“It made her feel better.”
“But it’s just a name.”
“A name is not a name is not a name. And it sure as hell isn’t me.”
I waited for her to continue, but she rolled to her back and took my hand and smiled.
“That’s fucked up,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Look. I know you’re restless. What I don’t get is, why me?”
“A long time ago,” she said, “just after I’d run away from home the first time, I bought a fifty-cent box of chow mein down on 42nd street, in New York. I ate it all, and when I finished, I ate the fortune cookie, too. You want to know what the fortune said?”
“Fortune’s are for weaklings,” I said.
“It said, Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.”
I didn’t have to tell her the idea was worth regard. But neither did I want to say something too glib or hifalutin.
“Traveling cures these things,” she said. “I’m on the road. My secrets are my steps.”
“Sounds like a fancy way to say you’re just a liar.”
“Let’s go to sleep.”
“If it’s the way you say it is, then why didn’t you tell her your name was Mud?”
Avey put two fingers on my lips. “I’ve never told anybody that,” she said. “Not even you.”
There must’ve been more to Avey’s telling Lucille her real name than she’d admit. Our friend had died, the woman was filled with grief. Lucille wouldn’t’ve cared if Avey had said her name was Trash.
It was hard at first. Lucille’s silence, it seemed, was a forest through which she couldn’t find her way. We asked how she felt, for nothing. We asked was she tired, the same. We asked what she wanted now we were free, but still she said not a word. I flicked the monkey so it bumped and spun.
“The old man calls this thing José,” I said. “As if at any minute it might want to rhumba.”
Lucille was listening now. Her eyes had kicked the blur. She even almost laughed, I thought.
“I notice you haven’t called me Elmira,” Avey said.
“I like Hickory better.”
“What if I told you Elmira’s no more my name than Hickory?”
“I’d say that was a good thing.”
“What if I told you it’s Avey?”
“You want to be called Avey, I’ll call you Avey. You want the other, I’ll call you that. Just tell me what you want.”
“I want for you to be happy.”
“Basil wants to get his truck,” said Lucille.
The old man had remained quiet in the drizzle. “What about him?” Avey said.
“He needs us right now,” I said.
“Somebody needs somebody,” Lucille said.
“The man is back in town!”
And so he was: Basil Badalamente, musician, doofus, drunk, asshole-cum-friend, friend-cum-foe, and foe-champ, all in the sense of huge, of extraordinaire, of bigger than life itself. Yes, yes, yes, Basil was big, Basil was huge, as huge as ever and maybe huger, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a fake. Fakes was what we were, really, every last one of us, and fakery was our game, especially times like these. There’s no such thing, after all, as the Comedown, so long as we never called it. Ergo, with fakery and lies, this had become routine. I am not ugly, but stoked. I am not wounded, but charmed. I am not hurt, but pissed. And I will laugh at it all — ha! ha! — and keep on laughing — ha! ha! ha! — down to the putrid dregs. Basil, undisputed King of the Fakes, now threw down his cane and proffered a Coke on ice.
“Am I good, baby,” he said, “or am I good?”
I took the soda. “Mighty white of you, friend.”
“How are you?” Lucille said.
He looked like a hairy scab. But to see his twinkling eyes and mouthful of teeth, you’d think he thought himself a hawk. “On top of the world,” he said. “On top of the freaking world!”
“Hey, Super,” Avey said, tugging at the old man’s sleeve. “You ready?”
“Our name’s Steady,” Super said.
“We thought we’d pick up some clothes,” I told Basil, “then hit a motel and place to eat. Then you can see about the Cruiser.”
“That okay with you, geeze?” Basil said to Super.
“So long as Horatio here lives to tell the tale, we can run the race.” And at that, Fortinbras the dog appeared in the bed behind his master.
“We’re not getting back there again,” I said.
Lucille sat up to protest, but Avey cut her off. “And we shant be drawing straws.”
“It’s only just down the way,” Basil said.
I offered Lucille the Coke. Little by little her face grew soft. “I’m sorry,” she said at last.
We didn’t say a word. There was no word to say. Her sorrow, I saw, was more than she herself could say. Her face was the saying, and the wet of her eye. I thought of infants and of hatchlings, and of the trillions of creatures searching through this world, those in this land of wintry muck and those out there, beneath the sun, away at the world’s ends. Lucille was in her hair shirt. Times like this you don’t say dook. What you do is breathe.
Super drew the door and stepped aside. “Well sure you are,” he said. “Sorrow’s always better than laughter.” Avey got out, then Lucille, the old man tapped his chest and grinned. “It’s by sadness the heart’s made good.”
“If only this were another day,” Lucille said.
“Oh, but you’re wrong, young misses. This here day’s better than the rest, by far.”
“Not to change the subject or anything,” Avey said, “but do you know where these guys can get a change of clothes for cheap?”
Super said he did, and sure enough, at the 89 and 50, it was: a Millers Outpost, like a beacon from the mist. With the $52.38 in my pocket, the bills completely soaked, I bought some 501s, a cheap blue flannel and long sleeve tee, and was left with some change till I could tap my nest egg, 262 lousy bucks. Basil got identical stuff, fifty sizes larger, and a pair of Reeboks, size 17, for the bindings on his feet.
“You wouldn’t happen to have a paper I could buy?” I said to the kid who helped us. He was a white boy, skinny as Fred Astaire, with a baseball cap and little bald head and giant shirt across which, in skate-punk graffiti, read the word THINK!
“Don’t be crazy, man.” He took a paper from under the reg and tossed it on the counter. “Y’all can have it.”
“Slap me some skin,” I said, and held out my hand.
The kid eyed my hand like it might become a snake. “You a weird-ass.”
“Slap me some skin,” I said.
Basil was waiting. The kid ran his hand across mine, way too fast, and our business was complete. “You a weird-ass dude,” he said. “I check you out.”
I opened the paper. LAKE MAROONED BY TORRENTIAL RAIN, said the headline. Basil leaned over my shoulder:
With rushing floodwaters undermining U.S. Highway 50 in numerous locations, the main route from Sacramento to South Lake Tahoe will remain closed indefinitely… Rain and melting snow have filled rivers and caused dangerous mudslides throughout the Tahoe Basin, where more than 2,000 US West customers were without phone service… About 7,300 Northern California customers were without power yesterday, while about 13,000 Washington households were without power, down from a peak of 250,000…
“I wasn’t going anywhere, anyway,” Basil said. “You going anywhere?”
“I’m just a weird-ass, Basil. You know?”
He pinched one of his little ears, and it struck me he didn’t have his hat. He’d slept and showered and shit with the thing for the better part of ten forsaken years, and now, someway, it was lost.
“Speaking for myself,” he said, “I’m one famished son of a bitch.”