A man walked down the aisle. He was about 40, not very tall but barrel-bodied and bull-necked, his large head stubbled with a gray crewcut, his face mean and disgruntled-looking, with down-turned thick lips and cold piggy eyes. A brown string tie hung down on a yellow shirt tight across his chest. He was so muscular he seemed to have trouble walking, his thick shoulders working massively back and forth. His tan jacket was too small for him, hanging open, with strain creases around the armpits.
What made Gerry notice this creature was that he was staring at Gerry. He looked mean and angry, as though something about Gerry just simply enraged him. Helpless to look away, Gerry sat open-mouthed and watched the man go by, their eyes locked as though with Krazy Glue. Gerry’s head turned like a ventriloquist’s dummy until at last the man removed his own glare to face forward, and as Gerry looked to his left, over Alan’s head, still compulsively staring, that open jacket swung out and back and something glinted inside it at chest level, and then the man was gone.
Something glinted.
A badge.
A policeman.
They know.
“Ohh,” said Gerry faintly.
Alan gave him a look: “What now?”
“I’m going—” Gerry swallowed loudly “—to be sick.”
Alan glared. Sotto voce, he hissed, “I can’t take you anywhere.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to be home.”
The man went by again, in the opposite direction, giving Gerry one withering glance before continuing on, his jacket taut across his back.
“You had to sit by the window,” Alan said. Turning away, jawline eloquent with rejection, he icily explained to Whitman Lemuel that they would all have to get up so Gerry could be sick.
“Ho—” Gerry said. “Unk— Ho-ome.”
Still, everything might have been all right if the lavatories hadn’t all been occupied.
19
The Role of the Anti-Hero in Postwar American Fiction
Kirby spent a few minutes watching the Indians wrap Zotzes in Beacons and then went back outside to a sunny day and a stormy Innocent, who rose from his mahogany throne to say, “Well, Kirby?”
“Well, what?”
“Aren’t you ready yet to give it up?”
Kirby frowned at him. “Give what up?”
“I don’t see any Valerie, you know.” Innocent put his hands on his ample hips and gazed around at the timeless morning scene: Indians squatting over fires in front of their huts, nursing their hangovers. Rosita’s distant unremitting call of “Vaaaallll-erie,” sounded from time to time across the sunny clean air like the cry of some local bird.
“They’ll find her,” Kirby said, somewhat impatiently. Last night’s Innocent had been a lot easier to get along with.
“It’s almost noon,” Innocent said. “She won’t be back, and we both know it. Stop the playacting, Kirby.”
“You believed me last night, Innocent, you said so yourself.”
“I talked a lot of nonsense last night.”
“You had an epiphany.”
“I believe what I had,” Innocent said, “was the shortest nervous breakdown on record. The disappearance of a fine young woman looked like what caused it, but it was really brought on by overwork, male meno-whatever-it-is—”
“Pause.”
“That’s my problem, I never did. Just work work work, I thought I was tough enough to go on forever.” He looked angry when he said all this, and Kirby was gradually coming to the realization that Innocent was partly angry at himself.
But not entirely; there was plenty left for Kirby. Glowering at him, Innocent said, “And smart fellas like you, Kirby, coming along all the time, looking for that edge, trying to put something over on me.”
Betraying a bit of his grudge, Kirby said, “The way I put over that land deal on you, right?”
“What have you been doing with that land, Kirby?” Innocent stared at him round-eyed, leaning forward, alive with curiosity and frustration. “That’s what caused this whole thing! That land up there—” he flung his hand toward the barren hill in question, just visible from the village “—isn’t worth shit, Kirby!”
“That’s not the way you talked when you sold it to me.”
“What are you doing with it? What is all this goddam temple about?”
Kirby took a step back, head cocked, giving Innocent a wary look. “Temple, Innocent? Which temple is that?”
“That’s what I want to know, dammit! You bring all these Americans down, give them some song and dance about a temple, there isn’t any temple!”
“That’s right.”
“Valerie comes down, comes to me, Kirby, says she has computers up in New York tell her there’s a temple on your land. Wants to go out to see it. That’s where it all starts, Kirby. I wanted to know what you were up to.”
“So you sent Valerie Greene out to see.”
“She was coming anyway, that isn’t the point.”
“No,” Kirby said, seeing it. “The point is, you made that creep of yours her driver.”
“I regret that, Kirby,” Innocent said. “I regret it bitterly. But I blame you as much as me.”
“What? You turned that girl oyer to that hoodlum, and it’s my fault?”
“I had to know what was going on,” Innocent said. “What you were up to. That was the only driver I could trust.”
“Some trust.”
“Kirby,” Innocent said, coming a step closer, calming himself by an obvious effort of will. “It’s time to tell the truth, Kirby,” he said. “Go ahead.”
“Time for you. I know you didn’t kill Valerie Greene, just as surely as I know poor Valerie is dead. I know my own driver killed her and then ran away, so you don’t have to put on this game any more.”
“No game, Innocent,” Kirby said, trying to look sincere. “Honest.”
“Don’t use words you don’t understand, Kirby. I’m not even mad at you any more. All you have to do is give up all the playacting, admit this is just one more of your cons, and we can go home.”
“But it isn’t. Valerie Greene actually was here, but now she’s gone.”
“If I know anything for certain in all of this, Kirby,” Innocent said, “it is that you’re lying.”
Kirby paused, thought things over, and then said, “All right, Innocent, I have a deal for you.”
Innocent’s agitated face suddenly cleared, as though a storm over a pond had gone, leaving the surface smooth and blank. Even his eyes showed nothing as he said, “A deal, Kirby? What sort of deal?”
“Buy that land back,” Kirby said.
“Why?”
“Buy it back for exactly what I paid you, and I’ll tell you the full honest truth about Valerie Greene and the temple.”
“Lava Sxir Yt.”
“Oh, you know its name, do you?” Kirby said, and smiled his admiration.
Very faintly Innocent frowned. “That’s not a deal,” he decided.
“It is if we shake on it.”
Innocent considered. He glanced over at the blighted hilltop. He studied Kirby. He said, “The truth, Kirby? How much of the truth?”
“I’ll answer every question you ask, as long as you keep asking.”
“Then I’ll have the land and your con, whatever it is, and the truth about Valerie.”