I rubbed her back. She was sore from shoveling dirt.
“Then, in college, studying physics — Newton’s apple, you know? I was delighted all over again. Gravity, spreading seeds … for me, apples became this solid connection to the earth. I know it sounds silly, George, but right then, I swore I’d plant an apple tree wherever I lived.”
“It’s not silly,” I said. I drew her a bath and washed the dirt from her arms.
Now she’s listing here and there, about three feet from my face. Diffuse as lamplight, she wears the cotton gloves she wore to plant the tree. A faint odor of loam.
“Good-night,” I say. She shimmers like water, then fades.
In the middle of the night, I wake from my first wet dream in — how many years? Since long before my marriage. I was walking along the bayou with Lira, the water like silk. I reached to touch a bruise on her face; she opened her mouth and took my thumb between her lips.
I felt the warmth at my waist.
Now the rain comes hard, stirring mud in beds where Jean used to grow marigolds, roses, lilies, thyme, and dill. The apple tree moves to and fro: a happy child, clapping.
“Heads up, boyo! Pair of first-class obits here. They need to be somber and respectful, mindful of the city’s major loss,” Penrose told me this morning. He handed me a packet of photos. A big-shot lawyer and a real estate developer. Heart attack. Stroke.
“No ‘Good riddance’?” I said. ‘“O happy day’?”
“Save that searing wit for your two-bit card games, son. And on that other matter — it’s good research. But no one wants to read about it.”
I’d taken a chance and shown him Houston’s Latin Refugees, suggested running it in the paper, a two- or-three-part series. Community service? He’d agreed to look it over.
“It’s a downer. People want to feel good about their community.” He tapped the black-and-white lawyer. “Got it?”
“Yeah,” I said. Fucking Jamón. “Thanks for taking the time.”
On my lunch break I run by Sam’s Deli — Ed wanted turkey, Tony a hoagie.
Ash smudges the air, from an aggravated volcano south of the Rio Grande. In front of me, a flatbed pickup is hauling empty Cokes. The bottles fill with powder.
Stopping at Cal’s, I notice the Bookmobile parked by his curb. I haven’t seen it in weeks. A year or so ago, before tumbling oil prices pinched his sales, he bought this custom-made van as an advertising gimmick. Plexiglas, solid, tinted brown. Every time a customer plunked down a hundred dollars or more, he’d give them a ride in the Bookmobile. “Cruising the freeways,” he’d say, “with only a river of sweet air between you and freedom and the road.” For a while it was a popular sales ploy. Now he’s into raffles.
“Thought you’d sold that clunker,” I tease Cal, walking in, testing his mood before pitching him again.
He’s stacking ratty paperbacks: cookbooks, astrology guides, an unauthorized biography of Mamie Eisenhower. “Hm?”
“The Bookmobile.” I offer him some Fritos. Sam’s sells only the big bags, and I can’t ever finish them.
“Oh. Ray’s learning to drive,” Cal says. “So I been lending him my horsepower here — against my better judgment. Boy’s a damn fireball when he scoots behind the wheel.”
“How’s his dad?”
“Goner. Ghost.”
“Jesus, I’m sorry to hear it.”
Just then, Ray himself appears, emerging from a tiny bathroom in the back. “Mr. Palmer! Good to see you,” he says.
“Hey, Ray. You too.” He’s clean-shaven now. “I was just asking about your pa.”
Ray nods. “He’s had some pain, I guess … and, you know, they’re not sure they got it all … I mean, the cancer …” His eyes glisten; his voice crumples.
“Got your car picked out?” I ask. “Classic Mustang? Thunderbird?”
But my little evasion is far too clumsy. “Excuse me,” he says, wiping his nose, and scuffles back to the john.
“Poor kid,” I say. “Cal, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Billy’s a damn fighter, but it looks like this is one ol’ bear he’s not going to bust.”
“Can I help?”
He tosses Mamie onto a fat Jackie O. “Come to think of it, there is something you can do. Your buddy, Ed What’s-His-Name, he dropped in the other day looking for the latest Stephen King. Says you fellows got a card game.”
Good ol’ Ed. He did just as I asked him to. “Yeah, we deal a hand or two.”
Ray’s back now, trying to smile, his nose and eyes raw beets.
“Billy’s the best damn bluffer you ever saw.…’course, he hasn’t been able to play. Two of my other cronies moved out of town … anyways, this shindig of yours.” He slaps a discount tag on M.F.K. Fisher. “Closed shop, or what?”
Before I can answer, Ray chimes in, “Maybe you two should work a deal, Unc. You stock some of Mr. Palmer’s books, he puts a word in for you with his poker pals.”
Glory! I want to kiss the kid. I’d been wondering how to open my bid.
Ray blows his nose.
“Well now.” I scratch my chin. Delivery trucks scurry past us on the street. Pizzas, furniture, meat. Bless our culture of exchange. “I suppose I could do that.”
Cal rubs his tired barterer’s eyes. He glances at Ray. “We got us some powwowing to do, kid. About car keys.”
“Come on, Une. I just did you a favor.”
“Shit,” Cal says. He looks at me. “When’s your next game?”
“I’ll let you know, when I drop the books off.” I tell Ray I’d be happy to give him a driving lesson some night.
“I’d like that,” he says, reaching for the Fritos.
“Save up your card money, George. You’re going to need a barrelful.”
“Turkey, George. I ordered turkey,” Ed says. “This is Spam. Or aluminum siding, or something.”
On my desk, a scribbled message: “Call Julio Zamora — Urgent.”
A woman speaking rapid Spanish answers the phone.
“I’m sorry, I can’t … can you please slow down?” I say.
Impatiently, she says, “Mr. Zamora cannot talk to anyone right now.”
“Que pasó?” I ask.
In stilted, rolling-r English, the woman explains to me that Mrs. Zamora came home from the employment agency late this morning and, without a word to her husband, picked up her babies and tossed them into Buffalo Bayou.
“‘Tossed’?” I say. “What do you mean, ‘tossed’?”
“Like dolls, sir. Like old newspapers.”
Goosebumps spatter my arms. “Was anyone hurt?”
Chatito, ten weeks old, drowned, she says. Roberto is missing. Manuel and the others are in shock. The police had handcuffed Mrs. Zamora and driven her away.
“What’s up, man?” Tony watches me from his desk.
“Lira Zamora — ”
“Trouble in taco land?”
Close your eyes, I think. Count to ten. “Any calls for me, take a message, okay?”
“Hey George, you going out again? Can you bring me back some turkey?”
At the mouth of the garage, pulling out in my car, I wave at Bob, half-asleep in his concrete security booth. He doesn’t see me.
I speed down Main Street, past Indonesian restaurants and a Pizza Inn. Car exhaust hangs in willows along the median. The Astrodome rises like an old, pallid whale to the south.
Julio’s neighbors are talking in tight circles on their lawns: men with long shirt-tails, sipping canned beer. Children play near the curb. On the horizon, at the end of the street, Houston’s glassed-in banks tower together like slats in a cyclone fence. The bayou boils around fallen oak limbs, curled like big arthritic hands. Five or six cops unroll a strip of yellow tape. “Back. Get back, please.” One of them shouts into a walkie-talkie, “No floater here. Water’s moving pretty fast. We’re gonna need boats and divers downstream …”