The Miraculous Plot of Leiter & Lott

by Jonathan Lowe

  “Because the animal shelter requires names, like you do. They also require someone to have a home address. My benefactor--”

  “Who shall be nameless?”

  “--works with me to provide animals as a stepping stone for homeless people to get off the streets. You cannot degenerate into mental illness if you have a companion to talk to and care for. You will not begin talking to yourself--or rather your own ego--to develop a split personality, if there is a dog with you, reacting to everything you do. Along with the dog comes a responsibility, too. Your fate becomes the dog's fate. The dog is assured of medical care by calling my phone number and leaving a message.”

  “What--you have an answering machine, too?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Where? And please, please don't say it's not important.”

  “Where I sleep.” He paused, then finally added, “A trailer nearby.”

  “This is amazing. So you have a car?”

  “A van. I sleep in it while on the road, sometimes. But right now I can’t drive.”

  Val shook her head, smiling in disbelief. “What more aren't you telling me?”

  “What more do you need to know?”

  5

  They approached the rose garden, next to the lake. It was half an acre surrounded by a large round fence, with a gazebo in the middle, and three benches. A quaint spot. A circle within a circle. Beautiful, simple, serene.

  "Let’s check out the flowers, okay?" Val said, indicating the path. She walked ahead of David a few strides before realizing he had stayed behind. Then she stopped and turned back to him. “Is there a problem?”

  David stepped onto the path experimentally, then appeared to walk with some effort. He passed her, going toward the center gazebo as she followed, watching him. Once there, he looked around a bit, as if looking for something, overwhelmed by the garden for some reason. At last he sat on the center bench, and Val sat beside him.

  “Something’s wrong,” Val heard herself say aloud.

  At that, David's expression changed. He looked around him again, as if for the first time. Suddenly back in the moment. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he noted.

  Val nodded, thoughtfully. “You’ve been here before, haven't you?”

  “Yes, I was remembering. But I’m here now.”

  Val sighed, seeing the renewed peace evident there, in his face. “You’re right,” she admitted. “It is. . . lovely.”

  She was dying to question him, but waited instead. He noticed that she waited, and he smiled. Finally, he said: “I was reborn here, actually.”

  This time she couldn't help herself. “Reborn? You mean like a spiritual conversion?” She gazed up at the gazebo, trying to piece it together in her mind: A gazebo. A rose garden. You were a different person when you came in. Then something happened, and you changed. She asked, “A wedding?”

  David looked away, his silence an answer in itself.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” she said. “Unlike me, you were married once, weren't you? And then she. . . died?”

  He nodded. “It wasn’t until after I came back here, though, that my life changed.”

  Stunned by his simple confession, she stared at him, now. At his strangely serene face. Then she looked away. “I’m sorry,” she said at last, not knowing what else to say.

  “Don't be. I accept it, now.”

  “But you didn’t then?”

  “No. I blotted it out, like an eclipse. But now I’ve let it go.”

  “A clean break. I see.”

  “It was either that or resist the truth of it forever. To go mad, or become friendly with the pain and fear. Like people you see in your rearview mirror, tailgating you to get to the future, never satisfied with what they have, no matter what it is. So afraid of any loss that they lose everything.”

  Val followed his line of sight. Where David looked, a car roared by on the distant road, passing a slower vehicle. She indicated the traffic. “I guess everybody wants the same things, and you have to run really hard to get them before it’s too late. That fabulous house in the burbs is on the market. . .the best school nearby for your kids. . .that big screen high def TV.” She chuckled half heartedly at the thought. “We’re all programmed to be desperate housewives. So if a wrinkle comes along, our life is over.”

  “Or so we think,” David agreed.

  She considered asking him something specific about his wife, but thought better of it. “Easy to say it shouldn’t matter,” she continued, “but it does. How you look, for instance. Like everybody’s on camera, playing parts in some reality show. Like maybe that guy behind you is late for his big screen test at the Paris Hilton.”

  He nodded. “Appearances.”

  “Are deceiving. And beauty’s only skin deep. Yeah. Who believes that anymore?” On impulse, Val reached over and brushed a strand of dark hair back from his cheek. “You know, you could use a makeover. How about it? Wanna cut this off and get fitted for an Italian suit? You could get a job working for some high powered PR firm. Become front man for Shaq or Tiger with the soft drink companies. Make some real bucks.” She put his hair back the way it was. “Sorry.”

  “Your favorite word?”

  “I heard it a lot growing up.” She smiled a little ruefully. A distant horn blared. They both looked over to where the children were being lined up for the waiting school bus. “You know, I’ve never told anyone this, but when I was a girl, I liked astronomy, like a few boys used to do. But I was told it wasn’t an appropriate profession for ladies. I don’t remember them using the word ‘appropriate,’ but you know what I mean.”

  He looked at her with what seemed surprise. "Yes."

  She thought of mentioning Sarah Collins, and their brief encounter in the tunnel, under the bridge. The facts would take only take a few sentences, as they had with the police. Instead, though, she conceded, “I suppose they give those girls appropriate things to learn and recite, too. Thinking about their safety, their future. Maybe they don't even see them as kids, but as potentials. Future adults. Still, that’s what parents and teachers do, though, right? Protect. It’s hard-wired into them, like a computer virus. Or like men on the prowl in bars.”

  David smiled at this. “One day, when your life is nearly over, you'll know that what you did was what you did. There’ll be no more adding to it. All your fears of the future were only fears. This is what really happened. What we're doing right now. This is the only real truth. Everything else is imaginary.”

  Val stared at him as he got up and began walking slowly back to the entrance. She stood, and as she passed one of the rose bushes, noted its small plaque, indicating the variety: NEW BEGINNINGS.

  “Are you thinking now?” David asked, when she caught up to him.

  “Don't you mean what am I thinking now?”

  “No, I don't.”

  6

  During their walk around the circular path surrounding the Reid park golf course, Val pointed at three men standing on the green beyond the fence. “Imagine being one of those guys out there," she said, half wondering if she could rattle him with the idea. "The one in the yellow shirt might be a doctor. Retired, though. Blue shirt is a lawyer. Not defense, but not pro bono either. Tax lawyer, I bet. The young guy? He’s still in college, being mentored on investments. Mutual funds, securities. They crack jokes about women and sex when they’re not talking sports or money. At the end of the day that’s all they care about, really. And of course those three subjects are really about the same thing--control, world domination, victory. Guy stuff you should know about, David. You are a man, right? I mean, you didn’t used to be a woman?”

  His smile returned, briefly. “In another life, perhaps.”

  "I believe that."

  "What else do you believe?"

  “That nothing bothers you. Not even my talking too much?”

  “I am not bothered.”

  “Amused, then. So are you bothered by anything?”

  “The violence p
eople do to each other and themselves when they don’t get what they think they want.”

  “Right. Have you been mugged, then?”

  “Yes. And you?”

  “No, and I've never been assaulted, either. Unless you count date rape.”

  “I do.”

  “Good," she said. "May I ask more about your mugging without reciprocating?”

  “It doesn’t bother me anymore. I meant violence due to blindness, like when it’s done in the name of profit or religion. A conditioned response.”

  “What about sports? They're often violent, pay well, and they're religions too, in a way.” He answered with only a nod, and so, during another one of their longer pauses, she pointed out at the golf course again. “Check out those two. Maybe their golden years have tarnished yellow for them, and so--”

  “You have a habit of making up stories about people,” David observed, interrupting.

  “But it doesn’t bother you, though.”

  “People are not their stories. They’re hidden behind their stories.”

  Ah ha. “And that bothers you.”

  “No.”

  “You keep saying that! But what if you’re in repression, in denial? Maybe you need to talk to a shrink.”

  “Why is it we think people with different values than ours are insane?”

  “Maybe because the pay is good."

  David abruptly stopped and closed his eyes, then opened them and pointed up toward a bird in a tall cottonwood tree. Instead of watching the bird, though, Val walked to the tree, and stretched out her hand to feel the initials that had been carved there, like a wound. David stepped up behind her, and touched her shoulder. Again, the act momentarily startled her.

  “Don’t worry, the tree will survive,” he said. “Look.”

  He pointed, then. She gazed up into the branches with their high fluttering leaves catching the sun. But now the bird was gone, so what was he pointing at? When she looked back down, David had already begun walking away.

  She rushed to join him, glancing at her watch before asking, “Do you like music?”

  He nodded. “Some.”

  “Who, specifically?”

  “I like Miles Davis.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “Jazz. Well, that makes sense. Living in the moment? Improvising?”

  “Miles was good at that. There’s freedom, even within a structure, if you can open your mind to it.”

  “Three or four minutes of a typical song isn't usually enough time for much of an expression, you mean.”

  “It’s happened, but most songs are similar because the mind prefers repetition over change. Obsession over discovery.”

  “Is that why the secret to happiness is so hard to find, too?”

  He looked at her almost, it seemed, in disappointment. As though everything he'd said had fallen on deaf ears. “There is no secret,” he said.

  “No? Why not?”

  “Because it’s not something that's out there, somewhere. So it's not a journey. You're already there, and just don't know it.”

  “Wow, that's a relief,” Val confessed. “I'm happy, and I don't even know it? Or is this what you meant before, about my finding myself?”

  “Yes.” He stopped walking and suddenly turned to take her arm, halting her in her tracks. “What's your name?”

  “What?" She pivoted to free her arm, and move it behind her back. Teasingly at first, but then, seeing his seriousness, allowing her feigned reaction to harden into what it had merely mimicked. "You know my name," she said. "I just don't know yours.”

  “And do you think of yourself as Valerie, too?”

  She laughed, but in a way that felt like a deterrent. From her hidden vocabulary of defenses. “You're playing games with me, now,” she said, and started to walk on. But then he held her back with only his voice.

  “How long will it be before you give it up, do you think?” he asked.

  She stopped and turned, tensing. “Give what up?”

  “The story telling.”

  For a moment she felt frozen to the spot on which she stood. How to answer such a thing? She suddenly felt trapped by his words, and couldn't look at him directly. “Hey, everyone has a story to tell,” she heard herself say. Except you.

  “Would you know me any better if I told you my history? I told you I’m not the same person anymore."

  She felt an inexplicable flush of anger, knowing her attempt at rattling him had backfired, and now she made no attempt to suppress it. Hands on her hips, she felt almost like a woman scorned, once more. Almost, yet somehow with a curious quality to it. Because she was aware of her reaction now, too. The scripted, theatrical aspect of it. As though part of her were watching from the sidelines as her controlling frustration and passion surfaced. Off to one side, as in a movie, horns honked on cue, and the traffic became like an endless sweep of blank faces moving toward unknown destinations. But even while these reminded her of passing hours and missed opportunities, there was also embedded within it a sense of projection beyond herself. A sense of being that driver, or that one. Off to another house, another job, another. . . story.

  When David finally spoke again, his unflappable serenity challenged her emotions once more. “People rarely change unless something big happens to them that unmasks their ego, and allows them to open their eyes to the world. To see the big picture. Maybe this is what needs to happen to you, so you can be free of the past as well. Have you considered this?”

  She studied the path ahead, which on the one hand seemed to be leading nowhere, and yet also everywhere. She glanced at her watch again, wanting time out. But for what? To think? “Listen,” she managed to say, still not looking at him. “I really do have a job to do, and it's getting late. Maybe I'll see you here again sometime, and we can continue this conversation, okay?”

  When he didn't answer, she felt for certain that it was a lie. It was also why she avoided his eyes. Then again, maybe it had all been a lie, what he believed, too. Maybe he was deluding himself as much as her.

  If only she could believe that.

  She gave him a little wave at this thought, as she was wont to do with friends who'd outstayed their welcome. “Okay, then, goodbye for now, David,” she heard herself say.

  Or whatever your name is.

  She forced herself forward, toward the distant parking lot, quickening her pace at his silence. She felt an odd relief as each step she took widened the distance between them. When she finally glanced over her shoulder, he was nowhere to be seen. As if he had never been.

  “That was a close call,” she whispered, before it occurred to her that talking to herself was probably even less healthy than talking to strangers.

  At the realization that she wasn't merely late, she paused a moment later to compose herself at the nearest bench. She tried to imagine how she might explain her strange encounter to those at the office, and why it seemed even stranger now that he was gone. Why had she willingly missed a chance to interview a star ball player? Was it career suicide she was secretly seeking? Perhaps she could claim that it had been an enigma, like chancing upon a black hole in deep space--a singularity whose gravity had attracted her just before she'd managed to escape being pulled into the unknown. Or if she waited long enough, maybe David would make the complete circle around the golf course, and return to complete the mystery. Then she wouldn’t have to explain it to anyone at all, including herself.

  She waited, but when he did not return, a sense of loss engulfed her. It was a familiar feeling, like déjà vu, and not unlike being lost as well.

  7

  Val took an impulsive detour downtown on the way home. At first she cruised past the old Fox theater, where ornamental neon glowed beside an Italian sidewalk cafe whose tables bustled with exuberant concert goers. Next came the skeletons of those future monoliths of glass and steel that figured into the district's revitalization plans, so long stuck in the planning stage and now out of funds for completion. Feeling increasingly re
stless after each turn, she finally passed a gaggle of teens on the street corner, and when she spied a lone girl sitting atop a battered picnic table at the rear of a closed bar off Congress street, she abruptly braked, parked, and got out. She walked purposefully toward the girl, yet felt the effort. The resistance.

  She's lost, came her first thought. just like me.

  The girl appeared to be wearing a long black coat, like a duster seen in old western films. The closer Val got, though, the lighter in weight the material appeared to be. Dark, yet without the stiffness of leather. Her shoes too were black, with thick soles and high lace ups. Mock boots in military style, the girl's footwear matched a severe buzz cut that resembled an attempted Mohawk, but with the sides grown partly back and tinted orange. The impression was of a persona constructed on whim, subject to the vagaries of mood. Only her deep-set cobalt blue eyes, luminous and accentuated by purple eye shadow, seemed insistently candid, their whites as pure as chalk. Attentive and receptive, the soul soon revealed in those eyes possessed a fleeting curiosity as startling as the luminous eyes of an owl whenever clouds parted for the moon.

  Before Val could even speak, the enigmatic young woman stabbed out her cigarette and announced, "I don't have any tattoos, unless ya count the gargoyle on my left hip, and the flaming Harley on my right."

  "I'm sorry, what?" Val responded in disconcertion.

  The girl grinned with exaggerated stagecraft, tilting her head to one side, a gesture that emphasized the angular profile of her nose and chin. Then she thrust out her hand as her expression morphed in defiant constriction at her violated space. "I'm Rikki," she divulged. "Something I can do for you, officer?"

  Val moved closer, with the intention of taking her hand. At that, the hand dropped limply away. So Val let her own arm drift back down too, and asked, "What makes you think I'm a police woman?"

  "'Cause I don't have a personal banker," Rikki, the Goth girl, replied.