Hob Broun - Odditorium

So set em up, Joe

I can do it up fast or do it up slow …”

“Coffee, mister?”

“Make mine a double.” He had black, shoulder-length hair and a face off an old Roman coin. Sitting right next to Tildy, he cocked one eye in Etta’s direction and whispered, “Hirsutism. Probably some kind of hormone imbalance.”

Feeling crowded, Tildy drew in her elbows, shifted her knees to one side.

“What’s the special today? Got any fish cakes?” He touched glances with Tildy, smiled, a lupine retraction of lips from teeth. “Don’t mind me, señorita . It’s these time-release Dexamyls. I’m stoked up pretty good.”

“Hooray for you.”

“Come on, don’t be that way. Let’s be old friends. Can I treat you to some fish cakes or something?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay, okay. Maybe something with a little more visual appeal. Miss, a hot fudge sundae for the señorita here.”

Tildy raised her hand. “I think you ought to know about the special diet I’m on. My doctor says I can only take in so much bullshit per day. If you keep on like this I’m liable to overdose.”

He extended his hand. “Marty Rechette, how ya doin’. I’m a doctor myself.”

“Really. What’s your specialty?”

“Verbal display.”

“I mean medically.”

“Oh yeah … uh, forensic psychiatry. I just finished testifying in a strangulation case down in Key West. I’m in and out of court all the time.”

“I’ll bet,” Tildy said, intrigued despite the outlandish MO.

Etta refilled their coffee cups, said testily, “You want to look at a menu or what?”

“Nah, I’ll just have the fish cakes.”

Etta threw down her order pad, flounced to a back booth and opened a newspaper.

He followed her with his eyes, caught sight of the pictures on the wall. “Unreal. What kind of place is this anyway?”

“Just what you see,” Tildy said.

“What I see is, well … I don’t know. Some of those people have serious medical problems. Bad taste, bad taste.”

“Not in this town.”

“Very inbred, huh?”

“No. Carny people live here, lots of them. Abnormal is normal so nobody notices.”

Tildy saw that he was examining her body, slowly and section by section, not caring if she noticed. “Nothing the matter with me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

He removed the smoke-colored glasses and polished the lenses with a napkin. Then he went spinning on the stool and as he slowed like a switched-off phonograph and came to face her again, said, “You don’t want to know what I was thinking.”

“It’s true I’m not a curious person. People comment on it all the time.”

Outside, thunderheads were gathering over the supermarket and papers spiraled in a whistling wind. Tildy placed a stack of change next to her saucer and got up.

“It’s been an experience, Marty. Let’s meet here again next year.”

“Wait now, señorita .” He came after her, looming, and grabbed her hand as it reached for the door. “Hold up a minute. You don’t want to skip out now and regret it all day long.”

“I have an appointment.”

“‘I have an appointment.’ Come on. You can’t scale fish with a rubber knife.” He angled his head toward the street. “I know my weather and this storm that’s coming is gonna be a good one. A real extravaganza with lightning bolts from one end of the sky to the other. We’ll go for a ride in it and you can show me the sights.”

Tildy looked down. His hand was cold and surrounded hers like some sightless underwater beast. “Why not.”

“That’s much better. I’ll drive.”

Tildy was watching his seesaw hips as they crossed the street. She tripped over the curb and skinned the palms of both hands in breaking her fall.

“You okay?” He pulled her up. “Little blood there.”

“It’s no big deal,” she said, dodging the arm he tried to curl about her waist. “I’m not usually so clumsy.”

“I’m not really a doctor.” Pushing the Fiat through a stop sign. “And this car is stolen.”

“If you’re trying to impress me, forget it.”

“I’m leveling with you, that’s all. I’m on my way to New York to close out a business deal and my real name is Jimmy Christo. No one calls me by my first name, though. It’s not allowed.”

“Great. You’re a real colorful guy. But I’ll have to assume that everything you tell me is a lie.”

“Okay, let’s hear your story. As plausible as you can make it.”

“Why don’t you just take me back to my car.”

“Not yet. I want to hear your side.”

Tildy looked out the window, then at the raw spots on her hands. The first submission was always the hardest; they get progressively easier after that. “My name is Tildy. I’m twenty-five years old. I play, or I used to play, shortstop for a traveling softball team. I have a husband who’s kind of a basket case, a small birthmark on my stomach and not too much in the bank.”

“You’re pretty colorful yourself.”

And then with a single horrendous crack the storm was upon them. Raindrops the size of hominy rumbled on the roof of the car and ran in overlapping sheets down the windows. The chill came right through the seams of the car. Tildy’s teeth chattered and she slid down until her eyes were level with the door handle. They were breathing fog, felt the cold charge of ozone stiffening muscles along spine and calf. Rising off the floor came the heavy odor of a Turkish bath: steam and sweat and scurf and fungal crusts that fed off one another. Abruptly then, something was sucked from the furious core of the storm and it eased, shifted. They were strafed with tiny nuggets of hail now.

“I think you should have turned left back there,” Tildy said.

Two-lane blacktop had turned to one-lane gravel. They swayed in the ruts and Christo had to swing sharply right to avoid the limbs of a freshly fallen tree. Soupy mud thrummed in the wheelwells. Christo stopped short and cut the ignition.

“What’s the deal?”

He turned to her and wiped his eyes. Tildy stared ahead, shoulders square, arms folded under pointy breasts perfect as two chrome bumper guards.

“This doesn’t go anywhere. I think you’d better turn around.”

Rain fell softly now and through a meager canopy of trees the sky showed veins of yellow breaking through.

“I sort of like it here. Tranquil.”

“Let’s go.”

Christo watched her hand dip into a pocket of her baggy slacks, reappear holding a pale, slender object which she tapped against the window glass. It was a straight razor.

“What’s that for?”

“Protection.” She depressed the thumb lever and the blade, spotted with iridescent tarnish, emerged from its mother-of-pearl housing.

“You don’t need it from me, Tildy. Relax. Whatever you might be thinking right at the moment, I’m a real get-along guy. Dogs love me.”

“You’re a thief and a liar, and that’s only what you’ve admitted to. How do I know you’re not some maniac who’d like to tie me up and carve his initials in my thigh?”

“You don’t, not conclusively. But that’s part of my charm.”

“This ride was your idea, don’t forget, not mine.”

“I’d call that coy, but if you put that thing away, I’ll agree.”

Tildy shoved the razor back in her pocket. “This doesn’t mean I trust you.”

He swung the door open, put one leg outside. “We’re both too jumpy for close quarters. Let’s walk.”

Separated by a wide corridor of air, they tramped through the drizzle without speaking. The road dipped and turned past a gravel mound, an overgrown rubbish site: tires, jerry cans, rubber pipes, a tilting stove.