“Sorry I came in late,” I said.
He waved this off. “Barely noticed.”
“Good.”
“So, Tim. Think about what I said yesterday. About Mom.”
“You bet.”
“I know you think it’s the right thing. But you’re only doing it for yourself, to feel good about yourself. That’s no reason to take an old lady away from the place where she‘ll be safe.”
I wondered if Bobby had really looked at the nursing home. The degeneration of people’s bodies, the madness, the unrelenting smell of urine. I said, “Well, that’s food for thought.”
We had come to the hotel. A woman with antennae walked into the revolving door with a man in a robot suit. Bobby didn’t appear to notice.
“So keep in touch,” he said.
“I will.”
We shook. “That was a great visit.”
“Sure was.”
He nodded. “Okay, right. See you, bro.”
I got out of the car, straining to come up with a response. “Right on,” I told him, and shut the door. The sound it made was quiet as a breath.
* * *
I was among the first to arrive for my panel. To my surprise, there was a name placard already in place for me, along with three others: Bennett Koch, Lynn Bismarck and Ken Dorn.
I actually did an authentic double-take. Ken Dorn? I didn’t think he’d ever had his own strip before. The other people I knew of only vaguely: Koch’s strip, “Pangaea,” had a lot of cute dinosaurs in it, and Bismarck’s was one of those serial soap-opera things, the kind that now invariably looked like Roy Lichtenstein paintings, I forgot the name.
But Ken Dorn! I began to get a creepy feeling, like he’d been planted. I entertained the notion that he had somehow replaced me without my knowing: had I been betrayed by the Burn Syndicate’s corporate honchos? Or by the woman I possibly sort of loved? I took the sealed letter from my pocket and turned it over in my hands. I felt like a fool, and thought about tearing it to pieces.
“Timmy Mix. Fancy meeting you.”
He was beginning to grow a tiny mustache and goatee, and had gotten his hair shaved closer to his head. “I’d imagine you’re brimming over with insights from your training, mmm?”
“Hello, Ken,” I said, stowing the letter. “Oh, I don’t know.”
“Don’t know? You haven’t taken any notes?” He reached into the pocket of his pants and pulled out a small stack of 3x5 note cards, fastened with a rubber band. “I’ve been thinking a lot about this. The issues are compelling indeed.”
“Well…I’ve never done anything like it before.”
“I would suppose not.”
“So what strip have you taken over?” I said, trying to sting him. He looked off into the air, though, and crossed his arms in a pose of mock contemplation.
“Oh, I’ve taken over the inking for a few. But I’m most interested in taking over full creative control.” He raised his eyebrows and turned to me, grinning. “Someday, that is.”
“Oh, sure,” I said, crossing my own arms. I was almost a full foot taller than Ken Dorn. Push him over, I thought.
“I was talking to Ray the other day, and he seemed quite impressed with my drawings. I didn’t have anything prepared, of course, but it was no trouble dashing off a few sketches…”
“Ray? Ray Burn?”
“Yes, Ray Burn. A good man, wouldn’t you say, Timmy? What did you talk about the last time you saw him?”
I cleared my throat. Dorn leaned back and plucked from a chair a glazed donut and a cup of orange juice. “Well,” I said, “he told me I’m the sentimental favorite.”
Dorn took a large bite of donut, laughing from behind his closed lips. “So you are,” he said, chewing. “So you are.”
“Where did you get those?”
“These?” he said, holding out the donut and juice. “There was a table in the hall. Participants only!”
“Then you’ll excuse me,” I said.
“Of course! See you behind the mike!”
* * *
Everyone seemed to have donuts and juice but me, and if there had been a table in the hall, it was gone now. I stood helpless among the conventioneers, squinting into various rooms. Finally I gave up and was turning to take my place in the Green Room when I saw him at last: Art Kearns.
Kearns was being escorted by a jowly middle-aged woman wearing an “Art’s Kids” T-shirt. He clenched her arm with one hand and a scuffed wooden cane with the other. Both hands, along with the rest of Art Kearns, were shaking. He was a large man, even in this sad, crumpled state, still bearing the profile of the Wyoming cowboy he was said to have been before he became famous. He wore a white shirt and bolo tie, and a pair of dirty black jeans; his head was nearly bare, with a little red knoll of blotchy skin poking up through his hair. He was blinking, blinking, blinking his eyes, as if something tiny and painful was lodged under both lids.
He and the woman moved slowly, and they commanded much of the hallway’s attention. A few people even set down their donuts and juice to quietly applaud. As they passed me, Kearns raised his head and his eyes met mine. He winked. I couldn’t help grinning.
* * *
Ben Koch had two donuts, but didn’t offer one to me. Lynn Bismarck had only juice. Dorn was finished eating. He and I sat next to each other at one end of the table, while Koch and Bismarck chatted animatedly like college freshmen, obviously falling for one another.
“Oh, you’re from Ohio too! Which town?”
“Sandusky.”
“Oh, you’re kidding me. I have an aunt in Sandusky.”
“Really!”
“Ida Loos.”
“Well, I’ll just have to ask my mother if she knows her. Do you get back much?”
“Not much.”
“Well, we’ll have to go together sometime!”
“Why not?”
Dorn was oblivious to them, transfixed upon his notes. I tried to peek at them, but his handwriting was indecipherable: thin lines of what looked like chocolate ice cream sprinkles. Several times he laughed privately or raised his eyebrows. I watched the room fill up and wondered if Tyro would come, until I remembered he was drawing and signing in the Blue Room. It was difficult to imagine him doing such a thing.
Koch had the gavel. He whacked it happily on the table, paused a moment to giggle with Lynn, then announced in a loud voice, “Welcome, everyone, to ‘Taking Over the Old Strips.’” People clapped. He introduced Lynn and her strip, then Ken Dorn, “who has helped produce some of our finest work for over fifteen years.” Dorn nodded. “And at my left,” Koch said, “is, I believe, Tim Mix, who you all know as Timmy in the Family Funnies. Let’s give him a hand.”
People clapped, harder than they did for Dorn. I raised my hand, scanning the crowd for a familiar face. Thus distracted, I stopped waving a few seconds too late.
“Now,” said Koch, “let me introduce our topic.” He went on at length about the cartoonist’s responsibility to his legacy, that perhaps an inherited strip is at best shared with the deceased. He pointed up the need to be honest about making people laugh. “Or cry,” he said. “Emotions are serious business. People depend on their funnies. So. There you have it. Does anyone have a question?”
A man stood up in the audience. “I have a question for Tim Mix,” he said.
Koch leaned over the table and shot me a smug smile. “Tim?”
“Uh, sure,” I said. “Go on.” My meek voice boomed out across the crowd and I pulled back a little from the mike and cleared my throat.
“What’s it like, drawing yourself? Is it, you know, weird?”
“Uh, not really. I don’t think of it as me, really. Timmy’s just, you know, a kid. I’m, uh, an adult.”
A ragged laugh went up. I didn’t understand why.