It was the Jack Nicholson movie that starts out in North Africa, in the hotel in a desert village, bugs on the wall, where Nicholson switches identities with the man in the next room who dies of a heart attack. Carmen remembered the name of the movie now, it was The Passenger. Nicholson, what he’s doing in the movie, is running away from his own life. He steps into the dead man’s life and lets it take him on a trip to different places, England, Germany, Spain, where he meets the girl in Barcelona and it’s fascinating, sort of dreamlike, not knowing what’s going to happen next, Carmen thinking that if it’s fascinating to watch it would be fascinating to do it, become someone else, at least for a while. But something funny is happening in this movie. Nicholson remembers seeing the girl in London, before, yet doesn’t think it’s strange when she shows up in Barcelona. He doesn’t even mention it till much later. He knows, with his new identity, he’s in a dangerous business and there are men after him. But he doesn’t seem to care, he’s only concerned with escaping his past. So he lets his new life happen. He lets it carry him along as a passenger to the end and the end is fascinating. At least it was fascinating to watch, the way it was filmed, not like any other movie Carmen had ever seen, it was so real in a way that she could feel what was happening without actually seeing it. Even now she could feel sorry for Nicholson. Poor guy, a passenger all the way. Not knowing when to get off.
Carmen put on a terry-cloth robe and patiently wrapped ten electric curlers in her hair, head down, eyes raised, staring at herself in the mirror, thinking that if she were Jack Nicholson she would have gotten out of there somehow, run like hell or explained who she was. The whole thing a big misunderstanding. Go back to the other life and face it, work it out. Nicholson’s wife seemed okay, she did look for him. But even if she hadn’t and even if bad guys weren’t after you and you were free to go anywhere you wanted, how long could you hang out in Barcelona or drive around Spain in that convertible? ...Or past real estate offices in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, in her Cutlass or walk through West Park Mall. It was okay, it was a very nice mall as malls go, nice people, though no one had stopped her to say she looked like a person they would like to know. Come home and look out the windows hoping a cream-colored Plymouth didn’t turn into the drive. Fix supper, wait for Wayne to walk in full of his new job and listen to him speak in a new language as he turned from ironworker to riverman, amazed to hear it. No more spud wrenches and beaters. Now it was cowtails and hula hoops, chain slings, ratchets, the jewelry they used to tie barges up for a tow—three wide and five long on the Upper Miss on account of they have to pass through locks. But did she know what the record was on the Lower Miss? No, what? Seventy-two barges, a world-record tow the Miss Kae-D hauled from Mile 304 near Baton Rouge to Hickman, Kentucky, in May of ’81. A fleet more than a quarter of a mile long, with a load capacity of 113,400 net tons. How did he remember that?
Moved by rail it would’ve taken 1,152 boxcars, a freight train 13 miles long. By truck, shit, it would’ve taken 4,300 18-wheelers in a convoy, legally spaced, that would stretch 173 miles on the interstate. He remembered it because he was a man who could look up at a high-rise he’d helped build and tell you how many tons of structural steel were inside its skin. He was reading a book on Mississippi River navigation and the Rules of the Road, showing her maps. Did she know the Mississippi started way up here by Minneapolis–St. Paul? Yeah, she knew that. It was called the Upper Miss down to Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio came in, and the Lower Miss down to New Orleans. He told her, by the way, the Miss Kae-D was a triple-screw tow, same as the Robert R. Nally that had run aground on the Backbone, up by Mile 94, that tow he was working on and wouldn’t mind going out in sometime, take a little cruise on her. Carmen asked him how come if it was a her, it was named the Robert R. Nally?
She walked out of the bathroom in her robe and curlers, glanced down the hall and stopped dead.
A man she had never seen before was standing near the doorway to the kitchen. It was his yellow sport coat that stopped her, made her look and held her rigid. She saw the yellow coat—the man in it beefy, with short legs and arms. She saw his arms raise, saw the palms of his hands extended toward her.
He said, “Take it easy, okay? I’m not gonna hurt you.” As if to reassure her, keep her from screaming or running out of the house. “I rang the bell— listen, I didn’t mean to walk in on you like this, I’m sorry.”
“I’m getting used to it,” Carmen said, more irritated than afraid, even though she was fairly certain this guy must be the previous tenant, the Mafia witness from somewhere in the East, New Jersey. He was in his upper fifties, about five-seven, with a little gigolo mustache and hair that was too dark and thick, too perfect, to be his own. Carmen was good at spotting rugs.
So this was what a loan shark looked like.
“You’re Mr. Molina, aren’t you?”
His expression changed just a little.
“Yeah, I used to live here.”
“Well, you don’t anymore. What do you want?”
It startled him; he seemed more surprised now than when she said his name.
“I stopped by—my wife thinks maybe she left one of her rings here she can’t find.”
Carmen said, “You want to search my house?”
“No, it’s okay. I won’t disturb you.”
“I’ll tell you something, I cleaned this place from top to bottom and didn’t find anything but dirt.”
She was at ease, confident, standing up to this guy. Then began to lose it—Oh, my God—as she nodded toward the spare bedroom and felt the curlers in her hair and felt Mr. Molina staring at them.
“Unless it might be in there. I didn’t touch those boxes.”
“No, that’s nothing, some junk. Old clothes I was gonna throw away or give to somebody. Listen, I’m sorry the way the place was.”
Carmen looked at him again. He did seem sorry.
“My wife was already gone and when I left . . . Well, I left, that’s all. I decided and that was it.”
“How long did you live here?”
“Almost five years.”
“That seems like a long time.”
“You kidding? It was five years too long, if you know what I’m talking about, the kind of situation I’m in. I think you do, since you know my name, probably where I’m from, my life history.” He came toward her taking cautious steps, as if testing the floor.
Carmen didn’t move. She could tell now, absolutely, he was wearing a rug, a good one, a style popular with a number of movie stars, but still a rug. She decided if he didn’t feel funny wearing it there was no reason to be self-conscious about her curlers. She was even beginning to feel comfortable with this man.
When he said, “It was that deputy marshal that told you, uh? That kid Britton?”
Carmen said, “We call him Ferris, so we won’t think of him as a parole officer,” and saw the man’s expression change, his eyes open with obvious surprise. Carmen put out her hand. “Mr. Molina, we’re both in the same club.”
The last time they drove up the river to Port Huron they crossed the Blue Water Bridge to Sarnia and got Richie’s chin stitched up at the hospital and Armand had waited in the blue Cadillac to think of what they would do next. When was that, last year? It seemed like it. This time they came to visit the ironworker’s mother-in-law, and Armand was still thinking of what they would do next on this trip that didn’t look like it would ever end.