D= Banana Daiquiris

"Banana Daiquiris"

There was definitely a stone of some sort in his boot, probably from
when he'd been down on the beach, throwing smooth stones into the sea.
It would be best to stop somewhere before going to the store, somewhere
he could sit down, unlace his boot without being troubled, maybe get
something.

Luke rubbed his hand over the back of his curled hair, which felt
springy, like he'd slept on it in an odd way. It was about eleven, so
the town was fairly quiet. Most people were working, either out at sea
in those tiny boats, or at the factories. Even the people at sea were
less lonely than he was. They had their crewmates, or if not, then at
least they could see the other boats nearby.

He was the only cop in this town. He had nobody to team up with, nobody
to play good cop / bad cop with. Everyone in town knew the role he'd
have to take. Everything he'd thought about being a cop before he
became one, he'd got from the movies. Buddy movies, the tough
experienced cop guiding a raw recruit, showing him what was what;
distrust at first, building to a quiet respect and finally real
comradeship. The finest sort, the type of friendship where you could
trust the other with your life.

And what did he have? Three guys he went bowling with that didn't much
like him, who only asked him along because their fourth guy had gone
off with the wife of guy number one. Three guys who didn't like him and
a crippled wife who made it clear every second of the day how much she
loathed and despised him.

He could do what he wanted in the job, provided the town was quiet and
the forms got completed and sent off upstate. There was a little ruckus
once a month when the factory boys got paid and sometimes people
squabbled about which box of fish they were going to take from the
market, but apart from that, there was barely any need for the law in
this town. So Luke felt.

The job bored him, but he didn't really need to be there. He could be
at home, with his wife, who still had his bullet lodged in her back.
But she never tired of telling him that. So mostly, Luke just wandered
around the town, under the guise of making sure that everyone was
acting properly, but really just killing time until his wife
died.

Iris was in her late forties, so he figured he ought to get fifteen,
maybe twenty years of living after she was gone. He wasn't sure why
he'd fallen for an older woman; he'd grown up interested in
cheerleaders and the girl who worked at the record store, like most
other men he knew. But the moment he'd met Iris, he had known.

She had a sort of faded beauty. It was faded, but it was there. She had
more about her than any of the pretty, insubstantial girls. She looked
like a movie star.

This was only right, since her mother had been one. After a manner of
speaking, anyway. Veronica Stanwyck had gone out to Hollywood in the
Fifties, trying to get picked up, discovered. Mostly what she
discovered was that a lot of men were happy to spend money on showing a
girl with movie star looks a good time. She did make two pictures, both
of which flopped. One was called "Sad girls shoot straight".

Something had happened to Veronica, something that made her decide that
she wasn't going to wait with all the other girls for her time to come,
something that made her instead move away to a small town in Maine,
about as far as she could get from Hollywood without leaving the
continent.

The girls had a picture of her that Luke liked to admire when the house
was quiet, a colour postcard old and with a crease running across a
third of it, yellow and rigid. Veronica was showing the right side of
her face, her best side, and she had a plum headscarf on, pulled over
her hair so that only a few black strands tumbled loose, eyes full of
anticipation and the hint of things, cherryred mouth with her top row
of teeth showing, huge and white, looking like there wouldn't be room
in her mouth for a bottom set. Veronica shone in that picture postcard,
like colour had been invented for her, as a tribute to her.

Iris had picked up her mother's looks; black bobbed hair clipped short
at the base of her long neck, cool soft white skin and eyes that
belonged on a poster. They were maybe violet; Luke wasn't too good with
colours. She'd got the whole package, whereas her simple sister Betsy
got neither the brain, the charm nor the looks. Luke guessed there'd
just been nothing much left to pass on after Veronica had produced
Iris.

Although she had got something that Iris was lacking. Kindness.

Sometimes he'd see Iris, in that horrible iron chair black and ugly and
oversized; sitting by the window looking out in the rain. He'd think
she was wistful, maybe thinking of going for walks or something. That
wasn't it. What she was doing was watching birds get wet.

"Goddamn it, " he said, just as Sam Morning turned up.

"Thinking 'bout our bet, were you ? "

He'd almost forgotten that. At the time he'd been full of confidence,
knowing that Sam would lose and have the smirk wiped off his face. Now
in the morning, he realised that he didn't know what bowling balls were
made of, had not an idea, and that Sam had been confident enough to bet
money. Wasn't it more likely that he was right than wrong ?

"I was going to go down to the alley in an hour or so, " said Sam,
flashing him the grin. Luke wondered sometimes if Sam was aware of just
how short he was. He didn't act like a guy who barely clipped five
feet, "Check on my money, get the answer. Just got to hang around while
Ben from the factory shows up. You wanna come too ? "

"No thanks, " said Luke shortly. He didn't care much for the factory
men and the persistent smell of damp dough that clung to them. When he
sat in front of the game working through a box of cookies, he didn't
want to think about other men touching them first. In his mind, those
pretty cookies just climbed right in the box all by themselves. And not
just that, he felt inadequate around factory men, like salad to their
steak. Being with a guy who cut hair and someone who sliced up limes
and a guy with one leg who swept up - well, he could look down on all
of them. Not realising of course that they all looked down on him
too.

They walked together almost by default, hardly talking. Luke didn't
have anything worth saying to Sam, and Sam was busy thinking about the
telephone call he'd had that morning from Canada.

Jimmy Forricci, telling Sam that things had gotten screwed up the other
night, that things had not worked out the way they should have done.
But, bygones be bygones, maybe there was still some business they could
do together. All Sam had to do was hop on a plane to Montreal.

Sam had been nervous. If the mob were going to clip you (even the
Canadian mob, who did everything a little screwy), then they often
liked to get you to come to them, all trusting and walk right into it.
He had put this qualm to Jimmy. (Jimmy had an old-fashioned way of
talking, like a British lawyer, that was infectious. The word qualm was
used when Sam would never ordinarily have said it. )

Jimmy was full of reassurance. No, we don't want to kill you. Yes, we
want to do some business with you.

"That's exactly what you would say, " Sam had told him, "So I'm no
better advised. "

"Listen, " Jimmy had said, "This is what you should do. Tell everyone
you like that you're going to see Jimmy Forricci in Montreal. Then, if
anything should befall you, my name is top of the list. "

They had to pass the little iron bridge on their way towards the Knot,
the centre of Moreover, and saw Meg striding up the grassy bank. Luke
nodded to her politely, but it was Sam who noted that Stewart's wife
had smeared her lipstick and was brushing down brittle leaves from her
brown corduroy pants. He looked at Luke to give him a manly look, but
there was nothing on Luke's face at all. What sort of poor cop was he
?

Sam answered his own question. The sort of cop who wraps his gun up in
brown paper and hides it in another man's trash at 3 am on the same
night some intruder shot his wife in the spine, but doesn't take
careful account of who might be watching. Sam had that gun kept safe,
Luke's prints still on it. One bullet missing from the chamber. In his
line of work, he never knew when a leverage might come in handy.

In time, Sam and Luke arrived at the Oystercross, Luke's foot now
tender from walking on the stone in his boot while not wanting to wince
in front of another man. The building was like a smile, it helped both
men a little. The strong fresh yellow that Sal and Carmine had painted
the front, the way that more than a little of the paint had splashed
onto the cobbles and still remained there now, the low sound of lively
music.

"I'm going in here, " said Luke, hoping to be rid of Sam.

"Me too, " said Sam, figuring that a cop would be a good person to
inform of his whereabouts (and there was that Jimmy influence
again.)

When they got inside, the lights were down low and there were only two
other customers in there - the Wallpaper Man with cheap chewed pen in
his mouth like a cigar and the Smoker, sat with four packs of full and
three packs of empty Red Apples in front of him. No drink for either of
them.

Oh and the dog, the dog the colour of a carpet, sort of beige dog, sat
with a bone between its front paws, gnawing at it with a sort of
complaining but pleasured noise.

Sal was cleaning the mincing machine out back and making a lot of noise
about it, telling Carmine that he should do his share as well, that
half of this was his mess. There was a sort of sweet smell about the
place that was maybe a lot of air-freshener, maybe something
else.

Carmine was working out some figures on a pad when he looked up and saw
them both, "Hey, Luke, " he sang out loudly, "What can I do for you
?"

Sal closed the kitchen door, not wanting to trouble the new customers
with what he was doing. They were very alike, the two men, both lean
with sharp faces that were almost pretty. Carmine's hair was a little
longer and he didn't wear any rings.

"You doing any oysters for tonight ? " asked Sam, "Man I love the
oysters you do here, in a little bowl of ice, just perfect. "

"Maybe, " said Carmine warily, "We've made a loss just yesterday. While
I was bowling, the barbecue people called Sal. They say, we don't want
those burgers anymore. Two hundred burgers - already made ahead of
time. Now they've got to go. "

"I could eat a burger, " said Luke.

Carmine tugged at the hem of his stiff white shirt, which he wore
loose, outside his pants, "I think Sal has thrown them all in the
trash. So sorry. "

"Well, " said Sam, in a very clear voice, "I've just recalled that I
won't be here tonight. I'm going up to Montreal to meet with a man
named Jimmy Forricci. Odd name huh ? Jimmy Forricci. You know how you
spell that ? "

The Smoker came to the bar and asked for a book of matches.

Carmine groaned, "That's your third. These things cost, you know. I
don't pull them out my ass. "

"Why don't you buy a lighter ? " asked Luke, who was curious.

"I like matches, " said the Smoker, who took the book of matches that
Carmine handed him, picture of a gleaming pearl inside a curving shell
on the front, on a black background.

"I said, do you know how you spell Jimmy Forricci ? "

"I care even less than I did before the matches interlude, " said Luke
and for a second Sam wondered whether he too had been speaking with
Jimmy.

Carmine came out from behind the bar to move the dog outside, firstly
taking the bone from him, then opening the door to the yard and
throwing the bone out there.

"And leave my chickens alone, you hear ? " he shouted at the dog. He
came back and wiped his hands on a pale gray bar towel. "What can I get
you fellows? "

"I'll have a Rolling Rock, " said Sam, "And let me get both of you two
a drink."

"Kind of you, " said Luke and meant it.

"Well, " said Sam, "It's your money after all, I'll be picking up my
winnings in an hour or so. "

"I'll have a whiskey sour, " said Luke, "No, make it a vodka cranberry.
"

Carmine made a very fine vodka cranberry. It helped that he used fresh
berries and heaped them all up in the blender instead of just opening a
carton. When it came it tasted fresh and tart.

"I've got to buy some bananas from the store, " he complained, "A pound
of bananas. "

"Can't buy them in pounds, " said Carmine, "I always have this trouble.
The kid who owns the store only knows metric. "

Luke cursed some, "Metric ? Who knows metric ? "

Sam grinned, "Anyone who learnt maths from Miss Flynn. She sure gets
those kids interested in the metric system. "

How many kilograms were a pound, wondered Luke. He had no idea of this
sort of thing. He could tell that Sam knew, all cocky looking, but he
wasn't going to ask him. He'd just buy four bananas and have done with
it.

This is what had happened that morning, before he'd come out. Iris had
been sitting by the pool, (the indoor heated pool. Veronica had married
money, Ed Shaker who had owned Shakers Motel and Supper Club) reading a
book.

"What's that you're reading ? " Luke had asked, to kill the
silence.

"It's a book about Sunset Boulevard, " she'd said, "The film. "

He'd known it was a film, he just hadn't seen it.

"I was just imagining you as the lead character, " she said, "In the
film, William Holden plays the lead. "

That wasn't bad. He knew William Holden from the Wild Bunch; a bit old
but full of dignity.

"He starts the film face down in a swimming pool, dead as you like, "
she drawled, "I was thinking how good you'd look, that way. "

Before he could get mad, she moved the chair around, making a huge
effort. The chair was like something prehistoric, it looked older than
Ironside's. It was a horrid brute black colour and the wheels were big
and heavy. They could have afforded something modern, but Iris had
wanted something awkward, something that would keep reminding him. It
made a grating noise as she moved it.

"I want a banana daiquiri, " she said.

"You don't like bananas, " he had said.

"I like them just fine in a banana daiquiri, " she'd shot back, "Betsy
can't make them. Lord knows I've tried to teach the girl but she can't
do it. So you're going to make me some. Make a jug and bring it out
here with a tall glass and some straws. "

In the Oystercross, Luke shivered and ordered himself another vodka
cranberry. Maybe he would go down the bowling alley with Sam and the
factory man and find out what they made bowling balls out of.