Mangrove Squeeze

by SKLA

  "No, Piney," said the patient Fred, wiggling his can of beer. "What do you sometimes wonder about?"

  Winter stars were wonderful too. The stars seemed closer then, they had a roundness, like they were shiny indentations punched in tin. Satellites etched their courses among the whirling constellations, and if you watched long enough, you saw them return in the exact same places.

  "I sometimes wonder," Pineapple said, "if you were in a spaceship, say out there by Orion, and you started going faster and faster, till you were going as fast as the light, and you turned your headlights on, would anything happen?"

  Fred sipped some brew, wiped his walrus moustache on his hand. "Fast as the light," he said, "you'd be squooshed."

  "Okay, but leave that on the side for now. The headlights come on? Yes or no?"

  Fred thought it over. "Middle a space, whaddya need headlights for?"

  Piney gave up on that one, fell briefly silent. They strolled. Off to one side, slabs of ancient rusted military fence tugged against their stanchions; up ahead, the unnatural shapes of flat-topped earthwork pyramids poked bluntly toward the sky. Piney started in again. "Fred, you think life is interesting?"

  "Interesting," said Fred. He scratched his ear. "I dig holes. I drink beer. Interesting is not the first word springs to mind."

  "I do," Piney said. "I think life is interesting."

  Fred guffawed. "Nothing happens to you, Piney. You sit on your ass and hold a fucking sign."

  "What happens, that's not what makes it interesting. What happens, that's really, like, beside the point."

  Fred didn't follow up on that, and Pineapple kept strolling, looked up past the fringe of mangroves. Way high up, so high that you could barely see the flashing of its wing lights, a plane was moving south to north; Piney decided it was coming from Peru and going, maybe, to Chicago.

  "Fred," he said, "d'you think people's faces change, d'you think they look different, when they're in love or something?"

  "Jesus Christ," said Fred.

  "Today I saw a woman go into a hotel down on Whitehead Street. She came out a few minutes later and she looked completely different."

  "Prob'ly got laid."

  "Coupla minutes, Fred. Don't make it crude. She came out, she had a glow."

  "Who gives a rat's ass?"

  "I thought that was interesting. This is what I'm trying to explain. Not what happens. Things like that. That's what makes life interesting."

  Fred polished off his beer, crushed the can and dropped it. "Piney," he said. "Being you, even for a minute—it must be a really odd experience."

  The Ukrainian busboy had a pale and doughy face, and he was still wearing the smock he'd worn at work. Originally crisp, almost medical, it was stained now with lobster juice and butter sauce and splotches of wine and smears of vinaigrette. The busboy smelled of detergent and grease, and he couldn't decide on a posture. One moment he was stiff, skinny shoulders back as if trying to look military, and the next he was scrunched and furtive, quailing.

  Finally, Ivan Fyodorovich Cherkassky said to him, "Stay still, Pavel. Are you a Ukrainian or a cockroach?"

  The busboy stalled in his squirming. It seemed to take a monumental effort, as if his skin was holding back a platoon of snakes and worms. He cleared his throat, said to the two old Russians who sat while he stood, "I come because I think you like to know. Twice already they are there together. One time lunch, now dinner. Hexpensive, I tell you. And always they are talking, talking, talking."

  Cherkassky turned his scooped-out doleful face toward his colleague. They were sitting across from each other on leather settees in Markov's living room. A fire was blazing in the fireplace and they were drinking cognac. It might have been Moscow except it was nearly the tropics. Markov waved his snifter casually, indulgently. He even smiled. "They are young," he said. "They like each other. Of course they talk, talk, talk."

  Cherkassky frowned, turned back to the busboy. "And all this talking, talking, talking. They talk of love? Of politics? Of business?"

  The busboy flicked up his unspeakable sleeves, interlaced his fingers. "Yes," he said.

  Cherkassky spanked the arm of the settee. "Which of these, fool?"

  The busboy hitched back his skinny butt, executed an appalling shallow bow. "Always I am clearing, running," he explained. "Salad plates. Butter. Cleaning, someone spills. I only hear a little now, a little later." He stood there fidgeting.

  Markov raised a fat hand, gestured him over. He reached into the pocket of his brocade smoking jacket produced a hundred dollar bill. He gave it to the busboy, then motioned him away with a gesture like pushing crumbs.

  When he was gone, Cherkassky said, "This worries me, Gennady."

  Markov swirled his brandy. "Like everything, Ivan." He paused, then claimed an old friend's prerogative to tease. "Still you are the fretting bureaucrat. Straight from Gogol you are."

  The thin man didn't smile. "For a newspaper she works. This I do not like."

  Markov snorted. "Newspaper? Business propaganda only. Selling restaurants, selling T-shirts, selling shnorkels."

  "Ink on pages," Cherkassky insisted. "Is a paper."

  "She is not journalist" protested Markov. "Only she sells adwertisements."

  Ivan Cherkassky put down his glass, slowly ran a hand over the lumpy hollow of his face. "Gennady," he said. "To you this boy he walks on water. You laugh, you pat his hand, you do not see. But I am telling you, this talking, talking, talking, it is bad."

  Markov waved his snifter. Fat in his maturity, goatish in his youth, he was no believer in disciplining appetite, arguing away desire. He said, "He wants to fuck her, Vanya. Can I tell him not to talk?"

  Cherkassky stared into the unlikely fireplace, watched yellow flames lick against the bricks. "Yes," he said with certainty. "You can."

  Chapter 8

  Aaron Katz swung slowly onto A-l A and tried to get his mind around the notion that he was bringing his old and slipping father on a play-date.

  A couple of evenings before, Sam had found a cocktail napkin in his pants pocket. Written on the napkin was a name and number, but Sam couldn't quite remember whose they were, or how the piece of paper had gotten in his pants. He'd put the napkin on his nightstand, hoping that it would catch his eye at some receptive moment and everything would click.

  And sure enough, he finally remembered Bert—the shiny hair, the ancient dog, the offer of companionship. He said to Aaron, "Can we call him up? D'ya think it would be okay to call him up? Would you bring me for a visit?"

  So they were driving now along the beach, toward the Paradiso condo. Palms leaned backward against a fresh east wind. Beachgoers danced over the thin imported sand that hid the native lacerating coral. Enormous freighters looked like bathtub toys as they rode the Gulf Stream, out beyond the reef. Sam and Aaron didn't talk because the only things they thought of were things they didn't want to say.

  Aaron was thinking: I wonder if he'll be all right, if he'll get confused and panic. What if he goes wandering off? He thought how nice it would be if his father had a friend, and he caught himself daydreaming guiltily about the things he could do if he had more time to himself.

  Sam was thinking: This having to be driven everywhere, accompanied—it was a nuisance. For all the many things that he forgot, he seldom forgot that he was in the way. A burden. His son worked too hard. Was lonely. Needed friends, a woman. Needed time to find those things. Maybe Sam could still discover something of his own, a place to go, a way to keep his dignity and his distance. It would be better for everybody.

  They reached the Paradiso complex—three long squat buildings cradling a pool and a putting green and tennis courts and a gazebo—a perfect little swath of Florida across the road from the Atlantic Ocean. Aaron parked. Father and son walked up to an iron gate and punched in Bert d'Ambrosia's number on the intercom. A buzzer buzzed and the gate swung open.

  Bert met them at the pool. He was wearing a mustard- colored linen shirt with big r
ough buttons made of bone, and he was holding his dog like the dog was a football. Everybody said a nice hello, but Aaron felt awkward, shy; felt, absurdly, like a parent at a prom. Eager to go, he said to his father, "So you'll call me later? The number's in your wallet."

  Bert said, "Don't expect him soon. What if we find a couple broads or something?"

  Sam said of his new friend, "A regular comedian."

  Aaron patted his father's shoulder then turned his back on the two gray men and the moribund chihuahua. But crazily, as soon as he began to move away, he found his steps were weighted down with grief. It was a brilliant sunny morning. Nothing was wrong, everyone was fine. But as he walked back toward the iron gate he just felt torn apart. Loss. A strange word. It seemed to mean an absence, something missing; but loss was also a presence all its own, a fanged and snarling monster ready at any moment to break its chain and snatch someone away.

  The condo gate swung open at Aaron's approach, started swinging closed again as soon as he had passed. It clicked shut with a terrible finality, like the school door on the first day of kindergarten. Aaron grabbed a deep breath to open up his throat. He thanked God he had no children of his own. He didn't know how anyone could stand the love and sorrow of doors clicking shut on both sides all at once.

  "Peter," Suki said, "how do you get into the database?"

  Peter Haas, the restaurant reviewer, looked up from his computer screen. He had lank sandy hair and owlish horn-rim glasses, and he'd been trying to decide whether a certain chocolate terrine was better described as ambrosial or celestial. He tried to look a little bit annoyed though he was relieved to be interrupted. "What do you want to look up?" he asked.

  Suki bit her lip, the upper one. She said, "Just, you know, in general. How to use it."

  "There's no category just-in-general." Peter said. "You've got to plug something in."

  Suki said, "Okay. Pick something."

  "You pick," Peter said.

  "Okay," said Suki. "How about... how about, um ... Russian Mafia?"

  "Russian Mafia?" said Peter, and he looked at her over the tops of his glasses. "Hm. Would we look that up under Mafia or Russian?"

  "This is what I'm asking you," said Suki.

  "Maybe just crime," said the restaurant reviewer. "Or organized crime."

  "Look, how do you get started?" Suki asked. "I mean, just get into the system?"

  "Might still be under Soviet Union," Peter said. "Breakup of. Or even Cold War, aftermath of."

  "Maybe we should start with something simpler," Suki said.

  "Could be cross-referenced," Peter said, "with individual crimes—extortion, murder."

  Suki leaned lower over Peter Haas's chair. "All I really want to know—" she began. Then she straightened up and said, "Oh shit. I smell Donald."

  The restaurant reviewer sniffed the air, which second by second was becoming fouled with the approach of a cheap cigar. The publisher's heavy step could now be heard on the metal grid-work of the outside stairs.

  Suki said, "Can we talk about this later?"

  Peter said, "But—"

  "Later, Peter, please? You'll take me through it step-by-step?"

  The restaurant reviewer shrugged agreement.

  Suki sniffed. "That stink," she said. "Do you think it would be more exact to call it rank, or putrid?"

  "Uncle, I am not a child," Lazslo said.

  He'd been summoned to Key Haven for lunch, but Key Haven generally took away his appetite. He poked at his blini and looked across the seawall to the Gulf.

  "Put more sour cream," Gennady Petrovich Markov advised. "You hardly have any sour cream."

  "I have enough," said Lazslo.

  Markov frowned, took another hefty dollop for himself. He watched it slide fatly off the silver spoon, then returned to the business at hand.

  "No," he agreed. "You are not a child. You are a fine young man, and like every fine young man you are following your schwantz, and your schwantz sees only half the picture because it only has one eye."

  "What picture?" Lazslo said. "I'm dating this woman. That's the only picture."

  "For a newspaper she works," said Markov.

  "And I run a chain of T-shirt shops. What's the problem?"

  Markov put down his fork. An instant later it was in his hand again, like fork and hand were magnetized. Pondering, he yet managed neatly to fold another buckwheat crepe. "Lazslo. You don't want to admit you understand, but I know you understand. Of all the women you could have. Ivan Fyodorovich is very concerned."

  "Ivan Fyodorovich!" Lazslo said, and he launched into a manic pantomime of the scoop-faced Russian's tireless paranoia. He pulled his brows together, dropped his neck, vulture-like, between his shoulders. Eyes darting, he glanced nervously behind himself, then underneath the table. "Ivan Fyodorovich! Are you hiding? Are you listening?"

  Markov smiled even as he shook his head in disapproval. "Luzhka," he said, "a real American you have become. You think everything is joke."

  "Uncle, most things are."

  "And some few things are not," countered Markov. "For your own good, Luzhka, please stop seeing this—"

  Lazslo was pushing some food around his plate. "You're just a little bit too late," he interrupted.

  "Late?"

  Lazslo tried to stifle a triumphant grin. He was several years too young to manage it, and a hint of a lubricious smile broke through his irritated look. "I called her up this morning. She's coming to my place for dinner."

  "Your place?" said Markov. A thrum of vicarious lust pulsed through him, he reached across the table and lightly squeezed the muscles of Lazslo's forearm. Then he took another blini from the platter and shoveled up another wad of sour cream. "So tonight's the night you—"

  "Don't jinx it, Uncle," Lazslo said.

  Markov chewed some pancake, wiped his fat lips on a napkin. "Okay, Luzhka, so you fuck her once—"

  "How about twice?" said Lazslo.

  "Then have more blini," Markov said. "As many times you like. But please, after tonight you call it off. Promise me."

  Lazslo looked toward the green water, the distant mangrove islets floating on their silver nests. He didn't promise. Instead, he said, "Don't I always, Uncle? Right afterwards, I almost always call it off."

  Chapter 9

  Aaron Katz had a million things to do, but the relief of having his father taken care of for a while somehow broke his focus, and he gave himself over to the rare delicious pleasure of goofing off. There were shrubs to be planted, but he didn't want to plant them. There were red and black and yellow wires poking out of walls, needing to be sorted, but he didn't want to sort them, didn't want to jump at unexpected sparks. He sat down on the porch swing meant for guests, and for some few minutes tried to imagine he was a guest himself, enjoying the blessing of an uncluttered mind.

  Thoughts of contractors and invoices and canceled reservations fell away, and what was left when the annoyances receded was a vivid but ambiguous recollection of Suki Sperakis kissing his cheek.

  A mystery, that kiss. So sudden it might almost have been an accident, a spasm rather than a choice. Was it sexy or just sisterly? An offer of more and slower kisses or just part of her apology, a conciliation between new friends? If it was nothing more than friendly, why would she have rung the bell?

  But how available was she, really? There was that cultivated toughness to contend with. Then too—Aaron recalled in spite of himself—there was that other involvement. Not romantic but getting deeper. Whatever that meant. This Lazslo person, this big-shot in a dinky little town. He probably had a fancy spotless car. Pastel silk shirts, perfect for the climate, casual but pricey. Got sucked up to in restaurants, was given the best tables. Had all the things, in short, that Aaron used to have, and now told himself, maturely, he could do without. He told himself they were jerky things, trivial, he didn't need them anymore; and he hoped like hell he really meant it.

  He rocked on the porch swing, tried to claw his way free of the
slime of jealousy. He steered his mind back to Suki herself. Her eyes. Things she said. Plate of macaroni.

  He found himself on his feet and heading into the office. The piece of paper with her number on it was in a cubbyhole behind the desk. Stiff-legged, his chest a little tight, he was moving toward it, but not directly. He arced, he dodged, he was circling the phone number like it was something dangerous—a ticking suitcase, a big dog sleeping. Finally he slipped behind the desk and seized it.

  There were two phone numbers on the little piece of paper. Aaron tried the home phone, got an answering machine, didn't leave a message. At the second number a bored male voice answered, said, "Island Frigate." Aaron asked for Suki and she soon picked up the line.

  "Suki? Aaron Katz."

  For a second she was flustered. She'd been reading on a computer screen about the Russian Mafia. Criminal chaos in a society come unmoored. The violent disorder that had all along underlay the veneer of Soviet authority. The switch to peaceable, mild Aaron Katz was a little befuddling, and she said a somewhat distracted, weak hello.

  Aaron didn't know what to make of it. Was this the same bold woman who had rung his bell? Tentative in turn, he said, "I was wondering if I could take up your offer on my offer."

  Suki said, "Excuse me?" No one knew how or if the Russian Mob was organized. If there was a mastermind, he was very, very brilliant. More likely there were a thousand separate cells grabbing shreds of wealth and force...

  Aaron said, "Will you share a meal with me sometime?"

  In Russia it was looting on a national scale. As if the entire country was blacked-out and the police had gone away. There was nothing too big, too small, too sacred, too egregious to be stolen. Suki said, "Yes. I'd like that."

  There was a pause. She hoped he wouldn't ask her for tonight; she didn't want to have to tell him she was busy. Nor did Aaron want her schedule, clearly fuller than his own, thrown up in his face. He played it safe and gracious. "When's good for you?"