“That was hardly enough time,” Ben told him.
“How long does it take to say thanks but no thanks . . . and I’m sorry my tactless husband didn’t handle this as well as he should have?”
Michael had hoped for a smile, but all he got was another question:
“And you’re sure that’s what I want to say?”
The uncharacteristic sarcasm in Ben’s tone stung Michael. He kept his gaze on the dome of the tent for fear of what he might find in Ben’s eyes.
“Tell me then,” he said calmly. “Tell me what you feel.”
“Now he asks,” said Ben, as if he were talking to someone else.
There was a loud gas-jet roar somewhere outside the tent. Michael recognized it as the octopus, shooting flames for the sheer, frivolous hell of it.
“You don’t want to have a baby with her, do you?”
Ben took a moment to answer. “Having a baby with her and giving her the chance to have one are two different things.”
“No, sweetie. They aren’t. She’s not going anywhere. She’ll still be a part of our lives. It will be your baby, no matter what kind of spin you put on it.”
“She doesn’t expect me to parent,” said Ben “Or you or anyone else. She’s been really clear about that.”
“Do you really want a baby around? Do you want that sort of life?”
Ben sighed. “There’s going to be a baby around no matter who fathers it. She wants to do this, and she’s a part of our lives. You said so yourself.”
“And you just said ‘fathers.’ ”
“What?”
“ ‘No matter who fathers it’ is what you just said. You would be that baby’s father, Ben. There’s no two ways about it.”
A long, brooding silence before Ben finally said, “Haven’t you ever thought about having a kid?”
He asked it so earnestly that Michael tried to answer accordingly.
“Not since I knew how it felt to be in love. That was all I wanted after that. That’s all I want now.”
Ben rolled on his side, his face golden in tent-filtered sun. “Seriously, you’ve never imagined it.”
“Oh . . . well . . . imagined it, sure. In my early teens. But it was just to give them cool names. I had a Zachary and an Atticus, as I recall. I had a Tallulah decades before Bruce and Demi thought of it.”
Ben gave him a drowsy smile. “Tallulah Tolliver? Really?”
Michael smiled back. “I know. If you say it fast enough, it becomes an al-Qaeda war cry.”
They had moved off topic, but Ben seemed as glad about that as Michael was. And Michael knew that Ben would commit to nothing, spermwise, unless Michael had agreed upon it. Such was the nature of their marriage.
“Let’s grab a snooze,” Ben said, taking Michael’s hand.
As he drifted into sleep, it occurred to Michael that Brian might be the only person who could talk some sense into Ben and Shawna. Her own father, after all, would understand how this arrangement would be a familial minefield. But Brian wasn’t here. He was somewhere north of here, holed up with his new bride in an air-conditioned RV, taking Mrs. Madrigal on a cryptic Trip to Bountiful.
Chapter 19
AS BOYS DO
It had been ten days since Andy last saw Lasko. School had let out for the summer, and Andy had stayed away from Eagle Drugs. He didn’t hate Lasko for what had happened that night in the Madrigals’ garage. He was just embarrassed for them both, and sad that his very first courtship (for that’s what it had been) had ended in ugliness. Lasko had wanted Andy—no doubt about that—but Lasko had wanted a boy, and Andy had not been up to it. Had Andy mustered the nerve that night to show Lasko his Wondrous Wisteria toenails—just unlaced his shoes and flat-out showed him—Lasko might have saved face, knowing he was more of a man than Andy, and the tragedy might have been averted. But Andy had kept the truth to himself, as boys do, leaving Lasko the rejected pansy, humiliated and broken.
Andy would not figure this out until many years later, when he was no longer in Winnemucca, no longer Andy. That summer his focus was on his own heartache. He would not give a moment’s thought to the fact that Lasko’s mother had watched him leave the garage. Nor would he think about Lasko’s volatile father or the reason for Lasko’s banishment. If he dwelled on anything from that night, it was Richard Halliburton’s Book of Marvels, which, in his haste to flee, he had left behind.
June was high season at the Blue Moon, so Margaret stayed busy in her cabinette. Andy missed her company. He went to several movies alone at the American—his favorite being Love Before Breakfast, with Irene Dunne—but they lacked the zest that came from hashing things over afterward with Margaret. At night he stayed in his room, curled up next to the Lux Radio Theater, sometimes in the dress, sometimes not. He had less reason to worry about Mama now that the house was busy and Gloria Watson was ensconced in some girl’s camp in Utah.
He felt so old that summer, older than he would ever feel again. His youth had grown decrepit, and there was nothing in sight to replace it, neither college nor marriage nor foreign travel nor work beyond some flunky job in town where they would still be calling him Mona’s boy. Missing college was the hardest part. They never talked about it, but Andy knew that Mama didn’t have near enough money to pay for a proper education. And even if she did, it was stashed away somewhere, a puny grubstake for her dreams of gold. That’s why Mama was all-fire set on Gloria or someone like her, someone who would take Andy off her hands for good.
Mama loved him—he knew that—but it wasn’t a useful love.
You cannot be loved by someone who doesn’t want to know you.
Delphine’s mother had died of influenza in Louisiana, so she’d taken the train to the funeral with Mama’s blessings—one of the reasons Margaret was working harder now. Delphine’s absence gave Mama a chance to paint her cabinette (or rather, have Andy paint it), since Delphine had made a mess of it doing some phony voodoo routine for a customer that involved, among other things, the sacrifice of a chicken. She’d been quick about it, she claimed, and the chicken had already been “condemned to dinner,” as Mama sometimes put it, but Mama had been infuriated, knowing that other customers might not take kindly to the bloodstains on the walls.
Andy had scrubbed those stains with a whole bottle of Lysol, only to be left with big brown continents on the cream-colored walls. So tonight, because it was hot and noisy in the house, he had gone to Delphine’s cabinette with a brush and a bucket of paint he’d bought that morning at Melarkey Hardware. He had chosen the color himself, the same shade of wisteria that secretly inhabited his socks. It was a good color, exotic but not flashy, and it would complement Delphine’s olive skin.
He painted by the light of Delphine’s ballerina lamp while listening to her Victrola. Sometimes his brushstrokes kept time with the music (right now it was Billie Holiday’s “Did I Remember?”), and he twirled to his heart’s content, knowing Margaret wasn’t there to warn him of the inherent dangers. It was delicious to be surrounded by this flagrant color, without apology or deceit. He sang along, when he knew the words, applying them to his own melancholy.
You were in my arms, and that was all I knew. We were alone, we two. What did I say to you? . . . Did I remember to tell you, I adore you . . .
He couldn’t remember the rest of that verse, but someone outside the cabinette finished it for him. Heroically basso. Just like in the movies.
. . . and I am livin’ for you alone!
The voice was unmistakable. It was as if he had somehow summoned it. He went to the door and peered through the little diamond-shaped window. Lasko was twenty feet away, a dark figure smoking a cigarette under the blue neon moon. Andy opened the door and stepped out. Lasko turned slowly to face him.
“What are you doing down here?”
“I live here, remember?”
“I mean, out h
ere in the fuck shacks.”
Andy hesitated. “I’m painting this one. Were you looking for me?”
“That’s a laugh!”
Another pause. “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings, Lasko. I didn’t mean to, because I like you . . . and I’m sorry if—”
“Well, I ain’t sorry. I got me some poontang tonight.”
Andy felt a terrible dread growing in his chest like a tumor, making his throat go dry. “You like Lady Day too, huh? You know the words.”
Lasko ignored his effort at diversion. “Papi told me the old one was the best. More grateful for the ol’ whanger, ya know.” He seized himself between the legs the way he had once seized Andy. “Her pussy’s loose, but she’s got some nice gams.”
“Shut your trap, Lasko.”
“What? I ain’t said nothin’ bad. I didn’t call her nympho or nothin’ . . . like some people do.”
Andy walked slowly toward him. He tried his best to sound calm. “You know who she is, don’t you?” It wasn’t so much a question as a revelation, spoken aloud, so he could actually believe it himself.
“Sure.” Lasko flicked his still-lit cigarette to the ground. “She’s got a reputation.”
“That’s not what I mean. She’s the friend who gave me the valise. You knew that, didn’t you, when you came? You remembered her name.”
Lasko snorted. “Wish I had me a prosty for a friend.”
Andy was so close now he could smell Lasko’s breath. “You stole from her, Lasko. That’s as low-down as it gets.”
Lasko gave him a curdled smile. “It’s not like she ain’t gettin’ her money back.” He grabbed himself again. “One night at a time.”
Andy’s hands shot out and seized Lasko’s shirtfront, curling it into his fists, yanking him closer.
“You stay away from her, you bastard!”
Lasko seemed too stunned to reply.
Andy shook him once, really hard, then shoved him away in disgust. Lasko stumbled backward, his knees finally buckling under him. His head hit the concrete base of the sign with a sound too soft not to be alarming. Andy saw blood on the side of his face, slick as the cover of a dime novel under the blue glare of the neon.
He’d had the last word. He must have cracked Lasko’s skull.
“Oh, God. . . . Lasko?”
Lasko didn’t answer, didn’t move. Andy could hear everything around him but Lasko: a car on the highway, a customer braying in the house, a dove cooing on top of Violet’s cabinette. Then, after an eternity, Lasko propped himself on an elbow and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to blot the side of his face. There was a long scrape there—a deep, ugly graze, but not as bad as Andy had feared.
“Let me help,” he said.
“Get away.”
“I just need to—”
“I’m warning you!”
Andy wondered if Lasko was about to lunge. All that pugilistic stuff, the fake fighting that he had found so endearing, could have held real fighting in its heart, a secret cruelty waiting to be unleashed. But Lasko just staggered to his feet, bloody handkerchief pressed to his head, and lurched toward the parking lot.
He was a fraud as a tough guy, a real impersonator. His cruelty was there all right, plain as day, but it was not contained in his fists.
Andy watched Lasko leave, watched until he climbed into a truck with MADRIGAL PLUMBING barely visible through the rust of the door. His father’s truck. Andy heard an anguished squeal from a woman in the front seat.
Hegazti? Had his sister been waiting for him?
The truck pulled slowly out of the lot, passing Andy and the neon moon. Lasko leaned out of the window, still holding the handkerchief to his head.
“You better stay upstairs. Cuz I’m comin’ back.”
“No, you’re not,” Andy said quietly.
“Next week. She wants me to.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“Ask her. She can’t get enough of me.”
Andy was quiet for a moment. “Margaret,” he said finally. “Her name is Margaret. You can’t even say her name.”
Lasko’s lip curled. “Pussy don’t need a name.”
The truck pulled away. Lasko shouted his exit line out the window.
“Abyssinia!”
In those days, there was a law in Nevada decreeing that prostitutes could not work in counties where members of their family resided. It was a sensible law, Anna thought, one that had no doubt prevented a lot of accidental heartbreak, not to mention a few multiple murders. Andy had been exempt, however. Margaret might have been more mother to him than his own mother, but, having no legal offspring or relatives of her own in Humboldt County, this wheat-haired angel who had read him the Winnie-the-Pooh books was free to hurt anyone she pleased.
He stopped at the door of her cabinette. After a moment’s hesitation, he entered without knocking. Margaret was standing there in her chenille bathrobe.
“Oh, lamb . . . you gave me a fright.” She laughed at herself merrily. “You don’t know what happened to my Lysol, do you?”
He didn’t hear the question. He smelled Lasko’s spunk, ripe in the air.
“That guy who was here—” he began.
“The Basque boy.”
“Yes.”
“He’s the one who hocked the valise. I lent it to him, and he hocked it.” His legs were trembling, so he clamped his hand on the doorjamb to make sure he could finish what he had to say. “He came here to get back at me . . . to hurt me.”
Margaret sat down on the edge of the bed, her knees pressed together, her face contorted in disbelieving empathy. “Why would he do that?”
Andy spoke directly to her summering Swedish eyes. “Because I wouldn’t be a boy with him.”
She blinked at him, uncomprehending.
“Because I wouldn’t do what boys do with each other in private.”
Margaret absorbed that for a moment, nodding slowly. “Oh . . . well . . . I guess that makes sense.”
“I liked him, but I couldn’t. I mean, I never . . . and I couldn’t. And now he thinks he has to prove he’s a man. He has to go out and get some . . . some . . .”
“Snatch,” said Margaret, nodding solemnly.
“Revenge.”
“Well . . . that too. Same difference.” She gave Andy a weary smile, then patted the bed, signaling him to sit down.
He remained standing. He could not let this be settled so easily. “Don’t you get it? I told him you’d given me the valise. He knew your name, so he came here and fucked you. That’s like fucking . . . I dunno . . . my mother or something.”
Margaret’s eyes went wide and watery. “Andy Ramsey, that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.” She found a hankie in the pocket of her bathrobe and dabbed at her eyes for a while. “Just the sweetest. Don’t go tellin’ Mother Mucca, though. It would hurt her feelings.”
“Who?”
Margaret nodded. “Ain’t that rich? Violet started calling her that. I’m doin’ it now myself. I ain’t takin’ her guff anymore.” She tucked the hankie away. “Listen, lamb, that boy may have it in for you—I don’t know—but his Papi placed the order with me personally. Said his son needed fixin’. Paid in advance, too. Plenty.”
Andy nodded. “Seventy-five dollars?”
Margaret drew back. “Now how in the blazes—”
Andy just glowered at her.
“That’s how much they got for the valise?”
“Bingo.”
Margaret’s shoulders were completely slumped, but she still managed to shrug them a little. “Oh well. What goes around comes around.”
Andy’s mind was elsewhere now. He was thinking about the plumbing truck in the parking lot, Hegazti waiting there, a reliable witness that Lasko had done the deed. The old man had been thorough. Fixing Las
ko had been a family affair.
“You can’t let him come back,” he said.
“Oh, sweetheart. . . . We’ve already taken their money.”
Their money.
“And he’s not such a bad kid.”
Andy couldn’t believe his ears. “You should hear how he talks about you!”
Another what-the-hell shrug from Margaret. “You should hear how they all talk about me.” She studied him and his pain. “If it makes you feel any better . . . he wasn’t havin’ a real swell time. He’s just like you, lamb. I’m sure of it.”
“He’s not just like me! He’s stupid and vindictive and childish.”
“Well, not in that way maybe, but—”
“How can you stand it, Margaret?”
“What?”
“Men. Night after night. Putting up with their meanness.”
She fiddled with the cord of her bathrobe. “I like ’em, I guess.”
“Well, I don’t. I want my friends to be women when I get outta here. Men don’t even know who they are. They’re such cowards.”
“I reckon that’s true,” said Margaret with a sigh of resignation.
Andy finally sat down next to her. “Just don’t see him again.” He could feel tears scalding his cheeks. “Couldn’t you do that?”
“Oh, lamb.” She reached over and squeezed his hand. “You won’t even know when it happens. And it won’t mean nothin’, you know that. This boy’s a lost soul, and . . . I got so much mothering in me. Just like I got for you. You understand?”
He understood all too well. Sex had never been Margaret’s only gift to the world. She had a vast, promiscuous kindness that had made him jealous, in small ways, even as a child. There had never been anything like this, though, nothing that had torn through his heart from the inside. She had let Lasko into the nest, and she wanted Andy to know it. He yanked his hand away from her, sprang to his feet.