“I have my own car,” he says.
“Big shot,” Tiny mumbles as the van starts.
The chatter of the junketeers fills the van. They talk about who showed up at the party at the Fashion Café two weeks before and not one among them can remember what movie it promoted; about the night they attended the book party for the hot new memoir, something about a rough childhood, how they swooped down on the stack of review copies and the next day all ran into each other at the Strand bookstore, laughing at the coincidence, as they sold the review copies for cash. Tiny gloats over the money he gets for selling the cookbooks that arrive every day in his mailbox: The Art of Southern Indian Cuisine, Tuscany Delight, The Master Crepe. Tiny says, you can’t eat recipes.
The woman’s arm digs into J.’s side. She smiles an apology but does not speak. Maybe he’ll talk to her at the dinner, so what brings you down here from the big city? How did I know? I could tell. J. closes his eyes to gather himself for the next few hours. Shut down for a bit before whatever god awful festivities are ahead of him. His stomach chews on itself loudly and he hopes that no one else hears it. Then he hears honking and the van lurches to the side. Peering through the windshield he sees the vehicle trying to run them off the road, the red pickup truck of his nightmares. So much depends upon a red pickup truck, filled with crackers. The pickup swerves in the lane parallel to them, dipping and zigging. The man in the passenger seat waves his pink fist out the window at them. Both drivers pounding their horns feverishly. “What the fuck is this! What the fuck is this!” Dave yells. They are being run off the road. Here it comes, J. thinks, this is how it goes down. The van capsized in a ditch. Open the door, I said open the damn door. What chew all doin’ ridin’ with nigruhs? We don’t abide no consortin’ with nigruhs in Summers County. Get out the car. Maybe one of his comrades puts up a little resistance against the taking of J. and the young lady. Then the ropes, the guns, the fire. The South will kill you.
“Slow down, slow down,” Frenchie says. “It’s all right.”
“Are you fucking crazy?” the young woman shrieks. J. thinking, now she speaks.
“No, it’s okay,” Dave reassures, pointing out the window. “It’s a friend of ours.” And indeed, J. sees, the man in the passenger seat is none other than One Eye, come in from the cold.
“You know these men?” the driver asks.
“Sure, just pull over,” Dave says. “It’ll only take a second.”
“You’re the boss,” the driver says, easing into the shoulder. The pickup pulls up in front of them and One Eye hops out, a scrambling, scarecrow figure with a short brown buzzcut. He is dressed like an idiot, with gray cloth trousers held up by red suspenders over a white striped shirt. A black eye-patch conceals his left eye.
One Eye removes his two black suitcases from the back of the pickup and offers a farewell to the man in the front seat before the red pickup takes off down the road. One Eye looks in the van and scrabbles into the passenger seat next to the driver, who shakes his head and frowns.
“What’s up, fellows?” One Eye says. “I saw Tiny’s fat fucking head in the window and knew it must be you.”
“You had your one eye peeled,” Tiny says.
“The great Cyclops,” Frenchie adds.
“My plane was late and my ride had already left,” One Eye explains. “So I hitched with Johnson there, figuring I’d catch up with you at the Mill-house.”
“You’re lucky Johnson had to run into town to buy some dry goods,” Dave chuckles. Dave Brown — what could you do with Dave Brown? It is inert, the name just lays there, as resistible as his prose. His name does not lend itself to nickname shenanigans, playful permutations.
“He was a nice guy,” One Eye says, cracking his knuckles. “More than I can say for you all. This is one sorry crew. No offense, ma’am, I’m not talking about you. Dave, of course, it wouldn’t be a junket without Dave. Being down South must bring back memories of being on tour with the Allman Brothers, huh? Yes, we all miss Duane, it was a terrible loss. Tiny, of course, thought he could wrassle up some alligator fritters. Sorry to burst your bubble, Tiny, but we’re a little north of weezie-ana. Frenchie, fuck you, I don’t know about you, but J., poor J., I had such high hopes for you.”
“He’s our inspiration,” Tiny pipes in.
“The great black hope,” Frenchie says.
“Exactly. I had such high hopes. New York, New York. Wine, women and pop songs. And I find you here.”
“He’s going for the record,” Dave offers.
“Tsk, tsk,” One Eye shaking his head. “You can’t see, but I’m making the station of the cross and praying for the soul of Bobby Figgis. Say it isn’t so, J.”
J., his name truncated to a single initial during childhood, does not need a nickname. “I’m on a jag,” he says. He is a little embarrassed about how all their bullshitting appears to the woman next to him.
“Nonstop since April,” Dave says, happy to be finally getting in his little digs before a proper audience. “Three-month bid.”
“Three months in,” One Eye says, taking stock, “Figgis was a wreck. You seem to be holding up.”
“Jag.”
“Hit an event every day,” Frenchie counters. “He’s going for the record.”
“How’s the book coming, Frenchie?” One Eye suddenly on J.’s side. If you wanted to shut Frenchie up, a quick rapier thrust to his ambition did the trick. Frenchie had spent his advance on clothes and lifestyle years before, without delivering word one of his manuscript, thus urging his comrades’ initial envy to curdle into warming superiority, and then well-timed derision. If he wanted sympathy he should have never written those Talk of the Towns for the New Yorker, a sure friendship-killer in the freelance world. Frenchie does not say anything; One Eye’s shiv dispatched him to the site of his more recent failure, to the bed he shared with his lost Italian model, her lost thighs.
One Eye had been blinded in a tragic ironic quotes accident a few years before. As he sat on a couch chatting with a publicist, a young freelancer stood above him, relating a droll tale of Manhattan mores as expressed in a new collection of short stories by that month’s photogenic young writer. The bartender yelled out last call for the open bar, and One Eye jumped up on instinct, just as the freelancer punctuated his clever description by forming air quotations with the index and forefingers of his hands. The point in question was apparently very ironic, requiring a vigorous expression of the ironic quotes. The force of the irony, coupled with One Eye’s eager and frantic upward movement, drove the freelancer’s pincer fingers deep into the junketeer’s eye socket.
J. reaches over and snaps One Eye’s suspenders. “Where did you dig this up?”
“This is my Huck Finn outfit. I’m trying to gain trust, blend in.”
“You look like an idiot.”
“I know.”
“Couldn’t miss this one, eh? Where are you coming from?”
“Florida. I was visiting my parents.”
“Okay time?”
“It’s Florida.”
“Figured you’d stop on down here for some more Southern hospitality.”
“I’m on a secret mission,” One Eye says. His good eye winks mysteriously. “A mission that could very well change the course of human events.”
“It’s hush-hush.”
“I’ll tell you about it later,” One Eye murmurs. He turns back to face the road. He isn’t kidding, J. thinks.
“I can’t wait to see Ben Vereen,” Tiny says.
“He canceled,” J. informs him.
“What, creative differences?”
“No, he’s sick,” J. says, and the van continues its approach to the Mill-house Inn.