by David Pierce
Out on the wooden court that had been laid on the sand, the Globetrotters swung into their well-known warm-up antics, to the delight of the crowd.
Then a strange thing happened. Despite the fact that I was wearing on my head a six-foot-wide sombrero, had one arm in a sling down to and including the hand, attired as I was in Globetrotter warm-ups, outsized sneakers, and wraparound sunglasses, with a towel slung around my neck, I began, in a weird way, to feel invisible. I was so visible as an object, as a curiosity in a group of, to the locals, similar curiosities, that I felt invisible as a person, much like, as Benny had explained to me, the crucial letter of Mr. Poe that one of his characters hid, or unhid, by leaving it in a group of other letters tossed casually on a desk.
I was also black, of course, which did a lot to alter the face V. Daniel usually presents to the world. And I do not mean paper bag brown; I do not mean high yellow; I do not mean cordovan brown; I mean your basic black. When my ex-friend Benjamin, long may his nefarious schemes backfire, first suggested the idea back in the swamps. I had to admit it did have something going for it, but I didn't see why I couldn't be one of the Washington Generals instead, that hapless white team who always played the Globetrotters and whose record was then something like Won – 0, Lost – 11,242.
"You're too old to be a white basketball player," Benny said cruelly. "Also, you wouldn't be noticeable enough and thus you'd be more noticeable." Sure, sure, it all sounded good on paper, but I couldn't help thinking that Benny would come up with any excuse to have a cheap laugh at my expense. He probably had one of his hammock-weaving amigos up in the stands taking pictures.
Anyway, while I was fretting, fussing, and fidgeting by the river trying to come up with a plan B that made sense, that little rascal had all the details of his own plan B already worked out. He'd seen, as I had, the announcement in the newspaper that the Globetrotters were in town. He figured they'd be staying at the most American hotel in town, the Holiday Inn just off the Paseo Montejo, phoned up, and they were. So he dropped by one afternoon when he was supposed to be by the pool—didn't he?—all on his lonesome, without telling his best friend in the world, who at that very moment was wracked by disease, and tracked down the road manager, name of Happy, whom he found in the outdoor bar by the pool. Benny drew Happy aside. Benny said his pal V. Daniel was in Mexico doing a chore for one of Happy's basketball brethren, none other than power forward J. J. Hill, for confirmation of which all he had to do was phone up J. J. at his hotel, number on request. Benny said in the course of my duties I'd had a minor altercation with the local fuzz, the specifics of which Benny had neglected to inform me. He offered Happy a lot of money (mine) if I could mingle with the team for a few hours, and that was all. Benny had a stroke of luck here, as Happy came up with the good news that the teams were taking a late flight out Saturday night after their last game—Mérida to Mexico City to Monterey to Houston.
Whatever line Benny spun, Happy bought it, and they shook on the deal. It was the twerp's idea to have a fake broken arm, that way I'd have a reason for not warming up with the others, let alone playing, God forbid, and also that way I'd only have one hand to blacken.
So when I got back to Mérida after some more soothing hours in the womb, I called Happy from Jorge's back room and made the necessary arrangements. Later I sent Carlos out shopping for a gigantic embroidered silver-on-black sombrero, a pair of flashy shades, one large souvenir scarf, a jar of cold cream (any brand), a box of tissues, one pocket mirror, several corks, and finally, an extensive supply of food and drink. Then there was nothing to do but wait and practice my lay-ups.
To the great delight of all Jorge's neighbors, the hired bus containing both teams plus Happy plus the two refs who traveled with the entourage pulled up in front of his shop just after seven. A half-dozen Globetrotters piled out and invaded the store. Happy followed Jorge out back and handed over the warm-up outfit and a pair of canoe-size high tops he'd brought along as arranged. The road manager was, as one might guess from his moniker, a totally harassed, permanently worried, short, black bundle of nerves with round glasses and a highly creased forehead; I suppose my pristine forehead might pick up a wrinkle or two if I had to baby-sit that busload of sports all around the world.
I was already made up and had been for some time, and I am here to state that burnt cork really works, as Benny had assured me it would. I do not care to speculate how he came by that information. What you do is cream your visage thoroughly, wipe off all the surface cream, burn some corks, and rub the charred bits on. Then one either pats the face gently all over with a tissue or powders lightly, my dear, with a soft puff.
I climbed into the warm-up outfit, slipped on the boats, put on the sombrero, then the shades. I slung the towel casually around my neck. I inserted my broken wing into the sling. Happy took one look at the finished product and shook his head slowly.
"Thought I'd seen it all," he said. "How wrong I was." I handed over two grand in traveler's checks, which failed to significantly cheer him up. He led the way to the door into the shop, opened it a crack, and called out, "Hey, Peanuts, Snowy, come here a minute!"
In came Peanuts and Snowy, already in costume, like me, but with Globetrotter shorts and vests underneath, as bullfight arenas don't have changing rooms and all personnel involved in a bullfight show up in their appropriate attire, be it suit of lights or the more mundane costumes of the ground crew, the horse handlers, and so on.
Peanuts was a skinny bald gent about my height. Snowy was a hefty afroed gent so black he was aubergine.
"This is the guy I told you about," Happy said.
"It sure ain't Sammy Davis, Jr.," Peanuts said. We slapped palms a couple of times. "Hey, babe. I'm Peanuts and this holy terror here is Snowy. Sorry to hear about your trouble."
"Thank you, Mr. Peanuts," I said. "Mr. Snowy, nice to meet you."
"Love the lid," Snowy said.
I'll get you for this, Benny, I vowed.
"OK, OK," Happy said agitatedly. "Let's get this show on the road, what d'you say? We're late already."
We trouped out into the store where Happy rounded up the others.
"Stay cool, Pops," I said to Jorge as I passed him. He seemed to be choking on something; perhaps he hated goodbyes.
Thanks, Benny. I felt as invisible as the Empire State Building on a clear day. I shuffled outside and we clambered onto the bus to a smattering of applause from the onlookers. I slunk into the first unoccupied seat I came to—as chance would have it, beside an extremely pretty black girl who took one look at me and burst into an uncontrollable fit of giggles.
"If that ain't the creature from the Black Lagoon, I don't know what is," a wiseacre from the back called out. I slunk even lower in my seat. The bus took off. After a minute the girl next to me quieted down enough to say her name was Joy and don't mind her and she was sure sorry to hear about the trouble I was in; then she started giggling again. I began to wonder just what kind of trouble I was supposed to be in.
"I didn't know they let girls play now," I said after a while.
"Sure," she said proudly. "There's two of us but I was the first."
I took a close look at her, which wasn't hard.
"I know you," I said. "I saw you play on television A couple of times. You were terrific. I saw you win the college championship."
"You got it," she said. "That was us. Now I'm broadening my horizons, I think they call it, seeing new countries, meeting new people, but mostly keeping my door locked." She took out a compact and began to inspect her makeup.
"Maybe I better do the same," I said. "My nose feels shiny."
She giggled again.
All of which, aside from a lot more catcalls, one-liners, and jibes from the cheap seats at the back, which I won't bother to report here, pretty much brings us up to "Sweet Georgia Brown" and me sitting on the bench getting splinters beside Happy, watching the boys and girls warm up.
When the game started, it proceeded along the well-wo
rn and well-loved Globetrotter lines, and although most of the faces were new to me, the gags weren't. We were treated to the lopsided ball, the ball on a long elastic, the piggyback dunk, the forty-yarder thrown from the hip, the smallest Globetrotter dribbling through the entire other team before scoring, the player rummaging through a lady's handbag and holding up various items for the world to see while taking a breather in the audience, and all the other old favorites. And all the while their straight men (some of whom, I may say, Benny, looked almost as old as me) were careful not to score too many baskets or do anything remotely flashy. The Méridians lapped it up, and quite rightly too.
I wondered vaguely, a-sittin' there, what kind of life it was for those involved healthwise, travelwise, hotelwise, diseasewise, foodwise, and girlwise. Could be worse, I decided. I once knew a young lady, Mary Lou Kempsky—this was back east in my younger days—who spent half the year touring with the Ice Capades and the other half in Florida with a water ballet and acrobatics show. She said she loved the life, but after a few years, who knew? Who knows anything about a few years from now? I say. Mary Lou Kempsky. If you so much as touched the back of her neck, she fell down on the floor and purred, and that is all I have to say about Mary Lou, not being a kiss-and-tell, except she had a twin brother in Tahoe who gave snow skiing lessons in the winter and waterskiing lessons in Sarasota in the summer. I sometimes wished my life was arranged as neatly. I wonder if water ballets hire people my age. Maybe I could black up again, all over, to hide the wrinkles and saggy bits.
To the enormous surprise of no one, the Globetrotters hung on to win, despite a late rally by the Generals. Then as the mariachi band struck up again, we trotted off into the wings and straight onto the bus and then straight back to the Holiday Inn, where we stopped just long enough for folks to shower, change their clothes, and finish packing. I neither showered nor changed clothes because I wanted to go on looking like a Globetrotter and also because I only had one change with me and I'd be needing that later. I'd left all my luggage except for one oversized carry-on at Jorge's for him to air-freight up north with the hammocks. The last thing I needed was for some custom zealot at the border to say, "Open, please, señor," and out tumbles my collection of FBI paraphernalia, amongst other goodies.
I hung out in Happy's room till we boarded the bus again, and glued myself to Mr. Peanuts and Mr. Snowy when we got off at the airport, which wasn't exactly crawling with cops but it was certainly seething with them, all armed, all jittery, all watchful. One of the things they never tired of inspecting was the Generals, us folks they just smiled at or waved at every time we passed, so I took back my evil thoughts re Benny's intentions, for the nonce.
Then we were blessedly at thirty thousand feet straight down again, and I was opening my first but far from last libation and regaling the delectable Joy with amusing anecdotes from my daredevil juvenile days when I was the possessor of the most unstoppable hook shot in the history of American penal reform.
There were plenty of cops about, too, in Mexico City, where we had a long stopover, but again my crafty disguise, coolness, and powers of mimicry foiled the boys in blue (only in their case, gray). The only remaining danger point for me was at Monterrey, where, as it was our last stop in Mexico, we all had to deplane, with luggage, to go through Mexican customs and immigration. I was in line behind Happy, hoping that I wasn't sweating all my tan off.
When it was my turn, the official took a half-hearted look at my entrance permit, tossed it in a box of the same, then asked me where the rest of my luggage was.
I said the carry-on was all I had.
He asked me if I had any livestock with me.
I said I didn't.
He asked me if I had any fruit, vegetables, plants, seeds, flowers, bulbs, or dirt.
I said I hadn't.
He waved me through. Through I went, with the merest touch of a skip in my step. Onto the plane I went. Up into the atmosphere we went. Down a lot more beer went, despite the time of day—exceptionally early. Down, down onto the friendly tarmac at Houston we went. Toward U.S. customs and immigration we went. On the way, I ducked into a men's room and, with the help of a lot of cold cream, a lot of tissues and a quick-change act, metamorphosized back into my true persona, the one and only V. (for Victor) Daniel, white, unmarried, forty-four, and considerably grayer of hair.
I caught up with Joy and said good-bye. She said she'd love to meet me sometime and get the real story out of me, but it would have to be somewhere awful crowded, given my awful reputation. I goggled. She giggled. I said good-bye to Mr. Peanuts and Mr. Snowy and slipped Happy a two-hundred-buck tip when I shook hands with him.
They went off to wait for the carousel to deliver their luggage, and I went off to check up on flights westward. Was I a different man, a changed man, mayhap, as the result of my having been, for however short a time, not only black but visibly invisible? Amigos, you know what foolish questions get.
I had time for a quick breakfast before catching a TWA flight direct to L.A., during which I slept the whole time.
At LAX I hopped the free shuttle bus that went to a certain hotel's parking lot where I'd left my car for nothing. Ignoring the jealous glances directed at my souvenir sombrero, which I was toting, I found my chariot, dusty but otherwise untouched, and homeward we went, at least one of us with a song on our lips, except for the time I spent trying to add up in my head how much the whole venture had set me back. I stopped when I began grinding my molars.
L.A. was hot, muggy, smoggy, ugly, dirty, and oh, was it good to be back. Mañana I'd worry about Mom and going to work for Mel The Swell's old boss. Today I'd think about other matters, pleasanter matters. Evonne. Wouldn't she look darling in the sombrero. And we had sprung Billy, after all, and gotten back with a whole skin, after all.
" 'I took a trip on a plane, and I thought about you,' " I sang as I tooled northward up the freeway.
" 'A tinkling piano in the next apartment,' " I sang as I cruised down the far side of the Hollywood Hills into my beloved San Fernando Valley.
" 'Pardon me, boys, is that the Chattanooga choochoo?' " I sang, turning into my driveway and cutting the motor.
"Mom! I'm home!" I sang out as I opened up the front door. "Yoo-hoo."
No Mom.
I checked her room.
No Mom.
I checked my room and the bathroom just in case.
No Mom.
I'd noticed something different about her room, and went back in. What was it? . . . Her quilt, a patchwork made by her aunt Someone, wasn't on the bed. None of her personal belongings were on the table beside the bed. The picture of me and Tony as kids and Mom and Pop that was always beside her bed wasn't beside her bed.
All right.
Maybe she took them all with her when and wherever she went with Feeb, although they hadn't been in the bag I'd helped her pack and had carried downstairs to Feeb's for her. But a quilt? Not even my mom would take a quilt on holiday. I checked both closets, both were as bare as the proverbial baby's buns. So were all the drawers in the dresser. Being a highly trained and skilled detective, it took me no time at all to come up with the answer: Mom had done a moonlight flit on her little boy.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I checked the top of the small bar that separated the kitchenette area from the front room, because that's where we left notes for each other, on a memo pad I'd been lucky enough to find in my stocking the Christmas before and which featured the old Dutch Cleanser lady holding a broom, the handle of which was the pencil. There might be a note saying Mom had run away to join the circus. Or maybe she'd found another man. What the note I found did say was, "Feeb knows all, Feeb tells all." I knew Feeb was home, as I'd seen her battered old heap downstairs in the drive when I'd parked mine, so I lumbered down to my landlady's. She had her door open waiting for me.
"OK, Feeb, tell all."
"Sit down first," she said. "Want a cup of coffee or something? I got some fresh."
"Don
't mind if I do." I sat down in one of the two recliners that faced the fake fireplace. Feeb poured out two cups from her automatic coffee maker, added the necessary, then brought them over. My cup had a picture of two insipid children holding hands on it Underneath was written in a kid's scrawl, "Love is . . . sharing your last jelly bean."
"All right, jelly bean," I said after taking a sip. "Out with it. Where's Mom?"
"In a home," Feeb said. "Want a brownie? Made 'em myself."
"Later, maybe. What home?"
"It's called Hilldale. It's in the hills between Glendale and Pasadena. I get there in about half an hour."
"How come she's in a home all of a sudden? When did you two come up with that idea? How come she didn't wait till I got back?"
"Now hold your horses, Vic. Your mother knew exactly what she was doing. We've been talking about it for months."
"Oh, you have, eh?"
"Yes, we have and don't get snitty with me. It's a fine place, my girl friend Shirl's father is there—you know Shirl—and I go visiting with her sometimes 'cause she hasn't any other family. It's run by a really marvelous man, Dr. Donald Fishbein. Everyone calls him Doctor Don."
"I am looking forward to meeting marvelous Doctor Don," I said.
"So let's go, soon as we finish our coffee," Feeb said. "You can visit any time out there up till eight-thirty."
I finished my coffee, went back upstairs, changed into visiting clothes—a clean Hawaiian shirt, cream cords, and tan moccasins—then got a lightweight blue fake-suede windbreaker out of the closet. I had three fake-suede windbreakers of assorted colors, which I—the great expert, the canny, street-smart know-it-all—got conned into buying; so if anyone wants one, size XL, cheap, you know where to come. It's called the Italian scam, for some reason. What happens is you're walking along the thoroughfare minding your own business, and a guy in a car perusing a map hails you and calls you over. His story is he's a salesman on the road with his samples and he's just lost all his dough either at Vegas or the races and he has to peddle the last of his samples dirt-cheap for gas money to get home. You, being so street-smart and all, know the guy's lying, but you probably figure, like I did, that what he's really unloading are hot goods that fell off the back of a truck somewhere. And of course the samples look pretty good in their new cellophane wrappings, but I will tell you three things about fake-suede jackets, or at least my three fake-suede jackets: do not get them wet; do not get them dry-cleaned; and do not use the zippers more than twice in any direction.
