Koko

Clutching his head, Pumo slowly made his way into the bathroom. Without turning on the light, he bathed his face in cold water before daring to look at himself in the mirror. A grotesque purple mask, the face of the Elephant Man, stared back at him. His stomach flipped over, and he threw up into the sink and passed out again before he hit the floor.

10 Conversations and Dreams (#ulink_2cc0dd96-d2e2-5ee0-8bf9-41f13cef74a4)

1

‘Yes, I’ve been lying low, and no, I haven’t changed my mind about going,’ Pumo said. He was talking on the telephone to Michael Poole. ‘You should see me, or rather you shouldn’t. I’m hideous. I stay inside most of the time, because when I go out I frighten children.’

‘Is that some new kind of joke?’

‘Don’t I wish. I got beat up by a psychopath. I also got robbed.’

‘You mean you got mugged?’

Pumo hesitated. ‘In a way. I’d explain the circumstances, Mike, but frankly, they’re too embarrassing.’

‘Can’t you even give me a hint?’

‘Well, never pick up anybody who calls herself Dracula.’ After Michael had laughed dutifully, Pumo said, ‘I lost my watch, a clock radio, a brand new pair of lizard-skin boots from McCreedy and Shreiber, my Walkman, my Watchman, a Dunhill lighter that didn’t work anymore, a Giorgio Armani jacket, and all my credit cards and about three hundred in cash. And when the asshole took off, he or she left the downstairs door open and some goddamned bum came in and pissed all over the hallway.’

‘How do you feel about that?’ Michael groaned. ‘Jesus, what a stupid question. I mean, in general how do you feel? I wish you’d called me right away.’

‘In general I feel like committing murder, that’s how I feel in general. This thing shook me up, Mike. The world is full of hurt. I understand that there’s no real safety, not anywhere. Terrible things can happen in an instant, to anyone. That asshole just about made me afraid to go outside. But if you’re smart, you should be afraid to go outside. Listen – I want you guys to be careful when you get over there. Don’t take any risks.’

‘Okay,’ Michael said.

‘The reason I didn’t call you or anybody else is the only good thing that came out of this whole thing. Maggie showed up. I guess I just missed her at the place where I encountered Dracula. The bartender told her he saw me leaving with someone else, so the next day she came around to check up. And found me with my face about twice its normal size. So she moved back in.’

As Conor said, there’s a flaw in every ointment. Or something like that.’

‘But I did talk to Underhill’s agent. His former agent, I should say.’

‘Don’t make me beg.’

‘Basically the word is that our boy did go to Singapore, all right, just like he always said he would. Throng – the agent’s name is Fenwick Throng, believe it or not – didn’t know if he was still there. They have a funny history. Underhill always had his checks deposited in a branch bank down in Chinatown. Throng never even knew his address. He wrote to him in care of a post office box. Every now and then Underhill called up to rant at him, and a couple of times he fired him. I guess over a period of five or six years the calls got more and more abusive, more violent. Throng thought that Tim was usually drunk or stoned or high on something, or all three at once. Then he’d call back in tears a couple of days later and beg Throng to work for him again. Eventually it just got too crazy for Throng, and he told Tim he couldn’t work for him anymore. He thinks that Tim has been agenting his own books ever since.’

‘So he’s probably still out there, but we’ll have to find him for ourselves.’

‘And he’s nuts. He sounds scary as shit to me, Michael. If I were you, I’d stay home too.’

‘So the agent convinced you that Tim Underhill is probably Koko.’

‘I wish I could say he didn’t.’

‘I wish you could too.’

‘So consider this – is he really worth risking your neck for?’ Tina asked.

‘I’d sure as hell rather risk my neck for Underhill than for Lyndon Baines Johnson.’

‘Well, hang on, because here comes the good part,’ Tina said.

2

‘I don’t think adult men actually exist anymore – if they ever did,’ Judy said. ‘They really are just grown up little boys. It’s demeaning. Michael is a caring, intelligent person and he works hard and all that, but what he believes in is ridiculous. After you reach a certain level, his values are completely childish.’

‘At least they’re that mature,’ said Pat Caldwell. This conversation too was conducted over the telephone. ‘Sometimes I’m afraid that Harry’s are just infantile.’

‘Michael still believes in the army. He’d deny that, but it’s the truth. He takes that boy’s game as the real thing. He loved being part of a group.’

‘Harry had the time of his life in Vietnam,’ Pat said.

‘The point is that Michael is going back. He wants to be in the army again. He wants to be part of a unit.’

‘I think Harry just wants something to do.’

‘Something to do? He could get a job! He could start acting like a lawyer again!’

‘Hmm, well, perhaps.’

‘Are you aware that Michael wants to sell his share of the practice? That he wants to move out of Westerholm and work in a slum? He thinks he isn’t doing enough. I mean, he has a little tiny point, you have to be a doctor in a place like this to find out how really political it is, you wouldn’t believe how much infighting goes on, but that’s life, that’s all it is.’

‘So he’s using the trip to give himself time to think about it,’ Pat suggested.

‘He’s using the trip to play army,’ Judy said. ‘Let’s not even mention how he’s guilt-tripping himself about Ia Thuc.’

‘Oh, I think Harry was always proud of Ia Thuc,’ Pat said. ‘Some day, I ought to show you the letters he wrote me.’

3

The night before he flew to Singapore, Michael dreamed that he was walking at night along a mountain trail toward a group of uniformed men sitting around a small fire. When he gets nearer, he sees that they are ghosts, not men – flames show dimly through the bodies in front of the fire. The ghosts turn to watch him approach. Their uniforms are ragged and stiff with dirt. In his dream Michael simply assumes that he had served with these men. Then one of the ghosts, Melvin O. Elvan, stands and steps forward. Don’t mess with Underhill, Elvan says. The world is full of hurt.

On the same night, Tina Pumo dreams that he is lying on his bed while Maggie Lah paces around the bedroom. (In real life, Maggie disappeared again as soon as his face had begun to heal.) You can’t win a catastrophe, Maggie says. You just have to try to keep your head above water. Consider the elephant, his grace and gravity, his innate nobility. Burn down the restaurant and start over.

11 Koko (#ulink_7135909a-b8fe-5ac3-8844-a912ad67c887)

The shutters of the bungalow were closed against the heat. A film of condensation lay over the pink stucco walls, and the air in the room was warm, moist, and pink dark. There was a strong, dark brown smell of excrement. The man in the first of the two heavy chairs now and then grunted and stirred, or pushed his arms against the ropes. The woman did not move, because the woman was dead. Koko was invisible, but the man followed him with his eyes. When you knew you were going to die, you could see the invisible.

If you were in a village, say –

If the smoke from the cookfire wavered and rose straight into the air again. If the chicken lifted one foot and froze. If the sow cocked her head. If you saw these things. If you saw a leaf shaking, if you saw dust hovering –

Then you might see the vein jumping in Koko’s neck. You might see Koko leaning against a hootch, the vein jumping in his neck.

This is one thing Koko knew: there are always empty places. In cities where people sleep on the pavement, in cities so crowded people take shifts in bed, cities so crowded no one single person is ever truly quiet. In these cities especially there are always hollow realms, eternal places, places forgotten. Rich people leave the empty places behind, or the city itself leaves them behind.

The rich people move everything out and forget, and at night eternity quietly breaks in with Koko.

His father had been sitting in one of the two heavy chairs the rich people had left behind. We use everything, his father said. We waste no part of the animal.