Vineland (45 page)

By the time they got there neither could remember why they'd picked the Club La Habañera, deep within a thousand-room resort-casino much too close to the airport, designed after the legendary gambler's paradise of pre-Castro Havana, where the smoke of genuine Vuelta Abajo filler and the fumes of Santiago rum, smuggled past the long embargo, mingled with a couple dozen brands of perfume, the band wore arm ruffles, and the sequined vocalist sang,

 

Mention . . . [rattle of bongos] to me, [picking up slow tropical beat]

“
Es posible
,”

And I won't need a replay,

My evening, is yours. . . .

 

 

Yes that's all, it takes,

Incre-íble
,

Would it be so . . .
ter-reeb-lay
,

To dare hope for more?

 

¿
Es posible?

Could you at last be, the one?

Increíble
,

Out of so many mil-lyun,

What fun,

 

If you [bongo rattle, as above] would say,

“
Es po-ho-seeb-lay
,”

While that old
Mar Carib'
lay

‘Neath the moonlight above,

Es posible,

Increíble
,

It's love . . . [fill phrase such as B–C–E–C–B flat]

It's love . . . [etc., board-fading]

 

Deeply tanned customers in dimly white tropical suits, with straw hats on the back of their heads, danced lewdly with hot-eyed packages in spike heels and tight bright flowered dresses, while beyond the seething blur of flame and parrot colors, sinister creatures, wrapped objects of unusual shape passing among them, bargained in the shadows. They were all yuppies on a theme tour, from places like Torrance and Reseda.

She recognized Hector right away, even after all the years, but the sight didn't raise her spirits. He looked like shit—run-down, congested in every system of circulation, appearing to her as at the edge of a circle of light, out of the frozen dark of years in service, of making deals and breaking them, betrayed himself, tortured, torturing back . . . long-term ravages . . . He ought to've broken by now—what kept him going? Somebody he loved, some drug habit, simple stubborn denial? She breathed his tobacco aura, withstood his crooked jovial born-to-lose laugh. So this was who he'd become—who, at least through her lack of surprise or any but reflex sorrow, she, down at her own modest level, must have become as well.

Just to get it done, she asked, “Is this official? Do you have any backup from DEA or Justice on any of this, or are you working some private angle?”

Hector began to pop and roll his eyes, as if working up to a full-scale freakout. Back at the Tubaldetox he'd had women talking to him like this all the time, another reason to escape, obliged never to scream back at them, as this earned him demerits that would even further postpone his release date. How he would have preferred violent body contact, shock, the recoil of a weapon, some scream of aggro, some chance just to drum his heels on something, but his options these days didn't even include teethgrinding. Once suave and master of himself, the fed was now having some trouble “trying,” as Marty Robbins once put it in a different context, “to stay in the saddle.”

Frenesi felt a little anxious for him. “Hector, you ever just think about beaming up, getting yourself out of this?”

“Not till I've got you and Brock Vond in a two-shot, smiling.”

“
Oh
dear. No—Hector, it isn't ‘This Is Your Life' here, in fact it could turn out the opposite. . . . Don't you know anymore what Brock is? Those quacks at the Tubaldetox have got you so Tubed out you can't even think straight.”

“Listen to me!” screaming through his lower teeth like a lounge comic doing Kirk Douglas. She foresaw his attempt to grab her by the lapels and slipped in ahead of his, yes definitely looser reflexes, on her feet, turned and planted, telling herself
I'm ready.
Here she was with a homicidal narc having a midlife breakdown, without, fool, having remembered to bring anything tonight more threatening than a purse-size can of hair spray. But Hector, exhausted, folded back into the rattan chair, squeaking and creaking.

“You're an honest soldier, Frenesi, and we been out on so many of the same type calls over the years. . . .” Here came some sentimental pitch, delivered deadpan—cop solidarity, his problems with racism in the Agency, her 59¢ on the male dollar, maybe a little “Hill Street Blues” thrown in, plus who knew what other licks from all that Tube, though she thought she recognized Raymond Burr's “Robert Ironside” character and a little of “The Captain” from “Mod Squad.” It was disheartening to see how much he depended on these Tubal fantasies about his profession, relentlessly pushing their propaganda message of cops-are-only-human-got-to-do-their-job, turning agents of government repression into sympathetic heroes. Nobody thought it was peculiar anymore, no more than the routine violations of constitutional rights these characters performed week after week, now absorbed into the vernacular of American expectations. Cop shows were in a genre right-wing weekly
TV Guide
called Crime Drama, and numbered among their zealous fans working cops like Hector who should have known better. And now he was asking her to direct, maybe write, basically yet another one? Her life “underground,” with a heavy antidrug spiel. Wonderful.

“Your story could be an example to others,” Hector was purring, trying for a Latin Heartthrob effect, “an inspiration.”

“Get them off drugs, right? Hector, Hector. I grew up hearing too much of this all the time, one movie pitch after another, my mother was a reader, then a story editor, even a writer, at first I thought they were all real, all I had to do was wait a little and I'd get to see every one of them on a screen someday.” Sasha had finally wised her up, likening it to one sperm cell out of millions reaching and fertilizing an egg, a comparison by then that Frenesi could relate to, though she felt the same shock and depression as when she'd found out that babies come not from Heaven but from Earth. Things now, for a moment, went likewise a little hollow. She'd brought to this rendezvous some wispy 2 or 3 percent hope that Hector might not be crazy. Though he and Brock both nominally worked for the Meese Police, just handicapping personalities, playing percentages, she'd have been willing to bet on some support from the DEA man—but now, outside again after all these years, back with the rest of the American Vulnerability, she could see, desolate, how anytime soon, in the cold presence of trouble already on the tracks, better she keep her change in her mitten than molest herself calling Hector for any help. He reminded her of herself when she was in 24fps, inside some wraparound fantasy that she was offering her sacrifice at the altar of Art, and worse, believing that Art gave a shit—here was Hector with so many of the same delusions, just as hopelessly insulated, giving up what seemed already too much for something just as cheesy and worthless.

He was nodding his head now, with a faraway look, as the Local 369 folks played “A Salute to Ricky Ricardo,” a medley of tunes actually sung by Desi Arnaz on the “I Love Lucy” show, including “Babalu,” “Acapulco,” “Cuba,” and “We're Having a Baby (My Baby and Me),” from the episode in which first mention is made of what turns out to be Little Ricky, a character in whom Hector took unusual interest. “Yes and a hell of a li'l percussionist, on top of everythín else. Just like his dad.”

Frenesi peered. Something was up. His eyes had this moist gleam, growing brighter by the moment. Then she tumbled. “
Oh
no. We all settled that years ago, don't be doin' this to me now.”

“Come on, open up them world-class ears, don't be tell' me you're not itchín to hear certain pieces of news.”

“Warnin' you Hector, don't get me pissed.”

But he had advanced across the tabletop, like a tile in a game, a Polaroid, mostly green and blue, North Coast colors, of a girl wearing jeans and a Pendleton shirt in a Black Watch plaid, sitting on a weathered wood porch beside a large dog with its tongue out. There was no sun, but both were squinting. “You fucker,” said Frenesi.

“Zoyd took this one. You can tell from the weird angle. See the dog? name's Desmond—Brock chased him away. The house there? took Zoyd years to build, Brock came took that away under civil RICO, and they're probably never gonna live there again. The deal we all thought we had, the deal we honored all these years, is now all blown to shit because of Mad Dog Vond, you listenín to me?”

“No, asshole, I'm tryin' to look at my daughter's face. That all right?” She glared at him. “If you're so worried about the breakdown of your private little boys-only arrangement, bring it up with Reagan next time you see him, he's the one took the money away.”

“Correct. But did you know he took it away from Brock too? Imagine how pissed off he must feel! Yeah, PREP, the camp, everythín, they did a study, found out since about '81 kids were comín in all on their own askín about careers, no need for no separate facility anymore, so Brock's budget lines all went to the big Intimus shredder in the sky, those ol' barracks are fillín up now with Vietnamese, Salvadorans, all kinds of refugees, hard to say how they even found the place. . . .”

“Hector—” shaking her head, unable to stop looking at the Polaroid.

He beamed her a tight teary smile. “She wants to see you.”

She took a breath and enunciated carefully. “Look, I've seen some no-class behavior go on trying to get a picture made, and considering your life history, usin' somebody's kid on them ain't even a misdemeanor, but remember to put in your report that subject took deep exception to Agent Zuñiga's spiritual molestation of her child.”

Hector frowned, trying to figure that out. “This ain't on the books—that what you think? Naw—families belong together, is all. Just 'cause I couldn't save my own marriage don't mean I can't try to help, does it?” Under the influence of, by then, quarts of a house specialty known as Battista's Revenge, Hector went off mooning about his ex-wife Debbi, who during the divorce proceedings, on the advice of some drug-taking longhair crank attorney, had named the television set, a 19-inch French Provincial floor model, as corespondent, arguing that the Tube was a member of the household, enjoying its own space, fed out of the house budget with all the electricity it needed, addressed and indeed chatted with at length by other family members, certainly as able to steal affection as any cheap floozy Hector might have met on the job. As long as she'd happened, moreover, to've destroyed this particular set with a frozen pot roast right in the middle of a “Green Acres” rerun that Hector had especially looked forward to viewing, possibly thereby rendering moot her suit, he decided in the heat of his own emotions to make a citizen's arrest, charging Debbi with Tubal homicide, since she'd already admitted it was human. In the movie of his life story, with Marie Osmond as Debbi and no one but Ricardo Montalban as Hector, it would be one of those epic courtroom battles over deep philosophical issues. Is the Tube human? Semihuman? Well, uh, how human's that, so forth. Are TV sets brought alive by broadcast signals, like the clay bodies of men and women animated by the spirit of God's love? There'd be this parade of expert witnesses, professors, rabbis, scientists, with Eddie Albert in an Emmy-nominated cameo as the Pope. . . . All just dreams of what might have been—in non-Tubal “reality,” both actions were thrown out as frivolous, and they got a simple no-fault divorce, on the condition that Hector immediately enter a Tubal Detoxification program.

“As kindly as I can,” since no one else was telling him, “between the television set and those New Age psychobabblers back at your Detox, I fear that very little, beyond the minimum needed for basic tasks, remains of your brain.”

“OK. Swell. You don't care about your kid, or the War on Drugs, I can even buy that, but I can't believe you'd just walk away from a chance to get back into film again.”

“Oh, ‘film,' well, ‘film,' I thought you said Triggerman and Liftoff, I hope you aren't mistaking what they do for ‘film,' or even a class act.”

“Look, with or without you, this will, git made. The money is committed, the papers are signed, all except for the director's agreement, and that's you . . . if you want. Shootín starts next week, soon as I leave here that's where I'm headed.”

He wanted her to ask where. “Where?”

“Vineland.”

“Hector, it's probably old news to you, but since I went under I've been all across the USA, Waco, Fort Smith, Muskogee too, rode up and down every Interstate in the land, some don't even have numbers, sweated my ass off in Corpus Christi, froze it in Rock Springs and fucking Butte, honored my side of it, always went where I got sent, and not once, that was the deal, never did I have to go anywhere near Vineland. It suited Brock's control-freak desires to keep me away from my child, and bein' a hard case and cold bitch, why, it suited me too.”

They were both just about crying, Hector more with frustration than anything. “Is what I been tryín to tell you,” in his forced, whispered grunt, “is that there is no deal anymore. OK? Brock has taken over the airport in Vineland with a whole fuckín army unit, and he seems to be waitín for somethín. Now what do you suppose that could be? Some think it's the dope crops, 'cause he is coordinating with CAMP and their vigilantes. Some think it's more romantic than that.”

“This the way it is in your movie script, Hector?”

“Frenesi, there's no more reason for you to stay away anymore—see your kid again if you want, the game was called off. Come on back to Vineland, think how long it's been, all your mom's side of the family, gonna be up at those campgrounds on Seventh River—”