XI

Simple Madness All Along

The ride up is like the ride Moses would have taken if Moses had a truck. Moses might have driven up from the wilderness to receive the law, so the chosen might know the error of their ways, not that they didn’t already suspect something askew. But people like things spelled out, enumerated and expounded, so they’ll have a point of reference in times of doubt and contrition, so they can know what is wrong. So they can choose better next time.

Heidi pulls up, shuts it off and stares at her lodger with the same scrutiny he saw on their first morning together. “Life is hard,” he says. She gets out and walks into the scene, leaving him to comprehend and, with luck, adapt.

He looks for intention, for what is real behind what is staged. Charles is an actor after all, cast in the lead at last, supporting himself and appreciating his performance. Like an actor fulfilled, Charles produces, directs, stars in, reviews and loves the show. What a ham.

Tony and Heidi are welcome to the show, mind your step now, choreography is by Charles, who pulls strings so the Charlettes can get it right instead of just flopping around like they’ve done all their lives. No more pagan frenzy at this altitude; this dance is formal.

Maybe he’s only crazy. “What’s the diff? I’m not an actor. I’m an ex-actor.” He plays the old lines before imaginary kliegs and a peanut gallery demanding more. He appears to approach his denouement. Or maybe that’s his fantasy. “Ex-actor. Exactor. I demand precision. Eggs Zactor was my stage name. They called me Eggs. Ecks in Germany. You are all Chooish … Ecks Schloctor when they didn’t like me, which came to be always because I couldn’t make it. Never and ever. Mac Fuctor on the mall. Call me Mac. Big Mac, on account of my size. With cheese!” He makes no sense; that’s the ticket, working it out, honing lines under the gifted direction of himself. From the ruins of failed characters he strives for a composite that perhaps can hold together. He isn’t sure it can play out, but he’s never been so close, and the uncertainty seems complimentary to the play’s texture, to its rich and creamy flavor, its complexity and pathos and all that …

Action.

Charles achieves suspension. Insane yet coherent he narrates a life of days suspended. Fragmented notions in staccato delivery mean nothing to the non-initiate, the unmad, the ungame, the undrunk. But to the unhinged he is soul-kin. Haggard and winded, reporting trouble from the front like an advance scout who’s been and seen, he wails, “Lawdy, you will not believe what happened to us.”

Emoting nonpresence, he left town character by character down to the stumble drunk who was last man out. Revival on the mountain needs a simple set—a fire, some rags and dirt and a fur piece from the pulpit on the flats. Risen to the clouds he plays it fresh. “It’s typecast, don’t you think? I play a novitiate recluse from the Church of Christ I Need a Drink.”

Commitment to the role appears supreme. Clarity and intensity once squandered on rote recitation now give forth with ingenuity. Charles has new material at last, as if his career and life and potential only needed a decent script, so he got down and wrote it. It allows him range and depth, so long constrained; he reaches and by God grasps the intrinsic nature of man-the-actor acting like a man, reaching the glint for all seasons, the deathly quest, the doomed knowledge, the harsh concern, the mortal pride and monstrous compassion. “Adolph Hitler was an animal nut. Did you know that? Vegetarian. Who did you eat today?”

Charles ditches method and lines and goes for the greater repository of truth: instinct. Sober now he fumbles with sentences like a simian with hand tools. He goes back to reshape a few, bending and banging to capture the essence of his struggle. He achieves lucidity in recollection of infirmity.

Heidi sits apart. She won’t sit by the fire or go behind the rocks for sexual relations with Charles. Not now. Not even for a quickie—even if it goes slam bam and ends with a glop in her skivvies before her skivvies reach her ankles—because she only arrived. A girl needs to warm up. She’ll go behind the rocks later, when she’s ready. She hopes Tony can see that what was once a fling is now a cause, a noble calling, a salvation. He must see it. He will see it, truth be told, because he knows she’s not blind. She didn’t walk out when he sniffed every bush in town. No; she deserves a hearing, so they can know where they are and what comes next.

Charles leers and confides to Tony that he doesn’t mind waiting awhile, because they don’t like you putting it on them too fast, because they need time to adjust like anyone. “And it’s a hell of an adjustment if you think about it. I think premeditation lets them dilate, don’t you? Have you ever thought about that? Hell, I’m asking the head hotdog if he ever thought about mustard. Ha!”

“I know I need time to warm up,” Tony says, watching the fire as if reason will rise from the flames. He appears calm, possibly numb and repressed, like he needs time to let the truth ooze out slowly. Difficult visions crowd the little clearing. The knife is in, and like many men he wants it twisted, to be sure.

Jorge stares like a bump on a log in rags—a dirty bump on a dirty log in dirty rags, unlikely guru to a cult of one. Tony walks away from the fire and gazes down on the patchwork plateau three thousand feet below.

Charles stokes the coals. “The gates of heaven are closed to me today. They’ll open tomorrow. Why wouldn’t they?” He rubs his hands over the fire like a sorcerer over a batch of hocus pocus. “They always do.” His voice resonates in the cold air, so he rides the chord on the final affirmative: “Do. Do. Dooo.” Embers pop like modern percussives for his descent to the low end: “Doooooo!” Looking fore and aft he grins, but the audience is still.

Scene 2: “We know a woman in town, Rhonda. I was there first, you know. I had this craving to eat her. You got there but wouldn’t eat her. That’s what she said. Your loss. That’s what I said. She’s a smart one, Rhonda, but she doesn’t want to be loved for her brain. She wants to be eaten. They all do, you know. It’s up to us to eat them. You must know that. You must, you being you. Or me, I guess I should say. I ate plenty women, but this one—we had chemistry. She was flattered, I tell you, that I’d rather eat her than talk to her. Not that she had nothing to say. She did. She’s quite a rhymer you know. I told her: just keep rhyming. She had a hard time with that, I think because she hadn’t been eaten in quite awhile. I wasn’t putting her on. I liked it. Maybe it’s a phase I’m going through. She liked it too, never was eaten so good—I’m not bragging. I don’t think I’m bad. But this one I got close to. Don’t ask why. I don’t know. She wouldn’t admit I was the only one who ate her so well. She didn’t have to. I knew. I know things, you know. I got down there and started eating her and it was the most amazing thing. It tasted like blueberries.”

He pokes the embers, drifting from blueberries, scanning the ridge. Scudding clouds threaten but break up and drift. “Blueberries?” Tony asks.

“Mm. Yes. Wish you had some now, don’t you? I don’t mean blueberries in a dish with cream and sugar. It was like … like this blueberry poppyseed cake I used to get at this pastry place in New York. I never liked poppyseed cake. It’s so dry—my mother makes this dry poppyseed cake and I take a big bite and give it a chew and spray crumbs all over my dog. He doesn’t care. But this place makes it so moist you can eat it plain, and then they put this blueberry stuff on top and warm it up. It’s incredible. I can eat one of those things and go to late afternoon without getting hungry. It’s that satisfying.”

A minute passes in the clouds. Tony calls back, “Lunch.” Because no matter what tragedy befalls you, you have to eat. Heidi rummages the truck for beans or coffee, anything but blueberries. “And Rhonda tasted like blueberry poppyseed cake?” Tony sizes him for coherence, and he wants to know. Because Tony doesn’t actually mind eating a woman if he can warm up to it and it looks good and smells tolerable and, well, if he senses sparse traffic at the intersection. He knows some of them like it. He would have eaten Rhonda, maybe, but then standing up and all. She seems unlikely now, but then everything does.

Charles laughs. “No. I was kidding. She tasted like pussy. It was good though. It was only me. Shit, I’d have to go back to New York to get a piece of cake like that.” Charles smiles and looks up at the old man. Tony eases off the log to the dirt and sits back laughing at what life has come to, a weak woman, a failed actor and a nobody—oh, yes, and a beggar—sitting around a fire like cave dwellers. And he thought he had nowhere to go. He wonders if Charles humped his girlfriend back in the days of Spandex and mariachi and dancing all night and love as a concept. Of course he did. Why wouldn’t he?

Charles works the coals barehanded. Jorge poses like a proud leader of a modern revolution.

Tony has seen the show. Loonies, alkies, druggies, sociopaths—they marry, get jobs and settle down. What else can they do? This is no different. This is where we came in. Still, it’s hard to figure. How weak can she be? And what drives her but an endless need for purpose and the high hard one?

Tony Drury used to fancy survival as a mark of character, as if fortitude was free will, spirit was the same as luck and love was a matter of timing. Now he merely recognizes these things and wonders what else character might have in store. He’s ready and willing and can take a punch, and he wants to see another side of life, like he did on recent nights of warmth and romance. Yet they tint and transmute, those nights, and he wonders if a man is better off playing by the rules he grew up with. They seem like a series of lucky nights now, with a cucumber called dinner and another called love. Pour on a few drinks, garnish with smiles, dim the lights, insert corpus callosum into soft opening and presto: what we wanted all along.

One night she ditched her skivvies, hiked her dress and said, “Here you go. Here’s your fantasy.”

“My fantasy?”

“Oh, no. Right. You like naked.”

She could be anyman’s dream and never called him Charles. She remembered who he was, and what a show, watching her tame the little gusher that could with the vagina that devoured Tony D. What a woman. But wait. Was that before the trail of love? He thought it was. So she did love him. She said she did and always would. But she says the same to Taco, because he needs her too, so he’s in, but Christ, he’s so short. She doesn’t care, because a couple pooches on hand for puppy love make a full house.

She wanted him one night after a drunk and a greaseburger, and it was fun if not magic, and the first day was an outing to remember. She called him kind and considerate then, because he was present and rang her bell. Across the courtyard and down Canal Street she wailed for the jackhammer of kindness and consideration. She said she didn’t mind it fast, and a woman can’t expect multiple orgasm with every man. She called him a good lover and said he could put it in there any time he needed to, but still, you don’t want to overwork your equipment.

She says it again once the truth of the traffic is revealed. “It’s unexplainable,” she says of her feeling for Charles. “He’s not gentle. And you can’t get to know him. Boy. He’s so unpredictable. He keeps coming on. Not sexually. He’s just got so much inside him.”

But a man considers pressure and flow. “He’s nuts.”

And a woman knows what a man considers, so she eases his gross physical focus with the only thing that survives a life. “I’m happy here with Taco and you,” she says, meaning the deal is still on, really on, and a man can change and grow and be the man he wants to be by simply throwing off the forty-pound pack cutting his shoulders and killing his back, because it’s just that easy. Jealous? Of what? She is plainly and simply helping a friend who happens to be a rare talent and an extremely unique individual. And if another friend who is every bit as unique in his own way wants to get all bent out of shape because two inconsequential bits of flesh rub together until the stuff comes out, well, then, she can only try to help him through his malaise as well. Because that’s all it is. She laughs, catching herself on the verge of asking why we all can’t just get along. He thinks she’s mocking him. But she’s not, and to show it she touches him softly; how else can she express herself? Why does a he require such pain? Isn’t it easier now that he knows where she goes and what she accomplishes there? The truth might hurt in real life, but you can’t change the truth. And he can still stick it in there, for all the difference that makes.

“Maybe I shouldn’t shave or bathe for a month.”

“That might be interesting,” she says.

“It’s so simple, isn’t it? Whatever is interesting.”

“It really is. It’s an adventure. But that’s not it. I wouldn’t be jealous of you loving someone else. Why shouldn’t you love two people? How many people love more than one person but spend their lives denying it? What’s that worth? All I want is communion with what I love. You’re not so different.”

“Is it because you love him? Or because he needs you? Or you need to be loved by as many men as possible?”

“You’re bitter. It’s all those things. I’m not guilty.”

“I like, I fuck. Is that it?”

“You’re asking me? In a nutshell, yes. Just like the animals. Just like you.”

It’s not easy for a man of Tony Drury’s social standard to achieve indignation on a social issue, but a man has his minimums. He will leave. Unlike Charles, he’ll go for good, away from those of no social context. That’ll teach them, if they ever catch on. But he knows as well he hasn’t yet caught on and doesn’t know where to go. He only wants to remodel, not demolish. Some failed actor went camping and got lucky with a so-called girlfriend who can’t say no to pitiful. Some women are like that. But that’s no reason to hit the road. “I’m not going,” he says. “I’m not ready.”

“Good. I couldn’t love an insensitive man. The problem here is jealousy. The lowest behavior known.”

He takes it on the chin, and in the spirit of liberal inclination, he says, “I’d like to stick it in there. Now.”

She scoffs. “You don’t get it. The sexual part is … nothing.” Her sad smile looks vulnerable.

He drops his fly. But with a face drawn sadder still, she leaves for another ascent.

But conversation with Heidi comes after the morning of truth. The gathering on the mountain has no more meaning than stick figures with empty talk bubbles. Jorge led Charles up the mountain and down to the dirt. Charles followed to scratch an itch, to find the edge. Charles peered over and got stuck in the dusty void of his own making.

The old guy sits facing a boulder like Whozit contemplating Destiny. His talk bubble isn’t empty, though it’s sparse on vowels. He’s never actually seen a movie with subtitles but isn’t so far gone he can’t play along and practically see his lines in translation. They read: I am the one. It is me. Now you see. Me. You. Move that rock. Give me money. Hungry. Eat. Now you see. Charles. At last.

He points to the water can and tequila bottle in the dirt near the beans and funky corn and a few dirty cukes and carrots and a shrunken head of broccoli ready to stick on a spear. He is thirsty and ready for some quenching. Nobody responds, so he pulls another bottle from his rags and kills the last three inches. That’s more like it.

Trash litters the clearing. To one side are two dwindling piles, nopole and marijuana. Let’s get high. Jorge squirms on low voltage but cannot find a doobie. The rest sit in awe and hunger. In time Charles stands and says, “I heard you.” He puts his shoulder on the rock of Jorge’s meditation and heaves. The rock gives. The old man grunts and keeps the scene interpretive. “Hey, Charles, you want a beer?” Tony asks on his way for a beer. Tony needs a beer.

“Sure,” Charles says casually. Tony pulls the joint from behind Heidi’s ear and fires it up, wondering if Charles can get high, getting himself high first, because he won’t take a pass from Jorge. They smoke in ritual silence.

“You don’t really need ice up here,” Tony says. Charles grins. “I mean for the beer.”

“I know what you mean,” Charles says.

They drink and smoke. Tony can play along. Charles waits to see if Tony knows the next line. Maybe Charles is ready to clam up if Tony drops it, or if Tony cops a throwaway like, Are you okay? Or, What’s going on here? Tony looks around and says, “You and Jorge making a long weekend of it?”

Charles grins again; Tony gets the picture. “The longest,” he says, pumping his head.

“We were just talking the other day about how good it is to get out, camping, the fire, a few doobies and beers.”

“Oh, yeah,” Charles moans, eyes darting. He chirps, “It’s the best. You can’t beat camping. All right.”

Move to Tony. Charles stares, his raving grin gone gray with no lines between the teeth. “Tomàs says you took your toothbrush and personal items.”

The mouth hole closes. “I ate it,” Charles says.

Tony’s turn to grin. They pass the joint and drink. “You must have been a hungry man.”

“Starving.” Charles grins and wins the grin competition. Tony can’t compete with mossy teeth. He only brushed this morning. He considers Charles’ rare thespian commitment; you don’t get teeth like that in make-up. Charles looks down on him from down in the dirt; Tony knows it, feels the benevolent scorn. Soul is for those who’ve been somewhere, really been, really somewhere; this is what Charles wants to say.

But this is nowhere because Charles is gone, a loser gone loony playing with himself in the mirror. The dope is fresh from Michoacan and revs the dream to warp speed. Meltdown turns yellow and purple with splotches and giggles. “You and Jorge take turns cooking?”

“His name’s not Jorge.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. I think he has no name. Imagine that.”

“Do you still have a name?”

“You think I’m nuts? I’ve got a name. Nobody up here to use it but me. I’m trying not to so nobody’ll think I’m crazy.” Charles hesitates, double checking coherence. “Nobody up here to think that but me and him, and now you. The place is getting populated. You think I’m crazy?”

“Hard to say,” Tony says.

Charles stares over the valley. Eyes on the fire again, he says, “He didn’t lead me up here. He only thinks he did. I guessed the way up here. Lucky guess, huh?” He laughs.

“So the whole show is kind of improv,” Tony says.

“No, no. He called me out, you know, like Rin Tin Tin and Fury and Lassie wanted everyone to follow and someone says, ‘Look! He wants us to follow!’ Remember?”

“Yes. I remember.” Charles finishes his beer and stares at the bottle. “Then what?”

“I built a palapa. Built it at night. No sunburn at night. I do the work. I like it. We didn’t do anything for so long. You can build anything. You need to work toward something. I built shade, spotty shade. Spotty as him. But shade. I built it, wood, wire, sheet metal, stuff. I threw it all on. I like it. You should see it.”

“Mm. Nice,” Tony says.

“We built a fire. Ate seeds, drank, slept. That’s all. You think this is crazy. He’s teaching me telepathy. He moves rocks with his mind. I play along. I build palapas and fires and move things. I get up for piss call and he’s eyeballing some rock. Good luck, Bobo. I tell him. His name’s not Bobo. I didn’t feel so good. You need time to warm up. Tripping, fucking, dying, all the good stuff needs a warm up. I built another. You should try it. I built four. We had to move to find stuff. I got sick. No mas. I told him. I hurt. I liked it—hey!” He leans over with a secret. “I think I am nuts. He thinks I’m on my way, you know? I like the pain. Your hands crack. Bruises on my shoulders, big purple bastards. Like tattoos. Go like hell. Look …” He peels his rags back to reveal a shoulder. “Shit. It’s gone. You believe me, don’t you? I got burned. Don’t take your shirt off. But I like it. Coffee and tequila then. I sleep outside now, years and years now.” He laughs and reaches for a soiled bag of tortillas. From a pot he glops a spoonful of beans and offers it. Tony would make a joke about doing that sort of thing with your left hand but nothing is funny and Charles uses his left hand.

“No thanks,” Tony says. “I just had a bar of soap.”

Charles laughs more, engorging on beans and tortilla, through the mush saying, “You’re funny.” He swallows and asks, “You got soap?”

“What do you need soap for?”

“Clean up, fool.”

“Wouldn’t that ruin it?”

Charles grins. “You want ruin. I’ll show you ruin.”

Tony turns to Heidi. “Did you bring soap?”

“No.”

He turns back. “No.”

“We need soap,” Charles says. “We need a campo tienda for some soap.”

“Yeah. And a decent restaurant from Northern Italy.” Charles nods; Tony is catching on.

The old guy grunts and stares up the mountain. “Phase Two,” Charles says. “He didn’t want to move the mountain. I knew he didn’t. I was pissed. Four days, no shade, not even a morning. I was tostado, you know. We moved. Straight up. Fuck it. I told him. Another bed of nails. Another crown of thorns, another cross to bear, another pooch to hump, another ghost game. Fuck it. I let him go. He went so slow anyone could catch up.” Charles turns to Heidi. “You know he wasn’t talking then.”

“Is he talking now?” Tony asks.

“I hit the shade. Had a few snorts. Boy.” He grins. “Got a snort?”

“Sure,” Tony gets up for a pint from the truck. “Anything your heart desires, Charles,” he says. “We’re here to serve.” Heidi smiles timidly. At the truck Tony takes a pull then carries the bottle to Charles, who guzzles to a gasp—“Fifty feet I cleared! Clean as a pin. Hey—you got coffee?”

“I’ll get it.” But Heidi is on it, staying busy.

“Boy, you can’t beat camping. Four days I bust my hump. Four clearings. Four campos. I ease on back, you know, in the shade, watch him hump it up for a change.” Charles finishes the pint, shakes off the jolt and tosses the bottle. “He’s no magic. But he makes sense. But a man like me following some … peasant. I could go to town. Get laid, get drunk. But you know what? Fuck it. Fuck me and fuck you and blueberry pussy turned it upside down. Bad script, friends. I left thirty years ago. Twenty bucks and a thumb and fuck all in my heart and fuck you and me for every car that didn’t stop. Bad start. Bad start. Pass the bottle, please. Plenty more where that came from. You got smokes?”

Heidi fetches liquor and cigarettes. Charles shrugs. “What’s a white guy do on the desert? Thrive? Shit, he was up in the trees. Now that was shade.”

Heidi pours coffee. Tony has a smoke. Charles says, “We do this frequently.” Awhile later he says, “Mm. Hungry.” Tony gathers wood and drops it on the embers. Charles makes sound effects: “Kshooom!” He mumbles his love for changes in scenery. “New, new, old and borrowed. And blue, like fire. Good fire gets blue.” Jorge grunts and mimes coffee drinking. She serves him a cup. He sips it like a zombie enjoying full-bodied aroma and flavor. He shakes his leather coin pouch at Tony.

“He’s got the concession on bonfires?” Tony asks.

“If you pay him he does.”

“Fuck you,” Tony says. Jorge fidgets.

“I don’t like him,” Heidi says. “He’s a mumbler. I knew he could talk.”

“He knew you could pay him,” Charles says. “But you wouldn’t.”

“He has more money on him than you do,” she says.

“He should,” Charles says. “I gave him what I had. But look what I got.”

Tony stands and stretches and asks how far is the walk down. Charles says, “It’s easy. Keep the summit behind you and that black dot just there in front. Fifteen miles. Not bad. Don’t take your shirt off.”

Tony is done with camping for today and a walk looks good for what ails you. “Adios,” he says, heading out light, no water, no snacks. He wants away.

Charles calls, “You’re invited back.” Tony waves without looking. “Not many people are.” Tony waves again, his legs hobbled by images of Charles mounting up. He hears Heidi call his name and hopes she’ll continue until he’s too far to hear it. But she stops, so he focuses on loss and heads back to earth. Taco comes along because a dog senses death and chooses action. He sniffs a rivulet in the rocks a couple hours out. They rest and drink but not too long, lest they swell and stiffen the way old people do.

Taco isn’t the pup he used to be either, but he comes a long way up on the long way down, sealing a friendship and making it clear that a beat-up mutt for a best friend isn’t so bad if he’s road-smart like Taco and stronger than you in difficulties of the heart.

Tony scratches him on the neck. Taco likes that but not the hugs, not with a long trail ahead, a hard life behind and a tough row to hoe because some dumb shit forgot the water. They make it home after dark with a few adventures that blow away like leaves when they see the truck in the drive. What can they do, go in and swap rattlesnake and ravine stories for tales of therapeutic horsefucking in the dirt with a lunatic who really needed it? Tony doesn’t think so. Taco whines.

It’s three aspirin and four over easy for Tony Drury and his comical sidekick. “Kind of a routine with you guys,” she says, slinking around the corner and leaning on the wall. He has nothing to say and little more to think about except tomorrow and life.

“You want yours turned?” he asks. Taco slurps; he doesn’t give a shit. Tony serves him and starts his own with a sprig of cilantro, because he read somewhere that it fends off cancer, and a dash of red-hot salsa, because he read somewhere it causes inflammation, but he doesn’t give a shit, too, and fairly enjoys the not giving, and he read somewhere that enjoyment fends off everything. He sits down with a grab of hard bread and eats. “You’re right,” he says, meaning Taco is correct in not giving a shit and he, Tony, appreciates the perspective.

She moves from the wall to the chair across from him. “I don’t expect you to understand.” He eats. “But it would be so great if you could.” She wants him to know a woman’s point of view. He muddles in with a woman pushing thirty-five who drinks like a fish and chain smokes and won’t ever have children because she’s out hustling men on the street while gobbing greaseburgers—he hurls the slings and arrows of a jilted man on the woman who jilts him. But he stops; accusation and guilt are not for the wild ones. He only slipped there for a minute on convention and condemnation; fuck that. That’s giving a shit and Tony Drury does not. He’s free. Or at least free of that.

“Don’t explain yourself,” he says. “It’s not necessary.”

“I want to explain, because you don’t get it.”

“Not necessary.”

“I love you.”

“Pulleeeze.”

“You don’t understand.”

“What’s love got to do, got to do with it?” She looks aside. A tear rolls. “Come on, come on.” She cries, and he says, “You just got done horsefucking a wacko in the dirt. Did you do the old guy too? He’s unpredictable and dirty. He might not need you, but he could use you.”

“You don’t know anything,” she blubbers.

“What’s to know?”

She pants, “I only did it with him because he insisted!”

“Oh. Stupid me. Why didn’t you say so?”

“And I wanted it too. You asked for it.” She liked it more than she thought she would, it was so primitive with hardly a squish before the squirt. She insists the sex is nothing but cries in contrition for being turned on. She realized after the first few times that she loved it and knew something had to give, but she couldn’t help giving.

“Kee-riste,” he says. She says Charles changed. “Duh.” She says Charles achieved something rare.

He says insanity is a condition, not an achievement.

“The old man wants to kill him,” she says.

“You’re lightweight loony,” he says, “which is to loony what middle class is to class.”

She says the more Charles follows, the more Jorge demands. “Charles knows he’s demented but says they’ll become gods. Like in the legend.”

“So?”

“The legend of two guys who burn themselves up.”

“How do you know the legend?”

“Charles told me. He doesn’t care if he dies. He says, ‘Suspend. Suspend.’ Jorge’ll say ‘green cheese,’ or ‘itchy feet,’ and Charles gets excited and mumbles green cheese and itchy feet for an hour.”

Tony wants the sauce but can’t get up. She gets the sauce, pours it deep and blows her nose. “They’re going to burn themselves. Charles is the sun. Once he’s dead, Jorge is supposed to burn and become the moon. That’s why I took you up there,” she says. “I need help.” He laughs, that he suspected harsh truth and bitter love.

“So Charles wants to kill himself?” She nods. “What’s that got to do with fucking him?” She smiles scornfully; he doesn’t get it.

“We have a tragic potential here.”

“Yeah. You’re the potential and I’m the tragedy. You go up the mountain to bang a lunatic while I’m supposed to be open-minded and help him out of a jam.”

“Did you ever know anyone who killed himself?”

“Yeah. Big deal. You croak now. You croak later.”

“Did you feel like it could have been your fault?”

“I could have prevented it. I could have called and said, ‘Hey, let’s go get a drink.’ I could have thrown a party, a celebrity roast where we made jokes about her goddamn depression. But I didn’t, so she smoked herself on Tuesday instead of Thursday.”

“Charles is a wonderful man. He’ll kill himself.”

“No he won’t. You’ll save him,” he says. With the magic salve, he doesn’t say, she’s sobbing so hard again, and he’s pouring again. What does she expect, anyway?