The American Pearl

by Peter Gilboy

  Patricia had tolerated their dirty jokes for eleven months. Like frat boys, they were. She’d had enough of men to last her a lifetime. Nineteen days was all she had left, and she’d be out of this place and returning to rural Connecticut with its tidy homes and gardens along curving residential lanes.

  Continuing down the compound road, Patricia swept her hair back with both hands and bunched it into a ponytail. Then she shoved it down the back of her green fatigue blouse. She put on her OD green ball cap and slipped on her sunglasses. Not much of a disguise, but perhaps it would work.

  “What if they stop me at the gate?” she called over to T.R., above the roar of the engine. “I don’t have a pass.”

  “What are they going to do, send you to Nam?”

  The same tired joke, but Patricia laughed anyway.

  “Thank you for getting me out, T.R.”

  “You deserve it,” he said.

  “And you’re sure I can’t catch it?”

  “Not a chance,” he told her, shaking his head. “Nothin’ to worry about, Lieutenant. You can trust me. Nothin’ to worry about at all.”

  3

  JANUARY 15, 2006

  SAN DIEGO, 9:35 A.M.

  I CLIMB OVER THE dunes and head back to the Pacific Terrace Hotel. Julia is waiting for me in our room and I know we’ll make delicious love when I get back.

  The hotel doors slide open for me. From the corner of my eye I see a young Hispanic man behind the counter look up and then wave his hand.

  “Excuse me, sir! Are you Mr. Ames?”

  “No,” I tell him.

  “Quintyn Ames, sir?”

  “Not me,” I say.

  I keep going, past the tourist shop and the indoor fichus trees.

  “You in Room 323, sir? There’s a message for you.”

  I stop and turn. “I said no messages.”

  “Is this your phone?”

  I recognize it. Red Motorola flip phone. “Not mine,” I say.

  “We found it at the bottom of the pool, sir.”

  “I know,” I tell him.

  The elevator doors open. I enter and press the button to the third floor. I face the polished mirrors. Even I’m sometimes surprised by my size. But I used to weigh more. Three thirty-five or three forty, like those mammoth guards and tackles you see on Sunday afternoon with their guts spilling over their jerseys. But I’d lost weight since meeting Julia. Running had done it. A mile and a half isn’t much for most people, but three times a day will do the trick if you run until your muscles scream as loudly as your lungs. Even then, the ounces only crawl away. Still, it’s better than those green ketone-burning pills. Better than Lean Cuisine when you have four for dinner. A jiggling waist of forty-nine is now just a jiggling forty-four. Another twenty pounds to go, maybe thirty, and I’ll be more like a linebacker than one of those linemen. Huge and strong again. Huge and swift again. I turn sideways, to check my gut in the mirror. Way to go, Ames. You’re doing it, man. Gettin’ your wind back, too. Gettin’ your legs back.

  My eyes go to my nose. Can’t miss it. A big bump on top that holds my glasses in place, then a sharp bend to the left. It used to bend the other way, but I fixed it, sort of, along with three fingers on my right hand. Not a problem. Didn’t hurt at all. Jesus, it still hurts every time I think about it. But that nose is part of me now. So what if it looks that way. I’ve got Julia. I’ve got a job and some money in the bank. So what if it fucking looks that way?

  My eyes go to the gold loop earring in my ear. I had protested at first. “I’ll look gay.”

  “It’s okay to be gay,” Julia had assured me.

  “But I’m not!”

  “Then wear it in your right ear. No one will think you’re gay.”

  She was kidding, about the right ear. But I relented. Anything for Julia. So it was the right ear only. One small gold loop. She had a matching earring that she wore on the opposite side. I had to admit it was pretty cool, this asymmetrical look.

  On the third floor I get out my room card. Julia and I have been married for just two days. Finally. We’d set the date eight times before, saying we’d keep it simple, march down to city hall. But plan something important and life laughs at you. Always an emergency at work, the quiet sanctuary from which I travel the world.

  I am not like Balboa or Columbus. I do not venture forth to discover new lands. From miles above I gaze down at the already-discovered lands. No risk of scurvy. No hurricanes or shipwrecks. No mutineers. I do it all from air-conditioned safety, usually with a cup of coffee in my hand.

  Julia knows that I work with satellites, but she thinks it has to do with meteorology, that I’m a weather researcher, a civilian adjunct to the military who uses satellites to determine climate patterns and reasons for the shrinking water supplies. So she was exasperated by each delay. Her exasperation has its limits. An elopement was in order. On the spur of the moment we each called in sick with what we claimed was the two-week flu. I booked us flights and we flew west to the Chapel of the Flowers on South Las Vegas Boulevard. Weddings every half hour. Two hundred a throw.

  My mother was appalled that we hadn’t told her about the wedding; and on top of that, she wasn’t so sure about Julia because Julia is Catholic and therefore couldn’t be very serious about God. And the other thing: Quintyn, she isn’t black, you know. Not really. How can you be so sure about her?

  But Julia was the right girl. My friends joked that she must be the right girl because I’d had so many wrong ones that I ought to know. Not quite. Some of the others were fine all right, but they quickly fled when they knew. They didn’t know what they knew. But they knew something.

  Julia knew something too. For months she encouraged me, even prodded me, saying we could talk, talk about anything. We could be free and honest with each other. That’s what couples do. She said that sometimes I forget things or stare off at nothing. That sometimes I seem too detached and almost cloistered. She called it a caged sadness about me and said that to be together as husband and wife we’d have to understand each other, know what drives us and makes us who we are. Julia wondered whether it might be a residue of my childhood there on Northeast Side where I had lived with my mother on Hays Street in that third-floor walkup.

  “Everybody has things, honey. Regrets and remorse. Things to get over or beyond. Everybody has them.”

  She was right, of course. And I wanted to tell her. All of it. Finally blurt it out. It wasn’t right otherwise. It wasn’t fair. Julia would talk about her own past sometimes but her memory lane was always some happily floating nostalgia, though I’m sure there are fingerprints of regret too, as with each of us; but likely no more than some careless lies or words spoken too harshly, or perhaps some near-infidelity that is wholly insignificant now. She wouldn’t understand how the past is strapped to my back. How it crawls up and leans over my shoulder and whispers to me. It always says the same thing: Ready?

  But I finally did tell her, or tried to, there in our DC apartment with the dark wood panels and frilly white curtains. It was evening, a month before we were married, and we were on the couch, my arm around her, Julia’s head on my shoulder. The TV was on, but we weren’t really watching anything, just enjoying touching and being alone. At some point I switched off the show and faced her. I think Julia sensed that this was the moment. There was a small smile of relief on her face. I would take her down my own memory lane.

  And so I started in, about Eddie, about Eddie Cobb and the pact we had made. As I spoke I fell into a kind of time shift to which I’ve fallen prey many times, and once again it is night and drizzling, and yet the air is hot and still. I see a single star above, and I can see Eddie’s dark face and his crooked teeth like tilted tombstones. We are alone in the ditch where we’ve been for nearly three days. He’s been trembling all this time, and again I reach over and steady his hand. He soiled himself two days ago yet we have waited here in the great stench with hardly a word except his pointless question to Bob Wilcox who is no longe
r there. “Is it okay, Bob?” Eddie asks Wilcox. “You don’t mind, Bob?”

  Then, more hours of aggressive boredom and silence that tear into us, until Eddie’s head suddenly swivels to mine. I know that this is the moment. His eyes widen. Eddie mouths a single word to me: Ready?

  I never got that far with Julia, not even halfway. Just hearing about Eddie and the momentous pact, and Julia seemed to brace herself. I couldn’t go on, and after a time she stood up and gazed around the room as if looking for something. Finally, she turned to me and smiled. Actually smiled. But it wasn’t a smile of relief. It was the way you smile when something doesn’t compute, doesn’t register at all. A bewildered smile.

  I could guess what she was thinking—that it was all past and done, that it had no place in our present; or even if it did, therapy would take care of it, or maybe some new medication. I didn’t say anything more. I just watched Julia standing there and nodding her head slowly as if underwater. I waited through her silence, and finally she said: I’m okay, Quintyn, and you’re okay too. Everything will be okay because it was a long time ago. Then the words I knew were coming: I don’t care what you did.

  Julia still didn’t understand. It wasn’t something I’d done. Even now I see Eddie’s mouth silently forming the decisive word: Ready? And then his final words to me, perhaps his final words to anyone, more of a sigh than a whisper, but words so fierce they are a continuous sound in my head: You said you’d do it, Quintyn. We have a deal, man.

  No, it wasn’t something I’d done. It was something I hadn’t done. The most solemn commitment possible to another human. Sometimes you can fix what you did; but what you didn’t do, you can’t fix forever.

  Julia’s bewildered smile eventually settled into one of tender affection. She sat down next to me again and took my arm. She nestled into my shoulder. Thank you for telling me, Quintyn, she said. I don’t care about Eddie Cobb or anything else, because I know you. I know you for who you really are.

  Which meant she didn’t know anything at all.

  I slide my plastic card into the slot on our hotel room door and enter. I smell coffee and air conditioning.

  “Hey,” Julia calls from the adjoining room. She’s in bed still, on my side now, the blanket smoothed out for me, her hair tumbling over one eye like a dark curtain; her white silk top not covering much, which is just fine. My mother was right. Julia’s not really black. Her skin is its own color. Maple. Yes, bright maple. Her eyes are blue leaning toward green. Her father had immigrated from Scotland and her mother had immigrated from Jamaica. I’ve seen both sides of her—the stubbornness of the Scots and the gaiety of the Jamaicans.

  Julia and I met at a Nats game. The nation’s capital finally had a ball team again, and on April 14 I went to the home opener. Nationals versus the Diamondbacks. It was the bottom of the fourth. Vazquez, I remember, was pitching for the Diamondbacks. Vidro doubled for the Nats and then Guillen was hit by a pitch and went to first. Two on, no outs, and I sensed someone settling into the seat beside me. Two more pitches and Ryan Church popped out to the shortstop. I must have groaned audibly because Julia leaned toward me and said, “I think they should make the ball bigger.”

  “That’s not your seat,” I said without turning.

  “Or make them throw it slower, don’t you think?”

  I must have grumbled something.

  “Are we having our first fight?” she asked.

  She later told me that she’d seen me at Little League games and liked the way I had stood behind the home-plate cage and encouraged batters for both teams. I had played two years of Double A in Birmingham, and was pretty good, but not nimble enough for the hot corner and not speedy enough for the outfield. They put me at first because of my big bat. I had dreams of being drafted, maybe by the Yankees or the Dodgers. Dreams do come true. I was drafted, all right. By my country.

  Julia also played ball. She was a pitcher for the George Washington University Colonials. The GW’s. Now she’s their coach. I have a photo of her from back then, a frozen moment of a younger Julia leaning toward the plate as she awaits the sign; her hair falling forward across her cheek, her eyes nearly hidden in the shadow of her GW ball cap.

  It didn’t take long for me to fall for Julia. It could have been her lean no-nonsense body, her deep-set eyes, or that she was so tough and funny; but really, she had me with the warm timbre of her voice: Are we having our first fight? I turned to find her sunshine smile. Her eyes said even more. Somewhere I heard the crack of a bat but I stayed focused on Julia as Vinny Castilla tripled to right and Vidro and Guillen raced home.

  Julia and a triple. A good omen.

  “A good run?” she asks me now. She smooths out the sheets for me and shifts her hips suggestively. She stretches her arms out to welcome me.

  “Thought we’re going for Mexican,” I say.

  It’s a joke of course. With Julia first things are always first. She gives me a look as she lowers a strap on her gown.

  “I’m sweaty,” I tell her.

  “So get me sweaty.”

  I glance in the mirror to see how bad I look.

  “Looking good, Quincy,” she says.

  “It’s Quintyn.”

  “Come here and let me see if I can do something about that nose.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “So, how about getting me sweaty?”

  It would never end. I’m fifty-nine and she is thirty-eight and not just the years, but who knows how many pounds separate us. But Julia always wants more. Fortunately, she’s a miracle worker in bed. Knows everything and likes everything, and can perform wonders to keep me going. She doesn’t mind my size. Says she likes to hang on for dear life. But I’m not sixteen anymore. I’m not even thirty-six anymore, and I’ve considered more than once that I might die right there in bed. With Julia the end could be near. Then she’d need a real miracle. I move closer to her. Maybe this time it will be the end. What a sendoff that would be.

  There’s a buzz on the bureau. Julia’s cell.

  She takes a breath. “First your phone,” she says. “Now mine. They can’t have you, Quintyn.”

  “Ignore it,” I tell her.

  The buzzing continues.

  “I’ll handle it,” she says.

  Julia springs up and grabs the cell phone. “He isn’t here,” she announces without even a hello. With the phone to her ear she marches to the balcony door. She slides it open and steps outside. I know what’s coming.

  “No idea where he is, Alec. Try fucking Mars!”

  A flip of her wrist and her phone soars over the balcony toward the pool three floors below. It’s the second arcing phone since we arrived. Too far up for me to hear either of them splash.

  “They can’t have you,” she says again as she returns inside.

  In a single flowing motion my beautiful Julia is back on the bed. A seductive raise of an eyebrow. She lowers the other strap now. I take a breath. “Get me sweaty, cowboy,” she says, and again I think of death, and smile to myself.

  Now it’s the hotel phone ringing.

  “How do they know where we are?”

  “No idea, honey.”

  “How do they know, Quintyn? It’s not fair! What could be so damn important?”

  “I said, I have no idea.”

  We ignore the phone. The harsh ringing stops. Then it starts again. I reach for the phone to stop the ringing. “I’ll just tell them I’ll call back later,” I say.

  Wrong. Her eyes grow dark, determined. She glares at me.

  A second later Julia is up and standing with her back to me as she pulls on her jeans and grabs a blouse from the drawer. “You promised,” she says over her shoulder. “You promised me, Quintyn.”

  “Hey, what happened to sweaty?”

  Silence now, except for the shrill ringing of the hotel phone.

  “Let me get a shower,” I say. “I can’t go to breakfast like this.”

  She slides on her GW jacket. Pulls on her ball cap.r />
  “A quick shower is all,” I plead.

  But Julia is already at the door. She turns with an exaggerated smile. “Ready for some Mexican, honey?”

  I grab a towel and wipe my face. I promised her two weeks. Two gold rings. Two matching earrings. Just the two of us.

  The door closes.

  Of course I’ll go to her. My life is moving forward again and I’ll move with it. With Julia. The phone continues to ring. I pull on my red Nats jacket and race after her to catch the elevator. Nothing will keep me away from Julia. Nothing.

  But the past is a hook in my mouth. Even in the hallway I find myself again in those dark and motionless hours: The constant drizzle, the single bright star that seems always to hover above us, the stench of Eddie’s pants, his quivering hands. Eddie has a lucky charm, a rabbit’s foot that he’d won at a carnival or maybe a gum ball machine. He keeps it mostly in his helmet where he can feel it, and sometimes in his mouth where he turns it with his tongue. Now Eddie peers over at Bob Wilcox who isn’t there, having stopped twitching and flapping a day before. Eddie reaches out of the ditch and grips Wilcox’s bloated ankle. Is it okay, Bob? he asks Wilcox. You don’t mind, Bob?

  Down the hallway, and I replay it all in my mind, compressing into instants what took hours, days, weeks: Humping step by step, sometimes without direction, anatomy slumping along as we entered villages that look the same and hump past paddies reflecting the same gray sky, up and down the same rivers again. Sometimes the choppers come in to lift someone back to the world. All that, with no sense of strategy or mission and nothing gained and nothing lost. Until now: Yen Bai, and the sniper taking Jim Geltz and Sam Greene and Tommy Colome one at a time; then Leroy Williams trying to be brave but was easy pickings, and Bump Rogers who ran and he was easy pickings; and last was Bob Wilcox who just wanted to go home so he just stood up, said “Peace, brothers,” and he was easy pickings. And me and Eddie still in the ditch.