A nurse entered, straightening her cap. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I went to relieve my-I went to the rest room, and the next thing I knew Mrs. Uzig had…” She took the old woman’s elbow.
“Like Anne Boleyn after the… after…”
“Then why not go back to bed?” said Professor Uzig, his voice much gentler than Nat had ever heard it. He hadn’t imagined certain things about Professor Uzig, that he could have been born in Brooklyn, that he’d be caring for an aged mother.
“Come, dear,” said the nurse.
“Come, dear,” mimicked the old woman. “Why should I, when all the fun’s down here?” She picked up Nat’s glass. “How’s the wine?”
“I haven’t actually tried it yet,” said Nat.
“Proving youth is wasted on the young. Are you familiar with that expression?”
“I’ve heard it,” Nat said.
“A careful reply.” She took a sip. “Can’t taste a thing, of course. But I’m sure it’s good-I taught him everything he knows about wine, paying for it in the bargain.”
The nurse tugged a little harder at her elbow.
“You don’t mind sharing your wine, do you, young man?”
“No,” said Nat.
“What’s your name?”
Nat told her.
“Enchantee,” she said, extending her hand as though she expected him to kiss it. “I am Helen Uzig.” Nat shook her hand: skin like paper, green veins almost on the surface, pulsing light and fast against his fingers. “Enchantee,” she repeated, “accent aigu on the second e.”
“Please, dear,” said the nurse, pulling now.
“Keep your panties on,” said Helen Uzig. She looked right at Professor Uzig and repeated the remark. The nurse pulled again, a little harder, and this time the old woman gave way, half walking, half in tow, toward the doorway. “Good night, my bushy-tailed friends,” she said, as the nurse got her out of the room. “And never forget that Nietzsche is something one must grow out of,” she added from down the hall.
There was a silence. Ferg, on his sixth or seventh beer, broke it. “Your mother’s pretty cool.”
“My mother is dead,” said Professor Uzig.
“Huh?” said Ferg.
But Nat got it.
The prize in the cake was a well-preserved piece of eight, found by Professor Uzig himself off Jost van Dyke, pierced to make it wearable as a pendant. It turned up in Grace’s portion.
Once, in Boulder after a high-school student government conference, Nat had found himself in a pickup basketball game that included a few CU players. It was the only basketball he’d ever played where everything had happened too fast. Now, leaving Professor Uzig’s house, snow falling but the moon somehow shining at the same time, an effect-black snow streaks over the disk of the moon-that he’d never seen before, he had that feeling again. He needed to slow things down, to go back to his room, to do nothing. The three of them went down to the cave instead. They were college freshmen. It was Saturday night.
19
Does the superman make you uneasy?
Saturday night. Freedy’s favorite night of the week, by far. What else was there, if you thought about it? Sunday, Monday, Tuesday nights all sucked, everyone knew that. Wednesday was a little better, Thursday better yet-he’d even been known to cut loose on a Thursday night, like one time down in Tijuana after those fires or earthquakes canceled the Friday schedule. Friday night was famous coast to coast, of course; but at jobs he’d held, A-1 Pool Design, Engineering, and Maintenance, and others not worth remembering, Saturday was a working day- not a normal working day, because no one expected normal work when everyone was a little wasted, although he would expect it, by God, when he got set up down in Florida, whose money was it, anyway? — but still, a working day, taking some of the fun out of Friday night. That left Saturday night, just one goddamn night to be totally… totally whatever. Freedy came alive on Saturday night. He was in the habit.
Totally whatever. That put it perfectly. Saturday morning Freedy lifted over at Ronnie’s, feeling real strong, stronger than he had for a long time, since California, in fact. Then he and Ronnie had a few beers, watched an infomercial about real estate or maybe getting into retail, Freedy wasn’t sure. Didn’t matter: they were always the same, as he told Ronnie. Idea, plan, stick.
“Fuckin’ A,” said Ronnie. “I never thought of that.”
“Works for everything,” Freedy said.
“What do you mean, everything?”
“Give you a for instance, Ronnie. What do you want to do tonight?”
“Huh?”
“Just answer. I’ll show you how it works.”
“What I want to do tonight?” said Ronnie. “Get laid, I guess.”
“Okay. That’s the idea part. Now for the plan. How are you going to make it real?”
Ronnie thought. “Head over to Fitchville?”
“Fitchville? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Thing is,” said Ronnie, “there’s sort of a girl.”
“You’ve got some piece in Fitchville?”
“Nothing what you’d call serious.”
What the hell was going on? Ronnie had a girlfriend? How did that compute? “What’s the story?”
“No story. She’s pretty nice.”
“Pretty nice?”
“Yeah.”
“How did you meet her?”
“I still do a little reffin’.”
“Reffin’?”
“You know. Reffin’ basketball. Pays twenty-five bucks a game. I got my certificate way back.”
“So?”
“So she plays on the team. Point guard.”
“Fuck are you talking about? What team?”
“Fitchville South.”
Fitchville South? “You’re fucking some high-school girl?”
“I wouldn’t say fucking, exactly,” said Ronnie. “She’s not ready yet.”
“She’s not ready yet?”
“She’s just a sophomore,” said Ronnie. “But I get hand jobs.”
Fuckin’ pathetic. But that night-sitting in a bar near the state line, a stripper bar, but because of the snow only one stripper had shown up and she was on a break-Freedy’s mind gravitated to the subject of hand jobs. Nothing wrong with hand jobs-American as apple pie. Once Estrella had given him a hand job in the Burger King drive-through in West Covina. Home of the Whopper. He kind of missed Estrella. But what good would that do? She’d fucked it all up with that brother scam or whatever it was. He ordered another beer, and a shot of V.O.; he was starting to like V.O.
