Stealing Flowers (22 page)

When Lloyd and I arrived at the cottage, he
put on an explicit pornographic video-tape. “That’s what we’ll be
doing tomorrow night,” he boasted.

I was astounded at the graphic nature of it.
I’d heard of such things, but had never imagined I would be
watching it, let alone doing it. “Where did you get this?”

“Good, isn’t it? Wait until you see some of
the women on this thing. They’re hot.”

“How much did it cost?”

“Diddly-squat. Kwong leant it to me.”

Kwong was Kwong Katigbaki, an old friend of
Lloyd’s from the Carling Street days. I was dumbfounded and grew
excited by each sequence of lurid repetitive pumping and sucking. I
could hardly sleep that night in anticipation. I dreamt of sex the
entire time I slept.

If Jesus had visited me that night, he’d
have been appalled. Good to his word, before noon of the next day,
two young girls were dropped off by Lloyds’ friend, Kwong, who came
into the cottage alone and looked around first. He was Korean,
about nineteen or twenty years old, although this was hard to tell.
His face was without hair and his deep almond eyes appeared
penetrating, maybe even cruel. He’d a sturdy body with a developed
chest and arms, emphasized in a tight cotton shirt, dress pants,
and a sports-jacket. My immediate instinct was that he was a bad
person, brutal, and greedy, but I hid my reaction. I became truly
nervous of him.

“Nice,” he said with a thick accent, I
assumed evaluating the cottage. “You like Korean girls?”

I shrugged. I’d seen now that he was armed
with a pistol and I had grown nervous. My heart began to pound.
“Maybe,” I said.

“You a Tappet?” he asked. I nodded. “They
pretty. You not racist?” I shook my head. “You don’t hurt girls?”
he asked further and I looked at Lloyd.

“Jesus, who does he think we are?” I
asked.

By then it had dawned on me that they were
street girls and my anticipation was souring by the second. I
wanted to call the whole thing off when he called them in, then,
when I saw them I went silent. They were young and had long black
hair, both were svelte women, glamorous and fascinating. They were
dressed modestly and didn’t at all look like any of the working
girls I had seen on the streets. Kwong chuckled at my reaction and
shook my hand.

“I see you nice. You like?” I nodded. Lloyd
smiled and shook hands with Kwong. “I be back tomorrow,” Kwong
continued, “Noon. Sharp.”

With a little flurry and a light kiss to
both girls, he left. They introduced themselves as Kim Lai and Mi
Ley, and whether these were their real names, was highly unlikely.
Within minutes it was obvious they didn’t understand a thing we
said.

“You can’t have everything,” Lloyd said in
regards to their lack of English. “Who do you want first?”

I picked Kim Lai. She was the taller of the
two. Lloyd began kissing Mi Ley and I watched them as they openly
made out right in front of us. In a minute they were both naked on
the couch. I was transfixed until Kim Lai came and took my hand,
pulling me to one of the bedrooms. That afternoon, Lloyd and I took
turns on and off with both girls. I lost all my modesty around him
and the girls. To my shame, my body reacted excitedly even while I
became perplexed when a deluge of loneliness for Sally washed over
me with each passing encounter. I became so sad into the evening
that I couldn’t sleep and was restless the whole night through. I
counted the hours until the girls left.

“I don’t want to do that again,” I said to
Lloyd when they were gone. “It’s like pretending.”

Then unfortunately, I preceded to tell him
of my relationship with Sally and what had happened to destroy
it.

The next year flew by like the first, except
for one thing. I took a course on the History of Europe from the
Renaissance through to World War II which was staffed and
supervised by a tutorial leader, an undergraduate who was an
adamant Marxist. He was a horrible fellow, a total ideologue who
was too young and unpolished to hide it in any way. He wore this
scraggly beard which always had bits of food in it and constantly
sucked on Halls candy which had rotted out his teeth and which did
nothing to mask his bad breath.

He preached that everything in history
flowed through and from the labor movement. All capitalists were
parasites. America was a country of white pirates who in 1492 stole
the continent from the world’s most beautiful people, and after
slaughtering them, brought over from Africa, the world’s second
most beautiful people, as their slaves. However, the Capitalists
weren’t just heartless, greedy, white and Christian, they were also
responsible for India’s overpopulation, China’s scarcity of food,
the Soviet’s intellectual chauvinism, South Africa’s apartheid,
Germany’s former Nazism, Italy’s former fascism, Japan’s former
imperialism and every other sin of the modern world, past, present
and to come.

“How come,” I asked one day, “if
philosophers weren’t able to recognize that we were trapped in the
material dialectic, Karl Marx was all of a sudden able to break out
of the trap?”

“He was the first true philosopher,” he said
in all sincerity. “Once he took off the veil of history and showed
its inevitable march toward the world without governments, other
brilliant minds followed his lead.”

“I can tell that you’re one of those
brilliant minds,” I responded.

He frowned. “I’m just saying,” he continued,
“that more and more people recognize that history has an
intransigent nature and nothing can stop it. Already one third of
the world is under communist rule. There’s nothing you can do about
it.”

I had long known he had an answer for
everything and that he hated me, but like a fool I would continue
these insipid conversations, sometimes even drawing a small crowd
of students.

“I realize that according to you,” I
persisted, “all sorts of leftist theories exist scientifically
proving that capitalism leads to monopolies. How come the only
major monopolies in America that exist are government created and
protected ones?”

He blew off my question. “The same
capitalists involved over the world are consolidating and growing
larger. It’s an indisputably totally proven fact.”

I knew that it was untrue. Tappets was
pretty large, but if mismanaged, it could be destroyed in a couple
of years. Companies were fragile, and so was the stock market
system which supported them. “Why will the people rise up and
violently overthrow the Western Democracies after some future
crisis occurs? I mean why do you preach Marxism? If it’s
inevitable, violent action and preaching are unnecessary?”

“We don’t preach,” he said with a lie. “We
point out a path for the proletarian to follow. You’re never going
to understand it. You come from the wrong class.”

He was a knavish fellow and would always
have a rejoinder, but why I have such nasty feelings about him is
another matter. He grew to dislike me as I bested him in public
throughout the year and began to avoid me. I was rather insulted.
When I failed the course at the end of my term, I waged a rather
public fight with him and marched to the dean’s office to register
my complaint. I was indignant that this malcontent could possibly
do this. I knew it was nothing except revenge. My work was focused,
well-researched, and I had been careful to follow the guidelines. I
put a tremendous amount of work into all my papers, no matter how
large or small. The more I thought about it, the angrier I became,
but the dean’s office, good to their word, investigated my
complaint and asked the course professor to re-grade my three main
course papers. I received an overall A-plus.

I found myself in the summer of 1979, once
again working at Tappets. I often traveled with Stan to Japan or
different plants in the States. On these stateside excursions, I
piloted him. I presently knew every key player in Tappets on a
first name basis. The Stanroids were all free-wielding managers
except Hiroyuki. Mary’s loyalists were managerially restrained
except Cheryl Garland at Nexus, one of her oldest allies. I hadn’t
made up my mind about many of them, but I did have an intense
dislike for Graham Roberts, the head of Constant Batteries, who
always looked at me with acute resentment.

Clara had another stroke at the beginning of
the summer and Una left for Jamaica. Unlike it had in the past,
this didn’t tip me off to keep an eye on any upcoming calamity as
it should have. I’d forgot about The First Law of Life for the
unlucky; then one scorching afternoon near the end of July, it
happened . . . it would cost me so much suffering, and that was the
least of it. It was after an industrial league hardball game and my
mind was focused on only two things: Getting to the pool, it was
around 85̊ F, and relaxing. I was leaving for Japan in a couple of
days to join Stan, and tomorrow I’d quite a bit of running around
to do. Sally had come to watch Andy and I play. I was happy to have
won, but I was tired. I’d stayed up too late the night before and
ate too little for breakfast.

We approached that damnable corner where I
think everything in Jersey and New York Cities merges into Newark
and Willow. We passed where the naked street-person had been killed
by the bus. Besides the traffic commotion, what also annoyed me
here was the level of noise, the seeming chaos. Cars pulled u-turns
or cube-vans whizzed to a postal sorting-center nearby. It was
always something, and then there were the street-people, who I
detested more as I grew older.

I noticed that Sally’s attention had been
drawn to a vacant parking lot east of us on the other side of the
street. Young people sold flowers in front of an old
psychedelically painted school-bus, from one end of it to the
other, the flowered prints and plaid stripes exploded in garish
greens, pinks, yellows, and blues. I knew this sort of art was
inspired by drugs, especially LSD, by hippies, and like the
panhandlers and street people, I hated them. The only thing was,
they didn’t look like real hippies. Moreover, the ugly lot stood as
a reminder to me of the endless and senseless building in this
immediate area. They’d torn down perfectly fine homes to start the
construction of yet another strip mall.

“Let’s walk to Western and cross there,” I
said, seeing no gap in the speeding traffic.

“Who are they?” she asked.

Andy shaded his eyes from the sunlight and
looked over at Sally. With his dark complexion, especially in the
summer, and short athletic body, he sometimes reminded me of an
Italian I knew from the Hoboken head office, Burney Greco.

“They’re from Northern Bloomingdale, I
think,” he said, his voice lower than mine these last years. “It’s
a big commune, or something. They’ve a church. I can’t remember its
name.”

I was immediately disinterested, besides, I
knew right off that they hadn’t been hippies, they looked too
straight. “Do you see the two blond ones?” I asked anyway.

Andy nodded. “Pretty if you like Jesus
Freaks. Dad says they’re capital-A assholes, but that’s what he
calls Carter too.”

I laughed. “I think they’re selling roses,”
Sally said.

She handed me the baseball bat, and let out
her ponytail, so that her long blond hair fell to her back. I
glanced back at where we’d played. The baseball-diamonds were all
in use. To the north stood the Gusto. Beside it, the Essex County
Theater showed four movies: Alien, Manhattan, The Life of Brian,
and La Cage aux Folles.

“At last,” I said and took off my baseball
cap to wipe my forehead. “I hate this spot.”

We crossed onto Delaware in the direction of
Lower. “Look, they’re calling us over,” Sally said, waving to
them.

We were a hundred steps away from them.
“Better not,” Andy said, “have you ever seen Invasion of the Body
Snatchers? That’s what they say about these guys.”

Sally half-frowned, but I laughed. “Sal,
it’s a gorgeous day,” I said, “the pool awaits us.” I could almost
taste the fuzzy navels. I would put vodka, peach liqueur, fresh
orange juice, and crushed ice in a blender for a minute or so. It
was scrump-delicious.

“Let’s at least say hello and get their
brochures,” Sally said and pulled me to a halt. “We talk about
religion and you’re the one who’s studying it.”

I glanced again at the two girls with long
blond hair. We were closer now. They were pretty, though not
glamorous, and tall and thin, though not haggard either. “Let’s say
hello,” I said begrudgingly.

“My dad would kill me if I brought home the
Word,” Andy said, dragging his feet.

Four of the bus people came over to us at
once when we stepped into the lot. I thought the two blond girls
smiled especially nice for me and Andy. They placed their hands
affectionately on our arms. They’d no makeup, jewelry, nor fashion
accessories. I saw that the whole group dressed the same, in clean
white t-shirts, blue jeans and running shoes. They hadn’t a pound
to spare between them and it seemed the girls didn’t wear underwear
and went braless. At first I averted my eyes out of modesty, but
realized that they openly stared at the three of us, but in a
particular manner, as though we had just landed on earth from
another planet. They seem not to mind me staring at their breasts
and their friendliness appeared genuine. I felt myself getting
excited. Thinking back through the years, analyzing that day, I
realize I’d noticed one important telltale sign. They all had
dilated pupils and eyes that were out-of-focus. I know that this
will all seem impossible, it seems so to me, and I was there, but
it happened exactly as I’m describing it. It got ahead of Andy and
I somehow, and in quick order and the rest was . . . well, it was
the horrible thing that it became for all of us.

A young bearded man with a purple birthmark
above his right eyebrow approached, and a tall striking-looking
young man also with a beard, hung just back. “Would you like a
Pepsi?” the man with the purple burn or birth-mark said.