by Herbert Gold
“But?” Kasdan asked.
“Problem is, who’s to say there’s a hereafter? There’s mucho question about that, Señor – not proven, you know? I’m not even sure there’s a here and now, so let’s deal with it, okay?”
Kasdan believed his daughter and grandson guaranteed his own hereafter on earth. Unless, and these were the normal risks, they didn’t.
Ferd’s lips shone pink and damp. He overcame an interlude of melancholy. He had shared what was hard to share – depth. But now that the deed was accomplished, he dried his lips with the back of his hand. They could proceed. Nearby, diners were slipping leftovers into Styrofoam with the furtive half-smiles of folks slightly ashamed. In a real cuisine restaurant, the waiter would do it for them. Ferd Conway, himself, never asked for a people bag. “Cowboy…”
“How many times do I have to ask you?”
Contrite, Ferd shook his head, shedding droplets of apology. “Cowboy, cowboy, cowboy, I always forget you don’t like that, but I mean it in the best possible way – narrow hips, not too much butt, lean face, stringy old guy like you, don’t even look too much like a Mosaic person. Probably twenty years ago, back then, Margaret Torres thought you were really a primo stud unit.”
“You had something on your mind?” Kasdan asked.
“Always, buddy. Due course. Bear with me.”
As usual, Ferd reached for a handful of sugar packets. The busboy, who noticed, grinned. Kasdan ventured to ask, “You munch on sugar to keep up your energy?”
“Oh, these?” Ferd pulled out the packets he had just tucked down with his handkerchief. “No, in case I meet a horse I like... Wanna couple? Quick pick-you-up? Hey, it’s important to get a little something back when you give as much as I do.”
Then the salt shaker disappeared into Ferd’s pocket. “Don’t have to buy salt, neither. Sometimes I brush my teeth with this stuff when I get to hating that minty Crest.” Humorously he replaced the salt on the table. It had just been an audio-visual demonstration. “Cowboy, you’re the expert on living cheap and saving up for your... now that you have that responsibility.”
After lunch, they walked in silence through the alley alongside. They were digesting; Ferd was contemplating; his silence stretched for seconds longer than usual. Its cause was greenery, the persistence of nature as soon as the city gave it a chance. A fresh slim trunk of alley weed claimed Ferd’s attention. He frowned with recognition; he smiled upon it. He broke his language fast. “So you know all about this dogwood?”
“Ailanthus,” Kasdan said.
“The Tree of Heaven, Doctor Botany. Love it! You told me once, tell me twice, it came over from Asia, grows in any muck, just sticks in and grows... I listen to you! Only the females are good for a body – for tea, am I right? – and the male flowers stink. Girl flowers, yummy – how about that?”
“Thanks for listening.”
Ferd bowed his head reverently. “Makes us both preciate nature, doesn’t it? Pushes out of the dirt, cleans up the toxics, and it comes from across the mighty ocean.”
“China.”
“I just told you. Immigrants take over, they’re non-native. We both love nature and that’s a whole nother thing we both have in common together.”
Heaven provides toxics, Kasdan was thinking, so that nature has something to purify. He asked Ferd: “You’re making a face.”
“If I was a tree of heaven, amigo, I’d be a male one with stinky flowers.” He brushed against Kasdan, his pocket stuffed with sugar packets. Down this alley there were no horses to befriend, but elsewhere on the hills of San Francisco, where the wild herbs used to grow and sometimes still did, Indian and Mexican hunters used to chase game and rest their beasts near streams coursing down to the bay.
“Like if you cop a bunch of big bills in the form of money for you and yours, plus you don’t owe any taxes anybody knows about? And only me and you are in on the secret? Let me ask you something: How does that sound?”
“Smells...”
“Not kosher, haha, say it like your daddy. You called him Papushka? But if nobody has any inkle but Danny Kasdan?”
“And Ferd Conway, Esquire.”
“Goes without saying, but like the old saying, Follow your bliss.”
Ferd was not only troubled by Kasdan’s failure to express enthusiasm; he was also pleased. It gave him a mountain to climb. It was like courtship. It was a challenge.
“Dan, Dan, listen up, there’s traveling involved. Fun and frequent flier miles, right? You got to have your wits. You’re carrying cash. You’re dressing nicely. You’ll look middle-aged – that shouldn’t be too hard. Just an ordinary guy, maybe a little depressed after a tragedy. Capishe? His wife died, his kid perished, Customs won’t know it’s just the normal way you are. No es problema.”
He winked. His stride was firm. He had scored essential points.
Kasdan said: “I’m not sure of this.”
“You’ll end up secure for life.”
“If I don’t live too long.”
Ferd shot a grin directly at his colleague. “Goes without saying. We know the statistics, the actuarial tables. I tried a wrongful pedestrian death just a few months ago, my first.” The grin was withdrawn. “You’ll be in profit, Dan. You want to end up happy? You’ll do so.”
“Still not sure.”
“So get sure. This is America. All you need is a few details I’m gladly in the process of imparting, plus withholding on a need not to know. You’ll end up next door to affluent.”
Silence. No answer. No trees of heaven or yerba buena or moss in the sidewalk cracks or screaming gulls to distract them. Kasdan wondered why it was taking Ferd so long. He met Ferd’s stare. Their eyes were meeting, facing each other down, or maybe they were just staring at the bridges of noses.
“Dan. I’ve got to make something clear, Dan. Please. You’re the man for me.”
All through history, from the dawn of the species, men had kept busy hunting other men, those who had women they wanted, or goods, or land, food, or drink, or sometimes just to keep in practice by killing someone. Why should it be difficult for Kasdan? He tried to imagine this Pacific coast, swept by salt winds and covered with clinging green, and a lonely meeting at night in the emptiness of nature, the amplitude of nature, by dim moon glow, when it would be safe to do whatever a man wanted to do.
Ferd Conway, like everyone, owed a debt to nature. Just this once, Kasdan promised himself, I’ll pick the time of someone’s going, the place, and the means. He wouldn’t be able to pick his own time.
– 9 –
It was resolved, maybe. It was possibly determined. Kasdan was on the verge of being almost convinced.
All yet to be decided was what he might do to carry through the action he planned. Inexorably Dan Kasdan moved in directions he wasn’t sure of. As an exercise in perspective, he tried not blaming himself for matters beyond his control, such as the weather of San Francisco, such as not knowing he had a daughter until she revealed herself, fully grown and lacking a father. Did not succeed in self-exculpation. Due to the willful habits of the San Francisco Bay, tidal currents, tule and ocean fogs, the rising of the sun and the turning of the earth, did not always perform for his convenience. The people of San Francisco and the world presented similar problems.
Margaret Torres, who had smilingly received him one, two, or three nights during the Summer of Love hangover, believed a child needed nothing more than the seed from a seed provider. She liked Dan okay for this brief role. A little money would have been helpful, too, but money always came with patriarchal hassles. She managed. Raising a daughter cost more trouble and more money than she had anticipated, but she managed. She had her principles. She even let herself keep most of the weight she gained during her pregnancy – her principles remained firm.
She stenciled a painting of Frida Kahlo on the driver’s side door of her rusted-out VW bug. She colored the image with authentic Mexican acrylics. Later, despite her solidarity with the other
women in her commune, she forgave Amanda for searching out and finding the seed-provider, a Spanish translator operating in the misogynist oppression system.
How, Kasdan wondered, had he survived so long without Amanda? He had felt the void. Though he didn’t believe in karmic deficits (Margaret Torres did), the void had been a presence in his life. While he was busying himself with street hoods, carjackers, purse-snatchers, and cornerboy crack dealers grabbed by the law at 16th and Mission, his very own little girl had been busy needing someone to be her dad. But things were just as they had been and he was just as he was; that too is fate. It’s called history. During his farewell to middle-age, Dan Kasdan had entered upon commotion.
Early in the new acquaintanceship of Kasdan and his daughter, he had wanted her to understand how he spent his life. He asked her to meet him for breakfast at the Caffe Roma. “So early? I don’t usually keep those hours.” But she roused herself in time so that he could introduce her to Harvey Johnson, who said, “The offspring! I see the resemblance, man. The best of health and long life to you both!” And, standing, he raised his tomato juice in their honor. His belt clanked against the clasp of his bullet-proof vest.
Ferd Conway trotted up as they moved chairs to join Harvey. “You never told me, you rascal, you got one. A sweetie of a daughter!”
Harvey stared. He judged a person coming, no trial necessary. The table for two could accommodate three but not four when the fourth was Ferd Conway. Ferd nodded and left.
“Friend of yours?” Amanda asked.
“Uses me with his clients. It’s the job. Mostly it’s translation between him and the defendant, or the prosecution, or there’s a document in Spanish... I guess we’re associates, sort of.”
“Friends,” Harvey muttered, tomato juice on his breath.
Amanda made a little shrug. Maybe her father was afraid of the plainclothes dick’s judgment. It was obvious that cool Harvey Johnson, who looked like her boyfriend, now her husband, D’Wayne – muscled weight, belly laugh – wasn’t a buddy of that Mr. Conway. But – what surprises there are in life! – it happened that Amanda had found a father, found he had associates and friends.
Even in San Francisco with its foreboding gusts of fog followed by California-like episodes of sunlight, daily life most often took the weather as just another given. Thanks to immersion in the rhythms of crime followed by punishment, Kasdan had learned that the full-moon connection with miscreancy was just another theory for the comfort of the police and witches dancing in the hills. Fallacious, no matter what these experts thought, “Post hoc ergo propter hoc,” said Harvey Johnson, going for Latin whimsy, pronouncing it like an expert. Still, weather stimulated novel desires for coziness in Kasdan. It was a mild later afternoon, no fog rolling in, no chill winds off the Pacific, when he decided to exercise a grandfather’s privilege, a father’s right, to visit his beloved only family. Drop in, was his plan; just passing by, thought I would – hope you don’t mind –
Then how come you brought this paper tiger for Sergei? Amanda would ask.
Well, it’s been in my car, actually it’s a leopard, I’ve been meaning to –
What’s it, a souvenir from a Happy Meal? He’ll just mash it up, spit on it, wet on it, you ought to know that, Dad.
He was learning about family negotiations. Sometimes it helped to change the subject. “You smell good. Is it okay to say that to a daughter?” (My daughter.)
“I’ve been bathing for nineteen years, cept when I shower.”
(Not that you were ever around, Dad.)
Sometimes the subject wouldn’t get changed.
After he finished playing the conversation in advance, rehearsing it for himself, his Honda Civic was parked and he found himself walking up the steps with the paper leopard – maybe it was a tiger with spots – in a plastic bag from McDonald’s, wondering why D’Wayne and Amanda couldn’t have rented a flat on a street with a few trees and no buildings painted Cantonese Pink. Not that he had any problems with upward mobile Chinese folks investing their savings in the Golden Empire or Mountain or whatever they called California. Just because he had been downward stagnant…
The conversation with his daughter which he had rehearsed was not, as usually is the case with rehearsed conversations, the experience which followed.
“What’re you doing here!” (Dan Kasdan erupting.)
“That’s a funny way to talk, whatchudoin here. That’s what you said, am I right? Questioned? Interrogated? Well, what I’m doing here is visiting a friend, that’s the answer, okay? Visiting just like you, Cowboy.”
Amanda turned to the sleeping child and spoke toward him as if Sergei were the line for getting through. “Dad, I’m in this here downer, this depressive, and Ferd kind of knows about these things” – sure he does – “and it helps me, talking, you know, Ferd talking to me, letting me express myself” – so why didn’t you let me do that so many years, Dad?
Why were all the buttons on her blouse – okay, all but one – unbuttoned?
“You look like you want to say something, Dad.”
“Hey, Cowboy, your lips are moving. You mumbling to your own self? There something here we don’t quite catch? We’re all ears, aren’t we, Amanda?”
The baby was a problem. Generally Sergei gurgled funny, spit and shit funny, except it wasn’t funny. Amanda and D’Wayne wanted their child. Amanda wanted to correct the laws of the universe which had failed to give her a father until one turned up, no thanks to him, after Margaret Torres sloppily dropped clues and Amanda picked them up. Then she worked her own progress through, gave birth to the boy, and it turned out that Sergei Mose would need care all his life. No one to blame. Not D’Wayne’s fault. Laws of the universe.
So why shouldn’t Ferd just want to help? He could provide. D’Wayne was an okay guy, no education and all, in a lazy big way and all, but clever white Ferd Conway could be useful. Because he had feelings for Dan and Dan’s family.
Deep feelings are often helpful. “Truth be told,” Ferd was saying, presenting depths for consideration, “I never had a kid, you know, not even like you did, Dan – a kid I never knew about till she was a terrific funky grownup girl. Never had one, far as I suspect. Let me be sincere just a sec.”
In the light of all this sincerity, how come Amanda had to button her blouse back up when her father appeared without warning?
“… the kind of good luck you had, never had to raise her, but then voy-la! You get this precious treasure, the Surprise Girl I call her, quote-unquote, a stunner with a Latin tinge! Wow. And then lickety-split she gives you a grandson.”
A room-inclusive congratulatory swivel of body with extended arms.
“… okay, a grandson with problems, issues, okay, grant that, I’m sorry.”
“Thanks,” Kasdan said.
“For what?”
“I was a little late thanking you for your congratulations about my family.”
“You’re welcome, Cowboy. Did I probably not give you an opening? It’s all karma or some shit.”
“Ferd?” Amanda said. “How about enough of this?”
He pressed his mouth together. “Lips sealed.”
The winds of discourse subsided.
“Dad doesn’t like puppies,” Amanda said. “Stop peeing on his leg.”
Through pressed lips, Ferd repeated: “Sealed.”
Amanda was trying not to channel her mother and express too much impatience with her life’s big males, hanging around this afternoon, all except D’Wayne. The sleeping, gurgling, yellowish-hued Sergei with his tangled arteries and irregularly sparking nerves was the essential one, but there was also Ferd Conway and Dan Kasdan, her found dad. She thought a normal person in her situation would do something in the hospitality line at this point, maybe make instant coffee and open a box of cookies. In her case, she opened her mouth: “And Dad, don’t get sarcastic in my house. Only Amanda gets to be sarcastic around here.”
Ferd took a release from his vow of silence in
order to speak up for Amanda’s father. He put his hand gently on her shoulder, but he was talking to Dan. Ferd’s weather could change in an instant, now pensive, worn, concerned, bordering on haggard. “Do you remember when you thought you could be a rodeo rider…?” (Never Kasdan’s ambition.) “… or anything your little heart desired, actor, finance champion – maybe you don’t remember this – and then there was the minute it came to you that all you would ever get to be is you? Right? Well, I’m a person remembers. That’s my sadness. I’m not going to get over it, but we can get over it together.”
“Huh?” said Amanda.
“Maybe all I’ll ever be is me, and you too, the exact same.”
“Huh?” She bent, looking for something which seemed to have disappeared.
“Okay,” Kasdan said, “what’s up here?”
Ferd recovered swiftly from his tragic moment. “This is society. We’re just talking. We’re all gathered on a sociable visit, course Amanda lives here, she’s our hostess, am I right, Amanda? Didn’t you tell me drop by sometimes? Tell your father, dear.”
Oh, surely now was the time. But not in front of Amanda and sleeping Sergei; that would make a mess; also profitless. Besides, Kasdan had no weapon in his jacket or pants. Instead, his foot shot out on a death mission against what looked like a shiny brown date fallen to the floor. It suddenly grew legs and scurried, rustling, away. The cockroach escaped Kasdan’s shoe. Both Ferd and Amanda, without comment, unobtrusively took note.
Ferd waited for him to recover from an inaccurate lunge, a failure of passionate impulse. Cockroaches were rare in San Francisco; even a man living in the Tenderloin didn’t get much practice. Ferd was concerned with his own moment of revelation – the soul confession before Kasdan, Amanda, sleeping Sergei, and the cockroach, that all he was was what he was. Confession was good for his soul. “What you think of me in your heart of hearts,” he said, “is none of my business.”