Tumbledown

by Robert Boswell

“If you had a wife, she would live in your house with you.” Candler agreed.

  “Mr. James Candler, do you have a wife?”

  “No, but I’m planning to get married.”

  “Everybody knows that.” She made a gesture James had never seen her use before. He noted it in her file while she continued speaking. Places one hand over heart, places the other hand on top, and presses against chest. That brought the total number of gestures to twenty-one, which was also her age. Perhaps her personality grew by a single gesture each year. “When men and women grow up, they get married,” she said. “My mother and father got married. I was just a baby. Now my father is dead, even though my mother isn’t.”

  Candler glanced at his watch. He was getting nowhere. “But let’s talk about the house you live in here in Onyx Springs.”

  “Onyx Springs is a hole with water in it, too,” she said, “not just a town.”

  “I know, but let’s talk about Onyx Springs, the city, where you live in a house with a man. What is the man’s name?”

  “What man?” she asked. “Your name is Mr. James Candler.”

  He offered a resigned nod. “What other men do you know?”

  “I know Mr. Clay Hao,” she said. “Do they have to be grown-ups? Because I know Mick and Rhine and . . . is Alonso a grown-up?”

  “Let’s forget about the people you work with in the workshop.” Knows how to duck a question. Should he add that to her file? It was clearly a talent.

  “I forgot my lunch today,” she said. “I was supposed to put it in my purse, but it was so funny.”

  “What was funny?”

  “I didn’t put it in my purse!” She laughed. “Mick bought me lunch at the Kentucky Fried Chicken chicken place. I had chicken and he had chicken, and it was so fun.” She laughed again. “Mick is not a grown-up but he can drive a car, and he keeps money in his billfold, which he calls his wallet, and he bought me lunch. Do you drive a car, Mr. James Candler?”

  “Yes, I drive to work every day.”

  “Is it a long drive to work every day?”

  “It is such a long drive that today I went too fast, and . . .” He stopped the story from spilling out and looked at her smiling, patient face. She really was beautiful, and the thump of his heart sprang from twin desires: to speak the truth, to hide it. He said nothing for several seconds. “Let’s just say another car tried to keep up with me, and it had an accident, but no one was hurt.”

  “Was the car hurt?”

  “Not my car, but, yes, his car was damaged.”

  “Could they fix it?”

  “I don’t think it can be repaired. It was going so fast that it flipped over. It flew in the air and hit a light pole and the driver could have been killed, but it was a special light pole, and he was fine.” The dam was cracked, and words poured out of him. “We were racing, if you can believe it, and he didn’t know when to stop. I found a seam . . . a wide spot between cars that made a diagonal like . . . a slant right across the freeway . . .” He demonstrated with his hands. “. . . but the traffic closed up after an instant, and the other driver just would not let it go. He would not let it go. He risked his life to keep up with me, to participate in that stupid, stupid race.”

  He told her the whole story. He spilled every bean.

  “That’s so funny,” Karly said.

  “Yes.” He realized he was breathing heavily. “Funny.”

  “My sister tells her friends I’m a car wreck.”

  Candler swallowed hard, a lump in his throat. The sadness of this woman’s life—no, not sadness. She was perfectly happy. The tragedy of her life was suddenly visible to him. It choked him up, and he flicked tears from his eyes.

  “She calls me Karly the Car Wreck, which rhymes.” She laughed and tossed her hair, gesture twelve on the list. She added, “I have a sister.”

  “I think I’ll call you just plain Karly.” He did not fully have control of his voice. “Karly’s good by itself.”

  “I’m glad they could fix your car.”

  He nodded without trying to correct her.

  “My sister says some car wrecks can’t be fixed.” She shook her head once more as she laughed, her hair swinging, her eyes seductive. “Isn’t that so funny, Mr. James Candler?”

  3

  Rhine dropped the kickstand to his cycle—a motorized scooter but he called it his cycle—and checked his watch: 6:45. He did not trust his watch and dug through his backpack for his cell phone. If it was 6:45, he was early by a quarter of an hour, which meant he made the drive across Onyx Springs in less than three minutes, which was not humanly possible. His cell phone kept time by means of a satellite connection with a perfect clock in Greenwich, which, according to Wikipedia, was in three places: England, New York, and Connecticut. From this information, Rhine understood the perfect time was calculated by triangulation. His phone’s window read 6:39, meaning he had crossed town in minus three minutes. Either there was a time warp or his bedroom clock was fast.

  He adjusted his watch to match satellite time, removed his helmet, checked that he had his keys in his pocket, looked at the window over the garage where his friend Alonso Duran lived (window lit, curtains open), fingered the zipper to his fly (completely shut, lever down), and ran a finger over his teeth (clean). Still 6:39. Nothing he could do about it, he was going to be early.

  He crossed the street and climbed the stairs. The door was open. “Alonso!” Rhine called out, opening his arms. “Am I early?”

  “You’re so early every time,” Alonso crowed, throwing his arms wide in a mirror gesture.

  Their embrace was animated yet tentative, with much back clapping, but enough room between their chests to lob an apple.

  “Is Karly here yet?” Rhine inhaled deeply. “You’re cooking dinner? You can’t cook, can you? Can you cook?”

  “Every time early.” A stranger might have thought Alonso’s harsh expulsions indicated anger. Rhine knew better. Alonso was one of his best friends and Rhine knew. “Catching worms,” Alonso continued, nodding enthusiastically, growling the words. “Healthy. Wealthy. And what’s showing.”

  “If you were going to take my coat,” Rhine said, handling his suit jacket, “I’m not wearing one.”

  “Karly is coming, all right,” Alonso said. “I’m cooking garlic.”

  “It smells good,” Rhine said, “but will it taste?”

  “Just for smelling,” Alonso said. “Mom called the pizzas.”

  Rhine tried to laugh and Alonso joined in to help, but for Rhine it always just came out ha, ha, ha, which didn’t sound as much like laughter as people seemed to think. He was wearing his new suit, a color the salesman had called magenta, with thin blue stripes that crossed not like a checkerboard but like the wire fencing around the animals at the petting zoo. He had not removed the tag but tucked it inside the sleeve and taped it down with duct tape. His shirt was also new, a pink like the inside of lips. His tie was wide and yellow. “You could sell a Playboy subscription to a blind man in a getup like that,” the salesman had said. Several fellow salesmen gathered to nod their approval. But after leaving the store, while he was waiting at the bus stop, Rhine wondered if the salesman said “prescription.” Not Playboy subscription but prescription. He boarded the bus but immediately stepped off. He had a yearly pass. How often he boarded didn’t matter. He walked back to the store. The salesman was with another customer.

  “I’m kind of busy now, partner,” the salesman said.

  “It’s subscription,” Rhine said. “Not prescription. You can’t have a Playboy prescription, which means you couldn’t sell it. Sub, not pre.”

  What a look the salesman gave him! “You’ve got me there, bud.” He shook Rhine’s hand and waved as he turned away. Rhine waved back.

  At the bus stop again, he wondered about the wave. You didn’t wave to people who were right next to you. He boarded the bus, and then as it wa
s about to start up, he hustled forward for the door.

  “Rhine, you set yourself down,” the bus driver said.

  It was Mrs. Connelly. Just his luck.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and that was how he got his new suit. “Karly’s not here yet, is she?” He could see the whole apartment, but wanted to be sure.

  “You’re early,” Alonso said. “She’s not even here.”

  Alonso’s apartment above his parents’ garage was one large room plus a bathroom. A broad strip of tape showed where a wall should be, separating the kitchen and living room from Alonso’s bedroom.

  “You didn’t make your bed,” Rhine said.

  “Party doesn’t go that far.”

  “I can see your socks on the floor,” Rhine said. “And underwear.”

  “If there was a wall you couldn’t.”

  “Noted,” said Rhine, looking at his watch: 6:10. “What is it with the time around here?” he asked. He stared through the invisible bedroom wall at Alonso’s alarm clock. Huge green digital numbers announced 6:45.

  “I shouldn’t do anything in the dark,” Rhine said. “I adjusted my watch to match the Greenwiches in the dark, and I shouldn’t do anything in the dark.” It was only dusk and not close to dark, but he knew his friend would understand him.

  “Movies,” Alonso said.

  “True,” Rhine acknowledged, movies were better in the dark. “I’m going to make your bed. It’s early and everyone knows you can’t wait for time. Is your garlic burning?”

  He crossed into the bedroom through the blank spot that indicated the door. He could make a bed with military corners. He had to or he couldn’t sleep in it—not that he would sleep in this bed but it would be made with military corners. The doorbell sounded. Rhine picked up the pace. His first name was Bellamy. No one but his parents used it. He didn’t look or feel like a Bellamy, and he had never actually seen his birth certificate. He grabbed the socks and white briefs and dropped them in the plastic box where Alonso kept his dirty clothes. The underwear fell between the socks, and flapped over one heel. Rhine bent down and quickly matched the socks.

  “It’s you!” Alonso said. “My garlic’s burning and Rhine is making my bed in the bedroom.”

  “Hey, Alonso,” Mick said. “I guess I’m early? Hey, Rhine.”

  “He’s in the bedroom,” Alonso said.

  Mick Coury slouched in and offered a slow, slight nod.

  Rhine stepped through the door path wearing an insane suit and tie. “I thought you might be Karly,” he said.

  Mick continued nodding. “Everybody wants to see Karly. You ought to turn that burner down.”

  “I know!” Alonso said, but he didn’t make a move toward the stove. Mick stepped past him. The pan held garlic cloves and a halved onion. He shut off the burner. “Is this for atmosphere?”

  “I thought you meant Karly was a burner,” Alonso said.

  Mick stared blankly at him.

  “She’s hot,” Alonso explained.

  “She’s hot,” Rhine agreed. After a moment he added, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”

  Mick Coury felt the slurring of blood through his body slow yet again. His head teetered under the weight of its monstrous mass. He settled himself in a kitchen chair, but got up and sat on the couch. If Karly wanted to, she could sit beside him. If she didn’t want to, at least she would be in a chair and not beside Rhine or Alonso, whom he watched as they walked the smoking pan through the door, oven mitts on every hand. He heard them trammel down the stairs, the rush of water through pipes. They would be spraying the pan with a garden hose.

  He wished Maura could have come with him to the party, though she didn’t like Karly. Maura was smart and sarcastic; she put an edge on things that made them visible. Back in Minnesota, she took a knife to her wrists while she was bathing. When she described it to Mick, he asked, “How much water was in the tub?” And then: “Was the water warmer than the blood?” She liked those questions, and they became friends. She would be happy to be with him, even in his current sorry state. He had screwed up. He had skipped his meds this morning, revving his brain, the world brightening. Polishing his shiny, he and his brother called it. But his father showed up unexpectedly after work, having driven the thirty miles from Imperial Beach. “Look who’s here,” his mother said, and there was his father, buttoned up in a white shirt, standing in the doorway, saying Mick’s name.

  They sat in the kitchen, Mick and his parents and his brother Craig, who was fifteen now, two years younger than Mick was when the illness found him. Mick could barely stand to see how his father looked at Craig, searching for clues, afraid of what he might find. His parents’ marriage ended because of Mick’s illness. He knew this to be true, and not, as his mother liked to say, because of his father’s reaction to the illness. Without the illness, there would be no reaction.

  His father was born again, washed in the blood, saved by Christ, which made him unbearable. He was right across the table, grinning, and Mick could not bear to look at him; therefore, he was unbearable. Not that Mick blamed Christ, exactly, but his father’s reaction to Christ. He laughed inwardly, a sly smile showing on his face, but he didn’t openly laugh, which was a symptom: laughing for no reason.

  His father spoke to his mother in that singsong Christian voice, and the desire to laugh evaporated. Didn’t it stand to reason that to be born again you had to first die? Wasn’t he saying that Mick had killed him? Or killed off something inside him? It would take something like surgery to fix his father, make him give up the kneeling and that gawking smile, a smile like the bird in that cartoon who steals teeth from a glass of water beside a bed, a bed that angles out like the Van Gogh bed, a painting Mick saw once in a traveling exhibit in Los Angeles before his illness. He didn’t like the labels for his illness. Wasn’t it enough to say illness and not pollute the waters with terms no one could understand and so had to simplify like an algebraic equation: a boy’s strangeness is equal to the sum of age + illness – (0 meds X 2 days)? Mick had gotten an A in algebra his sophomore year, and Leah Kasten, the smartest girl in the school, had cheated off his exam, he knew, because he had caught her in the corner of his eye. Caught her from the corner? Caught her out of the corner? Eyes don’t even have—

  “Mick.” Craig jostled his arm. “They’re talking to you.”

  “You didn’t take your medication,” his mother said.

  “I was going” to but I wanted to be sharp for this party, where the woman that I love is going “to choose between me and two” goons who aren’t bad—my friends, actually—but who have no more conception of the world than a rattling tin can filled with bottle caps “making noise and calling it thought.”

  “You’re doing the rag,” Craig said.

  Code, their fraternal code for Mick’s ramble, when his mouth betrayed him, falling so far behind his thoughts that he sounded incoherent and, if the world was to be believed, scary and sad and dismissible, like a fire that burns so brightly and at both ends that its race to the middle is not only exhilarating but terrifying and explosive: his brain free of medication, blowing up his thoughts so that his mouth can only express the bits.

  His mother, the pill: he had to take it. Weighted by the drug, he could barely put one word after another. That’s how it felt. He was on their level: Rhine’s level, Alonso’s level. The doorbell made the light in the room quaver, his vision a sandbox, black around the borders, sand spilling out, draining him. He looked to the door, but it was just Rhine testing the doorbell so they wouldn’t miss Karly if it was broken.

  Mick’s meds made him like the blackened nub of an eraser on a pencil, while his mind without medication was like the pointed end, a needle-sharp pencil slashing across the page—too fast to be read, granted, but how could he compose with an eraser?

  “We shouldn’t do anything till Karly gets here,” Rhine said. �
�It wouldn’t be fair.”

  “I’ll try not to be too interesting,” Mick said.

  “Not no but hell no,” Alonso put it.

  “She should be here any minute.” Rhine studied his watch. “Any minute.” He mouthed numbers, literally counting the seconds. “Not that minute, maybe this one.”

  “She should be here every minute,” Alonso said and smiled. “You made a joke,” Mick said.

  Thirty-nine, thirty-eight, Rhine continued silently, thirty-seven, thirty-six . . .

  Why Candler decided to drive by Karly Hopper’s house again, he couldn’t say. Because it was almost seven p.m. and he was weary of the office but couldn’t yet go home? He never quite reached his destination. A diesel truck and trailer was parked on a side street, a couple of blocks from the trees of Lantana Avenue. It had Oklahoma plates, and the engine was idling. Maybe his visit this morning had convinced the bastard to run, Candler thought. He felt a brief, ridiculous surge of pride. Of course, it could be the guy was scheduled to leave anyway. Evidently, Karly was able to manage during his absences.

  It occurred to Candler that this arrangement was almost like a rehabilitation plan. The trucker would be away for periods, and Karly would see how she could keep up, what she could accomplish, what she would have to let go. When the driver returned, he would set her back up again. Candler might have logically pursued this line of thought and asked himself whether it had been smart to run him off, but he didn’t go that far. Instead, he wondered what the guy hauled, how long it took him to get to Stillwater, whether he had a woman at every stop.

  Candler parked the Porsche up the street from the truck and turned off the engine. What a strange day. That it was Karly Hopper to whom he spoke about the accident was weird, but she had most of the characteristics of a good listener—all of them, in fact, except for comprehension. The woman Candler used to live with was the opposite: she always knew what he was trying to say before he could get the words out. Saundra Dluzynski—Dlu—was the woman his friends and family expected him to marry. They had lived together six years, but he discovered that he didn’t like being that well understood. He didn’t think anyone would.