by Burton Hersh
“The lady seemed to be travelling light, nothing but a sort of vanity case/carry-on bag. Everything was luxus, old-fashioned, like that fur muff. That’s where I noticed the hat with the feather. On a chair in their suite, I remember it now. Her passport said Olivia de Broulee. French maybe, except that she had more of a German accent. Hard to place. She was travelling light – a change of underwear, extra makeup besides her toilet kit. Not even a second dress.”
“They obviously weren’t expecting to stay in Philly long.”
“Overnight. They were overnighting. She did bring along one thing I hadn’t seen before. Some kind of mean-looking curved battery-powered apparatus with three protruding vibrating heads. Definitely had me puzzled for a minute or two. Why wouldn’t it – backwoods brave, fingering the white lady’s underwear?”
“Not a vote of confidence in Cedric Bougalas.”
“Not a vote of confidence.”
Just then a hefty female singer with a mezzanine that made me catch my breath began to belt out a half-forgotten Janis Joplin number against the harsh thunder of electric guitars. I had almost been about to ask Sonny whether he could recall the brand name on Olivia’s apparatus so I could get one for Wendy for Christmas. Then I thought better of that. By that time, more than likely, Wendy would be a mother.
I sat there finishing my second beer, my nerves jangling. Everything was eating into me – the raw, evocative throb of the music, the smell of working-class people enjoying themselves, the unabashed sexuality the women in particular kept projecting. I was profoundly thrilled, confused.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” I said to Sonny. “Something really has changed.”
“Peyote can do that. Open things up. Besides, you’ve had a hard week. Probably just unwinding.”
“Maybe. I admit I’m scared half out of my mind. But I think it’s more your sister.”
“I went by Linda’s place earlier today. She’s loco too. At least she’s got the dog.”
“I’ll try and see her tomorrow.”
“Try and fit it in,” Sonny said. His eyes were narrowing, not a good sign. We both stayed quiet for a couple of minutes. The big singer started a new set, torch songs from the thirties.
“What do you make of that Bougalas operation?” Sonny asked once the singer took a break.
“I have no idea. You’re the spook.”
“Just guesswork. Those two didn’t look like that much, some kind of retirement gig, it could be. What that really means to me is that you’re not dealing with IBM here. Bougalas is probably an old hand in the business, and word has gotten around that he can put things together under the table and customers come to him and he subcontracts a lot of it. He’s a clearinghouse. When your boy Buckley called somebody—“
“Rick. It stands to reason he called Rick.”
“OK, Rick called Bougalas. Probably Senor Cruz’ go-to guy on this coast. Bougalas couldn’t have handled that big safe the other day, so they brought in demolition talent. Picking off your briefcase must have looked doable to Bougalas, especially with the tall broad as backup.”
“So what happens next?”
“By now they all probably know they’ve been had. You’ve got to hope your lawyer in Philadelphia lands on all those Cubans before they can regroup.”
I could merely nod. The singer had launched into a jazzed-up version of Begin the Beguine that was all but immobilizing me. I could feel tears starting in my eyes. I was hopeless.
13
Late the following afternoon I picked Linda up and took her out to supper at The Spartan, a Greek restaurant in a neighborhood shopping mall off 62nd South. They baked a decent pizza, and the baklava was outstanding. The restaurant was blocks from my house in the Pink Streets on the Oval Crescent Annex.
Linda had packed her big flowered pouch-like carryall with what she expected she would need for a night or two. The good-natured hunchback who rented the unit on the first floor of Muldavey Court was going to look after Penelope.
“You think we can do this thing without Penelope?” I wondered once we were back in my bungalow and I had poured two glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon and we had started to settle in. “She added that unpredictable je ne sais quoi.”
“I guess.” Linda looked confused. “Mostly she supplies slobber. She is an old soul, but on the earth level she slobbers like a leaky hydrant.”
Laughter was warming us up. Without a word of understanding we each finished our wine and stood up to strip down. I proceeded her to the bedroom. Every piece of furniture in the bedroom was part of a California fruitwood suite Janice and I had picked up cheap at The Gas Plant on lower Central. Linda took the silver clasp out of her hair and we sat in the edge of the bed and held hands.
“Your brother is a piece of work,” I tried to open. “ Maybe a little bit touchy at times, but gifted. Amazingly. No point in getting into it now, but without that tradecraft of his we’d already be cooked. Our family, I mean by that.”
“Sonny is the one they always favor back home. When he was very young he stabbed to death a rattlesnake that was waiting underneath the blanket of the chief. After that they even let him use the sweat lodge when he was around. On the rez. Most of the time he was away at those schools.”
“That’s what he says about you. That you were gone mostly.”
“Later, dancing. In the ceremonials. I was twelve when they put me into the group that travelled so much to perform the dances. Away and back, away and back. Never really a teenager.”
“That’s what Sonny indicated. He said you were very—extremely serious about your powwow dancing. No time to waste with the usual screwing around—“
Linda gave him a sidelong look, her dark eyes glittering a moment. “Did I go with men, you’re trying to ask? Before Savage Owl? One. In a way.”
“Look, it really isn’t any business of mine—“
“No, I ought to tell you. Maybe you should know.” Linda recrossed her legs and hunched her shoulders. “We were a troupe who travelled together. Six people. Eight people. Three were still very young. On one tour I was eighteen, and we had a stripling who was very ahead of himself, very dynamic, leaps very high. He was sixteen.”
“Not really the age of consent.”
“That wasn’t a part of it. We had our own world. Because I was closest to Little Shield in years I was supposed to look after him. Help wash the paint off after the performances, make sure he stored the headdress right so the feather bustle don’t get tangled. So much regalia for all the males, and after we got that all off he had such very soft buckskin leggings that he wore and sometimes I helped him get them off afterwards. So easy to snap the porcupine quills, which our head drum worried about. All the time.”
“You were supposed to tend him.”
“Tend to him, not let him get too homesick. Mother him. Little Shield was high strung.”
“I gather that you discovered new ways of helping.”
“Nobody wanted this. But one afternoon when the others were away in some town and I was cleaning Little Shield up we had some trouble getting his leggings off that day, and his breach clout came loose, and he was -- his—“
“His pecker?”
“I like cock better. His cock was – you know – it stood up there so stiff and swollen and sore! So smooth, with all those veins! I didn’t know what to do, I had to take it in my hand, and then I give Little Shield a tug. But then he had to have another tug, and I can see you know what happened after that.”
“I know what happened.” My cheeks were burning.
“It makes a truly wonderful face cream,” Linda mused, with that half-smile. “I tried to save a little every time from then on….”
“And Little Shield – you taught him how to keep you from being – what’s that phrase – too high strung? Those woman’s needs?”
“We learned. Both of us learned. That tour lasted months. The important thing was, I couldn’t get pregnant. Among us Comanches, that would have been
a disgrace. So in a way, we were just practicing.”
“Saving yourself for Savage Owl?”
“Saving myself for you. I see you liked my story.”
My prick was outdoing itself. I planted my fingers deep into Linda’s fur and she reciprocated. After a few minutes I got up with difficulty and stripped back the coverlet. This time Linda took off her necklace of elk’s teeth. “I wear this even to bed so the spirit of the elk can protect me. But you will protect me now. I think you will.”
“I will,” I said.
We were so excited by then that our lovemaking lasted hours. I remember waking up around three or four with my face between Linda’s powerful thighs and my nose halfway up her vagina. As I came to slowly she stirred. “What are you doing down there?” she said softly.
“Just checking things out. I think I caught a taste of the baklava.”
* * *
Easter came in 2008 just before the end of March. After a touchy winter the stock market began to show indications of coming back, but Dad was increasingly alarmed. “It’s going to be entirely about the big banks,” he assured me on Easter morning, when I stopped by the house on Snell Isle to make sure it was OK to bring Linda to the three o’clock banquet. “They’re trying to lay everything off on Lehman, and more now AIG. But at this stage it should be obvious how every shagitz up and down Wall Street has been selling phony insurance policies with no more capital than I’ve got tits enough to suckle King Kong. Derivatives, feh! Insurance is a great business until something floods or burns up.”
“Isn’t that what Ramon was doing? Those medical insurance startups?”
“With those you can predict, at least. Statistics mean something. But you tell me which of those Wall Street sharpshooters can gauge the foreclosure rate of a ten-billion-dollar issue of subprime mortgage bonds based on the ability of Margo the cocktail waitress and Elmo the bellhop to pay off their mini-mansion. Preposterous! Or Iceland to float paper based on a budget its parliament will never pass.”
“But Ramon’s hedge fund is different?”
“I told you. He started out underwriting health coverage for a lot of mom-and-pop start-ups and widows and orphans in the Cuban community down there. Then he got into partnerships concentrating mostly on land development. Insurance is a sideline.”
“Then why did he need us?”
“Because we looked solid. Quality properties, professional mortgage-holders. With us in his fund he gets to keep on borrowing. He needed to impress the machers around Miami he thinks he wants to run with, Gomez and Geoffrey Ball and the rest of those potzes whose big interest was scams like draining the Swamp into their offshore bank accounts. Now Ramon would get to be a player. Maybe they cut him in. He obviously left those bloodsucking mob counterparties of his with the impression his hedge fund was in a position to liquidate our properties any time push came to shove. Butcher anything we turned over to him whenever his balance sheet looked a little thin and they decided he’d better recapitalize. ”
“So now Ramon has got a problem?”
“If we can get out.”
“I thought we were as good as out. I thought those injunctions of Ethan Stokes’ froze the assets until they pass back to us.”
“Their lawyers have already started to contest the injunctions. Stokes says we’re likely to recover the properties but it may take a while. Time is precisely what we haven’t got, with the economy falling off a cliff.”
“And you think a few months—“
“We need them back in time to unload them.”
By one in the afternoon, when we met in the drawing room before dinner, you’d never have been able to tell Dad had anything on his mind. Everybody else was there, working on Daiquiris, when I showed up with Linda. She had just gotten her initial paycheck from Walmart, and bought herself a very flattering dark linen dress.
Everybody had pulled up the Hepplewhite side chairs around the big parquet coffee table that fronted on the balustrade that overlooked the Bay. Linda eased into the chair next to Carol and I sat next to her beside Rick. Rick looked preoccupied, wiping off his bulging temples again and again with his giant palm once he felt his cocktail.
“Mikey here speaks so highly of you,” Carol said to Linda. “He says you’re extremely talented.”
“Quite a performer,” Wendy chimed in. I could have cut her throat.
“Michael says that you were well known while you were still very young as part of some sort of travelling dance company,” Mother said, straining to rescue that. “I know I have at times been reduced to all but tears by ethnic dance ensembles. When I was a girl we never missed the Bolshoi.”
“I never saw that,” Linda said.
“Outstanding!” Mother said. “Every spin made you catch your breath.”
“Linda was a powwow dancer,” I said. “She and her group danced here and in Europe.”
“That had to be exhilarating,” Carol said.
Linda surveyed them all and barely smiled. “Sometimes it was a blast,” she said. “Sometimes it got old. The food was good, though.” Dad brought her a Daiquiri, which she held but did not drink. “I liked the French.”
“Who was that was telling me the other day that Native American cuisine is utterly superb under certain circumstances?” Buckley volunteered. “Much neglected.”
“What are your favorite dishes?” Carol asked. “At home. On the reservation.”
“At home?” Linda tossed her black mane and appeared to think back. I could tell by the sudden light in her eye that we were in trouble. “We like plain food. A lot of boiled dog. Sometimes we season that up a little with – what do you call them in English? – grubs. Larvae. Very excellent fried. When you eat them fast they go pop, pop, pop—“
There was a startled moment or two before the rest of them realized that Linda was putting them on. Then Wendy exploded with laughter. “This girl is a trip!” she got out. “You’re gonna fit right in here, babe.”
Dad poured another round of Daiquiris and the back-and-forth got lively fast as politics became the subject. The national party primaries were starting to heat up. As always, Buckley Glickman was our outspoken Republican. He still favored John McCain, with his years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, although he himself had to admit that George Romney came closer to looking the part. Barack Obama was showing a lot of appeal nobody had expected. That week he made a speech proclaiming that there was still a lot of black anger out there, a statement the Fox spokesman resented especially. James Carville gave an interview in which he savagely accused Governor Bill Richardson of taking on the role of Judas by espousing Obama so early and selling out the Clintons, who did so much for him.
“Whatever happened to the war in Iraq?” Dad – clearly feeling his Daiquiris – demanded of the group at large. “Kids are dying.” Mother looked apprehensive – Dad sometimes went overboard railing about the senselessness of the invasion. I think Mother had started to worry about Dad’s blood pressure. She looked quite attractive if extraordinarily pale and patchy-cheeked in a white silk cocktail dress, her knuckles all but submerged from the edema in her hands. Dad had told me earlier that day that Mother was on and off prednisone at this stage.
I could see that Linda was making an effort to be attentive. Ricky had just started to defend the Iraq incursion, maintaining to the best of his ability that unless we took over there Saddam Hussein would have invaded Israel with his atomic weapons, as he had attempted to do with rockets during Desert Storm. Dad was countering that with unaccustomed gentleness when I caught Linda’s eye and she planted her untouched Daiquiri on the coffee table and followed me to the door. “I thought I’d show Linda around a little,” I told the others.
“It’s got so many rooms!” she breathed as we explored the upper stories. “Like a museum.” A central hall led into Mother’s office and private library. Linda took in Mother’s pictures one by one and stopped – everybody stopped – at the Klimt drawing of the full-bodied woman fellating the a
dolescent boy. “That’s definitely right out there, isn’t it?” I said.
“I didn’t know it was all right to hang up pictures like that one.”
“Bring back memories?”
Linda conferred on me a long look, between amusement and recrimination. She accomplished a lot with her eyes.
“The afternoon I first met you, you reminded me of the woman in that picture,” I said.
“Because we both have fabulous big butts?”
“I think it was the long hair. Long dark hair.”
“Ah. You appreciated the hair.” She murmured that softly but full of feeling, accompanied by another look. If we had not been trapped in my father’s house, I think I would have fucked her on the carpet.
* * *
By the time we got back downstairs Anastasia had come out to get us in to dinner. “Anybody ‘round here hungry, I gots a little something,” she announced in those lilting, musical tones: a small girl’s voice, always surprising in a black woman whose waistline had gone out of control decades ago. She was Max’ wife, or whatever.
We started with lobster in cocktail sauce in Margarita glasses and moved on to rack of lamb and/or individual Cornish game hens – several of the women refused red meat. Sweet potatoes decorated with marshmallow sauce. For dessert Anastasia’s amazing carrot cake, ice cream voluntary. By the time the Cointreau went around we were all breathing hard.
After that we all went back to the sitting room. Wendy was already starting to show, and Carol and then Mother couldn’t resist palpating her abdomen. They invited Linda who – shyly – acceded. “You will have a boy,” she said, and smiled.
“How do you know that?” Ricky immediately demanded. There was a catch in his voice. “Nobody did sonograms or nothing like that. Nada.” I had never mentioned to any of them that Linda had been married before, and had a child.
“I feel the rhythm of him breathing,” Linda said. “And you are carrying so low.”