Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? (19 page)

Connor feels as if someone has hit him, but there's no indication of Céline's hatred in her expressionless face or in the tone of her voice. “Why'd you hate him?”

Céline thinks. She doesn't want to say too much or too little, and whatever she says must be something to appeal to Connor's particular sensibility. “He wasn't a gentleman,” she says at last. “Will you find those things for me?”

“I wouldn't know where to start.”

Céline gets up from the armchair and walks slowly to Connor until the purple velour brushes his face left and right in a delicate slap. Then she moves back a step. “You'll find a way,” she says.

I
t is midnight, and we're in the small white house on Montauk Avenue where Fat Bob moved after Angelina kicked him out. Two rooms and a kitchen are on the first floor; two bedrooms and a bath are on the second. One bedroom contains six U-Haul boxes and a three-legged straight-backed chair that Fat Bob had hoped to fix; the other has a narrow floor-to-ceiling mirror by the window, two bureaus with drawers pulled out and clothes strewn all over, and a queen-size bed covered by a white comforter. The bed has the sort of mattress that adjusts to one's bumps and bulges while exuding soothing perfumes when one button is pushed and soothing sounds—breaking waves, wind through trees, birdsong, et cetera—when a second is pushed. Fidget knows that if he lies on the mattress, his fears will vanish. They'll be lulled away, chuckled away. Unhappily, he is lying not on the bed but beneath it as a serious ruckus consisting of shouting and banging rises up from downstairs.

Fidget is sure the noise is caused by bad guys in pursuit of his bling—gold chains, gold rings, bracelet, gold Rolex watch, and a limited-edition Montegrappa pen. He's fearful, and he'd check his racing pulse if he could, but the eight inches of space between bed and floor don't permit such activity. Indeed, if someone jumped on the bed, he'd be crushed faster than a jackboot can crush a cockroach.

When Fidget was hunting out a fine and private place in which to hide, he'd thought of Fat Bob's empty house as an entire house and not a thin sliver of space beneath a bed. With him are two half gallons of vodka he bought at a package store on Montauk, but there's not enough room to lift one to his lips. The pockets of his raincoat are crowded with nips, and in two paper bags he has a supply of liquor store food: beer nuts, peanut butter crackers, beef jerky, and Slim Jims. But in the space at his disposal, these treats are as distant as Mars.

He'd squeezed beneath the bed when he heard what sounded like a dozen boots tromp into the kitchen, open the refrigerator door, bang the cupboards, tromp into the living room, and then tromp up the stairs to inspect the bedrooms. “Nothing in here!” shouted one pair of boots. “Nothing here either!” shouted another. Then they tromped back down.

Fidget fears that without food or drink he'll die beneath the bed like a sailor marooned on a coffin-size atoll. But he needn't worry. The noise downstairs comes from disgruntled employees of the department of public works as they clean out the refrigerator, gather up the trash, and screw panels of half-inch plywood over the windows and doors. The midnight job, set in motion by Detectives Benny Vikström and Manny Streeter, is to make certain no more ne'er-do-wells take liberties with private property. Now it will require a tank to break into the house, and, as Fidget discovers, it will require a tank to get out.

Perhaps Fidget slept—he's not sure. But when he next turns an ear to the ruckus downstairs, it's gone. Silence reigns, and all is dark. Fidget spends a moment thinking the big boots are hiding in the closet and if he leaves his place of safety, they'll jump out with shouts and whistles, but then his growing need to pee defeats his fear of the boots and he begins to extricate himself. This is a detail mostly absent from adventure stories. Was there ever a moment when the Lone Ranger, galloping along after desperadoes, turned to his companion and shouted, “Hold up, Tonto, I've gotta take a whiz?” Very unlikely.

Once free and with his antique bladder accommodated, Fidget celebrates his release with several mouthfuls of vodka and a Slim Jim. He again listens and again hears nothing. He decides to stay put till morning, since the house is dark and if he begins to prowl around, he'll break a leg. So, after having a mouth-cleansing gargle with more vodka, he crawls into bed and pulls the comforter up to his nose. The bed tweedles birdsong noises. This was what civilization, Fidget thinks, is all about.

Some might imagine that Fidget will be lonely, marooned as he is in an empty house. But Fidget doesn't know the meaning of loneliness. Maybe he knew it once, but he's forgotten. His interactions with people are mostly negative, so he can't envision seeking out anyone for a chat. Maybe in the distant past it was different, yet when he tries to recall what it was like for him as a kid, he sees only shadows. As far as he can tell, he's always been as he is tonight: solitary. Does he have a wife? A dog and cat? Children? He won't deny the possibility, but with shadows in his past and shadows in his future, Fidget thinks the present moment is where he's meant to be.

Now, however, life has changed; he's turned the tables on the world. His rings twinkle in the faint light from the window. He has gold, and his joy is not yet diminished by the worry of its heavy responsibility. Life is good. He settles his head on a pillow and soon falls asleep. Does he dream? Only of rosy clouds at sunset and squawking geese flying south.

Around two a.m. he's awakened by the busy
putt-putt
of a motor scooter, but it takes a minute to determine the source of the sound as it gets louder and softer, louder and softer. Then, when the word “scooter” drifts across his cerebral cortex, the sound is already diminishing down Montauk. Fidget feels a touch of disquiet that someone would ride a motor scooter four times around Fat Bob's house at two a.m., but as he turns over, he thinks his disquiet can wait until morning.

We should state, however, that the scooter's rider is Jack Sprat and that he's still looking for Fat Bob.

Fidget sleeps late, and it's not until nine o'clock that sunlight creeps across the comforter and into his eyes. The room is warm, and he stares up at the ceiling that follows the slope of the roof. The walls are off-white and freshly painted. Fidget wiggles his toes. Although he doesn't believe in heaven, he feels that a room with sun streaming through the window has a heavenlike splendor. He takes a remote control from the bedside table, turns a dial, and the mattress begins to vibrate. The more he turns, the more it vibrates. The gold chains around his neck jingle, and when his remaining teeth begin to rattle, he lowers the dial to a more restful level.

Fidget goes into the bathroom to fill the tub. As the water rises, he uses the nail clippers found in the medicine cabinet to cut his toenails, which resemble the thick, dark scales on a nine-banded armadillo. Once his nails are done and the tub full, he lies on his back and admires how his gold sparkles in the darkening water. Half an hour later, clean-shaven and cloud-white, he leaves the tub, dribbling water behind him as he returns to the bedroom, rubbing himself with a towel.

When Fidget catches sight of himself in the mirror, he receives a little scare. Who's this naked, beardless man with the trimmed white hair caressing the nape of his neck? Never in all his vague memory has he appeared so virginal. He may still resemble a parking meter, but he's a very handsome parking meter. He raises his towel in front of his genitals and bows to his reflection. The reflection bows back. Then he skips two steps to the right, pauses, skips two steps to the left, and bows again. He jumps up and down three times, small jumps, nothing too strenuous, just enough to make the gold chains bounce on his narrow chest so they go
ching, ka-ching, ching
. He pirouettes and then skips again to the left and right. Again he bows, and with this last bow he has reached the pinnacle of self-appreciation.

Fidget stops when he hears a
putt-putt-putt
, the same
putt-putt
he'd heard in the night. He crouches by the window as the sound circles the house. Then it diminishes. Something red is disappearing down Montauk Avenue.

—

I
t's past nine o'clock Thursday morning, and Connor has walked several miles in search of Fidget. Now he's taking a breather by a large blue mailbox next to the round archway of Union Station, a two-and-a-half-story redbrick structure where Amtrak and commuter trains discharge and pick up passengers. It's springish and about fifty degrees. A March wind blows small billows of sand from where it had been scattered by city trucks during Tuesday's snow. At times Connor wipes sand from his eyes, and to someone across the street it might look like he's weeping.

But Connor is moderately happy. There's solace to be found in stroking the area of a missing hirsute accessory with finger and thumb even if the accessory is only a large black mustache, and as Connor massages his upper lip, he realizes it is nicer with the mustache gone than with the mustache in place. The memory is better than the actuality, which in truth was often a bother, as the mustache imitated the job of a steam locomotive's cowcatcher, snapping up bread crumbs, raspberry jam, and unfelt kisses. This also is one of Didi's firm beliefs: Life recalled is better than life lived. The imagination, after all, can edit, revise, and improve. Those ancients who pass to their reward in old folks' homes with smiles on their lips and songs in their hearts—who knows what illusory achievements and bogus epics warm their last moments? “Isn't it something to look forward to?” Didi likes to ask.

But to continue: Yesterday evening and into the night, Connor walked about fifteen miles, all in New London, as he searched for Fidget. He means to appropriate Fidget's jewelry, though Connor's verb of choice is “liberate.” He isn't sure how this will happen, and in his imaginings he skips the theft part to the gratitude part, when Céline shows her appreciation with fleshy thank-yous between soft sheets. Made-up futures and made-up pasts: “Reality,” says Didi, “is no more than a fleeting nanosecond that we straightaway begin to modify.”

But earlier that morning, Didi had shown irritation as his reality came into conflict with Connor's over the issue of what Didi called Connor's irresponsible absences. “You're supposed to be working for us, not prowling around New London after some woman.”

Connor rejected this. Céline wasn't just “some woman” but “an archetype of female sexuality.”

Eartha disliked this talk. She'd taken out a sizable loan to have her own sexuality heightened, and now it was going to waste on a deserted beach in Rhode Island. To her mind, sexuality must be seen—otherwise her breasts were just a double splop of silicone gel. She scorns Céline, whom she's never met, as no more than “pussy with bells and whistles,” which conjures up strange images in Connor's mind.

As Didi and Eartha made their complaints, Vaughn sat cross-legged on the floor bobbing his head and drawing squares on a yellow pad. When Eartha paused in her gripes to take a breath, Vaughn approached Connor, who sat in the dinette staring into a cold cup of coffee. Vaughn leaned over to whisper in his ear. “You're in a risqué location. For water's worth Didi'll burn you as a steak.”

“Say again?”

“Stick your eye on a wheel and your shoulder to a boulder.”

What was it about Vaughn's declarations that disturbed Connor? Or was it confusion as to Vaughn's meaning that gave him a chill, as if his words were hazy broadcasts from the Hermetic Order of Vanished Chances? He felt if he could understand Vaughn, then Vaughn would no longer trouble him. But Connor was unable to articulate the nature of his anxiety—or if a potential threat even existed.

“You confuse me,” said Connor.

Vaughn looked kindly at Connor, as if he were a dumb animal in need of comfort. “You're in a dangerous salutation suffering from impassable dreams.”

“How so?”

“Don't burn your bridges before you come to them. Remember, there's no time like the pleasant. Don't take the bad with the worse.”

—

S
tanding in front of the train station later that morning, Connor decides he suffers from a dislocated agenda. He's not lazy. He wants to help Didi in any way possible, or so he tells himself. But the statue of his self-identity has been knocked askew on its pedestal by a few powerful thrusts, leaving Connor to stare off in new and worrisome directions. The first had been the motorcycle accident. The second was meeting Sal Nicoletti. Third was the moment that Céline had emerged from her house in her white shorts. Fourth had been telling Vasco he'd seen Sal. Fifth was Sal's murder and the red plastic flower planted in his forehead. And there'd been smaller nudges, such as the confusion between Fat Bob and Marco Santuzza. And snow, how could he forget the snow? Then, in Wednesday's paper, he'd read about Pappalardo's murder. Drifting back and forth over these events was Céline, like a hawk in cheap clothing, as Vaughn might say. Lastly came Fidget and the theft of Sal Nicoletti's gold.

Only three years ago, Connor had been teaching in Iron Mountain, way up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Two years ago he'd taken a job as a slot attendant at the MGM Grand in Detroit. A year ago he'd taken a job as a slot supervisor in San Diego. In terms of the world, he'd been a baby. Excitement for him was an egg dropped on the kitchen floor. Then he'd been seduced by Didi's promise to widen his horizons, which included the Winnebago, Eartha's bare breasts, and Vaughn's hermetic mouthings. Now, in New England, his horizons seemed as misshapen as a kiddies' earthquake-struck jungle gym. Even gravity was problematic. As for Connor's small duties—errands to run, checks to pick up, et cetera—they seemed absurdly immaterial given his present frame of mind. Thus his dislocated agenda.

Connor is distracted from his disagreeable musings by the growing roar of a motorcycle as its sound reverberates deep in his belly. Up and down Water Street, people turn to look. A bright yellow Harley Fat Bob pokes along past the light at Bank Street and past the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument, where a dozen men and women sit on the steps giving the bike the eye—some positive, some negative—while the female figure of Peace atop the monument's fifty-foot column keeps her back to the station as if to say,
Enough's enough.
The motorcycle slowly passes in front of the train station. The rider wears a black leather jacket and jeans. No helmet, of course. His dark hair with streaks of gray is caught up in a ponytail. He isn't fat; rather, his body seems swollen into a football shape. His face resembles the mug of a good-looking English bulldog having a thought.