by D. Foy
“Pity,” Super said, “never cries in the streets. But wisdom. Every day it’s howling on the roads, and not a varlet hears it.”
Was he a cream puff, this man? We thought not, though, again, he was no insensitive beast… The song about the man who couldn’t cry until he’d been taken to the place for the insensitive and insane. Who after that not only cried, but cried every time it rained. Who once it had rained for forty days and forty nights died on the forty-first day—he just dehydrated and died…
And it was true, I thought: he was there, and then he wasn’t…
We hove on, getting the brush at every joint—stuck in and shut out, all at once. I picked up the paper. “‘Fed by a week of pounding rain and melting snow,’” I read, “‘Lake Tahoe rose to its highest level in modern times Tuesday, rising six inches in a day to surpass the lake’s legal storage capacity—’”
“Needles in your brain, Horatio, is all that is.”
“Says here it’s a twelve hour drive just to Sacramento.”
“We got a friend,” Super said. “Up yonder.”
“What friend is that,” Avey said.
“Fear not, butterfly. She will feed you.”
Around the bend the lake rolled into view once more, turbulent, vast, and blue, roiling with whitecaps, and scarves of mist, and not a single squawking gull, nothing from a painting on a doctor’s wall, just apathy, brutal, just eternity, cruel. A flooded shopping center drifted past, and then a golf course, flooded, too. Then more concerns, the Mickey D’s again, the crowded Shell’s, that diner packed with refugees and locals and archangels and creeps. And then we were parked before the Thunder Chief Motel, a drowsy looking joint with dripping eaves and needles on the porch. But just like the rest, this one had its blinking sign: NO VACANCY.
“I know you can read,” I told the old man.
“We’ve got a friend.”
“By the looks of it,” Avey said, “he’s doing a good business.”
The old man wriggled in his seat. I looked at his fingers on the wheel: BEND and GIVE.
“What’s the deal?” Basil said.
“The old man says he’s got a friend in there,” Avey said.
“The implication,” I said, “is he can somehow squeeze us in.”
“I’ll hold my breath,” Basil said.
Inside, I rang the bell. To the left hung a pic of two of the scariest entities I had ever seen. The woman reminded me of something from Poe, risen from ancestral vaults. She had a forehead like a boxing glove, her eyes bulged over a steak-knife nose above a scratch for lips, and her beehive do was purple. Next to her, and much taller, stood her giant of a freak, Herman Munster’s brother, his iron hair in a bowl-cut and skin like the rinds on nasty cheese. At least the office was warm. It smelled of TV dinners and mentholated smoke. I rang the bell again.
“Be right with you,” said a voice from behind a half-drawn door.
I had my arm around Avey. She looked at me and smiled. I wanted to be alone with her, in the warmth of a room with chocolate and toast, beneath some grandma’s quilt. We’d murmur to each other, we’d sleep, I’d rest in the belly of her sighs. I wanted to say, I love you, but mumbled, “Take your time.”
The guy through the door was the monster in the pic, the selfsame bizzaro of a guy. He was not, however, clad in a tux, but bicycling shorts and a pale green tee that said MARINE WORLD, AFRICA USA. He was barefoot. Most of his toenails were black. Best of all, he was an inch or two taller than Basil, pushing seven feet.
“What can we do for you kids?” he said, and placed a dish of olives on the counter.
It took me a second to find my voice. “Hows about telling us you accidentally switched on your NO VACANCY sign?”
“Since Moses got the tablets,” said the man, “I been sitting in this office. That’s a long time, you know.” I picked up a postcard featuring a Fabio-type lunk in a g-string, smoldering with his pinched blue eyes and ridiculous bulge. It said FABULOUS LAKE TAHOE. “And in all that time,” the man said, “I haven’t seen anything like what we’ve got going on here.” Now that he’d moved closer, the sacks beneath eyes took on a whole new meaning. “I ask you,” he said, “would either one of you kids go out in this if you did not absolutely have to?”
“So you did make a mistake with the sign,” Avey said.
The man smacked his lips. “Nincompoops I think the world is spawning these days,” he said. “If you ask me, that’s what I’d say. This genius of a couple, it turns out, decided they were going to try to make it home tonight. Only fifteen minutes ago they conceived of this exploit.”
“You’re kidding,” I said.
The man crammed a handful of olives in his mouth. “Do I look like the kind who kids?”
“Depends on what the-kind-who-kids looks like,” I said.
The man took a step back from the counter and held out his arms. “The father of our country?” he said, smacking on his olives. “He’s a big fat nothing next to me.”
“How much,” Avey said.
“Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know. But I think you’ll agree that $59.95, plus tax, is a precious good deal.”
“We’ll take it.”
“Just the two of you?”
“We’ve got three more outside.”
“Not to be slippery, but that will make it $89.95.” From behind a pair of thrift store specs, he took up a pencil and licked its tip. “Two king-sizes ought to keep you, I think.”
“You know an old man named Super?” Avey said.
“That I cannot say.”
“He says he knows you.”
“Lots of people say they know me when I don’t know them from Jehoshaphat.”
“He’s right outside.” I pointed out the window, but go figure, Super had disappeared. “Well,” I said, “he was a minute ago.”
“He couldn’t’ve gone far,” said the man. He slid his check-in book my way. “Now if one of you gentle people would be so kind as to share your intimates.” He snuck another peep outside. “You may think I’m plotzing, but my eyes, they tell me there’s a little monkey out there, dangling in that truck, I swear.”
“Plotzing you are not,” Avey said.
The man shook his head. “Then I wasn’t plotzing.”
I asked Basil to cover the tab till we could reach a bank.
“You got dough in the bank?” he said. I looked at him. A wad of bills appeared in his hand. “Here.”
The room was typical, a tube on the wall, plastic drinking cups and cheap white towels, the Hallmark photo of two owls in a hole in a tree. Lucille wanted to get in bed but Basil wouldn’t let her. He needed her to get his truck. Triple A told us such conditions would usually keep us waiting two or three hours, but it just so happened a man was nearby. Fifteen minutes later, our buddies were gone.
Not until the door had shut behind them and the hush came down did I comprehend: this was the real world, this normality, we were safe again in the real world now, Avey and I were alone.
Her eyes were black, her skin a lake of shadows and cream. A thick green light had fallen on her, full of swirling motes. Her mouth, her lips, her teeth—she was all too terribly edible, so deceptive, so pure.
I imagined her finger along my teeth and over my tongue, and then another finger and another until soon her hand had eased down my throat, and then her arm, too, and other hand and arm, and her face, and head, and on, till she was all inside. I touched her mouth. Her eyelids drooped.
“So pretty,” I said.
She blushed. “Really?”
I plucked her nose and stuck my thumb between my fingers. “Really.”
Avey kissed me again, and we laughed.
“I like you, AJ,” she said.
“I like you, Mud.”
It was unbelievably quiet. Everything lay quiet, everything still. The room was a cave under water and all that was in it a merking’s things, silent as the depths, lovely and green, a silence only the gifted could know, the gifted and the
drowned. Avey sat on my lap.
“I feel so greasy,” she said.
I put my face in her neck, her hair. We rocked to and fro. Such stillness, such quiet, what a world…
And the rain kept raining, down the mountains, into rivers and lakes…
“Speaking of which,” she said at last, “did you know there was some greasy spoon down the way?”
“I saw it.”
“Let’s walk down there.”
“What about Super?”
“You really like that old guy, don’t you.”
“He’s the kind of guy who scares you while he makes you laugh. But I feel sorry for him. I don’t know why.”
“He’s a lonely man.”
“His truck’s outside.”
“Come on.”
“I don’t want to be anything like him,” I said. Avey shook her head. “But then again, I want to be exactly like him.” Avey smiled. “You miss Dinky?”
“I started missing Dinky the day we met.”
“It’s like he’s on vacation,” I said. “Like he left on a train.”
“Come on.”
I took her hand. “I like you, Mud.”
Again she smiled. “I can see that, AJ. I like you, too.”
A DARK-SKINNED MAN WITH KRIS KRINGLE EYES and big gold teeth met us at the door and took our name.
“Is cold out there,” he said, “and warm in here. We take good care of you.”
Here was a place full of people who might never have known they were trapped in a storm. Families of all sorts had jammed the room to the gunnels. Maple syrup and waffles, hash browns and crepes, and pork chops and ketchup and muffins and toast, and burgers, too, and corned beef and sauerkraut on rye, and hot chocolate and tea, and onions and root beer and coffee and milk, and French toast, and raspberry jam. Smells swirled round us thick with the hum of satisfied speech, a great single body of glistening eyes and munching mouths, the clatter and clink of spoons in cups and forks on plates, and the steamy hiss of fryer and grill, and the banter of waitresses, children, cooks. An infant sat in her mother’s lap, feeding from a bottle. The mother herself was engaged in talk with a boy in a mask, waving a plastic gun, another, I guessed, of her many. The boy had asked about the difference between bacon and ham, whereon she took the baby’s foot and jiggled its toes. “This little piggy,” she said, “went to the market. This little piggy stayed home…” The boy tore off his mask and squealed. “Oink, oink!” he shouted. “Oink!” Two girls maybe seven or eight were playing a game of patty cakes. An old woman sat with her old man holding hands in silence, not for nothing to say, I could see, but for the glow that was The Real. Red and green crepe bunting festooned the place. Lights twinkled, music purred.
A woman approached. She was pregnant and wore her hair in a braid, tied up top with a bow of white taffeta. Around her neck on a silver chain hung a silver ball that tinkled as she moved. She was tall and thin, and her eyes gleamed with such joy, I had never seen. I recognized the song, by Captain & Tennille—I will! I will! I will!
“Hello, hello,” the woman said. I wanted to call her Old Lady Pear, but she wasn’t old, but like a pear. “I sure do hope you two are ready to eat, because we’re ready to serve you. Ready spaghetti!”
“I am no lie, eh?” said the man with gold teeth as the woman led us off.
“What’s your name?” Avey said.
“My name,” said the woman, and pinched the chain above her silver ball, “is Robin. Did I sprinkle magic dust on you yet?”
“I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure,” I said.
“Never say never,” she said, and giggled. She leaned first to Avey’s side of the booth and then to mine and shook the ball so it tinkled. “All of us girls have them,” she said. “I was the first. Now every girl gets one on her birthday. We’re all fairy sisters!”
“You’re lucky,” Avey said.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Robin said. She stood back and gleamed. “You two look like you could use a good strong cup of motor starter!”
“Is she cool or what?” Avey said when Robin had left.
“Straight from a book,” I said.
Robin came back with coffee and filled our cups. It was so hot and black and the steam so thick I almost didn’t want to drink it. Nothing, it seemed, had been so inviting for years.
“I’ve told you my name,” said Robin, “but you haven’t told me yours.”
“I’m Avey. That’s AJ.”
“Well, Avey and AJ, would you mind if I make a suggestion?”
“I don’t know…” Avey said, drawing out the words.
“Swiss Boysenberry Crepes.”
“You like those, do you?”
“Like them?” Robin wore heavy blue eye shadow that glistened when she blinked. “Goodness, AJ. I could eat those until they came out my ears!”
“Well what are you waiting for?” I said. “This guy’s starving.”
Robin’s smile never left. Avey touched her arm. “Don’t take it personally, but I’m kind of in the mood for eggs.”
“I do love eggs,” said Robin as her hand described a circle round her belly. “They make me think of how fast my little one here’s gone from being a little teensy egg to this.”
“When’re you due?” I said.
“Make me a promise?” Robin said.
“Depends.”
Robin giggled. “Think of me on Ground Hog Day!” she said, somehow able to laugh and talk at once.
“That’s it?” I said. “The big day?”
“The big day. Pop!” Robin poked her belly. “Now about those eggs,” she said. “We can make them any way you like, scrambled hard or soft, soft boiled, hard boiled, poached, sunnyside-up, over easy, over hard, what’s your pleasure, Avey? Speak now or I’ll have to come again!”
“Scrambled,” Avey said, “with cheese. And toast and hash browns and jelly. And orange juice, too. Doesn’t orange juice sound divine?” she said.
“Orange juice sounds just lovely,” I said.
“I can’t believe how perfect you two are,” Robin said. “It makes me all warm and mushy inside just to see you. How long have you been married?”
“We’re not,” Avey said.
“Well you should be,” Robin said. She spun round on her pediatric shoes and shouted. “Yoo-hoo, Ma-ri-a!” A curvy girl with kinky hair and tiny teeth pattered to the table. “Do they or do they not look like the perfect couple?”
Robin hadn’t lied about the silver balls. Maria pulled one from her blouse and shook it. “It’s your destiny,” she said.
“See?” Robin said.
“You’re a regular gypsy,” I said.
“I’m good, I’m bad,” Robin said, “though I might be a little ugly.”
“No,” Avey said.
“Yes!” One of the cooks called Robin’s name, and she jumped. “Goodness. They’ll have my head on a platter before I know it. I’ve got to get your order filled.”
The place was really bustling, the air enough to swoon. Waitresses worked their way through the aisles, each with a silver ball on a silver chain. Two construction-type guys sat hunkered over plates full of biscuits and gravy and pancakes and butter and bacon, all good things for hungry working men. Young and upcoming professionals decked out in Calvin Klein shades and Gucci skiwear clambered round tables loaded with grub, grandmas and grandpas, as well, gnawing on bones and sucking down fries, their grandsons and -daughters righteously porking along. Here was the ontology of oneness in a world gone mad, the music of chaos and bliss, some bright and risen band of lovelies playing for our ears only. Or maybe it was the way things had been and would always be, plain as a mountain, jeering at my stupor with good-natured amplitude until finally, like a man who’d been anesthetized, like it knew would be, I came round. The fragrance of so many meals, and the gorgeous din, the coffee in my mouth, hot with sugar and cream, these were a euphony all their own. Since I could remember, this was the first time my body had keened
with a sense the world calls delight. My head swam loud with textures, tastes, colors, sound. On every wall hung pictures of the famous who’d graced the joint, a regular Vegas pantheon. There was Crystal Gayle in a white lace dress, and The Oak Ridge Boys with pompadours and smiles, the Denvers, too, John and Bob, and Wayne Newton, and Sammy Davis Jr, and Three Dog Night. The cheese factor was as high as the spirits. Hosannas from the sky couldn’t have sweetened the pot.
“Avey,” I said. She didn’t answer. She only looked. “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s like this place fills me with a huge sense of, I don’t know, well-being, I guess.”
“That is so weird,” Avey said like a high school bimbo, though I loved her for it anyway, “because that’s exactly how I feel, too.”
“It’s a Brady Bunch thing,” I said.
“I wish I could live here.”
“Me, too,” I said. “With you.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Me, I mean, with you.”
Steam like genies swarmed from our plates when Robin set them down, boysenberries oozed across my crepes, cheese over Avey’s eggs, them and mounds of butter. A smorgasbord of syrup magically appeared—strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, maple—the whole goddamned works. And though I’d never asked, Robin had brought me a giant glass of milk. If Avey’s face was a picture of mine, we must have looked the King and Queen of Earth.
“Say, Robin.”
“Yes, dear?”
“You wouldn’t by any chance know a silver-haired man called Super?”
“Super Duper? Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “You know him?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“You’ve heard of him then,” Avey said.
“Nope.”
“Then how’d you know his name?”
“Silly! Everyone is super-duper to me!”
