“Excuse me, Aura, I can’t assimilate this just now, and your voice sounds funny anyhow.”
“Funny ha ha, or funny bombed to the max?”
“Gates is over on the other side of the pool here talking to a woman in the Mafia about this idiotic duel.”
“Oh, Raleigh, your family! And you think I sound funny?” “But I’ll call Betty tomorrow.”
“I wouldn’t. She said she’d like to spit right in your eye. In fact, she said I ought to go through your dresser drawers and your checkbook because you were probably a bigamist. Come on, Buster, spill it. Have you got a wife in New Orleans?” Laughter and screams. “Oh, don’t worry about the rug, Barbara! I’ve been needing to get a new one for ages.”
“Aura, good-bye. I love you. I wish you were here. No, I wish I were there.”
“Wait a minute, Raleigh, wait a minute. Oh, damn, I’ve got to pee!”
“You want me to wait here long distance while you go to pee?!”
“No, no, I’m crossing my legs. I just wanted to tell you Aunt Vicky may call. She was over here last night, asking me what was going on, and I told her everything I knew, but she’s all upset. You know how she likes to be in control.”
Raleigh stood up to open the phone booth door. The young German tourists (glittery Styrofoam stars and hearts bobbing on wires atop their heads) were following the girl with a map out the door. “I wouldn’t mind being in control myself. Well, okay, I’ll talk to you soon. If I’m not at the bottom of a river. Anything else I need to know?”
“Well, I’m wearing a black see-through nightie.”
“Aura, really, is that all you can say?”
“Well, I have absolutely got to pee! Bye-bye. Remember, you’re a happily married man. Güten Nichtski.”
The glass elevator floated up and down with guests. The escalators glided, the fountains rose and fell, the bellboys strolled racks of luggage. The waiters sped trays of food. People hurried along the ramps and walks from entertainment areas to bar areas to shopping areas. High at the very top of the skyscraper, a restaurant revolved in circles so diners could see the new skyline from every angle. Atlanta did not sit still, even for Sunday supper.
Neither did Gates Hayes, who skipped three moving steps of the escalator at a time and caught his brother near the elevator. “Back to the sack, Ace? You just rolled out.”
“Why are you wearing my new suit, Gates? How many times have I told you I don’t like your wearing my clothes?”
“Lots. Sorry about that. It was the best I could do. Little long in the cuffs, but not impossible. By the way, never never put things in your pockets. It bags the fabric and spoils the lines.”
“Yes, I noticed you removed my money pouch. And what were you doing to my new blazer, for Pete’s sake? Soaking it in Old Spice?”
“Please! Giorgio Armani. I said I was sorry. Okay? My hand slipped. Listen, Raleigh, I’m under a lot of pressure here.” He leaned over the curving rail to point down to where Mrs. Parisi, flanked by a praetorian guard of dark-haired men, was being escorted through the lobby.
Raleigh made a short speech in which he proved that Gates would always be under a lot of pressure until he reformed his life and rechose his career.
“Right sure fine. But come on, let’s go chow. I heard about a place with great risotto, across town. We’ll grab a subway.”
Beside them, a potbellied man in a salmon Lacoste shirt had been staring at Gates. Now he said he wanted to offer some outsiders some friendly advice: it was, to steer clear of MARTA (Atlanta’s downtown subway system) at night. “You know what we call MARTA, don’t you? M.A.R.T.A. Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta. Awwkah awwkah awwkah,” he snuffled. His joke fell flat, and so did his face when Gates grinned evenly about six inches from his nose.
Gates said, “Hey, honkey, take a closer look. My mother happened to be from Africa, and I happen to have a switchblade in the pockets of my pants right now, right next to my long thick dick, and if you don’t want one of them stuck up your fat ass, take a hike.”
“Jesus,” hissed Raleigh, as the man strode indignantly away. “I don’t believe you! Why do you make these things up?! He’s going to go straight to the manager!”
“Nah. Probably go jerk off in the men’s room.”
The Hayes brothers rode the handsome new subway, untroubled, to their restaurant, where Raleigh sipped wine while his brother ate artichokes, risotto, and calf’s liver with sage, and where Raleigh learned that Mrs. Parisi (softened by Gates’s heart line and his fleshy pads of Venus—for while a good Catholic, she always took a second opinion from palmistry) had been persuaded that the anxieties of a dying mother’s hospital bills might have driven a good son to the desperate measure of selling her Cupid that flea-market jewelry as a historical heirloom. “See, Raleigh, that was the thing,” explained Gates as he raked an artichoke leaf through his beautiful teeth. “Soon as I saw the missal in her hands, I didn’t try to con her, and feed her a line how I didn’t know the necklace was fake.”
“Didn’t try to con her?”
“‘Mother Parisi,’ I said, ‘I came here ready to lie to you. But you are too good and too wise a woman for me to think of that.’ So I said, ‘I have just lost my own mother.’”
Raleigh, neatly arranging the artichoke leaves flung onto his empty plate, sighed. “How could you say that? That’s disgusting.”
“Hey. It’s true, right? Sop some bread in this sauce. Delizioso.”
“Well, good, I’m glad she accepted your apology. We have enough problems without your having to go ahead with this stupid ‘duel.’”
“Oh that.” Gates wiped his mustache with the red-checked napkin. “That’s still on. Oh yeah. In a macho society, caro mio, the power of the matriarch is influential but not executive; know what I mean, jelly bean? Nine tonight, I meet Calhoun to discuss terms.” He glanced at his watch. Nor had Gates “exactly” talked Mrs. Parisi into accepting a circus truck in lieu of $7,500, a proposal that had not proved as irresistible as the financial exigency of a grieving son.
“I tried to tell you,” Raleigh nodded. “Didn’t I?”
“Big Bro, you’re always right and I’m always wrong. You’re morally, mentally, and personally perfecto.”
“Oh shut up.”
On the return subway ride, Gates swung by an arm from the handrail while speculating on their father, the former Episcopal minister, Earley Hayes, and his peculiar relationship with the Charlestonian Jubal Rogers. One of his theories left Raleigh aghast: “Man, from what you say, there was something really heavy between those guys. Hey, maybe they were lovers. See? Daddy gets the heave from the church because he’s gay, plus his lover’s black and they’re moonlighting at these Darktown jazz joints.”
Raleigh diverted his eyes from the crocheting woman across from him, eavesdropping. He lowered his voice. “Daddy got the ‘heave’ because of your mother.”
“Well, Specs, let’s not get personal. Okay, so you don’t like my boys in the band theory. I guess you’re right. If there’s one thing we know about the old man, it’s he couldn’t keep from blowing his trumpet up any skirt that slowed down walking by.”
Turning his back on the pinched-mouthed woman, Raleigh pretended to stare out the subway window, but all he could see was his own embarrassed face.
“Besides,” his brother went merrily on, oblivious to the accelerating crochet needles below him. “It doesn’t jive with what ole long tall Toots tells me about your pal Rogers. Sounds like far as chicks go, Jubal couldn’t keep his dick zipped either. Toots says he went through them like a bag of peanuts. Says they couldn’t keep their hands off him. Some guys are born lucky.”
Raleigh did not think Jubal Rogers considered himself a particularly lucky man. When he said so, Gates had a theory about this as well. “You’re right. I sure wouldn’t thank my lucky stars either. Would you? Let’s face it, would you want to grow up black in Thermopylae? In the Depression? Man, that’s pre-Jackie Robinson days. That�
�s Strange Fruit days. Especially if I came on like Malcom X, before it was exactly fashionable.”
“What do you mean?”
“Toots says this guy talked a real hard line. I mean, ‘Shoot the fuckers.’ Anyhow, it sounds like he’d had enough bad breaks to make Coretta King wanna line ’em up against the wall. The Germans shove him in a POW camp for two years, and when he finally crawls back to the States, he gets to New York, and his wife’s split and her family’s taken his kid, his little boy, and no forwarding address. He looks all over hell and back.”
“Toutant told you all this?”
“Yeah, right.” The subway slowed. Holding her crochet needles like a weapon, the woman shoved past them. Gates raised his voice. “Well, if Daddy wasn’t buggering black guys, I don’t see why his congregation had to go and lynch him and leave us orphans.” The subway doors slid shut with the woman outside them staring in at Gates, who blew her a kiss. As they lurched forward, he laughed. “Aces! I really had that old dragon going, didn’t I? WATCH IT, RALEIGH!”
“What? What?” Hayes ducked, expecting an Underworld grenade tossed down the aisle.
“Don’t lean on a dirty window in a white suit, babe.”
Back in the circling lobby of the Peachtree Plaza, the two brothers sat talking about the past in armchairs beside the pool.
“Hello, I’m Timothy,” said the red-jacketed waiter.
“Bloody cheek, never met the bugger in muh life,” rumbled Gates Hayes, chin tucked in, jowls sagging, his mustache suddenly very British.
“I’m your waiter for tonight,” Timothy persisted.
“Howchewdo. I’m Colonel Diggeson-Hayes, not that it’s rally any of your bloody business, I must say.”
“Could I bring you gentlemen something from the bar?”
“Rather! The bosomy lass behind it! Har har. Righto, Sir Raleigh, old chap? I say! Her bazooms are splendid!”
Timothy did his best to smile. “Could I get you a drink?”
“Glenlivet. No ice. Barbarous custom. Utter rot. Harumph, harumph.”
Raleigh looked at his brother, the cold merriment of the blue eyes, the strange sweetness of the mouth. “Gates?” he asked quietly. “Why are you always pretending to be somebody else, why don’t you just be yourself?”
The man shrugged, Raleigh’s pin-striped suit snug across his shoulders. “Who wants to be a fuck-up like me?”
Hayes didn’t know how to answer that. Hadn’t Gates, in fact, just accurately described himself? Juvenile courts for shoplifting and joyriding. Biannual expulsion from high school for back talk and wildness. Terminal expulsion from college, for getting Fs in the courses in which he wasn’t getting As—which proved to the dean that he could do the work, if he would, but he wouldn’t. Detention in the Marines for going AWOL, and discharge for backtalk and wildness. Inability to stay with a job or a girl or a town or the truth. Almost a year in prison for false business practices. Lies, debts, scams, risks, speed, and gambles—and what did he have to show for it? A motorcycle and leather bag of outlandish clothes. Raleigh rubbed his eyes. “Gates, that makes me sad.”
“Awwh, Big Bro’s sad.”
Raleigh blushed, and then Gates blushed, and then at the same moment they looked away toward the pool; and upon the hapless waiter’s return, Gates told him that if his man in India had taken this long, he’d by Jove see him flogged. More of this followed and Hayes was actually relieved to catch sight of Mingo wandering through the lobby in awed open-mouthed circles, a huge shopping bag in either hand. Hayes stood up to call his neighbor over.
At first Mingo could say nothing but “Gollee, this place is big!” But soon enough, he sufficiently overcame his wonder to drink two strawberry daiquiris and eat a bowl of smoked almonds while he recounted, in a narrative of excessive high relief (for it included even the search for a public toilet and a subway trip in the wrong direction) the many events of his busy day. First and foremost, Diane couldn’t be better. Little Vera (for Sheffield confirmed Aura’s news) couldn’t be better, nor could she possibly be more beautiful, more angelic in her nature, more amazing in her intelligence, more satisfactory in her height, weight, eyes, ears, fingers, and toes. These few little things in the bags were for her, and while Little Vera might have no immediate use for an engraved silver brush, a Cabbage Patch doll, and a musical mobile of white teddy bears, she probably could use all the pink nightshirts, blankets, and booties. No, Mingo was not tired, for he had caught some sleep on the couch in the maternity lounge while waiting for Mrs. Yonge to drive from Kure Beach to Wilmington and fly from there to Atlanta. It had taken her until four this afternoon, ten hours after Mingo had telephoned her with the good news. News which, unfortunately, Mr. Yonge had taken so ill that, far from praising the Lord that his missing daughter was alive and well and mother of the most perfect baby every born, he had refused to come to Atlanta, and even claimed to be sorry that Diane had ever been born herself, much less given birth to his grandchild. Mingo, however, had no doubt that as soon as Mr. Yonge saw Little Vera, all would be forgiven. Parenthetically, it had to be confessed that Raleigh was right: Diane and Pete had taken her father at his word when he forbade them to get married so young. It could also be admitted that Pete had not behaved as gallantly as Mingo might have hoped when he ran off to Atlanta, leaving Diane behind to cope as she could. Nor had Mingo liked the way Pete had tried to run off down the aisles of the Omni coliseum as soon as he’d asked him if he were the father of Diane’s baby. Nevertheless, after a long talk, some hot dogs and beers, Pete had returned with Mingo to the hospital, where he was now walking the halls, proud as punch, and even though it couldn’t be said that Mrs. Yonge had treated Pete really warmly, nor had yet stopped periodically asking Diane to agree that she’d broken her mother’s heart; still, when all was said and done, time heals all wounds, and there’s no limit to what love can do, as the Good Book says in Corinthians I or II.
“You done good, mountain man,” announced Gates Hayes with a Western slap on the Gargantuan back. “What you need now’s some vittles and a tall brew. Follow me.” He headed up a ramp to the glass bubble elevators.
“I am pretty starved, okay; I walked a million miles. Boy, Atlanta sure is bigger than Thermopylae. I guess you never could get to know everybody here if you lived forever. Not like home. Oh, Raleigh, guess what? I was reading this newspaper in the maternity lounge, and there was nothing in it about Weeper, so that’s lucky. But guess what I read? Your secretary’s husband held up four liquor stores in Jacksonville, Florida, and he’s going to jail.”
Raleigh said, “That’s ridiculous! Betty Hemans’s husband died fifteen years ago. He fell off his roof!” With a double-indemnity policy! And Betty had the gall to complain about retirement benefits!
“No, not her. The pretty one. Bonnie Ellen.” Mingo called to Gates, bounding ahead, “You know, the one the police thought we’d murdered, when Raleigh threw my guns in the hole where she was lying.”
“Tell the world about it,” hissed Hayes, as people turned to stare.
“Bonnie’s husband. That’s what it said: ‘Charged were somebody somebody from someplace else and Edward Dellwood, twenty-four, of Thermopylae, North Carolina.’ He must not have gone to California like you thought. UhhhoOOOO, RALEIGH, RALEIGH, RALEIGH! NO, I CAN’T! I CAN’T! Let me out, LET ME OUT!”
Now, Mingo had been babbling away and automatically following Gates into a cluster of hotel guests; with his shopping bags raised high, he’d walked right inside the all-glass outdoor elevator without noticing, until the doors shut, that he was trapped inside a crowded transparent cubicle that was shooting straight up the side of a skyscraper. Around, below, and above him was space. Empty space. Far, far below were lots of little midgets running around a lake. When he realized this, Mingo turned a very dead waxy white and shrieked the above remarks, to the consternation of the other passengers, two of whom he had flattened by backing up against the inside wall. He stayed there, eyes shut, breath sucked in, until Raleig
h and Gates pried his stiff outstretched arms away from the man and woman crushed behind him.
“He’s, ah, a little afraid of heights, I’m afraid,” Raleigh somewhat superfluously suggested to the spluttering couple who’d just been squished. But Gates took the offensive.
“Hey, give my buddy a break. He was shot out of a helicopter in ’Nam and spent the next two years getting tortured by filthy V.C. Commies.” The elevator slid to a stop, and the couple fled. “We were fighting for your freedom!” Gates yelled after them.
“The poor man,” a woman beside Raleigh murmured with a sympathetic glance at Mingo’s wide paralyzed face and clenched fists.
“Yes, ma’am,” Gates nodded. “He paid a high price, but he paid it gladly and he paid it proudly. Because he’s an American. And that’s what America is all about.”
Everybody still left in the elevator nodded solemnly as they rode to the top of the giant gleaming skyscraper, where the glass cage opened to let them out at the glass restaurant that slowly turned to see how far in every direction Atlanta lit up the night.
“Man,” Gates chuckled. “You see their faces? ’Nam is in! I’d tried that a few years back, I’d have been frosted. ’Nam is cool, now. What a pisser.”
“Yes? Do you have a reservation?”
Gates looked at his watch, and with a smile turned the pretty hostess’s check-in book toward him. “Yes, ma’am, howdy. Round ’bout eightthirty? We certainly do. Right here it is. Daniel Austin, party of three? By the window? That’s us. Me and my partners. We’ve been looking at nothin’ but oil figures and A-rabs so long, we just had to come on up and see if y’all git a sky full of stars like we do back home. I guess we’re a little bit early, but that’s right, Rawley, y’all follow on all behind this young lady. She’s giving us one of those nice tables looking right out on that gold dome. Thank you, ma’am. I ’preshate it.” He handed the mesmerized hostess the “Reserved” sign from the elegant table for three. “Why look here, this little ole restaurant’s movin’. Reminds me of my living room, dudden’t it you, Rawley? ’Mind you of my living room back in Houston? ’Course they don’t have a Jacuzzi up here. Ma’am? Y’all carry Dom Perignon?”
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