“No,” said Peavey, “you don’t want one of those.”
“I want a smart boogie.”
He shook his head again. “If the colored people had any imagination … but they don’t, do they? I mean, every urban area in the country is filled with pigeons — the Eurasian rock dove, that’s what a pigeon is. And they could go out and gather all the pigeons they could eat, take them home, clean them, pluck them, and pop them in the rotisserie. Baste them liberally with butter and a bouquet of white wine and herbes simple … brown them to a turn!.. and serve with a cold bottle of Montrachet. Mwah!” He kissed his fingers. “But they won’t do this. There’s a lack of imagination. I don’t know what it is, protein deficiency, the gene pool, I just don’t know. But I do fear this guy is little more than a monkey. I fear this very deeply. I fear monkey shows in the inner cities as well as right here in Key West. We already have to watch out for our lives with many of these apes owning Coupe De Villes, Smith and Wessons, and Godknowswhat. These are powerful devices and they have them.”
Then Peavey looked right at me.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Fine,” I retorted.
“Don’t overdo a good thing,” he said.
“You smell upset,” I said.
“I’m not,” he said.
“Good,” I said. “But you don’t smell right.”
* * *
Catherine, my ballad to you goes like this. You can replace me but I can’t let you go because I can’t let you go I can’t that’s all I just can’t. The night you sat on my Gibson Hummingbird I forgave you even though it was the last thing Johnny Horton ever touched I didn’t care because it was you. That writer has a girlfriend too. She used to be Joe Cain’s widow. He said she used to ride a train called the Hummingbird from Mobile to New Orleans. When he goes home, he’s going to take her with him. I think she’ll go. And how come you and me are always in pieces?
That night I dreamed again and again of the old man arranging Catherine’s hair on the mud while the tide whispered past. Two dreams out of three he was faceless; in the third, he was my father.
* * *
“Hello—”
“This Nylon Pinder.”
“Hello, Nylon.”
“I’m home from the hospital.”
“Right…”
“And feelin real good.”
“Yes, Nylon.”
“And you should think about that.”
“Thank you, Nylon, I will.”
I got off and reflected upon Nylon. I supposed he was dangerous but he seemed merely pitiful, manipulating his voice and announcing his ominous return as per some TV show he’d seen. It is very very hard in this life to be a nincompoop. I called him back.
“Say, I’m having a party at the Casa Marina Saturday. Can you make it?”
“Oh,” said Nylon, “I already was going to make it.”
Nylon is very close, save for certain root, unpremeditated instincts, to what I spent a number of years enacting. I was a simple occupant, the man the anonymous senders of junk mail have in mind when they buy the stamp. And it was only my ability to see something in the accretion of toothpaste on unscrubbed counters, the signaling stain from plugged eaves troughs, the smell of myself in fear, as unattractive and profound as the funk of unloaded clothes hampers, that propelled me into the public nerve net with the ability to terrify with a smile or merely missing teeth. My affection for the ordinary, for Joe Blow in all his wonder, has deprived me of the power. But if the recoil doesn’t kill me, if my affections don’t kill me, I may laugh all the way to the bank; and without ever becoming The Occupant again, I could be happy. Not happy with a grin and the days flying by, but picking up the hours like shining stones. Meanwhile, it is sea level, incidents of torpor, and I know that I have been preceded in death. But if Catherine and I find a way to be happy together, we’ll step aside when desolation roars past.
When I met my grandfather for the last time, he was riding an old singlefoot horse and carried his cane in a saddle scabbard. He looked at me for a long time, standing before him in my corduroys, T-shirt, and red tennis shoes; and said, “Oh, what’s the use?”
* * *
Marcelline popped in.
“Two dudes outside want to know if you’ll back them in the far-out tie-tack business.”
“No.”
She stepped outside and called, “No.”
Then she came back in and rubbed up against me.
“Got time to feed it in?” she asked.
“No.”
“Want to rob a crypt with my honey and me?”
“No, sir.”
“He had to leave New Orleans. They used smear tactics against him.”
“The term ‘grave robber’ doesn’t sit well with people.”
“They could of said ‘breaking and entering.’ If a person busts into a store front, they say ‘B and E,’ not store-front robbery. They called him a grave robber so it would go harder on him. He had to jump bail, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.”
“I see your point,” I said wanly.
“Anyhow, we located this crypt has this lieutenant from the pirate squadron in it, hundreds of years old. It could be damn near anything in there. We’ll be in the cemetery tonight.”
She darted through the wall into the blinding light.
I felt I had got used to Marcelline. She seemed like a moron. I’m sure she’s not. At this point, time had had that effect. I don’t like anything time does, so I’m not sure why I’m buying this. But she did seem quite the little moron.
I waited until Marcelline was clear, then I went outside and got almost nine dollars from the wishing well. I don’t know who got the impostor’s silver dollars. I pushed my hands into my pockets and looked up the street at the cars under the palms, the lawns against the shattered sidewalk.
When Jesse James rode the trolley in St. Joseph, they could smell gunpowder in his clothing. I started crying again for the first time since the monkey bars.
* * *
On January 13, 1975, I got up from dinner at a small private bistro, popular with the professional psychodrama folks, called Fuck You. I am absolutely sure that I had a wonderful meal but ten minutes after I got up from the table I couldn’t remember what I ate.
I had been dining with Jean-Luc Godard, who was a little down on his heels and looking for a new slant, in other words, me. He said, “It is simple, Chet. We return to Fuck You and ask the maitre d’.” He couldn’t remember what I ate either.
I said, “Nuts to that, Jean. I will just have to eat again. And in case you remember what I ate, I’d rather you didn’t say.”
“But aren’t you full?”
“That’s going to have to be my tough luck.”
I had another large and this time disgusting meal at Luchow’s, including a ghastly platter of Black Forest mushrooms. All the while a hideous Bavarian orchestra in lederhosen blared at my table. Imagine my discomfort!
But: it kept happening for years to come, sometimes three meals in a row. Eventually it culminated in a very unfortunate episode with the mayor of New York.
* * *
Catherine said, “This business about Jesse James, I wish you’d stop. It makes my skin crawl.”
“Why?”
“He’s deader than a doornail.”
“Wait a minute.”
“Dead. And you know something? Nobody else has these troubles we do. I don’t like this. I don’t believe we ever needed your fame. I don’t think I ever had to leave South Carolina—”
“We sought to be illustrious.”
“I want to be happy.”
“You said that.”
“I want to be happy.”
“Catherine—”
“I want to be happy.”
“Jesse James was happy.”