Leave It to Me - Bharati Mukherjee [68]
I didn’t drive Romeo Hawk to Jess and Ham’s floating love nest because of the 9mm he pointed at my head. I drove him because he was the scatterer of seeds from which I’d sprouted. Nature has no prodigality, no psychology, no sympathy. I drove him because he was that place, the over there, he was my poem of night, light and leaves. I was gambling on finding the maze’s exit. Romeo did fancy twirls with the 9mm as we headed for the Golden Gate Bridge. He had the widest, surest hands I had ever seen.
He caught me staring at those hands, and said, “Don’t get any funny ideas. These are my waste disposal units. They take care of expendable people. And the nosy.”
“Like Jess’s friend? Did they take care of Fred Pointer too?”
“Never inform, and never explain. That’s the way I’ve always lived.” He grinned. We could have been talking about a misdemeanor. “Jess’s friend was. Now he isn’t.”
“Fred Pointer didn’t start this,” I fumed.
“There is no start, and there is no finish. Only process, you get the picture? I learned that from my trusted friend the warden, a Hindu.”
“Fred shouldn’t have had to die.”
“It was his time, dear. And that bitch deserves serious attention from me. All those years in prison in India, how many deaths is that worth?”
“You’re crazy!”
That’s when Romeo raised the handgun to my neck level, and caressed my throat with it. Kept caressing the whole, slow length of the bridge.
Karma is groping your way out of a maze. You know there’s an exit.
“You’re not doing so badly yourself, little Devi. I always say genes will win out.” Romeo was in a chatty mood.
Beg not for justice, and you won’t end up straitjacketed in a padded cell or drowned in shallow water in Land’s End. Make it happen!
Being stuck with an armed and crazy bio-parent in the rush-hour Marin-bound traffic organized my priorities. I didn’t give a damn if I never found out details like the exact time of birth and name of birthplace. Go with the flow, as Fred Pointer’d counseled, keep your identity—your only asset—liquid. Breathe deep, relax.
“Take in the view,” I said to distract Bio-Daddy. “We’re proud of it.” That “we” had slipped out, startling me.
“Nice Jag,” Romeo agreed.
The Jaguar ahead of me had a bumper sticker that said IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO HAVE A HAPPY CHILDHOOD.
“I myself prefer a Bentley,” he went on. “Benzes are vulgar, Beamers prosaic.”
“How about Alfa Romeos?” If it hadn’t been for that Spider Veloce cutting me off that August day at the border, I’d probably not be chauffeuring my father to Marin this February evening.
“Too moody.” He grinned. “Not worth the dough you have to shell out for it. Even as a kid keeping books for my father—hey, I forgot, your late grandfather; he owned a pedicab fleet—I could see myself in a white Bentley.”
“White?”
“Snow white. Why? I’ll tell you why.” The handgun on his lap, he launched into the Hawk family history. “Because my father, Yves Haque, ran the Snow White Pedicab Company of Saigon. Our surname—your name—was spelled H-a-q-u-e by then. H-a-q to H-a-q-u-e was strictly an economic decision. A penniless man makes his way out of Peshawar or someplace equally filthy, and peddles cigarettes, chewing gum, dirty cards in Indochine cities. Ib Haq was an okay moniker for that man. His son upgrades Haq to Haque, buys himself a Eurasian whore for a wife, and makes what living he can driving pedicabs on the crowded streets of Saigon. Haque’s son, yours truly, Americanizes his name to H-a-w-k, and procures for GIs to-die-for dreams. A procurer is not, repeat not, a pimp. We’re talking imagination on the grand scale, Miss Dee. If you can supply satiety, there’ll always be appetite. I could have been a millionaire. The war was good, very good, and damn your Berkeley peaceniks. The war was great, especially since Vietnam wasn’t my real homeland. And then boom! my number one Bar-dolly decides to moonlight as the Cong’s number one Tigerlady. You ever see American and South Vietnamese interrogators