The Great and Secret Show

  Even the Pontiac convertible he parked in the Mall was white, though its bodywork had been rusted by snow and salt from a dozen Chicago winters. It had got him across country, but there'd been a few close calls along the way. The time was coming when he was going to have to take it out into a field and shoot it. Meanwhile, if anyone needed evidence of a stranger in Palomo Grove they only had to cast their eye along the row of automobiles.

  Or indeed, over him. He felt hopelessly out of place in his corduroys and his shabby jacket—(too long in the arms, too tight across the chest, like every jacket he'd ever bought).

  This was a town where they measured your worth by the name on your sneakers. He didn't wear sneakers; he wore black leather high-tops that he'd use day in, day out until they fell apart, whereupon he'd buy an identical pair. Out of place or not, he was here for a good reason, and the sooner he got started the better he'd start feeling.

  First, he needed directions. He selected a Frozen Yoghurt store as the emptiest along the row, and sauntered in. The welcome that met him from the other side of the counter was so warm he almost thought he'd been recognized.

  "Hi! How can I help you?"

  "I'm . . . new," he said. Dumb remark, he thought. "What I mean is, is there any place . . . any place I can buy a map?"

  "You mean of California?"

  "No. Palomo Grove," he said, keeping the sentences short. That way he stammered less.

  The grin on the far side of the counter broadened.

  "Don't need a map," it said. "The town's not that big."

  "OK. How about a hotel?"

  "Sure. Easy. There's one real close. Or else there's a new place, up in Stillbrook Village."

  "Which is the cheapest?"

  "The Terrace. It's just two minutes' drive, round the back of the Mall."

  "Sounds perfect."

  The smile he got in return said: everything s perfect here. He could almost believe it too. The polished cars shone in the lot; the signs pointing him round to the back of the shopping center gleamed; the motel facade—with another sign— Welcome to Palomo Grove, The Prosperous Haven—was as brightly painted as a Saturday morning cartoon. He was glad, when he'd secured a room, to pull down the blind against the daylight, and lurk a little.

  The last stretch of the drive had left him weary, so he decided to perk his system up with some exercises and a shower. The machine, as he referred to his body, had been in a driver's seat too long; it needed a working over. He warmed up with ten minutes of shadow sparrings, a combination of kicks and punches, followed by a favorite cocktail of specialized kicks: axe, jump crescent, spinning hook and jump spinning back kicks. As usual, what warmed up his muscles heated his mind. By the time he got to his leg-lifts and sit-ups he was ready to take on half of Palomo Grove to get an answer to the question he'd come here asking.

  Which was: who is Howard Katz? Me wasn't a good enough answer any more. Me was just the machine. He needed more information than that.

  It was Wendy who'd asked the question, in that long night of debate which "had ended in her leaving him.

  "I like you, Howie," she'd said. "But I can't love you. And you know why? Because I don't know you."

  "You know what I am?" Howie had replied. "A man with a hole in his middle."

  "That's a weird way to put it."

  "It's a weird way to feel."

  Weird, but true. Where others had some sense of themselves as people—ambition, opinion, religion—he just had this pitiful unfixedness. Those who liked him—Wendy, Richie, Lem—were patient with him. They waited through his stumblings and stammerings to hear what he had to say, and seemed to find some value in his comments. (You're my holy fool, Lem had once told Howie; a remark which Howie was still pondering.) But to the rest of the world he was Katz the klutz. They didn't bait him openly—he was too fit to be taken on hand to hand, even by heavyweights—but he knew what they said behind his back, and it always amounted to the same thing: Katz had a piece missing.

  That Wendy had finally given up on him was too much to bear. Too hurt to show his face he'd brooded on the conversation for the best part of a week. Suddenly, the solution came clear. If there was any place on earth he'd understand the how and why of himself it was surely the town where he'd been born.

  He raised the blind and looked out at the light. It was pearly; the air sweet-smelling. He couldn't imagine why his mother would ever have left this pretty place for the bitter winter winds and smothering summers of Chicago. Now that she was dead (suddenly, in her sleep) he would have to solve that mystery for himself; and perhaps, in its solving, fill the hole that haunted the machine.

  Just as she reached the front room, Momma called down from her room, her timing as faultless as ever.

  "Jo-Beth? Are you there? Jo-Beth?"

  Always the same falling note in the voice, that seemed to warn: be loving to me now because I may not be here tomorrow. Perhaps not even the next hour.

  "Honey, are you still there?"

  "You know I am, Momma."

  "Can I have a word?"

  "I'm late for work."

  "Just a minute. Please. What's a minute?"

  "I'm coming. Don't get upset. I'm coming."

  Jo-Beth started upstairs. How many times a day did she cover this route? Her life was being counted out in stairs climbed and descended, climbed and descended.

  "What is it, Momma?"

  Joyce McGuire lay in her usual position: on the sofa beside the open window, a pillow beneath her head. She didn't look sick; but most of the time she was. The specialists came, and looked, and charged their fees, and left again shrugging. Nothing wrong physically, they said. Sound heart, sound lungs, sound spine. It's between her ears she's not so well. But that was news Momma didn't want to hear. Momma had once known a girl who'd gone mad, and been hospitalized, and never come out again. That made her more afraid of madness than of anything. She wouldn't have the word spoken in the house.

  "Will you have the Pastor call me?" Joyce said. "Maybe he'll come over tonight."

  "He's a very busy man, Momma."

  "Not too busy for me," Joyce said. She was in her thirty-ninth year but she behaved like a woman twice that age. The slow way she raised her head from the pillow as if every inch was a triumph over gravity; the fluttering hands and eyelids; that perpetual sigh in her voice. She had cast herself as a movie consumptive, and would not be dissuaded from the role by mere medical opinion. She dressed for the role, in sickroom pastels; she let her hair, which was a rich brunette, grow long, not caring to fashion it or pin it up. She wore no trace of make-up, which further enhanced the impression of a woman tottering on the tip of the abyss. All in all, Jo-Beth was glad Momma no longer went out in public. People would talk. But that left her here, in the house, calling her daughter up and down the stairs. Up and down, up and down.

  When, as now, Jo-Beth's irritation reached screaming pitch she reminded herself that her mother had her reasons for this withdrawal. Life hadn't been easy for an unmarried woman bringing up her children in a town as judgmental as the Grove. She'd earned her malady in censure and humiliation.

  "I'll get Pastor John to call," Jo-Beth said. "Now listen, Momma, I've got to go."

  "I know, honey, I know."

  Jo-Beth returned to the door, but Joyce called after her.

  "No kiss?" she said.

  "Momma—"

  "You never miss kissing me."

  Dutifully Jo-Beth went back to the window, and kissed her mother on the cheek.

  "You take care," Joyce said.

  "I'm fine."

  "I don't like you working late."

  "This is not New York, Momma."

  Joyce's eyes flickered towards the window, from which she watched the world go by.

  "Makes no difference," she said, the lightness going from her voice. "There's no place safe."

  It was a familiar speech. Jo-Beth had been hearing it, in one version or another, since childhood. Talk of the world as a Valley of Death
, haunted by faces capable of unspeakable malice. That was the chief comfort Pastor John gave Momma. They agreed on the presence of the Devil in the world; in Palomo Grove.

  "I'll see you in the morning," Jo-Beth said.

  "I love you, honey."

  "I love you too, Momma."

  Jo-Beth closed the door and started downstairs.

  "Is she asleep?"

  Tommy-Ray was at the foot of the flight.

  "No. She's not."

  "Damn."

  "You should go in and see her."

  "I know I should. Only she's going to give me a hard time about Wednesday."

  "You were drunk," she said. "Hard liquor, she kept saying. True?"

  "What do you think? If we'd been brought up like normal kids, with liquor around the house, it wouldn't go to my head."

  "So it's her fault you got drunk?"

  "You've got something against me, too, haven't you? Shit. Everybody's got something against me."

  Jo-Beth smiled, and put her arms around her brother. "No, Tommy, they haven't. They all think you're wonderful and you know it."

  "You too?"

  "Me too."

  She kissed him, lightly, then went to the mirror to check her appearance.

  "Pretty as a picture," he said, coming to stand beside her. "Both of us."

  "Your ego," she said. "It's getting worse."

  "That's why you love me," he said, gazing at their twin reflections. "Am I growing more like you or you like me?"

  "Neither."

  "Ever seen two faces more alike?"

  She smiled. There was an extraordinary resemblance between them. A delicacy in Tommy-Ray's bones matched by clarity in hers which had both of them idolized. She liked nothing better than to walk out hand in hand with her brother, knowing she had beside her a companion as attractive as any girl could wish, and knowing he felt the same. Even among the forced beauties of the Venice boardwalk they turned heads.

  But in the last few months they hadn't gone out together. She'd been working long hours at the Steak House, and he'd been out with his pals among the beach crowd: Sean, Andy and the rest. She missed the contact.

  "Have you been feeling weird these last couple of days?" he asked, out of nowhere.

  "What kind of funny?"

  "I don't know. Probably just me. Only I feel like everything's coming to an end."

  "It's almost summer. Everything's just beginning."

  "Yeah, I know . . . but Andy's gone off to college, so fuck him. Sean's got this girl in L.A., and he's real private with her. I don't know. I'm left here waiting, and I don't know what for."

  "So don't."

  "Don't what?"

  "Wait. Take off somewhere."

  "I want to. But . . ." He studied her face in the mirror. "Is it true? You don't feel . . . strange?"

  She returned his look, not certain she wanted to admit to the dreams she'd been having, in which she was being carried by the tide, and all her life was waving to her from the shore. But if not to Tommy, whom she loved and trusted more than any creature alive, to whom?

  "OK. I admit it," she said, "I do feel something."

  "What?"

  She shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe I'm waiting too."

  "Do you know what for?"

  "Nope."

  "Neither do I."

  "Don't we make a pair?"

  She reran the conversation with Tommy as she drove down to the Mall. He had, as usual, articulated their shared feelings. The last few weeks had been charged with anticipation. Something was going to happen soon. Her dreams knew it. Her bones knew it. She only hoped it was not delayed, because she was coming to the point, with Momma and the Grove, and the job at the Steak House, when she would lose her cool completely. It was a race now, between the fuse on her patience and the something on the horizon. If it hadn't come by summer, she thought (whatever it was, however unlikely), then she'd up and go looking for it.

  ____________ ii ____________

  Nobody seemed to walk much in this town, Howie noticed. On his three-quarter-hour stroll up and back down the Hill he encountered only five pedestrians, and they all had children or dogs in tow to justify their waywardness. Short though this initial journey was it took him to a fair vantage point from which to grasp something of the town's lay-out. It also sharpened his appetite.

  Beef for the desperado, he thought, and selected But-rick's Steak House from the eating places available in the Mall. It was not large, and not more than half full. He took a table at the window, opened the tattered copy of Hesse's Siddhartha, and continued his struggle with the text, which was in the original German. The book had belonged to his mother, who had read and re-read it many times—though he could not remember her so much as uttering a word of the language she was apparently fluent in. He was not. Reading the book was like an interior stuttering; he fought for the sense, catching it only to lose it again.

  "Something to drink?" the waitress asked him.

  He was about to say "Coke" when his life changed.

  Jo-Beth stepped over the threshold of Butrick's the way she had three nights a week for the last seven months, but tonight it was as if every other time had been a rehearsal for this stepping; this turning; this meeting of eyes with the young man sitting at table five. She took him in with a glance. His mouth was half open. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles. There was a book in his hand. Its owner's name she didn't know, couldn't know. She'd never set eyes on him before. Yet he watched her with the same recognition she knew was on her own face.

  It was like being born, he thought, seeing this face. Like coming out of a safe place into an adventure that would take his breath away. There was nothing more beautiful in all the world than the soft curve of her lips as she smiled at him.

  And smiling now, like a perfect flirt. Stop it, she told herself, look away! He'll think you're out of your mind staring. But then he's staring too, isn't he?

  I'll keep looking—as long as she keeps looking

  —as long as he keeps looking—

  "Jo-Beth!"

  The summons came from the kitchen. She blinked.

  "Did you say a Coke?" the waitress asked him.

  Jo-Beth glanced towards the kitchen—Murray was calling her, she had to go—then back at the boy with the book. He still had his eyes fixed on her.

  "Yes," she saw him say.

  The word was for her, she knew. Yes, go, he said, I'll still be here.

  She nodded, and went.

  The whole encounter occupied maybe five seconds, but it left them both trembling.

  In the kitchen Murray was his usual martyred self.

  "Where have you been?"

  "Two minutes late, Murray."

  "I make it ten. There's a party of three in the corner. It's your table."

  "I'm putting my apron on."

  "Hurry."

  Howie watched the kitchen door for her re-emergence, Siddhartha forgotten. When she appeared she didn't look his way but went to serve a table on the far side of the restaurant. He wasn't distressed that she failed to look. An understanding had been reached between them in that first exchange of gazes. He would wait all night if need be, and all through tomorrow if that was what it took, until she had finished her work and looked at him again.

  In the darkness below Palomo Grove the inspirers of these children still held on to each other as they had when they'd first fallen to earth, neither willing to risk the other's freedom. Even when they'd risen to touch the bathers, they'd gone together, like twins joined at the hip. Fletcher had been slow comprehending the Jaff's intention that day. He'd thought the man planned to draw his wretched terata out of the girls. But his mischief had been more ambitious than that. It was the making of children he was about, and, squalid as it was, Fletcher had been obliged to do the same. He was not proud of his assault. As news of its consequences had reached them his shame had deepened. Once, sitting by a window with Raul, he had dreamed of being sky. Instead his war with the Jaff had reduced him
to a spoiler of innocents, whose futures they had blighted with touch. The Jaff had taken no little pleasure in Fletcher's distress. Many times, as the years in darkness passed, Fletcher would sense his enemy's thoughts turning to the children they'd made, and wondering which would come first to save their true father.

  Time did not mean to them what it had meant before the Nuncio. They didn't hunger, nor did they sleep. Buried together like lovers, they waited in the rock. Sometimes they could hear voices from the overground, echoing down passages opened by the subtle but perpetual grinding of the earth. But these snatches offered no clue to the progress of their children, with whom their mental links were at best tenuous. Or at least had been, until tonight.

  Tonight their offspring had met, and contact was suddenly clear, as though their children had understood something of their own natures, seeing their perfect opposites, and had unwittingly opened their minds to the creators. Fletcher found himself in the head of a youth called Howard, the son of Trudi Katz. Through the boy's eyes he saw his enemy's child just as the Jaff saw Howie from his daughter's head.

  This was the moment they'd waited for. The war they'd fought half way across America had exhausted them both. But their children were in the world to fight for them now; to finish the battle that had been left unresolved for two decades. This time, it would be to the death.

  Or so they'd expected. Now, for the first time in their lives, Fletcher and the Jaff shared the same pain—like a single spike thrust through both their souls.

  This was not war, damn it. This was nothing like war.

  "Lost your appetite?" the waitress wanted to know.

  "Guess I have," Howie replied.

  "You want me to take it away?"

  "Yeah."

  "You want coffee? Dessert?"

  "Another Coke."

  "One Coke."

  Jo-Beth was in the kitchen when Beverly came through with the plate.

  "Waste of good steak," Beverly said.

  "What's his name?" Jo-Beth wanted to know.