In short, exactly the same routine.
Henry fed pigeons on the boardwalk in Brighton Beach. He ate smoked fish and black bread, pierogies and hot borscht, and drank a little but not a lot of vodka. When not sitting on the boardwalk in an old man's coat with a fake cane, he lay around his rented room, watching television and sleeping. His next-door neighbor, a taxi driver from Azerbaijan, knew him as an out-of-work machinist who spoke a few words of Russian and had an interest in coins. He'd seen him go into Sammy's, the coin shop a few buildings down. It was good, thought the taxi driver, to have a hobby.
44
Henry stepped back and admired his work: two hexagonal warning signs, bright yellow with black lettering, one admonishing the reader to WEAR HARD HAT AT ALL TIMES, the other warning, EXPLOSIVES! USE OF TRANSISTOR RADIOS, WALKMANS, AND CELLULAR PHONES IS FORBIDDEN!
The signs were about four feet high, sunk in two cone-shaped concrete stands, and unusually thick, about six inches. Henry didn't think anybody would notice. He sat down in Sammy Avakian's cluttered storage lookup and smoked a cigarette, thinking.
Jimmy Pazz, watching House of Style in his trailer office, heard the whooshing sound first. He thought for a second it might be coming from the television and was irritably reaching for the remote when there was a loud thud, a jarring impact that rocked the whole trailer on its cinder-block foundation. Richie Tic looked up from his magazine in time to see the wall beginning to glow, something white hot coming through the paneling right next to the photograph of Connie Francis, spitting flame and sparks. He was opening his mouth to say something when whatever it was erupted into the room in a concussive fireball. Jimmy was on his feet in time to see Richie's upper torso bounce off the acoustic tile ceiling, his lower body, clothes smoking, crumpling to the floor.
Everything was on fire. Jimmy knew that. He could smell his own flesh singeing, and the blond Dynel wig - it was melting over his head, long, gooey strands of blond plastic running down his face like hot lava. Screaming like an impaled wolverine, Jimmy used his 320-pound bulk to smash through the office door and out of the burning trailer.
In the last few seconds of his life, Jimmy saw things with an unusual clarity. Through burning eyelashes and melting Dynel, he actually noticed the Calabrese Construction panel truck double-parked across the street, realized he'd never owned or even seen it before. The signs were new also, he noticed, one on each side of the entrance to the site, and he ran at them like goalposts, hoping to flop into the puddle of rainwater between them and put out the flames.
When the backs of the two signs erupted in unison, spraying hunks of irregularly shaped shrapnel through Jimmy from his knees to his collarbone and throwing him back onto the steps of the trailer, he had a half second of consciousness left - time to realize what had happened.
By the time the cops arrived, running from their observation post a block away, the van was gone and Jimmy looked like the smoldering remains of a shaved buffalo. The charred heap of flesh and smoking Dynel smelled unbelievably acrid.
When the fire department finished hosing down the trailer and went looking for Richie, they found his head and one shoulder wedged in an open desk drawer, strangely unburned; the rest of him was ashes.
The guys at ATF were called, and after sifting through the wreckage and arguing with the crime scene officers, the Fire Department Arson Team, and the medical examiner over who got what and what exactly constituted a body part, one agent in a blue nylon parka briefed some curious Fibbies from the strike force on his initial findings.
"Looks to me like somebody fired a fuckin' LAWS right up Jimmy's Hershey Highway," he said, grinning at the novelty. He walked over to the trailer steps, where two young men from the ME's office were trying to figure out how to get Jimmy Pazz's corpse onto a gurney and retraced the hapless capo's last steps.
"Jimmy comes runnin' outside, feelin' pretty uncomfortable already, I guess, and he gets a bellyful a' Claymores right about . . . here. That's an antipersonnel mine, in case you didn't know," he added.
"That's . . . like . . . military hardware," ventured one of the Fibbies. "What are you telling us? Jimmy piss off Abu Nidal? I mean, maybe you see this shit in Beirut . . ."
"Don't ask me." The ATF agent shrugged. "All I can tell you is this was real creative work. Whoever done this, I'd like to meet. I haven't seen anything like this since . . . since nineteen sixty-nine, and that was in fuckin' Vietnam. I like this guy. This guy is a pisser."
45
So the parrot . . . he comes outta the freezer," said Charlie Wagons, his whole body shaking with suppressed laughter. "And he says, 'Brrrrrr, brrrrr . . . I'll be good, I'll be good! I promise! Just tell me one thing, though. What did the turkey do? Ask for a blow job?'"
Henry laughed politely. Frances was not amused. "I don't like what she did to the parrot," she said, turning to pet the weimaraners. She'd heard the joke before anyway, from Captain Toby, who told it better. Toby got the parrot's voice just right. Charlie, struggling for breath between hits on a joint and long, noisy inhalations on his portable respirator, made the parrot's struggles too painful, too tragic.
Henry sipped his rum and gazed out over the water at the lights from Saint Martin, looking forward to going home. Charlie lived right on the beach now, and Henry could even see the headlights from cars over there, moving up and down the mountain roads. The weekly trips to Anguilla to see the increasingly dependent Charlie were becoming a burden, like visiting a tiresome grandmother, and Henry yearned to be back in their rooms at the Oyster Pond - holding Frances between clean hotel sheets, listening to the familiar chop-chop of the waves below their balcony, the New York City weather playing silently on the cable TV.
"Ya got any more a' this marahoochie you can leave with me?" asked Charlie, enjoying the last of the torpedo-size spliff. "Sidney Poitier back there - whatsisname? Agnes? Angus? - he won't get me none for love or money. Fuckin' creepin' Jeesus."
"Yeah, don't worry. We'll leave you a couple ounces. Enough to last you till next time," said Henry, keeping an eye on Frances, who had gone down the beach a few yards. "When are you gonna learn how to roll your own, though? I'm not gonna keep rolling 'em all up for you. If you want a pipe I'll get you a pipe. How about a nice big bong, Charlie? Would you like that?"
"Fuck that," said Charlie. "I can fuckin' roll. I been practicin'." He reached inside his robe and pulled out a perfectly ballistic one-paper joint, evenly packed and rolled like a nonfiltered Camel. "See?"
They sat on Charlie's porch for a while without saying anything, watching Frances play tug-of-war with the dogs. Charlie lit another joint and started complaining again about Angus, the owner of the small Anguillan guesthouse where he'd lived for the last months.
"He's a religious fanatic, the guy," he said. "Him an' the missus, and everybody else on this miserable fuckin' island. You should try listenin' to the radio down here, watchin' TV. Especially Sundays . . . Forget it. You got yer Jerry Fuckin' Falwell on one channel, Oral Roberts on the other. Change stations you got Jimmy Swaggart askin' for some more money so's he can go and get another hand job. They even got that fuck with the hair Benny, Benny somethin'. This prick - he blows on people. Blows that curry breath on people an' it's suppose' to be magic, 'cause their eyes roll up an' they fall onna ground, and the next thing, when they stand up, they ain't got that brain tumor no more. I'm tellin' you, every fuckin' station there's people cryin' or about to cry, askin' you to send money."
"What about the VCR?" asked Henry, growing annoyed. "Watch a fucking tape."
"I seen 'em all," complained Charlie. "I send Angus or Mrs Angus down the video store. I say, 'Get me somethin' good. Somethin' with a little excitement in it, some good car chases, some broads.' Whaddya think they bring back? Free Willy! I thought it was a fuck film . . . it's about some kid and his fish! I go fuckin' nuts!"
"Okay, okay. We'll bring you some tapes next time."
"Get me some good gangster movies. Ones I ain't seen. Jesus, Henry, you
know what I like."
Henry took another sip of rum and swept his hand reflexively over his head. The hair was growing back; it was already over his ears, tangled, sun bleached, and sticking up in spots like a Rastafarian's. It was grayer, though, and Henry, when he caught sight of himself in a mirror, thought he looked old. He was tan again - it had taken only a couple of weeks once he'd returned from New York, and it was nice, of course, to live without shoes or socks.
Frances's wounds had healed. Yes, there was a large, star-shaped scar over one breast, but her face looked fine, only a slight crescent of dead tissue over her right eye to remind of that night. They almost never talked about it.
"You gonna hog that whole joint?" she asked, back from the water's edge, the weimaraners trailing sleepily behind her. She snatched the joint out of Charlie's hand and took a hit. "Still pissing and moaning about Anguilla?"
"What do you think?" said Henry.
"You're becoming a real whiner," she said, sitting down in the sand and cracking a beer. "Read the paper today? I figured that would cheer you up."
"What? About Jerry Dogs? Yeah, ain't that a bitch! They say he's been in 'at trunk for two weeks. Can you imagine the stink? I guess . . . I guess he had a fallin' out with Paulie." Charlie sat up in his rattan armchair a little, warming to the subject. "Jerry was always a pain. And him and Jimmy was close. That was probably his problem. Paulie was smart havin' that guy clipped, believe me. I woulda done the same thing. You can't have people walkin' around harborin' bad feelings. It's bad for everybody."
"Good luck and God bless, that's what I say," said Henry. "Maybe we should send him a card. 'Congratulations on your new job.'"
"Paulie the Boss," said Charlie, shaking his head. " W e l l . . . see how he likes it."
One of the weimaraners came over and licked Charlie's hand. "Hello, Useless," said Charlie, leaning over to nuzzle the dog's face, kissing his nose. "Government dog. Half the fuckin' Dominican army lands on my house an' they run away - don't even bark." He scratched the dog's head while it looked up at him adoringly. The other weimaraner came over and plopped down under his chair. "Maybe they wasn't so dumb after all."
Frances, seeing Charlie getting sad again, came around behind him and began massaging the old man's neck. It didn't help. Charlie's shoulders started to shake, and tears came, running silently down his cheeks. He didn't bother to wipe them. No one said anything for a while. Charlie coughed and snuffled and took a sip of wine before settling back in his chair and closing his eyes. Frances took Henry's hand and led him to the water. They stood ankle deep in the gentle surf and wiggled their toes.
"You think he's sleeping?" asked Henry.
"Yeah. He does that a lot lately, drop off like that. He's old. Old people do that."
Henry put his arm around Frances's waist, and they stood there for a while, looking up at the sky, the bewildering array of stars, the horizon purple and orange around a fat, yellow moon, the silhouette of Saint Martin in the distance. A light breeze rustled the palm trees behind them, and Henry turned to look back at Charlie, sleeping in his chair, the dogs at his feet.
46
After a long day at the beach, they ate dinner at Talk of the Town, on the bay in Grand Case. It started to rain. The tin roof of the clapboard lolo was soon drumming with heavy raindrops, water leaking through in spots, so they had to move their chairs to a dark corner near the tiny kitchen.
The wind picked up, and on the street people ran for cover, huddling in doorways, suddenly crowding the Talk of the Town's makeshift bar, jabbering in loud patois, the rain louder now, making sounds on the roof like a machine gun.
An American couple hurried from their open jeep to take refuge in the smoky shack. The man, a rosy-cheeked retiree in white, and the wife, a pained-looking creature in a blue jacket and scarf, appeared lost. They stood frozen in the dark shelter, eyes adjusting, clearly looking for a friendly face to direct them back to their hotel.
"Ask them, honey," said the woman, seeing Henry and Frances in the corner. "They probably know," she whispered loudly.
The man gave Henry and Frances a careful look, measuring them against the sea of black faces pouring into the lolo's bar area. He took in the faded jump vests, the kaffiyehs worn around their waists like South Sea natives'. He saw how Frances was feeding chicken bones to a flea-ridden dog under the table, the animal's jaws making crunching sounds as he wolfed them down. He waited for one of them to talk, to look up at him, acknowledge a white man's presence in the room, but they didn't. They just sat there, drinking beer and eating chicken, saying nothing.
These were clearly not people you asked for directions back to the Great Bay Hotel and Casino. With their too-dark skin, bare, dirty feet, and ragged clothes, the way their teeth flashed eerily white when they opened their mouths to take a bite of chicken, their wild, tangled hair and somehow debauched expressions, he was not comfortable approaching them.
He turned to his wife, confident that the feral-looking couple in the corner would be of no help, and said, "No, honey . . . They aren't American. They don't speak English in here. C'mon. We'll ask at a gas station." He hurried his wife out the door as if the place was alive with anthrax spores, preferring the downpour to this cramped, frightening place at the end of the world.
When they were gone, Henry and Frances burst out laughing. Hearing them, the proprietor came out of the kitchen and asked if they wanted anything. Henry called for more beer.
"They aren't American," he said, mimicking the middle-aged tourist. "They don't speak English in here."
Frances, still smiling, leaned back against the stained plywood wall and put her head on Henry's shoulder. "I feel kind of good about that," she said. "I guess we've really gone bamboo."
"Yes," said Henry. "And we're never going back."
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Anthony Bourdain is the author of Kitchen Confidential and Bone in the Throat (New York Times Notable Book of the Year). He is the executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in New York City.
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