Ikon (4 page)

He had never meant to run a restaurant, especially not here in Final County, Arizona. He had tried singing, and selling, and sucking out sewers, and collecting tolls on the Indian National Turnpike in Oklahoma. He had even worked as a stand-up comedian in a quasi-Victorian topless nightspot in Nevada called the Gaslight. ‘And Moses is standing on top of the mountain, right, and he says to Jehovah, listen, let me get this straight, you want us to cut the end of our dicks off?’ That was where he had met and married Candii, Susie’s mother, blonde curls and snub nose and Little Annie Fanny eyes, giggly and small and sexy, with breasts so big that when she jiggled down the street men used to stop and stare with their mouths wide open, a tabletop dancer supreme, a burlesque artiste out of her time, the rage and the love of his life, gone now, of course, like a sad hoarse-throated song by Dr Hook (‘To think I was the kind of guy who could have kept her … would be taking too much credit on myself). Candii had sworn filthy curses at him in the obstetric clinic in Reno, while a red neon light across the street had flashed the word DIVORCE on and off all night, and the doctor had warned vaguely that Susie would probably die. Susie hadn’t died, thank God, but Candii had left them after eight months, taking her tight silk dresses and her seamed stockings and her giant-sized pink vibrator, which he had never seen her use. He missed her badly, even now, six years later, because she was an unassailable sexual fantasy and because she always used to laugh at his jokes and because he loved her. What was more, her name was actually Candii, on her birth certificate.

He had arrived in Apache Junction by accident. He had been heading towards Santa F6, New Mexico, to show off Susie to Candii’s mother (only 42 herself, by God, and just as busty as her daughter) and to panhandle a few hundred dollars from Candii’s father to pay off some of his arrears in rent. A few miles outside of Phoenix, his old green Mercury had finally collapsed on its worn-out suspension and died by the glaring roadside. When he had looked around, the signs had said Apache Junction.

They had also said Thriving Diner for Sale. The Navajo mechanic from the nearby Exxon garage had stared Indian-wrinkly-mouthed at the Mercury’s rusty green carcass, his waist girdled with shiny wrenches, and then at last pronounced, ‘No point in fixing that, my friend. Transmission’s shot.’ The moon-faced man who was selling the diner had peered out suspiciously from his darkened porch and said, ‘You’re not wasting my time, are you? I get more time-wasters, I can tell you.’

There wasn’t much in Apache Junction. A couple of gas stations, a few peeling houses, an Indian jewellery store. But it was as good or as bad as living anyplace else. The weather was warm and dry and helpful to Daniel’s sinus condition. The crime rate was low. The only habitual offender was a halfbreed Navajo called Ronald Reagan Kinishba, and he and Daniel were good friends. They played cards together occasionally, and got themselves drunk on Lowenbrau, and sometimes Ronald took Daniel out on the pillion seat of his Honda 749cc Nighthawk, blaring through the night at 110 mph, oblivious to anything but speed and grit and hot wind, and lights that flashed past them like space missiles out of Star Trek II. Afterwards, they would sit astride the bike at some unmapped desert intersection, trembling and saying, ‘Shit, wow, phew,’ over and over.

It was a silent life, sometimes; a life in which a man could turn in on himself. At night, in high summer, with the sky as clear as a black lawn sprinkled with silver daisies, with Susie sleeping in her rumpled cot, and the odd aromatic smell of the desert on the breeze, Daniel would sit out on the balcony at the back of the diner listening to the small voice of KSTM inside the kitchen, and wonder if he was real or not. He would cheer himself up by remembering one of Woody Allen’s characters, who hated reality but realized it was the only place to get a good steak. He often felt like a Woody Allen character himself these days: anxious, and just about able to cope. And the longer he lived in Apache Junction, the greater his uncertainty about coping became.

Cara said, ‘You don’t feel like a vacation, maybe?’

He looked up from the onions. ‘A vacation? What do you mean?’

‘Well, getting away from it all.’

‘You don’t think this is getting away from it all? Apache Junction?’

She kissed him, and then reached forward a little nearer and kissed him again. ‘This is work,’ she said. ‘I’m talking about swimming, or surfing, or climbing up mountains and making love on the snowline.’

‘Oh, yes? And who’s going to take care of Susie?’

‘Don’t you have a friendly old couple who could take her in for a week or two?’

Daniel stirred onions, and then reached for the seasoning. ‘I’d miss her,’ he said.

There was a long pause. Then Cara said, ‘Would you mind if I stuck around for a little while? Maybe a day or two?’

Daniel glanced at her, and smiled. ‘You’re welcome, if that’s what you want.’

Cara took his wrist, and nudged back the shirt she was wearing, and held his hand firmly over her bare left breast. She stared at him challengingly, and he felt her nipple crinkle and rise against the palm of his hand. ‘Destiny/ she said.

‘What is?’ he asked her.

‘You and me, meeting. Destiny. Not great destiny. Not thunder and lightning and whole continents catching fire. But good sweet destiny; something we can both remember for ever, when the mood comes over us.’

He kept staring into those pale blue eyes of hers, and gently rotating the palm of his hand around her breast. ‘Cara,’ he said. ‘Cara from South Dakota. I don’t even know your surname.’

‘Does it matter?’

Just then, there was a rattling knock at the kitchen window; and through the frosted glass, Daniel could see the blurry outline of a man’s face. ‘Daniel! You there? Daniel!’

‘Willy?’ called Daniel. ‘Hold on a second, I’ll let you in.’ He turned to Cara, and said, ‘It’s a friend of mine. Do you want to go get dressed?’

Cara looked down at herself. ‘Oh, sure,she said. She blew him a kiss, and then, with a sassy twirl, turned around and pranced back upstairs.

‘Holy shit,’ came Susie’s voice from the diner next door, although Daniel had paddled her twice in the past week for talking like a trucker. But sometimes women knew when they could get away with it, and Susie was no exception.

Three

Daniel lowered the gas under the onions and went to open the back door. Willy Monahan came tumbling in with his usual awkwardness, brushing dust off his Air Force uniform. ‘Whose damn chickens are those? Are they your damn chickens? Damn things almost pecked the laces straight out of my damn shoes!’

They’re Bill’s,’ said Daniel, mildly. Tima Indian who lives out back there, he’s peaceful enough and gives me plenty of eggs, too. Do you want some coffee? You’re early.’

‘I’m not early, I’m damn late,’ Willy retorted. He hung up his major’s cap next to a huge Hungarian salami, ‘I’ve been working all night in the armoury.’ He sniffed, and fhen he said, What’s that smell?’

‘Onions.’

‘No, the other smell. The subtle, sensual, underlying smell. Do I detect woman with a capital W?’

Susie came into the kitchen, carrying a stack of clean red gingham napkins. ‘Hi, Uncle Willy.’

‘Hi yourself. Don’t tell me the old man has company again.’

Susie nodded. ‘Redhead. From South Dakota.’

Daniel took down another skillet, and scraped some more lard into it. ‘I’m outnumbered, you know that? My daughter, my best friend, who’s it going to be next? Just because a pretty young lady from Woonsocket decides to spend a little time here, helping me out - ‘

‘Woonsocket? You’re serious?’ asked Willy.

‘Of course I’m serious. Woonsocket is in Sanborn County, a couple of hundred miles south of Huron.’

‘Oh, that Woonsocket,’ teased Willy. ‘Well, my friend, if if s that Woonsocket, you don’t have much to worry about. They’re known for their obliging redheads. In fact eight Woonsocket women out of ten are redheads. They’re also known for the Woonsocket Jew’s Harp Orchestra, and Woonsocket Pie, which is a whole gopher in a flaky pastry crust.’

Susie giggled, but Daniel closed his eyes and raised his head as if he were appealing to the Lord to save him from smartass Air Force majors. To think, Willy, that we depend on you to protect this great nation of ours in time of war.’

Willy noisily pulled across one of the red-and-gold Mexican kitchen chairs, and sat down on it, propping one angular leg across the other. ‘You don’t know how damn hicky you are,’ he said. “The reason I spent all night in the armoury was because single-handedly and unaided I have discovered a flaw in our air-to-air radar systems. Now, what do you think about that?’

‘What should I think?’ asked Daniel.

‘What should you think? You should only think that you have sitting in your humble little kitchen the greatest genius in ordnance and navigation systems in the entire United States Air Force. And that’s just for beginners.’

‘Have some coffee, Daniel enjoined him.

Willy was unusually disconnected and disarrayed-look-ing for an Air Force major, particularly an Air Force major who flew regular tactical training missions in a jet airplane

which could fly at 920 mph and had cost the American taxpayer something over $18 million. He was thin, Willy, with a large hatchet nose, and bright dark eyes. He had been married once, years ago, but his wife Nora had left him during Viet Nam, and he had sworn to himself that he would never try marriage again. Instead, he had devoted his on-duty hours to familiarizing himself almost fanatically with the Air Force’s new and sophisticated weapons systems, becoming an amateur expert in radar and guided missiles; and his off-duty hours to Chivas Regal, poker, and scandalous womanizing. He was the only officer in the Air Force who had completely overhauled a Boeing 8-1 defensive radar system single-handed, and the only officer in the Air Force who had actually succeeded in tugging the white nylon pants off Corporal Sherry P. Kearns, the Junoesque but notoriously inflexible secretary of General Tailpipe’ Truscott, at Nellis Air Force Base.

Willy was Nebraskan by birth; rangy, funny, but also very good at what he did, an Air Force man through and through. If his wife hadn’t left him, and if he had behaved himself, he could have been a major-general by now, on $38,000 a year. But he had remained a major for six years, while younger and correcter men were promoted over his head, and his latest posting to Williams AFB to train inexperienced young pilots on F-15 Eagles had been an unmistakable message from Tactical Air Command that he could expect to rise no further. He called Williams ‘the Graveyard of Dreams’.

He hadn’t quit the Air Force. There was nothing else he could do, not happily, at least. But now and then, when he was drunk, his chagrin rose to the surface like the boiling bubbles from a sunken submarine, and he foully cursed all wives, and all superior officers, and most of all he foully cursed himself.

He sipped his coffee noisily, and helped himself to a handful of chocolate-chip cookies. ‘I can’t wait to lay all this stuff on Colonel Kawalek’s desk. I can picture his face already. “Well, Willy, what’s all this, Willy? What do you

mean our radar’s up shit-creek? Apart from being distasteful, Willy, it’s politically impossible.” ‘ Willy did a particularly cruel impersonation of the blustery Kawalek.

Daniel peeled strips of bacon out of a greasy plastic pack, and laid them in the skillet. ‘Is it serious, this flaw you’ve found?’

‘Is it serious? Was Hiroshima serious? Of course it’s

serious.’

Willy munched cookies and swallowed coffee as if he were trying to win himself a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the man who gave himself indigestion the fastest.

‘Well, are you going to tell me?’ asked Daniel.

‘It’s very technical,’ said Willy. ‘I’m not sure I could explain it to a short-order cook.’

‘Restaurant proprietor, if you don’t mind.’

‘Whatever. It isn’t easy to understand, not unless you have a moderate grasp of the principles of X-band pulse-doppler radar.’

‘Are you kidding?’ said Daniel, flipping the bacon over. ‘My mother used to tell me bedtime stories about X-band pulse-doppler radar. Didn’t you ever hear the one about X-band pulse-doppler radar and the seven dwarfs?’

‘Seriously,said Willy, ‘this is one of those high-tech discoveries a man makes just once in a lifetime.’

‘Will you pass me the pepper? No, that one. Thanks. Go on, then, tell me what you’ve found out.’

‘Ah, shit,’ Willy despaired. ‘How do you explain anomalies in APG-63 multi-mode radar to a guy who’s frying onions?’

Try, will you? I’m listening.’

Willy dragged his chair across to the table without even taking his backside off it. He laid a wooden spoon on one side of the table, and a blue-and-white china butter-dish on the other. “This radar is highly sophisticated, very advanced. It fits into the nose of a fighter-plane, and it controls every move that the fighter-pilot is going to make in any kind of combat situation. It can track one enemy airplane, and at the same time it can carry on looking for

others. It can lock from one target to another instantly. Up until now, I thought it was the best air-to-air radar in the entire world.’

‘In that case, I’m glad that it belongs to us, and not to the Russians’.

Willy blinked at him.

That’s all I could think of to say,’ Daniel apologized.

Willy took the pewter flour-shaker, and carefully sprinkled a fine coating of white self-raising flour all over the surface of the table. Susie watched him with grave interest; Daniel thought, God in Heaven, here we go again, another Willy Monahan hobby-horse. He remembered the time that Willy had got a bee in his bonnet about missiles with non-imaging infra-red seekers, and how he had single-handedly persuaded his bemused commanding officer to lobby the Pentagon for all TAG airplanes to be re-equipped. Unsuccessfully, of course.

This table is our attack scenario, right?’ said Willy.

‘I thought you were making shortcrust pastry/ Daniel retorted.

Willy raised a hand to silence him. ‘Don’t make fun. This is serious. This wooden spoon is an enemy intruder, right? And this butter-dish is me, okay, in my F-15. I’m protecting the homeland in the late stages of a protracted nuclear confrontation. Enemy wooden spoons are coming in from all sides.’