by Ronald Malfi
“You can lose yourself in them,” Emma said soothingly, meaning the fireworks.
“You certainly can,” he agreed.
“The colors remind me of a dream,” Emma said.
“We should leave now,” Isabella said.
“The display isn’t over yet,” he said.
Isabella pulled a playful frown. “My Nicholas, it is very bad luck to stay till the end of the fireworks. One must always leave before the display is finished. Haven’t you ever heard?”
He shook his head.
“It is customary.”
“I’ve never heard it.”
“Well,” she said, “it is the truth.”
No one questioned Isabella’s authority. Arm-in-arm-in-arm, the three of them walked back out across the dunes toward the lighted, glistening bulwark of bistros down along the boulevard. A startling white flash directly above them reconfirmed the existence of the Harbour Town lighthouse. On the curb, taunted by a demanding horde of preteens, a frayed and grizzled black man strummed a ukulele while sitting cross-legged before an empty Folgers can. Behind them, around them, more onlookers cheered at the fireworks display.
They claimed a cozy, nondescript bistro just off the main boulevard, and a table adorned with tapa, paper towels, and newspapers. The front of the bistro opened into a wide dining area and looked out upon the busy boulevard. Outside, a gathering of bystanders got into it following a few drunken words. Further down the promenade, on the heels of a quick side-to-side glance, a teenage hoodlum proceeded to empty his bladder into the open window of a 1957 Chevy. Several couples strolled with their arms around each other. The rear of the bistro—the taproom—spilled out onto the beach, and all the doors were propped open. A carpet of loose white sand unfurled across the taproom floor. By the bar, a three-piece zydeco band performed while a number of inebriated wayfarers, claiming the open floor as Germany had once claimed territory, danced until sweat burst from their skin and their shirts clung wetly to their backs. Despite the open doors facing the beach, the bistro’s odor was an overriding blend of bad cologne, bare feet, and burnt sawdust.
Pushing his way through the dancers, Nick went to the bar and ordered a bottle of pinot gris and three glasses. Seated beside him on a stool, an attractive older woman smiled in his direction.
Nick nodded. “Hello.”
On a waft of gin, the woman said, “Save the sea turtles.”
“All right.”
“No,” insisted the woman. “It’s important.”
“I’ll bet,” he said.
The wine came and he carried it back to the table. Emma and Isabella were already deep in conversation, laughing and giggling behind cupped hands. Tanned, handsome men had come sniffing around, and were now occupying all the previously open chairs around their table.
“I would have gotten more glasses,” Nick said, setting the bottle and three glasses on the table.
“We’re not drinking,” one of the handsome men said, holding up one hand. There were three of them, and they all could have been related, could have been brothers. They wore pressed oxford shirts and boating loafers, their skin bronze from countless days beneath the sun.
“We don’t drink when we’re on the water,” said the second man.
“You’re in a bar,” Nick informed him.
The first man laughed. It was a single, short burst of sound, and he did not open his mouth very wide to accommodate it. As if he did not want to stretch his face out of shape. “We’re heading back out tonight,” he said.
“Very nice,” Nick said.
“They were the ones shooting off the fireworks,” Emma said. One of the men had slid next to her. In Nick’s seat.
“Really?” Nick said. “Isn’t that something…”
“Get up, Joseph,” one of the men said to his friend, his brother. “Let the man sit back down.”
“We’re stealing his women,” Joseph said, but did not appear to mean anything by it. He looked a little shiftier than his comrades and, as if testament to this, boasted the threat of what, in a few hours’ time, would turn into a perfectly solid black eye. Unfettered, Joseph stood and disappeared without hesitation into a wedge of dancers.
Nick sat, uncorked the wine, and filled all three glasses.
“You’re Nicholas?” one of the men said. “Nick? Yes?” He extended a hand and Nick shook it. “Leslie Hansen.” He nodded toward the remaining doppelganger. “This is Ben.”
“Cheers,” said Ben. Uninterested, he was sucking the life out of a Pall Mall.
“We’ve met your wife and your girlfriend,” Leslie Hansen said, “and now we’ve met you. The circle is complete.”
“To the circle,” Emma said, holding up her glass.
“The circle,” Isabella said, and met Emma’s glass with her own. They drank.
“What is it you do, Nick?” Leslie Hansen asked. He was the one sitting next to Emma. The first three buttons of his oxford were undone, exposing the freshly shaved cascade of his brown chest.
“I’m a painter.”
“No joke? Wow. Hey, that’s something. What do you paint?”
“Paintings,” Nick said.
“Oh, yes,” said Hansen. Nick could tell the man was sitting there, deciding if he was being played with or not. “Too funny.”
“The hell happened to your arm?” Ben said.
“Nicholas was in the war,” Isabella said. “He was fighting the crazies and sand-monkeys over in Iraq.”
“Well,” Hansen said. “How about that? Did you just get back?”
“Yes.”
“How about that? What was it like over there?”
“Hot.”
“I’m sure of it. What were the people like?”
“Angry. With guns.”
Leslie Hansen got the hint. “Oh, sure. Sure.” He pointed his chin at Emma’s cleavage. “Do you like boats?”
“Oh,” Emma said, “I think they’re wonderful.”
“Ever been on a boat?”
Emma shook her head. “No.”
“We’ve got a great boat. We call her Kerberos.”
“I thought you were supposed to name boats after women,” Emma said.
“This could be true,” Hansen agreed, “but you’d first have to find the right woman.”
“Oh,” said Emma. “All right.”
“How about you?” Hansen said, leering over at Isabella. “Do you like boats?”
“Boats are for children,” Isabella informed him. “Didn’t you know? Weren’t you told?”
Hansen laughed. Beside him, smoking casually, Ben raised a single eyebrow but remained disinterested for the most part.
Joseph returned gripping a liter bottle of twelve-year-old Chivas Regal in one mitt while balancing a stack of rocks glasses in his other. Somewhat clumsy, he set the glasses and the scotch on the table, thumping his knee against Nick’s chair as he did so. Despite the men’s declaration that they did not drink when going out to sea, Joseph seemed to be doing quite all right for himself.
“I heard something about the war,” Joseph blurted. “Someone was in the war?”
“Pour the drinks,” Ben said.
“He’s a fool, that Joseph,” Leslie Hansen said to no one in particular, and intercepted the liter bottle before Joseph could make a dive for it. “You’re a fool, aren’t you, Pygmalion?”
“I can certainly be a fool,” Joseph agreed.
Hansen opened the bottle, poured. Looking at Nick, Hansen said, “You’ll have some, won’t you, champ?”
“All right.”
“We should drink absinthe,” Isabella spoke up from her side of the table. For whatever reason, this made Emma break into laughter, which she tried without resolve to stifle with the heel of one hand. “We should get muddy with it.”
“I heard something about the war,” Joseph repeated. He seemed in ignorance of everyone else. Unseated, half-propped against the wall just above their table, Joseph was the recipient of numerous thuds against h
is back as dancers, no doubt drunk in their own right, continued to run into him like a turnstile. The collisions, however, never seemed to register with either party.
“Nick here was in the war, Pygmalion,” Leslie Hansen told him, then turned to Nick. “Let’s drink to you, champ.”
“That’s all right,” Nick said. “Let’s drink to something else.”
“Something else,” Hansen muttered.
“I think I’ve suddenly lost my personality,” Emma marveled from her seat. Without anyone’s knowledge, Leslie Hansen had somehow made his way closer to her. Even pouring the drinks, he had managed to bring one arm up and behind her, resting it on the top of the booth.
“Let’s drink to the sea turtles,” drunken Joseph with the black eye suggested. “They’re trying to save the sea turtles on this island, you know. It’s an epidemic. Wait—is that—is that right? Well, whatever it is, they’re dying, these sea turtles. Being poached, their flippers cut away. Goddamn shame, is what it is.”
“You’re something else, Pygmalion,” Hansen said.
“Why do you keep calling him that?” Emma asked finally.
“Well,” Hansen said playfully, “it’s quite a personal story for old Joseph, here. Isn’t it, Joseph?”
“Quite personal,” Joseph said.
“He may not appreciate us talking about him and his personal stories,” Hansen went on.
“Not appreciated,” Joseph agreed.
“Oh come on!” Emma pleaded. “You can’t just call someone a name like that then not tell about how he got it!”
“The lady wants to hear it, Pyg,” Hansen said, shifting his eyes toward his drunken buddy. “Would you like to tell her, or shall I?”
“Christ,” Joseph muttered, “I can’t even remember it no more…”
“He’s got an infatuation with the inanimate,” Ben said through pursed lips. His cigarette bobbed. “That’s the long an’ short of it.”
“That’s true,” Leslie Hansen said. “You see, Joseph here was engaged to a young Navajo woman when he was still in school. They were very deeply in love. It was romance to the point of obsession. Old Joseph lost himself a little.”
“What happened?” Emma asked.
“She died,” Hansen said. “She was killed by a drunk behind the wheel of an enormous Cadillac.”
“It was a bus,” Ben announced.
“Was it? I thought it was a Cadillac. Joseph?”
Joseph only shrugged.
“Bus,” Ben maintained.
“Anyway,” Hansen continued, “ever since her death, if he’s been drinking too much, Joseph will seek out a wooden Indian figurehead and attempt to woo her. It’s quite a sad display. When we first met Joseph, Ben and I, he was in the basement of a bar, propped up against a life-sized carving of an Indian squaw, hell-bent on buying her a margarita. When we approached him, he was in the middle of asking her age.”
“Leslie suggested he cut her open and count her rings,” Ben said.
Both Emma and Isabella laughed. Joseph—Pygmalion—laughed, too, although it was quite apparent that he had only comprehended a slim portion of what had been said. He seemed dangerously on the verge of total fadeout.
“That’s some story,” said Emma. To Joseph, she said, “Does it still hurt that she’s dead?”
“Oh, I doubt she feels a thing,” Joseph responded.
The zydeco band concluded their up-tempo number and the dancers cheered. Someone shouted a request—it was impossible to decipher what it was—and the band counted the beats and struck up the song.
“I’d really like to toast you, Nick,” Hansen went on, turning away from the women and looking as though he desired to administer a swift and brotherly clap to Nick’s forearm. The man would not relent.
“It isn’t necessary.”
“You’ve risked your life for the welfare of this country,” Hansen said. “Of course it’s necessary.”
“We don’t have to toast anything at all,” he told Hansen. “There’s nothing wrong with just drinking the stuff.”
“He’s trying to be amiable, friend,” Ben, who had not spoken directly to Nick thus far except for the comment about his arm, suddenly piped up.
“Ben,” Hansen said quickly.
“Drink-drink-drink,” Isabella said. “A toast to sea turtles!”
“Sea turtles!” Joseph crooned, and was the only member of the party to inhale his drink.
His eyes on Hansen, Nick swallowed half his scotch. It was room temperature, which made it less smooth going down. But when it settled in his stomach, he felt the familiar blossom of warmth comfort him, resign him.
Hansen held out a hand to Emma. “Dance?”
“Oh,” she said, and there was a slight hesitance following the way she automatically brought her hand up to meet his. She did not lay it fully in his palm but, rather, kept her fingers hovering over his, afraid of the electrical current that ran through him. “Well, I don’t really see why—”
Reaching across the table, Nick took her hand. To Hansen, he said, “I’m sorry, I promised my wife the first dance.”
“Wonderful,” Hansen said, falsely grinning.
Nick ushered Emma to the crowded dance floor. The other dancers were moving wildly, as the music was upbeat and with heavy percussion, but he held her close and up against him. One hand at the small of her back. His other hand seemed out of place. Awkwardly, he held it away from his body, uncertain where to put it or what to do with it, until Emma muttered, “Here,” and placed it against her hip. She moved with him.
“I did promise you,” he said as they danced. He knew it only sounded like an excuse for the jealousy he had exhibited back at the table.
“Let’s just dance.”
“Isn’t this what you wanted?”
She did not answer.
“Emma?”
“I don’t know, Nick. None of this is what I wanted.”
They danced.
“I’m a clumsy dancer,” he said.
“You’re fine.”
“Would you prefer to dance with him?”
“Now why would you say that?”
“I don’t know. It seemed like you wanted to dance with him. You seemed to find him entertaining.”
“I find circus clowns entertaining, too. That doesn’t mean I want to dance with them.”
“Because I can take you back to the table, if you like,” he said.
Surprisingly, she laughed. “Goddamn you, Nick.”
They did not wait for the music to end before going back to the table. Hansen had slid closer to Isabella while Joseph had crept up and bookended her on the opposite side. Isabella looked bored. “We were just talking about the war,” she said as Nick and Emma approached.
The comment seemed to disturb Emma. “What is it with the damn war? Why does everyone feel the need to talk about the damn war?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. Isabella and I were just discussing Spain’s role in the war and in dealing with these terrorists,” Hansen said. There was a showman’s apology to his tone. He was quite the politician. “I was commending her country for pulling out of the whole affair.”
“I have nothing to do with my country,” Isabella said coldly.
“The whole thing is barbaric,” Ben said. He tapped a finger on the rim of his glass. “Spain did the noble thing, pulling their troops.”
“Spain pulled their troops because a group of extremists blew up a train,” Nick said. For whatever reason, his eyes were on Isabella when he said this.
“Spain pulled their troops, friend, because it was the thing to do,” Ben admonished. “Unlike this bully of a country, this U.S. of A., storming villages, picking on poor, helpless bastards, shooting up mosques with machine guns and bombs…”
“I wasn’t aware you had been over there fighting,” Nick said. “What outfit were you with?”
Ben sipped his drink, looked down at it as he set it on the table, then pretended to find interest
in his cuticles. “I don’t have to be over there firsthand to know it takes a bunch of schoolyard bullies to blow up a mosque.”
“It is a bunch of cowards who hide in a mosque in the first place. And I’m not your friend.”
Those words paved the way for a simmering silence. Then, grinning like a magician about to perform his much-rehearsed closing trick, Leslie Hansen stood from behind the table and put a hand on Ben’s shoulder. A waft of cologne rose with him. “We’re just talking, champ. No need for anyone to get their feathers ruffled. Just talk. We’ll cool it, if it bothers you that much.”
“It bothers me that much,” he said.
“How many innocent people you kill over there, Nick?” Ben said.
“I may just kill one right here, tonight,” Nick said back. “Although his innocence is questionable.”
“Punch him in the nose,” Joseph called to Ben from behind the table. “Punch the son of a bitch in the nose, Ben. Teach him the two-step.”
“How many medals they give you for shooting Iraqi women in the back?” Ben said.
“Come on,” Hansen said, urging Ben up from his chair. Ben’s face was stone-cold sober, his eyes the most lucid eyes Nick had ever seen. At his friend’s behest, though somewhat reluctantly, Ben rose from his seat, finished his scotch, and ran his thumb across his lips. “You, too, Pyg,” Hansen called to Joseph, who stood with much more difficulty than his friend.
“Adios,” Isabella cooed, not looking at any of them.
“My apologies,” Hansen said, nodding at Nick, and ushering Ben past him and through the crowd. Joseph quickly followed. Turning to watch them leave, Nick did not look back at the table until he saw the three of them file neatly out the door
“Sit,” Isabella told him.
He did not sit.