The Boardwalk

One afternoon near the end of summer, while George Pavel stood alone by a snack booth dribbling malted vinegar into his paper cone of fries, he looked down and saw something nearly inhuman—a creature in a stroller—staring back at him.  It had eyes like soft-boiled eggs, a mouth like a shmoo.  It gurgled.

“Whoop,” said Pavel, as if he’d tripped or knocked something over.  For a moment he felt heads turn—as if he had done something wrong or embarrassing.  But all he had done was look; and gripping the damp cone, he kept looking: the horrible wonder of the deformed child numbed and electrified his mind, like a plunge into freezing water.  He couldn’t help the momentary thought that some sea-monster, some prodigy from the abysmal regions, had slithered up the shore and been placed a pram.  How naked, how exposed—prostrate and oblivious, paraded shamelessly into this throng of Labor Day fun-seekers, the child snored sea air through tiny oblong noseholes. 

As the stroller moved away through the crowd, Pavel stared at the back of the man—presumably the father—who pushed it.  The man had browned and muscular arms and wore a tight black tank-top decorated with a Christian slogan: “CHOOSE THIS DAY.” He nipped at a pink cloud of cotton-candy as the crowd parted around him.

Pavel cleared his throat, tingling from the pungent vinegar fumes.  He thought of his own son Bradley at the age of three or four, a boy who had looked normal then and still did now, at twelve, with both eyelids and earlobes, and all his toes and teeth, and unbroken skin; though now he slouched, and his straight blond hair had grown woolly and receded back from his forehead like an older boy, and one of his formerly twinkling blue eyes had begun to develop a squint. 

But still.  Compared to the one in the stroller, anyone would point to Bradley and say, “He is a normal boy, a fine boy.  But—”

Whack-a-mole! shouted a carny—then came the thuck pock thuck of the game in the Funland Arcade, pneumatic mallets pounding at the heads of grinning plastic rodents as they popped up from their holes.

But just last month, when a promising young couple had arrived with the realtor at the Pavels’ house in Wood Acres—it had been on the market for nearly a year, far too long, no one could make sense of the lack of a buyer—Bradley had come running out onto the lawn and dropped his pants and bent over, displaying a pimply white butt, and spread his cheeks, and screamed Redeye!  Redeye! The young couple said they would come back later, and left in the car with the realtor.

For Bradley it is only springtime, Dr. Rayhack had declared at the end of their first consultation at the Family Psychiatric Center at Suburban Hospital.  So many children received a diagnosis, A.D.H.D. or something similar, maybe a prescription, it wasn’t at all uncommon.  But—ominously, Pavel felt—the doctor was unable to sum up Bradley’s condition and let them get on with their lives.  They would have to come back again, many more times, it seemed—it could be the beginning of something, Dr. Rayhack intimated, that might take years to develop.  We’ll have to wait and see if this bud blooms into a full-blown blossom, he said cryptically, like some perverse Zen master.

Driving home, while Bradley slouched in the back seat, Pavel mulled over the doctor’s strange words, as the petals of cherry-blossoms torn from trees in the April wind twirled down around the car in a soft pink snow, like an other-worldly blessing.

A bell rang: Winner!

Pavel chucked his fries in a trash barrel and went upstairs to his motel room.  He stood before the bathroom mirror, trying to see what his own face really looked like.  Once as a young boy he had asked his mother Am I deformed? and she had answered Everyone is special in their own way.  What if he had been deformed and no one had ever told him?  What if some ghastly defect had developed slowly through the years, unapparent to himself, like a milky whorl of cataract through which he could still see sharply?  What obscene image of himself would intrude suddenly into the worlds of vacationing strangers, only to be suppressed and sedated by the habitual flow of faces, smells of sweets and fried foods, the monotonous rhythm of the surf crashing and crumbling, like soothing waves of static, upon the beach?

None, he supposed, looking at his plain bald head; he was all but invisible.  He might as well not even be there.

Pavel had arrived at the beach alone that same afternoon.  It was supposed to have been a family trip.  They had gone as a family every summer when Bradley was a baby and a little boy, but had given up in the past few years, when the trip had become difficult, then intolerable.  It had been Pavel’s wife’s idea to try it again this year.  All summer Bradley had stayed locked up in his room, plucking out elaborate, tuneless strings of notes on the expensive-looking guitar he had mysteriously acquired.

When Bradley wasn’t in his room he was sitting in front of the TV in the family room, memorizing hours of meaningless dialogue, which, to his great amusement, he would recite monotonously for his parents and their guests in lieu of conversation.  Ugly peach fuzz had sprouted from his chin; he had grown large soft lovehandles; he rolled little bits of dried scum off his skin and flicked them onto the floor.

But the week they were to leave for the beach, a phone call had come, and now Pavel’s wife was in Wisconsin, helping her Aunt Rose die of a ruptured abdominal sac.  She hadn’t been able to think about the beach issue.  Non-refundable reservations had been made late—their old cottage behind the dunes was already rented out to other people, so Pavel had booked adjoining rooms at the shabby Sea-Esta Motel, right up over the boardwalk. 

Pavel assumed that he and Bradley would go to the beach.  It would be a vacation for the two of them—each with a separate bedroom.  But the morning of their departure, Bradley had refused to get out of bed.  It smelled funny in his room.  The combination of the smell and the big stubborn mound beneath the covers infuriated Pavel, and when he raised his voice and said some regrettable things Bradley burst from the bed sobbing, ran down the stairs in his underwear, slammed out the front door, and locked himself inside the car, which was waiting fully packed in the driveway. 

When Pavel saw that he’d left the keys in the ignition and that a small child across the street was looking on at the scene, his body went limp with frustration.  He stumbled into the house to look for a spare set of keys, but by the time he came back out to the car the door was hanging open and Bradley was gone.  Pavel stood in the driveway, staring at the FOR SALE sign leaning crookedly on the lawn.  The ignition chime seemed to mock him.

And so Pavel—impetuously defying reason and good judgment, he now saw—had driven alone to the beach in a numbing cloud of anger.

That evening, Pavel stood in his socks, gripping the ranch-style wooden railing of his balcony, listening to the distant patter of mallets, the loopy Whack-A-Mole bell, the mechanical cars bustling through the Fright City Haunted Attraction.  Someone let out a shriek of laughter.  Then he seemed to hear whispers.

He spun around—was there someone else on the balcony?  The floor was concrete; there were no sunchairs or tables.  Everything would shut down after this weekend.  Pavel saw a fine mist sifting down through a wedge of lamplight.  Funny, he thought, that he couldn’t feel it on his face.

He opened the sliding glass door and stepped into his room.  He sat down on the bed and turned on the TV: a movie called “Insignificance” was playing.  Pavel chuckled to himself, then stretched out and closed his eyes.  When he opened them, a faith healer with a shelf of silver hair held his hand against the neck of an elderly woman.  There are some lumps behind your ear, he spoke, his eyes shut tight—feel there…you will actually feel them dissolving in the next few minutes.

It was very late.  Pavel realized that hadn’t even looked inside the adjoining room—the room that was paid-for and empty.  He picked up the bedside phone and dialed home, but hung up quickly when he heard his wife’s voice on the answering machine’s greeting.  Was Bradley there, and not picking up—or was he out somewhere, with friends?  Did he have friends?  Pavel guessed that Bradley felt like he’d gotten away with something.  And his wife, preoccupied with Aunt Rose, would be better off not knowing what had happened. 

But that’s crap, Pavel thought.  He was a coward—too lazy to involve himself in the dreary scene unfolding in Wisconsin; too ashamed to tell his wife that he’d left Bradley by himself; that perhaps he’d escalated the morning’s debacle, deliberately exaggerating his own frustration, to avoid having to spend time alone with his son. 

It was he who had gotten away with something.  At the same time, Pavel felt exhausted and bitterly glad for his solitude.

He turned his head toward the sliding glass door.  In the distance, tiny orange lights glowed in the night: The American Dream Cone.  Again he closed his eyes.

What woke him some time later was not guilt but fear: the type of fear that pierces one like a blade—like an oar slicing the surface of a cold pond, or a skin peeled away, the filmy egg-skin of the child in the stroller, leaving something raw and chilled and exposed, like nothing that could ever go away. 

Maybe something, Pavel thought, was wrong with his mind.

The late morning was overcast, the frothy ocean colored a beautiful slate grey.  Yellow pennant flags fluttered over the pink-and-teal striped awnings of the pizza parlors, video arcades and souvenir shops which lined the boardwalk.  GEORGES’ “FAMOUS” LUNCHEON asserted itself in rainbow lettering painted on fiberboard, beneath which a large plastiform elephant mounted on a green wooden box challenged the grey day with the glistening pink of its inner ears, toes, and curling under-trunk.

On the beach, vacationing families and couples bared vast flanks of pallid flesh, lying face-down on beach blankets secured by pairs of shoes, dreaming in the murky weather.  Paddleballers stood in the surf, and a bulbous man in a Speedo, covered with animal hair, adjusted a baby carriage with a bright blue covering.  Perched on benches, shielding their paper plates from the wind, old people and children attempted to eat puffy, dripping confections with plastic forks.

Pavel felt calmed and assuaged by the raw, breezy day.  He entered a family-style seafood restaurant whose roof was topped with a fake cupola, festooned with bunting as if for a grand opening.  A young girl sat him at a table by a large plate glass window which looked out on the boardwalk.  Pavel didn’t have much of an appetite—maybe he would have the crab sandwich.  Outside, people passed by wearing green and fuchsia sweatpants, T-shirts bearing large colorful slogans: “JUST DO ME” and “DON’T EVEN GO THERE!” A tall man with a shaved and pierced head and tattooed arms held the hand of a little boy.

The girl came back to take Pavel’s order.

“I’ll have the crab sandwich,” he said, folding his menu.  “And a Coke.”

“The crab sandwich?” said the girl.  She had a scrunched face and her mouth seemed to twitch.

“Yes—is it good?”

The girl fumbled with her pen and pad.  “Huh?” she said.  “I’m not sure.”

“Okay,” said Pavel.

The girl looked at him.  “You still want the crab sandwich?”

Pavel nodded. 

Someone knocked on the glass.  Pavel turned: a disheveled looking man with a large oily forehead and wide-set eyes was standing outside the window.  The man mouthed words at Pavel.  He had a thin moustache and pudgy lips.

Pavel frowned and looked down at the table, but the man knocked again on the glass.

“What?” mouthed Pavel.

The man shouted, so that Pavel could just hear him: I wouldn’t advise eating at this particular restaurant.

Before Pavel could reply, the man walked away, his hands stuffed in the pockets of a fatigue jacket.

Pavel glanced around him—was something wrong with the restaurant?  He thought of the pinched face of the waitress, her slow speech.  Pavel felt that he should go to the men’s room, but he didn’t want to give the impression he’d walked out.  To signify his presence, he took off his light jacket and hung it on the back of the chair.

The restroom was empty.  He washed his hands in the sink, then entered a stall, wondering why he had done these things out of order.  It suddenly occurred to him that he would check out today and go back home to Wood Acres.  He and Bradley would share a pizza and watch TV.  Pavel would apologize for leaving, and ask Bradley to apologize for his behavior in return. 

While he was unzipping, Pavel heard the sound of the restroom door swinging open and two sets of feet clopping across the tiled floor.  Pavel paused, listening.  The two people entered the stall directly to his left; someone shut the door and latched it.

Three brief, muffled thumps punctuated the silence, followed by the soft whimpering of a child.

A quiet, firm adult voice spoke: “Do you want me to do that again?”

“No,” came the reply from the child.

“Then are you sorry for what you did?”

“No,” said the quiet, faceless voice.

Shoes squeaked on tile, and again came the muffled thumps, measured and sober and even, numbered to three.  The child didn’t whimper this time.  Pavel’s heart raced: he felt that he should raise his voice, intervene, but he dared not move.

“Do you want me to do that again?” spoke the adult voice, calm and deliberate.

“No.”

“Then are you sorry for what you did.”

“Yes.”

“And what do you say when you’re sorry?”

“I’m sorry for what I did, and I won’t do it again.” The soft voice was low, rote, quietly monotonous.  Pavel listened, overwhelmed with a feeling that consumed him like an ether.

There was a terrible pause: then came one last thump.  Again there was no whimper—only a sharp, high-pitched intake of breath.

“Now let’s go back out there,” said the man.  Pavel heard the latch, and the stall door creaking open, and the two sets of feet again on the tile, one heavy, one light.  He stood rigid, his mind completely empty, gazing at the wall above the toilet.

“Wash up first,” said the voice of the man.

“But I didn’t go.”

Water burst from a tap, and Pavel heard the intermittent splashes of water in the sink, the squeaky pump of the hand soap, paper towels yanked from their metal bin and crumpled quickly—then the door to the restroom yawned open and the two sets of footsteps died away.

Pavel didn’t have to use the toilet.  Into the blankness of his mind raced Bradley, chasing him round a holly bush with a hammer.  It was autumn—Bradley had just begun fifth grade.  He’d wet the bed during the night, and that morning Pavel had hauled the urine-soaked mattress out into the backyard to dry.  When Bradley came home from school and saw the stained mattress leaning against the fence, he quietly entered the garage and emerged with a hammer.  The boy lunged for his father, screaming obscenities.

Pavel emerged from the stall.  He stood in the cool restroom, thinking of what to do.  Then he washed his hands with soap, dried them on a paper towel, and left.

The crab sandwich and the Coke had been brought to the table.  Pavel regarded the plate: the round bun, brownish patty, tomato slice and lettuce leaf.  After taking some bills from his wallet and securing them under the glass of Coke, he quickly made his way out of the restaurant. 

Later that night he would remember the light jacket he’d left hanging on the back of the chair, but would not return to get it.

It was high tide; the people on the beach were confined to a narrow strip of beige sand.  From the far side of the boardwalk, it looked as if the beach had completely disappeared, as if the boardwalk itself were the edge of the sea, and someone standing on the wooden railing could remove his shoes and socks and leap off into the choppy waves, swells the color of granite.

His lost appetite had returned.  Pavel found himself standing in front of The American Dream Cone snack booth, idly reading the hand-painted sign:

Shrimp
Fresh-Cut Idaho Fries
Birch Beer
Italian Sausage
Grape Soda
Corn on the Cob

A woman inside the booth peered out at him.  “Chilly treat?” she asked.  There were no other customers.

“Chilly treat?” she repeated.

Pavel stepped closer to the open window of the booth.  The woman was lean and bony, with a pointy chin and a cheerful, ruddy tinge to her otherwise shallow cheeks.  Her skin looked papery, and her eyes were an icy blue.  Pavel couldn’t discern how old she was.  The limp, fluffy curls of her hair seemed a greyish blond.  She had neat rows of little white teeth, and wore an apron over her blouse.

“How about an Icee?” she said.  “Or a Chilly Bar.” Her mouth made a dry chalky sound as she carefully enunciated her syllables.  Perhaps she had a Canadian accent?

“It’s not too warm today,” said Pavel.

“That’s true,” said the woman.  “But they’re tasty.  Hand-dipped.”

“OK,” said Pavel.  “I’ll have one.”

“Which flavor?”

“Chocolate, I think.”

“Choc-o-late,” repeated the woman, in three distinct syllables.

Pavel paid her; she returned his change without a smile.

Seagulls swarmed precariously overhead as he strolled back down the boardwalk, eating from the cone which he found to be unusually delicious.  While he was turning his key in the lock, the dregs of the ice-cream dribbled out through the nub of cone and splattered on the concrete at his feet.

With the taste of chocolate on his tongue, Pavel fell into a deep nap, remembering the many feet of fresh snow that had fallen secretly during the first night his family slept in their new house in Wood Acres.  Bradley had just turned three.  In the morning, the two big dogs—now dead—bounded out into the yard, disappearing as they tunneled through the whiteness.  As Bradley watched, the dogs came bounding back into the house where boxes were still unpacked, jumping on him and licking his face and his hands, shaking off their snow onto the carpet where it melted in the warmth.

The quiet roar of a Superbowl stadium drifted in from the den, and the smell of cardboard and the damp dogs and the smoke from the fireplace filled the living room.  Bradley wanted ice-cream. 

Pavel heaved great stacks of snow from the driveway, sweating underneath his flannel shirt and wool coat.  Healthy and strong, sweating in the crisp air, he filled his lungs deeply and exhaled rich plumes of vapor beneath the thick black branches sagging under their burden of snow.

He got Bradley in his moon boots and buckled him into the seat.  “I don’t know if they’ll be open,” he said.  The station wagon plowed slowly and steadily, like a boat cushioned on soft swells of snow.  The seats jounced and jiggled—it lulled them both.  Dusk came early, infusing the white landscape with deep blue; Pavel could see the clear soft glow in the windows of the homes of his new neighbors.

Baskin Robbins was open; theirs was the sole car in the parking lot.  Bradley ordered a cone of bubblegum ice-cream, and his father had a chocolate shake.  They ate their treats at a table under the fluorescent lighting, watching the darkening world outside. 

That winter night—thinking of his own father, who was then dying of Alzheimer’s—Pavel had begun a letter to son, to be kept in a safe place and given to the boy when he was older.  He took his good fountain pen and wrote, I don’t know how to describe you.  You are like an image of pure joy, laughing and bursting with energy, and your eyes sparkle when you run.  Sometimes, though, you have a quiet mood.

Pavel couldn’t remember whether he’d finished the letter, or where he’d put it away.  In those days there had been hardly a moment’s peace.  But the letter must surely have been stored in some safe place.

When he woke from his nap it was evening.  He stepped out onto the small balcony; and again sensed that someone else was watching, or had just slipped around a corner.  But the clouds had cleared, and the gauzy yellow moon which hung like a streetlamp over the ocean showed him that he was alone.  Across the boardwalk, a pair of overweight women leaned on canes as they gazed out at the dark, glittering surf.

It was later than he’d guessed; down on the boardwalk, the few remaining families strolled between packs of teenagers—boys whose anonymous baseball caps hid their eyes and whose pantcuffs concealed their shoes; skinny, flat-chested girls in tube-tops emanating chatter and perfume.  One young couple lingered by themselves.  The girl had legs like toothpicks and cutoff shorts which barely covered her butt.  She wore what Pavel supposed was her boyfriend’s yellow cap, and a blue windbreaker that read “Mud Dogs Lacrosse” in white lettering.  The two play-boxed, dodging and faking, before slipping inside the brightly lit Candy Kitchen, whose shop window was lettered in pink neon script:Chocolates—Taffy—Fudge.

Pavel wandered in the direction of The American Dream Cone.  He passed an elderly man sitting on a bench in a hat and plaid sweater-vest, holding a small vinyl suitcase in his lap.  Perhaps that would be him.  Like his own father: no memory left, drifting through a seaside resort village at the end of the season with a colostomy bag, not knowing what or whom he was looking for.  Confusing strangers with real people.  Pavel’s own father would never have let himself be chased by a boy round a holly bush.  He would have unclasped his belt-buckle; lips shut, he would have caught the hammer in his thick, gnarled fist.

The American Dream Cone was dark, but in front of the booth a woman was pulling down a protective aluminum gate.  As Pavel came closer, he noticed the limp, fluffy hair, a profile of sharp cheekbone and chin.  The woman turned to look at him.

“Did you enjoy your hand-dipped?” she said.

“I did,” said Pavel.  It was the woman who’d sold him the cone.  “How long have you worked here?”

The woman shrugged.  “It’s just a thing for the summertime.  I like to be in the outdoors.”

Pavel nodded.  The woman finished securing the lock and stood up with her handbag.  “I feel like a stretch.  I think I’ll walk on the beach.”

“That sounds nice,” said Pavel.

“Would you like to come on the walk?”

Pavel had planned on going home.  He thought of Bradley picking out the jumbled notes behind his locked door; he thought of the concrete balcony and the door to the empty adjoining room.  But it was a long drive home.

“Maybe just a little ways,” he said.  “I have to leave early tomorrow.”

“I’m Lynne Grolsch,” said the woman, making the strange enunciation with her jaw and the back of her teeth that produced little dry sticking sounds.

She bent down and unstrapped the sandals from her long slender feet and bony, raw-looking ankles.  Pavel removed his socks and tucked them inside his loafers.

The sand was cold, wet and soothing.  They stepped over nubbled strands of seaweed, devil’s purses, clamshells and the skeletons of crabs—occasionally the husk of some half-buried sea thing grazed the sensitive flesh of Pavel’s foot.

“Do you like living here?” he said.

“My parents live here,” said Lynne.  “It’s nice to watch all the different people that come.  My parents don’t like it, though.  They prefer November, when the beach is empty.”

“I might like that,” said Pavel. 

Lynne seemed to look hard at the sea, her lips set in a firm line above her prominent chin.  But her voice was soft, thoughtful:

“I like looking at the waves.  They remind me of time.” In the moonlight he saw that her pupils were very small and sharp in the center of her pale blue irises.  She might not have been younger than him.  “We used to come down to the beach and have some marijuana and talk about the waves, and the footprints.”

“Whose footprints?”

Lynne seemed not to hear him.  The dark ocean was all but invisible; in the lulls between crashing waves the moonlit foam hissed and churned, receding into the blackened cups of new waves.

“Once I caught a fish and left it in the bucket when a storm came.  There was lightning in the sky.  We ran under the boardwalk.  But rainwater filled the bucket up over the top and when the sky cleared I came out, and the fish had swum away with the storm.”

Pavel nodded; he felt impressed by her speech—it seemed poetic.

Lynne regarded him.  “It seems strange,” she said. 

“What seems strange?”

“This,” she said, waving her hand at their surroundings.  “Everything.”

Pavel’s toe touched something in the sand—he recoiled at once.  They both looked down at a small vague object.

“What—what is it?” he gasped.

It wasn’t much more than a lump; but it looked slimy, even bloody, and clinging to it was something that might have been hair.

“It’s a toy,” said Lynne.  “A children’s toy.”

Pavel gazed at the thing, then turned to Lynne.  “Why did you say that?”

Lynne smiled; her icy eyes lit up a touch.  “I don’t know—I just felt like it.  What should I say?  Don’t you ever just do something that you feel like?  Just to do it?”

Suddenly Pavel remembered the jacket he’d left hanging on the chair in the seafood restaurant. 

“Oh,” he said. 

“Hmm?” Lynne cocked her head at him.

Pavel pointed to the boardwalk.  “This afternoon when I was having lunch up there, a complete stranger outside the restaurant shouted at me to not eat there.” Pavel was surprised to recollect the incident—he must have forgotten it immediately after it happened.

“Ah,” said Lynne, smiling to herself.  “That probably was Bobby.”

“You know that person?”

“I think so.  He’s an old friend.  We used to—I don’t know.  Bobby’s crazy.”

“You mean he’s mentally ill?” Pavel pictured the unhealthy-looking man shambling along the boardwalk in his fatigue jacket.

“No, no.  Crazy.  Like he expresses himself in a really unique way.  You know?”

Pavel was silent.

Lynne stirred patterns in the sand with her toe.  “I guess he just needed some time to think things out.”

“To think things out?”

“To deal,” said Lynne.

“Oh.”

“He’s super.  His parents owned an apartment in the Carousel Hotel, but they died.  Have you ever been ice-skating at the Carousel in the middle of June?  They give you these figure-skates, made of flimsy leather, and you wobble around…the ice is kind of slushy.”

“Is there some reason he didn’t want me to eat at that restaurant?”

Lynne shrugged.  Her lack of concern and expression of calm disinterest assuaged Pavel.  She seemed like a woman who knew what people were like.  She conveyed a sense of placid depth that seemed to extend even to the image of Bobby, with his oddly-spaced eyes and patchy moustache.

“Chinese,” she stated.

“Sorry?”

“I’ve got an urge for some Chinese food.  I can just taste the lemon flavor.  Want to come?”

The chocolate cone had not sufficed as a meal, and Pavel’s hunger returned to him like a wave.  They found a Jade Garden Restaurant on Rehoboth Avenue.  It was closing up, but suddenly it seemed very important that they have the Chinese food.  Pavel suggested take-out.  “I think there’s a refrigerator in my room,” he said, though he didn’t know why that would matter. 

Lynne smiled.  “Like a picnic in the room,” she said. 

They ordered heaping portions of lemon chicken, sweet-and-sour shrimp, egg-drop soup.  They took the fuming bags and walked quickly back to the Sea-Esta Motel.  They tore open the bags and ate at the little table across from the bed.  Lynne’s favorite was not the lemon chicken, but the beef with garlic sauce.

“Do you know what it is?” she said.

“What?”

“Childhood,” she said, gazing at him with her pinpoint pupils.  “It’s the taste of childhood.”

She ate several helpings, filling her sunken cheeks with remarkable quantities of food, chewing and breathing softly while Pavel looked on in semi-wonder, noting her slim, almost wasted figure.  They ate together for a long time at the small round table, and she didn’t ask him about his house in Wood Acres with the crooked FOR SALE sign on the lawn, or his wife, or Aunt Rose who was dying with a ruptured sac.  She didn’t ask about his son, whose hair was frizzy and receding and who’d been suspended from school, at the age of ten, for biting Mr. Peebles, the gym teacher, on Field Day.  She didn’t ask about the door to the adjoining room, which was empty.

At the end of the meal they took the fortune cookies from the bottom of the bag and cracked them.

“What’s yours?” said Pavel.

But Lynne’s eyes were shut; she held the tiny paper in her chapped-looking fingers, as if praying upon some secret.

After they’d cleaned up the empty cartons, Lynne licked her lips and said: “I think I’d like you to meet Bobby.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” said Pavel.

“He gave you the wrong impression of him.  I want you to see him as he really is.”

Pavel squinched his toes together, feeling the grains of sand in his socks.

“The Carousel Hotel is so nice,” she said.  “Ice skating.  Movies.  The room’s on the fourteenth floor.  You can see the ocean.  May I use your phone?  It’s local.” Lynne sat on the edge of the bed as she dialed a number.  She spoke soft, almost affectionate words into the receiver.  “Where?” she murmured.

Pavel watched from his chair.

Lynne cupped her hand over the mouthpiece.  “Would it be okay if Bobby met us here?  Then we could go with him to the Carousel.”

Pavel recalled the pudgy lips and protuberant forehead of the man who had interrupted his lunch, the voice muffled by a pane of glass.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Just for a cup of coffee,” she said, her eyes fixed on him.  She leaned in closer.  Pavel saw that the rims of her contact lenses exceeded the limits of her irises, encircling each disc of blue with a fine thread—he could see how each lens clung to the eyeball with its mysterious suction.  “I think Bobby could really use some company.”

Pavel nodded.

“Just a cup of decaffeinated coffee,” said Lynne.  Her voice was calm, as when she had spoken meditatively on the moonlit beach—but Pavel heard beneath this poise an insistence that vaguely unnerved him, a feeling that had been absent during their meal.  She spoke into the phone and then replaced it in the cradle.

Why had he agreed to go on the walk?  Pavel recalled the touch of the cold lump against his toe and shivered, tasting on his lips the residue of Chinese food.  A children’s toy. Perhaps when Bobby arrived, Pavel would decline to go with them, saying that he needed to sleep, that early in the morning he would go home.

Turning toward the sliding glass doors, Pavel saw that the reflection of the lighted room, of the rumpled bed and the table and two people sitting in chairs, obscured one’s view of the balcony and the dark ocean beyond. 

Pavel wondered, had it been Bradley’s and not Lynne’s reflection in the glass—here, now—what they would possibly say to one another; or what, if anything, they would do.

*

When a knocking came at the door Lynne jumped up to answer it.  For a moment Pavel imagined that there had been a mistake, that someone completely different than the person who had alarmed him at lunch would now walk into his room—some stranger he had never seen before—and his heart leapt, for he was suddenly convinced this was the case.

He heard Lynne speak something tersely under her breath, and a man’s grunt; and then the person from outside the restaurant walked into the room in his fatigue jacket, carrying a tattered paperback book in one hand and a brown grocery bag in the other.

“George, I’d like you to meet Bobby Pageant.  Bobby, George Pavel.”

Pavel stood to shake the shabby-looking man’s hand.  He saw that Bobby’s sparse, oily hair had been run through with a comb.  His hand was moist and lifeless in Pavel’s grip, and averting his eyes Bobby coughed out a weary salutation.  Then he placed the bag on the floor and glanced back down at the book, which he’d been holding open to a certain page.  His plump unseemly lips silently mouthed a phrase.

“Bobby,” whispered Lynne.

After a few moments, Bobby snapped the book shut and regarded them.

“Labor Day,” he said absently.  “I’ve been laboring.” Unbidden, he picked up the bag from the floor and plunked himself down in a cheap wicker chair by the wall.  Lynne returned to her seat at the table. 

Pavel hadn’t been expecting to sit back down—he thought they’d been planning to leave as soon as Bobby arrived.  But as Pavel reluctantly took his seat, Bobby opened the paper bag and produced a six pack of Henry Weinhardt beer.  As he pulled three of the bottles from their slots and began to pop their caps with a key-ring opener, Lynne said,

“What kind of labor, Bobby?” She seemed to wink at Pavel.

“Love,” spoke Bobby in a sarcastic tone, handing two bottles to Lynne.  “The long labor of love.” He sipped deeply from his bottle, wetting the inadequate moustache and focusing his eyes on the wall.

“The beer’s delicious,” said Lynne, licking her thin lips.  “I especially like beer and cookies.”

“The nectar of the gods,” murmured Bobby.  With her hand Lynne stifled a brief sniffling chuckle.  Pavel saw that one of Lynne’s eyes seemed slightly astray.  Was she strabysmic?  He certainly hadn’t noticed anything before, when he’d seen those sharp, glittering pupils fixed on his own.  With a slight wince, Pavel recalled a girl from high school, Katharine, who’d sat next to him in math class.  They’d made up all kinds of little jokes together, and he’d grown fond of her, when one day she seemed to have acquired, literally overnight, an embarrassing lisp.  He never asked her about it; eventually they grew apart.

“Were we going to go see your hotel?” asked Pavel, directing the question to Lynne.  The look she returned was vacant.  Pavel tapped his finger on his unsipped beer.  The heavy food churned in his stomach.

“Oh, Mommy and Daddy’s?” said Bobby.  He emitted a weak guffaw.  “Ma and Pa.  How proud they’d be of their son,” he intoned, holding aloft his bottle, “on this proud day.”

“Surely they would,” said Lynne softly.  Pavel wondered whether some romantic relationship existed between the two of them.  It seemed absurd that the thought hadn’t occurred to him, but he couldn’t picture them embracing, and struck the image from his mind.

“The Mamas and the Papas,” said Bobby.  “The Papas and the Mammas.  What was that song?  All the leaves are brown….” Tapping his shoe and humming, he seemed to slip off into a reverie.  Pavel wondered whether he was on drugs. 

“I used to say to my mom,” continued Bobby, “‘There are two types of people in this world—those who just get it, and those who don’t.’ You know?” He swallowed the last of his beer and popped open another.

In the silence, Pavel thought of Lynne on the beach.  This, she had said, gesturing with bony fingers at the disorder of footprints in the sand—Everything.  Pavel wondered whether that was what Bobby now meant.

Hesitantly, almost whispering, Pavel asked: “Which type was she?”

Bobby looked straight at him for the first time.  Something Pavel perceived as dangerous flickered in his eyes.  “Which type was she?”

Pavel looked to Lynne for help, but Lynne looked down at her beer. 

“Let me put it this way,” said Bobby, slouching back in his chair.  “God just made us; and the earth stands on an elephant; and the elephant stands on a tortoise; and if you ask me what the tortoise stands on, I’ll burn you alive.”

He paused, wild-eyed, then burst into a peal of infantile giggling.  He turned to Lynne.  “Man, I wish Genevieve was here.  You know?  That girl loved beer.  Man, could she drink.”

“Ginny,” crooned Lynne, nodding and smiling.

Pavel felt an urgent need to call home, to hear Bradley’s voice—but he knew Bradley wouldn’t answer the phone.  Was there some way he could make him answer—some neighbor he could summon to the house to check on the boy?

“Cancer sticks,” Bobby announced, pulling a flattened pack of cigarettes from his coat.  “Coffin nails.”

Pavel felt ill: he realized that Lynne had been imitating Bobby’s tone earlier when she’d stated, Chinese.

“It’s a non-smoking room,” said Pavel quickly.  “Out there,” he said, indicating the balcony.

Bobby paused with a look of astonishment on his face, then rose, grabbing a third bottle, and walked around the bed to the sliding doors.  As he opened them a gust of briny wind filled the room, and he turned to face Pavel and Lynne, straightening his back and shoulders dramatically.

“Smoking is pernicious,” he said, drawing a cigarette from the pack.  He rolled his eyes at his own irony, then stepped out onto the balcony, sliding the door shut behind him.

Pavel glared at Lynne.  Now that Bobby had left the room, leaving the two of them alone, his chest swelled with anger and a sense of absurd betrayal, even personal violation.  Lynne, who had seemed like a friend, had become strange and mute in the presence of this man.  Pavel hadn’t invited them to stay—they had no right to be in his room.  It was stupidity, silliness…a knot formed in Pavel’s gullet—he believed he would burst into tears.  But when he opened his mouth to question her, the phone rang—immediately he thought of Bradley—a terrible accident had occurred.

He scowled at Lynne, who seemed limp and unsubstantial, as if she had caused the accident—then quickly picked up the phone.

“Sir?” spoke a man’s voice.

“Yes?” said Pavel. 

“I’m very sorry to disturb you so late.  I’m calling from the desk.  But we’ve had a kind of situation.  Now, we got some guests in the motel, good folks, they got a kid that’s handicapped.  We’re sorry to disturb your family.  But these folks can’t seem to locate their kid.”

“Which family?” said Pavel.

The man on the line seemed confused—Pavel could hear a shuffling noise.

“Is someone hurt?” said Pavel.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  Through the glass he could see the pinpoint orange glow of Bobby’s burning cigarette tip.

“Can’t look after himself,” said the man.

“A boy how old?” said Pavel.  He thought of the deformed child in the stroller, and the T-shirt: “CHOOSE THIS DAY.” Such a child couldn’t possibly wander off on its own, lurking among the corridors of the motel or the flashing lights and clanging bells of the Fright City Haunted Attraction.  What would it see?  What would the father think, weaving frantically between the families laden with prizes and ice creams, searching for his son, a ghost with eyes like soft-boiled eggs, a paper stick caked with the sugary dregs of pink cotton candy still clutched tightly in his fist?

“Grade-school,” said the man.  “Not to worry.  But if you happen to notice a child alone in the building….”

“What does the boy look like?”

“He—well, I guess pretty much like normal.  I’ll be at the desk all night.”

Pavel replaced the telephone.  The glass door slid open.  Bobby emerged into the room, trailing a noxious cloud of smoke.

“I demand institutionalization,” he declared, marching to the bag and reaching for the last bottle of beer.

Pavel stared at the man, whose eyes had narrowed and reddened from the alcohol and smoke.  His face was contorted in a ridiculous smirk.

“But I seem to have already found the nuthouse,” he said.

“What?” asked Pavel.

“They’ve got freaks running amok in the place.  Perhaps I should take a room.” He winked at Lynne.

“Freaks?”

Bobby gestured toward the balcony.  “Some dude,” he said, “asking me whether or not the haunted house was scary.”

“There was a person out there?”

Bobby shrugged, sucking on his beer with an effete whimper.  “Tourists,” he said.  “You know, it reminds me of something mommy used to say, bless her soul.  One time I asked her—”

“I need you to leave my hotel,” said Pavel.  Turning to Lynne he said, “I’m sorry.” As soon as they left, he would slip out and attempt to find the missing boy.  He would present the damaged child to the family, sharing in their moment of amazement and relief.

Bobby gazed back at him, expressionless, his torpid face flushed and ugly.  “Hmmm.”

“I will call the manager,” said Pavel, his body tensing.

“Ha!” yelped Bobby, placing a hand over his moustache.  Unsteadily he rose from the wicker chair, swaying slightly and grinning idiotically at Lynne.  He took his paperback book and the brown bag and walked to where Lynne was sitting.  He gazed down at her contemptuously:

“Your friends really know how to party.”

“Bobby!” said Lynne.  “Wait.”

“Lynne Grolsch,” he said, moving toward the door, “you’re a saint.  As Tom Petty said, Yer the best.  I’m so glad I have you when I need you, Lynne.  Goodnight, Lynne.” He exited and slammed the door behind him.

The woman looked shocked and alarmingly pale; the soft blush of her cheekbones had deepened into rash-like splotches.  The papery skin of her face crumpled as she began to cry.

Instinctively Pavel crept up and put his arms around her quivering body.  As she wept she produced a strange, low groaning sound from deep within her throat.  Pavel smelled the garlic on her breath, softened by the sweet lemon sauce.  Who was she?  Where did she come from, and what would happen to her later?  Pavel supposed she would reconcile with Bobby.  He pictured the two of them, seemingly young adults, lying side by side on the dead parents’ bed, fully clothed, exchanging reminiscences, on the fourteenth floor of a building that towered over an empty beach at the end of the season.  Her parents preferred November.

A cold breeze ran up Pavel’s arms; he saw that the sliding door had not been properly shut.  He remembered the chill air of the park on Cranston Street where one day in winter, years ago, Bradley had for no comprehensible reason burst into violent sobs.  They’d been standing by the little pond surrounded by large egg-shaped stones, where Bradley liked to be taken.  Normally the boy spent many minutes carefully selecting the perfect stone; then he would hurl it into the dark water where it landed with an overwhelming, joyous plop—his body trembled with pleasure as he watched the ripples widen and dissolve.  But on this day Bradley stood in his furry parka in the frozen grass, letting out wave after wave of uncontrollable shrieks.  Pavel glanced around at the few other people in the park.  A lot of shrill blackbirds burst from some bushes, squawking away into the clear sky.  What could he have done?  A fear pierced his heart.  He ran to Bradley and squeezed him tightly.  He lifted him up off the ground and held him there.  He shut his eyes and waited: there was nothing else he could do.  The noise was unlike anything he’d ever heard.  It was inhuman.

Pavel beheld his arms and hands, these same ones, which now held the strange woman as her frail body shook.

People are unknown, thought Pavel.  His son was unknown to him.  When had it begun—this secret change, this transformation of joy into something monstrous, something damaged and frightened and incapable of accepting love?  Had it happened at once, like a brain vessel bursting in the night?  Or gradually, through the years, some quiet insidious thing that grew on the heart and deformed it?

But he was not yet old; he had not yet lost his memory.  And he was going home.  Perhaps in some far future time he would be able to explain what had happened here, during his time alone, in the absence of his family—Bobby and Lynne and the creature in the stroller, the elderly man with the suitcase, the thumping of the mallets and the clanging bell.  Perhaps his son would grow up into someone thoughtful and patient, capable of looking back on himself as Pavel now saw him, and together they could laugh about it, or cry.  Bradley could change, he knew—his mind could change and grow.

One can be returned to oneself, Pavel thought, looking at his reflection, and the woman’s, and the darkness beyond the glass door.  One can learn to see anew what has become ugly and unrecognizable.  One can take what is suffering and strange, he thought, and hold it tight.