Endless Things

  "They're inseparable,” Val said.

  "Oh God,” Pierce said, who had not separated them. “Identical?” he asked.

  "Jeez, I don't know. They are a lot alike. But opposite, sort of, you know?"

  "Complementary,” said Pierce. “Oh Lord."

  What is it, what accounts for the delight we feel when the world with a grin and a tug on the strings reverses the figure, delivers the punch line, a delight so pure it can even color our chagrin and make it hilarious too? Of course sometimes our souls are wrung and harrowed by a peripeteia, appalling knowledge given all in a moment, but—it's the difference between the joyous plunge of a roller coaster and a bad fall downhill—just as often not. More often, even, in lucky worlds. Pierce lifted his face to Heaven, and laughed aloud.

  What was so funny, they wanted to know.

  "Nothing. Nothing. I knew all that. All along. Sure."

  So maybe, he thought, I really won't have to live there; maybe they can't make me. You're all nothing but a pack of cards. He laughed and laughed, and Val shook her head at him.

  She and Spofford walked with Pierce down to inspect his stopped car, which he had been unable to get started, hadn't dared try too hard to cajole or insist with turning of the key and pumping of the gas, the battery seemed a little. The Firebird lay sullen and unapologetic on the soft shoulder. Val kicked the tire, more punitively than diagnostically, Pierce thought. “Christ,” she said.

  "Vapor lock,” Spofford said when Pierce described the sudden ceasing of the engine. “Can't get fuel through the line.” It was exactly the last car Spofford's father had bought for himself, and still drove down there in Tampa as far as Spofford knew: a car so deficient in every real virtue that you could only think of it as a deliberate trick played by the maker on sheeplike Americans, who fell for it too. Huge and clumsy, yet with almost no room inside; absurd streamlining and speed lines; fabulously expensive but starting to fall apart as soon as delivered. He had watched his father, proud yet not really gratified, get behind the wheel, and had felt pity and anger, shame too. “Start it up now and it'll be all right. Even odds."

  "I've got to get something of my own,” Pierce said. “I guess I'll start looking in the papers. Or the lots."

  "Well,” Spofford said. “There's one other option. It's sort of taking a chance, but it could work out for you. Has, for people I know."

  Pierce waited.

  "There's a guy in Fair Prospect who's a dealer, out of the business now, retired I guess, but he still's got a license and he makes a little on the side. What he does is, he takes you to these auctions that car dealers go to, where a hundred cars, two hundred, get sold in a day. Only licensed dealers can bid. You look over the cars, and give him your choice, and a top price you'll pay. He bids. You give him a hundred, hundred fifty in cash on the side."

  "Huh."

  "You can't beat the prices.

  "Well, sure."

  Val lit a cigarette. “Are you talking about Barney Corvino?” she asked. “Jeez, I don't think he's doing it anymore. Ugh, that's a sad story. Sad.” She waved away their inquiries. “He doesn't do much. Last I heard."

  "Worth a call,” Spofford said.

  * * * *

  Just as Spofford promised, the Firebird started again after its rest, and now Pierce had had a drink, and a chat, catching up with the local gossip, and there was no longer any way to put off what he must do next.

  She was digging in the earth around the foundations of Arcady, wearing a pair of huge bright yellow gloves like a clown's, and overalls over a raveling sweater. She ran toward the unknown car when she saw who it was inside, pulling off the gloves and waving. He was inordinately glad to see her, his heart soared in fact, with only a touch of guilt, which seemed small after all. He got out of the car with some difficulty—the door was bent somehow and ground horribly as he pushed it open with his foot—and then she was in his arms exulting. Why so glad?

  "You talked to Spofford?” she asked.

  "Yes. At the Faraway Lodge."

  "The Faraway Lodge!” she cried in cheerful indignation. “What the hell's he doing there?"

  "Getting advice. He said."

  "Advice! Well, maybe he needs it."

  He'd never seen her thus, as though incandescent, radiant. Who is it that's always called radiant? He made a guess, and she began to laugh, as though spilling over with goodwill or delight, and so did he.

  "I thought you were going to wait,” he said. “For a long while. Maybe travel. Maybe see the world. Walk in the woods."

  "I walked in the woods. I can't explain. It's a big surprise to me."

  "I knew he was going to ask. Hadn't he already, before?"

  "Yeah. Well. That wasn't what surprised me.” And they laughed uproariously together.

  "When?” he asked.

  "We thought June,” she said, and they laughed again together, at the great and glorious absurdity. “And you're telling me he never said a word to you?"

  "No word."

  "So, what did you talk about?"

  "Cars."

  "For heaven's sake."

  "June, huh,” he said.

  "You'll come?"

  "Rosie,” he said, as though the answer was so obvious he refused the question. And for a moment she only stood and glowed. Then she took his arm.

  "You're back,” she said. “Come talk. Tell me everything."

  She led him toward the house, the door, and he remembered many things: not a list of items (Boney, summer, grief, winter, Rosie's daughter, night, drink, Rosie's bed) but a taste, a garment warm and binding; a thing both his and not his but all of a piece. Inside renovations were going on: not the same place at all, pleasingly.

  "So what happened? What came of it all?"

  "It came,” he said, “to nothing."

  "Oh.” She sat down behind Boney's big desk—he'd always think of it as Boney's, and no doubt so would she—and put her hands together as in prayer. “I guess that's all right."

  "Yes?"

  "I guess I'm sort of glad."

  "Glad?"

  "Well, you know. What would I have done. If you'd come home with the Holy Grail."

  At that moment Pierce, seeing or feeling something indistinct behind him, turned to see Rosie's daughter, Sam, standing in the doorway. He would have greeted her, but her attention seemed not pointed his way.

  "And what about the stuff you were looking for?” Rosie asked. “What you needed for yourself."

  "I found it,” Pierce said. “But I left it there."

  Sam wore a knit dress striped in rainbow colors, red to orange to yellow to green to blue to purple; and when the dress ended, the colors began again on her tights.

  "So no book?"

  "No. There never really was one."

  "Oh.” She scrutinized him, as though to see if she should extend some hope, or pity, or consolation. Then she said: “Did you have enough money?"

  "I've got lots left,” Pierce said. “You have to tell me what you want me to do with it."

  "Keep it,” Rosie said. “It was a grant. Nonreturnable."

  "But..."

  "It would cause endless accounting problems if you gave it back. Believe me."

  Sam had clasped her hands together behind her back, and put one foot out to rest it on the heel, which made the S-curve of her torso more pronounced. Pierce recognized it as a common human pose, more common in girl children than in others. Still she had not chosen to turn his way. He thought she'd grown a lot.

  "She's grown a lot,” he said to Rosie.

  "Who has?"

  "Sam. How's she feel about all this?"

  They both looked to the door, but Sam was gone.

  "You know what she said to me, when I told her?” Rosie said. “She said it was good because Spofford'd be here in case she needed him. I asked if she thought she might need him, and she said well there was the time he had brought me to the Woods, that night when Beau was there."

  "Yes.” Winter dark. Sam ta
ken away from the Powerhouse and brought here again where she belonged. Could all that have really happened, really truly, the month he had last been here in this land?

  "And she said,” Rosie said, and seemed to laugh and cry a little at once, “she said she was glad, because he got me there just in the nickel-dime. That's what she said. In the nickel-dime."

  * * * *

  She stood in her rainbow dress again at the top of the stair when Pierce went out the door, and he waved to her, and stood for a moment to see what she would say, but she only stood and smiled. He went out into the day.

  So, he thought, and said: “So."

  So he would not ever do what Frank Walker Barr had charged him to do: to take up, in a book, the questions people ask, that history might answer. His own question had been Why is everything the way it is, and not some different way instead? Which he had meant to answer by showing that everything is a different way instead. And then, in that laboratory, those pages, gather the evidence for his proposition, or in that sealed courtroom make the case for it in contrast to the case against it, bring it forth even shaped by the case against it; build the case over slow time, so slow it would seem to build itself, gathering like storm clouds or battle, forming always in the direction of a conclusion. It's so. Or It's not so.

  Why had he imagined he could do that. He didn't have the thought to make the language that would draw a new thing, like wire, out of the future: or he didn't have the language to embody the thought, same thing. The only marvel was how long he had believed otherwise, without even understanding that he did.

  Because he was not, actually, all that smart. He really knew next to nothing about European history or Hellenistic religion, he read no modern or ancient languages with any real comprehension, had no way to judge if what he projected was what had happened, or like what had happened, or something else entirely different. How could he have spent so much time on a thing so inchoate, cutting off its blooming endless heads until he just couldn't anymore, and so going away with nothing?

  You could say, of course—anyway Fellowes Kraft might, in jest or not—that the book had become impossible only because the world was ceasing to be different: that the possibility of difference was once again leaking or running away, and that his apprehension of the possibility of a magical renaissance had itself been a sign that it wouldn't last much longer. For magic—great magic, world-making magic—vanishes from the world at exactly the same rate as it is perceived to be there: a rising and a falling line on a graph, and right where they meet the world trembles uncertainly for a moment, and then goes on alone.

  Which is why Prospero has to drown his book and break his staff: when the world has gone on, you must live in it without magic. Or there will, at last and in the end, be no world for you to live in.

  You could say that. But he wasn't going to say that. His lips were sealed. He would, from now on forever, be a true Rosicrucian, and keep his mouth shut. Silentium post clamores.

  Whistling—when had he last whistled?—he went back to the pretend car he had been given. When he was seated he spent a moment counting, mentally, his money; then he backed out of Arcady and drove to the Jambs and out to Route 6 toward Cascadia, where the trucks and the travelers pass and repass, to look for a place to stop and stay.

  * * * *

  From the room he was given at the Morpheus Arms Motel, which was just as he had expected it to be, he called the number of the car dealer that Spofford had given him.

  "Corvino,” said the phone. It was a woman's voice, and was one of those voices on the phone that sound somehow sadly far-off when they first speak, making you almost shy to go on.

  "Hi. Is Barney there?"

  "He's not available."

  "Ah. Well. I had a question for him."

  "Call back."

  "It's kind of hard for me to phone,” Pierce said. “Can I leave a message?"

  "Sure."

  "I understand he sometimes can get cars, or a car, by, well on an individual basis, from the auctions..."

  "He's not doing that anymore."

  "Oh.” Impasse. “Well."

  "Who told you about this?"

  "Brent Spofford, actually. I guess he's a friend of Barney's?"

  A pause, unreadable.

  "Well, no,” she said. “I'm not sure they've even met.” Something in her tone had altered, maybe (Pierce thought) for the better. “You know Spofford?"

  "For years."

  More pause.

  "So what were you looking to get?"

  "I hadn't decided. Mostly small and cheap."

  A derisive snort. “Spofford told you the deal?"

  "Well, he said..."

  "Two hundred cash, no check. And a cashier's check when you get the car."

  "Sure. Of course."

  "We'd have to leave early. The next auction is Saturday, up around Nickel Lake, you familiar with that area?"

  "Um no.” Before she could give directions, he said: “Wouldn't you have to ask Barney about this?"

  "What?"

  "You said he wasn't doing it anymore."

  "He's not doing it. I am."

  "Oh."

  "I'm his daughter. I've worked for him."

  "Oh."

  "Problem? I have a dealer's license."

  "No. No problem at all."

  She said nothing more for a moment, for so long in fact that he thought she might have left the phone, gone away for some urgent thing.

  "Okay,” she said then. “Tell me where you'll be. I'll come. We'll go up in your vehicle."

  You can only know you have reached the springing of a Y when you look back from on ahead; then it's apparent that what seemed to be the important junctures weren't, they were simply the plain way continuing, but ways you bypassed without even noticing (saying Yes or maybe No unhesitatingly) were in fact the way you might well have gone, but didn't.

  "Yes,” he said. “All right."

  "I'm Kelley,” she said. “Kelley Corvino."

  "Pierce Moffett,” he said unconvincingly (it always seemed so, to his ears). “My um vehicle is a little unreliable. Vapor lock."

  "I'll take a chance,” she said. “Where do I meet you?"

  "I'm, right now I'm at the Morpheus Arms Motel, on the Cascadia road."

  "Oh jeez,” she said.

  "Yeah,” he said. “I need a home too."

  "I'll be there,” she said.

  * * * *

  She was his own age, he thought; actually she'd turn out to be some years younger, but the lines of her face were deep cut, and her throat incised too with finer lines. The hand she held out to him was knuckly and strong.

  "Roo,” she said.

  "Rue?” he said. “You're called Rue?” He seemed to remember a different name, but not what it had been.

  "What's the matter? You know some other girl with that name?"

  "Oh yes,” he said. “More than one. Many more. Almost all, in fact."

  She seemed to decide he was making a joke not worth investigating. “It's a nickname,” she said. “I've had a lot of names.” She looked into the room, took in the unmade bed, the still-packed bags. “You're ready?"

  "Yes."

  "Got your money?"

  "Yes."

  She turned away to where the cars stood, each before its owner's door. She didn't seem to fill her faded workpants, but you couldn't tell, they weren't designed to reveal, or conceal either. He found himself fixed by her face, trying to place her. She seemed to belong to none of the three sexes he lived among, these being men, women who drew him, and women who didn't.

  "The Firebird yours?"

  "Yes. I mean I'm driving it. It's a rental."

  She nodded, regarding it with a certain caustic knowingness, a face he would come to learn she wore when looking at all old cars and certain other classes of things, but he didn't know that yet, and supposed that he'd made an obvious wrong choice at Gene's, and should have known better. “Okay. We gotta go. You want to take the short way
? I can show you. Save half an hour."

  "I tell you what,” Pierce said. “Why don't you drive."

  He held out to her the Firebird's key on its ring. How attuned we are to the faces of our kind. Something happened in Roo Corvino's mobile features, something slight, too slight to interpret but not too slight to catch, a kind of relenting or unlocking, he would have had no word for it even if he'd been wholly conscious of perceiving it; distant cousin of a smile, the troubling or calming of some deep water.

  "Okay,” she said.

  And they set out.

  Nickel Lake is in the north of the county, a round deep pool like the mirror taken from a compact that you might set into papier-mâché hills for your HO locomotive to pass and repass, or into the wintry Bethlehem beneath your Christmas tree for miniature skaters to pose on. That's what Pierce had imagined on first hearing the name. In fact it was a dun waste of water glimpsed now and then through the burgeoning sumac and other roadside trees, and around its marge a spread of roadhouses, low motels, auto graveyards, and bike shops. On the far side were summer places and a beach, where last July he (and Rose Ryder) had watched fireworks. He told her this, though no more.

  "We had a place over there once,” Roo said to him. “Burned down."

  She told him her history, and it was patent and severe. Her father, handsome devil, hot-rodder, soldier, then car salesman; her mother some years older, divorcée, their romance a scandal, burning hotly. Years go by, a couple of kids, the dealership, a big new house in Labrador, that development east of the Jambs? Pierce knew of it. Her father was one of those guys who are sure that everything they have is the best there is, and everything they know can't be beat: my fishing rod, my power saw, my gas mileage, my wife, my club sandwich, enjoying himself daylong with a profound and seemingly unalloyed enjoyment, and always ready to tell you with a smile how you too can get the best of everything.

  She said that women like guys like that. Pierce thought he'd never heard the type described before, and wasn't certain he recognized it. Oh yeah: women love it when men know exactly what they want. Especially if what they want is you.

  "Lucky man."

  "Well. He always had a lot of affairs. Long ones, short ones. It was sort of well known. My mother kept finding out, and kicking him out, and taking him back. Because she knew that underneath he always wanted her most. Then one year no more."