At our third meeting Paul went to the podium to tell his story. ‘I’m Paul, and I’m a member of the Allie Fisher Fan Club . . .’ Allie, you probably don’t know this, but he quit his job. Paul used to be the hardest working, most ambitious guy I knew, and now he won’t do anything. My God, look what you did. Can’t you at least help him get through this? Can’t you at least call? I really don’t understand why you won’t call?
And David, what about David? We thought he was getting better. He spoke at the last meeting and seemed fine. Before stepping away from the podium, he smiled, not angry or bitter. After the meeting, he and Chris talked in the hallway, and Chris told me later that David was more worried about me than himself. He said to Chris, ‘Do what you can for McAllister. He’ll never admit he’s in trouble, but I’m afraid he won’t stay without Allison.’
Won’t stay? Not sure what he meant by that; everything’s fine with me. David is the one who decided not to stay. About the funeral, I would have gone over and said hello but you were sitting with Josh, and you kissed him. Why would you do that? People don’t kiss at funerals, not like that. It’s like you were shoving it in my face. Well, this is what I wanted you to know. David was upset about a lot of things and probably would have done it anyway. You were just the last one to let him down.
. . . . .
Let It Be Known To All Concerned
Jack is thirty-six. His wife has joined the Lake Charles Junior League and spends most of her time working on community projects. His daughter has a new boyfriend.
“I’m telling you, Tracy, he dropped the damn ball.”
Tracy’s high school boyfriend caught the winning touchdown pass, got his picture in the paper, and now Jack is saying he dropped the ball. “Your boyfriend is no damn hero, that’s for sure!”
“Why do you hate him so much? Why do you hate every guy I date?”
“I don’t hate him, Tracy. Of course I don’t hate your boyfriend.” Jack turns to his wife for support but she offers nothing.
Mrs. Sedgwick tells them both, “We all need to tone it down a notch. And Tracy, you know your father is talking nonsense.”
Jack stands up to fix another dink. “I’m only saying that our daughter should spend more time with her family.”
“What about you, Dad? You haven’t spent time with me since I was born!”
. . .
Lynette is in the bookstore rifling through a price guide when I walk in. After selling the business and building to her, I gambled away a small fortune in the futures market, nearly everything I had, for reasons I don’t understand, and now I’m going to tell Lynette she’s on her own.
“How much should I pay for this copy of East of Eden?” she asks. “The man’s coming back any minute.”
“I’m leaving,” I tell her.
“What do you mean you’re leaving? You’re moving?”
“Yep.”
“But you haven’t given a thirty-day notice. If you’re moving, you have to give a thirty-day notice.”
Standing in front of her desk, I spot my Cross pen in a mug and use it to write on her desk calendar. Let it be known to all concerned. Within thirty days, Mitch McAllister will be gone. Lynette wants me to stay. I rent the upstairs loft. She wants me to continue helping with the bookstore, offering free advice forever. I stick the pen in my pocket. “Offer him sixty. If he complains, tell him it’s a nice book but not in good enough condition.”
“Sixty dollars for East of Eden? Isn’t that too much?”
“Nope, it’s a first edition that’ll sell for about one-fifty.”
She tells me. “If I can’t find someone to lease the apartment, you’ll have to pay rent for March.”
I know she’s frustrated, and maybe a little nervous about having to manage the place on her own, so now she’s looking for an argument.
“I know you’re loaded,” she says and reminds me that she paid two-hundred and sixty-thousand dollars for the building and business, but Lynette doesn’t know about the futures market. She doesn’t know Allison is screwing a guy named Josh.
“So, are you going to explain this sudden exit?” she asks.
“Listen, Lynette, I’m not here to talk with you about exits. If you still want my rare books and exercise equipment, I’ll take twenty-five hundred.”
“Did you make one of your bimbos pregnant?”
“Twenty-five hundred, yes or no?”
She offers eight hundred in cash and March’s rent.
Fuck it. I stash the bills in my pocket and head out to my car for one last fishing trip.
. . .
Galveston’s Mardi Gras celebration begins tomorrow. City workers are setting up traffic barricades on side streets and erecting bleachers in front of the Galvez Hotel for the Knights of Momus parade. I’m on Seawall Boulevard driving along the Gulf of Mexico saying goodbye to the Island. On my left is the neglected Balinese Room. The old casino extends past the beach and sits out over the water. It’s boarded-up now, out of business, the supporting pylons slowly eroding away. Fifty years ago, during the Balinese’s glory days, Sam Maceo wore a white tuxedo and greeted people from all over the country. Now, a street person wearing a bent cowboy hat loiters on the Balinese steps bumming spare change from tourists.
In the next block a souvenir store sells plastic sharks, conch shells and rubber alligators. There’s a tall, wooden pirate standing near the entrance, whose eye’s roll and head swivels as he guffaws at tourists walking by. On the sidewalk promenade, Downtown Annie digs through a trash barrel collecting cans. Before I sold the bookstore, she’d bring in worthless books people had thrown away. I’d give her two dollars and then toss the books in the trash after she left. Lynette won’t even allow Annie inside.
The Flagship Hotel is on the left. Before Hurricane Carla damaged it in 1961, it was called Pleasure Pier, with a ferris wheel, roller coaster and carnival games. Further up on the right is the empty lot where Saint Mary’s Orphanage used to be. When the Hurricane of 1900 hit the Island, the Sisters of St. Mary’s rushed ninety-three frightened kids up to the second floor as Gulf waters invaded the first. Desperate to calm their kids, the Ursuline Sisters led the children in songs. “Let’s see who can sing the loudest . . .” Before the orphanage collapsed, the Sisters made a quick but poor choice. Not anticipating the gravity of their decision, they used clotheslines to tie everyone together. When one sank, they all sank.
I park on Seawall Boulevard, open my door and get out to inspect the water. The color is sandy turquoise with an outgoing tide. The weather’s warm for February but the water will be cold. After removing my shoes, socks and shirt, I open the trunk and grab a pair of needle nose pliers from my tackle box. Descending seawall steps, I walk across the jetty to a low spot and step into cold water holding my fishing rod above my head. Wading through chest deep currents, I cross a trench and stop on the first sandbar. From here I cast a yellow sand eel into the second trench, slacking the line, allowing the bait to drift with the current. My shorts cling to my legs; my toes grip the sandy bottom.
For the past several years, Grady Myers would drive in for Mardi Gras. We’d dress in purple and gold costumes, get drunk and toss beads to screaming crowds from a float in the Momus parade. One year, as a girl ran beside our float, Grady traded his jester hat for a her tiger panties. We laughed, sniffed her panties, passed them around and drank lots of beer.
Following the sandbar I cast on one side then the other, rising on my toes to keep the cold shock of waves below my waist. A fish takes my bait, hitting the sand eel on the drop. I set the hook and loosen my drag. The rod bends, while line rips off the reel. Out past the second trench, the fish breaks the surface tossing his head side to side trying to spit the hook. It’s a large speckled trout, angry and strong. I lower my rod tip, relieving the stress on the line so it doesn’t break. It’s not that I want to leave Galveston Island. The best times of my adult life happened here, but facts were presented to me, truths that couldn’t be denied, so I�
�m leaving.
. . .
Groping through my closet I fill a garbage bag with casual clothes and my running shoes, everything I’ll need. I haul the rest of my clothes down to the street and fling them into the trunk of my car. Allison doesn’t know about the futures market—she knows about Josh, though—her new toy, her victim du jour, but Josh doesn’t know about her. Good luck, Josh, whoever you are. Hey Josh, a word of caution: the line is long and moves fast. You’ll see.
I consider donating my clothes to the United Way, then become cynical of large bureaucracies getting rich from people’s donations and decide to give my clothes directly to someone who needs them.
People crowd into the laundromat, while I rest on a bench waiting for someone my size to walk in. The owner, a small Asian man with tools in his pocket, pops off a dryer’s front panel. A teenage girl, wearing clear platform shoes, feeds dollar bills into the jukebox. When a black guy strolls in, about my size, I offer him a friendly hello and wait to see how he responds. He asks for a couple dollars, says he ran out of gas and needs to get his family back to Houston. Wrong response.
“A couple bucks, huh?” I open my wallet. “Here’s a dollar, but before I give it to you, tell me why you deserve it.”
“What chew talkin’ crazy ‘bout?” he says.
“Why should I give you money I worked for when you’re not willing to do anything but hustle?”
“You needs to keep it cool, bro.”
“Hey, I’m just standing here wondering why you can’t be a man and take care of yourself.”
“How ‘bout’ I kick your muthafuckin white ass?”
“I wish you’d try.”
Swaggering out the door, he says, “Keep yo money, crazy white boy.” My heart’s pounding and I’m pissed off, needing to calm down. I watch him stroll across the street to a Mobil station, where he works his scam on a lady pumping gas. Returning to the bench, I’m not sure why the guy upset me so much. The Asian owner has stopped working on the dryer and is now glaring at me. A Korean woman bumps my knee with her rolling basket without apologizing. Rude bitch.
A Hispanic man parks his Buick in front. His wife and young daughter shadow him inside. The wife sorts clothes into separate piles while the daughter measures soap in a plastic cup. I nod and say hello to the man as he counts quarters from a glass jar. He seems like a nice guy, so I ask, “Would you like some free clothes?”
“No speak Ingles,” he says.
I tell him, “Muchas ropas para usted. Todas gratis,” and motion for him to come with me. We go out to my car and the man sifts through my clothes, examining ties for stains, feeling the leather on my Allan Edmonds shoes.
“Gratis?” he says.
“Si, gratis.”
“Por que?”
“Por que, no?” I tell him.
After we load the back seat of his Buick, he unhooks a wire that holds his trunk closed and spreads a newspaper over his spare tire. His wife and daughter watch from inside. The Asian owner is watching too—the little faggot, I wish he’d stop staring at me. We finish loading his trunk and the man opens his wallet to offer a twenty dollar bill.
“No, amigo, es gratis,” I tell him.
He shakes his head, insisting I take the money. His wife and daughter are now standing behind him, so I accept his money and offer a nod of thanks. Exiting the parking lot, I slow my car to look back. His wife is holding my three-hundred dollar navy blazer up to his chest. His daughter wraps my favorite belt around his waist.
. . .
At the end of summer, when Allison started pulling away, I became a shut-in, hiding in my loft, drinking too much vodka, seldom hearing from friends. The same thing happened to my father. It doesn’t make sense to me why friends vanish, why they duck for cover at the first signs of distress.
After poking through cabinets and boxes, finding twenty-nine years of accumulated gifts and memories, I can’t decide what to do with it all except give everything to Allison, but she asked me to stop calling. I decide to call her anyway. When she answers, I tell her that I’ve been cleaning my apartment and have some things she might want, and if she doesn’t mind, would she come over to pick them up. Also, without meaning to, I mention something about us getting back together. It isn’t much, just a comment or two, but it’s enough to piss her off. The conversation ends badly.
I piddle around for a while, and when she doesn’t come over, I call her brother, Alex. He doesn’t answer, so I drink a few shots of vodka and start carrying boxes down to the sidewalk, spreading them outside the bookstore. Donny, a gay friend of mine and regular at the Kon Tiki bar next door, helps carry a few boxes downstairs. He’s interested in buying my framed Van Gough prints, an antique table and my brass headboard.
“Donny, just give me two hundred and it’s all yours,” I tell him.
He wipes the brass with the inside of his shirt. “Needs a good polishing. How ‘bout one seventy-five?”
“One seventy-five? How ‘bout three hundred?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said.”
“You said two hundred a minute ago!”
“I changed my mind. Take it for three or I’m giving everything to the next person who walks by. If you don’t think I’m serious, stand here and watch.”
“Why are you being so huffy at me? Damn, you’re huffy! I thought we were friends.”
“I thought so too.”
Donny crosses the street to an ATM, comes back and pays the three hundred. Inside the Kon Tiki he tells everyone I’m going out of business. Three customers parade outside to see what they can buy on the cheap. A thin nosed man wearing tight jeans and cowboy boots pauses for a minute, scratching his chin before asking what business is going out of business.
“This is not a business!” I tell him. “It’s me, a fuckin’ human being!”
He takes a step backwards and tilts the upper half of his lanky frame forward. “And so am I,” he says, tapping his chest.
Feeling a bit of remorse, I apologize, tell him I may have overreacted.
“You sure did,” he says and returns to the Kon Tiki.
A medical student buys my tennis racquet and fishing tackle. A construction worker buys power tools and the equipment I used to renovate the building. A lady interested in my microwave punches buttons.
“It’s brand new,” I tell her.
“Then why are you selling it?” she asks.
“Because I don’t need it.”
“Why don’t you need it?”
“You want the microwave or not?”
“I can give you ten dollars,” she says.
“Take it,” I tell her.
She inspects a blender, studying it like a fine crystal vase. “What’ll you take for this?”
“How about these CDs?” a cute teenager asks.
“Three dollars each,” I tell her, noticing her crooked teeth.
The lady says she’ll return later for the blender. I tell her, “Ma’am, when you come back, ask for blue-boy.”
She turns around. “Blue-boy?”
“Yeah, I’ll be holding my breath.”
The teenager digs in her pockets and plucks out a wad of crumpled dollar bills. “That was like, funny, what you told that lady.”
“Thanks.”
“There’s nothing like. Wrong with the CDs, is there?”
“Nope. Come see.” I get in my car and crank up the volume on George Strait.
She leans in through the passenger window.
“See, nothing’s wrong,” I tell her.
“I’ve heard that before,” she says.
“Heard what? What do you mean you’ve heard it before?”
“I’m talking about. You know. The CD. I think my father has it.”
I ask, “You feel like going for a drive?”
“Dude, what about your stuff? On the sidewalk.”
“I don’t care about stuff. What’s your name? I’ve seen you in my bookstore.”
&
nbsp; “Bethany,” she says and hops in my car.
“I’m Mitch. How old are you, Bethany?”
“Sixteen.”
Cruising west on Seawall Boulevard, she slides open my sunroof. Traffic is stacked up, moving slowly. The Mardi Gras crowd from Houston has invaded the Island. On the deck of Woody’s bar, revelers drink red Hurricanes from tall curved glasses and toss beads to people riding by in cars. In the next lane, teenagers holler from the bed of a pick-up truck. A woman bends over Woody’s handrail and lifts her halter top with one hand, holding on to her Hurricane drink with the other.
Bethany turns to me with a look of shock. “Those were like. Huge.”
“Too huge,” I say. “What about you? Would you do that?”
“Do what? Flash?”
“Yeah.”
“I would. Not here though. In New Orleans or somewhere, I would.”
“What about in private?”
A trolley car moves slowly along the tracks. It stops at the corner to allow three tourists on.
“You mean. Here? In your car?”
“Sure, if you want to, why not?”
“I don’t want to.”
When the trolley car stops again, two boys with skateboards jump off. I drive around the trolley and gesture toward the Gulf. “Thirty miles out is an area called Rum Row. It’s where prohibition gangsters from Cuba and Jamaica off-loaded bootleg liquor onto smaller powerboats for fast runs to the beach. Galveston supplied illegal liquor to Houston, Dallas, Denver— Have you heard of Ollie Quinn or the Maceo Brothers?”
Bethany nods, “Yeah. I mean no. Not really.” She examines a CD in the light looking for scratches.
“Did you know Jean Lafitte lived here? The U.S. government forced him off the Island in 1821. Before he shipped out, he buried his treasures and burned the town. Nobody knows what happened to him after that. He disappeared.” I reach in the glovebox. “Here, you can have this CD. I made it for somebody else, but I want you to have it.”
Leaving Allison Page 12