Americana (38 page)

“What are you stopping for?” I said.

“That’s all there is,” Glenn said.

After he left I looked up Owney Pine’s number in the local directory. He said he’d try anything once and we made a date for the next day.

* * *

If I could index all the hovering memories which announce themselves so insistently to me, sitting amid the distractions of yet another introspective evening (ship models, books, the last of the brandy), I would compile my index not in terms of
good or bad memories, childhood or adult, innocent or guilty, but rather in two very broad and simple categories. Cooperative and uncooperative. Some memories seem content to be isolated units; they slip neatly into the proper slot and give no indication of continuum. Others, the uncooperative, insist on evasion, on camouflage, on dissolving into uninvited images. When I command snow to fall once again on the streets of Old Holly, my father’s hands curled about a shovel, I can’t be sure I’ll get the precise moment I want. A second too soon and there is mother sitting in the rocker; too late and the memory subdivides, one part straying into fantasy: dull knife clamped in my teeth, I dog-crawl through the jungle, belly dragging, toward Dr. Weber’s house. We are what we remember. The past is here, inside this black clock, more devious than night or fog, determining how we see and what we touch at this irreplaceable instant in time.

* * *

“How long have you been practicing medicine, doctor?”

“Let’s see, I make it twenty-four years. Does that jibe with your figures?”

“It’s not important,” I said. “Where did you intern?”

“Interned first at Brooklyn Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat. Then at Pelham Senile, the New York City Mortuary, Jewish Discount, and Blessed Veronica Midwife. Followed by a brief stint on the coast at Pasadena Neuroland and Roy Rogers Lying-In. Mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all, doctor. And after your internship?”

“Private practice in Westchester. I was beloved out there. You can check that out with anybody in town. I was beloved by my parishioners. I mean my patients.”

“Let’s discuss the disease that’s on everyone’s mind today.”

“The Big C. Love to.”

“Would you tell the camera the different ways in which it might manifest itself.”

“Look out for lumps of any kind. Look out for irregular bleeding from any orifice of the body. Look out for changes
in color of moles or warts. Look out for persistent coughing, pain in your bones, indigestion, loss of weight. Look out for diarrhea. Look out for constipation. Look out for that tired worn-out feeling. Look out for painful urination and beware when you cough up blood or mucus. Look out for sores on the lips. Look out for aches in your lower back. Beware of swelling. If you develop a sudden distaste for meat, you’re in big trouble. Look out for bloody stool, urinary retention, lumps in the throat, sputum flecked with blood, discharges from the nipple, lumps in the armpit. Beware of wens, canker, polyps, expanding birthmarks. We all have it to some extent. Oh yes. Cells expanding, running wild. Bandit cells. Oh yes. Massage the prostate. Whirl the poor bastard’s urine at high speeds. Bombard the victim with sound waves—eight hundred thousand cycles per second. Sound kills bandit cells, drives victim crazy. Oh yes, oh yes. But by the grace of Aesculapius, god of medicine, we’ll lick the Big C and make America safe for babies and other growing things. Radiation and/or surgery. Cut and burn, cut and burn. Toss me that pack of cigarettes.”

“Did any of your patients despise the very earth you walked on?”

“You must be kidding. I was beloved by my patients. Making my rounds of a spring morning I would nod to them on the street and they would nod back. Many’s the time they nodded first.”

“Cervix, doctor.”

“Neck of the womb. Scrape surface of vagina for fluid. Or get it out of there with a tube. Run a smear test, one of my favorites. Dry fluid on a glass slide. Stain it. Hand it over to a pathologist. Say the physician’s prayer. Give me strength and leisure and zeal to enlarge my knowledge. Our work is great and the mind of man presses forward forever. Thou hast chosen me in Thy grace to watch over the life and death of Thy creatures. I am about to fulfill my duties. Guide me in this immense work so that it may benefit mankind, for without
Thy help not even the least thing will succeed. I like that part about leisure.”

“Internal examination, doctor.”

“Probe and investigate. Seek and find. Make soundings. Great earth and sea smell comes blowing out. Changing tides. Sandalwood and spices. Harvest time in Flanders. I like to dilly and dally just a bit. It relaxes them.”

“Death, doctor.”

“Never say die is what I say. Pump glycerol into the circulatory system. Put the body on ice in a plastic bag. Place in vacuum capsule full of liquid nitrogen. Cool to three hundred twenty degrees below. Once we figure out how to thaw the sons of bitches, we’ll have mass resurrections from coast to coast.”

“We’ve run out of time,” I said.

“That’ll be one hundred and fifty dollars.”

* * *

Any description of the main street of Fort Curtis can begin and end inside this very sentence. Beyond that I find only redundancy. The same six words identify the thing to be described and serve to describe it. The main street of Fort Curtis.

It was there that I wandered about with my strolling players, Austin Wakely and Carol Deming, each of us filled with the crosscurrents of love that pass between collaborators in secret acts, creators, interpreters, artisans, mapmakers, weavers of the speed of light. People in the street passed us, distantly, unadvised of our commitment, fairly large numbers on that warm evening, moviegoing, shopping for seasonal items—paint, window screens, lightweight shoes. The breeze smelled of commerce, of leather goods and exhaust fumes, very pleasant in a way, the Greek figs of one’s childhood. That street was a thoroughly American place, monument of collective nostalgia, and we read the store signs aloud and looked at the glossy stills behind paneled glass outside the movie
theater. Nobody knew who we were and we didn’t know each other.

They were fascinated by the walls of my room. I put up a bedsheet to block out the words in the area where they’d be sitting. Soon we were ready. Austin was in his jockey shorts, sitting in a chair in front of the bedsheet. Carol wore black underwear of the bikini type. She sat next to Austin in an identical straightback chair. I was getting very intricate here, not just tampering with the past, changing its color a bit, but mixing pasts together and ending at least in part with a film of a film. Terribly intricate. But the actors did not ask questions. Underwear is humorous and only the undemocratic mind interrogates humor.

Boy.
Let’s talk about the near future.

Girl.
You start.

Boy.
I think we should get married. We can go out to the Coast together for my senior year. It’ll be a lot of fun. There’s all kinds of water sports out there.

Girl.
I’d like to learn how to water-ski. But marriage is such a big step.

Boy.
Do you love me?

Girl.
I don’t know. I think so. I guess I do.

Boy.
I’ll have my car out there. We can drive into the desert. Maybe you can be in my movie. I’ll be doing a movie. We can do pretty much what we want out there. We can take off our clothes and try to be free. When you think of all the people in the world who dress freely and who when they want to take off their clothes don’t have to discuss it for hours on end, it’s amazing.

Girl.
This is my favorite set of underthings.

Boy.
This is mine too.

Girl.
How free is it out there? How many girls have you done things with?

Boy.
One doesn’t keep books.

Girl.
That’s very British and amusing.

Boy.
Experience is important.

Girl.
Experience is something I’d like to have without going through all the trouble of getting it.

Boy.
As I see it, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t get married. We like each other a lot. We have mutual respect for each other’s taste in clothes. We like to do a lot of the same things. And everybody says we’re an attractive couple.

Girl.
Aren’t there other things to consider?

Boy.
One doesn’t keep books.

Girl.
That really is an amusing remark.

Boy.
I promise you one thing. If we get married I’ll definitely put you in my film. We’re supposed to use students as actors but I’m sure they’ll make an exception in this case. It’ll even have a soundtrack.

Girl.
Can I wear what I’m wearing?

Boy.
You can wear whatever you want. And you can say whatever you want.

Girl.
It’ll be wild. It’ll be super. It’ll be too much.

When Austin was dressed I asked him to leave and he said he’d wait outside in his car. Carol put on one of my shirts and read quietly through the next scene. I tried not to sneak looks at her as I played with the tape recorder. I felt it was important to keep things on a strictly professional level and I wanted to make a casual remark, something technical about sound or lighting, but nothing very scientific arrived at the tip of my tongue. Then Brand showed up, surprisingly, on time. Carol went into the bathroom and Brand stripped down to his shorts, long white things with green alarm clocks on them. She came out wearing a thigh-length nightgown and walked toward the bed without looking at either of us. Glances carefully prepared to indicate nothing more than mild interest were exchanged between Brand and me as we noted the soft commanding bounce of her breasts. Carol stood on the bed, hands on hips, looking about her as if to make sure the set had been cleared of all but essential personnel, and then lowered herself to a pillow, where she sat wrapped in her own limbs, an entrance and a place-taking of totally serious humor, one level of personality
already in role and trying to demand obedience of the other, which perhaps was beginning to hate the camera. Brand sat on the other pillow. I told him to take off his glasses. Then we discussed what was to follow. Although Brand assured me that he had memorized his lines, I insisted on an improvised scene, first because I didn’t trust him, second because I didn’t like what I had written. I told them to retain the spirit of the thing and forget the details. Carol stared at the inkblue dogs on Brand’s arm, the fornicating dogs. He blinked several times and reached for his glasses but I moved them out of reach. I set up camera and tripod at the foot of the bed.

Man.
There was a red moon.

Woman.
Schenectady is famous for its moons.

Man.
Right away you start in. It’s better you don’t know anyway. I’m not supposed to tell you anything but you always get me to tell you.

Woman.
You tell me where but that’s all.

Man.
That’s enough. That’s too much. Sometimes I wonder about you. Always asking. Isn’t it better you don’t know? You’re too interested. You shouldn’t be that interested.

Woman.
You’re my sweetheart. I want to know what you do on your business trips.

Man.
It’s not right that you should want to know. There’s something wrong with it. Sometimes I wonder about you.

Woman.
What’s fascinating about people like you is your blazing sense of morality. Your devotion to the concept of a place for everything and everything in its place. When you get right down to it, that’s what morality means to a moralist. It means shoot to kill but not in a hospital zone. You might wake the patients.

Man.
What are you talking about? What’s she talking about?

Woman. I’m
talking about your underwear. Did you buy those shorts in Schenectady? Was it before or after you fulfilled the contract? I’ve never seen them before. They’re marvelous. They go beyond the outlandish into some private area
of metaphysics. All the clocks say nine forty-five. Do you suppose that’s morning or evening? Somehow it seems terribly important. You must give me the name of the store so I can call them and ask. In the meantime I want you to tell me very specifically whether you were wearing those shorts when you fulfilled the contract.

Man.
Let’s get back to what we were saying.

Woman.
You don’t even remember what we were saying. Now answer my question. Were you wearing those shorts when you carried out the terms set down in the small print?

Man.
Okay, I was wearing these shorts.

Woman.
Now tell me exactly what time it was when you killed him.

Man.
You know I don’t talk about that. It’s bad enough I tell you where. Details cause trouble. You learn that in this business. Details cause trouble.

Woman.
Tell me what time it was. What harm could that possibly do?

Man.
It was ten after one.

Woman.
Repeat that.

Man.
It was about ten after one in the morning.

Woman.
I thought so. I knew it.

Man.
How did you know?

Woman.
It’s written all over you. It’s literally written all over you. Those clocks on your shorts are a dead giveaway.

Man.
The clocks say nine forty-five.

Woman.
Exactly. That’s exactly the point. You’ve got to burn them as soon as possible. We can drive down to Nell’s place and burn them there.

Man.
Look, if you have to know exactly how I did it, I’ll tell you.

Woman.
I’m not interested.

Man.
The last show was coming out. The ticket window was closed. The marquee was dark. Only about ten people came out. I got out of the car and walked up to him; I put out my hand as if I wanted to shake hands with him. It’s your
natural reaction when a guy puts out his hand like I did that you take it. I knew who he was but he didn’t know me like from Adam. He never saw me before. But he put out his hand anyway. That’s the natural reaction. Anyone would have done the same thing. We stood there shaking hands and I had a big smile on my face and I called him by his name. He wanted to let go but I kept a tight grip on his hand. Then I put my left hand in my jacket, still holding him with the other hand, and I took out the .38 and fired three times right into the breast pocket of his shirt. There was a war movie playing.