgeries are performed by robots remotely operated by East Indian interns working for the minimum wage.”
He smiled that easy, sexy smile of his. “You have an imagination too.”
“It's a messy job, but somebody has to get their hands dirty,” she quipped. “Will you excuse me?”
She rose and walked quickly toward a nearby restroom building. What's gotten into me? she thought. She glanced back at David still sitting on the bench as she went inside--this strange yet peaceful enigma of a man, this potentially interesting Tucson This Week guest who didn't want to cooperate. If she couldn't find a way to crack him soon, time would run out, and she'd be forced to find a more usual and boring prospect. Some egoistic and possibly illiterate jock with a bat.
Inside the restroom, she looked into one of the metal stalls, trying to decide whether or not to use the facilities. Against her better judgment, she did. Then, when she noticed that the mirror above the sink was made of shiny metal, she looked at her own distorted reflection there. She touched the metal, slightly. She put a slight dent in the convex bulge of it, seeing how her image changed when she moved her head. Entranced by the shifting reflection for a moment, she suddenly became aware of the time again, and looked down at her watch.
Upon exiting the small building, she saw, to her surprise, that David was gone. She looked around for him in disbelief at first, then panic. Finally, she felt regret, a feeling that was surprisingly colored with sadness. So close to making a real friend, but he probably hadn't trusted her. Or, more likely, he hadn't appreciated being questioned. Why had she pressed it, after giving him the name of her ex-boyfriend, no less!
She began walking slowly toward the ball field, in a daze of contemplation. Odd, how different she'd felt, talking with a stranger with whom there had been no expectations. The reality of it had frightened her, somehow, and made her defensive as well. Why couldn't she have just relaxed? He'd seemed harmless enough. Although perhaps Sarah Collins may have felt the same way with her own stranger. If stranger he'd been.
She'd started to remember other times when she'd blown it in conversation with men who actually had well-paying jobs, but then was startled and relieved to see, in the distance, that the one she'd ironically named "David" now knelt next to a dog owned by another seemingly homeless man. This second man carried a sheet of plastic, which might have been used as a raincoat or sun shield. But it was the man’s dog that David greeted happily, and almost face to face.
When he finally saw her, Val approached at a faster pace, but after rubbing the dog's ears, before she even got there, David rose and waved goodbye to the dog's master.
“Make another friend?” Val asked.
“Dogs are everyone’s friend,” David replied.
Except for guard dogs, she thought. But what she said was: “I'm sorry.”
“Why?” he wanted to know.
“For asking about your past. I didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable.”
“But I'm not uncomfortable,” he said.
“You're not David, either.” Thank God.
“You feel the need to call me something, true?”
“I guess. Sorry.”
“Don't be sorry. Be who you really are.”
“And who is that?”
“You don't know?”
4
They began to walk together toward the Reid Park lake, which was really only a manmade pond, but called a lake due to the scarcity of water in the desert. Val fought against any discomfiture, walking so closely to a man who looked homeless, even if he wasn't. Yet the fight wasn't difficult. Although she looked for reaction in the faces of the few retirees they passed, there wasn't much of it. Not even from the old geezer who left the lake's edge, carrying a fishing rod in one hand and an empty bucket in the other. The old man only seemed to smile wryly at the incongruity of their apparent association. Which wasn't much to endure, was it? she wondered. For an interesting new friend?
“Would it help to give you the Reader’s Digest version about me?” Val asked, in an attempt to ignore the distraction of being observed. "I studied journalism at Columbia. A sonority brat, you might say. My dad was a newspaper man before he retired last year to travel. Only child, so you can imagine how that was too, right?"
“I suppose,” David said, a hint of suspicion in his tone.
“Yeah, I guess that’s a stretch. Mom and I didn’t get along much. Argued over the men I chose. We won’t get into that, though. Much. Anyway, suffice it to. . . what I mean to say is. . . I wasn’t good at that.”
“At what?”
“Romance. I was pursued, of course.”
“Of course.”
Val laughed. “No, but I mean just knowing how men think.”
“Too much.”
“Right. And not just with their minds. But, I mean, the one track, it’s not like us at all. I’m not really complaining, though. Or maybe I am. It’s pretty obvious, they’re more 'focused.' Simple surface creatures, men.”
“Like me?”
“Well, sure, in a way. 'Don’t think, just be?' Nice work if you can get it.”
David now looked out at the ducks. A mother duck had eleven tiny chicks trailing behind her like a line of fuzzy bumblebees.
“Anyway,” Val continued, determined, “I got two proposals, and almost took the second one. Todd was a nice guy, a real charmer. Career military. Air Force, but not a pilot. Todd had a desk job. Still, he knew how to treat the ladies. Trouble was, his idea of a woman’s place didn’t include my being a reporter. I tried giving his ring back, but he wouldn’t take it. Said he’d written it off as a loss he wanted to remember.”
“His mind was playing games with him.”
“Right. His one track mind. Are you gay, by the way?”
He looked back at her, finally. “No.”
“Amazing. Girlfriend? Sorry. Don't answer that.”
“Okay,” said David. But the way he said it was not exactly with relief, she noted. It was more in keeping with his belief that her ramblings weren't as important as she thought. Even her ones about her ex. So she switched back to her other tack.
<
br /> “That other man with the dog. . . did you know him?”
“Yes,” he replied. “I got him the dog.”
“You--” Val hesitated in surprise, then became aware that she was blinking rapidly, as though trying to see through a sudden fog. “Forgive me. You got him the dog?”
“Yes, I did.”
She waited for elaboration. When none came, she asked, “What's his name? The man, I mean.”
“That's not--”
“--important,” she finished his sentence. “I understand. But could you indulge me, anyway? Please?”
“I don't know,” David told her.
She could see that it was the truth. She could see so much truth in him, she wondered if there was any other kind. “Then how,” she began, as though about to present a riddle, “could you get someone a dog without knowing their name? Doesn't the dog have a name, either?”
David looked out at the ducks again. He pointed to the mother duck with the trailing chicks, and asked, "Do you think that mother duck knows the name of each of her hatchlings?"
Sighing, Val hung her head. "Touché," she said.
“Are you feeling okay?” he inquired. Val shook her head, so he took pity on her and added, "I get dogs for homeless people sometimes. And other things, like clothes or food. And jobs, when they're ready. It's what I do, in my retirement.”
She looked up at him in amazement. “Oh.” Then, after a few more involuntary blinks and nods, she made one of her faces at him. A face from her bag of tricks that she usually reserved for a fourth or fifth date. “Why didn't you tell me this before?”
“I'm telling you now.”
“Yes, but--” She paused, feeling her exasperation surfacing again. “And the dog coming by plane is your own dog?”
“Not always.”
“Not always?” She said the word like an accusation.
“No,” he replied, “Picasso was not meant to be my companion, forever. I may find him another person, too. Perhaps you.”
“Me?”
“If that's what you need.”
“I'm sorry. This is--” She searched for a word in her lexicon of adjectives, discarding both bizarre and befitting. “Well, I just mean I'm flustered, here. How can you get dogs for people by air freight? I mean, why not just go to the pound?”
The Miraculous Plot of Leiter & Lott Page 16
