A Wonderful Stroke of Luck Read online

  “Must we factor in that nature’s beauty is impermanent, which colors perception, so to speak?”

  Ben took a deep breath. To avoid answering Akemi’s impossible-to-answer questions, some of the teachers resorted to calling on her classmates to respond, instead. Now, though, no one replied, though LaVerdere coughed into his hand.

  “Let us look at this painting—its subject matter; our arguably unreliable information about a lack of peacefulness within the painting’s creator. While that hardly makes it Munch’s The Scream—thank you again, Aqua—may I suggest that ultimately, anecdotal information makes our contemplation something other than it might have been, allocating three to five seconds to walk past it in a museum. Or, in this case, in a Park Avenue condo. Though we cannot detect conflict, the vision portrayed, the idealization, is to my eye a bit too remote from reality to be convincing. And while I know nothing about the painter’s intentions, I do know that there are sixty-some variations on this painting, which might be interpreted at least two ways: that the painter is insisting—which always makes us think we might be encountering someone’s defense system, hmm?—or that the painter has a specific ambition he is unable to accomplish. Of course we would not want Mr. Hicks to say, ‘Aha!’ and destroy the succession of paintings leading up to this one. Yet, ironically, amid the ostensible ‘peace’ of the painting, its emotional underpinnings may be quite varied, among them obsession, frustration, even desperation.

  “Without adding more biographical information, let me suggest that while certain writers and musicians are approved of because they have a so-called vision that they return to, it is also a risky endeavor, because quantity may raise questions rather than reinforcing the impact. Does one’s adamancy convince, or suggest a possible struggle within the artist that becomes part of the art itself—perhaps inseparable from it? Something we are no doubt still thinking about, following our trip to a so-called real art gallery last year, under the supervision of Ms. Alwyn-Black, as I’m sure all of you will remember: another highlight of your broad—I imply no pun here—education at Bailey Academy.”

  Phillip Collins got it. He snorted.

  “Thank you for your time, ladies and gentlemen,” LaVerdere said, his face becoming animated. “Let us hope our museum director makes a quick recovery so that she can preside at the upcoming dinner thanking our benefactor. Study those animals and marvel at their slightly romanticized accuracy, but wonder whether within those depictions we don’t sense a personal projection not to be satisfied by this painting, or by its reiterations.”

  Three

  Against Ben’s better judgment, on Thursday after basketball practice he agreed to accompany LouLou to see a guy she’d met during the summer when he was singing and playing guitar at a coffeehouse in Bellows Falls. As far as Ben could tell, the fascination Willy held for LouLou was that he was seven or eight years older than she and married, and had briefly been a studio musician in Nashville, where his wife remained. They were technically still married, though he wrote and sang songs about divorce. Ben and Jasper had listened to only one: Froggie got divorced from Mrs. Frog, who drowned herself under a lily pad (those weren’t really the lyrics, but he could no longer remember the anthropomorphic song’s story). He had an aversion to songs that condescended to the audience’s intelligence, but according to LouLou, the crowd (Crowd? For a folksinger in Bellows Falls?) loved him. At first Hailey said she’d go along, but it turned out she had to write a paper she’d left until the last minute. Ben also thought she was skeptical about any musician except Stiff Formaldehyde.

  Jasper had been scheduled to go, too, but he told Ben that he felt like he was being used, so he’d backed out. It was unusual to be invited anywhere with LouLou, because most of the time you found out about her adventures after the fact. She just went missing. If you believed her, any number of people were happy to take her in (those times she wasn’t with a boyfriend), or to give her a meal. This must be a boring adventure if she wanted him along, Ben thought. Jasper’s sense of things was probably more accurate: She might have wanted protection, but more likely she wanted an audience. She’d told Willy she was twenty-one.

  A dark-green hatchback picked them up in front of a house a block past the school. The house was a landmark, for no good reason except that it was painted yellow. The Bailey students called the house The Big Banana. On Halloween, the young couple who lived there with their twins gave out butterscotch candies and Mr. Goodbars. The driver’s name was Lee—a friend of Willy’s, who seemed surprised to see Ben. The car smelled of cigarette smoke. “How ya doin’, man?” Ben said, climbing in front and shaking the man’s hand.

  “O-kaaay,” Lee said. Ben assumed LouLou knew Lee, until she introduced herself. “And, uh, you two go to school here? You’re, like, teenagers? This is what—some practical joke?”

  “We’re twenty-one,” LouLou said. “We have a long history of flunking out of other schools.”

  “You have some identification to that effect?”

  “We need it, to ride to Vermont?”

  “Maybe I misunderstood something,” Lee said. “Your friend Willy’s such a loser, he’s got to import a teenage fan club?”

  “I thought you were his friend,” LouLou said. Willy had sent her twenty dollars that he told her to give Lee for gas.

  “How are you kids getting back to school? You know I’m headed for Saint Johnsbury afterward, right? I’ve got a gig of my own up there, only it’s construction, not music. A real job.”

  Well, this was certainly unpleasant, Ben thought. Though Lee could see LouLou in the rearview mirror—which he looked into often—Ben had no idea how she was reacting to their blunt, seemingly unwilling driver. How were they going to get back? He’d assumed the ride would be round-trip. Lee drove like an old woman, never changing lanes, braking lightly when approaching intersections even when the light was green.

  “So tell me,” Lee said, “what about Willy’s music do a couple of kids like you relate to? It doesn’t seem like a little boilerplate old hippie ‘Puff, the Magic Dragon’ shit?”

  “It’s my kind of music,” LouLou said. “You’re the one who seems down on it. And on your friend.”

  “Down on Willy? Nah. Went out of my way to pick you up, at his request, though now I’m worried I might be charged with kidnapping two kids that go to a fancy rich kids’ school. Anybody’d think that for that tuition, they’d keep tabs on you. But hey, maybe those school bigshots aren’t so perfect. You think they might be not quite right in the head themselves? They sure watched me where I went to school. One time I got expelled for cherry-bombing the Christmas tree.” He lowered the window to pitch his cigarette. “Smoking’s bad,” he said. “I’m sure they instruct you rich kids in how to live a long life. Aerobic exercise, right? Jumping jacks till you feel the heartbeats in your ears. You vegetarians?”

  “No,” Ben said.

  “Uh-uh,” LouLou said.

  “Tell me,” Lee said. “What do you take me for? You think I’m just another adult, the way I think you’re just another couple of spoiled brats?”

  “You’re somebody doing us a favor,” Ben said.

  “You don’t make any assumptions, hearin’ my accent? Don’t wonder what a Southern boy’s doin’ in the north? See this tear under the arm of my jacket, here? I could use some new clothes. Surprising to me that shit-kicker boots are in fashion. Weren’t when I was in high school, but they were the only shoes I had.”

  “We’re not judging you,” LouLou said. “People dress all different ways.”

  “Your boyfriend’s so far over in his seat, it looks like he’s magnetized to the door.”

  Shit, Ben thought. But neither of them denied that he was her boyfriend. For a few seconds, he imagined that he was. But how much sense did that make? She was on her way to see Willy. The guy driving regarded both of them as interchangeable with the charms dangling from a rawhide loop hu
ng over his rearview mirror: little stones; good-luck charms only if he believed in them. The guy drove carefully, eyes straight ahead. “You two know Mandy?” he asked at a red light.

  “No,” Ben said.

  “No,” LouLou said.

  “That’s Willy’s wife, back in Tennessee. She would not believe that today I’m driving my mother’s vehicle with two school kids in it, heading off to some coffeehouse to hear her Willy. She thinks he’s working construction with me. You can’t have a marriage if you don’t have any honesty with one another.”

  “I’ve got a flask filled with Mount Gay. Want a swig?” LouLou asked, rummaging in her bag.

  “Drink and drive? I never do. Maybe your boyfriend here would like a drink. I can just feel his brain waves wiggling like worms. ‘Who’s this guy? What am I doing here?’”

  “He’s cool with things. He never says much. That’s just Ben.”

  Was this true? Ben wondered. He thought of himself as talkative. His father often said he was too quiet, so it was a sensitive subject.

  “I don’t understand young people. I didn’t understand myself when I was one, either. I broke it off with my girlfriend and took off for Asheville and played music with two different bands, the first of which fired my ass for sleeping through a rehearsal. Then I joined up with Hibernation, playing the lyricon, and one day I got so sick, I collapsed onstage. Turned out I had a heart problem. I take pills for it now. They make me feel fifty. They also affect my judgment, I guess, if I’m chattering away with a couple of school kids.” He snorted. He turned on the radio. They’d just missed a song by Michael Jackson, who was appearing that night, Ben learned from the excited announcer, for a concert at Madison Square Garden. That was of little interest to Ben, but Elin would have been elated to hear the song, and even more thrilled if his father had taken her to New York. She preferred Manhattan to their home in Brookline. She loved “Billie Jean,” which had gone to the top of the charts to become number one in Sweden.

  Ben understood guys like Lee. They were like some of the workmen at his father’s summer place, guys who tried to sound forthcoming at the same time they were judging you; they wanted to distance themselves to assert superiority and control. LouLou, from the backseat, waved her flask in the space between seats, but neither took it. Was she wearing perfume? It was probably her shampoo that smelled like the beach in the rain.

  “Anybody want to take a whiz?” Lee said. “If so, I’m pulling into the service station up ahead. Get me a Diet Sprite, enjoy a couple of pills, then we’re on our way, straight through, bladders empty as a pocket picked by gypsies.”

  What would LaVerdere make of this guy, Ben wondered. LaVerdere, who had such a facility with words, partly because he had so much knowledge to call on.

  “Nobody for the can?” Lee said, pulling into the parking lot and getting out.

  “Guess not,” Ben said.

  “Not me,” LouLou said.

  After the comment Lee had made about his recoiling, Ben had made it a point to center himself in the seat. He felt like crossing his arms over his chest wasn’t defensive, but instead indicated that he couldn’t be pushed around. If he had it to do over again, he would have stayed at Bailey and played chess with Jasper.

  At the convenience store, LouLou stayed silently seated. What was he supposed to do—pretend everything was cool? Or blurt out nervous, stupid questions? “In silence, the butterfly rises,” LaVerdere had once said. Some Zen koan, or whatever it was. He remembered LaVerdere’s hand rising like a conductor’s, with purpose. There had, of course, been only a metaphoric butterfly in the air, and LaVerdere had been talking to Dr. Ha, who amused him, or whom he disdained—Ben and Jasper had an ongoing disagreement about this. Ben looked out the window. He wished Hailey had come instead of him.

  “Do you want to do a Five Easy Pieces?” she said, leaning forward.

  “What?”

  “Jack Nicholson. At the end of the movie LaVerdere screened. The guy who dumps his girlfriend at the gas station and jumps in some guy’s truck.”

  “Really, LouLou? We continue this adventure by hoping some trucker takes us wherever he’s going?”

  “He stopped so we’d split. Don’t you know anything?”

  “Five Easy Pieces? You think Lee knows that movie?”

  The scarf she kept fiddling with was from an admirer who’d gone to Paris. Somebody who no doubt didn’t have to mow his father’s lawn all summer, who’d gone to see the Eiffel Tower instead.

  “Come on,” she said, opening the door. “I’ll apologize later. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “You’ve suddenly lost interest in this guitar player it was so important to see?”

  “He’s not playing. I screwed up. I thought he was confirming he’d be back in Fellows Balls, but he left a voicemail. He’s in Sharon, Connecticut, playing a private party. I got my signals crossed.”

  “What? Does Lee know he’s not there?”

  “I don’t know. Come on. Let’s go.”

  He sprang out of the car. “We hitch a ride and go back to Bailey? Are you fucking kidding? I don’t believe you, LouLou! You wanted to hit the road, but what was the point in dragging me along? Just to see if I’d do it?”

  “Children, children,” Lee said, walking back toward the car, smoking a narrow, dark cigar. “Let’s not have a meltdown on our way to our playdate.”

  “He’s not on tonight, according to her. What do you know about that? Huh? Is she telling the truth?” Embarrassingly, his voice cracked on the last word.

  Lee exhaled noxious smoke. “Ben,” he said. “Don’t we all believe that the fun is in the journey? Somebody’s playing at the coffeehouse tonight. Another friend of mine, as a matter of fact. A female friend. That might be more interesting to you, I’m thinking, than meeting Willy, because what was in that for you, Ben, am I right?”

  “We’re outta here,” LouLou said.

  “Rushing off to try to catch Michael Jackson at the Garden?” He pushed a button on his key ring. The car doors locked. “Change of heart? You rich kids were really going to hear Willy play in that factory with mice running around, nothing to eat but stale pretzels and beer? My friend and I can show you a better time than that. By the way, I think we need some gas. Get back in the car and I’ll pump half a tank and you can pay for it, huh, kids? I wouldn’t want to take advantage.”

  “You locked us out,” Ben said.

  “What’s so funny about being young?” LouLou said. “What’s your story, that you stop to get two so-called rich kids, so you can get free gas?”

  “That is such a disappointing reaction, LouLou. Please don’t contribute if you don’t feel you should.”

  “Here,” Ben said, holding out a twenty-dollar bill he’d pulled out of his own wallet. That left a five and a one-dollar bill, worn thin and missing a corner. It had been in his wallet for some time, because he wasn’t sure it was negotiable. “Sorry to have inconvenienced you, Lee. Let’s not have things turn ugly.”

  “Let you wander away into the night, with no clear way to get back? Some other dude might be a child molester. I say we have a hit of LouLou’s moonshine, pump some gas, and continue our exodus from Live Free or Die. I’m certainly about to be on my way.” Lee took a few steps closer to Ben. LouLou stood outside the locked car, the flask nowhere Ben could see, her backpack dangling from one shoulder, her scarf entangled with the straps. Thank god she’d pulled her backpack out of the car behind her. What really amazing hair she had. Her nose had turned pink from the cold. But her hair—he could almost feel it in his fingertips.

  A car pulled in and a woman hopped out, unscrewed the gas cap, and began pushing buttons before inserting her credit card. Someone else came out of the store, eating a candy bar. There were people around them. Lee wasn’t an eagle whose talons were going to lift them from the planet. A man had gotten out of the passe
nger seat and was hitching up his pants while walking toward the store.

  Why did Ben feel like these people, this place, might be the last things he’d ever see? Lee had turned his back and walked off. He was lifting the hose. He didn’t seem dangerous. He seemed to be having some sort of discussion with himself—anybody who went to Bailey became hypersensitized to that conversational mode. All along, it had seemed like he’d been preoccupied with something else while talking to them.

  “Joke’s on us,” Lee said, hanging up the hose. “All of us going to some sad café in Hicksville, me hoping to get laid, just like you wanted to fuck my buddy, LouLou. Wish me luck with that, huh? Ben—I think your girlfriend wishes I’d drive away and disappear.”

  “You have a good night,” Ben said. “Sorry about the mix-up.”

  “Benny! You’re too much! You pay for gas and now you’re going to insist on getting me a package of cigs, too, aren’t you?”

  “Fuck you,” LouLou said. “Don’t do it, Ben.”

  He stood there thinking. Then he walked into the store and bought Marlboros, hoping the woman behind the counter wouldn’t ask to see his ID. She didn’t. She was polite. She gave him matches. He looked at her pudgy fingers grasping the cigarette pack and the matchbook, her hovering index finger’s pink painted nail the cherry on top of the treat. She was missing a tooth.

  Back at the car, he handed the package to Lee, though he’d pocketed the matches. He had no plan for them, but they seemed like a good thing to keep. Boy Scouts knew how to rub sticks together to make a fire, but he had no such skills. He also didn’t think that they’d be camping in the woods. With a pretty girl, it would be easier to get someone to pick them up.

  “Much obliged,” Lee said, pushing the cigarette package into his shirt pocket. “Lots of loonies out there on the interstate. Best to take back roads.”