Tropical Depression (3 page)

"Place like this," the old man went on, "what happens is people stop being curious. Too much coming and going. Transients. People decide, hey, this guy's only here a week, why bother gettin' to know 'im? The year-rounders, they figure these seasonal people, they dump us inna summer, why bother makin' friends? But my question, where d'ya draw the line? Everybody dumps everybody when they die, so this means ya don't bother makin' friends wit' nobody? Siddown."

For a second Murray was paralyzed by thankfulness. To have someone to sit with, this was no small thing. He coaxed his feet toward a metal chair, felt the heat of it against his butt, took a moment to study his companion. The old man's face was long and thin, his eyes were crinkly but clear and bright as marbles, he had neatly combed white hair that flashed with glints of pink and bronze.

"The shoes. Beautiful loafers like that, Italian I bet, you'd only find 'em New Yawk or California. And California, excuse me for sayin' this, ya'd look a little fitter."

"Very observant," Murray said.

"Hell else I got ta do? So Murray, y'on vacation?"

The Bra King didn't answer right away. He scratched his head. He opened his mouth. He giggled, not with mirth but freedom. He was in a transient place where there was not the slightest reason not to tell the simple naked truth. "Actually," he blurted, "I left my wife and quit my business yesterday."

Unruffled, the old man stroked his chihuahua. The chihuahua blinked and wheezed, short white dog hairs fluttered onto Bert's Bermuda shorts. "Ah, so you're havin' a whaddyacallit, a midlife crisis."

Murray waved that idea away. "Nah, I had that one already. That's when I left my first wife. Bought a sports car. Got tennis elbow shifting. It was stupid anyway. Leaving the wife, I mean. Really stupid. But this is something different. This one, I don't think it has a name."

Water surged along the edges of the pool, made a sound like a cat lapping milk. Bert pursed his lips and nodded. "Good. I don't like it the way everything, they give it a name, it's like it isn't yours no more. Some things, okay, I guess they gotta have a name. Haht attack. Diabetes. But stuff inside ya head? I don't see where alla that, it has to have a name."

For this Murray had no comeback, so he just looked out at the palms and the sky. The sun was getting higher, and Bert moved his chair a few inches to keep his napping dog out of the sun. Then he said, "Ya play poker, gin rummy, anything like that?"

Murray nodded that he did. Bert gestured toward a screened gazebo set back from the pool. Even empty it seemed to ring with the easy congeniality of card games, seemed fragrant with the oily richness of potato chips.

"We need a hand sometime, I'll let ya know," said Bert, and Murray nearly panted with the hope of things to do. "What apartment y'in?"

The Bra King pointed at the West Building and said, without false modesty, "The penthouse."

"Whaddya know," said Bert. "Guy who plays sometimes has the East Penthouse. Politician. LaRue's his name."

"Ah," said Murray, "I went into his place by accident this morning. Got kicked out by a geek in a hair net after being called an asshole by a screaming Indian."

The old man calmly stroked his dog. "Feather or dot?"

"Hm?" said Murray. "Ya know. Indian. American Indian. Native American, whatever they like to be called these days."

"In costume?"

"Costume?"

"Yeah. Ya know, Tonto vest, ponytail?"

'Yeah," said Murray. "That's him."

"That's Tommy," said Bert. "Sells shells. Makes himself look like an Indian for the tourists."

"Now I'm confused," said Murray. "Are you saying the man's an Indian or are you saying the man is not an Indian?"

"He's an Indian," said Bert. "I'm sayin' he's an Indian. But I'm sayin' he makes himself more like an Indian than an Indian really is, because this is the way the stupid tourists want an Indian ta look.
Capeesh
? I wonder what he was doin' at LaRue's."

"I know what I see," said Bert. "I know what people tell me. More'n this, I don't know." He put the ghostly chihuahua on the table, where it did a stiff-legged pirouette, its paws clicking dryly on the metal surface. Then he labored upward from his chair. "You'll excuse me, Murray, I gotta go upstairs and give the stupid dog a pill."

Slow but straight, he walked away. Murray closed his eyes a moment and listened to the watery and rustly sounds of Florida.

As the Bra King was trudging back up to the West Penthouse, the curtains of the East Penthouse were being tightly drawn against the high and candid midday light. The young man called Pascal—senator Barney LaRue's houseboy, secretary, and masseur—out of his kimono now and clad in purple harem pants, was dusting chairs, mixing drinks, squaring papers on his patron's desk, doing all the little things that make a meeting work.

The senator was receiving a visitor, a large contributor to his campaigns, but one whose name would never appear on donor lists and whose support, for the good of all concerned, would forever be disclaimed.

"Charlie," he was saying to this visitor, in his lush unhurried voice. "I'm looking out for your interests. Never doubt I'm doing that."

They were sitting in his study. Recessed fixtures threw a soft glow that mostly lit up photos of Barney LaRue shaking hands with people more famous than himself—visiting dignitaries, movie stars. In every picture his blandly handsome face—too-neat silver hair, small and somewhat pointy nose, deep-set pale blue eyes—was locked in the same relentless smile, the small teeth uniform as mah-jongg tiles.

His guest sipped slowly from a glass of bourbon. "Did I say anything about doubting you, Bahney? Ya got a guilty conscience, wha? All I said, I said a fucking hundred grand has gone from me ta you and so far I've seen dick on my investment."

The politician leaned suavely forward on well-tanned elbows. "But Charlie, that's how investments are. Sometimes they pay off, sometimes they don't."

"Mine pay off," the visitor said. He was a small man with squeezed-together features and sacs the color of liver beneath his eyes. He wore a silver jacket with a zipper, the kind of jacket race-car drivers wear.

"Charlie," said the senator, touching rum to his lips. "I promised you I'd work night and day for that bill. I never promised it would pass. And it won't pass. Sad but true. I've twisted arms, I've traded favors. They won't do it. Political reality. The churches. The tracks. This crazy coalition. Casino gambling—it isn't going to happen, Charlie."

The guest turned in his chair, addressed a massive presence that hovered a discreet distance away. Charlie Ponte did not go anyplace alone, and today his chaperone was a guy named Bruno, who had a pitted face and a frame like something for industrial use. "All that money," the boss said to his goon, "and these gutless bastards can't even pass a fucking bill."

Bruno frowned, shook his head, twirled a big globe like he might here and there punch in a continent.

Surly now, slow-burning, Ponte turned back to his host. "So you're telling me I'm fucked on that. Zat the end'a the story? You get a hundred grand and I get a lecture on politics?"

LaRue lifted up his silver eyebrows, spoke with the desperate and mendacious cheer of a salesman who didn't have what you wanted but was confident that you could be persuaded you wanted something else. "I have another idea for you. I've been working on it, free of charge."

"You're a whore, Bahney. You don't do nothin' free a charge."

The politician let that pass, leaned back in his chair. "Charlie, you familiar with the Native American Reserved Harvesting Act of 1978?"

The little mobster just glared at him, brooded about his hundred grand.

"I opposed it," LaRue went on. "Pansy liberals passed it anyway. It gives the Indians a monopoly on gathering and selling certain kinds of seashells."

"I believe it would be useful to you to control an enterprise through which certain embarrassing-to-explain earnings might be filtered."

The mobster cooled a hot hand against his bourbon glass.

"There's an Indian in town," LaRue went on. "Sells shells on the street. Has for years. I've been explaining to him the advantages of joining forces with a wealthy backer. Opening a store. Maybe a chain of stores. The IRS, the FBI, Charlie—they're not likely to look too hard at the business of a poor downtrodden Indian. They make trouble for him, it's bad PR."

"Not that kind of persuading," said LaRue. "Unless, of course, it's necessary. I mean logic. Reason. Having his street-vendor's license yanked."

That one Ponte liked. His upper lip pulled back, showing jagged pointy teeth. "You can do that, Bahney?"

"Maybe," said the politician. "It's city, not state. But what's that quaint saying you people have? One hand washes the other."

Ponte sipped bourbon, felt placated until he thought again of his hundred-thousand-dollar payoff, saw the neatly bundled bills flying out the window. "And how long is this persuading gonna take?"

LaRue put on that mah-jongg smile, shrugged. "He's a stubborn man."

"So am I," said Ponte, rising from the chair that Bruno swiftly moved to hold for him. "Remember that. You owe me some results."

*****

Shirtless now, hunkered on the sofa with the nautical stripe, Murray cradled the phone against his shoulder and related to his shrink, in great detail, the saga of the past thirty hours of his life. At the close of the story, Max Lowenstein came forth with a soft and perhaps involuntary "
Qy
."

"
Oy
?" protested Murray. "What
oy
? Max, for months you've been telling me I'm depressed, I'm in a rut, I should do something for myself—"

"But these decisions, Murray, they're so abrupt, so radical."

"Rebirth is radical, Max—what could I tell ya? You should be happy for me, I feel alive again. Believe me, everything's under control."

"
Oy
," the doctor said again, this time more emphatically.
Everything's under control
. That was classic Prozac-speak. It was what patients tended to say in that sometimes brief euphoric moment after the depression had lifted and just as they were poised to go manically careening like a Frisbee in a gale.
Everything's under control
they said, then went out into traffic and started handing out hundred-dollar bills.
Everything's under control
, then they climbed onto the sills of thirtieth-story windows because such great bliss could surely fly. "Murray, have you found a doctor down there?"

"I just got here, I've barely found the bathroom—"

"You need monitoring, Murray. The medication, it can be volatile."

The Bra King paused and swallowed. Something tasted off in his saliva, it had the stony taste of sudden fear. "Max, you trying to scare me, wha'?"

"I'm only trying to keep you on track. In touch."

Murray's shoulders slumped. It was disheartening to have somebody tell you you were not as happy as you thought you were, and to know in your heart he was right. The Bra King looked through the open doors to the rectangle of sunshine beyond the balcony. The light was glary, over-bright, colors burned off into scorching white just as, hardly more than a day before, they had murked and muddied into gray. For one bleak moment Murray believed that things would never, ever find their balance, never, ever be the way they ought to be.

The psychiatrist paused, Murray could see his hand ascending toward his bearded chin. "That's interesting. In all the years I've known you, Murray, I don't think you've ever once mentioned an outdoor activity."

"I sell bras, Max. Bras are, like, an indoor activity."

Another silence. Then: "I have an idea. Visualize something for me, Murray. Your finger on the fishing line, the fishing line going in the water. See it'"

Murray closed his eyes. "I see it. I see it."

"When you were depressed," said Max Lowenstein, "you didn't have enough voltage in your brain. Now I'm concerned you're having a little bit too much. The fishing line, it's going to be your ground wire, it's going to carry off the excess. You see what I'm saying?"

Murray pictured little lightning bolts throbbing in his head then coursing down his arm, escaping through his index finger and pulsing along his fishing line, sizzling softly as they flashed into the ocean and illuminated snapshots of big-eyed incandescent fish. "I see it, Max," he murmured. "I like it."