Reptile House Read online

  Gustavo pushed open the double doors with his narrow backside. He twisted himself and the stack around him. He disappeared inside the light of the kitchen.

  William slapped the table. “Have what you want then.” The waiter stood by.

  “I think we need four,” said Helene.

  “Four is absurd,” said William. He slapped the table.

  “I want the Black Russian,” said Michael to the waiter.

  “We know what you want,” said William.

  “I’m talking to him,” said Michael of the waiter. “Black Russian, Black Russian, Black Russian.” Gustavo pushed silently through the double doors. His tray was empty again. He stood surveying the tables.

  William held his head. Gustavo swept a dollar bill from a table while the waiter was distracted. Tweedy began to clap. “Bravo! Bravo!”

  Helene said, “Perhaps the pecan tart.”

  “My God,” said William.

  “Art Beeker liked pecan pie,” said Michael.

  “The man is dead,” said William, standing.

  “And we will have the chocolate gateau as well,” said Helene.

  “I won’t eat a bite of it,” said William. “Not one bite.”

  “Do as you must,” said Helene.

  Art Beeker had been a fair card player at the Club and he did not like dessert at all. Tweedy remembered this distinctly. Otherwise, Art was unmemorable, a fading man.

  Helene ordered the pecan tart and the scoop of vanilla. The waiter asked Tweedy last, after a hiccup. She said, “I think I’ll try the powder room again,” and stood and ordered three vanillas with mint as she went. In the powder room Tweedy dug in her turquoise handbag. She wrote the note with lipstick on an envelope. Punctuation and style were simple and the envelope was old, flat and clean from a remote zippered pocket rarely opened. It had been waiting there blind to its future. At the table Tweedy ate the ice cream slowly, never with such pleasure. She tried each of three spoons laid out by her busboy. She drank long drinks of water between. She pulled the ice cream off the spoons to the ends of her lips. They turned white and cold. She could not come close to finishing. She offered to share half-heartedly. She licked her lips and a finger. She hiccuped.

  Helene set the car keys by William’s plate. Gustavo cleared the plates around them. Then the check came.

  “Fifteen percent, no more,” William said. “This waiter was only average.”

  “In Europe a tip’s an insult,” Michael said. “They’d throw you in the back alley for fifteen percent.”

  “Twenty is a minimum,” said Helene, on and on, so they never saw the handoff from Tweedy to busboy: the tray, the envelope, the lipstick words, and the turquoise keychain, which the busboy stuffed down the front of his pants. He already looked older.

  “My spare set,” Tweedy whispered. “Follow me. Make it look convincing.”

  The table was soon cleared.

  Soon, in the alley, Gustavo with the envelope stood smoking. He was not usually one to smoke, but he puffed. The brick was hard on his shoulder. Busboy was only his first career. He read the lipstick words again.

  “Take the Car . . . ,” said the envelope.

  He watched the party of four under the awning, which was blue and white with lights on the skirting. The party parted, one couple walking one way and the other the other. Gustavo puffed. The chill shivered his skin, how surprising after the ovens and candles, the night of sweat and running. Michael and Helene stood beside the parking meter. They pecked, then Helene clicked away down the street.

  “. . . Take the Girl,” the envelope continued.

  Gustavo watched William find his keys and slip one in the door of the long creamy car in front of the deli. William opened the door for Tweedy then walked around the car and dropped into it. The car pulled out. The headlights slashed the bumpers and tires parked along the street and the glass in the storefronts. Gustavo rubbed the stub out on brick. Gustavo threw the stub on the dirt where it smoked long after he’d slipped in behind the wheel of his old Dodge Dart parked in the alley and followed the long creamy car.

  The car made a few stops on the way home. The Dart pulled over and waited. Gustavo was not usually the type for rereading, for following strangers, for waiting outside on curbs and lighting another, but there was pleasure in all this new. He reread the envelope. All of it.

  “Take the Car. Take the Girl. For a Good Life if you can,” it said.

  At the liquor store William walked in then walked out with a bag. At the drugstore Tweedy walked in. A horse and buggy trotted past from the Bavarian Hotel on the corner. Gustavo had seen these horses hundreds of times but had never seen the mist made with their noses. How the buggy driver tapped their swaying hips with the crop, which was small and thin, just for show with horses so well-trained and obedient. Tweedy walked out of the drugstore with a bag. She stood under the awning. She watched the horses and listened to the clop of their shoes. When she saw the Dart across the street, she waved. The long creamy car pulled out and the Dart followed it.

  Their home was seven turns away and had brick pillars in front and a hedge. The car turned in. No dogs came running, a good sign. The door opened to the light and then the door shut and the light went out. The Dart parked behind the hedge by the last pillar. Gustavo shuffled papers in his glove box, then the Dart pulled away.

  Rivers are convincing in movies, he knew. Gustavo drove to the river. He took the frontage road that was tilted and ridged. He parked the Dart on the river’s edge next to old bridge pilings. The front tire rolled in and submerged. His shoes got wet climbing out.

  The new bridge was lit up upstream. The headlights passed across and back. They lit up the river waves, the dots and dashes. He unscrewed the license plates with a screwdriver from the tool kit in the trunk.

  “OK,” he said.

  He found a triangle of glass in the sand, since sand and glass are convincing too as are blood and skin. He jabbed his arm with the glass in a hairless muscle, but the blood was meager. He cut over his eyebrow in the rearview mirror for more, a thin clean line, always a gusher according to movies and slap shots on the hockey pond as a boy when winter and blood were as entirely real as gangsters, as hurricanes, as gold and silver mines at the end of caves and no girls at all.

  Fresh blood in the eye. He smeared the driver’s seat with it, a credible crime scene. He had always wanted one. And blood on the inside of the door, which they would dust for prints, and the steering wheel, which his ex-girlfriend would cry over if they even let her through the cordoned area. Most likely not. She was not immediate family. She’d been such a bitch at prom. That chess team captain with the big teeth. Envelopes need not be obeyed to the letter. One must use judgment, exercise freedom. He wiped his face on his sleeve. They would never look for him.

  Gustavo scuffled with himself in the sand. From the marks the police would call it “an unsolved mugging”. He bashed the perfect old hood with a head-sized stone for extra credibility. He was sorry for the Dart, his grandmama’s, which refused reverse and always would now. He stuffed his tips in his pocket. He threw the wallet with the license in the driver’s seat, then rolled up the windows. He pushed the Dart further into the river, which was heavy and pushy. The waves sloshed over the windshield. He threw the triangle glass and stone in the river. The splashes disappeared. He walked out as far as he dared. He cleaned himself of the busboy.

  Gustavo lifted the tool kit from the trunk. A Christmas gift from his father. He had really never used the tool kit, never held each tool in his hand and thought of potentials of wrenches and blades. He lifted out the gas can, water jug, and the little suitcase he always kept ready in case of sudden opportunity. He stopped to think. Mistakes are so easy and well-disguised. He leaned on the trunk. At critical times especially. He put the license plates in the little suitcase. He sat in the sand and stones and watched the cars on the new bridge. He listened to the water flow past him toward bigger rivers.

  The little suitcase had
a handle and wheels. He rolled it over the sand until he noticed the tracks the wheels were making. He carried the suitcase the rest of the way to the frontage road pavement, then went back to wipe the tracks away with his coat. He would wash the coat somewhere new, in some big-mouthed machine with washing instructions in a foreign language. He rolled the suitcase on the frontage road. He carried it when cutting through yards and parks. It was not heavy at all. The coat was tied around his waist. The neighborhood dogs barked on the end of their chains, collars tightening around the necks, as he slid past their backyards and back porches. His feet hurt.

  At the car, he dug in his briefs for her turquoise keychain. The key turned in the lock like lemon meringue. He slid across the long creamy seat. He checked the glove box, which contained a man’s wallet filled with bills, some cookies in foil (cream custard-filled and ginger thins), and some assorted jewelry. He let the car roll backward. The driveway had just enough downward slope, not too fast or slow. His foot swung out the open door. His foot pushed the asphalt out to sea. His fingers crushed the envelope. He steered with his elbow. It was a heavy car, full of gas, and rolled well. It would sell for a bundle: Texas or Mexico. The Panama Canal. The moon was white. The car backed into the darkened street.

  Everyone was sleeping.

  No one to thank.

  He unwrapped the foil. He wiped his mouth on his damp sleeve, swept the crumbs out the open door, pushed the car down the street, one hand on the wheel and one on the door frame, careful of the hinges, slow and peaceful under big heavy trees. He thanked the branches and leaves lit in elegant street lamps. He gave a thumbs-up to them.

  At a safe distance, past the pillars and hedges, he pulled the door shut. The engine started like a maiden voyage. The headlights were excellent. The car was warm and comfortable, smelled nice like the powder room, and was big enough to sleep in.

  Canada. Bolivia.

  “OK. OK.”

  He screwed on his old plates at an abandoned farm stand. He crunched last year’s kernels underfoot, soggy from recent heavy rains, sprouting pale thin legs in mud. He changed to high tops. He kicked a dried apple in the ditch. He set the envelope on the dash. He was not usually one for maps, for lines on paper claiming to lead somewhere.

  The car pulled out south and ran well over the county line.

  The Amazing Discovery and Natural History of Carlsbad Caverns

  That was Mike hanging on the brass chandelier. He was Tarzan with a crew cut and farm boy grin, swinging upside down. Hilarious. Mel could get Mike to do anything.

  The women were laughing their heads off at Mike, mostly South of the Border girls, in their reds, blues, and pinks. They pointed pretty painted fingers up at him. Smiled with big teeth and red lips. The men were laughing their heads off too, clean, starched, tall and white, taller by a head than the local girls. The men were shipped in from their Chicagos, Maines, and Pasadenas to Fort Bliss to be trained up and ready, waiting to ship out.

  It was too tight and warm in the Bombardier. The men dabbed their brows with handkerchiefs someone had stitched for them on some back porch. Those who had mislaid their hankies wiped sweat with the back of bare thick arms, or the tail of a damp shirt, or licked the upper lip and swallowed with a chaser. Hot as Hades sure, but if a big black hand had flown in from downtown Hong Kong or Taiwan or Ching Chong to pry at the rafters with black hairy fingers, had pulled off the roof purlin by purlin, had let in some air, then things might have been different.

  Mike poured beer on the crowd. The crowd laughed and twirled. Mike twirled his trousers like a lasso. Mel blew a kiss at Mike and handed him up another, which Mike poured on the crowd, which laughed more and leaned and so on. It was a wonderful night. Mike’s chandelier will hang there for three decades more, until the Bombardier burns down. The girls will marry and have children by other men than these, and one of the children’s children will fly to Mars on the first manned mission. At the launch, this grandmother, stone-blind by then, in her lilac suit, rose in hair, Bible in hand as the rocket glides out of earshot, will picture this night perfectly. Will sit down on the bleachers and rub her neck.

  Mel was from McAllen, so was used to the heat. A boy was walking in the crowd with a pretty pistol on a yellow velvet pillow and was talking español. He wore a sombrero. The pistol grip was mother-of-pearl, a beauty, made for a female or a duel, someone said. Mel ended up with the sombrero too.

  Someone called, “Enough hanky-panky. Let’s get back to Base.”

  Someone else yelled, “Reveille’s at six.” One man whistled at his pals and the pals herded up. They laughed at something someone said. Mike swung down with one arm. He scratched his armpit and howled.

  “What a card,” someone said as the men moved to the street. They rubbed their arms in the chill. The Border was like that, hot after dark until it was suddenly cold. Someone called a cab.

  In the street, Mike hopped into his pants. He zipped up, “Where’s my goddamn belt?” But the belt was gone forever, kicked under the bar by a girl’s pink heel, never to be discovered by anyone ever, although a long-handled broom will almost grab it next Easter. The belt will burn up, even the brass buckle, with the rest of the Bombardier in the Heroes Day Fire that will take the whole block to the river.

  For now, Mike bunched his pants with one hand. He stood on the curb and cracked the seal of a bottle and drank. The sombrero was huge on Mel’s head and Mike said, “I like that hat. I sure do like it.”

  Others agreed, nodded. Time passed, a few minutes, a quarter hour, a cab came and took some men, another cab came, so on.

  The sombrero had red balls around the rim like a toy. They swung in unison and glowed when any car drove by.

  “Let me try it,” said Mike.

  “Get back,” said Mel, and he slapped his friend’s hand, but nice. The sombrero looked like a crown in the headlights. The city was dim and the dwindled crowd smoked on the street. Nearby the river flowed dry and someone said, “Does it ever rain?”

  “Godforsaken desert,” said someone else.

  The rooftops were flat and poor. Flags and clouds strayed in the small breeze and drooped. The moon was up but hidden. It haloed the corniced peak of El Banco. The men leaned on brick and saluted with bottles when three jets roared over, banked, then disappeared north to home and hangar.

  “Let me try it on,” said Mike.

  “You always want what I got,” said Mel, but he let Mike try the hat. The crowd laughed at Mike. They passed a bottle, then Mike set the hat back on Mel’s head. Happiness is so small a thing, and they had it on the street for a while, just like that, happiness. Mike stumbled into Mel, who had grabbed a girl in an orange dress who had just come out the door. They all three swayed together for a turn, like waltzing, until Mel shoved the girl to an electric pole for a kiss. Her arms went crazy. She screeched like a cat and the sombrero fell.

  “My nose!” said Mel. She’d made a direct hit to the bridge of it. “Son of a bitch!” said Mel with his face to the wall, his hands were up like praying since his nose was bleeding like crazy.

  The girl went running and it was Mike who made chase. “I’ll get her,” Mike said, clutching his pants, but she was faster than one might guess. The crowd was excited. Mel watched between bloody fingers and they hooted and whistled at her big bottom swinging. “Will you listen to those shoes,” someone said. “Like hooves clomping, clickity, click clack!” someone said. The girl hurdled a small fallen tree.

  When a cab turned the corner, Mel whistled and Mike ran back.

  “My dad would have a cow over that tree,” said Mike trotting up.

  “I’ll see that cow in the future,” said Mel to the corner where the girl in the orange dress had turned. Mel and Mike slid in the backseat of the cab, Mike behind the cabbie. The nameplate on the dash said “Richard” but with no picture. It was any ordinary cab.

  “To Fort Bliss, amigo,” said Mike to the cabbie. “Mucho dinero for you.”

  “Don’t you have any h
eat in this rig?” said Mel. “I’m freezing.” He adjusted the sombrero, which blocked the rearview when he tipped his head. He licked blood from his lip. His nose was turning blue and swelling.

  “Heat’s busted,” said the cabbie, then the cab pulled from the curb and sped north.

  “My dad will be milking soon,” said Mike. The street was closing up. Men and girls walked in couples and threes. “My mother’s a poor milker.”

  “Who’d want to milk a cow?” said Mel.

  “It’s more pleasant than you’d think,” said Mike. “Restful and gives you time for thinking.”

  “Who’d want to milk a cow?” said Mel. He dabbed his nose on his cuff.

  “You OK?” asked the cabbie. “You need a hospital? I can take you there.”

  “My friend had a run in with a she-wolf,” said Mike.

  “A rabid bovine,” said Mel.

  “Looks more like Joe Louis got him,” said the cabbie. “Or my mother-in-law.”

  “Ha ha ha, a joker,” said Mike. “Mel, how do you like this guy?” He smacked the cabbie’s shoulder. He drank from the bottle, and drank again.

  “Take a left,” Mel said.

  The cab swerved around the fallen tree and turned. A block up, the girl in the orange dress stood under an awning, bent over, hands on her face.