Sideswipe (14 page)

While Troy looked up the number and called, Stanley's mind raced, trying to think of something to say in his defense. He wanted Troy to have a good opinion of him.

"Two-thirty, Pop. If you'll let me have the thirty bucks now, I'll be on my way."

"You don't have to leave just yet." Stanley put his pipe down, looked into his wallet, and handed Troy thirty dollars. "Sit down awhile, Troy. There's plenty of time. I can always call you another cab when the city buses stop running. I don't want you to think you've hurt my feelings, either. A man don't mind hearing what others think about him, even if they've got it all wrong."

"I don't, Pop, and I don't care what people think of me."

"Well, I like to listen to you, anyway. I liked that part about the rocks in a leather bag. That makes a lot of sense. But a man's born where he's born. And if he's raised in a city, he can't help being a city man."

"I was raised in a city, too. Los Angeles. But if you follow what I'm saying, it's all a matter of awareness and instinct. Today the times are so damned good it's hard to be an individualist. What you should've done, the first time you came home and puked up your guts, was quit striping cars."

"I couldn't quit, Troy. It was the best job I ever had. I was newly married, too. I guess I can't really explain it, but most people in Detroit'll work for an auto company if they can. The union did a lot for us, too, you know."

"Have you got an alarm clock? Maybe I'll take a little nap before the bus leaves."

"Sure, you can sleep in my wife's bed, Troy." Stanley led the way into the bedroom and switched on the bedside lamp. "I'll just sit up, and wake you in plenty of time for the bus."

Troy put his arm around Stanley's shoulders, then dropped it. He pinched the old man's skinny buttocks, and Stanley flinched.

"Ever fool around, Pop? Want to go to bed with me? I wouldn't mind a little round-eye. It'll make me sleep better."

"No, no." Stanley shook his head and looked at the floor. "I never done anything like that."

Troy shrugged, sat on the side of the bed, and pulled off his boots. "I won't press you. But I advise you to keep away from little girls. Next time you're liable to land up in Lake Butler. And some of those cons up there would rather have a clean old man than a young boy." Troy unsnapped the buttons on his shirt. "If you've got an alarm clock, go to bed. You look like you need some sleep yourself. I won't bother you."

"I don't need any sleep. I had me a long nap this afternoon. I'll wake you in plenty of time."

Stanley closed the bedroom door. He poured a cup of coffee and pulled the plug on the machine. If he was going to stay up anyway, the coffee couldn't bother him too much.

What made Stanley uneasy was the way Troy had hit the nail on the head about his alleged allergy to the smell of paint. When Maya had wanted the all-pink bathroom, he had wondered about it at the time. He had enjoyed painting the bathroom, taking his own sweet time, and he had done a beautiful job in there. But the bathroom was small, and he had often worked with the door closed. And he hadn't been sick or nauseated during the three days it took him to complete the job.

But he didn't recall actually hating his job at the plant, either. He'd been too happy to have a good job, especially when a lot of men in his neighborhood had been laid off. There had been days when he had been sore about something or other, but that was only natural with any kind of work. Besides, Troy had never had a regular job, he said. What could he know about the comfort and security it gave a man to know that he had a paycheck coming in every week? With a paycheck, a man could plan things, build up some savings, even buy on credit if he wanted something bad enough. He knew exactly how far the money would go every month. Except for strikes. The budget went to hell then. But after the strike, he would be better off than before, with a higher paycheck and other fringe benefits. Reuther had been a genius; that's probably why they had killed him. There were a lot of things he would like to talk about with Troy if he would only stay a few days.

At one-thirty, Stanley made a fresh pot of coffee in the Mr. Coffee machine. It wasn't so hard. At two he awakened Troy.

"I made some fresh coffee, and I already called for the cab."

Troy, fully dressed, joined him in the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee.

"What's your all-fired rush to get to Miami, Troy? Staying here a couple of days won't hurt you. If the police don't know you're here, they won't be out here checking on you."

"I'm not worried about the cops, I'm looking for a fresh stake. I wouldn't mind staying here a couple of days, but I want to visit the West Indies. Sit down a minute, Pop. There's this guy down in Miami I met in New Orleans. He's a Bajan nonobjective painter, and he told me about a job in Miami that could make us both a bundle."

"What kind of a painter?"

"A Bajan. Barbadian, from the island of Barbados. They call themselves Bajans."

"I mean the other. Nonobjective, you said."

"Right. It's different from abstract. In abstract art, part of something is recognizable, but in nonobjective art nothing is."

"I don't understand--"

"Hell, you told me you were a painter, a striper."

"I am. But I never heard of nonobjective art. It don't make any sense."

"Now you've got it. It isn't supposed to make any sense, Pop. But James, that's his name, can't draw worth shit, so he became a nonobjective painter. He's a remittance man, in reverse. His father's a black man, and his mother's white, an Englishwoman. His father owns some kind of catchall store in Bridgetown. Dry goods, English china, peanut butter, and he also has the island concession on two different European cars, James told me. That's the way they work down there. His old man has the peanut butter concession, so anybody wants peanut butter he has to get it from James's father. James is the only legitimate son, although he has a few illegitimate brothers and sisters. When his father made enough money, he went to England and got himself an English wife before he came back.

"James's father wants him to go into business with him, but James talked his family into letting him study painting in the United States. His old man sends him an allowance of two hundred bucks a month, and he keeps this allowance low so that James'll give up painting and come back to Barbados. Evidently, legitimate sons are a premium in Barbados, and having light skin is good for business, too.

"If he wanted to paint on the side, James told me, his old man wouldn't care, but full-time nonobjective painting is too much for his father to tolerate. His aunt sent him some extra dough on his twenty-sixth birthday, and he used it for a sketching trip to New Orleans. I met him on the levee one day. He had a sketchbook, and he was trying to draw the -Dixie Queen-. It was like some little kid drawing. We got to talking, and we became friends. He mentioned this setup in Miami when he learned that I was experienced in that line. He's desperate, you see, to study art in New York at the Art Students League, on Fifty-seventh Street. He thinks if he could get a one-man show in New York, he'd get some recognition, and then he'd never have to go back to Barbados.

"To cut this short, I dropped James a card that I was on my way to Miami, and I'm a few days late already--because of what happened in Jacksonville."

"What happened in Jacksonville, Troy? You never told me nothing about that."

"I don't think you want to know about it, Pop. It was just a misunderstanding I had with some guy I met in a bar."

The cab pulled up at the curb, and the driver honked his horn. Troy opened the front door and waved to the cabbie to let him know he had heard.

"Thanks for everything, Pop. I'll send your money back to you in a few days."

"Never mind the money, Troy. I--I suppose it's too late for me to go with you, ain't it?" The old man's lower lip quivered.

Troy rubbed the flat placeon the bridge of his nose. "It's never too late to do anything, Pop. I can't promise you anything, but if you want to come to Miami with me, the cab's waiting."

The cabbie sounded a long blast on his horn. Troy opened the door again. "Don't blow that horn again." His voice carried in the night air, and the driver jerked his hands away from the wheel as if it were red hot.

"I can't go right this minute, Troy. But I can come in a day or so."

"Get a pencil and paper. I'll give you James's address."

Stanley got a ballpoint and a piece of paper from Maya's desk. Troy scribbled the address. "That's James FrietasSmith, with a hyphen between the names. I've never been there, but the house is in the neighborhood they call Bayside--not far from downtown. There's no phone, so come right out to the house. There's a big house in front, belongs to the Shapiros, and James has the garage apartment in back."

"I can find it. I can't come today, but Thursday or Friday for sure. At least I'm pretty sure."

Troy winked and kissed Stanley lightly on the lips. He opened the door, stepped outside, and snapped his fingers. "Pop! The writer's name. The guy who made the statement about the rocks in the bag. Somerset Maugham, the Englishman. And he lived to be a helluva lot older than you."

Troy got into the cab, and Stanley turned off his porch light. He wondered if any of his neighbors had seen Troy kiss him, but he didn't much care if they had. It had been a sweet kiss, the way his son had kissed him when he was seven or eight years old and left for school in the mornings. Then one morning Junior had stopped kissing him, and even pulled away when Stanley had tried to hug him. Boys were like that. Junior would still let Maya hug him in the house, but if she tried to kiss or hug him in public, the boy had a fit, and pulled away from her, too. But Troy had liked him well enough to kiss him good-bye, and the old man was touched by it. Well, maybe he would go to Miami, and maybe he wouldn't. Despite what Troy said, a man couldn't do anything he felt like doing without thinking it over first.

CHAPTER 9

On Sunday, Hoke and Aileen went to his father's house for dinner. Sunday dinner was always served at three P.M., because the Moseleys usually had a late breakfast and skipped lunch. It was an early dinner for Inocencia, too, so she could finish up and go home to her own family in time to attend evening church services. There was a standing rib roast for dinner, and if anyone got hungry later, they could make sandwiches. Frank had always followed this practice on Sundays, even after he became a widower, and he hadn't changed the tradition when Helen came into his life.

Hoke and Aileen got to the house at one, so Aileen could swim in the pool before dinner. Aileen didn't like to swim in the ocean. She was afraid of jellyfish, and had once been bitten on the toe by a bluefish in Vero Beach. The El Pelicano didn't have a pool, so her grandfather had given her his permission to use his pool any time she wanted to walk the mile and a half to his house on Ocean Road. Frank and Helen rarely swam in their pool, but they had white cast-iron chairs and an umbrella table beside the pool, and they often sat out there in the early evenings to have a drink and watch the traffic on the intracoastal waterway. There was an old back-scarred manatee that often came to the dock in the evenings. When it did, Helen fed it a few heads of iceberg lettuce. Because iceberg lettuce was eighty-nine cents a head, Helen had tried to feed the manatee Romaine, which was much cheaper, but the manatee didn't care much for it, so she had gone back to giving it iceberg. While Aileen splashed in the pool, Hoke looked for the manatee, but it never showed up.

Hoke was wearing a new yellow poplin jumpsuit, tennis shoes, and a pair of Ray-Ban aviator-style sunglasses he had owned for ten years or more. He occasionally missed the tug of his gun at the back of his belt, where he usually wore it, but he no longer carried it, or his badge, or his handcuffs. On the right leg of his jumpsuit there was a square cargo pocket that closed with a zipper, but the outline of the gun was clearly visible when he put it into this pocket, so he had decided to quit carrying his weapon. Inasmuch as he was on leave, and not in Miami, he wasn't required to have his gun on his person at all times. Still, he felt a little funny without it.

Frank was in his den, watching a lacrosse game on cable, and Helen was in the living room. She sat at her fruitwood desk, addressing envelopes and enclosing mimeographed letters requesting donations for the Palm Beach Center for Abused Children. She was on the last few envelopes when Hoke joined her in the living room. He poured three ounces of Chivas Regal at the bar, added two ice cubes, and gave himself a splash of soda. Helen looked over her shoulder and smiled. "I'm about finished, Hoke. Could you fix me a pink gin, please?"

"Tanqueray or Beefeater?"

"It doesn't make any difference when you add bitters, so I'd just as soon have Gordon's."

Because it did make a difference, Hoke poured three ounces of Tanqueray into a crystal glass, added ice cubes, and put in a liberal sprinkling of Angostura bitters. He took a cocktail napkin from the stack and put the napkin and drink on the edge of the desk where Helen could reach it.

"Thank you." Helen sipped her drink. "This is Tanqueray."

"There is a difference, then."

"I know that, but what I meant was that it didn't make any difference to me. There, that's the last of the list. I wanted to have these letters printed, but I was argued out of it. The committee thought if we had them mimeographed instead, the letter would be more convincing as a dire need for funds. In my opinion, mimeographed letters look tacky. I'm not sure anyone'll read them."