Your Body is Changing (3 page)

“Hey, Dud, get the fucking stick out of your ass, man.”

“Ah, yes. Well, I suppose that’s the reason I haven’t succeeded in the publishing world. If I had a filthy mouth like a gutter and included numerous detailed descriptions of disembowelments littered with the most vulgar profanities imaginable I guess then I would be a best-selling author.”

“Yeah, uh-huh, that’s probably it.”

“The day Miss Tina Brown took over The New Yorker magazine I knew in my heart that the fuck word would writhe on its pages like a plague of locusts. These editors, they take one look and say, ‘Oh, this fellow is from old working-class Alabama stock. He can’t possibly use the fuck word enough to meet our quota of fuck words in this modern publishing world. Let’s throw his manuscript directly in the trash can and use his return postage to mail off our water bill.’ And then I suppose they have a good laugh at my expense. The Alabama rube!”

“Subject sighted! Subject sighted!”

“Gig Young. The guy who created Plastic Man. The actress who drowned in the toilet,” said Dud.

“What the fuck are you babbling about?”

“The three persons I just named all have something very specific in common. They killed themselves. But something’s bothering me. I can’t recall if Spade Cooley was a murder/suicide or merely a murder.”

“I’ve never heard of a single fucking person you’re talking about,” said Three.

“That’ll all change when my novel comes out,” said Dud.

The Frenchman had left the city and driven deep into the country, with Dud and Three following. The highway was still a highway, but it had shrunk to two narrow lanes and there were no streetlights, almost no houses. Stands of trees, broken by an occasional field or orchard.

“Did I tell you about the strange mole on my neck?” said Dud.

“Probably.”

“It was just on the spot that my collar rubbed against.”

“Your collarbone?”

“Why, yes. Isn’t that peculiar? I never in my life, until now, realized why they call it a collarbone. It just never occurred to me to consider the derivation. Certainly it is because that bone is located in such a position as one’s collar would rub against. I don’t know why I never thought of it before. I truly do learn something new every day.”

Three grunted.

“Anyway,” said Dud, “I suppose my collar just rubbed on this strange mole every day and eventually it fell off from the sheer friction. The mole did. I got it and put it in an envelope and sealed it up. I was going to bring it to the doctor for a biopsy. But don’t you know, I misplaced that envelope. Can’t you just imagine when someone finds it one day? They’re going to get some kind of surprise. Delightful. Anyway, I don’t suppose it was cancer, knock wood, because I’m not dead yet. I don’t recall what I wrote on the front of the envelope. Hey, you passed him!”

The Frenchman had turned and Three had kept going down the highway.

“Of course I passed him,” said Three. “We’ve been the only car behind him for at least thirty minutes. If he’s not suspicious yet, he will be if he sees us following him down that red dirt road. We need some tactical distance.”

It was a while before they found a place to turn around. When they got back to the dirt road they saw the broken gate at its entrance, the rusty, buckshot-riddled NO TRESPASSING sign. Three switched off the headlights and started down the road, which was wide enough to accommodate no more than one car.

It had rained a few days before, and huge ruts had dried everywhere. The Escort’s shocks were completely shot. The men bit their tongues, clashed their teeth, hit their heads on the roof of the car, and they were blind.

“This is the real Alabama,” said Dud.

“I hate to do this,” Three said. He switched on the headlights. “I’m a fucking shitty detective.”

Something with flashing yellow eyes ran out in front of the car and bounded into the thicket.

“That GPS sure would come in handy about now.”

“How, Dud? How the fuck would it? We don’t know where the fuck we’re going.”

Dud shrugged. “I’m just saying,” he said.

“I’m cracking this fucking window,” said Three.

“Don’t you dare!” said Dud.

“I’m fucking claustrophobic, okay? It smells like shit in here. I feel like I’m breathing your skin. God, why do you sweat so much?”

“Metabolism,” said Dud.

Three cracked the window and made a big show of gasping for air. “God, it stinks worse out there than it does in here,” he said.

“Alabama. Should have thought of that before you rolled down the window,” said Dud. “Now it’ll never go back up.”

“Bullshit.” Three tried to roll up the window, but was unsuccessful.

Twenty minutes later they reached the end of the road, and there was literally nothing there. The crickets, locusts, and tree frogs were deafening.

“Huh,” said Three. “Where the fuck did he go?”

“He vanished,” said Dud.

“Yeah, that’s helpful. Well, maybe there was a turnoff somewhere.”

They backtracked, and indeed came upon a crossroad they had missed before.

“Which way do we go?” said Dud.

“Well, first we go one way and then we go the other way,” said Three.

Taking a right, they almost immediately came to another crossroad. Three put on the brakes.

“Shit,” he said. “I can see I’m going to need some inspiration.”

He lit his joint and began to smoke it. Once he held it out for Dud, who declined. “Suit yourself, hotshot,” said Three. The car filled with moths, horseflies, gnats, junebugs. Three sat there and smoked his joint until it was nothing but a wet little dot that hardly existed.

After that they drove for a long time, over roads of dirt, roads of oyster shell, roads of gravel, turning whenever Three got a hunch, until they ended up on a road almost too narrow for the Escort, where shrubs and stickers clawed at the doors, branches came in the window and scratched Three’s face, and they saw, just up ahead of them, the Frenchman’s car parked next to a stream that intersected the path. Three snapped off the lights at once and stopped the car.

“Shit,” he said softly.

“Do you think he saw us?”

“I don’t the fuck know, Dud. I don’t even know where he is.”

“It’s a good thing his car was there. We could have driven right into that stream.”

“I have to admit I’m kind of fucking scared,” said Three in a whisper. “Maybe it’s the pot.”

“Maybe he’s sitting up there in that dark car just waiting for us with a tire iron,” said Dud.

“Stop making me paranoid. Come on, let’s investigate. That’s what we’re here for, right? There’s nothing to be scared of. I have a flashlight with me that costs four hundred dollars. I bet you anything he headed downstream. That’s what people do. Go with the flow.” Three paused, as if stunned. “Wow. I just realized that’s where that expression comes from. I am so stoned!”

“I need you to get out of the car, please. It’s going to take me about forty minutes to get your window rolled up. In fact, why don’t you go without me? You probably don’t want to waste any time, and you have your special flashlight…”

“Leave the window down and let’s go. You’re my goon. This is your time to shine, brother, when fucking danger strikes.”

“I just don’t feel right leaving the window down.”

“Do you see where we are? Who do you think’s going to want in to your shitty car anyway? Count Fucking Dracula?”

“A snapping turtle, a bat, a rabid raccoon or possum, a mosquito carrying the West Nile virus…Look at all the bugs that are already in here.”

“How the fuck is a fucking turtle going to climb in through the window? It’s completely implausible. Use your fucking noodle, man.”

“What about the rusted-out holes in the floorboards?” said Dud.

“Well, then, that has nothing to do with the windows, does it, little man? Let’s roll.”

They came upon the Frenchman in a clearing defined by a circle of huge, scabby old oaks. He was alone, dressed in something like a beekeeper’s outfit. He seemed startled to see them, but only momentarily. He sprinted toward them, waving his hands.

“The light! The light!”

When he reached them, he tried to force the flashlight from Three’s hand. Three struggled. The Frenchman desisted.

“I am sorry,” he said. “Must turn off. We use this for light?”

He brought out an iPod, its glowing screen paused on “I Think I Love You,” by the Partridge Family.

“I am sorry,” said the Frenchman. “You har the honers?”

Three looked at Dud, then back at the Frenchman. “Yes,” he said, “we’re the honers.”

“I do not think you will be…’ear, you know? I think I can come, it is late, I will bother nobody? I make a study of the birds, you know? Birds?”

“I know birds,” said Three.

“I am ’unting the howl, yes? Not to ’unt bang-bang. To study. Take picture. You see ’ow I am dress? The bird see me, he think…‘Ah! A tree!’”

The Frenchman seemed to wait for a response from Dud and Three, who were not forthcoming.

“It is good you ’ave appear. You can be my hinformant. ’Ave you ’ear of a howl that glow? A phosphorescent howl?”

“A phosphorescent howl,” said Three. “This guy’s nuttier than you,” he said to Dud.

The Frenchman concentrated on his pronunciation. “Owell,” he said.

“Oh! Owl. They don’t glow, pal. Sorry to bust your fucking bubble.”

“Yes! They do not glow. But some howl do. They ’ave been sightings, you know? People look,” (here the Frenchman made binoculars of his hands to illustrate) “and see the phosphorescent howl.” He applauded and jumped up and down, pretending to be a person who had just sighted a phosphorescent owl. “But it is, er, undocument? Could be, for me, an himportant discovery. I am thinking it is something the howls eat, per’ap a glowworm or firefly, or possibly a kind of mushroom. Or could be a moss that get catched in their feather? Or phosphorescent dung of rare beetle. These are my hypothezee.”

“Well, I take it you’re not banging somebody out here,” said Three. “Not in that outfit. Where’s the zipper?”

“I do not bang the howl, bang-bang! No, very careful. Very science.”

“Right. Well, knock yourself out, Monsieur Valentin.”

“Ow you know my name?”

“A little howl told me,” said Three.

“God, I’m the shittiest detective in the world. My cover is totally blown. I’m going to have to call the monsignor and…What are you doing?”

“Making sure no murderous hillbillies climbed through the open window while we were gone. Looks clear. I better check your knitting basket.”

“Don’t touch that! I have everything organized.”

They got back on the road home.

“Did that guy seem gay to you?” said Three.

“It was hard to see him,” said Dud.

“Are you listening to me? Goddamnit, I’ve just solved the fucking case! That guy doesn’t have a fiancée. He’s too fucking gay. Check it out. That lady was probably a rival scientist, or an imposter hired by a rival scientist. I probably did the monsignor a favor. He shouldn’t be mixed up with that heartless bitch. Did you see Chinatown?”

“Where are we? Is this the right way?”

“I don’t the fuck know, Dud. Why couldn’t he have driven north to Lumber Land instead of south to Bumfuck? Did you see Chinatown?”

“I saw it on the big screen at its inception,” said Dud. “To this day I have no idea what the grand folderol was about.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? It’s classic. My sister! My daughter! My sister! My daughter!”

“I need to relieve myself,” said Dud. “It’s an emergency.”

“My sister! What? We were only like in the woods for half a fucking hour, you couldn’t have gone then?”

“The need just came upon me, that’s the way it happens for me. Call it a weakness. I can’t help it.”

“Can you wait until we find the highway?”

“I cannot. Have you ever heard of Tycho Brahe?”

“Fuck no.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk about what happened to him. It would make me too uncomfortable at the moment.”

Three pulled off so Dud could go. When Dud returned he seemed almost at peace for a while.

“Have you ever had the problem of phosphorescent urine?” he asked, finally breaking the silence.

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Do you think it’s common?”

“I don’t really think it’s a fucking problem, okay? Maybe it was the moonlight shining off it. Or maybe your subconscious mind was thinking about phosphorescent owls.”

“Now you’re just proving your own ignorance. I didn’t think a detective was supposed to assume anything.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Dudley, have it your own fucking way. Your pee glows. Congratulations.”

“What I mean is, why should you assume I was talking about my urine that I urinated just now? When in fact I was talking about my urine of several nights ago in my own bathroom in my own home. I was urinating with the light off and I noticed that my urine had a faint white phosphorescence to it.”

“That could come in handy. Now could you please shut the fuck up for two minutes so maybe I could figure out where the fuck we are? You were like quiet for three minutes in a row back there and I thought I had gone to fucking Heaven.”

Dud was silent for a spell and then he made a little grunt like he had thought of something private and fascinating.

“What?”

“Huh? Oh!” Dud pretended to be surprised that Three had heard his meaningful grunt. “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking about how many great novels I could have written.”

“How many?”

“Fourteen.”

“Wow.”

“And I’m not talking about these little skinny novels everybody writes nowadays. I refuse to read any novel that’s under eight hundred pages long.”

“Hey, you’re deep,” said Three.

“Trouble is, I can’t write any of my novels until everybody I know is dead. I wrote a great one about my dead wife but I had to dispose of it out of guilt feelings. I really shouldn’t blame her but I do.”

“On a personal note?” said Three. “It makes me uncomfortable that you blame everything on your dead wife. I think the word I’m looking for is un-fucking-gentlemanly.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have a dead wife.”