WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

New Guy announced that he was moving to Washington, D.C., at nine-seventeen on a Thursday morning, which was precisely the sort of hour when a person might say almost anything at the Grounds for Divorce and still have a reasonable chance of being forgiven. The first rush was over, the second pot of coffee was underway, and Delgado had reached the point in breakfast service when he no longer regarded every incoming order as a personal betrayal.

“I’m moving to Washington,” New Guy said.

Nobody answered him immediately. This was partly because Rex Hall was buttering toast and partly because nobody at the regular table had ever heard New Guy discuss travel beyond Odessa except in connection with televised football. He had lived in Fort Stockton for as long as anyone could remember, although nobody knew exactly when he had arrived or what he had been called before the community settled upon New Guy. He had never married, never mentioned relatives and, to anybody’s knowledge, had never crossed the city limits unless the westbound lanes of Interstate 10 had briefly been rerouted through his living room.

Angus Hopper lowered his coffee cup.

“Washington where?”

“D.C.”

“I know what D.C. stands for.”

“What does it stand for?” Chad asked.

Angus looked at him.

“Washington.”

“That’s not what the D stands for.”

“I wasn’t finished.”

Rex pushed his glasses higher on his nose. “You’re moving to Washington, D.C.?”

“That’s right.”

“To live?”

“That generally comes with moving.”

Lucinda stopped beside the table with the Bunn-O-Matic suspended over Brother Bob’s cup. She had developed an instinct for recognizing statements that might require witnesses.

“Have you ever been to Washington?” she asked.

“No.”

“Have you ever been east of Odessa?”

New Guy thought about it.

“I went to Midland once.”

“That’s north,” Rex said.

“It was east enough at the time.”

The Grounds for Divorce grew quiet in expanding circles. Even Delgado looked through the order window. People had moved away from Fort Stockton before, but they usually did it gradually, beginning with a job in Midland, progressing to a subdivision outside San Antonio and eventually claiming they had always preferred trees. Moving directly from Fort Stockton to Washington was like leaving a Baptist fellowship supper to take command of a submarine. It was not necessarily impossible, but it suggested the existence of preparations no one had noticed.

“What are you going to do there?” Hairless B29 asked.

“Start a business.”

That answer produced less confidence than New Guy apparently intended. Chad leaned forward with the cautious interest of a man employed by Piggly Wiggly who was always prepared to hear about a new commercial venture, particularly one unlikely to affect grocery sales in Pecos County.

“What kind of business?”

“Historic tours.”

Brother Bob turned completely around on his stool.

“You don’t know any history.”

“I’ll learn it.”

“You didn’t learn any here.”

“I wasn’t charging for it here.”

New Guy took out his telephone and placed it in the center of the table. On the screen was an automobile of such extravagant length that the photographer had been forced to stand in a neighboring county. It was a 1995 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham, painted Light Adriatic Blue with a padded light-blue vinyl roof, Sapphire Blue leather and enough gold-finished trim to make an ordinary Cadillac look as though it had been promoted to televangelist.

Its long hood carried a standing Cadillac ornament. Its rear wheels were concealed behind fender skirts. Chrome-finished wheels wore Vogue tires with whitewalls and narrow gold stripes, as though even the rubber had been informed there would be important people aboard. The body stretched away from the front bumper with the quiet confidence of a private railroad car, reaching the rear license plate only after passing several acres of pale-blue sheet metal and every formal styling cue General Motors had retained after the rest of the automobile industry discovered restraint.

Angus enlarged the photograph.

“That’s a lot of Cadillac.”

“It’s a Fleetwood Brougham,” New Guy said.

“I didn’t ask its baptismal name.”

“It has fifty-five thousand miles. Five-point-seven-liter V8. Two hundred sixty horsepower. Four-speed automatic. Heated power seats. Automatic climate control. Electronic level control.”

“What does that do?” Hairless asked.

“Keeps the car level when you put passengers in it.”

“How many passengers are you expecting?”

“Small groups.”

Angus studied the Cadillac’s rear overhang.

“You could put a small group in the trunk.”

The car had been built near the end of Cadillac’s old rear-wheel-drive era, when the company still understood that luxury meant placing as much distance as possible between the owner and anything likely to happen in front of him. Its 5.7-liter V8 drove the rear wheels, its speed-sensitive power steering required little more than an opinion, and its leather interior appeared capable of absorbing six adults without forcing any of them to acknowledge the others. There were rear vanity mirrors, a cassette and compact-disc stereo, a power antenna and enough blue upholstery to finish a respectable Baptist sanctuary.

The exterior was where the Cadillac ceased being transportation and became argument. Pale-blue paint covered the automobile from horizon to horizon. Gold wreaths and crests appeared wherever Cadillac had found a level surface. The padded roof suggested that the car had been upholstered from the outside after someone decided steel alone did not look comfortable enough. Its fender skirts concealed half of each rear wheel, perhaps out of modesty, and the upright hood ornament rode at the end of the vast hood like a survey marker identifying land Cadillac intended to annex.

Trixie, who had been sitting at the neighboring table, leaned closer.

“It looks like something a successful undertaker would drive to tell another undertaker he wasn’t successful enough.”

“That’s the appeal,” New Guy said.

“Is it?”

“The car has presence.”

“So does a boil,” Rex said.

New Guy explained that the Cadillac was being auctioned on Bring a Trailer. The current bid was six thousand dollars, which he considered affordable, although he declined to say how high he intended to go. The car was in Angola, New York. After winning it, he planned to fly there, drive it to Washington and begin operations immediately.

“You’ve never flown,” Lucinda said.

“I’ve watched people do it.”

“That is not generally counted as flight experience.”

“I won’t be operating the airplane.”

“That is our first piece of good news,” Rex said.

New Guy retrieved a folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket and opened it on the table. Across the top, printed in large gold letters, were the words:

CAPITAL GRANDEUR MOTOR TOURS

Underneath was a rough drawing of the Cadillac passing between two enormous white structures, with several gold stars added in the margins. The stars did not correspond to anything in particular, but New Guy felt they improved the federal appearance.

“My route starts at the new White House ballroom,” he said. “I’ll pick up six tourists, drive them past the monuments, circle the new arch by Arlington and finish at the cemetery.”

Brother Bob looked down at the drawing.

“They let private Cadillacs pick people up at the White House?”

“They will once they see it.”

Rex removed his glasses and cleaned them, although there was nothing on the lenses that could account for what he was hearing.

“You’re planning to drive an eighteen-foot Cadillac into one of the most heavily secured areas in the United States, collect six strangers outside the White House and announce that you intend to circle major government buildings?”

“Historic buildings.”

“That wording will not improve the interview.”

New Guy had studied the ballroom carefully. It was to contain approximately ninety thousand square feet and accommodate six hundred fifty seated guests, which meant it would be somewhat larger than the Grounds for Divorce if the Grounds for Divorce swallowed Rex Hall Drug, K-Bob’s, the Klip-N-Dye, two blocks of Dickinson Boulevard and possibly Alpine. The renderings showed a vast classical exterior with columns, tall arched windows and a roofline decorated beyond the point at which architecture normally asks somebody to stop.

Inside, chandeliers descended in glittering ranks. Gold moldings bordered more gold moldings, which surrounded panels trimmed in additional gold so that none of the original gold would be forced to endure an undecorated edge. Gilded Corinthian capitals supported elaborate ceilings painted with pale clouds and allegorical figures. Mirrors multiplied the chandeliers until the room appeared to have its own electrical grid.

Hairless studied the image.

“Where do they dance?”

“On the floor.”

“I thought that was where they stored the chandeliers.”

Chad turned the telephone sideways.

“It looks like a casino where the minimum bet is a cabinet appointment.”

“That’s elegance,” New Guy said.

“No,” Trixie replied. “Elegance is knowing when you have put on enough jewelry.”

Lucinda glanced from the ballroom to the Fleetwood. The resemblance was not architectural so much as spiritual. Both had been designed according to the belief that dignity could be achieved by adding expensive details until doubt became financially irresponsible. The Cadillac had a padded roof; the ballroom had a decorated roof. The Cadillac possessed gold emblems, opera lamps and chrome wheels; the ballroom offered gilded columns, chandeliers and enough ornamental plasterwork to employ every cherub between here and Rome. Each was much larger than strictly necessary, and each seemed faintly offended by the continued existence of anything smaller.

“The car matches it,” New Guy said.

“That may be the most damaging thing anyone has said about either one,” Rex told him.

The second stop on Capital Grandeur Motor Tours would be the proposed triumphal arch near Arlington Memorial Bridge. New Guy produced a rendering of an immense ivory-colored structure standing at Memorial Circle between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. It was to rise two hundred fifty feet, crowned by a sixty-foot gilded winged female figure carrying a torch and a crown. Two enormous golden eagles would share the upper reaches, four gold lions would guard the lower structure, and the phrases ONE NATION UNDER GOD and LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL would appear in gold lettering on both sides.

Angus stared at the rendering for a long time.

“What’s it for?”

“The country’s two-hundred-fiftieth anniversary.”

“That was this year.”

“It takes a while to build two hundred fifty feet.”

“What triumph does it commemorate?” Rex asked.

New Guy consulted his notes.

“America.”

“That’s a country.”

“Yes.”

“It isn’t a particular triumph.”

“It has had several.”

“Which one is the arch about?”

“All of them, apparently.”

Brother Bob examined the golden winged figure.

“Who’s the woman?”

“Liberty.”

“What are the eagles for?”

“Also liberty.”

“And the lions?”

New Guy hesitated.

“Security.”

The table considered this. Washington already possessed an obelisk for its first president, a temple for Lincoln, a domed memorial for Jefferson and a cemetery filled with men and women whose monuments were white stones no larger than necessary to hold a name. The new arch would stand between some of these, tall enough to dominate the sight line and ornamented as though the national supply of symbolism had been placed on a deadline.

It did not commemorate one war, one leader, one sacrifice or one idea that New Guy could explain. It was a monument to magnitude—a structure erected to prove that the country remained capable of constructing something too large to look around. Its purpose was triumph, broadly defined, with the exact nature of the triumph to be determined after the gold fixtures arrived.

Trixie studied the Cadillac again.

“What does the car commemorate?”

“The American luxury automobile.”

“Which luxury?”

“All of it, apparently,” Angus said.

The comparison became difficult to escape. The arch had a sixty-foot gold statue; the Fleetwood had a standing gold hood ornament. The arch concealed its uncertainties beneath eagles, lions and inscriptions; the Fleetwood concealed its rear wheels beneath fender skirts. One towered over the Lincoln Memorial. The other towered over most rental cars. Both were pale in color, long on ornament and based upon the assumption that size could answer questions no one had phrased clearly.

New Guy proposed that the Cadillac would make two complete loops around the arch during each tour, allowing passengers on both sides a good view.

“Can you circle it?” Rex asked.

“It’s in a traffic circle.”

“Then why twice?”

“Circumnavigation.”

“That means going around something.”

“Exactly.”

“It does not mean doing it twice.”

“It does if the passengers on the right paid the same as the passengers on the left.”

This was the strongest part of the business plan so far, and the table disliked it for that reason.

New Guy intended to charge ninety-nine dollars per person. For an additional twenty-five dollars, passengers could receive what he called the Executive Experience, which included bottled water, a souvenir lapel pin and the privilege of sitting in the right-front seat.

“What does the lapel pin look like?” Chad asked.

“A little gold Cadillac going through a little gold arch.”

“Toward the ballroom or away from it?”

“That depends on how you pin it.”

Lucinda asked whether New Guy had calculated insurance, commercial registration, permits, fuel, lodging, maintenance or parking. He had not, although he had written the word EXPENSES near the bottom of his paper and drawn a box around it. He believed this demonstrated awareness.

“The Cadillac gets seventeen miles per gallon on the highway,” Rex said, reading from another website.

“I’ll mostly be in town.”

“That will not make it better.”

“Tourists expect authenticity.”

“What part of using thirty dollars’ worth of gasoline to drive nine miles is historically authentic?”

“Congress does it every day.”

Even Rex had to allow him that one.

The tour would end at Arlington National Cemetery, where New Guy planned to reduce the radio volume and speak in what he called a respectful voice. He had not yet written that portion of the narration. He knew the cemetery contained approximately four hundred thirty thousand people, and he understood that many had died in service to the country. Beyond that he believed silence might be more appropriate.

This was where the laughter thinned. On one side of the river would stand the Lincoln Memorial, grave and restrained, honoring a president who had carried the nation through civil war and had needed only nineteen sentences at Gettysburg. On the other would lie Arlington, its white markers following the hills with a terrible simplicity. Between them, if the proposal prevailed, would rise two hundred fifty feet of stone, gold wings, enormous eagles, lions, inscriptions and triumph.

Angus looked again at the rendering.

“Seems like the people under those little stones already built the monument.”

Nobody answered him.

New Guy folded his plan halfway, then opened it again. “That’s why the tour ends there. Perspective.”

Lucinda refilled his cup.

“Where does it begin?”

“The ballroom.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

New Guy looked at her, and for the first time that morning his certainty weakened. He had always been New Guy because Fort Stockton had never required anything more specific from him. He occupied his stool, drank his coffee, offered occasional opinions and went home to whatever life he kept from public inspection. Perhaps the Cadillac had not caused the plan. Perhaps it had merely given shape to an existing restlessness. A man could wake one morning and discover that being harmlessly familiar had begun to feel too much like being invisible.

“I thought I might do something,” he said.

It was not much of an explanation, but it changed the room.

Rex put his glasses back on. Trixie stopped smiling. Even Angus gave the proposal the consideration due any plan conceived by a man who had finally grown tired of having none.

“You could start a tour business here,” Chad said. “Fort Davis. The Annie Riggs. Paisano Pete.”

“Paisano Pete doesn’t have gold lions.”

“He’s taller than most roadrunners.”

“Tourists already know where Fort Stockton is,” Rex said.

“No,” Lucinda told him. “They know where the gas stations are. That isn’t the same thing.”

Brother Bob suggested a Christian heritage tour, although most of the locations he proposed were churches that had split from other churches over matters too complicated to explain in a moving automobile. Hairless offered to help install a second air-conditioning compressor. Trixie thought the Cadillac needed magnetic door signs, preferably removable in case the federal government interpreted CAPITAL GRANDEUR as a claim of jurisdiction.

Angus remained doubtful.

“You’re going to buy a thirty-one-year-old Cadillac in New York, drive it to a city you’ve never visited, start a business you’ve never run, carry tourists you’ve never met through security you don’t understand, around a monument that hasn’t been built and past a ballroom that isn’t finished.”