Riven Rock Part 8

That was how Stanley courted her-with socialism, unionism, progressivism, reform-instead of flowers and banter and meaningful glances. He sought her out first thing in the morning, even before she'd had a chance to come down to breakfast, and he launched into a polemic against inherited wealth, greedy capitalists like his father who took the means of production to themselves and robbed the workers of their labor, spoke of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen and Marx as if he'd known them personally, and yes, he'd broken down in tears over How the Other Half Lives How the Other Half Lives and hoped one day to convert the new International Harvester Company to a fully cooperative enterprise, as he'd done with his ranch in New Mexico. They played tennis together, swam, he took her boating, and all the while they debated the issues of the day until she felt as if some great shining light were opening up inside her. and hoped one day to convert the new International Harvester Company to a fully cooperative enterprise, as he'd done with his ranch in New Mexico. They played tennis together, swam, he took her boating, and all the while they debated the issues of the day until she felt as if some great shining light were opening up inside her.

By the third day, she couldn't help telegraphing her mother to tell her about him, about Stanley Robert McCormick, heir to the McCormick fortune, a tall physical man from Chicago who wasn't afraid of the intellectual side of things, right-thinking, sweetly shy, worth all the Butler Ameses of the world put together. And her mother, who'd been nagging her for the past six months to think of what she was going to do when she graduated MIT next year at the age of twenty-nine, already old for marriage and the very last hope of the Dexter line, telegraphed back within the hour: MAKE ME A HAPPY WOMAN.

But that was all a long time ago, an Ice Age ago, and now the best she could do was watch her handsome husband through a pair of binoculars like a field biologist studying the habits of some rare creature in the wild-that, and make sure he had every comfort, every material thing money could buy to ease his trials, and the best treatment available to bring about his cure. And even if she couldn't be with him for Christmas, she was determined to scour every shop and every catalogue and bury him in an avalanche of presents so that his doctor, handing each one over, would announce, like a benediction, This one's from Katherine.

And she was doing just that one morning after her mother arrived, directing O'Kane and LaSource to carry in great towering armloads of foil-wrapped gifts and arrange them under the tree in Stanley's quarters, when Julius suddenly appeared out of nowhere to clamber through the open door and into the back seat of the car. Her first thought was to shoo him away-it was two days before Christmas and she was anxious to get back to the hotel and relax with her mother over a cup of eggnog and a concert of Christmas carols in the courtyard where poinsettias grew up out of the ground in a red blaze that mocked the pitiful hothouse plants they had to make do with in Boston-but then she looked at him there, one leg folded over the other, his eyes lit with expectation, and changed her mind. Suddenly she was whimsical. The beautiful and intellectual Katherine Dexter McCormick, hard-nosed suffragist, brilliant organizer, manager of all Stanley's properties and her own too, the woman who never let herself go, looked at that strange pleading hunched-up figure of male dejection sunk into the leather seat and felt silly, lighthearted, girlish. It was Christmas. Julius was in the car. What a lark it would be to show him off to everyone in the hotel. After all, if you could have tropical palms, birds of paradise and poinsettias in December, you could have a tropical ape too. Maybe she'd even see if she could find him a Father Christmas outfit-and a fluffy white beard.

She had to open the windows, not so much as to allow Julius to snake out a long-fingered hand and s.n.a.t.c.h at the roadside vegetation or the odd bicyclist, but enough to dissipate the very intense and peculiar odor he carried with him. For the most part he behaved himself, cooing softly, licking the windows with a dark spatulate tongue, surprising her fingers with his own-he liked to hold hands, like a child-and she fell into a reverie as the trees slid by and the sun spread a blanket of warmth over the interior of the car. She was thinking about Hamilton and the hope he'd held out to her-Stanley had improved, he'd definitely turned the corner, and he, the doctor, was full of optimism for the future, perhaps even to the extent of allowing her a Christmas visit next year, if not sooner-but she was puzzling too over something he'd said just yesterday.

It was the middle of the afternoon and she'd just started up the hill with her binoculars when he scurried out the back door of the house and fell into step with her. "About this new man coming in after the New Year," he began, "I just wanted to say-"

"What new man?"

"Do you mean to say Dr. Meyer hasn't apprised you of the situation?"

"Why no-he hasn't said a word."

"Oh, well, in that case, well, you know how much I appreciate what you've done for me here and I'll always be grateful for it-in terms of the hominoid colony, I mean-but my researches have gone about as far as they can, I think, and they've been enormously successful and enlightening and I really do feel I can write them up and make a significant contribution to our knowledge of human s.e.xuality ... Well, what I'm trying to say is that the new man is a fellow who's been working quite closely with Dr. Meyer at the Pathological Inst.i.tute, an excellent man by the name of Brush, Dr. Nathaniel Brush-"

"But Gilbert, you're not thinking of leaving us, are you? With my husband improving so? It would, it would be a blow to him, to us all-"

But Hamilton, turning away so she couldn't see the telltale quirk of his eyes, evaded the question. "He'll be working with me for a while, to get him acquainted with Mr. McCormick and our day-to-day operations here, all under the direction of Dr. Meyer, of course, and really, I have the utmost confidence in Nat Brush, I do-"

She came out of her reverie when Julius suddenly presented her with a hat, a lady's hat, replete with pins and feathers and a small but unmistakable quant.i.ty of well-tended brunette hair, torn out by the roots. One minute she was gazing out the window, brooding over Hamilton's evasiveness, and the next she was staring down at the unfamiliar hat in her lap. It took her a moment, and then suddenly she was craning her neck to peer out the back window and pounding on the gla.s.s part.i.tion all in the same motion. Roscoe brought the car smartly around-it was new, one of the matching pair of Pierce Arrow sedans she'd ordered for Stanley in the wake of her weekend at Lavinia Littlejohn's-and they backtracked to where they found a hatless and irate young woman stopped astride her bicycle in front of a clump of cabbage palm. Katherine got out of the car, the hat held out before her in offering, mortified, absolutely mortified, and she was apologizing even before she'd crossed the road.

The young woman, a pale welt of anger stamped between her eyes, began cursing her in Italian, and she was pretty, very pretty and young, a girl really, and where had she seen her before?

"Scusi, scusi," Katherine was saying in a hush, spreading her hands wide in extenuation. "I'm so sorry, I feel terrible. You see, it was"-and she gestured at the car-"it was our pet, Julius. He's an ape, you see, and I know I shouldn't have had the window open, but-"

"I don't want nothing from you," the girl spat, glaring, and she s.n.a.t.c.hed her hat back and furiously jammed it down over her ears, the bicycle all the while clutched between her legs.

"I-realty, can I offer you something, for the inconvenience? The price of a new hat? A lift to town, perhaps?"

The girl made a rude gesture, thumb under chin, and brushed at the air with flapping hands, as if scattering insects. "Get away from me, lady," she snarled, and then repeated herself: "I don't want nothing from you." She shoved forward in an angry, unsteady glide, her feet pounding at the pedals, and then she was gone.

That should have been Katherine's warning right there, and if she'd been thinking she would have turned round and gone straight back to the house to divest herself of one very importunate ape, but she wasn't thinking, and she didn't go back. "You naughty boy," she scolded, shaking a finger at him as she climbed back into the car, and he looked so contrite, burying his face in his hands and hunching his shoulders in submission, that she hesitated. He cowered there in the corner of the seat, emitting a series of soft high-pitched sounds that might have been the whimpers of a baby fussing in a distant room, and Katherine marveled at how human and tractable he really was: he'd been naughty, and he was sorry for it. She leaned forward and tapped on the gla.s.s to get Roscoe's attention. "Drive on," she commanded.

It was a mistake. Oh, Julius was a model ape for the rest of the drive, holding hands with her and peering out the window with a docile, almost studious look, but when the car pulled up in front of the Potter, with its promenading guests, snapping pennants and all-around bustle of activity, he began to show signs of excitement. In particular, he kept swelling and deflating the naked leathery sacks of his jowls as if they were bellows or a set of bagpipes, and his eyes began to race round in their sockets. As the doorman approached, he was banging the crown of his bald head against the window, over and over, till the car had begun to rock with the motion.

"Now, Julius, take my hand and behave yourself," Katherine said, as the door pulled back and Roscoe helped her down onto the pavement. Uncoiled, Julius sprang down in a sudden flash of bright orange fur, and all eyes were on them. People stopped in mid-stride. A pair of bicyclists skidded to a halt. The doorman gaped. But Katherine, smiling serenely, held tight to Julius's hand and ambled up the walk as if nothing at all were out of the ordinary, and that was part of the joke, of course it was, to stroll right on into the hotel lobby as if she were on the arm of her husband. And it was all right, faces breaking out in surprise and delight after the initial shock, Katherine soaring, humming a Christmas tune to herself-"G.o.d Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"-until they reached the revolving gla.s.s doors.

She was able to lead Julius in, breaking her grip on his hand just as the transparent compartments separated them, but then Julius balked. Perhaps it was the novelty of the situation, the oddness of inhabiting that little gla.s.sed-in wedge of s.p.a.ce, or maybe it was fear and bewilderment, but Julius suddenly put on the brakes and stopped the door fast. Katherine was trapped, as were an elderly woman she recognized from the breakfast room and a man in a bowler hat and corkscrew mustache who seemed to have skinned his nose on the panel in front of him. They looked first to her, and then to Julius, who stood there resolute, his ma.s.sive arms locked against the gla.s.s on either side in all their rippling splendor. "Julius!" she cried, her voice magnified in that vitreous cubicle till it screamed in her own ears, "now you stop that this instant!" And she leaned forward with all her weight, the old lady and the bowler-hatted gentleman taking her cue and simultaneously flinging themselves against the gla.s.s walls in front of them.

The door wouldn't budge, not a fraction of an inch. But the fifth part.i.tion was open to the lobby, and one of the bellhops, a powerfully built young man, stepped into the breach, and with a mighty effort, coordinated with the renewed impetus of Katherine and her fellow hostages, succeeded in moving the doors just enough to trap himself as well. Julius lifted his upper lip and grinned at her like a horse. He licked the gla.s.s. Cooed. But nothing would move him. And no matter how furiously the young bellhop and the man with the skinned nose exerted themselves, the door remained fixed in position, as immovable as if it had been welded to the floor.

A crowd gathered. Someone called the fire department. Katherine had never been more embarra.s.sed in her life, both men and the old lady looking daggers at her, the rest of the pullulating world, from floor-sweeps to jeunesse doree, jeunesse doree, studying her as if she were a sideshow attraction, elbows nudging ribs, smirks spreading across faces, silent quips exchanged by bug-eyed strangers in the walled-off vacuum of the lobby. She took it for half an hour-half an hour at least-the firemen there with their useless pry bars, Julius the equal of all comers, and then she broke down, and she didn't care who was watching or where her dignity had fled. studying her as if she were a sideshow attraction, elbows nudging ribs, smirks spreading across faces, silent quips exchanged by bug-eyed strangers in the walled-off vacuum of the lobby. She took it for half an hour-half an hour at least-the firemen there with their useless pry bars, Julius the equal of all comers, and then she broke down, and she didn't care who was watching or where her dignity had fled.

"Julius!" she screamed, pounding at the gla.s.s like a madwoman, "you stop this now! You stop it!" She sobbed. She raged. She backed up and kicked savagely at that grinning intransigent unreasoning gla.s.sed-in hominoidal face till she broke a heel and fell reeling to the little wedge of tiled floor beneath her. '

Julius did a strange thing then. He dropped his arms, just for an instant, just long enough to part the fringe of orange hair concealing his genitalia and expose himself, right there, inches from her face, the long dark organ in its nest, the meaty bald t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, the maleness at the center of his being, and then, before anyone could act, he shot out both hands again to catch the gla.s.s on either side of him and hold it fast in his indomitable grip.

FOR THE MAIN AND SIMPLE REASON.

It was in 1916, in the spring, that Dr. Brush took over for Dr. Hamilton. O'Kane remembered the day not only for what it represented to Mr. McCormick and the whole enterprise of Riven Rock-a changing of the guard, no less, and this far along-but for the heavy fog that lay over the place late into the day, and no chance of clearing. It was a transformative fog, thick and surreal, and it closed everything in like the backdrop to a bad dream so that he half expected to see ghosts and goblins materializing from the gloom along with Rosaleen and his father and the walleyed kid who'd rubbed his nose in the dirt when he was six and afraid of everything.

He was sitting with Mart and Mr. McCormick in the upper parlor, just after lunch-and Mr. McCormick had eaten very nicely, thank you, allowing the napkin to be tucked into his collar without a fuss and using his spoon with a wonderful adroitness on the peas, potatoes and meat loaf-when there was a sound of footsteps on the stairs and they all three glanced up in unison to see a huge puffing seabeast of a man laboring up the steps under the weight of the cigar clenched between his teeth. O'Kane's first impulse was to laugh out loud, but he restrained himself. It was too much, it really was-the man was a dead ringer for William Howard Taft, right down to the pinniped mustache and the fifty-six-inch waistline. And after Hamilton, with his Rooseveltian spectacles, O'Kane was beginning to see a pattern developing here-he supposed the next one, if there was a next one, would look like Wilson, all joint and bone and sour schoolmastery lips. Was this some sort of private joke Dr. Meyer was pulling on them-Dr. Adolph Meyer, that is, who looked just exactly like what he was, a Kraut headshrinker with a gray-streaked headshrinker's beard and a sense of humor buried so deep not even the Second Coming could have exhumed it?

"Mr. McCormick, I presume?" the fat man called when he'd reached the landing and stood poised outside the barred door like a traveling salesman unsure of the neighborhood. He was trying for a genial smile, but the cigar wedged in the corner of his mouth distended it into a sort of flesh-straining grimace. "And Mr. O'Kane? And that would be Mr. Tompkins, yes?"

"Thompson," Mart returned in a voice dead and buried while Mr. McCormick blinked in bewilderment from his place at the table-he wasn't used to new people, not at all-and O'Kane got up from his chair to unlock the door and admit the new psychiatrist. Rising from the chair, moving through the desolate s.p.a.ce of that penitentiary of a room, the most familiar room in the world, a place he knew as well as any prisoner knew his cell, he couldn't help feeling something like hope surging through him-or maybe it was only caffeine, from Sam Wah's black and potent Chinese tea. But who was to say that this man standing so mountainously at the door wasn't the miracle worker who would transform Mr. McCormick from a disturbed schizophrenic s.e.x maniac incapable of tying his own shoes into a kindhearted and grateful millionaire ready to reward those who'd stood by him in his time of need?

"We were expecting you earlier," O'Kane said, by way of making conversation until he could insert the three separate keys into the three separate locks and let the swollen savior in so they could shake hands and get off to a proper start.

"Yes," Dr. Brush rasped, chewing around his cigar, "and I expect Gilbert'll be up in arms over it, but I'm late, you see, for the main and simple reason that this d.a.m.nable fog made it d.a.m.ned near impossible to find the door of the hotel, let alone give the d.a.m.ned driver a chance of finding the d.a.m.ned road out here-and where in h.e.l.l are we, anyway? Good G.o.d, talk about the hinterlands-"

Actually, he'd been scheduled to take over more than two years earlier, and Hamilton had prepared O'Kane and the Thompsons and everybody else for the pa.s.sing of the baton, but word had it that Katherine had opened her checkbook and said, "How can I persuade you to stay on, Dr. Hamilton?" And Hamilton, who'd already written up his monkey experiments for some high-flown scientific journal and was anxious to get back and circulating in the world of s.e.xual psychopathology, where new advances were being made almost daily, had, so Nick said, demanded on the spot that she double his salary and provide him with the use of a new car. "Done," Katherine said, and wrote out a check. And so, Dr. Brush was late. Not just by a couple of hours, but by two years and more.

There was an awkward moment after the door had been shut and treble-locked behind him, when Brush began advancing hugely on Mr. McCormick and throwing out a grab bag of hearty greetings and mindless pleasantries, wholly unconscious of the telltale signs that Mr. McCormick was feeling threatened and on the verge of erupting into some sort of violent episode, but O'Kane caught the big man by the elbow and steered him toward an armchair on the far side of the room. "Wouldn't you be more comfortable over here, doctor?" he said so that everyone could hear him. And then, sotto voce, "You've got to give Mr. McCormick his s.p.a.ce, at least until the two of you are better acquainted-he's very particular about that. You see, he's not sitting there alone-his judges are there with him, wigs, robes, gavels and all, though you and I can't see them."

The big man looked perplexed. He must have been forty or so, though it was hard to tell considering the amount of flesh he carried, especially in the face-every line and wrinkle was erased in the general swell of fatty tissue, giving him the look of a very well fed and pampered baby. "Well, I just-" he began, looking down at O'Kane's hand clamped round his arm and then allowing himself to be led, like some great floating zeppelin, to the chair. "I just felt "-and now he looked again to Mr. McCormick, who was doing his shrinking man routine, hunching his shoulders and declining into the chair so that soon only his head would be visible above the tablecloth-"that we should meet, and as soon as possible, Mr. McCormick, sir, for the main and simple reason that we'll be spending so much valuable time together in the coming weeks and months, and while I, er, should really have waited for a proper introduction from that good friend of yours, Dr. Hamilton, I just thought, er, for the main and simple reason-"

Mr. McCormick spoke then, and with no impediment. "Dr. Hamilton is no friend of mine."

Brush was on it like a hound. "Oh? And why do you say that, sir? I'm told he's been your very good friend over the course of many years now and that he's very much concerned for your welfare, as indeed Mr. O'Kane and Mr. Tompkins are, and I myself."

No reply from Mr. McCormick, whose chin now rested at the level of the table. O'Kane could read the look in Mr. McCormick's eyes, and it wasn't auspicious, not at all. "Well, then, Dr. Brush," he interjected, clapping his hands and rubbing them together vigorously, "why don't you let me show you around a bit, at least until Dr. Hamilton arrives?"

While Mart entertained Mr. McCormick with some h.o.a.ry card tricks Mr. McCormick had already seen half a million times, O'Kane led the psychiatrist into the bedroom. "There isn't much to see here, really," he apologized, indicating the bra.s.s bed bolted to the floor in the center of the room. Everything else, right down to the pictures on the walls and the nails that held them, had been removed. There were no curtains, no lights. Here and there along the walls you could make out a faded patch where a piece of furniture had once stood.

"Rather spartan, isn't it?" the doctor observed, swinging his tempestuous frame to the left and poking his head into the bathroom, which contained only toilet, sink and shower bath, and the infamous window, of course, now louverless and with the neat grid of iron bars neatly restored.

"We did have a rug," O'Kane said, "a Persian carpet, really quite the thing. But we found that Mr. McCormick was eating it."

"Eating it?"

"At night, when no one was watching. Somehow he managed to get a section of it unraveled with just his fingers alone, and then he'd pull out strands of it and swallow them. We found the evidence in his stools. Of course, the rest of the stuff, the furniture and pictures and all that, well, he destroyed most of it himself the last time he escaped."

And then they were back in the upper parlor, standing around awkwardly, awaiting Dr. Hamilton, who'd spent two hours that morning awaiting the fog-delayed Dr. Brush. By this time, Mr. McCormick had retreated to the sofa, where he was reading aloud to himself in a cacophonic clash of words and syllables: " 'TARzan is NOT an APE. He is NOT LIKE his peoPLE. HIS WAYS are NOT their ways, and SO TARzan is going BACK to the LAIR of his OWN KIND ....' "

O'Kane was just about to suggest that they take a tour of the lower floor and then perhaps look round for Dr. Hamilton, who was most likely out in the oak forest overseeing the dismantling of his hominoid colony, when Dr. Brush abruptly swerved away from him and loomed up on Mr. McCormick, cigar smoke trailing behind him as if it were the exhaust of his internal engine. "How marvelous, Mr. McCormick," he boomed, "you read so beautifully, and I can't tell you how therapeutic I find it myself to read good literature aloud, for the main and simple-"

But Dr. Brush never had a chance to round off his homily, because at that moment Mr. McCormick slammed the book shut and hurled it at him end over end, prefatory to leaping out of the sofa and tackling the doctor round the knees. The flying book glanced off the side of Brush's head and he was able to take a single hasty step back before Mr. McCormick hit him and he found himself swimming through the air with an improvised backstroke before crashing down on one of the end tables, which he unfortunately obliterated. O'Kane was there in an instant, and the usual madness ensued, he tugging at one end of Mr. McCormick's wire-taut body and Mart at the other, but Brush, for all his size, proved remarkably agile. Without ever losing his masticular grip on the big tan perfecto, he was able to fling Mr. McCormick off, squirm round and pin him ma.s.sively to the floor beneath all three hundred twenty-seven pounds.

Mr. McCormick writhed. He cursed, scratched, bit, but Dr. Brush simply shifted his weight as the crisis demanded, not even breathing hard, until finally Mr. McCormick was subdued. "Ha!" Brush laughed after a bit, O'Kane and Mart standing there stupefied, their hands hanging uselessly at their sides. "Trick I learned at the Eastern Lunatic Hospital. Always works. The patient, you see, after a while he feels like he's a little bird nestled inside the egg, not even a hatchling yet, and calm, so calm, for the main and simple reason that I represent the mother bird, a nurturing force that cannot be denied, for the main and simple-"

"Just a minute, Dr. Brush-I don't mean to interrupt, but I think, well, I'm afraid you're hurting Mr. McCormick," O'Kane put in, alarmed by the coloration of his employer's face, which had gone from a deep Guinea-wine red to the palest blood-drained shade of white.

The big doctor was unconcerned. He squared the cigar in his mouth, shifted his haunches. "Oh, no, no, that's just the thing, don't you see-a little compression. It's what they all need."

Afterward, when apologies had been made all around and Mr. McCormick, very contrite, was put to bed for his afternoon nap, O'Kane felt it politic to escort Dr. Brush out onto the fog-shrouded grounds in search of Dr. Hamilton. "Can't see a d.a.m.ned thing," Brush complained, moving cautiously forward as O'Kane, familiar with the terrain, led the way. "Afraid of barking a d.a.m.ned shin. Or worse. You sure he's out here?" And then, in a stentorian voice: "Gilbert? Gilbert Hamilton! Are you there?"

The trees stood ghostly, ribbed in white like so many masts hung with tattered sails. The leaves were damp underfoot. Nothing moved, and there was no sound, not even of birds. O'Kane felt his way, and he didn't even have the stench of the hominoids to guide him. All but two of the baboons and monkeys had been sold off to private collectors or donated to zoos, and Hamilton was packing up his notes and equipment and shipping it back east to his mentor, a small monkey-obsessed scholar by the name of Yerkes who'd spent some time at Riven Rock a year ago. As for Julius, he'd been removed from the premises after the Potter Hotel incident and sold for a song to a traveling circus-on Katherine's orders.

There was a smell of burning in the air, and of something else too, something rank, and before long they could hear the crackling of a fire, and then they saw the flames, a moiling interwoven ball of them, up ahead at the edge of the oak grove. Two figures, in silhouette, slipped back and forth in front of the fire, feeding the flames with sc.r.a.ps of timber. As they drew closer, the big doctor tramping heavily behind him and cursing steadily under his breath, O'Kane recognized Hamilton's gnomelike a.s.sistants, and he called out to the shorter of them, the Mexican. "Hey, Isidro, you seen Dr. Hamilton?" And then, showing off one of the handy phrases he'd picked up amongst the denizens of Spanishtown: " El Doctor Hamilton, dondy estis?"

They were at the edge of the fire now and O'Kane saw that the two men were burning up the dismantled cages, wire and all. Paint sizzled and peeled. Wood split. Fingers of flame poked up through the mesh, weaving an intricate pattern, leaping high to drive back the fog even as the smoke settled in to replace it. The heat was intense, a hundred stoves stoked to capacity, and they had to step back away from it; O'Kane looked at the two scurrying men and hoped they knew what they were doing-a blaze like this could get out of hand and bring the whole place down, orchards, cottages, Pierce Arrows and Mr. McCormick too. Isidro, the Mexican, paused with an armload of rubbish to consider the question of Hamilton's whereabouts, then nodded his head toward the place beneath the trees where the cages had stood even this morning.

They found Dr. Hamilton fussing around a pile of odds and ends he meant to keep, the chute with the doors at the end of it, a couple of the smaller cages, a pegboard he'd used to gauge the monkeys' intelligence. "Gil!" Dr. Brush boomed, bobbing through the fog to seize Hamilton's hand. "I'm late, I know it, but it was for the main and simple reason of this d.a.m.ned fog, and I hope you'll forgive me, but I'm here now and I've met everybody and I'm raring to go."

"Nat," Hamilton said, shaking with one hand and adjusting his spectacles with the other. "Yes, well, the weather's been unusual. Sorry for the inconvenience."

"Pah!" Brush returned, waving a big flipperlike hand. "No inconvenience to me, for the main and simple reason that I'm here to stay. California. G.o.d bless it. But what's this-leftover monkeys?"

He was pointing to a small cage set atop the psychological chute. In it, O'Kane saw, were the two remaining hominoids, a pair of rhesus monkeys the doctor called Jack and Jill. They were runts, even for monkeys, and though they'd been displaced and seen all their companions exiled and their home of the last several years demolished, they still had the spirit to f.u.c.k-which is what they were doing at the moment, black lips drawn back in erotic transport, the cage swaying rhythmically to the persistent in-and-out motion of the monkey on top, presumably Jack, but you never could tell. That much O'Kane had learned about hominoids.

Hamilton seemed a bit fuzzy. "Yes," he said, gazing down on them, "the last two. Jack and Jill. I'd had half a mind to take them with me, but now I'm not so sure. The zoo down in Los Angeles is filled up with them-rhesus, that is-and I can't seem to get rid of them in any case."

The big doctor huffed a few times. His cigar had gone out, but he still clutched it with his teeth as if it were the last link of a breathing tube and he a sponge diver wending his way along the bottom of the sea. "Why not set 'em free? Let 'em go. Liberate 'em. For the main and simple reason that they're sentient creatures, just like you and me, and it's a cruelty to keep them caged up like that, and the climate here'll support 'em, I don't doubt that, for the main and simple-"

"Yes, I've thought of that," Hamilton said. "Haven't I, Edward?"

O'Kane hadn't the faintest idea what Hamilton had or hadn't thought of, but he nodded his head anyway.

"Well?" Brush demanded. "And so?"

Hamilton took his time, the fog settling in, the fire of demolition snapping and roaring off in the distance. He looked down at the copulating monkeys. "If there's one thing I've learned after all these years of study," he sighed, "it's that they're nothing but dirty stinking little uncontrollable beasts. Set them free?" He looked up. "They don't deserve it."

It was about that time that Giovannella came to O'Kane with the news that she was pregnant. She wasn't Giovannella Dimucci anymore, but Giovannella Capolupo, married, at her father's insistence, to a little hunched-over wop with a single black eyebrow drawn like a visor across the top third of his head. Guido, his name was, Guido Capolupo. He had a shoemaker's shop in a back alley in Spanishtown, with a cramped little cell of an apartment above it, which was convenient for O'Kane, who was then living at a boardinghouse not five minutes away.

Giovannella, sleek and beautiful, with her eyes like chocolate candies and her feet primly crossed at the ankles, sat waiting for him in the parlor under the watchful eye of the landlady, Mrs. Fitzmaurice. It was a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, 2:00 P.M., and he'd just come back from his half-day shift at Riven Rock and collapsed into his bed like a jellyfish, utterly drained after a long night of celebrating somebody's birthday at Menhoff's, he couldn't remember whose. He closed his eyes. And in the very next instant there was an impatient rapping at the door and who was it? Mrs. Fitzmaurice. And what did she want? There was a young lady downstairs for him.

"Giov," he crooned, crossing the carpet and taking her hand, feeling better already, and he couldn't kiss her there in public, though he wanted to, and he couldn't read her chocolate-candy eyes either. "What do you say?"

"I'm pregnant."

At first it didn't register on him. The sun was fat in the windows and outside the streets were placid and inviting, all the long Sat.u.r.day afternoon stretching languidly before him. Since he was up, he was thinking of maybe suggesting a stroll up to Menhoff's, for a little hair of the dog. He blinked. Tried on a smile.

Giovannella was beaming suddenly. "I thought you'd be mad, Eddie, but I'm so happy." She gave his hand a squeeze, though Mrs. Fitzmaurice, studiously watering her geraniums at the far window, was watching like a moral executioner, ready to pounce at any hint of impropriety.

O'Kane wasn't following. "Mad? About what?"

"You're the father, Eddie," her voice soft as a heartbeat. "Didn't you hear me? I'm pregnant."

In the next moment he had her out the door and they were stalking up the street, pedestrians trying not to stare, the streetcar clanking by, a roadster parked at the curb, a sedan beyond, an old Reo beyond that. His blood was surging, and it wasn't all bad. He was was angry, of course he was angry, but there was a crazy exhilaration to it too. Sure the kid would be his-her husband, Guido, looked to be about a hundred and twelve years old though she insisted he was only thirty-six, and how could she have relations with a guy who looked like that, even if he was her husband? Of course the kid was his-unless she'd been fooling around with somebody else, and if she fooled around with him why wouldn't she fool around with somebody else? But no, it had to be his, and it would come out with fair hair and sea-green eyes, he just knew it, and Baldy Dimucci and this Guido would hit the roof. There'd be a vendetta. Sicilian a.s.sa.s.sins. They'd crawl through the ground-floor window at night, brutally dispatching Mrs. Fitzmaurice and old Walter Hogan, who spent half his life snoring in a chair by the front door, and then come up the stairs and cut his own miserable throat. angry, of course he was angry, but there was a crazy exhilaration to it too. Sure the kid would be his-her husband, Guido, looked to be about a hundred and twelve years old though she insisted he was only thirty-six, and how could she have relations with a guy who looked like that, even if he was her husband? Of course the kid was his-unless she'd been fooling around with somebody else, and if she fooled around with him why wouldn't she fool around with somebody else? But no, it had to be his, and it would come out with fair hair and sea-green eyes, he just knew it, and Baldy Dimucci and this Guido would hit the roof. There'd be a vendetta. Sicilian a.s.sa.s.sins. They'd crawl through the ground-floor window at night, brutally dispatching Mrs. Fitzmaurice and old Walter Hogan, who spent half his life snoring in a chair by the front door, and then come up the stairs and cut his own miserable throat.

Someone honked a bicycle horn. The greengrocer-Wilson-came out from behind a display of muskmelons and threw a pan of water in the gutter. "You'll have to get rid of it," O'Kane said.

Giovannella stopped dead in her tracks, Giovannella the fury, Giovannella the lunatic. The candy melted out of her eyes. "What did you say?" she demanded. "I think my hearing must not be so good."

The fat-ankled woman from the Goux Winery waddled past them with three kids in tow. A man with a panting dog almost ran into them. People were everywhere, swells ambling up the street from the Potter, women shopping for groceries, kids darting in and out of alleyways with b.a.l.l.s and hoops. "Not here, Giov," he said, and he wanted to take her by the arm and steer her someplace, someplace quiet and out of the way, but he couldn't do that, because she wasn't Giovannella Dimucci anymore-she was Giovannella Capolupo and he had no right to touch her. In public, anyway.

Suddenly she lurched away from him, her face twisted and ugly, and broke into a clumsy trot, fighting the weight of her skirts. He gave it a minute, inconspicuous Eddie O'Kane, just another guy out for a Sat.u.r.day-afternoon stroll, and then made his way up the street after her. By the time he got going, she was already a block ahead of him, still kicking out her skirts in an awkward trot, her head bobbing like a toy on a spring, people stopping to turn and stare after her. O'Kane quickened his pace, but not so much as to attract attention.

He caught up with her in front of Diehl's Grocery, a place that catered to the carriage trade of Montecito-O'Mara smoked hams from Ireland in the window, jars of curry and chutney from India, pears in creme de menthe, the sort of place that had no business with O'Kane or he with it. But there was a line of limousines parked out front, one of them Mr. McCormick's, which meant that Roscoe was around somewhere, and Sam Wah stalking the aisles inside, inspecting ginger root from Canton and curls of candied melon from Cambodia. Giovannella was standing at the window, her back to the street, staring at a perfectly stacked pyramid of tangerines. He saw her face reflected in the gla.s.s, her lips puffed with emotion, eyes like open wounds, and felt something give inside him. "Giovannella," he said, "listen to me-can't we talk?"

In the smallest voice: "I don't want to talk to you, Eddie."

Sam Wah's face suddenly loomed up in the window, caught between two pink-and-brown hams, and Sam smiled a gap-toothed smile and O'Kane waved, and then, whether the whole world was watching or not, he took Giovannella by the elbow and led her down the alley and into the next street over. They walked in silence, out of the commercial district and into a residential area, neat houses with deep-set porches and roses climbing up trellises. They found a place to sit on the knee-high roots of a big Moreton Bay fig tree that spread out over an empty lot like ten trees all grafted together. There was no one around. He took her hand and she gave him a sidelong look that seemed to have some conciliation in it, but with Giovannella you never could tell. Sometimes when she looked her softest she was about to explode, and when she exploded she could do anything, throw herself in front of a streetcar, jump off a building, rake your eyes out.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean that, what I said back there on the street."

"Eddie," she said, surrender, forgiveness and reproach all in two syllables and one tone, and she took hold of him with a strength and intensity that was intoxicating and terrifying at the same time and kissed him, forcing her tongue into his mouth, again and again, crushing him, tearing at him, till finally he had to put his hands on her shoulders and come up for air.

"I'm not going to have my son raised by some wop shoemaker, that's all," he said.

That only made her hold on tighter. She was a woman drowning in the surf and he the lifeguard sent to rescue her, her nails like claws, every muscle straining to drag him down, and she wouldn't let go, wouldn't let him get his face clear, no neutral zone here, no calling for time out, her lips his lips, her nose his, her eyes and her breath. "Oh, yeah?" she said, and her voice was dangerous. "And what about the son you already have-whos raising him? Huh? You tell me. Who's raising him, Eddie?"

Rosaleen was raising him, and if she had some man in her life, he didn't know about it. He sent her money, when he remembered, and she sent him silence in return. No letters, no photographs, no nothing. But if he pictured her, and he did once in awhile, lingering over a beer when n.o.body was around, a mournful tune playing on the victrola, he pictured her alone and waiting, a photo of handsome Eddie O'Kane on the wall above her bed.

"That's none of your business," he said.

A breeze came up and scoured the ground, sc.r.a.ps of paper suddenly pasted to the roots of the tree, branches groaning overhead. Still she clung to him, her breath hot in his face, the smell of her skin, soap, perfume. "You're my husband, Eddie," she whispered, "you're the one. Be a man. Take me away someplace, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Or back home to Boston, I don't care, I'll go anywhere with you."

"This is my home. Mr. McCormick-"

"Mr. McCormick. McCormick. Don't tell me about Mr. McCormick." She pushed away from him, her eyes dilated and huge, hair falling loose at her nape and whipping round her shoulders. "It's only a job, Eddie-you can get a job anywhere, a big strong man like you, an American born here and with an education too. Where's your three o'clock luck you're always telling me about? Trust it. Trust me." Don't tell me about Mr. McCormick." She pushed away from him, her eyes dilated and huge, hair falling loose at her nape and whipping round her shoulders. "It's only a job, Eddie-you can get a job anywhere, a big strong man like you, an American born here and with an education too. Where's your three o'clock luck you're always telling me about? Trust it. Trust me."

But the curtain had fallen in his mind. The play was over. "You'll have to get rid of it."

"Never."

"I'll arrange it. I'll ask around. He-whatever his name is-he'll never have to know. n.o.body will."

Suddenly, and he didn't know quite how it happened, they were boxing. Or she was boxing and he was just trying to fend off her blows. They struggled to their knees, then their feet. She swung at him, just like Rosaleen. "I hate you," she sputtered, gasping, swinging, her voice dead calm between one ratcheting breath and the next. "It's murder you're talking about, you son ... of a b.i.t.c.h, murder of an ... innocent soul ... How can you even ... think of it, and you a ... Catholic?"

She stopped swinging then and stood there rigid, but he kept his hands up, just in case. He glanced round to see if anybody was watching, but the lot was deserted. Her eyes were wet. She made a noise deep in her throat and he thought she was going to start crying on him, but she snapped back her head in a sudden fierce motion and spat down the front of his shirt, a glistening ball of Italian sputum that hung there like a jewel on a string. "Don't you have any feelings at all?" she demanded, and still she wasn't shouting. "You stinker," she hissed. "You pig. Don't you have a heart?"

Well, he did. He did have a heart, but he wasn't going to start a war with all of Sicily and he sure as h.e.l.l wasn't going to have somebody named Guido Capolupo raising his own flesh and blood, and so as soon as Giovannella had turned her back on him and fled across the lot in her stiff-legged skirt-hampered trot, he went up to Menhoff's to see what he could do about it. He figured he would have a beer and a whiskey to ease the throbbing in his head and the sourness of his gut-though he didn't need the stuff, not really, not like his old man-and maybe make some discreet inquiries, that was all.