Chapter Eighteen

J36

crouched behind some of the totems and scanned the living room. Somebody or something was rooting behind a 1: 4-scale Saber fighter jet made of Bumble Bee tuna and Spa-ghettiOs tins.

Eugene swept across the foyer like a cartoon detective. Stealthily he maneuvered to the base of the statue, its wheels resting atop a plinth built of stabilized Kraft Catalina salad-dressing boxes. He was calm. He stood up and, with kickbox-ing speed, lunged over to the other side of the base shouting " Freeze!, " and pointed the handgun onto what appeared to be a drifter—a wino—who yipped like a squeak toy, and cowered against the boxes. Eugene flipped on the light switch, shocking the room and flaring his retinas. " Well fuck me, " he said. " If it isn't Miss Wyoming. "

" Put down the gun, Ken Doll. "

" Lordy! Miss Congeniality. "

" Yeah, like I always keep a speech about world peace prepared. "

" Hey—" The adrenaline was wearing off. He grew confused. " You're supposed to be—"

" Dead? " she laughed. " Well, technically yes. "

Eugene paused and crossed his arms while studying Susan, now hoisting herself up. " Boo, " she said. " I'm not a ghost. I'm real. I promise. Nice place you have here. "

Perplexed, Eugene asked how she got in.

" I scampered in while you were on the curb. I was sleeping outside your front door. "

" You were sleeping outside my front door? "

" No. I was waiting in the soundproof booth to answer a skill-testing question. " Eugene was still digesting the scene before him and was silent. Susan wanted a reaction and added, " Gonad. " Douglas Couplancf

He lit a cigarette and relaxed just a smidge. " I can see you're a feisty one. Ten out of ten for deportment. "

" Oh, let it rest. I came here on purpose. What do you think. "

" You came here? Why here? And as I said, you're dead. I saw the crash on TV a hundred times. "

Susan stood up and removed the scarecrow's down jacket. " You've been doing weather for how many years now, Eugene— how many times are you ever right? "

" I was a good weatherman. "

" Was? I guess your station saw the inside of your house and decided to can you. " Susan was both pleased and surprised that she and Eugene so quickly fell into patter. More to the point, the sense of powerful first-crushiness initiated with " the wink" back in St. Louis was in no way diminished by the physical sight of an aged Eugene. He'd aged in the crinkly, weather-beaten manner of action heroes, sheepherders and five-star generals. His eyes remained as gemlike and clear as she'd remembered. He was also a kook and already kind of fun.

" Susan, what could you possibly have come to me here for? I've never even met you. "

" Where's Renata? "

" Renata's not here anymore. "

A good sign. Susan's insides thrummed. " You two split? "

" Years ago. You didn't answer my question. Why did you come here of all places? You've gotta know dozens of people within hours of the crash site. " He threw up his arms. " Shit. Look at me, trying to be logical with somebody who's supposed to be a ghost, fer Chrissake. "

Susan wondered herself why she had come there. All she'd known along the way was that she was in the Midwest and that Eugene's house seemed like the only safe place between thetwo coasts. She had no plan prepared for what came next. As this dawned on her, the lack of immediate response goaded Eugene.

" So let me get this straight—you thought Renata and I would give you a blanket, some Valiums and a phone line to 911? Your crash was a week ago, Miss Wyoming. Something's not right here. If you wanted blankets and cocoa, the time limit on that expired five days ago. "

Meanwhile, all Susan knew was that since her initial crush on Eugene she'd spent her life trying to find him in some form or another, mostly through Larry, and maybe now she wanted to see what the real goods were like. " Maybe I'm not sure myself why I'm here. "

" Oh, this is nuts! " He let out a breath. " Are you okay? After the crash? No broken bones? No bruises? "

" I'm fine. "

" You're going to tell me what happened? "

" Of course. Not now. Later. "

" You hungry? "

" Thirsty. "

" Come on. I'll get you some water. "

Susan brushed herself off and looked at Eugene's sculptures. " All this stuff made of trash. But it's so clean. How do you keep it all so clean? "

" It's my art. It's what I do. Come on. Kitchen's this way. How'd you get here from Ohio? "

The house was warm and dry. " It's pretty easy to get anywhere you want to in this country. All you have to do is find a truck stop, find some trucker who's flying on amphetamines, hop in the cab, drive a while, and then start foaming about religion—that way they dump you off at the next truck stop and you don't even have to put out. " " I remember seeing you on that stage, you know. "

" You do? " Susan was thrilled.

" Hell, yes. The night you won, you would have even if your mother hadn't done her little blackmail routine. "

Susan didn't want to dwell on Marilyn. " I'm thirsty, Eugene. "

Eugene gave her some water. The kitchen ceiling's lights wore milk carton shades, beacons of missing children, and cast a yellow light on the sink. She checked the expiry date on one of them. " April 4, 1991. That's when you started to become Picasso? "

" Sunshine, you're crazy as a fucking loon. And your voice. Your manner. You probably don't even know it, but you've become your mother. I only met her for maybe five minutes, but baby, you're her. "

Susan closed her eyes. She had a small puff of recognition. " Oh God—you know what, Eugene? You're right. I actually do feel like her right now, the way she moves. Funny—this has never happened to me before. It took me a plane crash to bring out my inner Marilyn. All it took her was fifteen years being the youngest daughter in a hillbilly shack full of alcoholics. " She put down her glass. " Now where am I going to go sleep? " They could hear a garbage truck outside, bleeping and throbbing.

Eugene was curious but exhausted. They inched back into the dining room. " My brain feels like Spam. Are you sure you're okay? "

" Yeah. "

Eugene became officious. " How'd you manage to survive that crash? "

Susan took a sip. She was beginning to feel level. The sense of having taken flight was gone. " You know, I've been thinking about that for seven days solid. I drew ticket number 58-A and won. I don't think there's anything more cosmic to it than that. There just isn't. I wish I could say there was, Eugene. "

" But where were you this past week? "

Susan yawned and smiled. " Save it for the morning. I've been up thirty-six hours. "

Eugene was too tired to probe further. " There's still a guestroom with furniture in it. Probably a bit dusty, but it ought to be fine. " Eugene led her there. Susan, meanwhile, was inwardly glowing: Eugene was single, retired and, like her, didn't have too much interest in the outer world. Once in the room, she lay her aviator glasses down on the bedside table and sat on the bed.

" You know, if it hadn't been for Mom pulling that stunt with you, then I never would have stolen your 8-x-lO and fallen in love with you. "

" Love! " Eugene seemed amused but then yawned. He said to Susan, " I phone in my grocery order tomorrow afternoon. Think of what you want to eat over the next week. "

" Why not go out and just buy them? "

" I don't like leaving the house. "

Susan hadn't heard such good news in years. It was all she could do to contain her sense of sleeping on Christmas Eve. " Good night, Eugene. Thanks. "

" Night, sunshine. "

Eugene sighed and walked down the hall. He loudly thumped the top of a totem. " And the winner is. . . " he said, " Miss Wyoming. What a fucking tide. "

At noon the next day Susan awoke to the sound of an electrical rhythmic thunking sound coming from the basement. Eugene's house. She rolled over and faintly purred.

A minivan drove by outside. The rumbling beneath her, precise and gentle, continued. She found an old housecoat on the guestroom door peg and walked down to a paneled oak door beneath the main staircase. Blazing green-white chinks of light escaped from around the door's edge, as though the door were shielding her from invading aliens. She opened it and discovered the basement. Eugene was dressed in slacks, socks and a polo shirt, orchestrating the Xerox 5380 console copier's collation of hundreds of mail-outs. There were shelves of blank paper, file folders and CD-ROM's containing thousands of U. S. and Canadian names and addresses Susan would soon learn were culled by a demographics research firm in Mechanicsville, Virginia, accompanied by information on incomes and spending patterns.

Eugene glanced up at Susan on the stairs. " Good morning, sunshine. Dressed for casual Friday, I see. "

On the walls surrounding Eugene's work area were dozens of wood and velvet plaques of clouds and sun and snow and temperatures ranging from —30 up to 120. She walked down the steps and picked up a velvet sun. " Whoo-ee! I'm all sunny today. " She noted Eugene's flash of disapproval and placed the sun back in its correct orbit.

" Thank you, " said Eugene, who continued with his clerical chores. Susan came up close to get a better peek at his documents, backing into Eugene.

He turned around. " Can you work a copier? "

" Back on the set of Meet the Blooms, whenever the writers got pissy and superior, I used to bring script production to a halt. You know how I did it? I wrote out of order on a sheet of scrap paper and taped it onto the copier's lid. All these people with IQs higher than Palm Springs temperatures, and not once did they consider challenging my paper signs. " She picked up a wooden plaque numbered 110°. " Did you ever use this one much? "

" Near the end. A few times. Once the weather got wrecked. "

" I guess you'd know. " She sat down on a stacking chair and watched Eugene. " When the show was canceled, Glenn, the head writer, loaded a commissary drinking straw with Nutra-Sweet. Back on the set, he opened the copier's top and blew the NutraSweet into the machine, onto the drum. Killed the machine dead. They had to throw it out. It's like the worst thing on earth for copiers. "

" This house is a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone. We'll be having none of your white-collar sabotage during your stay here. " But he couldn't hold back a smile.

The copier created a relaxing rhythm. Susan's eyes glazed and her thoughts wandered. " Did your TV station can you because you were nuts? "

Eugene, sorting papers, spoke: " Nah. They didn't can me. I was injured on the job. I took early retirement. "

" You were injured doing the nightly weather? "

" As it happened, yes. You want to know what happened? I was crushed by a Coke machine. "

" On the job? "

" In the studio, so it was insured and unionized up the ying-yang. They installed a talking Coke machine which weighed, like, a ton more than a normal mute Coke machine. So this ugly little twerp with hockey hair shakes the machine back and forth, getting a rhythm going, until a can or two pops out, and the thing toppled down on top of him and it crushed him like a pifiata. I happened to be passing by and my right foot got smashed. Look. . . "

Eugene removed his sock, and Susan bent down to look at Eugene's right foot, which, with its scars and stitches, resembled a map of Indiana divided into small, countylike chunks. " Ouch City, Arizona, " said Susan.

" You said it, baby. The kid was a goner, and I didn't walk for maybe seven months afterward. In the meantime they brought in a new guy with a fresher, perkier smile than me, who also focus-grouped like a royal wedding. I didn't have it in me to flog my butt around to the other stations. Too old. And if you're old in the weather biz, you either turn into a wacky eunuch real quick, or take a hike. So I hiked. "

" Let me see your foot more closely. " She sat down. " Put it in my lap. "

Eugene turned off the copier, and silence, like solidified Lu-cite, filled the air. He sat on a chair opposite Susan and hoisted his leg up and dropped it into Susan's lap.

Susan said, " Mom trained me never to say a word or a sentence without imagining that a pageant judge is out there secretly listening in. So my whole life I've been followed by this invisible flotilla of soap opera actresses, Chevy dealers, costume designers and TV weathermen who scan my every word. It's a habit I can't shake. It's like those people whose parents made them chew food twenty times before swallowing, and so the rest of their life becomes a hell of twenties. " She looked Eugene in the eyes: " Does it hurt when I do that? " The atmosphere for Susan took on the it's-not-really-happening aura of life's better sex.

" No. Some of it I can't feel at all. And some of it feels like regular touching and. . . "

Susan looked him in the eye and applied more pressure but was also more thoughtful, kneading both the bottom leathery pads and tender spots between the toes.

" I saw you that night—at the pageant. You winked. Your wink almost bruised me, " Susan confessed. Her hands locked onto his ankles. She stared him down: " I've been through a lot this week. I need a shower, Eugene. "

He led her up out of the basement. They readied the bathroom. Susan turned on the water, clean and hot, and in an instant they were naked and wet and all over each other like scrapping dogs. Susan felt her skin shouting with relief, as though it had been long smothered, and her insides felt like she was riding in a fast elevator. They slammed into each other, releasing unknown volumes of anger and lust and loneliness until finally the water went cold and they left the tub. Eugene opened a cupboard which contained, to Susan's surprise, fresh towels.

A few minutes later, Susan was looking into Renata's old closet for something to wear. " I'm going to borrow one of these Bob Mackie gowns here. I see she left her stuff behind. " There were hundreds of dresses and outfits hanging from a dry cleaner's mechanized conveyor belt. The outfits did a dainty little jig as Susan turned the system on and off. " Boy, if Mom could see this. "

" Christ, turn that thing off. The noise is like the theme song to a show I don't watch anymore. "

" She can't have been that bad. "

" You used to be married, too. "

" Still am, technically. We never divorced. "

" Rock star guy. Rough stuff, I imagine. "

" Chris? Rough, yes, but stuff, no. He's gay as a goose. I married him so he could get a green card and so I could remain close to his Catholic and very married manager Larry Mortimer. " She stopped playing with the clothing rack.

Eugene was dialing on the cordless, ordering groceries. " Oh God. "

" What? "

" You're real, " he said.

" As opposed to... ? " He lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling fan. " I've got a good thing going here. My time is all my own. I don't have to deal with. . . "

" With what? "

" With people, " Eugene spat out.

Susan looked at him. " I agree. You do have a good deal going here. "

Now they were both looking at the ceiling and holding hands. Eugene asked her, " What did the focus groups say about you? "

" What do you mean? "

" You know. The focus groups. The ones they brought in to pick you apart so the network could figure out what makes you you. "

Susan was intrigued. " Why? "

" I'll tell you what they said about me. Then you tell me what they said about you. "

" Okay, deal. "

" Women said, 'What's with his hair? Is it real? Is that his real color? ' They said, 'Ooh, me so horny, me want humpy astronaut. ' They said, 'I'd go metric for you, baby. ' Guys weren't as descriptive. They just called me nothing, but once they saw my face, they knew the sports segment was over and could switch off the set. " He lit a cigarette then lay back and chuckled. " TV Ugh. "

Susan spooned into him. The sheets felt like cool pastry marble.

She said, " Near the end they knew they had enough episodes to syndicate, so they stopped focus-grouping. But at the start I got stuff like 'I can see the zits underneath her makeup. Can't you guys find her a putty knife? That's one helluva thick paper bag she's trying to act her way out of. Her tits are like fried eggsgone all runny. ' That kind of stuff. " Their eyes caught and they both laughed.

" I've gotta phone in this grocery order. " Eugene punched a phone number into the cordless, and the touch-tone beeps reminded Susan of a song she used to like back in the eighties.

Chapter Eighteen

Susan had performed in shopping strips many times, and her afternoon stint at the Clackamas County Mall was by no means unusual. In fact, as opposed to pageant judges, she found the overwhelmingly geriatric mall crowds emotionally invisible, and performing before them neither chancy nor stressful, her only stings arising from the occasional heckling teen or a stray leering pensioner. Once in Olympia, Washington, mall security had removed an old lech who'd been wanking listlessly down by the left speaker bank, like a zoo gorilla resigned to a sterile caged fate. Susan thought it was funny, but hadn't quite understood what it was he'd actually been doing. She'd told both her mother and the mall cops she thought he'd been " shaking a donut, " which made the cops snort and Marilyn screech. When the cops briefly left the office, Susan had said, " Mom, please don't go filing another lawsuit. Not over this. Just let it go. "

" Young lady, who knows what harm that man did to you. "

" What harm? "

" It'll be years before you even know, sweetie. "

" Mom—no lawsuit. I'm sick of your suing people all the time. It's my birthday. Make it my present, okay? "

Marilyn's face froze but then immediately thawed. " I'll just keep on shucking bunnies to help pay the rent. I suppose somebody has to work in this world. " At the Clackamas Mall it had been arranged for Susan to perform a Grease medley, her routine that somehow dovetailed with the mall's Campaign for Drug-Free Kids. Susan's friend Trish had just turned sixteen, and drove Susan up to the mall from McMinnville. Marilyn was to follow shortly, after stopping to meet with a seamstress in Beaverton to go over Susan's autumn look.

Susan and Trish parked, hooked up with their mall contact, and then crammed themselves into the Orange Julius bathroom where Susan's poodle skirt remained untouched within its paper Nordstrom s bag. From a gym bag, she and Trish removed black jumpsuits and thin red leather ties. Both combed their hair into spikes and applied gel and heavy mascara, then headed backstage. Susan's name was called, and the two climbed up onto the carpeted plywood risers. They walked like robotic mimes, Trish to her Casio keyboard, Susan to center stage. To the bored and distracted mall audience they might just as well have been dressed as Valkyries or elm trees, but Susan felt for the first time a surge of power.

Trish hit the opening notes, at which point Susan lifted a riding crop she'd borrowed from one of Don's army buddies. She began to crack the whip in time with the rhythmic nonsense of " Whip It, " a by-then-stale new wave anthem. For the first time, Susan didn't feel like a circus seal onstage. Trish kept the synthesizer loud, and Susan could feel all other times she'd been onstage drop away—those years she'd been trussed and gussied up, barking for fish in front of Marilyn and every pageant judge on earth, joylessly enacting her moves like a stewardess demonstrating the use of an oxygen mask.

But now—the faces—Susan was seeing genuine reactions: mouths dropped wide open, mothers whisking away children— and at the back, the cool kids who normally mooned her and pelted her with Jelly Tots, watching without malice.

Suddenly the speaker squawked and moaned, and Susan turned around to see Marilyn ripping color-coded jacks from the backs of the Marshall amps while a mall technician lamely protested the ravaging. Heads in the audience shifted as if they were a field of wheat, in the direction where Susan now turned, glaring like a raven.

" What the hell are you doing, Mom? "

Marilyn plucked out more jacks, and her face muscles tensed like a dishrag in the process of being squeezed.

Susan cracked the riding crop at Marilyn, where it burned Marilyn's hands, a crimson plastic index fingernail jumping away like a cricket. " Mom, stop it! Stop! "

Marilyn grabbed the crop's end and yanked it away from Susan. She looked to be rabid and scrambled up over the 2-X-6 trusses and onto the stage. Susan turned to her audience. She was raging. " Ladies and gentlemen, let's have a big hand for" — she paused as Marilyn raised herself awkwardly, like a horse from thick mud—" my overenthusiastic mother. "

The audience smelled blood and clapped with gusto as Marilyn cuffed Susan on the neck. Three hooligans over by the Sock Shoppe shouted meows, at which point Susan went momentarily deaf from Marilyn's blow. Time stopped for her. She was lifted up and out of herself, and she felt aware for the first time that her mother didn't own her the way she owned the Cor-vair or the fridge. In fact, Susan realized Marilyn had no more ownership of her than she did of the Space Needle or Mount Hood. Marilyn's connection was sentimental if Susan chose it to be that way, or business, which made some sense, but no longer was Marilyn able to treat Susan like a slammed car door every time she lost control.

Marilyn looked in Susan's eyes, realized she'd blown it and would never regain her advantage. This sent her into a larger

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