Mile Zero (22 page)

“No no no. Can’t go yet.” Ed handed St. Cloud a glass, his smile hinting at boyishness, the true age of his face betrayed by gray stubble of a five-day-old beard. “You haven’t seen the babies yet.” Ed did not wait for a yes or no before dashing in an artful weave between crowded pieces of furniture to present Lila her glass of tea. Alice eyed Ed with an intense look of proprietorship, her tongue darting anxiously between ice-pick straight canines as Lila raised the cold glass.

Lila did not notice she had become the object of the Doberman’s uncertain intentions. Her attention was fixed on the organ and its forest of frozen photographic memories. “What cute boys.” She spoke the words in a voice mixed with slight condescension and a genuine respect for something that should be of importance to her as a female. “They really are so
cute
.” She ran slender fingers tentatively over the frame tops. There was more than enough of the polite Southern girl in Lila to obey the protocol of family manners. “How many boys do y’all have?”

Lila asked Ed the question with such sincere maternal interest it confused St. Cloud. He wondered if she was serious, or simply playing with this guy just to see his pug, or had she too fallen prey to the cute thought of babies? St. Cloud decided Lila was simply scratching the soft spot on many female Southern souls which itched from guilt if a girl hadn’t become a mama before she became a woman.

“Two or five boys, I guess.” Ed laughed nervously, gulping his ice tea so quickly he sucked out several ice cubes, which came coughing back into his glass with a choking gurgle. “Care to see my babies?” he spluttered.

“Such a nice big family.” Lila ran her fingers down from the photographs onto the polished imitation wood of the organ top. “We used to have an organ at home.” She traced the black and white outline of the keys. “My stepdaddy used to play, taught me a little.”

“It’s my wife’s. Care for a refill on the tea?” Ed rattled the melting ice in his empty glass and beamed his graying boyish smile.

“No.” St. Cloud interrupted, setting his still full glass down on a
stack of television guides. “I mean …” Lila’s eyes were suddenly all over him with disapproval, as if suspecting he was about to douse the cluttered room with gasoline and toss a match to it. “I mean … we would love to have more tea, great stuff, but we have to get back to Key West. May we see the pug?” St. Cloud wasn’t drunk enough not to feel like a total fool for being intimidated by this young woman, and allowing Ed the wife beater to get away with putting on the royal dog of hospitality. He had not driven all this way to have tea with a transplanted suburban loony.

“See the pug? Course you can see the pug. What you come for, what I’m here for, isn’t it? How many pug puppies are in all the Florida Keys as we speak? Tell you how many, zero, except what I got. Let’s get the little cuties to audition for you, Mister … Mister … what did you say your name was?”

“St. Cloud.”

“Mister St. Cloud, funny handle. And what’s your young wife’s name?” Ed turned his graying boyish beam appreciatively onto Lila.

“She already told you, Lila.”

“Ain’t heard that one before either. Okay though, Alice loves you both. Don’t you, Alice?” The Doberman jumped with a fierce bark, rattling ceramic pugs in the glass case.

“Your last newspaper advertisement said only
one
pug left.” St. Cloud finally caught the wife beater in a lie. Lila was certain to commend him later.

“That’s because two were sold but haven’t been called for yet. Lucky you have pick of the litter.”

“Funny the people who bought the first two didn’t take them.” No matter how quickly this guy dodged the bullet, St. Cloud knew he was all lies. He picked up the glass and swigged the bitterness of a nonalcoholic drink. “Why don’t you bring them out? We’ve got a long drive.”

“Yes, bring them out. Yes!” Ed exited the room quickly through a swinging door leading down a narrow passageway.

“Is it true about your stepfather?” St. Cloud set the ice tea down, he wasn’t that desperate for something to drink. “Did he really have an organ?”

“Why, yaaas.” Lila drawled the affirmative answer with a distracted air, turning to the organ keys and tapping them lightly with her long fingernail tips. She seemed far away, drifting in some unreachable
place, like the first time St. Cloud had seen her in the air-conditioned cool of the bird shop, a treacherous wall of ice separating them, threatening to splinter into a thousand dangerous shards. One of Lila’s long nails stabbed an organ key, introducing a shrill note into the silence. The Doberman leapt with a snarl, sharp canines exposed, ready to tear off Lila’s kneecaps.

“Alice! Shut up and sit!” Ed banged through the swinging door, three squealing puppies held against his chest.

The Doberman backed into the corner with a whine, its body alert to the puppies.

“It’s okay, Alice.” Ed let the puppies loose on the oatmeal-colored carpet. “The babies are okay. That’s a good mama.” The puppies bumped into each other, into the furniture, making their way across the carpet to the whining Doberman. “Sorry about the commotion.” Ed beamed. “But Alice takes a real interest in these babies. Never been a mama herself, thinks these cuties are hers.”

“Where’s the mother?” This time St. Cloud was not going to let Ed get away with his juggling act. He was going to insist Ed produce. “You said on the phone you had both parents and we could see them.”

“The mother? The father? Oh … yes … uh. They’re at the vet’s, had to be left overnight there for worming. Normal thing, you know, pinworms.”

“What’s the name of the vet?” St. Cloud finally had Ed where he wanted him.

“The name of the …?”

Lila dropped to her knees before the puppies, disregarding Alice’s suspect expression. “I don’t care about the parents, I just want a puppy.” She lifted one of the squealing dogs into the air and pressed its nose to her lips. “I don’t have to see any pedigrees.”

Once again Ed dodged the bullet, but St. Cloud figured he had one round left in the chamber to blast the liar between the eyes. “How much did you say the puppies are?”

“Four fifty. Fair price. Don’t like my prices you’ll have to keep on driving up to Miami and buy from those backyard breeders at near twice that.”

Bull’s-eye. “You said on the phone
four hundred
. We get out here and you raise the price.”

“That was four hundred till there was only one left. Supply and demand.” Ed beamed his gray smile. “Simple as that.”

It wasn’t simple as that, St. Cloud finally had the wife beater dead to rights.

“I love this one.” Lila was paying no attention to the conversation, busy weighing her choices, coming to a decision after poking and petting her three best new friends. “This one will be fine.” She hefted a stubby creature, rubbing its grunting body against her cheek. “Do you think it’s a boy?”

“Looks like a little boy to me.” Ed nodded encouragingly. “Has the most black in its face, the father had that. I’ve got pedigrees to prove the father.”

“What do you think?” Lila presented the puppy to St. Cloud at the end of her outstretched arms. The creature’s tiny paws churned the air, powered by nonstop chortles and whines.

“Looks good, would have been my choice.” St. Cloud lied, he was the sort who never made his mind up about anything in short order. Choosing one of these dogs was like choosing a shirt, an enterprise he had had a lifetime of opportunity to execute, but to this day he remained incapable of walking into a store and choosing a shirt in less than twenty minutes, debating its color or collar shape as if the nuclear balance of power depended upon it, feeling embarrassed before a shop clerk impatiently awaiting a decision on such an insignificant purchase. St. Cloud always wore his clothes to a threadbare condition before contemplating a change. “Great choice, Lila. Really the best.”

“I thought so too.” Lila brought the dog back to her cheek for a reassuring nuzzle. “Knew this was the one right off, intuition.”

“Absolutely a perfect match.” Ed tossed in the echoed opinion as if it originated from him, his gray smile curved across his face, giving him the beaming air of a cartoon-drawn man in the moon. “You make an excellent pair.”

Moon over Miami, sun over Cairo, stars in his eyes, St. Cloud no longer cared. His brains drained into his shoes, blood drumming in his toes, he wanted to walk out of the trailer and drive away to Key West while sipping the secreted sweetness of Haiti’s finest cane. He wanted out of this wife beater’s midget suburban ghetto, he wanted to wander like the wind in mangrove swamps, where lizards eyed busy fire ants and pelicans gulped baby bonita fish. He eyed the door in desperation. He wanted aboard the freedom train with the wife beater’s wife and kids. He wanted the Haitian face of Voltaire to stop floating up in his dreams like a helium-filled balloon pumped to a
grotesque explosion of death. He wanted out once and for all. What could he do about it anyway? His idealistic days of chasing righteous answers were over, the ship of his soul was sunk. No more showboat we shall overcome the injustices of mankind for him. Right now he was looking for sunlight shining beneath the rum tide to swim toward. Had to get Lila on the midnight freedom train before the wife beater had his way with her, sporting and grunting atop her, rolling across the carpet while the ceramic circus of dead-eyed pugs in the glass-case gallery howled obscene approval. He moved toward her with steady deliberation, then stopped, not wanting to break the transparent shell engulfing her, not wanting to step into final illumination. He hoped the wife beater didn’t see what he saw, what he trained himself a lifetime to look for. Lila kneeling was in a perfect curve of grace, Narcissus at the reflecting pond, body arched, skirt working high to thighs. There was a sense of the unlearned about her, an intuitive nurturing which shined in the feckless act of allowing the misshapen dog to suck at her fingers. She was suspended in an elusive female state of being, defensible and alone. This elusive constant was what fascinated him from the beginning, why he had followed her along Duval Street all those nights, through redneck bars, in and out of biker dives and fancy tourist hotels. What she sought did not exist in the music played in those places. She was the music, the name of the tune was everyone wanted her. Through St. Cloud’s rum-thickened blood an insistent message registered, he would die unless he captured her elusiveness.

“Hi, Dad.”

The shrill voice was a blatant intrusion into St. Cloud’s reverie. Was it a real voice, or that of a ghost?

“You should be in bed, son, school tomorrow.” Ed beamed his gray smile beyond St. Cloud, to the swinging saloon-style doors leading off into the narrow passageway. “Alice will watch out for the babies, don’t worry.”

“Okay, Daddy.”

St. Cloud turned slowly to the voice behind, bracing for the worst. Instead of a ghost he was greeted by a grinning seven-year-old in pajamas with a ratty blanket clutched securely at his shoulder. The boy gave a quick conspiratorial wave before disappearing back through swinging doors.

“What a darling.” Lila stood, fondling her own new baby. “What’s your son’s name?”

“Matt.” Ed beamed. “Matthew Robert O’Grady.” He turned his gray beam triumphantly onto St. Cloud for full effect. “My youngest.”

Worse than it first appeared, St. Cloud thought. Ed beat the wife
and
the kids, things got so bad the wife had to abandon the little tykes and run for her life. What a sordid scenario. He didn’t like Ed at all before, he liked him even less now. Thank God they could at least save the funny-looking dog from this miniature suburban torture chamber.

“Your son’s such a doll. Y’all must be proud.” Lila squeezed the puppy until its pink tongue popped out to lick her cheek. “Your boy’s so …”

“Cute.” St. Cloud sprang the word from its trap, not to interrupt Lila, but to show her he too could be from the land of cute, cute love, cute boys, cute wife beaters. Cute transformed everything into the comfortable and reassuring. Cute was nonthreatening, a smooth thing with no spikes, no nasty history. Cute was a bloody mess without a face.

Lila gave St. Cloud a puzzled look, not certain what he was up to, usurping the most used word in her lexicon. Maybe he was trying to belittle her? The concerned look on his face didn’t indicate that. Why was it when he spoke the word
cute
it sounded foreign, even dangerous? The pint of rum he drank driving up from Key West must be taking its toll. She decided he wasn’t trying to insult her, he was just stewed.

“Why don’t we give you your cute money, Ed?” St. Cloud slurred his words. “Then we’ll be off to cutie-pie land, give you a cute nighty-nite and the cute four hundred smacks and that’ll be our last cute act.”

That was it, Lila knew for certain, St. Cloud was drunk and his rum-loosened tongue was getting ready to use those fancy words of his on anybody who got in his way. She had to head him off. “I have the money right here in my purse.” She hurriedly struggled to get the purse open, not wanting to let go of the pug for fear she would be separated from it forever. “It’s all here.” She held out the wad of bills. “You can count it, four hundred.”

“Four hundred
fifty
, if you please.” Ed beamed.

St. Cloud was pleased, but for a different reason from Ed’s. Finally Ed tripped himself up, stepped into the bear trap.

“I thought you said four hundred?” Lila squeezed the puppy even tighter, a look of terror in her eyes at the thought the animal might
be yanked from her arms. “I called several times and you said you would hold the dog for four hundred.”

“True enough.” Ed turned his gray beam down a few notches. “But like I told your husband when you was playing with the babies, last of the litter is four fifty.”

“He’s not my husband.” Lila gave Ed a confused look which went quickly past him to the front door. She was ready to bolt into the night with her bundle of love.

“That’s cute.” St. Cloud decided it was time the steel jaws of justice slammed onto this wife-beating phony suburbanite. “Real cute, Ed, almost broke the girl’s heart. Here.” He pulled his wallet out and counted five tens. “That’ll make up the extra. Now, where’s the pedigree?”