Nowhere Man

Fabiani was one of those people who believed for a while anyway he could be almost anyone he wished, as if all he had to do was slip on a mask as he did as a kid on Halloween. A bartender in the upstairs lounge at the airport, he had conversations with numerous people during his shift, and frequently he would find himself assuming certain aspects of their lives and personalities. He might adopt a lavish Southern accent after speaking with someone from Atlanta or New Orleans or employ the argot of a pilot or a chemist or an engineer or twitch his head uncontrollably like someone afflicted with a nervous disorder or make references to all sorts of exotic places as if he had visited them. It was something he did to amuse himself during slow periods in the lounge, to see how long he could pull it off before the person he was speaking with caught on to what he was doing.

One of those he deceived for quite a few minutes was Roy Robbins, the manager of a Chevrolet dealership in the southeast end of town. Impressed by the Cockney accent the bartender had cultivated, he invited him to work as a walker on his lot. Fabiani assumed the manager wanted him to sell cars and politely declined, but Robbins smiled and informed him that a walker was someone he hired to stroll around the lot for an hour or two in the afternoon so that it appeared he had more business than he did.

"You're pulling my leg, right?"

"Not at all."

"All you want me to do is pretend I'm looking to buy a car?"

"You got it, friend. You're part of the honey that attracts the flies."

Fabiani squinted in confusion.

"I've learned after many years in this line of work that you need more than just cars to attract customers onto your lot. People won't go into a restaurant unless others are eating there. They won't laugh at a show on television unless others are heard laughing at the jokes. That's why laugh tracks were invented. The same goes for the car business. Other customers have to be there before someone feels comfortable about coming on the lot."

* *  *  *  *

With apparent interest Fabiani bent over the sticker on the passenger window of the strawberry-hued Camaro and pretended to read all the options that were included on that particular model. It was the fourth time he had paused to read a Camaro sticker that afternoon and he practically knew the words and prices by heart. Then he straightened up and continued down the row of gleaming new Camaros and Cavaliers, idly grazing his fingers along the sun-baked roofs and tinted windshields and slivers of chrome and glass. Just like a child in a toy store, he felt like touching every bright new item he could reach. In the twenty or so minutes he had been there today, only five people had visited the lot, and a couple of them were youngsters to look at the latest shipment of Corvettes. He suspected it was a little too warm for most folks to be outside today if they didn't have to be, with the temperatures threatening to rise into the nineties; even so, he was out there because it was an easy, if monotonous, way to earn fifteen dollars an hour.

Slowly he circled the dusty lot of Robbins Motors, moving past one row after another, his nostrils filled with the pungent smell of new cars. Two or three times a week he was on the grounds, walking anywhere from an hour to two and a half hours depending on the condition of his left knee which sometimes flared up from an old football injury. Often he thought of himself as a letter carrier dutifully following the same route day after day, seldom exchanging more than a few pleasantries with the burgundy-shirted salesmen who also patrolled the lot. Mostly they seemed oblivious of him, as if he were part of the fixtures like the huge paper banners in each corner of the lot that proclaimed WE MAKE YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE.

"Say, I wonder if you could give me some idea of the kind of mileage this Blazer gets in the city?" a Sikh in a pale blue turban asked Fabiani.

"Sorry, I haven't a clue."

"Aren't you a salesman?"

He shook his head. "Just looking around like you."

"Oh, my mistake."

He nodded and continued on, always a little surprised when he was mistaken for a salesman because he was seldom dressed in anything but jeans and tennis shirts. Robbins hired him to look like a customer so he usually had on pretty grubby clothes. A scarecrow was better outfitted than he was some afternoons.

Moving toward some recent trade-ins, he noticed a penguin-shaped man climbing behind the wheel of one of the clunkers he thought looked somewhat familiar and paused. At first, he assumed the man was someone he had mixed a drink for at the airport then, after a couple of minutes, he remembered where he had seen him—at the county courthouse where he was a bailiff.

It was nearly three weeks ago that Fabiani reported for jury duty, and though he didn't look forward to the prospect, he didn't try to get excused from serving. His attitudes changed, however, after he listened to the introductory comments of the opposing lawyers in the medical malpractice case. They were so disingenuous and obnoxious that he knew right away he didn't want to be there. So during "voir dire" when the lawyers questioned the potential jurors to see whether they were acceptable or not, he fabricated the story that he had once considered bringing a cause of action against a surgeon because of the lingering pain he had following an operation on a torn ligament in his left wrist. He was confident that would get him dismissed from the panel and it did. At the time he didn't feel the least bit remorseful, either, convinced the lawyers really weren't interested in selecting people of independent judgment, only those who seemed the most susceptible to their specious arguments.

Briskly he sauntered by the bailiff, curious if the man would remember him but he didn't raise an eyebrow. He wasn't particularly surprised. Anyone who worked in a courthouse probably heard so many liars it was hard to tell them apart after a while. It was the rare honest voice that stayed in his memory.

* *  *  *  *

Over and over Fabiani turned the lavender envelope in his hands as if hoping the letter inside would slilp out onto his lap but it didn't budge. The envelope wasn't addressed to him but to Stacey, the woman he had been living with the past eight months. However, he was curious who sent it because it was postmarked Cedar Ridge, which was a fairly affluent community a few miles north of town, and he didn't recall her mentioning that she knew anyone from there. His sister once had a friend at college who came from that area but otherwise he didn't know anyone who had spent much time there.

Not once had he ever opened anything addressed to Stacey without her permission. So he knew he should put the letter on the bureau with the other pieces of mail she had received today but, instead, he took out an opener and carefully lifted up the right corner of the envelope then slid the blade along until the other corner was open. He held it up to a spear of sunlight streaming through the dining room window. Scarcely any tears were visible so he doubted if she would suspect anyone of tampering with it.

What was inside was not a letter but a tissue-thin greeting card in which the sender thanked Stacey for the two hundred dollars she sent him last week. He did not indicate what the money was for, just made it clear how grateful he was for it. "You're the one I can always turn to whenever I am feeling out of sorts," he scribbled. "Without you, I'd be lost as Columbus some days." The sender signed it, in spidery capital letters, "YOUR OTHER FATHER."

Fabiani was confused. She had never said anything to him about having a step father, not even some imaginary one she concocted as a child. Her real father had passed away several years ago when she was still in grade school, and for almost as long her mother was married to an electrical contractor whom Stacey always addressed by his nickname "Mack." Never as father. Maybe the card was from someone she knew when she was growing up, a kind of surrogate father to her after her real one died, but he was surprised she had never mentioned the person to him. He was even more surprised that she sent such a large amount of money for she was definitely the most frugral person he had ever met, reluctant to spend much of anything on anyone but herself.

"Your other father," he said aloud as he slipped the card back into the envelope. Then he repeated the words a couple more times as if hoping the answer would come to him but it didn't. Carefully he sealed the envelope shut, suspecting "other father" could refer to practically anyone as far as he knew.

* *  *  *  *

That guy, Fabiani thought to himself, stepping past a scruffy man with long graying sideburns. That guy would be about the age of someone referring to himself as Stacey's other father. And the person with him as well, though he might be a shade too young.

Throughout the sweltering afternoon, as he walked past row after row of cars at Robbins Motors, he found himself looking at other people on the lot to see if they might fit the description of the person who sent the card to Stacey. He knew it was impossible to ask her. Not only didn't he want to admit that he had opened her mail, but he knew if the subject ever came up somehow, she would in all likelihood not tell him the truth. That was one thing they had in common: the willingness to lie their way out of thorny situations. However she might try to explain the card to him he could not believe her, having caught her lying to him too many times already, just as she had caught him. It was amazing they had been together as long as they had, he thought, but perhaps it was because they recognized their mutual deceitfulness and were not as offended by it as they pretended.

A bored salesman, idly inspecting a batch of pickup trucks, spotted Fabiani and mosied over to him and asked, "You ever get tired of just walking up and down here?"

"Sure, but it's what I was hired to do."

The salesman nodded and lit a mentholated cigarette. "I bet you spent some time in the service, didn't you, chum?"

"Nah. Never even considered it."

"Huh, I figured you had." He leaned back and exchaled a thin film of smoke across the hood of one of the new pickups. "I was in the infantry a couple of years and all we did it seemed was march. Here, there, and everywhere."

Fabiani didn't respond but was grateful for the opportunity to rest his aching knee for a couple of minutes.

"In boot camp, you do something wrong your drill sergeant would have you out behind the barracks marching up and down the parking lot with a rifle on your shoulder and a full pack on your back. A white line bordered the lot and other lines marked out the parking spaces. You were forbidden to cross the lines without first getting permission from your drill sergeant so you had to zigzag all over the lot like a damn jackrabbit."

"Sounds pretty ridiculous if you ask me."

"Of course it was. That was the point, chum. Discipline. You did things, even the most ridiculous kind of things, because you were told to do them. I was out marching once and had to use the latrine and I remember screaming for permission to cross the line until my throat was practically raw."

A trace of a smile skimmed his lips. "Sorry, but I don't get it."

"Not many do anymore. Nowadays folks scarcely think they have to ask permission to do much of anything. They do whatever they feel like doing. What matters most is looking after yourself, and if you have to trample over some lines, you do it."

* *  *  *  *

Out of curiosity, on his way to work the next day, Fabiani swung by the address that was printed on the envelope of the card that was sent to Stacey. The place was a pine green two-story house with yellow shutters and a narrow front porch that was cluttered with gloves and shovels and spades and brooms. He circled the block once then parked across the street behind a maple tree and waited a few minutes for someone to come outside. But no one did so, not wanting to be any later for work than he already was, he left.

The next day, however, he returned a little earlier, and after a quarter of an hour, a scrawny figure with ears the size of candelabras came out and climbed into the dented Subaru in the driveway. He looked at the guy closely, doubting if the so-called "other father" was more than a year or two older than Stacey. As the car went by, Fabiani turned away then started his engine and spun around and trailed after it. The guy drove to a drug store about half a mile from his home and stopped and went in and made a purchase then drove to a restaurant on the marina called Pacific Blue. He got out and stood beside his car, surveying the crowded parking lot for a minute, then adjusted the knot of his necktie and went inside the establishment.

Fabiani climbed out of his car and looked around, and there at the back of the lot beside a cedar tree was Stacey's burnt-red Plymouth. He told himself he should not be surprised but he was, completely, and felt his pulse throbbing in his ears. Immediately his back and shoulders became damp with sweat, making his shirt feel pasted to his skin. Rattled, he jumped back into his car and pulled out of the lot, pressing his foot down on the accelerator pedal.

At first, as he paraded across the acre of new and previously owned cars, it was difficult to think about anything but Stacey and this guy who sent her the card. However hard he tried not to, he found himself scouring his memory for any clues that might reveal when they started seeing one another. But gradually his anger subsided so that by the time he returned home he had composed himself enough to keep his temper under control. Still, he could not resist asking her if she had been at the marina earlier in the day just to see what, if anything, she would admit to him.

"No, what makes you ask?"

"I thought we might have passed one another when I was driving by there today."

"Let me see," she said, as if piecing together her itinerary that afternoon. "I may have passed through the area on my way to have lunch with my sister but I never stopped there."

"I guess I was mistaken."

"Yeah. You must've been."

She lied, as he knew she would, because that was what she generally did when she was in a tight corner. Certainly it was what he would have done if he were in her place—what, in fact, he had recently done to get excused from serving on a jury. Ever since he got to know Stacey, he had a hard time believing anything she told him that might involve something troubling to her. The only reason he asked her about being at the marina today, he reckoned, was to watch her squirm, because he certainly didn't expect her to identify the person she met there.

* *  *  *  *

Maybe not the next day but some day soon, Fabiani expected to come home and find that Stacey had moved out of his apartment. But every day, for the next three and a half months, she was there, acting as if there was no one in the world who meant as much to her as he did. Then one evening late in September, he returned to find that she had left, leaving a note on the telephone stand in which she said she needed to be by herself for a while. Of course he knew it was another lie, certain if he went over to the home of her other father he would find her there with all her furniture.

Before long, he began spending more time at the car lot, not so much because he needed the extra money, but because he wasn't as lonely there as he was at home. As if in the service, he tried not cross any of the many lines that graced the immense lot, imagining, if he did, some furious drill sergeant would leap out from behind one of the cars and scold him for his transgression. Up and down the rows he proceeded, committed for once to doing something difficult without taking the easy way out.

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