“Oh that,” Dorothy would say, “that’s for the tourists.”
“And what are you, Dorothy, a native?”
“We should hire a guide and let him take us around in a taxi.”
“And deal with two shvartzers?”
“Shh,” Dorothy said.
But she was oddly moved by the journey today, the sight of such ancient, lush significance on either side of the tremendous car that skated over the loose gravel on the slender little road like some sleek, fearless, predatory beast, its flanks mere inches from the edges of what in places seemed more path or trail than road, brushing the rough saw grass that grew along the queer, amorphous, indeterminate earth like clumps, paddies of unfamiliar geography.
Thinking, this is how they took him to prison. These are the last things he saw before they threw him in jail.
Though she knew he hadn’t been “thrown” into jail, that he had too much influence, too much imagination and power, that even now, behind walls and locked up in a cell, they let him take calls (it had been the next day she’d heard from Chitral, the day after she’d made her wish known to Camerando), and let him put calls through, to arrange to send drivers with gracious notes and imaginary roses.
“Oh,” she told the chauffeur, “that reminds me,” she said, inspired, “I never thanked you for bringing me those beautiful roses.”
“What beautiful roses would those be, Mrs. Bliss?”
“Why the roses you brought with you last week when you delivered that letter to the Towers.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but the first time I was to the Towers was when I picked you up this morning.”
Amazed, thinking, oh, two drivers!
Thrilled retroactively who’d never met a man who hadn’t impressed her, swept away by men, not in any sexual or romantic sense but rendered dumbstruck by all the ways they seemed to fill up the world (so overwhelmed by them that she had had trouble with the notion of disciplining her male children, this so apparent to the two boys that even when they were still quite small they behaved in front of their worried, vulnerable mother like visitors in a sick room), stunned by their stature and brisk efficiency (their perfect businesslike forms built for a power and efficacy that spread through their bodies like steam pushed through a radiator, their unadorned flesh not expended in breasts or useless piles of complicated hair, and even their privates out in the open, functional as hand tools), by their willingness to go forth and wrest bread and victory from their lives in the world, clear down to changing a tire or starting a fire from scratch or handling the money or initiating love, by their gruff and bluff and boldness, and all the rest of their dangerous, hung-out, let-loose ways.
Awed by the driver, too, overcome with wonder and admiration by the sureness with which he negotiated the fragile, narrow gravel road, the toxic-looking swamps — logjammed, she was sure, with alligators — on either side of the winding, puny spit which they did not so much travel as traverse. He must be a convict, Mrs. Bliss thought. Probably a trustee or something. Which just goes to show, thought Mrs. Ted Bliss. Wouldn’t you have to be as smart as you were probably brave to know how to walk the fine line between the guards with the guns on the watchtowers and the vildeh chei-eh killers, kidnappers, and bank robbers in the prison yard? If that wasn’t man’s work she didn’t know what was. And if that wasn’t going forth and wresting bread and victory from his life in the world, then she didn’t know what it was. It’s a man’s world, thought Mrs. Ted Bliss, and between you, me, and the lamppost, he’s welcome to it.
“Excuse me, sir,” said Mrs. Bliss, “you’re from the federal penitentiary, too?”
The driver may not have known she was addressing him. They were the first words she’d spoken since she’d asked about the roses.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
He spoke very softly. She might not have been able to hear him in an open room, but in the big airtight automobile his voice was startlingly clear, even intimate.
“You work there,” she said.
“I’m a con. I live there.”
“Oh,” she said, “you live there.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It’s none of my business, you’ll excuse me for prying, but what did you—”
“Forgery. I forged things.”
“Oh,” she said, “you forged things.”
“Passports. Liquor and drivers’ licenses; when the elevator was inspected.”
“Oh, I don’t think I could do that. It must take so much skill. I’d get caught.”
“I got caught,” said the convict.
Mrs. Bliss didn’t answer. Yes, he got caught, but he proved her point. Men were more gifted than women. They could make a fire, rotate the tires, and forge important papers, too.
What men did took nerve and a steady hand. It took brains and courage. Here was this nice, polite, and, as far as Mrs. Bliss could tell, very bright young man who had managed so well in the penitentiary that he had not only worked his way up to trustee but had climbed so high in the system that they trusted him to drive a great powerful limousine all the way out of his prison in the high Everglades, down the gravel road to the Tamiami Trail, across to Miami, and up to the Towers in Miami Beach. He was a man. He was brave; he had nerve. At any time during his journey he could have stepped on the gas and made his escape by outdistancing anybody who might have given him chase. But he was a man, he knew better. He knew it would be other men who would be sent out to find him.
“You know,” said Mrs. Bliss when they had gone a few more miles, “you wouldn’t believe it to look at me but a long time ago in Chicago I used to carry a gun.”
“You did, ma’am?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss. “My husband owned a building on the North Side. It wasn’t a good area. I took it with me when we collected the rents.”
“I’m damned,” the driver said.
“I never took it out of my purse. Not once. These were very rough people. You know why I did it?”
“Why?”
“I thought I could save my husband’s life,” Dorothy said and, so quietly she didn’t think he’d notice, she started to cry.
“Look there,” the driver said some minutes later. “That’s where all the magic happens. I’m home.”
The guards at the gate didn’t need to see identification. They didn’t even ask her her name. They didn’t bother with the driver either, just waved him on through as though he were pulling up to discharge a guest in front of the entrance to a hotel. When he stopped before what Mrs. Bliss took to be some sort of administration building he got out of the limo and came around to Dorothy’s side to open her door and help her out. Now she was there she wondered why it had seemed so important to come.
“It’s a big roomy car and very comfortable,” Dorothy said, “but three hours in a closed automobile is a long time to sit. I wonder could I stretch my legs a few minutes before I go in?”
“Stand around in the yard? It’s your call, Mrs. Bliss, but not all these guys are as civil as yours truly. Not everyone here is in for a victimless crime. Ain’t all of us forgers, what I’m saying.” He winked. “Some of these characters ain’t seen a woman in a long time.” Quite suddenly Mrs. Ted Bliss was alarmed. She was well into her seventies and what he said seemed one of the cruelest, most patronizing things anyone had ever said to her. So much for men’s bravery and nerve. Mrs. Bliss felt quite ill and turned to enter the building. The driver touched her arm as if to stop her. “Hey, no, I’m kidding,” he said. “It’s like they say in the papers. The place is a country club. You see anybody with his back on a bench lifting weights? You see a single tattoo, or some bull con make eye contact with some cow con? No, Mother, you stay outside and enjoy the fine weather, I’ll go tell Señor Chitral you’re here.”