"Lordy! Miss Congeniality."
"Yeah, like I always keep a speech about world peaceprepared."
"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"mreal. 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 askill-testing question." Eugene was still digesting the scene be-fore 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 afeisty 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"redead. I saw thecrash 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? Iguess your station saw the inside of your houseand decided to can you." Susan was both pleased and sur-prised that she and Eugene so quickly fell into patter. Moreto the point, the sense of powerful first-crushiness initiatedwith "the wink" back in St. Louis was in no way diminished by the physical sight of an aged Eugene. He"d aged in thecrinkly, weather-beaten manner of action heroes, sheepherdersand five-star generals. His eyes remained as gemlike and clearas she"d remembered. He was also a kook and already kindof 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 youcome here of all places? You"ve gotta know dozens of peoplewithin hours of the crash site." He threw up his arms. "s.h.i.t.Look at me, trying to be logical with somebody who"s supposedto be a ghost, fer Chrissake."
Susan wondered herself why she had come there. All she"dknown along the way was that she was in the Midwest and thatEugene"s house seemed like the only safe place between thetwo coasts. She had no plan prepared for what came next. Asthis dawned on her, the lack of immediate response goaded Eugene.
"So let me get this straight-you thought Renata and I wouldgive you a blanket, some Valiums and a phone line to 911 ? Yourcrash was a week ago, Miss Wyoming. Something"s not right here.If you wanted blankets and cocoa, the time limit on that expiredfive days ago."
Meanwhile, all Susan knew was that since her initial crush onEugene she"d spent her life trying to find him in some form or another, mostly through Larry, and maybe now she wanted tosee what the real goods were like. "Maybe I"m not sure myselfwhy I"m here."
"Oh, this is nuts!" He let out a breath. "Are you okay? Afterthe 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 keepit 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 getanywhere you want to in this country. All you have to do is finda truck stop, find some trucker who"s flying on ampheta-mines, hop in the cab, drive a while, and then start foamingabout 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.
"h.e.l.l, yes. The night you won, you would have even if yourmother 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 lightswore 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 becomePica.s.so?"
"Sunshine, you"re crazy as a f.u.c.king loon. And your voice.Your manner. You probably don"t even know it, but you"ve be-come your mother. I only met her for maybe five minutes, butbaby, you"re her."
Susan closed her eyes. She had a small puff of recognition."Oh G.o.d-you know what, Eugene? You"re right. I actually dofeel like her right now, the way she moves. Funny-this hasnever happened to me before. It took me a plane crash tobring out my inner Marilyn. All it took her was fifteen yearsbeing the youngest daughter in a hillbilly shack full of alco-holics." She put down her gla.s.s. "Now where am I going to go sleep?"They could hear a garbage truck outside, bleeping andthrobbing.
Eugene was curious but exhausted. They inched back intothe dining room. "My brain feels like Spam.
Are you sureyou"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 ofhaving taken flight was gone. "You know, I"ve been thinking about that for seven days solid. I drew ticket number 58-A andwon. 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 beenup thirty-six hours."
Eugene was too tired to probe further. "There"s still a guest-room with furniture in it. Probably a bit dusty, but it ought tobe fine." Eugene led her there. Susan, meanwhile, was inwardlyglowing: Eugene was single, retired and, like her, didn"thave too much interest in the outer world. Once in the room,she lay her aviator gla.s.ses down on the bedside table and saton 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 inlove with you."
"Love!" Eugene seemed amused but then yawned. He said toSusan, "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 thumpedthe top of a totem. "And the winner is . . ."
he said, "MissWyoming. What a f.u.c.kingtide."
At noon the next day Susan awoke to the sound of an elec-trical rhythmic thunking sound coming from the bas.e.m.e.nt.Eugene"s house. She rolled over and faintly purred.
A minivan drove by outside. The rumbling beneath her, pre-cise and gentle, continued. She found an old housecoat on theguestroom door peg and walked down to a paneled oak doorbeneath the main staircase. Blazing green-white c.h.i.n.ks of lightescaped from around the door"s edge, as though the door wereshielding her from invading aliens. She opened it and discov-ered the bas.e.m.e.nt. Eugene was dressed in slacks, socks and apolo shirt, orchestrating the Xerox 5380 console copier"s colla-tion of hundreds of mail-outs. There were shelves of blank pa-per, file folders and CD-ROM"s containing thousands of U.S. andCanadian names and addresses Susan would soon learn wereculled by a demographics research firm in Mechanicsville, Vir-ginia, accompanied by information on incomes and spendingpatterns.
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 ofwood and velvet plaques of clouds and sun and snow and tem-peratures ranging from -30 up to 120. She walked down the steps and picked up a velvet sun. "Whoo-ee! I"m all sunny to-day." She noted Eugene"s flash of disapproval and placed the sun back in its correct orbit.
"Thank you," said Eugene, who continued with his clericalch.o.r.es. Susan came up close to get a better peek at his docu-ments, backing into Eugene.
He turned around. "Can you work a copier?"
"Back on the set of Meet the Blooms, whenever the writers gotp.i.s.sy and superior, I used to bring script production to a halt.You know how I did it? I wroteout of order on a sheet ofsc.r.a.p paper and taped it onto the copier"s lid. All these peoplewith IQs higher than Palm Springs temperatures, and not oncedid they consider challenging my paper signs." She picked up awooden plaque numbered 110. "Did you ever use this one much?"
"Near the end. Afew times. Once the weather got wrecked."
"I guess you"d know." She sat down on a stacking chair andwatched Eugene. "When the show was canceled, Glenn, thehead writer, loaded a commissary drinking straw with Nutra-Sweet. Back on the set, he opened the copier"s top and blew theNutraSweet into the machine, onto the drum. Killed the ma- chine 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 havingnone of your white-collar sabotage during your stay here." Buthe couldn"t hold back a smile.
The copier created a relaxing rhythm. Susan"s eyes glazed andher thoughts wandered. "Did your TV station can you becauseyou were nuts?"
Eugene, sorting papers, spoke: "Nah. They didn"t can me. Iwas 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? Iwas crushed by a c.o.ke machine."
"On the job?"
"In the studio, so it was insured and unionized up the ying-yang. They installed a talking c.o.ke machine which weighed,like, a ton more than a normal mute c.o.ke machine. So this uglylittle twerp with hockey hair shakes the machine back andforth, getting a rhythm going, until a can or two pops out,and the thing toppled down on top of him and it crushed himlike a pifiata. I happened to be pa.s.sing by and my right foot gotsmashed. Look . . ."
Eugene removed his sock, and Susan bent down to look atEugene"s right foot, which, with its scars and st.i.tches, resem-bled a map of Indiana divided into small, countylike chunks."Ouch City, Arizona," said Susan.
"You saidit, baby. The kid was a goner, and I didn"t walk formaybe seven months afterward. In the meantime they brought in a new guy with a fresher, perkier smile than me, who alsofocus-grouped like a royal wedding. I didn"t have it in me toflog my b.u.t.t around to the other stations. Too old. And if you"reold 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 inmy lap."
Eugene turned off the copier, and silence, like solidified Lu-cite, filled the air. He sat on a chair opposite Susan and hoistedhis leg up and dropped it into Susan"s lap.
Susan said, "Mom trained me never to say a word or a sentencewithout imagining that a pageant judge is out there secretlylistening in. So my whole life I"ve been followed by this invisi-ble flotilla of soap opera actresses, Chevy dealers, costume de-signers and TV weathermen who scan my every word. It"s ahabit I can"t shake. It"s like those people whose parents madethem chew food twenty times before swallowing, and so therest of their life becomes a h.e.l.l of twenties." She looked Eugenein 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 bet-ter s.e.x.
"No. Some of it I can"t feel at all. And some of it feels likeregular touching and . . ."
Susan looked him in the eye and applied more pressure butwas also more thoughtful, kneading both the bottom leatherypads and tender spots between the toes.
"I saw you that night-at the pageant. You winked. Your winkalmost bruised me," Susan confessed.
Her hands locked onto hisankles. She stared him down: "I"ve been through a lot this week. I need a shower, Eugene."
He led her up out of the bas.e.m.e.nt. They readied the bath-room. Susan turned on the water, clean and hot, and in an in-stant they were naked and wet and all over each other likesc.r.a.pping dogs. Susan felt her skin shouting with relief, asthough 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 l.u.s.t and loneliness until finally the water went cold and they left the tub. Eugeneopened a cupboard which contained, to Susan"s surprise, freshtowels.
A few minutes later, Susan was looking into Renata"s oldcloset for something to wear. "I"m going to borrow one of these Bob Mackie gowns here. I see she left her stuff behind." Therewere hundreds of dresses and outfits hanging from a drycleaner"s mechanized conveyor belt. The outfits did a dainty lit-tle jig as Susan turned the system on and off. "Boy, if Momcould 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 mar-ried him so he could get a green card and so I could remainclose to his Catholic and very married manager Larry Mor-timer." She stopped playing with the clothing rack.
Eugene was dialing on the cordless, ordering groceries."Oh G.o.d."
"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 todeal with . . ."
"With what?"
"With people," Eugene spat out.
Susan looked at him. "I agree. You do have a good dealgoing here."
Now they were both looking at the ceiling and holdinghands. Eugene asked her, "What did the focus groups sayabout you?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know. The focus groups. The ones they brought in topick you apart so the network could figure out what makesyou you."
Susan was intrigued. "Why?"
"I"ll tell you what they said about me. Then you tell me whatthey said about you."