Baby, Would I Lie?

14

The song that got to Jack Ingersoll, perched on the Elvis seat for the 8:00 P.M. show in the Ray Jones Country Theater, was called “New York Sure Is a Great Big City,” and it went something like this:

“I kind of took it personally,” Jack told Sara afterward as they ate a late dinner — late for Branson — in the Copper Penny, one of the few joints in town that served stuff recognizable as food. Only a few local hipsters and musicians were scattered around the dimly lit place, so they had their corner booth and its neighborhood completely to themselves.

“It’s that solidarity thing again, you see?” said Sara. “They set up a tribe; they define who’s in and who’s out.”

“I’m out,” Jack said.

“Sure you are. So am I. And they know it.”

Slicing steak. Jack said, “Sara, so what? Where’s the news in all this? Where’s our news in all this?”

“Ray Jones,” Sara said, “and his audience.”

Jack glumly chewed, hating to have to be a teacher again, knowing it brought out the worst and the snottiest in him. Swallowing, knocking back a bit of the not-bad red wine, he said, “Sara, do you really think there’s a point to be made that the great unwashed are bad judges of character, that they’ve got a shitty record when it comes to picking their heroes? Elvis was a drugged-out porker with more sexual hang-ups than a nine hundred number. The televangelists are too despicable to describe, J. Edgar Hoover was a fag-bashing faggot, and Ronald Reagan was brain-dead — they operated him from a Japanese microchip implanted after the fake assassination attempt.” Then he perked up, hearing his own words. “Say, that isn’t bad,” he admitted, and reached for pen and notepad.

Sara grinned at him. “I see. You can take the boy out of the Galaxy, but you can’t take the Galaxy out of the boy.” She watched him jot notes. “The microchip?”

“You bet.”

“That isn’t for Trend, Jack; that’s even less for Trend than Ray Jones’s fan dub.”

“Not for Trend,” Jack agreed, putting pen and paper away. “For later, after Trend fires me.”

Sara stared at him. “They’re going to fire you?”

“Of course. They fire everybody, sooner or later.”

“No, Jack,” she said, “not your usual cynicism. Have you heard something, that you’re gonna be fired?”

“I don’t have to hear anything,” Jack said. “What most people don’t understand is, all jobs are temporary. You get fired, or the company folds, or the technology changes, or the customers move away, or there’s an earthquake and they don’t rebuild.”

“So people who unpack are stupid, is that it?”

“I don’t say that,” Jack objected. “I don’t even believe it. But I do believe I have the jump on them.”

Sara shook her head. She hadn’t finished her food, but she clearly wasn’t eating any more. She sipped wine, sighed, frowned, and said, “Okay, I can see what’s wrong with you, but what’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing,” he said, wanting to make nice. After all, they had to share a bed tonight.

But she wouldn’t accept it. “There must be something,” she said, “or I’d find some normal guy, some regular member of my tribe to hang out with. But here I am with the Cheshire cat. Why?”

“You want an answer?”

“Yes, please.”

She seemed serious, so he was, too. Reaching across the table, taking the fork out of her hand and putting it on her plate, then taking her hand in his, he said, “Then I’ll tell you. I’m sorry, but the diagnosis is not good. After a close look at the X rays and the test results, I’m afraid I have to tell you the reason you’re staying with me is because you love me. Sorry.”

“Hell,” she said, squeezing his hand in hers. “I was afraid it might be something like that.”