Nat looked at Julie. The boy was hugging himself. It took another few seconds for Nat to shame himself into providing this service for his son, and put his arm around the boy. Julie wore a too-tight short-sleeved button-down shirt patterned in black-and-white microcheck. His shoulder bone found a familiar notch in Nat’s inner elbow. His broomstick arm still had an infantile give. As soon as Nat touched him, the boy relaxed.
“He looks awesome,” Julie said.
“Yeah?”
“Totally.”
“Okay,” Nat said to Archy. “We do it open.”
Aviva showed up at a quarter to eleven, snaking a spot as it opened up for her, in front of the hearse parked outside of Brokeland Records.
Nat was hanging around on the sidewalk, trying to look like he was not waiting for her. But she knew how he looked, standing at a bus stop when it was raining and the bus was late. He was waiting.
When she pulled into the spot, he got into the car and closed the door. Kind of a bank-robber move, Aviva thought. A man in a hurry to get away.
“Doris Day spot,” he said.
“Totally. Anybody here yet?”
“Just the home team. And, of course, the corpse. The cadaver.”
An off note in his voice, a hollow thud of irony. Looking rumpled and disenchanted in his Belmondo suit. Not even a glance at her to see what she had chosen to wear to Mr. Jones’s wake or whatever this thing today was supposed to be. For the record, she had on a black Donna Karan pantsuit, bought at Crossroads, over a pearl-gray shell and a staid pair of walking sandals. All business for the business at hand, except for the scarf, which she had tied into a headband. A birthday gift one year from Mr. Jones, it had belonged to the late Fernanda. It was patterned with peaches and peach-tree leaves, and it was a fiery thing for a funeral. Nat really ought to have remarked on it.
“I went to Smart and Final. It’s all in the trunk.”
“Thank you.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” he said. Then he hid his face in his hands. That was as close to a breakdown as Nat ever got, the heroic attempt to confine his weeping to the region encompassed by his palms. It always slew her.
“Oh, baby, what is it?” she said. “Come here.”
She held him, ready to ride it out while he massaged his sadness, pushed it all back up into his face. During the first part of their marriage, Aviva would have encouraged him to go ahead and let himself cry. But Nat, she had finally learned, would not, possibly could not, let himself cry, and maybe it was not fair to try to make him all the time. Maybe it was better to leave the poor man alone.
So now Nat really shocked her as his hands fell away, like youthful illusions, to reveal a man in the grip of a full-fledged jag. Soft, damp, and almost grandmotherly in his sorrow, mooing dolefully. Shoulders shaking. And all for old Mr. Jones. Imagine that. After so many years of wishing and resignation, Aviva saw her husband dissolved in tears, and found that the sight, this soft crumbling of his castle, kind of irritated her. It was not Nat: a dweller at the poles, prone to transports of anger and tantrums of joy.
“I know how much you liked him,” Aviva said, taking some Kleenex from her purse. “I liked him, too.”
Nat blew his nose, took a deep breath, let it out. “I did,” he said. “I really did like him. But that isn’t—that’s not why—”
“Then what’s wrong? Nat, what happened?”
“I had a fight with Archy. We’re breaking up.”
“What?”
“He’s divorcing me. Because? He’s sick of all my fucking bullshit.” He gave another snort into the Kleenex, equal parts mucus and derision. “What the hell kind of reason is that?”
“He’s taking the Dogpile job?”
“I hope he is. I sure as fuck don’t want him around anymore.”
“Nat.” It was not that Archy wanted a divorce; Nat, she understood from his petulant tone, felt like he was being dumped. “Archy and Gwen are clearly going through some kind of a thing right now.”
“Yeah. It’s called real life.”
“You’re saying that until now Gwen Shanks and Archy Stallings have been living in a fantasy world.”
“I bet Gwen feels like she’s been living in a fantasy world. Black midwife and a million white mommies. Black people live their whole lives in a fantasy world, it’s just not their fantasy.”
“Uh-huh,” Aviva said, sensing with a migraine throb a session in Jaffean theoretics coming on. “So, okay, let’s talk about what you’re going to do.”
“What I’m going to do. Okay. Let’s. One thing? I don’t want to sell fucking used vinyl records anymore.”
“Nat.”
“I actually, you know, I actually hate records. No. Let me restate that: I hate music. All music. Yeah, I repudiate it. Fuck you, music! Music is Satan. We serve its hidden agenda. It’s like a virus from space, the Andromeda strain, propagating itself. We’re just vectors for the contagion. Music is the secret puppet master.”
“Nat.”
“Think about it, Aviva. Music actually has us to the point, we’re walking around with fucking pods, with buds in our ears. Nah, I’m out. I think I’m going to get into, like, I don’t know, cheesemongering. I’m going to monger cheese. You can help me. Forget birthing babies. Christ, we already have enough babies in the world. What we need more of is really good cheese. I mean, tell me, why should we have to go all the way up to North Berkeley, there, to go to the Cheese Board for the top-quality cheese product? Why shouldn’t Oakland have a cheese collective, too, you know, South Berkeley/Oakland? Wait, no, fuck cheese. Cheese is all about spores and, and, molds and all that shit. Maybe cheese is trying to colonize our brains, too. Cheese and music duking it out for control of the human nervous system.”
“Nat—”
Rap of a hand. They both jumped. Nat rolled down his window, and Julie was there, looking cute in his little-boy grown-up shirt, with Titus beside him just looking grown up. Two boys, chomping two big hunks of gum.
“Hey, Ms. Jaffe,” Titus said.
“What are you guys doing?” said Julie, making a quick study of the dishevelment of Nat’s face, hair, and suit. “What’s wrong with Dad?”
“What’s wrong? It’s a funeral, Julie,” Aviva said. “I want you and Titus to unload all that crap out of the back of the car. The ice, the sodas. Carry it in.”
Chomp, chomp.
“Okay,” Julie said eventually. “Come on, T.”
The boys went around to the Volvo’s hatch and threw it open. Aviva watched in the rearview mirror as Titus encircled four bags of ice with his long arms and hoisted them, his face showing only a faint tautness from the strain. Duly, Julie tied the ribbon of his arms around four bags and lurched, pitched forward like a man with a stomach cramp, away from the car.
“ ‘Come on, T,’ ” Nat said. “Fucking little poseur.”
She laughed, happy to see him irritable again. She let go of every part of him except for his hand, which she squeezed between both of hers until their wedding rings clinked like flint and steel or a pair of champagne flutes. “You’ll be all right?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“You know it’s all going to work out in the end?”
“No,” he said. “But I guess I can probably fake it.”
They got out. He grabbed two cases of Coke pony cans, and she grabbed a case of orange Jarritos, and they followed the boys into the store.
“Whoa,” Aviva said when she saw the body laid out in a casket pimped with brass like something from Jules Verne. On a flood tide of burgundy velour, the face of Mr. Jones bobbed like a hunk of driftwood worn smooth. The leisure suit gave way at its extremities to the devouring work of fire and vines. “Is that the famous Aztec number?”
“Its farewell appearance.”
“Hey, Aviva.”
She turned to Archy, standing by the food table, stuffed with partial success into an undertaker suit. She searched his face, legible as a baby’s, an
d saw only a mournful squint appropriate to the occasion. No sign of guilt or remorse over whatever had passed between him and Nat this morning. No hangdog skulk to his shoulders. She knew enough of his history with Gwen—in fact, she knew well more than enough—to know that regret might be days in making its appearance.
“You are looking fine, Aviva,” he said. “Wore Fernanda’s scarf, I see.”
“Thank you, Archy,” Aviva said.
Nat put a hand on her shoulder. She felt the weight of him transfer like a message. Without turning around, she knew that he was scowling at Archy, who bunched up his lips and rolled his eyes in an impatient way that confirmed her intuition.
“Sure you got enough fried chicken?” Aviva said.
Along the food table ran a sawtooth of fried-chicken mountains. Wreathed in clouds. Air tanks and Sherpas were required to reach its peaks.
“You’re kidding, right?” Nat said. “Wait, seriously, should I go get some more?”
They had brought the food in from Taco Sinaloa and from the Merritt bakery, Mr. Jones’s favorite places to eat. Endless llanos of green enchiladas and tamales, a Popocatépetl of al pastor. From Merritt, that high sierra of fried chicken. Aviva knew it pained Nat not to serve his own fried chicken at this of all parties, but Aviva had made him promise, like God postdiluvian, never to destroy the kitchen again.
“I’m kidding,” she said. “But I will mention, when black folks and Jews feed a crowd, you know many chickens will die.”
“I told Aviva how we’re closing down the store,” Nat said. “For good. Per your wishes.”
“You’re—closing—the store?” Julie said, the words emerging between grunts as he staggered past on his way to the drinks table with two cases of Martinelli’s.
“Never you mind,” Aviva said. “Archy, is it true? Did you take the job at Dogpile?”
“No,” Archy said. “I didn’t do anything, which I intend to keep on doing for as long as I can, at least until tomorrow. Nat’s just bugging out.”
Aviva grabbed hold of Nat by the elbow and turned him, boxing in his gaze with her own until he gave up and met it. “Nat, are you bugging out? If so, I need you to stop. For like the next four hours. No bugging, no tripping, no rapid cycling. You need Archy. And Archy needs you. Right, Archy?”
“From time to time,” Archy said.
“You have, what, fifty people about to show up, plus a dead guy.”
“More like a hundred,” Archy said.
“So man up,” she told her husband. “Maybe you won’t be partners after today, maybe you will. But today you definitely very much still are. And as partners, you have an obligation to stand up, to represent, for Mr. Jones.”
“That all sounds great, Aviva, and you’re such a grown-up, my hat is off to you,” Nat said. “But there’s a level underlying this thing between Archy and me that you can never hope, for all your wisdom and maturity, to understand. And that level is the one that’s all about vinyl.”
Aviva considered a number of possible replies, pointed, dismissive, sardonic. She held her tongue, because if it was about vinyl—and men like Archy and Nat would wage wars, found empires, lose their dignity and their fortunes for the sake of vinyl—then Nat was right. She would never understand.
“But I take your point,” Nat said. “And so I’m going to think of this as our last day, and live it accordingly, and do my best to honor the memory of Cochise Jones. All right? Just don’t expect me to speak to Archy.”
“He give you the silent treatment?” Aviva asked Archy.
“Might have. I didn’t notice.”
“He did,” Titus said. “Most definitely.”
Everyone turned to look at him. For Titus Joyner, in the presence of adults, it was a pretty long speech.
Gwen showed up almost twenty minutes late, working on fifteen hours of sleep in her very own bed, feeling like she had taken a powerful cortico-stimulant. Feeling dauntless, even when it turned out she could barely get in the front door. All kinds of people had come to represent for Mr. Jones. Neighborhood folks, hipsters, beefy and bearded record collectors. Kai and her bandmates, eighteen women all resplendent in leisure suits from Mr. Jones’s collection. The regulars, Moby, Mr. Mirchandani, Singletary. By the casket, Chan Flowers, arms folded, that James Brown shine on his big old hair, eyed the face of the dead man with a critical squint. Everybody standing, except for a few lucky folks right toward the front counter who had been granted the use of folding chairs.
Gwen’s gaze found Archy’s. He stood way at the back by the beaded curtain, towering mournfully over the buffet. Gwen did not linger on his sweet, sad, pouchy eyes. They had brought in some kind of platform and shone a light on the killer B-3. Nat stood beside it, arms folded, as though to restrain it from further acts of violence. He arched an eyebrow in greeting and then returned his attention to an unknown old white man standing on the far side of the organ, in front of the Leslie. In an indefinite European accent, the old man was speaking earnestly to the crowd, talking about Mr. Jones’s political beliefs, of which Gwen (like most people in the room) had been ignorant until now. Red, as it turned out, as Cochise himself.
Aviva’s jungly head scarf caught Gwen’s eye, in the row by the front counter. Aviva was one of the people in chairs. She raised a hand to Gwen: There was an empty seat beside her. Gwen would have to take it. She knew that Aviva was angry, and knowing that was enough to make Gwen angry, too. But she was too pregnant to stand.
As Gwen worked her way into the crowd like an icebreaker shouldering the floes, Aviva picked up her purse, which she had been using to save the seat for Gwen.
“Who is this guy?” Gwen whispered into Aviva’s ear when she sat down. Aviva’s hair had a bay leaf smell.
“He’s from, I guess a Marxist library down the street.”
Gwen had been unaware, as well, that Telegraph Avenue featured a Marxist library. She tried to imagine it as a place that would feel congenial to a man who not only dressed the way Mr. Jones dressed but also understood, according to the fluty-voiced old Marxist librarian, the interactions of base and superstructure, the way ultimately, class struggle underpinned all the racism in America.
“That the Aztec number?” Gwen whispered, grasping for the first time the splendor of the corpse.
Aviva nodded.
“Shh,” said the woman on the other side of Gwen. She was a freaky-looking old Cruella with a brindle shih tzu perched on her lap.
“Sorry,” Gwen said to the scary old lady.
“Me, too,” Aviva said to Gwen immediately, as if she had been holding that for Gwen’s arrival as well.
Gwen considered correcting Aviva’s misapprehension that she had apologized for what Aviva had called her “performance” in the hearing at Chimes. But some impulse restrained her. It was not a qualm—far from it. Maybe it was the soft, snowy mantle of sleep under which she had passed the previous night, but she felt more justified than ever in taking on those tools of the insurance companies, more justified at having thrown Archy out of the house so that she could at last get some rest. It was not the possibility that she might have been wrong, excessive, manipulative, over the top yesterday afternoon, which led Gwen to let stand the misapprehended apology. It was pure calculation, albeit buried deep: Let Aviva think she had been apologized to; it would make things easier later.
After the man from the Marxist library, there was a gap-toothed drummer who looked older than he probably was, a hundred and ten in dope years, and then Moby got up and told a story about how the first time he came into Brokeland Records, Mr. Jones had been sitting at the counter in his usual spot, rewarding his parrot, Fifty-Eight, with sunflower seeds from his jacket pocket, trying to teach him, with a deck of playing cards, to recognize the difference between the red and black suits. “ ‘This bird smarter than anybody you know,’ ” said Moby, quoting Mr. Jones too faithfully, maybe, laying on as usual with the Ebonics. “ ‘He don’t learn how to play poker, just mean I didn’t give him a adequa
te schooling.’ ”
Most of the room broke up into laughter. Gwen looked over at the organ to see how Nat was taking the lawyer’s routine. She knew how much he detested the way Moby slipped into his wannabe shtick. And he was really ill equipped for it, there was no denying that. If he were not so sweet and fat with that preposterous swoop-back haircut, Gwen might have taken a measure of offense at the way Moby talked, the style cobbled (with unquestionably sincere intentions of tribute) from the discarded materials of rap records, Grady Tate on Sanford and Son, a touch of Martin Lawrence, and then at the core, something really questionable, maybe Morgan Freeman as Easy Reader on The Electric Company. It sure bothered the hell out of Nat, though, look at him up there, turned around on the organ bench, working the pedals of his irritation, shooting his cuffs. If you were trying to pass as white, the thing was always to keep your distance from your darker relatives, but if you were a white guy living along the edge of blackness all your life, the worst thing was somebody around you trying to do the same.
Having concluded his remarks, Moby worked his way back to his seat, free throws made, pounding and dapping folks right and left.
“Thank you, Moby,” Nat said from the back. Everybody craned around to look at him. “You would not be so fond of that bird if you owed him as much money as I do.”
He meant it as a joke, and Aviva laughed, but it came out sounding angry, and if Gwen were a detective investigating the bird’s disappearance, she definitely would have brought Nat in for questioning.