The Middleman and Other Stories (7 page)

Acapulco, Tijuana, Freeport, Miami—it doesn't matter where the pimping happens. Mr. Vee in his nostalgic moments tells me Havana used to be like that, a city of touts and pimps—the fat young men in sunglasses parked at a corner in an idling Buick, waiting for a payoff, a delivery, a contact. Havana has shifted its corporate headquarters. Beirut has come west. And now, it's Miami that gives me warm memories of always-Christmas Saigon.

It's life in the procurement belt, between those lines of tropical latitudes, where the world shops for its illicit goods and dumps its surplus parts, where it prefers to fight its wars, and once you've settled into its give and take, you find it's impossible to live anywhere else. It's the coke-and-caffeine jangle of being seventeen and readier to kill than be killed and to know that Job One is to secure your objective and after that it's unsupervised play till the next order comes down.

In this mood, and in a Civic newly liberated from a protesting coed, I am heading west out of Miami, thinking first of driving up to Pensacola when I am sides wiped off the highway. Two men get in the Civic. They sit on either side of me and light up cigarettes.

“Someone say something,” I finally say.

They riffle through the papers in the glove compartment. They quickly surmise that my name is not Mindy Robles. “We know all about this morning. Assault. Grand theft auto.”

“Let's talk,” I say.

I wait for the rough stuff. When it comes, it's an armlock on the throat that cuts air supply. When they let me speak, I cut a deal. They spot me for a vet; we exchange some dates, names, firefights. Turns out they didn't like Mindy Robles, didn't appreciate the pressure her old man tried to put on the police department. They look at our names—Robles and Marshall—and I can read their minds. We're in some of these things together and no one's linked me to Chavez—these guys are small time, auto-detail. They keep the car. They filch a wad of Mr. Vee's bills, the wad I'd stuffed into my wallet. They don't know there's another wad of Mr. Vee's money in a secret place. And fifty bucks in my boots.

Instead of an air-conditioned nighttime run up the Gulf coast, it's the thumb on the interstate. I pass up a roadside rest area, a happy hunting ground for new cars and ready cash. I hitch a ride to the farthest cheap motel.

The first automobile I crouch behind in the dark parking lot of the Dunes Motel is an Impala with Alabama license plates. The next one is Broward County. Two more out-of-staters: Live Free or Die and Land of Lincoln. The farther from Florida the better for me. I look in the windows of the Topaz from New Hampshire. There's a rug in the back seat, and under the rug I make out a shiny sliver of Samsonite. Maybe they're just eating. Clothes hang on one side: two sports jackets for a small man or an adolescent, and what looks to me like lengths of silk. On the rear-view mirror, where you or I might hang a kid's booties or a plastic Jesus and rosaries, is an alien deity with four arms or legs. I don't know about borrowing this little beauty. These people travel a little too heavy.

The Dunes isn't an absolute dump. The pool has water in it. The neon
VACANCY
sign above the door of the office has blown
only one letter. The annex to the left of the office has its own separate entrance:
SANDALWOOD RESTAURANT.

I stroke the highway dust out of my hair, so the office won't guess my present automobileless state, tuck my shirt into my Levis and walk in from the parking lot. The trouble is there's nobody behind the desk. It's 11:03; late but not late enough for even a junior high jailbait nightclerk to have taken to her cot.

Another guest might have rung the bell and waited, or rung the bell and banged his fist on the counter and done some swearing. What I do is count on the element of surprise. I vault into the staff area and kick open a door that says:
STRICTLY PRIVATE.

Inside, in a room reeking of incense, are people eating. There are a lot of them. There are a lot of little brown people sitting cross-legged on the floor of a regular motel room and eating with their hands. Pappies with white beards, grammies swaddled in silk, men in dark suits, kids, and one luscious jailbait in blue jeans.

They look at me. A bunch of aliens and they stare like I'm the freak.

One of the aliens tries to uncross his legs, but all he manages is a backward flop. He holds his right hand stiff and away from his body so it won't drip gravy on his suit. “Are you wanting a room?”

I've never liked the high, whiny Asian male voice. “Let's put it this way. Are you running a motel or what?”

The rest of the aliens look at me, look at each other, look down at their food. I stare at them too. They seem to have been partying. I wouldn't mind a Jack Daniels and a plate of their rice and yellow stew stuff brought to me by room service in blue jeans.

“Some people here say we are running a ‘po-tel'.” A greasy grin floats off his face. “Get it? My name is Patel, that's P-A-T-E-L. A Patel owning a motel, get it?”

“Rich,” I say.

The jailbait springs up off the floor. With a gecko-fast tongue
tip, she chases a gravy drop on her wrist. “I can go. I'm done.” But she doesn't make a move. “You people enjoy the meal.”

The women jabber, but not in English. They flash gold bracelets. An organized raid could clean up in that room, right down to the rubies and diamonds in their noses. They're all wrapped in silk, like brightly colored mummies. Pappy shakes his head, but doesn't rise. “She eats like a bird. Who'll marry her?” he says in English to one of his buddies.

“You should advertise,” says the other man, probably the Living Free or Dying. They've forgotten me. I feel left out, left behind. While we were nailing up that big front door, these guys were sneaking in around back. They got their money, their family networks, and their secretive languages.

I verbalize a little seething, and when none of the aliens take notice, I dent the prefab wall with my fist. “Hey,” I yell. “I need a room for the night. Don't any of you dummies speak American?”

Now she swings toward me apologetically. She has a braid that snakes all the way down to her knees. “Sorry for the inconvenience,” she says. She rinses gravy off her hands. “It's our biggest family reunion to date. That's why things are so hectic.” She says something about a brother getting married, leaving them short at the desk. I think of Jonda and the turbaned guy. He fired her when some new turbaned guy showed up.

“Let's just go,” I say. “I don't give a damn about reunions.” I don't know where Jonda ended up. The Goldilocks doll wasn't delivered to Laguna Vista Estates, though I had a welcome planned for it.

This kid's got a ripe body. I follow the ripe body up a flight of outdoor stairs. Lizards scurry, big waterbugs drag across the landings.

“This is it,” she says. She checks the air conditioning and the TV. She makes sure there are towels in the bathroom. If she feels a little uneasy being in a motel room with a guy like me who's dusty and scruffy and who kills for a living, she doesn't
show it. Not till she looks back at the door and realizes I'm not carrying any bags.

She's a pro. “You'll have to pay in cash now,” she says. “I'll make out a receipt.”

“What if I were to pull out a knife instead,” I joke. I turn slightly away from her and count the balance of Haysoos's bills. Not enough in there, after the shakedown. The fifty stays put, my new nest egg. “Where were you born, honey? Bombay? I been to Bombay.”

“New Jersey,” she says. “You can pay half tonight, and the rest before you check out tomorrow. I am not unreasonable.”

“I'll just bet you're not. Neither am I. But who says I'm leaving tomorrow. You got some sort of policy?”

That's when I catch the look on her face. Disgust, isn't that what it is? Distaste for the likes of me.

“You can discuss that with my father and uncle tomorrow morning.” She sashays just out of my reach. She's aiming to race back to the motel room not much different than this except that it's jammed with family.

I pounce on Alice before she can drop down below, and take America with her. The hardware comes in handy, especially the kris. Alice lays hot fingers on my eyes and nose, but it's no use and once she knows it, Alice submits.

I choose me the car with the Land of Lincoln plates. I make a double switch with Broward County. I drive the old Tamiami Trail across the remains of the Everglades. Used to be no cars, a narrow ridge of two-lane concrete with swamps on either side, gators sunning themselves by day, splattered by night. Black snakes and mocassins every few hundred yards. Clouds of mosquitoes.

This is what I've become. I want to squeeze this state dry and swallow it whole.

 

ON Thanksgiving morning I'm still in my nightgown thinking of Vic when Dad raps on my apartment door. Who's he rolling joints for, who's he initiating now into the wonders of his inner space? What got me on Vic is remembering last Thanksgiving and his famous cranberry sauce with Grand Marnier, which Dad had interpreted as a sign of permanence in my life. A man who cooks like Vic is ready for other commitments. Dad cannot imagine cooking as self-expression. You cook
for
someone. Vic's sauce was a sign of his permanent isolation, if you really want to know.

Dad's come to drop off the turkey. It's a seventeen-pounder. Mr. Vitelli knows to reserve a biggish one for us every Thanksgiving and Christmas. But this November what with Danny in the Marines, Uncle Carmine having to be very careful after the bypass, and Vic taking off for outer space as well, we might as well have made do with one of those turkey rolls you pick out of the freezer. And in other years, Mr. Vitelli would not have given us a frozen bird. We were proud of that, our birds were fresh killed. I don't bring this up to Dad.

“Your mama took care of the thawing,” Dad says. “She said you wouldn't have room in your Frigidaire.”

“You mean Mom said Rindy shouldn't be living in a dump,
right?” Mom has the simple, immigrant faith that children should do better than their parents, and her definition of better is comfortingly rigid. Fair enough—I believed it, too. But the fact is all I can afford is this third-floor studio with an art deco shower. The fridge fits under the kitchenette counter. The room has potential. I'm content with that. And I
like
my job even though it's selling, not designing, jewelry made out of seashells and semiprecious stones out of a boutique in Bellevue Plaza.

Dad shrugs. “You're an adult, Renata.” He doesn't try to lower himself into one of my two deck chairs. He was a minor league catcher for a while and his knees went. The fake zebra-skin cushions piled as seats on the rug are out of the question for him. My futon bed folds up into a sofa, but the satin sheets are still lasciviously tangled. My father stands in a slat of sunlight, trying not to look embarrassed.

“Dad, I'd have come to the house and picked it up. You didn't have to make the extra trip out from Verona.” A sixty-five-year-old man in wingtips and a Borsalino hugging a wet, heavy bird is so poignant I have to laugh.

“You wouldn't have gotten out of bed until noon, Renata.” But Dad smiles. I know what he's saying. He's saying
he's
retired and
he
should be able to stay in bed till noon if he wants to, but he can't and he'd rather drive twenty miles with a soggy bird than read the
Ledger
one more time.

Grumbling and scolding are how we deMarcos express love. It's the North Italian way, Dad used to tell Cindi, Danny, and me when we were kids. Sicilians and Calabrians are emotional; we're contained. Actually,
he's
contained, the way Vic was contained for the most part. Mom's a Calabrian and she was born and raised there. Dad's very American, so Italy's a safe source of pride for him. I once figured it out:
his
father, Arturo deMarco, was a fifteen-week-old fetus when his mother planted her feet on Ellis Island. Dad, a proud son of North Italy, had one big adventure in his life, besides fighting in the Pacific, and that was marrying a Calabrian peasant. He made it sound as
though Mom was a Korean or something, and their marriage was a kind of taming of the West, and that everything about her could be explained as a cultural deficiency. Actually, Vic could talk beautifully about his feelings. He'd brew espresso, pour it into tiny blue pottery cups and analyze our relationship. I should have listened. I mean really listened. I thought he was talking about us, but I know now he was only talking incessantly about himself. I put too much faith in mail-order nightgowns and bras.

“Your mama wanted me out of the house,” Dad goes on. “She didn't used to be like this, Renata.”

Renata and Carla are what we were christened. We changed to Rindy and Cindi in junior high. Danny didn't have to make such leaps, unless you count dropping out of Montclair State and joining the Marines. He was always Danny, or Junior.

I lug the turkey to the kitchen sink where it can drip away at a crazy angle until I have time to deal with it.

“Your mama must have told you girls I've been acting funny since I retired.”

“No, Dad, she hasn't said anything about you acting funny.” What she
has
said is do we think she ought to call Doc Brunetti and have a chat about Dad? Dad wouldn't have to know. He and Doc Brunetti are, or were, on the same church league bowling team. So is, or was, Vic's dad, Vinny Riccio.

“Your mama thinks a man should have an office to drive to every day. I sat at a desk for thirty-eight years and what did I get? Ask Doc, I'm too embarrassed to say.” Dad told me once Doc—his real name was Frankie, though no one ever called him that—had been called Doc since he was six years old and growing up with Dad in Little Italy. There was never a time in his life when Doc wasn't Doc, which made his professional decision very easy. Dad used to say, no one ever called me Adjuster when I was a kid. Why didn't they call me something like Sarge or Teach? Then I would have known better.