Negative Space

of a long-held breath.
Germain. Count Germain. What in God’s name is all this?
He took Moon Watch from public display and propped it against a nearby trash can. For now, he would hold on to it.
The man named Dwayne was apparently a good salesman. The couple walked off with the bowl. Max watched as they rejoined the flowing channel of people. The woman held the artifact but the guy had dropped the cash for it. Come the inevitable split, he wondered, which one would it go to?
Dwayne returned, hands jammed into his faded Levi’s.
“Congrats,” Max said. “What was that you sold?”
“A bowl.”
“No, I mean—”
Dwayne chuckled. “I know what you mean. It’s a fertility bowl. Based off old South American tribal myths that a man fills it with hot water and soaks his penis for a while if he’s impotent. S’posed to Popeye you right back up.”
Max looked at him blankly.
“I think I’ve seen you and your stuff,” Dwayne said. “You look familiar. Did you have a show or anything ‘round here?”
“Last show I had was at the Art Institute on Ocean Park. That was a little while ago. And I sometimes come here to sell stuff.”
“No, I don’t think I’ve seen you here. Oh! The magazine...” Dwayne snapped his fingers to the beat of his thoughts, trying to recall something. “Direct...Direct....”
“Direct Canvas.”
“That’s it!”
“Yeah, they had a spread about me in the last issue.”
“Right, right. You use, what, ah, missing persons or something in your art? There was some kind of funny little twist about it.”
“Well, you got it.”
“Right—and yeah, your father went missing and everything, too. I gotcha, I gotcha.”
A stale pause. Please leave, Max thought. But no. You don’t want him to leave. You want to talk to someone. You want company. Besides....
“So why are you obsessed?” Max said. “With, you know, weird things?”
“With Forteana?
“What?”
“Forteana. Umbrella for everything weird. Ghosts. Aliens. Bigfoot. You name it. Charles Fort, my dear. The bedrock of my life. If you want, I can show you. It’s all in my van. Call it my little mobile cave of inspiration.”
“Little cave of inspiration?”
“Mobile cave, yeah. My van. I drive it all over the place. I hunt up reports of things like Bigfoot and all his lesser known cousins and siblings and friends and check ‘em out for myself. It’s a living. Well, not really, but it’s my kinda living.”
“Are you going to publish a book or something?” Max asked.
Dwayne shrugged. “I just take it one step at a time, Maximo, one step at a time.”
“Why do you do it then? For kicks?”
Dwayne shrugged. “I suppose so. Someone has to look into all that. Most brush it off, shove it into corners.” He coughed, violently, then continued in a thin voice. “It’s fine, though—just gives people like us more room to explore those corners, right?”
“I guess.”
“I’m not gonna stick around for much longer,” said Dwayne. “How long you clockin’ in here for?”
“I don’t know. However long I feel like. I took the bus here from downtown so I’m probably going to stay awhile.”
Dwayne winced. “Downtown. Yowzers. Well, I can give you a tour of the cave and show you this Feldman guy, if you’re interested. Won’t take very long.”
“Feldman?”
“Yeah, Clifford Feldman. He’s the guy claiming to be Count Germain.” Dwayne pointed broadly toward Max’s collection of canvases. “He’s an artist up north and I got info on him. See if he rings a bell.”
“Um, I don’t—”
“I know you got your stuff out here,” Dwayne said, “But we got it covered. Hey, Johnny!”
Max followed Dwayne’s eyes through the crowds. The face reacting to Johnny was the vocally honest man jiggling a cup for liquor money.
“Yo Dwayne!” Johnny said. “What’s up?”
“You watch our stuff here?”
Johnny staggered over. “Sure thing,” he said.
Dwayne offered him a two-fingered salute and, with the deftness of a Vegas dealer, shuffled off five ones into the man’s palm.
Max hesitated, unsure.
“C’mon, Maximo. We’ll be back in a jiffy.”
As he placed a friendly hand on Max’s shoulder, Max had a faint, tingling notion that Dwayne already knew him, and knew him well.
***
An explosion of newspapers in here. Of magazines. Of computer printouts. A contained burst of media plastered across every available surface in this wide-bodied vehicle. Max took it all in, amazed for reasons both complimentary and insulting to Dwayne. Tucked in the corner was a small TV and VCR, fortified by a wall of VHS tapes.
As disorganized as it initially seemed, each ... “phenomenon” did, in fact, claim its own region in the van. The Bigfoot and Yetis and other terrestrial creatures lurked in the area of the left back-window, surrounded by foliage of blurry photos, artwork, and children’s drawings of other, even more bizarre creatures Max had never heard of before. The space around Dwayne’s makeshift bed was a shrine to lake and sea monsters. Perhaps appropriately, UFOs and “sky things” occupied the ceiling, stretching from the rearview mirror to the back windows.
“Yep, this be my humble abode,” Dwayne said, crawling inside. He plunked himself on the bed. “It’s always on the move.”
“You live in here?”
“Sure do. It’s my home and my office and my car all at once. Not to mention my studio. Even with all the technology rolling out nowadays, I’m sure you’d be hard-pressed to find a better system than that.”
Max remained just outside the van, between the back doors, trying to absorb it all but finding too much to absorb. Was this the way Ritter or others had felt when seeing his wall?
He noticed a gun in a duct-taped holster, just below the driver’s seat. Max didn’t say anything about it, only continued looking until his gaze settled on a tantalizing exhibit of scantily-clad women, photos raunchy enough for the Sirens Shop.
“We can’t all have just one drive,” Dwayne said. “I got a lot of time to myself.”
“Touché.”
Dwayne affectionately slapped the ceiling, accidentally peeling loose an article which he smoothed back into position. “Got this baby in the late seventies,” he said. “Still runs like a dream. I pay good attention