A large soft mouse-colored old dog, a Labrador, came out from behind the counter and stared at him.
“Could I use your restroom?” Ned asked.
“Acourse,” the old man said, gesturing unclearly to his right. Ned worked it out. The restroom required a key, which was hanging on a hook at the end of the front counter. Ned reached for the key without realizing that the fine chain running through the hoop of the key also ran down through holes punched in two tire hubs. So there was a certain clangor, of course. Ostensibly this arrangement would be to keep the key from being lost or mislaid, but probably it was also for merriment when the uninitiated grabbed for the key without paying that much attention, as he had done. The restroom was straight back and to the left. He had to pass a vast display of periodicals taking up all the wall space between the counter area and the cross aisle at the back.
He scanned the selection as he passed. Pornorama! he thought.
There was everything. A man could want. Naughty Neighbors through Gent through Plumpers through a startling one, Whorientals. Breasts for all. Back near the counter the main newsweeklies formed a thin right-hand margin to this field of pink plenty, and there the Weekly Standard predominated, with the last three issues preserved for sale whereas only the current issues of Time and Newsweek were available. Interestingly, a shower curtain shielded the last quarter of the array of porn. It could be slid aside. The design on the curtain represented the world: through the blue translucencies between the continents, images of handsome male heads and muscular bodies were discernible. Picturesque as all this was, Ned couldn’t linger.
A bald, youngish man, very heavy, was seated behind a workbench in a slot punched into the middle of the back wall. Ned crossed in front of him and nodded. The man was repairing a fly rod. As he slumped back in his chair to notice Ned more comfortably, and as his chin sank into his fat throat, his dense, short-cropped yellow beard presented as a sort of Elizabethan ruff along the bottom of his face. Ned thought he had an intelligent look. His arms were lavishly tattooed. He wondered if this could be the fine old man’s son. He hoped not, back there all day and probably expected to keep an eye on porn browsers in case they were tempted to take something or whisk something with them into the toilet. Not much of a life for this fellow.
Ned couldn’t help but be curious about the tattooed images the young man was displaying, which led straight to a question of etiquette, which was whether it was polite to look at the demons and crosses and daggers decorating his giant arms. On the one hand, they were put there to be noticed, and on the other hand, it would make you look gay. If that bothered you. It was best to treat it like wallpaper.
On the restroom door was a primitive cartoon of a figure that was female on one side, half a skirt, and male on the other, half a top hat.
In the restroom, Ned was quick about everything. He was pointlessly a little proud of the thick, shaggy limb of urine he produced. He rinsed his face with cold water, which was all there was. He decided he looked okay. A little red, white, and blue sticker in the corner of the dull mirror read Pataki? Ptui!
6
The bridge was well behind him. It had seemed sturdy enough.
He was almost there. It was a whole hilltop, green, treeless, broadly convex, like the top of a cupcake. It was extensive. His feelings reminded him of what Nina had said about Cézanne’s landscapes, that when you see them, you relax. Now he could see the tower, four stories tall, like a stone hatbox. Tower? he thought. Oh, a short one. And roomy-looking. A gravel path branched off from the road and led to the summit, and the tower. He couldn’t believe the tower. It was short and it had a parapet notched for archers or shooters, defenders. He couldn’t imagine anyone he knew living in such a setting.
He was agitated. But maybe something good could come out of this. This disaster. Their group had been talented. Letters they had written to the Aegis in college had always gotten attention. Maybe the others and he could collaborate on a statement against the coming invasion, in their old style. Their letters hadn’t all been on the frivolous side. Some hadn’t.
7
“Hi, Ma.”
“Hi yourself. To what do I owe the honor of thisum.”
Nina sighed. It was her mother’s way to break off her sentences once she was satisfied that her respondent knew what she was obviously going to say next. Thisums and theums were major building blocks in Ma’s discourse. It was odd. Her mother was an odd woman, an odd woman but lovable and she loved her. Her mother didn’t trail off as though she were trying to think of the next word. It was just laborsaving. That was how her mother saw it.
“I’m not calling to honor you, I’m calling to give you my whereabouts, such as they are, so you won’t worry.”
“Yeah, but Nina, what about theum?”
It sounded Greek, but Nina knew what she meant. It was the march, the demonstration, the Convergence. Her mother was a sentimental communist, a very nice old communist living in El Nido, a nice old lady communist apartment complex owned by a nice old rich lady communist widow. It was a family, there. Ned called it Birobidjan after the ghetto province Stalin had tried to corral all the Jews in Russia into, to raise chickens. And in fact in El Nido, they had raised chickens, until the city made them stop. They still had a victory garden. Her mother was a communist and a practicing astrologer. She had slept with John Garfield before she got married. Nina’s father had been proud of it and would drop it into conversations.
Nina said, “Where I am is in Kingston New York in a bus station and I’m waiting for a bus to take me to Phoenicia New York. You can only get me on my cell phone, do you understand? And don’t worry, the march is going to be enormous. I’ll tell you about it. I’ll call you when I can.”
“Hey, don’t hang up Neen! I don’t know where you are in New York. And why are you in New York?”
“Ma, I wish to God you would get a computer and take a course. I’ll pay for it. It’s so much better for keeping in touch.”
“I have no time. I’m too old.”
“Listen to me while I explain where I am. I can’t talk to you forever.”
“How I wish you could!”
That was her mother being ironical. It was kind of funny.
“Ma, okay, why I’m here. We’re supposed to be getting me pregnant. You know. So Ned gets a phone call saying that an old friend died, died, not even dying, dead. But Ned just ran out and got on a plane and left town. I got this in a message on my answering machine …”
The thing was to not keep getting enraged over it.
Ma said, “Oh Nina, was it yourum?”
Sometimes her mother baffled her.
“My what?” Nina asked. And then she had it. “Oh my sharp tongue, you mean? No, there was no argument, so not my sharp tongue, Ma. What sharp tongue, anyway, you absurd person.”
“You have a sharp tongue, Nina.”
Her mother never took anything back. Her usual move was to repeat what she’d said but in a tiny voice.