The Enigmatologist (21 page)

John
checked the bullets in his gun and reinserted the clip. The faded cloth interior
of his Saturn absorbed the metallic snap. He was parked down the block, on the
corner, and had been watching the motel for over twenty minutes. But it was
empty. Nothing moved. He set the gun on the passenger seat, next to the journal
and photos.

The journal. It was the most dangerous object in the car.
Scribbled by an ancestor, it completely rewrote John’s history. At first he
thought it was preposterous, that he was the latest product of an alien
breeding program. He had an expensive degree that said he knew how to pursue
clues and solve puzzles, and, pondering the evidence and events of the past few
days, he reached a disturbing conclusion. He gripped the top of the steering
wheel, rested his head on his hands, accepted that the journal and everything in
it was real. A tear dribbled down his cheek. As more tears flowed, John lifted
his head and laughed, feeling sorrow and relief, because everything he knew
about himself was false.

John sniffled and wiped his eyes and slowly drove down
Baca Drive. He scanned the road as he crossed Grand Avenue, looking for
anything that seemed unusual or artificial, a suspicious car, an unnaturally
empty street, or Professor Gentry walking a diapered monkey.

He pulled into the motel parking lot and the pain in his
stomach returned. It was stronger, like his intestines were twisting. John
clamped onto his stomach and bent over, accidentally slamming his foot on the
gas. His car careened through the parking lot, heading toward the motel room
door. John braked hard, stopping between two parking spaces, spilling the gun
and book onto the car floor. He decided, if the sheriff asked, he’d tell him
that it was a strategic move, meant to confuse anyone who was watching, make
them think he was lost or drunk, a pretty easy sell for a town where half the
billboards advertised DUI attorneys.

John picked the gun and book off the car floor, grateful
the gun hadn’t gone off, shooting him in the foot. He scraped up the pictures.
The photo on top. John is opening a Christmas present, an inflatable Godzilla
that he could punch and wrestle. His mother wanted to get him a Pound Puppy,
thinking the giant lizard would be too terrifying for her young child, but his
father insisted, saying John needed to learn that what he thinks are monsters
are really just obstacles to be body slammed and pile
drived
.
John lodged the photos in the book, surprised that seeing a photo could cause
him to relive something as cool as getting a blow-up Godzilla. He carried the
book and photos to his room, pulling out his key.

But at the door.

He stopped.

It was cracked a few inches.

But he’d locked it before he left, tugged it a couple of
times to make sure.

The curtains were drawn. A soft lamplight shone through
the crack. The maid’s cart was a few doors down, parked in front of an open
room.

John took out his gun, put his back against the wall.
Turning his head slightly, he smelled the crack. He didn’t know why he did it.
It just seemed natural, instinctual. The scent confused him. He expected the
room to smell like cleaning supplies. Instead, it smelled like peanut butter
and bananas. There was only one person who ate that combination, a person who
was supposed to be dead.

John tucked the journal and photos in the front of his
pants, zipped up his hoodie.

With his back to the outside wall, he slowly pushed the
door open. Keeping half his body hidden behind the wall, John spun and pointed
the gun inside. A man sitting on the bed, watching TV, eating a sandwich. The
sequins on his one-piece jumpsuit flickered like the nighttime neon on the
Vegas Strip.

“
Leadbelly
,” John said, lowering
his gun. “Jesus Christ. We thought you were dead.”

“Now, man, why would you think a thing like that?”
Leadbelly
asked, taking a bite of his sandwich. The bruises
and swelling from the bar fight were gone. The skin on his face was smooth and
the color had returned from the greenish-yellow of contusions to the tan of the
Memphis Delta. Every hair in his pompadour had been intentionally arranged. His
sideburns were focused and had been trimmed, ending right at his earlobes. And
Leadbelly
looked exactly like the King.

John holstered his gun and closed the door. “Because you
went missing and your trailer was covered in blood. The sheriff even came out
here.”

“Yeah, I saw y’all leave this morning. Decided to wait for
you to get back.” He took another bite.

“You’ve been here all day watching soaps?”

“Well, man, not exactly.” The toilet flushed.

“Who’s in there?” John put his hand on his gun. The
bathroom door opened and a heavyset Mexican woman in her mid-fifties walked
out, buttoning her housekeeping blouse, smoothing and putting bobby pins into
her dyed, black hair.

“Adios,
Señor
Elvis,” she said.

Leadbelly
stood. He grabbed her around the
waist with one arm and pulled her in, the sandwich still in the other hand. He
leaned in, kissed her, then curled his lip and said, “Thank you. Thank you very
much.”

She clutched her shirt and staggered out of the room. John
heard her vacuuming the room next door through the wall.

“Man,
Carmilta’s
a big fan,”
Leadbelly
said, taking another bite of his sandwich.

“On my bed? Really? On my bed?”

“Don’t worry, man, she changed the sheets.”

“Well, that makes it alright,”
John said.

“I told her you’d say that.”

“I spent all day trying to figure out what happened to
you, and now I find you’ve been here with what’s-her-name.”

“
Carmilta
. Man, she’s a very
sweet lady. Did I mention she’s a big fan?”

“On my bed? And please tell me you weren’t wearing that
suit the whole time.”

“Oh, this,”
Leadbelly
said,
smoothing some sequins on his chest. He tucked his thumb under the bedazzled
lapel like a farmer whose cash crop was nacho cheese. “Man, this here’s my
traveling suit.”

“Where’re you going?”

“That’s what I came here to talk to you about, man. My
transportation has
kinda
, well, burned to the
ground.”

“You talking about your trailer? I was there. My clothes
still smell like a burnt leisure suit.”

“Yeah, well, I need a ride outta town.”

“If you think I’m giving you a ride anywhere…”

“You looking for Rosa, man? She didn’t go to Albuquerque.”

“How did you…” John recalled Rosa sleeping on her side,
the sheet slipping from her naked shoulder.

“We’re going to the same place, man. All I need’s a ride.”
Leadbelly
placed his open palm over his heart like he
was pledging allegiance to polyester, cheap beer, and unprotected sex. John
sensed a rare sincerity radiating from
Leadbelly
,
like he was projecting his earnestness. Even though John knew he could trust
Leadbelly
, his day had been dominated by riddles.

“Alright,” John said. “You want a ride out of town? Tell
me why the Air Force was at your trailer. What do you have on them?”

“The Air Force? Man, they’re the
sonsabitches
I been running from. Been running since Vegas.”

“They’re the ones you borrowed money from? They’re the
reason you burned your chapel?”

“Yeah, man. It’s like you said,”
Leadbelly
said, taking a bite of his sandwich, “I owed them some money and now they’ve
caught up to me.”

“You’re going to have to try harder than that. What do you
have on them?”

“They’re blackmailing me, man. Trying to.”

“They’re after you,” John interrupted, “because you have
something they want. This.” He pulled out the journal. John didn’t toss it on
the bed or put it anywhere
Leadbelly
could reach it.
He held it, waved it, the photos flapping between the pages. Taunting
Leadbelly
with the journal, John felt tranquil, admitting a
truth about himself, the journal, its implications, and he was agitated that
the only person who could explain it to him was an Elvis impersonator.

“Oh, man, I thought I’d lost it,”
Leadbelly
said. He relaxed a little. “I’d a been in a heap a trouble. But you got it,
man. That’s a good thing.”

“You sure? ‘Cause I know how you got it. You took it from
Archibald’s house the day of his funeral, right before you burned the place.”

“How did you know, man?”

“It’s your M.O. Every time you run, you cover it up with a
fire. You burned your trailer, your chapel, and Archibald’s house. Archibald’s
house, the land where it used to be, it’s a Party Store now.”

“Yeah, man, maybe they’ll have a fire sale.”

“Not funny.” John waved the journal. “Are you in here?
Does Archibald mention you?”

“Briefly,”
Leadbelly
said. “I’m
his son, man, the one that was raised in New Mexico. Your great-great-uncle.”

“Are you kidding me?” John grabbed his hair and looked at the
ceiling. A crack in the plaster cut through it.

“Sorry, you had to find out this way, man. I wish I could
have been there for you, taught you how to play guitar, how take off a girl’s
bra with one hand.”

“The important stuff, right?”

“I just wish things
coulda
been
different. Hell, if they had, I
coulda
sang at all
your birthday parties.”

“You were already there.” John threw a picture at
Leadbelly
. John is sitting at a table, crying as he blows
out the candles on a cake shaped like a giant six.

“Hey, man, don’t be cruel.”

“Really? You’re quoting songs now?” John said, rolling his
eyes. “This is just great. My great-great-uncle’s a fucking Elvis
impersonator.”

“It’s not like that, man. I was one of Elvis’s body
doubles, from ’69 to ’77, all the way to the end.”
Leadbelly
finished his sandwich and wiped his hands, brushing crumbs onto the carpet.

“That’s why you look like him? so you could spy on him?”

“Yeah, man. We found out he was spying on us. So, a group
of us became his body doubles.”

“And being aliens, you were the perfect body doubles,
copying his hair, voice, everything, right?”

“Yeah, man, all us body doubles were Sagittarians. Man, it
was glorious.”
Leadbelly
looked at the curtains
covering the window, cloaking them from the empty parking lot.

“Sagittarian? You all were into astrology, too?” John
asked, thinking about the horoscopes just below the crosswords, and how he
ignored their manufactured prophecies.

“It’s who we are, man, where we’re from, you and me.”

“Bullshit. I’m nothing like you. I don’t play dress-up. I
don’t pretend to be something I’m not.”

“You sure about that?”
Leadbelly
nodded to the table, to John’s blank crossword.

“That’s you. You and all the body doubles, dressing up
like your hero Elvis Presley, living off his scraps because you couldn’t make
it on your own. Then he died and you went into hiding ‘cause you couldn’t take
it.”

“After Elvis’s funeral, man, we all knew the Air Force
would come for us. So, man, we decided to make a run for it.”

“Did they know you were aliens?” John asked. He squeezed
the journal and the cover squeaked.

“Not sure, man. One a my buddies, he started getting these
phone calls, real scary shit. So, man, we decided to take off.”

“But they didn’t know where you were, not until you fucked
up and let someone take your picture. You even posed for it, waving to
God-knows-what. And the Air Force got everything they needed from the reporter,
right before they killed him. Then they put your place under surveillance.
Followed you, found out about Rosa.”

“Yeah, man, I
kinda
fucked up.”