Native Speaker (5 page)

Jack would laugh and hoot down something like, “You damn menace, O'Reilly!” and then pour us each another full glass of Barolo, the wine warm, its color deep purple, so that when he smiled you saw his teeth shadowed with its ink. The men below would keep at their work, steadily clipping away until dusk at the overgrowth—“man-a-curing” was Lelia's reprise—showing no mercy to the thorny shrubs, the crapweeds and wild grasses, the tiny shoots of anything that rose up between the cracks of their meticulously landscaped stones.

I thought Sophie must have despised this place, but Jack always said that she had seemed happy, that she had liked the neighbors, the brightly bedecked husbands and wives, the gregarious, delinquent, wise-ass children of cops who asked her daily to play tag with them after school. I imagined her donning big Jackie O glasses, a silk print scarf, white tennis shoes. She moved probably a little like Jack, a little unapparently, she probably just seemed to get from one place to another, floating majestically through her life until the day the internist informed them otherwise.

When Lelia was away I kept thinking how the same could happen to her. I thought Jack could wonder forever if he had looked at his wife hard enough while she was alive, if he had burned enough into memory of every last sensation of her bearing and presence, the heat of her long roped throat, burned enough her scent, the notes of her mind, burned all the things he needed now. I could see her there, the picture perched obliquely in his thick hands, her unanswered gaze dead on us both. How dark the eyes, how dark the mouth. Indelible, our last clues to a beautiful woman.

* * *

After lunch, Jack and I went to the microfiche room to look up press on John Kwang. Only three months earlier, Kwang had been on the cover of a Sunday magazine. He'd been elected to the city council two years before, on his second attempt, and there was rampant talk of a run against the mayor in the next Democratic primary. Already the mayor was feeling the heat; you could tell, because his surrogates on the council and the boards of Estimate and Education had begun quietly assailing Kwang for his interest in providing tax vouchers for bilingual education, to have English Only in the schools but subsidize native language study outside. The De Roos people were trying to get Hispanics thinking that Kwang wanted to cut the formal Spanish-English programs. They spoke in veiled attacks about his mediation of talks surrounding the black boycotts of Korean businesses across the city. They said Kwang was trying too hard to be all things to all people. Mayor De Roos himself was making a point of half-complimenting Kwang in the media whenever he could, just the week before calling him “a fervent voice in the wide chorus that is New York.”

The mayor was a careerist, a consummate professional, and he knew how the game should be run against an ethnic challenger: marginalize him, isolate him, acknowledge his passion but color it radical, name it zealotry.

“The mayor is no slouch,” Jack said, scanning film beside me. The room was a converted utility closet, with just enough space for two machines and their chairs. “He knows how hot Kwang is running. John Kwang is a media darling, he is untouchable right now, and there is no sense trying to attack him.”

“The polls say the people are against bilingualism,” I said. “They're against giving anything more to immigrants.”

“They are more against the politicos,” Jack answered. “The big players with interests and connections like the mayor. They love Kwang's style. He has a homemade sword and he is swinging it as hard as he can. He is the dragon-slayer. It doesn't hurt to have that expression of his, all wisdom and sincerity. Sometimes I think you'll look like him, Parky, in fifteen years or so.”

I stopped the microfiche at a photograph in the
Amsterdam News
. Kwang embracing leaders at an NAACP benefit. “Here he is with his wife, May.”

“What did Joan find on her?” Jack asked.

I flipped through her part of the manila paper file. She hadn't found much. “Born Kwon So-jung, in Seoul. She's forty. Ewha Women's University, degree in English literature. Her father was a founder of one of the industrial conglomerates. He died three years ago. Her mother lives alone in Seoul. May has two brothers and a sister, all alive, all older, all living in Korea. She met Kwang in the States, but where and how we don't know yet.”

“When did she marry him?” Jack asked.

“Fifteen years ago, the marriage license says in the county of Queens. They have two boys, named Peter and John Jr., ages eight and five. May does volunteer work. The family attends the Korean Presbyterian Church of Flushing. May also leads the children's Bible study class. Kwang has been an elder of the church for almost twenty years.”

Jack nodded, his puffy lips extended. I could tell he'd already done some of his own work.

He said, “Kwang knows his base. He lives and dies on contributions from grocers and dry cleaners. It's said the congregation freely hands money to him after the service in envelopes. You'll have to see for yourself.”

I imagined Kwang in a dark suit and white gloves, his parcels of tribute politely bundled behind him on the dais.

“I wonder if my father ever gave him money.”

“Let's hope not,” we heard, immediately behind us.

It was Dennis Hoagland. The grand never-knocker. He was wearing a red rain slicker and a canvas fishing hat pinned with wet flies and nymphs. As usual, Hoagland had waited to come at us from an unseeable angle. His dog, Spiro, unleashed, heeled behind him and yelped once in pain as he lowered himself to the floor.

“It's nice to see someone working around here,” Hoagland said, rubbing warmth into his hands. He never seemed to address anyone in particular. “I can't do any work myself. February is the gloomiest month. It's never been this cloudy, never. The fucking sun must have died. Do you remember a time as dark and damp as this, Jack?”

“It's always sunny where I live.”

“Damn, Jack.” He stepped forward uneasily, then held his position on the threshold. “That sounds right. You live upstate. I live down here near the city, too close to the harbor. The water. It's like a lake effect.”

“I know nothing about it, boss.”

“Ha! Young Harry of the City knows. Did I tell you where we've got you placed?”

“I thought it was public relations.”

“That too. We've gotten lucky. They're opening a new office in Flushing next week and they need volunteers. Everyone's talking about taking on the mayor. My opinion—Kwang will get squashed. Old man De Roos is too slick. Anyway, you'll do some phone work for John Kwang's second.”

“How did you hook me?”

“Temp agency. Totally legit.”

Jack said, “This is cake, Parky.”

“No problemo,” Hoagland pitched in. “Anyway, she handles the PR and media. Her name is Sherrie Chin-Watt.”

Jack snorted. Sitting up straight in the chair with his thick legs bowed, he looked like a Cossack dancer. He was mincing the floor with his feet. “Even a councilman has a PR man. Or woman.”

“We all need one,” Hoagland said. “My wife, Martha, is mine. She sends out weekly flyers to the neighbors that remind them that I'm a quantity. She includes the slightest hints that I'm an unstable personality. How I am an insomniac. That I still sometimes wet the bed.”

“Is it working?” Jack asked.

“Damn right. No more dog shit on my lawn. It's clean. No more Girl Scouts at the door, either. No more Scientologists. We live in peace.”

“Who is the woman?” I asked Hoagland, half-recognizing her name.

Hoagland did the drill on her, calling it out with a straight voice.

“Sherrie Chin-Watt. Chinese American, born in San Francisco. Berkeley B.A. Did her law degree at Boalt. Law Review. Her parents run a small wig shop. Nothing special. She's around your age, Harry, thirty-three or thirty-four. Was married last year to your garden-variety investment banker, corporate finance. Her first marriage, his second. He works too much, sixty, sixty-five hours a week. Headed for the grave. Again nothing special, no real angle there for us. They own a co-op on Central Park West and a bungalow out in East Hampton. No children as yet. She suffers from endometriosis.”

“Where'd you get that?” I asked.

“I'm friendly with a prominent gynecologist. Coincidence.”

“Jesus.”

“She had a successful laser surgery last year, though she's not pregnant yet. They sleep in separate rooms because he snores. Other items. They went to Morocco for their honeymoon. They usually eat out, though not together. She lettered in volleyball in high school. Solid setter. She still calls home twice a week. What else? Before signing on with Kwang last year, she was an attorney for the ACLU office in Los Angeles. She made a name for herself then. If you'll recall, she defended that Indonesian crank in Santa Monica who trained his goat to fart into a portable mike at political rallies.”

“Free speech,” Jack said.

“Sure, sure. The guy was saying they were only being silenced at Republican events.”

“Republicans have the technology,” Jack said.

Hoagland sneered at him. “But Kwang knew her even before that. Apparently she met him while she was in law school, after some talk he'd given there. She's been with him less than a year now, but things are heating up fast. What, the election's in two years? They're not involved yet. Big yet.”

“I'm sure you would know,” I said.

“Oh, I do,” Hoagland belched out. He grimaced, knuckling the back of his thumb into his upper stomach. The doorway held him up. He quickly peeled away the foil wrapping from a roll of antacids.

“I know every rotten shit fucking thing going down in this hemisphere,” he said.

“I keep forgetting.”

“Ha!” He coughed. “You don't forget anything. That's why I love you so much, remember? Anyway, you're going to do Kwang right. Jack will be with you all the way. Do the full workup, certainly. We don't need anything unusual. Most of it you can do from here. Have you done any prep this week?”

Jack told him, “You're looking at it, boss.”

“Fine.”

Hoagland then motioned to me to walk with him back to his office. His way of telling you something was to stare at you for three seconds and then grin nervously like you've misunderstood each other. Spiro was trying to raise himself. When we got inside Hoagland's office he closed the glass door. Outside on the floor I saw Jack leave the microfiche room and walk back to his desk. Hoagland shed his slicker and hat. Spiro was waiting outside, whimpering. I sat down in the only other seat, a high metal stool on the other side of his desk.

“I take it you've been working things through with your wife. She's still your wife, right?”

“I think so,” I said. I didn't want to give him anything. “We're still legal.”

“Sure thing. We all love that girl, Harry. I know Jack does. Don't lose her. Martha, she's been nursing me toward sanity for a million years now. She's saved my sorry life more than a few times.”

I said, “I guess that's their job.”

“Damn right,” he replied, pouring a carafe of cloudy water into the top of his coffeemaker. “That's job one.”

He switched on the coffeemaker and lighted the butt of an old cigarette as he sat down. “Listen. I need you to work carefully through your legend with Jack before you come back to me with it. I've told him what I thought your angle might be. It's just a recommendation, you can take it or leave it. In fact, I want this to be left to you as much as possible. You're coming off a tough loss with that shrink and we're all pulling for you.”

I told him I was hearing the cheers.

“You should. No one's sleeping at night because of you.” He quickly finished the butt and was tapping out a fresh one. He was ignoring Jack's half tub of olives. Instead his fingers were jittering on the lighter. He was getting himself worked up, wanting to say something inspirational. He was the kind driven by the visions of certain men who'd come to occupy mythic sites in his life, scratchy visions of Rockne, Lombardi, visions of LBJ, Nixon. Then, the darker visions of Joe McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover. Our American Hitlers.

“What happened to you has happened to all of us once. That shrink only got to you because he believed in you so fully. You were giving a fantastic performance. You were never better than in those sessions. You were a genius, Harry, you had that fat fuck squirming on his own couch. He was ready to ooze. You were in perfect position to stick him. He would have told you everything.”

“If he had had anything.”

“Immaterial. Anyway, we couldn't have known that.”

“So I stuck myself.”

“Doesn't matter,” he growled. “You were there, in position. That's what counts. I listened to those tapes, Harry. You were fucking magnificent! I always knew you had it. Christ,
I
even wanted to help you with your problems. I kept forgetting why you were there. You were brilliant. Tony, Emmy, Academy-fucking-Award.”

“He was a decent man,” I said to him.

“The hell with that,” Hoagland groaned.

I could see him, Luzan, sitting there in his brown suit and square black-framed glasses. He was a primary organizer of small New York–based Filipino American movement for Ferdinand Marcos's return to the homeland; he collected money for press notices, pro-Marcos picnics, anti-Aquino rallies. Nothing violent. This before Marcos finally died in Hawaii. I learned that Luzan himself had died, too, soon afterward, while attending a professional conference in the Caribbean. I didn't think Hoagland knew I had, but of course he did, keeping a bug even after he was dead, the s.o.b. I had called Luzan's office to apologize for suddenly quitting our sessions and disappearing as I did. I knew I shouldn't have. I was simply going to tell him that I was sorry for the breakoff, that he'd been helpful in what he had to say about my life, but his wife answered and told me he had drowned in a boating accident off St. Thomas. She was cleaning out his office when I called. At the last moment she had decided not to go with him. And I thought,
Lucky for you
. She wept a little, wheezing like she was sick in the chest, and thanked me for my concern. I could almost hear Luzan's bird-high voice, a bizarre pitch that like much else about him was a little silly, a dress of maudlin order on a man of such girth and weight. He could have been a bit player on a Saturday morning children's show. He kept his black hair damp and oily and combed straight down to his eyes. As a kid I would have said his was a fresh-off-the-boat look. Luzan smelled of milk and ground pepper and lemons. Over the seven weeks of sessions I grew fond of him. Once, he offered me macaroons his daughter had baked.