Kirk handed over a Kleenex and then impulsively leaned across and kissed Willy-Bob on the forehead. Willy-Bob’s face, tear-streaked, came up swiftly, surprised.
Kirk pulled back. ‘No offense. No offense!’
They both laughed and circled back through Hollywood to find a small hotel.
Kirk got out of the car.
‘You better get back in,’ said Willy-Bob.
‘You’re not staying here now?’
‘You know I can’t.’
Kirk stood waiting. At last Willy-Bob said: ‘Did you have a lot of girlfriends?’
‘A few.’
‘I should think so. You’re nice-looking. And you behave nicely. Is your marriage happy? Does niceness help that?’
‘I’m all right,’ said Kirk. ‘I miss the way it once was, when we started out.’
‘Oh, I wish I could misshimsometime and get it over with. I’m sick to my stomach now.’
‘It’ll pass, if you give it a chance.’
‘No.’ Willy-Bob shook his head. ‘It will never pass.’
That did it.
Kirk climbed back in and sat for a moment watching the young, fragile man dry his tears.
‘Where do you want me to take you?’
‘I’ll show you the place.’
Kirk put the keys in the ignition and waited. ‘The hotel is here. Last chance for life. Going, going, gone. Nine-eight-seven…’
Kirk looked at the beer Willy-Bob was holding. Willy-Bob laughed quietly.
‘The condemned man drank a hearty meal.’ He crumpled the can, threw it out. ‘Now it’s just junk, like me. Well?’
Kirk swallowed a curse and started the car.
‘There he is!’
They had driven along Santa Monica Boulevard and approached a place called the Blue Parrot. Out front, half in, half out the door, stood the man with the invisible mask and the unseen cape. Right now his mask hung half off his face, his eyes damaged, his mouth wounded, but there he stood, anyway, arms crossed over his chest, foot tapping impatiently.
When he saw Kirk’s car slow and saw who was in the passenger seat, his whole body toppled forward eagerly. But then his mask sank back in place, his spine straightened, his arms crushed his chest firmly as his chin came up and his eyes blazed in silence.
Kirk stopped the car. ‘You sure you want to be here?’
‘Yes,’ said Willy-Bob, eyes down, hands tucked between his legs.
‘You know what’s going to happen, don’t you? It’ll be hell for the next week, or, if I read him right, the next month.’
‘I know.’ Willy-Bob’s head nodded quietly.
‘And yet you want to go to him?’
‘It’s the only thing I can do.’
‘No, you can stay at the hotel and I’ll buy you a compass.’
‘What kind of future is that?’ said Willy-Bob. ‘You don’t love me.’
‘No, I don’t. Now, jump out and run like hell,alone!’
‘Christ, don’t you think I’dliketo do that?’
‘Do it, then. For me. For you. Run. Find someone else.’
‘Thereisno one else, in the whole world. He loves me, you know. If I left him, it’d kill him.’
‘And if you go back, he’ll killyou.’ Kirk took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. ‘God, I feel like someone’s drowning and I’m throwing him an anvil.’
Willy-Bob’s fingers toyed with the door handle. The door sprang open. The man standing in the Blue Parrot doorway saw this. Again, the toppled move of his body, again the return of balance, as a grim line formed around his death-rictus mouth.
Willy-Bob slid out of the car, the bones in his body dissolving as he went. By the time he stood full on the pavement, he seemed a foot shorter than he had been ten minutes ago. He leaned down and peered anxiously in through the car window as if talking to a judge in a traffic court.
‘You don’t understand.’
‘I do,’ said Kirk. ‘And that’s the sad part.’
He reached out and patted Willy-Bob’s cheek. ‘Try to have a good life, Willy-Bob.’
‘You’vealready had one. I’ll always remember you,’ said Willy-Bob. ‘Thanks for trying.’
‘Used to be a lifeguard. Maybe I’ll head down to the beach tonight, climb up on the station, be on the lookout for more drowning bodies.’
‘Do that,’ said Willy-Bob. ‘Save someone worth saving. Good night.’
Willy-Bob turned and headed for the Blue Parrot.
His friend, the man with the now-restored mask and flamboyant cape, had gone inside, secure, certain, without waiting. Willy-Bob blinked at the flapping hinged doors until they stood still. Then, head down in the rain that no one else saw, he walked across the sidewalk.
Kirk didn’t wait. He gunned the motor and drove away.
He reached the ocean in twenty minutes, stared at the empty lifeguard station in the moonlight, listened to the surf, and thought, Hell, there’s no one out there to be saved, and drove home.
He climbed into bed with the last of the beer and drank it slowly, staring at the ceiling until his wife, head turned toward the wall, at last said, ‘Well, what have you been up to,thistime?’
He finished the beer, lay back, and shut his eyes.
‘Even if I told you,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t believe it.’
The End
