Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex

When I didn’t reply, Presto said, “I’m not offending you, am I? You’re not one of those Mormon kids on your mission, are you? In that suit of yours?”

“No.”

“Good. You had me worried for a minute. Let’s hear your voice again,” Presto said. “Come on, give me your best shot.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Say ‘English muffin.’ ”

“English muffin.”

“I don’t work in radio anymore, Cal. I am not a professional broadcaster. But my humble opinion is that you are not DJ material. What you’ve got is a thin tenor. If you want to get laid, you’d better learn to sing.” He laughed, grinning at me. His eyes showed no merriment, however, but were hard, examining me closely. He drove one-handed, eating potato chips with the other.

“Your voice has an unusual quality, actually. It’s hard to place.”

It seemed best to keep quiet.

“How old are you, Cal?”

“I just told you.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I just turned eighteen.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“I don’t know. Sixty?”

“Okay, you can get out now. Sixty! I’m fifty-two, for Christ’s sake.”

“I was going to say fifty.”

“It’s all this weight.” He was shaking his head. “I didn’t look old until I gained all this weight. Skinny kid like you wouldn’t know about that, would you? I thought you were a chick at first, when I saw you standing by the road. I didn’t register the suit. I just saw your outline. And I thought, Jesus, what’s a young chick like that doing hitchhiking?”

I was unable to meet Presto’s gaze now. I was beginning to feel scared again and very uncomfortable.

“That’s when I recognized you. I saw you before. At that steak house. You were with that queer.” There was a pause. “I had him for a chicken hawk. Are you gay, Cal?”

“What?”

“You can tell me if you want. I’m not gay but I’ve got nothing against it.”

“I’d like to get out now. Could you let me out?”

Presto let go of the wheel and held his palms up in the air. “I’m sorry. I apologize. No more third degree. I won’t say another word.”

“Just let me out.”

“If that’s what you want, okay. But it doesn’t make sense. We’re going the same way, Cal. I’ll take you to San Francisco.” He didn’t slow down and I didn’t ask him to. He was true to his word and from then on remained mostly quiet, humming along to the radio. Every hour he made a pit stop to relieve himself and to buy more economy-sized bottles of Pepsi, more chocolate chip cookies, more red licorice and corn chips. Back on the road, he tanked up. He tilted his head back while he chewed, wary about getting crumbs on his shirtfront. Soft drinks glugged down his throat. Our conversation remained general. We drove up through the Sierra, out of Nevada and into California. We got lunch at a drive-thru. Presto paid for the hamburgers and milk shakes and I decided he was all right, friendly enough, and not after anything physical from me.

“Time for my pills,” he said after we had eaten. “Cal, can you hand me my pill bottles? They’re in the glove compartment.”

There were five or six different bottles. I handed them to Presto and he tried to read their labels, slanting his eyes. “Here,” he said, “steer for a minute.” I leaned over to take hold of the wheel, closer to Bob Presto than I wanted to be, while he struggled with the caps and shook out pills. “My liver’s all fucked up. Because of this hepatitis I picked up in Thailand. Fucking country almost killed me.” He held up a blue pill. “This is the one for the liver. I’ve got a blood thinner, too. And one for blood pressure. My blood’s all fucked up. I’m not supposed to eat so much.”

In this way we drove all day, reaching San Francisco in the evening. When I saw the city, pink and white, a wedding cake arrayed on hills, a new anxiety took hold of me. All the way across the country I had absorbed myself in reaching my destination. Now I was there and I didn’t know what I would do or how I would survive.

“I’ll drop you wherever you want,” Presto said. “You got an address where you’re staying, Cal? Your friend’s place?”

“Anywhere’s fine.”

“I’ll take you up to the Haight. That’ll be a good place for you to get your bearings.” We drove into the city and finally Bob Presto pulled his car over and I opened my door.

“Thanks for the ride,” I said.

“Sure, sure,” said Presto. He held out his hand. “And by the way, it’s Palo Alto.”

“What?”

“Stanford’s in Palo Alto. You should get that straight if you want anyone to believe you’re in college.” He waited for me to speak. Then in a surprisingly tender voice, a professional trick, too, no doubt, but not without effect, Presto asked, “Listen, guy, you got any place to stay?”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“Can I ask you something, Cal? What are you, anyway?”

Without answering I got out of the car and opened the back door to get my suitcase. Presto turned around in his seat, a difficult maneuver for him. His voice remained soft, deep, fatherly. “Come on. I’m in the business. I might be able to help you out. You a tranny?”

“I’m going now.”

“Don’t get offended. I know all about pre-op and post-op and all that stuff.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I pulled my suitcase off the seat.

“Hey, not so fast. Here. At least take my number. I could use a kid like you. Whatever you are. You need some money, don’t you? You need an easy way to make some good money, you give your old friend Bob Presto a call.”

I took the number to get rid of him. Then I turned and walked off as though I knew where I was going.

“Watch out in the park at night,” Presto called after me in his booming voice. “Lot of lowlifes in there.”

My mother used to say that the umbilical cord attaching her to her children had never been completely cut. As soon as Dr. Philobosian had severed the cord of flesh, another, spiritual connection had grown up in its place. After I went missing, Tessie felt that this fanciful idea was truer than ever. In the nights, while she lay in bed waiting for the tranquilizers to take effect, she often put her hand to her navel, like a fisherman checking his line. It seemed to Tessie that she felt something. Faint vibrations reached her. From these she could tell that I was still alive, though far away, hungry, and possibly unwell. All this came in a kind of singing along the invisible cord, a singing such as whales do, crying out to one another in the deep.

For almost a week after I disappeared, my parents had remained at the Lochmoor Hotel, hoping I might return. Finally, the NYPD detective assigned to the case told them that the best thing to do was return home. “Your daughter might call. Or turn up there. Kids usually do. If we find her, we’ll let you know. Believe me. The best thing to do is go home and stay by the phone.” Reluctantly, my parents took this advice.

Before leaving, however, they had made an appointment with Dr. Luce. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” Dr. Luce told them, offering an explanation for my disappearance. “Callie may have stolen a look at her file while I was out of my office. But she didn’t understand what she was reading.”

“But what would make her run away?” Tessie asked. Her eyes were wide, imploring.

“She misconstrued the facts,” Luce answered. “She oversimplified them.”

“I’ll be honest with you, Dr. Luce,” said Milton. “Our daughter called you a liar in that note she left. I’d like an explanation why she might say something like that.”

Luce smiled tolerantly. “She’s fourteen. Distrustful of adults.”