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Elvissa starts her tale: "It's a story I call The Boy with the Hummingbird
Eyes." So if all of you will please lean back and relax now, I will tell
it. 'lt starts in Tallahassee, Florida, where I grew up. There was this
boy next door, Curtis, who was best friends with my brother Matt. My
mother called him Lazy Curtis because he just drawled his way through
life, rarely speaking, silently chewing bologna sandwiches inside his
lantern jaw and hitting baseballs farther than anyone else whenever he
got up the will to do so. He was just so wonder-

fully silent. So competent at everything. I, of

course, madly adored Curtis ever from the first

moment our U-haul pulled up to the new

house and I saw him lying on the grass next

door smoking a cigarette, an act that made my

mother just about faint. He was maybe only

fifteen. "I promptly copied everything about him. Most superficially I copied his hair (which I still indirectly feel is slightly his to this day), his sloppy T-shirts and his lack of speech and his panthery walk. So did my brother. And the three of us shared what are still to me the best times of our lives walking around the subdivision we lived in, a devel­opment that somehow never got fully built. We'd play war inside these tract houses that had been reclaimed by palm trees and mangroves and small animals that had started to make their homes there, too: timid

a well-cut head of black hair and a hot bod. He would also occasionally bob his head up and down, then sideways, not like a spastic, but more as though he kept noticing something sexy from the corner of his eyes but was continually mistaken.

"Anyhow, this rich broad, this real Sylvia type" (Elvissa calls rich women with good haircuts and good clothes Sylvias) "comes out from the spa building going mince mince mince with her little shoey-wooeys and her Lagerfeld dress, right up to this guy in front of me. She purrrrs something I miss and then puts a little gold bracelet around this guy's wrist which he offers up to her (body language) with about as much enthusiasm as though he were waiting for her to vaccinate it. She gives the hand a kiss, says 'Be ready for nine o'clock' and then toddles off. "So I'm curious.

"Very coolly I stroll over to the pool bar—the one you used to work in, Andy—and order a most genteel cocktail of the color pink, then saunter back to my perch, surreptitiously checking out the guy on the way back. But I think I died on the spot when I saw who it was. It was Curtis, of course.

"He was taller than I remembered, and he'd lost any baby fat he might have had, and his body had taken on a sinewy, pugilistic look, like those kids who shop for needle bleach on Hollywood Boulevard who sort of resemble German tourists from a block away and then you see them up close. Anyhow, there were a lot of ropey white scars all over him. And Lord! The boy had been to the tattoo parlor a few times. A crucifix blared from his inner left thigh and a locomotive engine roared across his left shoulder. Underneath the engine there was a heart with china-dish break marks; a bouquet of dice and gardenias graced the other shoulder. He'd obviously been around the block a few times.

"I said, 'Hello, Curtis.' and he looked up and said, 'Well I'll be damned! It's Catherine Lee Meyers!' 1 couldn't think of what to say next. I put down my drink and sat closed legged and slightly fetal on a chair beside him and stared and felt warm. He reached up and kissed me on the cheek and said, 'I missed you, Baby Doll. Thought I'd be dead before 1 ever saw you again.'

"The next few minutes were a blur of happiness. But before long I had to go. My client was calling. Curtis told me what he was doing in town, but I couldn't make out details—something about an acting job in L.A. (uh oh). But even while we were talking, he kept bobbing his

head around to and fro looking at I don't know what. I asked him what he was looking at, and all he said was 'hummingbirds. Maybe I'll tell you more tonight.' He gave me his address (an apartment address, not a hotel), and we agreed to meet for dinner that night at eight thirty. I couldn't really say to him, 'But what about Sylvia?' really could I, knowing that she had a nine o'clock appointment. I didn't want to seem snoopy.

"Anyhow, eight thirty rolled around, plus a little bit more. It was the night of that storm—remember that? I just barely made it over to the address, an ugly condo development from the 1970s, out near Rac­quet Club Drive in the windy part of town. The power was out so the streetlights were crapped out, too. The flash-flood wells in the streets were beginning to overflow and I tripped coming up the stairs of the apartment complex because there were no lights. The apartment, number three-something, was on the third floor, so I had to walk up this pitch-black stairwell to get there, only to be ignored when I knocked on the door. I was furious. As I was leaving, I yelled 'You have gone to the dogs, Curtis Donnely,' at which point, hearing my voice, he opened the door.

"He'd been drinking. He said to not mind the apartment, which belonged to a model friend of his named Lenny. 'Spelled with an i,' he said, 'you know how models are.'

This was obviously not the same little boy from Tallahassee. "The apartment had no furniture, and owing to the power failure, no light, save for birthday candles, several boxes of which he had scavenged out of Lenni's kitchen drawer. Curtis was lighting them one by one. It was so dim.

I could faintly see that the walls were papered in a jetsam of black-and-white fashion photos ripped (not very carefully ripped, I might add) from fashion magazines. The room smelled like perfume sample strips. The models were predominantly male and pouting, with alien eyes and GQ statue bones that mouéed at us from all corners of the room. I tried to pretend I didn't notice them. After the age of twenty-five, Scotch taping magazine stuff to your walls is just plain scary.

"' 'Seems like we're destined to always end up meeting in primitive rooms, eh, Curtis?' I said, but I don't think he got the reference to our old mobile love hospital. We sat down on the floor on blankets near the sliding door and watched the storm outside. I had a quick scotch to grab

a buzz, but didn't want it to go past that. I wanted to remember the night.

"Anyhow, we had the slow, stunted conversation of people catching up with time. Every so often, as there is with strained reminiscences, there were occasional wan smiles, but mostly the mood was dry. I think we were both wondering if we'd made a mistake. He was maudlin drunk. Maybe he was going to cry soon.

"Then there was a banging on the door. It was Sylvia. " 'Oh fuck, it's Kate,' he whispered. 'Don't say anything. Make her wear herself out. Make her go away.'

"Kate was a force of nature outside the door in the black black hallway. Certainly not the meek little Sylvia of that afternoon. She'd make the devil blush with the names she was calling Curtis, demanding that he let her in, accusing him of banging and getting banged by anything that breathes and has a wallet, then quickly refining that to anything with a wallet. She was demanding her 'charms' back and threatening to have one of her husband's goons go after his 'one remaining orchid.' The neighbors, if not horrified, must at least have been fascinated.

"But Curtis just held me tight and said zero. Kate eventually spent herself out, whimpered, then soundlessly vacated the premises. Soon we heard a car roar and tires squeal down in the building's parkade.

"I was uncomfortable, but unlike the neighbors, I could sate my curiosity. Before I could ask a question, though, Curtis said 'Don't ask. Ask me about something else. Anything else. But not that.'

'"" 'Very well,' I said. 'Let's talk about hummingbirds,' which made him laugh and roll over. I was glad at least that some of the tension was gone. He then started taking off his pants, saying, 'Don't worry. You don't want to make it with me anyway. Trust me on that one, Baby Doll.' Then, once he was naked, he opened his legs and cupped his hands to his crotch, saying 'look.' Sure enough, there was just one 'orchid.'

'' 'That happened down in—,' he said, me stupidly forgetting the name of the country, someplace Central America, I think. He called it 'the servant's quarters.'

"He laid back on the blanket, scotch bottle at his side and told me about his fighting for pay in wars down there. Of discipline and cama­raderie. Of secret paychecks from men with Italian accents. Finally, he was relaxing.

"He went on at some length about his exploits, most of them about

as interesting to me as watching ice hockey on TV, but I kept up a good show of interest. But then he started mentioning one name more than others, the name Arlo. Arlo, I take it it was his best friend, something more than that—whatever it is that men become during a war, and who knows what else.

"Anyhow, one day Curtis and Arlo were out 'on a shoot,' when the fighting got life-threateningly intense. They were forced to lie down on the ground, covered in camouflage, with their primed machine guns pointed at the enemy. Arlo was lying next to Curtis and they were both hair-trigger itching to shoot. Suddenly, this hummingbird started darting into Arlo's eyes. Arlo brushed it away, but it kept darting back. Then there were two and then three hummingbirds, 'What the hell are they doing?' asked Curtis, and Arlo explained that some hummingbirds are attracted to the color blue and that they dart at it in an attempt to collect it to build their nests, and what they were trying to do was build their nests with Arlo's eyes.

"At that point Curtis said, 'Hey, my eyes are blue, too—,' but Arlo's sweeping gestures to move the birds out of his eyes attracted the enemy fire. They were attacked. That was when a bullet entered Curtis's groin and when another bullet entered Arlo's heart, killing him instantly. "What happened next, I don't know. But the next day Curtis joined the mop-up crews, in spite of his injury, and returned to the battle site to collect and bag the dead bodies. But when they found the body of Arlo, they were all as aghast as anybody who picks up bodies regularly can be, not because of his bullet wounds, (a common enough sight) but because of a horrible sacrilege that had been performed on his corpse —the blue meat of Arlo's eyes had been picked away from the whites. The native men cursed and crossed themselves, but Curtis merely closed Arlo's eyelids then kissed each one. He knew about the hummingbirds; he kept that knowledge to himself.

"He was 4-F'ed that day, and by nightfall was numb and on a plane back to the States, where he ended up in San Diego. And at that point his life becomes a blank. That's when all of the things he wouldn't tell me started to happen.

"' 'So that's why you're looking at the hummingbirds all the time, then,' I said. But there was more. Lying there on the floor, lit by a sad triad of three birthday candles that also illuminated a sullen beefcake on the bedroom wall, he began to cry. Oh, God, weep is the right word.

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Дата добавления: 2014-12-23