Visible Empire, page 17
“Please don’t talk,” Robert said.
“I’ve swum with a whale shark off the southern coast of Thailand. I’ve seen a lion and her cubs devour an entire zebra in Zimbabwe. I’ve reeled in a blue marlin off the coast of Mexico only to have a great white shark jump from the water and eat all but the dorsal and the spear. But I have never in my life seen a woman who looks like Lily drinking a beer with a boy who looks like that, in Atlanta-galactic-Georgia of all places. Kill me now, I say. I have finally seen it all.”
“Please,” said Robert. “If it’s the only favor you ever pay me, please stop.”
Coleman put his hand on the inside latch of the Benz and pulled. The door popped open. At the same time, across the way, the Negro kid held up a hand—not in salutation—and Lily (what, by god, was she doing?) held up her own hand, and the two of them proceeded to press their palms together as if comparing size.
Coleman started to get out of the car.
“What are you doing?” Robert’s heart beat heavily against his chest. A line of sweat broke out across his forehead, another above his lip.
“You said you wanted to see Lily. You said you wanted to get the Thunderbird. Here we are.”
Robert’s pulse quickened. Perhaps this was the heart attack his doctor had promised, perhaps the stroke he’d always feared. A stroke had rendered his father useless; a heart attack had ended his mother’s life. He never should have pushed for this. He never should have allowed Coleman—allowed? My god, he’d begged!—to be this close to his house, to his Lily! He was playing fast and loose with his own health. He was playing fast and loose with his life!
“Close the door,” said Robert. “I think I might be having a heart attack. You need to take me to a hospital.” He wiped sweat from the back of his neck and regarded his hand. “I’m definitely having a heart attack.”
Coleman shut the door. He took Robert’s face in his hands. He moved it up and down and side to side like some diabolical optometrist. “Not a heart attack.”
“What do you know?” Robert jerked his head away. “You’re no doctor.” He looked again at the scene on the front porch. Lily’s hand was on her mouth; she was covering a smile. “Please,” said Robert. “Please let’s just get out of here. I’ll do anything. Please just take me away from here.”
“Anything?”
“My chest is exploding. I need water and a doctor.”
“And I need jazz.”
“I don’t care where you take me,” said Robert. “Just step on it. Get me out of here. Goddamn it, P. T. Get me out of here now.”
Another twenty minutes later, and they were safely installed atop leather-bound stools in a jazz spot not too far off Ponce de Leon. The walls were dark and the air was cool. Coleman was drinking something thick and sweet. Robert was on his third glass of water. “I want to go home,” he said. “I should be with Lily.”
“You don’t know what you want. You’re all over the place. You’re worse than a five-year-old. Shut up and listen to the music.” At a piano on a small riser in the back of the bar, a Negro was playing a doleful tune. Robert had wooed Lily with music like this. The truth was, he’d wooed Rita with it, too. He put his head in his hands. He didn’t want to feel sorry for himself. But he did. He was a sorry sonofabitch and an even sorrier one for knowing it.
“I’ve been thinking,” Coleman said, “and you’re right.”
“No,” Robert said into his palms. “No more from you.”
“I should have the Thunderbird for the Fourth. What’s the point of fireworks if you don’t have a convertible. Truth be told, seeing it made me crave the feel of wind in my hair. I get your point now. About money being only so valuable.”
“I can’t go back there again. It’ll kill me. I won’t go back there until I deserve her, until she asks me herself. What was she doing with that kid? Did it look like they were flirting? Did it look like she was giggling? I haven’t heard Lily giggle in . . . Good god, what have I done?”
“Hear me out,” Coleman said.
The piano man segued into a melancholic rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Robert pictured Judy Garland, those awkward pigtails. Her face was so young, her eyes spread far apart like a cow’s. But that voice—it contained multitudes. If that’s what people meant by God, then maybe he did understand something.
“You want her back,” said Coleman. “At least you think you do. Fine. Sure. But you’re down-and-out right now and in no condition. An hour ago you thought you were having a heart attack. There’s a colored kid getting drunk and playing footsie with your pregnant wife. Great. Agreed. We both understand the situation.”
“They weren’t playing footsie. Were they playing footsie? I didn’t see that. Is that real?”
“An expression. Lily’s fooling around with a darkie, wasting time until the baby hatches or until you come groveling. Whichever happens first. I appreciate your dilemma. I appreciate”—Coleman made a fist and beat three times against his chest—“the heaviness. I am not an ogre, my dear friend. What I propose is simple. It’s a beginning. It’s a First Step in a multifaceted maneuver to reinstate yourself into her life.”
Robert grimaced.
“We drive back over. Nope. Hear me out. Listen now. We drive back over. We explain that we’ve come for the Thunderbird and nothing more. You say hello. You maybe even tell her you miss her. If she’s interested—you’ll know if she’s interested, you’ll read her—then you tell her you’re sorry. If she isn’t ready yet—and I think it’s safe to assume that she won’t be given the state of affairs (pun intended, apologies)—well, she’ll at least know she’s on your mind.”
“What if the kid is still there?”
“The darkie?”
“His name is Piedmont.”
“All the more reason to go back. Let the darkie know you’re around. Let him know you’re watching, that you’re still in the picture, regardless of what Lily has or hasn’t intimated.” Coleman burped. “See what I mean?”
Sadly, Robert did see what he meant. But he wasn’t convinced. “I need water.”
“You’re boring on water. You’ve had too much of it. Did you know it’s possible to poison yourself by way of over-hydration? I’ve read the studies.”
“Where’s the barman?” asked Robert. “I need to think.”
“Here.” Coleman slid a glass of water in Robert’s direction. “Take mine. I don’t want it.”
In one gulp, Robert drank half the water. He put down the glass and wiped his mouth. The piano man moved into “Moon River.” Robert had seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s first with Lily and then, at a matinee the following week, with Rita. Both women had cried at the business with the cat. He’d comforted each. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the melody. He tried not to hear the lyrics in his head, which was nearly impossible. He tried not to think about what a rat bastard he’d been. Also impossible.
He finished the water and pushed the glass, now empty, away. He was conscious, he realized, for possibly the first time in his life, of his body’s insides. As the water hit each new surface, he was aware of his tongue, of the triangular fold beneath it, of his uvula and his hard and soft palates. There, as the water slid down, obeying gravity, was his palatoglossal arch, his lingual tonsils, his epiglottis. As the liquid met each surface, the vocabulary came to him, the anatomy suddenly being made real, made comprehensible in a formerly unfathomable way. He opened and closed his mouth. He licked his lips. He looked at Coleman, who was grinning. Robert could feel the lobes of his brain lighting up and going dark, lighting up and going dark again: like some mind-controlling game from the future, first his frontal lobe illuminated itself, then his occipital, his parietal, his temporal, his frontal again. Around and around, back and forth, his brain came in and out of the light. “Coleman,” he said. He felt his body rising, he felt weight—the concept of it—leaving his person. “Coleman, what did you give me? What have you done?”
Coleman clapped his hands together and stood. “Now we’re cooking,” he said. “Let’s motor. Let’s agitate the gravel, burn rubber, flat-out floor it, goose it, lay a patch. Let’s pop the clutch. You with me?”
When Robert’s mouth opened, when the words came out, when language finally found itself, it was as though Coleman was speaking through him. As if he’d not just been dosed, but dosed with some aspect of his companion: “Word from the bird,” Robert said. “Let’s punch it off the line. Let’s giddyup. I’m with you.” The words—Coleman’s words but from Robert’s mouth—came as effortlessly as if he’d been reading lines from a cue card. “Lead the way.”
They glided single file, the two men, out of the club, up its abbreviated staircase, out into the hot, thick rain forest of the night. They stopped long enough only to light cigarettes and roll up their sleeves. Then they were back in the Mercedes, the windows open, cruising beneath the elevated streetlights of Peachtree Avenue, hitting green light after green light after green light, in the direction—they both knew, though neither had said it aloud—of Coleman’s 1960 Ford Thunderbird convertible.
It was late enough now that there was no traffic. Coleman slowed as they approached the driveway of the Tudor on Forrest Way. He turned off the headlights on the Benz and started to pull up the drive.
“What are you doing?” said Robert. “You’ll wake her. Just park on the street.”
“Fine, fine.” Coleman backed out, the lights still off, and pulled the car alongside the curb. For a minute or two, they just sat there, looking at the house. The Thunderbird, thankfully, was still parked out front. Robert wouldn’t have to raise the garage door, which jammed at about two feet and always made a terrible racket. It was possible Coleman could simply put the car in neutral, back it down the driveway, and not start the motor until he was safely on the road and out of earshot. But even if the noise did wake Lily, they’d be long gone by the time she made it to the front door. That was how Robert was imagining it anyway.
When Coleman opened his door, Robert put a hand on his knee. “Wait,” he said. “You’ll be extra careful, right? Quiet as possible? Quiet and quick?”
“I’m a trained assassin,” whispered Coleman. “I’m in like Flynn.”
“It alarms me,” said Robert, removing his hand and looking back up at the Thunderbird, “that you would even make that joke.”
Coleman crept quietly from the car, which he left running, presumably to make it easier for Robert to slide into the driver’s seat and take the wheel when it was time. But for now Robert stayed put. He did not think it safe to move. There was a feeling in his gut that suggested he might foul himself right there in the car. His stomach growled.
From the passenger’s seat, he watched Coleman run, half-bent, up the driveway and crouch next to the convertible. Coleman gave him a thumbs-up then tried the driver’s-side door. It didn’t open. He looked in Robert’s direction. The light from the moon was enough so that Robert could see, or thought he could see, Coleman shrug then slink around to the passenger’s side. For a moment, he disappeared.
Several seconds later, when the passenger’s door of the Benz opened without warning and Coleman loomed suddenly and unexpectedly above him, Robert nearly cried out in terror.
“Car’s locked,” whispered Coleman. “No dice. So here’s the plan: you give me your keys to the house, I go in the back door quiet as a cat and come out with the keys to the Thunderbird.”
Robert was shaking his head. “Absolutely not,” he said. “Everything about that is off. No way. Not happening.”
“You still keep all the keys in the kitchen? To the right of the sink? Next to the silverware?”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m your friend. I bet she added my keys to the drawer.”
“You’re not that kind of friend.”
“Sure I am.”
“Who showed you our drawer of keys?”
“Don’t be crazy,” Coleman said. “I saw them last year, on the Fourth, at your party.”
“We didn’t have a party on the Fourth.”
“Oh, man, did you ever. Fireworks at sunset? Nude swimming after midnight? Lily was out of control.”
“That didn’t happen here. That was at the Pink Chateau maybe. And Lily wouldn’t have been there. She doesn’t like the daughter. I told you. Anyway, we’ve never thrown a party on the Fourth. Did Lily show you the key drawer on a different day? Is that how you know? I’m so confused.”
“Give me your house keys.” Coleman held out his hand. “Fork them over.”
“You don’t understand,” Robert murmured, his heart was racing again. “I think I need medical attention. You’ve drugged me.”
“The keys.” Now Coleman jabbed at Robert’s chest. Robert swatted at his hand.
“I’m a dead man. You’re murdering me.”
“I know dead,” said Coleman. “You’re not dead. My old man is dead. His old lady, too. You’re alive as a kangaroo.”
Again Robert swatted at Coleman’s hand. “Get out of my face.” His whisper contained real hysteria. “My house keys are long gone.”
“What does that mean?”
“I left them somewhere. I don’t know. The Ritz? The Purple Pigeon? The diner? They’re gone. I haven’t seen them in days, weeks.”
Coleman fell slowly back onto the lawn with his knees hiked in front of him and his feet planted on the street. “Damn,” he said. “You should have told me.” He allowed himself only the briefest moments of defeat, then he pushed himself up and brushed off the seat of his pants. “Plan B, then.”
Robert looked up. His stomach growled again, but the sickness had passed. “Plan B?” he asked.
“We break in.”
Before Robert could say anything, Coleman was moving back across the dimly lit yard. It was late enough—early enough—that dew was accumulating on the grass. Coleman’s shoes made imprints as he scampered away. Robert nearly fell out of the Benz trying to follow him. He caught himself before slamming the door, reached inside, turned off the motor, removed the key, then delicately pushed the door into the frame. He turned and trotted quickly after Coleman.
By the time he’d caught up, at the back door that led to the kitchen, Coleman had the doormat already flipped over and was running his hands across the top step. “Christ,” Coleman said. “Christ. No spare key? Who doesn’t leave an extra key lying about?”
“For this very reason,” Robert whispered, returning the mat to its rightful place. “To protect ourselves against bad guys like you.”
“We’ll just have to break a window,” said Coleman. “This little guy right here.” He knocked lightly on the small square pane just above the doorknob.
“Cut it out,” said Robert; he snatched Coleman’s hand away. “You’ll wake her.”
“You’re right,” he said. “Maybe we should just wake her. Why not? What’s the big deal? It’s your home, after all. And it’s my car. You go hide behind the bushes, and I’ll stand right here and knock until she lets me in.”
“If you think you’re going to knock on this door at this time of night,” Robert said, “then you’re out of your mind. Come on. We’ll come back tomorrow. I promise. You and me both. We’ll go through the front door together. No more excuses. Just let me be sober, clear-headed. That’s all I ask. That’s all I want.”
“No more excuses?” asked Coleman.
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“First thing in the morning?”
“As early as you get me here.”
“Deal.”
As Coleman started to move away from the door, a spotlight hit his face. He held up his forearm to shield his eyes. “Jesus,” he said. “The hell?”
The beam moved from Coleman’s face to Robert’s. He, too, held up his forearm for protection. “Who’s there?” said Robert. “Who is that?”
The light suddenly went dark. Then a different light, one just above the back door, snapped to life.
Footsteps approached from the direction of the pool house. Robert’s sight was still compromised. He rubbed at his eyes. “Hello?”
Behind him, the back door opened. Robert didn’t want to turn around. He didn’t want to see her. He didn’t want her to see him.
But the voice he heard first didn’t belong to Lily. The voice he heard first belonged to the Negro kid who, Robert realized in a stunning moment of clarity, must be staying in their pool house. Lily had put him up there. Of course she had. Coleman had sent the kid off on a fool’s errand, and somehow he’d ended up here instead, and Lily—because she was decent and good and the opposite of everything Robert had become—Lily had offered him a place to stay. It both did and didn’t make perfect sense. Wherever you go, there you are.
Robert closed his eyes and took a deep breath. With great purposefulness, he turned toward the kitchen door. The light overhead showed everything, more than everything. It showed too much.
Lily had stepped forward so that she was backlit. But even in the shadow, he could see her belly was large as a house. Between last week and today, it seemed to have swelled in size. Or maybe it was merely his proximity to her; maybe it was merely being so close after so many weeks. His instinct was to move toward her. His body, his whole body, seemed to want to take hold of her, to put his arms around her, to put his hands on her stomach and wait for the inevitable and outrageous kicks of life inside. My god, he wanted to hold her!
What he did was stay put. What he did was not move a single muscle.
Did it surprise Robert when Lily chose not to address him first? When she chose not to address Coleman either, but when she addressed, instead, the Negro? Perhaps it did surprise him, but what surprised him even more was the tone of her voice when she spoke. For a moment, he worried that his jaw had gone slack and that his mouth was open.
“Please stay,” said Lily, so soft, so sweet, so full of soul. “If you don’t mind, Piedmont, stay until they’re gone.”
By way of an answer, the kid stood still.
Finally Lily faced them. And this simple act—Lily, a few steps above them just beyond the doorway, turning in their direction—was nearly deafening in its effectiveness. That belly! When it moved, the attention of a room—a room, a yard, a world!—moved with it.
