The Garden of Last Days Page 4

  At first he’d come in only once or twice a week. He’d get a table on the main floor and hold on to his money and watch all the acts. Every now and then one of the girls would approach him for a private, but for a while—most of a night or an entire week—he’d smile and shake his head and stay put. But then one would come up to him he couldn’t say no to and he’d let her lead him back to the VIP for a one-on-one, and once he started to go there, he’d keep going, at twenty bucks a dance, again and again. Sometimes he fell for that one. Sometimes it was another. Then, each night, he’d wait for her. Like the man three tables over from Gordon waited now. He sat there and drank and said no to all the other girls because he was waiting for his girl and when she finally came back out on the floor he wanted her to come to him only, and when she didn’t, his pocket could open with all kinds of trouble. But even when he got his girl, when she moved right to his table and he paid her to take him back to the easy chairs of the VIP, he didn’t want her to dance for him anymore—he wanted to talk; at twenty dollars a song, he just wanted to sit and talk. Like the man in the VIP now, the fourth lone dog in the club, sitting with Marianne, who hadn’t taken off a thing.

  For weeks he’d chosen her, her hair dyed so black it looked purple on stage. Her blue eyes and pouty lips and fake breasts, her nipples stretched wide as a silver dollar. She couldn’t be more than twenty-two or -three and spoke with an accent that was east Texas, her voice high in her throat and nose. She laughed hard and often at nothing and, despite everything, had the naïve, too-friendly gaze of a child.

  But this one liked her. He had bright blond hair and heavy shoulders and he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his hand opening and closing, gesturing this way and that. Marianne leaned forward too, nodding her head with an overly enthusiastic but feigned interest, and onstage, Retro’s gown was off as her second number began, a Luther Vandross that made the whole place feel like somebody’s carpeted fuck van. In the smoky recessed light, five or six dancers had their customers happily seated in easy chairs and they stripped for them to Retro’s number. Marianne’s boy still had his elbows on his knees, one hand illegally holding hers as he made point after point with the other. His eyes were on his eight-dollar Budweiser, and as he talked, he shook his head as if he’d been deeply wronged. Marianne’s face was stuck in a half smile. She kept glancing behind her toward Paco standing in the blue light of the VIP bar talking to a regular, missing it all, seeing none of it.

  Lonnie hit the steps. It was Paco’s station for the night, but still, a pocket was a pocket and it had to be zipped shut.

  Retro’s number was on its last seconds, Luther done now, just a hundred synthesized strings in the air as the crowd applauded and the pack yelled it up. Retro’s long legs were spread wide, and leaning back on one hand, she lightly touched herself with the other. Lonnie hit the steps and moved through the crowd for the VIP. The air was heavy with cigar and cigarette smoke, perfume and cologne, hot French fries from the kitchen. Lonnie had to step by a waitress balancing a tray and just as he got to the half wall and was about to leap over it, Paco moved to what he should’ve seen earlier. Half-Cuban, half-Chinese, with his thick forearms and big hands, Paco stepped between them and gripped his fingers around Lone Dog’s wrist and twisted and it was as if an electric current had just shot into his easy chair, his torso straightening right up, his legs kicking out under the table.

  Marianne pulled her arm away and stood.

  Retro’s number ended with a tinkling of falling electronic chimes and in the air were just dozens of voices and bar sounds, the kitchen door opening and swinging shut, the high whimper of Marianne’s customer gripping Paco’s hand with his own. A few seconds passed before a Hank Jr. song charged out of the speakers, all drums and piano and lead guitar, and even though her LD’s eyes were squeezed shut, his wet cheek pressing against Paco’s knuckles, Marianne just stood there, her silicone breasts round and hard-looking. She was supposed to get the money up front but it was clear to Lonnie she hadn’t; she was staring down at her hurting customer. Paco eased up and she leaned over and said something. Then she straightened, rested one hand on her hip, and held out the other to get paid.

  APRIL HELD FRANNY in the darkness of Tina’s office. She twisted slowly from side to side, humming a nameless tune. She kissed the top of Franny’s head, could smell the beach in her hair, the salt and sun, the watermelon shampoo from yesterday when they’d taken a bath together before supper. She tried to ignore the rowdy country song out on the floor Sadie danced to in boots and a cowboy hat, and she stroked Franny’s hair, felt beneath her forearm the vertebrae of her three-year-old’s spine.

  It was so wrong to have her here at all. There was no way she could leave now, though, not after pissing off, then distracting Louis. If she left, he’d find a way to take it personally and make it harder for her to make money. No help from Glenn ever. Their five months on the third floor above the old Woolworth’s that’d been sold and turned into a remnant carpet shop. You could smell the rugs all the way up the creaking stairs, the dusty weaves and that new chemical smell, though they’d had a big three-room apartment with a view over the naval yard to the Piscataqua River and the bridge, the big ships that Glenn always stared out at. He’d hand her Franny, still in his shirt and tie from the shop at the mall where he sold computer games all day to isolated teenagers or lonely men. Glenn would lean against the windowsill and smoke his daily joint, blowing his smoke out the window, his back wide and his hips narrow because he took care of himself, the first thing she’d noticed when they’d met at the pub a year earlier, his thick arms and broad shoulders, his skin soft as a woman’s, but it was his green eyes that got her, so bright with flecks of blue in them, like they were lit from the inside, and when he finally looked at her and smiled, it was as if he was smiling right into her.

  Probably the same thing that got the new one too. And he was probably with someone else after that one now, working a different shitty mall job in a different town. Going to the gym, smoking his joints, looking out a window at whatever he saw there, maybe thinking about the ships he never had the balls to get on. And not one dollar from him after the first couple of months. Just gone.

  She should hate him but she didn’t. Instead, she found herself thinking of his eyes those first months, how he seemed to take all of her in, how he seemed to love all of her.

  April kept humming, turning from side to side. She put her back to the muted TV and hoped Franny might start watching the new movie Tina had put in before she left. In her small dark office, the club on the other side was loud and pulsing and April knew the place was filling up and every minute she wasn’t out there she was losing money. Sadie was already into her second number, the third dancer in the rotation to do her act since April’s. She stopped humming, said into Franny’s ear: “Want some ice cream?”

  “I want to go home.”

  “We will. We will.” April reached back for Franny’s fingers, gently pried them away from her hair. “Chocolate or vanilla?”

  Franny didn’t answer, her eyes on Neptune and his mermaid daughter swimming side by side deep at the bottom of the sea. April could taste the coffee she’d had on the way in, knew she’d have to get a mint from her locker before going out to the tables, her mind already there, her heart and face and body gearing itself up for the nightsmile that had to come from all of her. She let go of Franny’s hands but didn’t stand just yet. She’d wait till this cartoon movie had her attention completely. Another few seconds, that’s all it would take.

  She turned up the volume on The Little Mermaid, then unzipped Franny’s backpack and pulled out her pajamas, her pink cotton pants and shirt with buttons. She lifted Franny’s flip-flops off her feet, had her lie back so she could get her shorts off, too.

  “We going, Mama?”

  “Soon.” She gathered up the hems of both pajama legs, pushed them over Franny’s feet, and pulled them up over her underwear. It was Jean who’d potty trained her. Not her
mother, but Jean.

  “Arms up.”

  Franny lifted them slowly, a tentative smile on her face as another silly number began to play. April could hear the crowd out on the floor, could feel the bass notes from the speakers in the air around her. She pulled off her daughter’s top, working her left arm into the sleeve, then her right, buttoning it up. She kissed her on the forehead, whispered, “Love you.” Then she folded her clothes and placed them into the backpack, rising slowly and backing out of Tina’s office, the manufactured colored light of the TV spilling over Franny, her small face, her hair needing combing, her lips parted as she got pulled yet again into another made-up story, a scary part coming there too. This time April would tell Tina to fast-forward through it before it was too late. She’d tell her to bring Franny a bowl of ice cream and to make sure she used the bathroom before she got sleepy, to put a toilet cover on the seat.

  Then April would become Spring; she’d place a mint on her tongue, smooth her skirt, and finally walk out into the dark noise of the floor and all the men there, her smile and hair and body taking her from the tables to the VIP and back again till each garter was stuffed, stuffed with every single reason why, she kept telling herself, she was here at all.

  JEAN LAY IN her private room on the ninth floor overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. Earlier she’d watched the sun set into it, leaving behind a bright rim of green. Now the sky and water were one black mass distinguished only by the lights of an oil tanker out there. Under her johnny, taped to her upper chest, were two wires connected to the heart monitor beside her. Every thirty or forty minutes a cheerful, condescending nurse would come in and study it briefly, take her blood pressure, record information on a clipboard, then ask Jean in loud, overly enunciated words if she was comfortable. Did she want her to reposition the bed for her or turn on the TV?

  Jean answered no and smiled politely but was relieved to see her go; why, when one was laid up in some way, was it automatically assumed you’d lost half your hearing and your mind too? She shouldn’t even be here; her EKG had come back normal and so had her blood test. She was only lying in this bed, trapped in this place and not taking care of Franny, because she’d thought she was dying and had made the mistake of telling the cardiologist about all the heart attacks in her family, her high blood pressure and cholesterol, her true age. They’d given her aspirin and something to calm her, but all it did was knock her out for a few hours and now she wanted to get up and leave.

  Tomorrow morning they’d release her anyway, make her come back later to discuss losing weight and getting her cholesterol and blood pressure down, things she’d been trying to do for years to no avail really, and what was the use? What happened to her today is how it would happen when it finally came; it’s how the people in her family went—even Harold—tall fit Harry. Him, too.

  She missed him acutely right now, knew if he were still here he’d be sitting in the chair by the window, keeping an eye on the monitor as if he understood what he was seeing. His long legs would be crossed at the knees, his glasses perched at the tip of his hooked nose. He’d grill the nurse on medication frequency, fluid intake, rest, the possible contraindications of drugs. Eventually she’d assume he was a physician, though he knew next to nothing about medicine. Except for sales pitches and boats, he knew next to nothing about most things, but had always read daily and widely and so knew a little about quite a lot. She’d watch as experts in their fields got fooled by him—from the roofer working on their old house in Oak Park, to the dentist recommending an expensive crown, to the cable TV installer who’d come to upgrade their service, Harry always asked questions with just the right terminology to wake them up and keep them honest. He said he did it because he was interested in everything, but she had always thought it came from years of selling all those water filtration systems, replacement windows, forklifts for heavy industrial use, residential security systems, even eggs. He said he had the gift of gab, but what he really meant was he knew how to establish common ground with all kinds of people, to use what little he knew to make them think he knew more than that: their days and their nights, the very lives they were living, and, therefore, what they needed most. He made her feel that way, too. She missed that about him more than anything, that he had her best interests in mind at all times and she could leave the practicalities to him: car and house maintenance; banking, investments, and insurance, all those services that left her feeling surrounded by firm, deep cushions. At least that’s what she’d thought until he died in his office lined with top sales awards—she’d believed it was what he’d done that made her feel secure, yet weeks after his funeral, lying in the dark in their half-empty bed, angry at him for abandoning her, she pictured him at his desk in front of his computer talking on the phone to some agent or advisor, peering through his glasses at a figure, his calculator within reach, a pen between his long fingers, and her eyes welled up, for that’s what had made her feel so taken care of, not knowing he was tending to their business but actually seeing and hearing him do it.

  It was everything else, too: it was having him there to deal with anyone who came to their door—the UPS man, Jehovah’s Witnesses, trick-or-treaters, neighborhood fund-raisers. She’d listen from the living room or kitchen as he engaged each of them, asking them knowledgeable-sounding questions before he wished them luck and sent them away with nothing. When she and he hosted dinner parties, she would prepare the appetizers and the meal but she could count on him to be the central engine for the entire evening, to mix drinks and make everyone comfortable, to ask the right questions.

  In the thirty-five years they were married, she’d never had even one panic attack. Nervousness, yes. But nothing like these past months since he’d been gone. Nothing like today’s.

  Sometimes they would come with no warning and no seeming origin; she’d be driving past the lovely shops of St. Armand’s Circle looking for a parking place, watching from her air-conditioned cocoon all the brightly dressed tourists walking along the sidewalks or crossing the streets with their shopping bags and sodas, their melting ice cream cones, and she’d feel that weight begin to press against her chest; she’d break out in a sweat and could no longer breathe the air all the way into her lungs. Everything would begin to appear as if from a dream—a young boy looking past her and her car like they weren’t there, the sway of a purse from an old woman’s hand, the green of the palm fronds as they hung precariously off the tops of their long, gray trunks. The thought of actually stopping her car and stepping outside terrified her and it was as if she were a witness to something horrible only she could see.

  She would drive straight home and lock her car and gate behind her, take refuge in her walled garden in her chair under the mango with a full glass of Cabernet. Soon her breathing would return to normal and she’d begin to get that sideways perspective the wine gave, the ability to retrace her steps, then walk beside herself; she’d see that looking for a parking space had started it, that tiny lack of assurance that she’d find one simply opened up into a black chasm of no assurance of anything: continued good health, money, human kindness, God, a hereafter; she began to wonder if she’d find any help or comfort or meaning in this world at all before she was dust no one would remember or speak of or even think about in passing while reaching for the butter or unlocking the door.

  But today. What could’ve triggered it today? She closed her eyes, saw again the water spraying over the small white flowers of the frangipani against the wall. There was the way Franny had waved at the gate, a loving I’ll-miss-you gesture that made Jean miss her. That’s when she began to worry about them again, to wonder how long April could do what she did without corrupting Franny’s life. How long before April began to sell more than just an open view of her body? For all Jean knew, she may already do that.

  I’ll just have to take her.

  Jean kept hearing April’s voice over the phone when she’d called her from her new bedside, already drowsy from what they’d given her. At first,
April had sounded genuinely concerned, asking if she was all right and did she need anything, but then a distracted tension came into her voice.

  “Do you know anyone who can watch Franny? I can’t call in sick. I just can’t.”

  “No. Not really.” There was the woman who’d sold her the house, the man who advised her on gardening supplies, there was her new dentist out on Longboat Key, the somber owner behind the cash register at the wine and cheese shop, four or five teenagers and housewives who rang up her purchases at the grocery store, there was the young man Teddy, who pumped the gas into her car, and the occasional waiter or waitress when she would treat herself to a dinner out. Did she know anyone? Yes. And no.

  She hung up, ashamed of herself for not being home to care for Franny, but more, for not knowing anyone she could call. It’s how she’d thought she wanted it, so damn tired of being treated like a widow in Illinois, she was content to be just her for a while. She knew other people, mainly women, who could not leave the house they’d shared with their mates all those years for it was too full of shrines to their dead: the framed family photographs spanning decades, closets full of clothes and shoes, favorite books and a chair, a garage littered with tools. But for Jean, what had filled their house with so much life was Harry himself, and when he was gone, so was the feeling that it was her home.

  Old friends came by to try and fill the void: Lindsey and Bob Andersen, Mary Ann and Dick Hall, Joan and Larry Connorton—they’d bring food and make themselves the drinks Harry would have; they’d sit across from Jean or stand close to her, already hesitant to talk about him. As if it would make her feel worse when the opposite was true. Instead they’d talk about their kids or local politics, a class one of them was taking, a car that needed trading in. They’d make sure she ate what they brought her, and they tended to drink more than usual or not much at all.