Lights Out

by Peter Abrahams

“The one and only.” They looked at each other. “My God,” she said, “isn’t this something? I mean, what goes around comes around.”

  “I’ve got a bad memory for faces,” Eddie said, thinking that a chivalrous phrase might be required but doubting that that was it. He searched her face for the features of the Mandy he had known, and found some; but smudged, blunted, coarsened. Like the others-Jack, Evelyn, Bobby Falardeau-she had aged more quickly than he, as though prison, with its bad food that kept him from eating too much, and its absence of sunlight, which had kept his skin unwrinkled, had slowed the life clock inside him. A nice thought; but it left out his hair, growing in gray.

  “Of course I remember you-I never forget anyone I sleep with,” Mandy said, verifying Eddie’s doubt. “There haven’t been all that many, considering.”

  The office door opened again and a little man came out, carrying a briefcase. “Not all that many what, dear?” he said.

  “Requests for the Cotton Town jitney,” said Mandy. “Say hi to Eddie, an old acquaintance of mine. Eddie-my husband, Farouz.”

  They shook hands. Farouz’s name pin read “Manager.”

  “Gotta run,” he said, and went out.

  Mandy’s eyes were on him again. “You’re lookin’ good,” she said. “Stayed in shape, unlike yours truly. I don’t have the discipline.” She raised her arms hopelessly. “That’s my sad story. What have you been up to?”

  A routine question for most people, but not for him. Had he heard it right? “What have I been up to?”

  His tone surprised her. “Since I wimped out on you that time up in Lauderdale,” she explained.

  “Wimped out?”

  She lowered her voice. “When the cops came. You don’t have much of a memory for anything, do you? I heard them come aboard and just grabbed some gear and jumped off. I didn’t mean to leave you hanging and all, but what could I do? Especially since I was hip to what was on board and you weren’t. I just knew you’d be okay.”

  “Okay?”

  Mandy glanced around to see if anyone was watching. “I know you were pissed off. But you could have answered my letters. After all, there was no harm done.” Eddie was silent, but something in his expression made her say, “What? What is it?”

  “You’d better explain,” Eddie said.

  “About what?”

  “About no harm done.”

  Mandy shrugged. “You know. Nothing came of it.”

  “Nothing came of it?”

  “Brad lost everything to the bank, of course, but I meant nothing came of it in terms of you. I was back at my parents’ in Wisconsin by that time-classic move, right? — but when they dropped the charges I wrote you, more than once, and you didn’t write back.”

  “Wrote me where?”

  “Care of your brother in Lauderdale. I kept in touch with him for a while. That’s how I knew you got off.”

  Eddie leaned on the counter, not trusting his legs to hold him up. “Jack told you I got off?”

  “In a postcard or something. That’s when I started writing you. I gave up after a few months. I’m the kind who carries a torch, but not forever.”

  Eddie didn’t say anything. He just stared at her, looking for some sign that she was lying. He saw none.

  She misread whatever expression was on his face. “Hey! You really couldn’t expect me to, now could you? I mean, you didn’t even answer my letters.”

  “It’s all right,” Eddie said. His legs felt a little stronger now; he stepped back from the counter.

  “Whew,” said Mandy. “I thought you were going ballistic there for a second.” She looked him up and down. “How about a drink?” she said. “On me.”

  “I’ve got to get going.”

  She reached across the counter, touched his forearm. “What’s the rush? You’re on vacation, right?”

  They went into an air-conditioned bar overlooking a heart-shaped swimming pool. It had green-glass floats hanging from the ceiling, fishnets and harpoons on the walls, and a neon name glowing over the rows of bottles: “Mongo’s.” Jack’s suggestion, outliving him like the work of some great author.

  “Do you own this place?”

  Mandy laughed. “Are you kidding? It’s owned by AB Gesselschaft. They bought it from the bank, way back.” A waiter arrived. “What’ll it be?” Mandy said. “Cecil makes the best damn planter’s punch in the Bahamas.”

  Two planter’s punches arrived, in tall frosted glasses with pineapple wedges stuck on the rims. Mandy raised her glass. “To old times,” she said, taking a big drink.

  Eddie drank too; the glass trembled in his hand. It was too bitter.

  “We were so young,” Mandy said. “And what a place. Undeveloped then, but still. Irrestistible, I guess. At least, I couldn’t resist it.”

  “When did you come back?”

  “After the bank took over. I kind of drifted down. It was closed, but they needed someone who knew the history. When the Germans took over I stuck around, answering the phone, working my way up. Then Farouz arrived.” She took another drink. “Jesus, that’s good. You like?”

  Eddie made himself drink some more. She watched him, watched his face, his hand, his throat as the liquid went down. “I’ve got a confession to make,” she said. “Promise you won’t tell a soul?”

  Eddie smiled. It was such a childish idea. “Promise,” he said.

  Mandy smiled too. “Remember that shed by the old tennis court?”

  He nodded.

  “I still think about it.” Her voice grew husky. “I mean a lot. When I’m in bed, kind of thing.” She tried to meet his gaze boldly, but couldn’t. “With Farouz, I mean. As soon as I start getting all hot, or if I’m not, I just think of that time, and then I do.” Her face, dark and leathery as it was, reddened. She gulped her drink. There was a pause. She leaned toward him. “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  “I find that hard to believe.” She leaned a little closer. “Do you think about it?” she asked.

  She didn’t have to say the shed. He knew. In his cell in F-Block he’d thought about it a lot, not as a hormone booster to get him in the mood for someone else, but just because it was one of the best memories he had. Now he knew he would never think about the shed again, not in the same way. “It’s gone now, isn’t it?”

  She leaned back. “What’s gone?”

  “The shed.”

  She looked at him. Her eyes grew cooler, businesslike. “We’ve got twelve Deco-Turf courts and an outstanding program, if you’d like a lesson sometime.” She glanced at his drink. “You don’t like Cecil’s creation?”

  “I do.” He took another sip. “But I’ve got to get going.”

  The jitney left from the dock. Eddie sat alone at the back, waiting for the driver to finish saying good-bye to his girlfriend and climb aboard. He kissed her, patted her shoulder, patted her rump, kissed her again, answered a question, then another. Out on the water, a cruiser slowly approached the dock: long, white, multidecked, topped with rotating antennae and satellite dishes; possibly the boat he had flown over. It was much too big to cross the reef. Even as Eddie had the thought, the cruiser swung round, slowed some more, dropped a bow anchor. Eddie could read the name on the stern: El Liberador. Men appeared on deck, began winching down a Boston Whaler.

  The driver hopped on the jitney, cranked up his boom box, shot away from the dock. “Cotton Town and all points in between,” he said. “Which is nowhere. Va va voom.”

  31

  Cotton Town was an hour away. In that hour, the road degenerated to a rutted track, and Western civilization, except for flattened beer cans flashing in the sun, disappeared. Eddie caught a glimpse of one house along the route, standing on a bluff over a quiet bay. It was white with closed shutters, a verandah, and a peace sign painted large on the slanted roof.

  “Who lives there?” Eddie asked.

  “In the old gin house?” said the driver,
turning down his boom box. “Nobody now. The hippies they crash in it when there was hippies.”

  “Does anyone own it?”

  “Everything be owned,” said the driver, “even the mangoes hanging from the trees.” He glanced at Eddie in his mirror. “You in the market for a house?”

  Eddie looked down at the bay, sheltered by two curving arms that ended in sandy points about half a mile apart. He could picture himself swimming back and forth between them. “How much would it cost?”

  “The old gin house? Thousands and thousands.”

  He had thousands and thousands. Why not? Then he thought of Mandy. Would he want to settle in so close to her? There were other islands, with other bays perfect for swimming.

  “That be the problem, man,” said the driver. “Where to get those thousands and thousands.”

  The road ended in front of a pink church the size of a two-car garage. “Cotton Town Tabernacle Kirk of Redemption,” read big blue letters on the wall.

  “End of the line,” said the driver. “Tipping permitted.”

  Eddie gave him five dollars-too much? he didn’t know, not having been in many tipping situations-and got off the jitney, carrying the backpack. The jitney backed, turned, departed. That left Eddie alone with a brown chicken, pecking at the dirt outside the open door of the church.

  Music came through the doorway, one of those familiar pieces that appear on classical-highlight records not sold in stores. Eddie went inside.

  A little girl with a bow in her hair sat at an upright piano, her back to the door, her eyes on the sheet music. She sensed his presence; her hands flew off the yellowed keys and her head snapped around.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Eddie said.

  She stared at him.

  “I’m looking for a man named JFK.”

  “You the doctor?” Her voice was so soft he could barely hear her.

  “Just a friend.”

  The girl stared at him. It was quiet in the church; he heard something land with a thump outside, a coconut perhaps. Just when he’d decided she wasn’t going to respond, the girl said, “The house after the Fantastic.”

  “Where’s that?”

  She pointed with her skinny arm.

  Eddie went outside, slipped on the backpack, and set off on a path that led beyond the church, in the direction the girl had pointed. He went past an overgrown garden, a half-built cinder-block house with weeds growing through the holes in the blocks, and a lopsided dwelling with an open window through which he saw a woman slumped forward at a table, her head in her arms. He came to an unpainted wooden structure with a sign over the door in big childish letters: “Fantastic Bar and Club.” He heard a man hawking inside, saw a gob of spit fly out a side window.

  The path led through a grove of four or five sawtooth-leaved palms to a small house painted in broad vertical stripes of red, green, and black. A curtain hung where the door should have been. Eddie knocked on the doorjamb.

  The house was silent. Eddie knocked again. “Hello?” he called. “Anyone here?”

  No answer. He brushed the curtain aside and went in.

  He was in a small room with a cement floor and unfinished wooden walls. There was nothing in it but an icebox, a card table, two card-table chairs, and a rusty bicycle leaning against the wall. “Hello?” he called again. Silence. He opened the icebox. It was empty except for an oblong yellow-green fruit of a kind he didn’t know.

  Eddie crossed the room, entered a short hall with two doors off it, both closed. He opened the first. A bathroom; he shut the door, but not before the smell reached him. A ball of nausea rose up inside him. He stood in the hall, took a few deep breaths, kept it down. Then he opened the second door.

  He looked into a darkened room. A strip of tar paper hung over the single window, but there were coin-sized holes in it, and golden rays of sunshine poked through, spotlighting a Bob Marley poster taped to the wall, an L.A. Lakers sweatshirt rumpled on the floor, and a man lying on a bare mattress, eyes closed. A fly buzzed in the shadows.

  Eddie had seen AIDS before. There was lots of it inside, although the victims were usually removed by the time they reached the point that the man on the mattress had come to. Eddie went a little closer, gazed down at him.

  Was it JFK? Eddie couldn’t tell. The image of JFK in his memory was blurred, and what was left of this man bore it no resemblance, other than in race and sex. The man wore only a pair of white briefs; on the mattress near his still hand lay another oblong yellow-green fruit, with one piece bitten out. As Eddie watched, a shudder went through the man. The expression on his face, which had been peaceful, grew anxious. His eyes opened.

  He saw Eddie. “I in a dream about L.A., doctor,” he said. “Universal Studio, Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm-I be knowing all these places in my past traveling life.”

  It was JFK.

  “I’m not a doctor,” Eddie said.

  JFK looked him over. “No problem,” he said. “Intern? Resident? Fellow? I got it all down, toute that jive, the hospital jive, man. Fellow the best. You looks like a fellow.”

  “You don’t remember me?”

  The eyes, big as a child’s in that hollow face, gazed up at Eddie. “What hospital you be from?”

  “No hospital,” Eddie said.

  “No hospital?”

  Eddie shook his head. “Maybe you remember the wild pig.”

  Pause. Then JFK smiled. “Boar, not pig,” he said. “Hemingway himself, he come to hunt the wild boar on this very island.” JFK’s teeth, probably just normal teeth, looked extrabig, extra-healthy. That they would long survive him, Eddie knew, was only a function of the hardness of teeth; but there was something macabre about that smile, as though JFK’s teeth were mocking the body they lived in.

  The smile faded. When JFK spoke again, his voice was quiet. “I remember that creature. Cook him up real nice. Onions, garlic, pineapple, herb. The herb what does it.” He paused, then spoke again, quieter still. “I remember you. You done lost all that hippie hair, but I remember you.”

  JFK turned his head away, toward the tar-papered window with the rays shining through like the blades of gold swords. The room was silent, except for the buzzing of the fly. Then JFK spoke: “Don’t be having the idea JFK is a gay man. Needles. Needles be the source of my disease.”

  “I don’t see what difference it makes,” Eddie said.

  Slowly his head turned back. “No difference?” he said.

  “No.”

  There was another card-table chair in the corner. Eddie pulled it up, sat by the mattress. The big child-eyes watched him. “You lose your trial, man. That right?”

  Eddie nodded.

  “Same thing be happening to my brothers. Dime he die in Fox Hill. Franco he get shot in Miami. And me … soon I shuffle off this earthly skin.” His eyes went to the Bob Marley poster, lit with golden rays. The words on the poster read: “One World.” There was a long silence. JFK’s eyes closed.

  “Can I get you anything?” Eddie said.

  “Water,” JFK replied. “For my thirst.”

  Eddie went into the stinking bathroom. A dirty glass sat on a shelf above the sink. Eddie turned on the tap. Rusty water trickled out. After a minute or so it cleared slightly. Eddie washed the glass, rubbing it clean inside and out with his fingers, then filled it.

  He returned to the bedroom. JFK’s eyes were still closed.

  “Water,” Eddie said.

  Not opening his eyes, JFK said, “You know we all ninety-nine percent water? All humanity? So it be the water have this disease, not me. All I be needing to do is piss out that sick water and fill up with clean. Abracadabra-problem solve.” His eyes opened. “You believe there truth in that?” he said.

  “I’m not a doctor,” Eddie replied, coming to the side of the mattress and extending the glass.

  JFK tried to sit up, could not. He raised his hand. It shook. “So weak, man,” he said. “I was never in this life a big strong white hunter like you,
but …” His hand flopped down at his side.

  Eddie sat on the mattress. He put his hand behind JFK’s head, feeling the dampness in his tightly curled hair and the fever in the scalp beneath. He raised the glass to JFK’s mouth. JFK’s lips parted. Eddie poured in the water, slowly. JFK’s Adam’s apple, prominent in his fleshless neck, bobbed up and down. He drank half the glass, then grunted and shook his head. Eddie lowered him back down.

  JFK breathed rapid, shallow breaths. “Down to ninety-eight percent now, man. Maybe ninety-seven.” His breathing slowed. “Water, water everywhere,” he said. “How true it be, those things they say in church.”

  “Water, water everywhere’s not from church,” Eddie said.

  “Sure it is,” said JFK, “sure it is. The gospel truth I strayed away from all my born days. Like my brothers, Franco and Dime.” His eyes shifted to Eddie. “You be different from your own brother.”

  “In what way?”

  “Not the same.” He licked his lips.

  “More water?”

  JFK shook his head. “Too hard,” he said. His eyes closed.

  “You were in New York,” Eddie said.

  JFK nodded, barely.

  “You saw Jack.”

  He nodded again.

  Why?”

  “Old times,” said JFK. “And him so rich, I be wondering if he could spare a little material advance for old JFK.”

  “Did he?”

  “Fifty dollars. U.S.” A faint smile appeared on JFK’s face.

  Fifty dollars: exactly what Uncle Vic had got. It must have been Jack’s standard handout. “When was this?” Eddie asked.

  The smile vanished. “Two years ago. Maybe three. The sickness already have me in its coils then, but not so strong.” He opened his eyes, looked at the Marley poster, then at Eddie. “You be in Switzerland at the time.”

  “Switzerland?”

  “Doing finance.”

  “Who told you that?” said Eddie, rising.

  JFK shrank back on the mattress. “Your brother. I aks about you. Feeling bad about how you lose your trial in the distant past. And that what he say. Switzerland.”

  Eddie reached down and took JFK’s head in his hands; not hard-at least, he didn’t think it was hard. “Are you listening to me?” he said. “I want you to listen carefully.”