by Trevanian
“No way!” says one of the boys. “Forget it!”
But the old man advances confidently. These kids may be modern and may speak English, but their blood is Greek, and he will win.
Three other members of the wedding party are now on the dance floor, their arms around one another’s shoulders, the outside two snapping then: fingers to the compelling tempo, and dipping with each third step. Too drunk to walk perfectly, they dance with balance, grace, and authority.
There is a friendly scuffle in the young men’s booth and one of them is pushed out onto the floor. With peevish reservation, he begins to snap his fingers mechanically, making it perfectly clear that this old-country shit is not for him. But the old man dances directly in front of him, looking him steadily in the eye and insisting silently on their common heritage. And when he puts his arm around the boy’s shoulders, the peevishness evaporates and he falls into step. After all, he is a man.
The tempo of the music increases relentlessly. The five link up. Two other old men join the end of the line, one of them brandishing an ouzo bottle in his free hand. It is two steps to the side, then a strong dip forward. Marie-Louise watches with fascination. She is surprised when she notices that LaPointe is clapping his hands in time with the music, then she sees that the men at the double table are clapping also. When she starts to rise to join the dancing, LaPointe shakes his head.
“It’s a men’s dance.”
“Oh, they won’t mind.”
He shrugs. Perhaps they won’t. After all, she is not a Greek girl. In fact, they part to make a place for her in the line, and from the first step she is native to the simple, inevitable dance. She adds to it a flair of her own, dipping very low and bowing her head almost to the floor, then whipping it back as she snaps up again.
With this the other three young men run out to join the dance.
When the music ends, there are yelps of joy and everyone applauds his own performance. Instantly another coin is in the machine. LaPointe is recognized, and an envoy of two old men come to invite him to join the larger table. He signals for a bottle of ouzo as his contribution and brings his glass along. The instant he sits down, the glass is filled to overflowing with ouzo. He had not finished the Armagnac, and the mixture is ugly, so he downs it quickly to be rid of it. And his glass is instantly filled again.
Because she is Greek, the barmaid does not join the dancing, but she sits at the common table between two old men, one of whom complains drunkenly that nobody let him finish the toast he had rehearsed all day long. The other occasionally slips his hand between her legs where the thick thighs touch. She laughs and rolls her eyes, sometimes slapping the hand away and sometimes giving it a hard squeeze with her thighs that makes the old man whoop with naughty pleasure.
After the fourth or fifth dance, Marie-Louise is exhausted, and she sits one out, pulling up a chair across from LaPointe, between one of the boys and an old man. The old man is very drunk and insists on telling her a very important story that he cannot quite remember. She listens and laughs, despite the fact that he speaks only Greek. LaPointe knows that the boy has his hand in her lap under the table. His extravagant nonchalance gives him away.
An hour and a half later, Marie-Louise is dancing with one of the boys, while one of the old men clings to LaPointe, his hand gripping the nape of his neck, and explains that all cops are bastards, except of course LaPointe, who is a good man… so good that he is almost Greek. Not quite, but almost.
By the end of the night, the table is awash with water that has condensed from the icy bottles, and with spilled ouzo.
When he finds the problem of getting his key into the lock both fascinating and amusing, LaPointe realizes that he is drunk for the first time in years. Drunk on ouzo. A sick drunk. Stupid.
It is hot in the room because he forgot to turn the fire off when they left. He does it now, while she slips through to the bathroom, humming one of the Greek songs and occasionally snapping her fingers.
“Did you have a good time?” she calls when he comes into the bedroom and sits heavily on the bed. She is on the toilet, with the door wide open, talking to him without embarrassment while she pisses.
She doesn’t wait for his answer. “I had a great time!” she says. “Best time of my life. I wish you could dance. Can we go there again?” As he tugs off his shoes, she wipes herself and stands up, shaking down her skirt as the toilet flushes.
LaPointe, drunk, is touched by the marital intimacy of it. It is as if they had been together for years. She must like me, he thinks. She must feel safe with me, if she doesn’t mind pissing in my presence.
Now he knows he is drunk. He laughs at himself. Come on, LaPointe! Is that an act of love? A gesture of confidence? Pissing in your presence? With sodden seriousness, he confirms that, yes, it is. How long was it after your marriage before Lucille lost her embarrassment with you? She didn’t even like to brush her teeth in your presence at first.
But… it could be something other than confidence, this pissing while chatting. It could be indifference.
Who cares?
Stupid, stupid. Drunk on ouzo. And you shouldn’t drink with that aneur… anor… whateverthehell it is!
She undresses quickly, leaving things where they fall, and slips under the covers. The sheets are cold and she shudders as her naked legs touch them. “Hurry up. Get into bed. Make me warm.”
He turns off the light before taking off his pants, then he gets in beside her. She clings to him, putting her leg over his for warmth. Soon their body heat warms the bed enough that one dares to move a leg to virgin parts of the sheet. She slips her knee between his legs and turns over, half upon him. The streetlight beneath the window makes her face visible in the dark. “What’s wrong?” she asks, running her hand over his chest. She laughs at him. “Hey, I’m not your daughter, after all.”
What? What put that into her head? What’s wrong with her?
They make love.
9
He wakes to dazzling sunlight streaming through the bedroom window, and to a heavy block of pain lodged behind his eyes. Ouzo.
The sunlight is unexpected after three weeks of leaden skies. It might mark the end of the pig weather, or it might be nothing more than one of those occasional wind shifts that bring diamond-hard winter cold for a few hours, like the night that Italian kid was found in the alley.
He puffs out a little breath and is not surprised to see it make a shallow cone of vapor. It will be sparkling and frigid out in the park. He slips out of bed, trying not to let cold air in to disturb Marie-Louise. When he bends forward to fish around for his slippers, he discovers the clot of ouzo pain behind his eyes is loose and jagged-edged. One eye closes involuntarily with the ache of it.
He pads into the living room muttering to himself: an ouzo hangover. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Giddiness overwhelms him briefly as he stoops down to light the gas fire The last time he had a hangover like this was from drinking caribou, that most lethal of all liquids, with an old friend from Trois Rivieres. But that was years and years ago.
As the bathtub fills, he cups his hands and drinks tap water from the sink. So desiccated is he that the water seems never to reach his stomach, being absorbed by parched tissue on its way down. He almost gags trying to swallow several aspirin with water from cupped hands. In the tub, his eyes closed, he sits a long time with steam rising all about him. The water and the heat and the aspirin combine to melt some of the ouzo out of his system; the nausea retreats, but the headache persists. Why did he drink so much? Why did he want to get drunk? He thinks about the love he and Marie-Louise made last night. It was good, and very gentle, particularly that long time he held her, between lovemakings. He believes it was good for her too. She wouldn’t have faked all that. Why should she?
He did not shave last night before bed, as is his custom, but he doesn’t dare try just now. He would probably cut his throat with the straight razor, shaky as he is.
While he makes coffee, he suddenly
feels guilty about Marie-Louise. My God. If he feels this bad, what will she feel like? Poor kid.
The poor kid chatters with animation as she sits on the sofa, curled up in Lucille’s pink robe. He answers in monosyllables, turning his head to look at her; it hurts when he moves his eyes.
“What was that licorice stuff we drank?” she asks. “It was good.”
“Ouzo,” he mutters.
“What?”
“Ouzo!”
“Hey, what’s wrong? Are you mad about something?”
“No.”
“You’re sure you’re not mad? I mean, you seem…”
“I’m fine.”
“Say… you’re not sick, are you?”
“Sick? Me?” He manages a chuckle.
“I just thought… I mean, you told me to watch out for that… what’s it called again?”
“Ou-zo. Look, I’m fine. Just a little tired.”
She looks at him sideways with a childish leer. “I don’t blame you. You have a right to feel tired.”
He smiles wanly. He cannot quite forgive her for being so healthy and buoyant, but she does look pretty with the sunlight in her hair like that.
She goes into the bedroom to find her hairbrush. When she returns, she is humming one of the Greek songs, doing a little sliding step and dipping down, then snapping her head up on the rise. One of his eyes closes involuntarily with the snap of her head. She plunks down on the sofa and begins to brush her hair. “Hey, we’ll have to go out for breakfast. I told you that I didn’t buy any groceries. I spent all the money on clothes. Where will we go?”
“I’m not particularly hungry; are you?”
“Hm-m! I could eat a horse! And look what a beautiful day it is!”
The glitter of the park stings his eyes. But yes, it is a beautiful day. Perhaps a walk in the cold air would help.
With few places open on a Sunday morning, they take breakfast in one of the variete shops common to this quartier, although slowly disappearing with the invasion of large cut-rate establishments. Such shops sell oddments and orts: candy, bagels, teddy bears, Chap Stick, ginger ale, jigsaw puzzles, aspirin, newspapers, cigarettes, contraceptives, kites, everything but what you need at any given moment. Its window is piled with dusty, fly-specked articles that are never sold and never rearranged. In the jumble, knitted snow caps and suntan lotion rest side by side, one or the other always out of season, except in spring, when they both are.
The proprietor moves a stack of newspapers to the floor to make room for them at the short, cracked marble counter. He has a reputation in the district for being a “type,” and he works at maintaining it. Although his counter service is usually limited to stale, thick coffee in the winter and soft drinks in summer, he can accommodate light orders, if he happens to have cheese or eggs in the refrigerator of his living space behind the shop. They ask for eggs, toast, and coffee, which the proprietor fixes up on his stove in the back room, all the while singing to himself and maintaining an animated conversation in English, his voice raised, from the other room.
“Is it sunny enough for you, Lieutenant? But I’d bet you a million bucks it won’t last. If it don’t snow tonight, then tomorrow will be the same as yesterday—shitbrindle clouds and no sun.” He sticks his head out through the curtain. “Sorry, lady.” He disappears back and calls, “Hey, do you want these sunny side up?
Keep your sunny side up, up…
Hey, you remember that one, Lieutenant? Oh-oh! I broke one. How about having them scrambled? They’re better for you that way, anyway. Egg whites ain’t good for your heart. I read that somewhere.
My heart is a hobo,
Loves to go out berry picking,
Hates to hear alarm clocks ticking.
You’ve got to remember that one, Lieutenant. Bing Crosby.” He comes from the back room, carefully balancing two plates, which he sets down on the cracked counter. “There you go! Two orders of scrambled. Enjoy. Yeah, Bing Crosby sang that in one of his films. I think he was a priest. Say, do you remember Bobby Breen, Lieutenant?
There’s a rainbow on the river…
That was a great movie. He sang that sitting on a hay wagon. You know, that ain’t easy, singing while you’re on a hay wagon. Yeah, Bobby Breen and Shirley Temple. Wonder whatever became of Shirley Temple. They don’t make movies like that any more. All this violence shit. Sorry, lady. Hey! You don’t have any forks! No wonder you ain’t eating. Here! Geez! I’d forget my ass if it wasn’t tied on. Sorry, lady. Here’s your coffee. Hey, did you read this morning about that guy getting stabbed in an alley just off the Main? How about that? It’s getting so you can’t take a walk around the block anymore without getting stabbed by some son of a bitch. Sorry, lady. Things ain’t what they used to be. Right, Lieutenant? And the prices these days!
The moon belongs to everyone
The best things in life are free…
Don’t you believe it! What can you get free these days? Advice. Cancer maybe. It’s a miracle a man can stay in business with the prices. Everybody out to fuck his neighbor… oh, lady, I am sorry! Geez, I’m really sorry.”
As they walk slowly along a gravel path through the park, her hand in the crook of his arm, she asks, “What was that mec jabbering about?”
“Oh, nothing. It never occurred to him that you don’t speak English.”
The crisp air has cleared LaPointe’s headache away, and the little food has settled his stomach. The thin wintery sunshine warms the back of his coat pleasantly, but he can feel a sudden ten— or fifteen-degree drop in temperature when he steps into a shadow. The touch of this sun, dazzling but insubstantial, reminds him of whiter mornings on his grandparents’ farm, the soil of which was so rocky and poor that the family joke said the only things that grew there were potholes, which one could split into quarters and sell to the big farmers to be driven into the ground as post holes. All the LaPointes, aunts, cousins, in-laws, came to the farm for Christmas. And there were a lot of LaPointes, because they were Catholic and part Indian, and you can’t lock the door of a teepee. The children slept three or four to a bed, and sometimes the smaller ones were put across the bottom to fit more in. Claude LaPointe and his cousins fought and played games and pinched under the covers, but if anyone cried out with joy or pain, then the parents would stop their pinochle games downstairs and shout up that someone was going to get his ass smacked if he didn’t cut it out and go to sleep! And all the kids held their breath and tried not to laugh, and they all sputtered out at once. One of the cousins thought it was funny to spit into the air through a gap in his teeth, and when the others hid under the blankets, he would fart.
On Christmas morning they were allowed into the parlor, musty-smelling but very clean because it was kept closed, except for Sundays, or when the priest visited, or when someone had died and was laid out in a casket supported on two saw horses hidden under a big white silk sheet rented from the undertaker.
The parlor was open, too, for Christmas. Kids opening presents on the floor. Christmas tree weeping needles onto a sheet. A pallid winter sun coming in the window, its beam capturing floating motes of dust.
The smell of mustiness in the parlor… and the heavy, sickening smell of flowers. And Grandpapa. Grandpapa…
Whenever a random image or sound on the Main triggers his memory in such a way as to carry him back to his grandfather, he always pulls himself back from the brink, away from dangerous memories. Of all the family, he had loved Grandpapa most… needed him most. But he had not been able to kiss him goodbye. He had not even been able to cry.
“…still mad?”
“What?” LaPointe asks, surfacing from reverie. They have rounded the park and are approaching the gate across from his apartment.
“Are you still mad?” Marie-Louise asks again. “You haven’t said a word.”
“No,” he laughs. “I’m not mad. Just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Nothing. About being a kid. About my grandfather.”
“Your grandfather! Tabernouche!”
That is a coincidence. He hasn’t heard anyone but himself use that old-fashioned expletive since the death of his mother. “You think I’m too old to have grandparents?”
“Everyone has grandparents. But, my God, they must have been dead for ages.”
“Yes. For ages. You know something? I wasn’t mad at you this morning. I was sick.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
She considers this for a while. “That’s funny.”
“I suppose so.”
“Hey, what do you want to do? Let’s go somewhere, do something. Okay?”
“I don’t really feel like going anywhere.”
“Oh? What do you usually do on Sundays?”
“When I’m not working, I sit around in the apartment. Read. Listen to music on the radio. Cook supper for myself. Does that sound dull?”
She shrugs and hums a descending note that means: yes, sort of. Then she squeezes his arm. “I know why you’re leading me back to the apartment. You didn’t get enough last night, did you?”
He frowns. He wishes she wouldn’t talk like a bar slut. He can hardly direct her to the apartment after she has said something like that, so they leave the park and stroll through back streets between Esplanade and the Main. This day of sunshine after weeks of pig weather has brought out the old people and the babies, making it seem almost like summer. In winter, the population of the Main seems to contract at its extremities; the old and the very young stay indoors. But in summer, there are babies in prams, or toddlers in harnesses, their leashes tied to stoop railings, while old, frail-chested men in panama hats walk carefully from porch to porch. And on the Main merchants stand in their open doorways, occasionally stepping out onto the sidewalk and looking up and down the street wistfully, wondering where all the shoppers could be on such a fine day. If one stops and looks in the window, the owner will silently appear beside him, seeming to examine the merchandise with admiration, then he will drift toward the door, as though the magnetism of his body can draw the customer after him.
