Victory Over Japan (13 page)

“She's bad business,” Witherspoon
had said when Manny first started bringing her around. “She's bad business. And that boy of hers is worse than that. King, what kind of a
name is that to call a boy?”

Lenny turned the lock on the door with a trembling hand. Don't let it be true, he prayed.
Please don't let King be here. He sneezed, then sneezed again. His hand went for the vaporizer. No, he mustn't use it this soon again.
He'd be back in bed acting like that. King Mallison! Lenny stood in the doorway remembering Manny's wedding day. Inside Momma's house
the wedding was going on. Outside King was destroying Momma's roses. The Marechal Neil had never grown again. Eight years ago, could it be eight
years that King had plagued his life. Except for Uncle Ted's suicide there had never been a breath of scandal in the Weiss family. Before Crystal
their lives had moved along with only sickness to trouble them. Then Crystal, the King. King Mallison! “They said he was in Texas,” Lenny
said out loud. “They told me he was in school in Texas.”

Lenny opened the door and looked down the hall. Everything
looked all right. The library table was a bit askew. He made his way down the hall and through the dining room and into the kitchen. The kitchen was
littered with pots and pans. There was flour all over a counter, as if someone had been making bread. A walnut cutting board that retailed for $46.50
was sitting on the table filled with marijuana.
He was using Momma's cutting board to clean marijuana
. “That's it,”
Lenny said. “That's the last straw. That broke the camel's back.”

“Hey, Uncle Lenny,” King
said, coming in behind him. He had his arm around a tall dark-haired girl wearing a blouse with little chess figures printed on it, queens and rooks and
castles. Underneath the figures were breasts like the ones in magazines, so full and perfect it was impossible not to look at them. A very small button
seemed to hold the blouse together. The breasts moved as she laughed. “Meet Roxanne Rothschild from New York,” King said. “I told her
I had a Jewish family and she wouldn't believe me. Tell her I'm okay, Uncle Lenny. Tell her I know the rabbi.”

“What happened at the beach, King? What was going on down there?”

“I don't know what
happened. I locked up good for the night, didn't I, Roxanne? We locked everything. It was that way when the sheriff woke us up this morning.
I'll lend you a hand cleaning up. Is that what you came over for?”

“Are you living here? In the house?”

“Just temporarily. I'm going to move into town next week. I'm going back to Tulane. Well, how's it going?
How's business? You doing okay?”

“Does Momma know you're living over here?”

“I guess so. How's she doing? Is her back okay?”

“She's better. She's walking
most of the time.”

“It's nice to know you,” the black-haired girl said. She was moving closer. “Your
nephew said I'd like you. He said you were the sweetest one in the family.” She smiled deep into his face. She was very good at this. She
had survived three stepmothers. She could charm her way out of a snakepit if she had to. “Have dinner with us, won't you? I'm a great
cook. Wait till you taste my paella. Will you stay? We'd like it so much if you would.”

“I guess so,” he
said. “I guess I will. If you have enough. I mean, that's kind of you. It's nice of you to ask.” He was embarrassed. For a
moment he had forgotten it was his house.

“Well, you just take King on down to the beach and about the time the sun goes down
we're going to have some paella.” She started moving pans out of her way and took an apron down from a hook and tied it around the blouse.
“Go on, King, you two get out of my way.”

“Her old man's a congressman,” King said. “Would you
believe it?”

When they came back up from the beach Roxanne had spread the table with a linen tablecloth and found
wineglasses and opened a bottle of Margaux and left it on the table to breathe. It was out of Lenny's wine cabinet. She had taken off the blouse.
In its place was a pink silk kimono that was so small it barely came to her knees. She was sticking candles into holders when Lenny came in the dining
room. The back of the kimono was embroidered with a great white heron. Where had he seen that before?

“Look at this old thing
I found in the attic,” she said. “It must be fifty years old. King said nothing around here really belonged to anybody. He said it was okay
to wear it.”

“It was Sarah Louise's,” he said. “She died when she was young. She was my
cousin.”

“What did she die of?”

“I don't know. Something was wrong with her
heart. Her heart gave out.”

“Do you mind me wearing it? Does it bother you?”

“Oh,
no,” he said. “It was a long time ago.”

“Well, go wash up for supper and tell King. I'm almost ready.
This is going to be a feast. I'm so glad you could stay.” She smiled at him again, a long slow smile.

“Come here
to me, you wild woman,” King said, coming into the room and pulling her into his arms. “Quit turning all that stuff on Uncle Lenny.
He's a bachelor.” They laughed and pressed their bodies so close together Lenny thought they would melt as he watched. “Excuse
me,” he said. “I'll go and change my shirt.”

He went into his room and stood by the bookcase. He pulled
out his vaporizer and cleared his passages. He felt better. Maybe fall was coming. Perhaps this would be a good season.

He looked
around his room. Everything was just where he left it. His autographed picture of Leonard Bernstein, his speed-reading course, his toolkit, his
flashlight, his scaling knife. He touched a book on his desk.
Tropic of Cancer
, it said on the dustjacket. Inside was a dictionary. He turned
the pages, letting them flip through his fingers.
Love
, he stopped at the word. “To feel affection for, hold dear, CHERISH.”

He closed the book and went into the bathroom and took a shower and pulled on some clean
slacks and a white shirt. He put on his socks and some tennis shoes and went out the door and in to dinner. The hall was full of the smell of bread
baking.

The bread was hot, soft in the middle, crisp on the outside. They ate it with a salad. Drinking the wine. Then Roxanne
served the paella, the steam rising from it. Lenny was hungry. He hadn't eaten all day. He forgot himself in the wine and food. Then he remembered
something. A memory of some trouble King had been in assailed him. He took his fork and picked a small black thing out of the paella and put it on the
side of his plate. “Are these mushrooms?” he said. “Sometimes I'm allergic to them. Certain kinds. I mean, the paella is very
good. I don't think I've ever had any that was better. But I shouldn't eat mushrooms. You don't mind if I pick them out, do
you?”

King and Roxanne looked at each other, then smiled. “I bought them at the store,” she said. “They
came from Piggly-Wiggly.”

“We could get some of the other kind,” King said. “If you'd like to try
them.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “I mean, do you, ah, ever do that now? I mean, anymore?”

“Not very often,” King said. “I'm cleaning up my act. I'm coming into town to get my cows.”

“Your cows.”

“I'm joining the tribe. Never mind, Uncle Lenny, it's just a figure of
speech. Don't worry about it. We wouldn't feed you funny mushrooms without telling you about it.”

“What's it like?” Lenny said. He took another bite of paella and poured himself more wine. “What's it like
to do that?”

“Just pretty,” she said. “Real funny and real beautiful. Sort of scary.”

“Let's have another bottle of that wine,” he said. “Go get it, King. You know where I keep the key.”

A few of the mushrooms in the paella had not come from the store. A few of them were mushrooms King and Roxanne had picked in a field
near the house, beautiful mushrooms with wide full lips like Roxanne's vagina. They had taken them home and baked them in the oven to take the
bitter taste away and chopped them and mixed them with green onions and tamari sauce and chives and parsley and thyme and Roxanne added them to the
paella just before she stuck it in the oven. It was a recipe Roxanne had learned in a commune in Minnesota. At King's commune in Texas they just
fried them with eggs and bacon.

“I'm sorry,” Lenny said finally. “I can't eat another bite. That was
perfect. They should make you a Chevalier, Roxanne.” He started to pick up his plate but King took it from his hand.

“You just sit right there and enjoy your wine and let Roxanne and me clean this up. We'll have it done before you know it.
Then we'll go for a walk down to the water. The moon's full. I love to watch it on the water, don't you?”

The night was very still. Not a leaf stirring in all those trees. They walked down the cobblestone path to the beach. The path led down
between cypress and catalpa. The moon was like a spotlight. Lenny had never seen it so bright. An August moon, he thought, the biggest kind. When they
reached the bridge over the lagoon Lenny felt Roxanne's hand. She had taken him by the arm as if to lead him. He felt her fingers going into his
flesh, into his bones. A piece of moonlight took off and climbed a tree. The moon was all over the water. It was many colors, as many colors as a
rainbow. Fish were swimming through the colors, a circle of light was opening up and taking everything. It took the lagoon, then the trees, then the
beach. It was taking everything. It was on his legs, then his waist, coming up to take his eyes. It was on Roxanne's hand holding him. It was on
his arm. His bones would melt from the colors. He would slide into the colored water and bubble away into nothing. Then singing. All that singing. What
was all that singing? There could not be that many crickets in the world, din, din, din, an unimaginable din. Now the water was singing too. Even the
water was singing.

“Come over here and sit down,” Roxanne said. “Come with me. You're safe with me, Lenny-
Wenny. Come on, come on over here.” She led him across the bridge. It took many hours to cross the bridge. It took a long time to lift his foot
and put it down. It took forever to shift his weight from one foot to the other foot. Then they went through a forest of catalpa trees.

She led him down the sandy beach. King laid out a blanket and they sat down on each side of him and began to talk to him about the stars.
They told him things he had never known about the stars. “They can't believe we are so well-behaved,” King said. “They
can't believe we are so cruel.”

The moon was so bright. Lenny could see every ripple on the water. The ripples started
far away on the other shore. Lenny watched each one until it reached the Weisses' shore. He must not take his eyes away. He must follow every
ripple. He was growing weary. It was very tiring. It was wearing him out to watch the water like this. It was too much. He could feel the sand beneath
him working, shaping him with its hands. “Oh, my God,” he said. “Why am I here?” “Hush,” Roxanne said.
“It's just a trip. You'll get used to it. Give in, Lenny, enjoy yourself, let it take you. There you are, see, it's not so bad,
now is it?”

A lion was making its way across the water. It was riding on a piece of deadwood. There were people behind it.
Many of them, the color of fallen leaves, naked like the leaves. They were the leaf people, coming to take the beach. And the lion, golden in the
moonlight. It was a moon lion. It was coming for him. He could not move. He would never get away.

“We're going to leave
you now,” King said. He towered over the place where Lenny lay. “For a little while. We're going to swim to the swing.”

“We'll be back soon,” Roxanne said. “You wait for us here.” Then they were gone, moving away like tall
black trees. They were going to swim. They would be eaten by the moon. He would never see them again.

“Come back,” he
cried out, sitting up on his elbows. “Come back to me. Don't leave me here alone.” He turned over and put his face down into the
blanket. His chin sank down into the sand. Around him the leaf people danced. The lion walked among them swinging his tail. A band began to play. Free
beach, a man was calling through a megaphone. Free cookies, free beach, room for everyone.
It was Ernest
. Ernest had turned on him.
Witherspoon was beside Ernest wearing her Little Dix Bay hat.
She was not dead!
People were coming from all directions, hordes of people with
their children. They were drinking all the water from the river. They were filling cups and buckets and pitchers. They were trampling the sand, touching
the cypress knees. Down the river came more tubers. They were naked.
They had taken off their clothes
. They were brown people with soft faces.
The leaf people. The people of the leaf. They were coming from all directions, down from the trees, across the bridge, over the roof. They were picking
the cape jasmine. Tying it in their hair. “Stay on the paths,” Lenny was calling. “Please stay on the paths. Don't touch the
cypress knees. Don't pick the jasmine. Dandaddy planted that,” he cried out. “Oh, no, oh, please don't touch it. Stop it!”
he screamed. “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!”

“Come on in,” a voice was calling from the water. One of the leaf
girls had stood up on her leaf and was calling him. The moonlight was all around her like a halo. “Come on, chicken. Come on into the
water.”

“Come on,” Roxanne called from the opposite shore. She and King were sitting on a swing that hung out
over the water. A rope swing with a board for a seat. Lenny had played on that swing a thousand afternoons when he was a child, pretending he was at a
great auction buying things. He would sit on the swing and call out bids for chifferobes and paintings and oriental rugs and chandeliers. Diamond tiaras
which the owners thought were worthless would fall into his hands from the trees.