Giles Blunt - No Such Creature

Zig was coming toward them on the road. His hands were still in the air, but lower now.

There was the sound of a car coming, spitting gravel. Zig turned toward the noise.

The Mustang, coming fast. Zig reached for his gun, thought better of it, and started to run. The Mustang swerved and scooped him up off the ground, flipping him in a somersault up and over the length of the car. Sabrina pulled to a gravelly stop, did a three-pointer, and vanished once again up the road.

Zig lay still beside the road in a cloud of dust.

As Max crossed toward him, gun ready, Zig struggled to one knee.

Owen saw Zig reach, gun coming up. “Max! Watch out!”

Max fired, and Zig dropped the gun, slowly toppling to one side.

Max knelt beside him. Zig pawed uselessly at the dirt.

“Best take it easy, old son,” Max said.

Zig stared at the blood soaking through his shirt. “Shit. Look at that.”

“Sorry,” Max said.

“It’s not your fault.”

“True enough, I suppose. Wages of ruthlessness. All that.”

“Fuck, Max. I suppose I’m going to die now.”

“It does look that way.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Owen said. “We can phone an ambulance when we’re back on the highway.”

“Fuck that,” Zig said.

“Is there anyone you want me to call?” Max said.

Zig was turning paler than any man Owen had ever seen.

“Let me think.” He closed his eyes.

“Zig?”

He opened his eyes again. “I can’t think of anyone.” He squinted up at Owen, then at Max. “You know something?” he said. “This really sucks.”

After that, there was no question of continuing their trip, not even for Max. Aside from having just watched a man die, they had already missed the scheduled dates for two of their jobs, and the third, in Savannah, Georgia, was far too complicated for two actors. So they drove back to Dallas, climbed inside the Rocket, and limped home to New York.

In the weeks that followed, Max rattled around their two-bedroom making a nuisance of himself. In an attempt to improve the apartment’s two air conditioners, he rendered both of them inoperable, and the New York humidity was suffocating. Owen was going to as many movies as he could-partly to keep cool, partly for “research” on his favourite actors, and partly just to get away from Max, whose episodes of confusion became more frequent. Even worse, he was losing his temper in a way that was quite new.

One August afternoon Mrs. Carlson, their neighbour from across the hall, rapped on the door and told Owen that she had just seen Max at the Pioneer grocery store. He was standing inside the doorway when she went in, and he was still there forty-five minutes later when she went out.

“I spoke to him both times,” she said, “but I’m not sure he recognized me. He just said he was waiting for someone. I said, ‘Owen?’ But he just snapped at me and told me to go away.”

Owen apologized on Max’s behalf and dashed over to the grocery store. He found Max standing outside the place, unable to account for his afternoon and not at all certain who Owen might be. Owen managed to persuade him to come home, and when Max woke up after a two-hour nap he was his old self again, irritated that Owen was so frantic.

They lived in an area of Manhattan that was full of clinics and hospitals. That turned out to be lucky on another day, toward the end of summer, when Owen received a call from Bellevue. A kindly phlebotomist, an enormous Jamaican woman, had noticed Max on the corner of First Avenue and Twenty-ninth, repeatedly starting out across the street and then turning around and heading back. She had brought him to work, and the ID in his wallet had enabled her to call.

“He needs to have a full examination, child. They’ll be wanting to do exams and scans and all kine a ting.”

Max had done a perfect impression of her accent all the way home, this myna bird part of his character apparently undamaged.

“What if you hadn’t had your wallet on you, Max? You could still be wandering around Manhattan like a homeless person.”

“But I did have my wallet,” Max said, suddenly red in the face. “I did have my wallet and I don’t need you nagging at me like a harpy.”

Owen tried not to be hurt by these sudden tempers. When Max refused yet again to be tested, Owen went to a pharmacy and had an ID bracelet made. To his surprise, Max didn’t put up any protest about wearing it. But how could Owen go into residence at Juilliard next month if Max was wandering around Manhattan in a fog?

His episodes had seemed to be entirely random, but he developed another behaviour that occurred only in the evening. Just before suppertime, he would be sitting in his La-Z-Boy with a book in his lap or watching the news. Suddenly he would announce, “I want to go home.”

The first time he said this, Owen felt a deep chill run through him.

“What are you talking about, Max? England?”

Max was staring in indignation at the room, as if someone had tried to pull a fast one.

“This isn’t my home. I want to go home.”

“Max, you are home.”

“This is not where I live.”

“It is, Max. This is your home. I’m Owen, your nephew, remember? We live together here in this apartment.”

“That’s fine for you to say, but I want to go home.”

“Max, let’s just watch the rest of the news, okay?”

After an hour or so Max would calm down, and when he had had his supper you would never know he had suffered a moment’s confusion. Owen talked to his own doctor, who said it could be Alzheimer’s, it could be a lot of things, but there was nothing that could be done unless his uncle came in for an exam.

It was Labor Day weekend when Owen came home one afternoon to find Max his old self again, whistling as he spread wigs and costumes over the dining table.

“Sit you down, nephew,” Max said. “I would acquaint thee with a show of pure genius.”

“No more shows, Max. Season’s over.” Owen went to the fridge in search of a snack.

“Bollocks,” Max called after him. “That impudent wench robbed us blind, cost us at least three performances, and an untold price in peace of mind and security in my old age-should old age ever become a concern. I plan to make good my losses.”

Owen selected a can of iced tea from the fridge and pulled out half a peach pie Max had made the previous weekend.

“Sometimes things don’t go the way you planned,” Owen said. “That’s what you’ve always told me.”

“Yes, and on such doleful occasions one must improvise. Which is why you need to look at this.”

“You want a piece of pie?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course I want a piece of pie.”

Owen cut two slices and brought them to the dining table.

Max was holding up a photograph of the Upper East Side-Madison Avenue, it looked like, but it could have been any one of a dozen corners in Manhattan, with its bank, its New York Sports Club, its Gap and Banana Republic.

“A bank,” Max said, tapping a finger on the Chase sign. “A very handsome little bank, well framed for larceny and but lightly defended.”

“Uh-huh,” Owen said around a mouthful of pie. “You’re going to rob a bank now?”

“A most excellent plan if you would but let me speak into the fearful hollow of thine ear.”

“Max, it’s a bank , and we don’t rob banks. This is New York , and we never work in our hometown. Pookie is dead. Roscoe is laying low. It’s time to retire while we’re still alive. Let’s not push it.”

“Look at these.” Max put on a green surgical cap and mask. “Dr. Abe Pfeffernan, oncologist,” he said, tapping the name-plate on his chest. “Pfeffernan-you have to love the name. I have a set for you too. Unless-would you prefer to be a nurse? You’re young enough. Elizabethan lads played women all the time. Test of a real actor if you can play a member of the opposite sex.”