Second Skin (16 page)

“Good night, you two,” I called anyway, and was alone with my music, the drunk GI, the woman who began clearing away the debris. Alone with the miniature silver dog. But not for long. Because before I could sit down with the drunk GI Fernandez retuned, breathless, guarded, already smelling of Cassandra’s scent, and held out to me the Edgeworth tobacco tin in which he kept his spiv, that terrible little weapon made of a broken razor blade.

“For you, Papa Cue Ball,” he said. “Take it. In case that one there,” jerking his elbow at the soldier, “in case that one tries to
cause you any trouble when he wakes up. It’s better to be ready for him, just in case. …

“Thanks, Fernandez. But wait,” trying to detain him, watching him slip off not toward the shrouded staircase but toward the littered street outside, “where are you going?”

“For the guitar, Papa Cue Ball. There would be no romance without my green guitar.”

But I was alone. Alone in this mining town of rusted iron pipe and settling rock and corrugated paper turned to mold. AJone with my heavy stomach, my heartburn, the dizziness I still suffered from the altitude. I paced up and down the dark room, I tried unsuccessfully to make friends with the wretched little silver dog. Apparently the woman expected me to climb to my own room upstairs and sleep, but I told her that I had spent so many months at sea that I found it difficult to sleep in a bed ashore. Why didn’t she bring me a beer, I asked her, and also one for the soldier and, if she liked, a beer for herself as well? She nodded, and then she put her fat brown hand on my arm and gave it a squeeze.

I told her I would sit down and keep the soldier company. So I pulled out a chair and took a seat. The head of black curly hair was buried in the crossed arms, the khaki shirt was disheveled, the cuffs were unbuttoned and drawn back from the thin gray wrists, and I noticed the outline of a shoulder patch which had been removed and no doubt destroyed.

“Hey, Joe,” I said. “Wake up, Joe. How about joining me for a beer?” No answer. No sound of breathing, not even the faint exhalation of a low moan. I leaned close to the hidden head to listen but there was nothing. I touched his elbow, I shook him by the arm. “Joe,” I said, “two lone servicemen ought to join forces, don’t you think?” But there was nothing. Only the rats, a little wind through the timbers, the first wailing chords struck on the guitar upstairs.

Then, on a tray this time, she brought out three beers and also a tin basin of warm water and a scrap of rag. And slowly she put down the glasses, arranged the rag and basin next to the GI and sat close beside him. We drank to each other—dark eye
on mine, little silver dog huddled between her breasts—and still holding her glass and without taking her eyes from mine she reached out her free hand, took a chubby fistful of black curly hair and pulled the GI upright, let his head loll over the back of the chair.

“Is he OK?” I whispered, “is he alive?”

She nodded, drank another sip of beer. Then she showed me the back of her small shapeless hand, held her hand up like a club.

“You did it?” I whispered and pushed aside my beer, leaned away from the two of them. “You mean you did that to him yourself?”

More nodding, more sipping, a soft shadow of pride passing over the greasy brown contours of her round face, more searching looks at me. And then suddenly she finished off her beer and, softly talking all the while to the dog and now and then glancing at me, she cradled the GI’s head and dipped the rag and went to work on him. With age-old tenderness she ran the rag over the lips, under the eyes, around the nose, again and again dipping the rag, squeezing, returning with heavy breath to the gentleness of her occupation. The white face began to emerge and already the water, I could see, was a soft rich color, deep and dark.

When the dog tipped its tiny nose over the edge of the basin I stood up. And quickly, without commotion, I left them there, the preoccupied fat woman bent over her task and the soldier moaning in the crook of her arm—he had begun to moan at last—and I groped my way outside and knelt at the nearest pile of rubble and upchucked into the rubble to my heart’s content, let go with the tortillas, the hot tamales, the champagne, nameless liquor and beer, knelt and clung to a chunk of mortar and gooseneck of rusted pipe and threw open the bilge, had a good deep rumble for myself.

Anyone who has gotten down on his knees to vomit has discovered, if only by accident, the position of prayer. So that terrible noise I was making must have been the noise of prayer, and the effect, as the spasms faded and the stomach went dry,
was no doubt similar to the peace that follows prayer. In my own way I was contrite enough, certainly, had worked hard enough there in the rubble to deserve well the few moments when a little peace hung over me in the wake of the storm that had passed.

I breathed, I smeared my face in my handkerchief, I climbed to my feet. It was a job done, and now the night, I knew, was going to fly away fast. Too bad for them, I thought, too bad for me. It hadn’t ended well but it had ended.

And now I was wandering and the opera house was like a decapitated turret or the remains of a tiny and monstrous replica of a Rhine castle. A few curtain wires flapping loose in the wind, a couple of sandbags and a little gilt chair upside down in the entrance hall, a pile of handbills. Another house of pleasure for the men in the drifts. And how many performances did my Mexican love attend? How many with some other little hairless rat-shaped dog tucked under her arm? How many with a mouthful of
pepitas
and a heavy hand on her rolling thigh and bright candles lit all the way across the little stage? I would never know. But there was life yet in that miniature lopsided castle of bygone scratching orchestras and flouncing chorus girls and brawling applause. So I began to feel my way up the narrow stairs. I climbed as high as the first balcony, climbed up into the fading night and could go no further, for the second balcony, the roof, the stage, all of it was gone and there was only a scattering of broken glass, the wind in my face, the feeling of blackness and a good view of the pitiless gorge and hapless town. I could make out the squat deeper shadow of the far-off Packard, I could hear the guitar. The dawn was rising up to my nostrils.

And then I saw those two enormous soft rolls of faded tickets which—by what devilish prank? what trick of time?—had been printed up for a movie that had starred Rita Hayworth, I remembered, as the unfaithful mistress of a jealous killer who escaped from prison midway through the first reel of the film. Shotguns, touring cars, acid in the face, long hair soaking wet in the rain— it was a real find, that memory, those rolls of tickets, and I
scooped them up and tore them into ten-foot lengths and tied them to the broken railing, to upright twists of iron, to the arms of ravaged chairs, and watched all those paper strips snapped out onto the wind and listened to the distant sounds of my little son-in-law shouting at my poor daughter and beating on the neck of the guitar, and emptied my pockets, threw my remaining handfuls of confetti out onto the wind. It was a fete of mildewed paper and wild sentiment, a fete for three.

And in that flapping dawn—sky filled with rose, silver, royal blue—I opened the Edgeworth tobacco tin, for a long while stared at the razor blade inside. Then slowly, can and all, I tossed it over the edge of the first balcony. And seven and a half months after that flapping dawn in the mountains Pixie poked her little nose into the world—premature, an incubator baby—and sixteen months after that same rose and silver and royal blue dawn they were putting Gertrude’s poor body into the ground. Thank God for the old PBY’s and for a captain who did not interfere when I left the ship to be on hand back home as needed in City Hall or maternity ward or cemetery. Thank God for the boys who flew those old PBY’s straight to the mark.

“That’s all you are, Papa Cue Ball. The father of a woman who produces a premature child. The husband of a woman who kills herself. I renounce it, Papa Cue Ball. I renounce this family, I renounce this kind of a man. Can you explain? Can you defend? Can you speak to me with honor of your own Papa? No. So I renounce, Papa Cue Ball, I will escape one of these days. You may take my word. …

“If you don’t wish to come, Fernandez, then you may stay behind.”

“That’s what I wish. I do wish it, Papa Cue Ball, now that you put the words in my mouth! And believe me, I will follow my heart. …”

In front of the mirror in the little room stacked knee-high with the cardboard cartons which I had half-filled with poor Gertrude’s clothing, I was having trouble with the sword. Our
limousine was waiting, scheduled to depart from the U-Drive-Inn, while the hearse was scheduled to depart, of course, from the mortuary. Or rather our limousine was scheduled to rendezvous with the hearse at the mortuary, the two black vehicles to proceed on from there together. And we were late and I was having trouble with my sword. Poor Gertrude. In the mirror I saw the smart dark blue uniform—it was Christmas, after all, the Christmas of ’44 and time for blues—saw the polished brass buttons, the white shirt still open at the neck since the baby was playing with my black tie, saw my bald head, freshly shaven cheeks, furrows over the bridge of my nose, and the unhooked and unwieldy sword. It was not my sword, it was the old man’s sword, and I had borrowed it late on that last night on the
Starfish.
I had thought a sword necessary for Gertrude’s funeral and now a couple of hooks were giving me trouble and the black scabbard was growing heavy in my hands.

“Cassandra,” I said into the mirror, “I wish you’d cry. And Sonny,” leaning forward, looking around for him in the mirror, “can’t you give me a little help with the captain’s sword?” Sonny was beginning to mourn, grief was beginning to overtake him in this ransacked room in the U-Drive-Inn, and he was scowling at Fernandez and holding Pixie on his lap. It was Sonny who had given the baby my black tie.

“All’s you got to do is speak up, Skipper. You knows that. I’ve helped the old man with his sword, and I can help you with it. You knows that.”

Sleeve of her camel’s-hair coat dangling from one of the boxes. Odor of gin. A scattering of small change, cuticle sticks, keys, all gleaming in the far corner of the room where I had been going over them, sorting things out. And on a fluffy beribboned hanger hooked to the top slat of the Venetian blinds her negligee, her pink negligee—I had rinsed it in the bathroom sink the night before, hung it to dry—now doing its long empty undulating dance in the cool currents of the air freshener that was humming low on the west wall. Poor Gertrude. I could never hold a grudge against Gertrude. No matter the motorcycle orgies with members of my own crew, half a season on a nearby
burlesque stage, the strange disappearances, insinuating notes to Washington, and bills, bruises, infidelity here at the U-Drive-Inn, and even a play for faithful Sonny, no matter how she had tried to injure me or shame Cassandra, still I could never despise the early wrinkles, the lost look in the eyes, the terror I so often saw on the thin wide mouth, the drunken floundering. She was a helpless unpretty woman with dyed hair. She got a rash from eating sea food. She gave a terrible ammunition to those young members of my crew with whom she managed to have her little whirlwind affairs. And her early V-letters were always the same: “I hope they sink you, Edward. I really do.” She said she was going to drink up my insurance money when I was gone. Poor Gertrude. “You are going to hate me, Edward,” she wrote, “at least you won’t deny me hate, will you?” But she was wrong. Because the further she went downhill the more I cared. And Gertrude was no match for my increasing tolerance.

“Now give me my tie, Sonny,” I said, and there was the empty camel’s-hair sleeve, the sword at my side, my own uneasy look of consternation in the mirror. “The baby will have to play with something else. On the double, Sonny, we’re late already.”

“What about the child, Papa Cue Ball? You don’t intend to leave the child with me?”

“Yes, Fernandez. That’s the plan. Exactly.”

Then Sonny helped me with the knot and gave me his arm and Cassandra found my hat in the bathroom. Gertrude’s finger-prints were everywhere, her smell was everywhere—sweet lemon and a light haze of alcohol—and in the wastebasket a crumpled tissue still bore the lipstick impression of her poor thin lips stretched wide in the unhappiness of her last night alive.

And Sonny: “Look at that baby there, Skipper. She sure misses her Grandma!”

I nodded.

So I leaned on Sonny and Cassandra preceded us—bright sun, black limousine, bright shadows in the empty driveway—and so at last, and only twenty-five minutes late, we pulled away from
the U-Drive-Inn and headed east in fairly heavy traffic to keep our rendezvous with Gertrude’s hearse. I could tell they had vacuum-cleaned the inside of our limousine. The upholstery was like gray skin and the sun was hard, brilliant, silent through the clear glass.

“Them swords are the devil to sit down with, Skipper. Ain’t they?”

I agreed with him. And then: “If we used the jump-up seats we could be carrying six instead of three. Did you notice that, Sonny? Wonderful room in these limousines. But I wonder why there aren’t any flowers?”

The traffic was heavy and all the other cars were filled with children. I could see them through the sealed glass, the smooth bright silence of our slow ride. Faint brand-new automobile smell, hard light, subtle sensation of new black tires humming gently through the perfect seat—gray skin, foam rubber, a bed of springs—and rising like a thin intimate voice into the receptive spine. And of course the driver. Something familiar about the driver—charcoal chauffeur’s jacket, white collar, charcoal chauffeur’s cap, dark glasses—a curiously muffled and familiar look about the driver. But I couldn’t place him and went back to stroking the warm handstrap and staring at the tints that were beginning to appear in the curves and along the edges of our shatterproof glass.

“Ask him if he has his lights on, Sonny. Funeral cars always have their lights on, don’t they, Sonny? We’d make better time with lights, I’m sure.”