He thinks this, then he hears crying. Not in the Free Street but in his mind. Long-gone crying. It goes right into your head, that crying, goes in like splinters of glass, and oh fuck, fuck me Freddy, somebody make him stop crying.
I was the one who made him stop, Beaver thinks. That was me. I was the one who made him stop. I took him in my arms and sang to him.
Meanwhile George Pelsen is telling them about how the stage door finally opened, but it wasn’t Jackson Browne who came out, not David Lindlev, either; it was the trio of chick singers, one named Randi, one named Susi, and one named Chantay. Yummy ladies, oh so tall and tasty.
“Man,” Sean says, rolling his eyes. He’s a chubby little fellow whose sexual exploits consist of occasional field-trips to Boston, where he eyes the strippers at the Foxy Lady and the waitresses at Hooters. “Oh man, fuckin Chantay.” He makes jacking-off gestures in the air. At that, at least, Beav thinks, he looks like a pro.
“So I started talkin to them… to her, mostly, Chantay, and I ast her if she’d like to see some of the Portland night-life. So we…”
The Beav takes a toothpick from his pocket and slides it into his mouth, timing the rest out. All at once the toothpick is just what he wants. Not the beer in front of him, not the joint in his pocket, certainly not George Pelsen’s empty kahoot about how he and the mythical Chantay got it on in the back of his pickup, thank God for that camper cap, when George’s Ram is rockin, don’t come knockin.
It’s all puff and blow, Beaver thinks, and suddenly he is desperately depressed, more depressed than he has been since Laurie Sue packed her stuff and moved back to her mother’s. This is utterly unlike him, and suddenly the only thing he wants is to get the fuck out of here, fill his lungs with the cool, salt-tanged seaside air, and find a phone. He wants to do that and then to call Jonesy or Henry, it doesn’t matter which, either one will do; he wants to say Hey man, what’s going on and have one of them say back Oh, you know, Beav, SSDD. No bounce, no play.
He gets up. “Hey, man,” George says. Beaver went to Westbrook junior College with George, and then he seemed cool enough, but juco was many long beers ago. “Where you goin?” “Take a leak,” Beaver says, rolling his toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other.
“Well, you want to hurry your bad ass back, I’m just getting to the good part,” George says, and Beaver thinks crotchless panties. Oh boy, today that old weird vibe is strong, maybe it’s the barometer or something.
Lowering his voice, George says, “When I got her skirt up-” “I know, she was wearin crotchless panties,” Beaver says. He registers the look of surprise-alnost shock-in George’s eyes but pays no attention. “I sure want to hear that part.”
He walks away, walks toward the men’s room with its yellow-pink smell of piss and disinfectant, walks past it, walks past the women’s, walks past the door with OFFICE on it, and escapes into the alley. The sky overhead is white and rainy, but the air is good. So good. He breathes it in deep and thinks again. No bounce no play. He grins a little.
He walks for ten minutes, just chewing toothpicks and clearing his head. At some point, he can’t remember exactly when, he tosses away the joint that has been in his pocket. And then he calls Henry from the pay phone in Joe’s Smoke Shop, up by Monument Square. He’s expecting the answering machine-Henry is still in school-but Henry is actually there, he picks up on the second ring.
“How you doing, man?” Beaver asks. “Oh, you know,” Henry says. “Same shit, different day. How about you, Beav?” Beav closes his eyes. For a moment everything is all right again; as right as it can be in such a piss-ache world, anyway. “About the same, buddy,” he replies. “Just about the same.”
1993: PETE HELPS A LADY IN DISTRESS
Pete sits behind his desk just off the showroom of Macdonald Motors in Bridgton, twirling his keychain. The fob consists of four enameled blue letters: NASA.
Dreams age faster than dreamers, that is a fact of life Pete has discovered as the years pass. Yet the last ones often die surprisingly hard, screaming in low, miserable voices at the back of the brain. It’s been a long time since Pete slept in a bedroom papered with pictures of Apollo and Saturn rockets and astronauts and space-walks (EVAs, to those in the know) and space capsules with their shields smoked and fused by the fabulous heat of re-entry and LEMs and Voyagers and one photograph of a shiny disc over Interstate 80, people standing in the breakdown lane and looking up with their hands shielding their eyes, the photo’s caption reading THIS OBJECT, PHOTOGRAPHED NEAR ARVADA, COLORADO IN 1971, HAS NEVER BEEN EXPLAINED. IT IS A GENUINE UFO.
A long time.
Yet he still spent one of his two weeks of vacation this year in Washington DC, where he went to the Smithsonian every day and spent nearly all of his time wandering among the displays with a wondering grin on his face. And most of that time he spent looking at the moon rocks and thinking, Those rocks came from a place where the skies are always black and the silence is everlasting. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took twenty kilograms of another world and now here it is.
And here he is, sitting behind his desk on a day when he hasn’t sold a single car (people don’t like to buy cars when it’s raining, and it has been drizzling in Pete’s part of the world ever since first light), twirling his NASA key-chain and looking up at the clock. Time moves slowly in the afternoons, ever more slowly as the hour of five approaches. At five it will be time for that first beer. Not before five; no way. You drank during the day, maybe you had to look at how much you were drinking, because that’s what alcoholics did. But if you could wait… just twirl your keychain and wait…
As well as that first beer of the day, Pete is waiting for November. Going to Washington in April had been good, and the moon rocks had been stunning (they still stun him, every time he thinks about them), but he had been alone. Being alone wasn’t so good. In November, when he takes his other week, he’ll be with Henry and Jonesy and the Beav. Then he’ll allow himself to drink during the day. When you’re off in the woods, hunting with your friends, it’s all right to drink during the day. It’s practically a tradition. It-
The door opens and a good-looking brunette comes in. About five-ten (and Pete likes them tall), maybe thirty. She glances around at the showroom models (the new Thunderbird, in dark burgundy, is the pick of the litter, although the Explorer isn’t bad), but not as if she has any interest in buying. Then she spots Pete and walks toward him.
Pete gets up, dropping his NASA keychain on his desk-blotter, and meets her at the door of his office. He’s wearing his best professional smile by now-two hundred watts, baby, you better believe it-and has his hand outstretched. Her grip is cool and firm, but she’s distracted, upset.
“This probably isn’t going to work,” she says. “Now, you never want to start that way with a car salesman,” Pete says. “We love a challenge. I’m Pete Moore.”
“Hello,” she says, but doesn’t give her name, which is Trish. “I have an appointment in Fryeburg in Just-” She glances at the clock which Pete watches so closely during the slow afternoon hours. “-in just forty-five minutes. It’s with a client who wants to buy a house, and I think I have the right one, there’s a sizeable commission involved, and…” Her eyes are now brimming with tears and she has to swallow to get rid of the thickness creeping into her voice. “… and I’ve lost my goddam keys! My goddam car keys!” She opens her purse and rummages in it.
“But I have my registration… plus some other papers… there are all sorts of numbers, and I thought maybe, just maybe you could make me a new set and I could be on my way. This sale could make my year, Mr…” She has forgotten. He isn’t offended. Moore is almost as common as Smith or Jones. Besides, she’s upset. Losing your keys will do that. He’s seen it a hundred times.
“Moore. But I answer just as well to Pete.”
“Can you help me, Mr Moore? Or is there someone in the service department who can?”