Black Tickets (15 page)

At sunset Bruno picks him up, holds him twenty minutes or so by the window. I see them now, outside on the balcony though it is only early spring. Old man just a swaddled bundle, no head, and Bruno a dark shape.

Harry wipes his hands on his pants and winks. Queers, he says, I love em. Perv fairies. Happens all over when the sun goes down.

I think of them. At night. I believe he sits on Bruno’s lap, wrapped in those big arms and several blankets. They never speak. They watch television until the picture fades to one burning spot the size of an eye.

I hold back just enough. He puts out a hundred a week for prescriptions, vitamins, imported Korean ginseng, papaya root, subtle sleeping powders, exotic capsules of pure oxygen. He writes me a check, I buy them all. Overcharge him just enough and keep the difference. Make and label some of them myself, pills of sugar, dried lemon peel, peppermint in a clear digestible shell. Or I dye them bright colors so they range in my hands like rainbows. Offer them on cut-glass trays, tip the goblet to his lips. And he swallows, thirsting for tropics, the juice of the mango. His vitamins sit waiting in clear cannisters, delicate in cotton and glass. I switch them, give them to him in strange bottles, pretend to buy them twice. The violet eyes grow more luminous, the skull almost visible in the bald head.

I could fence his rings and bracelets at Harry’s, there are boxes he ignores. He is too thin to wear them, he is unconcerned. Emeralds, rubies, opals gleam unseen. Moonstones glow in the dark. And his bracelets, Indian, Egyptian gold, old turquoise, tooled Irani silver. All neglected. Even the necklaces. He says he cannot breathe beneath the faintest gold chains, smallest pearls, jeweled chips tiny as grass seed. They oppress him.

Only the locust, heavy emblazoned diamond on its stemmed gold pin. He asks for it repeatedly. I fasten light silk scarves around his throat, locust burning a fiery head large as the nail of my smallest finger. Nestling in the cloth. Ruby eyes, the studded wings, the thin gold legs curled so they disappear.

He believes I admire the locust. As he sleeps, long afternoons, I open the drawer beside his bed to watch it. Jewel in dark brocade. The gold set is true to the insect, that single
particle of ravages and swarms. Winged grasshopper, pestilence. Its head flawless, diamond, the thin gold tongue protruding, and lower, the segmented legs. I want to take it, hide it in my clothes and not come back. In the drawer the locust glints and almost moves.

I touch it. From the bed a wheezing sigh, an exhalation that catches on itself and chokes. I jerk, my finger barely touching the head of the jewel, the brilliant thorax. The old man rolls, wakened, but I look again and the locust’s head is faintly smeared. A prong of the setting is loose and jagged. My finger, the stinging. I suck the blood away and shut the drawer.

In summer the street gets hot. Heat wavers from its surface and the Krishnas dance, jerking thin skirts dark in sweated patches. Jingling ankle bells. Leathery feet, thud, calluses so deep tiny worms lay eggs in their cracks.

But his stone house is cool, the street a muffled hum. Bruno rigs his bed with a clear tent and a metal tube of oxygen. We keep the tent rolled up until he sleeps and then we lower it, Bruno’s perfect hands soundless on its plastic walls. Inside the old man sleeps with his eyes open; veiled in a clear dry veil.

At noon I prop him in a chair and wrap him up, feel his heart knocking in his ribs like something trying to hatch. Cover his legs with soft wools, his feet in cowhide slippers, golden, lined in gold. His feet are too long for his bony ankles, the peaked shank bones of his legs. His toes seem longer than fingers, their nails thick, manicured, embossed with blue half-moons and a natural sheen. As I fit the slippers his toes rise together, once, poised like the hand of some intelligent damaged creature.

Hey kid, whaddya know? Harry gets a little fatter every summer. Points to his line of quarter machines. Antiques, he says. Every one of em, found out last week. He crows, says he’s got some valuable property here. He grins.

In summer the store is hot, old dirt in the floors smells old. Only his dedicated customers appear. Overhead the old ceiling fans whirr and buzz. Black points in the center, a blur of blades.

I don’t come every night. Only sometimes. Watch the house from Harry’s streaked window, watch the corner close down and turn crazy.

Harry shakes his head at me. Kid, he says. Yr getting skinny. Yr losing weight kid.

The old man is always cool, pale as a root. Once a day there is the walk to the bathroom, clump of the aluminum walker and slow scud of his feet behind. He can’t go the whole distance; this week I carry him from the bathroom door to the toilet. Floor an endless series of marble dots.

A dancer’s thin support bar runs along the wall. Last year he walked up and down its length grasping the metal, jerking his legs along. Once he fell, broke his ankles. They mended badly, they hobble him, inching, tottering. Like a Chinese girl with bound feet; a girl of good family whose feet are the feet of a baby.

Bathroom. Wide, marble, windows wavy and leaded. Light so dim the crickets sing all day. They hang in tiny cages from the ceiling, suspended by strings of prismed beads. There is a skylight, but the ragged palms have grown so tall they diffuse the sun.

I carry him, he begins to shake. A spasm beginning; I want to put him on the toilet and leave, wait in the hall as always until he presses the call bell, chimes his strange high note. The toilet has a padded back and sides, he is strapped in, he won’t topple over as the coughing progresses. Waiting, I try not to hear, frightened, clenched—the scraping, the shuddered hacks, the yellowed phlegm he drools. It smells of his disease, deep, damp. Not lilies and silks, mahogany, blond bamboo. It is this smell, putrid, comes out of him. I wait, outside in the long hall.

Today I put him down and draw away. But he has clutched my wrist. Yellow fingers tight, pressing, I shake them, pull, finally try to pry them off. Panic, think … this strength, involuntary … a stroke? … but then I see his face. The eyes recognize. Escaping them I look down, the floor. There is blood, trickles of it from his hand, his drawn white fist. He lets go; his palm opens. Couched in his thin flesh, the locust has eaten a small gash with its jagged gold. It drops to the floor and rolls, glittering. Yours, he says. The spasm builds, he shakes to hold it back. Skin around his eyes so white it seems to glow, and there are tears. Sounds. He releases me.

I step back but he is whispering. I am drawn to him, closer. His violet eyes and the whispers, a name. Closer. He beckons, frail hand turning like a leaf. I bend, his fluttering lips at my ear. He wheezes, breath a rotted weight; yet from his skin there is a light perfume, drying of an ancient herb. He whispers, softer. Love, my love, he whispers. Don’t leave me.

L
IKE EVERYONE
else, she thought a lot about eating and sleeping. When she was sleeping she felt like death floating free, a white seed over the water. Eating, she thought about sex and chewed pears as though they were conscious. When she was making love she felt she was dancing in a churning water, floating, but attached to something else. Once she almost died and went so far she saw how free the planet floated, how it is only a shadow, and was frightened back to herself. Later, when she explained this to him, he put his arms around her. She thought she had come home and they were in a shadow, dancing.

K
ATE ALWAYS
sent her mother a card on Valentine’s Day. She timed the mails from wherever she was so that the cards arrived on February 14th. Her parents had celebrated the day in some small fashion, and since her father’s death six years before, Kate made a gesture of compensatory remembrance. At first, she made the cards herself: collage and pressed grasses on construction paper sewn in fabric. Now she settled for art reproductions, glossy cards with blank insides. Kate wrote in them with colored inks, “You have always been my Valentine,” or simply “Hey, take care of yourself.” She might enclose a present as well, something small enough to fit into an envelope; a sachet, a perfumed soap, a funny tintype of a prune-faced man in a bowler hat.

This time, she forgot. Despite the garish displays of paper cupids and heart-shaped boxes in drugstore windows, she let the day nearly approach before remembering. It was
too late to send anything in the mail. She called her mother long-distance at night when the rates were low.

“Mom? How are you?”

“It’s you! How are
you
?” Her mother’s voice grew suddenly brighter; Kate recognized a tone reserved for welcome company. Sometimes it took a while to warm up.

“I’m fine,” answered Kate. “What have you been doing?”

“Well, actually I was trying to sleep.”

“Sleep? You should be out setting the old hometown on fire.”

“The old hometown can burn up without me tonight.”

“Really? What’s going on?”

“I’m running in-service training sessions for the primary teachers.” Kate’s mother was a school superintendent. “They’re driving me batty. You’d think their brains were rubber.”

“They are,” Kate said. “Or you wouldn’t have to train them. Think of them as a salvation, they create a need for your job.”

“Some salvation. Besides, your logic is ridiculous. Just because someone needs training doesn’t mean they’re stupid.”

“I’m just kidding. But
I’m
stupid. I forgot to send you a Valentine’s card.”

“You did? That’s bad. I’m trained to receive one. They bring me luck.”

“You’re receiving a phone call instead,” Kate said. “Won’t that do?”

“Of course,” said her mother, “but this is costing you money. Tell me quick, how are you?”

“Oh, you know. Doctoral pursuits. Doing my student trip, grooving with the professors.”

“The professors? You’d better watch yourself.”

“It’s a joke, Mom, a joke. But what about you? Any men on the horizon?”

“No, not really. A married salesman or two asking me to dinner when they come through the office. Thank heavens I never let those things get started.”

“You should do what you want to,” Kate said.

“Sure,” said her mother. “And where would I be then?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Venezuela.”

“They don’t even have plumbing in Venezuela.”

“Yes, but their sunsets are perfect, and the villages are full of dark passionate men in blousy shirts.”

“That’s your department, not mine.”

“Ha,” Kate said, “I wish it were my department. Sounds a lot more exciting than teaching undergraduates.”

Her mother laughed. “Be careful,” she said. “You’ll get what you want. End up sweeping a dirt floor with a squawling baby around your neck.”

“A dark baby,” Kate said, “to stir up the family blood.”

“Nothing would surprise me,” her mother said as the line went fuzzy. Her voice was submerged in static, then surfaced. “Listen,” she was saying. “Write to me. You seem so far away.”

They hung up and Kate sat watching the windows of the neighboring house. The curtains were transparent and flowered and none of them matched. Silhouettes of the window frames spread across them like single dark bars. Her mother’s curtains were all the same, white cotton hemmed with a ruffle, tiebacks blousing the cloth into identical shapes. From the street it looked as if the house was always in order.

Kate made a cup of strong Chinese tea, turned the lights off, and sat holding the warm cup in the dark. Her mother
kept no real tea in the house, just packets of instant diabetic mixture that tasted of chemical sweetener and had a bitter aftertaste.

The packets sat on the shelf next to her mother’s miniature scales. The scales were white. Kate saw clearly the face of the metal dial on the front, its markings and trembling needle. Her mother weighed portions of food for meals: frozen broccoli, slices of plastic-wrapped Kraft cheese, careful chunks of roast beef. A dog-eared copy of
The Diabetic Diet
had remained propped against the salt shaker for the last two years.