“Maybe I’ll go over and say hello,” the nephew said, but he didn’t.
And then, a few days later, Jeb heard the thunderous squeal of a motorcycle peeling up the road. For hours, he listened at his basement window, nodding his head to the rhythmic tempo of the girl’s headboard hitting the wall, the gasps and grunts and growls. When it was over, he took off on foot down the road into town and spent the whole afternoon ambling like a stray dog under the striped storefront awnings, dodging the daylight, lest his white skin burn and blister. He licked a vanilla ice cream cone and regarded his slumped silhouette in the shop windows. He straightened his posture as best he could, but he was stooped by nature. He could still be a god on Earth, however, if only he found the right tribe. That would be something—to be worshipped and beloved. Jeb whistled through the warm evening streets, imagining this wonderful new place and all the stupid people who would gasp and fall to their knees in ecstasy every time he shuffled past.
THE BEACH BOY
The friends met for dinner, as they did the second Sunday of every month, at a small Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side. There were three couples: Marty and Barbara, Jerry and Maureen, and John and Marcia, who had recently returned from a week-long island getaway to celebrate their twenty-ninth wedding anniversary. “Were the beaches beautiful? How was the hotel? Was it safe? Was it memorable? Was it worth the money?” the friends asked.
Marcia said, “You had to see it to believe it. The ocean was like bathwater. The sunsets? Better than any painting. But the political situation, don’t get me started. All the beggars!” She put a hand over her heart and sipped her wine. “Who knows who’s in charge? It’s utter chaos. Meanwhile, the people all speak English!” The vestiges of colonialism, the poverty, the corruption—it had all depressed her. “And we were harassed,” she told the friends. “By prostitutes. Male ones. They followed us down the beach like cats. The strangest thing. But the beach was absolutely gorgeous. Right, John?”
John sat across the table, swirling his spaghetti. He glanced up at Marcia, nodded, winked.
The friends wanted to know what the prostitutes had looked like, how they’d dressed, what they’d said. They wanted details.
“They looked like normal people,” Marcia said, shrugging. “You know, just young, poor people, locals. But they were very complimentary. They kept saying, ‘Hello, nice people. Massage? Nice massage for nice people?’”
“Little did they know!” John joked, furrowing his eyebrows like a maniac. The friends laughed.
“We’d read about it in the guidebook,” Marcia said. “You’re not supposed to acknowledge them at all. You don’t even look them in the eye. If you do, they’ll never leave you alone. The beach boys. The male prostitutes, I mean. It’s sad,” she added. “Tragic. And, really, one wonders how anybody can starve in a place like that. There was food everywhere. Fruit on every tree. I just don’t understand it. And the city was rife with garbage. Rife!” she proclaimed. She put down her fork. “Wouldn’t you say, hon?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘rife,’” John answered, wiping the corners of his mouth with his cloth napkin. “Fragrant, more like.”
The waiter collected the unfinished plates of pasta, then returned and took their orders of cheesecake and pie and decaffeinated coffee. John was quiet. He scrolled through photos on his cell phone, looking for a picture he’d taken of a monkey seated on the head of a Virgin Mary statue. The statue was painted in bright colors, and its nose was chipped, showing the white, chalky plaster under the paint. The monkey was black and skinny, with wide-spaced, neurotic eyes. Its tail curled under Mary’s chin. John turned the screen of his phone toward the table.
“This little guy,” he said.
“Aw!” the friends cried. They wanted to know, “Were the monkeys feral? Were they smelly? Are the people Catholic? Are they all very religious there?”
“Catholic,” Marcia said, nodding. “And the monkeys were everywhere. Cute but very sneaky. One of them stole John’s pen right out of his pocket.” She rattled off whatever facts she could remember from the nature tour they’d taken. “I think there are laws about eating the monkeys. I’m not so sure. They all spoke English,” she repeated, “but sometimes it was hard to understand them. The guides, I mean, not the monkeys.” She chuckled.
“The monkeys spoke Russian, naturally,” John said, and put away his phone. The table talk moved on to plans for renovating kitchens, summer shares, friends’ divorces, new movies, books, politics, sodium, and cholesterol. They drank the coffees, ate the desserts. John peeled the wrapper off a roll of antacids. Marcia showed off her new wristwatch, which she’d purchased duty free at the airport. Then she reapplied her lipstick in the reflection in her water glass. When the check came, they all did the math, divvying up the cost. Finally, they paid and went out onto the street and the women hugged and the men shook hands.
“Welcome home,” Jerry said. “Back to civilization.”
“Ooh-ooh ah-ah!” John cried, imitating a monkey.
“Jesus, John,” Marcia whispered, blushing and batting the air with her hand as if shooing a fly.
Each couple went off in a different direction. John was a bit drunk. He’d finished Marcia’s second glass of wine because she’d said it was giving her a headache. He took her arm as they turned the corner onto East Eighty-second Street toward the park. The streets were nearly empty, late as it was. The whole city felt hushed, focused, like a young dancer counting her steps.
Marcia fussed with her silk scarf, also purchased duty free at the airport. The pattern was a paisley print in red and black and emerald green and had reminded her of the vibrant colors she’d seen the locals wearing on the island. Now she regretted buying the scarf. The tassels were short and fuzzy, and she thought they made the silk look cheap. She could give the scarf away as a gift, she supposed, but to whom? It had been so expensive, and her closest friends—the only people she would ever spend so much money on—had just seen her wearing it. She sighed and looked up at the moon as they entered the park.
“Thank God Jerry and Maureen are getting along again,” Marcia said. “It was exhausting when they weren’t.”
“Marty was funny about the wine, wasn’t he?” John said. “I told him I was fine with Syrah. What does it matter? Que sera, sera.” He unhooked his arm from Marcia’s elbow and put it around her shoulder.
“It gave me such a headache,” Marcia complained. “Should we cut across the field or go around?”