NOS4A2(15)

“You can taste those candy canes if you lick the card,” Charlie said.

Bing stared for a moment, then lapped his rough tongue across the card. It tasted of paper and pasteboard.

“Kidding!” Charlie cried, and socked Bing in the arm. “Who do you think I am, Willy Wonka? Come around! Get in! Why, son, you look like you are about to melt into a puddle of Bing juice! Let me take you for a bottle of pop! We have something important to discuss!”

“A job?” Bing asked.

“A future,” Charlie said.





Highway 322


THIS IS THE NICEST CAR I HAVE EVER BEEN IN,” BING PARTRIDGE SAID when they were gliding along Highway 322, the Rolls riding the curves like a stainless-steel ball bearing in a groove.

“It is a 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith, one of just four hundred made in Bristol, England. A rare find—just like you, Bing Partridge!”

Bing moved his hand across the pebbled leather. The polished cherry dash and the gearshift glowed.

“Does your license plate mean something?” Bing asked. “En-o-ess-four-a-two?”

“Nosferatu,” the man Charlie Manx said.

“Nosfer-what-who?”

Manx said, “It is one of my little jokes. My first wife once accused me of being a Nosferatu. She did not use that exact word, but close enough. Have you ever had poison ivy, Bing?”

“Not in a long time. When I was little, before my father died, he took me camping and I—”

“If he took you camping after he died, my boy, then you would have a story to tell! Here is my point: My first wife was like the rash you get from poison ivy. I couldn’t stand her, but I couldn’t keep my hands off her. She was an itch I scratched until I bled—and then I scratched it some more! Your work sounds dangerous, Mr. Partridge!”

The transition was so abrupt that Bing wasn’t ready for it, needed a moment to register that it was his turn to talk.

“It does?”

“You mentioned in your letter your work with compressed gases,” Manx said. “Aren’t tanks of helium and oxygen highly explosive?”

“Oh, sure. A guy in the loading bay snuck a smoke a few years ago, next to a tank of nitrogen with an open valve. It made a big shriek and went off like a rocket. It hit the fire door hard enough to smash it off its hinges, and the fire door is made of iron. No one died that time, though. And my crew has been accident-free for as long as I’ve been head man. Well—almost accident-free anyway. Denis Loory huffed some gingerbread smoke once, but that doesn’t really count. He didn’t even get sick.”

“Gingerbread smoke?”

“That’s a flavored mix of sevoflurane that we send to dentists’ offices. You can also get it unscented, but the little guys like the old gingerbread smoke.”

“Oh? It’s a narcotic?”

“It makes it so you don’t know what’s happening to you, yeah. But it doesn’t put you to sleep. It’s more like you only know what you’re told. And you lose all your intuitions.” Bing laughed a little, couldn’t help himself, then said, almost apologetically, “We told Denis it was disco time, and he started humping the air like John Ravolta in that movie. We just about died.”

Mr. Manx’s mouth opened to show his little brown teeth in a homely and irresistible grin. “I like a man with a sense of humor, Mr. Partridge.”

“You can call me Bing, Mr. Manx.”

He waited for Mr. Manx to say it was all right to call him Charlie, but Mr. Manx didn’t. Instead he said, “I imagine most of the people who danced to disco music were under the influence of some kind of drugs. It is the only explanation for it. Not that I would call such silly wiggling a form of dance. More like rank foolishness!”

The Wraith rolled into the dirt lot of the Franklin Dairy Queen. On blacktop the Wraith seemed to glide like a sailboat with the wind behind it. There was a sense of effortless, silent motion. On dirt Bing had a different impression, a feeling of mass and momentum and weight: a Panzer grinding the clay under its treads.

“How about I buy us Coke-Colas and we will get down to brass tacks?” Charlie Manx said. He turned sideways, one gangly arm hung over the wheel.

Bing opened his mouth to answer, only to find himself struggling against a yawn. The long, peaceful, rocking ride in the late-day sun had made him drowsy. He had not slept well in a month and had been up since 4:00 A.M., and if Charlie Manx had not turned up parked across from his house, he would’ve made himself a TV dinner and gone to bed early. Which reminded him.

“I dreamed about it,” Bing said simply. “I dream about Christmasland all the time.” He laughed, embarrassed. Charlie Manx would think him quite the fool.

Only Charlie Manx didn’t. His smile widened. “Did you dream about the moon? Did the moon speak to you?”

Bing’s breath was pushed out of him all at once. He stared at Manx in wonder and, possibly, just a little alarm.

“You dreamt about it because you belong there, Bing,” Manx said. “But if you want to go, you’ll have to earn it. And I can tell you how.”


MR. MANX WAS BACK FROM THE TAKE-OUT WINDOW A COUPLE OF minutes later. He eased his lanky frame in behind the wheel and passed Bing a chill, sweating bottle of Coca-Cola, audibly fizzing. Bing thought he had never seen a bottle of anything look so good.