Outside the Gates of Eden

by Lewis Shiner

  OUTSIDE THE GATES OF EDEN

  also by lewis shiner

  novels

  Dark Tangos (2011)

  Black & White (2008)

  Say Goodbye (1999)

  Glimpses (1993)

  Slam (1990)

  Deserted Cities of the Heart (1988)

  Frontera (1984)

  collections

  Heroes and Villains (2017)

  Collected Stories (2009)

  Love in Vain (2001)

  The Edges of Things (1991)

  Nine Hard Questions about the Nature of the Universe (1990)

  OUTSIDE THE GATES OF EDEN

  LEWIS SHINER

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in the UK in 2019 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Lewis Shiner, 2019

  The moral right of Lewis Shiner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB): 9781789541137

  ISBN (XTPB): 9781789541144

  ISBN (E): 9781789541120

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon cr0 4yy

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  www.headofzeus.com

  For Jean-Paul with love, always, from Raul

  And, always, for Orlita

  Contents

  Also by Lewis Shiner

  Welcome Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Part One

  1965

  1966

  1967

  1968

  1969

  Part Two

  1971

  1973

  1974

  1977

  1980

  1984

  1990

  1993

  1999

  2000

  2001

  2010

  2016

  Later

  Author’s Note

  About the authorAbout the Author

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  PART ONE

  1965

  Three-thirty, Cole’s first day at the new high school. He hit the courts in his tennis whites, carrying his Jack Kramer racket in its wooden press. The St. Mark’s courts were like nothing he’d seen outside of tv. Bright green composite surface, clean white lines, cloth nets on steel hawsers instead of the chain link he was used to.

  He was one of two dozen boys. After ten minutes of basic calisthenics, they milled around, waiting. The coach was named Fleming, young and skinny and earnest. Freshman English teacher, somebody said.

  “Cole?” Fleming said, reading from a clipboard, and Cole raised his hand. Fleming glanced at him and said, “You and Montoya take Court Six. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Montoya was small and wiry, light-skinned despite the Mexican name. Short black hair parted on the left. Good-looking and confident—hell on women, Cole figured.

  “Alex,” Montoya said, offering his hand.

  “Jeff,” Cole said. “But everybody calls me Cole.”

  “What year are you?”

  “Junior.”

  “Me too. Transfer?”

  “Yeah, I was in Midland. You know where Court Six is?” He slacked off the wing nuts and slipped the racket out of the brace, then swung it in large circles to loosen up his shoulder.

  “The back forty.” Alex pointed with the head of his racket to a second row of concrete slabs behind the elegant composite courts. He grabbed two balls from the bucket at Fleming’s feet. “Your dad in oil?”

  “Kind of,” Cole said. “He’s an accountant.”

  “Much money in that?”

  “Not really. I’m here on scholarship. And against my will.” Alex cocked his head and Cole said, “No girls.”

  “It’s a drawback,” Alex said.

  The date was September 7, the day after Labor Day, and the colors of the distant courts rippled in the Dallas heat. Cole had already felt that first, cooling break of sweat under his arms and on his upper lip. Alex took the far side of the net, dropped a ball, and casually swatted it before it hit the ground.

  In two minutes Cole had his number. He was exactly the kind of player that made Cole crazy, a scrambler who could get to anything and whose wild shots always nicked the line. Cole had made up for a lack of natural ability with hours of practice, focusing on technique, drilling against a backboard until the daylight was gone. He was a power player, with a hard topspin backhand that he liked to follow in to the net. Unfortunately, he wasn’t powerful enough.

  They took a few practice serves, then Cole said, “M or W?”

  “M for Montoya.”

  Cole spun his racket and the Wilson logo on the handle landed upside-down. He hit both balls to Alex.

  It went as badly as Cole expected. Alex’s serves were nothing special, but every time Cole went to the net, Alex hit a deep lob that sent him scurrying to the baseline. Between that and the drop shots and bizarre spins, Alex easily won his serve.

  Cole himself had a nasty American twist that Alex couldn’t handle. If Cole got the first serve in. When he fell back on his second serve, Alex got up to the same tricks. Cole held his first two serves, trailing 3–2 when Fleming showed up.

  “Montoya, get out of no-man’s land. And quit hitting when you’re out of position. Cole, if you’re going to take the net, put it away. And you’re hitting late on your ground strokes and killing your power.”

  Cole dug in and pounded two serves in a row, and Alex sent both of them into the fence. “Nice serve,” Fleming said. “Let me see you mix it up a little.” As soon as Cole complied, Alex was all over it and took the game.

  Fleming moved on. Cole couldn’t get the service break back and lost the set 6–4.

  As they walked toward the net, Alex flipped his racket around and held it like a guitar, pointing the handle up and contorting his face as he pretended to tear off a hot lick.

  Interesting, Cole thought.

  They shook hands across the net and walked to the sidelines. “I guess you don’t know much of anybody here, right?” Alex said.

  Cole shrugged, still annoyed with himself for losing.

  “Why don’t you come to my house for dinner Friday night?” Alex said. “My father is always after me to bring people home, and the food is pretty decent. I can bring you over after school.”

  Over the years and many dislocations, Cole had developed the habit of making friends quickly. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks.”

  *

  Cole followed Alex out to the St. Mark’s parking lot after tennis on Friday. Their books were stacked on their notebooks under their left arms, their rackets in their right hands. They were in their fall uniforms, khaki pants with Ban-Lon polo shirts in a particularly fungal shade of taupe. Cole was a little nervous about being branded queer, though Alex seemed straight enough. And popular, based on the number of people who sat with him at lunch, a club that Cole had joined.

  Montoya’s car turned out to be a red ’65 Corvair Monza. Sleek, compact, sp
orty, engine in the rear. Cole stopped to admire it. “This got the one-ten horses?”

  “One-forty,” Alex said. “Not that I get much chance to open it up. You know cars?”

  “I used to help out in the motor pool.”

  The red tuck and roll upholstery was hot enough to pop the sweat on Cole’s freshly showered back. He followed Alex’s lead and threw his books and racket in the back seat.

  Alex had a cushion to put himself higher behind the wheel. He cranked the engine and the radio came on with it, blasting rock and roll. Big, skating-rink-type organ and tinny piano and a tired-sounding singer. “Check it out!” Alex said. “You heard this yet?”

  Cole shook his head.

  “It’s the new Dylan single. Dig it.”

  Cole had heard of Dylan but not heard him. Midland was solidly country-western, and his father ordered him to get up and change the channel whenever music groups came on tv. Most of the rock bands that Cole had heard sounded crude. He liked movie themes and John Coltrane, the Kingston Trio and Bobby Darin. His parents had an ancient monaural phonograph and Cole didn’t have any records of his own.

  The song was over by the time Alex exited the parking lot and made a left onto Preston. He turned the volume down and said, “You like Dylan?”

  “I don’t know,” Cole said. “How come you’ve got your license already? Are you even sixteen yet?”

  “Sixteen next month. It’s a hardship license.” He looked at Cole and grinned. “My parents felt like it was a hardship to drive me around.” Cole’s parents felt the same way, but in his case it meant he didn’t get out much.

  “How long you been in Dallas?” Alex asked.

  “Since June. Worked all summer in my father’s office. Making coffee, running errands, shit like that.”

  “It’s cool that you got to move around.”

  “Mostly from one armpit to another. Before Midland I was in Egypt for a year. That was where I learned to work on cars. We got out just before Nasser nationalized the oil. Midland for two years before that, Mexico for a year before that, New Jersey before that.”

  “Which armpit of Mexico?”

  Cole flushed. “No offense, but we were in Villahermosa, which was in fact not very hermosa.”

  “Why should I be offended?”

  He wants me to point out that he’s Mexican, Cole thought. He shut up rather than give him the satisfaction. It was starting to look like a long evening.

  “Relax, Cole, I’m just giving you shit. My father’s from Guanajuato, which is in fact pretty hermosa, and I agree that Villahermosa is pretty much an armpit. I myself have lived my entire life in Dallas, and I’m not convinced that you haven’t landed in an armpit yet again.”

  *

  Alex was nervous despite himself as he parked behind the house. You could see there was something about “this Cole character,” as his mother already called him. Alex felt like his own attempts at coolness were transparently lame, whereas Cole was the real deal, standing outside looking in, not with hunger but with indifference.

  They got out of the car and he watched Cole take it all in, the pristine driveway, the perfectly rectangular hedges, his sister’s red T-bird convertible, the privacy fence and the pool beyond it, the two-story brick house, less than ten years old. “Nice,” Cole said. “What does your father do to get this kind of bread?”

  “Import-export, real estate, he’s got a piece of the Cuauhtémoc brewery in Monterrey, I don’t even know anymore where it all comes from. Once you get past a certain point, being rich is a full-time job all by itself.”

  “You don’t approve?”

  “It’s not that simple. I love my father. I just don’t want to be him.”

  The garage door was up and they walked between his father’s Eldorado and his mother’s Impala, through the laundry room, and into the kitchen. Alex’s mother was washing lettuce in the sink while Frederica sliced potatoes on the counter. His mother’s hair was in a loose ponytail and she was wearing Capri pants and a tight sweater like somebody half her age. She’d barely turned 20 when she had Alex, and she was fanatical about watching Jack LaLanne and working out to fitness records. She dried her hands on her apron as she kissed Alex and said, «Hola, m’ijo.»

  “Mom?”

  “Sorry, sorry. Hi, Alex. And this is Cole?”

  “Hi,” Cole said. He took her hand European style, like he was going to kiss it. “You must be Alex’s sister?”

  “Points for charm,” she said. “You can stay.”

  “Dad home?” Alex asked.

  “Not yet.” Alex wondered if her false cheer was obvious to Cole. “Susan’s here for the weekend.” She looked at Cole. “Susan really is his sister. She’s a freshman at ut.”

  “Alex told me.”

  She nodded to Frederica. “And this is Frederica.”

  “I’m Cole. Anything I can do to help?”

  Frederica shook her head like Cole was crazy, and Alex’s mother said, “Is he always like this?”

  “I barely know the guy,” Alex said.

  “Like what?” Cole said.

  “You guys run along,” his mother said. “I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”

  Alex led the way upstairs. He’d remembered to make the bed that morning, at least. He sat on the bed and Cole pulled the wooden chair out from the desk and sat backwards on it. Cole eyed the guitars and amplifier, the stereo and the stack of records leaning against the wall.

  “What kind of music do you like?” Alex asked. You could see from Cole’s shrug that he was embarrassed. “C’mon, man, what’s the big deal? You into opera or some shit like that?”

  “No, it’s… I don’t know much about rock and roll.”

  “Yeah, I figured. Like, ‘rock and roll’ is oldies, okay, like the Platters and shit. Just plain ‘rock’ is what’s happening now.”

  Cole nodded like he was taking mental notes. “You play guitar?”

  “At it,” Alex said. “I’d have to work a lot harder to be any good. Lately I’ve been playing bass because it’s easier. If I was in a group, that’s what I’d play. Did you like ‘Positively Fourth Street’? That Dylan song in the car?”

  “I think so. Maybe.”

  Alex thought it over and said, “Here’s the deal. You help me clean up my tennis game, and I’ll help you with your appalling ignorance about music. Okay?”

  Cole nodded again.

  Alex took out Highway 61 Revisited. “Lesson One,” he said.

  *

  Fifty-some minutes later and Cole’s head was spinning.

  The instruments on the record were clangy and some of them out of tune. Instead of ruining everything, it only made the music sound more urgent. Then there was Dylan’s voice, like something he used to know and had forgotten. The voice of somebody too clever for his own good, hurt and lonely and rejecting before he was rejected. Like looking in a mirror and seeing somebody far more mysterious than he’d ever seen there before.

  Alex surprised him by not asking what he thought, which Cole did not want to put into words at that moment. It must have been all over his face, because Alex said, “Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  They went downstairs. Half of Cole was still out on Highway 61, or in the rain in Juarez, or maybe on Desolation Row. The other half dimly registered an oak-paneled dining room, a chandelier, an oval table 12 feet long laid out with linen tablecloth, candles, real silver. A two-foot-tall wooden crucifix next to a framed picture of the Virgin. At one end sat Alex’s father, five-ten and massively built, with short, curly hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. The only other person at the table was a younger, blonder version of Alex, maybe a fifth grader, sitting in front of a glass of milk.

  Alex’s father stood up and held out his hand. “Al Montoya. Good to meet you.” Only the slightest hint of an accent, more in the rhythm than the pronunciation.

  “Jeff Cole.” He was ready for a firm handshake and he got it.

  Alex hugged his father and his fath
er kissed him on the cheek. Cole, startled, looked away.

  “And this is Jimmy,” Montoya said.

  The kid shook hands too and said, “Hi.”

  Alex’s mother came in, holding a bowl of something in a red quilted mitt. From the look of it, Cole thought it might be potatoes au gratin, something he’d read about but never eaten. Then again, he’d never known anyone with a black maid before, or cars for everybody in the family old enough to drive.

  “You’re here, Cole,” she said, pointing to a chair one away from Montoya. “Go ahead and sit down.”

  He didn’t, of course. Being poor didn’t mean you couldn’t have manners, his mother had told him a million times. She read Emily Post and Amy Vanderbilt and never got to use them.

  “You want a beer?” Alex asked.

  “Um, sure.” He didn’t let himself look at Montoya to see if they were pulling his leg.

  “Bohemia all right?” Alex said.

  “Whatever you’re having.”

  Montoya said, “If you’re not familiar with it, it’s got a richer flavor than the US beer you’re probably used to.”

  Cole nodded as if he were used to anything other than an occasional pilfered sip of his father’s Schlitz.

  “Let me know what you think,” Montoya said.

  “I’ll do that,” Cole said.

  Alex’s mother set the potatoes next to the rest of the food on the table. Huge wooden bowl of salad. Fresh green beans instead of canned, cut diagonally and sautéed with mushrooms. Loaves of French bread torn to pieces and poking out of a checkered napkin in a basket. Glass butter dish and silver butter knife, steaming bowl of wild rice, pitchers of water and lemonade. She sat at her husband’s right hand and said, «Susana! Ven, estamos listos.»

  Alex, who’d come back with two brown bottles of beer, glared at her. Montoya cleared his throat. Cole shifted uncomfortably, and then Susan walked out of the kitchen.

  She was darker than Alex, with lustrous black hair that flipped inward at her shoulders, like a fashion model’s. Petite, graceful, completely out of Cole’s league. Except for the wounded look in her eyes. It matched the pain in Dylan’s voice, and Cole wanted to believe that no one saw it but him.