“Playing in Kansas City?” Willie asked. He poured syrup on his fried mush. Liberty reached over and scooped up a bit for herself with her coffee spoon.
“He’s a baseball player. He catches fly balls and wears a handlebar mustache and spits a lot. I think he suspects something. They’ve got this immense swimming pool wherein Janiella and I often fool around and there was this little rubber frog that drifted around in it, trailing chlorine from his bottom. Cute little frog with a happy smile, his rubber legs crossed and his rubber eyes happy? Well Mr. Mean came home last weekend and took his twelve-gauge and blasted that poor little froggy to smithereens.”
Liberty grimaced. Willie asked Charlie, “Who does Teddy think you are, a visiting uncle?”
“We’ve never met. I’ve only laid eyes on him in a photo cube. Janiella wants to keep him out of the house and she’s got him busy every minute. He has soccer practice, swim team, safe boating instruction. He’s hardly ever at home. After school, he takes special courses in computer language, calligraphy, backgammon. Poor little squirt comes staggering home, his brain on fire. I think of myself as a fantastic impetus to his learning.”
“Liberty’s not happy with this situation at all,” Willie said.
“Liberty’s all right,” Charlie grinned, showing his pale gums. “Liberty’s a great girl.” The waitress arrived and warily placed a pint carton of milk by Charlie’s right hand. The carton of milk had a straw sticking out of it. “Oh look at that!” Charlie exclaimed. “I love this place. You gotta get a pie, Liberty. Bring it home to Clem. He’d scarf it down and get some words. Be zealous and repent. Dog’d go wild!”
Liberty reached across to Willie’s plate and spooned up another small piece of mush.
“That’s extremely irritating,” Willie said. “You never order anything and then you eat what I order.”
Liberty blushed.
“Liberty!” Charlie cried, “eat off my plate, I beseech you! Let’s mix a little yin and yang!” He speared a piece of coffee cake with his fork and fed it to her.
“it’s just one of those things,” Willie said, “that has been going on for years.” He looked unhappily at his plate.
“Really, man, you’re losing energy with these negative emotions. You’re just going dim on us, man,” Charlie said.
“All right,” Willie said to Liberty, “let’s talk about you for awhile. Tell me something you’ve never told me before.”
“She’s going to say Oavid,’” Charlie said. He brushed his fingers lightly across the veins in Liberty’s wrist.
“David?” Liberty asked. “Who is David?”
“David is the boy you never slept with,” Willie said. “David is your lost opportunity.”
“I think we’re talking too loud,” Charlie yelled. “These are polite, God-fearing people. Their babies come by UPS. Big brown Turtle-Waxed trucks turn into their little lanes. They have to sign for them, the babies. The babies grow up to be just like these old geezers here. Nevertheless, it’s better to get babies by UPS. The sound of two bodies yattering together to produce a baby is a terrible thing really.”
“With David you would be another kind of woman,” Willie said. “At this very moment, you could be with David, cuddling David. After you cuddled, you could arise, dress identically in your scarlet union suits, chino pants, ragg socks, Bass boots, British seaman pullovers and down cruiser vests and go out and remodel old churches for use as private residences in fashionable New England coastal towns.”
“But David,” sighed Charlie, “is missing and presumed at rest.”
“Change the present,” Willie said. “Through the present, change the future and through the future, the past. Today is the result of some past. If we change today, we change the past.”
Charlie shook his head. “Too much to put on a pie plate, man. Besides, it doesn’t sound Christian.”
“If you were another kind of woman,” Willie said, “you could be married to Clay, the lawyer, dealing in torts. You’d have two little ones, Rocky and Sandy. They’d have red hair and be hyperactive. They’d be the terror of the car pool. Clay would have his nuts tied.”
“Oh please, man,” Charlie exclaimed.
“You and Clay would fly to your vacations in your very own private plane. You’d know French. You’d gain a small reputation as a photographer of wildflowers, really bringing out the stamens and pistils in a studious but quite improper way. Women would flock to the better department stores in order to buy the address books in which your photos appeared. With menopause would come a change in faith, however. You’d get bored with your recipes and your BMW. You’d stop taking dirty pictures. You’d divorce Clay.”
“I knew it, I knew it!” shouted Charlie. “There he’d be with his useless nuts!”
“You’d become a believer in past lives. You’d become fascinated with other forms of intelligent life. You’d see that Christ had returned as a humpback whale. You’d become involved in the study of whale language.”
“Oh, I love whales too, man,” Charlie said, spilling coffee down the front of his pink button-down shirt. “They are poets in tune with every aspect of their world. They sing these songs, man.”
“You’d curse the house in Nantucket that Rocky and Sandy had spent so many happy summers in.”
“Ahhh, Nantucket, built on blood. Let’s abandon this subject,” Charlie said. He looked sadly at his shirt. “I’ve got to throw up, man, the happy vomiter has got to leave you now.” He sighed and remained seated. “God is unrelenting and bitchier than a woman, I swear. What do you say, Liberty?”
“Liberty’s song is a little garbled,” Willie said.
“Aren’t ours all,” Charlie said graciously. “Ubble-gubble.” He smiled at Liberty, who tried to meet his thoughtful, thickened gaze. She wished that she could watch him without being seen. The considerable fact that she was attracted to him made her feel morbid, things i would like, she thought, things i would never do. She had to get started on that list.
“Except for Clem’s song,” Charlie was saying. The dog was visible from their table, lying beneath the palm tree, his paws crossed, yawning. A sheriff’s deputy sat nearby in his cruiser, looking at him as though he’d like to write out a ticket. “Clem’s song is serene. How’d you get such a great dog, Liberty?”
“He came in on the night air and settled on her head as she slept,” Willie said.
“Gubble-ubble,” Charlie said.
“He was in the envelope with the marriage license,” Willie said. “We sprinkled a little water on him and he puffed up and was made soul.”
“Leave this creep and come away with me,” Charlie said.
Willie said, “We got him from the Humane Society. He ate a child. The police impounded him but what could they do, after all, this isn’t the Middle Ages, we don’t hang animals for crimes. And he was an innocent, a victim himself, belonging to a schizophrenic, anorectic unwed mother who kept leaving her infant son alone with him, unfed, in her fleabag apartment.”
Charlie said, “I mean it. I love married women. I treat them right. Your blood will race, I’m telling you. I’m also a cook. I make great meat loaf, no, forget meat loaf, I’ll make gumbo. I’m third in line for two acres of land in St. Landry Parish. Only two people have to die and it’s all mine. It’s got a chinaberry tree on it. We’ll go to cockfights and pole the bayous and drink beer and eat gumbo.”
“Actually,” Willie said, “she found him sitting in the road. He’d been hit by a car. His eye was in a ditch of water hyacinths, being examined by two ducks. Blood all over the place. What a mess.”