Delusion

by Peter Abrahams

  “Nell? Nell?”

  Black-and-gold flashes receded, dimmed, vanished. She floated in the warm water, facedown, breathing air—so fresh—through her snorkel.

  “Nell? You all right?”

  She turned her head, saw Kirk leaning toward her over the side of the Zodiac. Nell raised her hand, started coughing.

  “Christ. You’re bleeding.” He helped her into the boat.

  Everybody made a big fuss—Vicki’s eyes so wide the whites showed all around her irises—but it was really nothing, just scrapes, cuts, a few sea-urchin needles. She didn’t even need stitches. While there was still enough daylight, Clay went out to the reef with scuba gear and had a look.

  “Front part of the ledge just caved in,” he reported. He found Nell’s spear, the lobster, an eight-pounder, the biggest Nell had ever seen, still on it; and delicious under the stars that night. The anchor had come loose somewhere along the way. Clay brought that back, too, except for one of the flukes, broken off.

  CHAPTER 19

  Am I disturbing you?”

  Susannah. Yeah, kind of disturbing him. Pirate was standing at his window at the Ambassador Suites, watching a woman at a bus stop. She wore a tank top, had big breasts, mostly exposed from this angle. Pirate tried to imagine what they would feel like and couldn’t. That part of him had gone—what was the word? like the bears?—dormant. But maybe it was starting to wake up. An important development, right? Springtime. So yes, Susannah was disturbing him. Still, Pirate wanted to be polite.

  “Nah,” he said.

  “I have some news,” she said.

  “Yeah?” She didn’t sound the same as normal, not so warm and friendly, so Pirate got ready for something bad. But what could that be? Bad was over; he was free.

  “It’s about the settlement,” Susannah said.

  “The…uh, oh, yeah.”

  “We’ve had an offer. It’s a good offer, and while there’s always the option of taking a hard-line stance and holding out for more, our impression is that they won’t go much higher, resulting in any extra payment merely being lost to legal fees.”

  Pirate tried to follow all that but got lost along the way. “Settlement,” he said. A strange word—didn’t it mean a village or something, like an Indian settlement? The woman at the bus stop had a kind of dark reddish skin; maybe she was Indian, although her breasts seemed a little lighter. Were the breasts of Indian women lighter than the rest of them? There were lots of facts he didn’t know. The bus came and she climbed on and went away.

  “Settlement?” Susannah was saying. “Is that what you just said? Meaning you want to settle? Shouldn’t you hear the amount first?”

  “Probably,” said Pirate.

  “As I explained, we think this is a good offer, although no monetary compensation can ever be adequate in a case like yours. Understanding that should help to keep emotions in check. This is really about going forward in a practical way.”

  Going forward? Sure, why not? “Hundred percent,” he said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “On going forward.”

  “Oh, good,” said Susannah. “The offer is four hundred thirty-two thousand seventy-one dollars and sixty-three cents.”

  “Sixty-three cents?” The rest hadn’t stuck.

  “Crazy, I know,” said Susannah. “The result of the metrics they use. I can forward you the work sheets—have you got e-mail yet?”

  “Say it again.”

  “Have you got e-mail yet?”

  “The fuckin’ money.”

  There was a long silence. Why? What was going on? Hard to understand Susannah sometimes, frustrating even, made him want to smack her. Not actually smack her, of course, not after all she’d done for him, to say nothing of the fact that he’d advanced to a point way way beyond violence of any kind. At last she spoke, saying the number in a strange voice, like she was handing over something smelly. This time he wrote it down.

  $432,071.63.

  “Four three two zero seven one point six three?” he said.

  “Correct.”

  Emotions aside? What was that about? He circled and circled the number with his pen until it dug right through that paper and scraped the desk. Scrape, scrape, scrape—he could buy a new desk, buy a hundred, a thousand, a million. Well, maybe not a million. He laughed out loud.

  “Mr. DuPree?”

  “What happened to Alvin?” he said

  She cleared her throat. “Alvin,” she said, “is the amount acceptable?”

  Four hundred and thirty-two grand? Was she nuts? Supposing he’d been free all this time, would he have accumulated a chunk like that? Only if he’d hit the big time in Nashville, or made some huge drug score, and what were the chances of either of those? Had to be realistic. “Yes, Susannah, the amount is acceptable.” So cool, the way he said that.

  “Very good,” Susannah said. “Reverend Proctor will be in touch regarding the paperwork and details of the transaction.”

  Pirate remembered Reverend Proctor, with his mellow reverend voice. He didn’t like Reverend Proctor, didn’t need any middlemen for his religion. Twice as much as before? Way way better than that. He tried to think up a joke about she asses but it got too complicated, and besides, there was the chance she might not get it.

  “Alvin? Did you understand that about the reverend?”

  “Yup.”

  “Any questions?”

  He had questions: Why Job? Were the breasts of Indian women lighter than the rest of them? Was Kahlúa booze or not? By now he knew she wasn’t the one for those kinds of questions. But Pirate had another.

  “Does the reverend want a cut?”

  “A cut?”

  “A piece,” said Pirate. “Of the four three two.”

  “Of course not,” said Susannah. “Anything else?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then I’ll say good-bye.”

  “Okeydoke,” Pirate said, then added, “And mucho gracias.” But too late: she was gone.

  After that, Pirate got restless. He switched on the TV and flicked through the channels, but nothing held his attention except a commercial for a real sharp knife, and that was over pretty quick. Pirate went into the bathroom, made himself look nice. Then he put on spotless new khakis and a T-shirt that said ROLL TIDE on the front. He left the tags on the T-shirt, also left behind the tiny weapon—did he really need it anymore?—and took the elevator down.

  A bar stood in one corner of the lobby—a few stools, all empty, no bartender—but there was something inviting about it. Pirate strolled over, scanned the shelves for Kahlúa. He spotted a single bottle, a big one. A big one meant big writing, maybe big enough for his eye to deal with the lettering, solve the booze-or-not mystery. He moved behind the bar, reached for the bottle, already able to read: PRODUCT OF MEXICO. Pirate had never been to Mexico, but why not? Mexico was supposed to be cheap—and cheap wasn’t even anything he had to worry about! Far from it, in—

  A door opened behind the bar and a man in a red vest and red bow tie came out, wiping his hands on a cloth. “Sir?” he said.

  “Hi,” said Pirate, taking his hand off the bottle.

  “Would you like a drink, s—” Maybe about to say sir again, but now he’d noticed the patch, or something else about Pirate, that made him cut off the last part.

  Did rich men take offense at things like that? Pirate didn’t think so. “Depends,” he said.

  “On what?”

  The bartender’s tone was slipping now, toward downright rude. That ruled out any easygoing back-and-forth about the booze question. Pirate turned his head, giving the bartender a real good angle on the patch. Then he went back around the bar and sat on a stool.

  “Kahlúa,” he said.

  “Depends on Kahlúa?”

  “Serve,” said Pirate.

  The bartender went all tight-lipped. Pirate thought of the tiny weapon, under the mattress in his room.

  “On the rocks or straight up?” the bartender said
, now looking over Pirate’s shoulder.

  Pirate smiled. “Rocks.”

  The bartender got to work. When was the last time Pirate had bellied up to a bar? He had a vague memory of a pitcher of beer in midair and bar stools reduced to kindling; but that was then. He unfolded the cocktail napkin and put it on his lap. Behind him a woman said, “Alvin?”

  Pirate turned. “Hey.” And almost right away her name came. “Lee Ann.” He was—what was the word?—adjusting. He was adjusting to life on the outside, real good.

  “I was just about to call up to your room,” Lee Ann said.

  “Yeah?” What would she look like without those glasses?

  She reached into her bag, took out some papers, sat beside him. “I’ve got the contract.”

  The waiter slid his drink across the bar. That gave Pirate a chance to piece things together. “Only a Test?” he said.

  “Exactly,” Lee Ann said. “This is the agreement between you and me, the sixteen percent, what we talked about earlier.”

  “Where do I sign?” Pirate said.

  “Something for you, ma’am?” said the waiter.

  Lee Ann glanced at Pirate’s drink. “What’s that?”

  “Kahlúa,” said the waiter.

  For some reason, Lee Ann looked surprised. “Chardonnay,” she said.

  Chardonnay came. Lee Ann raised her glass. “Clink,” she said. They clinked glasses. “Here’s to Only a Test,” she said. They drank. Coffee, sugar, something else, something nice: the taste of Mexico. “But there’s no signing till a lawyer’s been over it, remember?” Lee Ann said.

  “Had enough of lawyers for now,” Pirate said. He pulled the papers closer, leafed through. Lots and lots of print, big enough to see but hard to understand. Pirate came to the last page, saw the line where he was supposed to sign. “Pen?” he said.

  “I really can’t let you.”

  “No?” Pirate said. What did it matter, the details of some piddly little book deal? “So happens I got other resources.”

  “I heard about that. How does it feel?”

  How could she have already heard about the settlement?

  Lee Ann grinned. “I’ve got resources, too,” she said, as though reading his mind. Lee Ann was okay, plus they were partners, but wiping that grin off her face would have been nice.

  Pirate shrugged. “Feels all right,” he said. He turned to the bartender. “Borrow your pen?”

  “Yes, sir,” said the bartender. Back to sir: resources did the trick.

  Pirate took the pen and signed: Alvin Mack DuPree. He underlined his name three times, handed the pen to Lee Ann. She signed on the line below. “Partner,” she said, extending her hand. They shook.

  “This goes on my tab,” Pirate told the bartender, and added his room number. But just before Lee Ann left, he remembered he was down to about eighty bucks in actual walking-around money, so he hit her up for sixty more, strictly as a loan. “Trust me for it?” he said.

  Lee Ann laughed. She was okay. He came close to asking her to take off her glasses.

  “And here’s something else I’d like you to have,” she said.

  “What’s this?”

  “A digital recorder.”

  “What am I supposed to record?”

  “Details that might help the book,” Lee Ann said. “Ideas, memories, what you ate in prison, anything that fleshes out the story.”

  Pirate pressed the record button. “Flesh,” he said. He pressed play. “Flesh.” Was that him? He hadn’t heard his recorded voice in over twenty years. It had changed, now sounded—what was the word?—menacing. But maybe not, because when he glanced up at Lee Ann she was smiling and didn’t seem scared at all.

  Pirate went outside. The sun felt good. He took a walk, no place particular, soon found himself in Lower Town. After a while, he came to a pawnshop, saw a cool guitar in the window, an old Rickenbacker. He’d never actually played a Rickenbacker, but he’d once played with a guy who was playing one. Pirate checked the price: $995. No way for now, but soon. He was turning away from the window when something else caught his eye: a gold earring. Just a simple little hoop of gold, price $135. Every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold. Pirate opened the door and went inside. A bell tinkled, a nice, quiet sound. It was nice and quiet out in the world. He was at peace.

  “Help you?” said a man behind the counter. His gaze slid over to the patch; Pirate was tiring of that. And this was a tiny old guy with hairy ears, disgusting and weak; Pirate could almost hear the sound of brittle bones breaking.

  “The gold earring in the window,” he said.

  “One thirty-five for the pair.”

  “Don’t want the pair,” said Pirate. “Just the one.”

  “Eighty-five,” said the old guy.

  That didn’t sound right. Eighty-five had to be more than half of one thirty-five, but how much more? “Seventy-five,” he said.

  “Split the difference. Eighty.”

  “Deal,” said Pirate; he was a good bargainer—first getting Lee Ann to go up, now getting this old guy to go down.

  The old guy went to the window, got the earring. Pirate paid.

  “Wrap it for you?” said the old guy.

  “Nope,” said Pirate. “Gonna wear it.”

  The old guy had pea-size eyes. They shifted to one of Pirate’s ears, then the other. “How?” he said. “Ears ain’t pierced.”

  Pirate hadn’t thought of that. “You do that kind of work?” he said.

  “See that sign? Says pawnshop, not beauty parlor.”

  “Got a pin?” Pirate said.

  “Pin?”

  “Pin, needle, whatever.”

  The old guy rooted around in a drawer, came up with a long, thick pin.

  “Match,” said Pirate.

  The old man handed over a book of matches. Pirate blackened the end of the pin; couldn’t be too careful about this kind of thing. Then he moved a few feet along the counter so he faced a wall mirror and stuck the needle through his earlobe; left earlobe, to balance the patch—a nice touch, he thought. Maybe this was a beauty parlor, after all. He inserted the hoop, fastened it, blotted up the few drops of blood on the shoulder of his T-shirt.

  “Learn something every day,” said the old guy.

  Pirate walked down Princess Street, came to the Pink Passion Club. A sign flashed: OPEN. And on a chalkboard: NOW DANCING—AURORA, MYSTIQUE, CHOCOLATE. There’d been an Aurora back in his bouncer days—she’d always had a smile for him. Was this possibly the same one? Interesting thought; but Pirate, now a man at peace, kept walking. A path of righteousness existed—no doubt about that—and women and booze weren’t on it.

  Pirate turned the corner onto Rideau Street. There were bars and clubs on Rideau Street—Boom-Boom, Lot 49, Screaming Meemy’s; and hey: the Red Rooster. Still looked the same: neon beer signs in the windows and a giant wooden red rooster looming over the door. That fund-raiser: a man in his position didn’t need fund-raisers; in fact, the idea annoyed him now. Pirate heard music. He opened the door and went in.

  He kind of remembered the place, or places like it: dark, with tables in the middle, all empty except for one up front with a lone woman, a bar along the side, no customers there either, and a band onstage: guitar, bass, drums, fiddle, Dobro. They stopped halfway through a song he didn’t know, started up again. Pirate noticed that they were all lounging around or sitting on stools, and was starting to wonder if this was a rehearsal, when a woman in a cowboy hat stepped out of the shadows and said, “Sorry, we’re closed.”

  “Rehearsal,” said Pirate.

  Her gaze slid over to the patch. “That’s right. We open at five.”

  “I’d like to see the manager,” Pirate said.

  “That’s me.”

  “Cancel the fund-raiser.”

  “I’m sor—” The manager raised her hands to her mouth. “Oh my God, are you Alvin DuPree?”

  Pirate nodded. Was this bad or good?
<
br />   “I recognize you from the paper.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re a celebrity,” said the manager. She held out her hand, another one of those tiny female hands, lost in his. “Did you say cancel the fund-raiser?”

  “Won’t be needin’ it,” said Pirate. Then he added: “But thanks and everything.” Celebrities had to be polite.

  “We were all looking forward to it,” the manager said. “Gearbox was going to play.”

  “Gearbox?”

  The manager tilted her pointy chin at the stage. They were playing something he knew, maybe “There Stands the Glass,” but very fast; and what was that in the guitarist’s hands? A Rickenbacker. He took a solo—a lean kid with a smooth face, almost like he hadn’t started shaving yet—and lost Pirate right away; he was real good.

  “That’s Joe Don on guitar,” the manager said. “Isn’t he something? You can listen in if you like.”

  “Yeah,” said Pirate. “I’d like.”

  “Sit anywhere,” she said, waving at the empty tables. “How about a drink? On the house.”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “A Coke, maybe? Club soda?”

  “Kahlúa on the rocks,” said Pirate.

  The manager blinked. “Kahlúa on the rocks it is.”

  Pirate sat at a table up front. “There Stands the Glass,” “More and More,” “Backstreet Affair,” but all speeded up, all different, plus songs he’d never heard, just rocking, with the Dobro player—a woman!—wailing away, and the boy on guitar, even better, driving the music higher and higher; they were great. But after a while, Pirate’s attention began wandering to the next table, where the only other spectator sat, a woman, young, possibly a teenager. Was she just about the most beautiful woman Pirate had ever seen, live, in magazines, on TV, anywhere? Yes. Everything about her, so fine: soft skin, clear green eyes, glowing hair, delicate features, all finely formed.