The Great and Secret Show

‘Right.’

‘On present progress, I give you another ten years. That’s if you’re lucky. You’re overweight, you’re over-stressed. I’ve seen healthier corpses.’

‘I do the gags, Lou.’

‘Yeah, and I fill in the death certificates. So start taking care of yourself, for Christ’s sake, or you’re going to go the way Stanley went.’

‘You think I don’t think about that?’

‘I know you do. Bud. I know.’

Tharp stood up and walked round to Buddy’s side of the desk. On the wall were signed photographs of the stars whom he’d advised and treated. So many great names. Most of them dead; too many of them prematurely. Fame had its price.

‘I’m glad you’re coming to your senses. If you’re really serious about this …’

‘I’m here aren’t I? How much more fucking serious do I have to get? You know how I hate talking about this shit. I never did a death gag in my life, Lou. You know that? Not once. Anything else. Anything. But not that!’

‘It’s got to be faced sooner or later.’

‘I’ll take later.’

‘OK, so I’ll have a health plan drawn up for you. Diet; exercise; the works. But I’m telling you now, Buddy, it won’t make pleasant reading!’

‘I heard somewhere: laughter makes you live longer.’

‘Show me where it says comedians live forever, I’ll show you a tomb with a quip on it.’

‘Yeah. So when do I begin?’

‘Start today. Throw out the malts and the nose-candy, and try using that pool of yours once in a while.’

‘It needs cleaning.’

‘So get it cleaned.’

That was the easy part. Buddy had Ellen call the Pool Service as soon as he got home and they sent somebody up the following day. The health plan, as Tharp had warned, was a tougher call, but whenever his will faltered he thought of the way he looked in the mirror some mornings, and the fact that his dick was only visible if he held his gut in so hard it ached. When vanity failed he thought of death, but only as a last resort.

He’d always been an early riser, so getting up for a morning run wasn’t a great chore. The sidewalks were empty, and often – as today – he’d make his way down the Hill and through the East Grove to the woods, where the ground didn’t bruise the soles the same way the concrete did, and his panting was set to birdsong. On such days the run was strictly a one-way journey; he’d have Jose Luis bring the limo down the Hill and meet him when he emerged from the woods, the car stocked with towels and iced tea. Then they’d head back up to Coney Eye, as he’d dubbed the estate, the easy way: on wheels. Health was one thing; masochism, at least in public, quite another.

The run had other benefits besides firming up his belly. He had an hour or so alone to get to grips with anything that was troubling him. Today, inevitably, his thoughts were of Rochelle. The divorce settlement would be finalized this week, and his sixth marriage would be history. It would be the second shortest of the six. His forty-two days with Shashi had been the fastest, ending with a shot that had come so close to blowing off his balls his sweat ran cold whenever he thought of it. Not that he’d spent more than a month with Rochelle in the year they’d been married. After the honeymoon, and its little surprises, she’d taken herself back to Fort Worth to calculate her alimony. It had been a mismatch from the beginning. He should have realized that, the first time she failed to laugh at his routine, which was, coincidentally, the first time she heard his routine. But of all his wives, including Elizabeth, she was the most physically alluring. Stone-faced she’d been, but the sculptor had genius.

He was thinking of her face as he came off the sidewalk and hit the woods. Maybe he should call her; ask her to come back to Coney for one final try. He’d done it before, with Diane, and they’d had the best two months of their years together, before the old resentments had set in afresh. But that had been Diane, this was Rochelle. It was useless attempting to project behaviour patterns from one woman to the next. They were all so gloriously different. Men were a dull bunch by comparison: dowdy and mono-minded. Next time round he wanted to be born a lesbian.

Off in the distance, he heard laughter; the unmistakable giggling of young girls. A strange sound to hear so early in the morning. He stopped running and listened for it again, but the air was suddenly empty of all other sounds, even birdsong. The only noises he could hear were internal: the labourings of his system. Had he imagined the laughter? It was perfectly possible, his thoughts being as full of women as they were. But as he prepared to about-turn and leave the thicket to its songlessness, the giggling came again, and with it an odd, almost hallucinatory, change in the scene around him. The sound seemed to animate the entire wood. It brought movement to the leaves, it brightened the sunlight. More than that: it changed the very direction of the sun. In the silence, the light had been pallid, its source still low in the east. On the cue of laughter it became noon-day bright, pouring down on the upturned faces of the leaves.

Buddy neither believed nor disbelieved his eyes: he simply stood before the experience as before feminine beauty, mesmerized. Only when the third round of laughter began did he grasp its direction, and start off at a run towards it, the light still vacillating.

A few yards on he saw a movement ahead of him through the trees. Bare skin. A girl stripping off her underwear. Beyond her was another girl, this one blonde, and strikingly attractive, beginning to do the same. He knew instinctively they weren’t quite real, but he still advanced cautiously, for fear of startling them. Could illusions be startled? He didn’t want to risk it; not with such pretty sights to see. The blonde girl was the last one undressed. There were three others, he counted, already wading out into a lake that flickered on the rim of solidity. Its ripples threw light up on to the blonde’s face – Arleen, they named her, as they shouted back to the shore. Advancing from tree to tree, he got to within ten feet of the lake’s edge. Arleen was in up to her thighs now. Though she bent to cup water in her hands and splash it on her body it was virtually invisible. The girls who were in deeper than she, and swimming, seemed to be floating in mid-air.

Ghosts, he half-thought; these are ghosts. I’m spying on the past, being re-run in front of me. The thought propelled him from hiding. If his assumption was correct then they might vanish at any moment and he wanted to drink their glory down in gulps before they did.

There was no trace of the clothes they’d shed in the grass where he stood, nor any sign – when one or other of them glanced back towards the shore – that they saw him there.

‘Don’t go too far,’ one of the quartet yelled to her companion. The advice was ignored. The girl was moving further from the shore, her legs spreading and closing, spreading and closing as she swam. Not since the first wet dreams of his adolescence could he remember an experience as erotic as this, watching these creatures suspended in the gleaming air, their lower bodies subtly blurred by the element that bore them up, but not so much he could not enjoy their every detail.

‘Warm!’ yelled the adventurer, who was treading water a good distance from him, ‘it’s warm out here.’

‘Are you kidding?’

‘Come and feel!’

Her words inspired further ambition in Buddy. He’d seen so much. Dared he now touch? If they couldn’t see him – and they plainly couldn’t – where was the harm in getting so close he could run his fingertips along their spines?

The water made no sound as he stepped into the lake; nor did he feel so much as a touch against his ankles and shins as he waded deeper. It buoyed Arleen up well enough however. She was floating on the lake’s surface, her hair spread around her head, her gentle strokes taking her further from him. He hurried in pursuit, the water no brake upon him, halving the distance between himself and the girl in seconds. His arms were extended, his eyes fixed upon the pinkness of her labia as she kicked away from him.

The adventurer had begun to shout something, but he ignored her agitation. To touch Arleen was all he could think about. To put his hand upon her and she not protest, but go on swimming, while he had his way. In his haste his foot snagged on something. Arms still reaching for the girl he fell, face down. The jolt brought him to his senses enough to interpret the shouts from the deeper water. They were no longer cries of pleasure, but of alarm. He raised his head from the ground. The two furthest swimmers were struggling in mid-air, turning their faces up to the sky.

‘Oh my Lord,’ he said.

They were drowning. Ghosts, he’d called them moments ago, not really thinking about what that name implied. Here was the sickening truth. The swimming party had come to grief in these phantom waters. He’d been ogling the dead.

Revolted with himself, he wanted to retreat, but a perverse obligation to this tragedy kept him watching.

All four of them were caught up in the same turmoil now, thrashing in the air, their faces darkening as they fought for breath. How was it possible? They looked to be drowning in four or five feet of water. Had some current taken hold of them? It seemed unlikely, in water so shallow and so apparently placid.

‘Help them …’ he found himself saying. ‘Why doesn’t somebody help them?’

As though he might lend aid himself he started towards them. Arleen was closest to him. All the beauty had gone from her face. It was contorted by desperation and terror. Suddenly her wide eyes seemed to see something in the water beneath her feet. Her struggling ceased, and a look of utter surrender took its place. She was giving up life.

‘Don’t,’ Buddy murmured, reaching for her as if his arms might lift her up out of the past and carry her back to life. At the very moment his flesh met that of the girl, he knew this was fatal business for them both. He was too late in his regrets, however. The ground beneath them trembled. He looked down. There was only a thin cover of earth there, he saw, sustaining a meagre crop of grass. Beneath the earth, grey rock; or was it concrete? Yes! Concrete! A hole in the ground had been plugged here, but the seal was fracturing in front of him, cracks widening in the concrete.

He looked back towards the edge of the lake, and solid ground, but a rift had already opened between him and safety, a slab of concrete sliding into it a yard from his toes. Icy air rose from underground.

He looked back towards the swimmers, but the mirage was receding. As it went he caught the same look on all the four faces, eyes rolled up so they showed solid white, mouths open to drink death down. They hadn’t perished in shallow water, he now understood. This had been a pit when they’d come swimming here, and it had claimed them as it was now claiming him: them with water, him with wraiths.

He started to howl for help, as the violence in the ground mounted, the concrete grinding itself to dust between his feet. Perhaps some other early-morning jogger would hear him, and come to his aid. But quickly; it had to be quickly.

Who was he kidding? And he, a kidder. Nobody was going to come. He was going to die. For fuck’s sake, he was going to die.

The rift between him and good ground had widened considerably, but leaping it was his only hope for salvation. He had to be fast, before the concrete beneath him slid into the pit, taking him with it. It was now or never.

He jumped. It was a good jump too. Another few inches and he’d have made it to safety. But a few were everything. He snatched at the air, short of his target, and fell.

One moment the sun was still shining on the top of his head. The next, darkness, icy darkness, and he was plummeting through it with cobs of concrete hurtling past him on the same downward journey. He heard them crack against the face of the rock as they went; then realized it was he who was making the noise. It was the breaking of his bones and back he could hear as he fell. And fell and fell.

ii

The day began earlier for Howie than he’d ordinarily have welcomed after sleeping so little, but once he was up and exercising he felt good about being awake. It was a crime to lie in bed on a morning so fine. He bought himself a soda from the machine and sat at the window, gazing at the sky and musing on what the day might bring.

Liar; not of the day at all. Of Jo-Beth; only of Jo-Beth. Her eyes, her smile, her voice, her skin, her scent, her secrets. He watched the sky, and saw her, and was obsessed.

This was a first for him. He’d never felt an emotion as strong as that possessing him now. Twice in the night he’d woken in a sudden sweat. He couldn’t remember the dreams that had brought it on, but she was in them, for certain. How could she not be? He had to go find her. Every hour he spent out of her company was a wasted hour; every moment not seeing her he was blind; every moment not touching her, numb.

She’d told him, as they’d parted the previous night, that she worked at Butrick’s during the evening, and at a book store during the day. Given the size of the Mall, it wouldn’t be too difficult to locate her work place. He picked up a bag of doughnuts to fill the hole not eating the previous night had left. That other hole, the one he’d come here to heal, was very far from his thoughts. He wandered along the rows of businesses, looking for her store. He found it, between a dog-grooming service and a real estate office. Like many of the stores, it was still closed, opening time, according to the sign on the door, still three quarters of an hour off. He sat down in the steadily warming sun, and ate, and waited.

Her instinct, from the moment she’d opened her eyes, was to forget about work today, and go find Howie. The events of the previous night had run and re-run in her dreams, changed each time in some subtle way, as though they might be alternative realities, a few of an infinite selection born from the same encounter. But among such possibilities she could conceive of none that did not contain him. He had been there, waiting for her, from her first breath; her cells were certain of it. In some imponderable way she and Howie belonged together.

She knew very well that if any of her friends had confessed such sentiments she’d have politely dismissed them as ludicrous. That was not to say she’d not moped over a few faces, of course; turned up the radio when a particular love song was played. But even as she’d listened she’d known it was all a distraction from an unmelodious reality. She saw a perfect victim of that reality every day of her life. Her mother, living like a prisoner – both of the house, and of the past – talking, on those days when she could muster the will to talk, of hopes she’d had, and the friends she’d shared them with. Until now that sad sight had kept Jo-Beth’s romantic ambitions, indeed any ambition, in check.

But what had happened between herself and the Chicago boy would not end the way her mother’s one great affair had ended, with her deserted, and the man in question so despised she could not bring herself to name him. If all the Sunday teachings she’d dutifully attended had instructed her in anything, it was that revelation came when and where least expected. To Joseph Smith, on a farm in Palmyra, New York; news of the Book of Mormon, revealed to him by an angel. Why not to her then, in circumstances no more promising? Stepping into Butrick’s Steak House; standing in a parking lot with a man she knew from everywhere and nowhere?

Tommy-Ray was in the kitchen, his perusal as sharp as the scent of the coffee he was brewing. He looked like he’d slept in his clothes.

‘Late night?’ she said.

‘For both of us.’

‘Not particularly,’ she said. ‘I was home before midnight.’

‘You didn’t sleep though.’

‘On and off.’

‘You stayed awake. I heard you.’

That was unlikely, she knew. Their bedrooms were at opposite ends of the house, and his route to the bathroom didn’t take him within earshot of her.

‘So?’ he said.

‘So what?’

‘Talk to me.’

‘Tommy?’ There was an agitation in his demeanour that unnerved her. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘I heard you,’ he said again. ‘I kept hearing you, all through the night. Something happened to you last night. Didn’t it?’

He couldn’t know about Howie. Only Beverly had any clue as to what had gone on at the Steak House, and she wouldn’t have had time to spread rumours, even if she’d had a mind to, which was doubtful. She had enough secrets of her own to keep from the vine. Besides, what was there to tell? That she’d made eyes at a diner? Kissed him in the parking lot? What did any of that matter to Tommy-Ray?

‘Something happened last night,’ he was still saying. ‘I felt some kind of change. But whatever we were waiting for … it didn’t come to me. So it must have come to you, Jo-Beth. Whatever it is, it came to you.’

‘Want to pour me some of that coffee?’

‘Answer me.’

‘What’s to answer?’

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You’re lying,’ he remarked, with more bafflement than accusation. ‘Why are you lying to me?’

It was a reasonable question. She wasn’t ashamed of Howie, or what she felt for him. She’d shared every victory and defeat of her eighteen years with Tommy-Ray. He wouldn’t go blabbing this secret to Momma or Pastor John. But the looks he kept giving her were odd; she couldn’t read them aright. And there was that talk of hearing her through the night. Had he been listening at her door?

‘I have to get down to the store,’ she said. ‘Or I’ll be real late.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.

‘What for?’

‘The ride.’

‘Tommy …’

He smiled at her. ‘What’s wrong with giving your brother a ride?’ he said. She was almost taken in by the performance, until she nodded her acquiescence and caught the smile dropping from his lips.

‘We have to trust each other,’ he said, once they were in the car and moving. ‘Like we always have.’

‘I know that.’

‘Because we’re strong together, right?’ He was staring through the window, glassy-eyed. ‘And right now I need to feel strong.’

‘You need to get some sleep. Why don’t you let me drive you back? It doesn’t matter if I’m late.’

He shook his head. ‘Hate that house,’ he said.

‘What a thing to say.’

‘It’s true. We both hate it. It gives me bad dreams.’

‘It’s not the house, Tommy.’

‘Yes, it is. The house, and Momma, and being in this fucking town! Look at it!’ Suddenly, out of nowhere, he was raging. ‘Look at this shit! Don’t you want to tear the whole fucking place apart?’ His volume was nerve-shredding in the confines of the car. ‘I know you do,’ he said, staring at her, eyes now wild and wide. ‘Don’t lie to me, little sister.’

‘I’m not your little sister, Tommy,’ she said.

‘I’m thirty-five seconds older,’ he said. This had always been a joke between them. Suddenly it was power-play. ‘Thirty-five seconds more in this shit-hole.’

‘Stop talking stupid,’ she said, bringing the car to a sudden halt. ‘I’m not listening to this. You can get out and walk.’

‘You want me shouting in the street?’ he said. ‘I’ll do it. Don’t think I won’t. I’ll scream ’til their fucking houses fall down!’

‘You’re behaving like an asshole,’ she said.

‘Well, there’s a word I don’t hear from my little sister’s lips too often,’ he said, with smug satisfaction. ‘Something’s got into both of us this morning.’

He was right. She found his rage igniting her in a way she’d never allowed it to before. Twins they were, and in so many ways similar, but he had always been the more openly rebellious of the two. She had played the quiescent daughter, concealing the contempt she’d felt for the Grove’s hypocrisies because Momma, so much its victim, still needed its approval. But there were times when she’d envied Tommy-Ray’s open contempt, and longed to spit in the eye of propriety the way he had, knowing he’d be forgiven his trespasses upon payment of a smile. He’d had it easy, all those years. His tirade against the town was narcissism; he was in love with himself as rebel. And it was spoiling a morning she’d wanted to luxuriate in.

‘We’ll talk tonight, Tommy,’ she said.

‘Will we?’

‘I just said we would.’

‘We have to help each other.’

‘I know.’

‘Especially now.’

He was suddenly hushed, as though all the rage had gone from him in a single breath, and with it all his energy.

‘I’m afraid,’ he said, very quietly.

‘There’s nothing to be afraid of, Tommy. You’re just tired. You should go home and sleep.’

‘Yeah.’

They were at the Mall. She didn’t bother to park the car. ‘Take it home,’ she said. ‘Lois will run me back this evening.’

As she went to get out of the car he took hold of her arm, his fingers gripping her so hard it hurt.

‘Tommy –’ she said.

‘You really mean it?’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of?’

‘No,’ she said.

He leaned over to kiss her.

‘I trust you,’ he said, his lips very close to hers. His face filled her sight; his hand held her arm as though he possessed her.

‘Enough, Tommy,’ she said, pulling her arm free. ‘Go home.’

She got out, slamming rather than closing the car door, deliberately not looking back at him.

‘Jo-Beth.’

Ahead of her, Howie. Her stomach flipped at the sight of him. Behind her, she heard a car-horn blare, and glanced back to see that Tommy-Ray had not taken the wheel of the car, which was blocking access for several other vehicles. He was staring at her; reaching for the handle of the door; getting out. The horns multiplied. Somebody began to shout at him to get out of the way, but he ignored them. His attention was fixed upon Jo-Beth. It was too late for her to signal Howie away. The look on Tommy-Ray’s face made it plain he’d understood the whole story from the smile of welcome on Howie’s face.

She looked back at Howie, feeling an ashen despair.

‘Well lookee here,’ she heard Tommy-Ray say behind her.

It was more than despair; it was fear.

‘Howie –’ she began.

‘Christ, was I dumb,’ Tommy-Ray went on.

She tried a smile as she turned back to him. ‘Tommy,’ she said, ‘I want you to meet Howie.’

She’d never seen a look on Tommy-Ray’s face the like of the look she was witnessing now; hadn’t known those idolized features capable of such malice.

‘Howie?’ he said. ‘As in Howard?’

She nodded, glancing back at Howie. ‘I’d like you to meet my brother,’ she said. ‘My twin brother. Howie, this is Tommy-Ray.’

Both men stepped forward to shake hands, bringing them into her vision at the same time. The sun shone with equal strength on both, but it didn’t flatter Tommy-Ray, despite his tan. He looked sickly beneath the veneer of health he wore; his eyes sunk without a gleam, his skin too tightly drawn over his cheeks and temples. He looks dead, she found herself thinking. Tommy-Ray looks dead.

Though Howie extended his hand to be shaken Tommy-Ray ignored it, suddenly turning to his sister.

‘Later,’ he said, so softly.

His murmur was almost drowned out by the din of complaints from behind him but she caught its menace clearly enough. Having spoken he turned his back and returned to the car. She couldn’t see the mollifying smile he was putting on, but she could imagine it. Mr Golden, raising his arms in mock-surrender, knowing his captors didn’t have a hope.

‘What was that about?’ Howie said.