“I know what you mean,” Dick Gibson said. “What are you getting at, please?”
“You mean the miracle?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s what I was getting at. Yesterday a guy comes in for a present for his wife’s birthday. He was thinking in terms of a toaster, but he didn’t know exactly what model he had in mind, so I asked him if he had kids and he said yeah, he had two kids, twin boys, ten years old. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘in that case you probably want the four-slice toaster.’ That’s our Ezy-Clean pop-up job with an adjustable thermostat control and a crumb tray that opens for easy cleaning in a handsome chrome-plated steel exterior. I have the same toaster in my kitchen.”
“Yes?”
“Oh yeah. So he asked to see it and I showed it to him and I told him that he could compare it to any model on the market at the price and it couldn’t be beat and that’s the truth. Well, to make a long story short, he went for it. I mean, it was just what he had in mind without knowing it and I asked, as I always do, if it would be cash or charge. He said charge. I asked if he wanted to take it with or have it sent. He said take it with. So he gave me his charge plate, and when I went to my machine to write up the sales slip, I couldn’t help but notice when I read his charge plate that he was my brother.”
“Really?”
“My long-lost brother.”
“That is a coincidence.”
“Wait. When I went back, I was like shaking all over and he noticed it and he asked what was wrong and I said, ‘Are you Ronald L. Pipe?’ And he says, ‘Yes. What about it?’ And I tell him, I tell him I’m Lou B. Kramer!”
“Oh?”
“Well, I expected him to fall down in a dead faint, but he doesn’t bat an eye. Then I realize, I realize Kramer’s my adopted name, my stepfather’s name, the corporal’s.”
“The thirty-year man’s.”
“Right. And it’s been, what, twenty-eight years since we laid eyes on each other. He’s bald, and I’m prematurely gray and I’ve put on a little weight from all that toast. Of course we don’t recognize each other. So I tell him his history — our history — that when he was eight years old his folks split up and his mom passed away and he was raised by an older cousin. ‘Can this be?’ he asked. ‘How do you know this?’ And I explain everything, who I am and everything, and that if he’d paid cash or if it hadn’t been for my habit of reading my customers’ names off their Charge-a-Plates we’d never have found each other to this day.”
“Well,” Dick Gibson said.
“Wait. That’s just the beginning of the coincidence. I punched out early and we had a couple of beers together.”
“I see.”
“We both drink beer!”
“Gee.”
“We’re both married and have kids!”
“How do you like that?”
“His wife’s birthday is the day after tomorrow!”
“Oh?”
“My wife was born in the springtime, too!”
“Hmn.”
“We both bowl!”
“You both do?”
“I average 130, 135.”
“And he averages?”
“About 190.”
“Do you have anything else in common?”
“We’re both Democrats. Neither of us is a millionaire.”
“I see. Well, that’s really — I’m going to have to take another—”
“We both watch Monday-night football!”
“—another…”
“When we go out with our wives — when we go out with our wives—”
“Yes?”
“We both use babysitters!”
“…call.”
“Neither of us has been in prison; we both like thick juicy steaks. Dick, Dick, both of us, both of us drive!”
“Thank you, sir, for sharing your miracle. The Dick Gibson Show. You’re on the air, go ahead, please.”
Flesh couldn’t stop laughing. Things would work out. He left Interstate 70 and turned off onto U.S. 24 to drive the remaining eighty or so miles to Colorado Springs. At Peyton, Colorado, where his headlights ignited a sign that read COLORADO SPRINGS, 24 MILES, the signal was so powerful that he might have been in Chicago listening, say, to the local station of a major network.
When he was almost there, there was a station break. “This is Dick Gibson,” Dick Gibson said, “WMIA, Miami Beach.”
Then he panicked. It’s not, he thought, because it’s so close that it’s so clear, it’s because all the other stations have failed! It’s because America has everywhere failed, the power broken down!
And that, that, was the last time he was fooled.
Yet the lights were on in Colorado Springs.
Colorado Avenue was a garden of neon. The lights of the massage parlors burned like fires. The sequenced circuitry of the drive-ins and motels and theaters and bars was a contagion of light. A giant Big Boy’s statue illuminated by spots like a national monument. The golden Shell signs, an old Mobil Pegasus climbing invisible stairs in the sky. The traffic lights, red as bulbs in darkrooms, amber as lawn furniture, green as turf. The city itself, awash in light, suggested boardwalks, carnivals, steel piers, million-dollar miles, and, far off, private homes like upturned dominos or inverted starry nights. Down Cheyenne Mountain and Pikes Peak niagaras of lights were laid out like track. Don’t they know? he wondered. Is it Mardi Gras? Don’t they know? And he had a sense of connection, the roads that led to Rome, of nexus, the low kindling point of filament, of globe and tubing, as current poured in from every direction, rushing like electric water seeking its own level to ignite every conductor, conflagrating base metals, glass, the white lines down the centers of the avenues bright as tennis shoes, stone itself, the city a kind of full moon into which he’d come at last from behind its hidden darker side. The city like the exposed chassis of an ancient radio, its embered tubes and color-coded wire.
He drove to the Broadmoor Hotel and checked in. Only a suite was available. That was fine, he would take it. How long would he be staying? Open-ended. A bill would be presented every three days. That was acceptable. They did not honor credit cards. No problem. He would pay by check. He could give them two hundred dollars in cash right then if they liked. And was willing to show them his money. That wasn’t necessary. All right then. Could he get a bellboy to help with his bags? He was tired. Then he could go to his rooms at once. The boy would take his car keys and bring his bags up when he had parked Mr. Flesh’s car for him. Fine. His suite was in the new building. The new building, was that far? Oh no. Not at all. Another boy would show him the way. That was fine. That was just what he wanted.
He tipped his guide two dollars and sat on a Georgian chair by a white Georgian desk and put a call through to Riverdale.
He shoved the cartridge into the stereo and dedicated it aloud to Irving’s wife, Frances. My Fair Lady took him past St. Charles to Wentzville, Candide, played twice, to the Kingdom City exit, West Side Story to Columbia, where he ate lunch. He put his ’74 Cadillac through the Kwik Kar Wash. It cost him seventy-five cents and, as far as he could see, did no better job than his Robo-Wash in Washington, D.C., which took no longer and was a quarter cheaper. The difference — though there was no one ahead of him now — would have to be in customer convenience. His lot was shallower, the washbarn closer to the street. His customers, when there was a line, had to wait in the street. That meant a few bucks off the top to the cop every week. This guy’s machinery, set off to the side at the rear of his lot, permitted his customers to form a sort of U-shaped line, maybe eleven cars long, no, twelve or thirteen — he hadn’t allowed for the cars at the pit of the U — before they backed up into the street. Still, the sharp turn they had to make at the back of the lot to get into the barn must have chipped plenty of fenders. The management had put up a “Not Responsible” notice, but Flesh could guess how much that was worth. The insurance company would hassle him plenty, and why not? The customer couldn’t read the disclaimer until he had already committed himself, made or begun his turn into the narrow passageway, and it was too late, particularly if there was a strand of cars behind him, to back out. Sure. Six of one, half dozen of the other. The guy could keep his extra twenty-five cents. Flesh would rather deal with cops than insurance companies any day of the week.