The Other Mr. Bax (14 page)

A
shuffling bustling world greeted Roland
as he exited the jet-walk and entered the terminal waiting area at Phoenix International. He found himself being corralled by the joking, hugging, laughing, waving, kissing, mumbling friends and families of his fellow passengers. He searched for Joyce’s face, heard his name being called, turned, and there she was, waving. A pronounced feeling of familiarity buzzed his brain, like a prelude to an epiphany. He lifted his hand to wave back—a movement that seemed tied to the spell. She stood fifteen feet away, wearing a pastel-pink blouse and blue jeans, a smile starting at her lips and spreading to her eyes.

Doing his best to regain sobriety as he drew nearer, he focused on being in sync and present.

“Hey. How was the flight?” she said.

The flight
… “Fine.” Was his half-second lag as obvious to her as it was to him? “Fine. I’m fine.”

Her smile gave way to mild bewilderment. “You sure?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He nodded.

“Good. Do you have luggage?”

He glanced back over his shoulder, for what, he didn’t know. “Just this.” He lifted his carry-on, which felt heavier than he thought it should, then checked its tag, to make certain it was his.

“Great. We can go then.”

He walked along at Joyce’s right.

“I was afraid I’d get here late. The traffic… seems like every year it gets worse.”

“You haven’t been waiting long?”

“A minute.”

They took an elevator to the top tier of the parking garage where Joyce’s car waited, and a warm breeze carried the thunder of a jet pushing up the runway. The air smelled of city, oil, pavement and heat—everything radiating heat. Above them, the sky was clear but for a thin string of clouds just above the low-lying mountains to the north. To the west, the city appeared compact, its tallest buildings rising above the hazy ridgeline farther west of the city, but then merging with a seemingly endless sprawl below.

Roland waited by the passenger door as Joyce dug through her purse for her keys. The noise of an aircraft swelled in volume as she yelled over the roof of the car. Realizing he could not hear her, she gave him a quick nod and a smile, then pulled her door open and got in. Roland climbed in and pulled his door shut. The chaos from outside instantly became a dull, muted rumble.

“Hope you’re not too hungry,” she said. “I thought we’d have an early dinner at home. There’s something I want to show you while we’re here in town.”

Home
…
He noted how natural it sounded—not “dinner at my house,” but “dinner at home.”

“We could stop for a snack somewhere if you’d like.”

A cool, tingly sensation migrated across his scalp. He thought again of the fever he recently suffered, and begged it to stay away.

“Something to hold you over,” she added.

The feeling rose and fell like an ocean wave—in, out, and then gone.

“Roland?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you hear me?”

“The plane ride. I’m a bit spacey yet.”

“You sure you’re okay?”  Her smile vanished. Her eyes betrayed a heaviness, which he now suspected had been there all along.

“Yeah… yeah, I am.”

“Have you had anything to eat?”

“Really, I’m fine. I had grilled chicken and baby carrots on the plane.” He looked at his watch. “Three hours ago.”

“You’re okay?”

“I wasn’t drooling was I?”

“Just a bit.” She ran a finger from her lip, down to her chin, and gave him a quick smile, then turned away and checked her side mirror. Twisting in her seat, she squared herself, started the engine, then turned back and again checked behind her before finally backing out.

Roland tried to imagine picking Dana up at the airport—a different Dana, a Dana with no memory of him, a Dana who, to the best of his knowledge, never loved him. He studied Joyce with intermittent peeks from the corner of his eye. A feeling similar to what he had while in the hospital surfaced, a kind of amazement, or disbelief over their propinquity. He found it impossible to imagine life ever becoming mundane again, yet, focused on the traffic ahead of her, she appeared so at ease and casual, as if it had always been. She turned her head, catching him with a quick glance as his eyes darted the other way, then steered onto the on-ramp of the expressway. Low, flat-roofed buildings, palm trees, and sparsely used parking lots scrolled by below and to the right. Keeping her eyes on the traffic before them, she acknowledged Roland with a nod. “Do you think the…” She turned her head, trying to read a sign going by. “Do you think you… I mean, the other you, my husband…” She huffed.

“What?”

“You think he’s okay? He’s still here?” She gestured toward the windshield with a flick of her wrist. “Or there somewhere? Do you ever feel…”

“The other me.” He knew precisely what it was she was trying to get at; he had often considered the possibility. “Where I came from… like trading realities?” It was becoming more and more difficult for him to keep these separate lives organized. His old life would sometimes become tangled with this new one. “I have no way of knowing,” he said.

The city loomed large, clean, and modern all around. Joyce pulled off onto an exit ramp to their right; the traffic signal at the bottom changed to red as they neared. She slowed to a stop behind another car, its left turn signal flashing. Pounding hip-hop bass boomed from a nearby car, a steady
boom boom
…
boom boom
, like a massive heart beat. Once the light changed, they turned onto a busy four-lane street.

“I wonder… and worry. I know it’s pointless,” she said. “Nothing I can do to change it, but I still worry.”

Roland gazed ahead—palm trees whizzing past as regular as telephone poles. He of course understood Joyce’s feelings; the empathy was there, but, at the moment, he lacked the energy to express it. He said, “You live down this way?”

Joyce gave him a quizzical look, turned back to the traffic, then came to a stop just two feet from the next car-bumper. Half a block away, the light was red—a hundred shiny vehicles between them and it. She looked again at Roland, an odd smile on her lips. “Nooo,” she said.

Recalling the Queen Creek address on a letter he recently received from her, he realized that somewhere along the way he had missed something. “Queen Creek. This is looking more and more like downtown Phoenix, huh?”

The traffic moved forward. “What?” She chuckled. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ve probably told me where we’re going. You’ll have to excuse my tardiness. I’m usually not so…” He made a goofy face.

“Uh, I didn’t actually say where I was taking you, but I did give you fair warning that I was taking you somewhere.”

“Oh.”

Two blocks further, she made a right, and then another, into a parking garage.

Roland walked along at Joyce’s side, resigned to her apparent secrecy over their destination. “It always this busy here?” he said, as they strolled down a sidewalk lined with small, potted trees, people all around, coming and going.

“I work down that way.” She pointed down the street to their left. “It’s worse in the morning.”

“You work for a newspaper, right?” he said, instantly wishing he hadn’t, as he’d asked her about her work sometime before, maybe a month or so earlier, and now couldn’t remember what she had told him.

“The Phoenix Sun. A music critic. Though I rarely live up to the title. My criticism tends to appear as weak praise, I think.” She stopped on the sidewalk and pivoted to the right. “This is it.”

Roland glanced at the gold lettering on the glass door before them—Gallery Voorheese.

“Frank Voorheese has represented you for four years now. You’ve had two solo shows here.”

Roland’s expressionless reflection gazed back from the glass.

“You can see the advantage of keeping that relationship going, right?”

Little could be seen beyond his and Joyce’s reflections and the reflections of the sun-lit city behind them, as if the art hanging inside was not there for the casual passerby.

“He called last week, asking for you. I wasn’t sure what to tell him.” She sighed. “I told him you’d just left for Indiana, to visit family, and that I’d have you call him when you returned. I was thinking this might be something you could take advantage of. It’s one of Phoenix’s top galleries.”

A big, city bus passed behind his reflection, the sun flashing off a piece of chrome.

“Well, I thought it’d be nice.” She caught his reflected gaze, then looked away.

“You mean, go in?” he said.

“You can look around, say hi maybe. We don’t have to. We could come back another time, if you’d prefer.”

“It… it feels a bit weird.”

“Sorry. I probably shouldn’t have sprung it on you like this.”

“No, it’s not that, really.”

“It’s okay. Let’s just go home, have dinner and relax.”

Roland turned back toward the gallery window. “What the hell, let’s do it. We’re here. Let’s go in.”

“You sure?”

He hesitated. “I
am
a little nervous about meeting people. I mean, people who think I know them, you know?”

“But, he doesn’t know that. No one does.” She gestured toward the door. “They
can’t
know that.”

“Just play along, huh?”

She smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

Scrutinizing his reflection, Roland reached up and smoothed down a tuff of hair sticking out from behind his ear. “I suck at acting.”

“It’ll be easy. You look remarkably like Roland Bax, for one thing. We walk in there together… Hey, look, it’s Mr. and Mrs. Bax.” Her eyes shifted side to side, while her jaw shifted in opposing directions. “You ever hear the one about the kangaroo who walked into a bar?”

“Probably.”

“We’re all set then.” She grinned.

Roland took a deep breath, exhaled. “You’ll cover my back?”

“I’ll not leave your side.”

Joyce stepped through the door—Roland just behind her. He was immediately struck by the uniqueness of the gallery—nearly as dark as a movie theater. The floor was covered with dark-gray carpeting. The walls and ceiling were painted the same gray as the carpeting. The lighting was focused entirely on the art—small, inconspicuous spotlights, scattered high overhead. His eyes were drawn to the stark, vivid colors on the canvases, like slide projections in a darkened room. A man sat at a desk in the corner speaking Spanish into a phone. He appeared maybe forty, with dark, shoulder-length hair, a goatee, and a crisp looking suit and tie, giving the impression of a Hollywood drug-dealer.

The man waved, then held up a finger—one moment.

Joyce moved even closer to Roland. Bringing a hand to her mouth, her eyes shifting sheepishly, she whispered, “Frank Voorheese,” and nodded toward the man talking on the phone. “Oh,” she continued, “we may bump into Pam here too—mid-twenties, thin, blonde, pretty, or Martje; she’s like sixty, tall, always smartly dressed… and hot for you.”

The air was chilly. Roland rubbed his hands together, trying to work warmth into his fingers.

“Ciao...ciao,” Frank said, then set the phone down. “Roland, Joyce, my dear friends.” He had a Latin-American accent, and a big, cheesy grin on an otherwise handsome face. He rose from his chair and approached his visitors. “So nice to see you.” Half-bowing, he held a hand out toward Joyce.

“How are you, Frank?”

“Excellent. And I don’t even have to ask how you are. I can see that you are excellent, as well.” He let Joyce have her hand back, then turned to Roland. “I am right, my friend?”

Roland lifted his brow in mock astonishment. “Oh, yes.”

A phone rang. Roland threw a quick peek toward the desk. Just one ring.

“Is there anything I can do for you today?”

A young woman entered from a back room. “Frank, Mr. Rizzo is on hold for you.”

“Take a message; tell him I’ll call him back in
two
seconds.”

“Hi, Mr. Bax,” the girl smiled and blinked, tipping her blond head from side to side.