Mangrove Squeeze (8 page)

Markov smiled even as he shook his head in disapproval. "Luzhka," he said, "a real American you have become. You think everything is joke."

"Uncle, most things are."

"And some few things are not," countered Markov. "For your own good, Luzhka, please stop seeing this—"

Lazslo was pushing some food around his plate. "You're just a little bit too late," he interrupted.

"Late?"

Lazslo tried to stifle a triumphant grin. He was several years too young to manage it, and a hint of a lubricious smile broke through his irritated look. "I called her up this morning. She's coming to my place for dinner."

"Your place?" said Markov. A thrum of vicarious lust pulsed through him, he reached across the table and lightly squeezed the muscles of Lazslo's forearm. Then he took another
blini
from the platter and shoveled up another wad of sour cream. "So tonight's the night you—"

"Don't jinx it, Uncle," Lazslo said.

Markov chewed some pancake, wiped his fat lips on a napkin. "Okay, Luzhka, so you fuck her once—"

"How about twice?" said Lazslo.

"Then have more
blini,
" Markov said. "As many times you like. But please, after tonight you call it off. Promise me."

Lazslo looked toward the green water, the distant mangrove islets floating on their silver nests. He didn't promise. Instead, he said, "Don't I always, Uncle? Right afterwards, I almost always call it off."

Aaron Katz had a million things to do, but the relief of having his father taken care of for a while somehow broke his focus, and he gave himself over to the rare delicious pleasure of goofing off. There were shrubs to be planted, but he didn't want to plant them. There were red and black and yellow wires poking out of walls, needing to be sorted, but he didn't want to sort them, didn't want to jump at unexpected sparks. He sat down on the porch swing meant for guests, and for some few minutes tried to imagine he was a guest himself, enjoying the blessing of an uncluttered mind.

Thoughts of contractors and invoices and canceled reservations fell away, and what was left when the annoyances receded was a vivid but ambiguous recollection of Suki Sperakis kissing his cheek.

A mystery, that kiss. So sudden it might almost have been an accident, a spasm rather than a choice. Was it sexy or just sisterly? An offer of more and slower kisses or just part of her apology, a conciliation between new friends? If it was nothing more than friendly, why would she have rung the bell?

But how available was she, really? There was that cultivated toughness to contend with. Then too—Aaron recalled in spite of himself—there was that other involvement. Not romantic but getting deeper. Whatever that meant. This Lazslo person, this bigshot in a dinky little town. He probably had a fancy spotless car. Pastel silk shirts, perfect for the climate, casual but pricey. Got sucked up to in restaurants, was given the best tables. Had all the things, in short, that Aaron used to have, and now told himself, maturely, he could do without. He told himself they were jerky things, trivial, he didn't need them anymore; and he hoped like hell he really meant it.

He rocked on the porch swing, tried to claw his way free of the slime of jealousy. He steered his mind back to Suki herself. Her eyes. Things she said. Plate of macaroni.

He found himself on his feet and heading into the office. The piece of paper with her number on it was in a cubbyhole behind the desk. Stiff-legged, his chest a little tight, he was moving toward it, but not directly. He arced, he dodged, he was circling the phone number like it was something dangerous—a ticking suitcase, a big dog sleeping. Finally he slipped behind the desk and seized it.

There were two phone numbers on the little piece of paper. Aaron tried the home phone, got an answering machine, didn't leave a message. At the second number a bored male voice answered, said, "
Island Frigate."
Aaron asked for Suki and she soon picked up the line.

"Suki? Aaron Katz."

For a second she was flustered. She'd been reading on a computer screen about the Russian Mafia.
Criminal chaos in a society come unmoored. The violent disorder that had all along underlay the veneer of Soviet authority
. The switch to peaceable, mild Aaron Katz was a little befuddling, and she said a somewhat distracted, weak hello.

Aaron didn't know what to make of it. Was this the same bold woman who had rung his bell? Tentative in turn, he said, "I was wondering if I could take up your offer on my offer."

Suki said, "Excuse me?"
No one knew how or if the Russian Mob was organized. If there was a mastermind, he was very, very brilliant. More likely there were a thousand separate cells grabbing shreds of wealth and force...

Aaron said, "Will you share a meal with me sometime?"

In Russia it was looting on a national scale. As if the entire country was blacked-out and the police had gone away. There was nothing too big, too small, too sacred, too egregious to be stolen.
Suki said, "Yes. I'd like that."

There was a pause. She hoped he wouldn't ask her for tonight; she didn't want to have to tell him she was busy. Nor did Aaron want her schedule, clearly fuller than his own, thrown up in his face. He played it safe and gracious. "When's good for you?"

Suki bit her lip and thought. Tonight at Lazslo's place would be a war. She would have to smile through her distaste, probe while trying not to be pawed. She deserved an antidote to all of that. "How's tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow's great," said Aaron. "How about Lucia's?"

"Lucia's," Suki said. "We're not talking macaroni now. Lucia's, that's pasta."

"Eight o'clock?" said Aaron.

"I'll be there," Suki said.

"I do not like it," said Ivan Fyodorovich Cherkassky.

He was sitting in his living room, which was modern and beige and spare, its paintings empty of figures, its furniture undented by humanity. The room lacked a fireplace and a cart of liquor and was altogether less grand than his old friend Markov's. His windows looked out at a less expansive view of patio and sky and dredged canal. Sourly he said, "The mouth opens when one tries to open other things."

Markov's voice sounded wet and wheedling through the telephone. "Ivan," he said, "it is the last time he will see her. He gave his word."

"The word of a boy whose pants are out of shape," Cherkassky said. "You trust this word?"

"He is infatooated," Markov said. "He will have her, and then his
schwantz
will droop, and the world will not be changed, and she will seem less beautiful, and it will all be over."

Cherkassky fretted. He looked across the narrow, still canal to the garish mint-green house on the other side. So stupidly cheerful, these Americans, with their houses of peach and turquoise, archways and walkways of bright tile, their obnoxious optimism and cars the colors of candy. Finally he said, "Would have been much better if you tell him simply no."

"Ivan," said Markov, "do you remember, long ago, what happened when your
schwantz
would stand?"

The scoop-faced man hung up.

He sat there in his unlived-in living room and he thought a while. He didn't pace, he didn't fidget He just looked out the window and wondered why it was that the more wretched his life became—the more devoid of joy, the more totally inhabited by mistrust and disapproval—the more determined he was to safeguard it at any cost. He once again picked up the phone.

He called the Belorussian woman who cleaned Lazslo's apartment. He told her to get on her scooter and come to Key Haven right away.

"So Sam," said Bert "when you worked, what kind of work did you do?"

Sam scratched his head through the tangles of extravagant Einstein hair, said modestly, "I invented things. I was, ya know, a tinkerer."

"Invented things?" said Bert. He was impressed but also distracted. His chihuahua needed attention.

They were sitting poolside at the Paradiso, in the shade of a metal umbrella painted like a daisy. But the sun had shifted and now Bert had to reach across the table to slide his dog back into the retreating shadow.

"Gets dehydrated," he explained. "Eyeballs dry up. Lids stick. He goes ta blink, his ears wiggle but nothing happens wit' the eyes. Looks confused. And his little asshole too. Dries up. Looks like chapped lips. Crinkly. Vet said rub a little Chap Stick on it. Can ya believe it, Chap Stick. I gotta remember which pocket his is in, which pocket mine. So wha'd y'invent?"

Sam didn't answer right away. He watched the pale chihuahua, sublime in its passivity, being slid across the surface of the table, its tiny toenails screeching softly against the paint. When it was safely in the shade again, it seemed to smile; its mouth twitched open, showing mottled gums. Finally Sam said, "I invented very simple things. Useful little gizmos. Like, you know that kind of can opener, it has a wheel, you squeeze the handle and the wheel bites through the top? I invented that."

"You invented that?" said Bert. "You musta made a fortune."

Sam said, "Before that wheel, you opened a can, you got dents in your fingers, that's how hard you had to squeeze. But a fortune? Ach! I sold the patent, flat-rate, to a company. Moved my family to the suburbs. Spent a lot more time at home."

"Retired right away?"

"Nah," said Sam. "Kept working. Built myself a bigger workshop. Fiddled with crystal radios, phonograph needles, wireless intercoms. But I liked being home. Seeing my boy grow up. Helping with homework. Going to the bakery together, now and then a day game at the Stadium. Simple things... And what did you do, Bert?"

The table they were sitting at was right next to the pool. The breeze was fresh and it was too cool for swimming, but that didn't stop the short-term guests from swimming anyway. They kicked, they splashed, the liquid noises obscured the words when Bert said softly, "I was in the Mafia."

Sam wasn't sure he'd heard right. He double-checked that his hearing aid was in. He looked dubiously at his new friend, the skinny face, the banana nose. He said, "You were in modeling?"

Bert leaned in a little closer, spoke no louder but bit the words off cleanly. "Not modeling. Mafia."

Sam said, "Now you're making fun of me."

"An old man," said Bert, "does not make fun of another old man. God doesn't like that shit."

There was a pause. Tourists splashed; a red biplane dragged an ad across the sky above the beach.

Finally Sam said, "So you're in the Mafia now?"

"Retired."

Sam pursed his lips. "Things I've read, movies—I didn't think you could retire."

Bert said, "Special case. I died."

Sam wagged a finger in his face. "God doesn't like that shit," he warned.

So Bert told him the story. The dread subpoena; the murderous stress of being called to testify. The heart attack on the courthouse steps. Ambulances, sirens, the mask thrust over his bluing face. And finally, the deliverance of a dead-fiat EKG. Twenty-seven seconds of eternity, before they shocked him back to life. Enough for Bert to persuade his bosses that he'd fulfilled his solemn pledge: He'd come in living, and gone out dead, and this second go-round should be his own.

"What it all comes down to," he concluded, petting the head of his comatose dog, "is that it don't mean diddle what we did before. Now is now, what's left of it. Ya get old, things level out."

"Yeah," said Sam, "I think that's true."

"Prime a life," said Bert, "things are all uneven. This guy's rich, this guy's poor. This guy's a bigshot, this guy's a pissant. Old, it gets equal again, like wit' little kids. Ya need other kids ta play with, that's all. We're just a coupla kids in Florida."

Sam thought that over, made a futile attempt to smooth his fluffy hair. "Except," he said, "in my mind I'm not a kid. In my mind I'm not retired even now. I still think. Try to. I try to think of something useful. Nothing comes, but in my heart I'm still inventing."

Bert toyed with the mustard-colored placket of his shirt. "Okay, ya put it that way, I guess I'm not retired either."

Sam looked at him a little funny.

"I mean," Bert explained, "ya retire from work but ya don't retire from habits. A certain way of looking at the world, a way of reading people, situations. Comes in handy sometimes."

"That's what I want," said Sam Katz.

"What's what you want?"

"Still to come in handy. Be of use."

"That's a luxury," said Bert.

"Dream up some idea, put together some gizmo that still might come in handy."

"Ya never know," said Bert.

"That's right," said Sam. "I never do."