Whatever Lola Wants (5 page)

“And how much will—”

“I'd figure $3 million. Maybe more.”

“That includes your share?”

“Nope.”

“Oh my god …”

In the end the man agreed. They always did, they had no other choice. Carney's team arrived, seven men and six women. In fifty-two hours the fire was old news.

The road approaching Burlington had been well sanded. Carney turned onto the campus, found Brentfern Hall, parked the Ram, stared down at the ice-free lake. A glorious day. He'd been tempted to drive over in his Jag and would have if Bobbie'd come with him, she liked open cars. And good booze, good jokes, good talk, good work. He sniffed a laugh. And good men. She'd had a good man who became the sadness of her life when he died. A good woman, Bobbie, infinities more than an aunt. Like an older sister. A grand friend.

Theresa scooted her
wheelchair away from the second-floor window. She recognized Carney from the back cover of
A Ton of Cure
, wavy dark hair thick in back, straight nose, wire-rimmed glasses. A shorter man than she'd figured, slighter. What, was tall and stocky better? She shook her head, positioned herself behind her desk, and for a moment agreed with Milton, that this meeting was a bad idea: keep the anger in the family. But son Karl was no help, nor Feasie and Leasie, the Noodles. Let alone Sarah. Maybe Theresa should have sounded out the Noodles anyway. But Leasie was too caught up in too many hours of too high billing. And Feasie? Practical, yes, but the woman thought only in domestic terms. The ways our kids can fail us.

The office of Theresa Bonneherbe Magnussen, Bullfinch Professor of Ethical Studies, when Carney found it, seemed merely paper in chaos. Between piles of journals and stacks of books a narrow path of visible floor space led from the window to the desk, from the desk to the door. “Mr. Carney! Welcome.” Theresa, sitting straight in the wheelchair, stuck out her left hand, fine-boned, the fingers worn.

Carney took the hand, her grip firm. “Good to meet you.”

“What do they call you?”

“Carney, when they're being polite.”

She held Carney's eye, her cheeks drawn, her stare fixing him at the far end of a shared line. She nodded. “Be with you in a minute. Sit. Toss those exams on the floor.” She turned to her desk and wrote in pencil on a pad of paper.

Carney lifted the exams from a cracked leather chair. He set them on bare floor—

“Not there! How d'you expect me to get out?”

He shifted them to a double stack of books. She wrote on, nodding to herself, a thin woman, her white ponytail falling halfway down her spine. Before setting the appointment he'd checked her out. An on-line
Christian Science Monitor
interview noted that among her more satisfying activities had been her work with the Women's National Fencing Team, first, one of its stars until stopped by a hip injury, then as a coach until her stroke. The interview had highlighted her demand for doubt and change, for a little anarchy, for a more unstatic order to daily life. “There is no single core to human hope.” “Each sentient being becomes his own maker.” “The fear of mortality drives the hardest bargain.” “We'll let no social contract keep our dreams from slashing lies.” He sensed in Theresa Magnussen a woman who, in the realm of philosophy, contended with issues similar to those Carney confronted day by practical day.

Mounted on the wall above the entry door hung a brown trout, taxidermized, dust-free, a handsome fish. Just caught it might have weighed eight pounds. Carney saw a broad stream, a rippled run at the head of a long pool—

“You fish?” Theresa was watching him over her shoulder, eyes gleaming.

Carney smiled. “Never leave home without my fly rod in the car.”

Theresa nodded. “Before my stroke Milton and I'd fly in, camps in Quebec or Labrador. Or drive down hundreds of miles of logging roads, pitch a tent, slide the canoe into the lake, fish for hours. Days.”

“Sounds right.” What an indignity that wheelchair must be.

She spun about, nodded twice. “I liked your book, Mr. Carney, a lot. Your five levels of preventive tactics is dead-on.” She sniffed a laugh. “Lots of good stuff there, the asides too. Especially enjoyed the little subsections, like the Two-Handed Ear Grab.”

A metaphor Carney had used to describe a maneuver for getting an environmental transgressor's attention. “Thanks. I always accept compliments.”

“You write like a man who's been there. I appreciate that.” Her chin suddenly dropped as she added, “Ever hear of John Cochan?”

“Familiar,” Carney said. “Can't place the name.”

“Called Handy Johnnie by those who like him because they think he is. And by his enemies too 'cause he holds tight to where his hands grab on.”

“You're not his friend.”

“My existence, Carney, is plagued. John Cochan is my nemesis. A horror, like his father. The man used to be Cochan Pharmaceuticals, the drug king killer. But now it's way worse, and it's not just my personal problem. He's creating an unnatural catastrophe. He calls it a city, Terramac. It's a city arising where no city should be.”

“Where?”

“For a while there it looked like he'd given it up. He was building it for his son but the boy died, an accident. Sad. Cochan was torn up, I hear. Didn't want to believe it 'cause that'd make him a bit human. Except now he's started up again. He has to be stopped. I need your help.”

“And”—Carney raised fire-frizzed eyebrows—“what would that be?”

She leaned toward him. “Ever feel fear, Carney? Real fear?”

Carney's brows dropped. “I get scared from what people do to each other, and to their world. But I don't call that fear.”

“A shame. Fear's good. Makes you think out your life. We ought to venerate fear. It concentrates the mind.”

“Maybe. But it can also freeze the mind.”

“It can grasp the mind. Then you react and it gives you strength. First to think, then act.”

“Except there's better ways to concentrate. Like, say,” Carney smiled, “through work.”

“Work? Real work's the result of concentration, not its cause.”

“Well then, how about concentration coming from, say, laughter.” Carney was enjoying himself. The woman had an intriguing mind.

Theresa's head shook hard, vibrating a half-dozen times. “Laughter dissipates, it covers up, lets you live with whatever is.”

“What about laughter that brings you hope. And helps create community.”

“No no no. You laugh, you accept deception.”

All interesting enough, but time to move on. “Excuse me, Dr. Magnussen, but what does this have to do with John Cochan?”

She scowled. “Be afraid of him.” She whispered, “Keep his Terramac from happening.”

“How?”

She tilted her head. “You're the expert. You're the one who knows that what most people accept as normal can be horrendous when you look at it up close.” Her eyes focused on his left one. “How? Investigate him. Do whatever it takes.”

•

“Tough dame.”

My echo-memory realized Lola had said something. “Yeah.”

“Hey. You okay?”

I let myself smile a little. “I guess.”

“What's the matter?”

I looked at her lovely face. Words, once spoken, once heard, cannot be retracted. What to say to her, how deep into my confidence to take her? “Carney's my son.” The words came out before I could censor them. I want to think I told her because I'm an honest storyteller. But more likely I used it to try to draw her closer.

“Oh wow,” said Lola.

I nodded.

“That's why you're following all that down there.”

“No.” I laughed a little. “It's weird. He just wandered in. I didn't know it would happen.”

“You didn't?” She raised an eyebrow, sniffed a laugh. “Okay then. It is weird.”

She left soon after, back to the other Gods.

I sat alone with my thoughts. Like about that notion, weird. One of the advantages of death-by-accident in your late thirties is that you don't lose your looks to time. I've got a sharpish Roman nose and strong chin, thick brows, my hair's all there, I'm a bit gangly. Carney's hair is thick, he's wiry, still in good shape. Like I am now, only alive. I'd guess I could tackle him down. Occasionally I've checked in, to see what he's up to. One of the Immortal privileges. So it's eerie to be forever thirty-eight, and watch my son turn forty, fifty, this year fifty-two.

Weird, too, is Lola's fascination with all I've told her. What do the mortals in my down below mean to her existence? When she did return, I figured I'd ask her.

Then some days later there she was, dressed in rich burgundy, a smile and delight in her eyes. “What's happening down there now?”

I told her about Carney meeting Theresa. But after the equinox there'd been little new. I feared that if I had nothing more to tell her she'd go away again. But I couldn't lie. “Except for that meeting, not a whole lot.”

A pout took her lips. “Really?”

A few new patterns were beginning to form. Not ready yet to be reported. “Mostly people going on as they were. The same old stuff.”

“Oh.” She hugged herself, as if she were cold. “Okay.” She looked back in the direction she'd come from. “I guess I'd better go then.”

But my brain had heard something …the same old stuff …Of course. “Do you know anything about the old stuff?”

“About them? Down there?”

“You bet. Interested?”

It took her only two seconds to decide. “Okay.” The mischief was back.

Which made me wonder. “Lola?”

“Yes?”

“Those people down in Merrimac County, are they important to you?”

“I think— Yes.”

“Why?”

She thought for a few seconds. “I wish I could tell you.” And after a few seconds more: “I don't know.”

I believed her.

“Just, they matter.” She beamed at me.

She could make me her slave.

THE PAST

1959–2003

One

1. (1959)

The telegram arrived in the
middle of Bobbie's performance. Ginsberg stuck it in his pocket. For a while he forgot it. She was such a success, they loved both her and the stuff she was reading. He whispered to Gary, “She's given up the control's why it works.”

Gary nodded. “Shifting it.” They leaned back and watched.

She sat slumped in an overstuffed armchair and continued her paced pattern, silent and unmoving between poems, staring down the audience as they gazed at her, thirty seconds, maybe a minute, then she'd read again. She spoke. “This is from a new group. Sonnets. The only one that's nearly ready. There'll be ten. Called, ‘Vomit Cycle.'” She read:

VOMIT 3

Then comes the pus.

Its nylon smothers us.

It sticks on our skin,

We're girdled in.

Pus glows on his skin.

The state he's in.

It kisses my lip,

Oozing acryl. I sip.

Pus pees through our guts.

What it touches it rots.

Try to sink it in gin.

Try to ice it in shit.

Sniff. Shoot. Score. Plastic spew.

We piss pus when we screw.

•

Lola wrinkled her nose. “Yuk.”

“They say you had to be there,” I replied.

“Where?”

“San Francisco. The scene.”

“Who is Bobbie?”

“Carney's best friend.” I grinned. “My sister-in-law.”

“Oh. Her. Is she important to Carney's story?”

Important? No one more so. “Such impatience. Why don't I tell you? Then you'll know.”

She gave me an “I'm sorry” smile, and pretended to glance over the edge.

•

Again Bobbie's silence.
She stared out at them, her large brown eyes unblinking. Her darker brown hair covered her forehead, cut off in a hard line a half inch above her eyebrows. She stood. “That's all.” Her brown sack dress hung to her knees, in front from her tits, behind from her ass. She walked off the makeshift stage.

The applause came hard. Cries of, “More, Bobbie! More!”

She reappeared, suddenly grinned, and Ginsberg saw the sister he should have had. The audience's shouting fell away. She said, “There isn't any.”

“Go write some!” yelled Gary, and people laughed.

She sipped bourbon. She'd arrived in San Francisco seven months back. And fitted in. First place she could say to herself, Here is home now. She missed her sister, Annette, sure, and her nephew, Carruthers. A little bit Annette's husband; they sometimes talked easily, sometimes less so. Her father maybe but he was out of his head and if he ever came back in she had no idea what he'd be like. Her mother? Maybe she loved her mother but she sure didn't miss her. Nobody else. Here they all knew why she couldn't have stayed in Median. They'd all come from the same kind of place, Topeka and Dracut, Cincinnati, Medicine Hat, Amesville. The bourbon wasn't much good. Surely Kenneth had better taste than this; why the hell did he serve this crap.

She searched for him among bookshelves and displays. Never mind, if she wanted better bourbon she'd return to Median, to some Dennis who prided himself on his bourbon, needed his dentist's salary to pay for it. Go all the way to New Hampshire for better bourbon? Too late for that. She held her nose and chugged it down.

Ginsberg hugged her from behind. “Good,” he said. “Friggin' good.”

“Friggin'?”

“Should I say ‘fuckin' to a lady who says ‘fucking'?”

“Is that what I am, a lady?”

“Half,” he said, and looked her up and down. “Less and less,” he added.

She patted his scraggled cheek. She wondered what he'd be like in bed. She wondered the same about half the men here. Half of the other half she already knew about. She knew she'd never go to bed with Ginsberg, she wasn't his sort of attachment. She'd tried it the other way herself, with Carla and a couple of times with little Martha but didn't get off on it, she preferred men. She smiled. Female after all. Not feminine, thank god. The girls in her dorm tried to feminize her, makeup and satin; but for whom? Those little boys who arrived on Saturday afternoons from Brown, Yale, Dartmouth? Ridiculous. Which left only the professors. “Is it them we're after?” she'd asked her roommate Libby.