Читать книгу The Grand March - Robert Turner - Страница 7

“So, how are your folks?” Russell asked Carmela as they rode together to the Contreras’ family home.

“Oh, my mom’s beautiful as ever. She’s still at the alterations shop every morning, to make sure everything gets out, but she leaves around noon, instead of staying around all day like she used to. That’s good for her, I think. My dad’s still my dad. He’s got two new shops in Michigan City, so he’s there a lot. Mom keeps telling him to take it easy, let Luis take over, but he just works all the time still.”

“He’s a walking heart attack,” Manny commented.

She turned to him and said sharply, “Don’t say things like that.”

“It’s true,” he persisted. “The way he eats, always working—what did your mom say his cholesterol was? Something crazy, way up there. Blood as thick as pudding.”

She stiffened, stared straight ahead and stated, “We’re done talking about my father’s health now.”

Manny cast a glance over at Russell, who avoided his eyes. They came to a stop at a red light. A decidedly unstable-looking fellow loped into the crosswalk. He stretched his scrawny neck, thrust his head over the hood of the car and stared at the three occupants with a yellow-toothed snarl. He narrowed his eyes on Manny, who imitated his expression and leaned over the wheel, staring back. The guy crossed slowly to the curb, eyes fixed on Manny’s. He stood there and continued staring at them. Manny kept his eye on him.

“What’s that guy’s problem?” he muttered.

“I don’t know,” answered Carmela, “but let’s not make it ours.”

The light changed and they drove on.

“How’s Isabel?” Russell continued inquiring about her kin.

Manny snorted.

“What’s so funny?” Russell wanted to know.

“Just thinking about when you had a thing for Isabel,” Manny explained. “It’s funny.”

Carmela looked at her husband with something just shy of scorn, then turned to Russell and said brightly, “Isabel is fine, thank you. She’s teaching English at a school in Mexico, living with my Aunt Rosa. We write to each other every month or so. I’ll tell her you asked about her.”

Manny snorted again, and Russell leaned across Carmela to tell him, “I don’t know about having ‘a thing’ for Isabel, but I like her all right. All the Contreras women are charming.”

Carmela planted a kiss on Russell’s cheek as Manny laughed approvingly.

“And how’s Nestor?”

“Oh, Nestor, now let me tell that one,” Manny started. Carmela cast him a sideways glance as he launched into a story that he obviously relished.

“You know he married Lisa Strube, right? Just out of high school—bam—and her dad buys them a house, a real nice house. She was going to school, but Nestor just plopped his ass down. She started riding him, so he got this band together, right? Only they sucked and could never get any gigs, and it was just an excuse for him to party anyway. So she kicked him out, and he went bonkers. I mean, seriously bonkers. He spray painted crap on the house, smashed her car with a sledgehammer, ran around screaming, got picked up downtown butt naked one night. The works. Mom and Dad sent him away someplace downstate. He got back last year and he’s living with them, not doing much of anything that anyone can tell. He’s a lot mellower now, on his meds, but man, get him talking and he’s a pure, unadulterated freak.”

Carmela piped up. “What’s your problem with my family tonight?”

“I’m just saying the guy’s a freak. I like him, but you got to admit he’s out there.”

“He’s my brother. And your brother-in-law.”

“Oh, I know. I love your family. Really I do. They’re just funny to me is all.”

“Well, I’m glad we can amuse you,” she said coolly.

Manny shot another look at Russell, who returned it this time.

They parked next to a bunch of cars angled together on one side of the house.

“Is that new siding?” Russell asked.

“Nope,” Manny answered, setting the brake. “Painted a couple years ago, though.”

Her parents had a nice spread with their three-story house on a sizable piece of land, complete with a duck pond in the backyard. They were both first-generation Americans, born to Mexican families that had moved here in the 1940s. Alejandro, her father, had graduated from business school and started the dry cleaners that provided their family income. Her mother, Letitia, was an equal partner in the business, in charge of alterations and repairs. They had been married for thirty-five years, and had lived in this house for thirty.

Dad was at the barbecue on the patio. Four picnic tables were joined together and laden with dishes of food. A few guys tossed a Frisbee. A croquet match was underway in the backyard. Children gamboled about, playing games and chasing ducks.

“Who’s this?” Dad nodded as Russell approached. He was a short, stocky man with eyes that squinted above his broad cheeks. His short, thick hair was still mostly black, but flecked with gray.

“Russ Pinske,” Carmela said, giving her dad a quick peck on the cheek.

“Good to know you,” he said, holding his hand out to Russell.

“Russ has been here before, dad,” she said as she headed to the door with a sack of corn she’d brought.

“Oh, sure, I remember,” he said, although it was clear he didn’t.

Dad got back to the grill, and Russell followed Carmela into the house. Manny had meanwhile joined the Frisbee game.

Letitia was a great collector of things, and adept at their artful display. Russell stopped at the kitchen door to admire a collection of eyecups.

“Russ Pinske,” Letitia said from across the kitchen. He came in. Fortunately the daughters had inherited the fine features of their mother. With Carmela standing there beside her, it occurred to him for the first time that the kids all stood a good head or two taller than their parents.

“Russ Pinske,” she repeated, looking him square in the eye. Without the slightest trace of a smile she asked, “What are you doing here?”

He looked at Carmela, then back to her mother and answered, “I’m back in town for a while.”

She considered this with a tight-lipped hum as she continued chopping ingredients for a huge salad bowl. Without looking up, she said, “Russ, get out of my kitchen. Nothing personal, but men get in the way in my kitchen. You want to be useful, go clean this corn. Outside.”

He took the bag of corn and two empty bags and went to the kitchen door. Carmela winked at him as he left, then busied herself in her appointed tasks. He sat on the stairs, the bag of corn at his side, the two empty bags open at his feet. A screened-in gazebo stood halfway between the stairs and the pond. He could see part of the croquet game, and the Frisbee players occasionally drifted into view. The grill was out of his line of sight, but the smoke reached him where he sat, quite contented with his shucking.

Nestor stepped out of the gazebo, letting the screen door slam behind him. He lazily crossed the lawn, lifting a lanky arm in a sort of half-wave, half-salute to Russell.

“Hey, Russ,” he said, sitting down on the stairs. “When did you get in town?” He blinked his eyes rapidly, as though something irritated them. He looked tired. His clothes were wrinkled, and he needed a shave.

“Just this morning.”

Nestor ran a hand through his long black hair and said, “Yeah, Carmela said something, like, a month ago about you maybe coming to town.”

“Took me a while to get my act together, but here I am.” He tossed a clean ear of corn into a bag and got to work shucking another.

“She said something about you going on a road trip, something like that.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m telling people. I just want to get out and see the country, you know? See what’s happening out there.”

“Any real reason, or just to say you’ve done it?”

“Well, I’m hoping I’ll find something to get involved in, maybe someplace cool I want to live, some community to be part of. But I’ll be damned if I know what I’m looking for.”

Nestor grunted. “You might be more damned if you find it.”

Their eyes met.

“Well, what the hell you hanging round this shit-hole for?” Nestor blurted. “Get out—get out while you can. Go!” He grabbed Russell’s arm and mock-dragged him down the stairs. “Try to get to the county line before it’s too late!”

They shared a laugh, then Nestor continued. “Seriously, though, man, you stay around too long, and this place will get its hooks in you. Suck you right in. Suck you in so good you’ll forget you ever wanted to leave. That’s when it starts to quietly digest you from the inside out.” He paused, contemplating whether to continue in this vein, then pointed to the bag of corn. “Give me one of those. Shame on my mom, putting her guest to work.”

“Oh, it’s cool,” Russell shook his head and finished another ear. “I don’t really know anyone here. And I can hardly charm them with my Spanish.”

“I suppose,” Nestor agreed, husking the corn with muscular efficiency. “Well, you got your whole assortment here this evening. A few friends of the family, few aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews. All like that.”

Having vigorously stripped the husks, he now meticulously began removing the silk strand by strand. Russell watched his delicate movements.

“So, Manny told me on the way over here that you went nuts.”

With his intense concentration focused on one particular strand, he softy stated, “Man, you don’t know nothing till you’ve been through the wringer like I have. Goddamn.” He peeled off the thread and moved to another, isolating it from a tangle. “And now I’m always going to be ‘Crazy Nestor.’ Someday, ‘Crazy Old Nestor.’ As long as I’m around all these people, who keep thinking of me as ‘Crazy Nestor,’ see me as ‘Crazy Nestor,’ how can I not be ‘Crazy Nestor?’”

He removed his current strand of concern, and with a triumphal flourish cast it to the wind. He immediately singled out another strand and continued talking, almost in a whisper. “All I know is I got to get out of here any way I can, get away from all these eyes pinning me down as ‘Crazy Nestor.’ Got to make a clean break and head off where no one knows me. I think East Coast.”

Russell finished the remainder of the bag while Nestor continued his futile attempt to remove each tassel individually. He handed the uncompleted ear to Russell and said, “You finish it. I just can’t.” He got up, walked down the steps, stopped and said, “I don’t know if I’m going to make the big feed, so if I don’t, stop by the gazebo before you leave. I’ll be out there.”

Russell took the cleaned corn to the kitchen. Carmela met him at the door, set the bag on a counter and ushered him back out onto the landing.

“I saw Nestor out here helping you. He’s really been looking forward to seeing you, I know, ever since I told him you were coming. He seems all right to you?”

“Well, he’s Nestor,” Russell began. “You know, but he seems kind of nervous and distracted. But he’s always been kind of nervous and distracted, I guess, so who’s to say? He’s definitely still Nestor.”

“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. She wrapped her arm around him. “Hey, I want to thank you for your compliments on my embroidery work this morning. You really like it?”

“Sure, Carmela, it’s great.” He felt her enthusiasm swell, and he liked pumping it up. She unhooked her arm and leaned out over the railing.

“You know, like on consignment or something. It’d be great if some of them sold. I like to think about people wearing them, putting them on their tables, giving them as Christmas gifts or whatever. I just want to get my stuff out there in the world.”

One of the croquet players gave a shout that sent some ducks flying. She turned and smiled at him.

“I’m going to go boil that corn. Why don’t you play Frisbee? I see Manny down there with Luis.”

She went back inside, and he took himself over to the game. Dad waved when he walked by. Manny saw him and yelled, “Russ—go long!”

He sent the Frisbee flying. Russell ran to intercept it, fell short and dived for it, touching it with his fingers but not grabbing hold. He got up, brushed himself off and picked up the disc, to the evident delight of Dad, who shouted, “Hey, he plays fetch! Hey, Fido! How you like it?”

Russell ignored the comment and walked toward Manny, who indicated that he should turn around, just as Dad’s voice rang out again.

“Hey, how you like it?”

Russell turned to see the man holding a steak above the grill.

“Rare,” he answered. Dad started laughing.

“Rare. Rare. That’s him all right,” he called out to Manny and Luis. “He’s a rare one all right!”

It took a while for the crowd to be seated when dinner was called. Russell had gotten separated from Manny and Carmela, and was surrounded by strangers. They all held hands as a white-haired man said a prayer. Although Russell’s Spanish was limited, he followed the gist of the blessing, heavy on the gratitude for family, making him even more self-conscious of being a stranger among them. After the meal began, he felt a slap on his back, and Nestor appeared at his side.

“I decided I’m hungry after all,” he said with a broad smile.

A plentiful meal was set before them. Platters were heaped with grilled meat and shrimp. Bowls overflowed with salads of every stripe—bean salad, lettuce salad, potato salad, egg salad, macaroni salad, fruit salad. There were plates of corn, beets, biscuits and bread. Carmela made sure Russell tried a dish she’d concocted with melon and walnuts. Dishes clattered. Children shouted, giggled, and carried on. Everyone talked at once, a babble largely unintelligible to Russell, who concentrated on his plate. The food looked especially good to him, and he dug in. Nestor nudged him.

“See the redhead?” He tilted his chin and drew Russell’s attention down the table to a woman whose flaming mane was hard not to notice. “Luis’s girlfriend, Cheryl,” Nestor continued. “Check her out.”

Her complexion was pale and freckled. There was almost no food on her plate, and she wasn’t eating any of it. Her watery eyes bulged from their sockets and stared beyond the table. Russell followed her far-off gaze and saw that she was watching a duck waddling on the lawn. Suddenly she grabbed a soda can and raised it to her lips, then closed her eyes and jerked her head back as she took a quick swallow.

“She’s one weird girl,” said Nestor in a confidential tone. “And you know, if I’m calling someone weird, well, keep your eye on her. She’s nuts. Takes one to know one, you know.”

Russell looked at her again. This time she noticed him. They looked at each other for a moment. Then she rolled her eyes back in her head, picked up her soda and took another bird-like gulp. Russell returned to his meal and devoured a pile of shrimp.

A cooler of ice cream was presented for dessert. Russell ignored the sweets and began to help clean up. He was dismissed by a woman who told him not to bother, so he started to walk off to the gazebo to which Nestor had already retired. On his way he remembered with a start that he hadn’t called Helen. He sought out Carmela for permission to use the phone. She led him into the kitchen and left him there. He picked up the receiver and searched his pockets for her number, then realized he’d left it behind. He really didn’t want to blow her off again, but he slouched and hung up.

Out in the gazebo, Nestor was writing. He glanced up as Russell came in.

“Hey, grab a seat. I’m just taking a few notes here. Something on my mind.”

Nestor sat at a desk, surrounded by a futon and a chest of drawers. Crates full of books were piled everywhere. Russell sat in a folding chair.

“What, do you live out here now?” he asked.

Nestor answered while he continued to write. “Yeah. My dad kept telling me I should move out of the house, so I did.” He looked up with a smirk on his face. “Moved out here. For the summer at least.” He capped his pen and moved over to the futon, where he stretched out.

“Dad mostly just ignores me now. Whenever he does notice me he calls me a kook. But Mom’s cool. She knows I’ll probably just disappear one of these days. ‘Crazy Nestor’ getting lost in the crowd in New York City.”

The horizon turned yellow and the air thickened. A charge built in the atmosphere, like a storm might be coming. The air was still, without the slightest breeze. Slanting light cast the scene in a greenish tinge.

“I’ve been concentrating on my music,” Nestor said. “Let me play you something I’ve been working on.” He reached behind the futon and pulled out an electronic keyboard, then looked through a crate for a long orange extension cord. Russell followed him to the house.

“My dad hates it when I do this. Let’s go round the back and avoid a freak out.” He led him to the rear door and located an outlet. Russell turned to head back out, but Nestor stopped him and waved him up a set of stairs.

“Come up here for a second and check out my mom’s latest craze.”

They stood in a little alcove of shelves filled with shuttlecocks.

“See this one?” Nestor handed him a bundle of cork and feathers. “Passenger pigeon feathers,” he said. “They used to blacken the sky. Now this is all that’s left.”

Russell handed it back. “Pretty wild.”

“Yeah.” Nestor started down the steps. “You want to know something wild—you know about Isabel?”

“Carmela said she was living in Mexico.”

“Right, with Aunt Rosa.” They left the house and headed across the lawn. “Did she tell you about the unsuitable suitor?”

Russell shook his head.

They entered the gazebo and sat together on the futon. “Maybe she doesn’t know,” he began. “But my mom got a weird-ass call last week about this guy Isabel was dating. I guess he creeped Rosa out, she said she got this bad vibe off him. So Isabel’s going out with this guy, and then Rosa finds out he’s married. She tells Isabel and she puts the guy out. Then he comes back the next day with a big bouquet of flowers, only Isabel wasn’t home. Rosa grabbed the flowers and threw them on the ground and—this is what my aunt told my mom—then the flowers turned into hissing green worms.”

“What?” Russell exclaimed.

Nestor laughed and continued. “I know. That’s what she said, big hissing green worms. The guy ran off and she stepped on them and squished them and she said they were full of black blood that smelled like sulfur.”

“OK,” Russell slowly intoned, trying to determine by Nestor’s expression if this was some sort of joke.

Nestor laughed again, then stood and shrugged his shoulders. He set up his keyboard and began cranking out swirling chord progressions. He closed his eyes and swayed rhythmically, leaned across the keyboard and chanted in a slow drawl, “All skate! Everybody skate!”

“No way!” Russell shouted.

Nestor continued playing, then trailed off and said, “What, no way?”

“I was just talking about that this morning,” Russell excitedly explained. “I walked by the roller rink and thought about that guy and his ‘all skate, everybody skate’ thing.”

“Well,” Nestor chuckled, “I’ve been working for a while on a concept, sort of a take-off on The Phantom of the Opera, maybe something like, Phantom of the Roller Rink.’”

Russell stared at him. “That’s just weird.”

“Yeah, it’s a weird world,” Nestor sanguinely affirmed, then launched back into his homage to the maestro of the rink.

Carmela gave a perfunctory knock and walked in. “Hey, guys.”

Russell stood as she entered. Her brother kept playing, his eyes closed and his whole body swaying.

“Manny’s ready to go,” she said.

They stood together a moment and Nestor’s keyboard faded out. He walked over to his desk, picked up an envelope and handed it to Russell.

“Good to see you again, man.” He slapped him on the back. “Come on out here and see me again before you leave town. We should talk more.”

As they stepped out of the gazebo, Nestor pointed at the envelope and said, “That’s a little souvenir from dinner for you.”

Carmela and Russell caught up with Manny near the front porch, where he stood talking to a middle-aged man wearing a wide-brimmed hat. Three other hatted men stood in an adjacent cluster, talking amongst themselves. Manny noticed their approach and hailed them.

“Russ, here, meet Arturo.”

Russell took a couple of steps forward to shake hands with the man, who looked him up and down and asked, “You work?”

Manny put his arm around Russell’s shoulder. “I told Art you were looking for work. He’s the lead man on a field crew. Turns out he needs a few new hands.”

Arturo again addressed Russell. “You work hard? It’s hard work. Out in the sun. Sunrise to sunset. Forty dollars a day, paid cash at the end of the week.”

“Work for a month and you’ll more than double your roll,” Manny nudged him. “Keep you moving a lot longer.”

Arturo continued explaining the terms of employment. “You start Monday. Be at the Five Star parking lot at five-thirty. Truck takes you out, brings you back. We got water. Bring a bottle to carry with you. Bring food. You’ll burn out there, so bring a hat.”

Russell nodded, not knowing how to get out of this without looking like a shirker.

“OK. You be there Monday at five-thirty.”

“All right,” said Manny as they walked to the car. “I feel better about that now.”

They drove slowly past the handsome estates on one of the town’s wide boulevards. Most dated from the nineteenth century: spacious old mansions set among towering maples and sycamores. Russell thought about the families and all the generations that had inhabited them, about stories told and lives lived.

“Hey, take him by the free house,” Carmela said.

Manny took an abrupt right.

“Free house?” Russell asked.

“Yeah, free if you can move it. You tell it, Manny.”

“I heard from some guys at work about this guy, Jim Ryan I think his name is, a businessman—”

Carmela interrupted with a little snort.

“What?” Manny asked.

She tried to explain. “Businessman. That word is funny to me.”

“What’s so funny about it?’” Manny wanted to know.

Russell gave her a knowing look and said, “Time zone.” They both giggled.

“What?” Manny said again, thoroughly perplexed. “You two talking in some kind of weird code now?”

“Some words are just funny,” Carmela said.

“Businessman,” Russell repeated, and she snickered.

Manny glanced at them and continued where he left off. “Anyway, this businessman—go ahead and laugh—he, well, owns a business, and he wants to expand to the next lot. So he buys it, but there’s this old house on it. Needs some work, nobody’s lived in it for a while, but it’s a nice old house and he really doesn’t want to tear it down. So he put out the word that anyone who’ll move it off the property can have it for free. He’s not going to expand till September, so someone’s got to take him up on it before then.”

They pulled up and idled in front of a peeling but proud Victorian house sitting in the middle of a yard gone to seed.

“How much to move it?” Russell asked.

“I heard someone say forty grand just to jack it up, then you have to move the utility lines, and haul it at, like, five miles an hour to wherever it’s going to go. It’d be pretty cool to see. Hell, I’d take it if I had a place to put it.”

Carmela liked that idea. “Oh, that’s good. You know how some people have cars up on blocks in their front yards? We could have houses up on blocks in our front yard! Lots of ‘em!”

They drove away and headed toward the center of town.

“Can you believe they wanted to tear down the train depot?” Carmela said as they passed by the stately old building.

“No,” Russell gasped. “Why did they want to do that?”

“Parking,” she responded with a disgusted tone. “This town is obsessed with parking. Tear it all down and pave it over!”

“Well,” Manny interjected, “the traffic is getting pretty bad. Sometimes you can’t find a decent spot anywhere.”

Carmela raised a finger. “But we can’t keep losing nice old houses and tearing down things like the train depot. Too much is getting bulldozed lately without too much getting said about it, if you ask me.”

“Run for office,” Manny said, as though they’d had this conversation before. “Run for mayor. I’d vote for you. I’d even work on your campaign a little.”

They cruised along Lincoln Way for a few blocks, then turned and went past the Masonic Temple and the old Rumacher Hotel.

“Now there’s something they’ve done right,” Manny said with civic pride. “Remember it used to be all worn down? Complete restoration, inside and out. It’s beautiful in that lobby, man. Go in there sometime and just sit. They’ve got these murals on the walls that tell the whole history of the region. It’s cool.”

“That was a good move,” Carmela agreed.

They continued meandering through the town. Russell took out his pocket watch, but it had stopped. He reset it and wound it.

“Got someplace to be?” Manny asked.

“Oh, no. I thought if it was earlier I’d ask to get back to your guys’ place so I could call Helen, but it’s too late to call now.” He sighed, disappointed in himself for blowing her off, even if it was inadvertent.

“Helen?” Carmela asked. “Didn’t you call her from Mom and Dad’s?”

Russell frowned. “I tried, only I didn’t have her number with me, and it’s unlisted. I just saw her today and I told her I’d call her tonight.” He trailed off into a shrug.

“You brought her to our wedding, didn’t you?” Carmela asked. “I remember her dancing barefoot.”

Russell smiled at the recollection.

“So you guys are still friends?”

Russell rolled his eyes. “I hope so. I haven’t talked to her in a while, but looked her up this morning and ran into her later, downtown. It was good to see her, and I hate dogging her tonight.”

Manny and Carmela exchanged a look.

“Should we get home?” she suggested.

“Oh, not on my account,” Russell insisted. “I’m liking this little drive. I’ll call her tomorrow.”

They resumed their slow cruise.

“So, you never did tell me about you and Gloria,” Carmela prompted Russell, who immediately began to squirm.

“Oh, God—do I have to talk about that?”

Manny chuckled. “Women, Russ—they love to get the dirt on one another.”

Carmela swatted him. “You’re in fine form tonight.” She turned her attention to Russell and said, “I’m afraid you bring out the worst in him.”

Manny winked. “You’re a bad influence.”

They stopped at a red light.

“Aah!” Carmela cried. Both men jumped.

“What?”

“Oh, whew,” she whispered, holding her hand to her breast. “It was nothing. Just that guy, see him?” They followed her pointing finger to a man wearing camouflage fatigues. She began to giggle as she continued. “I couldn’t see his body—it was completely camouflaged—I just saw this head go floating by.”

Manny wiped his brow. “Damn it, woman, don’t do shit like that. You make me all nervous.”

“If it gets any greener it’ll puke on ya!” Carmela taunted Manny as he lagged behind the changing light. She was giggling hard now.

“All right, all right,” he said, slowly pulling into the intersection. “Not like I’m holding anyone up.”

“Look out!” Russell shouted in alarm as a big old boat of a car hurtled through the intersection on an obvious collision course.

With a cry of “Shit!” Manny assessed the situation and gunned the accelerator, hoping to clear the intersection and avoid getting broadsided. The front end of the other car hit the Imp in the right rear fender and spun it around.

“Goddamnit,” was all Manny could say when he climbed out of the car.

“Calm down, it’s OK. No one’s hurt,” Carmela reassured him.

He stormed over to the other vehicle, where he was met with the squinting sneer of an elderly woman.

“Well, I don’t know how you drive where you’re from,” she scolded him, “but around here we stop at red lights.”

Manny stood dumbfounded a moment, then informed her, “I come from here. And my light was green.”

“Look, look here,” she said, “You just got your paint scraped. You should consider yourself lucky that I don’t report you.”

“Holy moley!” Manny roared. “Lady, you’re paying for a new fender.”

A nearby homeowner called the police, who came and talked to Manny and the other driver, a Mrs. Enid Kartch. They were given an incident report and the advice to be careful.

“Damn,” Manny mumbled as he paced around the porch. “Damn, damn, damn.”

“We’ll get it fixed, it’s OK.”

“But it was perfect—perfect when I got it, and perfect until now. Until tonight, when old lady Kartch rammed into it with her lame-ass old Caddy. Damn.”

Carmela tried to calm him down. “Lighten up, man.”

Manny was having none of it. “See that car?” he pointed into the darkness. “That’s not the same car anymore. That car used to be perfect, and now it’s not anymore.”

Carmela arched an eyebrow. “It’s just a car, Manny.”

“I know, I know,” Manny said. “It’s just a car. But goddamn, I’ve kept it like I wanted it for this long and now— just like that—it’s totally altered. From this point on, it’s a different car. Thanks to old lady Kartch. What the hell kind of name is that, anyway?”

By way of distraction, Russell offered the comment, “Looks like that storm’s passed by us.”

Lightning sparked in the distance, too far away to resonate on this calm porch. Carmela and Russell watched Manny walk out to his car and disappear into the shadows. They heard him walking in the gravel, then silence, then the striking of a lighter. As a pinprick ember glowed in the driveway beneath them, Russell turned to Carmela.

“You want to know about Gloria,” he began, scratching his chin. “I just remembered something. Once we were in bed and we were fighting about something—who knows what, we were always fighting about something—and at one point she just gave me this lame crap like, ‘You’re right. You’re always right. I should know better than to ever voice my opinion.’ God, that just irritated me. I shouted, ‘No, I am not always right. In fact, I am frequently wrong!’ And then I punched the wall. Only the wall was weaker than I thought, or I was stronger, and my fist went right through it. Then I punched it again and made the hole bigger and I yelled, ‘See? See? I am not always right!’”

Carmela stared at him with a wide grin, then broke into a deep laugh. “You’re funny, Russ.” She hugged him. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

Manny shuffled back up the walk and onto the porch. He stopped by the door and offered a beer to Russell, who accepted. Carmela got up and followed him into the kitchen. They were inside awhile as he sat lazily swinging, watching the flashing sky. The night droned with cicadas, crickets and frogs. A mosquito bit him. Manny came out with the beers.

“Here,” he said, handing one over, and seating himself on the railing.

They sipped their beers in silence. Then Manny came over and sat beside Russell on the swing. He took his shoes off and urged Russell to do the same. Then he put his left foot against Russell’s right foot and said, “Look at that.”

“What am I looking at?” Russell wanted to know.

“At our feet. See mine, and how regular the toe progression is? From the big toe—”

“That’s the one who went to market,” Russell interrupted.

“Right. From the big toe to the little toe—”

“Wee, wee, wee!” squealed Russell.

“Yeah, well, you see how regular all the toes are? Perfect, you might say. Each one proportionately smaller than the next. Now, you take yours. Boy, look at your toes. Those are some ugly toes you got on your feet. Are you a human, or a marmoset?”

Just as Russell was withdrawing his unworthy feet from the scrutiny of his perfect-toed friend, Carmela came out on the porch. Seeing Manny sitting with his toes splayed, she made an assumption and asked, “Is he getting off on his toes again?”

She sat between the two men, patted her husband on the knee and said in an overly patronizing tone, “We all know your toes are perfect, dear.”

They swung together silently, until Russell spoke up.

“Hey, what’s with the house numbers on this street?”

“Oh,” Manny began with a low growl. “I don’t know, but if I ever get my hands on the person responsible I’m gonna slap some sense into him. I talked to the postman, or postwoman, I guess, and she said she didn’t know how it got to be so screwed up, but it’s been screwed up so long that no one’s going to do anything about it at this point. So I’m thinking I’ll just change our address randomly. Right now it’s 21. Tomorrow I’ll change it to 32. Next Thursday it’ll be 1508. Why not? It obviously doesn’t matter.”

Carmela got up and went inside again. They sat and drank their beer.

“Say, Russ,” Manny turned to him. “Did you turn off the lights in the sewing room?”

Russell nodded that he had.

“OK. Just leave them alone next time. They’re special fixtures with a ballast that should be turned on and off only once a day. Carmela knows that, and she takes care of it herself.”

With this point understood, Manny moved to another topic of interest. “Hey, did she show you The Wiggler?”

“The what?” came Russell’s reply.

“The Wiggler. It’s in our basement, left over from whoever owned the place before. It’s this antique exercise device. It’s got this kind of platform you stand on, and there’s this big rubber belt you put around your waist, and when you fire it up the belt starts moving and jerks your body around like a spaz. It’s supposed to, like, vibrate your fat off or something. It’s major machinery—I can see why they left it behind for someone else to deal with. Want to try it out?”

Russell shrugged and consented. As they were getting up, Carmela came back out and said, “What now?”

“I was going to introduce Russ to The Wiggler.”

“No,” she insisted. “God, no. Don’t go down in that basement and get that thing going. It shakes the whole house. Sheesh—just give it a rest.”

They all settled back. The sky was purple, the air was heavy.

“Hey,” Russell began, “Nestor totally freaked me out tonight with something out in the gazebo. You know what we were talking about this morning, the roller-rink organist? Well, it turns out Nestor’s been writing a piece of music about him, calling it The Phantom of the Roller Rink.”

She looked at him with a slightly skewed smile. “He’s putting you on, Russ. I talked to him this afternoon, told him you were in town. He asked what you were up to, and I got to talking about what we talked about, and told him you’d mentioned the skating rink. He’s goofing on you, pulling one of his jokes.”

Russell rocked tranquilly, then said, “So, what should I make of the story he told me about the flowers turning into worms?”

With his friends staring at him, he related the story as he’d heard it.

“That’s a new one on me,” she said. “But I don’t doubt it. I know for a fact that my Aunt Rosa has heard the voices of dead people on her radio.”

The night quietly absorbed this statement.

Russell looked around for a minute, assessing his surroundings. “Your house is just great, guys, just great. And right over there is old Nellie Widow’s.”

“You know, I told you all her property went to the city, and now it’s getting annexed to Fox Lake Park,” Carmela said, gesturing into the darkness. “So there’ll be one big park from the lake all the way up the ridge and out past here. Permanent green belt. Perfect for kids.”

Manny stretched and yawned. “I’m getting tired.”

“Oh, hey,” Russell hastened to ask, “have you seen Carl or Ellie recently?”

Carmela, now also yawning, said, “I haven’t talked to Ellie for a couple of weeks. But they’re still living out at Stillwater. Carl’s working some job in the city, sales rep or something.”

“Yeah, remember last time they were out here?” Manny asked his wife. “Remember Carl freaking out about that rock pile out there by the road? He was about to go out there and tear it apart. I don’t know what his problem was.”

Carmela’s cat came puttering across the porch and laid itself down at her feet. From where Russell sat he could clearly see the animal was pregnant.

“She’s pregnant,” he stated.

“Yep,” she said softly while stroking her pet.

“Oh,” he said, looking at Manny, who averted his eyes. “I just didn’t know, that’s all.”

A breeze came off the lake, rustling the windsock a bit. Carmela patted her cat’s head, then got up and gave Russell a quick kiss on the cheek.

“Good night, Russ.”

The two men sat awhile, staring out at the black water.

“Seen Guy Bogel or Gary Pierce around?” Russell ventured to ask.

Manny face expressed disdain. “No, and I don’t want to. Last time I saw those guys was when they came around here with a couple of AK-47s they were trying to get me to buy. What the hell do I want with one assault rifle, let alone two? Who knows where they got them, but I don’t like that business. Those guys are bad news.”

Russell accepted this and finished his beer. Manny got up and cracked his knuckles.

“I’m hitting the hay, Russ. You got the back room there, and anything you want. Just slam the door hard when you come in, so it locks. Don’t worry about slamming it—I’ll worry if I don’t hear it slam. OK?”

They hugged. Manny smiled, squeezed his shoulder, and said, “See you tomorrow.”

In the back room, as he was preparing to turn in, he remembered the envelope Nestor had given him. He opened it and read:

The graceful curve of subatomic particles, unresolved musical sentences, subtle intonations eliciting resonant memories of the warning: Do not eat shellfish when the glow of the dinoflagellates can be seen from shore. She sat at the picnic table and looked out across the pond. Scum bobbed on the waves, and she tried to remember her name. At a loss, she drank her soda and turned to the conversation at table. Forty people were talking at once. She could grasp words, but they had no context. She thought two cousins may have been discussing whether an individual’s name was Paco or Pablo. More voices joined in. Above the noise she heard the voice of Aunt Flora, who said, “Once I roped a wild horse and named him Paco.” Aunt Flora’s voice faded again into the confusion. An Eskimo Pie melted on a paper plate. Her amorphous mind continued to assimilate as she sipped soda and tried to conceal her swelling delight.

He folded the page, replaced it in the envelope, and tossed it on the nightstand. When undressing, he discovered two stickers on the back of his shirt. In thinking over the day, wondering who might have stuck them there and when, it seemed that everyone he’d been with had handled him in some way. It was Nestor’s work, he decided, looking closely at the stickers. One was a severely crosshatched and demented rendering of the Big Boy mascot of the diner chain. The other depicted a stick figure pedestrian, like the one on signs at crosswalks, only this figure was hunched over, its feet in waves, and on its back was a lumpy bag labeled, CATS. He got out his journal, peeled off the Big Boy sticker and put it on the front cover. The other sticker ended up on the back. He set everything aside, turned off the light and shut out the world.