Little God Blues

by Jeffrey M Anderson

  “I guess you’ve heard a lot about me. Too much, probably. Is that it?”

  “Maybe, at first.”

  “If you’re gonna turn me down, I just want to make sure it’s the real me you do that to. You know, ‘me,’ and not some mirage.”

  “Mirage? What does this word mean?”

  “Chimera. That’s a Greek word, isn’t it?”

  “I think I have a good idea about you.”

  “You’re saying it’ll end in tears so why start?” Her lips tightened into a straight line. Bingo. “So okay, I’ll respect that. We’ll stop well short of tears.” Damn, that was a good line for a song—well short of tears.

  “Let me think about this.” Somehow I understood from her look that there was hope; more if I didn’t push my luck. We stood. We hugged, awkward, distanced like two hinged flaps. I smelled her hair, was it cinnamon or cloves? I’d have to bone up on my spices. Out of nowhere this certainty: I was way beyond intrigued. Yes, I wanted her. I would fight for her if I had to. My new quest.

  CHAPTER 8

  Hardcastle didn’t leave his bed now, breathing shallowly, his pale brow untroubled. It was the end game. As usual I talked to him about my case. No reaction, his eyes now inward. I wasn’t even certain he was aware of my presence in the room. I strung together sentences with ‘Francine McLain’ and ‘Lucian Gee’ in them like a fisherman jerking a fly across the water’s surface. No bites. Towards the end I did get one eye flicker when I said, “Well, I’m gonna go find something to eat.”

  That evening I went to a Mayfair restaurant at eight p.m. and asked for table eleven. I had wheedled an NE1 dinner out of Neeta. Not with her, but a lady member from her list. It had been a theme in our phone discussions: me asking, her pointing out that NE1 was closed. That dinner request was the one needle I found that gave me some leverage with my pleasant, untouchable NE1 contact. Then one day, out of nowhere, I asked and she acceded. My request had been more about leverage, less about learning about an abandoned club, so, to an extent, my bluff had been called.

  I followed the hostess down three steps into the main room, all white table cloths, intent diners, a smoked glass mirror taking up most of the far wall, a ledge there holding two huge vases full of flowers.

  The table was at the street end, one of the few that avoided that long wall mirror. I pulled out my notebook, pretending to work on a blues song I had been dabbling with. I could play with it, tighten a line here, firm up a rhyme there. I slipped into actual progress, time passed and a woman was standing before me. She was older than me, later thirties. Steady hazel eyes, easy smile, chestnut brown hair worn simply down to her shoulders. Pleasant, confident, clear-eyed. From her looks I would have guessed TV presenter.

  Our host helped her into her seat. I wondered what the etiquette was. So far my “date” hadn’t acknowledged me, other than a slight nod. Settled now, she placed her hands on the table and came to my eyes with a sunny, calm look. I waited: the cues would have come from her. Had she been briefed? Told this was my first time? Did we give out made-up names? Real ones? She kept that look for longer than felt comfortable, like a conductor waiting for a random chorus of coughing to settle.

  She dug an envelope out of her purse. “Here,” she said, handing it to me. It was heavy coarse quality paper, cream, no address, just the date, time, table number and the name of our restaurant. I opened it, looked at a simple cream sheet, no heading. It read: male as father; female as run- away teenage daughter.

  What?

  It took me a long moment to understand my date needed to see the sheet. I handed it to her, watched her scan it hungrily, then fold it just so, place it on the table like a show card in poker.

  As this happened the waiter arrived to take our pre-dinner drink order. My date ordered a coke. I scaled back my wine order from bottle to large glass.

  I went for a good all-purpose opener. “We ought to do this more often.”

  “Often? You never had time for me before,” she held that for a moment, then, “Daddy.”

  Man, that sent a shiver down my spine. The exact wrong role, overtones of too many things, too much static, too much noise. This confident fully adult woman playing a teenager. Surreal. And me? At thirty-one, it was just about possible to have a teenage daughter. Damn. I tried for her eyes now. How serious was she with this game? Very, apparently.

  “You’ve always been important to me. You know that.” I said.

  “Important? That’s a business word.” She took a sip of her Coke, eying me over the rim. Nicely played: she got that foundation blush of young vulnerability covered over by a tentative defiance.

  “Important heart-wise.” I said.

  “Our-town.” Said as if one word.

  “Our-town, what?”

  “It’s like, a play? A small town in America. I was in it?” Withering sarcasm.

  “Okay, I was in…” I fluttered my hand here, “New York that week. These things happen.”

  “You were in fucking Brighton! Brighton! Fifty fucking minutes and you’re back in London! How hard can that be?”

  Too loud, people were looking. I mean, let ‘em, except it was all about my false guilt. If there’s one thing that revs my motor it’s being falsely guilty. Okay, lesson one: how she had taken Brighton, and nailed it down as a fact. I had no choice now but to follow that “reality.” There was no point getting into a “was not/was too” playground argument.

  “It was only a small part.” I don’t know why I said that. Call it an instinct for drama.

  I watched her pick up her Coke, consider it, then arc it towards me, hitting me full in the face. All of it. Cubes and all.

  “You have no idea how many lines I had to memorize. Lines, lines, lines…‌you know what that means? I was one of the fucking leads!”

  “Stop swearing. It doesn’t become you,” I said, fumbling the cubes out of my lap while mopping my face with a linen napkin, too starched to be absorbent. A forty-something woman at the next table was telegraphing her severe displeasure at our drama, and at me. Meanwhile, one of the other waiters was taking care of the cubes on the floor.

  “Don’t tell me what to do. You have no authority over me.”

  “I am your father.” Man did that sound wrong, said to a woman older than me. Well, I had asked for this dinner; I had better keep it going. “I guess I’m asking for another chance.”

  “Another chance? When was the first?”

  The waiter was back for our order.

  “I’m not hungry.” My “daughter” pouted.

  “Order something just for show. Humor me.”

  “That’s, like, so wasteful.”

  I sent the waiter away.

  “No more so than eating and giving it up in the bathroom,” I said.

  “That’s the other one.”

  Another fact to deal with. They were like overturned chairs to slow me, chasing her down.

  “I’ll tell you what. I’ll quit my job,” I started, kind of giving up at this point. “We’ll go live on a…‌a…a houseboat in Amsterdam, get stoned together, get to know each other. How’s that?”

  “What about Mum?”

  “You’ve always been more important to me. I’ve always loved you more.”

  “Your ‘more’s’ not much.” She was twisting her intertwined fingers into new knots. It was part of NE1 I hadn’t anticipated, how part of you could sit back and enjoy a good performance. Thoughts of performance reminded me we hadn’t got to the main event in the letter. Yeah, it would have to come from me.

  “Speaking of your mother—okay, I’m gone a lot—but how hard is it on her, you running away like that?”

  “It’s not about her; it’s not about you. It’s about me.”

  “What is?”

  The waiter was back. We weren’t ready to order. The whole restaurant routine defined a time period much longer than I wanted. I scanned the menu and ordered. She was on her own, in character
or out of it. She copied my order.

  “Did you ever run away from home?” she asked. From the inflection, it wasn’t at all clear whether it was her character or the adult ‘her’ that was asking. Which made it unclear how I should answer.

  “No,” I answered, truthfully. Left it at that.

  “I don’t believe you.” She brought enough lack of confidence, not looking at me, to show this was her character talking.

  I said, “You run away for two reasons. One: it’s so bad at home that anything’s better. Two: to draw attention to yourself. Because you’re not getting enough—attention. I didn’t have either of those problems.”

  “Whereas me?”

  “We’ve already been through this. That’s why I’ve offered you the houseboat. It’s a symbol of—I don’t know—cramped togetherness.”

  “So we’ll both run away. Mum? Your job?”

  A chill went through me, raising the hairs on the back of my neck. Out of nowhere came something that had never occurred to me. What if my father had taken me with him back to the old country? An act as redeeming as it would have been awful. Something in me snapped. I couldn’t go on with this game. It had been interesting, the way each side placed facts like hammered-in stakes. The way you had to invent a biography then work forward and backward from that to sketch your character. Time to kill this sorry game; do that by raising the stakes.

  “Look,” I started, pausing to signal a change of tone. “Look, I probably should have told you this before. You’re old enough now. I’ve been a lousy father, I know that. I have been away far too much. You must understand, though, that my interest in you is not as biological as it should be.”

  She shrieked. A room-filling, reverberating emanation of pain and shock. What was it Ravenhall had said about women being such extraordinary liars? I can’t begin to describe how utterly genuine that shriek sounded.

  It was just after the scream that a couple approached us in a we-can’t-help-ourselves shuffle. Another of those “aren’t you Jim Shalabons?”

  I sprung out of my chair and met them. “Look, she’s had some bad news. So, yes, I’m Jim Shalabon. Can we leave it at that? Okay?”

  They were persistent. The wife really would appreciate an autograph, which meant fishing in her purse for a pen and something to write on. The nearby diners witnessed my elevation to celebrity. I was no longer some anonymous schmuck having a bad dinner. Great.

  My date’s thin, elegant hands were clasping her temples, head down, shoulders like an idling engine. Now her left hand pulled at a clump of her chestnut hair. I noticed her ring finger, the whiter skin, the indentation where her wedding ring should be. The waiter arrived with our appetizers. A long way to go yet.

  I remained silent, slowly cutting my asparagus vinaigrette. I was half-finished when she finally lifted her head, calmer. She said, “You can’t know that. Your seed was in the mix.”

  What? No teenager says stuff like that. The damn woman was playing outside the box.

  “My what was what?”

  “You’re my father, all right. I can tell by the way I hate myself. For how wrong it was. For the way I want to scrub you out of me.”

  Oh no, she wasn’t going down that road. Here was a stake I needed to grab from her before she brought the hammer down. I have never understood what some men see in young girls. To me it’s sick. That court case in Ohio about a girl I had never seen. So, no, we weren’t going there.

  “Well, I’m no actor.” I held that for its double meaning. “That’s why I couldn’t go to your play. It must have been him you got that from.”

  “If that was true I would have been good. You didn’t read the reviews.”

  I had finished my asparagus. My date pushed hers away after a few bites. A diet forced on her by her role.

  “I’m serious about quitting my job. We’ll have to sell the house. Downsize. We won’t be able to afford your horse. We’ll have to take our holidays in Cornwall, not the Med. Some days it might not rain. We’ll be poor, but happy.”

  “Poor and happy are mutually exclusive.”

  Damn, she did it again. “What kind of teenager says ‘mutually exclusive’?”

  “An intelligent one.” It wasn’t clear at this point whether she was in role or not.

  “Intelligence. Another trait you didn’t get from me.”

  Our main course arrived, rack of lamb. I had ordered mine to match my Rioja. There followed a tacit time-out. We ate in silence, ignoring each other. My date ate out of character, with the polished manners and easy etiquette of long practice. At several points she even “borrowed” my wine glass, not looking at me when she did that. A faint smile, though. After a long, quiet time I watched her dab her mouth with her napkin, fold it just so, then place it on the table.

  “Daddy?” Now she was soft, pleading, vulnerable. She brought her eyes up to mine from downturned head, three notches short of chewing her fingernail. Now what? “I know you’ve been keeping away from me.” Now she turned her head up, met my eyes, the kind of shaky defiance there that has the head vibrating, the voice quivering. “It was only one time. If I swear it never happened, if you do the same. We’ll erase it from our memories. It won’t be true anymore. It will be like before.”

  “Oh, no! I don’t want to listen to such…‌lies.”

  “It was nice. To have so much of your…‌attention.”

  The waiter arrived. We ordered espressos, waiting while he took the plates away.

  “It hurts so much that you have abandoned me. You can’t imagine what it’s like to have a father who turns his back on you like that.”

  “I am not your old man. I’m not anyone’s old man.” I didn’t realize how loud I said this until I saw the other diners, the sudden pauses, some staring at their plates, willfully ignoring my outburst. I was having problems catching my breath. I needed fresh air, space, ideally lots of it between me and my antagonist. I got up, took out my wallet, and tossed all my cash on the table. Too much was just fine right now.

  “So…‌you’re running off as usual. You don’t know how much that hurts.”

  “This is bullshit! No one’s running out on anyone,” I said as I started to run out on her. “I’m sorry. I’m not right for your club. I can’t tell you how proud that makes me.” I left her at the table and walked away. The fake father abandoning the fake daughter, but, damn it, a large part of it felt real enough.

  I had to wait while a hostess got my overcoat. It was near freezing outside. My date approached. “Please don’t leave. Like this,” she said, out of character now, with enough feminine softness to give me pause.

  “I’ve gotta go.” The hostess helped me on with my overcoat, pretending she wasn’t listening to our drama. I went out to the street. She called to me from the doorway.

  “I’m sorry. Please?”

  She was barely outside, but shivering. She smiled, came to me, then hugged me, more about physical warmth than the human kind, then whispered, her voice jittery from the cold, “It’s a lesson. About how it works.”

  She could be lying. Probably was. “Good-bye,” I said, pulling away from her, but came back to give her a peck on the cheek. Only…‌she met me with her mouth. It was as if this was her chance to convey, in secret, essential information. Who she was. I succumbed to her kiss for the information it offered; how she was not my antagonist. A hint of interest, possibly regret. I rubbed her back a few times as a comment on the cold, pulled away, and got the door for her. She didn’t look back as she retreated into the restaurant.

  I walked to Oxford Circus Tube Station then kept going toward Tottenham Court Road and my line. I was too busy running away to analyze the dinner. Was being outside the restaurant outside the game? Can you lie with a kiss? Instinct told me no. She must be telling the truth about my lesson. Lesson? There was one line she had used more than once. Something like: “you don’t know how much it hurts to have a father walk out on you.” So the lesson was
, they could get to me? More than anything I wanted Sula just now. Her implacable, ever-constant honesty.

  CHAPTER 9

  Dr. Lifkin was a bushy-eyebrowed, droopy-mustached man with sad, bohemian eyes, like a cross between Einstein and a tango musician. He was all business, talked in clipped sentences for maximum verbal efficiency, his life a casual race against the clock. Sula’s friend Lucia had coached me on the basics. Her assumption was that the methamphetamines in some way reacted with the cocaine to create a death drug. Most students were intimidated by Lifkin, Lucia included, which is why I was making this approach.

  There was barely time to get one question in while I trotted next to Lifkin as he marched purposefully to his next, no doubt important, meeting. The narrow, tiled corridors meant I had to trail him, weaving in and out to accommodate oncoming traffic. I hollered a string of phrases at him, trying to jog his memory about Lucia’s introduction. Finally he came to a halt before a door, turned, and looked at me as if I had about ten percent of his attention. “What is it you are after?”

  I fumbled through an explanation that included the words “cocaine,” “methamphetamines” and “pathology.”

  “Those drugs are dangerous. Together they are an explosion. Logarithmic, not geometrical.” He said this impatiently. All of this was obvious; why was I wasting his time?

  I explained about the suicide. Yes, they were dangerous, but how could you know beforehand that they were fatal?

  “I assume you are talking about something other than dosages.” His tone said I had better be.

  “Correct. The dosages were, were not significant.”

  “Talk to Catherine Drysdale, Oxford. She’s your expert.”

  “Can I—” But he was already unlocking the door, his back to me. “I’ll take that as a yes,” I told his bent-over back. Yes, I would use his name with Drysdale.

  That afternoon I heard back from my German PI company. The name at the end of the Hamburg number was one Jolanta Rawicz. She had been a graduate student at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences but had recently moved to Krakow. Did I want them to find her contact details there? I got out my credit card.