"The heavy metal kids," Rho explains. "They're new on the block."
"Groovy," says Tommy.
Gerri's gaze swings pointedly from the near white house on the right to the near white house on the left. "Neighbors!" she exclaims. "I don't know if I could ever get used to this."
"Yes," Rho agrees, "some days it does seem too claustrophobic to bear."
"Must be like living in a fishbowl." Gerri lowers her voice. "Just think how many could be watching us right this minute."
"I try not to."
"Out on our place, at night you can't even see anybody else's lights."
"And no one can hear you scream," intones Tommy in his horror voice.
Gerri makes a face and turns back to Rho. "You and Wylie have got to get out again soon, see what we've done to the kitchen."
"And the barn," adds Tommy.
"And the garden. We've been down on our knees in the dirt the whole damn summer."
Rho's hesitant to accept. Last time she and Wylie visited they played a riotous game of badminton, toured the garden, admired the cabbage, drove to Lake Vista, paddled canoes, marveled at the leaping fish, sat at a charred picnic table on Succotash Hill amid a dusky swarm of hungry bugs and watched the dying sun bleed spectacularly into a clean blue blotter, invoked their famous college years: the bed sheet out the window, the lighter fluid under the door, naked volleyball, the filled condom tied to the police car door handle; they smiled, they touched, they shared, and everything was wonderfully wrong. There were undercurrents to the day and they were cold; Rho felt directed at her an implied and raking displeasure toward most of what she said, most of what she did, most of what she thought. Wylie, of course, dismissed her perception as exaggerated; if the Hannas were tired and slightly grumpy, then so were the Joneses -- long day, short tempers, why belabor the obvious? -- but she was hurt, the visit left her with a vague social nausea and the lingering question: does Gerri like me or not? She hadn't yet received an answer. So how could she know for true if this was a genuine invitation or a perverse emotional game? (On the last visit to the Enchanted Pines Care Facility Rho had brought her mother a box of turtles, her favorite candy, and that week's edition of her favorite magazine,
TV Guide,
containing all the many many shows she couldn't know she would never see.)
"There's hardly enough time anymore to get anything done," Gerri is complaining. "Have you noticed? There actually seems to be a smaller supply available than there used to be. Maybe our container of time has developed a slow leak. Maybe that's what those black holes do. They're just aimlessly vacuuming up our lives."
"Listen to the college girl," says Tommy.
"No holes upstairs," affirms Rho.
"You guys."
"She's very weird. One of these
reader
types you may have heard about. Always peeking into some damn book."
"Oh my God!" Gerri exclaims, sitting up excitedly. "Rho, have you read
Blondes in Black
yet? Tommy, honey, toss me my bag by your chair there." She rummages around, holds up a dog-eared paperback depicting on its cover a police lineup of indistinguishable fashion models in big sunglasses. She flips through the pages. "Listen." She reads: " 'Cymbelline is dancing. It is hot. The lights flash, revolve, strobe. The crowd heaves. The colors burn. She dances. Jewels of sweat glisten on her flawless forehead. Numerous tiny beads. The music ripples like a rainbow over her brain. She is not dancing, she is being danced. She is shedding skin. The little girl named Bobbie Jayne who once posed on a tractor (it was red) in a place too far from here to even exist is litter beneath her size seven pumps. Elbows and bodies nudge and jostle but she acknowledges the presence of no other. Tonight she is the star. A photographer's gun explodes in her face and she is caught with hair flying, arms flung sensationally above her head, trim aerobicized self abandoned completely to the rhythm of the life she had dreamed about. She exposes her perfect teeth. Her lips are full. She is in exstasy.
" 'When she and Johnny St. John return to their table, Bezique tosses her hair and points a sharp silver nail. "What's that on your dress?"
" 'Cymbelline touches the spot with her finger. It is wet. "Oh," she says.
" 'It was come.' "
Gerri closes the book with a knowing smirk. "Pretty great, huh? It's about New York. You know, that scene there."
"How does he spell it?" her husband asks.
"Spell what?"
"C-u-m."
"I don't know. Jesus Christ." She thumbs back through the book. "Here," she says, "c-o-m-e."
"Then why should we give any credence to an author who obviously doesn't know what the hell he's talking about?"
"Tommy doesn't read," Gerri explains.
"I watch," he says, and before he can be stopped is launched into another of his interminable movie synopses, this one a recent cable offering of unknown vintage, somewhat obscure, somewhat strange, essential defining characteristics of a Tommy favorite. He doesn't know the title either, having missed the opening credits and first ten minutes due to a "reasoning" he and Gerri were involved in over which shade to paint the spare bedroom (is there to be an adopted baby in there or not?), but since this flick'll probably be run ten, twenty more times before the month ends, he'll give them a call. Anyway, Sean Penn is this pumped-up lowlife going nowhere in a nowhere town until one day he discovers his long-lost father, Christopher Walken, acting even weirder than usual, is this cool criminal type he can really look up to because what else is he gonna do with an eighth grade education and a constipated strut and these ridiculous biceps swelling out of his T-shirt like Sunday hams? Only he doesn't understand the dimensions of evil residing in Daddy, he doesn't know what we do, which is --
Gerri's body convulses helplessly for an instant, rattling her chair. The glass door slides open. "Oh, Wylie," she gasps, hand astride her galloping heart. "You scared me."
Wylie steps out onto the deck, wearing the popular after-work look that loudly declares, don't even ask.
"Greetings, people." He stoops to kiss his wife's shiny forehead.
"Uh-oh," Rho remarks. "Looks like someone's had a bad day."
"Murderous," Wylie replies.
"All I could see was this horrible shape standing there right behind the door," explains Gerri. She jumps up to print a smeared set of lips on Wylie's grainy cheek.
Tommy, still not safely returned to noncinematic reality, waves an open palm.
Wylie leans back against the glass, hands roaming about in his pockets, impish face beaming benignly down on all. Rho can see he's making an effort. "So," he asks, "what've I missed?"
"Only everything," replies Gerri.
"Fine cuisine," says Tommy.
"Witty repartee," adds Gerri.
"My feet are sore from all the boogying," says Rho.
"Well." He studies their illumined faces. "Guess I need a drink." He slips back into the air-conditioned kitchen.
"He's so cute," says Gerri.
"In the right light," Rho replies, and asks about that younger sister with the three little kids who's been hiding out from her ex at a secret women's shelter on the west side. Theirs was a story short and savage and pointless as any you wouldn't want to live.
"She's okay. She's better. She's leaving at the end of the month as a matter of fact. She and the kids, they're moving to Santa Monica."
"She must be very strong."
Tommy gazes absentmindedly into the cluttered maw of the garage while Rho admires the shape of his bare neck, the graceful line of it sloping sturdily down into a plaid Paul Stuart collar.
"You do what you have to do," replies Gerri. In a culture fond of the tough cliché
, she is a skilled adept.
Rho often wishes she knew what others were thinking. The human brain, she read in
Time,
functions as a low-grade transmitting station, so theoretically, with the proper receiver, thoughts could be intercepted like television waves. Some minds are natural receivers. Is Gerri psychic? Privacy is a delusion. We are not alone.
Wylie rejoins the party changed into his customary khakis and navy blue polo shirt and carrying a hefty tumbler of vodka and tonic. He straddles the remaining chair, the defective one with the bent leg. "So," he begins, "what are we talking about tonight?"
"The kids are downstairs," says Rho. "With Daphne."
"I know. I've already squeezed each and every one."
If asked by a stranger to describe her husband, Rho isn't certain how she'd respond. Except for the eyes, those affecting moons of powdery gray, there was nothing immediately distinctive about him, no crags or crannies or funny clumps of hair for words to adhere to. Average, she'd have to admit, conceding her failure because the choice attributes, the ones you couldn't readily explain, escaped definition, and those were the ones she loved.
"We've been spanning the globe," Tommy claims. "Toxic crime, the drug deficit, celebrity terrorism. It's been an evening for the macroview."
"An evening for macaroni," corrects Gerri. She's intrigued by Wylie's hands, there's something positively noble about his fingers.
"Save the planet," announces Tommy. "Take a whale to lunch."
"We like coming here," says Gerri, making sucking noises with her straw. "So many of our other friends have given up drinking."
"Yes," Rho says. "The Eco-Age."
"I feel like eco-trash myself," jokes Tommy.
"Have you ever had a cherimoya?" Gerri asks.
"What's that?"
"It's a fruit, actually, some bizarre mating of an apple and a pear and a coca tree, for all we know. It's Peruvian. Quite yummy."
Tommy chuckles softly through his nose. "Yeah, since the Grand Tour has had to be temporarily postponed until the advent of our second million, Gerri here is eating her way around the world."
His tone irritates her. "Well, why go on tasting the same boring old tastes, doing the same boring old things?"
"I don't know," says Tommy. "Why?"
"Oh, you." She kicks at him under the table.
"Did you remember the charcoal?" inquires Rho.
Wylie's glass halts in midair.
"Damnit, Wylie, I asked you not to forget. Well, don't be long. We're starting to get hungry here."
"Tommy can go with you," declares Gerri.
"Hint, hint," says Tommy.
On the way out Wylie scoops up a handful of chips. "Mmmmmm," he mumbles, over his shoulder, "good nachos."
The vehicle is an '87 Jeep Cherokee. "Shouldn't we be wearing baseball caps?" Tommy's stale line. He has difficulty envisioning himself in such a machine and cannot understand why Wylie, whom he knows as well as anybody, would want to be seen in one, would apparently delight in one, would sometimes even drive the thing to work, for Christ's sake. It is a curiosity.
The passing streets are quiet, well tended, as are the lawns, the homes, the people. The radio is tuned to a popular FM station, classic rock, one uninterrupted hour of Canned Heat. Wylie is stolid behind black sunglasses. Tommy unreels another gripping scenario; this time it's Tony Perkins as a zany Dr. Jekyll who accidentally discovers crack, smokes it, naturally, then runs amok in a blue street frenzy of fucking and slashing rarely witnessed within the precincts of an R rating.
"But he's already nuts," Wylie points out. "Even playing normal. One look at the eyes and anyone but an idiot can tell there's another person in there."
"Granted," Tommy admits, "so maybe the suspense element is somewhat compromised. It's still an engaging piece of work."
Wylie hasn't seen the film, doesn't know if he will, he's been trying to cut down lately.
"Yeah yeah," says Tommy, "don't think I haven't heard all this before, it's a bad habit, yeah, waste of life, sure, but it's either sit in front of the box or talk to Gerri all night."
"Something else you could do with Gerri."
"Yeah, but not as good as they do it on the box."
The parking lot of the Feed 'n' Fuel is a mad snarl of cops and cars and rotating lights and the fear of the curious drawn, as always, to the center, wherever it may appear, a modern-day gathering at the rim of the awful, a satisfied peep down into the smoking crater, wonder that such things could be so great and so near. Police cruisers sit abandoned at opposed angles, doors hanging open, radios squawking like caged birds. Between scarred trash containers yellow tape fluttering upside down in printed repetition
crime scene do not cross
clears a space around the store entrance. In the middle of this opening, arranged rather carelessly on the gum-embossed, soda-stained cement, an apparently well-used painter's drop cloth. Under the cloth -- the itch the close semicircle of eyes can't stop scratching -- rests the body, its presence confirmed by the protruding pair of scuffed Nikes, toes pointing pathetically earthward, the thick green laces dangling loose and untied, particles of gray gravel worked into the tread of the soles, detail magnified into a revelation of intimacy Tommy is suddenly quite uncomfortable with. His feelings at the moment too tangled for endurance or examination. All he is sure of is that he must look incredibly stupid trapped in the midst of this crowd, gawking like a tourist fresh off a bus. He moves up nearer to Wylie. "Is that blood?" he whispers.
"Where?"
"By his head."
A cop who appeared at least a decade younger than Tommy and who was sporting sideburns he hadn't seen on a living person in twenty years catches his eyes and looks right inside easy as checking the contents of a boiling pot; he turns away, obviously amused by what he found there. Tommy is flushed with shame.
Inside the store uniformed police and homicide detectives in designer suits are engaged in solemn conversation with an acne-ridden boy in a red apron and a paper hat. His face exhibits the otherworldly features of someone who's just been unexpectedly photographed with a mighty large flash.
"What happened?" Tommy asks loudly.
"I don't know," replies a straw-haired woman in a Metallica T-shirt, clutching two small children. She doesn't bother turning around. "Somebody got shot."