The Quintessence of Quick (The Jack Mason Saga)

by Stan Hayes

  “Well, you please be sure to give ’im mine next time your paths cross.” Ziggy shook his head, saying, “Damn! Who’da believed it, way back there in Bisque, me pedalin’ that damn old Schwinn Cycle Truck fulla groceries all over town, you gettin’ kicked off the football team, that one day you and I’d be sittin’ here today?” Stopping abruptly, before he could say “...and talkin’ about somethin’ like this?” he brought the tips of his fingers to his upper lip and immediately took them away. “‘Scuse that, buddy; I oughta have better sense than to mention that.”

  “Ah, hell, don’t worry about it,” Rick said as he took a healthy sip of the fresh drink that had appeared in front of him, “It’s an old story; fresh kid tries hitting above his weight, gets sucker-punched by latter-day Delilah, misplaces the blame and goes away mad. And, of course, still nuts about Delilah.”

  Ziggy, slow to respond, recalled the wry smile to duty. “Shit,” he said, “Guess who else is.”

  Rick nodded. “You, me, and that champion asshole Preston Rogers, as worthless a motherfucker that ever lived. And who knows who else?”

  “Damn if I know. I didn’t allow myself to think like that about white girls. My momma would’ve whupped my ass till sunup if she ever saw me even lookin’ like I was thinkin’ about white girls atall. Hey.”

  “What?”

  “Preston Rogers. Dr. Rogers’ boy. He knocked her up, didn’t he?”

  “Not for lack of trying, but it turns out he didn’t. She was late with her period, I guess for the first time, panicked and dropped it in Preston’s lap. When he wouldn’t go for it, she slung it right on over into mine. I don’t know if you remember, but we were next door neighbors, which is why I got interested in her in the first place. Her tits sprouted early; she was 12, I guess. I was a year younger, and I honestly didn’t know what to think about a girl whose chest all of a sudden had started looking like my mom’s. I didn’t even respond to her teasing until I was 12, and by then she’d showed ’em to me probably half a dozen times.

  “There was this space between our garages, about a yard wide, and at the front there was a trellis at the end of the fence; kudzu had taken it over, so you couldn’t see in there at all, from either house. The first time it happened, I heard her calling me, but I couldn’t see her. ‘Come around to the back, goosey!’ She said. I finally figured out where she was, and went in there. She was just standing there with her shirt pulled up. I didn’t know what to say, but after that, any time I heard ‘goosey’ I knew she was there. By the time she quit doin’ it, I was havin’ wet dreams two or three times a week. And I didn’t know what they were. So you might say, hell, I might say, she was my first love, and you know what they say about first loves.”

  For the first time, they’d gotten ahead of the waiter. After Ziggy shouted, “James!” he said, “‘They’ always have something to say about everything under the sun. What’s the popular notion about first loves?”

  Rick chuckled. “Why, Zig, that you never get over ’em.”

  Ziggy’s face seemed to Rick to have materially elongated. “Goddam!”

  “Zig, Zig; not you too.”

  “Looks like it. You coulda gone all day without tellin’ me sump’m like that.”

  This civil rights movement’s damn troublesome already, Rick thought as the cab driver did his best to dodge the potholes on Maine Avenue on the way back to Fort McNair. Now I’ve gotta find my way back to Langley tomorrow with a fucking hangover. I expect it’ll be a light one, compared to Ziggy’s. Good thing that his pals came down from upstairs and took him out of there. Jesus, we really stepped off into the deep end! Once we both admitted we were still in love with her, school was out where Trisha was concerned. Probably not the first time a confessional turned into a fracas, if you could call it that.

  Maybe if I hadn’t said that she was kind of stingy with her lovemaking, the stagecoach wouldn’t have gone over the cliff. Where I was headed was that I didn’t love her because she was a superior fuck; I love her because she awakened feelings in me that no one else ever has. But I didn’t get to the second part before he interrupted me, saying that he felt the same way, but that black people never expected whites to be as good at sex as they are. That, as my mother used to say, “flew all over me.”

  I shouldn’t have told him that whopper about having sex with lots of colored girls; hell, I’ve only had a couple over what we might call my career, but the other part of what I told him was true. I really never could see much difference, black or white; some individuals just enjoy it more than others. Anyway, that really got him going. Next he tells me that Jack and I are “promiscuous,” and reminds me of how we used to “take advantage” of “those poor Bishop twins.” Then he goes on about Jack’s family, saying his grandmother was killed while she was running around on her husband, and that his mother carried on with Moses Kubielski for years, and with Sheriff McDaniel for years before that. Said he loves Jack for what he’s done for his brother Ralph, but that he can’t excuse the kind of behavior that Jack and I’ve indulged in.

  Well, that tore it for me. Told him that as far as I knew there weren’t degrees of promiscuity, and that aside from what he’d been doing with Trisha, that I’d make a small wager that in Korea, he’d been as promiscuous as the next Marine. He then proceeded to tell me that I was full of shit, and that if he could he’d marry Trisha tomorrow, he would, just to keep me from “further sullying her.” The real fun began when I suggested he give his mother a call and ask her who she thought had “sullied” Trisha. I figured that’d smoke him out. It did, but when he stood up to swing at me he tripped and went down like a loblolly pine in a pulpwood tract, out cold. Just as well, because I felt, just for a second, like I could very easily kill him.

  Guess I’ll always love her, in one way or another, but things really came to a head back in ’58, that New Year’s in New York, after we beat the Giants in Yankee Stadium for the NFL championship. Now they call it “the greatest football game ever played,” won when Alan Ameche punched in from the two-yard line in the first overtime period In NFL history. Looking back now, it’s clear to me how hard I worked talking her into coming. She had absolutely zero interest in going to the game; said she’d catch a late plane. But she’d only been to New York one other time in her life, and I’d sprung for that suite at the Plaza- a fucking suite, that even after the Colts’ front office got an inside rate for me, was too damn much- but being on the NFL championship team, even as a rookie who didn’t play a single down, plus having my girlfriend in New York for New Year’s, hell, that weekend I was on top of the world.

  Most of the team and staff rushed through the post-game locker room hoopla to catch the plane back to meet thousands of Baltimore fans at the airport, so I hopped into a cab and stopped off at a liquor store to pick up a couple of items. Somewhere in her fractured past, Trisha had come nose-to-nose with Piper Heidsieck champagne, and I wasn’t about to pay the Plaza’s price for it- shoved two cold bottles into my two-suiter, made it to the hotel by about 6:30 and checked in. If her Delta flight was on time, I had almost an hour to get ready. I took a quick shower, ordered up the makings for Martinis, specifying the largest glasses they had and an ice bucket full of ice, which would do double duty with the champagne.

  I’d just hung up from checking with the Concierge about theater tickets when the bellman’s discreet rap came. I opened the door to him, Trisha, her three pieces of Samsonite and a kiss for me that left no doubt as to why she’d come. She stepped back, her face saying that she was just too amused at the thought of the two of us being here. As the door closed behind the bellman, I dug through my quip file for a comment, settling for “Nice outfit.” Black two-piece pants suit, what I think they call a bolero jacket with a bouncy, frilly white blouse, everything silk. Black shiny boots like the sheen of her hair, cut shorter than I’d ever seen it into what I’d later learn was called a Sassoon.

  “Thanks! Just managed to swing it with my J.P. Allen employee discount. Di
dn’t see many like it in the terminal. Well, actually none.”

  “The hot luggage too?”

  “Hey! The outfit was all I could handle. The bags’re Norma’s, my roommate.” Spying the cocktail setup beside the window, she said, “Buy me a drink?”

  “Settle for Piper Heidsieck?”

  “Fuck me before dinner?”

  Doing it with somebody you love is totally different from doing it with somebody that you just really love to do. And in a four-star hotel. Well, things got even better as we went along, eating, drinking and gawking our way around Manhattan for the next two days. We even worked in a visit to Jack’s mother, who was so glad to see us it was embarrassing. Jack had called Christmas Day and no, he couldn’t make it up over the holidays, there was a deal brewing (credit him for the pun, she was quick to say) for the company to be sold, he also had Moses’ old car up for sale and that might take him out of town for a few days. Anyway, she was having a few people in for New Year’s Eve, if we hadn’t made other plans. We agreed to “pop in” before midnight.

  Holiday theatre tickets for the good shows are tough to come by, but the Concierge came through in the clutch with Wednesday matinee tickets for Once More, With Feeling!. Funny show, Joseph Cotten the wild-ass egomaniac conductor, but Arlene Francis? I kept seeing her behind the What’s My Line? desk. Anyway, we headed back to the Plaza for drinks at the Oak Room, a quickie, dinner from room service, then showered, dressed and cabbed it down to Ríni’s (she insisted that we call her that) around 11:30. Quite a group; mostly from her generation, which didn’t keep the straight minority from dry-drooling down Trisha’s shirt; I swear I hoped she’d make the “goosey” move. Ríni looked terrific, too, and worked hard making us feel at home. Gave up quickly, though, on trying to promote me, a Colt, to Giants fans, however half-assed. Hard not to notice her relief when we made our move to leave as soon after the midnight moment as we could decently bring it off. I thought I’d be getting flak from Trisha about our getting involved with Ríni at all, but she’d soaked up the “art milieu” fast, intoxicated, I guess, by Ríni’s being part of an arty New York clique. I said, “You didn’t drink much. Did you just get high on the company?”

  “Yeah, a little.” she stretched, extending her legs as can only be done in a Checker Cab, grinning with satisfaction as she did. “How ’bout you?”

  “I could’ve done with a little less crooning about de Kooning, and hearing those faggots giggling about Pull My Daisy. What the hell is that, anyway?”

  “A movie, although they insisted on calling it a ‘film.’ About the writers and artists that call themselves ‘the beats.’ You know- Kerouac and so forth. It’s just finished, and the people involved are celebrating at a place called the Artist’s Club. They wanted us to go there with them after Ríni’s party died down; apparently it’s an easy walk from here.”

  “You mean they wanted you to go with them.”

  “Sweetie, you just said they were faggots. They kept quiet about your being a Colt so the other faggots wouldn’t take note, which they probably did anyway. You were a hot item back there, rock-prick.”

  “For God’s sake. What a life Ríni must live, with that bunch of piss-ants underfoot.”

  “A steady diet of them could be a bit much, but those were some pretty smart folks Ríni had in there tonight. I really had a good time talking- well, mostly listening- to them. Can you imagine trying to get a group like that together in Atlanta?

  Blowing out my cheeks, I said, “No, but if you weren’t too picky about the gender, you could probably scrape up a fair bunch back at your alma mater.”

  She turned to me, the grin returning. “ Hell, I think I may move here. You know, Goosey, that’s the reason we should never be under the same roof for more than a few days. Not that those few days aren’t always magic; I do things with you that I’d never do with anyone else. But what I want to do is expand my horizons, and you’re fighting a perpetual rear-guard action to make sure yours don’t move an inch. But I’ll tell you what.”

  “What?”

  Undoing her shirtfront, she knelt in front of me. “Let’s just enjoy the ride, then sleep ’til noon and start fresh. And not just ‘once more, with feeling;’ I want you in me, everywhere, ’til one of us screams ‘enough.’ Then you cool my cunt off with a mouthful of the Plaza’s rich whipped cream. If we never do this again, we’ll remember wall-to-wall sex in the Plaza.”

  At what may have been my most obtuse moment, I grinned back. “Want to give the cabby something to talk about?”

  “Happy New Year, Goosey.”

  I put her in a cab to LaGuardia on the morning of January 2nd, 1959. As she’d tried to alert me, it’d be quite awhile before our paths crossed again.

  Jack’s phone cut sharply into the quiet of the late summer Saturday’s dawn. “Hey, Jack!”

  “Rick- You on your way to Bisque?”

  “Hell, no; you knew the President signed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution yesterday.”

  “Yeah...”

  “Well, Command must’ve known something was up back in June, when I was extended on active duty for 90 days. Hell, son, my battalion’s got orders to Vietnam; ETA, 1 October. Buddy, if I left my team now, I couldn’t live with myself. I hope you understand.”

  “Damn! Of course I understand, but-”

  “I know I’m passing up the chance of a lifetime, and I know you’ll have to make other arrangements to crew that Lear Jet, but goddam it, Jack, this was what I was meant to do; I’m a fucking soldier, soup to nuts, and now- right now- I’ve got a chance to make the difference in this world that we talked about down in San Juan. Buddy, I just gotta go.”

  “Shit. I know you do, but I hate it. You don’t mind if I hate it for a while, do you?”

  “Nope. I would in your shoes, for sure. Just hate ‘it,’ please, and not me, OK?”

  “Hell, you know better than that. In your shoes, I hope I’d make the same decision. Gimme a call before you go, huh?”

  “Wilco, fly-boy. Give the twins a hug for me, all right?”

  “That’s a rog, dogface. hasta la vista.” Hasta la vista indeed, he thought; among other things, to the time when you and I told each other nothing but the truth.

  30 SPRING ROLLS & POT-STICKERS

  The Bachelor Officers’ Quarters bar at Naval Station San Juan was dark and quiet on most Sunday evenings, and Jack was pleased that tonight it played strictly to form. He and Lulu typically closed out their weekend with afternoon cocktails, after which the visiting team would head home to rest up for Monday. At a little after nine on this eve of a workday, neither of them had moved to mention dinner. Sitting at a corner table within range of the bartender, its top populated with a half dozen empties, they sat nursing the contents of two more stemmed glasses. Time was short, not just for the evening or the weekend. Jack’s orders sending him to Commander, Fleet Air Jacksonville for release to inactive duty were effective two weeks from the coming Monday morning, the approach of which they were actively ignoring in this prime candidate for the sleepiest watering hole in San Juan.

  They had left the Condado Beach well before sundown, a couple of hours earlier than Lulu and her friends typically abandoned the sundeck. Jack’s reactions to the fallout from President Kennedy’s assassination that affected him personally varied, day to day, over a wide emotional spectrum. It was his first weekend in San Juan for over a month; he’d excused himself to Lulu with an assortment of events, from being scheduled as Squadron Duty Officer to car trouble. For her part, Lulu was far less interested than she used to be in making the drive from San Juan to Roosevelt Roads. Her friend, Margarita “Maggie” Torres, answered the many questions raised by the Condado clique concerning Jack’s absence: “She thought she was in love with him, and I guess that she still thinks so; but one thing Lulu won’t stand for is to have him, or anyone else, think that she’ll settle for being anything but Priority One. Whatever’s keeping Jack away from here on the weekends, it can’t just be his N
avy duty. It never was a problem for him to get away before.”

  And of course, the Navy wasn’t the problem. Since being returned to Earth in a craft from the far future, Jack’s real problem was how to understand, given Gil’s revelations, the true nature of his being. What would centuries of outliving one generation of peers after another bring to bear on him? More than six months had passed, and while he flew his missions and remained functional as a Naval Officer, he couldn’t bring himself to share the knowledge of his fate with anyone. After surviving into the fifth millennium, and returning to create major changes of events by saving Jesus’s, Linda’s and Pete’s lives, he now felt total responsibility for them. And his ongoing love for Linda, he now new, hadn’t faded much.

  Returning to Lulu on a bright fall Saturday, it seemed at first that he might be able to bring it off, this reunion with the other with whom he had, for a time, conceived of being in love. Bright, beautiful and, by some margin, the sexiest woman he’d ever known; and in her own words, having come from ‘pretty near nothin’,’ which was, to Jack, yet one more thing in her favor. As was their habit, they went for an early lunch at the restaurant she prized above all others, Le Chalet Suisse, to, also in her words, ‘lay down a base’ for yet another afternoon of alcohol, sunshine and horseshit at the Condado Beach.

  The first to greet them, not unexpectedly, was Burke Swearingen, which didn’t improve Jack’s already-faltering resolve to be civil, and if possible jocular, with all hands in this clueless coalition. “Well,” Swearingen breathed. “Thought you’d given us up for Luquillo or someplace.” This afternoon was the third, or maybe the fourth in Jack’s recollection, that he’d shown up since returning from leave the previous December. Contributing to his disenchantment was the fact that Swearingen, after a long evening at Casa Coquí, had made a laughably clumsy grab for Jack’s balls on the way into their quarters.