If you fiddle with the tracking on a VCR, sometimes you can see another movie just under the one you’ve been watching. It flirts between the scenes, steals outlines, blurs faces, commandeers bits of dialogue, makes a lawn into a lake, a domestic comedy into a primeval horror?duck-rabbit. Gone Joe’s old, blue watch cap wanted to preempt Gypsy’s beard.
“Did I get some butter in there or something? Robins lay an egg? What?”
“No. Sorry. You’re from Sanduleak, right?”
Gypsy’s jaw dropped. I mean, it really dropped; it hit his sternum, then sprang back, like a bungee jumper. The whole thing took maybe two seconds, during which I glimpsed Gypsy’s real body. In there, behind the phony jaw, a yellow snake bristled and shifted. There was a gasp from one of the tourist tables, babble, then hush. Gypsy stood; his hams shoved back the trucker’s table.
“Goddamnit, you fat slug!” The trucker slammed down his coffee and stood up. Gone Joe had penetrated the seam up to his elbows.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Gypsy said. “I’m just fat, see? I’m big. I’m clumsy. I can’t help it.”
I could see the trucker’s face cloud. It was a new one on him. He paused. He frowned. He said, “Ain’t you got no pride whatsoever?” He sat down again and mopped up spilled coffee with another paper napkin. He cussed under his breath, then said, “Just be careful, get it?”
“I get it,” Gypsy said. “Thank you very much.”
“What in the goddamned State of Texas you thanking me for, fat boy?”
“Here’s my sister, Nora,” Gypsy said to me, sotto voce. The most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life came right up to our table. She stood there next to Gypsy, with her hip in the cleft of Gone Joe’s chin. She looked impellingly familiar, but I was drawing a blank; whatever she had been to me was occluded by a sliver from Izzy’s bung.
10. What It Feels Like to Be an Angel
Even the trucker had to stop mopping and look. How could a brother like that have a sister like that? It wasn’t her cup size or complexion. Oh, she was pretty. She was very pretty, in a domestic sort of way. She wore boot jeans and a large T-shirt. Her hair was a tangle of brown cascading halfway down her back, with here and there a strand of silver. Her mouth was wide, the lips full, her dark eyes clear and intense. Her face was washed by sorrow, like a stone worn smooth by water. Compassion, it said. There was her beauty.
The way Nora walked, the way her eyes moved, effortlessly, without a trace of affectation or desire, everything about her won me. Hers was the secret face I put myself to sleep by. I loved her immediately.
Even Gone Joe stopped clawing for a moment. A cool wave spread through the cafй. The tourists stopped jabbering and breathed. The trucker stubbed his cigarette.
Gypsy pulled out a chair for Nora, and she sat down. Gypsy sat again, carefully. He said to her, “He knows.”
Our eyes met. When she breathed, I breathed. She seemed to nod, and I understood that she was acknowledging our kinship. “How?” she said. “Please tell me how you know about us.”
Her voice thrilled and pacified me at once. I thought, This is what it feels like to be an angel. Through her voice, as through a channel, I felt down inside her, to where her voice came from. I felt the blood bathing in oxygen inside her lungs. I felt the quiver of her vocal chords, the undulations of her tongue, the way the cartilage in her nose resonated with each vowel.
“I’ve been through a lot,” I said.
Nora’s forehead wrinkled ever so slightly. With exquisite concern she sighed, “Oh!” She reached across the table and laid her hand on mine. It was all I could do not to burst into tears. “Tell me,” she said. “Tell me, Mel. Tell me everything.”
11. My Debriefing
“I’m twenty-three. I’m from . . .” I couldn’t remember where I was from. “I took off because I wanted . . . you, Nora.” Saying that was like coming. She just kept looking at me, unruffled, like a calm ocean, a sunset, a mother, the moon. “I wanted you, and you weren’t there in . . .” I drew a blank. “So I started hitching around. My mom is . . .” What was Mom? “Well, of course, I didn’t tell myself I was looking for you. I was headed for Yucatбn to see the eclipse. I was headed for Atlanta to visit the Coca-Cola factory. I was headed for British Columbia to live off the land. I was headed for the Grand Canyon to learn the ways of the Havasupai Indians. That’s how it was. I remember once . . .” I hit a cul-de-sac; my sentence had nowhere to go. “Anyway, I love you. When Shaman picked me up . . .”