Need I tell you who passed the hours in the beach chair that night? I set it up in the yard where I could gaze at the sea and the moon. I could not see beyond the bay, where the dream boat sailed northward, but I knew that its deck would be milky with the same moon. Never mind what else. I had undergone a sea change myself. The thought of the Greek—the thought of her, that is, rather than what she might be doing—did not torment me. I thought of her all night. Just the thought of her, in my condition, seemed to be enough. I saw her brown arms, laced with the long nail scratches; I saw the strong wrist where she had been bitten—she showed it to me, that is, with that serene smile on her lips. She held, as was her custom, my amorous gaze. No words of love, no slogans of endearment, no promises or vows passed between us—nothing but the flow of my desire, and in return, the flow of hers. I did not burn in the hell of who, under that moon, might share it now. I blessed his luck. I took a certain pride in my own. Stripped down, like that car in its ditch, to what we referred to as the essentials, I possessed nothing under that moon but my past. That much I could take with me, if I cared to, and I did.
I got up at one point, took my seat on the chopping block, and poked around on the keyboard till I found my tune. I put the last touch to our comedy of terrors in this vein:
“Love among us cannibals is short and sweet,
There’s nothing to a loved one that we won’t eat,
The smile we love
Is the one we’ll miss
On the baby cannibelle that we just kissed.”
Mrs. Macgregor, a tattered phantom in her rags, came to her door. In the green moonlight she looked as insubstantial as desire. From the room behind her, like her ghostly lover, a voice croaked out:
“Man, it’s great!”
I gave a nod in its direction, sang:
“In Acapulco
By the sea,
The little inessentials
Are essentially
Your heart and your liver,
The strings of your eyes,
The big as well as
The little white lies,
On the beach of love
You strip down to
The essentially
Inessential you.”
“Man, I’ll buy it!” barked Mac. He meant that it was full of heart. I’ve never trusted his judgment, before or since, but that once he was right.
VI
What next?
Well, the hinges arrived for the doors, but before the doors arrived for the hinges Mr. and Mrs. Macgregor, on Mrs. Macgregor’s suggestion, chartered a small plane for a flight to the States where they would get a needed rest from their strenuous work on “Love Among the Cannibals.” Mac wired ahead for a ringside table at the Mambo, where they had not only found each other, but Miss Billie Harcum, of Memphis, had also found What Next?
On our way to the airport I happened to notice that the car was no longer in the ditch. They had put it back on wheels and pushed it down the road to where Señor Carrillo liked to wash his cab: there were palms along the street and they could work around the clock, in the cool shade. The men working beneath it were putting back the motor, the men working in it were putting back the dashboard, and the men not working were thinking of putting back the top. But they were sticking to the essentials. The little inessentials they were leaving off.
Why was that? I turned to ask Señor Carrillo.
Well—he replied—for one thing, if they put them back on, some no-good Mexican would only steal them; and for another, weren’t they inessential? To the car, that is?
I could see that they were, but when we drew alongside I could also see that something was missing. Something essential. I could see that it was their car now, rather than mine. Essential to them, but inessential to me, now, were the keys. Señor Carrillo slowed the car to a stop while I tossed them in.
I was thinking of that when Mrs. Irwin K. Macgregor, her big beautiful eyes now drilled with real pupils, offered me her new, almost real, but still pleated lips. I thought of it when Mac gripped my hand and said:
“It’s been real, man! You know what I mean?”
I not only knew what he meant, I knew he was right.
Stripped of all my inessentials I could plainly see the futility of it, the lack of principle of it, the essential anguish and hopelessness of it, and then I got to thinking, the way you will, of other things. I got to thinking of her lips, her eyes, and the street where she still lived. Any day now she might be back there with those damn kids. Any day now, with one on her hip, and that serene marble smile on her lips, she would come across the yard toward whoever it was, helpless, hopeless, and mindless as he was, but essential to what she called her development. I thought of all that, and I knew that, any day now, it would be me.
Love Among the Cannibals Page 16