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“Would you please not use that servile form of address to me?” she replied. “Where are your pets?”
“My pets?”
“You have pet bowls inside and outside. There’s a rabbit hutch under your tree.”
“I have a pet coon and a number of cats. In fact, the lady next door and I feed most of the cats in the neighborhood.”
“See? You’re a kind man. Why do you try to hide your qualities?”
I dried my hands. I turned and looked down at her. I thoug
ht of that twilight evening when I’d pitched the only perfect game in my baseball career. “I’m not your guy, Ms. Balangie.”
She circled my wrist with her thumb and forefinger. “Look at me.”
“Nope. No more gamesmanship.”
Her eyes jittered as they searched mine. “You think I’m immoral? You think I’m a liar. You think I don’t weep for my daughter? You look me in the eye and say that.”
“No, ma’am, I don’t think any of that.”
“Then maybe think of someone other than yourself.”
“Pardon?” I said.
“Damn you,” she said. “Damn you to hell.”
Then she beat my face with her little fists, cutting and bruising my lip and cheek and the edge of my eye. I stood with my hands at my sides and let her do it and never blinked. I stood like that until her fingers knitted themselves in my hair and tears leaked from her eyes, and I did not move even when she pulled my face down to hers and kissed my eyelids and my mouth and smeared my blood on her hair. Nor did I defend myself when she stood on top of my shoes and opened my shirt and kissed and bit my chest.
“I’m sorry for the pain you feel, Ms. Balangie,” I said. “I just don’t know what I can do about it.”
She pressed the side of her face against my heart. I placed both hands between her shoulder blades. Her hair smelled like the Caribbean. I felt a throbbing inside me I could barely restrain, and I could think of no words to say to my Higher Power other than I’m sorry for this.
* * *
FOUR DAYS LATER, Clete Purcel was back from New Orleans. He called in the early morning and asked me to meet him for breakfast at Victor’s Cafeteria on Main. “Something happen in the Big Sleazy?” I said.
“I’m feeling a lot better, that’s all,” he replied. “I’ll tell you about it.”
Victor’s was right across the street from Clete’s office, not far from the drawbridge. He was waiting for me by the front entrance. The air was cool and damp, the pavement still in shadow, the buildings dripping with moisture. He was wearing a soft wool suit with a crisp dark brown shirt and a shiny thin brown belt and brown alligator loafers. His eyes were clear, his cheeks rosy. “You look sharp,” I said.
“Let’s get some eats,” he said.
Inside, he stacked his tray with ham and scrambled eggs and grits and gravy and laid in to it, bending forward each time he put a fork-load in his mouth. “What’d you get into while I was gone?” he said.
“I’m back at the department.”
“Your face.”
“A lady got emotional. It wasn’t a big deal.”
“What’s the lady’s name?”
“I already forgot. You said you were feeling better and you were going to tell me about it.”
He glanced up at the stamped tin ceiling, his eyelids fluttering. I could hear his shoes tapping up and down under the table. “Okay, here it is,” he said. “I figured out some of those things that happened in the Keys.”
I should have been happy about his resilience. But I wasn’t. I knew the syndrome too well. Denial, as we call it today, is the brain’s anodyne and far less harmful in most situations than the booze that people like me soak their heads in. In this instance, I believed my best friend was not only lying to himself but setting himself up for another disastrous fall.
