Joe's Liver

by Di Filippo, Paul

  Ardy obeys. He is too numb to even worry that Roy will take off without him. He doubts the likelihood of such a betrayal anyway. Roy seems to need his presence too much, as some sort of touchstone to his own actions. Ardy cannot say the same of Roy.

  Once inside, Ardy hears voices from upstairs.

  Stealthily he moves to a position outside Roseanna’s bedroom door and peers around the frame.

  Confronting Roseanna is a big, blubbery, weepy sort of fellow, dressed in blue coveralls stenciled with a serial number, which he wears somehow as if they were a three-piece suit. He is holding both her hands in his.

  “… couldn’t stand it anymore, Rosie, I just couldn’t. Do you know what they had me doing, Rosie? I was on work detail, cleaning storm drains. Up to my knees in wet oak leaves, dear. It was sheer torture. Every minute I dreaded that someone I knew would drive by and spot me. The indignity of it all! God, they know how to break a man down! What with the holiday season and missing you and all — I had to do it, Rosie. I skipped out when the guards weren’t looking, Rosie. I’m on the lam now, just like that old show, ‘The Fugitive.’”

  “You’ll have to turn yourself in, Roger. You can’t stay here, they’ll surely catch you. The family name is already tainted with criminal shame, and if you’re caught here it’ll just be worse.”

  “I won’t go back, goddamn it, I can’t! I’ll be a quivering mass of jelly in another couple of months. And the lack of physical consolation, Rosie … I’ve missed your body so much.”

  “No, don’t do that, Roger, not now! Oh, I’ve missed you too, you know. A little lower, if you’re going to do it at all.…”

  Ardy creeps away, emotions of loss and nostalgia and sympathy mingling with his more pressing fears. Downstairs he gathers up some clothing, his Tupperwared stash, and all the money in Roseanna’s purse. Roseanna’s Christmas cookbook he leaves prominently displayed. Mister Balboni s wine he opens and swigs on the spot. Roy’s glove he takes outside.

  “What took you so long?”

  “I was simply bidding a silent adieu to the site of many fond memories, for I fear I will not be passing this way again.”

  “If you don’t get in and drive, our last memories probably won’t be too far away.”

  “May I suggest Pleasantville, New York, as a suitable hideout ? I know people there.…”

  “No, just pick up Route 93 south, and I’ll tell you where to go.”

  “Very good, Master Mountjoy.”

  “Can it!”

  “Roy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “In case we perish in a pyre of glory, may I present you with your Christmas present early?”

  “Wow, thanks, Ardy. Sorry I didn’t have time to pick up anything for you, what with the revolution and all taking up so much time.”

  “No matter, Roy. No material tokens whatsoever are necessary to insure that I will retain forever vivid memories of this day.

  “Same goes for me. If we live.”

  “Indeed.”

  6

  It Pays to Enrich Your Word Power

  Ardy says, “Roy, may I please see a portion of that newspaper when you’re done with it ?”

  The entire newspaper comes sailing across the bus aisle like some rabid albino fruit bat that might have launched itself out of the leafy green canopy of Spice Island vegetation surrounding the orphanage of the Sisters of Eternal Recurrence. In mid-flight it disintegrates into its component pages, which land in a heap on Ardy’s lap and at his feet.

  “Thank you, Roy.”

  “Just fucking read it and keep quiet while I try to bag a few zees.”

  “I would be glad to follow your advice, Roy, if you would take time to explain the meaning of that last idiom.”

  “Sleep, you damn idiot, I wanna sleep! My eyes feel like they’re full of kitty litter, and we’re almost into the city. Just let me catch a few minutes sleep.”

  “Certainly, Roy. I hope you don’t mind satisfying my curiosity with regard to new locutions, but it is only that I am always on the lookout for ways to increase my —”

  “Ardy!”

  Roy is soon drowsing, despite the none too gentle progress of the intercity bus they find themselves aboard. As Ardy attempts to assemble the pages of the disordered newspaper into a coherent whole, a sudden feeling of déjà vu overtakes him. Suddenly it is not Roy with him, but Mister Enrico; not the unknown city of Providence approaching, but the American border; not Christmas morning, but Thanksgiving. The whole experience is extremely disorienting. Ardy feels as if he is merely some limb of a larger being, without volition, made to carry out repetitive motions whose larger meaning is forever beyond his ken.

  He recalls the teachings of Sister Publia Hyacinth Hegel on the mysterious ways of the Creator: “Like a stage magician, the Lord’s Hand is always quicker than a poor mortal’s eye. And He always has something up His sleeve.”

  Ardy is forced to suspend his newspaper reassembly and meditate a moment on this parable, until the queer sense of helpless displacement disappears. Never while walking the placid beaches or embowered trails of the Spice Island has Ardy ever felt such strange sensations. He wonders if it all marks some acclimatization process to life in the First World, which, from Ardy’s admittedly limited experience, does take some getting used to.

  Consider, for instance, their flight from Boston.

  The Jag broke down a mere fifteen miles south of the city, all the oil drained from its bullet-riddled underbelly. It was four in the afternoon on Christmas Eve. The sky that had been so richly blue during the mad UMDPAFLL attack on the academically sacrosanct nuclear installation was now smoldering in the west and deepening to purple-black in the east.

  Ardy, having guided the expired vehicle into the breakdown lane, levered open his door and emerged. As he gently swung his door back into the frame of the sadly used car which he had once been so proud to drive, Roy, now standing outside also, violently slammed his door shut with a loud trademark exclamation.

  “Fucking shit!”

  Every piece of safety glass remaining in the blasted windows fell melodiously to the ground.

  “Well, our asses are really in a sling now,” said Roy. “The roads are gonna be crawling with cops looking for us, and we’re stuck without a set of wheels.”

  “Roy, may I suggest that we attempt to ‘thumb a ride,’ as the hobos have it. The last time I found myself in a similar situation, I was fortunate enough to meet up with your lovely mother.…”

  “Beats walking, I guess. But I don’t know, not many people will stop and offer a ride nowadays. Too many homicidal maniacs around.”

  Ardy was about to mention that their attack upon the MIT facility hardly qualified as the act of a sane person, and that, by many citizens, they themselves might be regarded as irresponsible and mentally unbalanced. But at the last minute he refrained, suspecting that such a viewpoint would not be calmly appraised at its full value by the dangerously agitated Roy.

  The two men began walking backwards down the interstate, thumbs extended.

  “If you see a cop, run for it.”

  “My own instincts counseled likewise.”

  After two hours of being ignored, Roy despaired and gave up. He turned to face their direction of travel and trudged wearily along in the gathering darkness, hands in his pockets against the chill. As he still perversely retained his dark glasses, he stumbled frequently. Ardy, however, continued his awkward reverse motion, persisting in smiling at each passing motorist and waggling his thumb. Finally his endurance paid off. A gigantic tractor-trailer rig braked to a stop some yards down from them. Roy and Ardy began to run for it.

  When they reached the cab, the passenger door was already open. Roy stepped up first and thrust his head inside. Ardy, Standing on the macadam, could see the driver was a bulky man in his forties.

  “Either of youse guys queer?” demanded the driver.

  “No, sir, no way, not at all,” Roy hastened to assure the man.

>   “Get walkin’, then,” the driver replied, pushing Roy out, pulling the door closed, and roaring off.

  “I don’t understand,” said Ardy.

  “Forget it,” Roy said dispiritedly.

  Around ten o’clock — after several occasions when Roy and Ardy had been forced to lie flat in the snow as squad cars raced past with sirens and lights going — another car stopped in deference to Ardy’s supplication. They trotted toward it.

  A battered mid-’Seventies station wagon, the vehicle held approximately fifteen people whose smiling Asiatic countenances shone in the mild green interior light cast by the dashboard instruments.

  Roy stuck his head in a rolled-down window and begin to shout, as if to overcome any assumed language barrier.

  “Providence, we’re going to Providence! You take us there, yes?”

  The driver and his passengers simply smiled. Two round-faced teenage girls whispered and giggled between themselves. Traffic whizzed by, lessening hour by hour as people settled down by hearthsides to await the arrival of jolly Saint Nick.

  “Roy, perhaps we should just get in. Does it really matter where they’re going? Certainly any place would be better than here.”

  Roy sighed. “I guess.”

  Ardy opened a back door. Somehow the occupants of the car made room for two more. Roy and Ardy got in; the car accelerated sluggishly down the highway.

  Roy immediately retreated into a cocoon of sullen silence. Ardy, to the contrary, attempted to communicate with his rescuers. Having studied their physiognomies for a time, he uttered a foreign word. The response was immediate: the people burst into a frenzy of gleeful, excited talk.

  “Roy, I believe I have deduced the origin of these kind folks. They are Hmong refugees from Indochina. I read all about them in the Digest. There are enclaves of them all along the East Coast, with especial concentrations in Providence and its environs.”

  “Fantastic. So they are going to Providence.”

  “On that point I’m not sure.”

  “Don’t you know any more of their language? What the hell was it you said to them anyway?”

  “Simply their word for ‘water-buffalo,’ a very important object in their native land. I’m afraid that is the extent of my vocabulary in their tongue.”

  “Oh, Christ, that’s peachy! If we see any water-buffaloes we can call their attention to them with no trouble. But as for finding out where we’re going, forget it.”

  “I am sorry, Roy. I did what I could.”

  Roy fell back into his miserable self-pitying quietude. Ardy wished he could be certain Roy was absorbing the proper lesson from the events of the day — to wit, that armed insurrection against the elected authorities was tantamount to suicide — but was instead afraid that Roy was simply trying to identify what he would do differently the next time.

  The Hmong people ceased trying to communicate, except by vast smiles, to which Ardy replied in kind. By the time they crossed the Massachusetts/Rhode Island border, Ardy’s cheeks felt like they were going to fall off.

  The car left the freeway at the first major conurbation. Ardy shook Roy out of his stupor. The confusing and somewhat scary events of the day seemed to have enervated Roy, reducing his usual zealous and righteous belligerence. Ardy remembered how he himself had reacted to events back in Vermont — when the hectic pace and quick changes of the First World were still new to him — and sympathized with Roy. But he knew that if their life continued along the vector already established, Roy would soon grow accustomed to such heretofore novel experiences as constantly running for one’s life amid bullets and explosions.

  “Roy, the sign said we were entering someplace called Pawtucket.”

  “Shit, we’re just north of Providence and my friends.”

  “Still, we’re much better off now than before, Roy.”

  “Yeah, yeah, great, you sound like that fucking Doctor Pangloss they made us read about back at fucking Bennington.”

  “I am afraid the allusion is lost on me, Roy.”

  “You got nothing but illusions.”

  “I have a dream, Roy. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s an American tradition.”

  “Its an American tradition to lynch dreamers too. Especially ones with your color skin.”

  “Roy, such cynicism is most inappropriate on the eve of the Lord’s nativity.”

  “All right, all right, I’m not gonna argue. Lets just concentrate on what we’re gonna do next. Hey, there’s a HoJo’s, make ’em stop.”

  Through vigorous gesticulations Ardy conveyed the desired idea. The station-wagon pulled into a well-lit parking lot. Ardy and Roy got out.

  “Hey, Ardy, come on, what are you doing?”

  “Just shaking hands, Roy. So long, goodbye, everyone.”

  The car pulled away, tailpipe only an inch above the ground. Roy headed for the door to the restaurant-cum-motor-lodge.

  “Okay, the first thing we do is call my friends.”

  Finding a pay-phone, Roy placed his call. He emerged disappointed. “No answer, they must be out partying. Hell, let’s meet ’em tomorrow. Right now we’ll rent a room, then get something to eat.”

  “Roy, I do not believe we have enough money to rent a room.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? You took a couple of hundred out of my mother’s purse, didn’t you?”

  “Roy, please don’t be angry with me, but I just gave it to the Hmong, in recompense for our ride, and because they looked so poor. I felt they needed it more than we did.…”

  “Jesus Christ, what a fuckup! I can’t believe it. Shit! All right, let’s find out about buses to Providence.”

  The clerk inside the motor-lodge informed them that bus service had just ended till the morning, following the truncated holiday schedule. However, the adjoining restaurant was open twenty-four hours, and they were welcome to wait there, if they made an occasional purchase.

  “You left us enough money for a lousy coffee, I hope.”

  “Roy, its nearly Christmas.…”

  “Fuck Christmas! I’m dirty and cold and hungry and tired, and you gave nearly all our money away. Charity begins at home.”

  “I will not trade aphorisms with a Scrooge, Roy.”

  “Oh, forget it. Lets grab a seat.”

  An interior door led from the lobby into the restaurant. Nearly all the booths were empty, and the only workers on duty were a single waitress, a clerk behind the ice-cream counter, and a cook. When they were seated the waitress approached. Ardy noted that she bore a family resemblance to the woman who had served him and Doctor Spencer in The Chainsaw Café. He became momentarily disoriented, but soon recovered.

  “What can I get you, boys?”

  “Just a coffee.”

  “I understand that your ice-cream enjoys a superlative reputation. What flavors are you featuring tonight?”

  “Oh, the usual. Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, nutmeg …”

  “A cone of the latter, please.”

  The waitress left and quickly returned with their orders. Ardy paid with a portion of the meager remnant of his personal savings. Roy sipped his coffee and looked at a clock on the wall.

  “Nearly midnight. I can’t believe it. Jesus, I never thought things would end up like this when I got involved with Doctor Hubert.”

  “That gentleman, under whatever cognomen, has a talent for provoking calamities, Roy. I would advise steering clear of him in the future.”

  Roy said nothing. When the appropriate hour struck, Ardy ventured to wish Roy a “Merry Christmas.”

  “Shut up, Ardy.”

  “As you please.”

  Around five am a delivery truck arrived with the morning paper. Roy bought a copy and perused it intently. Ardy was curious about any reference to their earlier escapades, but contained himself. At six they ventured out to await the Rhode Island Public Transit bus. When it came, they caught it. They were the only people aboard. The driver told them Providence was twenty minut
es away. They settled down, and Ardy asked for the paper —

  — which he has now assembled into its pristine state. Eagerly, he scans the front page of the newspaper, which proclaims itself to be The Pawtucket Times, The biggest headline seems to have nothing to do with the sabotage of the Cambridge realtor, which Ardy fully expected would top the news:

  PAWTUCKET MAN’S CAR DESTROYED

  IN BAY STATE BLAST

  This Christmas morning Richard Slater, 43, of 1135 Newport Avenue, has a lot to be thankful for.

  Yesterday, Mr. Slater drove to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with his wife, Betty, to pick up their son, Alan, who had been studying right up until the last minute before taking his holiday break. Parking their car in the lot he usually frequented, Mr. and Mrs. Slater set out to get their son.

  Returning, they were halted at police barricades. In the distance they could see an enormous glowing mass not far from their car. The police informed Mr. Slater that his car, along with dozens of others, had been lost in the explosion of the Institute’s on-campus reactor, which appears to have been destroyed by terrorists.

  The Slaters’ daughter, Cathy, eventually arrived to drive her parents and brother home.

  “I don’t know how we’ll be able to afford another car, what with Alan’s tuition and all,” said Mrs. Slater.

  “I knew we should have sent him to a state school,” opined Mr. Slater.

  Meanwhile, authorities continue to evacuate residents of Cambridge and greater Boston from the spreading radiation. Estimates place the number of refugees in the hundreds of thousands.

  MORE NEWS OF THE DISASTER, page 33.

  Ardy puts the paper aside. Its contents have aroused certain feelings of uneasiness which are not conducive to further reading. Best to let the home of the bean and the cod fend for itself, although of course he wishes Roseanna and his other Bay State friends well.

  He wonders how far Pleasantville is from Providence. Is this trip a detour or a step closer? And how to convince Roy that Pleasantville, that fabled sanctuary of learning and right thinking, is where they should head?