The Havana Room

by Colin Harrison

  "They signed you up, then?"

  "I play on their farm team first, then you eventually get your shot at the majors."

  She had edged even closer, dragging her tennis racquet in the green clay. "Will you make it?"

  He waited. "I don't know."

  "What do you think?"

  "I think I will. Yes."

  And this twenty-year-old British girl, who later Jay was to discover had already enjoyed a number of lovers, ranging from an Oxford don to a banker colleague of her father's, saw in Jay, I suspect, what was really there. Strength and decency and confidence and pure talent. It was not just his size and animal health, it was the openness of his face, and enough of this had survived to attract Allison Sparks years later, I realized. She was embittered and amused and skeptical, but she still saw it in him. As I had, too. He had been, standing in the sun on that tennis court, a beautiful boy-man. Eliza Carmody had known such men before, but he was pure and this intrigued her. It was new.

  "I think," Eliza Carmody said a little more softly, "that you should pick me up here tonight at seven o'clock."

  "Okay," he said.

  "You do want to, don't you?"

  "Yes," he'd answered, and his look went through her. It had been simple between them five minutes prior but it was no longer.

  Now Jay lifted the oxygen mask from its holder, fitted it against his mouth, and closed his eyes. The pulsometer atop the flow regulator blinked. I saw him inhale. He let the mask fall away.

  "We had two weeks together. I was over there every night. I knew she was going to leave and I knew I was going to report to the farm team. Basically we just spent every night together. I was nineteen years old, man, I was at the top of my game, I was in love."

  And then, he said. Their last night. Eliza called his house to say that her parents had decided to leave the next day, a change of plans. She had to see him that night, he had to sneak over. It was not far and he decided to run it, to keep in shape. His mother's car was an embarrassing little subcompact that only advertised how poor they were, and his father drove battered farm trucks and was possessive about them. So, better to run, and he did, slipping in past the tennis court, meeting her on the beach. She was ready with blankets and a picnic basket. They spent most of the night on the beach, and not for a moment did I not remember what it was like to be that age, to be torn by love and grief and desire, so I did not belittle this, I did not see it as any lesser than what happens to men and women later in their lives, which is heavier and filled with an awareness that one is not young anymore. Jay told me about that night and when I think of him with this young woman, I see them kiss agonizingly and then Jay force himself away. It's late. There's sunrise in a few hours. He must get home. He doesn't have a car, but no matter. His mind is full of the girl, and he feels strong. He knows he is strong enough to run the few miles from her house, after the sex and weeping and terrible parting. He knows this about himself without having to think about it. He is all arms and legs and lungs and he enjoys the sweat building on him, for he can walk the last quarter mile to his house and cool down. He pounds along the main road, enjoying the shadows, a bug catching in his mouth that he spits out, then turns the corner, nearing his father's field. He knows all the turns and dirt side roads, every one, and he sees the light of his house far across the field and wonders if he might be in trouble. Yes, he is probably in trouble. His father is expecting him to be up early, at 6 a.m., in fact. It's already well past two. Maybe he can get a few hours of sleep. So he will take a shortcut, striding over the rows of potato plants to save a few minutes, go directly. He feels the strength in his arms and legs, a pleasant cramp in his side, nothing he hasn't felt many times before during football practice, or running wind sprints on the basketball court. And the Yankees farm system coaches made him run for the physical, made him run the bases, run the outfield, and then a treadmill. They made him stand in against a practice pitcher throwing in the low nineties, they made him throw from a crouch from third to first to test his pure arm strength. He wants to play second base. Cal Ripken Jr. revolutionized the position. Ripken was six foot four. Second used to be for wiry little guys, now it can be big guys. He knows, however, that they might try to make him into a catcher. They've already told him this. He's got the size, especially in the legs. They put him on the leg press and he could stack seven hundred pounds and they said that's enough, you're still getting stronger, we know you played high school football, that's plenty enough, in fact. Pleased by it, writing the number down on their sheets. And they took him outside so he could put on the catcher's equipment and make the throw to second and he nailed it only two times out of ten. Not great. Sometimes the speed but not the accuracy, sometimes the accuracy but not the speed. Keep the arm up, come over the shoulder. Fucking bad habits, the old sidearm. And the equipment bothered him, the catcher's mask the most. The coaches didn't seem too worried. They knew he'd never played catcher, except back in Pony League. He had the size, they knew it. So he would agree to catcher but try to get some action at second. It occurred to him that he was thinking about baseball even though he'd just left her, which was a good sign. I think I'm in love with her but if I have baseball I can stand it, can stand missing her. They'd talked about him visiting her in London in the fall. Yes, she would wait. He worried that she would sleep with other men. He had already been with enough girls to know which ones were like that. But she had liked him, he could tell. And not too many other men would be playing pro baseball. At least there was that. Which did he love more? Baseball or Eliza? It was a stupid question. No it wasn't. They were different but they could be thought of in the same way. That was the thing. He saw it. His thing for her was as big as his thing for baseball. He needed both now. He thought it was just baseball but now it was her, too. Maybe she would come see him play. He would make the fucking team and send her a schedule, maybe a few clippings. Rainey goes 8 for 13 in three-game home stand. Fucking British with their cricket bats. She'd come over here and see American baseball. He pictured her in the stands. What's a fly ball? Why do they call it "fly"? That musical accent he loved. All those questions. He looked forward to the bus rides and the motel rooms. Of course it was tiring but it was exciting too. The best guys he'd ever played against and with. The best coaching, the best fields. Well, some of the university fields were pretty good. But the farm teams had their regular fans, the whole deal. It was good, good, good. A world away from the farm, from his parents. His father was a fucking bastard and his mother responded with open hatred, and Jay could escape them both by playing baseball. That was the beauty of it. The better he played, the farther away he would be. He kept the pace up as he turned onto his family's land. There'd be girls along the way. He didn't have to be faithful to Eliza yet. He loved her but there would be other girls. There had to be. It was too good. They'd done it twice that night, the second time much longer. He didn't worry about coming too soon. He'd learned to hold it. She'd been wet the first time and sort of sticky the second time, then got wet again as he was doing it. He reached down into his shorts and rubbed his finger against his groin, then brought it to his nose. That smell. You had to learn to like it and then you liked it a lot. He felt good. Stride was smooth, his shadow on the road rippling and synchronized, arm, leg, arm, leg, right through the rows of potatoes. The stitch in his side was gone. He had a tendency toward tightness in the calves but tonight they felt good, warm and loose.

  And as he thinks this, he smells something, a metallic tingle in his nose, then his eyes sting. Blinking, suddenly tearing up. He slows his speed to rub his eyes; then he cannot breathe. He slows to a walk, then stops, leaning over. A sledgehammer is pounding his chest. His eyes burn. He lowers his head, realizing he smells herbicide. Someone left the paraquat sprayer on. He falls to the ground and crawls. Which way is the wind blowing? he thinks. Usually it comes out of the southwest. But it can wheel around. Am I going farther into it or out the other side? He can't open his eyes. He is coughing terribly. His lungs fe
el swollen, heavy. He had the whole night sky in his lungs one moment and then the next he's sucking life through a flaming straw. He can feel his head getting stupid. I'm going to run as hard as I can in one direction, that's my only chance. And so he does, somehow forcing himself to his feet and then, eyes closed, mouth tight, lungs burning, he runs through the night, stumbling and staggering over the low potato plants. Perhaps he runs fifteen seconds, thirty, no more. No one can run with lungs filled with paraquat, and then— and then Jay is on the ground, vomiting, nose bleeding, lips foaming, and if there is a benevolent God or a being or a higher power, then the wind would shift right then.

  It doesn't.

  When he is found the next morning by one of the farmworkers, a middle-aged black man named Herschel, Jay is lying in the dirt, barely alive. The wind has shifted, but only later. A boy of nineteen, in his prime, lying at the edge of a potato field. His fingernails have turned black.

  You could think about that a long time, and I have, ever since Jay told me.

  "When I woke up in the hospital, like three days later, they had an airway down me—" He lay back on his bed. I noticed that he was playing with the dial on the oxygen machine. He breathed through his nose, easily now. The oxygenation meter said ninety-six percent. "I asked about my mother. They told me she was gone. Drove off. She probably had no idea I was in the hospital. She and my father had a terrible fight that night. I think she was angry that he wouldn't let me use the truck. He probably hit her. He really might have. She had this little old shit car, a Toyota, and took off. Didn't pack. Just fucking took off. Later my father admitted he'd hit her."

  "Where did she go?"

  "I don't know. I always figured she went to live with her father, he was some oil guy in Texas."

  "She never told you where she'd gone?"

  Before answering my question, Jay did a strange thing. He reached into his drawer and pulled out what looked like a cigar. It was a cigar. He bit off the end.

  "You going to smoke that?"

  "I wish."

  "You wish?"

  "I love the taste of cigars. I light one maybe once a month. One puff and that's it."

  I remembered the night I'd met Jay. "Is that the one Allison got for you in the Havana Room?"

  "The very same, man. I saved it for a special occasion."

  "Which is what?"

  "I'm going to tell you something I've never told anyone. Hey, open the windows, would you?"

  There were two, one facing the street, one over the stairs. I lifted them up and the cold night rushed in. Meanwhile Rainey went to the kitchen, ran the water, and returned with a glass nearly full. "Open the door, too."

  I did. He pulled out an inhaler and gave himself several more shots, and when he pulled it away, the medicinal mist of the stuff floated from his mouth.

  "Okay." He pulled the glass of water close, then lit the cigar. He blew air through it, making the tip glow, looked up at me, nodded, then puffed once, held the smoke in his mouth until his eyes widened, then released the smoke upward. It dissipated in the air from the windows and door so quickly I barely smelled anything.

  "That's good." He dropped the cigar into the water, making a short hiss, then closed his eyes and seemed to redream the smell of the cigar. His face reddened. He coughed violently and shot himself with the inhaler again. "All right… I'm all right. There. Fucking stupid, fucking suicidal." He coughed deeply but laughed. "One half puff and I'm a"— he coughed—"a mess." He sucked hard on the oxygen. "Stupid, but I love it. Lung tissue reacts so quickly. That was it. My indulgence, Bill. Once a fucking month for Christ's sake, one half puff." He put away the lighter in his drawer, coughed again, hard, and spat a brown glob into the trash.

  I got up to close the windows and door. "So, you were telling me—?"

  "Right. My mother drove off that night and I never saw her again, man." He stopped, his eyes considering the enormity of this, the implausible strangeness of it. "I asked my father a million times where she'd gone, and he was so fucked up by everything, sometimes he said she must have a boyfriend, sometimes he didn't know, sometimes he said she must've gone back to Texas. He said he called information down there, in Houston. He took a trip one time and I figured he went looking for her. That he knew and didn't tell me. Maybe he'd seen her with another man. But I wasn't sure. He wasn't well. When he was dying, he made me promise to tell her that he was sorry, that he had always loved her, that he— shit, he was a mess, he was weeping, he was fucked up. It's bad to see your father like that. His life came to nothing, he was a drunk and a fuckup and he never got over how one day he had a beautiful wife and son who was, you know, maybe going to play in the majors, maybe— only maybe, and then the next he has no wife and a son who can't even blow out a match."

  We sat there. I didn't have anything useful to say. I think it's possible to hate one's father yet also grieve for him, and this might have described how Jay felt. But I didn't give voice to the thought; instead I watched the compression device on the oxygen chamber rise and fall, while outside the room's tiny windows the Brooklyn night spun past.

  But in time Jay began to remember again, and now he simply talked into the room toward the ceiling, his voice not confessional— for a confession requires not only wrongdoing but also a listener willing to make a moral judgment— but duller than that, as if giving testimony in a long and intricate case, the points of which he had mastered and yet which he knew was probably of slim interest to anyone else. There is only a little relief in simply letting such a collection of facts unspool from oneself, but we all of us were once chimps chattering in the trees, desperate to be heard and understood, to find a language particular to the self, and in this Jay was no different.

  Within two months of his accident, he said, he'd regained the strength to get to England. His chances of playing professional baseball were now zero. The Yankees called after he hadn't reported, then received further details through his college coach. They sent a kind but brief letter wishing him well with his recuperation. Meanwhile he was spitting up buckets of phlegm every day, learning to use a nebulizer correctly. He could swing a bat weakly and he could throw off speed, but that was it. The shock was enormous, staggering. As was the fact that his mother had not yet come home. The only possible compensation would be to find Eliza Carmody. He'd written her, received one letter back. He did not tell her of the accident. He tried to call her, with no luck. So that fall he bought a ticket using the remains of his signing bonus money. He arrived at Paddington Station, rail thin, hair long, with almost no money, willing to live anywhere in London. He moved between neighborhoods and acquaintances, some benign, some not, the expectable grab bag of out-of-work models, would-be novelists, cannabis lay-abouts, abused seekers of truth, and piano-playing carpenters. That he did not understand the striations of English society meant that he was unencumbered by certain anxieties. And anyway, when you were an American in London, those things did not matter so much. The Brits liked the fact that you didn't understand, it was refreshing to them, or so they said. He found the London girls exciting and he wished he had more money with which to chase them. He found Eliza, he said. A house in Chelsea, on Tite Street. Ivy and black shutters. The parents were never home. Jay and Eliza were left alone. Her father was trying to rearrange the funding for the tunnel between London and Paris, the Chunnel. He was a little fat man with sausage fingers and almost no understanding of twenty-year-old girls. Jay saw him once at the end of the driveway and feared the man instantly.

  Eliza didn't seem happy to see him. She didn't seem anything, really. Discouraged, or tired, actually. She played tennis with a friend on the soft clay court behind her house while he watched. But she wasn't well and in the middle of a point she went to the bushes and vomited matter-of-factly. He was in love with Eliza, and when she told him that she was pregnant he felt shock and a small sudden pride. Are you sure? he asked. Of course, yes, of course I am, she said. Mine? My baby? Yes absolutely, who do you bloody think I am? she sai
d. They kept it secret for several weeks, but her mother, herself a former tall beauty, began to ask questions, and so with Jay present, Eliza told her mother. Instantly the parents were furious. They had plans for their daughter, plans that did not include a penniless, good-looking American who hung over park benches winded after a short walk.

  There followed quite a fight, with Eliza defiant of her parents' disapproval yet noncommittal toward Jay himself. She was, after all, from a wealthy family, and had no intention of marrying someone with no money. None whatsoever, end of discussion, no romantic illusions ever suffered for a moment in this house, Mr. Raintree, or what ever your name is! Finally Eliza's mother burst into tears and fled up the stairs, leaving her father to glare coldly upward at Jay. He understood that he was an intruder, and said he'd come for Eliza the next day; when he did, pressing the buzzer on the big green door early in the morning, she was gone. I'm sorry, her mother said, lips pinched in resolution. I shan't discuss it. He called the house almost one hundred times over the next two days and there was no answer, and then a male voice answered and said if he called again they'd have him arrested and deported. They knew where his apartment was, they would make it difficult for him, maybe they would have a go at him— just so that he remembered what's what— Mr. Carmody's bank had security people. Finally, Jay stood outside the house with a small backpack of food for three more days, leaving his station only to use the men's room in a pub half a mile away. At length the maid took mercy on him and came out and told him that the family was overseas, where exactly she wouldn't say. He might as well give up.