The Baby Merchant Page 14

  “Bingo. But nobody ever had to tell you anything, you always knew. I could tell you were going to be some big deal!” What the fuck, he is beaming. “Man, it’s great seeing you.”

  There is a moment in some human transactions when you become aware that you are more important to the person you’re talking to than they ever were to you. They remember you. They set great store by you back then. You see it in their faces even as you think guiltily that you never gave them a thought. “You too.”

  “So, cool, what are you up to?”

  Why are we stuck in this hall? “You know, this and that.”

  “You didn’t come to our fifth.”

  “Yeah, I guess I just got busy.” Duck and cover, man. Split!

  But Willie persists. “We thought we’d see you at our fifth.” “Sorry. I don’t do reunions.” But, why? He knows what reunions are like. He can see them all— people he barely knew and the few he was close to, all studying him like the board of some big company: A Group to Report To. Nice looking guys just about his age with nice new families, good jobs and kind faces. What would he say that they would want to hear? What could he possibly say? “This is great, Will, but I’ve gotta go.”

  “You should have come, dude.”

  “Busy. You know.”

  “It’s been a long time.”

  Starbird tries to leave but his new best friend hooks him with aggressive speed. Grimacing, he tries to get free. “Guess it has.”

  “Damn straight, dude. We missed you.”

  When you are committed to disappearing, this is the last thing you want to hear. “No you didn’t.”

  “OK, then, we wondered where you were.”

  “I’ve been around.”

  “You know what I mean.” Willie here means: What have you been up to? In case Starbird doesn’t get it he says, “Like how’s it going, and how’s your life?”

  “Busy.”

  “We’re all busy, man. What about we catch up over a drink?”

  “Love to but I can’t.”

  “Can’t or don’t want to?”

  “I’m kind of tied up right now,” Starbird says, making a feint at the door. “Nice seeing you, guy.”

  Slow-moving, nice enough schlub, but a schlub, Barton covers him like a basketball guard. “Come on, let me buy you a drink.”

  “I can’t right now, I have to see a person about a thing.”

  “One drink. After all, you haven’t exactly been in touch.”

  “Sorry, I’ve been busy.”

  “Nobody gets too busy to …” There is that flash of hostility because you are more important to him than you knew. “One drink.”

  “OK. One drink.”

  It is a mistake. They are standing at the bar when Willie starts. “Married much?”

  “Not so’s you’d notice.” This is getting more and more uncomfortable. “You?”

  “About to.” But Willie won’t stop and let him ask the questions that would derail this investigation, now that he has Starbird in his power he just keeps boring in. “Still seeing Marie, I hope.”

  Arg. Is this iron man Tom Starbird gnawing his lip and trying not to turn red? “Not so’s you’d notice.”

  “Somebody better? You always did have a …”

  “I told you, I’ve been busy. Look.” He shoves his hand in his pocket. “Phone’s vibrating, and I’ve gotta take this call. Sorry. Be right back.”

  Willie has no right to look so hurt. “No you won’t.”

  “OK. Take care.” Starbird pats him in place and goes.

  This does not stop Willie from scrambling after him. “Got a card?”

  “Not on me.”

  “E addy?”

  “It’s a lot of numbers and stuff. Look, I’ve really gotta go.”

  Reluctantly, Willie lets go. “OK my e is funicular@aol.com. Easy, right?”

  “Very easy.”

  But his voice follows. “So mail me.”

  “Sure, Willie. Right now I’ve.”

  “Later, OK?”

  “Later, sure. Gotta …”

  “Fershure, then.”

  “get …”

  The voice trails after him; the asshole can’t let it go. “That’s funicular@aol.com.”

  Out of this town!

  14.

  Waiting for the bus in the Florida moonlight, Sasha is tense; at any minute Gary could lunge out of the palmettos or swoop down in his Neon and drag her off screaming. She’s too huge and clumsy to put up much of a fight. The bus looms up in the Florida night like a wish fulfilled; anxiety drains out of her as soon as the doors hiss open and she makes it up the steps. Embraced by the dimness, she blunders along between rows of drowsing passengers and falls into the last available seat. She drops into sleep like a stone and sleeps until dawn, when passengers begin staggering back and forth to the toilet, cleaning up for the next big stop. In a way, Sasha wishes the bus would roll on past the terminal and keep on rolling. She feels protected here in the back of the Greyhound, warm and snug in her plush reclining seat with her feet propped on the collapsible footrest; never mind that her ankles have begun to swell. On another day she’d have stayed on the bus and ridden forever, due north to the border and up to Canada; she could get off the Greyhound in some small town and disappear in the great north woods, but not today. With her belly clenching in phantom contractions, it’s time to call the shot.

  When they roll in to the Greyhound terminal at Jacksonville, Florida, she gets off. Big, stupendously indifferent, it’s a good place to start. Built along the St. John’s River, the city of Jacksonville is an overgrown, confusing industrial hick town where it’s easy to get lost: quadruple lanes of clashing traffic, sulfurous haze, your vision obscured by toxins layering in the morning light. Yes there are glossy highrises, expanding areas of gentrification and megamalls in abundance, but it’s still an industrial city and it still smells bad. Sasha picks up a Jacksonville Journal at the terminal newsstand and hides out at the nearest fast food place, studying the Classifieds until the used car lots open for the day. It doesn’t take long to find the kind of dealer she needs: a guy committed to moving used cars in a hurry, no questions asked. She picks up a rusting black Toyota for a few hundred dollars, title? More money changes hands. Honey, nobody needs a title on this kind of car. Grinning, she gets in and heads for the coast.

  Finding a place is easier than she thought. She finds the DelMar around the time her appetite alarm starts jangling; she sees the DelMar Diner sign from the road, motel attached. Now she is holed up in this seedy, genteel motel marked for death, situated in the shadow of an expanding megamall so far outside Savannah, Georgia, that even if he could guess what city, Gary Cargill wouldn’t have the wits to figure out which place.

  Nice clean room she’s found to bring the baby back to, Fifties knotty pine paneling with a duck print over the bed, floral repros over the matching dresser; once forest green chenille bedspread with the peacock spin-dried to death, shag carpeting scrubbed so often that she can’t guess what color it used to be, but clean. Clean. The tile in the tiny bathroom is baby pink. The DelMar looks less like the Bates Motel than a fugitive from a Coen Brothers’ movie, it’s only a matter of time before the eighteen-wheelers and land yachts come nosing into the lot outside like animals at a watering hole, because the motel is situated on a frontage road and there’s a liquor license posted in the diner attached. But the mall is encroaching and the place could go on the market any minute.

  “It’s yours for as long as you want it,” the queen-sized manager tells her, sweeping furry Delta Burke eyelashes in the direction of Sasha’s bulge, “but be warned. The place could go on the market any minute.”

  Seems like a nice person. The room is clean. It’s half the price of a Holiday Inn. “I’ll take my chances,” Sasha says.

  “You won’t be sorry,” the manager says because they always do.

  She puts down cash. She has to save her plastic for the hospital, no idea what that will cost, but he
r credit limit is 20K, should be enough. Plastic when the time comes, not before. Even though Visa knows her as Sasha Egan, she could be traced before she’s fit to travel again. Cash machine, small withdrawals, she’ll be fine. The DelMar’s manager thanks her. She writes out a receipt, but she doesn’t leave. Lonely, Sasha thinks, she’s probably alone here. The woman is big as a house trailer but she dresses like a star: big prints in gaudy colors, to suggest she is proud of her size, or that she is beyond being ashamed. Costume jewelry and heavy makeup. She hovers with her lips pooched in an expectant, frosted coral 0. Hoping to release her, Sasha says, “Thanks.” Her gesture takes in the green bedspread, the curtains, the tacky furnishings. “This is really very nice.”

  “Any minute we might have to sell.” Poor lady, her eyes fill up. This motel is more to her than just a job. What did she, marry into the DelMar? Who was Del, and what happened to him anyway? Did he love her, or did he make her manager so he could run away and be free? Did she eat to console herself, or did he die, so eating’s all she has? Sniffling, the fat woman went on in a beautiful contralto, “The state could come along and condemn us any time and take the land.”

  “You can always fight it,” Sasha says.

  “Sweet girl. I’m giving you the monthly rate.” She shows Sasha where the blankets are stored. “You are so lucky,” she says. “Girl or boy?”

  Oh, the baby. She’d almost forgotten. Something makes her say, “I don’t know,” even though she does.

  “So lucky! Isn’t pregnancy the most wonderful time of life?”

  Are you fucking crazy?

  “Look at you, getting so big, and soon you’ll have a nice, sweet baby to love. I miss mine so much!”

  Sasha grunts. There are no words for what she feels.

  “I think the ninth month of pregnancy is just beautiful, don’t you? And when that sweet baby comes, the feeling …” She maunders on, running her hand under one of those huge breasts, burrowing in the fold as though trying to reach her heart. “When mine were tiny it was the happiest time of my life.”

  “I see.” Maybe it was. How’s Sasha supposed to know?

  “If only they stayed that way, all helpless and sweet and satisfied with a little toy.” She opens the metal casement window, you turn the crank like this. “Will Daddy be joining you?”

  “No.” Sasha is waiting for her to go.

  But the manager moves closer, squinting. “Honey, is everything all right?”

  Sasha shrinks. Huge as she is right now, she’s not a patch on this woman, who could be hiding triplets in there. “Yes Ma’am.”

  “Please, it’s Marilyn.” When she folds those pendulous, marbled arms, every Lurex stripe shimmies. “Marilyn Steptoe.”

  Just go. “Is there anything else you need me to sign?”

  “I’ll give you my old crib for an extra twenty-five.”

  “A crib?” Odd, this comes as a shock. She has become a person who needs a crib. Until now Sasha had managed to think of this pregnancy as happening to someone else.

  “Every baby needs a crib.”

  “A crib.” Sasha made it this far on hope: that she’d have this baby and kiss it goodbye. Nice new parents would whisk him off to a nice new home, and they’d be better parents than she could ever be. What does she know about bringing up a kid? She’d get herself back, no questions asked. Could have, too, if she’d stayed at Newlife, but she ran. Now that she is off the premises, she understands that in spite of the flowered scrubs and cosmetic rhetoric, Newlife was never anything more than the Agatha Pilcher Home for Unwed Mothers. Which is what she is. With a baby she’ll have to take care of day and night until she finds somebody better to do the job. The information rolls in and hits her so hard that she groans. “Oh God.” Correction: smile at the lady, keep it bright. “I mean, sure. Absolutely. A crib.”

  “Whoever the bastard is, he doesn’t deserve you.”

  Sasha doesn’t hear. She is stunned by the exigencies. A baby, here. Given time she can probably manage an adoption, but until then. Here. Oh good grief, I’m going to have this thing. No preapproved parents waiting, there’s only me. I’m having this baby and I have to bring it back to the DelMar. A lurking checklist hatches so fast that she blinks, necessity spreading its wings and pecking away inside her head. Obstetrician, she needs. Hospital, prepaid cab on call in case she is too bent to drive, Huggies or whatever, infant size; alcohol, Q-tips, what else, oh my God we don’t have clothes. Blindsided by the we, she says, “Hot plate and refrigerator, unless that minibar thing is cold enough?” Hot plate to warm bottles, she thinks, start the baby on formula so when they do part company it won’t be a problem. She’ll be able to do it fast. She is planning out loud. “I can always bathe the baby in the sink.”

  Marilyn is assessing her, as if subtracting the belly. “You know, I wasn’t always this big.”

  Sasha says politely, “You have a very pretty face.”

  “After the babies I never got my figure back. I’ll send Dancy to fix the little fridge for you.”

  “By the way, cool shoes.”

  “I’ll have him bring down the microwave.”

  “That would be wonderful.” How did she get so tired? Oh, lady, please go. “Now if you don’t mind …”

  “Honey, are you going to be all right in here?”

  “Fine.”

  But Marilyn has gone all mother on her, prodding in that musical voice, “What was he like, honey, did he love you? What was so terrible that you had to run away?”

  “What makes you think I ran …”

  “Nobody wants to have their baby all alone. Truth, honey. Did he beat up on you?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Then why don’t you call the boy and make up with him? Every baby needs a father, honey.” Marilyn misreads the snort of disgust. “One phone call is all it takes. Why not kiss and make up with him, so you can go home?”

  The truth pops out. “I don’t want to go home!”

  The manager’s face shakes like Jell-O in an earthquake. “Sugar, did he hit you?”

  “Can we not talk about this now?”

  “I know, I know,” Marilyn says nicely, “You’re one of those girls who can’t cry if there’s people watching, so I’ll just go. You go ahead and let it all out, honey. Why don’t you lay down?”

  Sasha stands like a movie lobby cutout, blinking at Marilyn until she leaves. Her body says, let me sit down.

  The minute she lets down, the door clicks open. “Remember, you have friends here.”

  “Thanks.” Sasha covers her face so Marilyn won’t see her losing it— not laughing exactly, but close.

  “OK then.” Long silence. “Goodbye now, and you take care.”

  For the first time since she hit Newlife, she is alone.

  For the first time she commands the space she occupies, expanding into the silence, the absence of routine. For the first time since she left Cambridge, Sasha is in control.

  At Pilcher she had been like a lab rat on a treadmill, chasing the bait with a sense of purpose but no place to go. Now she is her own person. She has things to do. Short nap. Next, food. Clothes. Pick a doctor and make an appointment. Emergency, she’d tell the office, because by her watch she has maybe three weeks. Maybe a how-to book so she’ll know what to do. Pick up art supplies at the mall. Until the baby comes, she’ll work. She won’t be making prints in this pastel rabbit hutch, but she can sketch.

  That night she comes back with a skeleton wardrobe and a few baby things; she walks in to find a crib jammed up against her bed and a china lamp with a rose silk shade installed. It is in the shape of a lamb. Groaning, she lets her plastic shopping bags slither into the crib and throws her new black scarf over the monstrosity. She pushes the crib into the far corner and opens her new pad—Arches paper, quality stock. She picks up the best of the soft lead pencils, thinking to get back to who she used to be. A few months ago she was an artist. Now she has become an instrument. No. She will not let biology
preempt her free will. You’re an artist, remember? Work fast. Rigid with self-consciousness, she tries. Nothing comes. Her brain’s been co-opted but at least she looks the part. After months in pastels she is wearing black.

  The few clothes she’d chosen for, OK, The Final Days are generic— leggings and oversized T-shirts in black or athletic gray. Perfect for now and afterward, no matter what shape this baby leaves her vacated body in. Tomorrow she will add a sweet-looking pastel top selected to delude doctors’ receptionists, but sweet is not how Sasha sees herself. She is a commando dressing for her next raid on the outside world.

  15.

  Once you have been made in a town you moved into minus backstory, that town is over for you. Willie Barton is the first clod of earth on the coffin. Starbird has to get out before it starts raining dirt and he is buried alive.

  Ugly feeling Starbird gets, coming into his building. Detritus that won’t fit in his lobby mailbox is heaped on the mat at his apartment door; mail accretes even when you’re known only as OCCUPANT, which is all he is. He kicks it aside and slams the door fast, but not fast enough. The world is out there shifting like a great beast. Sooner or later everything he tried to leave behind will filter in.

  Shaken and queasy, he sits crosslegged in his corner, humming on one long breath; he will do anything to get into the zone. He wants to get to a place where no thoughts can follow.

  Tomorrow, Starbird. This is the last day of your vacation. Tomorrow you’re back in the job, like it or not.

  That’s one bad thought. It turns out to be the least of them.

  The clutter drives him to his feet. Stretching, he looks around the featureless room. At least he has kept this pure. The solitude is particularly sweet because he knows it’s coming to an end. In an odd way his hiatus here has been like a convalescence. The limbo where he floated, a free agent, until tonight. Now everything out there is crowding in. If he’s been convalescing, is he over it? He doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter any more than it matters what the it was. It’s time to move.

  Over it? Checking his hands, the pink rims where the blood runs underneath healthy nails— no tremor that he can see— Starbird wonders for the first time, Have I been sick?