Among the Living (32 page)

The pregnant woman from The Pipe stepped forward on the arm of her man. A gentleman in a cutaway tuxedo, vest, and striped trousers, certainly the oldest among them all, tipped his hat and gave a little bow. The woman blushed at the attention. The night had already become unreal and otherworldly, even for them.

The welcoming officer stopped the pregnant woman.

She wasn’t a Sailor.

The man with her protested but without much conviction because he knew the rules. She waited where she was and her “husband” went aboard without her, looking back once. She picked up his watch cap where he had dropped it.

More cars were pulling into the parking lot. Some were big, expensive. The custom was to leave the keys in the ignitions, the doors unlocked. Whoever was left when it was over could take what they wanted.

A security car arrived. An excited guard jumped out almost before the car stopped rolling. He pushed his way into the middle of the Sailors, wide-eyed at the improbability of it all.

“Who are you? What is this?”

What did he expect to hear? A
prom
?

A hand touched the excited guard’s shoulder.

It was Connor. In uniform.

“It’s a private party,” the cop said.

The security guard started to protest.

“It’s all right,” Connor said calmly. “We’re here.”

The guard went away.

Jimmy and Angel were about to board when Jimmy saw Jean.

She was at the mouth of the gangway. Waiting, watching.

Jimmy went down the ramp to her, against the stream of Sailors boarding.

“You have to go,” he said.

“What is this?”

The clouds passed off the moon. The light brightened.

“I can’t explain it,” Jimmy said. “And you can’t see it.”

He started away.

“Is my father here?” Jean said.

He stopped. He was ten steps past her. He looked at her.

“I talked to him,” she said. “Tonight.”

“What did he tell you?”

Jimmy didn’t want to know, but it was the next thing to say.

“That he didn’t kill my mother.” She waited a moment. “And
what this is.
”

He felt as if she was suddenly across the widest ocean.

“Go back to the beach house,” he said.

“I’m coming aboard.”

“No.”

Angel stepped up. “It’s time,” he said.

“You can’t be here,” Jimmy said to Jean.

“
Tell her,
” he said to Angel and walked away from her.

“Go home,” Angel said. “He doesn’t want you hurt.”

Angel went after Jimmy.

She followed after them.

“I’m coming aboard,” she said. She caught up. “I’m coming aboard,” she said again.

The officer on deck put out a hand to stop Jean.

“You know she can’t come aboard,” he said.

Jimmy shoved him back out of the way.
Let her see it.

The three of them entered the grand ballroom, a tall Deco space with funereal elegance. There were multiple levels where once there had been cocktail tables or roulette wheels. An enormous crystal chandelier hung over their heads.

The room was filled with Sailors. They stood in clusters, among friends, waiting. Scott the bartender was there, Krisha, the woman doctor who treated Drew, one of Angel’s bodybuilder friends, Connor.

The old man in the tuxedo played an out-of-tune grand piano, the bad notes giving the scene the feel of a cheap dance hall somewhere or a wake.

The room was ablaze in blue light.

Jimmy held Jean’s arm. She pulled away from him and set off on her own to find her father.

Jimmy just watched her go.

“Three minutes,” Angel said.

There was an ornate clock.
Very English.
It ticked loudly enough to be heard over the voices and the music.

“Just stay with us,” Jimmy said to Drew as they moved back through the crowd. “Just do what we do and watch.” He remembered the first blue moon, when
he
was a kid and went from knowing everything to knowing nothing.

Drew did as he was told, fell in behind Jimmy and Angel as they moved through the clusters of Sailors. The room was almost howling now in anticipation, pulsing like a blue cloud somehow captured in a room, like a storm in a box. The tuxedo man played louder and louder to be heard over the growing din, lifting his curled fingers in great dramatic gestures with each chord.

“Does this just keep getting weirder and weirder?” Drew said as they moved through it.

Jimmy looked at him. “It’s beautiful.”

Jimmy kept going.

Angel put an arm around the boy. “It’s a
little
weird,” he said.

Jimmy saw Jean with her father, talking, close. So there he was, just like the picture from the
Press Telegram,
the narrow black tie, the white shirt, the gray suit.
The half smile.

Before he thought about what he was doing, Jimmy charged up to them and threw Jack Kantke against the wall. Jimmy’s anger wasn’t at Kantke and Kantke’s anger wasn’t at him but neither man cared in the moment, they both just wanted to tear something apart.

Kantke threw a punch. Jimmy avoided it and shoved him back into a glass cabinet, shattering it. Kantke recovered and came after him and Jimmy knocked him down onto the bed of broken glass.

Jimmy ripped the leg off of a table. He stood over Kantke. He raised the club.

The ticking grew louder and louder as the piano fought it.

Angel seized Jimmy’s arm. Jean screamed.

Peacoats arrived and pulled Jimmy away from Kantke.

Red Steadman was behind them, dressed as an admiral. With him were Boney M and Little Evil, but it was Steadman himself who seized Jimmy by the neck, lifted him off his feet.

“
Not here!
” he yelled into Jimmy’s face.

But then the ornate clock chimed.

The ship’s bells began to sound.

Steadman released Jimmy.

Kantke got to his feet.

Jean stepped back.

Angel took Drew’s hand in his and lifted it.

“What?” Drew said.

The piano player stood, lifted his hands.

Jimmy looked at Jean. She was terrified.

He closed his eyes and raised his hands.

Steadman raised his hands.

The ship’s bells ceased.

There was stunning silence, the silence at the end of the world.

Someone started crying.

The blue pulsed so brightly it hurt the eyes.

And then, as one, as if there was no time in the world, as if there was no
Now,
only
Always,
all in the room
spoke a line,
as one . . .

 

“Come The Flood, we will say goodbye to flesh and blood
. . .
”

 

Jimmy’s voice could be heard.

Angel’s voice, loud and prayerful.

Steadman, rough, impatient, chafing at obedience.

Drew, repeating the line a half beat late.

The room hummed with expectation.

There was a long, hollow moment . . .

And then a man collapsed where he stood.

And then another.

And then the man who had brought the pregnant woman, falling dead away.

Drew watched them fall.

And then there were no more. “Whoa,” he said.

Jimmy opened his eyes.

He scanned the room. There was Angel, still on his feet, tears in his eyes. Scott. Krisha. Connor.

Steadman.

Behind him, Jean knelt over her father’s body.
He was gone.

Jimmy went to her, leaned over and put a hand on her back. She looked up at him.

She shook her head. Sometimes what you have to do is walk away. She got up. He didn’t try to stop her as she pushed through the others, left them all behind.

The piano man began again, a tune that started out sad, and those who remained began to tend to the bodies around them, crumpled forms in the clothes they last wore living.

As first light came, a fishing boat with no name rode the swells of the gray water off Long Beach, well out from the shipping lanes. Jimmy and Angel and Drew were at the rails, steadying themselves as the boat climbed and fell. The engines idled and the captain tried to keep it headed into the wind but the ride was rough.

Steadman was forward, directing several peacoats bearing the first of the bodies, strapped with weights, wrapped for sea burial in unbleached cloth. As the bearers carried a body by, every man on deck reached out a hand to touch it. Drew did as the others did. He was back in his blue cap. Then the body was lowered over the side, sucked down feetfirst with hardly a sound.

As the peacoats went forward for the next, Angel and Drew went with them to help. There was a truce now, for this.

Steadman came to Jimmy.

“You know you won’t stop me,” he said. “Even with everything you know, you still don’t understand, do you?”

Jimmy didn’t answer him.

“We’ll win,” Steadman said. “We will win.”

“You probably already have,” Jimmy said.

Angel and Drew and the peacoats came back with another wrapped body. Jimmy reached out to touch it.

Steadman blessed it, too, but left his eyes on the breathing man before him.

Jimmy was on the rooftop patio of Jean’s apartment. It was clear with one of those once- or twice- or three-times-a-year views, all the way to Catalina. The traffic below on Sunset was heavy but the sound was reassuring, people in motion, full of purpose, everything shiny and bright and clean.

Jean came out with a bottle of water. Jimmy cracked the seal and took a drink.

“Do you believe in heaven?” she said.

He took another drink.

“No,” he said, “but I believe in a whole bunch of places they’ve never given a name to.”

She smiled and walked to the railing.

“It really is over with your father,” Jimmy said behind her.

She nodded.

She turned to face him.

“When you said that you can’t know everything, I guess this was what you meant.”

He looked at her. “At the time I think just meant . . .
generally.
”

She wasn’t close to him.

“So you just wait . . . for the next blue moon?”

Their
story was over. At least for now. They both knew it.

“Nah, we were just kidding about all that,” he said and tried a smile.

“I’m moving,” she said. “To San Francisco.”

He nodded.

“Maybe, after awhile . . .” She trailed off. He didn’t help her finish the sentence.

“I have something for you,” she said.

She went into the apartment and came back with something closed in her hand. She stood in front of him. She opened her hand.

It was a glass bottle, perfume in a functional but elegant glass bottle. He took it. It was a beautiful color.

“It’s what your mother wore,” Jean said. “They don’t make it anymore. I had it synthesized. The scent was still on her dress in the case.”

He took her hand.

“Maybe this will help you remember her,” she said.

Jimmy whipped away the cover—like a magician!—On the last car in the garage. It was a snow white 1969 Chrysler 400 convertible with white leather interior, with three-foot fin s and what the lowriders called monster whitewalls, though his mother certainly never called them that.

It was her last car and Jimmy rode with the top down and good music on the radio over to Hollywood and then down to the 10 past Parker Center and Union Station, the sky still full on blue, and holding, in daylight, the diminishing moon.

Some days people are happy. There wasn’t any explaining it but today people were happy. They waved at the sight of the huge white car, big as a boat. Jimmy wore a light green jacket that looked like ’69, like a college man in ’69, and they were happy with him, too.

He waved back.

The traffic broke open, as it always did, just past San Bernardino, the long hill up to the wide-place-in-the-road town called Beaumont. Jimmy stopped for a Coke at a drive-in. He always stopped at the same place. It was usually only twice a month but the high school girl there knew him and the Mexican boys who did the cooking knew the car.

He sat on the red-enameled picnic bench out front. It was over a hundred and yet there was snow on the mountains behind them.