Uncertain Ground (14 page)

Getting all dressed up to walk to a nightclub decorated as if it were some place in the South Seas when it was on the end of a pier in Galveston was silly. Piers were for fishing or looking at the ocean. They had their uses. Nightclubs … I thought of the ones we went to in Austin. On the other side of town across the river was the Tower, nothing more than a tall white stucco covered form sticking up like an awkward thumb over the entrance. Inside a huge mirrored ball revolved over the middle of the dance floor all night, and everyone said if you were drunk, you began to revolve too. Or, out by the lake, which was too small for yachts, there was Yacht Harbor where we danced outside every
spring on a floor outlined with multi-colored lights reflected in the dark water. The New Orleans, closer to the university, was a series of small candlelit rooms filled with wrought iron tables and chairs, but there was no jazz. A jukebox, yellow, red, and green, bubbled at the edge of the dance floor as one did every place we went. I didn’t want to drink and dance any place that night, not with Emmett, not with anyone.

Just ahead of me Emmett ran one finger between his neck and the back of his shirt collar. No wonder he hated suits. No wonder he hated ties and shoes that laced and coats that had to be buttoned. Wouldn’t he be happier in a breechcloth? But there was so much of him, and a breechcloth would cover so little. …

“What are you giggling about?” Emmett looked over at me. We were waiting with Aunt Bertha for Uncle Mowrey to back the car out of the garage. Though I had on my highest heels, he was still a head taller.

“Nothing.”

I glanced up past him to the sky, which held the sun’s afterglow. The rotting sweet smell of oleanders hung in the air. No breeze lifted the branches. Nothing fluttered, moved, stirred. There was often this dead calm at sunset as if the day had given up. It made me even more restless and a little sad.

Uncle Mowrey backed his bulky Olds out of the garage. For a moment, hearing the engine’s stutter in the stillness, I detested all mechanical noises. I wanted the world to stay quiet, to wait with me for the sun to go down.

Emmett opened the back door for me. Tonight we were the children, substitutes perhaps, for those Aunt Bertha and Uncle Mowrey never had. Did the same thought occur to them? They must have wanted children at one time. I stooped to climb in the car and hit my head against the frame.

“Damn!”

My necklace felt as if it were strangling me. I bent my head and fumbled with the catch.

Emmett slid down in the seat next to me and unfastened the necklace. His fingers brushed my neck.

“Don’t!” I said feeling an involuntary chill arise.

“Why not?” he whispered, then seeing Aunt Bertha’s eyes on us in the rearview mirror, he lifted his head.

“There.” He gave me an appraising look. “You don’t really need it” With one hand he stuffed the necklace in his coat pocket. His other hand still rested on the back of my neck as if he’d decided, once more, to claim me.

I twisted away from him suddenly thankful for the layers of clothes I’d put on. Emmett could make me feel almost naked.

T
here was a family,
just one, the Maceos, who were in charge of liquor by the drink and gambling in Galveston. Uncle Mowrey insisted everybody knew them, knew what they did. Of course, he granted, their business was illegal, but the family ruled carefully. There were no gang wars; there were few deaths. The family gave a lot of money to charity. Most of all, tourists continued to come to the island, to stay in the hotels, to eat in the restaurants and to enjoy what Uncle Mowrey and Aunt Bertha clearly considered minor vices. It was better for people who needed a vacation from the thou-shalt-nots to come to Galveston, lose a little money playing cards or the slots, and drink a few mixed drinks than it was to remain at home with nothing but more scoldings.

On the way to the Balinese Room, Aunt Bertha told us how the Texas Rangers raided it. “They run out here in plain-clothes, and by the time they get to the door—before then actually—they know they’re coming. Someone always tattles. Every bellboy in town knows when the Rangers arrive.”

We were walking down a long private pier where anyone could walk, but only those who paid their dues could walk through the locked door at the end. A dark green marquee covered us, its canvas sides and roof, strung taut; it was buffeted by continual winds. Below us waves curled and crashed around the pilings throwing spray high into the air though never high enough to reach the walkway.

“By the time they’re inside those doors—” She stopped to gesture toward the double glass doors at the far end of the green tunnel. “When they get there, the roulette tables are hidden in the walls like folding beds. At least one is left one out. It’s covered with a green felt top, and all the dealers are shooting pool on it just as the Rangers come in.”

“They’ve never been caught?” Emmett asked.

“No, I don’t think so. Not while people are playing. You have to go through a lot of other doors to get to those tables.” She pulled her shawl up over her shoulders. “Sometimes they close it down for a while. I suppose the Rangers have to win every now and then.” She said this is such a determined manner I suspected she’d never been there when the place was raided. Aunt Bertha was only repeating a story she’d been told. Probably the Rangers hadn’t been that gullible, nor had the dealers been such obvious play actors, but it was a story that Galveston people liked to tell if they, like Aunt Bertha, thought that tourists wanted relief from thundering preachers and tight-lipped elders.

One of the two men at the front door welcomed my aunt and uncle calling them by name.

Mowrey answered, “Evening, Frank.” His tone was such that I knew he’d grown accustomed to saying just that and not a word more to this particular man.

We were led down a long stretch of carpet printed with enormous swirling leaves to a room glittering with mirrors between murals. For a moment we stood across from one showing a Balinese looking woman balancing a bowl of fruit on her head. On her island in front of unreal mountains there were palms that were too green without a single ratty looking brown leaf like all those we saw every day in Galveston. A gleaming, almost phosphorescent light, hidden in the ceiling, played over people’s heads. Frank faded behind us to be replaced by a similar man with grayer hair. His white tux shirt glowed in the light. We were led around tables and rattan chairs to a deep booth near a small parquet floor where people were already dancing. Four huge fake palm trees, blue-green fronds drooping, sprouted from each of the dance floor’s corners. Against the back wall a small band played on the stage, but all I could see, at first, was a gleaming jumble of brass instruments, mirrors, and more murals. I kept searching for windows then realized there were none. Menus nearly the size of a tabloid newspaper, copies of the one I’d already seen with the stylized Polynesian girl’s
face, were passed to us. I held mine in front of me like a shield.

Why, I wondered, were restaurants always pretending to be some place else? Why couldn’t this one simply be in Galveston? Here, years after the war’s long bloody campaign when we’d fought for island after tiny island, the music of Broadway’s
South Pacific
had conquered. The dream of that remote, beautiful place had been imitated by interior decorators, readily accepted by the owners, and displayed to the public so people could pay for the dream and pretend to have been magically transported to a far greener, far more opulent island. I couldn’t understand the necessity of this transformation and I hated the pretense. San Francisco with its bays and bridges and wharves was San Francisco. Why couldn’t Galveston be Galveston? In the hotel, in the Galvez, it was, but here we were all supposed to be in Bali. Wasn’t this island exotic enough?

Uncle Mowrey ordered a round of Tom Collins for us all. The pages of the menu, offering an elaborate mixture of Italian and Chinese food, yawned before me. I chose redfish. Emmett ordered sirloin well done. He said he always ordered steak when he ate out; it was the least he could do for the cattle market. Trapped by the long drought, ranchers had to sell low. Emmett’s appetite could do nothing for starving cows on dried out pastures, and he knew it. He was only saying something his father probably said.

His and Aunt Bertha’s voices floated above my head. I kept listening for the sound of waves that I couldn’t seem to hear. The great crash and wash of water was submerged by air-conditioning, hidden under the languid music oozing around the wall, the rattle of cutlery, and clamor of people’s voices.

Emmett, who had been scanning the room also, finally asked, “Where’s the roulette?”

“Through those doors. Right over there.” Bertha nodded toward mirrored doors across from us. “They play craps too.”

I looked over at Uncle Mowrey. “Do you play?”

He shook his head and smiled. “I watch Bertha. She plays for jewelry.”

“He stakes me,” she said. Her diamond rings twinkled as she touched Uncle Mowrey’s hand. She wore a small constellation that night; beside the rings she had on two diamond bracelets and a pin and earrings equally glittering.

Mowrey laughed. He didn’t look embarrassed; he was merely amused. Much of what she did seemed to amuse him in the same way my mother’s cursing tickled my father. She didn’t do it often, but when she did, he grinned and shook his head as if to say he didn’t know what she’d do next.

Uncle Mowrey looked at his wife like that now, as if he was both proud and confounded by something she’d done.

“So far,” Aunt Bertha said, “I’ve won this pair of earrings and a diamond bar pin.”

“So you’re lucky?”

“Sometimes I lose.”

Uncle Mowrey smiled. “She doesn’t count the losses.”

I glanced away from them to see Luis and a middle-aged man with heavy half-circles under his eyes standing nearby. Mr. Platon’s gaze drifted generally over the room. Luis talked to someone just behind them. As he turned back toward his father, he saw me and came over, urging his father to walk slightly in front of him. The older man moved slowly through the rattan chairs as if he didn’t care where he was going, as if his son’s will was all that propelled him.

“Here comes that Meskin,” said Emmett. “Looks like he’s got another one with him.”

“Hush!” Bertha said.

At the same time I whispered, “Quit being an idiot!”

Uncle Mowrey stood up, the edge of his coat nearly meeting the table’s rim. “My niece,” he said, “my nephew,” and repeated our names to Mr. Platon.

He shook hands with Uncle Mowrey and nodded briefly in our direction. Did he see us? Or had he just nodded out of long habit?

“You’re looking well,” Bertha chirped.

Emmett began drawing lines in the tablecloth, digging into it with a table knife. At the same time he held his back straight against the back of the booth like an angry animal forced to retreat.

Mr. Platon stared down at Aunt Bertha. His eyelids flickered. He seemed to withdraw like an immense old turtle retreating into his shell.

“Won’t you join us?” Uncle Mowrey asked.

“Thank you. We’ve already eaten.” His tone remained polite though he was answering from a distance.

“My father and I are—” Luis began.

“Yes, we are just on our way.” Mr. Platon nodded toward the back of the room. “I must see how my luck runs tonight.” He moved away as automatically as he’d moved toward us.

Luis hesitated. “Celia, save me a dance?” For the first time he smiled.

I nodded, and he followed his father.

Emmett studied Aunt Bertha’s and Uncle Mowrey’s faces carefully searching for their reactions. “What’s the matter with him?” There was a scornful edge to his voice.

Bertha explained. “He’s … He’s mourning his wife. She’s been dead for several years, but—” She looked down at the table as if she might find an explanation hiding somewhere in the silver or in the cocktail glasses. “And he’s a gambler. He can’t stop that either. He comes out here nearly every night.”

“What does he play? Craps?”

“No. Roulette.”

“Does he win?”

“No one wins every night, Emmett. It doesn’t seem to make Alberto much difference though. He just keeps on. He must have run through a fortune, or else he’s got some sort of system.”

Uncle Mowrey shushed her. Mention of somebody else’s money made him uncomfortable. He refused to answer Emmett’s questions about “Old Platon’s fortune.” His professional discretion, the absolute refusal to discuss other people’s finances, was obviously his life’s rule, and Aunt Bertha obviously respected his
silence on the subject. He made their living keeping his mouth shut.

Emmett didn’t care. That was his way, to blunder through difficult questions, to ignore others’ quirks and habits. And he was worse at the moment because he had just one objective that evening. The Balinese was the only private club he was liable to get into in Galveston. He’d already played the slots until he didn’t have a nickel left in his pockets some days, and he’d played in small stakes poker games hidden in little rooms in bars all over town. This was his one chance to try roulette. He’d set aside—he’d told me—two, maybe three hundred dollars for that particular evening. Obviously he was determined to play. Sometimes I wondered if he’d ever stop, if he’d become as addicted to gambling as Luis’s father seemed to be.

While we were waiting for supper, Uncle Mowrey and Aunt Bertha showed us the room where people played roulette. Strangely the light was brighter in there as if the glowing darkness surrounding us in the dining room had given way. The light, I felt, announced the primary reason for the club’s existence; gambling was serious here. Mr. Platon was standing by one of the tables with some others watching the wheel whirl, watching the little white ball clatter and spin and fall into one of the colored slots. Black and red, black and red alternated from one to thirty-six. On opposite sides there were two green slots marked zero and double zero, and behind the wheels stood men in tuxedos, related by birth, disposition, or interest to Frank, the keeper of the front door. Was it merely the tuxes they all wore, or did they all truly resemble each other? Was there a family nose, a set of ears, a chin? I examined them closely but couldn’t discern a likeness except they all seemed reserved; they withheld themselves repeating, at the door and dining room, the usual greetings. At the roulette tables they only announced the beginning of the game and the winning numbers. All of them were watching us. It made me a little dizzy to watch the wheel; instead I studied the players putting chips on numbers and colors on either side of them. There were numbers in some of Luis’s
pictures … huge nines and fives repeated in red and in black on white as if his father’s addiction had seeped through to him. Why shouldn’t it have? Why shouldn’t he worry about a fortune disappearing? Yet he’d never mentioned it. He didn’t attempt to stop his father. Perhaps he couldn’t. Perhaps he didn’t care about the money. Emmett would have cared. So would have Kenyon. He’d take any kind of job to avoid being broke. My own father would have cared, and I guessed, Uncle Mowrey would have too.