Panama

5

AT 3 A.M. there are cats on the ledges, diffident animals of odd hours who know the enemy is at his weakest right around then. When you walk the street at that hour you think you share something and you reach out, try to make a deal, to touch. But the cats remember and they run.

Catherine didn’t mind. She knew better. Nor did she offer to demonstrate the five things she remembered from ballet when she was ten. She didn’t rant about cucumber sandwiches, other beings, the Montessori method, or the Schick center for the prevention of smoking. Fundamentally, she didn’t try to pet the cats. She understood that they’d clear out. A lot of people I know would reach and then find that space on the ledge, rotten shitsuckers who had no right to pester cats at three in the morning.

“Let’s buy some ammo,” I said.

“Too late. What do you want with ammo?”

“I feel strangely Hessian,” says I.

When we got to the corner of Duval and Caroline, some people sat on the wall and played various instruments. Catherine and I sang for them and we weren’t too god damned bad.

Catherine limped around in time to the music. I removed my teeth. We commenced hopping up and down. I combed my hair with my bridgework. Ya-ya-ya-ya, say hello to the mayor of New York ya-ya-yah!

Well, we were having a nice time out there. Certain abuses of our expectations were at arm’s length. No one clamored for encores. They stared at me and tried to put two and two together.

We lined up at the taco stand. “I hate lines,” I said.

“Nothing you can do about them,” said Catherine. “Not if you want a nice taco.”

“I do. I want one.”

“I want a messy one.”

“They put us in mind,” I said, “of our neighbors to the south.”

“Don’t be cavalier.”

“After this let’s go down to the fuel dock and decode the sky.”

We carried our tacos to the Gulf filling station. Avoiding interference from ambient or stray light, I was able to identify the Big Dipper, for Catherine. “Contrary to popular opinion,” I explained, “the Big Dipper did not die in a plane crash with Buddy Holly.” I was straining for laughs.

Catherine said, “Thomas Jefferson picked out the site of Monticello at the age of ten.”

“The Borgia Popes had a phone in every room,” I replied.

“At the bottom of the sea, the fish have no eyes,” she said.

“Did you get that from that low-rent marine biologist?”

“Everybody knows it.”

“You got it from him, that seagoing wage ape.”

“Watch the words, Chet, the words.”

Cats fell from the tree in mortal combat. We stepped aside and they pinwheeled past. The pilings throbbed to hidden currents. I looked at the sad water and remembered when I wanted, because of the Saturday matinee, to run away as a cabin boy and find Charles Laughton’s blubbery Old Salt Wisdom to guide my future to a sun endlessly falling into a shining sea, the old whale road where flying fish spangled the surface a square mile at a time and where, basically, seldom was heard a discouraging word. Instead … well, you know how it turned out. Substitute cyanide for sea; and curtains of remorse for all the flying fish in heaven.

* * *

I noticed that many people I saw were surrounded by invisible objects. Many of the visitors from New York had invisible typewriters right in front of their noses upon which they typed every word they spoke. Boozy hicks played an invisible accordion as they talked. Hip characters stirred an invisible cup of coffee with their noses as they spoke. Senior citizens walked down the street, dog-paddling in turbulent, invisible whirlpools.

When the sun came up, we were behind the A&B Lobster House. I was splashing water out of the bilge of my little sailboat with half a Clorox bottle. Catherine was hanging over the bow dangling a string in the water. She said the ripples made the reflection look like she was holding electricity.

“That time in the Russian Tea Room, what were you on?” I asked.

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

I uncleated the centerboard and dropped it. It knocked under the hull. I looked around at the well-built little sloop, proof that I was not an utter damned fool; as a matter of fact, the only one in a shipbuilding family who could still build a boat.

I stuck the tiller into the rudder and freed the lines that attached us to the decayed dock amid bright Cuban crawfish boats piled with traps and styrofoam markers. We began to drift away from the dock. Then suddenly I reached for the lines and tied us up again.

“I don’t want to go sailing,” I said.

“Why?”

“I feel like sinking it.”

“We’ve been walking around all night. You’re too tired.”

“Breakfast,” I said.

“My nerves are raw,” she said. “We’ll have to go someplace where the service is fast or I’ll jump out of my skin.”

Two dogs I knew, Smith and Progress, stared at us from the breakwater. Shrimp boats were starting to roll in from the night with their trawling booms swaying to the same rhythm as they passed each other in the channel going to different basins. A panhandler appeared from behind the warehouse and dismissed us. I was beginning to sense that the night had written a check that daylight couldn’t cash.

We ate our grits and eggs faster than you could say Jack Robinson. The radios were starting out of the upper windows with the rising sun and shattering our nerves. Crazed bicyclists raced up Passover Street with morning milk. Someone blessed himself behind louvers. Catherine and I embraced wearily to a Coast Guard weather report. I had the odd thought that I couldn’t fake a laugh for all the tea in China.

A Navy Phantom decelerated overhead in an afterburner smudge and the entire shore of the island seemed to close around my neck. In a moment, I had trouble getting my breath. Catherine said, “What in God’s name is the matter?” My hands went to my throat and I began to sink. “Straighten up,” she said, and swatted me on the rear. My eyes cleared and the perimeter of Key West fell away once more. Nylon Pinder materialized and said, “Want to try the breathalizer?” There was weird light on the yellow line.

“Get out of here,” Catherine told him. “I mean now.”

The last time I went to Catherine’s house, I was welcomed. We got into bed and tangled up in each other and slept in the sunshine in achy peace. I dreamt of the Easter bunny. He gave me a sugar egg you could look into and see God’s own front yard. That seemed a long time ago. But I’m still walking around.

“Want to go to the library and deface Sandburg’s life of Lincoln?” I inquired.

“No.”

“It is characterized by Hoosier traits,” I said.

“Sandburg’s or Lincoln’s?”

“A little of both.”

“Let’s visit Roxy and see how she is getting along.”

“Do you want to, do you think?” In our condition, this seemed dangerous.

Right on Angela, where all the bottles are set in dripping cement, Catherine spotted a young man in a shiny suit. She spun. “Can’t you leave us alone.” He stopped, bobbing slightly on his web shoes, then ran off. I had the sense that they were coming in on us.

“He’s got his nerve.”

“I don’t understand that at all,” I said.

“There’s a time for everything. I’m not a peeping Tom.”

“I think you are.”

Roxy greeted Catherine, then cut her eyes up at me and said hello. We walked out in back and sat beneath the divided fruit trees. I don’t know whether Roxy could see us trembling or not.

She said, “I’m pleased you’ve come over. I’m getting a lot of infuriating phone calls about Peavey. I know Peavey wants that land. What does that matter to me? The Old Island Restoration Committee says it will become a Holiday Inn. So what? Have you ever had their clam plate? I find it very edible. Besides, whatever his motives, Peavey is attentive to me. Tonight we’re going to Deep Throat. Day after day, he amuses me with his mindless money-grubbing and comic lack of ethics. Why should I worry about his getting my land?”

“Is he a Hoosier?” I asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“An out-of-towner?”

“I couldn’t say. The trouble is, there are only about six on the plate, it’s not enough.”

“Six what?”

“Clams.”

“On the Holiday Inn clam platter?” I asked.

“Don’t make me repeat myself.”

Catherine went over to have a word with the young man at the fence. When she came back, Roxy asked her who it was. Catherine explained that it was a private detective. Roxy said she thought we were already divorced.

“He’s helping Chet keep track of his actions.”

Roxy said, “It’s a little late for that.”

A jogger stopped to catch his breath and went on.

“There’s only one thing to concern yourself with as applies to me,” Roxy said deliberately. “After years of enthusiasm, I am almost devoid of interest. I’m sick of everything. The only response I can elicit from the family is greedy irritation. Finally, it’s the only response I want.”

Outside, Catherine said, “I’m so damned tired and your aunt’s personal philosophy is the tiredest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“You can see how she got that way though. Besides, we asked for it.”

“You’re not like that and you’ve got more reason to be.”

“Well, she keeps rolling. She keeps focused on the next thing. Collapsing into the present would kill her. I think she’s hilarious.”

“Do you get chills when you’re exhausted?”

“Yes, and I drop things and my knees ache.”

“Why don’t you give up?”

“What?”

“Why don’t you give up. If I were you I’d give up.” Her cheeks were mottled from exhaustion. “You have nowhere to go but down.”

“And you?”

“At the last minute, I’m going to drag myself tooth and nail to the bus station.”

“Memories will assail you before you get to Key Largo.”

“Your brain is decomposing,” said Catherine. “I can smell it from here.”

“I want to garner kudos by manufacturing an artificial paradise of household materials.”

“Sit here.”

“Thank you. But won’t the bus stop for us?”

“This is no longer the stop.”

“It is now. Catherine, if you are positioning me for discourse, quit it. We’re tired.”

“Your father said to me that he should have never left you with the nuns. He should have handled things himself. He said that he let too many others do the things he should have done himself. He said he injured you and he wants a chance to make up for it.”

“I was just another snack to him and now he’s gone.”

“He’s not gone. Chet, you have to go back and repair these holes. You’re not getting anywhere.”

“He got me below the waterline. It’s a tribute to my durability that I’ve lasted this long. Jim didn’t. And it’s a family legend that my mother died terminally pissed off.”

A city bus pulled up and stopped. The driver said it was no longer a stop. I thought that was thoughtful and said so. I told Catherine that I was not keen to pursue this conversation, and that the wolf was at the door.

“Stop talking like that.”

“I have my version of events.”

“Which is what?”

“Tiny funerals.”

“Is that to say that if people don’t suit you, you simply decide that they’ve died?”

“No, Catherine—”

“What about me?”

“You’re still with us.”

“How much longer have I got?”

“You’ve still got some time left.”

Catherine got up and stalked into the blinding daylight. It seems I’m always saying the wrong thing. But when the birds of morning induce terror, no one is at his best.

* * *

Sometimes I wonder about box office. What makes good box office, you think. What if a depraved pervert throttled the weather girl, is that good box office? I don’t know.

I have experienced disagreeable side effects in all my endeavors. Sometimes I look at a situation and know they’re going to get me and I say to myself, I think I’ll just go ahead on out of here. I don’t want disagreeable side effects. It’s the additives. There has been a commotion among the impostors and they have introduced additives.

Jorge Cruz arrived late in the morning to discuss the orchestra. He was distressed at my choice of location. How was I to have an occasion at the Casa Marina, which had not been operating for a quarter century, when the grass grew to one’s waist, how was one to dance under such conditions, to his orchestra. How was he to explain this to his orchestra. Explain that they will get paid, I said. But how would they recognize that this was an occasion to which they were to give of their utmost. I would speak to them beforehand, I suggested, to see if they were of a mind to give of their utmost. No, no, there was no need of this. In this sense, an orchestra was a herd of animals who understood only the one vaquero; he would speak to them. Jorge, I said, do we have a deal? And Jorge promised me an orchestra which would give of its utmost in the deepest neglect and tick-filled grass of the Casa Marina. I said, thank you, Jorge; it sounds very much as if we shall have an occasion.

* * *

Around twoish the CBS news team appeared. I took out my teeth and with some forethought conducted myself as a screaming misfit, a little on the laid-back side. I explained that I considered that I represented not so much the middle of the republic that produced mass murderers but the part of the mass murderer who explained that he didn’t mean anything, that he just wanted to get out of town. I pointed out that poison dripping from a fang reflected the world around it as well as a virgin’s tear. It was basically a walk-through. The commentator said he thought that I was “sick” and that my “corruption” was surpassed only by the “corruption” which had produced me. At this point, I fell completely silent, which is hell on commentators. I got a bit of goading and then boy did he have to talk fast.

* * *

Catherine turned up with her bathing suit, a towel, a lunch pail, and Pale Horse, Pale Rider.

“Could I sunbathe here? The Pier House is full of kids pissing in the pool. — Here.”

She handed me a document in the Spanish language.

“What’s this?”

“A marriage certificate. It’s Panamanian.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You asked me to check if we had gotten married.”

“This is ours?”

“Yes.”

“Panama?”

“I don’t remember either.” She walked into the water leaving her belongings behind, pulling her elbows into her sides at the chill. “I’m going to swim out,” she said. “There’s a sergeant-major fish always at the bottom of the piling. Saw you on TV this morning, champ. You were cuter than a speckled pup.”

I walked inside to call Roxy. I was a married man. I walked back out and called to Catherine. “What year is that?” She couldn’t hear me; so I looked myself: 1970. I had been married for years but I couldn’t for the life of me remember Panama, though I knew it to be very warm and green, with a certain number of coconuts and a sleepy way of life. Panama. Many hats have been manufactured there. And there’s that canal!

I walked in once again to call Roxy and got her. She sounded like a bad day at Black Rock, gargling into the phone incomprehensibly. The housekeeper took the phone from her.

“What’s the matter with Roxy?” I asked.

“Her medication isn’t suitin her so good.”

“Is she okay?”

“Mister Peavey say he keep an eye on things.”

“Where’s Mister Peavey?”

“He livin in the front room by the radio. His secretary livin in the Flawda room.”

“There’s no bed in there, Mary.”

“She say she plenty comftable on the terrazzo. And thass the room we can’t get rid them palmetto bugs. Mister Peavey had his own phones installed and got a heap biness frins be’s here all hour the night. So Roxy not up to scratch way she do most the time.”

I hung up and turned around to Catherine dripping across the patio. “Flirt,” she said. “Who’re you flirting with?”

“Person named Mary.”

“Spread it thin, do you.”

“Spread it however I can.”

“Do you.”

“Yes.”

“Got anything to read around here?”

“Not much.”

“You flirting asshole.”

“Oh, stop this.”

“What’s to read? Anything on Jenny Churchill?”

“Science.”

“What?”

“Got some science books. Quasars, mound culture, stress in plastics, black holes in space.”

“Have you got anything human around here, flirt face?”

“Dog books close enough?”

“I’m going to hit you in the mouth, you fucking flirt pervert.”

“Oh come on, Catherine. Rinse your hair. It looks like linguini.”

“I’m sick and broke.”

“No more tears, we’re off that now, off tears, so stop. What do you mean, you’re sick?”

“I don’t know, everything, gee, I—”

“Oh come on sweetie my God what is this?”

“I told that marine biologist I wouldn’t see him any more. He was in Coconut Grove on sopers and not acting right. He said you have to. I said no. He said yes. Then he began to destroy a chair over the phone to prove he was serious. I said no dice and he started smashing and a piece of chair went through his eye. The one he looks into the microscope with. Is it my fault?”

“Absolutely.”

“What?”

“You produce these demonstrations as testimonials. It’s a mainline cunt caper.”

“I want some god damn solace from you, Chet.”

“I’ll give you solace. The marine biologist is blind in the eye he looks into the microscope with and it’s your fault because you demand testimonials.”

She shrieked, “You’re making me crazy! Can’t you help?”

“Buggery.”

“What?”

“Buggery.”

“Oh my God.”

“I’ll put tongs on your temples you screaming testimonial-seeking harridan.”

Catherine hit me in the side of the head with a lamp and yelled, “Couldn’t you have left me alone you sonofabitch. Couldn’t you have left it clean like I did instead of running me down until I was nuts!”

I was crawling in the glass. The blow in the head had done something and I was seeing double and my hands were bleeding. Catherine sobbed, her face into the concrete wall, and I was dazed and my teeth were lying on the bloody tile floor. I ran my thumb over the bridge of gum where they fitted to see if there was any broken glass there before I put them back. I couldn’t see how you could hire an orchestra and have this on the same day.

I went to Catherine and touched her and my hand made a bloody print on her back. She turned to me, her eyes nearly closed and only white showing in the openings, making her seem quite thoroughly insane.

Catherine needed to lie down so I put her in the mildewed bedroom and tucked her in. I hunted for something to read to her but could only find Fenimore Cooper’s The Prairie; and not in an ideal edition. It was a Classic Comic. When I got to the end of it, having removed my teeth to recite all the Indian parts, I read the peroration: “Abiram was led away to receive the cruel justice of the desert law. The others made their way back to the settlements under the protection of Hard Heart and his Gallant Band. The Aged Trapper was content to remain and pass the few remaining years allotted him in the great reaches of the open prairie.”

Catherine was asleep. I could see the ocean from the window and I let it blot into my vision. I felt all the emptiness I call home.