by Daniel Klein
Of course, we still see bicycles here now, maybe even as many as half a century ago, but today’s pedal pushers are generally beyond school age and are distinguished by their garishly colored spandex shorts and jerseys, helmets, goggles, and grimaces of grim resolve. Or, alternatively, they are distinguished by their brown skin. The latter cyclists are undocumented workers who, even if they could afford an automobile, do not qualify for driver’s licenses.
Hector is singing Lila’s favorite bicycle ride song, “Amor Sin Medida,” piping it straight into her ear as they whiz across the Wright River Bridge to where the road widens to officially become the highway. Lila takes up the chorus with him, her pronunciation perfect if her pitch less so. The traffic is denser here, mostly with out-of-town cars freshly off the Turnpike, so Hector pulls onto the shoulder for a safer if bumpier drive. Lila, who carries Hector’s cuatro while they ride, cushions the instrument against her bosom.
Behind the restaurant, Hector leans his bike against the dumpster. He is still astonished by the fact that he does not need to lock it or remove its front wheel, an act of trust as unheard of in Danbury, Connecticut as it was in Bogotá. Lila lifts the cuatro strap over her head and hands the instrument to Hector. The young lovers embrace and bid one another a tender farewell even though they will see each other frequently over the next few hours. Over the course of a day, these two can pack in more sizzling ‘hello’s’ and ‘goodbye’s’ than a shipload of sailors and a wharf-load of wives and lovers.
In Nakota’s kitchen, the radio is tuned to WGVS, which is dedicating the entire day to celebrating the Phoenix’s reopening. Earlier in the day, they aired some vintage 78s of operettas from the golden age of the Phoenix—”Long Live the Hungarians” from The Gypsy Baron, “He’s Gone and Married Yum-Yum” from The Mikado, and “Vilya, O Vilya” from The Merry Widow. But now, as an overture to Bob Balducci’s live interview with Babs Dowd from the stage of the theater, they are playing selections from the original cast recording of Hair, starting with “Aquarius” and “Donna,” but discreetly skipping over “Hashish” and “Sodomy” to “Air” and “I Got Life.” Both the Japanese and the Latin American staff appear about as roused by Hair as they were by The Merry Widow.
The lunch crowd—the biggest so far this summer—is loud and happy. Lila overhears many of them talking about tonight’s show. The big question seems to be whether or not the cast will appear naked for the grand finale—in particular, whether or not Brad Doleman will bare all—as the original cast did on Broadway over thirty years ago. The general excitement promotes tips that average close to twenty percent.
At the break between the end of lunch and the beginning of dinner, Ichiro selects Hector to scale, clean, and precut the fresh shipment of fish from Boston. Hector’s dexterity and quick intelligence have propelled him to the top of the heap in the Nakota kitchen. Lila keeps him company on a stool beside him.
At the eight o’clock curtain time, theatergoers are still meandering into the Phoenix, reluctant to leave the late evening sunshine. Some are looking down the Melville Block to Main Street where the vigil group is staging a specially planned and rehearsed pre-theater performance.
Franny is just now locking up Write Now where she has taken inventory and made out order sheets. These tasks are her way of easing herself back into her job without yet having to deal with customers. Nonetheless, these past two weeks Franny has begun appearing at the shop a half-hour or so before closing time while her father is still there. At these times, Franny and Wendell stand together behind the counter listening to All Things Considered and chatting a bit, mostly commenting on the news they hear, but here and there talking about goings-on in the town, and even, gradually and delicately, mentioning subjects closer to home, like Esther and her children.
And last week for the first time, Wendell brought up Lila. He was unpacking a carton of magazines when over his shoulder he said, “I need your permission for something, Monkey.”
Franny was so startled and warmed by her father’s use of her old home nickname that his message did not immediately register. Wendell simply went on unpacking as he described Esther and Emmanuelle’s proposal for Lila and Hector’s new living arrangement. “I needed to run it by you first, of course,” he concluded.
Franny closed her eyes for several seconds, overcome with a feeling she had not experienced so profoundly in years—certainly since long before her breakdown. That feeling was pure sweet gratitude. Her father had just made her feel more worthy and human and sane than had four months of psychotherapy.
“Sure, I’m okay with that, Dad,” she replied.
Franny catches the eye of many of the dawdling theatergoers—especially the men—as she scampers down Melville Street to join the vigil group. She is wearing her tie-dye peace symbol T-shirt, her breasts bounding, her loose hair and the colorful ribbons tied to her neck flying behind her. This is the first time she has donned a striking costume for almost a year and she finds herself feeling as liberated and buoyant as doing so made her feel back then.
Taking their cue from Hair, Tony and Gary have put together a program of songs, posters, and tableaux vivantes that flaunt the parallels between the Vietnam War and the war in Iraq. They have just concluded singing, “The Ballad of Ho Chi Minh,” and move directly to “Kill For Peace.” Fluttering above the group is a fifteen-foot-long banner with an outline map of Vietnam on one end and of Iraq at the other, the words ‘Wrong Then, Wrong Again’ in between. Tony and Gary, in their army uniforms, are holding up the Vietnam end of the banner, Tiffany and Gloria the Iraq end. Like Franny, most of the other ‘vigil-istas’ are wearing vaguely hippie-ish garb. Herb Blitzstein is sporting an oversized bowler that captures a certain ’60s spirit, but also happens to suggest the spirit of an Old World schtetel—the hat once belonged to his Polish Jewish grandfather. As Franny joins the group, she tenderly clasps Herb’s hand.
Stephanie Cyzinksi is a sartorial exception; she is wearing a modest, J. Crew blouse and khaki slacks, her hair pulled back in a pin-through comb. As she is most often seen in public these days, Stephanie stands at the ‘push’ end of Michael Dowd’s wheelchair, although this evening without the company of Dowd’s daughter, Daphne, who is skipping tonight’s activities to take advantage of her empty house and the opportunity to get stoned in any room she desires.
Stephanie’s devotion to Mr. Dowd—she has resigned from every one of her Grandville High School extra-curricular activities to accommodate her new career—is puzzling to everyone who knows her. To the few people who have asked her about it, Stephanie has offered a quasi-spiritual answer that includes the words ‘fulfillment’ and ‘dedication’ which, in turn, has given rise to the popular notion that Stephanie has undergone some kind of religious awakening. But what has awakened in Stephanie is hardly spiritual—it is her agonizing conviction that she knows exactly who was behind the wheel of the car that shattered Michael Dowd’s thighs.
From the stage left wing, Babs gazes out at the audience. The aisles are still crowded and a good fifty or more seats remain unoccupied. It is already ten minutes past the hour and Babs is beginning to feel irritated with their dawdling, even if their laid-back attitude is reminiscent of that of New York audiences. Actually, most of them are New Yorkers—second homers; Babs can tell by their haircuts and jewelry and Barney’s wardrobe. Also by their ease—going to an evening of live theater is hardly an extraordinary event for this group. But what is rare is going to live theater in the countryside, and this juxtaposition generates some giddiness in them; many wear the ironic smiles of people who relish an evening of low expectations. Well, Babs thinks, they are in for a surprise.
Babs has resigned herself to the fact that very few in the opening night audience are local—she had already surmised that from the reservation list. Of the complimentary tickets she sent out to the Grandville selectmen, various members of the town clergy, and both Wendell and Franny deVries, only Selectmen Bill Lakspur and Frank Delmolino, and Reverend Moo
dy accepted. But she is sure the rest of the town will come around before the run is over.
There is some kind of disturbance at the back of the theater. Babs squints. She now makes out Michael’s shoes and his brace and plaster-encased legs propped up in his wheelchair at the top of the main aisle. Whatever other effect her husband’s arrival may have had, it does get the rest of the crowd to take their seats so the show can finally begin.
Because Grandville is ringed with mountains, the longest days of the year are shorter by twenty minutes than in the plains only ten miles east of here. The sun starts to dip behind Wright Mountain at eight-thirty, throwing off refracted ochre light that illuminates the tops of trees and steeples and, out on the highway, the pagoda tower on top of the Nakota. The pre-theater crowd is gone from that restaurant and the usual lull before the arrival of older, child-free diners has begun. Lila has only one table left to deal with before she can take a break. It is occupied by a Connecticut family with two teenagers who are disappointed by the absence of ginger ice cream on the desert list and grouse about it before settling for green tea sorbet. Bringing their order back to the kitchen, Lila sees that Hector, Pato, and Alarico are already on their break, so she asks Takaaki to cover the Connecticut family for her. She goes to her locker, removes a cigarette and her lighter from her jeans pocket, and heads for the kitchen door. There, she stops for a moment, listening for Hector’s voice in song, but she does not hear it. When she steps outside, a hand clamps over her mouth from behind. Another hand seizes her arm.
“Be good,” Flip Morris hisses in Lila’s ear.
Lila responds with a backward kick at Flip’s shin. She wrenches her head back and forth, trying to free her mouth so she can scream. But Flip twists her arm behind her, pushing it straight up until the pain is so great she thinks she will pass out. In the instant, Lila wonders if losing consciousness might be her best option—that crazed as Flip is, he would take no satisfaction from raping her limp body.
“Bitch!” Flip seethes.
Suddenly Lila spots the beam of a flashlight out by the dumpster. Then the gleam of reflective stripes—no, not stripes, letters. White capital letters, ‘STATE POLICE’ and ‘K-9.’ The letters are on the backs of dark jackets worn by ghostly figures. Half a dozen policemen. It is a drug raid. Lila’s eyes dart from one man to the other, from the corner of the dumpster to the black car idling behind it. She is searching for Hector.
Lila’s jaw goes slack. Then, with a surge of extraordinary strength, she snaps her teeth into Flip’s hand. He howls.
“Hector!” Lila screams, twisting away from Flip.
“Lila!” Hector cries back from inside the car.
Two of the men in lettered jackets intercept Lila as she races toward her lover. One of them, following procedure, tackles and handcuffs her.
The Phoenix Theater audience is on its feet, applauding and cheering as the curtain parts for a fifth and final time and the cast of Hair breaks into an impromptu reprise of “Good Morning Starshine,” this time adding overtones of irony to the ‘gliddy glub gloopies’ and ‘nibby nabby noopies’ of the baby-talk lyric. Babs Dowd sashays in from the wings with a basket of daisies and proceeds to hand them to her players one at a time. The actors, dutiful Flower Children, tuck the blossoms in their hair and laugh.
As the theater’s board of directors had hoped and predicted, the spectators are enthralled by the backward look to the psychedelic ’60s. But also, as Daphne Dowd predicted, it has not inspired any one of them to tune in or drop out or commit themselves to a life of rebellion. The sole nonconformist in the crowd is Selectman Frank Delmolino who found the show to be in extreme bad taste but, per his wife’s whispered instructions, he says nothing as they file out of the theater on to Melville Street.
On the porch of their house, Wendell and Esther hear the cheery hubbub of the crowd leaving the theater below them in town. Wendell groans. “That settles it,” he says. “All politics is entertainment.”
Inside, the phone is ringing. Suddenly, Emmanuelle appears at the door trembling.
“Lila’s at the police station!” she cries. “And Hector’s in jail!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
We shall hasten ahead here as Herb finds an attorney to represent Hector. His name is Roland Axelrod and he is a Boston criminal lawyer who specializes in drug cases. Axelrod has a second home only ten miles from Grandville in the town of Becket—his wife is a modern dance aficionada and serves on the board of the summer dance festival in that town—so he generously invites the deVries group to his country bungalow for a face-to-face meeting.
Mrs. Axelrod serves lemonade to the guests—Lila, Franny, Herb, and Wendell—on her back patio before Attorney Axelrod commences business by placing a manila file folder on the wrought-iron table at which they are all seated. Then in a soothing, if somewhat mechanical voice, he lists what he calls “Mr. Mondragon’s practicable options.”
He starts by saying that regardless of the fact that the State Police found no drugs on Hector, Officer Flip Morris’s testimony that he personally witnessed the Colombian smoking marijuana with a minor, Ms. Lila deVries, was sufficient to indict the young man.
“He’s lying!” Lila shouts. She looks both haggard and wired, the result of an entire week of sleeplessness and fury. No one in her home has been able to calm her; indeed, she has barely spoken to any of them.
Axelrod nods evenly. “I have no doubt that he is,” he says. “But a police officer’s testimony is more or less inviolable in a case such as this one.”
“But he’s lying!” Lila repeats loudly.
“In any event,” Axelrod continues, unfazed, “even if Mr. Mondragon were able to beat the drug charge, this would have no bearing on the finding of the Immigration and Naturalization Service that he was in the United States illegally, not only having overstayed his two-week tourist visa by almost a year, but by knowingly and willfully contravening its provision not to engage in gainful employment in this country. In most cases this means his best option is immediate repatriation with the proviso that he will never, under any circumstances, be allowed to re-enter this country. This is the option his two colleagues have taken.”
“You mean they’d send him back to Colombia?” Wendell asks.
“Yes.”
“I’ll go with him!” Lila cries. There is not a doubt in her mind that she would be content to live anywhere in the world as long as she was with Hector, even as she knows that Hector never wants to see his homeland again.
“But fortunately there is another alternative that has just opened up,” Axelrod goes on, barely acknowledging Lila’s outburst. “In fact, I have already spoken with Mr. Mondragon about it and he has fully endorsed it. In this option, the drug charges will be dropped and the immigration offense suspended—in fact, in due time he will be granted citizenship in this country.”
Of the group gathered around the patio table, only Herbert Blitzstein anticipates what is coming next and his craggy face involuntarily breaks into an agonized grimace.
“The compensation for this option,” Axelrod says, “is two years’ service in the United States Army.”
* * *
Mr. Axelrod manages to arrange a five-hour window of freedom between Hector’s Pittsfield cell and his troop bus to Fort Jackson, South Carolina. For three of those hours, Hector and his beloved Lila make love in their upstairs room in the house on Mahaiwe Street. Down below, Esther, Franny, and Emmanuelle play the stereo at top volume—a CD of Stravinsky’s Greatest Hits that could mask the screams of a stadium full of Ricky Martin fans—while they concoct the Colombian yucca soup Emmanuelle found described on the web.
It would be impossible for the three women to hear one another if they spoke, so they make do with hand gestures and facial expressions, Emmanuelle pointing from the oxtail on the counter to the just-boiled pot of water as a signal for Esther to drop the former into the latter, Franny smiling through tears to show her co-cooks that she is all right, that her tears a
re only caused by the fumes of the onion she is shredding. Each of the women is thankful for this absence of words; there is nothing new they could possibly say. Nonetheless, there is a fervent message that passes between them which has nothing to do with the soup, although it could be said that it is embodied in its making: Do not forget for an instant that this is a celebration. Of love and hope, and of the moment.
Wendell returns from Write Now with Kaela and Johnny in tow. The children have skipped day camp so as not to miss a moment of Hector’s going-away dinner. Instead, Kaela helped Wendell around the store while Johnny worked on his newly-developed reading skills by reading aloud every word on every candy wrapper. All three heard “The Rite of Spring” emanating from their house as they started up Mahaiwe Street, but as they mount the porch the music abruptly stops.
Inside, Lila and Hector are descending the stairs. Soup is on.
If that evening we were to mount the porch of the home on Mahaiwe Street much the way Franny deVries did over a month ago and, as she did, secretly peer through the front picture window on our right at the nine diners gathered around the long table as they ladle lumpy soup from a clay tureen at the table’s center and pour red wine from a bottle into juice glasses, most of them chatting vivaciously, smiling, laughing, and looking into one another’s eyes, we would probably be struck by the singular coherence of this motley assembly of young and old, brown and black, white and tawny people. And if, like members of an audience at the beginning of a new play or perhaps a film, we knew nothing about the characters arrayed in front of us, we undoubtedly would start making guesses about their relationships to one another and how they came to be together in this place on this particular evening.