The Dream Life of Astronauts (16 page)

“Your memory,” Emerald says. “Have you read something and tell it back to us. Show us what a goddamn computer you are.”

Derek scans the coffee table and the surrounding carpet. He puts the turtle down, reaches under the couch, and produces a section of newspaper. “How about something from this?”

“No,” I tell them both.

“Nervous?” Emerald says, then looks at Derek. “Maybe she's lost her touch.”

Derek is grinning and holding the newspaper out for me. Feeling a flush rise into my neck, I snatch the paper out of his hand and ask, “What, like, a whole article?”

“Just part of one,” he says. “For kicks.”

I peer at the tiny print. There's a story about Black Monday and the stock market crash, but that looks so boring I'm worried I wouldn't be able to keep track of more than a few sentences. There's a story on how a porn star got elected to the Italian parliament, but I'm not touching that one. Baby Jessica is in stable condition, which is uplifting, but I don't feel like reciting her story in Derek's living room, so I skip that one too. Finally, I settle on a story about some German guy who landed his plane in the middle of Red Square, which apparently is a very big deal because of the whole Iron Curtain thing. I read the first three paragraphs silently, then hand Derek the newspaper, point at the article, and recite the paragraphs back.

It turns out Derek has an ability I've always wanted to have: he can lift just one eyebrow to show his reaction to something. Unfortunately, it's the brow over the eye that's out to lunch. “Almost perfect,” he says. “That'll come in handy when you're giving acceptance speeches.”

“Thanks.” I look at Emerald. “You about ready to go?”

She's drinking from the Slurpee cup and squinting at me over its lip.

“Wait, now, don't rush off,” Derek says, dropping the newspaper onto the floor. “I understand there's something I might be able to help you with. Something that's not necessarily career oriented, but kind of is. Seems like there's this—Brian person? Who ought to have his joystick cut off?”

I feel my stomach drop. I look at Emerald. “What the hell?”

“Wuh,” Emerald says, her shoulders jumping like she's just felt a tiny electrical shock.

“So you're offering to do it?” I ask Derek. “Cut off Brian's ‘joystick'?”

“No, no,” Derek says, laughing through his words. “I'm not the mafia. I'm into ceramics, show business. Good times. What I'm talking about is something a little more—listen, do you want to step out to the back porch with me so we can talk in private?”

I don't, and I'm about to tell him so, but then Emerald says “Wuh” again. And leans forward. And vomits into her Slurpee cup. To her credit, not one drop gets on the floor.

“Oh, for the fucking love of god,” Derek says.

He seems not only surprised, but truly irked, and I don't have a strong stomach these days and am worried Emerald's going to make
me
throw up, so I say, “Let's go outside.”

The back porch is closed off, has a corrugated tin roof, and is windowed on three sides with horizontal planks of greenish glass that eat up most of the late afternoon sun. It's a little like
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
in there, except for several boxes that say
LYDIA'S SHIT
stacked against one wall. I get about two feet in and turn around to see Derek standing right behind me.

He puts his hands in his pockets and leans against the doorframe.

“Sorry about Emerald,” I say.

“Nothing I haven't seen before,” he says. “So, listen, Dani. Your situation”—he bobbles his head around a little—“isn't exactly earth-shattering. The sky's not falling, is what I mean.”

I wait for him to say more, but he doesn't. “Why?” I ask.

“Because it's not. I mean, what's going on with you right now doesn't necessarily have to get in the way of the life you want.”

I wait a little more. “Why?”

“Because there are things you can do about it. One thing, in particular.”

“I kind of know this already.”

“I'm sure you do. But you might be wondering how to go about it. How to get it done without everybody and his uncle finding out. Bottom line is, it's not a big deal. Quick and easy. It's basically like a glorified checkup.”

And how many glorified checkups have you had?
I want to ask.

“Don't worry about what it costs,” he says, as if either one of us has said anything about money. “I'll front you the funds, I mean. That's what friends do for each other.”

A dragonfly pecks on the outside of one of the window slats. Derek is
almost
blocking my way back into the house. “Why?” I say again.

“Look, how many Miss Americas you think had bastard kids when they were crowned? I'd venture to say none, unless they were keeping it a secret.”

“I met Philip.”

“Did you? I hope he didn't talk your ear off.”

“He's in the bathtub.”

“Funny kid. Really funny. I call him my new and improved me. But I want to help you out,” he says, setting the needle back down on his thought. “As your friend. Let me do this for you, and one day maybe there'll be something you can do for me, down the line. That's how people learn to trust each other, right?”

The dragonfly's fluttering shape through the glass is like a floater in my peripheral vision. I listen to it peck-peck-peck as Derek takes one of his hands out of his pockets, reaches up, and rubs a dusty thumb along the side of my jaw.

“Okay,” I tell him, knowing this is what he wants to hear, hoping this will shut him down.

He looks a little surprised. “You'll let me help you?”

“Okay,” I say again.

“Then you and I should get together and talk logistics. Sooner than later, of course. You could come back by tomorrow, if you want—on your own, just you.”

I move fast but try to be graceful about it, fluid, like it doesn't make any difference to me where I am, only right now I happen to be just barely sliding past him, back into the kitchen. “I have to check on Emerald,” I say over my shoulder.

I'm half-expecting Emerald to be passed out, but she's still sitting more or less upright, hunched forward, head tilted down. The cup is nearly full and is sitting on the coffee table next to the turtle.

“Come on,” I say. “We're going.”

When she looks at me, openmouthed, I see tears running down her cheeks. “I screwed this whole thing up,” she says.

“No you didn't. Let's go.”

She stands, and I take hold of her elbow to steady her. I pick up her purse from the couch, and the Glamour Shots, and guide her toward the front door.

“What time are you coming tomorrow?” Derek asks, coming in from the porch.

“Any time's good,” I say. “Thanks for everything!”

The sky is just starting to turn periwinkle as I walk Emerald across the front yard, past the kiddie pool, to the Chevette.

“I guess I shouldn't drive,” she says.

I fish her keys out, get her into the passenger seat, and climb in behind the wheel. Before I drive away, I see Derek standing in the doorway, watching us.

Emerald is quiet for most of the ride. She sits with her hands in her lap, staring out the side window. We're almost to her house when she tells me she doesn't understand what happened—meaning, I assume, the way Derek was more into me than her, the way he insulted her, his mention of something happening between us tomorrow that she's not in on.

“There's nothing to understand,” I tell her. “I'm not going back there.”

“No, I mean how did I get drunk so fast?”

When we get to her house, I help her out of the Chevette and walk her inside. Beyond the sliding glass door, I see her dad on the patio in the backyard, squatting down over a hibachi and holding a spatula. Her mom is setting out plates on the picnic table. It's like stepping into a TV show whenever I come over here, it's
that
nice. Emerald's mom waves at us. I wave back, and steer Emerald to her room, where she flops down onto her bed and hooks an arm over her eyes. I take off her shoes and put them beside the bed. Then I set her keys on the nightstand, close her bedroom door behind me, and walk the five blocks home.

H
alf of our silverware has been added to the box sitting out by the curb. It's scattered over top of the wedding portrait. My mother is sitting at the dining room table with a box of Pecan Sandies and an open, spiral-bound notebook. She's holding a pen with a heart-shaped piece of plastic attached to the eraser end. “I've decided to start keeping a diary,” she says. “What do you think of that?”

I'm thinking it would have been better if I'd thrown up, because I'm feeling too full. Of everything. Of being somebody's friend, somebody's daughter, somebody's mother. I pull the chair out across from her and sink down onto it. “Can I talk to you about something important?”

She looks up from the notebook and blinks at me. She says, “I'm right here.”

But how do I do it? And what's the use, really? I've gotten myself into this, and expecting anybody to understand, trusting anybody to hear me out and maybe talk a little but mostly just shut up and let me
be
—I'm about ready to give up on that.

“Well?” she says.

I look at the paint chips taped to the wall behind her. The picture hooks that used to hold the still lifes she and Roger bought at an art show in Orlando. “Don't worry, I'm not pregnant,” I say.

She seems to get taller by a couple of inches, her back straightening against the chair. The little heart on the pen is also the cap, it turns out; she pulls it off, fixes it to the other end, and sets the pen down.

“So I'm not looking for anybody to tell me what to do about that,” I say.

With frantic little movements, her eyes zigzag over every part of my face. I can almost hear the gears turning in her brain. There's a meltdown in the works, I'm sure, and at this point I'm ready to suffer it and get it behind me, because how could it be any worse than the afternoon I've just had?

“But if I
was
pregnant,” I tell her, “I think I'd probably want to keep it, and that would be my business and nobody else's, wouldn't it?”

For what must be the longest stretch of dead air we've ever shared, she doesn't say anything and neither do I. Finally, she closes the notebook and folds her hands over the cover like it's a bible she's just given a reading from. “Oh, little lady,” she says. And I know what's coming, because she thought her life couldn't stink any more than it already did, and because why should she have expected it to be any different? Why did she ever get married, have a kid, think there would be anything out there waiting for her other than one mess after another?

Her head is shaking no. No to me, no to my situation, no to the world.

I brace myself.

“I guess we should start thinking about names,” she says.

H
ere's my morning routine (just to give you an idea of what my days are like now): I wake up at 6:15, as if I've still got a job. I go downstairs to the front stoop I share with five other units and hope somebody hasn't filched my newspaper. I take the paper inside and sit at the dining room table, and while I drink a glass of orange juice with Metamucil and eat a piece of toast with marmalade, I read the news. Christ, it's boring. Depends on your vantage point, I guess, but for me it's gutless. Meatless.
Vegan.
A dozen people blown up by an unknown attacker in a country I couldn't find on a globe if I had to. Some woman in Smalltown, USA, who drove her kids into a lake. Some guy in some other town who didn't like his neighbor's music and dusted off his old hunting rifle to deal with it. Politicians with hookers. Cops with too much power. That's the news: somebody's an asshole, and another asshole's got something to say about it. Which isn't really news, is it?

I go on the Internet to see what's happening back in Chicago, and it's like they gave typewriters to a bunch of cats. I turn on the television to check out the local affiliates, and it's all traffic reports and “human interest” stories. So I watch a few reruns.
The Big Valley,
which I still enjoy.
The Waltons,
which is corny, but better than a lot of the garbage they show now.
Kojak.
Good old Kojak, still with the zingers and still walking into the room with his dick swinging.

I turn the clock radio to the classical station, get in the tub, soak my joints. Put on my robe, go into the kitchen, pour a big glass of water and lay out my pills for the day. Atenolol, donepezil, hydralazine, quinapril—over the teeth, past the gums. I put on trousers or a pair of shorts, depending on my mood. A guayabera. Crocs decorated with little Mickey Mouse snap-ons the girl at the mall talked me into. SPF 30 sunscreen with zinc oxide I smear from my collarbones to the top of my head, which went the way of Kojak's long before I ever had a chance of going gray. Onto this slathered bust, I place one of three straw hats and a pair of Oakleys strong enough to block UVAs, UVBs, and UVCs, whatever they are. Watch, keys, money clip, loose change, and I'm ready for what my doctor likes to call my heart-healthy, low-weight-bearing ambulation. I'm the roaming prince of Villa Ponce de Leon. Do I love my life? Not so much. It's like the Players Club, only with none of the play.

V
illa Ponce de Leon is a very proud place. It doesn't have bushes and trees; it has
landscaping.
It doesn't have sidewalks; it has a
promenade
of winding, wooden slats carefully painted with yellow caution stripes at every step up and step down. It has a Seniors Activity Center—shuffleboard courts, tile-laid tables for checkers and chess, classes in yoga and tai chi and scrapbook making. Its own battalion of big-bellied security guards who ride around on golf carts and wave hello. Signs telling you where you can and can't park, where you can and can't walk, where it's okay for your dog to do its business. Wooden dispensers with crap bags every twenty feet, and signs reminding dog walkers that the entire complex is a “Doodie-Free Zone.” Its literature boasts of being the finest retirement community in all of Brevard County—huzzah!—and in the center of the superfluous roundabout at the entrance to said community stands the man himself: Ponce de Leon, painted to look like bronze, one hand on his hip and the other thrust out, offering up this bountiful wonderland.

“Good morning, Mr. Delacorte,” one of the residents says as she passes me on the promenade. At the end of the leash in her hand is a Chinese crested, looks like he's got a toupee on top of his head.

I will never get used to being Eugene Delacorte—ridiculous name—but I've gotten used to faking it. “Good morning, sweetheart,” I say, smiling my most devilish smile. She smiles back and might even blush if she had enough circulation to get the blood to her cheeks.

Down the way, one of the ancients, he must be close to ninety, is squinting at the notice board with his mouth hanging open. I can't tell if he's reading the board or drying his teeth. “Huh,” he says just as I'm about to pass him. “Huh, huh, huh.” Then he turns around and glares at me like I've startled him on purpose. “John Kennedy Jr.'s plane went down,” he says.

“It sure did,” I say. “About ten years ago.” I pat his arm and keep walking.

The sky's gone from blue to a kind of ashy white. Blink your eyes and it'll be blue again. I follow the promenade around the lake they scooped out of the middle of the complex, past the playground for visiting grandkids, cut across the grass on a path of round pebble stones edged with a rope railing about as high as my ankle, and end up at the pool.

The pool is a fairly new addition to Villa Ponce de Leon. Finished just six months before I arrived, and still bearing the self-congratulatory banner across the entrance to the pavilion:
Our Beautiful Pool Is Now Open—Residents and Their Guests Only.
Maximum of three guests, that is, accompanied by a resident who's responsible for his or her guests obeying the rules. So says the president of the condo association, the one and only, ball-busting supervillain, Sophia Humphries.

She's a formidable opponent to yours truly, the roaming prince.

Under the umbrella of her presidency, Sophia is in charge of things like balcony etiquette (no barbecues, no storage, no nude sunbathing) and yard-sale etiquette (no yard sales). She's also the self-appointed Welcome Wagon; rings your bell right after you move in and presents you with—I kid you not—a basket of takeout menus, mosquito repellant, and a little stuffed-alligator key chain. I can only assume the sweet smile and the twenty-questions game are a regular part of her routine, because when I invited her in for a glass of iced tea, she sat herself down on my couch and was a jovial grand inquisitor. Where had I lived before moving here? Lincoln, Nebraska. What line of work had I been in? Drywall. Any children, grandchildren? Why not? Two of the former, five of the latter. A wife who passed away a few years ago. A sister who runs a daycare center in Omaha. Solid answers, and none of them true—if she was wise, she didn't let on. “I'd love to see pictures of your grandchildren,” she said, and I told her I would, too, but there were a few boxes that had gone missing when the movers arrived and I was still waiting for them to turn up. “And what made you choose Cape Canaveral, Mr. Delacorte?”

It was chosen for me, just like the name Eugene Delacorte. But of course I didn't tell her this. There she was, half a cushion away, halfway through her iced tea, around my age, wearing her reading glasses on a chain around her neck, a blouse patterned with hibiscus blossoms, and a whole lot of makeup, including a red-coral shade of lipstick that would have looked just fine on a young fox. She was kind of a sexpot in her own right, and you had to give her credit for it. “Sunny days,” I said with a shrug. “Balmy nights.” I rubbed the side of my neck and then laid my arm across the back of the sofa so that my fingertips—just barely—brushed the collar of her blouse. “Maybe a little romance.”

She glanced around as if suddenly needing to take inventory of my furniture. Then she looked me right in the eye, the smile gone from her lips but then back again in abbreviated form. “Well, aren't you full of yourself,” she said.

“I am,” I said. “I truly am. And I wish it weren't so.”

T
he problem with becoming someone else is that you're still stuck with
you.
You can change your name, buy all new clothes, pretend you're from Nebraska when you're really from Illinois, pretend you used to work in drywall when, really, you were a bookkeeper for an extortion racket, pretend you're a happy-go-lucky retiree, no secrets, no regrets—and still, when you look in the mirror, you're going to see the guy you first saw, way back when.

D. B. Cooper, or whatever his name really was, could never be D. B. Cooper again once he jumped out of the plane with all that cash, but he still saw the guy desperate enough to make such a heist when he looked in the mirror. Ferdinand Waldo Demara, the great imposter who pretended to be thirty or forty different people in his lifetime, with thirty or forty different jobs and thirty or forty different personal histories, saw only one guy each morning when he shaved his mug: Ferdinand Waldo Demara. I'll bet even Mickey Rourke can still see himself if he squints hard enough.

So when I, Eugene Delcacorte, look in the mirror, I see Nick Parascos. And here's why it's no picnic, this brand-new life: I don't want to be either one of them. Eugene Delacorte is a cream puff, and Nick Parascos is a rat.

Sophia Humphries, I would guess, is not the happiest camper when she looks in the mirror. I say that not because of her features, but because of all the makeup, and because of her lust for power, and because of that forward lean in her voice. I know more about her than I do about anyone down here—she's a sharer—but she leaves out the tender parts and won't go near the juicy bits. She's divorced, like me. She played tennis until she had to have her knee replaced—a surgery that led to complications, two more surgeries, and a pending malpractice suit. She likes QVC, anagrams, Hummels. She listens to Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck (so she's a private romantic, maybe, even while she's a ballbuster). I imagine she's been through a few wringers in her lifetime, had more than a few turns at the rodeo. And I suspect that, while she's glad to have survived it all, she's not exactly thrilled to be Sophia Humphries. She's got some Barbara Stanwyck in her, sure. She's even got a little Mae West, if I rose-color my Oakleys. But she's also got some dour in her dowry. Some Aunt Bee in her bonnet.

Nothing happened that first afternoon, other than that she finished her tea, complimented my Fiestaware, and went on with her day. Did I come on too strong? Not strong enough? Would she have liked it any better if I'd let her take the wheel? These might be questions for another man, but the rev in the engine doesn't go away, even if you're driving a jalopy.

T
he pool pavilion is a modest affair, given Ponce de Leon's lofty standards. Under the banner is an entrance that leads to the check-in counter, and on either side of the counter are the restrooms—ladies to the left, gents to the right, the only way in or out of the pool area. It strikes me as poor planning that you have to pass through the toilets to get to the pool, but there it is.

Sophia hires and fires the people who work the check-in counter. She hires and fires the lifeguards. She has her own test kit and goes behind the pool maintenance man, taking her own pH and alkalinity levels. She's breaking in a new kid for the desk today and, as I stroll in, she's also chewing out one of the lifeguards.

“We have to keep these children out of the hot tub,” she's saying.

The guard is all muscle, shaggy haired and dimple faced. A smirker. He's got on a white tank top and this snug, little red bathing suit that might as well be Jockey shorts. He shrugs.

“It's too hot for them,” Sophia says. “They're not allowed in.”

She's right; it's in the regulations. But the guard shrugs again and says, “They jump in really fast,” and he's right, too. I've seen them do it. There's a low wall between the pool and hot tub, and the brats make a game out of belly-sliding over that wall—plop!—right into old people's laps. I step around the two of them, wink at the scared-looking new kid sitting behind the counter, and cut through the men's room to the pool area. And what a crazy mix it is. A dozen retirees splayed out on lounge chairs, and half a dozen little hellions darting back and forth, up and down, asking for snacks. It's like flies on meat. I buy a Vitaminwater from the soda machine and carry it back inside.

Sophia's got her cinnamon-colored hair teased up into a bouffant, and aqua-blue earrings that match her nail polish. She's still putting the screws to the lifeguard. “Can I just remind you,” she says, “that it's your job to keep these children in line? I need one of you watching the counter, and two of you watching the pool, and if that's too much for you to handle, I'm sure they're hiring at McDonald's.”