LaBrava (5 page)

“Some oil, acrylics mostly. I’m getting ready to do Ocean Drive, figure out my views before they tear it all down.”

“Who’s tearing it down?”

“Progress. The zoners are out to get us, man, cover the planet like one big enclosed shopping mall. We’re getting malled and condoed, if you didn’t know it. Gray and tan, earth tones. The people that designed these hotels, they had imagination, knew about color. Go outside, all you see is color and crazy lines zooming all over the place. God, hotels that remind you of ships . . .”

“I’m glad you explained that,” LaBrava said. “I’ve always liked this neighborhood and I never was sure why.” She gave him a sideways look, suspicious. Really weird hairdo but he liked it. “I mean it. I feel at home here and I don’t know why.”

“Because it’s cheap,” the girl said. “Listen, you don’t have to know why. You feel good here, that’s reason enough. People always have to have reasons instead of just feeling.” She said, “You’re the photographer, aren’t you?”

Recognition. LaBrava leaned on the cool marble-top counter: artist relaxed, an unguarded moment. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Aren’t you sure?”

“I’m just starting to get used to the idea.”

“I saw your show over at the Emerson Gallery, it’s dynamite. But all the color here—why aren’t you into color?”

“I don’t know how to use it. I feel safer with black and white.”

“You selling anything?”

“A few more street shots than portraits.”

“Well, what do they know. Right? Fuck ’em. You have to do what you do.”

“You have to get mad?”

“If it helps. Why not? It’s good to be hungry, too. You do better work.”

She had a healthy build, tan arms, traces of dark hair. She would go about one-twenty, LaBrava judged; not the least bit drawn, no haunted, hungry-artist look about her. Gold chain. Rings. The white blouse was simple and could be expensive. But you never knew. He said, “You want some lunch? We can go across the street, the Cardozo. They got a nice conch salad, good bread.”

“I know, I’ve seen you over there. No, first I have to see about new digs. I’m not going back to that fucking cell I’ve been living in. You have to go in sideways.”

LaBrava looked up at the sound of the elevator cables engaging, the electric motor whining. He said, “You may be in luck,” staring across the lobby at the elevator door, a gold sunburst relief. The door opened and he said, “You are. That’s the manager.”

Maurice said, even before reaching the desk, “Where the prints? They didn’t come out, did they? What’d I tell you last night? I said stop it down.”

“I’ve got an idea,” LaBrava said. “Why don’t you take care of this young lady—she’s looking for a respectable place, no roaches, no noise—and I’ll go see about the negatives I got hanging in the dryer.”

“How they look?”

“Just tell me if you want ’em printed soft or crisp.”

“I want ’em
now
is what I want. While she’s still hung-over, ashamed, kicking herself.”

LaBrava said to the girl, “Did I tell you he was a sweet old guy?”

“You didn’t have to,” the girl said, smiling at Maurice. “Mr. Zola, it’s a pleasure. I’m Franny Kaufman.”

A pair of dull amber safelights recessed in the ceiling gave the darkroom form, indicated shapes, but nothing more. LaBrava hit the negative with a squirt of Dust Chaser, slipped it into the enlarger and paused. He added a yellow filter, feeling sympathy for the woman upstairs in 304, Maurice’s guest suite. The exposure was timed for twelve seconds.

He moved to the long section of the L-shaped stainless steel sink, dropped the exposed eight-by-ten sheet into the first of three trays.

An image began to appear, lights and darks, the curve of a woman’s shoulder, arm touching the lower part of her face. He had not seen her clearly through the viewfinder; only a glimpse in that part of a moment as the flash exploded. He didn’t know what she looked like and was intrigued now, the way he had been curious about her in the car last night.

LaBrava lifted the print from the solution, dipped it into the second tray, the stop bath, drew it through and placed it face up in the third tray, in the clear liquid of the fix solution. He leaned his arms on the narrow edge of the sink, low and uncomfortable, hunched over to study the face, the eyes staring at him through water and amber darkness.

Someone he had seen before.

But he wasn’t sure. It might be the look, an expression he recognized. He couldn’t see her features clearly.

He lifted the print from the tray, staring as water ran from it, dripped from it, became single drops in the silence, and he was aware of a curious feeling: wanting to turn on the light and see the woman’s face, but hesitant, cautious, on the verge of discovery and wanting the suspense of these moments to last a while longer. Then thought of a way.

He set the eight-by-ten aside and printed the second and third exposures of the woman’s arm and face against the mattress, this time without the softening effect of the yellow filter, and ran them through the baths. When there were three images, three pairs of eyes set in pale white staring at him from the counter top, he walked to the door, turned on the light and walked back . . .

He stopped and could do nothing but stare at the familiar gaze, knowing why darkness, before, had given him a feeling of recognition.

Because he had seen her only in the dark. Had watched her, how many times, in the black and white dark of movie theaters, up on the screen.

Jean Shaw.

Dark hair parted in the middle, the awareness in her eyes even half awake. Why hadn’t he thought of her in the car yesterday? He had seen her for a moment in his mind, without a name, and by then they were looking for Northeast Fourth Street.

She had changed. Well, yeah, in twenty-five years people changed, everybody changed. She hadn’t changed that much though. The hair maybe, the way it was styled. But she was pale in black and white as she had been on the screen and the eyes—he would never forget her eyes.

Jean Shaw. Upstairs, right now.

The movie star he had fallen in love with the first time he had ever fallen in love in his life, when he was twelve years old.

CUNNO REY SAID TO NOBLES,
“Let me ask you something, okay? You ever see a snake eat a bat? Here is a wing sticking out of the snake’s mouth, the wing, it’s still moving, this little movement like is trying to fly. The snake, he don’t care. You know why? Because the other end of the bat is down in the snake turning to juice, man. Sure, the snake, he don’t even have to move, just lay there and keep swallowing as long as it takes. He don’t even have to chew,” Cundo Rey said, watching Richard Nobles eating his Big Mac and poking fries in his mouth a few at a time, dipped in ketchup. “Mmmmmmm, nice juicy bat.”

They were in the McDonald’s on Federal Highway, Delray Beach, the place crowded with local people having lunch. Nobles had on his two-tone-blue Star Security uniform, but not the hat. Here he was from a family whose men spent their lives outdoors and wore their, hats in the house and he hated ’em. No, he liked to leave his golden hair free and run his fingers through it from time to time. Give it a casual look.

He said, mouth full of hamburger, “I ate a snake. I’ve ate a few different kinds. You flour ’em, deep-fry ’em in some Crisco so the meat crackles, they’re pretty good. But I never ate a bat. Time you skin it what would you have?”

There—if the Cuban was trying to make him sick he was wasting his time. If the Cuban had something else in mind and was leading up to it, Nobles did not see it yet.

Ah, but then the Cuban said, drinking his coffee, not eating anything, “You understand what I’m saying to you?”

So, he would be making his point now. Fucking Cuban hotshot with his wavy hair and little gold ring in his ear. Cundo Rey was the first nigger Richard Nobles had ever seen with long wavy hair. It was parted on the right side and slanted down across his forehead over his left eye. The hair and his gold chains and silk shirts gave Cundo Rey his hot-shit Caribbean look. The way they had met last summer, ten months ago:

Nobles was making night rounds in the company Plymouth with the official Star Security stars on the doors—cruising past shopping malls and supermarkets, shining the spot into dark areas of parking lots, dying to see some suspicious dark-skinned character in his beam so he could go beat on him—came to the Chevy dealership out Glade Road and got out of the car. It was one of the places he had to go inside, turn off the alarm with a shunt key they gave him, and look around. This night when he came out there was this dinge standing by the Plymouth. The dinge goes, “What about you leave the door open, sir, so I can get my car keys?” Telling Nobles he was supposed to pick up his car in for the free five thousand mile checkup before the place closed but didn’t make it. See, all he needed was to get his keys—telling it to Nobles in this Cuban nigger accent like Nobles was a fool. Nobles had slapped his cowhide sap against the palm of his hand a few times, but then had to grin. Which must have given the dinge confidence, for then he goes, “And if you don’t believe that, sir, how you like to put five hundred dollars in your pocket and drive yourself the fuck out of here?”

Nobles admired all kinds of nerve and this Cuban was polite and had fun in his eyes.

What Cundo Rey would do usually he’d wire a brand new car out on the lot and put on stolen plates, then drive it down to South Miami or Homestead, nighttime garages he knew, and sell the car for parts. Once or twice a month make a minimum twenty-five hundred a car. Also, couple nights a week dance go-go. Get sweaty, man, lose yourself, have some fun and make a few hundred bucks.

This had confused Nobles at first. Wait a minute. Dance
go-go?

Yeah, Cundo Rey danced go-go as a pro in a little leopard jockstrap, let the ladies reach up on their bar stools and stuff money in there, let them have a feel, spin around and shake a finger, naughty-naughty, if they tried to grab his business. Sure, dance go-go, bump and grind to salsa riffs, sometimes steel drum, have a time, work clubs Ladies’ Night from West Palm down to South Beach where he appeared at a gay bar once in a while, Cheeky’s; though he would have to work up his nerve for that scene, stuff his nose good with coke, because it was the freak show at the end of the world, that place.

Was he a queer? At first, usually when they were sitting in the Plymouth looking over a car dealership, Nobles had half-expected Cundo to reach over and try to cop his joint; but he had not tried it yet and he did talk about ass like he got his share of it; so Nobles decided Cundo was straight. Just weird.

But why would a man, even a Cuban, act like a queer if he wasn’t one? “What do you do it for?” he asked Cundo Rey, and Cundo Rey said, “I steal cars in darkness, I dance in lights.” Nobles had seen him dance only one time. It was a place out by Miami International and Nobles had felt his own body moving as the ladies reached for Cundo Rey’s crotch and Cundo Rey squirmed and writhed above them to that booger music, mouth full of white teeth sucking and smacking. Jesus. That one time was enough. Nobles believed it would take more nerve to get up there and act crazy than it would to break and enter.

They had a deal going now. Nobles would go in a dealership and get a key, Cundo Rey would start a car with it and Nobles would hang the key back up on the board—later scratch his head with everybody else, squint and kick gravel at how new cars were disappearing off the lots. He was making an extra grand a month for a few minutes’ work on dark nights.

“The snake I saw, is only this long,” Cundo Rey said, moving his hands apart in the air and looking from one to the other. “What is that? Less than two meters. The snake lay in the sand and swallowed for three hour, still you see the tip of the bat’s wing sticking out of is mouth. Taking his time . . . the snake isn’t going nowhere.”

Nobles said, “Yeah?”

“What does the snake have? Patience. What’s the hurry? Now with the lady, you know you going to score good there, uh? Sure, so be cool, let it happen.”

Nobles said, “I’m gonna get a present, like on my birthday? I want to know what it is. I pick the box up and shake it. I was a little kid I used to do that. You give me a hard time, partner, I’ll pick you up and shake
you
.”

Cundo Rey sipped his coffee—very poor coffee, like water—watching Nobles wiping his big thick hands on a golden arch napkin, sucking at his teeth. The Monster from the Big Scrub, with a neck so red it could stop traffic. Cundo Rey had come ashore in Dade County only a few years ago, boat-lifted out of Cambinado del Este prison and had worked hard to learn English—asking the girls why they didn’t correct him and the girls saying, because he talked cute. Richard Nobles had come down out of some deep woods only a few hours by car to the north. And yet there was no doubt in Cundo Rey’s mind that he was the American, a man of the city, and Nobles the alien, with mud between his toes. Nobles, with his size, his golden hair, his desire to break and injure, his air of muscular confidence, was fascinating to watch. A swamp creature on the loose.

Cundo Rey said, “You threaten me?” Yes, he liked to watch Nobles and he liked to annoy him, too, sometimes. Without getting too close. “I don’t have to do this thing with you.”

“I’m kidding,” Nobles said. “You’re my little helper, aren’t you?”

Let him believe it. “If this is a good idea,” Cundo Rey said, “I don’t see why you can’t wait for her to come home.”

“Man, I got to get going
now
, take off this goddamn uniform and get into something sporty. I mean
all
the time, not just off-duty. That drunk asshole I work for, he’s gonna go broke any minute the shape he keeps things. Hires a bunch of scudders barely out of high school, they got as much brains as a box of rocks, I’m out there humping like a four-horse weed chopper, keeping the son of a bitch in booze.”

Cundo Rey was staring at him, squinting, fooling with his gold earring. “I don’t know what you talking about.”