The Condor Passes

by Shirley Ann Grau

  It was past midnight when they got to their house. Two of the street lights were out, and in the darkened block the small white cottage was almost invisible under its heavy shrubbery. Roaches scurried across the porch boards and paint-tinged heat poured out when they opened the door.

  “Oh my,” Anna said.

  Methodically Robert began opening windows. The outside air seemed fresh and soft, leaf-cooled. … He could hear Anna at the phone, jiggling the receiver impatiently for the operator. He hadn’t eaten since lunch, but he wasn’t hungry. He was thirsty. On the shelves the glasses looked faintly dusty. He rinsed one and filled it. The water tasted like putty. He opened the liquor closet and took out the first bottle: Irish. He poured, stirred with his fingers, and drank it down. You didn’t even miss ice that way.

  Anna called: “Papa’s home, Robert. He says we are not to come over.”

  To show them that nothing mattered to him. That he did what he wanted; circumstances or bad luck had no effect on him. …

  Anna was saying, “Papa, I just want to convince myself you’re all right. You know I won’t sleep until I do.” And she hung up.

  Robert whistled under his breath.

  She fiddled with the phone, running her finger around and around in the mouthpiece. “Don’t be angry with me, Robert.”

  “Who’s angry?”

  “There’s nothing wrong in being worried about your father.”

  “Look, Anna,” he said, “if you want to see him, we’ll go over. That’s all there is to it.”

  ROBERT RECOGNIZED the stocky man who opened the door for them—Jasper Lucas. He’d worked for the Old Man for years, one place or the other. He’d started tending bar at the Old Man’s first casino, the one out at Franciscan Point. When the Old Man got a larger club at Southport, Lucas worked there as a dealer. When the Old Man bought the St. John Hotel, Lucas became a detective. For a while he was the Old Man’s bootleg distributor in East Texas. When the Old Man quit the liquor business, Lucas became a department-store detective.

  Robert nodded to him as they passed. … With Lucas here, the Old Man was taking no chances.

  He was in bed, waiting for them. He was wearing bright blue pajamas and his left arm was bandaged heavily all the way to the shoulder.

  “Oh, Papa,” Anna said.

  “Now that you’ve seen,” the Old Man said sarcastically, “can we all go to sleep?”

  “Aunt Cecilia was terrified,” Anna said.

  “She is an ass. I sent her home hours ago.”

  Robert said: “We could drink to your good luck if Jasper would fix us a whiskey.”

  From the doorway Jasper nodded.

  “I’ve been drinking Irish,” Robert said. “What about you?”

  “Fine,” the Old Man said. The skin was drawn tightly over his forehead and his cheeks. It wrinkled sidewise like carelessly stretched fabric.

  Jasper brought the drinks. Robert drank half, then rubbed the icy surface against his sunburned face and heard the little crackle of whiskers.

  “At least,” the Old Man said, “you have no curiosity.”

  “I’ll hear about it tomorrow,” Robert said. “Did they intend to hit you—is that why Jasper’s here?”

  “No,” the Old Man said. “It was an accident.” He reached for his glass, twisted his lips with pain. Robert handed it to him. “I was in the wrong place. I just feel better with him here.”

  Jasper’s square face smiled, briefly, then collapsed into its usual dull mask.

  Robert said, “How’d you get the doctor to let you out of the hospital?”

  “He would not have been my doctor very long otherwise.”

  With a rustle of starched cotton, a nurse appeared in the doorway. “Mr. Oliver,” she said, “do you want your shot? The doctor said you could.”

  “To hell with the doctor.” The Old Man let himself slip back on the pillows.

  “Okay,” Robert said. “Anna and I will stay here tonight.” In the hall, he asked Jasper: “What happened?”

  Jasper hesitated. Robert had the feeling that Jasper spoke more carefully with him, as if he were translating from another language. “It was in the garage.”

  “The garage?” With delivery trucks and pushcarts and old display counters and leftover advertising signs.

  “I know it don’t make much sense. Except they figured it was a big drop there. They damn near tore the building apart.”

  “Yeah,” Robert rubbed his unshaven cheeks, “I had something like that last year. Funny, the Old Man never did handle narcotics, but people sure seem to think he does.”

  Again Jasper searched for the right words. “When you bootleg, pretty often you got other things going for you. Like meat. There’s lots of meat around. Even the Old Man, he had meat too, years ago, when I first come to work. So people figure like this: he had meat, he had bootleg, he’s got something else. See?”

  Meat? Robert thought, What the hell was meat? Sure, sure, whores. The Old Man had started that way. …

  “Yeah, I see. What’s the rest?”

  Explaining left him out of breath. Jasper settled down in the living room, shifting his shoulder holster so that he could lean back comfortably. “That early, there wasn’t but one kid in the garage, and a couple of niggers. When them four come in, there wasn’t no argument; the kid shit in his pants, you shoulda seen that. …”

  Jasper paused, silently laughing. “You shoulda seen him when it was all over. Wouldn’t move. Tears running down his face.”

  Could have been me, Robert thought. I remember. …

  “They been there an hour and they got the place pretty well torn apart and they ain’t found nothing and they’re getting real nervous. When the Old Man drives in. Now you know he don’t ever go in there, only this one time he tells Macaluso to turn in the garage, and when they see that big black limousine, they start shooting.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Shit come from Biloxi,” Jasper said shortly. “You know Rizzo, the bookie? His cousin was one.”

  There was a .38 kept under the back seat. Robert could see the Old Man reaching for it.

  “The Old Man rolls out one side and ducks down. Me, I’m just coming to work, so I get over there quick.” His shoulders shook again; Robert wondered if he ever laughed out loud. “And Macaluso nearly runs me down, backing out forty miles an hour.”

  “There was a gun up front too,” Robert said.

  “He didn’t look for it.” Jasper bent forward to untie his shoelaces and massage his swollen ankles. They had puffed and ballooned over the tops of his shoes. “Moving the car like that, he leaves the Old Man in the open.”

  “Sure,” Robert said, “sure.”

  “And right after Macaluso those three bastards come roaring out. They’re burning rubber and the trunk lid is flapping up and down. And they are gone.” Jasper loosened his shoelaces again, and rubbed his legs violently. “I got high blood pressure,” he said, “and I just can’t stay on my feet no more.”

  “Hey, wait,” Robert noticed suddenly. “I thought there were four, not three.”

  Jasper looked up from his aching feet. “Was. I told you. Rizzo’s cousin. The Old Man killed him.” He pulled off his shoes. “Jesus Christ. …” He took off his socks too. “I’m going barefoot for a while, nobody here to see me but the nurse.”

  ON HIS way to bed, Robert thought: Me, I’m a coward. I know I’m a coward. I belong with the kid and the shitty pants in the back garage. Only luck that I wasn’t there.

  There were twin beds in Anna’s bedroom. “I’m so sorry, Robert,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s all right, honey.” Keep a straight face, boy. Don’t grin. You can sleep tonight.

  “And I’m sorry that we didn’t have a honeymoon.”

  “We had a fine honeymoon.” A couple more days of nothing to do and you’d have run out, over the hills and far away.

  WHEN THEY woke, the Old Man was already up. They heard his steady hacking morn
ing cough. The rasping, froglike sound drifted through the house.

  In Anna’s room, even in the security of his single bed, Robert squirmed uncomfortably. He dressed quickly and left.

  Away from her, he began walking up and down the hall from front door to dining room. Back and forth. He could feel his heels striking hard, as if he were trying to drive the carpet through the floor. He fancied that he was walking in his own tracks, that each step blurred a clear print going the other way.

  He stopped at the front door, tapping the screen with his fingers. Beyond the porch with its white-painted chairs, its cement planters filled with maidenhair fern, a few cars passed, and a man walked by. Robert could see his gray pants and big black umbrella held against the sun.

  It must not have rained for days; the street looked very dusty, and even the palms sounded dry—he could hear their hollow fronds rattle together. And invisible tree frogs were calling for rain. He’d always intended to catch one of those alive. He never had, though one had fallen on him once, and he felt the tickle of its little suction-cupped feet.

  HE COULDN’T stand at the front door all day long, staring into the street. He was supposed to be doing something; he was supposed to be busy. Anyway, he wanted a cup of coffee.

  In the dining room Anna said, “Robert, I have the most marvelous idea.”

  “Fine.” The coffee was very hot and black. He added more milk.

  “Don’t you think the hotel in Port Bella would make a marvelous house for us?”

  “The hotel?”

  “If you cut off a lot of those wings and that terrible kitchen.”

  “I never thought about it.”

  “I know it sounds silly and sentimental but I’d like to own the place I spent my honeymoon.”

  “Well,” he said. (No. Not live there. I don’t like it there. Too quiet, and far away. I don’t like the pinewoods, rustling all the time, even without a breeze.) “I suppose so.”

  “We could use it for a summer place. That point is really lovely. I’ll go ask Papa right now.”

  “You think he feels like talking business?”

  “Papa’s not going to let an accident upset him. Lamotta came in a few minutes ago.”

  “Fine,” Robert said. Could he say anything else? And began another cup of coffee.

  “Brother-in-law, how are you!”

  Margaret. He’d forgotten about Margaret. She twirled across the room and settled herself at the table. “You look sick, Robert.” She was wearing a light green slack suit that made her look like a child in her mother’s clothes. It was great for Carole Lombard, Robert thought, but it sure looked funny on a fat Italian girl. Anna would never have made that mistake, but then Anna could have worn the slacks and looked beautiful.

  “Look,” he said, “yesterday I was on my honeymoon, with nothing more to think about than whether we wanted to play croquet or tennis.”

  She grinned. “Aren’t you just a little glad?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Bet you were bored silly.” She pulled a lock of curly hair, stretched it out full length, and let it pop back into place.

  He said stiffly, “We liked it so much, we are trying to buy it.”

  She giggled her choking laugh. “You’re a kick, brother-in-law. So that’s why Anna went rushing to Papa.”

  “Lamotta was there earlier.”

  She raised her eyebrows. They were thick and bushy and almost met across her nose. “I might have known. You’d think they were a couple of fairies.”

  Robert looked disapproving.

  “Bothers you?”

  “No, damn it. Say anything you like.”

  “Lamotta is devoted.” She pursed her lips. “That’s for sure. The devoted lord marshal—see, I went to school. I got lots of references in my conversation.”

  “Try not talking.”

  “Robert,” she said, “let’s go sit on the front porch.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re both so stupid we haven’t got anything else to do.”

  They sat on the porch, and he decided that she looked a lot like Betty. He’d never noticed before, but it was in the shape of their faces.

  That hot June morning, rocking among the ferns, Robert found himself wondering about Betty. What did she do during the day? He’d never known. He’d only seen her at night.

  THEY DID not resume their honeymoon. After weeks of negotiation, the Old Man managed to buy the hotel at Port Bella and Anna was satisfied. She began methodically planning the rebuilding with notebooks and sketches.

  Robert went back to work. He now had lunch every day with the Old Man at Galatin’s. Overhead brass ceiling fans stirred the thick air lazily.

  “You getting gumbo again today?”

  “Yes,” Robert said.

  “I never learned to like Cajun food.”

  “I guess I’m a Cajun,” Robert said.

  “You sure look like a Cajun,” the Old Man agreed. “Fact is I don’t like poor people’s food. I don’t like gumbo and I don’t like red beans and I don’t like jambalaya.”

  Why had the word “Cajun” brought with it the smell of oily bayous and decaying shrimp shells? Robert said: “It tastes good when you’re hungry.”

  “Catfish used to taste pretty good to me once. Full of Ohio mud and I was damn glad to eat them.”

  “You get so you like it,” Robert insisted. “And then you keep on liking it all your life.”

  “You keep on liking it,” the Old Man said. “That’s your taste. … What time is it?” The Old Man carried a pocket watch—he had a dozen or so jumbled loosely in his dresser drawer. This one was new; on its cover was a blazing sun, done in rubies and diamonds.

  “You really like watches,” Robert said, “don’t you?” “That’s my taste,” the Old Man said. “Let’s go back to work.”

  ROBERT’S DAYS were neat and ordered. Every morning the Old Man’s limousine picked him up at seven o’clock, at 7:15 they picked up the Old Man, at 7:30 they walked into the office. Every day. Except Sundays, when he went to Mass with Anna. They were dusty sweaty summer days in the dense heat of a breathless river town. Electric fans buzzed from all corners. Anna’s white poodle puppy got caught in the big floor fan and bled bright red blood all over the blue Chinese rug. And the Old Man began a reorganization of his affairs, and formed Esplanade Enterprises, Inc., just to give Robert something to do.

  ROBERT WAS tired all the time, and feverish; his head ached, faintly and steadily. He felt strangely detached, as if he were really living next to himself, like an invisible shadow. Mornings when he walked to the car, there were two Roberts, step for step, coming down the brick walk. When he opened the door, two hands pulled at the handle. He even found himself keeping a little to one side, to make room for his shadow.

  Every morning he woke very early, burning with the heat of the double bed. He moved to the living room and fell back to sleep on the sofa. In July he developed huge red blotches of rash. Anna immediately installed two more ventilating fans—the whole house shook with their buzzing. Robert said, as he was supposed to, that he was much more comfortable. The blotches turned crusty white and scaled small flakes. And did not heal.

  One August morning, as he stood outside the Old Man’s store, delaying the start of his day, he caught sight of Betty. She was passing in a car; he was sure he recognized her. The next few mornings he waited at that same spot to see if she’d come again. She did not. Now and then, he’d dream about her, the same dream over and over again. She was standing in the basement doorway, in the shadow of a paper plant with leaves big as umbrellas.

  Maybe that was a memory and not a dream at all. He found it harder and harder to tell the difference.

  It often seemed to him that somebody else lived in his perfect little house. Somebody else went to work every morning and came home every night. Somebody else smoothed his wife’s body and felt the twisting spasm of love.

  But it was Robert who telephoned Betty, who said:
“I’ll be there at ten tonight.” Who stood in the dark and watched the shape of the giant paper-plant leaves against the lighter night sky. And waited until the door opened.

  Later, driving home, he thought: I have been married three months.

  Anna said: “You’re scowling.”

  “I’m just tired,” he said. “I’ll take a bath and get over it.” So he sat in the hot water, body emptied by Betty’s grasping, sucking muscles, and thought: I’ve been married three months. Imagine that. I’ve got a doll house and a doll wife. Look at her white robe, all embroidered with something or other.

  He stood and shook himself all over like a dog. Carefully, without bending, he wiped his feet on the bath mat. Then he shook himself again and walked out of the bathroom.

  “You do look cool,” Anna said.

  “I’m on my way to the kitchen, I think I’m hungry.” The drops of water were drying on his skin, tingling slightly as they cooled. Great. He found a salami in the icebox and sliced it, the smell of garlic spreading smoothly across the room. Anna came into the kitchen. Abruptly he dropped salami and knife and reached for her crisp white robe. He found himself laughing: maybe there was a charge in garlic after all, like the old women said. The muscles along his back and thighs tightened. Going home, baby, baby-o.

  HE WENT to the Old Man’s tailor now, and the Old Man’s shirtmaker. “Silk shirts,” the Old Man ordered. “Makes my skin creep,” Robert argued. “Silk shirts,” the Old Man repeated flatly.

  So here he was, being measured for shirts he didn’t like. Look at me, he thought as he left; look at me.

  It had begun to rain, the usual sudden September storm, sheets of rain and slashes of lightning. A taxi was passing slowly; Robert grabbed the door handle and swung inside, getting only a few sprinkles on the shoulders of his white linen suit. “I want to go to Esplanade—no, wait.” He opened the door quickly. A woman stood there, her hand still half raised, her lips forming into a disappointed O.

  Robert called: “Sorry if I grabbed. Which way are you going?”

  “To Canal and Burgundy.” Her voice had a faint accent.

  “I’ll drop you off, if you like.”