Second Skin

Wax in the Lilies

“We can sell the tires along the way if we have to, Papa Cue Ball,” said Fernandez, as in pairs we rolled them — white walls, retreads, dusty black tires as smooth as balloons — from his little improvised garage to his old disreputable forest green sedan. “Besides, I couldn’t leave them behind. They might be stolen. Nobody’s honest these days, Papa Cue Ball. The war makes everybody steal.”

“You know best, Fernandez,” I said. “But there isn’t room for all these tires. And what will your bride think of setting off on her honeymoon in a car loaded up to the hilt with black market tires? Not very sympathique, Fernandez?”

“Look, Papa Cue Ball, look here,” letting two fat ones roll to a stop against a fender, and then leaping into the car, leaping back into the dust again, “I throw out the seat — so — I throw out all this ugly stuff from the trunk compartment — what would anyone be doing with all these rags — and we have plenty of room for the tires. As to your second objection,” stooping to the nearest tire, glaring up at me darkly — I hastened to give him a hand — and speaking slowly and in the most severe of his Peruvian accents, “it will be a very short honeymoon, Papa Cue Ball, I assure you. A very short honeymoon.”

I smiled. In the long summer twilight of the trailer camp-soft magenta light through temporary telephone poles and brittle trees, distant sound of schoolboys counting off like soldiers, sound of tropical birds caged up behind a neighbor’s salmon-colored mobile home — and with his little shoulders square and hard under the white shirt, and his trousers, little tight pleated trousers, hitched as high as the second or third rib, and wearing the white linen shirt and crimson braces and the rattlesnake belt and tiny black pointed boots, surely Fernandez looked like a miniature Rudolph Valentino — eyes of the lonely lover, moistened lips — and I could only admire him and smile.

“Short but passionate, Fernandez?” I said then, and laughed.

“Don’t try to be indelicate with me, Papa Cue Ball. Please.” “You misunderstand me, Fernandez,” I said, and paused, frowned, extended my hand. “Since you have married my daughter I thought I could speak to you — well — frankly, and also joyously.”

“OK, OK, good Papa Cue Ball. Let’s forget it.”

“Just as you say, Fernandez,” I said, and reached out, took his small cool hand in mine, shook hands with him. “I share your happiness, Fernandez, I want you to know that,” I said, and for a moment I leaned against the old waiting automobile and my head was light and my mouth was dry and tart and bubbling with the lingering dry aroma and lingering taste of the warm champagne. Because I had considered champagne indispensable. And I had supplied the champagne, carried it to the City Hall in a paper bag, and after the service and in the dim institutional corridor between the City Clerk’s office and a Navy recruiting office we three had sipped our warm champagne straight from the bottle. I had counted on paper cups, but as luck would have it, the water cooler was dry and filled with dust and there was not one paper cup to be found in the holder. Toward the end of the bottle, when there were only a few drops of our celebrative wine remaining, I kissed the bride, there in the dark corridor of the City Hall. And now I remembered the kiss, the champagne, the City Clerk with dirty fingernails, and I wanted only to please Fernandez, to please Cassandra, to make the day end well.

So I did my share of the work and together we rolled the last of the unruly bouncing tires out to the waiting Packard and stowed them aboard. The chickens, little red bantams, and little white frightened hens, were cackling in the makeshift garage and squawking in sudden alarm, and I was tempted to toss them my remaining left-hand pocketful of confetti — yes, I had thrown my fiery flakes of confetti at Cassandra on the hot sidewalk in front of the red brick City Hall — but Fernandez had told me that the chickens were good layers and I thought better of it, left the confetti in the pocket where it was. Instead I stooped and clucked at the chickens, tried to nuzzle a little white stately hen under my arm. But it was a suspicious bedraggled bird and much too quick for me.

“The car needs some water, good Papa Cue Ball,” Fernandez called from the steps of his stubby one-man aluminum trailer — it sat on blocks like a little bright bullet in the fading sunlight — so while Fernandez gathered together his guitar and cardboard suitcase and extra pair of shoes and drew down the shades and locked the trailer, I managed to attach the hose to the outdoor spigot, pried open the enormous and battered hood, braced myself against the smashed-in grille and filled up the great black leaking radiator. Then I flung down the hose — nozzle lashing about in a perverse and frenzied circle, lashing and taking aim and soaking the lower half of my fresh white uniform — and dropped the hood and wiped my hands on an oily rag, straightened my cap, smoothed down the pure white breast of my tunic and gently shooed away the chickens and patted the old battered-up green hood of the car. The sun was going down, the champagne was tingling and Cassandra, I knew, was waiting where I had left her with Gertrude at the U-Drive-Inn.

“Ready, Fernandez?” I called. “Bride’s waiting, Fernandez.”

Then Fernandez must have felt the champagne also because suddenly the three broken car doors were tied shut with twine and I was behind the wheel and the sun was turning to gold the tall white plastic Madonna screwed to the dashboard and Fernandez was sitting up straight beside me with a bunch of crimson flowers in one hand and a large unlabeled bottle of clear liquor in the other. I waved to a fat red bantam hen, and the two of us, Fernandez and I, called good-by forever to his life in the splendors of Tenochtitlan Trailer Village. As we drove out between the rows of mobile homes — wingless airplanes, land yachts, or little metal hovels with flat tires and sagging aerials — suddenly I had the impulse to pat Fernandez on the knee, and did so and smiled at him through the sunlight which was full in my face.

“Courage, Fernandez,” I said softly. “She’s a charming girl.”

“Don’t worry about me, Papa Cue Ball,” cradling the bottle, clutching the flowers in his tiny bright mahogany fist, “Fernandez is no innocent.”

Sand flats, mountains of gravel, abandoned road-working machines, conveyer belts, fields of marsh and silver oil tanks, hitchhiking soldier, a pony ring, and the aged dark green Packard swaying and knocking and overheating on that black highway south.

“Faster, Papa Cue Ball, the hour is very late.”

Nonetheless I thought we had better eat — hamburgers in toasted golden buns at the side of the road, butter and pickle juice running through our fingers, two cold bottles of Orange Crush for the dark-faced groom and perspiring good-natured naval officer who gave the bride away — and my better sense told me that someone must attend to the Packard — unpardonable delay in lonely service station, gallons of gasoline, buckets of water, long minutes in the rest room where we, Fernandez and I, took our first drink of the colorless liquor which burned away the Orange Crush and killed the champagne — so that the sky was dark and the moon was a lemon curd by the time we reached the little suburban oasis called El Chico Rio and honked the horn in a prearranged enthusiastic signal — so many longs, so many shorts, so many trills — and parked in front of Gertrude’s accommodations in the U-Drive-Inn.

“Where are the flowers, Fernandez?” I whispered, and set the hand brake. “Quickly, hold the flowers up where she can see them.”

“The flowers were foolish, Papa Cue Ball.” Glum. Somber. Squaring his shoulders at the Madonna. “I dropped them in the big wire basket in the toilet back there at the Texaco station. A good place for them.”

But I pushed him out of the car then, straightened his linen jacket, squeezed his hand, and turned, smiled, removed my stiff white cap — civilian habit I was never able to overcome — because Gertrude’s door had opened and there was a light on the path and Cassandra was walking toward us carefully in high heels, and Cassandra was composed, calm, silvery and womanly and serene as she came walking toward Fernandez and myself and the old hot smashed-up Packard in these her first moonlit moments of matrimony. I caught my breath, held out my arms to her. And glancing down, I whispered, “Kiss her, for God’s sake, Fernandez. Look how she’s dressed up for us. You must do something!”

And it was true. Her hair was down, yet drawn back slightly so that we could see the little diamond pendants she had clipped to the lobes of her tiny ears; her waist was small and tight and her little silver breasts were round; she was cool, her dress was crocheted and white; and in honor of Fernandez, in honor of his Peruvian background, she wore draped across her narrow shoulders a long white Indian shawl with a fringe made of soft white hair that hung down below her knees. She carried a black patent leather purse, new, and also new a small black patent leather traveling bag monogrammed, I discovered once she got into the car, with a large golden initial C. We could smell the perfume and breath of talcum powder and sharp odor of nail polish — pink as the color of a peach near the stem, still wet-even before she reached the car, and I felt myself choking and gave Fernandez a shove, and dropped my cap and reached out and caught up the purse, caught up the traveling bag. Pride. Embarrassment. My daughter’s porter.

But he did not kiss her. He merely secured the bottle of liquor under one arm and put his little heels together and bowed, bent low over Cassandra’s soft white hand. The fingers of her other hand — two silver bracelets, a silver fertility charm — were curled at the edge of the high tight collar and her eyes were bright. Then I saw her breasts heaving again and knew that everything was up to me.

“Well, Cassandra,” I said, “my little bride at last!”

“My bride, Papa Cue Ball,” ruffled, holding the bottle by the neck, “you misunderstand, Papa Cue Ball.”

“Naturally, Fernandez,” I said, and smiled and felt Cassandra touch my arm and wished that I hadn’t already kissed the bride in the City Hall. “But are we ready to go? And shall I drive, Fernandez? I’d be happy to drive. If only you two could sit in back. …”

“The three of us will sit in the front seat, Papa Cue Ball. Naturally. And remember, please, this is my honeymoon, the honeymoon of Fernandez. I am the new husband and on my honeymoon my wife will do the driving. So that’s settled. The wife drives on the honeymoon. And you will sit in the middle if you please, Papa Cue Ball. So let’s go.”

I helped Cassandra into the car and managed to jam her traveling bag among the tires and slid in beside her, sighed, settled down with Cassandra’s purse in my lap and her smooth white ceremonial shawl just touching my knee. It was the first time Fernandez had cracked the whip, so to speak, and she took it well, Cassandra took it well. I glanced at her — mere doll behind the wheel, line of firmness in her jaw, little soft hands tight and delicate on the wheel — and her eyes were glistening with a new light of pride, joy, humility. Obedient but still untamed. Shocked. Secretly pleased. Mere helpless woman but summoning her determination, pushing back her hair, suddenly and with little precise white fingers turning the key in the ignition and, with the other hand, taking hold of the gearshift lever which in Cassandra’s tiny soft hand was like a switchman’s tall black iron lever beside an abandoned track.

“Got your license with you, Cassandra?” I asked. “But of course you do,” I murmured in answer to my own question and smiled, caressed the little black patent leather purse in my lap, then balanced the purse on my two raised knees, played a little game of catch with it. How carefully, slowly, Fernandez climbed back into the old Packard which he himself was unable to drive, and then took hold of the broken door handle and pulled, pulled with all his might so that the door slammed shut and the car shook under the crashing of that loose heavy steel. Another side of Fernandez? A new mood? I thought so and suddenly realized that the enormous outdated Packard with all its terrible capacity for noise and metallic disintegration was somehow a desperate equivalent of my little old-world Catholic son-in-law in his hand-decorated necktie and crumpled white linen suit.

“OK, Chicken,” he said, another vagary of temper, another cut of the lash, and without a word to me he thrust the bottle in my direction, “we want to head for the hideaway. And please step on the gas.”

“I’m with you,” I wanted to say to Cassandra as I took the bottle, held the purse in one hand and the tall clear bottle in the other, “don’t be afraid.” But instead, “Away we go!” I cried, and rolled my head, glanced at Cassandra, put the clear round mouth of the bottle into my own aching mouth and shut my eyes and burned again as I had first burned when I leaned against the tin partition in the Texaco filling station and sampled the rare white liquor of the Andes.

“My wife drives well. Don’t you think so, Papa Cue Ball?”

“Like Thor in his chariot,” I said. “But a toast, Fernandez, to love, to love and fidelity, eh, Cassandra?”

Moonlight, cold dizzying smell of raw gasoline, dry smell of worn upholstery, sensation of devilish coiled springs and lumps of cotton in the old grease-stained front seat of the Packard, wind singing through Cassandra’s door and the hot knocking sound of the engine and a constellation of little curious lights winking behind the dashboard, and I was snug between Cassandra and my son-in-law of several hours now, and the Madonna was standing over me and holding out her moon-struck plastic arms in benediction. She was the Blessed Virgin Mary, I knew, and I smiled back happily at her in the moonlight.

“Skipper?” Cassandra was staring ahead, whispering, driving with her bright new wedding ring high on the wheel, “Light me a cigarette. Please.” So I opened the purse — how long now had I been waiting for an excuse to open that purse? for a chance to get a peek inside that purse even in the smelly darkness of the speeding car? — and found the cigarettes and a little glossy unused booklet of paper matches and put one of her cigarettes between my lips and struck one of the matches — puff of orange light, sweet taste of sulphur — and smelled the blue smoke, and placed the white cigarette between the fingers which she held out to me in the V-for-victory sign. And during all the long miles we chalked up that night — tunnels of love through the trees, black Pacific deep and hungry and defiant down there below the highway, which was always honeymoon highway to me when that night had passed — and until we reached the hotel far up in the mountains, that was all Cassandra said to me, but it was enough. She had changed. There is a difference between a young bride with crimson flowers and a young woman driving a dirty old forest green Packard with her white pointed toe just reaching the accelerator and a cigarette burning in her pretty mouth. What bride wants to keep her eyes on the road? So she had changed. She would never lose the invisible encyclopedia balanced on the crown of her head and would always be identified for me with the BVM. But behind her anticipation — why else the new purse? why else the patent leather traveling bag? or why the monogram? — and behind whatever vision she may have had of matrimony, there was a change. Still hopeful, still feeling joy, but smoking an unaccustomed cigarette and tasting fate. In the darkness I noticed that one of her pendant earrings had disappeared, and I was sorry and irritated at the same time, wanted to tell her to remove its mate or to let me take it off myself. But I held my peace.

And Fernandez? Fernandez, I knew, was drunk. At least he was a jealous custodian of the bottle, or inconsiderate groom, a testy son-in-law. And forty or fifty miles beyond El Chico Rio the black sprawling ominous interior of the Packard was filled suddenly with the elated piercing sounds of a wolfish whistle, and I saw that Fernandez was sitting on the edge of the seat with the bottle gripped between his knees and two fingers stuck between his teeth, grinning, staring at Cassandra, whistling those two loud terrible notes of his crude appreciation, and I knew that Fernandez was drunk or at least that he had given way, at last, to the psychic tensions of his mysterious past.

“Control yourself, Fernandez,” I said, trying at any cost to preserve the humor of our journey, “we have a long night ahead of us.”

“The heart cries out,” he said, dully, morosely, “the heart demands satisfaction, nothing less. But my wife will know what I mean,” nodding, wiping his brow. “Know what I mean, Chicken?”

The mere expression on her white face appeased him, though not for long because all at once we could see the moon shattering on the black chaos of the Pacific far below us and the first cigarette package was empty and Fernandez was hunched in the furthest dark comer of the car.

“Fernandez?” Softly, cheerfully, touching him lightly on the shoulder: “Are you all right? Shall we stop for a minute?”

“Drive on, good Papa Cue Ball, drive on,” he said, and I saw that he had removed his shoes, removed his green socks, rolled the white linen trousers up to his knees. What next? His legs were perfect white shapely bowling pins, and he was arching one foot, wriggling the toes, flexing one calf.

“Hey, Chicken! You like cheesecake? You like cheesecake, Chicken?”

The Packard swerved once — headlights chopping through the trees — but Cassandra applied the brakes, steadied her hands on the wheel, and we recovered again, accelerated, sped around a curve with the moon going great guns again and Fernandez quickly repeating the marriage service to himself in Spanish. And then my heart was floating in a dark sea, in my stomach the waves were commencing their dark action. And yet for two more hours I was aware of everything, the climbing Packard, sudden feeling of elevation, hairpin turns in the road, small rocks in the road, Cassandra’s white skirt riding above her knee, moon flitting behind stark silhouetted peaks, the white plastic Madonna fixed and comforting on the dashboard, clearly aware of Fernandez sitting upright and all at once talking happily at my side.

“It’s silver mining country, Chicken. You see? Mountains of the great silver deposits. Think of the lost cities, the riches, thousands of little sure-footed burros laden with silver. Do you understand my feeling, Chicken? Silver is the precious metal of the church, the metal of devotion, ceremony, candlelight. The treasure of the heart, the blessed metal of my ancestors and of my somber boyhood. Out of these mountains they dug silver for old coins, Chicken, silver for the heavy girdles of young brides. Think of it. …

And slumped between them I listened, held my peace, drifted higher and higher into those black gutted mountains. There were ravines and cliffs and falling boulders all waiting to finish off the Packard, and we left our tire tracks in patches of fresh snow. Yet I merely grinned to myself, tried to imagine what our exact altitude might be.

… stumbling forward with the monogrammed traveling case in my hand, in the beam of the headlights stumbling, trying to breathe, feeling exhilarated despite the dizziness and pain in my eyes. “Is this it, Fernandez?” I called over my shoulder, hatless and suddenly hot and cold at the same time. “Pretty high up, Fernandez!”

“This is it, Papa Cue Ball,” he called back to me. “Honeymoon Hide-Away, which is the best place in all Southern Cal for the young men and women who have just taken the vows of marriage!”

Narrow rock-strewn deserted place, beginning of a steep gorge ringed with peaks, and I stumbled, paused, struggled for breath, looked up at the cold diminishing stars and birdless peaks. We were trapped, I knew. And yet I was unaccountably pleased to see that at the end of the headlights’ dull beam there was a shattered stone wall of a demolished building and leaning against it, fat and sullen and holding a little hairless dog in her arms, a Mexican woman who remained alone now with her little dog in all this rubble. I wondered how long she had been leaning there waiting to meet us.

“Señorita,” I called, “buenas noches!” And I waved — she was a match for me, the fat brown unsmiling mother of that wrecked mining town — and hurried after her with the blood draining from my eyes and my heart pounding. Around the corner I found only a single sharply inclined street of the abandoned mining town, only a barred window, a row of doorless openings, a chimney fallen intact across the street like the skeleton of some enormous snake, a few streaks of moonlit mortar and a few jagged heaps of dislocated stone still lodged there in the bottom of the sheer gorge. Ruin. Slow collapse. The rank odor of dead enterprise.

But there was light in the hotel and the heavy long empty bar was ornamented with the plump naked bodies of young Victorian women carved in bas-relief and lying prone on their rounded sides down all the length of that dark dusty wood. A light in the Hide-Away, and I rushed inside, dropped Cassandra’s traveling case beside the bar.

“Three beers, Señorita,” I said — she was standing in the shadows next to an old nickel-plated cash register that looked like a cranky medieval machine of death—“and the rooms are ready? You’ve got the rooms ready for us, I hope?”

She waited. Her small eyes were bright and glittering in the shadow, she could have been afraid or sullen but there was beauty still in the dark reticence of her enormous size. Then she moved, stood the little silver hairless dog on the bar — obedient, trembling, scared to death — and turned her back on me, groaned and stooped out of sight. It was a slow intimate process, the procuring of that first beer, headless, tepid, drawn in a small Coca-Cola glass and from what spigot or rancid keg I was unable to see, but at last she set the glass in front of me and braced herself against the bar, moved the dog out of my arm’s reach. Then she turned again and in the same way produced the second glass, and the third, until the three glasses stood in a bitter row and the dog tipped its sharp trembling ears at me from the far side of the cash register. I thought the woman’s eyes were warmer when she slid the last beer in line, at least her breath — rich, flaring, full of provocative hot seasoning and rotten teeth — was closer to my face and stronger.

“Now the rooms,” I said. “You’ve got the two rooms? OK?”

She nodded.

“Excellent,” I said, “excellent. You’re a real old queen of the Pampas.” She watched me, resting her breasts on the bar, and there was still beauty in the lines of her greasy face, still a strange promise of strength and gentleness in her short blackened fingers. I smiled, picked up the glasses, and was just arranging them on a dusty table when I noticed the soldier, a lone soldier near the jukebox with his dark head on his arms and khaki shirt wet and clinging to his thin ribs, and heard Fernandez calling out in the darkness beyond the fallen wall.

“In here, Fernandez! In here, Cassandra! Can you see the light?”

I waited, paced up and down. There was the odor of mildewed cardboard, odor of pack rats under the sagging floor, the Mexican woman had tacked an out-of-date girlie calendar above the jukebox. Then they appeared — I knew at once that they had been holding hands — and I embraced Fernandez, embraced Cassandra, seated them at our private table and sighed, smiled at both of them, winking at Fernandez, winking happily at Cassandra, and took a quick sip of my flat tepid beer.

“So, good Papa Cue Ball, you have seen to everything and all is in order?”

“All in order, Fernandez. Except for our unfortunate friend over there,” and I nodded in the direction of the soldier, tried to catch Cassandra’s eye over the rim of my glass. Fernandez turned, glanced at the sleeping figure, shrugged.

“It’s nothing, Papa Cue Ball. Merely a drunk GI. The GI’s are all over the place these days. Don’t give it a thought. But look, a woman of my own color! A very good omen, Papa Cue Ball, a very good omen.”

“I thought you’d be pleased, Fernandez.”

“Fernandez is very pleased. And Chicken,” looking now at Cassandra, putting his little brown hand on her wrist, “do you see that she’s a woman who has borne many children? Do you see from her size that she’s a woman of many glowing and painless births? Take heart from her, Chicken. Put a little flesh on the bones. …”

And interrupting him quickly: “Well, what do you think of having the wedding supper now, Fernandez? Pretty good idea?”

“Magnificent, good Papa Cue Ball. You think of everything!”

Tortillas. Soft brick-colored beans. Bitter nuts, half-moons of garlic, fish sweated into a paste with hard silver slices of raw onion. Ground meal, green peppers the shape of a finger and the texture of warm mucilage and filled with tiny black explosive seeds, and chicken, oh the tortured chicken skewered and brown and lacerated, running with pink blood and some kind of thick peppered sauce, chicken that fell away from the bone and in the mouth yielded first the delicate flavor of tender white meat and then the unexpected pain of its unleashed fire, chicken and murky soup and bits of preserved vegetable poisoned in such a way as to bring a sudden film to the eyes and pinched dry shriveling sensations to the nose and throat. So Fernandez kept calling out in Spanish to the Mexican woman, and the Mexican woman — now there was a new glazed color in her cheeks, a new odor of hot charcoal amongst the other smells of her enormous and unrevealed self — kept coming to us with still another clay pot steaming in one brown hand and always the little dog shaking helplessly in the other. And Fernandez ate, cocking his head, holding the food appreciatively on his tongue, then nodding, chewing, demanding more, and of course I ate right along with him, cooling myself, saving myself with innumerable glasses of the beer which was suddenly sparkling and as cold as ice.

“You know about the cojones, Papa Cue Ball? This is a feast for the cojones, let me tell you. …”

So that’s what our old mother of the mesquite was up to, and I blushed then, glanced at Cassandra — poor Cassandra, soft and unsmiling in the light of the half-candle which the fat woman had brought with the first brusque Spanish command — and bit down as hard as I could on a little tough root that was filled with devils. I was always afraid that Cassandra would marry a marine like so many of the girls she knew at school, but what would those marine wives think if they could see her now, waiting out this wedding night in the dark dining room of an empty hotel which was once the call house of our little abandoned and evil smelling and still collapsing silver town? For that matter, what was I to think? No doubt I was too full, too excited, but eager, strangely eager nonetheless, to think.

In the end there was candy — what secret cache expended loyally for the sake of Fernandez? what dirty old shoe box or earthen pot lovingly exhumed and made to yield up this cracked plate of thick dark sticky chunks of sugared fruit? — and two twisted black Mexican cigars and a tiny glass filled to the brim — rare cordial? primitive aphrodisiac? — for Cassandra. I ate, I smoked, I looked the other way when I saw her slender white fingers reach for the glass.

“Well, Fernandez,” I said, and pushed back my chair, stood up, blew the ash off my black cigar — sickening cigar, heavy pungent odor of bad dreams — and for a moment held myself where the food lay, “how about a little music, Fernandez? Shall we try a song?” The sallow wizened face looked up at me and he was unable to smile, unable to speak, unable even to nod, but the eyes told me that he wanted me to try a song. Cassandra was still holding the full glass, Cassandra still untouched by these disreputable ghosts or the chorus of the pack rats below the floor. The candlelight was flowing in her hair and on her ring finger there was a little bright chip of fire. I wanted to suggest that I call out the titles of the numbers and that she, my poor Cassandra, select our song. But clutching the back of the chair I looked down at her and the phrasing of this well-intentioned thought never came to my lips.

I left them together, left the two of them sitting together in the midst of the debris of the feast of the cojones, as my son-in-law had said, and somehow turning abruptly toward the dusty colors of the obsolete jukebox, I knew that once I walked away from the table, away from the wreckage of the indelicate wedding supper, I would be walking away from them forever. It was a difficult moment, an awkward pause. But I stepped out, telling myself I always enjoyed the mystery of push buttons and the flamboyance of bright undulating colors.

Unsteady steps across the rotten floor. A good look at the white neck of the sleeping soldier. And then the old machine, the colored water moving through the tubes, the rows of bright square buttons and, inside the dusty glass, the rows of printed song titles each one of which was a further notch in my knowledge of romance. I leaned down, hands on knees, never looking back at the table, and very carefully and slowly read each one of those little romantic titles twice. Then I made my choice, fumbled around in my pocket for a coin, pushed the bright button down. A click, a scratching sound, then music, and I started to wag my head to the rhythm of that awful tune.

Listening, swaying, smiling, hands still on knees, I did my best to dream up a little reverie of my own, a little romance of my own, and I did my very best, stood it as long as I could, then simply had to turn around and did so, humming along with the record, snapping my fingers, putting another nickel in the slot, turning slowly — oh I wasn’t going to miss a trick that night — until I stood facing them once more, but in shadow and with the colored lights revolving and dissolving across my poor wrinkled uniform. They had gotten up from the table — Fernandez, Cassandra — and I was just about to call good night to them, thinking that they wouldn’t leave the room until I called good night to them, when I saw the Mexican woman taking charge of them, watched with a curious shrinking sensation on my lips, my smile, as she took Cassandra’s submissive white face between her greasy hands and kissed her in the middle of that mere ghost of a white brow and then let go of Cassandra and quickly gave Fernandez a couple of coaxing pats on his white linen rump, and then pushed them out the door.

“Good night, you two,” I called anyway, and was alone with my music, the drunk GI, the woman who began clearing away the debris. Alone with the miniature silver dog. But not for long. Because before I could sit down with the drunk GI Fernandez retuned, breathless, guarded, already smelling of Cassandra’s scent, and held out to me the Edgeworth tobacco tin in which he kept his spiv, that terrible little weapon made of a broken razor blade.

“For you, Papa Cue Ball,” he said. “Take it. In case that one there,” jerking his elbow at the soldier, “in case that one tries to cause you any trouble when he wakes up. It’s better to be ready for him, just in case. …

“Thanks, Fernandez. But wait,” trying to detain him, watching him slip off not toward the shrouded staircase but toward the littered street outside, “where are you going?”

“For the guitar, Papa Cue Ball. There would be no romance without my green guitar.”

But I was alone. Alone in this mining town of rusted iron pipe and settling rock and corrugated paper turned to mold. AJone with my heavy stomach, my heartburn, the dizziness I still suffered from the altitude. I paced up and down the dark room, I tried unsuccessfully to make friends with the wretched little silver dog. Apparently the woman expected me to climb to my own room upstairs and sleep, but I told her that I had spent so many months at sea that I found it difficult to sleep in a bed ashore. Why didn’t she bring me a beer, I asked her, and also one for the soldier and, if she liked, a beer for herself as well? She nodded, and then she put her fat brown hand on my arm and gave it a squeeze.

I told her I would sit down and keep the soldier company. So I pulled out a chair and took a seat. The head of black curly hair was buried in the crossed arms, the khaki shirt was disheveled, the cuffs were unbuttoned and drawn back from the thin gray wrists, and I noticed the outline of a shoulder patch which had been removed and no doubt destroyed.

“Hey, Joe,” I said. “Wake up, Joe. How about joining me for a beer?” No answer. No sound of breathing, not even the faint exhalation of a low moan. I leaned close to the hidden head to listen but there was nothing. I touched his elbow, I shook him by the arm. “Joe,” I said, “two lone servicemen ought to join forces, don’t you think?” But there was nothing. Only the rats, a little wind through the timbers, the first wailing chords struck on the guitar upstairs.

Then, on a tray this time, she brought out three beers and also a tin basin of warm water and a scrap of rag. And slowly she put down the glasses, arranged the rag and basin next to the GI and sat close beside him. We drank to each other — dark eye on mine, little silver dog huddled between her breasts — and still holding her glass and without taking her eyes from mine she reached out her free hand, took a chubby fistful of black curly hair and pulled the GI upright, let his head loll over the back of the chair.

“Is he OK?” I whispered, “is he alive?”

She nodded, drank another sip of beer. Then she showed me the back of her small shapeless hand, held her hand up like a club.

“You did it?” I whispered and pushed aside my beer, leaned away from the two of them. “You mean you did that to him yourself?”

More nodding, more sipping, a soft shadow of pride passing over the greasy brown contours of her round face, more searching looks at me. And then suddenly she finished off her beer and, softly talking all the while to the dog and now and then glancing at me, she cradled the GI’s head and dipped the rag and went to work on him. With age-old tenderness she ran the rag over the lips, under the eyes, around the nose, again and again dipping the rag, squeezing, returning with heavy breath to the gentleness of her occupation. The white face began to emerge and already the water, I could see, was a soft rich color, deep and dark.

When the dog tipped its tiny nose over the edge of the basin I stood up. And quickly, without commotion, I left them there, the preoccupied fat woman bent over her task and the soldier moaning in the crook of her arm — he had begun to moan at last — and I groped my way outside and knelt at the nearest pile of rubble and upchucked into the rubble to my heart’s content, let go with the tortillas, the hot tamales, the champagne, nameless liquor and beer, knelt and clung to a chunk of mortar and gooseneck of rusted pipe and threw open the bilge, had a good deep rumble for myself.

Anyone who has gotten down on his knees to vomit has discovered, if only by accident, the position of prayer. So that terrible noise I was making must have been the noise of prayer, and the effect, as the spasms faded and the stomach went dry, was no doubt similar to the peace that follows prayer. In my own way I was contrite enough, certainly, had worked hard enough there in the rubble to deserve well the few moments when a little peace hung over me in the wake of the storm that had passed.

I breathed, I smeared my face in my handkerchief, I climbed to my feet. It was a job done, and now the night, I knew, was going to fly away fast. Too bad for them, I thought, too bad for me. It hadn’t ended well but it had ended.

And now I was wandering and the opera house was like a decapitated turret or the remains of a tiny and monstrous replica of a Rhine castle. A few curtain wires flapping loose in the wind, a couple of sandbags and a little gilt chair upside down in the entrance hall, a pile of handbills. Another house of pleasure for the men in the drifts. And how many performances did my Mexican love attend? How many with some other little hairless rat-shaped dog tucked under her arm? How many with a mouthful of pepitas and a heavy hand on her rolling thigh and bright candles lit all the way across the little stage? I would never know. But there was life yet in that miniature lopsided castle of bygone scratching orchestras and flouncing chorus girls and brawling applause. So I began to feel my way up the narrow stairs. I climbed as high as the first balcony, climbed up into the fading night and could go no further, for the second balcony, the roof, the stage, all of it was gone and there was only a scattering of broken glass, the wind in my face, the feeling of blackness and a good view of the pitiless gorge and hapless town. I could make out the squat deeper shadow of the far-off Packard, I could hear the guitar. The dawn was rising up to my nostrils.

And then I saw those two enormous soft rolls of faded tickets which — by what devilish prank? what trick of time? — had been printed up for a movie that had starred Rita Hayworth, I remembered, as the unfaithful mistress of a jealous killer who escaped from prison midway through the first reel of the film. Shotguns, touring cars, acid in the face, long hair soaking wet in the rain— it was a real find, that memory, those rolls of tickets, and I scooped them up and tore them into ten-foot lengths and tied them to the broken railing, to upright twists of iron, to the arms of ravaged chairs, and watched all those paper strips snapped out onto the wind and listened to the distant sounds of my little son-in-law shouting at my poor daughter and beating on the neck of the guitar, and emptied my pockets, threw my remaining handfuls of confetti out onto the wind. It was a fete of mildewed paper and wild sentiment, a fete for three.

And in that flapping dawn — sky filled with rose, silver, royal blue — I opened the Edgeworth tobacco tin, for a long while stared at the razor blade inside. Then slowly, can and all, I tossed it over the edge of the first balcony. And seven and a half months after that flapping dawn in the mountains Pixie poked her little nose into the world — premature, an incubator baby — and sixteen months after that same rose and silver and royal blue dawn they were putting Gertrude’s poor body into the ground. Thank God for the old PBY’s and for a captain who did not interfere when I left the ship to be on hand back home as needed in City Hall or maternity ward or cemetery. Thank God for the boys who flew those old PBY’s straight to the mark.

“That’s all you are, Papa Cue Ball. The father of a woman who produces a premature child. The husband of a woman who kills herself. I renounce it, Papa Cue Ball. I renounce this family, I renounce this kind of a man. Can you explain? Can you defend? Can you speak to me with honor of your own Papa? No. So I renounce, Papa Cue Ball, I will escape one of these days. You may take my word. …

“If you don’t wish to come, Fernandez, then you may stay behind.”

“That’s what I wish. I do wish it, Papa Cue Ball, now that you put the words in my mouth! And believe me, I will follow my heart. …”

In front of the mirror in the little room stacked knee-high with the cardboard cartons which I had half-filled with poor Gertrude’s clothing, I was having trouble with the sword. Our limousine was waiting, scheduled to depart from the U-Drive-Inn, while the hearse was scheduled to depart, of course, from the mortuary. Or rather our limousine was scheduled to rendezvous with the hearse at the mortuary, the two black vehicles to proceed on from there together. And we were late and I was having trouble with my sword. Poor Gertrude. In the mirror I saw the smart dark blue uniform — it was Christmas, after all, the Christmas of ’44 and time for blues — saw the polished brass buttons, the white shirt still open at the neck since the baby was playing with my black tie, saw my bald head, freshly shaven cheeks, furrows over the bridge of my nose, and the unhooked and unwieldy sword. It was not my sword, it was the old man’s sword, and I had borrowed it late on that last night on the Starfish. I had thought a sword necessary for Gertrude’s funeral and now a couple of hooks were giving me trouble and the black scabbard was growing heavy in my hands.

“Cassandra,” I said into the mirror, “I wish you’d cry. And Sonny,” leaning forward, looking around for him in the mirror, “can’t you give me a little help with the captain’s sword?” Sonny was beginning to mourn, grief was beginning to overtake him in this ransacked room in the U-Drive-Inn, and he was scowling at Fernandez and holding Pixie on his lap. It was Sonny who had given the baby my black tie.

“All’s you got to do is speak up, Skipper. You knows that. I’ve helped the old man with his sword, and I can help you with it. You knows that.”

Sleeve of her camel’s-hair coat dangling from one of the boxes. Odor of gin. A scattering of small change, cuticle sticks, keys, all gleaming in the far corner of the room where I had been going over them, sorting things out. And on a fluffy beribboned hanger hooked to the top slat of the Venetian blinds her negligee, her pink negligee — I had rinsed it in the bathroom sink the night before, hung it to dry — now doing its long empty undulating dance in the cool currents of the air freshener that was humming low on the west wall. Poor Gertrude. I could never hold a grudge against Gertrude. No matter the motorcycle orgies with members of my own crew, half a season on a nearby burlesque stage, the strange disappearances, insinuating notes to Washington, and bills, bruises, infidelity here at the U-Drive-Inn, and even a play for faithful Sonny, no matter how she had tried to injure me or shame Cassandra, still I could never despise the early wrinkles, the lost look in the eyes, the terror I so often saw on the thin wide mouth, the drunken floundering. She was a helpless unpretty woman with dyed hair. She got a rash from eating sea food. She gave a terrible ammunition to those young members of my crew with whom she managed to have her little whirlwind affairs. And her early V-letters were always the same: “I hope they sink you, Edward. I really do.” She said she was going to drink up my insurance money when I was gone. Poor Gertrude. “You are going to hate me, Edward,” she wrote, “at least you won’t deny me hate, will you?” But she was wrong. Because the further she went downhill the more I cared. And Gertrude was no match for my increasing tolerance.

“Now give me my tie, Sonny,” I said, and there was the empty camel’s-hair sleeve, the sword at my side, my own uneasy look of consternation in the mirror. “The baby will have to play with something else. On the double, Sonny, we’re late already.”

“What about the child, Papa Cue Ball? You don’t intend to leave the child with me?”

“Yes, Fernandez. That’s the plan. Exactly.”

Then Sonny helped me with the knot and gave me his arm and Cassandra found my hat in the bathroom. Gertrude’s finger-prints were everywhere, her smell was everywhere — sweet lemon and a light haze of alcohol — and in the wastebasket a crumpled tissue still bore the lipstick impression of her poor thin lips stretched wide in the unhappiness of her last night alive.

And Sonny: “Look at that baby there, Skipper. She sure misses her Grandma!”

I nodded.

So I leaned on Sonny and Cassandra preceded us — bright sun, black limousine, bright shadows in the empty driveway — and so at last, and only twenty-five minutes late, we pulled away from the U-Drive-Inn and headed east in fairly heavy traffic to keep our rendezvous with Gertrude’s hearse. I could tell they had vacuum-cleaned the inside of our limousine. The upholstery was like gray skin and the sun was hard, brilliant, silent through the clear glass.

“Them swords are the devil to sit down with, Skipper. Ain’t they?”

I agreed with him. And then: “If we used the jump-up seats we could be carrying six instead of three. Did you notice that, Sonny? Wonderful room in these limousines. But I wonder why there aren’t any flowers?”

The traffic was heavy and all the other cars were filled with children. I could see them through the sealed glass, the smooth bright silence of our slow ride. Faint brand-new automobile smell, hard light, subtle sensation of new black tires humming gently through the perfect seat — gray skin, foam rubber, a bed of springs — and rising like a thin intimate voice into the receptive spine. And of course the driver. Something familiar about the driver — charcoal chauffeur’s jacket, white collar, charcoal chauffeur’s cap, dark glasses — a curiously muffled and familiar look about the driver. But I couldn’t place him and went back to stroking the warm handstrap and staring at the tints that were beginning to appear in the curves and along the edges of our shatterproof glass.

“Ask him if he has his lights on, Sonny. Funeral cars always have their lights on, don’t they, Sonny? We’d make better time with lights, I’m sure.”

We were only forty-eight minutes late, exactly, when we drifted to a marvelous stop beneath the bright green caterpillar awning and waited while the driver climbed the smooth white marble steps to report inside. The place looked empty. No sign of the hearse. No attendants in black swallowtails. Nothing. Then Sonny went in after the driver — grief riding his shoulders, dreading the interior of this establishment which was like home to me — and in close conversation, stooping, black shoes making startled noises on the marble, they returned together. Sonny opened the car door, stuck his head in, and Cassandra and I–Cassandra in her trim black dress, hair drawn tightly under the little hat — leaned forward as one. The black face was wet and the long black cheeks were more hollowed out than ever. His panther hand was trembling.

“Been some mistake, Skipper,” shaking his head, fanning himself with his black chief’s cap, “hearse gone on ahead without us. The man inside couldn’t tell us a thing. Anyways, we got to get a move on now.”

“Well, hop in, Sonny,” I said. “Let’s go.” Then leaning forward, touching the stiff driver’s charcoal arm and wishing I could see his face, “Listen,” I said, “it’s a matter of life and death. Do you understand?”

“Got his lights on now, Skipper,” nudging me, peering down into my face, staring at me with those hard-boiled eggs of his, “and them lights ought to help for sure.”

“That’s good, Sonny,” I said. “I’m glad.”

Then suddenly the highway was wide open, clear, a long rising six-lane concrete boomerang with its tip driven into the horizon and all for us. Soft gray seats and chrome and the sunlight standing still on the ebony dashboard, and only the highway itself took my attention away from the chrome, the felt padding under our feet, so that for a moment I saw the lemon trees, the olive groves, the brown sculpted contours of the low hills.

There was a shadow in the front seat next to the driver, a dark amorphous shadow that swelled and tried to change its position and vague shape according to the curves in the road, black shadow that seemed to be held in its seat by the now terrible speed of the Caddy. The driver had both hands on the wheel and now the speed was whispering inside my spine. I noticed that the tints of the window and windshield glass had slid, suddenly, onto Cassandra’s black dress, were shining there in the black planes of her body, and that she was looking at me. The black shadow was snuggling up to the driver.

“Hurry up,” I said as loud as I could, leaning forward and fighting against the sword at my side, “hurry up, will you? We haven’t got all day.”

And then the turn-off, the gentle incline over gravel, a long sweeping glimpse of the lemon sky, the archway flanked by two potted palms — there was an angel floating between the palms — the still sunlit aspect of the cemetery at the end of the day. And a little sign which I saw immediately-speed six miles per hour—and far off, at the top of a dun-colored hill, a little activity which I tried not to see. Sonny was suffering now, moaning to himself, and doing a poor job of controlling his fear of graveyards.

“Look, Sonny,” I said, “isn’t that the hearse?”

“Appears to be the hearse, Skipper. Sure enough.”

We crawled toward the hill and toward the green speck — it proved to be a tent for mourners — and toward the other elongated speck, black and radiant, which was the hearse. The sky was a pure lemon color, quite serene.

“But, Sonny,” clutching his arm, reaching up quickly for a fierce grip on the handstrap, “it’s moving, isn’t it? It wasn’t moving before, but it’s moving now.”

“Appears like you’re right, Skipper. That hearse just don’t want our company, I guess.”

And then the stillness of the limousine, the grease and steel sound of the door opening — we left the car door open behind us, large and empty and catching the sun — and Sonny holding one of my arms and Cassandra the other, and we were walking across the carpet of thick green imitation turf in the gentle light on top of the dun-colored hill, and no one was there.

“All right,” I said, “they can begin. Let’s get it over with.”

But I knew better. There was no one there, the place was empty. The remains of flowers were scattered around underfoot, red roses, white carnations, the debris of real activity, I could see that. But I rushed to the tent, for a long while stood looking into the darkness of that warm tent. There was a shovel lying on the ground and the smell of earth. Nothing else.

The flowers were heaviest where the digging had been going on. Piled up, kicked out of the way, crushed. And there were a few strips of the thick green turf lying more or less around the edges of what had been the hole, and the three of us, standing there together, gently touched the green turf with the toes of our shoes. They must have thought they were burying a piano, and judging by the width and depth of the new earth the hole must have gone down a hundred feet. There was the deep print of a workman’s boot right in the center and I squatted, kneeled, brushed it away.

And kneeling, weighing a handful of the new earth in my cold hand: “So they went ahead without us,” I said. “They put poor Gertrude into the ground without us. You know,” looking up at the two black figures rising into the soft lemon sky, “I told them I wanted Gertrude to have a white casket. A white casket with just a touch of silver. But they might have put her into mahogany and gold for all we’ll ever know. How can we tell?”

I stood up, raised my palm, straightened out my fingers: “Pretty sandy stuff, isn’t it, Sonny?” I said, and tossed it away, wiped my hand on the back of my pants. I turned to go.

And then the whisper, the quick soft whisper full of love and fear: “Ain’t you got something for the grave, Skipper? Got to leave something for the grave, Skipper. Bad luck if you don’t.”

I nodded, thought a moment, pointed. He understood. Sonny understood and unhooked the hooks and raked out a little trough about three inches deep in the loose skin-colored soil. He buried the sword about three inches deep in the loose soil, tamped it down. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps we would have had worse luck had we not left it there. At least it was no great loss.

The driver took us the long way around the cemetery on our way out, drove us at six miles per hour along the gentle road that was like a bridle path through a hovering bad dream. At the far end of the cemetery there was a line of eucalyptus trees, and leaning forward, staring out of the tinted glass and between the trees, I saw a mountain of naked earth heaped high with flowers — dead flowers, fresh flowers, an acre-long dump of bright tears for the dead — and I knew that poor Gertrude’s flowers would soon land on the pile.

“When we get home, Cassandra,” I said, and leaned back against the perfect cushion and shut my eyes, “I want you to try on that camel’s-hair coat. I think her camel’s-hair coat might fit you, Cassandra.”