Body Language

by James W. Hall

  Staring at their images, Alex could become those women on the unyielding floors of their apartments. As cold and lifeless, as vacant and remote. Those women who had departed now, leaving behind only their latent images, silver-halide crystals in a chemical emulsion adhering to a flat white page.

  “Want to look at the book?” Lawton stood stiffly in the doorway.

  Alex fumbled the photos back into her fanny pouch, zipped it shut.

  Lawton was holding the coffee-table book in his right hand.

  “We’ve got to get you to Harbor House, Dad.”

  “Hell, if I’m late, what’re they going to do, send me to the principal?”

  She followed him into the living room and sat beside him on the dark blue velvet couch near the east window, the best natural light in the house.

  He opened the heavy book and let it rest half on his lap, half on hers.

  Big glossy shots of Seaside, Florida, that carefully arranged clutter of pastel wood houses with tin roofs that had been built along the dunes a half mile from Seagrove, where Alexandra had spent that glorious August. Princess of the Sugary Sands. The Gulf of Mexico spread blue and empty beyond the narrow strip of highway. The same tranquil water stretching away and merging with the sky.

  Seaside was only ten years old, but in that decade it had become a famous town. Famous among architects and city planners, who hailed it as a model for the new Florida, a town with the grace and civility of a bygone era. A laboratory for a simpler, more humane community structure, Main Street USA. Famous with travel writers who wanted to take their readers on a one-of-a-kind journey into a colorful fantasy land of the past. The town was a gorgeous blend of modern whimsy and old-fashioned architectural models. Part Charleston, part Key West, part Cape Cod, part sentimental daydream. Narrow red-brick streets, picket fences around every house. Scrub oak and wildflowers and pine-needle mulch for yards. No sod, no lawn mowers.

  Brick streets, a town square, fanciful beach pavilions, and all those gorgeous homes, soft purples and sunny yellows with lots of gingerbread and widow’s walks and shiny tin roofs. No two architectural plans were permitted to duplicate each other, but all sprung from the same nostalgic vision, a hundred different renderings of the ideal beach cottage. None of the scruffiness, none of the sagging floors and rusty tin that Alex remembered from her time there. As if all those bright young architects had pooled their imaginations to create a past that had never existed. A place more perfect than the perfect place she remembered.

  On the couch, her father paged aimlessly through the slick color photographs, mumbling to himself. Weeks ago, he had spotted the book while they were browsing in a bookstore, and he’d refused to leave the store without it. Now he called for it whenever he was anxious or confused. And just a few minutes of looking at those simple wooden houses seemed to tranquilize him.

  “Know why I like this book so much?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Because it’s such a pretty place. So serene.”

  “No,” her father said. He pulled the book from her hands and clapped it shut. He frowned at her, his eyes full of reproach, then shifted a few inches away on the couch.

  “Well, what is it, Dad? Why do you like the book?”

  “Because it reminds me,” he said. “It stirs my memory.”

  “Reminds you of what?”

  He turned his face away.

  “Never mind. You wouldn’t understand. You think I’ve forgotten everything. You think I’m an idiot child. You’d just mock me.”

  “I don’t mock you, Dad. I never mock you.”

  “Never mind. I’m sorry I brought it up. Let’s go. I’m going to be late for work.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s not work. It’s that place I go now. What’s it called?”

  “Harbor House.”

  “I know that. You think I don’t know what the place is called, the place I go every damn day? You think I could forget its name?”

  He set the book on the coffee table and stood up.

  “What does the book remind you of, Dad? You can tell me.”

  He looked down at her, rolled his lips inward, and bit down on them, sealing his mouth like a wayward boy refusing to admit his guilt.

  “All right, then, don’t tell me.”

  “It reminds me,” he said, taking a long breath, “of the last place I was completely happy. Right there, on that beach.”

  It was a fine October morning; the Miami sky was polished blue porcelain, a steady breeze stirring the palms, the gulls and herons skating across clear heavens.

  Going against rush-hour traffic, Alexandra drove her father the four miles to the adult living facility a mile west of Dixie Highway. Half her take-home pay each month went to the fine people at Harbor House who kept her father safe and entertained for six hours a day, five days a week.

  Lawton Collins had been a cop in Miami for thirty years. He’d been an excellent police officer, decorated, with steady raises. And he had lots of buddies. A slew of them had gone to his retirement party at Dinner Key Yacht Club, and a year or two later, the same crowd had attended her mother’s funeral. Though these days, they’d stopped coming around—two or three visits were all any of them could stand.

  At first, her dad knew what was happening to him. He listened carefully to the doctor, understood the diagnosis. He told everybody that he was going to fight this thing. He’d taken on worse shit in his life. Everyone cheered him on.

  With piles of books around him, he’d studied what the researchers knew and what his most likely prognosis was. He decided to put himself on a regimen of high protein and lots of exercise. Almost immediately, he was full of energy and seemed to be more alert and focused than ever. Then a few weeks later, he started getting lost on his jogs. Awhile after that, he abandoned the meat and eggs and started focusing on breads and pastries and beer. In six months, he went from a muscular, funny man to this bloated, unpredictable kid strapped beside her in the Toyota Camry. Like the innocent citizens in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, he fell asleep one night and the pod grew outside his window, and now this. Still the same face, but his eyes were tuned to a new channel. Static white noise for hours at a time, then suddenly long stretches of perfectly good reception. The father she’d always loved.

  These days, he was lucid about half the time. But it was still early in the cycle, the doctors warned. No telling how steep the slide would be or when it would start. “Take pleasure in the time he’s still himself,” they said. And she tried.

  She was at a light near Ludlum when he unfastened his seat belt and reached out for the door latch. But Alexandra had child-proofed it a month ago, and Lawton strained at the latch for a moment, then gave up.

  “Door’s broken.”

  “Where are you trying to go, Dad?”

  “Need to buy some luggage. I’m blowing this town.”

  “You’ve got good luggage now. Your initials on it and everything.”

  She started across the intersection.

  “What are my initials, anyway? I forget.”

  “L.A.C. Lawton Andrew Collins.”

  “Where are we going? Where you taking me?”

  “To Harbor House, Dad.”

  He tapped on his window and gave a wave to the driver of the car beside them. The young woman frowned and accelerated away. Warm-hearted Miami.

  Lawton turned back to Alexandra.

  “Is Stan a cop?”

  She let go of a long breath.

  “No, he’s not.”

  “But he dresses like one, that uniform he wears.”

  “He drives a truck,” she said, “an armored truck.”

  “The ones full of cash? Those big square ones? Steel-reinforced, bulletproof windshield.”

  She said yes, eyes on the rearview mirror, a tailgating asshole in a black Camaro. Testosterone in the tank, nothing between the ears.

  “It’s a dangerous job, driving an armored truck. You worry about him?”

  “Sometimes.”


  “Just like your mother used to worry about me. But see, I got through it just fine. Like I tell her. All your worry didn’t change a thing.”

  The tailgating asshole swung around her, burned some rubber, his windows impenetrably dark. He was gone in a blur.

  “Dad, what you did this morning, shooting the gun like that, it was wrong. You know that, don’t you?”

  Lawton reached into the pocket of his red-and-black-plaid shirt and came out with an old scrap of newsprint. He unfolded it, flattened it against the dash, got all the wrinkles out of the paper, then held it out to Alexandra.

  “Something from my files.”

  She took a couple of quick looks but couldn’t make out the article. Finally, she got a red light at 124th. She read it quickly. Took a second look at the photograph. And Jesus, it did look like Stan!

  “Frank Sinatra,” he said. “I caught him, sent him up the river. Late seventies, just like I said.”

  Alexandra had to chuckle.

  “What? You thought I was talking about the singer? That Frank Sinatra. Hey, I’m not some loon. I got an excellent memory for names. Names and faces. That’s my expertise. Never was any good with directions. Ask your mother. She’ll tell you. I never could tell north from south. Hand me a compass, a map, I’m lost in a minute. But names and faces, those I can remember. It’s a cop skill. Ask your mother; she’ll confirm everything.”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  “You know, your mother blames me for getting you involved with police work. She doesn’t understand why her little girl would want to do something like that. One awful scene after another. All that grim business. All night, every night. She doesn’t understand that.”

  “But you do, Dad. Don’t you? You understand me.”

  “Sure I do. You’re my girl. I know you through and through.”

  Alexandra glanced over at him. He was smiling sadly.

  “But, Alex,” he said, staring straight ahead at the windshield, “nobody should have to do penance their whole life.”

  “What?”

  “There’s such a thing as time off for good behavior.”

  “What’re you talking about, Dad?”

  “You know what I’m talking about, Alex. The thing that happened back a long time ago. The reason you do the kind of work you do.”

  She slowed for a light, looked over at him.

  “And another thing while I’m on a tear,” he said. “I know how goddamn annoying I can be, repeating things, going off like I do. I hear myself doing it, but I can’t shut up. It’s like I’m way down underwater and there’s another guy floating up on the surface and I can hear him saying all that nonsense, and I try to yell up at him to shut the hell up, but when I open my mouth, only thing that comes out are bubbles. Bubbles and more bubbles. Because I’m way down there underwater, you know, like a frogman.

  “I know it’s awful to listen to. And Stan’s right. I’m an old fool. But I can’t make myself stop yammering to save my life. I’m trying, though. I want you to know that, Alex. I’m down here trying to be good. Hanging on. Trying not to get on your nerves, or Stan’s. But it’s hard. It’s damn hard. A frogman, down on the bottom. Blowing bubbles. Glub, glub.”

  He looked over at her. For a moment, his eyes fluttered between the two worlds where he lived. Then they lost their grip on her face and slid away. A foolish smile took possession of his lips.

  “We don’t see much of your mother anymore, do we?”

  Alexandra drew a long breath and pulled into the parking lot of the Harbor House. Some of the other daughters were delivering their mothers and fathers. Twice as many mothers. Even though most of the women were twenty years older, Lawton liked those odds. He had six or seven girlfriends at Harbor House and was always bringing home tins of cookies.

  “Your mother died, didn’t she?”

  “Years ago, Dad. Years ago.”

  “You shouldn’t keep things from me,” Lawton said. “I can take difficult news. Believe me, Alexandra, I’ve dealt with some bad situations in my life. If your mother died, then I should be told.”

  Alexandra pushed her hair back. It needed cutting. It had been years since she’d had a manicure. Years since she’d bought herself anything frilly or impractical.

  “All right, Dad, fine. I won’t hide things from you anymore. Everything out in the open.”

  Most of the time, he didn’t bother with the paper. The only reason he bought a Herald that morning was because he wanted to see if the reporters had discovered the poses yet.

  They hadn’t, the idiots. Or else they were cooperating with the police. You never knew for sure anymore. Nowadays, you couldn’t trust the stuff in the paper and you couldn’t even trust the stuff that wasn’t in it.

  Taking an early lunch, he sat in a booth at Denny’s on Biscayne, with the traffic pouring past, and he read the article slowly and listened to his waitress talking to another waitress about the latest dead woman. His waitress had black dried-out hair and was thick-waisted and tall. She wore her makeup heavy and had bangles on both wrists. The hair on her arm was dark and longer than normal, and he looked at it carefully as she poured him more coffee.

  “It’s terrible, isn’t it? That young woman, with everything to live for.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Right there, that article you’re reading,” the waitress said.

  He looked up into her eyes and said nothing. He kept his mouth dead, and in a few seconds she gave a confused little shake of her head and took her pot of coffee and her chirpy bullshit off to another customer.

  Rapists and killers in the movies were always flamboyant madmen. They lived in rooms with outlandish insects flying around or with the walls papered with ten thousand creepy newspaper clippings. They were losers who wore polka dots and plaids together and their glasses were thick and greasy. The movie rapists slunk around at night with whores and go-go dancers. But he was none of those things. He was well-informed, well-read, but without intellectual pretensions. He was handsome, but not strikingly so. He could be intense, but he could also laugh. He had good taste in clothes and furnishings, a sense of style that floated between contemporary and classic, and he was bright and had friends, male and female. He made good money. He drove a two-year-old Honda, the most common car on the streets of Miami. He was a good singer, could find the harmony in almost any song he’d ever heard, and he could tell a joke well. He voted in every election and made contributions to environmental causes. He went to church now and then, but he wasn’t a zealot. He was polite to people in grocery stores and movie theaters and he was a good driver. He liked to eat and drink but was no glutton. He enjoyed fast food as well as four-star restaurants. He kept himself in excellent shape with weights and running. He played chess and darts in an Irish bar he went to now and then. People knew his name and liked him and called him up sometimes to cry on his shoulder or ask him over to watch a heavyweight fight or a play-off game on the tube. He could go anywhere and not be noticed. He was comfortable and secure in nearly any environment.

  He didn’t have a creepy bone in his body. Not one.

  He watched the traffic go by on Biscayne Boulevard and sipped his coffee. He hated newspapers and he hated television even more. He hated journalists. Their superior, cynical attitude, assuming the worst of everyone. Like they’d seen it all, crime and grime, and nothing surprised them. Calling him “the Bloody Rapist,” making a joke out of it.

  He shifted around on the bench seat, trying to find a more comfortable position. He was exhausted and his joints ached like he might be coming down with the flu. The bitch probably gave him some germ, all that kissing on the couch, her tongue down his throat like she was starved for something he had inside him and was trying to scoop it out.

  He was drained and vaguely depressed. These things took a lot out of him, more all the time. The recovery could take a full week. That long before he even started thinking about it again, looking for another woman, starting to ge
t the prickling in his blood. He wasn’t a horny guy by nature—ready to go all the time, like some men his age. He’d never been that way. Slow to rouse, actually.

  He hated those television experts with their sound-bite explanations of rape. The so-called authorities claimed rape was about violence, not sex. Saying the act sprang from a man’s need to dominate a woman, or his hatred of her, or some other bullshit. But it wasn’t like that. If it was about hate and violence, then the guy wouldn’t rape the woman; he’d beat the shit out of her, strangle her, and leave her lying on the floor.

  No, it was about sex. Sex, sex, sex. It was about the prickle in his blood, that tingle deep in the axons of his cortex. It was about neurons and dopamine and dendrites, all the thousand itchy creatures in his brain. It was about Pavlov and his dog. It was about chemicals that had been stewing for a million years, ever since one of his ancestors, something white and slippery, wriggled ashore and took cover under a rock. Rape was about crinkly folds of skin and the smell of flesh, and it was about hardness and softness, squirming and biting, prying inside the hot, tight sphincter of female tissue, deep inside her blood.

  He drank the rest of his coffee and raised his cup high in the air without looking for the waitress. And even after his arm began to hurt, he kept it up in the air until she returned with the pot.

  “It’s terrible,” he said, smiling at her, winning her back. “That young woman. Gruesome and sad.”

  “Yeah,” said the waitress, pouring him another cup.

  “Myself, I’m getting the heck out of Miami. It’s not worth all you have to put up with just for some good weather. I was telling Doris—”