Waveland (3 page)

“Oh, now that's nicely put.”

“I don't think I like you all that much,” Vaughn said.

“You haven't had my best stuff yet,” Eddie said.

They got more beer, and Eddie started telling Vaughn about the war. “It's like the minute I saw those people over there playing drop-the-goat I knew we were in trouble. I mean,
drop-the-goat
. Right there, you know? You do not want to fuck with people who play ball games using an animal as the ball.”

“Yeah,” Vaughn said.

“It's a question of reverence for life,” Eddie said. “Of course when I was over there we toasted those people trying to get back into Iraq from Kuwait. That wasn't our best moment.”

“I saw that,” Vaughn said.

“But you know we're overmatched, right? Those people are, all of them, crazy. They're all ‘I want to bathe in blood’ and shit like that.”

A tall man in the back said, “Hey! Quiet down, will you?”

Eddie turned around and looked at the guy and pointed his stump back there into the darkness. “Yes sir,” he said. “Quiet as a mouse, sir.”

“You about ready to go?” Vaughn asked.

“We got no business being there,” Eddie said. “It's fucking insane. People'll cut you up and eat you, you don't watch out.”

“Not us,” Vaughn said. “You did yours. I'm too old.”

That got Eddie headed in a new direction. “I hear your whole damn world disintegrated. Wife left you, you got fired, laid off, you got no job, you cruise around eating Chinese food with your landlord, observing the takeover of your world by younger, less capable guys. By children,” he said.

“That the deal?”

“Fucking Mike Wallace here,” Vaughn said, getting off the stool. “Let's go, huh?”

Eddie pointed to the girl bartender who was leaning over dead ahead, facing the other way. “See this tattoo?” he said, meaning the scrollwork just above her ass. “This is the defining mark of our historical moment. God Bless 'em. Everywhere you go. And they all got this idea at the same time. It's amazing.”

“Tramp-stamp,” Vaughn said.

“What?”

“What it's called,” Vaughn said. “Was in the AARP newsletter.”

He pulled Eddie away from the bar, said they had to get back, that Greta was waiting on them. Eddie went willingly, and Vaughn dropped him in the driveway and watched him tilt toward the apartment at the end of the drive.

The afternoon of the birthday dinner Vaughn headed for the bathroom to clean up, and Greta's dog, Monkey, seesawed off the couch and clicked into the bathroom after him, then sprawled on the floor by the back corner of the tub. Vaughn figured Monkey liked the sound of running water. Vaughn ran water then got in the tub, his feet up on the edge of the porcelain on either side of the faucet. He had a
Consumer Reports
with “Unbiased Ratings: 333 Products” emblazoned on its cover. There were pictures of cars, televisions, telephones, tires, digital cameras, and something that looked as if it might be an insurance policy. He drew the cover close to his face trying to read the type on the photograph of the contract or policy or whatever it was, but could not. He opened the magazine to the table of contents, and there was the same image again, repeated larger this time. It was a will. The issue had a comparison of will-making software. He started looking
at that, but then caught an article on page twelve called “Dangerous Products, a
CR
Investigation.” He went there instead, where he found a picture of a flame shooting out of some guy's hand. The caption said, “When we sprayed this aerosol hair glitter on a fire, it shot flames. We bought it in a store's children's party section.”

“Perhaps if you hadn't sprayed the fire?” Vaughn said. Monkey did not stir.

Vaughn had trouble reading. He often read in the tub, magazines mostly, but he skipped most of the text, reading a little at the beginning of a paragraph, then moving on to the next paragraph. Often he'd go through an entire article this way, looking at several pages but reading only a sentence or two per paragraph. He wondered if it was ADD.

“Earlier this year
Consumer Reports
revealed that millions of unsafe, recalled products remain in consumer hands,” he read. “Dollar shops and closeout stores have been prime destinations for shoddy products,” he read. “Electrical products,” he read. “Hazardous toys have been a concern since the Toy Industry Association first brought the matter to the attention of the Senate in 1997,” he read.

Pretty soon he tossed the magazine and his reading glasses on the bath mat and slid down in the tub until he was covered up to his chin in warm water. He closed his eyes and let the steady drip of the faucet lull him to sleep.

The restaurant that night was all about fat leather seats, dark wood, bright polished copper, waiters and waitresses in starched white shirts, steaks at eighty dollars a pop. Most of
the customers had their meals comped. It was dark and chilly in the restaurant, but the bread, which came seconds after they were seated, was toasty.

The greetings were overdone. Hugs and kisses all around. Gail and Greta might have been sorority sisters. Gail had a new look, thin and taller than he remembered, wearing a leather jacket, a long scarf, Beatle boots. She wore black jeans and looked quite severe with a new haircut, also black. Her nose was a little more prominent than she might want. Still, she was handsome and looked younger than she was. She could have passed for forty. Greta was dressed like a cowgirl—jeans and an open-collar man's button-down shirt, and she was less thin than Gail.

“So, it's just the three of us then?” Greta said.

“I guess,” Gail said. She reached into her purse and pulled out a folded section of newspaper. “Your press,” she said to Greta, sliding the paper to her.

“Gee, thanks,” Greta said. “We spent some time on that already. If you have a cat you might want to keep it?”

Gail grinned. “Well, you know—no such thing as bad publicity?”

“There's the murder exception,” Vaughn said.

Gail reached for the paper. “I withdraw the offering,” she said.

“It's fine,” Greta said, capturing the newspaper. “I guess I can keep two copies. It's sort of glamorous, don't you agree?”

“Terribly,” Gail said.

“It's not every day one dines with the notorious,” Vaughn said.

They were seated in a booth, Vaughn on one side of the table and the two women on the other. He saw his past and future in a single glance.

The chat about Greta went on, and Gail and Greta looked friendly—they seemed to “get” each other in some special way. Vaughn just watched and smiled, spun his knife on the tabletop until Gail reached over to stop the knife from twirling. “Vaughn,” she said.

“Sorry,” he said.

“He does that,” Greta said.

“I like to watch talk shows on television, especially political shows,” he said. This was his idea for changing the subject.

“Me, too,” Gail said. “They're so earnest and dopey—it's hard to imagine who they think they're talking to out here.”

“They're
explaining
everything to us,” Greta said.

“Talking to themselves,” Gail said.

“They've simplified the world for us morons,” Greta said.

“What do you think, Vaughn?” Gail said, tapping his hand.

“A world in which I feel more comfortable,” he said. “Beautiful and stark.”

“Hmm,” she said.

“I want to organize alphabetically all the things I hate,” he said.

“You're always so organized,” Gail said.

“He doesn't hate everything,” Greta said to Gail.

“I know,” Gail said.

“He just gets upset and angry.”

“I know,” Gail said.

“There are upsetting things out there, upsetting things happening
all the time,” Greta said. “I get upset sometimes myself, but then I just let it go.”

“Me, too,” Gail said.

“He doesn't let it go,” Greta said. “He's trying, though.”

“Says he is,” Gail said, readying her salad for eating. The salads were spare and lovely on shallow white plates, little arrays of lettuces and walnuts. “So what happened to the new you?” Gail said.

“I'm still here,” he said. “I just forget sometimes.”

They began to eat. They talked all during dinner, nonstop— last year's hurricane, the trash still scattered around, the way it still looked in some places as if the storm had just come through in the last week, the politics of gambling on the coast, the casinos, the usual.

“When they have a war, have they always just reported the number of Americans killed?” Gail said. “I hate that.”

“They used to report the number of Americans and the much bigger number of enemies,” Vaughn said. “To prove we were winning.”

“Stupid war,” Greta said. “They should have put Saddam back in charge when they found him.”

They talked about Eddie, and Vaughn said Eddie had said he'd worked for Greta, and Greta said yeah, and he had good bona fides, so she didn't mind renting to him. They chatted about what Vaughn was doing for work, which was nothing but a couple of classes at the college, and Gail asked about Newton and Vaughn reminded her that he really didn't know, and then she, naturally, apologized for asking, and said she never really understood why there was so much bad blood between brothers, and Vaughn said there wasn't so much bad
blood, it's just that they were different people, and then everybody made faces as if that sounded so lame, so he just waved it off, changed the subject again to ask her about their house, still jointly held, which she said was holding up, and that it had finally gotten the new roof it didn't really need courtesy of the insurance company, and then she told Vaughn and Greta about some of her projects, and asked if they'd seen her on TV on the news a month or so before, and they said they hadn't, but wished they had. It was strange how much talk there was, it just seemed to pour out of them and stay neatly away from worrisome spots, too, once they got started, as if all of them knew the territory well. Later, when dinner was over and coffee had been declined, Vaughn reached for the check and Gail rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, stopping him dead. “You got it,” he said.

She searched her purse for a card, and as soon as she placed it on the piano-black table, the waiter swooped in like a peregrine. The service was high-speed.

Then they left the restaurant. Gail said, “I'm going to hang out, play awhile.”

“Since when?” Vaughn said.

“I do it all the time,” she said. “I win a fair bit.”

“No kidding? Playing what?”

“Slots,” she said. “I play the dollars. If I've got money, I play the fives and tens.”

Her hair was raggedy and she was still inviting. The thinness made her complicated. He gave her a hug and a kiss high on her cheek and said good night, noticing for the first time that she had the name
Tony
in ink on her neck. He couldn't tell if it was a tattoo or something else.

“What is this?” he said, pointing at her neck.

“A joke,” she said. “It says ‘Tony.’”

“Yeah, I see it says Tony, but, like, what's it doing there?”

“It's just ballpoint,” she said. “I met this guy named Tony. I liked him, so, you know, he wrote on my neck.”

“He tattooed his name on your neck?” Vaughn said. “And you left it on there?”

“Well, he just did it this morning,” she said. “Last night, really. I'm going to run into him here later. It's just ballpoint.”

He turned to Greta. “He did it on there this morning.”

“I got that,” Greta said.

“It's not a big thing,” Gail said. “It's nothing. I'm going to play some slots. I'm going to meet up with him in a bit. Why don't you guys go on? It was great seeing you again, Vaughn. We should do it more often now. I'm really a lot better than I was last year. It's good to see you guys. And Happy Birthday. Really.”

“How are you getting home?” he said.

“She's got a car, Vaughn,” Greta said.

He felt stupid. “Right,” he said. “I lost track there for a minute.”

Gail stepped up and hugged Greta, whispered something that he couldn't hear. The two of them smiled, laughed a little, patted each other, then Greta steered Vaughn away, side by side on the ornate casino carpet toward the entrance, the jangling slots and dropping coins and hits-of-all-kinds relentless. At the door he turned and looked back, but Gail had vanished into the crowd, into glitter and smoke. Outside, he and Greta stood under the overhang for a minute. It was chilly, rainy, the first front of the season coming through. They paused a second, then stepped out into the parking lot.

Greta had won the fifty-two-inch rear-projection Sony television in a church raffle, a gift to the church from one of the casinos. The casinos, just as you might imagine, were like that, always donating to this or that charity, always being good citizens, always going the extra mile for the local firemen, or police, or PTA. It didn't matter much what your organization was, if you needed a little helping hand, the casinos were always ready. They went out of their way to contribute to the well-being of the community. The casinos were real team players when it came to participating in community affairs, models of selfless commitment to a better life for all.

When Vaughn first saw this TV, back in the summer, he'd said, “I always wanted one of these, but it cost too much and the quality of the screen isn't that good and the image is fuzzy and it's an ugly piece of furniture that takes up too much room.
It's kind of an eyesore. I guess that's why most people avoid 'em.” This was the first night he stayed at Greta's place.

“Why, thanks very much,” Greta said, making a curious face.

“That's not exactly what I meant,” he said.

“I was a fool to accept it,” she said.

“C'mon, that's not right,” he said. “I just meant that—”

“Yeah, yeah,” she'd said. “Okay. I accept your apology.”

It was their first big night and Vaughn wasn't 100 percent under control. He tried to repair this gaffe by explaining about rear-projection television, and about DLP rear projection compared to CRT rear projection, and about direct-view CRTs, and the business about scanning, about 1080i and 1080p, and how the picture is composed of alternating lines that are difficult to get in register. After a while he could see that wasn't working.