Then I saw an apparition move across the dance floor, broad-shouldered, thick-necked, with a countenance of angry irritation. He had grizzled gray hair, and wore a white smock smeared with blood, and as he walked slowly toward me, the group that had been heading in my direction halted their progress and stepped aside as if the old man were death itself.
Or maybe I was projecting.
He came right up to my table, placed his fists, knuckles down, on the wooden surface, leaned forward, stared at me with pitiless eyes.
“Who the devil are you?”
“Victor?” I said, my voice a questioning squeak.
“Where you hear about this place?”
“From Derek. He’s Barnabas’s cousin.”
“I don’t have no cousin Derek. What the blazes you want here, man?”
“Goat?”
He tilted his head, narrowed his eyes, stared at me for a long moment.
“Jerked or curried?” he said finally.
“Is the curry hot?”
“Hot enough for the likes of you.”
“Done,” I said. “And a Red Stripe, please.”
He stared a moment more, pursing his lips, and then he turned around and made his slow way back toward the dance floor. When he reached the group that had been eyeing me, he stopped, stared at them for a moment without saying anything, shook his head, and moved on. The group took a hard look back before retreating to the bar.
A few minutes later, Derek slipped into the seat across from me and plopped three Red Stripes on the table. The guy with the massive arms and the porkpie hat sat down next to me and slid over until I was pressed against the wall. He turned and stared, his eyes hidden completely by his dark glasses.
“You see that girl at the bar with those thighs and the rack?” said Derek. “Man, she was all over my ass. Shaking her thing like I wasn’t getting a good enough view as it was with the way her top was like three sizes too small. She might have been a size four in grade school, but that was before she started eating a whole haunch of cow for lunch. Oh, man, going to have to give her a free sample tonight, no doubt about it.”
“Can we get to it?” I said.
“Sure, man. No problem. I’m just saying did you see that rack?”
“Derek.”
“Calm yourself down. We’re just having a friendly here. Bo, this is my pal Antoine. Antoine, this here is my lawyer, Victor Carl.”
“Pleased to meet you,” I said.
Antoine grunted.
“Antoine here is the one with all the answers,” said Derek. “Funny thing, though, bo, he didn’t like them questions you was asking. So he’s got a question of his own.”
Antoine turned his head and stared at me a bit more.
“Antoine wants to know,” said Derek, “why you so interested in who’s selling that Black Cat. And since, bo, you never done told me, I didn’t have an answer for him.”
I glanced at Antoine. He seemed like he would just as soon crush my skull with those arms of his than hear any of my legal tap dancing. In times like these, I’ve found, when your body, if not your soul, is in mortal danger and there seems to be no way out, sometimes all that is left is for you to tell a story. And it better be a good one. And if you to want to tell a good story, among a pack of males, there’s one perfect opening line.
“There was this girl,” I said.
14
There was this girl.
I first spied her when she brought me an espresso in a coffee bar in Old City. She had bronze skin, dark hair, a lovely, suggestive mouth. I was taken breathless at first sight. When you saw her, you envisioned a certain kind of life, a private life ennobled by a singular obsession with a singular woman. Secret passions, teeming emotions, long walks by the river, sex on the rooftop, foreign films, visits to Paris, bad poems, summers at the lake, shared memories, her head on your shoulder as the years twirled around the stillness of your love. You looked at her and you saw it all, uncoiling, and when she turned away to clear another table, it vanished, quick as that, and you felt strangely bereft.
That was Julia.
Of course I was smitten, from the very first. With her looks and her body, she was many steps out of my league, except there was something about her, some sweet passivity, maybe, that made anything seem possible. She had no humor of her own, but she laughed at my jokes. She didn’t talk much about her life, but she seemed interested in mine. I didn’t expect that she would go out with me, but I couldn’t not ask. I figured there was no way she would sleep with me, but I couldn’t not try. It was inconceivable that she would actually marry me, but I couldn’t not propose. And at each step of the process, she acceded to my ever-more-desperate requests, as if she were being swept off on a voyage not of her choosing but one she couldn’t bring herself to halt.
And so we were engaged.
“You a dog,” said Derek.
“Yeah,” I said, nodding.
“And the sex?”
“What about it?”
“Was it rocking?”
“Derek, don’t be a jerk.”
“But he’s smiling, isn’t he? Look at that boy smile, Antoine. Bo, you a down-and-dirty dog.”
“Maybe. But this is what I discovered: In love, as in boxing, it is always dangerous to move up in class.”
“So what happened?”
“What had to happen,” I said. “She left me and broke my heart. Up and married a urologist instead.”
Antoine laughed.
“A urologist,” said Derek. “That is cold.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Still hurts?”
“Like someone ripped out my spleen.”
Just then the old guy with the bloody smock, Barnabas, showed up at our table with a tray. He slammed down a bottle of Red Stripe in front of me, spun a bowl with a light brown stew over rice onto the table, dropped a napkin and fork beside it.
“Goat,” said the old man.
“Freshly killed?” said Derek.
“Listen close, you can still hear the bleat,” said the old man.
“What are those?” I said, pointing my fork at some white chunks. “Potato?”
“Cho-cho,” said the old man, staring at me, waiting for me to taste the concoction. “And them yellow things is Scotch bonnets. That’s the heat.”
I speared a small piece of meat with my fork, stuck it in my mouth, gave it a careful taste.
“My gosh, that’s good,” I said. “That’s just terrific.”
Barnabas beamed.
“‘My gosh, that’s good,’” said Derek in a radio announcer’s voice. “Could you be more white?”
“But it is,” I said, and I wasn’t just blowing smoke, though the curry was hot enough. The stew was surprisingly delicious, the meat tender and tasty, the cho-cho and onions sweet. I pushed the yellow Scotch bonnets to the side, but my tongue still burned. I grabbed the Red Stripe, took a deep pull. The beer tasted like it was made purely to wash down curried goat.
Derek leaned toward the stew. “It does smell good. Get me some of that, old man.”
“Anything for my cousin,” said Barnabas.
Derek winced. “Sorry about that. Hey, Antoine, you want some goat?”
“Nah, mon,” said Antoine, in a thick Jamaican accent. “Just another bokkle Red Stripe, maybe.”
“Goat, the other red meat,” I said. “Who would have figured?”
“Another curry, then, and some more beers when you got the chance,” said Derek. “All this listening about old love, it builds up a thirst.”
“Old love?” said Barnabas.
“Victor here was telling us about the girl that broke his heart,” said Derek. “You still pine for her, bo?”
“Every day,” I said.
The old man looked at me for a moment and then eased himself into the seat beside Derek.
“There is always one,” said Barnabas.
“Don’t we know it,” said Derek with a sad shake of his head.
“I been married, it’s been now more than thirty-five years,” said Barnabas. “My wife, she’s a saint. We got children together, grandchildren, a great-grandson just got born. Named after me. My years with my wife have been the happiest of my life. But there is this one girl.”