Stabs at Happiness (14 page)

Earl opened the door, smiling, a very dark black man, shorter than me, and I crashed in and hit him as hard as I could with the gun Crystal had given me earlier from her purse. Gina screamed, and continued to kind of carry on as the door was closed and Crystal said we'll kill you if you don't shut up.

I hit Earl more than I needed to, it quelled my nervousness, and when I pointed the gun at naked Gina she peed herself, there on the bed. I felt dirty after that.

“Where's the money?”

Gina said she didn't know. Earl pretended to be more out of it than he was, acting like I'd knocked him out. Crystal pulled down his boxer shorts, squirted lighter fluid on his private parts, stood back and lit a match.

Earl told us where. No we didn't burn him, but Crystal said something and I hurt him bad.

We tied them up in a half-assed fashion, taped their mouths. Crystal only seemed to get scared now, breathing harder, eyes darting around, when we were on our way out.

There was only one way down, and that meant walking past the office again. The guy in there was a smackhead, he and Walker had known each other in the Army. So the guy, Jimmy, might be on the nod or he might open up, if he suspected anything. He had some guns and had killed a number of Vietnamese. He'd killed people here too. He didn't care.

“What's happening?” he said, stepping out, friendly enough, spaced. “You're Cathy, right?”

“Yeah. This is my date.”

“Cathy, why're you here?”

“I had to pick up some stuff.”

“Oh. Right. Okay. Later, man.”

“Later.”

Jimmy watched us walk across the street and get into the Chrysler. We had thought we better park nearby in case we needed to run.

Crystal took some pills on the way to the airport, to settle down her nerves. She was happy, sure, we'd divvied up the money in the car, and once she bought her ticket and we were in the United waiting area, sitting down, she started to laugh. She liked me better now, too, but I could tell she wasn't completely at ease about my knowing she was heading to San Antone.

“They think I'm from California,” she said, and laughed, childishly, younger than she'd ever seemed up until now. She didn't look very much like the mysterious person she'd seemed to be when I'd only seen her a moment or two at a time, driving past. But she was fine.

“How did you happen to come out here?”

“Everyone always asks me that,” she said. But she wasn't really being critical. “I came out with my boyfriend, a year or so ago, and we got into trouble right away. He's in OSP now for ten years.”

“OSP” meant Oregon State Penitentiary.

It was sort of awkward, saying goodbye when her plane was called. We really didn't know each other, we didn't even know if we liked each other. So we hugged, and perfunctorily kissed, but it didn't feel right. I didn't know what to say. The last look between us was like we had just met.

Two days later, my father wanted his car back. He was going to sell it. He'd met some guy in a tavern who was going to come over and check it out.

I could remember, back when my father and my mother were still married, one time he'd bought an outboard motor when he didn't own a boat. Out in the garage, in a big oil drum filled with water, he'd pull the cord and start that motor, and marvel at it, and my sister and I would marvel too. But there was no place for that outboard motor to go.

Predictably, you might say, on the third morning after Crystal left I woke up with a terrible burning when I peed. I knew what it was, and I just thought it was funny, in some stupid way – and I didn't mind. It seemed right. I went to the County Health and had the diagnosis confirmed. They gave me a shot of penicillin.

My younger sister took me, and afterwards we visited some fucked-up friends of hers out on Southeast 74th, near Powell. It was a white clapboard house, where everyone seemed to come and go, and my sister got so drunk on Almaden wine that she passed out. I stayed up talking and smoking cigarettes, all night, with this girl named Mary Sue. Before it was light we went for a long walk and ended up at a diner, where we had pancakes and coffee with a lot of truck drivers who seemed to be on speed.

Back at that house, I fell asleep on the couch in the living room, and my sister woke me up at noon or so to tell me that she'd just talked to our mom, something had happened to our dad.

At the hospital, when we were allowed in to see him, my father looked horrible. He'd been beaten up very badly, he had a concussion and both legs were broke. They'd cut off his left ear.

He had been uncooperative with the police.

My father's wife was in there, and she glared at me. She was a barmaid, the second barmaid he had wed. She had never liked me, I don't know why. I had hardly seen my father these last few years. His hair had gone gray, and his brown face was sunken in around his false teeth. Alcohol had really taken its toll.

Only when I heard him say that “niggers” had done it, and the Chrysler had been set on fire, did I begin to realize that his misfortune had any connection to me. I wasn't exactly sorry, or repentent, I was just listening to what was going on around me… as his wife was muttering something ridiculous about how her son (who worked in a gas station out in Estacada) and his friends would wreak revenge.

I was tired, and I yawned, without trying to cover my mouth, and just then, as I was yawning, my father opened his eyes and saw me there. He looked awful, his face swollen purple and red, white bandages around the crown of his head, some black stitches showing.

He finally said, “I told them it was you. I told them it was you in that damn car. You see what they did to me? How do you like it? I gave them your address.” The memory of this seemed to give him some vicious pleasure, and he smiled.

He was no one I'd ever known in my life.

My sister drove me sixty miles south down to Salem, though she was still shaky and sick from being so drunk the night before, and I took the Greyhound bus from there to Sacramento, then Reno, on to Denver and beyond.

I tried to think really hard about what I should do with myself. I didn't want to be the same person as before.

But even when I made it to St Louis, there was really no escape. There was failure everywhere.

I learned to pretend I didn't care. Like an actor, putting on an act, even when I was all alone. Or when I was with some other Crystal, helping her not look at herself in a mirror.

I lived in a house and had a lawn-mower after a while.

My life in Broward County Florida.

“You just about done?” Crystal said.

“Sure, babe.”

The sunshine was like a slow-motion black and white atomic bomb, destroying the houses, X-raying our bones, frying off our flesh. But we hardly knew. We didn't want to think about what might have gone wrong with our lives.

There was a huge noise but we were all deaf. Soon we would be blind.

W
E ARRIVED
at the Western coast of India, not too far south of the mouth of the Indus River, and disembarked around noon. After an hour or so spent getting through customs, straightening out the usual misunderstandings, and so forth, we were escorted past a great mass of beggars, all with some wound or deformity to exhibit, some with Walkmans, and we boarded the air-conditioned tour-bus and made our way inland, through fertile countryside which is nevertheless made dangerous and virtually uninhabitable by certain plants which grow there in abundance and are difficult to root out. These bear little white flowers which constantly generate tiny, highly poisonous snakes. The same plant, you know, caused the death of many men and horses during the expeditions of Marco Polo and Alexander the Great.

What happened next?

Having made arrangements to continue on to Russia, we flew to the Greater Moscow Airport, which was some distance, as it turned out, from the metropolis itself. Our rental car awaited us. First we drove through a desolate, sandy, rocky area, then densely wooded hills, until we saw signs indicating that we were on the outskirts of the city at long last. The car took us down a long road between rows of tall stones tapered to their tops like pyramids, each with an open eye carved in the middle, which did give one, after all, a curious sense of being watched. Then came scattered huts of mud and rush-hurdles, all conical in shape. Little pebble walls, runnels of water, grass ropes and nopal hedges formed irregular boundaries between these dwellings. There were multi-colored cacti and brilliant flowers such as I've rarely seen.

How was the traffic?

Oh, there was no traffic as such. We were the only car. Very few children came to stare at us, fewer adults, though we saw some goats, a few sheep, and dogs. The dogs had black muzzles and did not bark. We were tired, and the twists and turns of the road, together with its rough grade, made it impossible to rest during the drive.

Describe Moscow.

There was coconut milk in the curry, and it was very spicy. For dessert there was an inventive selection of macaroons. Some slices of palate-refreshing lemon.

Go on.

Our business concluded, we booked passage on a ship, the
Wanderer
, and—

You've spoken of this before.

I have? What about Baltimore?

Yes. Baltimore. Continue.

Let's see. After a short cab ride, in downtown Baltimore we were introduced to the Grand Vizier. He invited us to watch him carry out some of the duties of his office, such as dispensing justice, receiving petitioners, or overseeing some of the royal estates.

He was a thin man, with a toothpick in his mouth, wearing a somewhat rumpled off-white suit and two-toned shoes. He did not especially resemble other Grand Viziers we had known in the past, but he seemed to know perfectly well what he was about.

What did he say?

Nothing special. The usual things one in his station would say. Well, he mentioned that his favorite pet monkey had recently died, and he invited us to attend the funeral, but we could not stay.

Are you sure that this is true? Perhaps it's something you saw someplace else, or in a film. Long ago.

A trick question. I see.

Answer.

Have we discussed the jungle? The steamy jungle, you must realize, is a myth. The jungle does not steam. Rather, as long as you are in the rain forest itself, and not exposed to direct sunlight, the temperature is reasonably cool. Very humid, and one perspires freely, but there is a feeling of freshness so long as you remain still and do not exert yourself.

Yes. Where are you now?

Right now, this very instant? Kansas of course.

Kansas?

T
HE FIRST DAY
they were in Tangier, the 5th of June 1982, Lauren became ill. She was forced to go again and again into the bathroom, and after two hours of this told Patrick she didn't want him around. “Please… just leave me alone for a while,” she said. “I'm not going to die. I just want to be quiet, by myself.”

So Patrick left the hotel. The street up here was gently twisting—all the streets were twisting—and notable for the large amounts of blond dust and fine sand. The sidewalk looked relatively new, molded in small smooth separate squares, but it was all broke up and incomplete, so you had to watch your step. Plenty of messy black electrical or telephone lines connecting the rather similar residences, many with yards behind high walls. Palm trees and flowering bushes, dry-seeming greenery… most of the buildings white, white, beige or pale gray, here and there pinkish tan unpainted brick, occasionally just a few daubs of white paint outside the window, as though someone had leaned out with a wet paintbrush but then become distracted and never finished. Dark window spaces leading to unknown interiors. Blue or turquoise-blue doors, again and again.

Patrick walked down Boulevard Mohammed V, then wandered away to the beach. But Muslim countries did not seem to encourage skimpy bikinis and the like. Street kids and “guides” or touts followed him around in this area, annoying him, interfering with him really getting a look at anything, until he abandoned the beach and walked back, up through downtown and towards the medina. The guides lost interest as he went into the Café de Paris. He ordered mint tea, but then found he didn't like it very much. It reminded him of spearmint gum. He wanted a Coca-Cola. In context this both carried some nostalgia value and seemed safe. The waiter was a man in his late 40s, slender, with a thin mustache and pockmarked face, unsmiling but polite. He looked like he might have played an assassin in some old black and white film. Patrick watched the people go by. It was fascinating, now that he had a place to sit and not be bothered, a place where no one was paying particular attention to him, and so he was reasonably content.

Patrick would never carry a camera, or go on a tour-bus, or allow himself to be shown around by a guide. His idea of being a tourist was to pretend that this was where he lived, and so to blend in, in this way hopefully get to know the place more uniquely and thoroughly than if he saw the traditional sights. He was uninterested in “places of interest,” famous buildings and whatnot, unless he discovered them naturally, on his own.

Lauren didn't agree with his approach. She told him he was fooling himself, that his pretending not to be a tourist was an affectation – and so, during this, their first trip together, they annoyed one another some of the time, and often split up and spent the afternoon or much of the day apart. In Portugal and Spain, this had seemed to work out for the best. Lauren went to all the museums and old churches from her guidebook, and Patrick went off on his own unplanned excursions, and just hung out, and they reunited in the evening, going out together then to restaurants or whatever.

Patrick's mind wandered. There were white metal latticework tables and chairs here, outdoors, but until he felt more at home he would remain inside gazing out through the window at the constant stream of people in the fresh sunlight of the day.