Your Body is Changing (6 page)

He reached into the pocket of the peacoat and tossed onto the table something that looked from Mr. Fielding’s point of view like a piece of modern art: a stiffened yellow rag for a canvas, clotted and crusted with red-brown stains and splashes.

Mandy clapped her hand over her mouth.

“No, I’m just shitting you,” said Ray. “I had a nosebleed this morning.” He laughed. “What’s the matter, aren’t you going to call me on my shit? I don’t even have a stepbrother.”

As Mandy tried to leave the table she tumbled to the floor and lay there with the back of her legs showing and her lovely hair in disarray.

Mr. Fielding rose.

“You deliberately tripped that young woman,” he said to Ray. “By God you did. I make myself available as a witness.”

Ray stood up. “Sir, I did no such thing,” he said.

Mr. Fielding grew livid and wild. He made noises like a snake.

Ray approached him.

George scrabbled for the exit, leaving his wife cringing and slobbering on the floor. The little man studied his grappa bottle, held it up to see if a swallow was left, and seemed in all to be pretending that he was uninvolved with the incident, and indeed with the world. The bartender was on the phone to 911. Waiters posed about the bar like expectant ninjas. Ray had gotten Mr. Fielding from behind and seemed to be shaking him like a bottle of Coke until a nut flew out of Mr. Fielding’s mouth.

The EMTs, when they arrived, discovered that Ray, in his gusto to save Mr. Fielding from choking, had broken three of the old man’s brittle ribs. There was some talk, eventually dismissed, that Ray might have demonstrated glee, during the rescue, in applying just a little more force than necessary. One of the ribs had punctured Mr. Fielding’s right lung, happily not resulting in death.

During his first few days in the hospital Mr. Fielding remained particularly addled and insisted again and again that the nurses check on his daughter. He seemed to believe that he had been injured in her defense, when in fact she never arrived.

H
ere is a conversation I had with a big, strong black woman. She wanted to hire somebody and I needed to be hired. The first thing she asked me was why they let me go from the Earthly Garden of Tea.

“That was a misunderstanding,” I said. “A woman complained that her tea cookies were broken and I said, ‘Lady, they taste the same broken as they do whole.’ She was one of the corporate owners from Florida, on an undercover inspection. She didn’t like my attitude. She also saw me smart off to an old man, she said.”

“Did you?”

“Smart off? An old man was trying to tell me how to make change the old-fashioned way. I didn’t care. I told him we have computers for that now. I explained very patiently that he got the same amount of change whether I counted it out the old-fashioned way or whether a computer counted it for me, so why did he want to get in my face about it? He should be happy to be in a place where the price is reasonable and you get some change back from your hard-earned money. That was considered smarting off, apparently.”

“You realize, don’t you, that your job here would involve making change?”

“Well, yeah, but it’s fifty cents to go through the tollbooth, right? Like if somebody hands me fifty dollars, I give them back forty-nine fifty. I could do that all day.”

“Let me be clear. The position that’s open is a cashier position. There’s a lot more customer contact than if you were occupying, say, an exact change booth, where the driver merely tosses his coins into the sorter basket and the arm rises automatically. You will have to accept the customer’s cash with complete courtesy and give him his change quickly and efficiently. Any slowness or discourtesy on your part could result in a traffic accident or even death. That’s the difference between working at a tollbooth and working at a place that sells cookies.”

“And jellybeans. I could always guess somebody’s favorite jellybean flavor without them even telling me. It made me popular with the customers. I was giving them something extra. I was appreciated, until the unfortunate incident.”

“Moving on, you didn’t remain employed at the Video King for very long.”

“I was literally robbed by gypsies. One of them distracted me with a question about the California Raisins after I already had the cash drawer open. Anyway, I wasn’t fired. The investigating officer gave me a hard time, like I was lying, and the assistant manager didn’t say so, but I could tell she was taking his side. So I turned in my notice with a sense of indignation. It was the right thing to do and I stand by it.”

“When’s the last time you shaved, son?”

“I shaved for my twenty-fifth birthday.”

“And how old are you now?”

“Thirty.”

“Your beard makes you look a lot older than thirty.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Uh-huh…Honestly I’m surprised it’s been growing for…five years, is it?”

“It’ll be six years in May. I’m going on thirty-one. I’m a Taurus.”

“Seems like it would be down to your knees by now.”

“Oh, no ma’am. My beard grows outward, slowly outward, rather than downward. And as you can see, it curls inward on itself not unlike pubic hair, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

“Actually it’s just the expression that came to my mind. Our tollbooth attendants are required to be clean-shaven. Is that a problem for you?”

“Well…yes…that’s a problem. I used to be in a Dixieland band and we all have beards. There’s a chance we might get back together if I can iron some things out.”

“You’re a skinny white boy. How skinny are you?”

“I’m one hundred twenty pounds and five feet ten inches tall, ma’am.”

“You know, I believe I have a uniform that will fit you, just about.”

“I can’t shave my beard. Some of the other guys have, but I think that shows a sense of pessimism, and I don’t want to fall prey to that.”

“I have a special job for you, son. You won’t have to shave your beard. I have a feeling about you. I had a feeling when I read your résumé and now that I’ve met you I know my feeling was right. This is not the cashier position I’m talking about now. This is a job that will last you just until four o’clock or so today, and it pays two hundred dollars. Are you interested?”

“Two hundred dollars for one day?”

“For less than one day.”

Sometime between 10:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., a man was going to pull up to a certain tollbooth in a Volvo station wagon. He was going to say, “All I have is a Sacajawea dollar,” and I was supposed to give him a package and let him through.

The woman shut the blinds and made me put on, over my clothes, the bulky tan jumpsuit of a city maintenance worker. It was a disguise. When I walked out, nobody looked at me twice. With the package concealed in my otherwise empty toolbox, I walked out of the building and about fifty yards to my post on the highway: the sixth booth, an exact change booth, the one with the broken camera that I was supposedly there to fix.

There was a window of fog-colored acrylic on either side of the tollbooth, which meant that I had two lanes to keep my eye on. Each window was equipped with a little speaker, like at a bank, and a drawer like the one Hannibal Lecter used in Silence of the Lambs when he wanted to pass notes and stuff to Jodie Foster. The tollbooth seemed to be about the size of a coffin. In any case it had very few attractive features and did not seem like a fun place to work. It was damaged. Some of its insides seemed to have been removed. There was nowhere to sit. A red phone hung on the wall, and a shelf where you could put things. There was a wastebasket, and a cash box, and a cheap-looking plastic megaphone, and that was about it for the features of the tollbooth, except for a keypad with numbers on it.

If someone complained that the arm was jammed, I was supposed to punch in the code “1924” and it would lift up. “1924” was easy to remember because it seemed like a date when something famous might have happened, or the year an old person might have been born.

I couldn’t imagine an easier way to make two hundred dollars.

The catch was, what was in the package? Obviously it was something illegal, and possibly dangerous, or the supervisor would have handed it off herself, or she would have made one of her normal workers do it.

It was none of my business, because I had accepted the proposition and my handshake is as good as a contract. But what if the package was an explosive device designed to shut down interstate traffic, for example? I did not want any part of terrorism. That is where I draw the line.

I thought I should call Puddin’, a former professional mathematician turned park ranger. Puddin’s gig in Carlsbad Caverns only takes up three months of every year. The rest of the time she walks around in her apartment wearing nothing but a slip.

Puddin’ has a lot of interesting characteristics. She’s very small and slim and pointy all over. She is a native Hawaiian, I believe, who enjoys dyeing her hair strange colors. I like going over there and seeing her answer the door in her slip, smoking one of her cigarettes, the ones she rolls herself, a habit she acquired out west in Carlsbad Caverns. One time she was wearing a dingy white slip and a dark red pageboy haircut and she had a Band-Aid under each knee and she was standing in the doorway with her hip cocked and smoking one of her cowboy cigarettes and it was the most heartbreaking thing I have ever seen.

I wanted her advice about the package because according to Puddin’, the park ranger business throws her into contact with all sorts of people on the fringe of society—hippies, punk rockers, bums, and bad apples.

There is one more thing about Puddin’. I am not sure it is germane, or even polite to bring up, but I’m going to mention it because it’s so interesting. She claims to be having, or to have had already, an affair with the elderly R&B sensation Prince. The timeline is not clear.

None of us believes she knows Prince. It is obviously a huge lie. The question is, really, whether Puddin’ believes it or not.

This one guy, Ed, picks on her about it. We’ll all be at a nice party and Ed will say, “Hey, Puddin’. Remember when Prince changed his name to that symbol? What did he make you call him then?” And we’ll all stare at him until he shuts up.

Because I mean, bottom line, Puddin’ is the greatest girl ever and who cares if she likes to say she does it, or used to do it, with Prince? We all have our problems, that’s my theory. The best thing to do is pretend we don’t hear our friends too well when they start going on about their crazy stuff.

I picked up the red phone to call Puddin’, but there weren’t any buttons on it. The woman came on the line and asked what I thought I was doing.

“I have diabetic disease,” I said. “I was trying to call my buddy Puddin’ to bring me my medicine.”

“This had best not be a trick,” said the woman.

“I could faint out here and that would ruin everything,” I said.

“You’re in this up to your neck,” she said.

“I’m not trying to squirm out of anything,” I said.

“I’ll call your friend for you,” said the woman. “What’s the number?”

I couldn’t think of what to do, so I gave her the number.

“If this is a trick you’ll live to regret it,” she said.

Right after that a guy parked beside my booth and started yelling at me. I pushed the speaker button.

“What time is it?” I said. “I know it’s not ten yet.”

“What the hell are you talking about? The thing won’t do right.”

“Are you supposed to be in a Volvo station wagon?” I asked. “Because you’re in an Infiniti.”

“What are you, a freak?” he said. “I put in my money and the thing won’t do right. Open it up and let me through, you freak.”

“Are you sure you put in fifty cents?” I said.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to push your nose in for you?” he said. “What are you going to do, arrest me over fifty cents? I make four hundred thousand dollars a year. You look like a freak.” I noticed that he had an innocent child in the backseat, a child who seemed blissfully unaware of his father’s hateful ways. I pushed “1924” and let the man through.

The confrontation exhausted me. I don’t enjoy getting into it with people. I sat on the floor and took a nap. Cars came up in a regular stream. I listened to them idle, and then the clatter of coins in the basket, and the clunk and whir of the arm going up and down and letting the cars through. Everyone was cooperating, everything was working correctly, it made a nice picture of the world, and the steady sounds cleared my mind of conflict and allowed me to doze.

I don’t know how long I rested that way before a banging disturbed me. I jumped up and grabbed the package and saw the face of Puddin’ smashed comically against the window. I hustled her inside.

Puddin’ was wearing a wifebeater T-shirt of white corrugated cotton, a plaid skirt that seemed to be held together by a safety pin, and fishnet hose. Her hair was dyed bright white and she had on gray lipstick. Puddin’ is young, and goes through a lot of phases.

“Crouch down,” I said. “Where’d you come from?”

“India brought me in her van,” said Puddin’.

“Did anybody see you?”

“Yeah, lots of people. I looked in almost every other tollbooth before I found you. I almost got run over twice. Are you sick?”

“No.”

“I had a weird message on my voice mail. Somebody said you were sick. Do you need some Xanax?”

Even though she was in an awkward position she managed to wiggle out of her fluorescent pink backpack and kindly tried to dig out some Xanax for me.

“It was nice of you to come,” I said. “You’re a real trooper, Puddin’.”

“What are we doing out here?” said Puddin’.

“Just stay low to the floor like that and don’t let anybody see you.”

I handed down the package, which was about the size and shape of a big book, wrapped tightly in newspaper.

“I want you to tell me what this is,” I said. “I want to know what kind of funny business I’m mixed up in.”

“You need to clip your nails,” she said.

“Mom usually trims them, but she’s been busy this week,” I explained. “Moms have lives, too, you know.”

Puddin’ acted surprised that Mom trims my nails. She didn’t say it. Her face said it all.