Bodies Electric

by Colin Harrison

  “Alls I want is just you and the kid,” Hector hurried on. “If I got that I’m okay. This is what I been wantin’ to say and all. My heart is okay long as you and Maria come home. Let’s go to the beach. Today’s my day off, set up some beach chairs maybe . . .” He watched her for some sign that this might appeal to her, but Dolores’s expression was unchanged, and this seemed to unnerve him. “I never begged you for nothin’, I never begged nobody, I never even begged the Chink for money, I never begged for a job. Never. But I’m beggin’ you, Dolores, I’m in bad shape, chica, you’re still my hair parlor girl, tú sabes? Still my little mami. All them good times up in Sunset Park? All them nights outside on the grass? Come on, Dolores, you useta say besame, besame. You can’t walk away from all them times, I been out to little Hector’s grave, Dolores, and I seen you been there sometime not too long ago. I seen some old flowers and stuff and I know we still got all that. We still got little Hector, Dolores. Only I know ’bout him inside you and only you know ’bout him inside me. I even stayed around the cemetery lookin’ for you a couple of times. And I’m going to mass, Dolores, I’m prayin’ for you and me and Maria,’cause I’ll find some way for her to go to college, Dolores, I’ll do it if I gotta fuckin’ cut my legs off, she can do what we never got, we have to work for that. I got a whole plan, see. Every little thing figured. Keep goin’ offa this promotion, keep goin’ higher. I ain’t been drinkin’, Dolores, I’m savin’ every dollar, eating cheese macaroni—” He stopped talking. Something had occurred to him. He squatted down and opened his arms. “Maria, dame un beso.”

  The child broke from her mother’s arms and walked solemnly toward her father, head down. As she moved, Hector seemed reassured, even peaceable. “See that?” he demanded of us. “She’s gonna give me a kiss.”

  But Maria saw something in her father’s face that made her stop a few feet short. She turned and ran not to her mother but to me, since I was closer, hiding her face against my legs and wrapping her arms around me. I instinctively dropped my hands onto her head, cradling the dark mass of curls, and picked her up, holding her to my chest. Of course I loved this child, and my familiar actions betrayed that. When I looked up, Hector was staring in shock. His daughter had chosen me, not him, and his face drained of anger: the enormity of what Maria had done stunned him. He’d prepared himself for Dolores’s sexual infidelity, but not for Maria’s fearful embrace of another man.

  The four of us stood there silently, the bees meandering in the sunlight, Hector with his mouth open, unblinking. I wish now that I could have known what passed through his mind—perhaps he wondered how his life had come to a point where he had again been dispossessed of a child, how it was that his life was moving toward the margins of loneliness and despair. The shock on his face gave way to a strange, ashen resolve and he turned toward Dolores.

  “Come back now, Dolores,” he pleaded softly. “I can’t take this no more. I’m tellin’ you, Dolores, I’m goin’ to kill myself. Yes or no.”

  “Hector—”

  “Yes,” Hector whispered hoarsely, “or no, Dolores. That’s it. That’s what it’s gonna be. I’m askin’ you.”

  Before answering, Dolores glanced at me with torment; I saw that she dreamed of the life I had shown her. As much as she still loved Hector, a new life with me seemed a genuine possibility. My money seemed like a possibility. The ease of money, in contrast to Hector’s noble yet futile attempt to climb out of the working class. Dolores knew that money would help Maria. And too, there was the dream of Dolores’s father in her, and she wanted it to continue.

  “Hey, Dolores,” Hector pleaded, trying to break the spell, “I’m tellin’ you . . .”

  She continued to look at me until her expression changed, relaxed. She’d understood something. Decided something. Two days prior she’d been a guest with me at a Long Island mansion that was worth a good fifteen or twenty million; Hector’s motel in Atlantic City no longer cut it—it was a joke, in fact, a sad, little joke. We’re all like this; our appetites get richer. There I stood in my good dark suit. Three-hundred-dollar shoes, the small gold cuff links, the silk tie, the combed hair. Barely an hour had passed since I had ridden myself up into her, since the money had ridden up inside her. And perhaps she even held a certain sentiment for me, not great love perhaps, but something close to affection.

  “I can’t, Hector.” Dolores looked back at him, her voice firm now. “You and me . . . it’s all done, Hector, I can’t be with you.”

  “That your answer?”

  “Yeah.” She looked at him, not blinking.

  “I’m the father of your two kids!”

  “Don’t start on me like this,” Dolores said. “You and me been over all this.”

  “Okay,” I began. “I think—”

  “Dolores, I ain’t fuckin’ around here, you know?” Hector cried, a thin edge of desperation in his voice. “I’m sayin’ it plain as I can, that I got to have you and Maria back, so help me, I’m . . . I’m—”

  “No,” she answered angrily. “I said no. That was my answer.”

  “I’m no good for you now, that’s it?”

  Dolores stood straight before her husband. “Everything changed, Hector. Things happened. They always do.”

  “You gonna stay with this bastard?”

  “Yeah,” Dolores answered bitterly, “I just might, Hector.”

  “He gonna take care of you the way I do?”

  “Maybe better, Hector.”

  “Well—” Hector stood there staring at us. It wasn’t going the way he had envisioned. Maria was frozen in my arms. Maybe thirty seconds passed.

  “Dolores, I have this meeting I have to go to,” I announced with purposeful irritation, glancing at my watch, hoping to bluff things into some kind of settlement. It bothered me that Maria was witnessing such ugliness, too. “I’m really late. In fact I’m in trouble, too. So let’s decide what the fuck is going to happen here.”

  The two of them stared at each other, all of it passing back and forth between them, I knew. But I couldn’t be here, I had to go. I felt that first tick of acid in my throat—the pain didn’t want to be forgotten. If I left that instant, I’d arrive in time to be considered quite awkwardly late. Everyone would look up at me. Fine. I’d carry it off. The table was big enough that you could skate on it. The wastebaskets in the corners would be empty. The carpeting would have fresh vacuum cleaner tracks. Samantha’s makeup would be perfect. She would smell good, too. But five minutes more and I would be late enough that the Chairman would ask Mrs. Marsh if I’d called. He’d know how long he could wait and then he would blink once and decide that someone else would present the overview to the board. “Hector, dammit, you’re not wanted here,” I said now with urgency, “can’t you see that? Can’t you see that it’s over? It’s done. Things end, and other things begin. Your baby son died. I’m sorry about that. Things went bad. Your wife left you. She decided to do that. It’s done. Dolores and Maria aren’t—”

  Hector’s expression made me stop. He looked at each one of us, his dark eyes glassy with solemn comprehension, and then nodded silently. Something had passed out of him and in the warmth of the sun on the bricks he seemed to slouch into his heavy black coat. Maybe I could leave now. Still holding Maria, I took two steps closer toward him in such a way as to direct him back into the house and toward the front door. He didn’t move.

  “You going?” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said in that same hoarse voice. “I’m going all right.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “You think you love my wife and daughter?” Hector demanded suddenly, stopping in front of me.

  “Yes,” I snapped back, holding Maria tight to me.

  “You think you can take care of them?”

  I was silent, worried now about his malevolence.

  “You think you three going to stay together?” Hector persisted, his dark eyes burning the question at me.

  “Hector, you stop this shit,” Dolores s
aid.

  “You think you got my wife, my baby girl, that it?” Hector went on. “They’re yours now, big man, that the idea?”

  He wanted me to say it.

  “Yes,” I answered calmly.

  “Fuck you. You don’t have shit.”

  “Get out of here,” I said.

  “Fuck you,” Hector spat at me. “You hear that? Fuck you. You don’t have shit. You hear me?”

  I watched him, feeling the heat of the day rising. They were standing around outside the large mahogany doors on the fortieth floor waiting for the subtle nod to begin. The Chairman would be the only one carrying no paper.

  “One last time, Dolores,” Hector cried loudly. “Yes or no.”

  “No, Hector,” she said coldly. “Why do I gotta say it a million times? No.”

  I was about to again insist to Hector that he must leave but before I did he thrust his hand into his coat and pulled out a heavy old revolver. With no hesitation he jammed the steel barrel deep into his mouth; his lips were tight, as if he were sucking hard on a straw. He performed a brisk half turn toward Dolores—to face her directly one last time, to force her to see what she had done to him—and then the single shot came, the sound of it kicking the air, making us jump, and a fine spray of blood and tissue speckled my glasses and face. Hector fell to the brickwork at my feet, the blood from the back of his head bright red in the sunlight. I wiped my lenses instinctively. The shot was off to one side and Hector gurgled with a wild, choked expression in his eyes as he faced the sky. Screaming for her mother, Maria kicked and struggled out from my arms. Dolores and Maria fell to the ground next to Hector while I stood above them, knowing I must go and call the ambulance, yet unable to move, watching Hector’s young, vital body fight against the certain tide of death. His fingers clutched and released rigidly. Blood came from his ears and out of his mouth.

  “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” screamed Maria. The sound tore through me and echoed down the brick walls of the houses on either side of us. Then there was a telling silence. Maria and Dolores knelt beside Hector, praying and crying, and with his wife and daughter returned to him, he arched his back one last time and moaned strangely, as if he still had a shred of consciousness and now, this moment, wanted his life returned to him.

  The ambulance arrived in just under four minutes from Methodist Hospital six blocks away and at first the EMT’s worked hard on Hector, slipping off his heavy black coat and yanking his shirt open so that they could get to his chest as he lay there on the bricks of my yard, flat and rigid on his back, gold chain and crucifix fallen to the side of his neck. Their radios crackled as they tore open large white absorbent pads, jammed a syringe of adrenaline in Hector’s neck, and put inflatable shock trousers on him to force the blood from his legs back into his heart. But the color was gone from his face. His eyes peered fixedly into the morning haze above us, and his waxen lips hung open, as if about to comment. Dolores stood over him in her bloodstained dress, her hands on Maria’s shoulders in the same protective way she stood the first time she stepped off the subway and turned toward me on the day we met. In their shock, neither cried. Several policeman arrived and one fastidiously pulled on white latex gloves, removed the gun from Hector’s hand, and emptied the rest of the brass-jacketed shells out of the chamber, enough to have killed all of us. Another cop stood off to the side, rocking back and forth on his heels, his face impassive as he wrote down the basic facts. From time to time he looked up at Dolores and Maria. They were only yards away from me, on the other side of Hector’s body, but it seemed a strange, far distance.

  They lifted Hector onto a gurney, leaving the black coat on the ground, and moved him into the house toward the ambulance. Dolores and Maria followed his body. I put out my arms.

  “Don’t touch me,” Dolores said with fierce coldness, pulling Maria tight to her. She climbed straight into the ambulance, holding her daughter, and I knew it was done.

  The ambulance pulled away and I stood on my front stoop, alone and shaken. The appointed hour for the meeting with the board was upon me. If I left immediately, I could still arrive in time for the few minutes of chat at the end of the meeting, repeating the excuse for my lateness during the small talk on the way to the 10:00 A.M. press conference. I sat on the iron bench in my garden and gazed with dull fascination at the trampled pattern of blood upon the bricks. It seemed an insubstantial amount, given that a man had died there. Hector’s black coat lay across the bricks like a fallen shadow. I dared not touch it. My shoulders and legs ached with an ancient fatigue. Time passed—how much exactly, I didn’t know, but the blood had started to darken, a badge of time. The dust of Brooklyn caught in the blood’s surface and dulled it. The telephone rang once, then stopped after four or five rings and then rang again. It trilled out the window, a small, useless sound. They were calling me now, to be sure I was on my way. Mrs. Marsh, standing on low heels in her office with the phone in her ear, sucking primly on a candy. Ants gathered at the edges of the blood, tasting its possibilities. And then five or eight minutes went by and the phone rang again, hard, fifteen or twenty angry, insistent rings, and still I could not rise. My father is a man of God, and I am not. His sad old eyes stare at his garden. He contemplates his weeds. He says the Lord’s Prayer to himself with each meal. My mother reads the stock pages with a brandy and a cigarette. I wandered back into the house and stared at the many toys still spread across the living room rug, the tiny socks thrown on the floor, the sugary cereal in the bottom of the cereal bowl. Someone had tracked blood into the house, just a smear or two, probably one of the ambulance workers, possibly me. Next to the phone Dolores had left a hairbrush. A black sedan from the Corporation’s car service pulled up outside and honked. The driver got out and rang the doorbell. I waited for him to leave. They would understand that I was not coming. Adjustments would be made. Others had the different pieces of information in their heads and could spray it out into the universe. The phone rang one last time, a few desultory rings, and then it was silent for good.

  I did not intend to go to the meeting, I did not intend to do anything but sit by myself until the roaring in my head stopped, but sometime in those minutes, I stumbled to my feet and without knowing what I was doing, went out the front door toward the subway. It was not that I wanted to be at the meeting, but that I was alone and the only people I knew were at work. The sight of Hector on his back played before my eyes as I rode the train, and I felt strangely thirsty. People seemed to be looking at me but I ignored them.

  Forty minutes later I passed into the Corporation’s lobby. It was as ever but looked different; I felt the weight of the many stories above pressing down upon the high vaulted space. I’d missed the board meeting and God knew what that meant but I could still make the press conference in the Corporation’s auditorium. There was a special sign in the elevator welcoming the press and directing them to the twenty-second floor, which, when the elevator doors opened, was crowded with business, entertainment, and media reporters. The corporate relations people had set up a phone room for the wire service journalists to get the story out as soon as it broke and there were three dozen in there from Reuters, Associated Press, the British, German, and Japanese financial papers, all of them, calling it in to their editors or modeming a few paragraphs from their computers. That meant the major announcement had just been made.

  I went through the doors at the back, past the corporate relations people handing out press packets. Inside the auditorium, the Chairman and various members of the board were at the front of the room up on a stage. The Chairman stood at the microphone explaining the merger deal. The room was packed. Maybe two hundred people. A dozen television cameras in the back of the room. One of the corporate relations people stopped me as I got halfway down the aisle.

  “We’re in the midst of the announcement, Mr. Whitman,” she said with a smile. “We missed you earlier.”

  “Yes.”

  “. . . advantageous to our position as a world-class
corporation—” came the Chairman’s practiced public voice, full of pep and optimism and humor.

  “Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Whitman?”

  There was only one thing I could say, to anybody. “I just saw a man kill himself.”

  She blinked. “I don’t understand.”

  “I saw a man shoot himself in the head, not even an hour ago.”

  She frowned, then put her pretty hands in the air before me. “Stay here please, Mr. Whitman.”

  Standing behind the Chairman were Fricker and Waldhausen and all the others, including Samantha. She looked great in a bright red suit, her hair done for the occasion, and held some papers in her hands. Perhaps she had spoken to the board instead of me.

  “Excuse me.” A photographer edged by me in the aisle, lifting his camera above his head.

  “A guy just killed himself in my backyard,” I told him. “He worked for this company, as a matter of fact.”

  “What?” he said, irritated. “Who are you?”

  “I work here. I—I’m supposed to be here, doing this.”