Cassandra glanced at my chest — at what to me was still a mystery-glanced and nodded her small classical indomitable head. Then the tatooer took a square dirty mirror off the wall, held it in front of me:
“Have a look. Skipper,” once more sitting on the edge of the table, eager, bulking, swinging a leg.
So I looked into the mirror, the dirty fairy tale glass he was about to snap in his two great hands, and saw myself. The pink was blistered, wet where he had scrubbed it again with the cooling and dizzying alcohol, but the raised letters of the name — upside down and backwards — were a thick bright green, a string of inflamed emeralds, a row of unnatural dots of jade. Slowly, trying to appear pleased, trying to smile, I read the large unhealed green name framed in the glass above the ashamed blind eye of my own nipple: Fernandez. And I could only try to steady my knees, control my breath, hide feebly this green lizard that lay exposed and crawling on my breast.
Finally I was able to speak to her, faintly, faintly: “Sonny and Pixie are waiting for us, Cassandra,” as I saw with shame and alarm that her eyes were harder than ever and had turned a bright new triumphant color.
“Pixie and I been worried about you. You going to miss that bus if you two keep running off this way. But come on. Skipper, we got time for one more round of rum and coke!”
With fondness, a new white preening of the neck, an altered line at the mouth, a clear light of reserved motherhood in the eye, Cassandra glanced at the little girl on Sonny’s lap and then smoothed her frock — this the most magical, envied, deferential gesture of the back of the tiny white hand that never moved, never came to life except to excite the whole ladylike sense of modesty — and slid with the composure of the young swan into the dark blistered booth opposite the black-skinned petty officer and platinum child. I took my place beside her, squeezing, sighing, worrying, aware of my burning chest and the new color of her eyes and feeling her withdrawing slightly, making unnecessary room for me, curving away from me in all the triumph and gentleness of her disdain. I fished into a tight pocket, wiped my brow. Once more there was the smoke, the noise, the sick heaviness of our water front café, our jumping-off night in Chinatown, once more the smell of whisky and the sticky surface of tin trays painted with pagodas and golden monsters, and now the four of us together — soon to part, three to take their leave of poor black faithful Sonny — and now the terrible mammalian concussion of Kate Smith singing to all the sailors.
Duty gave still greater clarity, power, persistence to the whisper: “Has she been crying. Sonny?”
“Pixie? My baby love? You know Pixie never cries when I croon to her. Miss Cassandra. And I been crooning about an hour and a half. But Miss Cassandra,” lulling us with his most intimate voice — it was the voice he adopted in times of trouble, always most melodious at the approach of danger — lulling us and tightening the long black hand — shiny knuckles, long black bones and tendons, little pink hearts for fingertips — that spraddled Pixie’s chest limply, gently, “Miss Cassandra, you look like you been cashing in your Daddy’s Victory bonds. And Skipper,” sitting across from us with the child, glancing first at Cassandra and then myself, “you’ve got a terrible blue look about you, terrible tired and blue.” Then: “No more cemetery business. Skipper? I trust there’s no more of that cemetery stuff in the cards. That stuff’s the devil!”
Cocked garrison cap and shiny visor; petty officer’s navy blue coat, white shirt, black tie; two neat rows of rainbow ribbons on his breast; elongated bony skull and black velvet face — he called himself the skinny nigger — and sunglasses with enormous lenses coal-black and brightly polished; signet ring, little Windsor knot in the black tie, high plum-colored temples and white teeth of the happy cannibal; tall smart trembling figure of a man whose only arrogance was affection: he was sitting across from us— poor Sonny — and talking through the Chinese babble, the noise of the Arkansas sailors, the loud breasty volume of mother America’s possessive wartime song. Poor Sonny.
“Skipper,” once more the whisper of fashion, whisper of feminine cleanliness, cold love, “show Sonny, please.”
“What’s this? Games?” And casting quick razor looks from Cassandra to myself, shifting Pixie still further away from us and leaning forward, craning down: “What you two been up to anyway?”
I unhooked my stiff collar and worked loose the top brass button and then the next, gingerly, with chin to collar bone trying to see it again myself, through puckered lips trying to blow a cold breath on it, and leaned forward, held open the white duck in a V for Sonny, for Sonny who respected me, who was all bone and blackness and was the best mess boy the U.S.S. Starfish ever had.
He looked. He gave a long low Negro whistle: “So that’s the trouble. Well now. You two both grieving not for the dead but for that halfpint Peruvian fella who run out on us. I understand. Well now. Husbands all ducked out on us, wives all dead and buried. So we got to do something fancy with his name, we got to do something to hurt Skipper. Got to turn a man’s breast into a tombstone full of ache and pain. You better just take your baby girl and your bag of chicken salad sandwiches — I made you a two-days’ supply — and get on the bus. This family of ours is about busted up.”
But: “Hush,” I said, done with the buttons and still watching Cassandra — chin tilted, lips tight in a crescent, spine straight— and reaching out for the black angle of his hand, “You know how we feel about Fernandez. But Sonny, you’ll find a brown parcel in the back of the jeep. My snapshots of the boys on the Starfish. For you.”
“That so, Skipper? Well now. Maybe we ain’t so busted up after all.”
He puffed on his signet ring — the teeth, the wrinkled nose, the fluttering lips, the twisted wide-open mouth of the good-natured mule — and shined it on his trousers and flashed it into sight again — bloodstone, gold-plated setting — and took off his cocked and rakish hat, slowly, carefully, since from the Filipino boys he had learned how to pomade his rich black opalescent hair, and fanned himself and Pixie three or four times with the hat — the inside of the band was lined with bright paper medallions of the Roman Church — and then treated the patent leather visor as he had the ring, puffing, polishing, arm’s length examination of his work, and with his long slow burlesquing fingers tapped the starched hat into place again, saying, “OK, folks, old Sonny’s bright as a dime again, or maybe a half dollar — nigger money of course. But, Skipper,” dropping a bright black kiss as big as a mushmelon in Pixie’s platinum hair and grinning, waving toward Cassandra’s glass and mine — Coca-Cola like dark blood, little drowning buttons of melted ice — then frowning, long-jawed and serious: “whatever did happen to that Fernandez fella?”
I shifted, hot, desperate, broad rump stuck fast and uncomfortable to the wooden seat, I looked at her, I touched my stinging breast, tried to make a funny grandfather’s face for Pixie: “We don’t know. Sonny. But he was a poor husband for Cassandra anyway.” I used the handkerchief again, took hold of the glass. She was composed, unruffled, sat toying with a plastic swizzle stick — little queen — and one boudoir curl hung loose and I was afraid to touch it.
“Maybe he got hisself a job with a dance band. Maybe he run off with the USO — I never liked him, but he sure was a whizz with the guitar — or maybe,” giving way to his black fancy, his affectionate concern, “maybe he got hisself kidnapped. Those South American fellas don’t fool around, and maybe they decided it was time he did his hitch in the Peruvian Army. No, sir,” taking a long self-satisfied optimistic drink, cupping the ice in his lip like a lump of sugar, “I bet he just couldn’t help hisself!”