We'll Always Have Paris Page 12

  ‘And yet you want to go to him?’

  ‘It’s the only thing I can do.’

  ‘No, you can stay at the hotel and I’ll buy you a compass.’

  ‘What kind of future is that?’ said Willy-Bob. ‘You don’t love me.’

  ‘No, I don’t. Now, jump out and run like hell, alone!’

  ‘Christ, don’t you think I’d like to do that?’

  ‘Do it, then. For me. For you. Run. Find someone else.’

  ‘There is no one else, in the whole world. He loves me, you know. If I left him, it’d kill him.’

  ‘And if you go back, he’ll kill you.’ Kirk took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. ‘God, I feel like someone’s drowning and I’m throwing him an anvil.’

  Willy-Bob’s fingers toyed with the door handle. The door sprang open. The man standing in the Blue Parrot doorway saw this. Again, the toppled move of his body, again the return of balance, as a grim line formed around his death-rictus mouth.

  Willy-Bob slid out of the car, the bones in his body dissolving as he went. By the time he stood full on the pavement, he seemed a foot shorter than he had been ten minutes ago. He leaned down and peered anxiously in through the car window as if talking to a judge in a traffic court.

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘I do,’ said Kirk. ‘And that’s the sad part.’

  He reached out and patted Willy-Bob’s cheek. ‘Try to have a good life, Willy-Bob.’

  ‘You’ve already had one. I’ll always remember you,’ said Willy-Bob. ‘Thanks for trying.’

  ‘Used to be a lifeguard. Maybe I’ll head down to the beach tonight, climb up on the station, be on the lookout for more drowning bodies.’

  ‘Do that,’ said Willy-Bob. ‘Save someone worth saving. Good night.’

  Willy-Bob turned and headed for the Blue Parrot.

  His friend, the man with the now-restored mask and flamboyant cape, had gone inside, secure, certain, without waiting. Willy-Bob blinked at the flapping hinged doors until they stood still. Then, head down in the rain that no one else saw, he walked across the sidewalk.

  Kirk didn’t wait. He gunned the motor and drove away.

  He reached the ocean in twenty minutes, stared at the empty lifeguard station in the moonlight, listened to the surf, and thought, Hell, there’s no one out there to be saved, and drove home.

  He climbed into bed with the last of the beer and drank it slowly, staring at the ceiling until his wife, head turned toward the wall, at last said, ‘Well, what have you been up to, this time?’

  He finished the beer, lay back, and shut his eyes.

  ‘Even if I told you,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t believe it.’

  Apple-core Baltimore

  On the way to the cemetery Menville decided they needed to pick up something to eat, so they stopped the car at a roadside stand near an orange grove where there were displays of bananas, apples, blueberries, and, of course, oranges.

  Menville picked out two wonderful, big, glossy apples and handed one to Smith.

  Smith said, ‘How come?’

  Menville, looking enigmatic, just said, ‘Eat, eat.’ They stowed their jackets in the car and walked the rest of the way to the graveyard.

  Once inside the gates, they walked a great distance until at last they came to a special marker.

  Smith looked down and said, ‘Russ Simpson. Wasn’t he an old friend of yours from high school?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Menville. ‘That was the one. Part of the gang. My very best friend, actually. Russ Simpson.’

  They stood for a while, biting into their apples, chewing quietly.

  ‘He must have been very special,’ Smith said. ‘You’ve come all this way. But you didn’t bring any flowers.’

  ‘No, only these apples. You’ll see.’

  Smith stared at the marker. ‘What was there about him that was so special?’

  Menville took another bite of his apple and said, ‘He was constant. He was there every noon, he was there on the streetcar going to school and then back home every day. He was there at recess, he sat across from me in homeroom, and we took a class in the short story together. It was that kind of thing. Oh, sure, on occasion he did crazy stuff.’

  ‘Like what?’ said Smith.

  ‘Well, we had this little gang of five or six guys who met at lunchtime. We were all different, but on the other hand, we were all sort of the same. Russ used to sort of pick at me, you know how friends do.’

  ‘Pick? Like what?’

  ‘He liked to play a game. He’d look at all of us and say, “Someone say ‘Granger.’” He’d look at me and say, “Say ‘Granger.’” I’d say “Granger” and Russ would shake his head and say, “No, no. One of you others say ‘Granger.’” So one of the other guys would say “Granger” and they would all laugh, a big reaction, because he said “Granger” just the right way. Then Russ would turn to me and say, “Now it’s your turn, you say it.” I would say “Granger” and no one would laugh and I’d stand there, feeling left out.

  ‘There was a trick to the whole thing but I was so stupid, so naive, that I could never figure out that it was a joke, the sort of thing they played on me.

  ‘Then one time I was over at Russ’s house and a friend of his named Pipkin leaned over the balcony in the living room and dropped a cat on me. Can you believe that?! The cat landed right on my head and clawed my face. It could have put out my eyes, I thought later. Russ thought it was a great joke. Russ was laughing and Pip was laughing, and I threw the cat across the room. Russ was indignant. “Watch what you’re doing with the cat!” he said. “Watch what the cat was doing with me!” I cried. That was a big joke; he told everyone. They all laughed, except me.’

  ‘That’s some memory,’ said Smith.

  ‘He was there every day, was in school with me, my best friend. Every once in a while, at lunchtime, he’d eat an apple and when he finished he’d say, “Apple core.” And one of the other guys would say, “Baltimore.” Russ would then say, “Who’s your friend?” They’d point at me and he’d throw the apple core–hard–at me. This was a routine; it happened at least once a week for a couple of years. Apple-core Baltimore.’

  ‘And this was your best friend?’

  ‘Sure, my best friend.’

  They stood there by the grave, still working at their apples. The sun was getting hotter and there was no breeze.

  ‘What else?’ said Smith.

  ‘Oh, not much. Well, sometimes at lunchtime I’d ask the typing teacher to let me use one of the typewriters so I could write, as I didn’t have a typewriter of my own.

  ‘Finally, I had a chance to buy one real cheap, so I went without lunch for a month or so, saving my lunch money. Finally, I had enough to buy my very own typewriter so I could write whenever I wanted.

  ‘One day Russ looked at me and said, “My God, do you realize what you are?” I said, “What?” He said, “You’re a stale fruitcake, giving up your money to buy that damned typewriter. A stale fruitcake.”

  ‘I often thought later that someday when I finished my great American novel, that’s what I’d call it: Stale Fruitcake.’

  Smith said, ‘Better than Gatsby, huh?’

  ‘Gatsby, sure. Anyway, I had the typewriter.’

  They were quiet then, the only sound the last bites into their diminishing apples.

  A distant expression came over Smith’s face and he blinked and suddenly whispered, ‘Apple-core.’

  To which, quickly, Menville said, ‘Baltimore.’

  Smith then said, ‘Who’s your friend?’

  Menville, looking down at the marker near his feet, eyes wide, said, ‘Granger.’

  ‘Granger?’ said Smith, and stared at his friend.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Menville. ‘Granger.’

  At this Smith raised his hand and threw his apple core down on top of the gravestone.

  No sooner was this done than Menville hurled his apple core down, then reached and took it up again a
nd threw it a second time so that the gravestone was so littered with shreds of the apple core that you couldn’t make out the name on the marker.

  They stared at the mess.

  Then Menville turned and began to walk away, threading through the gravestones, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  Smith called after him. ‘Where are you going?’

  Menville, not looking back, said in a hoarse voice, ‘To get some more apples, damn it to hell, more apples.’

  The Reincarnate

  After a while you will get over being afraid. There’s nothing you can do; just be careful to walk at night.

  The sun is terrible; summer nights are no help. You must wait for cold weather. The first six months are your prime. In the seventh month the water will seep through with dissolution. By the eighth month your usefulness will fade. Come the tenth month you’ll lie weeping in sorrow without tears, and you will know then that you will never move again.

  But before that happens there is so much to be finished. Many likes and dislikes must be turned in your mind before your mind melts.

  It is all new to you. You are reborn! And your birthplace is silk lined and smells of tuberoses and linens, and there is no sound before your birth except the beating of the earth’s billion insect hearts. This place is wood and metal and satin, offering no sustenance, but only an implacable slot of close air, a pocket within the earth. There is only one way you can live, now. There must be an anger to slap you awake, to make you move. A desire, a want, a need. Then you quiver and rise to strike your head against satin-lined wood. Life calls you. You grow with it. You claw upward, slowly, and find ways to displace the heavy earth an inch at a time, and one night you crumble the darkness, the exit is complete, and you burst forth to see the stars.

  Now you stand, letting the emotion burn you. You take a step, like a child, stagger, clutch for support–and find a cold marble slab. Beneath your fingers the carved story of your life is briefly told: BORN–DIED.

  You are a stick of wood, trying to walk. You go outward from the land of monuments, into twilight streets, alone on the pale sidewalks.

  You feel something is left undone. Some flower yet unseen, some place you must see, some lake waiting for you to swim, some wine unsipped. You are going somewhere, to finish whatever is still undone.

  The streets are strange. You walk through a town you have never seen, a dream on the rim of a lake. You grow more certain of your walking, you start to go quite swiftly. Memory returns.

  Now you know every lawn of this street, every place where asphalt bubbled from cement cracks in the summer oven weather. You know where the horses were tethered, sweating in the green spring at these iron waterfonts so long ago it is a fading mist in your brain. This cross street, where a lamp hangs like a bright spider spinning light across darkness. You escape its web into sycamore shadows. You run your fingers along a picket fence. Here, as a child, you rushed by with a stick raising a machine-gun racket, laughing.

  These houses, holding their people and memories. The lemon odor of old Mrs Hanlon who lived here, a lady with withered hands who gave you a withered lecture on trampling her petunias. Now she is completely withered like an ancient paper burned.

  The street is quiet except for the sound of someone walking. You turn a corner and unexpectedly collide with a stranger.

  You both stand back. For a moment, examining each other, you understand.

  The stranger’s eyes are deep-seated fires. He is tall, thin, and wears a dark suit. There is a fiery whiteness in his cheekbones. He smiles. ‘You’re new,’ he says.

  You know then what he is. He is walking and ‘different,’ like you.

  ‘Where are you going in such a hurry?’ he asks.

  ‘Step aside,’ you say. ‘I have no time. I have to go somewhere.’

  He reaches out and grasps your elbow firmly. ‘Do you know what I am?’ He bends close. ‘Do you not realize we are the same? We are as brothers.’

  ‘I–I have no time.’

  ‘No,’ he agrees. ‘Nor have I, to waste.’

  You try to brush past, but he walks with you. ‘I know where you’re going.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘To some childhood place. Some river. Some house. Some memory. Some woman, perhaps. To some old friend’s bed. Oh, I know, I know everything about our kind. I know.’ He nods at the passing light and dark.

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘That is always why we lost ones walk. Strange, when you consider all the books written about ghosts and restless souls–never once did the authors of those worthy volumes touch upon the true secret of why we walk. But it’s always for a memory, a friend, a woman, a house, a drink of wine, everything and anything connected to life and…living!’ He makes a fist to hold the words tight. ‘Living! Real living!’

  Wordless, you increase your stride, but his whisper follows:

  ‘You must join me later, friend. We will meet with the others, tonight, tomorrow, and all the nights until at last, we win!’

  ‘Who are the others?’

  ‘The dead. We join against’–a pause–‘intolerance.’

  ‘Intolerance?’

  ‘We–the recently deceased, the newly interred–are a minority, a persecuted minority. They make laws against us!’

  You stop walking. ‘Minority?’

  ‘Yes.’ He grasps your arm. ‘Are we wanted? No! We are feared, driven like sheep into a quarry, screamed at, stoned, like the Jews. It’s wrong, I tell you, unfair!’ He lifts his hands in fury and strikes the empty air. ‘Is it fair that we melt in our graves while the rest of the world sings, laughs, dances? Fair, is it fair, that they love while we lie cold, that they touch while our hands turn to stone? No! I say down with them, down! Why should we die? Why not the others?’

  ‘Maybe…’

  ‘They slam the earth in our faces and carve a stone to weigh us down. They bring flowers and leave them to rot, once a year–sometimes not even that! Oh, how I hate the living. The damn fools! Dancing all night and loving till dawn, while we are abandoned. Is that right?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way…’

  ‘Well,’ he cries, ‘we’ll fix them.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘There are thousands of us gathering tonight in the Elysian grove. I will lead our army. We will march! They have neglected us for too long. If we can’t live, then they won’t! Will you come, friend? I have spoken with many. Join us. Tonight the graveyards will open and the lost ones will pour forth to drown the unbelievers. You will come?’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps. But right now I must go. I am looking for something…Later, later I will join you.’

  ‘Good,’ he says. You walk off, leaving him in shadow. ‘Good, good, good!’

  Up the hill now, quickly. Thank God the night is cold.

  You gasp. There, glowing in the night, but with simple magnificence, the house where Grandma sheltered and fed her boarders. Inside that grand, tall house, Saturday feasts happen. Where you as a child sat on the porch watching skyrockets climb in fire, the pinwheels sputtering, the gunpowder drumming at your ears from the brass cannon your uncle Bion fired with his hand-rolled cigarette.

  Now, trembling with memory, you know why the dead walk. To see nights like this. Here, where dew littered the grass and you crushed the damp lawn, wrestling, and you knew the sweetness of now, now, tomorrow is gone, yesterday is done, tonight you live!

  And here, here, remember? This is Kim’s house. That yellow light around the back, that’s her room.

  You bang the gate wide and hurry up the walk.

  You approach her window and feel your stale breath falling upon the cold glass. As the fog vanishes the shape of her room emerges: things spread on the little soft bed, the cherrywood floor brightly waxed, and throw-rugs like heavily furred dogs sleeping there.

  She enters the room. She looks tired, but she sits and begins to comb her hair.

  Breathlessly, you press your ear against the cold pane
to listen, and as from a deep sea you hear her sing so softly it is already an echo before it is sung.

  You tap on the windowpane.

  But she doesn’t turn; she continues combing her hair gently.

  You tap again, anxiously.

  This time she puts down the comb and rises to come to the window. At first she sees nothing; you are in shadow. Then she looks more closely. She sees a dim figure beyond the light.