Scarface (37 page)

“Gee I woulda got dressed,” said Tony, shrugging almost shyly in his rumpled traveling shirt.

“That’s okay, honey. I didn’t get dressed for you. I have to go out.”

“Oh. Will you have a drink first?”

“Well of course,” she said, her smile growing broader. “It isn’t every day that I get an invitation from a king.”

Tony stood up and went to the bar. As he tore the foil and the wire from the champagne cork, he watched her in the mirror. She knew she was being watched, and she didn’t appear to mind at all. As she crossed to the balcony doors, the sultry rhythm of her walk was like something she was whispering to him. Tony popped the cork, and the wine foamed over his hand. As he filled the tulip glasses he said: “Did you think of a place you wanna go?”

“Uh huh.”

She stepped out onto the balcony. He followed with the glasses in hand and passed her one when he reached the rail. The lights had come on in the jungle garden below, and a gas torch flamed on the Bengal’s island. Elvira lifted her glass and gestured toward the tiger. “To the king,” she said, and let her eyes rest on Tony. They clinked and took a swallow.

“Don’t matter to me where we go,” said Tony, “as long as it’s far away.”

She looked at him calmly, her eyes roaming over his face as if she was memorizing it. “Where have you never been?”

He thought for a moment, his brow furrowed with concentration. “I never been to an island,” he said.

She laughed. “But you come from an island.”

“I mean a real island.” He nodded vaguely west, as if he meant to exclude the whole Club Med Caribbean from Nassau to Grenada. “Tahiti or somethin’.”

“There is no Tahiti,” Elvira said dryly, her lower lip touching the rim of the glass. “I’ve been there.”

“Like I say, it don’t matter to me.
You
pick a place.”

There was silence now for a moment. Carefully she read his eyes, as if to see how serious he was. Then she looked out at the twilight sky, plotting her course by stars that were only the barest glimmer yet. He reached out to her hand on the railing and covered it with his own. For the space of a breath there was no cocaine at all. Their blood beat with nothing but feeling. The world was as immediate and real as the scent of lemons wafting up from the tree below. And they let it last longer than any moment they’d had together in weeks and weeks. They stood there a good two minutes, leaning slightly against each other and mild as the couple on a wedding cake.

And then she turned to him and said: “I’ll be going alone, Tony.” He nodded and drew his hand away. She reached out and grabbed it again, lifting it to her face and cradling her cheek against it. “I’m sorry it didn’t work.”

“Yeah, well . . .” His voice trailed off to an embarrassed silence. It was so much easier when they were yelling. If they weren’t going to run to a desert island, if she wasn’t going to fall in his arms, then they ought to be raging and throwing things. How else would he ever get over her? He said: “So where you going?”

“Old girlfriend of mine,” she replied, tossing off the rest of her glass. She set it on the desk and rang the crystal with a flick of one finger. “She lives in Washington now. Her husband owns Kuwait or something.”

“What’ll you do?”

Elvira tossed her head and laughed. “Dry out, of course.” She patted the pocket of his shirt for cigarettes, slipped out the pack and took one. He lit it for her. “I’m only kidding,” she said dryly. “I think Sally and Jeff are Mr. and Mrs. Freebase of 1980.”

“When uh . . . ?”

“Oh, right now. Martin’s going to drive me to the airport. You don’t mind if I use the limo, do you?”

“We could still work it out, Elvira.”

“Shh, don’t be silly. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do about the legal stuff, but . . . whatever you want, okay?”

He reached out a hand and stroked her hip, as if he too was trying to memorize something. His voice was husky. “You’re still a great-lookin’ woman, Elvira.”

She shrugged slightly, out of modesty almost. Then she reached through his open shirt and grazed her fingertips in the gypsy hair of his chest. She said: “We looked the best of anyone, didn’t we?” She seemed to feel genuine pride in this. “The animal part’s no problem, is it? It’s the people part.”

He didn’t know what to say. It was as if there was a cliff right there beside him, and out of the corner of one eye he could see the terrible drop to the darkness below. In one minute, as soon as she left, he knew he was going to have to look down, and then—he didn’t know what came after that. He had to say goodbye now, because he couldn’t just stand there and chat about why they were falling apart. He would rather kill her.

Awkwardly now he drew away from the touch of her hand and turned toward the desk. “Hey come on,” he said brightly, “at least have one for the road.” And without first offering her the rolled-up hundred, he reached for the vial and spilled out the whole of its contents, fanning it out in a quarter moon on the hardwood surface of the desk. Four or five grams at least. The gesture triggered a memory, and even as he bent and snorted he thought of Frank Lopez and the five-hundred-fifty-dollar bottle of champagne. Thought of it because he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to buy anymore.

He stood up and passed her the hundred. There was something almost formal in her posture as she leaned to the desk and did a double toot. Some ancient tribal ritual whispered about her bowed head. The swan-like curve of her back was like a frozen moment in a dance. She stood up and looked in his eyes. For a single beat they were on that desert island, the one that didn’t exist.

“Maybe some day . . .” began Tony, and then he shrugged.

“Who knows?” she said, with a shrug that was the mirror of his own. She bent to the desk again and took up a pen and a sheet of the Coral Gables paper. “Look, here’s the address,” she said, scribbling it down in a shaky hand. “Call me sometime, okay? Sally’ll know where I am.” She dropped the pen and looked deep in his eyes, smiling as if for once in her life there were no hard feelings. “Hey, look at it this way,” she said. “At least we had the circus, huh? Who ever gets the circus?”

And then she pecked his lips and turned and hurried out, still holding the hundred in her hand. Tony moved to take another hit of the coke, but found he had nothing to toot with. He reached in his pocket for his roll of bills, peeled off another hundred, but his hands were shaking so much that he couldn’t roll it up. Then the phone rang. As he reached to answer, he wondered if Nick or somebody had held all calls while he and Elvira were alone together. How long had that been? Ten minutes?

How long did he have now?

“Manolo?” he asked tensely, holding the receiver in both hands.

“Tony, get over here!” It was Mama, and she was hysterical. “She’s gone for good now. I hope you’re satisfied.” Then she fell to sobbing, cursing him in Spanish.

He tried to quiet her down, but she wouldn’t listen. He said he’d be right over, he needed to see her anyway, but still she would not let go of the phone. He lay the receiver on the desk, bent down and sniffed another dose, then hurried over to the closet.

Inside was a metal cabinet where he kept his cash on hand. It wasn’t a safe exactly, more like a double-size locker in a gym. It had a padlock, but they never locked it. They used it as a storage unit, accumulating a bankable amount. When he opened the cabinet he found a couple of half-full canvas bags and a suitcase stacked with twenties in wrappers.

He heaved one of the canvas bags over his shoulder, then grabbed the sheet of paper with the address and stuffed it in his pocket. He rushed from the room. There was no one about as he ran downstairs. It was in his mind to get out of there alone, but as he trotted across the gravel to the garage, he could hear Nick and Ernie running behind him. He didn’t care one way or the other now, and he slumped in the rear seat of the Corniche and let them climb in front. Nick drove. Tony called out an address and then sat back in a daze.

About ten minutes later they came to the house in Shenandoah Park. Tony combed his hair in the vanity mirror above the bar and straightened his collar. Then he did a heavy double toot. Telling the men to wait in the car, he hefted up the canvas bag, stepped out onto the curb, and loped up the drive to the back of the house. He waved to the boys who were tinkering with the car, then ducked inside and sprinted up the stairs. It seemed like a point of pride with him that he do this thing with the grace of an athlete.

Just now, as he reached the third floor—not even breathing hard—he looked fit enough to fight for the middleweight title.

Only Dolores and the grandmother and the retarded boy Ricardo were home. Dolores was most upset, for she knew how much Tony liked to go a couple of rounds with Paco. Tony had to reassure her, patting her arm and shushing her. He only had a minute, he said. She had to listen carefully.

“You take this, Dolores,” he said, heaving the canvas bag onto the kitchen table, “you hide it, okay? Year from now, you start usin’ it to live on. Groceries, gas bill, doctors—whatever you gotta pay, you pay outa here. You understand?”

Dolores nodded gravely. So did the grandmother. They looked soberly at the canvas bag, and it was clear they would follow his instructions to the letter. They would not even open the canvas bag till the year was up.

“That way,” Tony said, “you and Waldo can start puttin’ half his salary away for the kids. For their education.
Comprende?”

Once again the two women nodded in unison. They both looked grief-stricken now, as if they understood that Tony would not be back. They did not press him or ask him questions. They were too well-bred for that.

Tony reached in his pants pocket and pulled out the paper on which Elvira had written the Washington address. Tony asked Ricardo to go fetch a pencil, and when the young man brought him one he wrote Elvira’s name down twice. Her maiden name and her married name. There was no telling what she would go by later on.

“Some day I want you to contact this lady,” he said, handing the paper across to Dolores. “She used to be my wife. You tell her all about me and Paco and Ricardo here, how we met in the ocean. How I got you to take Ricardo in. I want you to tell her she’s part of the family too. You understand?”

“Sure, Tony. You can’t wait till Waldo comes home?”

“No, I gotta go now.” He leaned forward across the table and kissed Dolores on either cheek. Then he kissed the grandmother’s forehead. “You just take care o’ my boys,” he said. “I want Paco to grow up and be President, okay?”

Ricardo stood up when he did, and they shook hands man to man.

“Go with God, Tony,” said Dolores.

Tony nodded and smiled and took a last long look around the kitchen. Then he slipped outside and shut the door behind him with a quiet click. He trotted downstairs with a grin on his face. By the time he’d reached the car he was already thinking of the next encounter. He frowned with concentration as he gave the next address and tapped out a couple of thick lines. But deep inside he laughed for a long moment, because he’d finally done something that no one could take away.

Then he snorted hard.

All the way to his mother’s house he tried to focus on Gina. When had he set her up in business? When did she leave Mama’s house and get a place of her own? He kept thinking that if only he could recover the timing, he’d be able to put his finger on where they had all disappeared to. It was like they were all playing a game, hiding in a landscape full of trees, and he kept forgetting where he’d already looked.

Nick got another gram from the glove compartment and handed it over the seat. Until now he had always waited till Tony asked, but apparently they had reached a new plateau. Tony’s snorting now was purely automatic. He did not even pay attention to being high. The rush went right by him, clearing his head for a bit in the process but otherwise leaving no mark. It was as if he needed to do it now to prove how numb he was.

He left the two men in the car, who knew better than to bother a man who was saying goodbye to his mother. As Tony walked up to the front door, he tried to think what the deal was between him and this woman. Was he paying the rent? Or was she the one who’d thrown the money in his face? He could hear her sobbing even through the door. He walked in and followed her grief to the kitchen. She sat with her head in her arms on the table, the receiver of the phone lying helpless there beside her. The line was still open between her house and her son’s house, but it might as well have been dead.

“She don’t even live in her place,” gasped Mama, choking back her tears. Tony hadn’t even thought she noticed him come in. She spoke as if they’d been arguing nonstop for hours. He realized he would never be able to fill in the part he’d lost. “One day I follow her in a taxi,” Mama said brokenly. “She goes to this fancy condo in Coconut Grove. She don’t come out all night.”

“Coconut Grove?” Who lived in Coconut Grove?

Why was he being so slow? He
knew
now. But he wouldn’t let the truth take shape in his head. It was as if some terrible messenger had arrived with a sentence of doom, and the only thing Tony could do was barricade himself within the castle walls. Once he admitted the only possible explanation, time would begin its free fall. He realized he had no coke with him, he’d left it in the car. His hands began to shake again. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He was looking right over the cliff and down.

“Did you go in, Mama?”

“How could I?” the old woman wailed. “If I went in there she’d kill me. She’s just like you.”

“Where is it, Mama? What’s the address?” A voice inside him was screaming:
Don‘t tell me, I don’t want to know.

“Four hundred something. Citrus Drive. I got it over here.” She lifted herself from the kitchen chair and padded heavily to the counter by the sink. She lifted the sugar bowl and retrieved a slip of paper. The wave of sobbing had passed now. She seemed to be drawing together all her strength for one last rational argument. “You gotta talk to her Tony, she don’t listen to me. She says ‘I’m in love Mama, be happy for me.’ So how come she won’t tell me his name? How come she has to go there late at night like a . . .” She couldn’t say the word. Another squall of tears overtook her.