"I was born in Rochester. I don"t think I live anywhere."
"Rochester. What"s it like in Rochester?"
"I lived in a Mafia neighborhood. Everybody kept their yards neat and n.o.body ever broke into the houses."
"A lot of factories?"
"Eastman Kodak and Xerox Corporation. There"s a lot of s.h.i.t in the world, and Rochester exists by making copies of it." The boy said it bitterly, but Siggy laughed. It was funny, after all. The boy finally smiled, too.
"What are you going to do in California?" Siggy asked.
"Find a place to sleep and maybe a job."
"Want to be an actor?"
The boy looked at Siggy with contempt. "An actor? actor? Like Jane Fonda?" He said the name like poison. The tone of voice was familiar. Siggy decided to try him out on the Name. Like Jane Fonda?" He said the name like poison. The tone of voice was familiar. Siggy decided to try him out on the Name.
"What do you think of Richard Nixon?" Siggy asked.
"I don"t," said the boy.
And then, madly, knowing it could ruin everything, Siggy blurted, "I"m going to get him."
"What?" the boy asked.
Siggy recovered his senses. Some of them, anyway. "I"m going to meet him. At San Clemente."
The boy laughed. "What do you want to meet him for?"
Siggy shrugged.
"They won"t let you near him anyway. You think he wants to see people like us? Nixon." And there it was. The tone of voice. The contempt. Siggy was rea.s.sured. He was doing the right thing.
The hours pa.s.sed and so did the states. Illinois came and went, and they crossed the Mississippi at St. Louis. Not as big as Siggy had expected, but still a h.e.l.l of a lot of water, when you thought about it. Then Missouri, which was too wide and too dull. And because it was dull, they kept talking. The boy had a bitter streak a mile wide-everything seemed to lead to it. Siggy found it more comfortable to do the talking himself, and since the boy kept listening and saying something now and then, it seemed OK. They were beginning to pa.s.s signs that promised Kansas City as if it were a prize when Siggy got on the subject of Marie. Remembered things about her. How she loved wine-a French vice that Siggy loved in her.
"When she was a little drunk," he told the boy, "her eyes would get big. Sometimes full of tears, but she"d still smile. And she"d lift up her chin and stretch her neck. Like a deer."
Maybe the boy was getting tired of the conversation. Maybe he just resented hearing about a love that actually worked. He answered snappishly. "When you ever seen a deer, Manhattan cabdriver? The zoo?"
Siggy refused to be offended. "She was like a deer."
"I think she sounds like a giraffe." The boy smirked a little, as if saying this were somehow a victory over Siggy. Well, it was. It had worn down his patience.
"It"s my wife we"re talking about. She died two years ago."
"What do I care? I mean what makes you think I give a pink s.h.i.t about it? You want to cry? You want to get all weepy about it? Then do it quiet. Jesus, give a guy a break, will you?"
Siggy kept his eyes on the road. There was a bitter feeling in his stomach. For a moment his hands felt violent, and he gripped the wheel. Then the feeling pa.s.sed, and he got his curiosity back again.
"Hey, what"re you so mad about?"
"Mad? What says I"m mad?"
"You sounded mad."
"I sounded mad!"
"Yeah, I wondered if maybe you wanted to talk about it."
The boy laughed acidly. "What, the seat reclines? It becomes maybe a couch? I stuck my thumb out because I wanted a ride. I want psychoa.n.a.lysis, I stick out a different finger, you understand?"
"Hey, fine, relax."
"I"m not tense, s.h.i.thead." He gripped the door handle so tightly that Siggy was afraid the door would crumple like tinfoil and fall away from the car.
"I"m sorry," the boy said finally, still looking forward. He didn"t let go of the door.
"It"s OK," Siggy answered.
"About your wife, I mean. I"m not like that. I don"t just go around making fun of people"s dead wives."
"Yeah."
"And you"re right. I"m mad."
"At me?"
"You? What"re you? A p.i.s.s-ant. One of twelve million p.i.s.s-ants in New York City. We"re all p.i.s.s-ants."
"What"re you mad at?" Siggy could not resist adding the figures to his checklist. "Inflation? Oil companies? Nuclear plants?"
"What is this, the Gallup poll?"
"Maybe yeah. People get mad at a lot of the same things. Nuclear plants then?"
"I"m mad at nuclear plants, yeah."
"You want "em all shut down, right?"
"Wrong, turkey. I want "em to build a million of "em. I want "em to build "em everywhere, and then on the count of three they all blow up, they wipe out this whole country."
"America?"
"From sea to s.h.i.tting sea."
Then silence again. Siggy thought he could feel the whole car trembling with the young man"s anger. It made Siggy sad. He kept glancing at the boy"s face. It wasn"t old. There were some acne scars; the beard was thin in quite a few places. Siggy tried to imagine the face without the beard. Without the anger. Without the too many drugs and too many bottles. The face when it was childish and innocent.
"You know," Siggy said, "I can"t believe-I look at you, I can"t believe that somebody loved you once."
"n.o.body asked you to believe it."
"But they must have, right? Somebody taught you to walk. And talk. And ride a bicycle. You had a father, right?"
Suddenly the boy"s fist shot out and slammed into the glove compartment door, which popped open with a crash. Siggy was startled, afraid. The boy showed no sign of pain, though it seemed he had hit hard enough to break a finger.
"Hey, careful," Siggy said.
"You want me to be careful? You tell me to be careful, a.s.shole?" The boy grabbed the steering wheel, jerked on it. The taxi swung into another lane; a car behind them squealed on its brakes and honked.
"Are you crazy? Do you want to get us killed? Get mad, wreck the car, but don"t kill us!" Siggy was screaming in anger, and the boy sat there, trembling, his eyes not quite focused. Then the car that had honked at them pulled up beside them on the right. The driver was yelling something with his window down. His face looked ugly with anger. The boy held up his middle finger. The man made the same gesture back again.
And suddenly the boy rolled down the window. "Hey, don"t get us in trouble," Siggy said. The boy ignored him. He yelled a string of obscenities out the window. Siggy sped up, trying to pull away from the other car. The driver of the other car kept pace with him, yelled back his own curses.
And then the boy pulled a revolver out of his pocket, a big, mean-looking black pistol, and aimed it out the window at the driver of the other car. The man suddenly looked terrified. Siggy slammed on the brakes, but so did the other driver, and they stayed nearly parallel.
"Don"t!" Siggy screamed, and he sped up, leaving the other car in the distance. The boy pulled the gun back into the car and laid it on his lap, the c.o.c.k still back, his finger still on the trigger.
"It isn"t loaded, right?" Siggy asked. "It was just a joke, right? Would you take your finger off the trigger?"
But it was as if the boy didn"t hear him. As if he didn"t even remember the last few minutes. "You wanted to know if I had a father, right? I have a father."
At the moment Siggy didn"t much care whether the boy had been born in a test tube. But better he should talk about his father than wave the gun around.
"My father," said the boy, "spends his life making sure enough Xerox machines are getting sold and putting more ads in the magazines when they aren"t."
They crossed the border into Kansas, and Siggy hoped the incident with the pistol wouldn"t get reported across state lines.
"My father never taught me to ride a bike. My brother did. My brother was killed in Mr. President Nixon"s war. You know?"
"That was a long time ago," Siggy said.
The boy looked at him coldly. "It was yesterday, a.s.shole. You don"t believe those calendars, do you? All lies, so we"ll think it"s OK to forget about it. Maybe your wife died years ago, Mr. Cabdriver, but I thought you loved her better than that."
Then the boy looked down at the pistol in his lap, still c.o.c.ked, still ready to fire.
"I thought I left this home," he said in surprise. "What"s it doing here?"
"I should know?" Siggy asked. "Do me a favor, unc.o.c.k the thing and put it away."
"OK," the boy said. But he didn"t do anything.
"Hey, please," Siggy said. "You scare me, that thing sitting there ready to shoot."
The boy bowed his head over the pistol for a few moments. "Let me out," he said. "Let me get out."
"Hey, come on, just put the gun away, you don"t have to get out, I won"t be mad, just put the gun away."
The boy looked up at him and there were tears in his eyes, spilling out onto his cheeks. "You think I brought this gun by accident? I don"t want to kill you."
"Then why"d you bring it?"
"I don"t know. Jesus, man, let me out."
"You want to go to California, I"m going to California."
"I"m dangerous," the boy said.
d.a.m.n right you"re dangerous, Siggy thought. d.a.m.n right. And I"m a doubled.a.m.ned fool not to let you out of here right this second, right this minute, very next off-ramp I"ll pull over and let him off.
"Not to me," Siggy said, wondering why he wasn"t more afraid.
"To you. I"m dangerous to you."
"Not to me." And Siggy realized why he was so confident. It was the fairy G.o.dmother, sitting inside the back of his head. "You think I"m going to let anything happen to you, dummkopf? dummkopf?" she asked him silently. "If you knock off before you make your wish, it ruins my life. The clerical work alone would take years." I"m crazy, thought Siggy. This boy is nuts, but I"m crazy.
"Yeah," the boy said finally, gently letting down the hammer and putting the gun back into the pocket of his jacket. "Not to you."
They drove in silence for a while, as the plains flattened out and the sky went even flatter and the sun went dim behind the gray overcast. "Richard Nixon, huh?" the boy asked.
"Yeah."
"You really think they"ll let us get near him?"
"I"ll see to it," Siggy said. And it occurred to him for the first time that fairy G.o.dmothers might fulfill wishes in unpleasant ways. Wish him dead? I should wish Nixon dead, and this boy goes to prison forever for killing him? Watch it, fairy G.o.dmother, he warned. I won"t let you trick me. I have a plan, and I won"t let you trick me into hurting this boy.
"Hungry, Son?" Siggy asked. "Or can you hold out till Denver?"
"Denver"s fine," said the boy. "But don"t call me Son."
It was hot in Los Angeles, but as Siggy neared the sea the breezes became steadily cooler. He was tired. He was used to driving, but not so long a stretch, not so far. In a way the freeways were restful-no traffic, no guesswork about where the car to the right would be a few minutes later. People actually paid attention to the lines between lanes. But the freeways went on, relentlessly, mile after mile, until he felt like he was standing still and the road and the scenery played swiftly past him and under him. At last they had brought Los Angeles to him, and here the scenery would stop for him and wait for him to act. San Clemente. Richard Nixon"s house. He found them easily, as if he had always known the way. The boy, asleep beside him for the last few hundred miles, woke up when Siggy brought the cab to a halt.
"What?" asked the boy, sleepily.
"Go back to sleep," Siggy said, getting out of the car. The boy got out, too.
"This is it?"
"Yes," Siggy said, already walking toward the entrance.
"I gotta pee," the boy said. But Siggy ignored him, and kept on walking. The boy followed, ran a little, caught up, saying softly, "s.h.i.t can"t you even wait a minute?"
Secret Service men were everywhere, of course, but by now Siggy"s madness was complete. He knew that they could not stop him. He had to meet Richard Nixon, and so he would. He had parked a long way from the mansion, and he just walked in, the boy at his heels. He didn"t climb fences or do anything extraordinary. Just walked up the drive, around the house, and out onto the beach. No one saw him. No one called out to him. Secret Servicemen seemed always to have their backs to him, or to be on an urgent errand somewhere else. He would have his meeting with Richard Nixon. He would use his wish.
And he was standing where the water charged up the sand, always falling short of its last achievement as the tide ebbed. The boy stood beside him. Siggy watched the house, but the boy watched Siggy. "I thought they had us," the boy said. "I can"t believe we got in here."