Journeyman Read online

  Two boys run past the brothers on their way to a video-game booth at the back of the pizza parlor. A young woman’s voice, mutilated by a loudspeaker, says:

  —Ernesto? Order ready for Ernest?

  Members of a co-ed softball team sit at the large round table in the front window of the parlor. Outside, the sun-drenched parking lot slots are filled with automobiles, heat visibly radiating off their roofs and hoods. A few starlings hop and peck at the asphalt, hop and peck.

  Cosmo continues:

  —I don’t know. Maxine’s crazy. When she’s hot, she’s hot; when she’s not, she’s not. You say something she disagrees with, but has no counterargument for, other than she knows she’s being irrational, and that’s fine, because screw you for caring. Caring means you’re weak. It’s all posturing. Constant posturing. Are we that self-aware now? Is that what thirty-five-hundred-odd years of Moses David Jesus Hamlet has left us with? Spoiled rotten with indecision?

  Cosmo sits with his back to the order/pick-up counter, where a man who is not wearing a shirt stands tucking a tall stack of plastic glasses under his armpit. The boy who accompanies him stands on tiptoes, peeking into the salad bar, both hands cupped over the edge of the glossy countertop.

  —Come here, Nolan hears the shirtless man say to the boy.

  Cosmo says:

  —How much time do you dedicate to considering the potential flaws in your thinking?

  —What? Nolan asks.

  —This is the beauty of our culture, but it can also be debilitating to the point of paralysis, metaphorically and intellectually, but maybe it’s also motivational? I can’t tell anymore. It’s just everything at once and I’m never the same.

  The shirtless man walks past the booth where Nolan and Cosmo sit, carrying the glasses under his arm and two large pizzas out in front of him. The boy follows carrying a pitcher of bright orange, artificially colored soda. He stares into the liquid, using its surface to gauge each step. As they pass the booth, Nolan says:

  —I saw your office, Cosmo.

  But Cosmo does not hear Nolan.

  —Look at this. Cosmo raises his hands, palms up and fingers spread. I mean, hey, buddy, put on a shirt, for crying out loud. This is a family place.

  The shirtless man stops and turns.

  —What?

  —Put on a shirt, dude.

  The man sets the pizzas down on the table of an empty booth and puts down the glasses, still beaded wet from the dishwashing machine. Nolan watches the boy nervously watch the orange soda.

  —What’d you say? the man asks Cosmo.

  —Come on, man, this is a family place. Put on a shirt.

  The man repositions his feet so as to brace his core. He throws his chin at Cosmo:

  —Make me, bro.

  Cosmo closes his mouth and shakes his head.

  —That’s what I thought, the man says.

  Cosmo smirks.

  —Please. Put. On. A. Shirt.

  The man turns away:

  —Whatever.

  Cosmo slams his fist down on the table, rattling the condiment jars and the napkin dispenser. The boy carrying the pitcher of orange soda startles and spills at the sudden burst of sound. People in the parlor look in Cosmo’s direction.

  —No, Cosmo yells. This is not “whatever,” man.

  —Easy, Cosmo, Nolan mutters.

  —There is no “whatever,” bro. There are always consequences. No man is an island because all islands are connected beneath the ocean.

  Cosmo lunges out of the booth and shoves the man in the chest with both hands. As the man staggers back, Nolan slides out of his seat with his back to the man, who rights himself and draws back his fist. Nolan turns in time with the man’s swing, and a colorless flash of pain rams into the back of his skull. The muscles of his shoulders and neck cinch, and the insides of his knees suddenly ache.

  —Aw, the man yelps, crumpled over, grabbing his wrist. Damn.

  Nolan puts his hand over his eye. When he feels Cosmo trying to get around him, he reaches out with his free hand, wraps his arm around his brother, and holds him close.

  —You will not prevail, Cosmo yells. Not on my watch.

  By this time Nolan can see the jerseys of the softball team surrounding them. He can see their socked and sandaled and cleated feet on the carpeted floor.

  —You all right, man? he hears in one ear.

  —My wrist, the shirtless man moans. I busted my wrist.

  —Take it easy, someone says to Cosmo.

  Nolan can feel his brother wrestling against him. He smells of deodorant sweat. Nolan can feel fingers trying to pry free the cinch he has on Cosmo’s shirt.

  —Are you all right? Nolan hears someone say to him again.

  —I will stand against you, Cosmo yells.

  —Let it go, man, Nolan hears another voice.

  —We got him, man. The breath hot in Nolan’s ear. You can let go now, the voice says.

  Nolan can feel his cheek swelling below his eye into the palm of his hand.

  —I will stand against you, Cosmo yells again. You and your barbarous horde.

  —We got them, the voice says. Let go.

  Nolan releases Cosmo and steps back. With his hand covering his eye, he looks up and sees Cosmo hauled down the aisle by two of the softball players. The boy is standing to the side, the pitcher of orange soda shaking in his hands, sloshing against the rim of the pitcher, running down both hands and darkening the carpet at the toes of his small feet.

  Nolan shoves his way to the front door. Outside, the sun shines brilliantly. He stumbles into traffic but a horn blast sends him staggering back to the sidewalk.

  Breathe, he tells himself, seething with anger, his jaw clenched. Breathe.

  The air tastes of exhaust and baking pizza. He hears Cosmo running up behind him and he balls his hand into a fist.

  —Nolan.

  —Leave me alone, Chance.

  —Dude, where’re you going?

  —Home.

  —I’ll give you a ride.

  —I prefer to walk.

  —Come on, man.

  Nolan stops. He unclenches his fist and splays his fingers at the side of his thigh.

  —Chance, I want you to leave me alone.

  He doesn’t walk home, not directly. At Railroad Park overlooking Memorial Beach, he sits on a bench in the shade with his hand on his eye, silently berating himself for having left Las Vegas in the first place, for having bothered to stop to see Cosmo.

  This is why you stay alone. This is why you forsake family. Because for as much as you care for yourself, they care for themselves, and to forget that and to think you can be there for them, that you can help them in some way, will ultimately prove you the fool.

  Across the river, the summer beach is filled with sunbathers. Screaming children frolic in the water or chase each other across the hot sand. Uphill, at the shaded picnic grounds, families set up around barbeque stands, the smell of burning briquettes already in the air. Beneath the automobile bridge, a row of light-blue paddle boats are lashed together, and farther along, near the arsonist’s bonfires, overturned aluminum rental canoes shine in the sunlight. A small wooden shack is the only structure on the beach. Sunlight glints off security cameras, positioned at the gable ends, aimed at the canoes and paddle boats. Nolan stares at the black remnants of where the bonfires were lit until a group of boys, yelling and jumping from the girders of the railroad trestle into the river, break his concentration. He looks upstream, where a man in a long-sleeve shirt and dark pants disappears into the giant reeds. The man pushes a bicycle outfitted with panniers. His entire life in those bags, Nolan thinks.

  Then:

  Your poor mother. Three men in her life and each of you a strain on her selflessness in your own way. Your own self-absorbed, manly way.

  He gets up and walks. By sunset, he’s standing before the phone booth in front of the Chinese restauran
t. The horizon to the west is rimmed with pinks and mauves and the last rays of sunlight brighten a single white spoke of a contrail, dissipating east, into the onset of night. The silver cord dangles from the telephone receiver, which rests in its cradle. The cord loops up and disappears into the black box below the gray, plastic keys but above the chrome change box, with its circular keyhole, black around the edges.

  When Nolan leaves a place, it’s like when a film ends and the credits roll over a road unfurling before him, and just like that the place disappears from view. Out of sight, out of mind.

  But that’s not how it is.

  A film exists in a contained space, a frame. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and thinking that your life is anything like this, that it resembles it in the slightest, is delusional and it only reinforces the illusion of film.

  He wants to call Linda. He wants to tell her he was a damn fool and to apologize and to beg her to take him back.

  But he doesn’t. He can’t. Not if he wants her to want to be with him again.

  The next day is a Saturday. Two of the four streets bordering the plaza have been cordoned off and a large crowd stands facing the bank façade, a corner of which has been recently repainted so as to conceal the damage done to it by the arsonist. A young woman in a platinum-blond wig sits in the driver’s seat of a shiny red convertible parked in front of the bank. She casually smokes a cigarette while a small group of people cluster around her, tending to her hair and makeup. Behind her, and to the side of the bank’s front doors, Nolan notices Maxine and another young woman standing arm in arm, laughing self-consciously. They wear cotton summer dresses and their hair has been done up and their faces are covered in makeup.

  The sky has been darkening gradually throughout the day as clouds have gathered overhead. Clouds, Nolan notices, not fog, but rain clouds—the first ones he’s seen during his stay in Burnridge.

  —Places, people, a voice calls through a loudspeaker.

  A camera, set up perpendicular to the red convertible, to the actress’s profile, shoots directly into the bank entrance in the background. In the doorway of the bank, two actors stand idly. They wear blue jeans and white cotton T-shirts and have nylon stockings pulled down to their brows. One of the young men has a blotch of red dye on his right knee to indicate that he’s been shot. Evidence, Nolan supposes, of the love triangle Cosmo mentioned.

  —Quiet on the set, the voice calls through the loudspeaker.

  The actress tosses her cigarette and the two actors lower their nylon masks and walk inside the bank. In the commotion, Nolan notices Cosmo on the other side of the yellow cordon, wearing his press badge. Despite having been fired from the paper, he jots down notes and snaps photographs with the digital camera. No one seems to notice him or to care if they do.

  —Marker.

  Nolan hears a sharp smack of wood sticks, and then Maxine and the other young woman walk before the entrance to the bank as another extra, wearing overalls and a straw hat, tips his hat to them. A boy on a scooter swerves past.

  A teenage girl standing beside Nolan raises her cell phone above the crowd of onlookers and pushes a button on the screen. Nolan hears the replicated sound of a camera shutter opening and closing to make the phone sound like an antique. The girl brings the phone down and looks at the image in the display screen. Then, she raises the phone again and again the shutter snaps.

  Suddenly, the sound of a gunshot, muffled by the doors of the bank. A second later, the doors fling open and the man without the painted gunshot wound sprints to the convertible and dives in headfirst.

  —Cut, the director yells.

  Nolan watches Maxine and the other young woman laugh as they walk back to their original positions. He sees that Cosmo is staring at Maxine and making no attempt to conceal his dejection. When she notices him, she looks away.

  The actor who dove into the convertible pretends to struggle to get out of the vehicle, but he times his escape to coincide with Maxine walking by, arm in arm with the other woman. The man in the overalls and the boy on the scooter also return to their original positions. The actor says something to Maxine that makes her laugh; Nolan watches Cosmo watch this and seeing Cosmo witness Maxine flirting with the actor saddens him some. It also disappoints and angers him that his brother is this way. He doesn’t approve of Cosmo being so public about his emotions. It’s indecent and, ultimately, false. He’s never been comfortable with his brother’s need for attention. Even as children he thought that particular want unbecoming. It suggested a deeply layered miscalculation of how one ought to interact with the world. He took himself to the opposite extreme.

  Nolan notices the shadow of his hat out before him.

  But did you?

  A light sprinkle of rain begins to fall. Nolan looks to the girl standing next to him, to the display on her phone. The picture is blurry because the sprinkles of rain magnify clusters of pixels into bright spindles of separate colors.

  —Places, everyone, the voice says through the loudspeaker. We’re losing daylight here.

  Nolan watches them film the scene several times. Inside the bank, when the door swings open, he can see the actor who is pretending to be shot lying on the floor and reaching out to the convertible, to the female driver, perhaps, as the swinging doors slam shut on him.

  —Quiet on the set.

  Walking arm in arm with the other woman, Maxine smiles and laughs and flirts with the actor between takes. At one point, a woman scurries over to her and touches up her makeup. Someone from the crowd calls out to Maxine while this is happening, and she looks around the makeup artist and waves. Cosmo watches her throughout, adjusting his glasses now and then, his sense of rejection visible to all those around him, should they be looking.

  The actors and extras are standing in position when the first crack of lightning strikes. Moments later, it begins to rain, lightly at first, and then a downpour.

  A summer rain storm in northern California.

  Members of the film crew hurry to cover the lights and camera. A man drives the convertible off the set. As the crowd disperses, Nolan watches dusty drops of water drip from the leaves of the trees around him. He can see Cosmo in the confusion, his glasses crooked. Maxine huddles under the awning of a storefront with the actor, the two of them laughing. Cosmo wipes rain from the pages of his notebook, pages where he’s jotted down the thoughts in his head, the ink blurred by raindrops.

  With his bandaged thumb, wet from the rain, pressed against his cheek, and his swollen black eye visible in his reflection in the phone-booth glass, Nolan waits through the rings, expecting to get Linda’s answering machine. The streets are wet and black and glistening with colorful smears of reflected light. Cars pass, taking with them the light splash of tires on asphalt.

  —Hi, you’ve reached Linda’s answering machine. Please leave a message. Thank you.

  Lightning flashes above Fumarole Peak to the north as beads of rainwater run through the dust on the phone-booth glass. Nolan’s jeans and shirt are soaking wet. He looks away from his eye in the reflection in the glass. He listens to the thunder roll.

  Beep.

  —Linda, it’s Nolan.

  He sighs, audibly.

  —I can’t come back down there. Not yet, but I will if that’s where you’re going to be, because I want to be with you. I want to talk with you. I like talking to you. I find it easy. And that’s not often the case for me. I know you don’t trust me, Linda, and I’m sorry I’ve given you reason not to. I’m sorry for leaving without saying why.

  He sighs. The mountains to the north stand blue in the flashes of white light. The thunder gaining on the lightning cracks.

  —I’d like to say you were the first I’ve done that to, but I’d be lying if I did, and you’d know it. I just want you to know you can trust me. Not right away. But I’ll work for it. You’ll see.

  A truck drives past, similar in make and model to the one Guillermo and Manny drov
e, but a different color, its wipers swiping at the rain, its tires peeling water up from the road, shot with color from the signs and lights of the gas station and quick mart across the avenue.

  —I can’t get there anytime soon because my brother needs me. I swear that’s not an excuse, Linda. I do. But I’d like to know if you’d see me again. I mean, I’m coming regardless, but I want to know if you’d see me for real, not just some late-night, now-and-then thing.

  Lightning breaks over the edges of the town, illuminating the rooftops and power lines. Nolan sees light, cast off the wet road, shining along the undersides of the climbing irons set along either side of the knotted telephone pole. Then, thunder shakes the phone booth.

  —I meant it when I asked you to come here. Everything I see makes me think of you. Of what I want to share with you. What I want to talk with you about. There’s so much I need to talk to you about. I know I can get quiet, but I think you’d enjoy getting out up here and I’d enjoy being the one to show you around.

  The connection clicks in his ear.

  —Nolan, she says.

  —Hey.

  —Hey.

  —How long have you been there?

  —The entire time.

  —Why didn’t you pick up?

  —I didn’t think I should.

  —Make me sweat some first.

  —You deserve it.

  —I do.

  —Where are you?

  —In a phone booth in front of this Chinese restaurant.

  —It sounds like it’s raining.

  —It is.

  He waits a second, then he says:

  —What are you doing?

  —I was reading.

  —For school?

  —No, I borrowed a novel from a friend.

  —The guy you’re seeing?

  —No. A girlfriend.

  Linda doesn’t say more, so Nolan says:

  —What’s it about?

  —San Francisco, actually.

  —What’s the story?

  —This Chinese man during the Gold Rush brings his brother’s remains to San Francisco so they can be shipped back home. But the sea captain throws the urn overboard once he sails through the Golden Gate. He throws a bunch of urns overboard.