“Marion, it’s Paul Chardy.”
The door shot open.
“Paul, my God!”
“Marion, hi. I should have called. Something brought me out here and I thought, what the hell?”
“How did you find me? Nobody can find anything in Columbia the first time.”
“Lucky,” he said, sparing her the tale of his lost hours.
“Come in.”
He stepped into a hall and she took him down a step into the living room, which was cream-colored, filled with plants and light and spare, clean furniture.
“It’s very nice.”
“Sorry about the mess. My husband’s kids are with us this month.”
“Don’t worry about it. You ought to see my place.”
“Sit down, Paul. Can I get you some coffee?”
“Thanks. I’d appreciate it.”
She went to the kitchen as he sat down on the sofa.
“Paul,” she called, “it’s so nice to see you.”
She came back with two cups.
“I remember that you drank it black.”
“I haven’t changed. Remember that night in Hong Kong? Frenchy and I were just in from Vietnam. You met us at the airport. ’sixty-six or ’sixty-seven?”
“Nineteen sixty-six.”
“’sixty-six, yeah. And how we celebrated that night? We went to that place out in Happy Valley. The Golden Window, I think it was. Right next to the furniture plant, and you could smell the lacquer and hear the buzz saw next door. Remember that place had all those fish, six tanks of them? They glowed? Jesus, and we got drunk. Frenchy and I did anyway. And we were supposed to check in with Cy Brasher the next day at oh-eight-thirty. And you had that taxi driver find a place that was open at about five. And you ordered coffee and made us drink it. Black coffee. And wouldn’t let us go back to the hotel. You really saved our tails that night, Marion. Do you remember?”
“Yes, I do, Paul.”
Chardy sat back, took a drink of his coffee. “That was some night.”
“And wasn’t there a girl who wouldn’t leave you alone? At the Golden Window. And then you disappeared on us for three days after you got through the thing with Cy Brasher.”
“Oh, yeah,” Chardy said.
“And of course we knew where you’d been.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Chardy, leering as if he remembered the tart. And then he did, a Eurasian girl. She lived in a crappy little apartment in the city with three children. She’d given him a dose, too. And Frenchy had her, but that was on another trip, when Marion wasn’t around.
“Marion, I just can’t get it out of my head. We really had some times in those old days.”
“I used to think about it too, Paul.”
“But you quit? God, how? I’m still stuck back in the sixties.”
“You were very young then. That was your youth. You always remember your youth. And for me I suppose it had to do with starting a new life. A new family. New friends. You just have a different circle.”
“But you must miss him. The Frenchman. I miss him terribly.”
“I do, Paul. Of course. Frenchy was one in a million. I miss him all the time.”
“Old Frenchy. He taught me so much. Oh, he taught me a lot.”
“But Paul, it can be dangerous back there. I never told you this — or anybody this. But after Frenchy died, I had a very rough time. I had to go into a place for a while. And they made me see how he was killing me. And I had to let him go. I had to let it all go, and move ahead.”
“I wish I could.”
“You can. Frenchy always said you were the strongest.”
“Ah, Frenchy. The old bastard. Marion, where did they put him? I’d love to go see him. Just once, for old times’ sake.”
“He’s in Cleveland, Paul. A very nice place. He was cremated, and he’s in a vault in a nice cemetery outside Cleveland.”
“Maybe I’ll go there sometime,” Chardy said.
“Paul, have you been drinking?”
“Not enough,” he said, laughing loudly.
She nodded, disturbed. She was still a pretty woman; or rather he could still see her prettiness underneath her age, her thickness. She’d seemed to turn to leather. She was so tan she glowed. Her legs were still slim and beautiful. She’d been a stewardess, he seemed to remember. Yes, Frenchy always had a gift for stewardesses; they responded to him somehow.
“I’m just so mad he was dead all that time and I didn’t even know. The bastards could have told me that, at least.”
“I never liked the secrecy. I hated all that.”
“Ah, they don’t know what they’re doing.” He dismissed them with a contemptuous and exaggerated wave of his hand. He laughed loudly, threw down some more coffee. “Christ, the bastards,” he said.
Marion watched him. “You have been drinking.”
“A bad habit. Nothing serious. I drink, I shoot my mouth off. I make enemies, I take afternoons off. I get sentimental, look up old friends.” He laughed again. “Look at me now. Chasing ghosts.”
“Paul, you need help.”
“No, no, Paul’s fine. Old Paul, the strong one. He’s the strong one. Frenchy really said that?”
“He did.”
“I loved him. Marion, I have to know. What did they do to him?”
She seemed to take a large breath. She stood at the window. She looked out upon other Normandy-style mock farmhouses.
“It’s such a pretty neighborhood, Paul. It’s so leafy and bright. It’s a wonderful place to raise children. They have pools all over the place and playgrounds they call ‘tot lots.’ They have little shopping malls they call ‘village centers.’ It’s a wonderful place. I’m so happy here.”
“Marion. Please tell me. I have to know.”
“Paul, I don’t want to go back there. I had so much trouble. You don’t know how much trouble I had. I think it would be better if you left. This just isn’t working. I can’t go back there. Do you know how hard I had to work to get to this place, Paul? To have this life? This is the life I wanted, Paul, I always wanted.”
“Help me, Marion. Please help me. I need your help.”
“You’re not here for the old times, Paul. You’re not here out of love or loyalty. You’re still in it. I can smell it on you, Paul.”
She stood by the window.
“It’s so important, Marion.”
“It really was awful, wasn’t it, Paul? All the things you and Frenchy did. You thought you were such heroes, such big men, flying all over the world. Your duty, you called it. You were fighting for freedom. You were fighting for America. But you were just thugs. Gangsters. Killers. Weren’t you? Maybe that’s the shoe that fits.”
“I don’t know, Marion. I don’t know what we were.”
“Frenchy told me, years later he told me, that in Vietnam accidents happened all the time. The wrong people always died. And in South America the soldiers you worked with were brutal men, who hated everybody. There was just too much violence sometimes, it couldn’t be controlled. It just slopped all over the place.”
“Terrible things happened. That’s what it was about.”
“‘Hairy.’ Isn’t that the word? That was Frenchy’s favorite word. ‘Very hairy, babe,’ he’d say when he came back, just before he drank himself insensible What it means, though, is that a lot of people had just gotten killed in some terrible and arbitrary way, for no reason. Isn’t that what it means?”
“Sometimes.”
“Do you know, Paul, that Frenchy didn’t make love to me for the last five years of his life? Tried, tried hard. He just couldn’t do it. The war was eating him up. It was destroying the great Frenchy Short. He was trying to get out before it killed him and he knew he wouldn’t make it. He knew. That last trip, he knew.”