T. Boyle - T.C. Boyle Stories II - Volume II

“Excuse me,” somebody was saying at his elbow, and he looked up into the face of one of the men who’d come in earlier, the one the big blonde had reacted to. “I don’t mean to bother you, but aren’t you Edison Banks?”

The codeine was sludge in his veins, and his knee — he’d forgotten he had a knee — but he peeled off his sunglasses and gave the man a smile. “That’s right,” he said, and he would never admit to himself that he was pleased, but he was. He’d lived here three years now, and nobody knew who he was, not even the mailman or the girl who counted out his money at the bank.

“I’m Lyle,” the man was saying, and then they were locked palm to palm in a rollicking soul shake, “Lyle Hansen, and I can’t tell you how cool this is. I mean, I’m a big fan. Savage Street was the coolest thing in the history of TV, and I mean that — it got me through high school, and that was a bad time for me, real adolescent hell, with like all the rules and the regimentation and my parents coming down on me for every little minor thing — shit, Savage Street was my life. ”

Edison took hold of his drink, the comforting feel of the glass in his hand, the faces at the bar, dark blue shadows leaning into the building across the street. There was a trip-hop tune playing on the jukebox, a languid slow female vocal over an industrial storm of guitars and percussion that managed to be poignant and ominous at the same time, and it felt right. Just right.

“Listen, I didn’t mean to intrude or anything—”

Edison waved a hand. “No problem, man, it’s cool, it’s all right.”

Lyle looked to be about the same age as the bartender, which meant he would have been out of high school for ten or twelve years. He wore his hair longer than the bartender’s, combed back up off his forehead with enough mousse to sustain it and the odd strand dangling loose in front. He kept shifting from foot to foot, rattling the keys in his pocket, tugging at his tie, and his smile flashed and flashed again. “Hey, Carlton,” he spoke into the din, “give me another one, will you — and one for Mr. Banks here too. On me.”

“No, no,” Edison protested, “you don’t have to do that,” but the money was on the bar, and the drink appeared in a fresh glass.

“So you wrote and produced that show, right?”

“Shit, I created it. You know, when you see the titles and it says ‘Created By’? I wrote the first two seasons, then left it to them. Why work when you can play, right?”

Lyle was drinking shooters of Herradura out of a slim tube of a glass. He threw back the current one, then slapped his forehead as if he’d been stung. “I can’t believe it. Here I am talking to Edison Banks. You know, when you moved into town, like what was it, three, four years ago?”

“Three.”

“Yeah, I read that article in the paper about you and I thought wow — you were the guitarist for Edison Banks too, right? I had both their albums, New Wave, right? But what I really dig is jazz. Miles Davis. Monk. That era stuff.”

Edison felt a weight lift off him. “I’ve been a jazz fan all my life,” he said, the alcohol flaring up in him till the whole place was on fire with it, mystical fire, burning out of the bottles and the light fixtures and the golden shining faces lined up at the bar. “Since I was a kid of fifteen anyway, hopping the subway up to Harlem and bullshitting my way into the clubs. I’ve got everything— Birth of the Cool, Sketches, all the Coltrane stuff, Sonny Rollins, Charles Lloyd, Ornette, Mulligan — and all of it on the original LPs too.”

Lyle set both hands down on the bar, as if to brace himself. He was wearing a pinkie ring that featured a silver skull, and the rough edge of a tattoo showed at the base of his left wrist where the cuff climbed up his arm. “You might think I’m just some suit or something,” he said, “but that’s not me at all.” He plucked at his lapels. “See this? This is my first day on the job. Real estate. That’s where the money is. But I tell you, I’d love to hear some of that shit with you — I mean, Miles. Wow. And I know what you’re saying — CDs just don’t cut it like vinyl.”

And Edison, in the shank of a bad evening that had begun to turn clement after all, turned to him and said, “I’m up at the corner of Dolores and San Ignacio — big Spanish place with the tile roof? Come by anytime, man — anytime, no problem.” And then he looked up to see the waitress — Elise — glide by like a ballerina, that’s what she was like, a ballerina, with her bare arms held high and the tray levitating above her head. He had to get home. Had to eat. Feed the cat. Collapse in front of the tube. “Just don’t come between maybe one and four — that’s when I’m down at the beach.”

—

In the morning, the dryness in the back of his throat told him he’d drunk too much the night before — that and a fuzziness between his ears, as if his head were a radio caught between stations — and he took two of the Tylenol-codeine tabs to ease his transition into the day. Theoretically, he was working on a screenplay about the adventures of a rock band on the road as seen through the eyes of the drummer’s dog, but the work had stalled even before Kim walked out, and now there was nothing there on the screen but words. He took the newspaper and a glass of orange juice out on the patio, and then he swam a couple of laps and began to feel better. The maid came at eleven and fixed him a plate of eggs and chorizo before settling into her routine with the bucket, the mop and the vacuum cleaner. Two hours later, as he sat frozen at his desk, playing his eighteenth game of computer solitaire, there was a tap at the door.

It was Orbalina, the maid. “Mr. Banks,” she said, poking her head into the room, “I don’t want to bother you, but I can’t, I can’t—” He saw that she was crying, her face creased with the geography of her grief, tears wetting her cheeks. This was nothing new — she was always sobbing over one thing or another, the tragedies that constantly befell her extended family, the way a man on TV had looked right at her as if he’d come alive right there in her own living room, the hollowness of the sky over the graveyard in Culiacán where her mother lay buried under a wooden cross. Kim used to handle her moods with a mixture of compassion and firmness that bordered on savagery; now it was up to him. “What is it?” he said. “What’s the matter?”

She was in the room now, a whittled-down woman in her thirties whose weight had migrated to her haunches. “The elephants,” she sobbed.

“Elephants? What elephants?”

“You know what they do to them, to the elephants?” She buried her face in her hands, then looked up at him out of eyes that were like two pools of blood. “Do you?” she demanded, her frame shaken with the winds of an unceasing emotional storm.

He didn’t. His knee hurt. He had a headache. And his screenplay was shit.

“They beat them. With big, with big sticks! ” Her hands flailed at the air. “Like this! And this! And when they get too old to work, when they fall down in the jungle with their big trees in their noses, you know what they do then? They beat them more! They do! They do! And I know what I’m saying because I saw it on the, on the”—and here her voice failed her, till her final words were so soft and muted they might have been a prayer—“on the TV.”

He was on his feet now, the screen behind him displaying seven neat rows of electronic cards, a subtle crepitating pain invading his knee, as if a rodent were trapped beneath the patella and gnawing to get out. “Listen,” he said, “it’s okay, don’t worry about it.” He wanted to take her in his arms and press her to him, but he couldn’t do that because she was the maid and he the employer, so he limped past her to the door and said, “Look, I’m going to the beach, okay? You finish up here and take the rest of the day off — and tomorrow, tomorrow too.”