Elizabeth McCracken - Niagara Falls All Over Again

“A what?” I asked, sure I’d misheard.

“Drag show. Female imps. I’m so old the only women who’ll flirt with me are men. I like it, though. At a drag show, it’s like every one’s senile. Nobody knows what the hell is going on.”

“I do not like this,” Gertrude said, though I already had started eyeing her with suspicion. Then we fell silent again.

Well, what was I expecting? We hadn’t seen each other in three decades, and if I’d called ahead he would have told me not to come. I finished the licorice-scented biscuit on my plate, and wondered if I’d hug Rocky before I left or solemnly shake his hand. Then Charles said, “Let’s give them some time alone.”

“Oh,” Gert said. She put her hand on the kitchen counter, as though she’d have to be pulled out.

“It’s all right, Gert,” Rocky said.

“You know,” Rocky said confidentially, once they were gone, “she’s a Nazi.”

“Yeah?” I said.

He nodded. “My own darling Nazi.”

I felt my shoulders relax. This we’d done many times. Rocky’s paranoia was one of our running jokes. “She’s German,” I said. “And won’t let you drink that much. But that doesn’t mean she’s eyeing world domination. Besides, she’s, I don’t know, forty? She’s too young.”

He shrugged. “ You try living with her. Today this trailer, tomorrow, the trailer next door. Younger women, boy. I think; soon I’ll be dead, and I want to leave her something, but what have I got? Nothing.”

“Oh,” I said. I looked around the joint and couldn’t argue. Anything posh he’d left in California thirty years before, or sold off for taxes and alimony. Maybe I had something at home, some award we’d gotten for fund-raising, a piece of Jessica’s jewelry that I could claim somehow rightly belonged to him. “I’m sure—”

He interrupted me. “I think I thought up something.” He leaned on his hand dreamily. “I have a little plan worked out.”

“Is it legal?” I asked.

“This is Nevada,” he said dismissively. Then he put his hands out, voilà . “Me.”

“Why not give her something she doesn’t already own?”

“You misunderstand me,” he said. “ After I’m dead. Some men leave their bodies to science. I’m leaving mine to Gert.”

“That’s some Catholic thing,” I said. “Right? Lie around in a glass coffin, breath like roses? You told me about this once. Some saint you had a crush on. Let me think: if your body remains uncorrupted twenty days — I’m trying to remember this part — well, let’s just say that would be a lifetime record.”

“ Funny man,” he said, smiling.

“Or you were thinking maybe of taxidermy?”

“Nothing that fancy, no. I told you: she’s a Nazi. Lampshades.” He fingered his now half-sunk anchor tattoo. “Nautical theme, maybe. I figure, the place could use some sprucing up, right? I got enough skin for a whole chandelier. Maybe a couple of rings from the gold in my teeth—”

“ Jesus, Rocky.” I laughed and closed my eyes in happy horror.

Happy, no kidding. A happy ending: two old men joking about the worst thing in the world in an Airstream trailer. Another time I would have explained to him why there was nothing the least bit funny about what he’d just said, but right now I found it hilarious, may God and the Audience forgive me.

One of our ongoing fights: Rocky asserted that with enough diligence and joie de vivre, you could turn anything to comedy. If he’d been born twenty years later, he would have made completely different films. Farces. Movies with mean streaks. But he hit it big in the 1940s, when everybody — moviegoers, politicians, censors, and me — believed that certain things were not funny, could not be made funny, would not be made funny. The physics of censors meant that a funny joke about something unfunny was even less funny than a clunker.

When I’d asked Junior to bring me to Reno, the best I’d hoped for was something sentimental, apologies and forgiveness. A movie might have shown us launching into an old routine, a soft shoe choreographed for men who could no longer pick up their feet so well. Not this: both of us with senses of humor so funereal nobody young could even see the jokes. What kind of act would we work up now? The Two Undertakers. The Ghouls. Black and Barry: Comedy with a Grievous Touch .

“You know,” I said, “I read where the chemicals in the human body are worth upwards of thirty-seven dollars.”

He nodded. “I’m asking fifty a pint. I put a lot of money into this thing”—he slapped his missing belly—“and I’m not going to let anybody lowball me. Speaking of which—”

But then Gert and Junior walked back in, to find us laughing.

“You’re in a good mood,” Gert said accusingly. She probably thought we’d gotten into the liquor.

“We were just talking, my only love, about the human atrocities of your fatherland,” said Rocky.

Junior looked at his shoes. “Socko stuff, I’m sure.”

“I’ve told you,” Gert said to Rocky, and he showed his palms in surrender.

Then he turned to me, as though his ladyfriend and son weren’t there. He leaned forward out of his chair, and I realized he hadn’t stood up the entire time. “I sort of hope she does it. What I said? Let the light go through me. Think of me when the sun goes down. Maybe you’d like one too.”

“Rocky,” I said, shuddering.

“You know?” he said. “Might as well make myself useful.”

When we got up to leave, Rocky said, “This was nice.”

“It was,” I agreed.

“But you know, Professor,” and that was the first time he’d called me by that name, the first time in ages anyone had, “we can’t be buddies.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, though I had some inkling.

“We can’t be buddies. Glad you came down with the kid. Would have told you not to — you know that — glad you did it, but that’s that, right? This is my life now.” He gestured around the trailer to the TV, the Hummels, everything — and, I saw now, a total lack of memorabilia. No photos, no plaques, no souvenirs. No copies of his movies on tape. “This is it, ” he said, in a voice I couldn’t interpret, I don’t want anything else, or Please don’t make me want anything else . “And,” he said, though I’d already figured it out, I wanted to stop him, “you’re not in it.”

“I know.”

“We’re not picking up where we left off.”

“Sure not.”

“Don’t want you going off and telling people where I am. Don’t want — listen, this one’s important — you telling any reporters, and the one guy whose editor maybe thinks I’m this human interest story actually sends him down to find me, already with the lead: ‘You won’t find Rocky Carter’s place on any map of the stars’ homes.’ ”

“Of course, Rock.”

“Right? Right.” He clapped his hands together.

I stood up to go. Rocky caught my eye, and said, “You understand me?”

“You know me, Rocky,” I said. “I always do.”

“So did you?” Rocky junior said on the way home.

“What?” I answered, playing dumb.

He sighed and tapped the steering wheel. His hands were mammoth. “Penny,” he said at last.

I had never told anyone, not even Jessica. A drunken escapade; bad behavior, but hadn’t I been mostly good? What could it matter, then or now?

“It’s complicated,” I said.

He ran a hand through his black hair, and switched on the radio. The Caddy had a fine radio, with big knobs that were a pleasure to turn. We drove twenty miles without talking before he said, “Well, then, I guess I’m provincial.”