The Bumblebee Flies Anyway (12 page)

He had to stall a bit. “Tell me what this is all about.” Again, wanting to know and yet not wanting to know.

She sighed, as if she’d been running long and far and finally had reached her destination.

“It’s like this, Barney. My brother doesn’t want either my mother or me to see him anymore. He was always proud and independent—he doesn’t want us to see him this way. He’s never forgiven my mother for what she did. Divorced my father, and he died shortly afterward. Alberto says he died of a broken heart.” She paused, sighed again. “Anyway, he made me promise not to come here again, not to visit him. He said we could telephone him once in a while. But that’s all. And he was so full of pain and misery that I gave him my promise, my word of honor. But I want to know how he’s getting along. Dr. Lakendorp isn’t very communicative, resents my presence here like I said, says he can give me reports from time to time. But I don’t want a doctor’s report. That’s like reading a temperature chart. I’d like to know how Alberto’s doing. The little things. What he talks about. How he feels. And also this—I hate to think of him alone all the time. I’d like to think he has a friend. Someone like you.” She looked directly into Barney’s eyes now. “Someone like you, Barney. Alberto tries to act the wise guy and so do you. You’re more alike than you think you are. I thought maybe you could become friends. Or friendly, at least. And I figured I could drop in every day or so and you could tell me about him.”

“Like a spy,” Barney said, oddly touched, having to say something.

“A tender kind of spy,” she said.

God, she was beautiful. He would do anything for her. And he realized at that moment that if he agreed to be her spy, then he would see her when she came for his reports.

“Of course, I’m hoping Alberto will change his mind and let my mother and me see him eventually,” she continued. “I’m sure that will happen, but until …”

Suddenly, her words faltered, the way her footsteps had faltered outside of Mazzo’s room that day. She touched her forehead with a trembling hand, turning her face away. As she did so, Barney saw that her eyes had changed, looked shattered, as if someone had struck out at her, delivered a blow to her face and eyes.

He leaped to her side, grabbing her shoulder.

“Migraine,” she said. “They hit like lightning. This place … I had a terrible one after I left the other day.”

“Can I get you a pill?” Barney asked, aware of his hand on her shoulders and her flesh beneath her sweater, hating himself for thinking of her body at a time like this. “They must have migraine pills here.”

Shaking her head, Cassie said: “I have a special prescription at home. Maybe I’d better go along.…” She looked up at Barney, smiling wanly, a bit pale, eyes with that shattered look.

“Sure I can’t do something?” he asked, feeling helpless, knowing there was nothing he could do. He had released her from his grip, and stood there awkwardly.

She rose to her feet and slipped on the raincoat. “I’ll be all right,” she said. “The first stab is always the worst.” Another attempt at a smile. “Sorry, Barney.”

“Look, Cassie, I’ll do it. What you say. I’ll talk to Mazzo … your brother. Visit him every day.” As if his words could cure her, take away the headache.

“Thank you,” she said, the husky voice tender. “I’ll be back in a day or two.…”

She was gone a moment later, but Barney lingered in the room awhile, basking in the memory of her visit, her voice, the feeling of her flesh beneath the sweater, reluctant to leave this drab and dreary room that she had turned into a place of utter beauty for a few minutes.

Cassie paused outside the doorway, lifting her face to the fresh air, forehead throbbing with pain. Her old adversary, her ancient foe.

Walking on wobbly legs, she made her way to her mother’s station wagon. Felt a sense of guilt as she walked. That poor kid, Barney Snow. Using him that way. Aware of how he looked at her, all that longing and desire in his eyes and taking advantage of it. Yet had to do it.

In the car she leaned her head against the seat, trying to relax a bit before driving home. She felt miserable. And going home to her mother would not help the situation. As she groped for the car keys, she allowed herself a small wave of triumph. At least she had accomplished her mission, had gotten that boy to keep in touch with Alberto.

Alberto, Alberto, she thought as she switched on the engine and felt its surge of power. If you die, what becomes of me?

L
ATER
, Barney couldn’t remember the precise moment he had made the breakthrough with Mazzo. Looking back, he saw that there was a series of small advances into Mazzo’s world and his confidence, tentative and stumbling, as he groped, unsure of himself, but determined to carry out his mission. A mission for Cassie. Cassie was the key. Once he began to see Mazzo through Cassie’s eyes, as the brother of the girl he loved with such delight and such despair, a different Mazzo began to emerge. Barney saw Mazzo’s vulnerability and desperation. Having seen Cassie in the full bloom of her beauty and loveliness, Barney realized the extent of Mazzo’s deterioration. No wonder he was bitter and hateful. No wonder he turned his face away from visitors, no wonder he swore and growled and didn’t care whether he farted and belched in the presence of anyone who might be in the room. He had been young and handsome and rich, and now he was an emaciated figure in the bed, his beauty in tatters. Barney felt moved with compassion as he watched Mazzo, pale and perspiring on the bed, no longer combative, subdued by the disease or the drugs, wondering how he could reach him. At the same time he didn’t want to reach him. He dreaded the visits to
Mazzo’s room. There was such an air of despair and defeat that Barney was afraid it would also invade him, as if Mazzo suffered from a disease contagious enough to affect him.

He made himself visit Mazzo, however, for the sake of Cassie. He developed a habit of dropping in several times a day, at odd hours, between treatments and visits by nurses. At first Mazzo was uncommunicative, brooding, immersed in his small private world, barely acknowledging Barney’s presence. Barney tried to begin conversations but received no response at all, other than negative reactions. Sometimes Mazzo closed his eyes, shutting out Barney. Other times he turned away, hunching himself into the bedclothes. Barney did not give up. He had pledged his word to Cassie and he would see it through. He had only one weapon, and he used it in every way possible. Talk. His voice. He would wear Mazzo down with words.

He talked. Kept up an endless monologue of jokes and stories, telling Mazzo what was happening in the Complex, or at least what he observed. Barney had always been crazy about talking-animal jokes and he told every one he knew, embellishing them, drawing them out, making short jokes into long ones. If the kangaroo strolled into a barroom and ordered a martini, Barney painstakingly described the barroom, going into a thousand details while leading up to the punch line. Sometimes he didn’t think the punch line mattered, because Mazzo never reacted, didn’t laugh, didn’t smile, didn’t show impatience as Barney spun the tales. And Barney began to realize that Mazzo’s lack of reaction was a plus sign. He never laughed at the jokes, but he never told Barney to shut up, get out, don’t come back.

Getting out of bed in the morning, Barney went to the
small table and drew up a list of topics to bring to Mazzo’s room. He made up an entire biography for Bascam, from the time she was born (the only baby in the world who didn’t cry when slapped by the doctor) to the fact that she had eighteen children at home and that’s why she never smiled. Barney knew the material wasn’t that funny, not funny at all, in fact, but it gave him a chance to fill the room with his voice, to bounce the words off the walls and ceilings. Mazzo said nothing, did nothing. Barney sometimes became discouraged and thought: The hell with it. Let the silence fall. He’d stand beside Mazzo’s bed, wanting to shake him into responding, tired of the sound of his own voice, bored and impatient. Then he’d think of Cassie and see her face and those dancing eyes before him, and he’d say: “Hey Mazzo, did I ever tell you about the giraffe who got the sore throat and …”

Desperate one afternoon, empty of ideas, tired of the sound of his own voice, he saw Billy being wheeled by on the way to a treatment. Billy waved feebly. “Did you know Billy the Kidney was an expert car thief?”

He spoke to the air, having grown accustomed to a lack of response from Mazzo. But he noticed now that Mazzo stirred at the question, turned and looked at Barney, a glimmer of interest in his eyes.

Barney pounced on the topic of Billy’s car thefts. Told him about Billy’s exploits, how he stole the cars and the rides he took, elaborating a little, exaggerating a bit, but not too much. He didn’t want to lose credibility with Mazzo now that he had finally gotten a response after all this time. Talking about cars, he was afraid that he might induce his nightmare to return right here in Mazzo’s room, but he kept on talking anyway and the nightmare didn’t come.

Finally, topic exhausted, he fell into silence.

Mazzo’s lips moved. He uttered words Barney couldn’t understand. He leaned toward Mazzo, inclining his head.

“I like cars,” Mazzo croaked, voice hoarse and broken.

Barney’s hopes rose at this first response. Mazzo had given him a topic to explore further: cars.

He didn’t really know much about cars, so he pummeled Billy the Kidney with questions about them. Billy didn’t know a hell of a lot, but at least he’d driven a variety of them, knew their names, knew about four-wheel drive and stuff that was too technical for Barney to follow. Barney took a lot of this information to Mazzo, improvising again, spinning his wheels as usual, making up stuff about car races, describing at length a drive he told Mazzo he had taken in a green MG, which Billy said was the best car he ever stole. Barney played games, too, with the information, telling a weird science-fiction tale of how the MG’s joined forces with computers to take over the world, juggling the words, his mind racing and his tongue trying to keep up with it. Having run out of both words and ideas, he stood breathlessly at Mazzo’s bedside, feeling as though he’d just finished a long and arduous run. Mazzo lifted his hand, summoned Barney closer. “You’re crazy,” Mazzo said. But there was no venom in his voice, and his eyes did not have their usual hard glitter. It was as if he had said: “Thanks, Barney.”

One morning Barney was seized by an aftermath as he told a long story about an elephant who happened to wander through a supermarket, a variation of the giraffe in the barroom joke. He paused in midsentence—“The clerk turned around as the elephant raised its …”—as dizziness assailed him. His eyes suddenly could not focus, and he held on blindly to the bed, his fingers grabbing the sheets
for support in a world dissolving under his feet. Let the blood flow, rhythm, tempo, holding on, holding on, getting a flash of the nightmare car slanting down the hill, his hands on the steering wheel and the car out of control on the wet street, rain splashing against the windshield and the wipers going back and forth, rhythm, tempo. Then the dizziness receded, his eyes focused again, sweat ran down his cheeks into the corners of his mouth, salty and warm. But he was normal once again. His heart still raced a bit and throbbed in his ears, but that was par for the course following an aftermath.

He looked up to see Mazzo, half propped up on one elbow, studying him, as if Barney was a stranger he’d never seen before.

“A reaction,” Barney said. “From the merchandise they give me. It happens once in a while.”

For the first time Barney saw a look of concern in Mazzo’s face. Barney thought: It’s as if he’s discovering that I’m human too, that you don’t have to be dying in this place to be a good guy.

Then Mazzo lowered himself again and closed his eyes, shutting Barney out once more.

The final breakthrough came one evening as Barney sat beside Mazzo’s bed in one of the wooden chairs. There was not a comfortable chair in the entire Complex, it seemed, and the beds were not exactly luxurious either. Bascam had been annoyed when Barney had showed up at the door to Mazzo’s room.

“You here again?” she said.

Barney didn’t bother to answer. Bascam stole one more secret look at Mazzo and departed without another word. He and Mazzo remained silent. Frankly, Barney didn’t feel like talking. He could still hear the echo of his earlier
words coming at him from the corners of the room. Mazzo seemed to be dozing. Then he spoke, said something Barney didn’t understand.

“What did you say?” Barney asked.

Mazzo spoke again, words muffled, unintelligible.

Barney leaned across the bed, turning his head so that his ear was close to Mazzo’s lips.

“Any … more … after … maths?” Mazzo whispered.

Barney couldn’t believe his ears. Mazzo the bastard was not only talking but asking about Barney’s condition.

“No,” Barney said.

Mazzo nodded. “Good,” he said.

“Listen,” Barney said, “the aftermaths aren’t bad at all, really. They come and go and last only a minute. Hell, they’re nothing compared to the nightmare—” He caught himself but too late. Christ, he’d done so much talking in this room that now it was second nature to babble about anything and everything. Even the nightmare of the car. Which he hadn’t wanted to tell Mazzo about, tell anybody about.

Mazzo’s eyes were fixed on him, fevered and blazing.

“Nothing,” Barney said, answering the eyes’ demand. “The nightmare is nothing.”

Mazzo continued that fixed demanding stare.

“Nothing, I said, Mazzo. Nothing.”

Mazzo fixed his face in a don’t-give-me-that-crap expression.

Barney didn’t say anything. And then he thought: If Mazzo wants to know, why not tell him? He’d been trying to get his attention day after day without spectacular results. Now here was Mazzo actually wanting to communicate.

Barney told him. About the car and the slanting street.
The rain and the wind. The roaring motor and the wheel in his hand. The girl emerging from the mist, stepping off the curb. The car hurtling toward her. The moment of awakening at the point of collision.