The summer before my father was sent to Mount Pleasant Penitentiary he dressed in emerald-colored spandex and advertised carpeting on network television. It’s true. He had a form-fitting unitard, and a cape and mask, and a pair of ductile rubber boots that rode halfway up his legs, clinging to his hairless calves like Saran Wrap. He also had a thin blonde beard, a bit of a paunch (noticeable mostly because of the spandex), and a slight lazy eye that made him look at walls a lot. If you lived in Southeastern Iowa from the months of June through August in the year 1997, you probably saw the commercials. Maybe not in Hillsboro or Stockport, but if you lived in Ottumwa, I bet you’ll remember them. They were the kind people tend to remember: cheap, local, and embarrassingly stupid. And they featured my father, David Harrison Hollander, as a superhero who gave away free carpet pads with any home carpeting job completed before September 30th, 1998. He appeared in the ads with a large “P” sewn across his chest in a pleasing cursive font, and was named, aptly, the Pad Man.

There were four commercials in total. And in each one Pad Man swoops in just in time to save a happy couple from choosing an evil company (from outside Wapello County) for their new Wilton Velvet or Axeminster throw rug. Pad Man lands on the scene and informs them of the free pad promotion at Ottumwa’s own Carpet Emporium on North Church Street, and then, in each ad, the couple hugs and beams and everything is well again. All is right in the world of home decoration, and, by association, the universe.

That’s the middle part of the story. The way I tell it.

My name is Josie Hollander and I am the Pad Man’s only daughter. I tell that story a lot. I have probably told it about fifteen times, maybe twenty. I tell it because after Dad went East to the pen, the local reporters started coming around and my mother would not speak to them no matter how many times they phoned or rang the doorbell with classy meat and cheese baskets from Pepperidge Farms. For a while she would chase them from the yard and call them vampires, leeches, shitbags. Then she got bored or tired or both and started telling me to answer. “You talk to ‘em Josie,” she said. “Just make something up and then tell them to take a flying screw!”

So I talked to them. But I could never make things up, so I would only tell them the middle, just like I told you. It’s the easiest part to tell, and the most entertaining, really. What most people would consider the real juicy, saucy, parts, like the affairs and the final “incident,” are actually pretty dull. To give you the short version: my father liked to touch married women on their privates and he got in some trouble, like most people do when they take up that hobby. Maybe I’ll tell you more later, depending on my mood. You should know at this point that I am moody. It’s a Hollander curse. Something to do with our neurotransmitters.

But, all of this is, perhaps, beside the point. The real point here is to talk about my recent search for Dad. About how I’ve been tracking him down, and how when I find him, I’m going to reunite him with his beloved Irish Wolf Hound who is named Boris, but who we started calling Pad Dog after the commercials began to air. That is the real point. If I had to detail all of Dad’s indiscretions and moral hiccups, I would never have started in on this. But I guess I’ve got it going now, don’t I. So here we go.

It begins in a Dodge. At least my part does. And, as you might have assumed already, I am traveling with Boris, a.k.a. Pad Dog, (Incidentally, if you don’t know what an Irish Wolf Hound looks like, you can consult page 618 of Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary Tenth Edition where there is a small ink drawing that resembles Boris with an eerie portrait-like accuracy. Also on page 618, if you are interested, there is an even smaller drawing of an iris diaphragm, which to my surprise has nothing to do with preventing pregnancy.) But, in addition to Boris, I am also bringing along my current boy toy Faron Riniker, who does not like to be called a boyfriend and so, at his behest, is called a boy toy.

He’s accompanying me on this trip because he has nothing better to do with his life than follow me around like a stray cat, getting baked, and changing the radio stations in my pale blue Dodge Satellite. Faron has never met my father. But he’s not worried. He didn’t have a father growing up, so he pretty much just sees men as people. Anyway, Faron doesn’t get worried; he just gets high and stupid.

“People’s parents like me,” he has said multiple times since we began. “I’m nice.”

I can’t really argue with him. It’s true. He’s pretty nice.

We are approaching the town of Fairfield on Highway 34, which is on the way to Mount Pleasant. We are heading Southeast and Boris, a.k.a. Pad Dog, is sticking his tongue through the barely rolled-down window in the backseat. I began the trip this morning with enough space for him to get his whole head out there, but he kept trying to paw his way onto the highway so I had to reign him in. Faron said that dogs don’t throw themselves onto highways, but Faron has never even been able to keep his hamsters alive, so I kindly disregarded his advice. Anyway, Boris seems happy with the tongue-thing. He’s just letting that bad boy flap like a windsock, leaving bright white spit all over the glass like summer snowfall.

Boris was discovered five years ago by my father. Dad found him out behind the dumpsters at the Carpet Emporium. “He’s gotta belong to somebody,” Dad said that night, chaining the dog among my mother’s zinnias in the backyard. “Nobody would give up a full-bred like that.” But Boris, who became Boris that evening (after the German tennis star), had no tags or collar. And he was incredibly skinny, like he had been living on the weeds that cracked through the cement of the asphalt lot of the Emporium.

The first night he was home, my father gave him an hour-long bath, and he sang quiet songs to him. Jazz Standards. You Go to My Head. Our Love is Here to Stay. “It’s very clear…etc etc.” And when I came in the bathroom, Dad was giving him a haircut. I fed Boris small handfuls of hamburger meat, and some of the chunks dropped in the tub, mixing with the pungent soap bubbles. I didn’t speak. Dad sang. Dad never sang. But I can still see him in the dim light of the bathroom, ruining my mother’s sewing scissors on dog hair, remembering every word of the Gershwin songbook. Life was tough for him at that point, I think. He’d had bigger dreams than carpet (who doesn’t?), but there he was: a man entombed by plush. Surrounded by shag. And on and on.

“I’m going to draw Pad Dog,” says Faron, who never refers to the dog by his given name.

“Good for you,” I say, “Gold star.”

“You’re in a mood,” he says, “Aren’t you?”

“Neurotransmitters,” I say.

Faron likes to complain that I do not respect him as an artist, and that this disrespect stems from my “lack of real intimacy.” Just like I will not allow him to get close to me (or, specifically, to take off my underwear), I will not allow myself to surrender completely to the visceral beauty of a painting. He has said, on occasion, that I mask my real emotions with “sarcasm and ill-advised attempts at gallows humor.” That I can be a “negative Nay-Bob.” Faron believes he knows me like one of his drawings. He believes he can see through to my lines of construction. I believe this: he might know me. He might not.

“Why don’t you draw me?” I say, as he gets out his sketchbook and a small stubby pencil. “I’ll get naked for you later.”

Faron laughs. He thinks I am joking. But, I’m not. I am serious about everything. And I am serious about all of this. Even though my mom would not look at me as I left the house this morning, and called me names that she will regret. Even though I have not spoken to my father in the better part of five years. And even though he used to wear spandex and became a local joke which somehow got him married women, and also a divorce. Even though…all of that, I am serious about everything. I am that unlucky.

I should tell you now, maybe, that on the right kind of day, southern Iowa can look like Ireland. You are allowed to laugh at that, but it’s true. It has to be a sunny day, and the soybeans have to be up and stretching over the small bumps and ebbs of the landscape making everything look apple-green and polished. I’m not sure if they have soybeans in Ireland, but that knowledge is not required to enjoy the effect, which is best achieved by squinting your eyes and suspending your disbelief entirely. If you drive like this for a few minutes without hitting anything, or skidding off the road and into a livestock fence, you might just feel like you have transcended space and time and are driving in another country. You might just feel relieved.

“Open your eyes, Josie,” says Faron. “The dog is getting scared.”

I look at Boris. He is gnawing on a McDonalds cup, steadying it with an over-sized white paw. We are stopping in Fairfield. We are doing this for two reasons. Number one: they have a bakery with peanut butter cookies the size of your head. Number two: my father’s brother lives here, and he has stayed in touch with my father throughout the years.

My uncle is named Robert and he fixes lawnmowers, both riding and push. He gave me a call when Dad got out of prison and told me to stop by. I said, “Okay.” I said, “Terrific.” Then I laid in bed for three hours singing songs to myself.

Faron sparks a joint before we hit the bakery and I pass when he tries to hand it my way. I’m an occasional smoker, but it seems best to stay sober today. A nagging anticipation of the events to come is enough to give me that edge of paranoia that I usually get from the grass. I am high on life today, just like the anti-drug posters tell you to be. I am high on life like someone high on low-grade pot.

Faron waits in the car as I pop in the bakery. He is laughing when I return with the cookies and thick wedges of carrot cake, and I know immediately that he has gotten Boris high. Boris, a.k.a. Pad Dog, is now sitting calmly in the back, staring out the window and panting especially hard.

“Did Degas get his dog stoned?” I ask when I get in the smoke-filled car.

“I don’t know,” Faron says and digs into the white paper bag.

Boris barks as if on cue, high-pitched and strange-sounding.

“What’s that boy?” says Faron, doing his Lassie. “What’s that? You want to listen to some Pink Floyd? Mannnn, you are high, Pad Dog!”

“Fuck,” I say. “I feel sick.”

“Car sick?” Faron asks.

I shake my head.

“It’s okay,” he says, taking a large bite out of a carrot cake cube. “Everything’s peachy keen, jelly bean.”

“It is?” I ask, and then decide I should give Faron a kiss.

So I do. But I still feel ill, just all of a sudden. I was fine in the bakery, but when I came out and saw the car from the outside, something seemed very wrong and stupid about all of this, and my stomach started churning. You should know, also, that I am prone to nervous stomachaches, which is Hollander curse number two. In fact, I heard from my uncle that my father hardly ate a thing in prison. “The food must be awful there,” said my mother on one of her rare moments of speculation about Dad. But I knew why he wasn’t eating. It was the same reason I wasn’t.

“C’mon, baby,” says Faron, running his palm slowly over my right shoulder.

He is grateful for the kiss, but he wants more. He always wants more, which might not be his fault. “Not now,” I say.

But he presses his lips against my neck and kisses a trail up to my ear.

“I know,” he says. “But when? But when, Josie Hollander? When are you going to make me a man?”

He is being charming. I squirm a bit, even though it feels nice.

“I feel funny today,” I say, dodging his roving tongue.

“You taste funny,” he says, “like…virginity.”

I push his cheeks together with my hands.

“You can’t make jokes right now,” I say. “Just me.”

I am still churning a bit when I get out the map and find my uncle’s new place on the corner of Adams and Crawford. I put the map away and start up the car, which causes Boris to jump up and start whining, then to lie down again as if nothing has happened. I reach over the seat and scratch his ears. Faron is laughing again and saying something completely unfunny about the “Bark Side of the Moon.” I look at him until he shuts up.

It is tough to find, my uncle’s new place. Set back a good fifty feet from the street, his small yellowing home, vinyl-sided, sits on the dividing line between neighborhood and farm. It is two stories, complete with a porch and a large basket of geraniums dangling from the awning on a black metal hook. When we pull in his gravel drive, Uncle Robert is watering the geraniums with a green bucket. His pants sag. And so do his cheeks.

“Is that what your dad looks like?” asks Faron, dropping Visine in his eyes.

“Not really,” I say. “Tuck in your shirt.”

Uncle Rob has gained a little weight since the last time I saw him, which was about two years ago when he came up to Ottumwa to work on my mother’s fan belt. His hair has grown longer and he is wearing an awkward pair of thin-rimmed glasses over his famous Hollander baby blues. When he turns to wave he seems vacant. He seems medicated. I squeeze Faron’s thigh.

“Dude,” Faron whispers. “Your uncle looks ‘faced.’”

I open the doors and let Boris out of the car to run, which he does, in wide sweeping circles. “Howdy Rob,” I say, slamming my door shut with a grin.

“Ha!” he says and walks up to me. “Josie. You look like a woman.”

He gives me a dry kiss on the cheek, then he turns to Faron and slowly holds out his hand. “Robert Hollander,” he says.

“Faron,” says Faron.

We walk around Rob’s house for a few moments as he explains a small landscaping project that involves a garden path and, hopefully, someday maybe, a garden. He is slower then I remember, both in his movements and in his speech, and I think they must have him on something strong now, MAO inhibitors, or whatever you call them. Uncle Rob was a bit of a manic case as a child and had to spend some time in a hospital up north. He threatened a kid with a pen knife, as the story goes.

“There’s that pretty dog,” says Rob as he opens the screen door to his home. Boris is chasing a bird in mid-flight, and he keeps running long after the bird is out of sight.

The inside of Uncle Robert’s house is stuffy and has the imbued odor of bachelorhood: a mix of perpetually wet bath-mats and spray deodorant. After we sit on the couch, he brings in some beer, some diet soda, and a bowl of pretzels. He lowers himself into an overstuffed chair and smiles.

“How was the drive kids?” he asks.

“Good,” I say.

“Real good,” says Faron.

He starts attacking the pretzels, then he catches himself bolting and eats slower.

“How’s your mother?” Rob asks.

“The same,” I say.

He nods. We sit in total silence for a moment. Rob sips. He looks at Faron.

“You listen to Jazz music?” he asks.

“No sir,” says Faron. “Nope.”

Rob considers this over a pretzel and short drink of beer then looks at me incredulously. “Man, Josie” he says, “Who is this guy?”

“I don’t know,” I say, “He’s an artist or something.”

“Well,” says Robert, “I’m going to put on some Jazz.”

He walks slowly over to an antique hi-fi that has been repaired, at some point, with masking tape. He selects an LP from a shelf and draws it from his sleeve.

“This is Lester Young,” he says patiently. “He plays Jazz. Any man who doesn’t listen to Lester Young has probably got water on the brain.”

The music starts to drift from the speakers, and the air seems to expand around us. The hisses and pops of the record make the dank place seem airy and light.

“It’s okay,” says Faron.

“It’s not okay,” Rob says. “It’s best.” He sips at his beer and looks over the upturned can, directly into my eyes.

“Is this Pres and Sweets?” I ask.

“Yes,” says Rob, and sits up straight again, “You’re right on there, girl.”

“I think Dad used to play this,” I say.

We listen for a bit longer, saying nothing. Uncle Rob looks at me with a slack smile. “It’s great to be with you, Josie,” he says, after a moment.

A trumpet squawks like a goose from the speakers and Faron jumps a little. Then we both sit still for another couple of minutes. The song builds up steam. Rob bobs his head, drumming slowly on his knees.

“Uncle Rob,” I say.

He doesn’t respond. He’s not looking at me. He doesn’t seem to be looking at anything.

“Uncle Rob!” I yell.

Again, I’m not sure if he has heard me. Then he clears his throat. He sits up like a marionette pulled to life.

“Oh he was a funny bastard, Josie,” he says, pausing to draw from his beer.

“What?” I ask.

“But he was still a bastard, you see. That’s the whole thing of it, girl.”

I realize who he is talking about, and I lean forward to hear him better.

“Even when we were young, he was so much fun, but there was always a show there. A fib about him. I remember he and Joe Rudman did this act in the talent contest where they put pillow cases on their heads and painted their bellies up to look like faces. And they whistled a tune, see, out of their navels, dancing around the stage. Whole thing was your pop’s idea. Funniest damn thing. And later when we were drinking some, your father did the same thing in front of some ladies with his rear end painted instead of his belly. Sounds like idiocy, but goddamn it was funny the way he did it.”

Uncle Rob laughs for a moment, a quiet chuckle. Then he lets the laugh settle in his chest.

“But then here comes the time when I’m in trouble, that same year, and your dad tells everyone, our folks, the principal, that a home is the right thing for me. That I’m disabled maybe. He knew I wasn’t that way. That I was just angry, and picked on. But we fought some, and I had hit your dad a couple times, busted his lip on accident once, in front of some older boys. David couldn’t take it. He cried about it at home, and screamed at me and told me not to be around him. And months later when I lost it in that art class, he told them to put me away for awhile.

“My dad had you sent to that hospital?”

“Not by himself. That’d be impossible. But, everybody trusted David. I was quiet. They believed him.”

“I’m sorry, Rob,” I say, “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah well,” says Rob. He looks at his beer then sets it on a nearby bookshelf.

“I’m not supposed to be drinking any of these guys,” he smiles.

I am about to say something, but then Rob speaks again, and the grin is gone.

“He doesn’t want to see you Josie,” he says. “He come here a few days ago and we got into it. He doesn’t want you coming. He doesn’t want to see anyone.”

Rob gets up and rips the record off the hi-fi.

“But I can tell you where he lives,” he says. He stands still by the record player. “Seems to me that it’s not entirely his choice to make.”

Rob pulls a piece of crumpled yellow notebook paper out of his pocket and hands it to me. Then he goes immediately outside, and I can hear him watering his geraniums again, whistling. In between melodies, he is mumbling something to himself in a husky voice. He laughs. He is flooding the hanging basket, and I can hear Boris lapping up the puddle.

Let me tell you what the problem is with tracking down the past, if I can just do that here. The problem is that, most times, what you are tracking does not really exist anymore. Not in the way you want it to. The need to find it is all fueled by hope and regret as far as I can tell. And those are the killers, man. Hope and Regret. Those are the feelings that drive you to idiocy. Or to Mount Pleasant. Does that make sense? I don’t know.

But as Faron and I get back into the Satellite with a tired and an inexplicably more sober-looking Boris, I am thinking that these problems are especially true when the past is completely personified; when the past has become, at least for the time being, entirely stowed into one body. One man. But enough of that talk. I will let you know that we are leaving Fairfield now. And that we are doing so silently. I break the silence only once. And it is to say this:

“Let’s get a hotel room or something, okay?”

Then we ride on in quiet. Faron looks out the window. As does Boris, who has been given some food and water by Uncle Rob and seems to be reveling in a sort of post-meal calm. The sun is starting to set just so slightly, and the road signs are backlit by a subtle orange glow. One of them says, “Buckle up. It’s the Law.” So I do. And I flip on the radio.

And I begin to picture Dad. I can’t get him out of my head, suddenly, my father. But he is not soaring over the city of Ottumwa this time. He is not clad in spandex, soaring over a hand-painted set with the aide of a large fan and some moving scenery. He is in bed, un-costumed on a Sunday morning. He is in his underwear and his belly is moving up and down. The thick black hairs on his stomach are swirled together. Small wheezes are coming out of his nostrils like this: Smeeeeeeee. Smeeeeeee. I am a child. My mother is next to him, also asleep.

“Dad,” I say, hovering over his warm chest, “Dad, are you awake?”

He twitches a bit, moving his shoulders up and down. Then he falls limp again. “Okay okay,” he says. “I’ll make the pancakes.”

He is still sleeping, I know. He’s not making sense.

“Be a good girl,” he says.

“Well,” I say, “Okay. But I want to tell you something.”

He reaches out, still breathing heavily, and pets my head. His big fingers coast over my scalp.

“What is it?” he murmurs.

“You and mom are going to die,” I tell him, “Not today, but you will and then there will be nothing. Only a dark closet.”

He opens his eyes a little and pulls me onto the bed. I lie against his soft sweltering body. He kisses me with sleep-dried lips all over my head and my cheeks and my ears. He smells like sleep and dried perspiration.

“No, pumpkin,” he says. “You’re having a dream.”

And I lie there just with Dad. The room is blue and warm. At this age, six I think, I have been thinking about death all the time, but this is the first time I have mentioned it. I have been wandering around the last few days, ringing my little hands about it.

“You aren’t going to die?” I ask. I can hear his heart hammering under his big chest.

“No,” he whispers in my ear. “No. no. no.” And after each no, he squeezes a little tighter.

“I am invincible,” he says, “Do you know what that means?”

The first ad. Set up the formula. It began with the typical rosy-cheeked couple, browsing through a poorly-lit carpet store that looked more like a Russian gulag than a place of business. And following them around is this nefarious man dressed in all black, with a top hat and a mustache that curls at the ends (he was, in reality, the receptionist’s husband, Greg Tiermeyer). And Nefarious Man starts browbeating them, and forcing them to look at only the most expensive brands, and when he is asked, inevitably at some point, if the carpeting jobs come with free carpet pads, Nefarious Man laughs feverishly and says, “What am I running here…a charity!?” Then, faster than…most things…and able to leap a throw-rug in a single bound, comes Pad Man. He whisks into the room and transports the couple to the hallowed confines of the Carpet Emporium. “Here” he says, “the carpets are priced for the working American family and the pads are always free!” The couple is, of course, delighted and the commercial ends with Nefarious man slumped against a tall roll of cheap shag shouting, “Curse you, Pad Man, and curse the Carpet Emporium on North Church Street!”

This is the commercial that ruined my father’s life.

Not overnight. Not even in the first year. But everything can be traced back to it. Because after he was coerced into starring in the ad, he began to take a special interest in his customers of the fairer sex. Especially those with wedding bands on their fingers, and cat hair on their sweaters, and the smell of an unfulfilling marriage drifting off them like drugstore perfume.

They started calling in the night, the women: Mrs. Helen Van Rokel, a grade school music teacher who could not disguise her chirpy falsetto no matter how hard she tried. Mrs. Marian Felderman, who sold cosmetics out of her home and had called everyone in town a million times. Mrs. Staver. Mrs. Park. And on and on, infinitum.

Then finally, on a February night, after three more commercials and a string of exceedingly careless affairs, a suspecting husband came home to find his wife, Mrs. Shelly Metzger, locked in indescribable acts with Pad Man. Then, as the story goes, he attacked my father. And my father attacked back. They were upstairs, and they moved into the hallway and traded blows. Pad Man versus the jealous husband. A battle for the ages. They yelled, and Shelly Metzger called the police and wailed into the phone. Meanwhile the fight moved closer to the stairs, and my father just happened to land one of his only clean punches. It found Mr. Metzger off balance. It found Mr. Metzger’s jaw. Then the stairs found Mr. Metzger. And the fall was bad. And the fall was permanent. Paralyzing to be perfectly clear.

And that’s when things began spiraling downward and went from bad to really incredibly worse all in one ill-timed punch from one full-grown man to another. And that’s when Dad left and lived in a trailer briefly on bail, and then went to Mount Pleasant Penitentiary without saying goodbye.

And forgive the rushed summary here, and forgive all the “ands,” but that is when Dad stopped talking to me. And that, I suppose, is the real beginning of this story. I have told it because every story needs a beginning.

But it’s best just to move on, here I think. Because every story also needs an end. And the next thing to tell is the thing about Boris and how we have to sneak him into the hotel. Because we do.

We have to bring him in like a prostitute. We are forced to do this because along with unlicensed firearms and kegs of beer, there are no dogs allowed in the Lockridge Holiday Inn. So we wait twenty minutes and liberate Boris from the Dodge, where he is sitting quietly with that sedate and vaguely depressed dog look.

“Are you actually going to give your dad this dog back?” asks Faron after we turn on the television and let it rest on the hotel channel.

This is a fantastic question. And truthfully, I haven’t considered it up until now. Boris seemed an obvious choice to bring with me when I was planning this whole thing. My father loved him, and would be happy to see him, which would, maybe perhaps, break the ice. And Boris would provide a great initial excuse for my visit (“It’s not so much that I had to see you Dad, it’s just that I couldn’t bear to keep you from your best friend”). But I had failed, when lost in the swirling hypotheticals of my mind, to consider how awful it would be to tangibly hand over the dog. To be dogless. To be Boris-less. If Dad wanted him back.

“I guess so,” I say, after a lengthy pause.

“Wow,” says Faron.

“Yeah,” I say.

We are quiet for a moment. Then I begin flipping channels on the television. I flip past sports and the news and a show about a couple who really love each other but fight. And I finally end up on the hotel movie preview channel. And the possible movies are popping up with short descriptions in white letters on a blue screen.

Faron is looking at me.

I look back.

“You can french me now,” I say.

And so he starts doing that, and he is fast and tonguey, and the fact that we are in a hotel suite all alone is not lost on him. He is like a greyhound out of the gate.

“Easy, killer,” I say. “We have awhile.”

“Okay,” he says, but keeps moving at the speed of sound.

His mouth is ten places at once. It is on my cheek, then it is on my neck, then on my mouth, then at the top of my breast, which is barely exposed by the shirt I am wearing. His mouth is fifty mouths. And it’s not altogether un-enjoyable, but I can’t seem to get a lock on where it is at any given time. At this point Boris hops off the bed and curls up on the floor nearby.

I start to kiss Faron back, when I can. I just wait for his mouth to be near mine and then make the sound. This is technically kissing, I guess.

“Where are you?” I say. “Put your tongue in my mouth.”

He does this for a moment, and then starts in with the hands, which are twice as fast as his mouth, only they cover more ground. They are under my clothes and over my clothes. I feel like I am being explored, that my topography is being measured and recorded for a map. I feel him starting to grow in his jeans. And there is a certain inevitability to this situation that I realize I have resigned myself to when I agreed to stay with him in a suite at the Lockridge. Not that he wouldn’t stop if I told him to. He would stop right away. But I am realizing, as his fingers are on my zipper, that this was really what I had in mind when I suggested the room, and maybe what I had in mind when I invited him in the first place. So now that the time is drawing near, I decide just to relax and take it in like a late movie. Wake me when it’s over, I almost say.

And I won’t get into the mechanics here. Because really the mechanics are not very interesting, are they? They’re pretty much variations on the same kind of pushing and shifting movement. Sorry to those who wanted a thrill from this part. But maybe what is more important than the pushing and shifting and the sounds, all those sounds, is that while it is happening I am thinking of Faron, and that is good. Most importantly, I guess, I’m not thinking about myself. This may sound bad and submissive, but it isn’t like that. It is like letting go of something for a while.

And then it is like morning, only brighter, because it is afternoon. And there is a little bit of blood on the sheets but not too much. Faron is wrapped around me like an octopus, and I can hear Boris drinking out of the toilet in the other room.

“We missed the continental breakfast,” I say.

Faron opens his eyes. “What?” he says.

“I said thanks for coming on this trip with me.”

“Oh,” he says, “Sure.”

It is only about 20 miles to Mount Pleasant now, and I should mention now that the day is sunny. Blindingly so. But we have passed out of Ireland and moved into a more tree-lined, smacked-flat, sort of landscape. I really know nothing about trees except to say that these trees are not pines. They are front-yard trees. Park trees. And they are tall enough to cover the telephone lines and some sparse wispy clouds.

Faron is having problems waking up, and he gets his pipe out to roast something more effective than coffee, but then decides against it and puts it away.

“Nervous?” I ask.

“No way,” he says, “Cucumber, man.”

I’m not sure if I believe him. But even the act is comforting.

“Faron,” I say.

He is reaching into the backseat and petting Boris, who has his tongue out the window again.

“Miss Josie,” he says.

“How much longer are you going to stay in Ottumwa, do you think?” I ask.

I hate asking girlfriendy questions, but I am suddenly in need of some answers.

“As long as I have a reason, I guess,” he says, and smiles faintly.

“Are you going to move out of your parents’ house?”

“Don’t know.”

“Do you think you’ll go back to school?”

“Josie,” he says, and looks at me with raised eyebrows. “Are you being weird because we did it?”

“Yes,” I say, but that’s not really the reason.

“Do you want me to tell you that I love you?” he asks.

“No,” I say.

And like a simple chemical reaction, the pouring of vinegar on baking soda, my stomach is at it again. I rub it a bit, and then try to concentrate on the road. I just look straight ahead and watch the yard trees swish by like they’re jogging.

“I’m going to draw you,” says Faron, “If you still want me to.”

He is getting out his materials.

“Make my tits bigger,” I say, distracted.

“Your tits are fine,” he says.

He removes a small piece of charcoal from his plastic case and rubs it against the paper, scratching it softly like fingernails on denim. I pull over to the side of the road without saying a word to Faron (or to Boris) and I vomit all over the limestone gravel of the shoulder.

“Don’t put this in the drawing,” I say.

Faron gets out of the car and walks up behind me and pats me on the back, gently. Boris looks worried. He is staring out from the backseat, his eyes glued to the two of us.

“Are you done?” asks Faron.

“Yes,” I say, then gag up one last shot all over the far grass and onto Faron’s shoes.

“Josie,” says Faron, “I’m sure you’ve considered what I’m about to say. But…you don’t have to do this, you know. You can come another time.”

There is no other traffic on the road—34 is a slow road during the week—and there is just the sound of a few birds and of some great piece of farm machinery out of view. “I know that,” I say.

I hug Faron. He hugs me. We are hugging. But I don’t say anything else. I wait a moment and get back in the car. I wipe my mouth with a Kleenex from the glove box, and swish some stale Pepsi like mouthwash. I inhale. I exhale. I pull the car back onto the highway and then I glance at the beginning of Faron’s drawing. All he has is an eye. It is a nice looking eye, I think. And I tell him so.

Then I step on the gas.

It must happen to everyone at some time, I speculate as I pull into town, that a moment comes along for which all your planning and life-strategizing become useless. This must be true. A moment that makes you feel like a virgin to existence, like you were, perhaps, born yesterday, or the day before. A moment that leaves you completely without instinct, so that everything you do is brand new.

My father’s moment, I can only presume, came when he got up from the plush carpeted floor of Mrs. Metzger’s home and realized the other man at the bottom of the stairs, Mr. Ted Albert Metzger, could not do the same. My mother’s moment was probably when she got a call from the Ottumwa Police Department at four o’clock on a February afternoon and then had to walk six blocks to the station to see Dad, who was carrying with him at the time (for reasons only he and Shelley Metzger will know) his Pad Man uniform and some kind of toy handcuff set. I have to imagine that these were moments like those I have described. Moments of completely unfettered being. That they were directed by nothing, and, even if for a short time, contextualized by nothing.

My moment comes, perhaps, a bit more prematurely than I might have thought. It does not come when I stand before my father, or when we have started talking, or even when I am entering his home. It does not happen at those times, because those things do not happen.

My moment comes when I pull into the asphalt driveway of my father’s new home and can tell immediately, from the lawn, from the pile of weekly shoppers on his stoop, from the darkness inside that seems so final, that he is not there, and that he has not been there for quite some time. As soon as my eye catches the numbers on the side of the small ranch home, and dart from curb to window, I am sure that he is very very disappeared. And so, while I am entering this moment, I do not pull the car all the way into the driveway, but instead leave it idling in that gray area between sidewalk and street. And I walk out of the car, stopping only to let Boris out of the car, and I walk into the weeds that stand almost to my knees.

There are some bugs in the weeds and they bite at my ankles as Faron slams the passenger-side door and walks up beside me. The neighborhood is dead. There are no other people out on the block.

“I suppose there is no point in knocking,” he says.

I shake my head and Faron touches my wrist. He looks at me, then walks back to the car. And for a moment I think I am going to maybe start crying, which would be good and healthy and all of that. But that feeling coasts away as quickly as it comes, and I am left blank-faced staring at the house. Boris is yipping at something around the side of the house, and he pokes his face around the overgrown bushes in front to see if I am still standing there. Then he moves back around the house and takes off after whatever it is he has found.

I follow Boris to the back of the small home. He is at the very reaches of the property, barking at a black object that appears to be hovering in mid-air. As I walk toward him, I can see that the bat-like thing, dangling above Boris’s head is hanging from a clothes-line. It is right in the middle of the line. And once I am finally close to the object, I can see that it is a black suede mask, with almond-shaped eye-holes, swaying in the evening breeze. It is hanging out there like a pair of hose or the hide of a small animal. I reach up and pluck it down. First I push it into Boris’s nose so he can smell it and quiet down. Then I pull back the elastic strap and place it slowly over my face.

Then I am in the backyard of an abandoned house in Mount Pleasant, wearing a recycled lone-ranger mask that smells like mildew and dirt. And I have to say: the world looks a little different through those eyeholes. First there is this sense of protection, having something over your face like that (no matter how flimsy) and, of course, there is a sense of anonymity, necessary for all clandestine heroes. But there is also a slight tunnel-vision effect that makes things seem a bit smaller and more manageable. Like all you have to do is concentrate on one thing at a time. And life will be a series of numbered events that go in perfect order.