No Such Creature

clamped to the ceiling, was not conducive to good cheer.

“Come for a ride with me,” Max said. “Get some fresh air! Make a world of difference.”

“Tell you the truth, pal, I don’t even remember you.”

Max bowed his head. “I grieve to hear it.”

“I don’t have a clue who you are.”

“Max Maxwell, ne Magnus.”

“I know who you say you are, but I just don’t know who you are. You think you’re a character, right? Think you’re colourful. But you’re just another blowhard got lots of personality and no fucking character. There’s no person inside that belly of yours. And one day the belly shrivels along with everything else and you end up a fucking zero. Less than a zero-a minus sign, a decimal point, empty fucking space. Get used to it, my friend.” The bony hand gestured again: the empty chair, the nightstand devoid of gifts and cards. “This is the way a thief dies.”

Max was uncharacteristically quiet as they drove through at least a hundred miles of the desert that is west Texas. The plains and cactus looked as if all moisture had been sucked out of them thousands of years ago. A pale yellow light cast the world in a sickly, overexposed glow.

But Owen was feeling great. He had to look back at Sabrina every five minutes or so just to make sure she was real. He could not believe he had slept with so beautiful a creature. And she for her part had developed a new smile, where just one corner of her mouth lifted, a smile of complicity. He wished Max hadn’t confiscated her cellphone. Even though she was sitting about two feet away, he would have sent her a text message saying, “Stay Forever,” followed by a million exclamation points.

Max was driving with fierce concentration. He spoke without taking his eyes from the road, as if addressing the hot asphalt and the desiccated landscape it traversed. “Young lady,” he began, “you have made no inquiry concerning your father.”

“No,” Sabrina said from the back seat, “and I’m not going to, either.”

“I shall tell you how he’s doing anyway.”

“Knock yourself out.”

“Your father, I regret to say, is clearly mortal,” Max said. “Growing more mortal by the hour. The body is suffering, no question. But the spirit of the man! He’s driving the staff crazy with all the visitors. People bringing gifts, telling stories about the old days, wishing him well. Wanting to touch the hem, so to speak. I was moved, I don’t mind telling you.”

Owen feigned deep interest in a Blue Guide.

“And not a word of complaint about his illness,” Max went on. “Well, you could see it in the sweat on his brow, of course, and his eyes watering from the pain. Blamed it on allergies, the old master.” Sunlight glinted on the tears that now wet Max’s own cheeks.

“We saw this tiny Napoleon museum,” Sabrina said brightly.

“The man is on his deathbed. Can you not relent?”

No answer. They drove awhile in silence. Then Max said, “Why on earth is there a Napoleon museum in El Paso?”

“No one knows,” Owen said, “but they had a pair of his boots and a bunch of books that he owned. And we saw the cemetery where John Wesley Hardin was buried.”

“John Wesley? The religious founder?”

“The gunfighter,” Owen said. “One of the meanest ever. He shot one guy just for snoring.”

“No one could hold that against him,” Max said. “And what delights do you have in store for us today?”

“I’ll tell you when we get there.”

The Guadalupe Mountains brought some relief to the monotony of the drive as they continued east through fields of prickly pear, cholla and agave. They stopped for lunch at a state park, where they saw mysterious pictographs. Whenever they stepped out of the Rocket, the ferocity of the sun seemed to suck the breath out of their lungs.

When the sign came up for the Carlsbad Caverns, Max was all for it until he saw the vast squat oval of the natural entrance. “No, no,” he said. “Impossible.”

“Come on, Max, they’re supposed to be spectacular. They’ll be all lit up inside.”

“I refuse to go underground until such time as mortality may require. You two go ahead. I shall meet you here in the Rocket exactly two hours hence.”

So Owen and Sabrina got to explore the caves in the company of sixty or seventy tourists. After the brutal sun of the parking lot, the cool of the caves was pure balm. Owen lent Sabrina one of his sweatshirts. The sleeves hung down past her wrists, giving her a waiflike look that didn’t suit her at all.

They walked through strange cathedrals and chapels of limestone. The immensity of the earth lay above them, but the soaring ceilings relieved any gloom. A couple of times he took her hand to help her up a slope, thrilled by the heat of her small fingers against his palm. He would have held her hand for the entire rest of the day, but Sabrina detached herself each time.

Stone glittered and gleamed in shapes of waterfalls and organ pipes. Clusters of stalactites tiny as straws pressed up against columns bigger than anything that had supported the Parthenon. They saw dazzling mineral deposits, carpets of gypsum dust, and the shimmer and bustle of microscopic cave life.

When they came out into the sun again, Sabrina said, “Thank you for taking me there, Owen. It’s something I’ll never forget.”

She pulled off the sweatshirt and handed it back to him. A photographer operating a small stand near the exit asked if they’d like a picture for two bucks, and Owen said sure. He took one of Sabrina and one of them together, and Owen bought both.

“I look silly,” Sabrina said, handing back the photo.

Owen shook his head. “You are so wrong.” As they crossed the parking lot, he said, “You know, I think being around you makes me dumb.”

“Dumb as in quiet or dumb as in dumb?”

“Both. I’m having trouble speaking. Am I just, like, the nerdiest guy you ever met? I can’t handle this.”

“Can’t handle what?”

“You. Being around you. You make me too happy. I keep feeling like there’s something urgent I have to tell you, but then I can’t speak.”

“Sounds like a nightmare.”

Owen shook his head. “Definitely not. Whatever the opposite of a nightmare is, that’s what I’m having.”

The Rocket was dark, the bedroom door closed.

“I better wake him up,” Owen said. “He tends to get confused if he naps too long.” He rapped on the bedroom door. “Max? Max, you really missed something. The caverns were awesome. Max?” Owen knocked louder before opening the door. The bed was empty. “Shit. He’s gone somewhere.”

“It’s awfully hot,” Sabrina said. “Maybe he decided to wait inside the shop.”

Owen pulled out his cell and dialed Max’s number. There was a dull humming sound. Sabrina checked the far side of the bed and found Max’s vibrating phone, holding it up for Owen to see.

Coming in for the landing, that’s the tricky part-or at least that’s how Max thinks of it. He is aloft somewhere (where exactly is another blank spot on his instrumentation), and he is flying blind, drifting blind really, because he has no sense of direction. He is a balloon, not a powered craft.

He might call himself a UDO if that term were available to him at the moment, an unidentified drifting object, because he is certainly drifting, having no clue as to his exact location, and definitely unidentified, having for some reason no mental access to certain personal records-for example, his name.

The (he assumed temporary) misplacement of his identity was not nearly so alarming as the monolithic unfamiliarity of his surroundings. It was not for lack of signs, landmarks, hints and indications. There was that greyish breast of a mountain in the distance, surrounded by less impressive folds of agricultural cellulite. It was the sort of geographical formation you looked at and said to yourself, Ah yes, there’s, I must be near (home, Mum’s place, the office).

And there was a black and white sign, a shield-shaped piece of tin fixed to a metal post that said