The
light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to us to which we are
awake.
Walden.
I
walked along the gangway towards the light and entered the forecastle, navigating
the steep and narrow stairwell that led down into the large room where the
party was.
A
funky little band was playing at the far end of the room. It was hot as hell in there. The band wore red shirts with ridiculous
looking sequins.
I
instinctively and disdainfully looked away from her passionate eyes, and when I
looked back, in curiosity, she was staring at the floor with the same flashing,
wild, dark eyes. Her face was pale and
her long black hair, streaked with gray, was the only thing about her that I
still liked.
I
had barely thought about her since I stumbled onto the two of them, together,
in bed that night. I was curious and felt the urge to talk, but I was certain
that it was unhealthy curiosity and so I avoided her eyes.
Florence’s
friend, Marsha, was sitting next to her and I was grateful that she pretended
not to see me.
Turnbull
was standing with his back to me and he was talking to Tex, one of those Texans
who never leaves Texas, in appearance, accent and even first name, but rarely
goes back. I had met him once before and
we had made small talk about my birthplace,
I
walked towards them, apprehensively, because Turnbull still owed me an ounce of
marijuana and he had promised to have it, but he had promised twice
before. However,
A
voice came from nowhere, “Hey Jack.”
Pinson
was sitting in the corner, to my right, behind me, with Tilly. I was surprised to hear his voice. I turned around and waved. He motioned me over. He asked,
“Flo couldn’t make it?”
Tilly
knew that
I
said, “She’s in
Tilly
said, “She called this afternoon and
said she wouldn’t be able to make it in time for the party.”
I
was hurt because she had telephoned Tilly and not me. Chris reached for Tilly’s hand and instead of
offering it to him, she put her arm around his shoulder, jauntily, like a
comrade. I was surprised at their new
intimacy.
I
asked, “Where’s Billy?”
She
said, “He’s with Vida.”
I
said, “I don’t see him.” I turned to where I had just seen Vida. With her back to Vida, Marsha was talking to a
young Filipino woman whom I’d never seen before. Vida looked agitated and pretended not to
notice us. Suddenly, she looked up and
caught my eye. I smiled in recognition,
gave a little wave and looked away.
I
said, “She’s sitting over there alone.”
“They
were together a few minutes ago.”
The
galley door swung open and a man fell through it, backwards onto the
floor. The band stopped playing,
momentarily, and a large, bearded man stuck his head through the door, pointed
his finger at the man on the floor, and told him not to mess with his
woman. The man didn’t get up and the
door banged shut.
The
band started up again. Turnbull and
Arm
in arm, they escorted him towards the stairs.
When they got near I produced a small waive, at about belt level. When they passed us and on their way to the
stairs, Turnbull made the motion of taking a hit from a joint. He leaned his head towards mine, put his hand
near his mouth and said in a low voice,
“It’s in my cabin. But we’ve got
to get Benny home first.”
Benny
decided, again, that he didn’t want to go home and there were more words. While they were dragging him towards the
stairs Turnbull turned and yelled to me over the music, “I should be back in about a half an hour.”
I
said, “No problem.”
They
struggled up the stairs and disappeared through the door.
Jack
couldn’t stand the tension of making small talk, the Iranian woman’s sensual
eyes, the loss of Florence, Marsha’s lesbian aggressiveness, the red-sequined
shirts of the band members or the lousy music.
Helen
couldn’t get a baby sitter and therefore couldn’t come to the party but she had
invited him to her apartment after the party.
He decided to go to her apartment and return to the boat, later, for the
marijuana.
People
had either gone home or they were sprawled out on the deck of the ship or they
were sleeping in the various rooms below.
Turnbull
went to his cabin and discovered the Iranian woman there, drunk, sleeping on
the bottom bunk. A bottle of gin had
emptied its contents onto the sheets and the cabin reeked of it. The bottle was open, next to an outstretched
hand and it was obvious that she had drunk herself unconscious.
She
was wearing a miniskirt, which exposed her thighs all the way to her
panties. He sat on the bed and asked
her, in a quiet voice, what she was doing in his cabin. To his surprise she answered but with an
unintelligible moan.
He
caressed her legs and she made no effort to resist him. He raised her miniskirt and without much
ceremony took from her, in her semiconscious state, what his girlfriend hadn’t
given him at the party: anal sex.
During
the act that was devoid of passion or even interest, her bowels loosened and an
enormous amount of shit exploded onto his thighs and pants. He cursed and roared and finally, realizing
the impossibility of cleaning himself or the cabin, left her there and took an impromptu swim in
the
Jack
arrived back at the Basil Hall at 3:47 A.M., by the luminous hands of his
father’s Elgin, World War II, flight watch. Bodies were sprawled all over the
boat, sleeping. It was one of the
hottest October twenty first’s on record.
He
sat in a deck chair, in the tropical warmth, and lit up his last joint. If the estuary wasn’t beautiful, then the
marijuana made it seem so. He smoked it
slowly, listening to the snoring, the slow, rhythmic creaking of the boat and
the other sounds of night.
He
got up suddenly, feeling the sad sweetness of the loss of
While
coming down the staircase, the first person he saw was Marsha, sleeping in the
arms of the Filipino woman. He threaded
his way through the bodies, heading for Turnbull’s cabin, looking for the
Marijuana.
When
he got to Turnbull’s cabin he discovered Vida lying in the lower bunk, snoring
quietly. She was curled up, knees to
chest, with her back to him. Her dress
was pulled up over her hips and she wasn’t wearing panties. The tangle of her thick, curly, gray-black
hair fell onto the bunk below.
He
was relieved that Turnbull wasn’t there.
He couldn’t find the light switch so he lit the small kerosene lamp with
the multicolored glass and began looking for the marijuana.
He
found a large coffee can of cleaned marijuana and put about half of it in his
jacket pocket. It was what Turnbull owed
him.
The
odor of gin and shit suddenly filled his nostrils and he made a movement to
leave the fetid air of the cabin when he stepped on a small bag of rocks and
slipped. He fell against the bunk and
his shirt and pants were splashed with shit.
He picked up the gray colored balloon on the floor. It was tied together with a tight knot. He could feel small, regular stones through
the surgical rubber.
He
started to gag. He put the bag in his
pocket, rushed out into the open air, leaned over the banister and threw up
into the estuary below.
In
his car, about half way home, at a stop light, Jack feels a big shake. At least a 6.0 on the Richter Scale, he
thinks. The streets are deserted.
Waiting at the stoplight of
Across
the street, and to the left, off
When
he pulls into the driveway at
Twenty
seven uncut diamonds. He doesn’t know
the value of diamonds but he knows they are big, and that they are worth a lot
of money. Very carefully, he washes them
over a sieve in the bathroom sink.
Superstitiously,
he dresses, gets into his Volkswagen and takes them to a place where no one
could possibly find them, returns, and falls onto his mattress on the
floor. He falls asleep almost
immediately.
Pinson and Tilly wake him up. They are standing at the foot of the
bed. Pinson has his arm around her.
The
morning was gray and the room damp. The
sun had come up but was still hanging out somewhere east of Mount Diablo and
the Bay Area fog had moved in through his open window.
Jack
didn’t know where he was. He could make
out Pinson, crouching over the mattress, leaning towards him, and feel his outstretched
hand, shaking his shoulder. Tilly was
standing behind him, with a blue US Air Force overcoat draped over her
shoulders. She was four inches taller
than Pinson, but the coat was so long that it almost touched the floor. She was still wearing her red velvet hot
pants and her bare legs made his member stir, reflexively.
Pinson
said, “Big news dad. Wake up.”
Jack
stayed way back in delta for awhile, hallucinating them, the overcoat, the
velvet hot pants, the legs. Pinson
straightened up and stood next to Tilly.
Suddenly,
Jack remembered: Vida, the diamonds. He
pushed himself up onto his elbows.
“What’s
up?”
“The
Basil Hall burned down dad. Sunk.”
“Holy
Shit.”
They
stood there, staring down at him. Jack
smiled up at them, and said, offering them the truth of his feelings,
“Good.
I suppose Turnbull did it to collect the insurance money. It was nothing but a pile of rotten planks
anyway.”
They
weren’t amused. Jack asked, “Was anyone hurt?”
Tilly
drew close to Pinson and he put his arm around her waist. She said,
“Just the Iranian woman.”
“How
badly?”
Pinson
said, “She was burned to death, dad.”
Jack’s
body lost any feeling of connection.
Adrenaline poured into every muscle but there was no where to run,
except up, through the gray-white ceiling,
“Shit,
Fuck...” He rolled from the mattress
onto the floor, and banged one of his fists helplessly on the floor.
Pinson
sprung to the floor and grabbed his shoulders,
“Take it easy man.”
Jack
offered no resistance. He said, “She didn’t deserve that.”
Pinson
said, “They just pulled her out of the
Estuary, about an hour ago. We were
worried about you Jack. Man, is it good
to see you!”
“Me?” Two lines of tears had spurted down onto his
cheeks, from the outside corners of his eyes, across his sideburns. “Why me?”
“She
talked about you last night. We thought
you were with her in the cabin.”
“Well...”
He let his voice trail off.
Pinson
continued, “She was drunk, and she
talked about you and the Mets.”
“The
Mets?”
Jack
swung himself from the floor, back onto the mattress and lay on his back,
holding his head with his hands, eyes closed.
Pinson
said, “She talked about Tommy Agee and
Gerry Gentry. And Kranepool. She wanted
to know if you had watched the game.”
Tilly
said, “She really had the hots for you
Jack.”
Jack
spat the words, “She hated my guts
man. She had the hots for...” He looked
into the middle of her face, with all of his feeling.
Tilly
said, “She was drunk on gin. She wanted to come to the party but nobody
could figure out why. Maybe it was to
see you. She talked crazy all
night. Even Turnbull took pity on her.”
Jack
wasn’t able to say anything. She looked
at him out of the corner of her eye, maybe just to make sure that he was still
there, and then went on talking, like a morning rain squall, “I told her Florence wasn’t coming back. That you two were finished. And she wanted to come to the party but I
told her not to come. She wouldn’t
listen. She talked Billy into bringing
her. And she wouldn’t stop talking about Baseball. Everyone thought she had lost her mind...”
She
stared at Jack defensively. Suddenly she
looked at the ceiling in exasperation and spit out the word, “baseball!” Then she looked at Pinson, waiting for him to
say something.
Pinson
said, “She said some stuff Jack. I
can’t remember exactly, but she kept saying that no one had ever kissed
her like you had.”
Jack
exploded, “Cut the shit Pinson. Stop lying...
Get to the point. What are you
driving at?”
“Calm
down. I’m serious man. That’s what she said.” Pinson fixed Jack with his, Basque-peasant
eyes and then continued in a very soft voice,
“She kept talking about Agee’s catch.”
He
paused to make sure Jack had really heard what he said. “I’m not shitting you man. Tommy Agee’s catch. The first one, she said, not the second
one. She said, “Make sure you tell him it was the first
catch.” She made me promise to tell you
it was the first catch. I just about got
down on my knees and swore to her that I would tell you that. But I didn’t know what she was talking about
until this morning. The Dick told me
just a couple of hours ago. Did you see
the game?”
“I
saw it.” Jack said it slowly, like a man
waiting for an execution, his own maybe or someone else’s.
Pinson
said, “He must have made one hell of a
catch.”
“He
did.”
Tilly
looked up at the ceiling with exasperated contempt.
Jack
said, “There was no way I was going to
miss that World Series. No way.”
Jack
refused to waste his reasons on them. So
he just said, “Agee is probably the best
baseball player on the planet. Last
night, yesterday, this morning. I mean,
alive, playing baseball now, today. It
was just... I mean... surreal…
But...” He couldn’t finish his sentence, couldn’t compose his thoughts.
“Get
ready for this one dad. Hold onto the
bed.”
Jack
tried to get ready.
“She
said the catch was like your kiss. She
must have said it ten times. Maybe
twenty. It was embarrassing. I’m sorry.
I thought she was just drunk and...”
He paused to let it sink in.
“Well, maybe she was just drunk.
But that’s what she said. The
catch was like your kiss.”
I
must have been visibly stunned, shaken.
Because Pinson said, “I wouldn’t
make up something like that man.” His
voice softened. “She said the first
catch was like the time you kissed her in Berkeley, but that the second one was
nothing, like sex with someone you don’t love.
We all felt sorry for her because she wouldn’t say it once quietly and
shut up, she had to make sure that everyone on the boat heard it five
times. Nobody had seen the game so we
didn’t know what she was talking about.
We thought she was making it all up.
All of it.”
I
couldn’t form any words, I couldn’t say anything.
Tilly
said, “She was slobbering drunk. It was embarrassing. She couldn’t stand up. We tried to make her go to bed, but she got
hysterical. It was disgusting....”
Pinson
said, “She told me that she wanted to
keep her eye on us to make sure we didn’t do anything.”
Tilly
frowned at him. She said sharply, “She ruined the party.”
Pinson
said, his voice rising, defending himself,
“That is exactly what she said!”
Tilly
yelled, “She was blubbering drunk
Chris! She didn’t know what she was saying.”
My
mouth must have fallen open in disbelief, I can’t remember exactly how I was
feeling.
Pinson
said, “It’s true dad, she was really
crying in her beer...”
Tilly
said, “It’s too bad that she died. But somebody has to say it. She was crazy. Nobody liked her. I told her to stop calling me. She called other people too. I couldn’t get her off my back.”
Pinson
tried to break the curtain of my frozen grief, grief for everything, grief that
was piled up, on top of and around the dead Iranian-Sioux woman. He said,
“Man, it’s good to see you alive.
Do you realize that they are still dragging the Alameda Estuary for your
body! You didn’t answer the phone
dad! I was trying to figure out what to
say to your mother.”
“Thank
God you didn’t call my mother. She would
have died of a heart attack.” I turned
to Tilly, “You must be pretty ...
shocked?”
“Me?”
“I...”
Tilly
said, “I just told you. I hardly knew her name. The last time I saw her was at that party
when you met her for the first time.
When you two were watching TV and you made Florence so jealous.”
I
looked at Pinson in disbelief. Pinson
motioned to the living room with his head and said, “You’d better call the police and tell them
you’re alive.”
Tilly
scratched her nose with her stump. I
noticed that her legs were, undeniably, magnificent. I hated her, but I couldn’t deny that. I felt happy for Pinson. Obviously, he was finally going to get
some. I said, “Tilly, you should have been a sprinter.”
The
line that was her mouth pulled like a bow.
Pinson
said, “I was there when they found the
body. They wanted me to try to identify
it. She was charred down to the bone but
I knew it was her by the bracelet that she was wearing. She showed it to me last night. She said the writing on it was a verse from
Hafiz. She showed me his name in Persian
script, under the line of verse. I
couldn’t make out the name, but I remembered it. The guy from Homicide said that the Coroner’s
Office will probably wait for the dental records to make a positive
identification. But it’s just routine.”
Tilly
said, “They think the fire started in
Turnbull’s cabin. That she must have
been sleeping in there and was overcome by the smoke.”
Pinson
said, “She was carrying an almost full
bottle of Gin when I last saw her. And
she was already dead drunk.”
Tilly
said, “She didn’t know how to drink either.
I never saw her drink more than a couple of glasses of wine before. She must’ve gone into Turnbull’s cabin and
passed out. They said the fire started
in his cabin. It was caused by an
electrical short that was caused by the earthquake.”
She
looked out of the window and added, “I
thought the earthquake was a large boat passing us, and went back to
sleep. The boat went up so fast, that no
one had time to do anything except get off.
In five minutes it was a blazing inferno.”
She
suppressed a giggle and looked out the window again.
Pinson
said, “It took less than a half hour for
it to sink.”
Tilly
shuddered.
I
remembered the kerosene lamp. The phone
rang. Pinson got it. Tilly and I were left alone in my
bedroom. I asked her, “Where was Billy in all of this? I thought he took her to the party?”
She
said, “Maybe she just used him as a way
to get to the party. I don’t know. She started drinking almost immediately after
they arrived. He went home to his folks’
place in
We
were silent for a moment. I was in a
black hole and I could barely hear her voice.
She
continued, “She told me that she wanted
to go to the party because she wanted to get laid, but then he left...” She
paused for a moment. “I think Billy was
afraid of her. Iranians are different
from us. They’re more... animalistic.”
Pinson
came back into the bedroom. He
said, “It was the police. I told them you’re alive.”
“Thanks. It feels good.”
Pinson
said, “Why don’t you shut this goddammed
window?”
“What
window? ... Oh... that
one.......... Why?”
“It’s
colder than a witch’s tit in here, that’s why.”
“I’ve
tried. It’s stuck.”
Tilly
said, “Why don’t we all three try
shutting it together?” She let her
overcoat slide off her shoulders, pirouetted like a dancer, caught it in
mid-air, falling, and placed in on the bed at my feet.
Without
asking permission, Pinson used my brass water pipe to pound the paint loose
from the edges. Then, with three of us
hanging on it, and hitting it with our palms, it went down with a bang.
I
said, “Well, fuck a duck.” I went back to the mattress on the floor, and
sat down. I said, “I still can’t believe she’s dead.”
Tilly
said, “She asked me why you left the
party.”
I
asked, “What did you tell her?”
“I
said I didn’t know.”
I
couldn’t hold it back any more. I
said, “Somehow I thought you two
were...”
“Were
what?”
Silence. Pinson looked at her questioningly.
I
said, sharply, looking into the center of her antic face, “You know what I mean...”
She
looked back at Pinson defensively. “I’m
not a lesbian. Besides, even if I were I
wouldn’t go for a woman like that. I
mean... I have my pride... anyway she’s
not my type. I barely knew her... You have to believe me.”
She
looked at me with panicky eyes. My
silence became her prosecuting attorney.
She took the stand, “I don’t know
how to say this because its sounds so horrible, but basically... I didn’t
respect her... at all. She was... She lied about everything. She was capable of anything. She was just basically... low-life. An Iranian, a...”
My
mouth must have been hanging open.
She
continued, in an intimate tone, “They’re
all like that Jack. They’re different
from us. That’s why we all thought she
was lying. Making it all up.”
All
I could say was, “She was
beautiful. She was...”
She
looked away in disgust. She said, “Shit.
I feel sorry for you if you think that.”
I
said, “There was something special about
her. But I didn’t know how to... Whatever I did wasn’t... enough... that’s for sure... it was bad. She ran away.
That’s why I can’t believe what she said... I know that... but...” I slipped into incoherence.
Pinson
said, “It’s not your fault she’s dead,
dad. Forget it.” He walked towards the bathroom.
I
said, “I’m a worthless son of a bitch,
Chris, a worthless son of a bitch.”
They
stared down at me.
I
said, “I don’t understand women. Some of them want you to... and some of them... I should have told her that she was as pretty
as that clothesline double. The one that
Agee hit that night. It turned the Mets
around. One hit, man. We both thought the Mets were finished before
that hit. Maybe she’d still be alive...”
Tilly’s
cold eyes stopped me. She shook her head
in disgust. I said to her, “I guess I can’t understand what was going on
between you two either.” She sneered at
me. I thought, “You cunt-slashing Narcissistic bitch.”
Pinson
yelled from the bathroom, over the noise of his thundering waterfall of
piss, “What’s this mess in the bathtub?”
“Nothing. I was trying to wash... the shit...”
Tilly’s
eyes blazed back at me. I fell back onto
the bed, onto my back. Her insolent,
magnificent legs were all over me. I
mumbled, almost in self-defense, “Hate
the shit Tillotson, hate the shit.”
Her
mouth tensed into the crooked, smirking line again. I narrowed my eyes, pretending to close
them. Pinson flushed the toilet and came
up behind her and put his hand on her neck and bent way over behind her back,
looking appreciatively at her from behind.
The sun was up, and the room was getting warm.
I
said, feeling like Poncho Villa and narrowing my eyes like a Mexican
Revolutionary, “I want to eeet
yore fokking legks Teely. I want to eeet
yore legks.”
Pinson
said, “It’s been a night man. For all of us. Let’s get some shut-eye.” He stepped behind her again and his eyes
flashed in panic, as he moved his right index finger in and out of a hole that
he formed with his left hand.
I
said to Pinson, “Watch out for the stub,
dad. She’ll butt-fuck you if you turn
your back on her.”
Her
good fist formed into a claw and she looked like she was getting ready to jump
on me. She hissed, “He’s as crazy as that goddammed Iranian
bitch. Let’s get out of here.”
Pinson
slapped her hard on the leg. There was a
frozen silence, her eyes blazed and she disappeared from the room, like an
enraged dancer.
“Bitch,” I growled behind her.
Pinson
said, “Don’t blow it for me dad. You didn’t even know that Iranian woman. Anyway she’s dead. You can’t bring her back.”
“Don’t
mind me. I’m just... well, I’m meditating on... a diamond... or
two... or even three. Or...”
“For
all of your lost ladies?”
“Maybe
I’m thinking about some lost baseball diamonds.
I don’t know. Some of the
baseball diamonds I’ve known.”
“Well,
she’s heading next door with the juiciest cunt attached to the best legs this
side of the
I
replied, and it sounded more ominous than I had intended, “I should warn you, Chris.”
“I’ll
get a shot after I’m finished, dad.
Don’t worry.” His eyes were
laughing.
“I
caught the two of them eating pussy.
That’s all. No big deal. They didn’t see me. Over there.”
I nodded in the direction of the house next door. Pinson raised his arm as if he were a lawyer
in court waving away an irrelevant and stupid objection.
I
said, “The Iranian woman. You should have seen them, it was really
awesome. My come is still on the rug.”
He
laughed, silently, with his eyes. He
said, “So that’s what you’re so
exercised about. Don’t worry Jack, I
won’t let a cunt come between us, if that’s what you mean. Maybe for a few weeks but... a man can only eat so much pussy.”
That
got a crooked smile out of me and I said,
“Just don’t turn your back on her.”
“I
wasn’t planning to.” He added, “That reminds me, Turnbull wanted me to tell
you that he got an offer for his novel.
Big bucks. They’re even talking
about movie rights.”
“No
shit. Well, I hope it doesn’t turn him
into an asshole.”
“It
won’t, he already is an asshole.”
I
smiled and waved him on, “Go get her
while she’s still hot, Christian. But
leave your name at the door.”
He
exited with a subdued smile.
I
yelled, “Hey Pinson,” He ducked his head through the doorway.
“If
I was a cave man, I’d wrestle you, out in front, to see who gets to fuck her.”
“I’m
glad you’re a civilized man.”
“I
am a civilized man, but I do think the slap on her leg did her some good.”
Pinson’s
grin broadened and he turned around abruptly, and went next door. For a few
seconds, I couldn’t remember where I hid the diamonds. It gave me quite a scare.