Buddy Cooper Finds a Way Read online

  Bacchus steps into me, pokes a chubby finger into my thick chest. “We’ll still be wanting that antenna.”

  “Fine with me,” I say, and the three of them shuffle across the lawn. They climb onto the air conditioner and clamber over the wooden fence. I get back into the truck, knowing that in a neighborhood like this, suspicious characters bring cops in a hurry. And these days, I absolutely qualify.

  I tilt my wrist, see that it’s nine-fifteen. At this moment, downtown, we’re crashing through the doors at O’Leary’s. They’ve queued the jukebox to play “Celebration.” Our guests—my fellow workers at the bar, Alix’s grad school pals, some friends we had from the Y—stand up and applaud like we’re movie stars. Champagne waits on the tables. Alix’s hand feels warm and fragile.

  A car horn blares and the bar disappears. I look up into the headlights of an Aerostar, rolling slowly toward me. It pulls alongside, driver’s side to driver’s side. With an electronic hum the window eases down, and I recognize the familiar face of my former neighbor. “Buddy,” she says. “How you doing?”

  “Every day my life gets better and better.”

  Marlene raises her eyebrows. “You know you shouldn’t be here. I’m not sure I should let Brook out.”

  On the far side of the Aerostar the door rolls back, and a moment later the lanky form of my daughter rounds the rear of the van, my old gym bag slung over her shoulder. Long auburn hair, the same shade as her mother’s, is bunched up behind her head. She leans into the open window of my passenger side. “Hey, Poppa-San. It’s not Saturday.”

  “Hey, Bird. You get a good workout tonight?”

  “Jhondu helped me get my half tuck,” she says. “It’s bullet sweet.”

  I smile, as if I understand. Brook likes dancing, but she confided in me during one of our Saturday night dinners at T.G.I. Friday’s that she misses kicking people.

  “Seriously, Buddy,” Marlene says. “I really think you should be somewhere else. You’re in enough trouble.”

  “We’re missing Buffy, Mom.” This comes from the depths of the Aerostar.

  “Tell you what, Mar,” I finally offer. “You take care of your family, I’ll take care of mine.” At a Fourth of July neighborhood picnic back in the day, Marlene slid up behind me while I was making a pitcher of margaritas and nibbled on my ear, then told me her laundry room was empty. In the here and now, she huffs once, then pulls away.

  Brook squeaks open my cranky door, climbs in. “She’s, like, such a pit worm.”

  I have no idea what this phrase means. “Don’t use language like that.”

  “How’s the Kentucky Horror?” she asks.

  “Terror,” I correct her. “And great. Got crushed in Greenville on Monday night. I’m at the Civic Center on Friday.”

  “Against Hardy,” she says. “I saw the commercial.”

  “Your mother doesn’t want you watching SWC.”

  “Just a commercial. Besides, Mom doesn’t want a lot of things. Anyway. Good luck Friday. Hope you win.”

  We both laugh, this one of our favorite running jokes. The truth, as everybody knows, is that about twelve minutes into the match on Friday, Hardy Appleseed, the All-American Dream, will flatten me out so the ref can beat the mat three times. The Dream will live on, retain the Supreme Victory Belt of the Southeastern Wrestling Confederacy, and my record will go unstained by success. In the four years since I traded the gold cape for a mask, I have a perfect record, 0-186.

  When Brook was little, Alix would bring her to my matches. They’d sit ringside, Brook’s tiny voice screaming “Go Bull! Go Bull!” as I sprang from the top rope. Back at home after we got Brook to sleep, Alix would massage my shoulders and share her professional observations, theories from her graduate courses in drama—what the crowd liked, ideas for the next match. Even then, she had a talent for choreographing chaos. Sometimes her fingernails would bite into my muscles, but I never told her to stop. Nowadays Brook is barred from my matches because during the divorce proceedings Alix insisted that as a minor Brook be protected from “the inherently violence-fostering atmosphere of professional wrestling.” What didn’t come up in court was that on the Monday night I left the house, the alpha of all this omega, Alix smashed a commemorative Star Trek plate over my head and stabbed me in the ass with a shard.

  I realize we’ve fallen into a silence and I ask Brook one of my standard I’m-a-really-good-father questions: “When are you dancing again?”

  “That benefit,” she says. “Day after mañana? I left it on your machine.”

  “Right,” I say. “Absolutely.” It’s some deal arranged by a group Trevor belongs to. Generally, I avoid these competitions.

  Again, we’re quiet for a few moments. Brook angles her face at her feet and takes a long breath. “I was, like, going to call you when I got in tonight.”

  I ask her why.

  She shrugs. “Just wanted to know how you were doing with the day. I’ve got a calendar too, you know.”

  For thirteen, there really isn’t much you can get past her.

  “I’m doing fine,” I tell her. “Really.” And this is the absolute truth. Since first donning a mask my life makes more sense. Giving up that Rocky Balboa crap was a one hundred percent therapeutic decision. When you embrace defeat as a way of life, it’s hard not be successful. “Bird,” I say. “Everything’s cool. My life’s good.”

  She wipes away the auburn bangs from her eyes. “Then how come you’re here, Dad?”

  I’m stumped for a moment, honestly just wondering this myself. Then the front door bangs open and Drs. Winston and Gladstone stumble onto the steps, struggling to keep the giant Trinitron from falling.

  Brook sees them and looks back at me.

  “That TV is mine,” I explain, both hands up. “Ask your mother.”

  “She’ll call Kowalski. You know she will.”

  “Let her,” I say. “I’ve been hoping for a chance to renegotiate the terms of my surrender.” These words escape without editing, and I regret them. Brook’s put up with too much already. I inhale, exhale, and tell her I’m sorry for what I said.

  She nods and says, “I’ll tell them the TV was gone when I got home. I’ll tell them I saw a green van.”

  “No. I don’t want you lying to your mother. Or Trevor. It’s important to always tell the truth.”

  “Whatever,” she says as she turns away.

  I climb out and meet the boys as they reach the truck. I hoist the TV from them, lift it over the sidewall, and set it down gently in the bed.

  “Show off,” Winston says. Gladstone folds in half, sucking air. At 280, I weigh about as much as both of them combined.

  I’m about to ask where Bacchus is when I hear his voice at the house. He’s talking to Brook on the steps. She disappears inside but doesn’t close the door. Bacchus ambles down the lawn, and as he comes closer I see he’s carrying one of Trevor’s Wild Turkeys, expensive bourbon in bird-shaped bottles.

  “There was a whole flock of them in there. And this.” He pulls a dinner plate-sized satellite dish from behind his back. “It was on the roof of the toolshed. It’s a sign. God wants us to have the porno channels.” Looped in the same hand is a long coil of dirty cable, ripped free of the earth.

  “Put those back,” I say.

  “You did designate this as a rescue mission,” Winston argues.

  Frozen in a standoff, nobody moves. Behind them, two houses down, I see a dark figure in Marlene’s kitchen window. She’s looking this way. Alix and Trevor both own cell phones, and I’m calculating the odds of a call when Brook reappears, hopping down the steps and crossing the lawn. Without comment, she hands Bacchus the remote control and a cable guide with Mel Gibson on the cover. Half his face is blue.

  “I appreciate this,” Bacchus says.

  She looks at me and shrugs. “No sweat.”

  Together, we all watch her march back inside, close the door. Dr. Winston says, “She handled all that with remarkable dignity and aplom
b.”

  Gladstone simply says, “Neat kid.”

  Dr. Winston wasn’t joking about the power behind the altar. The second we plug the Trinitron into the outlet in Jesus’s feet, static bursts to life on its screen, casting a strobey static glow onto the weeds growing down the center aisle. Sitting in the first moss-covered pew, Dr. Bacchus struggles to read from the cable guide in the haze of the screen’s snowstorm. “Nine o’clock … Angela’s Ass: an Irish girl … arrives in New York … with only her wits to survive.”

  Over the altar, I say, “You sure it says wits?”

  Next to his pal, Dr. Gladstone giggles and takes a drink from the beheaded turkey. Then he asks, “Are we gonna get Nickelodeon and Comedy Central?”

  “Man,” Bacchus says, “we’re gonna get it all.”

  Dr. Winston has disappeared into the steeple, trailing the cable along with him. He’s decided to mount the dish in the bell tower for better reception. I offered to help but he explained that his Ph.D. in physics best qualified him for the installation of a satellite dish. I found it hard to argue.

  I wish Brook knew the truth about how well I’m doing today. Like right now. Standing behind the altar, looking out over this fallen church, I’m not thinking about that other church and the ceremony at all. I’m not thinking about how Alix winked at me from beneath her veil. I’m not thinking about how when Father Callahan gave us the all-clear to kiss, Alix simply hugged me, a desperate squeeze that seemed designed to crush us into one body.

  I turn to my apartment, beyond the pews, past the rubbled remnants of the wall that Hurricane Fran collapsed. Above the alley, the yellow light shines. The church wall to my right still stands, housing weary stained glass windows shattered by rocks from the neighborhood hooligans. During the day, they shine like Technicolor shark teeth. Behind me, the spire rises into a sky darted with stars. All churches, I decide, should be open to the heavens.

  A shadow shimmers on the outside of the steeple, what looks to me at first like a giant dark spider. But then I see the spider has golden feet. “Winston!” I yell.

  Bacchus and Gladstone stand. Bacchus pulls a DayGlo green cell phone from his back pocket and says, “Should I summon the fire department?”

  “Where’d you get that?” Gladstone asks.

  Bacchus smiles. “It got rescued too, man.”

  I sigh, but a clatter turns our attention skyward just in time to see a slate spin from the darkness and crash to the marble floor. Winston clings to the side of the steeple.

  “Don’t move!” I shout up—good advice in any crisis. I sprint into the sacristy, duck through a crooked doorway. Charging blindly up the twisting steps, I bounce off dark walls. Something skitters past my feet and disappears below. At the top of the steps I find an empty room with wind, maybe bats, snapping in the open cone over my head. There is no bell. A two-by-six is absent from a huge boarded-up window, and through this opening a slim rectangle of moonlight shines on a pile of ashes and what could be tiny bones. I jam my head outside, look down, see no body, and yell, “Dr. Winston!”

  “Here,” he answers, as if this were roll call. His voice comes from around the side of the steeple.

  I snap two more boards free so I can fit through, then step out onto the thin ledge, keeping my eyes away from the ground. Winston’s hand is off to the left, about ten feet up. Embracing the steeple myself, like some prodigal son filled with joy at returning to the church, I shuffle around until I’m beneath Winston. On his foot hangs the satellite dish.

  “I thought we could reach the cross,” Winston explains. “But I ran out of cable.”

  “Shimmy down,” I say.

  “If I move, I’ll drop the dish.”

  From below us, Bacchus shouts, “One hundred seventeen channels. Five HBOs and Sexcitement Plus. Do not—drop—the dish.”

  “I’ll catch it,” I say.

  “Promise?”

  “Absolutely.” Here’s one thing I’m sure of: You can always apologize later for broken vows.

  I lay my hands out, a wide receiver ready for a touchdown pass, a father waiting to be handed his baby daughter. Winston lifts his foot, and the dish skitters down the slate. It kicks out away and cartwheels into the air, but I reach for it, snatch it from disaster, and only then realize I’m teetering on the brink, sixty feet up. Below me, the blue glow of the TV makes a pond I could high-dive into. I find my balance, pull back in, and lay my face into the slate. Its coolness feels good as I hug the sides. Scant cheering breaks out from the two-man congregation. Winston scrambles down and scoots along the ledge, back to the safety of the bad mojo room. I pass him the satellite dish and he says, “Maybe we’ll just set it up inside.” But before I step in, my head turns on its own and my eyes take in the full view of downtown. And there it is, that undeniable second moon, staring at me from just over the Cape Fear and pulling at me with a gravity all its own.

  Winston and I emerge from the sacristy to find Bacchus and Gladstone bathed in the Trinitron’s aura. “Good job,” Bacchus says, “but bad news.” He points to the screen, where a CNN correspondent is explaining that amateur astronomers in Borneo are reporting what could be a rogue asteroid on the distant fringes of our solar system. We are shown a grainy star field with a menacing circle around a gray dot.

  “I’ve been telling you guys,” Gladstone says. “The sky is falling.”

  “Please, people,” Bacchus huffs. “Consider the source. This is Borneo.”

  But Winston is unconsoled. Gazing into the constellations, he shakes his head. “I suspect that NASA has known for some time. Those arrogant fools would never listen to me.”

  When the story ends, the screen fades to black for a moment and then fills with a blond woman with too much mascara.

  “Jackpot,” Bacchus says.

  The blond bats her eyes, pouty with invitation. She says, “The tree of life is rich with possibility when you call Carolina’s own, Psychic Sidekicks.”

  A gypsy appears, hands floating over a crystal ball. “Yes, Brenda, I can see that you’re pregnant. You’re going to have a healthy son, and he’s going to be a writer!” A smiling black woman lays cards on a table. “It’s a happy day, Charlie. Those tech stocks are going to rebound.” A man with blue sunglasses says, “She still loves you, Estevan. Go to her.” Here’s one thing I’m sure of: Reliable prophecy is rarely all good news.

  The number on the screen, 1-800-ILL-KNOW, doesn’t make any sense until you realize the apostrophe is missing.

  Another mystic appears on the screen. This one’s a redhead, but her face is covered with a black veil. All you can see are her eyes, and they are green and penetrating. “My mother had a vision of Reagan being shot. My sister knew about Bhopal. The one true gift flows in my veins. I know your future’s truth.”

  “Change it,” I say. The truth is not something I need to be reminded of.

  But the commercial is clearly coming to a close, and Winston lets the redhead deliver her final pitch. “I’ll be waiting for you. Decide now what one question you would want answered.”

  “Will the asteroid end life as we know it?” Winston says.

  Gladstone asks, “Did my father mean what he said?”

  Bacchus grumbles, “Which channel is porn?”

  They turn to me in my silence, wanting to hear, I suppose, the question at the center of my heart. I picture two moons. “I need to go,” I say. “Good night.”

  Dr. Winston shakes my hand. “Your contribution will not be forgotten.”

  “Sure thing,” Bacchus says. “Thanks.”

  Gladstone runs a ragged sleeve under his nose. “That pizza tasted really good.”

  I walk to the rubbled wall. Before climbing over, I pause by the holy water repository and consider blessing myself. But after a second I just walk away. It’s only rain, after all. I look up at the yellow light and consider the safety my apartment offers, but I move no closer to the stairs.

  It’s just after eleven. Soon, we’ll be leaving our own
reception early, eager to be alone. The Hilton. Room 341. We’ll eat hot wings left over from O’Leary’s. Any minute now, somewhere in the beautiful yesterday, Alix and I will be making love, so excited that we rush things and end up, by accident, creating the best part of our lives: Brook.

  Somehow I find myself wandering down the alley, though I don’t recall making this decision. When I step onto Market, I turn and face the Cape Fear and bang—the big perfect moon is right where I left it, out over the river. Head down, hands in pockets, I walk west, passing Keenan Plaza without looking at the stone turtles squirting water in the fountain. Once I cross 3rd, I can see the crowd’s a mix of UNCW students up too late and the usual downtown groupies, corralled by a few local cops and ReelWorld security. As I move closer, past the support trucks and the rumbling generators, I get a good look at the crane atop the Jacobi Warehouse that’s holding the false moon in the sky like a silver medal.

  When ReelWorld first came to town it was a blessing. The cash Alix made as an extra kept Tae-Kwon-Do for Tots afloat and helped us keep the house on Asgard. Then one fateful day she improvised in midtake during a catfight in High School Hellions, and the director—he couldn’t believe her skills. He had her rechoreograph a few action scenes. One thing led to another, and a few months later the studio hired her on as an assistant stunt coordinator. Alix was a quick study, and it wasn’t long before my wife was spending her days slamming motorcycles into parked cars, being set on fire, charging from buildings seconds ahead of the bomb’s detonation. Of course, like any good husband I worried about her, despite the hours of calculations, the precautions she always took. “Buddy,” she told me one night in bed, “there’s a huge difference between danger and risk.” Her eyes were sad when she saw I didn’t understand. This was toward the end.

  A couple of the crew wear T-shirts that read THE CREATURE FROM BEYOND TOMORROW, so I figure he’s the reason we’re all gathered here. I step into the back of the crowd, and somebody yells “Quiet on the set,” and then a moment later “Action.” I freeze. Three stories above us, along the rim of the Jacobi Warehouse, my wife leaps onto the ledge and starts running. My ex-wife. She’s wearing a blond wig, but I know it’s Al. Her feet lift and plant so cleanly along the edge of disaster.