by Jay Hopler
Now nothing will do but Jo-jo must show the kid his automatic, which is as long as your arm, and maybe longer, and the kid is greatly delighted, and takes the rod and starts pointing it here and there and saying boom-boom, as kids will do. But what happens but he pulls the trigger, and it seems that Jo-jo does not have the safety on, so the Roscoe really goes boom-boom twice before the kid can take his finger off the trigger.
Well, the first shot smashes a big jar over in one corner of the room, which Miss Peabody afterward tells me is worth fifteen G’s if it is worth a dime, and the second slug knocks off Izzy Cheesecake’s derby hat, which serves Izzy right, at that, as he is keeping his hat on in the presence of a lady. Naturally these shots are very disturbing to me at the moment, but afterward I learn they are a very good thing indeed, because it seems a lot of guys who are hanging around outside, including Baron von Terp, and several prominent politicians of the country, watching and listening to see what comes off, hurry right home to bed, figuring the king is got rid of as per contract, and wishing to be found in bed if anybody comes around asking questions.
Well, Jo-jo is finally out of lies about Chicago and Mr. Capone, when the little kid seems to get a new idea and goes rummaging around the room looking for something, and just as I am hoping he is about to donate the valuable jewels to us he comes up with a box, and what is in this box but a baseball bat, and a catcher’s mitt, and a baseball, and it is very strange indeed to find such homelike articles so far away from home, especially as Babe Ruth’s name is on the bat.
“Do you know about these things?” the little kid asks Jo-jo. “They are from America, and they are sent to me by one of our people when he is visiting there, but nobody here seems to know what they are for.”
“Do I know about them?” Jo-jo says, fondling them very tenderly, indeed. “He asks me do I know about them. Why,” he says, “in my time I am the greatest hitter on the West Side Blues back in dear old Chi.”
Well, now nothing will do the kid but we must show him how these baseball articles work, so Izzy Cheesecake, who claims he is once a star back-stopper with the Vine Streets back in Philly, puts on a pad and mask, and Jo-jo takes the bat and lays a small sofa pillow down on the floor for a home plate, and insists that I pitch to him. Now it is years since I handle a baseball, although I wish to say that in my day I am as good an amateur pitcher as there is around Gray’s Ferry in Philly, and the chances are I will be with the A’s if I do not have other things to do.
So I take off my coat, and get down to the far end of the room, while Jo-jo squares away at the plate, with Izzy Cheesecake behind it. I can see by the way he stands that Jo-jo is bound to be a sucker for a curve, so I take a good windup, and cut loose with the old fadeaway, but of course my arm is not what it used to be, and the ball does not break as I expect, so what happens but Jo-jo belts the old apple right through a high window in what will be right field if the room is laid off like Shibe Park.
Well Jo-jo starts running as if he is going to first, but of course there is no place in particular for him to run, and he almost knocks his brains out against a wall, and the ball is lost, and the game winds up right there, but the little kid is tickled silly over this business, and even Miss Peabody laughs, and she does not look to me like a doll who gets many laughs out of life, at that.
It is now nearly ten o’clock, and Miss Peabody says if she can find anybody around she will get us something to eat, and this sounds very reasonable, indeed, so I step outside the door and bring in the guy we tie up there, who seems to be wide awake by now, and very much surprised, and quite indignant, and Miss Peabody says something to him in a language that I do not understand. When I come to think it all over afterward, I am greatly astonished at the way I trust Miss Peabody, because there is no reason why she shall not tell the guy to get the law, but I suppose I trust her because she seems to have an honest face.
Anyway, the guy in the uniform goes away rubbing his noggin, and pretty soon in comes another guy who seems to be a butler, or some such, and who is also greatly surprised at seeing us, and Miss Peabody rattles off something to him and he starts hustling in tables, and dishes, and sandwiches, and coffee, and one thing and another in no time at all.
Well, there we are, the five of us sitting around the table eating and drinking, because what does the butler do but bring in a couple of bottles of good old prewar champagne, which is very pleasant to the taste, although Izzy Cheesecake embarrasses me no little by telling Miss Peabody that if she can dig up any considerable quantity of this stuff he will make her plenty of bobs by peddling it in our country, and will also cut the king in.
When the butler fills the wineglasses the first time, Miss Peabody picks hers up, and looks at us, and naturally we have sense enough to pick ours up, too, and then she stands up on her feet and raises her glass high above her head, and says like this:
“Gentlemen, the King!”
Well, I stand up at this, and Jo-jo and Izzy Cheesecake stand up with me, and we say, all together:
“The King!”
And then we swig our champagne, and sit down again and the little kid laughs all over and claps his hands and seems to think it is plenty of fun, which it is, at that, although Miss Peabody does not let him have any wine, and is somewhat indignant when she catches Jo-jo trying to slip him a snort under the table.
Well, finally the kid does not wish us to leave him at all, especially Jo-jo, but Miss Peabody says he must get some sleep, so we tell him we will be back some day, and we take our hats and say good-bye, and leave him standing in the bedroom door with Miss Peabody at his side, and the little kid’s arm is around her waist, and I find myself wishing it is my arm, at that.
Of course we never go back again, and in fact we get out of the country this very night, and take the first boat out of the first seaport we hit and return to the United States of America, and the gladdest guy in all the world to see us go is Ugly-face, because he has to drive us about a thousand miles with the muzzle of a rod digging into his ribs.
So [Kitty Quick says] now you know why we go to Europe.
Well, naturally, I am greatly interested in his story, and especially in what Kitty says about the prewar champagne, because I can see that there may be great business opportunities in such a place if a guy can get in with the right people, but one thing Kitty will never tell me is where the country is located, except that it is located in Europe.
“You see,” Kitty says, “we are all strong Republicans here in Philly, and I will not get the Republican administration of this country tangled up in any international squabble for the world. You see,” he says, “when we land back home I find a little item of cable news in a paper that says the Grand Duke Gino dies as a result of injuries received in an accident in his home some weeks before.
“And,” Kitty says, “I am never sure but what these injuries may be caused by Jo-jo insisting on Ugly-face driving us around to the grand duke’s house the night we leave and popping his pineapple into the grand duke’s bedroom window.”
LOOSE ENDS
Bharat! Mukheriee
She sends for this Goldilocks doll in April.
“See,” she says. The magazine is pressed tight to her T-shirt. “It’s porcelain.”
I look. The ad calls Goldilocks “the first doll in an enchanting new suite of fairy tale dolls.”
“Bisque porcelain,” she says. She fills out the order form in purple ink. “Look at the pompoms on her shoes. Aren’t they darling?”
“You want to blow sixty bucks?” Okay, so I yell that at Jonda. “You have any idea how much I got to work for sixty dollars?”
“Only twenty now,” she says. Then she starts bitching. “What’s with you and Velasquez these days? You shouldn’t even be home in the afternoon.”
It’s between one and two and I have a right, don’t I, to be in my Manufactured Home—as they call it—in Laguna Vista Estates instead of in Mr. Vee’s pastel office in the mall? A man’s mobile home is his castle,
at least in Florida. But I fix her her bourbon and ginger ale with the dash of ReaLemon just the way she likes it. Sheisn’t a mail-order junky; this Goldilocks thing is more complicated.
“It makes me nervous,” Jonda goes on. “To have you home, I mean.”
I haven’t been fired by Mr. Vee; the truth is I’ve been offered a raise, contingent, of course, on my delivering a forceful message to that greaser goon, Chavez. I don’t get into that with Jonda. Jonda doesn’t have much of a head for details.
“Learn to like it,” I say. “Your boyfriend better learn, too.”
She doesn’t have anyone but me, but she seems to like the jealousy bit. Her face goes soft and dreamy like the old days. We’ve seen a lot together.
“Jonda,” I start. I just don’t get it. What does she want?
“Forget it, Jeb.” She licks the stamp on the Goldilocks envelope so gooey it sticks on crooked. “There’s no point in us talking. We don’t communicate anymore.”
I make myself a cocktail. Milk, two ice cubes crushed with a hammer between two squares of paper towel, and Maalox. Got the recipe from a Nam Vets magazine.
“Look at you.” She turns on the TV and gets in bed. “I hate to see you like this, at loose ends.”
I get in bed with her. Usually afternoons are pure dynamite, when I can get them. I lie down with her for a while, but nothing happens. We’re like that until Oprah comes on.
“It’s okay,” Jonda says. “I’m going to the mall. The guy who opened the new boutique, you know, the little guy with the turban, he said he might be hiring.”
I drop a whole ice cube into my Maalox cocktail and watch her change. She shimmies out of khaki shorts—mementoes of my glory days—and pulls a flowery skirt over her head. I still don’t feel any urge.
“Who let these guys in?” I say. She doesn’t answer. He won’t hire her—they come in with half a dozen kids and pay them nothing. We’re coolie labor in our own country.
She pretends to look for her car keys which are hanging as usual from their nail. “Don’t wait up for me.”
“At least let me drive you.” I’m not begging, yet.
“No, it’s okay.” She fixes her wickedly green eyes on me. And suddenly bile pours out in torrents. “Nine years, for God’s sake! Nine years, and what do we have?”
“Don’t let’s get started.”
Hey, what we have sounds like the Constitution of the United States. We have freedom and no strings attached. We have no debts. We come and go as we like. She wants a kid but I don’t think I have the makings of a good father. That’s part of what the Goldilocks thing is.
But I know what she means. By the time Goldilocks arrives in the mail, she’ll have moved her stuff out of Laguna Vista Estates.
I like Miami. I like the heat. You can smell the fecund rot of the jungle in every headline. You can park your car in the shopping mall and watch the dope change hands, the Goldilockses and Peter Pans go off with new daddies, the dishwashers and short-order cooks haggle over fake passports, the Mr. Vees in limos huddle over arms-shopping lists, all the while gull guano drops on your car with the soothing steadiness of rain.
Don’t get me wrong. I liked the green spaces of Nam, too. In spite of the consequences. I was the Pit Bull—even the marines backed off. I was Jesse James hunched tight in the gunship, trolling the jungle for hidden wonders.
“If you want to stay alive,” Doc Healy cautioned me the first day, “just keep consuming and moving like a locust. Do that, Jeb m’boy, and you’ll survive to die a natural death.” Last winter a judge put a vet away for thirty-five years for sinking his teeth into sweet, succulent coed flesh. The judge said, when gangrene sets in, the doctor has no choice but to amputate. But I’m here to testify, Your Honor, the appetite remains, after the easy targets have all been eaten. The whirring of our locust jaws is what keeps you awake.
I take care of Chavez for Mr. Vee and come home to stale tangled sheets. Jonda’s been gone nine days.
I’m not whining. Last night in the parking lot of the mall a swami with blond dreadlocks treated us to a levitation. We spied him on the roof of a discount clothing store, nudging his flying mat into liftoff position. We were the usual tourists and weirdos and murderous cubanos. First he played his sinuses OM-OOM-OOM-PAH-OOM, then he pushed off from the roof in the lotus position. His bare feet sprouted like orchids from his knees. We watched him wheel and flutter for maybe two or three minutes before the cops pulled up and caught him in a safety net.
They took him away in handcuffs. Who knows how many killers and felons and honest nut cases watched it and politely went back to their cars? I love Miami.
This morning I lean on Mr. Vee’s doorbell. I need money. Auguste, the bouncer he picked up in the back streets of Montreal, squeezes my windbreaker before letting me in.
I suck in my gut and make the palm trees on my shirt ripple. “You’re blonder than you were. Blond’s definitely your color.”
“Don’t start with me, Marshall,” he says. He helps himself to a mint from a fancy glass bowl on the coffee table.
Mr. Vee sidles into the room; he’s one hundred and seventy-five pounds of jiggling paranoia.
“You look like hell, Marshall,” is the first thing he says.
“I could say the same to you, Haysoos,” I say.
His face turns mean. I scoop up a mint and flip it like a quarter.
“The last job caused me some embarrassment,” he says.
My job, I try to remind him, is to show up at a time and place of his choosing and perform a simple operation. I’m the gunship Mr. Vee calls in. He pinpoints the target, I attempt to neutralize it. It’s all a matter of instrumentation and precise coordinates. With more surveillance, a longer lead time, a neutral setting, mishaps can be minimized. But not on the money Mr. Vee pays. He’s itchy and impulsive; he wants a quick hit, publicity, and some sort of ego boost. I served under second looies just like him, and sooner or later most of them got blown away, after losing half their men.
The story was, Chavez had been sampling too much of Mr. Vee’s product line. He was, as a result, inoperative with women. He lived in a little green house in a postwar development on the fringes of Liberty City, a step up, in some minds, from a trailer park. By all indications, he should have been alone. I get a little sick when wives and kids are involved, old folks, neighbors, repairmen—I’m not a monster, except when I’m being careful.
I gained entry through a window—thank God for cheap air conditioners. First surprise: he wasn’t alone. I could hear that drug-deep double-breathing. Even in the dark before I open a door, I can tell a woman from a man, middle age from adolescence, a sleeping Cuban from a sleeping American. They were entwined; it looked like at long last love for poor old Chavez. She might have been fourteen, brassy-haired with wide black roots, baby-fat-bodied with a pinched, Appalachian face. I did what I was paid for; I eliminated the primary target and left no traces. Doc Healy used to teach us: torch the whole but and make sure you get the kids, the grannies, cringing on the sleeping mat—or else you’ll meet them on the trail with fire in their eyes.
Truth be told, I was never much of a marksman. My game is getting close, working the body, where accuracy doesn’t count for much. We’re the guys who survived that war.
The carnage at Chavez’s cost me, too. You get a reputation, especially if young women are involved. You don’t look so good anymore to sweatier clients.
I lean over and flick an imaginary fruit fly off Haysoos Velasquez’s shiny lapel. Auguste twitches.
“What did you do that for?” he shrieks.
“I could get you deported real easy.” I smile. I want him to know that for all his flash and jangle and elocution lessons so he won’t go around like an underworld Ricky Ricardo, to me he’s just another boat person. “You got something good for me today?”
A laugh leaks out of him. “You’re so burned out, Marshall, you couldn’t fuck a whore.” He extracts limp bills from a safe. Two thousand to
blow town for a while, till it cools.
“Gracias, amigo.” At least this month the trailer’s safe, if not the car. Which leaves me free to hotwire a newer model.
Where did America go? I want to know. Down the rabbit hole, Doc Healy used to say. Alice knows, but she took it with her. Hard to know which one’s the Wonderland. Back when me and my buddies were barricading the front door, who left the back door open?
And just look at what Alice left behind.
She left behind a pastel house, lime-sherbet color, a little south and a little west of Miami, with sprinklers batting water across a yard the size of a badminton court. In the back bedroom there’s a dripping old air conditioner. The window barely closes over it. It’s an old development, they don’t have outside security, wire fences, patrol dogs. It’s a retirement bungalow like they used to advertise in the comic pages of the Sunday papers. No one was around in those days to warn the old folks that the lots hadn’t quite surfaced from the slime, and the soil was too salty to take a planting. And twenty years later there’d still be that odor—gamey, fishy, sour rot—of a tropical city on unrinsed water, where the blue air shimmers with diesel fumes and the gray water thickens like syrup from saturated waste.
Chavez, stewing in his juices.
And when your mammy and pappy die off and it’s time to sell off the lime-sherbet bungalow, who’s there to buy it? A nice big friendly greaser like Mr. Chavez.
Twenty years ago I missed the meaning of things around me. I was seventeen years old, in Heidelberg, Germany, about to be shipped out to Vietnam. We had guys on the base selling passages to Sweden. And I had a weekend pass and a free flight to London. Held them, in my hand: Sweden forever, or a weekend pass. Wise up, kid, choose life, whispered the cook, a twenty-year lifer with a quarter million stashed in Arizona. Seventeen years old and guys are offering me life or death, only I didn’t see it then.