Killing Time in Crystal City (4 page)

Since nothing in there seemed like an invitation to debate, I don't debate with him. I still don't think if we managed to clone me, twice, all of my selves could finish, but this one is going to give it a try.

My uncle is a methodical eater. It could well be that he is putting on a how-to-eat clinic for my benefit, but the way he fully interacts with each item and each mouthful makes me think he's a natural. The result is that there is a calm, welcome quiet to the meal while he focuses, and a jarring breaking of that calm after he neatly wipes his mouth with his napkin.

“I'll be away for a few days on business,” he says while pretending not to stare at my slow-moving knife and fork.

“Okay,” I say.

My father always said that his brother was a filthy criminal. I can see for myself he has the fussy cleanliness of a cat, so that's one myth busted. Also, my father's unique take on truth was, “A statement containing an inaccurate detail or two is not a lie if it is serving a larger, more honest narrative.” So, you could say his pronouncements about his brother or anybody else's were not necessarily take-it-to-the-bank reliable.

“Can I ask you a question, Uncle Sydney?”

“You want to know what it is I do.”

I nod.

“You know, Kevin, I'm happy to tell you anything. But, sometimes just knowing things is enough to get you into trouble or play havoc with your inner peace. Maybe safe and simple is the better way to go with your life.”

I look at him for a long minute while he does the same to me, a something across his mouth that could be a smile but is not quite declaring itself. I don't think I've ever met anyone quite as sure as he is, and I have to say I find that extremely powerful and alluring.

“Are you telling me that you recommend ‘safe and simple' as a rule for life, Uncle?”

His smile declares itself fully now and he reacts as if I have flipped over the right card.

“I am categorically not telling you that, Nephew.”

Who could resist?

“I would love to know what it is you do.”

“I am a large-scale transporter, basically, of luxury goods. Mostly fine cars, but whatever high-margin items come available. I see to it that these items find their way far, far away from their stinking-rich former legal owners, to distant places where their new, somewhat less well-off owners can enjoy them without suffering undue anxiety over it. It is perfectly reasonable redistribution of wealth in my opinion and a victimless crime. Like necrophilia.”

“I can see what—whoa, the last part there just caught up to me.”

“Ah, don't worry about it. That's just a thing I say. And until somebody with dough comes along and offers me good money to do some necro-pimping, that is not a part of my portfolio.”

“Oh,” I say, still kind of stumbling over it all. “Yeah. Sure. Right.”

“So then, there. I have given you my full confidence and trust. Feel good?”

I am shocked—on several levels, actually. But shocked, really, at how good that does make me feel. I'm bigger than I was a minute ago. Could be the steak, I suppose. Steak and confidence, more like it.

“I feel good,” I say.

“And are we good, with the reality and all? I don't need to worry about you knowin'?”

“Not at all, Syd. No worries, and we are good.”

“Good. So, the house is all yours, three, maybe four days. I take off later this afternoon. Rules. Keep it clean, just like you see it now.”

It glistens. “Yes, sir.”

“Stay outta my room. Even if it's on fire.”

“Understood.”

“And the place is all yours, but
only
yours. No guests, no exceptions. If you get lucky, go out and use the baseball field like everybody else.”

“That would not be a problem, Uncle Sydney. Much as I wish it would be.”

“Sheesh. Is that why you were inquiring about sex with dead people?”

“I never in—”

“With confidence like that, it's no wonder you can't bag a live specimen. Eat your steak, practice your swagger, and when I come back I want to see some rotten punk attitude.”

He makes me laugh, at myself, and it somehow doesn't even hurt.

“I'll see what I can do,” I say. “But here, first can you sign my cast before you go?”

“It would be an honor.” I offer him my stubby marker and he snorts, before walking past me. “Gimme a break with that thing. I got about a thousand Montblancs in the office.”

He comes back and signs with a flourish. Once we finish eating we take our plates together out to the kitchen where we each wash our own stuff. Then he guides me around, showing me what I need to know about the washer-dryer, what's available to me in the freezer and what's not, and vitally, his vast armory of cleaning products and accessories underneath the sink and the garbage disposal. We move on to the hallway, the linen cupboard, the bathroom, the towels and toiletries, and eventually every last item in the house that has a button, switch, plug, or any remote possibility of a dopey rookie like me creating havoc.

“How are you for dough?” he asks me, all serious as he fishes a single key on a moose-head key chain out of the small single-drawer table under the coat hooks by the front door.

“I'm good,” I say. “I'm okay for now.”

“But you'll let me know,” he says, opening the door to the street and ushering me out ahead of him.

“I'm hoping I won't have to,” I say, “but yeah, it's huge, knowing you're there covering my ass like that. Thanks a whole lot, Sydney. But right, when you're not here . . .”

No idea why I expected a guy like Syd to step in and finish a sentence I could not finish for myself. His raised eyebrow would have to do.

“If you're away on business, and it turns out I have to contact you in an emergency because I
am
short of dough or whatever, and my ass
does
need covering . . . well, how will I reach you?”

I know that I'm stretching a bit. That I'm looking for a key to a special exclusive club that I may never need, but jeezuz I want that key all the same just to be special and exclusive.

“You won't,” he says with a friendly dangerous uncle smile. “You'll reach around behind you and cover your own ass until I return. Got it?”

“Got it.”

Uncle Sydney claps a hand on my shoulder as we head off on our circuit of the neighborhood. He shows me where to get essentials that might not already be in the house, which would be none. He shows me the shoe repair shop, which I will never need in my whole life, but when we go inside and I meet Carlo and smell the leather and shake the old rocky hand, I feel like there was something beyond shoes in the visit and come out glad I had the honor. We visit three small eating establishments, each one smelling different, of lamb and baked goods, of simmering tomatoes and spring onions and basil and cinnamon and peaches, and none of which has a deep-fat fryer. Conspicuously, Syd and I stay by the entrance all three times. We breathe it in, the busy folks behind the counter notice us and wave, and Syd points at me before we exit again.

“You'll be well taken care of, any of these places. You'll never go hungry.”

“I'm not hungry now, but I want to eat in all of them anyway.”

“Ha,” he says, “that's the stuff. You'll be great here. That's the municipal pool right there, and the public library . . . it's a great neighborhood. Never have to leave it if you don't want to.”

“I want to, though,” I say, not meaning any disrespect to the fullness of Syd's neighborhood universe.

He laughs again. “Of course you do, young man. You're a young man. You want to go explore. So go, explore. I'll probably be gone by the time you get back. You know what to do,” he says, pointing at me so close I can smell the soap on his finger.

“I do know what to do,” I say.

“And you know what to not do,” he says.

“I do.”

He gives me a hug and surprises me by holding it a fair bit of time, and firmly.

“Are you sure you don't need some money?” he asks while his DNA once again passes my smell test.

“You must be joking,” I say as we part and I back away from him down the road. “I feel like I owe you so much already.”

He stands steady, seeing me off with a big windshield-wiper wave.

“I sort of feel like I owe you more, 'cause of him,” he says.

JASPER JUDGE

S
o who told you to go sneaking around the dark corners of his computer anyway? That's insane, and guaranteed to produce nothing but horrors.
Nobody
could pass that test. I'm telling you, nobody.”

Jasper apparently didn't think it was smart of me to snoop on my father's computer. He very nearly snapped the tops off of six of my fingers when he threw himself at the laptop and banged it shut.

Truth be told, it was a relief.

“I guess now we know why he didn't want me to move back in with him,” I said.

“So, he has a life,” Jasper said. “He's entitled to that, isn't he? Are you still four or something, expecting his world to cease whenever he's not with you? If that's it, then he'd be right to not want you for a roommate. I wouldn't.”

“You call
that
a life?” I shouted, jumping up out of my father's private desk chair behind his private desk in his until-recently-private home, and pointing with my fist at that private computer and the shocks within it that I had no business looking at.

It probably would have been a good idea to let him know when I was coming. I didn't, because it never for a second occurred to me that he would have been anything less than totally thrilled at my returning to him. That possibility never crossed my mind.

He was less than totally thrilled.

“I do,” Jasper said, mostly calmly. “I call it a life. It might not be
my
version of life—or it might be—and it's surely not
your
version of life, but it is definitely some people's version, and without a doubt it's his right to have it. Frankly, it's not even that weird.”

“Of course it is.”

“You are very, very naive, Kiki my friend.”

“I am not. Not naive, and not Kiki. And not wrong.”

I didn't really know whether I was or wasn't any of those things. Because all I knew then was that I was hurt and that I needed to get over it or through it or under it or whatever a person was supposed to do with this kind of ache, but I was getting nowhere with it. Nowhere.

It hurt a lot, feeling like I didn't belong in Dad's house, his life, his home.

“Well, I suppose you could always virus his computer,” Jasper said, leaning over the back of me in the desk chair and reopening the laptop. He clicked back rapidly to the most appalling,
not
enthralling smut site of the many on my father's favorites. Then he made a low
ow-yeow
sound of both injury and satisfaction right in my ear that made the whole thing infinitely ickier.

My turn to slam it closed.
Slam.

“A virus?” I said, jumping up out of the chair quickly enough to bang Jasper's chin with my shoulder. “Sorry,” I said, “but, I hardly think a virus is going to do much since I'm sure everyone at
that
party has already contracted every disease known to man. They are probably now a filthy invincible master race of degenerate—”

“No,
The Master Race
was the name of the video before that one, where it was just those five naked guys in director's chairs facing the—”

“I remember the race, thank you.”

I led him out of my father's study and to the living room where I was determined to find the most normal and sensation-free programming on TV to numb the next hour or so.

“You know that's not the kind of virus I meant, right?” he said as we sat on the couch, searching.

I turned to stare at him while I continued to blindly click through the stations. “Yes. I was making a joke.”

“Oh. Sorry, I just never heard you do that before. I mean, you're funny all over the place, but not usually with that kind of, you know, intention. That was good, though.”

“Thanks,” I said, still locking onto him as if somewhere in his eyes I might find answers to the questions I couldn't even formulate yet. I stopped clicking and settled on the voice of somebody excitable selling us something fabulous involving juices. “Are you comfortable?” was the concoction that came out of me.

Jasper's expression went from amused to confused to concerned over several seconds. He inched a bit away from me, but it was more like he was trying to get me in focus than a prelude to fleeing.

“Well,” he said, “it appears Daddy's Pornotopia had a bigger effect on you than you thought.”

“No, no, what I mean is . . . oh God, don't
call
it that.”

Strange as it may have sounded, Jasper and I were actually kind of perfect as friends. I watched him there, practically tumbling off the couch laughing at my reaction, my squawk of outrage, my feathers flying all over the room, and I could not help converting to his way of thinking. I laughed at myself, which I knew was far too rare an occurrence. My anxiety lessened, a little bit, for a moment. He made me get over myself, however briefly. And I liked it there, over myself.

“What I am asking, Jasper, is what do you think of this place? Do you like my father's house? Is it homey?”

He scanned all around, serious and intense, which I knew meant he was nothing of the kind. Then he turned to me again, fixed me with spooky, unfocused eyes, and spoke in a sickly singsong voice. “This is a lovely home you have here. Lovely home. Lovely home. It just needs a juicer. You need a juicer, Kiki. Kiki, buy the juicer now.”

I looked toward the TV, where the screechy and jittery info-pitchman was going on rabidly about the life-changing capabilities of the juicer.

“Well done,” I said. “But, really.”

“Really, um, no offense, but there's not really anything for me to go on. It's an all right place. Kinda bland. Not a lot of personality, warmth. But it's okay, I guess. Comfortable enough.”

I looked at him silently for a few ticks, and I nodded.

“I think the house makes me angry,” I said.

Once more Jasper gave me the quizzical expression.

“So, you want me to go have a word with my house, have it come over here and kick your house's ass?”

“Yeah,” I snapped, “would you, please, and then we can watch them fight? Just shut up for a second, will you? I think I know what I'm trying to say, and I need to say it before that window closes.”

With that, Jasper pulled a shocking maneuver on a par with my attempting to construct a joke—he got earnest and respectful.

“Go,” he said, hammer-punching my knee like a judge's gaveling.

“I was so sure this was where I belonged. I was
so sure
this was the right decision that I pretty well destroyed the remaining other part of my life to be here. Now I'm here, and Dad seems just confused by my presence. And this house, right, it's not somebody's home. Certainly not my home. And not his, either, in any real way. If I just broke in like a burglar I would not have a clue I was robbing my own father. He has no pictures, no . . . I don't know, stupid knickknacks, mementos from those years, you know. It's cold and it's blank, and I hate it and it's this way by
design
, I realize, because he is trying to forget it all. He's wiping it, making like our previous life never was.”

He was holding his composure an impressive length of time, and I appreciated the hell out of it.

“It was a wicked divorce, you said,” he said.

I nodded, nodded, nodded.

“And I understand all that,” I said. “I really do. But, I'm
here
now, Jas. I'm fucking
right here
!
”
I was shouting, and aware, and did not care. “I am the solution to that problem, aren't I? And now, look, I'm going to cry and I
fucking hate
that, too.”

“That's cool,” he said. “Afterward you'll feel better. You'll be able to relax some.”

“I don't want to relax. This is exactly the way I'm supposed to feel. I'm doing just what I'm supposed to and he is not, goddammit.”

“Am I stupid if I say maybe you should talk to him about this?”

“Yes, you are, but it's not your fault. It's him. Of course I talked to him. But I can't talk to him, not about something he doesn't want to let out. I never could. He's good with words, you see.”

“You're good with words. You're great with words.”

I shook my head vigorously enough that I felt as if I could sense my brain sloshing against the insides of my skull. “No, he is of a different order. The only thing that ever drove me on to get better with language was to catch up with him, to meet him
there.
But
there
was always elsewhere by the time I got there. He would always leave me in a state of thinking we had talked about what I wanted to talk about but only later would I realize that the real things, the stuff he wasn't offering up, didn't come away with me at all the way I thought it did. The only difference now, since I have been here, is that I know this is how it goes. So when he starts it, when I see it happening, I don't play on. I rage, Jasper. I pop off and I know I sound like I am criminally insane. I know it, but cannot do anything about it. It's the fact that this time he is doing the puffs of smoke, the hymns in praise of his own evanescence, for the purpose of making me disappear.”

He got up off the couch and walked toward me, and I only then realized I had walked and ranted, paced and panted, until I had taken up a kind of defense position in front of the TV screen.

“No,” I shouted at him. “Stay there, I mean it.” I believed they were fists I had created there at the far ends of my arms as Jasper advanced, breached my defenses, and gave me what I could only guess was a mighty fatherly hug.

“It was
his
fucking Robert Frost,” I said into Jasper's shoulder.

“Okay, pal,” he said patting my back with increasing firmness, which must have been the technique for bucking a guy up. “I don't need to understand every damn thing you say in order to be supportive.”

“
Home is the place where, when you have to go there/they have to take you in.
Robert Frost. He gave me that, goddammit. He planted it right inside my skull, and right inside my rib cage. He knows.”

“Though, in fairness,” Jasper said tentatively, “he did take you in.”

“Like hell he did,” I growled, and simultaneously felt him go stiff and then loosen his grip.

I turned just in time to see my father evanesce, out of the doorway, up the stairs.