Some portion of the poignancy that is seizing you may be attributed to the fact that your bladder is brimming. You hadnt wished to go to the bathroom at the same time as Larry Diamond, lest he perceive-and celebrate-a repulsive intimacy in the synchronized discharge of wastes. But you can delay no longer. Passing the bar as unobtrusively as possible, you steal a look at the TV screen. What your colleagues are watching, it turns out, is a Latino horror movie about a vampire mariachi band. No wonder there is an excess of green and red. When these musicians stroll through the plazas of nighttime Tijuana, they give a whole new dimension to Besame Mucho.
NINE OH-EIGHT P.M.
There is an electrical problem in the womens room. It is as black as outer space in there, and the light switch flips up and down uselessly, like the lips of the President. Oh, well, pity the woman who cannot pee in the dark. Having grown up in a household where the power was routinely shut off due to nonpayment, you are practiced in the art of locating toilet seats by touch and feel. Once the target has been locked in, the compact urinary jet of the female, unlike the helter-skelter garden hose of its male counterpart, can fire with almost pinpoint precision.
It is appropriate, you are forced to admit, to be sitting in literal darkness since, after all, you have been in the figurative dark for about three days. Were it not for its overtones of outsider ignorance (it is the masses who usually are left in the dark), a certain cheery comfort might be derived from the blackout. Darkness can protect as well as threaten. Of course, there is a limit to how long you can enjoy asylum in the ladies room. And when at last you leave, you must take a decision with you-not that there is really much to decide. Or is there?
When the last note of water music has subsided, you dab your little valve with tissue and still seated, lean against the right panel of the stall. Of the many batlike rumors circling the ruins of the market, the one that seems to want to hang upside down from the rafters of your cranium is the scenario that has the Arabs reducing the ruins to rubble by further raising the price of oil. Then, when the market has sustained all the damage it can endure without being obliterated, the sheiks will come in with the vault loads of petro dollars theyve been hoarding and buy out the store. Then, they will lower oil prices to todays levels or below and stand at the top of the stairs to watch the indexes climb to greet them, oozing megabucks from every pore. It makes sense. And there has to be a way for a smart cookie like you to grab a little bitty piece of that bonanza. By going long on oil futures, for example. But you would have to buy on margin, and you would probably have to buy in London, preferably late tomorrow night, as soon as trading reopens in Europe. You lack the faculty to buy without resources, you lack the skills to buy abroad on short notice. Larry Diamond, on the other hand, if he is the wizard he is cracked up to be… .
Diamond, unfortunately, has a different agenda. He wants to fuck you (were it not for the wine and gin, you could not even think that word, the word that leaves a salty ring around your brain like the scum line in a bathtub), but thats only part of it. He is challenging you in areas that have little or nothing to do with sex.
Your daddy used to tell you bedtime stories, accompanying himself on the bongo drums. His favorite story, though not necessarily yours, was Jack and the Beanstalk. It was really something the way he could make those drums say fe fi fo fum. As you grew older, the bedtime entertainment petered out, but one night when you were nine, or maybe ten, he told Jack and the Beanstalk one last time. You listened dutifully, although you were somewhat embarrassed. When he ended the tale with a loud squashed-giant blop on a drumhead, he said, This a smart story, Squeak. This a lesson story. Person learn righteous things from this story, man. You keep it wit you. He slapped you a high five and left the room, off to a club or a party. In the morning, you asked your mother what he might have meant. I think, she replied, that he means that you should never hesitate to trade your cow for a handful of magic beans. On the way to school, you considered-and rejected-the fatherly advice. Why not milk the cow, you reasoned, and exchange a pail of milk for just one or two of the beans? That way you get to keep the cow, and how many magic beans does a person really need?
Well, you have left the barn door unlatched, and a storm has blown it open. Your cow has run away. You want to chase after it, to entice it home or force it home. Larry Diamond is urging you to let it go. Cows are of no consequence, he is saying: here, forget the cow and accept these magic beans. Diamond is daring you to become a part of something totally unfamiliar, to move outside the realm of normal expectations. It intrigues you, primarily because he doesnt want a cow in return. But he obviously wants. Is it merely sex he wants, or something other? And how can you be sure his beans will grow? They might be jelly beans or jumping beans-or pellets of poison.
On the toilet seat, you shift your weight from your right to your left buttock. Now your head and shoulder are resting against the left panel of the stall. In your bloodstream, molecules of wine and gin wander, cartwheeling, singing, like a troupe of minstrels. A few more drops dribble out of your urethra. Your challenge, as you see it, is to convince Diamond to lasso your cow plus fork over a bean or two without your having to sleep with him.
An alcohol bubble bumps against your libido and bounces impishly along its unguarded surface. Sleeping with Diamond might be, well … a consideration, at least-if you could be assured he wasnt responsible, in some dire way, for Q-Jos hiatus.
A sudden finger of light juts into the restroom. Two fingers, three fingers. Widening. Four fingers, five. A creak follows, and finger by finger, the hand of illumination balls up with a click into a fist. The door has opened and shut. You sense someone standing just inside the room, perhaps futilely flicking the wall switch. Undoubtedly it is Ann Louise or the single other woman from the group at the bar. You clear your throat and rattle the toilet paper dispenser to signal that the stall is occupied. How awful if Ann Louise were to back in in the dark and plop her wanton fanny down on top of you.
The person walks farther into the room. And you realize, with a chill, that the footsteps-heavy, flat, wide-spaced, spikeless-are those of a man.
NINE-THIRTEEN P.M.
The steps advance to the stall door-latchless and none too snug-and stop. There is no sound beyond breathing. Yours. His.
Slowly, you pull up your panties, realizing, with a shock and a tingle, that were the man to speak, were it Diamonds voice and were that voice tender and reassuring, you might leave them down.
He does not call out. He does not whisper your name. Nor does he move. He only breathes. You can no longer hear your own breath, it is corked, like a ferment of oxygen, like a distilled scream, in the jug of your lungs. His breathing is slow and even, and the ordinariness of its rhythms, the absence of rasp or rush or thickness, makes it all the more menacing.
Minutes pass. Panic throbs in you like a gypsy guitar. From the purse at your feet, which are only inches from his feet, you withdraw your canister of Mace. What kind of world is this? you think. What kind of world?
Then, without a word, he turns, walks leisurely to the door, and exits, leaving behind a faint smell of burnt sugar.
You take several minutes to compose yourself before following him out. Once your eyes have reaccustomed themselves to the light, you scan the lounge. Nothing has changed. The bartender tends bar, the waiter waits, the bookies, absorbed in the movie (mariachi vampires are serenading a honeymoon couple from Brooklyn), dont so much as blink as you wobble by. Larry Diamond is at the table.
Started without you, he says. Hope you dont mind.
He is eating the vegetable stir-fry.
NINE TWENTY-THREE P.M.
Onions with their pearl-skin layers, like the pages of newspapers published by oysters.
Baby carrots, orange and droopy, imitating the mustachios of Yosemite Sam.
Green pea pods: the detached spines of elves.
Broccoli boutonnieres plucked from the mildewed lapels of dandified Swamp Things.
Sliced swe
et peppers, yellow and red, vaulted and naved, like cross sections of Caribbean cathedrals.
Zucchini, poor Italian, wearing its envy of eggplant on its sleeve.
Button mushrooms -but what do they button? Dirts clown suit? The meadows fly? One thinks of Satan undressing his bride.
Beets as intense as serial killers, celery as stringy as soundtrack orchestras, sesame seeds as blank as the eyes of termite queens.
One by one, Diamond forks vegetable pieces into his mouth, while you avert your gaze from the plate you have inherited, and try to get a grip on yourself. From time to time, Diamond looks at you quizzically, but he doesnt ask for your decision or why you havent bitten into the leg of a frog. If it was he who terrorized you in the ladies room, he certainly isnt gloating over it. He forks, he chews, he glances at you quizzically until eventually, because you feel pressured by the silence, you sigh and say, Larry, do you think George Washington flossed with an awl?
Diamond doesnt miss a beat. Guiding a broccoli floret toward his chops, he says, If the father of our country was reduced to such a thing, he had only Christianity to blame.
Sorry?
Christianity, he says, the enemy of the teeth, as well as the clitoris and the brain.
Enemy of the teeth? you ask, hoping he will drop the clitoris part.
Dentistry was already a fairly sophisticated science in ancient Egypt. Therere mummies with fillings in their teeth; with root canals and bridgework, for crying out loud. He chews broccoli while you think, Good news for cloned pharaohs. They can go right from the sarcophagus to a steak house.
Jews considered such practices a form of mutilation, and our European Christian ancestors believed it was blasphemous to mess with the Almightys handiwork, we being created in his own image, overbite and all. Never mind that their molars ached-that was the result of sin, or the mischief of demons. By the time the King James version of the Bible hit the stands in sixteen-whatever-it-was, dentistry in the English-speaking world was a rustic joke, which is why, four thousand years after Imhotep got his cavities filled, the President of the United States was forced to replace his troubled teeth with blunt objects carved out of a fallen log. The Christians crucified dental science, just like they nailed up astronomy-you know what happened to Copernicus and Galileo-and the rest of the human races intellectual and artistic progress. Yes, indeed. It was a bishop of the Church of Rome who burned the great library at Alexandria because he was uncomfortable with the reminder on such a grand scale that there were successful human enterprises that predated Jesus. You have any appreciation of what was lost in that fire? The science, the records, the scholarship, the wisdom, the literature? Our understanding of the past and what it may portend for the future was irreparably sabotaged by arrogant Christian firebugs. The second greatest library in the world happened to be in Timbuktu, and it was torched by Islamic revisionists for the very same reason. Let history begin with Muhammed! If these religious assholes are really convinced of the power and the truth of their big boohoos, why are they so scared by historical fact, by thought, by knowledge? He jabs the prongs of his fork into a pea pod. Thats a rhetorical question. Get on with your din-din.
If chickens played basketball, their drumsticks would look like the deep-fried appendages on the platter in front of you. Long, graceful, athletically bent. Good thing the feet are missing. They probably would be sporting a little pair of Nikes. Obviously, Diamond can see that you havent touched them. Whether its about their finances or about their souls, you venture, most people tend to be a bit insecure. But you have absolutely no sympathy for them, do you? Havent you ever experienced insecurity?
Insecurity? Me? He forces the words through pea pulp. Constantly. Every waking moment of every day, and probably when Im snoozing. Theres no such thing as security in this life, sweetheart, and the sooner you accept that fact, the better off youll be. The person who strives for security will never be free. The person who believes shes found security will never reach paradise. What she mistakes for security is purgatory. You know what purgatory is, Gwendolyn? Its the waiting room, its the lobby. Not only does she have the wrong libretto, shes stuck in the lobby where she cant see the show.
That might not be all bad. What if the shows a dog?
Jesus, that poor penniless wretch whose failed attempts to reform Judaism, to make it less commercial and corrupt, have been exploited into the biggest, most profitable business in history-howd you like to have bought Christianity, my dear, when it was selling for a shekel a share?-ol Jesus said, The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the Earth, but men do not see it. Personally, I suspect the Kingdom of Heaven has got to be a pretty hot show, although I admit the reviews have been sketchy. Even if its a flop, it beats waiting in the lobby. At least you can reach your own conclusions. But first you have to claim your seat and have a look.
Everybodys waiting for something.
Yeah, and everybodys got to stop it. Its making em crazy. Worse, its making em mediocre. Even the Dogon, the Bozo. Theyre waiting for the Nommo-and growing more pedestrian with each passing decade-in the same way the other nitwits are waiting for the Messiah. He stabs a carrot. Which is worse, having a boil lanced or sitting in the doctors waiting room hour after hour, filling out forms, thumbing through those out-of-date magazines, sneezers and coughers spraying microbic wildlife at you, babies howling, hard-luck stories being traded like baseball cards? Better to be in the examination room learning the boil is actually a cancer than waiting your life away with unhappy companions on plastic-covered furniture. Purgatorys not only inferior to Heaven, its worse than Hell.
As he shoves the carrot into his thin smile, like a cartridge being shoved into the chamber of an antique rifle, you say, We both know what Im waiting for …
Among other things, for me to stop pontificating.
… but how about you? Is there nothing youre waiting for, Larry?
Among other things, for me to stop pontificating.
And what else?
Well, short-term, I suppose my breaths bated for your decision. Which is it going to be, cocoa eyes? Wisdom or steady employment?
You sit up straight and push aside the frog-leg platter. Larry, youre going to be very disappointed in me. However, I—
You are interrupted by a loud murmuring from the area of the bar. Oh, shit! somebody exclaims. Can you believe it! exclaims another. Even those customers who had not been watching the movie are fixed now on the television screen, where the picture and sound have changed drastically. Mexican music and coffin-lid creaks have been replaced by the excited but controlled voice of a reporter; the color has gone from gore-red and vampire-green to tints of gray and beige. Blurred by the contracting muscles of your myopia, images are indistinct, although you can tell from the infrequency of flicker that the footage is too static to be yet another gang skirmish or inner-city riot. Impulsively, you rise and glide over to the bar.
NINE-THIRTY P.M.
To your credit, perhaps, your first thoughts are of Q-Jo: what if her decapitated body has been found in a dumpster? But no station would interrupt its Saturday night movie to report on a messy bit of business that has become fairly commonplace in America; and, anyway, the reaction of the bookies indicates news with financial repercussions. This spurs you to move closer yet.
The bulletin, you soon learn, involves Motofusa Yamaguchi. The doctor, it seems, returned from an early dinner a short time ago to find that his hotel suite had been burglarized. Missing in the robbery is a device or instrument, not specifically described, said to be absolutely indispensable to Yamaguchis cancer cure. Without it, his appearance at the conference on Monday would be pointless, his lifes work curtailed, if not ruined.
There goes the Nikkei, a broker says.
There goes the Nikkei, the Hang Seng, the DAX, the CrEdit Suisse, the Bourse CAC, the Footsie One-Hundred … elaborates another, his voice trailing off in despair.
Repeatedly, the camera pans the crime scene, a crowded, only moderately disarranged, luxury
suite, in a corner of which Dr. Yamaguchi can be seen speaking with detectives, shrugging, shyly smiling, tapping his front teeth with a Bic.
The doc doesnt look all that upset, says Ann Louise. For a guy whose bird has flown.
Theyre inscrutable, you know.
The whole thing could be a setup. I mean from the get-go. I, for one, was never convinced he had a cancer cure in the first place.
Oh, come on, Joel. Whatd be the point of a hoax?
Wuf, barks Joel.
The movie resumes, but the brokers have lost interest in fangs and frijoles. There is a hubbub about the bar, everyone-except you-talking at once.
Id enjoy hearing Larry Diamonds take on this, Ann Louise says rather loudly. But apparently, Ms. Mati here has screwed his brains out. Everyone, including you, follows her gesture. Diamond is leaning back in his chair with his eyes shut, looking pale and insensate. Ann Louise lowers her voice to a stage whisper. Did you see him earlier? The poor stud could barely walk.
There is a round of dirty laughter, but by the time you have tossed your head, gray strands and all, and stalked half the distance to your table, the talk has returned to the Yamaguchi robbery. Therell be no shortage of suspects, you hear a bookie say. Pharmaceutical houses. The National Cancer Institute. Any number of terrorist organizations, including the AMA.
Larry? Are you all right?
The beads of sweat on his forehead are bigger than bugs. Some of them scatter when he opens his eyes. Fit as a fiddle, he says weakly. Then, in a stronger voice, Lets get out of here. From his chewed-up jeans he pulls a roll of bills one could open a Texas S&L with, peels off three fifties, drops them on the bread basket, and throws his leather jacket about his shoulders like a cape. You can tell he is struggling to walk normally.
Larry. Got a second?
Larry, can I ask you …
A chorus of Larry this and Larry that rings out as the two of you approach the bar. Again he pulls out that beautiful tumbleweed of cash, wads another fifty, and tosses it to the bartender. Poorer of some hopes but freer of some illusions, he says cheerfully. Drinks are on me.