Leave It to Me - Bharati Mukherjee [71]
Dad shoved and dragged Mom; Mom cursed Dad all the way to my car. I couldn’t have stopped them even if I’d wanted to. Dad had the 9mm, the cuffs, the strangler’s hands. Maybe Mom’s time had come.
I stayed on the deck, rocking back and forth on my heels in time to the rocking of Last Chance. The waves lapped the sides, higher, faster, stronger. I listened to seagulls, I sang with mermaids and waited for Ham to skid back into my life on the worn-smooth tires of his Triumph. And he did, could have been a half hour later, could have been longer than that; all I know is that by then sea and sky were communing.
“Hey, Day-Vee, hi!” He stuck his head out and waved. Women complications he could handle. “Your boss tell you she sent me for the one brand of pita bread they don’t sell in Sausalito?” He hefted a small sack off the passenger seat and joined me on the deck. No ghosts, no purple auras, no angel halos: just a longhaired smiling man in a red polo shirt and white baggies, hugging dips and munchies. “What’s up?”
What’s up? Oh, nothing much, Ham. What’s up? I’ll tell you, starting with, Your friend and squeeze, Jess, Jeanne, Iris-Daughter or whoever, helped Romeo Hawk or Haque or Haq kill a total of seventeen men and women, nearly choke to death a no-name baby of no fixed address, bump off Fred … You want more?
“Jess just stepped out.”
“In future, call before you show up.” He led me into the cabin all the same. A quick kiss before emptying the deli items, then another kiss, this time long, rough and ardent. “Catfights prohibited on Last Chance,” he whispered. He found my nipples with his teeth.
“I don’t do jealous, Ham.”
“That’s why you turn me on, hon.” The nibbling and biting continued. “So what brought you?”
“My author turned out to be Jess’s best friend from way back when. He planned the surprise visit, I went along because he was the client. The surprise worked, I guess. They took my car and went for a spin.”
“Which leaves us just enough indiscretion time, hon?”
I said, “What’s that romantic aroma? The Ham Cohan Valentine Special Roast Chicken?”
“I lucked out. Happy Valentine!”
The secret of the sexes was suddenly apparent to me. Clueless jerks who can’t get their underwear on straight still have the priceless women. It’s on all the sitcoms, it’s the imponderable, it’s what makes the world go round. It’s got to stop. I settled among beat-up cushions on the kilimcovered banquette and watched Ham rinse clean a wineglass and paper-towel it dry before pouring a splash of Zinfandel into it. There wasn’t more left in the bottle. He didn’t reach for another wine from the rack behind him. He wasn’t inviting me to stay for dinner.
The soundtrack of The Big Easy was playing on the CD player “… Got to be closer to you … wrapped in your arms, holding you tight, whispering faintly, baby, deep in the night …” Ham and Jess had been getting in Valentine mood when we apparitioned on the houseboat. You kill the past only if you have the know-how to survive hauntings.
I leaned a lazy finger on the rewind button. When I let it up, the singer was reminiscing about lace curtains, willow trees, rustling bedsheets. I didn’t have to listen to someone else’s nostalgia “… the smell of the morning in the rainy lane …”
A wartime memory that Larry once shared popped into my head. “You know what I remember best about the place,” he said. “The swallows. Blue swallows, goddamn swarms of them getting in your face. It was beautiful! I wouldn’t have missed Nam for anything.”
I didn’t care if too much Dexedrine had turned crows and sparrows into a blue blanket of swallows. Eighteen-year-old Larry Flagg had gone into the war with a fuck-with-me-and-you’re-dead attitude;