I was still breathing hard. “I told you I’d be okay.”
“Let’s go home, Mr. Miller,” said Joan, leading me off the dance floor.
“We can stay,” I said, suddenly quite proud of myself. “We can dance to Dick’s singing, if you want. It’d be nice to hear him.”
“I think I’ve had enough of the fair for one night,” she said.
As we made our way through the crowd to the parking lot, I felt better than I had in a long time; I felt as though a fog were lifting, a fog of rage and jealousy in which I’d been lost for weeks, maybe months. By the time we reached the Silver Coach I couldn’t keep my hands off Joan. I was overwhelmed by a wild and joyous horniness.
“Down,” Joan said, laughing as she unlocked the door.
But as soon as we were inside she was kissing me back, pulling my shirt off. I made for her belt, but she stopped.
“Wait. Let’s not until we get home,” she said.
I kissed her belly, unzipping the top of her jeans.
“There’s too many people around,” she said, but she was already unbuttoning her blouse. I looked out the windshield and saw no one close enough to worry about.
The coils were loud that night, groaning and crying beneath us. I held Joan’s hips as we moved. She pressed back into me, her skin hot and soft against my own. I grabbed at her, wanting to envelop her, to be touching every part at once.
“That feels so good,” she said, moving faster now.
I closed my eyes. I could feel the shuttle rocking on its wheels. The sounds the Coach made were exciting, the creaking and huffing, and yet beneath the racket I thought I heard something else, some other, deeper strain of noise. The sound was faint, but persistent. I listened harder, until I realized what I was hearing. The noise was a voice: Dick Doyle’s voice.
I opened my eyes and saw something so shocking, I nearly froze: standing on the dashboard just behind the steering wheel, guitar in hand, was a miniature Dick Doyle. He couldn’t have been more than six inches tall, a tiny doppelgänger, wearing a little red suit, a minuscule cowboy hat on his head. And he was singing to me; I could hear his voice beneath the squeaking of the seat, that high, whiny crooning of his.
But then I realized that, of course, this wasn’t a miniature Dick Doyle at all; the figure was just a reflection. Joan had left the mirror she’d won on top of her bag, and it reflected the fair’s stage. The gold stars around its border twinkled in the light. They hovered all around Dick, shimmering.
I turned away from the mirror and concentrated on Joan. I watched the shiny groove of her back, the bounce of her. I tried to listen to the sounds she made, to the rocking Coach. But beneath the noise, I could still hear Dick’s nasal, grating voice. I craned my neck to get a look at the actual stage, but the Coach’s windshield was angled toward the thoroughfare. All I could see of Dick Doyle was his reflection.
Hee-hee, went the springs beneath the seat. Hee-hee-hee. I thought back to how close Dick had let his hand get to mine a moment before, so close that I’d actually believed he was going to shake with me. I recalled that trick kids play on each other, putting a hand out, then yanking it back. Fooled you, shithead! Hee-hee-hee-hee. And there was little Dick, singing from the dashboard. The sequined playing cards flashed from his lapels.
I took off my watch and flung it at the mirror, but it missed and hit the windshield.
“What was that?” Joan said over her shoulder.
“Nothing,” I said. “Don’t stop.”
“You threw something. I saw you. What’s the matter?”
“Come on. Don’t do this,” I said, trying to get back into things.
But she was already looking out the windshield, at Dick onstage.
“Joan.”
She pulled away. Then she started dressing.
“Joan, come on. I just got nervous that we were going to get caught.”
“Don’t lie,” she said, pulling on her jeans.
“I’m not lying! I thought I saw someone peeking at us from over there. From behind that Plymouth.”
“Stop already. I need to get some air.” She pulled the lever and opened the door.
I grabbed her hand. “Joan, I’m crazy about you. I want you to come to New York with me. Joan!”
“Let me go!”
“Joan, please!”
She tried to pull away but I held on.
“Get off of me!” She yanked her hand free and got out of the shuttle.
“I’m sorry,” I called after her, watching her vanish into the crowd. “I couldn’t help it!”
A woman with a blanket under her arm walked by the Coach’s open door and I suddenly became aware of my nakedness. I yanked the door shut and sat down in the driver’s seat, which gave a loud, tired wheeze beneath my weight.
For a long moment I sat inside the empty Coach, the sweat on my body cooling. I stared out the window at Dick Doyle, trying to figure out how, exactly, he’d tricked me into becoming this—a man sitting naked and alone in a dusty parking lot. He’d led me away from my life, down, down all the way to central Florida. He’d turned me into someone I didn’t recognize. A man I despised. I thought about returning to New York without anything to show for myself, returning with no one, to nothing.
I fished the keys from Joan’s bag and started up the Coach. Then I slammed on the gas.
The chain strung across the front of the lot snapped with a twang as the Coach roared up out of the gravel lot and onto the stretch of grass leading to the stage. I turned on the high beams, which cut through the darkness like the white horns of a charging bull. I was vaguely aware of people on the dance floor screaming and scattering, but I had my sights fixed on the man onstage. He seemed unaware of the commotion; he just strummed his guitar and sang, the spotlight making the sequined designs sparkle across his suit.
Lanterns popped against the windshield, one after another, sending showers of sparks across the glass. The blue floor gleamed beneath the Coach’s tires. Flecks of mica in the paint sparkled under the headlights, as though the floor were an immense body of water, an ocean I had to cross to get to Dick Doyle. Someone threw a soda against the driver’s-side door, where it splattered all over my window; I plowed through a giant teddy-bear, which burst in an explosion of stuffing. All I saw was Dick Doyle, singing away at the end of that bright shaft of light, his hairy fingers moving over the guitar.
I pressed harder on the gas; the stage loomed closer and closer. I glared at Dick, waiting for him to look over, to see the Coach speeding toward him, but his gaze was vacant, aimed blindly at the dancing crowd. Look over here! I thought. Call chicken! Still, he kept on playing. I was so close now that I could smell the hay bales onstage. I could hear his voice, not his amplified voice but the real thing. I could see the sweat stains on the brim of his white hat.
“Drop your mask!” I screamed. “Drop it!”
But Dick stayed where he was.
I stomped on the brakes, but the Coach was going too fast; the van hurtled toward Dick, screeching and fishtailing, smashing through hay bales. I pulled the emergency brake, and still the Coach skidded toward Dick, who was only now looking over, finally seeing what was about to happen. There was no fear in his face, though, only a lack of comprehension, bewilderment. He stopped playing. But that was all he had time to do before the Coach rammed into him. There was a horrible thud, and then the Coach slid to a stop.
“It’s that stalker!” someone screamed.
“Call the cops!”
I glanced in the side-view mirror and saw Dick staggering to his feet behind one of the hay bales. His guitar still hung from his neck, but its front had come loose and was dangling by the instrument’s strings over the empty wooden box of its body. Dick’s hat had fallen off too. His hair stuck up in wild shocks. He looked over at me, dazed and blinking against the stage lights. The light had been in his eyes, I realized. That was why he hadn’t seen me coming.
I put the Coach in reverse.
The tires
squealed against the waxed surface of the stage. I watched in the side-view mirror as Dick wobbled on his feet, looking at me coming toward him with that same expression of confusion. Who’s the loser now? I thought. Who’s the fucking fake! Dick vanished behind the tail end of the Coach.
I was sure he’d dodge or dive to safety, but instead I heard a loud whump and a grunt and the crash of someone falling backward into stage equipment.
I jerked the Coach to a stop. The voices were closer now.
“Get him!”
“Grab his arm! Lord Christ, he’s naked in there!”
I craned my head out the window. I saw Dick’s leg hanging over a toppled speaker. The silver toe cap at the tip of his boot winked at me in the light. Beyond the boot Dick’s face appeared with what looked like a smile on it.
I stepped on the gas again. The Coach lurched backward, but an amplifier was stuck beneath the tail. The tires spun and smoked. I rammed the lever into drive, but before I could hit the gas again a hand reached inside the window and had me by the face. Another one grabbed my hair. All the stage lights seemed to go out at once.
Part Three: Ballad with Thirty-six Wheels
I SPENT THE WHOLE OF SUNDAY AT THE POLICE STATION, LOCKED in a common holding cell. The courts were closed for the weekend, so there would be no bail hearing until Monday morning.
All I did in the cell was lie on my cot. I hurt all over; I was covered in bruises from being dragged out of the Coach. One of my eyes was black and swollen and wouldn’t stop tearing. The cell was nicer than I’d imagined it would be, clean and well lit, with six soft cots lining the wall. The toilet had a curtain that pulled closed around it for privacy. Only two other people shared the cell with me. Both were men sleeping off drunks. One lay on his back with an arm flung over his face. The other sat curled against the wall, his jacket around his shoulders like a cape. This man was older, and for a moment, when I was first led into the cell, I mistook him for the old man from the dumpster, but he was just a stranger.
On Monday morning the policeman gave me two calls. I called Roddy and I called Joan. But it was Orlando who came to get me late Monday afternoon. Driving back from the station, he hardly said a word. He looked haggard, and he kept his eyes on the road.
“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,” I said.
“I’m the one who’s sorry, Miller. I should never have let you go see the singer. That was my mistake.”
“No, I—”
Orlando hissed through his teeth. “Don’t say anything,” he said. “Just rest.”
I leaned my head against the window, letting the glass cool the inflamed skin above my eye. The sun was just setting; all the day’s color was draining into the sky, leaving the trees black. I thought of my apartment back in New York. I could see the same sunset pouring in through those huge bedroom windows, lighting up the floor like the deck of an ocean liner. I saw my little robotic vacuum, slowly dragging itself from room to room, its batteries nearly dead.
I closed my eyes. How had I let this all happen? How could I have been so stupid? An image of Dick’s face came to me—his face the way it had looked in the Coach’s windshield just before I knocked him down, confused and frightened and yet horribly blank. I felt a great shame welling up in me. Dick Doyle was not to blame. He wasn’t a fake. He was just an unfortunate man, now made more so by my attack, left bruised and battered. I was lucky he’d survived at all.
By the time Orlando pulled into the pawnshop’s lot, I felt ready to sleep for a thousand years. It took a great effort to get out of the car. Raoul, another clerk, was just locking up.
Orlando thanked him and sent him home. “Hey, Miller,” he called to me then. “Come inside. Have a drink with me.”
I looked at him through my good eye, then at my car, parked beside the dumpster. A drink sounded like heaven.
I followed Orlando inside the pawnshop, turning on all the lights.
“Back here,” he said, heading to the supply closet. He unlocked the door and from a small box in the back he pulled a bottle of Gullick Single Malt.
“You’ve had that in the store the whole time I’ve worked here?” I said.
He shrugged and took out two plastic cups. “Sometimes, when I’m here at night, after you or Raoul or Sam leave, I call home.” He poured Scotch into a cup and handed it to me.
It took me a moment to realize that by home he meant Argentina.
He took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his nose. “I’ve been a fool plenty times over, Miller,” he said. Then he took a sip of his drink. “Here. I want to show you something. Look at what came in the other day.”
He opened the jewelry case and pulled out the box of nameplates. “I don’t know why I keep any of these things,” he said. “None of them are worth much. And no one ever buys them from me.” He sifted through the alphabetized bags of names until he found what he was looking for—a pendant reading Orlando.
“Look at that,” he said, holding the nameplate up to the light. “My first Orlando. I think I must have every name in the box now. None worth anything.”
I smiled, which hurt. “You got a Max?”
“Sure,” he said, digging through the nameplates. “I think we got three or four.” He pulled out a couple, then picked the nicer of the two and gave it to me.
I turned the pendant over. Max, in swooping gold letters. “What do you think it’s worth?” I said.
He examined the pendant. “About…twenty-five cents.”
We both laughed.
“Get the acid,” I said.
He slapped me on the back, then took the nitric acid from the cupboard.
I put an empty bowl on the counter. Carefully, Orlando poured in the acid. Then he resealed the jug and locked it away.
“Cheers.” I held up my cup of Scotch.
He nodded and tapped my cup with his and then we dropped the pendants in the acid.
“Hocus-pocus,” he said.
“Exactly.”
I watched as the letters began to fizz and break apart, turning the acid a rusty brown. An odor like vinegar emanated from the bowl. After a moment, the bubbles cleared and the reaction settled and all that was left of the pendants were a few metal rinds, floating and bobbing around in the acid.
“You go home now, Miller,” said Orlando. “I’ll take your shift with the dumpster tonight.”
I shook my head, swallowing the last of my Scotch. “No way,” I said. “I’m doing it.”
“You’ve had a long day. You need to get some sleep.”
“I want to stay.”
He eyed me.
“I’ll be fine,” I said.
Orlando nodded, then went to get me the spear gun.
Spring nights in Central Florida are full of turbulence. Almost every cloud has a secret storm balled up inside it. They skid across the atmosphere, trailing strange, violent winds behind them, winds that sway the palm trees, blowing the mice that live in the leaves out into the sky.
I was enjoying my time outside, my last night guarding the dumpster. I lay on the hood of my car, watching the sky, which was clear and filled with stars and blinking satellites. The wind felt wonderful on my bare skin, warm and close and breathy. I felt far away from myself, completely alone in the world, but strangely calm, too.
The dumpster creaked on its base. I scanned the area, but saw no one. Just then I noticed the sound of an approaching car. I sat up and reached for the spear gun.
Headlights appeared from around the corner. They stopped at the end of the block. Someone exited the car, and though I squinted to make the person out, the headlights were pointed at me, and all I could see was a hazy red silhouette.
“Is that you, Joan?” I said. “Joan, I have some things to say.”
“I’m not here to start trouble,” said Dick Doyle.
The blood rushed out of my face. I shielded my eyes, but he was just a shadow and a voice.
Then the headlights went off and I could see him. He wore a T-shirt
and jeans, a trucker’s cap on his head. One of his arms hung in a sling. The fingers of his other hand were all splinted. His expression was sharp and alert, though. Just the way I imagined he lived in his private time.
“Well, well,” I said.
“Look. It wasn’t an act, at first,” he said, walking toward me. “After that asshole ran me down, I couldn’t hardly do anything. It was like someone padlocked my brain. But then things came back to me. It was slow going.” He stopped right in front of me. “It took a long time to recover.”
“So, who knows about this?” I said. “Who knows you’re faking?”
He shrugged. “My family, my friends. I don’t know. Whoever. I’m not faking, though, because that’s not what matters about the act. That’s not what it’s about.”
“Does Pearl know?” I said.
Dick sighed. He turned toward his car and gave a nod. A tiny light went on inside and I saw Pearl sitting in the driver’s seat. She wore a kerchief over her hair, like an old woman. There were dark circles beneath her eyes.
“I’m dropping the charges against you,” said Dick.
“Why are you doing that?” I said.
“Because I want this to be over and done. I need it to be, man. Look, if you want to go tell everyone I’m a fake, then go ahead. Be my guest. Splash it all over the place. I don’t care anymore. You want to beat the shit out of me? You want to fire that spear through my chest? I deserve it, right? I ruined your life or whatever you want to think. Here. Go ahead. Shoot.”
He flung open his good arm and waited.
“Really,” he said. “Do it. Now’s your chance. Fuck me up, man. I stole your girlfriend, dragged you down here.”
He lifted his shirt, revealing his belly. “Come on!” he said, angry now. “Do it. Here I am! Exposed!”
I kept waiting for the old anger to kick in, but it just wouldn’t. None of my past with Dick Doyle seemed to matter anymore. I actually felt silly, standing there with my spear gun, facing off.
“Let’s call it even,” I said.
He squinted at me. “Hold up,” he said. “You understand, right? This has to be the end?”