The Green Parrot was on a corner several blocks up: a big bar with open shutters and a deeply overhanging roof, specks of light inside from pinball machines and the lights dangling over pool tables. The wall art, Marshall saw as he climbed off and walked limp-legged into the bar, consisted of hand-painted beer bottles and framed pictures of parrots. The rectangular bar took up almost the entire room and was worked by one bartender, who did things faster than the eye could register them. “Hey, man,” he called, in greeting to Gordon. “You got my machine fixed, I see.” He raced to their end of the bar, setting down two open bottles of Rolling Rock and pouring two shots of vodka that slowly settled after he left like water calming in the wake of a boat. Gordon nodded, tossing down the vodka. Marshall did the same, tears springing to his eyes.
“So you tell me, man,” Gordon said. “Have we got the right life down here, or do we not?”
“Seems great,” Marshall said.
“Beth upsets herself about the place, though. Says the reef is a cesspool. Everglades almost gone. Hell, she won’t go into the Audubon House because it turns out he killed birds. She’s got quite a rant against Audubon. But luck? Does that woman have luck? She got four ceiling fans off the back of a truck in trade for her spare tire. No fuckin’ way you can figure out what that’s about, right? Guy driving a Ford pickup is getting gas the same time Beth is, tells her he’ll give her four ceiling fans in exchange for her spare. She didn’t even question him, man. She is some cool customer. You know her philosophy? It’s better not to ask. Which is a hard philosophy to argue with. Jackson!” he hollered to the bartender.
Jackson raced to their end of the bar. “I had a customer you missed by ten, fifteen minutes. He was going to Paris to jam with Jim Morrison. Hope he likes playing music leaning up against tombstones — that’s what I didn’t tell him.”
“He doesn’t contradict a lot of ideas,” Gordon said to Marshall.
“Heard that, Gordo,” Jackson said, opening a cluster of beer bottles and racing with them in two different directions.
“He hears real good. But he doesn’t hear. You know?” Gordon said.
Jackson raced back. “What about the machine, man?” he said, pouring two more shots.
“It was nothing. Got it fixed in half an hour. My guy admitted it couldn’t count as repayment for his debt. Have it break down a couple more times, he might be even with me.”
“Gordon built this guy a brick courtyard,” Jackson said.
Marshall nodded appreciatively.
“Hey, this is my brother,” Gordon said.
“No shit. He’s your brother? Where you here from, bro?”
“New Hampshire,” Marshall said. The words stuck in his throat.
“Isn’t that where Jean Louise went the time she ran away?” Gordon said.
“Nah. Seattle.”
“She get that tattoo lasered off okay?”
“Nah, now she’s decided she likes it.”
“We going diving or what?” Gordon said.
“My ear’s still no good,” Jackson said. He pivoted to take a drink order, dunking glasses in soapy water, then clear water, putting them upside down on a towel to drain, reaching for drier glasses to squirt drink mix into, while scooping in ice cubes left-handed. “Gin tonic, vodka tonic, liiiiime for everyone,” Jackson said, opening two bottles of beer, grabbing them by their necks, palming slices of lime onto the rims, setting all four drinks in front of two people standing and two sitting.
“Is Beth going to mind if we’re not there when she’s through meditating?” Marshall said.
“Beth? No way. Beth’ll start ’em all over again, let the burned-out coals be dust to dust. She knows I’ll be home eventually.”
“So you really like it here?” Marshall said. “You think you’d retire here even if you sold the business?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Gordon said. “Is that gonna happen? Am I gonna sell that man the business? Hank’s not even sure he wants to be bought out. I expect if he saw it in writing, he’d change his tune. But retire here? I don’t know. I’ve heard Maui is pretty nice. For all that, I’ve heard Costa Rica can be beautiful.”
“Really?” Marshall said. “You’d think about those places?”
“Yeah, why not?” Gordon drummed his thumb on the counter-top.
“Guy down there’s a friend of the boss,” Jackson said, picking up their empty shot glasses, indicating with a roll of his eyes he couldn’t refill them again.
“His wife is gonna leave him,” Gordon said as they left. “Came to the wife or the motorcycle, I think I know which he’d miss most, though.”
“His wife, who went to Seattle?”
“That was the girlfriend,” Gordon said. “She got a viper tattooed on her butt. So I hear, anyway.” Gordon coughed a long, dry cough. His face was red, and there was a scar above his left eyebrow, pink and puckered. Off the motorcycle, Gordon looked suddenly smaller. He had gotten quite thin. Marshall felt protective; he was glad Beth would be feeding Gordon dinner.
“You remember that night Mom told us she was dying?” Marshall said.
“Shit, man, I knew you were going to mention that. Sitting in the bar, it came to me that that is exactly what you were going to ask about. I’ve gotten psychic since I’ve been with Beth.” He kicked a stone, stepping far to the left to do it. “What about it?” he said.
“Did you know that was what she was going to talk about that night? It just occurred to me that you might have known what was coming.”
“Well, Evie had told me she was sick, but it was the first time I’d gotten it from the horse’s mouth.” Gordon turned slightly to look at two girls passing by, both in short shorts and tropical shirts tied at the waist. “Jail bait,” he said. As they got to the corner of a more crowded street, Gordon said, “This is Duval. The main drag. We take you sightseeing when you were here before?”
“Yeah,” Marshall said. “We ate on Duval one night. At an outdoor place.”
“Claire,” Gordon said. “Closed. Became something else.”
“Good jukebox,” Marshall said. He looked at Gordon. “How did you do that to your eye?” Marshall said.
“Hit the fucking reef,” Gordon said. “She’s putting vitamin E on it. Healing it pretty damn fast.” Gordon pointed to something ahead of them. “This street we’re walking up. Faustos is on it. I’m always trying to get her to go out on the highway to shop, but now she’s a townie, she feels she’s got to be loyal to local establishments. Watch: she’ll say whatever vegetable she’s cooked came from Faustos.”
“I swear I won’t keep talking about this, but lately I’ve been thinking about that night, and some things are very distinct, but other things are blurry.”
Gordon looked at him with mild interest. Not because of the night, Marshall guessed, but because he was so intent on discussing it.
“Our father — he was outside? In a storm?”
“Overcome with grief,” Gordon said. “Didn’t you ever see Wuthering Heights on the tube? One of those old movies like Rebecca or whatever, trees blowing, clouds streaming over the moon. Cliffs. Stuff like that. The big house lit by lightning.”
“What was going on?” Marshall said.
“You think I know?” Gordon said. “He didn’t want her to tell us. He thought we shouldn’t have to hear it, or something. She had cancer. People didn’t use the word in those days. Look, she was crazier instead of better after what they did to her in the hospital. My opinion is that he’d rather she’d faded away, but she decided to pull out all the stops. Those two were going to have their show, and so they did. She’d started drinking again, you know. She did not stop drinking the day she got home from the hospital. Quite the opposite.”