Stick (15 page)

Moke crept past in the van. Now should he call Chucky back, listen to him piss and moan? . . .  Or call Avilanosa and get her done. Bright and clear, it was too nice a day to sit around smoking weed.

STICK PULLED INTO THE TURNAROUND
wondering what Kyle was doing, wondering what he'd say to her. Cornell was standing by the open garage door.

“You have a nice time with Rorie?”

“She never shut up all the way to Lauderdale.” He pulled the Rolls into the garage and came out.

Cornell said, “Love the scene, sneaking her off the boat this morning. Man so hung over he could barely see to walk.”

“Aurora says she's going to tell him off,” Stick said. They were moving across the cobblestones toward the lawn.

“He's heard it,” Cornell said. “Man will put up with just so much, then she be looking for another daddy. Speaking of—the lady was looking for you.” Stick's gaze swung toward the pool and Cornell said, “Not that one, the lady of the house. I told her it was your day off. But she's gone now, went to the club to fool around, have a few salty dogs. How come you're back?”

“Why would I want to leave this,” Stick said, his eyes moving across the slant of lawn again to the swimming pool: to Kyle on a lounge, motionless, long brown legs shining in the sun. Her suit, wide blue and white stripes, was cut high on the sides, almost to her hips. He wanted to walk up to her—say something to Barry first. Barry sat at the umbrella table with a pile of Sunday papers. Looking at Barry he felt sorry for him, or else it was a twinge of guilt; or an awareness that he might feel guilty if he thought about it long enough or hoped to be seduced again by the man's wife. But there would never be another night like that one. He'd keep it to bring out and look at now and then, close to his vest, knowing his amazement would be shaded with remorse once he got to the part with Kyle. Not because he'd failed but because he'd tried, because he'd included her in his personal record attempt. Dumb. Still, he could forgive himself. It wasn't that dumb. He didn't
know on the guest-house sofa he was going to have a knot in his gut thinking of her the next day. There was no one to tell to get a reaction. All he could do was start again from scratch—something he'd had a lot of practice doing—and this time hope she'd feel he was worth waiting for.

Cornell said, “Was a man name of Harvey stop by, look like he was gonna be sick he didn't find you. Gave me a number said for you to call soon as you got back. Hey, you see your little girl?”

“I sure did.” It picked him up, like that, thinking of her arms around him, saying close to him,
I got your letter
 . . .  It reached deep into him. He felt a sadness even while he smiled, telling Cornell about Katy, and asked, “How 'bout you, you have a good time last night?”

“Fell in love,” Cornell said. “Again. Yeah, while you doing the chores.”

“They keep you humping,” Stick said.

“Man got good and smashed, uh? I hear him say he don't remember nothing. That's safe.” Cornell looked off. “I think he's waving at me. Wants a bloody.” Cornell walked to the edge of the grass, watched Barry beneath the umbrella waving his arms, gesturing. “No, don't want me, wants you.”

Stick walked across the grass slope with his magazines and aftershave and toothpaste in the sack trying to get words ready and found he didn't have to. Barry was into the stock market again, throwing questions at Kyle lying motionless a few feet away, sunglasses covering her eyes, arms at her sides.

“How do you like Biogen? Raised forty million for research, their objective”—glancing at the newspaper—”to become the IBM of biotechnology.”

Kyle said, not moving, “You're already into biotechnology.”

“With what?”

“Automated Medical Labs.”

“I want to cover my ass,” Barry said. “This”— looking at the paper again—”recombinant DNA, you understand that?”

“Gene splicing.”

Barry waited, Stick watching. “That's it, uh? Gene splicing?”

“Transplanting genetic characteristics from one cell to another. Cloning . . .  mass-producing human hormones . . .  all that stuff.” She sounded sleepy.

“How do you know that?”

“You sound like Aurora,” Kyle said, still not moving.

Barry looked up at the terrace, his gaze monitoring the area before settling on Stick. “Hey, buddy, how you doing?”

Kyle didn't look over. Stick said to Barry, “What can I get you?”

“Not a thing. Listen, I hope I didn't give you a hard time last night. I don't remember a goddamn thing from the time we walked outta the club. How was . . .  my friend? She give you any trouble?”

“Not a bit. She was fine.”

“Last time I got that drunk,” Barry said, “years ago, I didn't know any better, I pick up a broad someplace—I mean I must've 'cause I wake up the next morning and there's this broad laying there. We're in a motel, that Holiday Inn over on LeJeune. I've got my arm out like this and the broad's laying on it with
her head turned away from me? I lean up to get a look at her—I don't remember a goddamn thing from the night before—and, Jesus, I can't believe it. This is the ugliest broad I ever saw in my life. I mean that's how drunk I was. This broad was so ugly . . .  Ask me how ugly she was.”

Stick said, “How ugly was she?”

“She was so ugly I actually considered chewing my arm off rather than wake her up. You talk about an ugly broad . . .”

Stick glanced over. Kyle didn't move. Now Barry was looking at his newspaper again and Stick wondered if he was dismissed. He didn't want to leave, he hadn't learned anything yet.

Barry said, “I think Enzo Biochem's looking good. Up from six and a quarter to twenty-three.” He turned to Kyle. “What do you think, babe?”

Kyle said, sleepy or bored, still without moving, “Nothing in the field of biotechnology has been brought to market. You're trading in names and numbers. They could be making cat food or you could be playing Keno for all it has to do with product.” She said, even more slowly, “You don't need me for that.”

Barry lowered his sunglasses and ducked his head looking over them. “Babe? What's the matter?”

“Nothing”

It seemed that was all she was going to say.

Stick said, “I heard about a dental faith healer, he straightens your teeth and fills cavities with gold in the name of Jesus. That come under biotechnology?”

Kyle opened her eyes.

“You're putting me on,” Barry said. “Come on, you serious? A
dent
al faith healer? The age of specialization, man.”

“At the Church of the Healing Grace,” Stick said. He watched Kyle get up from the lounge.

“That's where you've been?” Barry said. “You get your teeth capped or what? Lemme see. Babe, you hear this? . . .  Where you going?”

“Home.”

“You mean
home
home?”

“No, my room”—waving him off with a tired gesture—”I'll see you later.” Not looking at either of them as she walked around the deep end of the pool and headed for the tennis court. They both watched her. Barry said, “Look at those lovely long legs. They go right up to her brain, without any stops along the way.”

Stick didn't say anything.

Kyle put on shorts and a tennis shirt and left the guest house with no purpose but to walk, feel herself doing something physical. She walked past hedges and walls that enclosed the wealth of the kind of people she counseled, walked east to the Atlantic Ocean, a
neutral ground, and took off her sneakers to wander an empty stretch of shoreline.

She had said to her dad, “The money's great, but there's no satisfaction. I want to
do
something, see tangible results.” He told her to drop her start-up companies going public and get back on the Board quick, for the upswing. She said to her dad, “Do you know what I wanted to be when I was little? A cop . . .  No, not ever a nurse or a nun.” She had played guns with her brothers and baseball in Central Park and at school in Boston, the boys amazed she didn't throw like a girl. She side-armed snowballs at cops in '69 demonstrating on the Commons, knit scarf flying, nose running, perspiring in her pea-coat, drinking beer after and smoking pot; into living. Now: “There's no excitement anymore. I watch. I'm a spectator.”

Her dad said get married, raise a family. When she felt like trading, pick up the phone.

“Who do I marry?”

Lot of bright young guys on the Street to choose from, share a common interest.

Like dating sociology majors at school: have something to talk about. Except that textbook conversations ran out of gas and when they took the Orange Line to Dudley Station and prowled through Roxbury she found she could not study “real people” statistically: they were in a life that made hers seem
innocent make-believe. Still, she was drawn to the street, fascinated, feeling a rapport she didn't understand.

Kyle had brought that home from school and her dad said there was the Street and there was the street. One was neither more real nor unreal than the other. Kyle said, except one was concocted, invented in the name of commerce; while the other was concerned with existence, degrees of survival. She would talk about social and economic inequalities and watch her dad doze off in his chair.

Today there was still a distinction in her mind. Comparing her Street with the ghetto street—or with rural, suburban or industrial streets, for that matter—she felt insulated, left out of life. She dealt in paper, in notes, contracts, certificates, coupons, with a self-conscious feeling of irrelevance.

On her recent trip home Kyle said to her dad, “I think I want to get into manufacturing, make something.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know, it's down the road. Maybe something in genetic engineering.”

“Pie in the sky. You want to be realistic, buy a stamping plant in Detroit and go out of your mind that way.”

“Or get into a service business that deals with people who need help on a survival level.”

“The public defender complex. I thought you got over that in Boston.”

“You've got an answer for everything, haven't you?”

“I hope to God I do,” her dad said. “But if you're serious, why don't you make a lot of money in the market, then open a home for cute little nigger kids the Junior League ladies can dress up and take to the zoo? Would that make you happy?”

Her dad had not been entertained by the Chucky stories. Or, he'd refused to accept the fact his daughter had a drug dealer as a client, put it out of his mind without comment. Now, if she told him she'd gone to bed with a man who'd served seven years for armed robbery . . .  (The failure to bring it off with skyrockets was beside the point.) On second thought her dad might accept Ernest Stickley the ex-con—once he knew him—and still disapprove of their sleeping together. It wasn't a subject you discussed with parents, at least not comfortably. She had lived with a premed student in Boston for a year and a lawyer on and off in New York for a year and a half; her parents had been aware of both, without a word of comment.

Getting involved with Ernest Stickley, Jr., from Norman, Oklahoma, by way of a state penitentiary—God—previewed what could be an entirely new experience. She liked him. She liked to talk to him
and felt good with him. At this moment she missed him. He appeared to be predictable, but wasn't the least bit. The dental faith healer . . .  She had left because she was tired of hearing Barry's voice and was certain he'd take over and do all the dental-faith-healer possibilities to death, without restraint. Which was one of Stick's strong points, his control, patience, without—thank God—putting on a show of being cool. They had been natural together in bed, both at ease, in sort of a dreamy nod. It was great. Until,
maybe,
he began to think too much and his male ego got him worrying about performing, being a star, instead of simply letting it happen. Her dad might call it the unfortunate stud syndrome, self-emasculation through anxiety. But that's
all the analysis she was going to give it. Feeling good with him and close to him was enough for the time being. The boy-girl aspect would take care of itself.

What might require work would be getting him out of that chauffeur's uniform and into a business suit. But why not? He had the potential, he certainly caught on fast enough. Why not help him get started? Not think of it as rehabilitation, like she was going to straighten out his life. Though it was an intriguing idea: from armed robber to investment counselor. Forget the gun, Stickley, there's an easier way to make it. No, just help him out, gradually.

Her dad would call it latent motherhood.

Crossing Collins Avenue on the way back she noticed the van parked off the road by a clump of seagrape, standing alone. She could make out a man's head and shoulders through the windshield, a cowboy hat, and thought of Chucky's unbelievable friend Eddie Moke.

Kyle began to jog, just in case: in past the gate-house and for several blocks, letting the perspiration sting her eyes, thighs aching now as she turned the corner and came along Bali Way. It was not until she saw the black limousine that she broke stride and slowed to a walk, catching her breath. The car stood at the entrance to Barry's driveway, a figure hunched over next to it. As she approached, the figure straightened, looking toward her. It was Stick. The car started up and came past her, a uniformed chauffeur at the wheel, alone in the car. Stick waited, starting to smile.

“You run in weather like this, Emma, you know what happens?”

“What?” She touched the sleeve of her T-shirt to her forehead.
Emma.
She had forgot about that part of last night.

“You die,” Stick said. They started up the drive together, the blacktop soft underfoot. He said, “I just made nine hundred dollars. Not all from that one. The word's gotten around. He's my third customer; they call and stop by.”

“I'm afraid to ask what you're selling.”