Fletcher Flora: Desperate Asylum

He went back around to his stool and got on.

“You ever been to Miami?” Avery said.

“No. Up till recently, I never had the money. Now I’ve got the money, I don’t have the time.”

“It’s warm in Miami. Sun shining on the beach. Not cold and dark. Not snowing. You ever lie on the beach in the sun and feel like something was boiling out of you? All the poison inside seeping out your pores. Like creosote out of a railroad tie in the summer. Remember that from when I was a kid. Nasty little bastard. You had the feeling?”

“The only feeling I ever had on any beach was fear. In the war. Except for those times, I’ve never been on a beach. We’ll have to take time for Miami one of these days; Ed and I.”

“You ought to do it. Come with me if you want to. But I don’t suppose you would. Of course not. Why should you?”

“You going to Miami?”

“Tomorrow. Driving down in the Caddy. Going tomorrow.”

“Some guys have all the luck, lying around on a sunny beach while the rest of us are wading through snow.”

“Got to go. Got to get myself cleaned out. Now or never. Realize it now.”

“Well, it ought to be fun.”

“Not going for fun. For therapy. What they call it. Nasty damn word.”

“How long you going to stay?”

“In Miami? Don’t know. Going on someplace from there, I think. Thinking of Havana. Never been there. Probably Mexico City, though. Store the Caddy and fly. You ever been to Mexico City?”

“No.”

“I was there once. Long time ago. Went with my mother and father. Just a little kid. All I can remember is Chapultepec Park. Odd about that. Can’t remember anything else, but I can remember all sorts of things about Chapultepec Park. Vendors. Hundreds of them. Selling all sorts of things. Balloons and colored bottles. Stuff to eat. Fruit, cheese, all kinds of nuts. Coconuts all over the place. Thin cakes you ate with some kind of hot seasoning. Pepper sauce, I guess. Hot as fire. Big lake there. Lots of cypress trees. And a castle. Chapultepec Castle. Man who would draw your picture in charcoal for a few cents. Artist. Probably lots of them around, but I only remember this one. He did a picture of me. Squat, dark man with a long mustache that stuck straight out to the sides. Must have been ten inches from tip to tip. Pocked skin. Ugly devil, to be truthful about it. I’ve still got the picture at home. The one he drew. Not very good, really.”

“You remember a hell of a lot, if you ask me.”

“Just about Chapultepec Park. Nothing else. We didn’t stay long. My mother went to bed with a Mexican musician, and my father brought us home. I didn’t know about the musician until later. Much later. Wondered at the time why the old man brought us home in such a hell of a hurry.”

Emerson was startled. He remembered Avery’s mother, a tall woman with golden hair who had died young. It had been long ago that she died, and his remembrance of her had lasted only because of her great beauty. She had seemed to him proud and arrogant. He couldn’t imagine her going to bed with a Mexican musician or with anyone else for pleasure. He wondered if Avery could be making it up. Maybe too much Scotch made a liar of him. It was hard to believe of Avery, but you had to admit that too much to drink sometimes did odd things to unlikely people.

He got off the stool and put a hand for a second on Avery’s arm.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I think I’d better float awhile.”

“Of course. Business first. See you later, Em.”

“Sure.”

“That trip to Miami. You and Ed riding along, I mean. Really meant it, you know.”

“Thanks, Avery. We couldn’t possibly make it, though.”

“No. Thought not. Well, better go float, Em. Duty of proprietor.”

“That’s right. And thanks just the same about Miami.” He walked up to the front window and looked out into the street again. It was still snowing, and a wind had come up. The flakes no longer drifted through the light lazily, but were driven through on a tangent, and the snow already lying on the pavement was whipped up by the wind in thin, swirling clouds. A car passed slowly with flapping wipers. Avery’s black Caddy at the curb, facing into the wind, had acquired a drift against the windshield. It looked like they would get their four inches at least. Maybe more.

Emerson turned and walked into the dining room and through the dining room into the kitchen. They were almost finished serving in the dining room, and in the kitchen they were cleaning and polishing and getting ready to wrap it up for the night. Looking at his watch, he saw that it was a few minutes after ten. He wondered if Ed would come down for the drink. He hadn’t suggested it when he’d left her, and now he wished that he had. He wanted her to come very badly, and his need for her seemed to have something to do with Avery’s quiet drunkenness, but he couldn’t understand why that should be. He didn’t want to go on thinking about Avery, but he couldn’t help it. The truth seemed to be that Avery was very lonely and very unhappy about something. It was even more than unhappiness, really. A kind of despair. Sometimes a guy really gave himself away when whiskey let his inhibitions down. Sometimes you found out things that surprised the hell out of you. The truth was, it was a little disturbing. It made you wonder how much you really knew about anyone, even people you saw all the time, day in and day out, and you got the crazy idea that everyone was actually a God-damn stranger or something. Take that crack about his mother and the Mexican musician. That was a hell of a thing for a guy like Avery to come out with. Sober, he’d have cut his tongue out first.

Where was Ed? He was willing to bet, thinking about it, that she’d gone to sleep over her book. She did that lots of times. Lots of times he went up and found her curled up under the reading lamp in the big chair with the book open in her lap or sometimes on the floor where it had fallen. She was cute as all hell when she went to sleep that way. He always kissed her awake, and that usually got something bigger started. He had a notice to go up and get something started right now but decided that first he’d probably better make another tour of the bar, just to be sure everything was going along all right. Come to think of it, he’d just have Roscoe mix up a shaker of martinis to carry upstairs with him.

In the bar, trade was brisk and would stay brisk until midnight, when they would have to close because of the Sunday closing law. The man and woman drinking Manhattans were still at it, but Emerson could see by the cherry stems that they had reduced their rate of consumption. The row of stems was not much longer than it had been the last time he looked. The woman was fuzzy in the eyes and her lipstick was a little smeared but her gestures were controlled and she seemed to be talking coherently to the man across from her. No potential disturbance there. She could hold what she took, no question about that.

Moving his eyes right, he saw Avery Lawes lift his glass and drain it and stand up abruptly. Turning, Avery walked carefully toward the rack where he’d left his coat and hat. His slim body was erect and graceful in its motion. If there had been a chalk line on the carpet, he would have been on it every step. When he was abreast, Emerson stepped forward and intercepted him.

“Leaving, Avery?”

“Yes. Going home. Red brick house on High Street. View of the river and everything. Money street. Class street. Home of the Laweses, the God-damn Laweses.”

“You sure you’re all right?”

“Perfectly. Perfectly sober. A Lawes never gets drunk. In public, that is. It’s against the creed.”

“I don’t know. The streets are getting bad. Looks like the forecasters hit this one.”