“Not even remotely just like me. And nobody I know calls me Vincent. Or Van Goze.” Winston put the guitar down, closed the ice chest, was about to say what had been on his mind for ten years but figured why bother, then said it anyway. “You sold the bus, Harry.”
“Only my ex-wife calls me Harry.”
“How could you sell the fucking bus?”
“The bus? Are you talking about the 1969 VW-”
“How many goddamn buses did you have?”
“Let me understand this. You’re pissed at me for an event that happened how long ago?”
“There’s no statute of limitations on suicide of the soul.”
“The bus was my soul?”
“The fact that you don’t understand is testament to its demise.”
“I drive my daughter to school. Ok? As if any of this is your business. It embarrassed her. So, I got rid of it.”
“It was an icon, man. You don’t sell an icon.”
“It leaked oil and poisoned the rose bushes.”
“You know who I fucked in that wagon?”
“Yeah. All my overflow.”
Winston crunched his empty juice bottle and tossed it into the can, laid his ear across the strings and played another note. “You meant something to people before you died. People bought into your shit. They like to think they can de-pants the president.”
“Then people should.”
Winston plucked a string. It vibrated full and true and resonated with all the A-strings of the instruments hanging on the walls. The room sang. “You hear that? A over middle C. Four-forty every time. Once you have your note that’s your note.”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
“You changed your tuning, man. Now I don’t know who you are.
“You’re talking about strings, not people.”
“No difference.”
“I would have given you the goddamn wagon if I knew you wanted it.”
Winston still refused to make conciliatory eye contact. “I wouldn’t drive that weak piece of shit. You know that beast Arnold drives in the movies?”
“The Hum something?”
“Word is they’re coming out with them for civilians. That’s my ride.”
“Where do you hear this shit?”
“I hear things?”
“Speaking of hearing things.” Stein sensed there weren’t going to be many openings so he jumped in. “I came here for a reason.”
“You want something. Let me get over my shock?”
“Can we stop farting up each other’s assholes for a second?”
“You looking to score tickets for the Raven Family Five?”
“To score, yeah.” Stein tried to pluck the string just right. “But not tickets.”
Winston lit up another smoke. “I wouldn’t know what that means coming from you.”
“Same as it means coming from anybody.”
“Nah. Everybody knows a certain ex has got your nuts in a sack.”
“Not everybody seems quite as delighted about it as you are.”
“Trust me, they are. Activities deleterious to the well being of the child? How do you let that shit happen to you?” He did a pantomime of a testicle sac being snipped off.
“Listen to me.”
“Ears, man.” He shielded his stubs.
“Sorry.” Stein modulated his tone.
Winston slapped his attache case down on the stage and unzipped the inner compartment. Seven sandwich baggies were pinned to the inside wall, each housing a distinct variety of bud. “You want to look at some shit? Here is the basic winter catalogue. Humboldt Sense. Maui Wowie. Jack Herer. Some sweet hydro-ponic from that dope fiend capital of the world, Minneapolis.”
Stein smiled at the buds.
“Enjoying your vicarious window shopping?”
“That shit’s fine for the tourists and civilians. If I wanted to buy off the rack I’d go to Macy’s. I’m looking for something special.”
“Something special, he says.”
“I hear there’s Goodpasture Orchids around.”
Winston gushed out a pillar of Marlboro smoke. “Right. Maybe I can get you a date with Cameron Diaz, too.”
Stein unfurled the plastic placenta in which Goodpasture’s little embryo was ensconced, and with great care, broke off a small tip of the bud. Unmistakable perfume flooded the room and Winston knew instantly what he was looking at.
“Are you shitting me?”
Stein enjoyed the change in tone from derision to respect. “Would I bother a busy man like yourself, who doesn’t have time in five years to call his best bud, with anything but the best bud?” He tamped the fine grains into the bowl of Winston’s pipe with meticulous care.
Winston was like a boy leaning toward the bowl where his mother was mixing chocolate pudding “I’ve never smoked genuine orchid.” Pipe now in hand, Winston closed his eyes, folded down and lit a match one-handed, and took a long, luxurious lungful. “Oh man! This is the shit! I take back nearly half of the bad stuff I ever said about you.” Van Goze offered the pipe to Stein, who held up both hands in the international gesture of no thanks. “Good. More for me.” Winston vacuumed up another bellowsworth. “You know what’s beautiful about this shit? You can think clearly and be fucked up at the same time.”
“There may be a person or persons advertising to have quantities of this for sale. I’d appreciate a heads up.”
“Rather than telling them you’re looking.”
“You got the idea.”
“You’re working?”
“Just keep an eye open, will you?”
They made a feeble attempt at an embrace that neither of them was into. Winston conceded an inch. “Look. I’ve been out in the fucking Ozarks for a month with these crazy crackers. But if you’re really interested in Great Smokies you should reach out to my ex-old lady. She’s working with her new husband, Maw-Reece, in his antique shop.”
“Right. She’s with the antique dude. I heard that.”
Van Goze took a long last dredging hit on the pipe and sucked the smoke down to Australia. Stein narrated to an invisible TV camera. “Don’t try this at home, kids. This man is a professional.” Van Goze laughed so hard he coughed up chunks of the Outback.
“You’re still a putz.”
Stein was nearly out the door when Winston called after him, “It’s too bad you didn’t turn out like your kid. She’s a trip.”
Stein’s face reappeared. “What the hell do you know about my kid?”
“I was at your surprise party, man.”
“The Best of Times ” antique store was packed to a critical mass with chairs, desks, tables, cabinets, armoires: each of them in turn crammed with hats, bowls, glasses, mirrors, jewelry, scarves, cameos. The air was left from a previous century. Stein called a hello, but his voice was absorbed two inches in front of him by material goods. He slithered through the maze, pinching his love handles on an old metal stove, banging his forehead into the edge of a Monopoly board held together by a petrified rubber band. He followed the sound of a power tool into a back open courtyard. Somebody who looked like a Maurice-short, bald, wiry-was sanding down a cherry wood night table that its former owner had slathered in white enamel.
“Howdy,” Stein ventured.
Maurice turned around and took the sawdust mask off his face. “Help you?”
“Are you Maurice?”
Maurice nodded that he was.
“Winston’s old lady here?” Stein caught himself and apologized. “Sorry, I guess you probably think of her as Maurice’s old lady.”
“I think of her as Vanessa,” said Maurice. “And if she’s not inside, she’s probably down at the community center changing the world for the better. Do you know where that is?”
Stein indicated that he didn’t.
“You’re lucky.”
Maurice made a little map, directing him to walk a few blocks east then walk a block or two south.
“I notice you keep using the verb ‘walk’ instead of ‘drive.’ Is that just a figure of speech?”
“Not if you’re married to Vanessa.”
The DeLongpre Community Center was a large, rambling one-story house built in the 1920s. A plethora of signs on the bulletin boards would have you think this was international headquarters for the Abolishment of Domestic Violence, Saving the Whales, Saving the Ozone Layer, Free Choice, Free Condoms, Free Spaying and Neutering of Pets and a few other causes whose notices were thumb tacked over by newer ones. The person who met Stein at the door had unruly manes of black hair and beard that left only a small bit of unplanted acreage on his face. He looked like a short, squat version of Allen Ginsberg, and was one of the throng of seven people assembled for this afternoon’s lecture and book signing by the famed anti-automobile activist, Brianna Chisolm.