Marisha Pessl: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

“I believe I have heard a few rumors,” said Dad.

Dad made Nurse Cone call AAA from the Recovery Unit desk, and when we returned home, Andreo’s truck was being towed. A large white van, discreetly marked Industrial Cleaning Co., was parked under our banyan tree. At Dad’s request, ICC, specializing in the sanitization of former crime scenes, had driven the half hour north from Baton Rouge to attend to the trail of Andreo’s blood staining the walkway, the front porch and a few maidenhair ferns.

“We’re putting this sad incident behind us, my little cloud,” Dad said, squeezing my shoulder as he waved to grim-faced ICC employee Susan, age 40–45, wearing a blinding white slicker and green rubber gloves that extended beyond her elbows to her upper arms. She stepped onto our porch like an astronaut stepping on the moon.

The appearance of Andreo’s blurb in The Howard Sentinel (FOREIGNER SHOT, VANISHES) marked the end of The Verduga Incident, as Dad called it (a minor scandal that had only briefly tarnished an otherwise spotless Administration).

Three months later, when the allspice and cassava plants had successfully quarantined the lawn, when twisting liana had choked every porch pillar and gutter and begun its murderous designs on the roof, when rays of sunlight, even at noon, rarely had the nerve to trespass beyond the understory to the ground, we still knew nothing about Andreo, and in February, Dad and I left Howard for Roscoe, Michigan, official homeland of the Red Squirrel. Though I never said his name and remained silent in supposed indifference whenever Dad mentioned him (“Wonder what ever happened to that Latino thug”), I thought about him all the time, my stop-spoken gamekeeper, my Heathcliff, my Something.

There was one more incident.

When Dad and I were living in Nestles, Missouri, immediately following my fifteenth birthday celebration at The Hashbrown Hut, we were loafing around Wal-Mart so I could pick out a few birthday presents. (“Sundays at Wal-Mart,” said Dad. “Parkies feasting for an afternoon on a football stadium of spectacular savings so the Waltons may buy an extra château in the south of France.”) Dad had gone to Jewelry and I was perusing Electronics when I looked up and noticed a man with shaggy hair black as an eight ball. He was moving past the display of digital cameras with his back to me. He wore faded jeans, a gray T-shirt and an army camouflage baseball cap pressed way down over his forehead.

His face was hidden — apart for a bit of tan, unshaved cheek — and yet, as he rounded into the aisle of TVs, my heart began to pound, because instantly I recognized the showy sigh, the slouch, that slow, underwater movement — his overall sense of Tahiti. No matter what time of day or amount of work to be done, someone with Tahiti could close his eyes and the reality of moody lawnmowers, scruffy lawns, threats of termination of employment would recede and in seconds he’d simply be in Tahiti, stark naked and drinking from a coconut, aware only of the percussion of the wind and girlish sighs of the ocean. (Few people were born with Tahiti, although there was a natural proclivity in Greeks, Turks and male South Americans. In North America, there was prevalence amongst Canadians, particularly in the Yukon territories, but in the United States it could be found only in first and second-generation hippies and nudists.)

I slipped after him, so I could find out it wasn’t him but only someone who looked like him with a flat nose or Gorbachev birthmark. Yet, when I reached the aisle of TVs, as if he was in one of his restless, drowsy moods (exactly why he’d never tended the Neptune orchids), he’d drifted out the other end of the aisle, seemingly headed toward Music. I darted back the other way, slipping past the CDs, the cardboard CLEARANCE display of Bo Keith Badley’s “Honky-tonk Hookup,” but, again, when I peered around the FEATURED ARTIST OF THE MONTH sign, he’d already disappeared into the Photo Center.

“Find some respectably rolled-back prices?” Dad suddenly asked behind me.

“Oh — no.”

“Well, if you’d accompany me to Garden and Patio, I believe I’ve found a winner. The Beech Total Ovation Symphony Hot Tub Spa with Stereo. Typhoon back and neck jets. Maintenance free. Eight people may pile in for the fun at once. And price? Firmly rolled back. Hurry. We don’t have much time.”

I managed to extricate myself from Dad under the somewhat shaky guise of wanting to peruse Apparel, and after I saw him head merrily toward Pets, I quickly circled back to the Photo Center. He wasn’t there. I checked Pharmacy; Gifts & Flowers; Toys, where a red-faced woman was spanking her kids; Jewelry, where a Latino couple was trying on watches; the Vision Center, where an old woman bravely considered life behind brown-tinted billboard frames. I ran through a slew of cranky mothers in Baby; dazed newlyweds in Bath; Pets, where I covertly observed Dad discussing freedom with a goldfish (“Life ain’t so good in the slammer, is it, old boy?”); and Sewing, where a bald man weighed the pros and cons of pink-and-white cotton chintz. I patrolled the café and the checkout aisles, including Customer Service and the Express Lane, where a fat toddler screamed and kicked the candy bars.

But again — he was gone. There’d be no awkward reunion, no WHEN LOVE SPEAKS STOP THE VOICE OF THE GODS MAKE HEAVEN DROWSY WITH THE HARMONY STOP.

It wasn’t until I dejectedly returned to the Photo Center that I noticed the shopping cart. Abandoned by the Drop-Off counter, jutting out into the middle of the aisle, it was empty — as I could have sworn his had been — apart from one item, a small plastic package of something called ShifTbush™ Invisible Gear, Fall Mix.

Puzzled, I picked up the bag. It was stuffed with crunchy nylon leaves. I read the back: “ShifTbush™ Fall Mix, a blend of 3-D, photo-enhanced, synthetic forest leaves. Apply it using EZStik™ to your existing camo and you’ll be instantly invisible in your woodland surroundings, even to the keenest of animals. ShifTbush™ is the accomplished hunter’s dream.”

“Don’t tell me you’re about to go through a deer-hunting phase,” Dad said behind me. He sniffed. “What is that horrific smell — men’s cologne, acidic sap. I couldn’t find you. Figured you’d disappeared into that black hole known as the public restroom.”

I tossed the package back into the cart. “I thought I saw someone.”

“Oh? Now tell me your gut reaction to the following words. Colonial. Della hay . Wood. Patio. Five Pieces. Sun resistant, wind resistant, Judgment Day resistant. Amazing value at just $299. And consider the Dellahay motto neatly inscribed on their cute little tags: ‘Patio furniture isn’t furniture. It’s a state of mind.’” Dad smiled, putting his arm around me as he pushed me gently toward Garden. “I’ll give you ten thousand dollars if you can tell me what that means.”

Dad and I left Wal-Mart with patio furniture, a coffee machine and one paroled goldfish (freedom was too much for him; he went belly up after a day of living on the outside), and yet, weeks later, even when the Improbables and Highly Unlikelies had taken over my head, I couldn’t let go of the thought that it had, in fact, been he, restless and moody Heathcliff. Day after day, he floated through all the Wal-Marts in America, searching for me in a million lonely aisles.

Naturally, for me, the idea of a Permanent Home (the definition of which I took to be any shelter Dad and I inhabited in excess of ninety days — the time an American cockroach could go without food) was nothing more than a Pipe Dream, Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, the hope to purchase a brand new Cadillac Coupe DeVille with baby blue leather interior for any Soviet during the drab winter of 1985.