Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (4 page)

He remembered the previous Christmas with Heff. Mexican grass and birdbath martinis, stealing the D-Phi car at a purple passion party, both of them going to the imported manger in the Ramrod, staring for almost half an hour at the yard-high figurines around the crib, listening to the peals of Gregorian celebration from the speakers overhead. One of the shepherds too obviously cross-eyed.

Hey, Heff man, you dig Sebastian?

I what?

The cross-eyed shepherd cat. Behind old Saint Joseph.

Oh yeah. Look at him, he’s cross-eyed.

That’s poor taste, right?

Who’s to say?

He sees double, dig?

Yeah.

He sees two little baby Christ Jesuses.

I’m with you.

Then it’s no good.

Yeah?

Two little Jesuses, I mean, Christ, that’s a Roman paradox right there.

I’m hip, Paps.

We get rid of one, set the whole thing straight.

Pappadopoulis picking up the plaster statue of the child and tucking it under his parka as if it were a bottle of vintage champagne; the two of them turning casually, ambling out to the illegally parked car. Then sitting with the motor running.

You know what, Heff? The Virgin Mary-Mother dug the whole snatch.

She’s hip?

We’re in trouble.

Let’s get her.

Heff picking up the Virgin’s statue back at the manger, returning clumsily to the car, then tripping with a clatter on the steps, the figure flopping into the air, making a bottom-heavy arc, crashing against the stone, its head flying off and rolling down the street.

She lost her cool, Paps man.

Yeah, put it in your pocket.

Driving across the blanketed campus toward Harpy Creek, Pappadopoulis fondling the statue of the child, tucking it under the chin, poking his pinky in its navel, feeling its swaddling clothes for poo-poo. Stopping at the bridge and strolling across.

Tradition, old Heffalump.

Check. Mustn’t collapse the bridge.

They kissed the statues in turn and threw them out into the snowy void, where they fell tumbling against the frozen gorge below. Listening for the sound of impact, two muted crunches.

We go back for Sebastian, Paps? Liable to say he dug four kidnapers ’stead of two.

Let’s get him.

The kidnaped shepherd stood on a pink Formica tabletop in Guido’s Grill, everyone standing around singing Christmas carols, toasting the cross-eyed image. Heff giggling the words to his own song:

Holy Infant
,

So tender and mild
,

Sleep in heavenly pieces
. . . 

Heavenly pieces. Speaking of which:

“Have you had any ivy league ass, Fitzgore?”

“Jesus Christ, you ask the most disarming questions.”

“I’ve been on a voyage, old sport, a kind of quest, I’ve seen fire and pestilence, symptoms of a great disease. I’m Exempt.”

“There’s some nympho in Circe III who’s screwing everybody since Heff left her, but she’s got warts.”

“Splendid Heffalump, always loving the disfigured. Was she any good?”

“I don’t really want to think about it. Got her drunk on grasshoppers and she barfed all over the back seat of the car. This Pamela girl kind of interests me, though.”

“Car? You don’t have wheels?”

“My dad got me an Impala for senior year.”

“Oh splendid. Splendid, splendid illness and decay.”

“Hey look, Paps, really. I’ve
got
to hit the books this semester. I’m carrying eighteen hours and I’m on pro.”

“So?”

“So I’ve got to get through.”

“Maybe sometime, you rat-bastard traitor to your ancient blood, I’ll ask you why. But not today, right? Let’s go to Louie’s.”

“They’re tearing it down.”

“What?”

“Building a thing called Larghetto Lodge. Things have changed, for Christ’s sake, you can’t go stomping around the country for a year and expect to come back to the same lousy landscape. C’mon, let’s get a beer in the Plato Pit.”

Plodding along, backs angling at sixty degrees to the never-leveling hill, Gnossos thinking of the students at their left and right, ears deaf to doom. Little shops and businesses springing up to court the passing generations. A new photographer’s, specialty in dramatic pose from the look of the window, black backgrounds, faces lit from beneath, pipe smoke, passionate intensity: stare at me, I am the bust of Homer. At Student Laundries the ambitious, short-haired young men scrambling about, mixing everyone’s wash, student drivers jumping happily into student
vans with student routemen, muddy fruit-boots squeaking in the snow, everyone with a share in the business. How to con them, worries Gnossos, remembering the roulette wheel he ran with Heff in their cellar. A sudden sign creaking on its hinges:
MENTOR
UNIVERSITY
,
FOUNDED
1894. Visions of mustached juniors, celluloid collars, evolving undergraduate vocabulary, making tradition. Give me the Victorian for “how’s your ass, ace?” Cow pastures then. Jove Dormitory a gabled sign of the times.

Past the law school with its university Gothic. Mock-Yale really, pleasant courtyard, splendid for a duel. Odd heads turning to look at him, not believing, who’s that weirdo with all the curly hair? New faces, incredible bodies of young American girls, beckoning even under wool. Avoid my gaze, ladies, for you read the wish well enough. Care to mount a maniac before you marry your lawyer? Some Gnossos seed, in case your man goes sterile from martinis. That one with the green knee-socks. Seen her once.

“Who is that one, Fitzgore?”

“Where?”

“The green knee-socks, loafers.”

“Don’t know her, some kind of genius in government, I think.”

Incredible legs. If they knew how long it’s been. The Golden Fallacy. What the hell, it’s worth saving. “And that thing over there?”

“New engineering building. They’re planning a whole quad of sorts around the chem school. Wasn’t it up when you left?”

“Certainly not.” Tinted aluminum plates, long sheets of weatherproofed glass, dymaxion torsions: the synthetic contents of a collective architectural grab bag. Clean, well lighted, cheap to heat, functional, can be torn down and replaced over a long weekend or transported to Las Vegas by helicopter, demolition incorporated in the structural design. A nod to mortality.

Heffalump the quadroon was waiting at one of the varnished picnic tables in the Plato Pit next to the jukebox, under a pathetic plastic pot of ersatz ivy. His thin, quarter-spade body gathered over his Red Cap, in case it should get away. A girl next to him, Joan of Arc hair-do and men’s clothes. Creep up slowly, let him know.

“Is it truly a Heffalump, Fitzgore? Brooding with its snout in foam?”

The spidery form uncoiling in an explosion of arms and legs, the Red Cap clattering over the table, spilling in an effervescent pool. “Gaaaaaaa!” His eyes, moons of disbelief.

“Then why does it retreat? Home from the great adventure and no one takes my hand. Philistines.”

“Jesus and Mary! You’re not dead!”

“So Fitzgore’s already told me.”

“Pachucos in Texas or somewhere, Oeuf told us you were murdered—”

“Oeuf’s projected death wish, baby. Anyway, it was New Mexico, some boy scout they burned in Taos. Me, I was in jail.”

“No shit, man,” Heff giggling nervously, “we thought you were down.” People beginning to stare. Fitzgore, embarrassed, fed the jukebox and disappeared into the line for beer. The Joan of Arc girl stuck out her hand and said, “I’m Jack. You must be Paps.” Her voice a husky baritone.

“Gnossos, man,” finding the strength of her grip excessive, then sitting. Heffalump’s mouth still hanging open between giggles, huge teeth jutting forward like a beaver’s.

“Wow,” he said.

“You really hadn’t heard?”

“Something about the Adirondacks, but nobody knew for sure, and anyway the time sequence was always screwy. We didn’t know if you were coming or still going.”

“Neither did I. Flew back is where it’s at. Had an epiphany in North Beach, dug my reflection with all the other faces. Threatened my Exemption status, right? Had to flee.”

“Why?” from the girl called Jack, her brow furrowed, looking a bit too serious.

“Who knows? Keep a jump ahead of the monkey-demon. The signs were there.” Fitzgore returning, glancing about, placing the three cans of ale on the table, then going back for something else. “The time was right, mostly.” And disaster hovering behind the last silver dollar in the rucksack. “You still run the wheel, Heff?”

“Shhhh! My God, they’d bust me as soon as look at me if they got into that.”

“New administration?”

“Some woman called Susan B. Pankhurst. Vice-President for Student Affairs.”

“Virgin?”

A moan from Heffalump, who looked down at the same time to find the spilled ale dripping on his jeans. Jack laughed and slapped his back, making him cough. Dyke from the pelvis up. “What’re you doing for a pad?” she asked.

“Just found one on Academae Avenue with Fitzgore. British chic moving out.”

“British?”

“Fitzgore?” said Heff. “He’s in a fraternity.”

“There is what Memphis Slim once called the rent situation. And he has wheels.”

The words to Peggy Sue blaring from the jukebox, Buddy Holly with hiccups.

Fitzgore setting down a cup of tea, poking the dissolving lumps of sugar. “When are we moving in, Paps? I’m still at the house, and this is what, the second day of classes?”

Heff was licking the puncture in his can. “I’ll check tonight,” from Gnossos. Maybe get that splendid hair on her chest. No bosom to speak of, but it’s been a long time. Legs the important thing. Maybe have a midnight cook-’em-up, dolma with vine leaves, little egg and lemon sauce on the side, moussaka. Need some Metaxa. Where to feed later? Fitzgore’s fraternity?

Peggy Sue grunting into a chorus.

“Is your house rushing, Fitzgore?”

“All week. Probably fine me for moving out,” pressing the teabag against his cup with a fork. Ask him.

“Is there any clause against Greeks?”

“I don’t think so.”

Catching on suddenly, dropping the cup from his lips, peering over its rim, hint of wrinkle in the forehead, “Why? What do you have in mind?”

“Oh, a little purloined Harris tweed maybe, some Daks, a challis tie—why, I’m choice cut for the best house on the hill.”

“We did it two years ago at D-Phi,” from Heff. “He’s good at it.”

“I’m topping. Witty conversation, parlor games, charades, recite the Greek alphabet, impress the troops. What house are you in?”

“D.U. But—”

“
Dikaia Hypotheke
. Splendid motto. Inspiring, I might say.” Quick drink of ale, feel it already, stomach churning, anxious acid. “Non-secret house, if I remember. No handshakes, hocus-pocus, ritual shelved in favor of the Square Deal. Who knows, Fitzgore, I might dig it and pledge. Wear a propeller-topped beanie during Hell Week, pull a quacking toy to class.”

“Jesus, Paps, you’d only be coming for the free meal. Some of them might know.”

“What are you having? Filet mignon? Buttered lobster tail? Something groovy to impress me?”

“You don’t have any real clothes, to begin with.”

“Heff?”

“I’ve got a Brooks suit from Student Laundries.”

“There you are, then.” Jack laughing her baritone laugh again, rubbing her hands together. Good-looking, all the same. Wonder, does she have a roommate. “Why not pick me up at Heff’s, say six.”

“Jesus, Paps, I don’t know.”

“They’ll love me,” into the rucksack for a blessing on the moment, a silver dollar and some feta, having to burrow through moist rabbits’ feet, underwear, around the vials of paregoric. He screwed open a jar and broke off four pieces of white, chunky goat’s cheese, holding them over his head and mumbling solemnly:

“Confiteor Deo omnipotente
,

Beatra Pappadopoulis, semper virgini
,

Beatra Pappadopoulis, semper paramus.”

Little transubstantiation. “This is my body, gang.” Then, sliding a can of Red Cap forward, “This is my blood.” Goat cheese, the cookings of a copper-plated vat, symbols for the silly cells of being. With sanctified fingers he placed a piece of cheese on each of the proffered tongues before him.

“I’m redeemed,” said Heff.

“Amen,” from Jack.

Flipping the silver dollar to Fitzgore, Gnossos said: “A sizable percentage of my fortune, that, to purchase more blood.”

“Okay, if I can have tea instead.” Fitzgore going obediently to the line, resigned to the dinner ahead. Jack staring wildly, smiling. Careful, she might be Heff’s. Trouble enough with friends’ women. Fitzgore returning from the line almost immediately.

“They won’t take it.”

“What?”

“Your silver dollar.”

“Won’t take it?”

“She says she’s never seen one before, the woman at the checkout.”

Up at once, eyes flashing, the parka over his large shoulders like a magician’s winter cape, his hair tumbling on his ears. Stomping up to the line, walking ahead of two coeds buying corn muffins, who jerked their sneakered toes away from the clang of his boots. The woman at the cash register, with a potato for a face, complexion like Wheatena. He has seen her in a hundred roadhouses and side-street hotels, in countless supermarkets and bargain basements, squatting in a print dress, wearing hobheels, smelling of purchased secrets from Woolworth’s, lips puckered, passion plucked or pissed away some twenty years before. The resigned are my foes.

Three opened Red Caps and a cup of tea were waiting by her side. He snapped down the silver dollar with a weighty click.

“That ain’t no good,” she said. “I just sent one back.”

“What?”

“ ’Sno good.”

Placing the flats of both palms on the counter and leaning so far forward that she had to change position and back away: “I beg your sublimely idiotic pardon, but it IS good and YOU are taking it.”

“I’m awful sorry, sonny, but—”

“Sonny? SONNY? DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”

The entire length of the Plato Pit falling silent, heads at each of the picnic tables turning in the direction of the bellowed cry.