The Speed of Life

by James Victor Jordan

  Driving north on Brickell Avenue under banyan and oak canopies, on my way to meet Aurora and Phoebe at the Chocolate Carousel – an upscale coffee shop in the Collins Hotel with a semicircular rear wall of floor-to-ceiling glass offering panoramas of Vizcaya and the Key Biscayne Bridge and a rotating floor making a complete turn every ninety minutes – I fantasized about Al kissing me, stroking my thighs, tracing the outline of my open lips with his fingertips, his tongue, the sound of my dress unzipping. His hand moving slowly down my spine as I unbuckled his belt, hot breath on my neck. I unbuttoned his shirt.

  A convertible, its top down, drew abreast of the Triumph, Aurora, tapping her steering wheel as if it were a bongo, her hair shaking like a pompom, “Somebody to Love” blaring from her car’s speakers. The soundtrack segued into the next song, “My Best Friend.” She blew a kiss and accelerated.

  As the moderne crown of the Du Pont Building came into view, I followed Aurora onto a road that wound its way around marshes of sawgrass and past a flock of flamingos— some on one foot with beaks bowed as if praying, others stepping delicately through the water. We drove into a parking structure and circled up the ramps to the roof, where no one else was in sight.

  She wore her federal-prosecutor uniform, a pinstriped navy suit. When she stepped out of her car, her suit jacket was unbuttoned. The frills on her silk blouse did little to conceal the contour of what was beneath. She pressed against me, caressing my breasts with hers, then covering my mouth with hers. Sucking on my tongue, she lifted my dress, slipping fingers under my panties.

  “You’re already wet,” she said.

  I leaned against her. “I’m having unusual experiences,” I said.

  She said, “Something happen between you and Al?”

  “Nothing’s changed.”

  “Would you feel differently if he were cheating?”

  A shortness of breath. “Are you saying he’s seeing someone?” I said.

  “No,” Aurora said. “But if you were free—”

  “I’m not,” I said, taking her hand. “And we agreed, we’re not doing this.”

  We crossed an opalescent marble mandala in the lobby of the Collins and went into The Chocolate Carousel. The place had the feel of a Disneyland confectionary with a cruise ship décor. Speedboats pulled water-skiers over the bay just beyond the glass wall where Phoebe was waiting.

  “I love this place,” Phoebe said. “The fleurs-de-lis in the wrought iron are to die for.”

  Aurora said, “Hailey’s having strange experiences.”

  “Who isn’t?” Phoebe said, fanning herself with a menu.

  Our server appeared— six-two, dreadlocks, wide-eyed. “Aurora Goldin!” he said.

  “Greg Pardo?”

  “Craig, but my name is Mohammad now.”

  “Was it two kilos?” Aurora said.

  “I’m sober twelve years.”

  “Congratulations!” she said. Then she ordered a Café Diablo with a double Kahlua straight up and a shot of tequila.

  “Can you get that here?” I said.

  “You can get anything you want,” Mohammad said. “But I’ll have to see your ID.”

  “You want my phone number too?” Aurora said.

  Mohammad brought the Kahlua and an oversized shot glass filled to the brim with tequila. He set down a mug of steaming coffee, then using a paring knife he sliced off the skin of an orange in a continuous swirl. He poured heated brandy down the spiral of the peel, then lit a match. Flames twirled down the peel, igniting the surface of the coffee.

  Aurora downed the tequila. “Al’s bank puts up its overseas clients here?” she said.

  The rotating floor brought us adjacent to the lobby. Its columns were made of the same marble used in the mandala. Flower-and-leaf motifs were carved into the Corinthian capitals. Guards stood near a traveling exhibition of Jackson Pollack paintings. The paint liquefied, lapping at the frames like roiling waves.

  Pointing, I grabbed Phoebe’s arm.

  “Every piece is a Louis XIV,” she said. “Makes you feel as if you’re in Versailles.”

  “Not the furniture,” I said. “The paintings—”

  “What are they worth?” Aurora said. “Eight figures each?”

  A girl, ten or eleven, held a cage with a white rabbit. The rabbit winked, opened the cage door, leapt to the floor, jumped into a painting, and sank beneath molten yellows and greens.

  “Did you see that?” I said. “The rabbit?”

  “He’s cute,” Phoebe said.

  The rabbit, reincarnated, was back in its cage. An apparition, my doppelganger, joined us.

  “I was unfaithful,” my ghostly counterpart said.

  “You were?” Phoebe said.

  I couldn’t speak, but my guilt-ridden stand-in said, “I fell in love, but it’s over now.”

  Love— that bitter mystery. Why was I sad? Hadn’t I resolved my feelings for Aurora long ago?

  Phoebe said, “You wouldn’t have fallen in love with another man if you were fulfilled.”

  “Al’s my best friend,” I said. “If he found out, think of his pain.”

  I thought about ordering a drink.

  Phoebe held my hand. “This is between us,” she said. She looked at Aurora for an affirmation.

  Aurora finished her Kahlua; her face was florid. She’s made eye contact with a good-looking man, a swarthy complexion, a tropical suit, sipping a drink, sitting in the lobby. She slouched, uncrossed her legs, opened them, closed her eyes. Smiled.

  “He wants me,” she said.

  Phoebe nodded to Mohammad and reached for her purse. “I’ll get the check.”

  When Mohammad returned, Aurora said, “Did you know that marijuana puts holes in children’s brains? I shoulda asked for the death penalty! You shoulda been shot!”

  Aurora’s flirting companion, the tropical suit, approached. “May I be of assistance?” he said.

  Mohammad said, “Thanks but we’ve got this.” He helped me help Aurora to her feet.

  “C’mon,” I said. “I’m taking you home.”

  In the parking lot I said, “That was disgraceful.”

  Aurora said nothing.

  “You’ve got to come to terms,” I said. “Alcohol isn’t your friend.”

  “What’s a friend?” Aurora said, still slurring her words.

  About a mile down the road Aurora said, “I have a friend, a lawyer I want you to call.”

  I pulled into a 7-Eleven parking lot. The Triumph sputtered, then coughed.

  “The idle is set too low,” she said. I turned off the engine.

  “I’m not supposed to know—” She slumped in her seat. “I’ll get fired. Maybe I should resign.”

  “When you’re through feeling sorry for yourself, tell me what the hell you’re talking about!”

  “On Monday a receiver’s gonna take over First Global.”

  “Al knows?”

  “It’s all his fault.”

  “Bad loans?”

  “The law— Federal— Oh, damn it. Hailey, it was— he was money laundering.”

  Her words reverberated like mallets on timpani.

  “No,” I said. “He couldn’t— never—”

  “And racketeering,” Aurora said. “He did it. Massively. And justish . . .”

  My gut cramped; I began to cry. “Drug money?”

  “Your father woulda spared us a prosecution. He woulda strangled Al,” Aurora said.

  “Your lawyer friend can help him?”

  “She can help you.” Aurora looked at her watch. “Go to the bank. After six, you don’ have any money— it’s all frozen.”

  “What about Jacob?”

  Aurora was crying too. “Al is evil,” she said. “We just didn’t know.”

  My mascara streaked, my lips quivered. I leaned into Aurora, felt the crush of her silk blouse.

  “I’ve always loved you,” Aurora said.

  I thought of the people I’d loved: my grandparents, Dad, Mom, Al, Jacob,
Phoebe, Aurora. Among the billions of people who’d lived in my lifetime; these were the ones I’d loved. I drew Aurora’s face to mine, kissed her deeply for a very long time. “I’ve always loved you, too.” I said.

  I was baking brownies when Jacob and Pierre came into the kitchen.

  “I’m going to kill Victor,” Jacob said.

  “Who cares?” Pierre said. “He’s a troglodyte.”

  I took a baking pan out of the oven. “Are you taking your lithium?” I said to Pierre.

  Pierre said, “When I don’t take it, I’m smart. I can play baseball. When I take it, I’m clumsy, I get fat, I’m not smart. The devil lives in my brain.”

  I wrapped two brownies in tinfoil and put them in the refrigerator.

  Al stood in the foyer holding his briefcase in one hand, his suit jacket in the other, looking lost. His eyes were swollen.

  I put his briefcase in the entryway closet.

  “You know?” he said.

  “I made brownies.”

  I sat with him at the kitchen table, looking out at the pool, the gardens, and The Octopus, his two-million-dollar sport yacht, bobbing between its docks on Biscayne Bay. The yard lights came on.

  “May I have more milk?” he said

  “That’s all we have,” I said.

  “Hailey,” he said. “There were these technical violations—”

  “Take me upstairs,” I said. I cleared the dishes, then walked into the foyer. Al stood at the top of the staircase looking funereal. My father stood beside him.

  I heard a sound – Zip – like a pop, like something snapping shut.

  Or was there a sound?

  Part VII The Circle of Jupiter

  A Warped Side of the Universe

  Sarah Abiaka says, “It’s a miracle you survived your birth.”

  She and her great-grandson, Andrew, who is nineteen, are in her study in her home in Tallahassee, where she and her husband of fifty years, Marcus Kayalu, have adjoining offices, each with a generous picture window showcasing a vista of verdant woodlands unfolding and streams flowing into the lake adjoining their backyard, lapping at its shores.

  Because Andrew’s college is in Tallahassee, he and his great-grandparents have spent a lot of time together during the three years it’s taken him to earn his baccalaureate. He’s become especially close to them, admiring each of them for their character and accomplishments. But he cannot comprehend how two people as different as they are could have married, let alone stayed married for a half century. Always contradicting each other, quibbling if not quarreling.

  When he asked his great-grandpapa what contributed most to the success of his long-term marriage, Marcus said, “Love,” hesitated, then added, “and a gigantic helping of luck.”

  Sarah said, “It was The Creator’s will.”

  It is mid-May. Under a clear morning sky, sunlight pours over the sweet lake waters and glittering brown-and-red marshes, home to hundreds of bird and reptile nests that flourish within and around the lake. An American alligator, twenty to twenty-five years old judging by its twelve-foot length, rugged-leather armor reticulating along its back and tail in two rows of serrated ridges in the form of sawlike teeth, looking exactly like its ancestors did one-hundred-fifty-million years ago, basks in gray-green mud. Turtles on the endangered- and-threatened-species lists – Suwanee cooters with their vulnerable yellow-and-black-polka-dot undersides and yellow-striped mud turtles – sun themselves on smooth stones and rotting logs jutting from the shore into the water. Wading birds – white ibis and blue herons – stand still as tombstones in the lake near the shore.

  Just what is it about these little swamp birds basking in this lake that sparkles like diamonds that like lives once lived? The birds don’t foreshadow their own deaths to any greater extent than the sight of any living creature is a reminder of its inevitable end; rather the untimely death, or more precisely the extinction of these species in this locale is foretold by the prolific, herbicide-resistant Hydrilla verticillata growing in the lake like a tumor, threatening to choke life from all other flora and the fauna whose existence depends on the waters clogged by these pathogens. Regrettably, locating and identifying a life form that’s fatal to other life forms in the ecosystem does not ensure the ability to destroy it.

  This is the first time Sarah has talked to Andrew about his birth unlike Marcus talks about it in terms of the physical properties of hurricanes, the atmospheric conditions that spawn them, the salient circumstances the escape from Karl’s trailer, Estella prematurely going into labor, Betty Mae delivering him. Marcus immersed himself in paleotempestology, publishing Epic Tropical Storms: Desolation and Opportunity, his only book that has earned significant royalties.

  Sarah says, “What are the chances that a baby born outdoors in the Everglades during a hurricane—”

  “A colossal hurricane,” Marcus thunders through the open doorway.

  “Would live?” says Sarah.

  “How did Seminole women living on chickees do it?” Andrew says.

  “Thatched roofs of chickees are lowered to the floor to provide shelter during storms, but no Seminole ever gave birth during a hurricane and survived as you and your mother did.”

  “How do you know?” Andrew says.

  “If it had happened, it would be part of our lore. I’d know,” Sarah says. “Hurricane Andrew carried a sign from The Creator of Her grand design for you.”

  “Good grief,” Marcus bellows. “Grand design? Study the stars. Study those damn aquatic weeds polluting our lake. Eradicate them. That would be grand.”

  What Marcus says makes sense. At nineteen, Andrew is nearing graduation from Florida State University with a double major in literature and philosophy, which qualifies him to do what? There are myriad viable choices, not one of them appealing. He doesn’t have to work for a living because of his monthly stipend from the tribe, because of trusts established for him by Marcus and Sarah, and by his grandmomma, Betty Mae. But he wants to make the world a better place. And to do that, he has much more to learn, much more to do.

  He could join one of the armed services or the peace corps, go to grad school and pursue a career as an academician, take premed courses and apply to medical school, or worst of all, with due respect and love for his momma, take the LSAT and go to law school. Could there be a profession more boring, more superfluous? He’s pinioned by an existential crisis common to others his age. But he’s graduating from college years ahead of his peers.

  Marcus is urging Andrew to work after graduation as his research assistant for a year, to discover the world through the lens of science.

  His mother’s boss, Aurora Goldin, suggested that he apply for a one-year internship in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Miami. Aurora said that while there were no guarantees, based upon his academic record, she’d be surprised if he wasn’t selected for one of the positions. She said it with jollity. Did his momma have a hand in that? She denied it, saying that encouraging him to apply for the internship was strictly Aurora’s idea. Is there justice in nepotism or vice versa? Regardless nepotism is unsavory because unearned privilege leads privileged individuals to claim entitlement to privilege, which in turn leads to the inhumanity and corruption bred by the god complexes of those who believe they are chosen for privilege.

  And then there is the possibility if not the promise of his becoming a writer. In his first semester, he took a creative writing class and his professor encouraged him to submit short stories to literary journals. And so, mentored by this professor, he devoted a substantial portion of his first two years of college to writing short fiction.

  But he hadn’t written or submitted anything in the past year. Why? There were many reasons. Among them, the ratio of time expenditure to reward was ridiculously low. But foremost, the process of submitting stories to literary journals was even more repugnant than nepotism.

  The submissions policies of most literary journals were idiotic. The one that was most offensive stated: We don’t p
ublish anything with talking animals. Would these self-appointed guardians of good taste and literary merit reject Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” because the story is told from the a point of view of a bug? Would they reject George Orwell’s Animal Farm because the main characters are talking barnyard animals? Would they reject The Odyssey because Odysseus battles a talking Cyclops? What about power animals? Are they banned from literary fiction? The rule against talking animals was just one among many that barred allegory, allusion, cultural and religious diversity that offended the editors’ sense of realism, and banned a sense of humor from the pages of their journals.

  There were submission guidelines that proudly announced that the journal did not publish poems about poets or poetry. That ruled out The Divine Comedy or any other poem written in the first person. There were rules against stories about writers or writing. And forget it if your story fell within the purview of a recognized genre. No polemic by John Steinbeck or Sinclair Lewis. No science fiction by Doris Lessing. Rules are rules notwithstanding a Nobel Prize in literature.

  And so exactly what was the point of writing for these narrow-minded guardians of literature?

  The literary-journal route to a career in creative writing was a zero-sum game played with idiots full of sound and fury who signified nothing of literary consequence. If he were going to be a writer, he would follow the example of Melville and Conrad: spend his youth in pursuit of experiences both with and without talking animals that he would want to write about when he was older. He would disregard literary correctness, following the examples of Mark Twain, Margarette Atwood, e e cummings, and Virginia Woolf by self-publishing his early work.

  This was why his great-grandmomma—working fulltime as a Seminole medicine woman and sangoma shaman—struck a chord that was harmonious with his own inclinations. She’s not offered him a job, not suggested that he pursue shamanism or tribal medicine. Rather she’s recommended that he take a year off, travel, explore, discover justice, truth, and love on his own terms in ordinary as well as in hidden reality.

  “Can’t argue with that advice,” Marcus said. “Take a year off. Go to Vienna. Go to Vietnam. Go to the Magellanic Clouds.” But Marcus embellished his concurrence with the year-of-discovery plan. “Whatever you decide to do in the coming year,” he said, handing Andrew a book, “study chaos theory.”