The Collected Stories

by Leonard Michaels

  “All right, he’s big, he’s important. He came to America as an immigrant kid. Life was tough. He made his way. It’s the common story. I didn’t ever want to know everything. He’s been good to me. Look, Sam, I get your point. I believe you. But it makes no difference. I don’t care how important he is. I don’t admire his line of work, and I don’t think he’s flying down here for me.”

  “Why not? It’s been a long time since he’s seen you. Remember what you said when I asked if you fucked Zeva? You said, ‘I didn’t hear you, Sam,’ or something like that.” His tone was melancholy and nostalgic, as if he’d referred to the distant past.

  “I remember. So do you. You have an ear for facts. What are you getting at now? Are you setting me up for something? I don’t like the feeling, Sam.”

  His ears — I hadn’t noticed until that instant — protruded slightly; long and batlike; fact-catchers. He dipped his head, in a tiny, sheepish, Oriental bow, to concede the point.

  “When I was a boy, I knew the statistics for every player in the major leagues. I could name the capital of every country in the world. I love facts. Do you know, in the state of Florida, you’re never more than sixty miles from water? Don’t get so excited. You feel strongly for the Cuban bitch. I approve. You want to protect her honor. Maybe you have Latin blood. Maybe you’d die for la familia. But right now you’re suffering from culture shock.” He stabbed the tabletop with his fingertip. “Here, you’re in America, not Berkeley. Miami is America and I’m trying to tell you something. I don’t think you can hear me. Let me — please — tell you something. In the human brain there are two major centers. One is for sex, the other is for aggression. They lie side by side. Cut the links between them and a natural human person becomes a fucking liberal. Somebody cut your links?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “César Chávez says, ‘Don’t eat grapes,’ so you don’t eat grapes?”

  “Damn right I don’t. You’ve got my number. Is it all right to change the subject now, or do you intend to finish the story?”

  He sighed, rubbed his eyes again. As though much discouraged, he continued. His voice went flat and thick.

  “The rest is obvious. Some women were sent by Zev. When they came down from the mountains, Zev put them on airplanes to places like Zurich, Caracas, Stockholm. Different ambassadors helped him. The same later, after the revolution. The women still live in distant places with their sons. We call these women Vessels. The sons we call Potentates.”

  “That’s very poetic.”

  “Everything is in Zeva’s thumb.”

  “That sure isn’t what I told her. I feel like a liar. Fidel knows about his familia?”

  “He has received photographs. He sees boys becoming young men. No question who is the father. Fidel is prepotent, you know what I mean? It’s a technical fact.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If the stud is prepotent, it doesn’t matter what the woman looks like. Fidel’s baby grows up big, handsome, smart, with a memory for detail. It talks when it’s six months old and never stops. By the time it’s six years old, it’s kicking ass. No kid on the block can handle it. Beat it with a baseball club and it comes off the floor fighting. You follow me? I’m talking about a hero.”

  “Sounds like a pit bull.”

  “Fidel is no longer young. The revolution no longer feels to him like his personal expression. He finds himself looking at the photos. He cares. He needs these sons. He is ready to deal. That guy in the water bothers you, but we had to send a strong message. No other way. He was dead before he left Havana. Or you were dead.”

  “Zev risked my life to send a message?”

  “It was the first stage of our negotiations. The last is when the Potentates go to Havana, and Zev’s women leave.”

  “What about his daughters? He had none?”

  “Sure he did. There’s one right in Havana. He sends her Christmas presents. That’s a fact. But he’ll bargain only for Potentates. Zev wants you to find them. You won’t talk to reporters, won’t sell the story, won’t make deals on the side with the Vessels, or subcontract with other operatives. You won’t even think about that kind of shit. We’ll have Zeva in a couple of days and you two will fly to Zurich. You go to the bank and open the box. You’ll find cash and bankbooks in the names of the Vessels. Give the bankbooks to the manager. He’ll show you the status of each account along with addresses in different cities. With the cash you and Zeva play while you find the Potentates and put them on planes to Havana. You have a month. After that Zeva’s passport is invalid. If she isn’t back in Havana, Consuelo is dead.”

  “I can imagine us playing. How many sons?”

  “Some Vessels miscarried, and some, like I told you, had daughters. Of twenty-eight babies, fifteen sons.”

  “Zev wants me to find fifteen men I never saw in my life, who could be anywhere in the world, and put them on planes to Havana?”

  “They won’t be so hard to find. They look like him. Maybe a couple are dead. There could be a few it wouldn’t be wise to send to Fidel. You have to study them; use good judgment. Figure, eleven. Maybe less. Look, Consuelo is already in jail. You understand? It’s under way.”

  “What if they won’t go?” I said, panic in my heart. “Not everybody is like me.”

  This was like agreeing that I might go. Unthinkable, but I’d said the words. Not everyone is like me, including me, but I’d been shoved over the edge with news about Consuelo. Sam picked up the implicit agreement. As if the main issue were settled, his mood changed. Encouraged, he said, “Tell a guy in France or Norway he’s won a free trip to Cuba, and you think he won’t go? Miami is full of European tourists and Latin Americans. Not only drug barons. We’ve also got former dictators and their dependents who are to a high degree scumbags. They drive around in fancy cars, wearing gold chains and no shirts. Like the guy who lives across from me. He parks on my grass. I asked him nicely not to do it, but he keeps on doing it.”

  “Must be a scumbag.”

  “I’ve been feeding broken-glass hamburgers to his watchdog.”

  “Sam, I have an idea. You and Zev write letters to the Potentates and stick plane tickets to Havana in the letters. I’ll help.”

  “We don’t know who they are. And maybe you’re right, some won’t go. We’ll tell you how to encourage them.”

  “You think I’m a travel agent.”

  “That could be your cover — a business card, official papers, home office in Miami, secretaries answering the phone.”

  I detected in Sam’s long narrow face, broken by the glint of small dark eyes, an idea of me passing across his features like a breeze across a lake. It touched the strong nose, the sensuous droop of his lower lip. But it wasn’t me. He saw the travel agent. There’d been a flash of intenser concentration on my presence, like an animal fixed in his gunsight stare, through which I could see Zev’s stare, his invincible determination of how things will be; and I saw that I had nothing to say about it, only to behave as Zev assumed I would, because I wasn’t a crook and there was nothing I wanted.

  I said, “There are chores I have to do in Berkeley. Not very important, but they’re my life, such as it is. Otherwise, I’d leave for Zurich this minute. What the hell. Why not? Zev is my favorite uncle. I owe him plenty.”

  “What do you have to do? I mean have to do. Like pay some bills?”

  “That’s right. Like pay some bills. Telephone, gas, electric …”

  “Like pick up your car at the dealership?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  “The new clutch was five hundred and seventeen bucks. We paid. The car is sitting outside your place. Your landlady will drive it around the block every couple of days. Your other bills are also paid. As for your girlfriend’s birthday present …”

  “Oh God.”

  “You forgot, didn’t you? Don’t even know your own fucking life. Lawyers, accountants, and car mechanics — total strangers
— are living your life. We bought your girlfriend a pair of earrings at Gump’s. Antique jade. They go with her eyes. She’ll be pleased. There is nothing left for you to forget. You’re a free man.”

  “What about my new glasses? They’re waiting for me this week in Berkeley at Dr. Schletter’s office.”

  Sam shoved a brown leather glasses case across the table. I took out the glasses, tried them on. They seemed correct. He called for the check.

  A free man, I never felt more helpless except in dreams where I’d want to scream or run and couldn’t. I followed him to his car.

  “A million bucks to spend traveling around the world with a beautiful girl, and he worries about his glasses. What a putz. Wait till Zev hears this. He’ll change his mind about Chester.”

  “No, he won’t.”

  Sam laughed. “He thinks you’re perfect.”

  Zev’s plane was a silver twin-engined jet with two pilots. The first to emerge was a light-skinned black woman. For an instant I thought she was Zeva. The same size as Zeva with her dancer’s legs, strict posture, aristocratic neck. She wore a one-button jacket and short tight skirt. High heels forced emphasis into her calves. The power and shape of her thighs were evident in the skirt, green-gray cotton, same as the jacket. Her blouse was lavender, like her shoes. She stood in the door and looked about the tarmac. Spotting Sam’s car, she called into the plane, no doubt telling Zev we were here.

  “Zev’s pilot?”

  “Also driver, bodyguard, business manager,” said Sam. “You want my opinion, she’s his sickness. Penelope de Assis. Reminds you of someone?”

  “Except for the eyes.”

  They were mounted on the flared branches of her cheekbones, birds fashioned by a diamond cutter. Fifty feet away, I could tell they were blue.

  “Where did Zev find her?”

  “In Rio, dancing in the street for tourists. She was eight years old, shaking her ass to a conga drum. She’s been with him fifteen years. She signs his checks, kid, so be polite. Her name, let me repeat, is Penelope. Don’t call her Penny. Don’t suppose any other familiarity is allowed. She’s the one who fixed your life in Berkeley.”

  “Nobody knew about the glasses except me and Dr. Schletter.”

  “She saw a photo in a writer’s magazine. You’re at the typewriter working on a screenplay, but she could tell you weren’t reading the type, so she phoned every optometrist within a mile of your house, to ask if your glasses were ready. Your girlfriend was easier. Penelope needed only her license plate number.”

  “How does she feel being a surrogate daughter?”

  “She feels that Penelope de Assis — nobody else — is the daughter of the yid from Odessa, Zev Golenpolsky Lurie. That’s how Zev once wanted it. Now he wants a little distance — room for the other women, you know what I mean? Is it too much to want? Penelope says no, no, no. She’d love to have a sister. She’d love to kill her.”

  “Let’s push Penelope into the bay.”

  “Try it. I’ve seen her kick out a man’s teeth. There’s Zev.”

  He was coming down the steps from the plane, Penelope, at the bottom, watching. I saw his age in Penelope’s tension — as if braced to save him should he lose his balance — and also in his slowness and caution. He glared at her, despising her concern or his dependency. The cossack-yellow hair was still yellow, straight, thick as honey and brushed back flat in the old fashion, appropriate to a dancing dandy. When he looked toward us and grinned, terrific peasant teeth appeared in the square, heavily structured Russky head, built for hard blows. He wore a black linen suit, pink shirt, gray tie. He carried nothing. I hadn’t seen him for over twenty years — our dealings were by phone, me asking for favors until he asked — not that I’d understood — for my life. He looked much as I remembered. Sam and I got out of the car. Zev came toward us. Then I could see more indications of age — seams in his neck and a downward pull about the wide, heavy mouth — but still, in his sixties, Zev could pass for a younger man, even here in the Miami sunlight through which he approached with a strong step, the blue-eyed Penelope de Assis at his side.

  He embraced me, then shoved me back, arm’s length, his hands lingering on my shoulders.

  I said, “You betrayed me, Uncle Zev.”

  He shook his head, sighing. His words came slowly, with the weariness of ancient disappointment.

  “You did me a favor unknowingly. Is that what you call betrayal?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry that’s how you feel, but I can understand. I won’t ask more of you. Say ‘No, Uncle Zev. You ask for too much,’ and I will walk right back into that airplane and there will be no hard feelings.”

  His green-and-yellow flecked eyes stayed strictly on mine as he extended his left hand toward Penelope, palm upward. “You have a reservation on the next flight to San Francisco. It leaves in two hours and forty-five minutes.”

  Penelope put an air-ticket envelope into his palm. He rattled it in my face.

  “Say no. Use this ticket. You fly first class. Say it—‘No, Uncle Zev. I feel deeply how much this means to you, but my answer is no.’ A chauffeured car will meet you in San Francisco and drive you home. Phone your girlfriend. Take her to dinner at Jack’s. It’s on me.”

  “Uncle Zev, give me a chance to—”

  “I’m still talking. Should you say yes, I have also made a reservation for you at my hotel in Key Biscayne. They’re holding a bay-view suite. A speedboat is at your disposal. It’s got a thousand horses. Penelope will drive you to the hotel and buy you decent clothes in the shop. To these old eyes, the way you’re dressed, you look like a piece of shit.”

  “Uncle Zev, please, this isn’t about clothes and speedboats.”

  “You got something better in your miserable life? What? Writing a screenplay? It’s digging a ditch. They make a movie, the ditch becomes a sewer.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Soft as a fairy.”

  “All right, enough.” I snatched the ticket out of his hand and tore it in half. My freedom had been compromised by neediness and favors, but the trouble was deeper — in the chemistry. I stared at the epicanthic folds that lay on his tigerish, Genghis Khan eyes, the grainy texture of his heavy skin, the yellow hair — each of the billion strands an expression of his soul — and I was hypnotized by the force, the mystery of his particular being, which I couldn’t reconcile with the idea that he was a son of a bitch. Penelope took the torn ticket from me and slipped it into her jacket pocket. Frugal.

  “All right, what?”

  “Introduce me to your daughter.”

  Having said “daughter,” I glanced at her. There was no gratitude in her face. If she felt anything, it looked like anger. Maybe Sam hadn’t told me enough. Zev’s voice, now low and harsh, as if I’d kicked him in the groin, said, “Penelope de Assis, meet my nephew.”

  We shook hands. She said, “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “Listen to her,” said Zev. “She knows more about you than you. Sam and I must have a short conference in the plane. We’ll meet you later at the hotel and go to dinner. You’ll be there. I like a Spanish restaurant on Calle Ocho. You know it, Sam?”

  “The Malaga.”

  Zev snapped his fingers. “Correct.” Turning to me, he said, “Afterward, we’ll go dancing. What do you say?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Truer words were never spoken. Buy clothes. Look good. Take a ride in the speedboat. Penelope, show my nephew how to live.” Sam handed Penelope the keys to his car.

  Driving to Key Biscayne, Penelope concentrated on the road and, it seemed, didn’t want to speak. I figured I knew why. She’d witnessed my confrontation with Zev and decided she had nothing, after all, to say to me. With an apologetic and resentful tone — coming out of an irrational need to be polite and make her approve of me — I began to apologize for causing her trouble, though I was more sinned against than sinning—“I had no idea of the complications in my Cuba trip. I didn’t even know you existed
until a few minutes ago”—when she grunted and swung her arm, like a backstroke in tennis, banging my jaw with the heel of her fist. Blindly, reflexively, my hands flew up, catching the next blow on my wrists. The car swerved left and right as she overcorrected, hitting the brakes, tearing gravel. We stopped. A fiend with searing cold blue eyes screamed at me:

  “Why didn’t you just say no and get the fuck out of here?”

  Then she stiffened, pressing herself back against the seat, and breathed deeply. A hundred cars and trucks passed before she restarted the engine, reentered traffic. We sped on to Key Biscayne.

  My jaw was hot. I wanted to touch it, but I sat like a dummy, not looking at her legs, the skirt awry, pulled up to her crotch. Dummy or not, I was alert and feverish. Only she and I existed in Miami. Pray, I told myself, for patience. Be silent, strong, clean of heart. You don’t know what’s going on. A wrong word and she might drive into a palm tree.

  As we pulled into the hotel grounds, she said she would go to the shop, buy some clothes, bring them to me. “You will keep whatever you like. I’ll return the rest.” She would choose the clothes alone. Her tone was cold and curt. No talk of styles, colors, materials. She didn’t ask for my sizes. Go to my suite, sit in the bar, take a walk about the grounds, look at the trees, flowers, shorebirds, or ride in the speedboat. If I preferred, she would ride with me later. “I assume you’ll want me,” she said matter-offactly, without the coyness or arrogance of a good-looking woman, or any apparent suspicion that I might prefer to strangle her. The boat ride didn’t matter to her one way or the other. Please myself. She’d see me in an hour.

  I went to my suite, lay down on a couch, got right up and looked out the window. Looked, didn’t see, lay down again, shut my eyes, waited, waited, waited. There was a knock at the door. Penelope came in with jackets, shirts, pants, socks, shoes, and bathing trunks. She dropped everything on the couch, smiling faintly, as if amused by the colors and variety. I was glad to see this other face. It was possible almost to like her. But, far more important, despite her volatile personality, I was oppressed by desire. “Try this on,” she said, holding up a jacket. I took it from her.