Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

The two took afternoon naps beside the armillary sphere, a dogeared copy of When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals splayed upon Tull’s chest. It was thought that Pullman needed more exercise, so they hired Kali Guzman, the very same who took Diane Keaton’s and Michael Ovitz’s dogs on their morning runs. That was good, because Tull needed to find someone to work with the Dane in the summer while the Four Winds group was traveling. He didn’t feel like going on the supersonic excursion but didn’t really want to stay home, either — he wanted to get away from his mother; he wanted to get away from the ghost of his father; he wanted to get away. Still, Tull worried about leaving Pullman behind.

As he sank deeper into gloom, Lucy tried futilely to entertain by reading aloud selections from her book, but Tull was glacially indifferent to the apparent majesties of The Mystery of the Blue Maze . She drew solace in knowing Mr. Hookstratten had at least passed some of the pages on to a highfalutin editor in Manhattan.

After an hour of wheedling, the redhead got him to accompany her to the little hangar that had been built behind the Majestyk to house Edward’s most recent diversion: a 747 simulator. You sat in front of banks of instruments while a computer initiated takeoffs and landings — the same one that pilots trained on. Lucy liked the way it projected constellations onto a “night sky”; but the best was when the computers made turbulence.

That afternoon, while fiber-optic stars bloomed outside the cockpit windshield, Lucy asked if he wanted to make out. Tull shrugged and she took that for a yes. She popped out her retainer, jumped onto his seat, and, straddling him, Frenched away. Tiny orange fuzz glowed on her upper lip as O’Hare or Heathrow or some such impossibly unnavigable complex receded into incandescent view on a virtual vector far below; he watched the vertiginous ten-thousand-light runway as they kissed. He liked the way her mouth smelled. When Tull focused on her, Lucy’s lids were slammed shut in a CinemaScopic swoon. With sweaty hand she removed steamed eyeglasses — they folded up like a copper spider — without pausing in her business. Her neck, pale and faintly pulsing, looked ready for vampires. They’d been fooling around for six months now (though this was their inaugural flight) and the last few times her hand had drifted down, flopping onto his crotch with the occasional serious back-kneading of knuckles. His mind wandered during their rites and sometimes he even pretended to be with other girls, a fantasia that inevitably ended with Tull back in the Mauck kissing the homeless one called Amaryllis; in the cockpit, he would slowly open his eyes in a squint, trying to make his cousin look dark and leonine-haired. No such luck.

“Ho ho ho! Well what have we here?”

A damp-haired Edward, in chenille robe and silvery beaded hood, floated at the laddered entrance; toothy Eulogio (Epitacio’s kid brother) held the boy up as if making an offer to Aztec gods. Lucy involuntarily jumped, knocking her head against the ceiling before fumbling for her spectacles.

“Oh my God, Eulogio! Look! It’s incest!”

Eulogio grinned, clucking like a simpleton.

“It is not incest,” Lucy remonstrated.

“Tell it to the court!”

Tull winced in embarrassment. “We were just … messing around,” he said sheepishly.

“You better get down , Edward!” she said, sternly pulling rank; he was her younger brother. “Take him down, Eulogio! You’ll be in big trouble if he falls!”

“Can’t leave ’em alone for a minute!” said Edward.

There was a movie tonight at the Majestyk— Journey to the Center of the Earth . Eulogio carried the boy outside and set him in the buggy before going to turn on the popcorn machine. A gloating Edward waited patiently for his shamefaced cohorts, who, smoothing their skirts, soon joined him. They rode back to the cobblestone streets of Olde CityWalk.

“So,” said Edward mischievously. “Ready for tomorrow?”

Tull was blank-faced.

The cousin turned to his sister. “Didn’t you tell him?”

“Tell me what?”

“Do I constantly have to be the one to surprise you?”

“I talked to your dad’s father,” said Lucy.

Again, Tull was blank.

“Your grandfather ,” Edward enlightened.

“You’re kidding.”

“Well, you wanted me to find them, didn’t you?” said Lucy.

“I–I guess …”

“You guess ,” said Edward. “Have you no concept of the amount of time and money that little maneuver of my sister’s involved?”

“He’s teasing, Tull. The Weiners are still in Redlands; they’re listed. I got their number from 411.”

“Where is Redlands?” asked Tull, trying to be flip.

“About an hour from here. But we don’t have to visit,” said Edward archly. “I mean, you don’t really seem all that excited .”

“No, it’s cool. My father’s probably been in touch with them. Then maybe we can put an end to all this.”

“What ever ,” said Edward, rolling his eyes at Tull’s unconvincing sangfroid. “Hey they’re your grandparents, not mine.”

“Not really. I mean, my father was adopted.”

“You know, you really have an attitude problem,” Edward said.

“You actually talked to them?” asked Tull of Lucy.

“Of course I talked to them. I said I did.”

“Someone has to do the legwork,” Edward said disparagingly.

“What did you tell them?” he asked Lucy.

His cousin answered instead, with campy hauteur. “That the Trotter kinder were descending en masse.”

“Harry and Ruth Weiner!” said the braided detective, beaming. “How’s that for Jewish?”

†Unlike their detractors, Tull and his father know nothing of fiction — they only know of the magic of this “fierce and beautiful” world. Ironically, it is the cynical reader himself who is threatened with fictionalization; yet such a bewitching seems unlikely, for, like characters in a threadbare novel, little has happened to these cynics, nor likely ever will. Thus may they go to their graves.

The arrival of the Mauck in the Riverside County suburb could not have made more of a stir than an X-Files alien ship. The pitch-black vehicle, abristle with various satellite dishes and antennae, was strange enough; its crew, subsequently disgorged onto the usually lonesome dead end, had a nearly traumatizing effect on neighborhood denizens, mostly children on Razors who, like tugboats, had accompanied the craft a number of blocks during its slow-speed arrival to dock.

First came the space-age spreading of the gull wings; then Epitacio exited the driver’s side with impressive stoicism while his brother Eulogio, being less experienced, played to the crowd with not inconsiderable élan. The two met congenially at the MSV’s rear.

The onlookers swelled to about fifteen now, including three or four adults, who, looking busily preoccupied as only adults can on a weekend, still deigned to make their way over. One of the bolder kids seemed about to make a general inquiry when he was arrested by two happenings — Harry Weiner appeared on the front porch and made a tentative albeit silent greeting to the Monasterio brothers; moments later, the hatchback rolled up with a great hydraulic whoosh to reveal the Mauck’s outrageous innards.