The truck came every night, always in the middle of a performance, always when he had discovered something true about the role he was playing. At first, the Actor resented this interruption, but then he learned to regard it as naturally as he did the soft palaver of grass in the nightly wind. Because this was an act of communication, there had to be an audience. And his audience was the owner of a sad ugly truck, a desperate soul who headed out each night in search of him. He—something about his vehicle spoke of a stunted masculinity—parked so far away that even with the windows rolled down he could not hear the Actor perform. He must have seen the Actor as no more than a small figure on a crumbling stage. And then he flashed his beams twice when the performance was over, not applause, merely an acknowledgment. Once, twice. Thank you, good night.
The Actor had started out with the moon waxing, providing enough natural light for him not to fall off the stage, but when the moon waned, the driver put on his lights, beamed them not directly at the Actor but across the broken tarmac of the country road. And the Actor was silently grateful. He thought he could see the occupant in the truck’s cab now. Sometimes he appeared young and pockmarked, a high-school kid at best, and at other times bald and pinch faced and official, the local excavator or part-time town councilman. He was all of these things to the Actor, a projection, a substitution, and when the time came for the Actor to leave the summer camp, when Dee had been expunged and he reconstituted, he walked toward the high beams with his hands up in a formal surrender.
He mounted the cab and took a look at the body next to his. Just a body like his own, a florid respirating thing with its temporary leasehold on life. There were features to be sure, ginger muttonchops surrounded his simple cloth mask, what could have been a keloid scar peeked out long beneath one collar, but it was difficult to assign an age to the truck owner—forties? fifties?—who possessed a kind of indeterminate Danish blondness beneath a red cap that did not signify politics, merely a stump-grinding service up by the state border. They did not say a word to each other. The driver pointed to his mask. “Oh, I think I’ve had it already,” the Actor said. The driver remained silent and stared ahead, until the Actor slipped on his paisley mask, a gift from Dee. The engine started, firm, powerful, dutiful, an American valediction. They drove to the House on the Hill in silence, slid effortlessly across the grass of the front lawn. The Actor did not make eye contact as he climbed out of the cab. That would be offensive given their silence. But the driver turned on the dome light and finally spoke into the air before him, his voice a product of cigarettes, his body cradled around the wheel, pinched by rheumatism. “I didn’t tape you that night with your friend,” he said. “There’s a guy across the river who does that.”
“I’m glad it wasn’t you,” the Actor said.
The driver looked ahead with the low beams of his sleepless eyes. He spoke slowly, as if practicing a foreign language in front of the mirror, accents sometimes falling on the wrong word. “The early stuff, that’s what I like the most,” he said. “When you still wanted it. When you were young. The joy on your face back then. It was a blessing. You had been blessed. The universe celebrated the way you came together, your talent, your hunger, your smile. The way you let us know you were in pain. Honesty and grace. You can try to find something better beyond that, but you won’t. When something extraordinary happens, you don’t let go. Not for another person, not for the world. But that’s what people do. They forget. They let go.”
The Actor nodded. He saw the lights coming on in the main house and the bungalows. Before he slammed his door shut, he bowed shortly, stiffly, like they did on the Japanese reality show. Once, twice. Thank you, good night.
* * *
—
The colonists were witnessing two separate events. First, the rearrival of the Actor after another long absence. He stood before them at the head of the drive, his beard floodlit to religious proportions, the bag from the California vineyard Ed despised static by his feet.
The other event consisted of the black pickup truck thundering through the grass to reconnect with the road beyond, its high beams already writing the next chapter of its odyssey. Nat’s terrific eyesight could make out the single word SUPERDUTY stenciled across its rear.
“Put your mask over your nose!” Masha shouted to the Actor. “Don’t come close!”
The Actor adjusted his mask, his eyes still skirting gravel. He looked out onto the audience and found Dee, who was dressed in a tiny satin blue slip Ed had bought her because it matched the color of her mask. Backlit by the halogen outdoor lights, her hair haloed, her body slight and trembling, she should have been unbearable for the Actor to see. But he merely smiled, the cover of near darkness preventing the colonists from enjoying his laugh lines, the handsome erosion of his face. “Dee, I feel nothing!” he shouted. “Dee, I’ve been working on myself.”