Like People in History (13 page)

"Stairs!" I called out. "You have to stop!"

"What is it!" Cousin Diana's voice, only feet away.

I closed the window and pushed my way out of the boxwood.

"Roger? What are you doing? What's going on?"

Behind her, Alfred loomed, growling that his steak would be burned.

"Nothing," I lied.

"What are you doing there? What's..." She seemed to realize something, then turned and rushed to the garden room door. Before I could stop her, she pulled it open, and teetered on the lintel, before almost falling back into Alfred, who'd come up behind her.

He looked inside and muttered, "Sodding kid!" Then Alfred pulled her away and, with a burst of strength, grabbed her up in his arms and carried her off across the garden and terrace to the house, from whence I heard her begin to scream in an unnaturally high-pitched voice.

I no longer hesitated, but went to the door and closed it upon Dario's unceasing buttocks.

The dining room was set for four. I sat down numbly, and Inez immediately served me steak and cottage fries and spinach souffle, which I ate, surprised by my appetite, my attention bifurcated by the decreasing sounds up a half flight of stairs of Alfred's deep voice and Cousin Diana's whimpers, and by the even more disturbing silence of the distant garden room, now just another undefined shadow in the dimmed outdoors.

Alfred came downstairs, tumbled into his chair, and Inez jumped up and served him. He ate with gusto. A few minutes later, the glass door opened and Alistair stepped in casually, as though he'd been taking a nightly promenade. He sat down and Inez served him, and he also ate with great appetite, despite the almost dreamlike look upon his face.

No one spoke a word. Once, just after Inez served apple pie a la mode, Alfred snorted suddenly, loudly. I jumped in my chair, prepared for an outburst that never arrived. But Alistair didn't seem to notice anything. He wolfed down his pie, drank his glass of milk like a good little boy, excused himself, and went up to his room.

As he reached the landing, Alfred said in a low voice, "Happy now?"

Alistair turned, in that single fluid gesture we'd seen Loretta Young use to turn after entering a room on TV. He stared with a distracted smile.

Dario was arrested the next morning before we woke up. No one said anything about the incident at breakfast or later that day, or in fact until two mornings later, when Cousin Diana suddenly announced, "You'll both have to come down to the courthouse with us for the hearing. Wear your best clothing." I turned to Alistair, but all he said was "The blue-and-maroon tie?" To which his mother nodded assent.

Alistair and I sat alone in the backseat of the Bentley as we drove to downtown L.A., and I kept trying to get his attention to find out what he intended to do, to say. But he eluded me from this close as he'd evaded me ever since that fateful evening.

Two men in gray pin-striped suits, with rich leather briefcases, met us in an anteroom.

"He's got a smart dago lawyer who's claiming entrapment," I heard one of them say, "but he knows it won't work. It's just for honor back in the old country."

They continued to talk, moving away from us. When Alistair asked where the men's room was, I got up my nerve and followed him.

I found him combing his hair at the row of sinks; he was being careful, precise.

"You're not going to let them throw him in jail, are you?" I asked.

"He's not going to jail. He's going back to Sicily."

"But... but aren't you going to say anything?"

"If they ask for details, I'm going to say he fucked me in the ass."

"That's what you wanted!" I protested.

He looked at me, then simply said, "I'm a minor."

"But it was all your doing!"

"Don't be a sap, Stodge. I don't intend on having any blot on my name or record. And if you're thinking of saying anything... Well, no one will believe you. They'll think you're just doing it to keep Judy to yourself. You understand that, don't you?"

I understood all too well. What I'd merely thought bribery had turned out to be Alistair's insurance on my silence.

He left the bathroom and I stood looking at myself: fool!

What I hadn't understood earlier was that I was to be put on the witness stand. Oh, it wasn't a real trial, only a judge and the lawyers and us and poor Dario—addled-looking and in need of a shave—at the defense table. Even so I was frightened. When Cousin Diana's lawyer called me up and asked me to tell what, exactly, I'd seen looking in the garden room window that night, my shame over my role in Dario's downfall and disgrace filled me so intensely that I blushed and stammered, and after all sorts of dithering, I ended up only answering yes and no— mostly yes—to the lawyer's deadly aimed, totally distorted questions.

Alistair was far cooler, saying he'd been so upset he'd managed to block most of it out. When he stepped down, I was astonished to see Judy appear. She was also put into the witness box, and the prosecuting attorney told us that allegations about her friend had been made and asked her would she answer them, and she said in a voice bold as brass, "Alistair is a completely normal boy of his age. Even if he is," and here she glared at me, "more of a gentleman than some other boys."

That was what did it for me. Judy lying like that, all of us turning to protect Alistair, when we all knew it was his fault. Even Alfred was complicit in his silence. I wouldn't look at anyone when we were sent out to the corridor to await a finding.

Alistair was called in to clarify a point for the judge in camera, as was Judy. I assiduously studied the designs on the marble floor until I thought I'd go cross-eyed. All at once, the lawyers came out of the chamber and it was over, Dario doomed to deportation.

As we were walking up to the house later that afternoon, I fell back to where Alfred was dawdling.

"Is that offer still open?" I asked. "You know, to work at Creosote Canyon?"

"It is," he said. "Anytime you want, lad."

"Tomorrow?" I asked.

"Sure." He held me hard around the shoulders as we went inside.

Alfred woke me up early the next morning, and we drove off in his pickup, and for the next four weeks of my stay, I worked alongside dirty, swearing, uneducated, often quite stupid adolescents and men. I worked well and kept my mouth shut, and I earned enough money that when I returned east, I could move out of my parents' house on the sly and pay my share of rent in an apartment on the Lower East Side with two other guys.

I never drove the Alfa Romeo or even the station wagon again— although Alfred loaned me the pickup once or twice for solitary weekend drives. I never went to the Slumbergs' or to Jewel's Box again; I never phoned or saw Judy again and barely saw Alistair, which seemed to suit us both fine.

The day before I was to fly back to New York, I was in the shacklike office of Alfred's construction unit drinking bad coffee out of a paper cup when he got a phone call from Cousin Diana's lawyer. The deportation paperwork had gone through finally, and Dario was to leave the next day. He'd asked for some of the things still left at the house. Alfred reluctantly said, "Yeah, yeah, the poor blighter!" When he hung up, he told me.

The next day, after work at the construction site, I went with him into the little garden house and collected the few items Alistair had pointed out—the mandolin and photograph and litho Crucifixion. I drove with Alfred down to the L.A. County Jail, where he'd been held all that time.

"Christ! I don't want to see him," Alfred said, punching the steering wheel. So I said I'd take the stuff in.

I didn't know what to expect, something out of a Cagney movie, I suppose. But Dario met me in a large, bright visitors' room. We were alone, with a dilatory guard outside chatting with a secretary. Dario wasn't wearing stripes, wasn't even wearing a prison uniform; he was in his own clothes, and he looked well, healthy, clean, perhaps relaxed for the first time since I'd met him, maybe even at peace with himself.

He opened the cardboard box and took out each item, greeting each like an old friend. It did me good to see him like that—not angry or bitter. He'd picked up some English in jail and spoke a little, saying how he was looking forward to getting back to Enna in September for the harvest. I reached out to shake his hand and wish him luck, but he said, "Please!"

I couldn't tell what it was he wanted from me. He was angling my body around with his hands, and I had to look over my shoulder at him, to ask what he wanted.

"Please. Just once!" he begged. "The pants down. No touch. Just— look!" He said that last word so oddly.

"What?" I asked. But I knew what he wanted. Although I was dusty and filthy from work all day, I was clean underneath. I turned, unbuckled, and dropped my denims and then my underwear, and stood there.

After what seemed a long time, I looked over my shoulder. Dario remained sitting, staring as though he were trying to remember something for a long time to come.

"Okay?" I asked.

He snapped out of it. "Okay!"

As I left the room, he said, "You see, this way I always remember what it was like to fall into hands of
Pericoloso Eroë."

"Who?"

"Eroë!
He shoots the arrows into the heart." Dario illustrated on himself.

"Eros! he meant," I explained to Wally, who'd caught up with me and sat me down on a bench facing the East River. "As in Cupid. A few years later when I was working in the bookstore I looked up the phrase in this huge Italian-American Dictionary we had on sale, dangerous Eros' had been glossed by the editor, who wrote, 'So called because the Greeks and Romans considered Eros the most ruthless, the most potent god in the entire pantheon.' Odd, no?"

"Why would Eros be the most potent, the most ruthless?" Wally asked.

"You know, Wals, I asked someone that, and he said, 'Because Eros has no goal, only intention, when he shoots. And because his arrows never miss.'"

"Who told you that?" Wally asked.

"I don't remember," I lied.

We were close enough now to Gracie Mansion to hear voices chanting and a sudden burst of applause and cheers. The clouds were breaking up over the river, and the moon was making a debut; it looked full to me.

"Let's go!" I said.

"Are you all right?" Wally asked.

"I don't know, Wals."

"Come. It'll get your mind off him," he reasoned.

He took my hand and began leading me away. Two joggers followed by a Great Dane shot past us. Otherwise the promenade looked empty. Through the trees of Carl Schurz Park, I could see lights moving about. The media had arrived. Just in time too: someone was testing a microphone. Wally led me down a ramp, telling me that I'd be able to put my anger and frustration to some use down there, among others equally frustrated and angry. Suddenly, he stopped.

"It was that poet, wasn't it?" Wally asked. Then, "You know, about Eros?"

Matt. He meant Matt Loguidice. I didn't remember ever talking to Wally about Matt. Who had? Alistair. It had to have been Alistair.

"I told you, Wals, I don't remember."

"I'm sure that's who it was," Wally said in a determined tone of voice.

We'd reached another telephone booth. I stopped, put a coin in, and began to dial.

"What are you doing?" he asked, but he didn't try to stop me.

It rang twice. Then: "You have to get off the line, whoever you are," Alistair's voice said firmly, bubbling over with laughter. "I'm calling out."

"Stairs?" I asked, amazed and a little offended hearing him be so cheerful. Almost immediately, I regretted using our old nicknames.

"Stodge?" he asked back. "What are you doing calling? You've got to get off the line. I'm calling out."

A moment of panic, despite his obviously unpanicky tone of voice.

"We've run out of liquor. Can you believe it? The hostess's doom. But we simply undercounted the number of people who decided to come see the old thing! Place is packed. Stop that, you animal!" he added to someone in the room. "Stodge? You forget something?"

"What?" I was dumbfounded taking this all in. It seemed so utterly apart from how I was perceiving Alistair.

"I asked, did you forget something?"

"No. No. I..."

Wally was now making faces at me of total tedium and watch-checking ennui.

"Never mind," I said with fake enthusiasm. "Happy a hundred and three."

"Thank you, Twat!" he answered and hung up.

"Sounds like the party won't be over for a while," Wally commented.

"It's the party of the night," I admitted. "A social triumph!"

"Exactly what Alistair would want."

"I'm still going to stop him from taking those pills," I said.

"Fine," Wally said. "Let's do this event first. Then we'll come back."

"Together? You'll come back with me?"

"Don't read too much into it," he said.

"Will
you come back with me?"

"I said I would, didn't I? Now, move. We're missing all the action!"