Koko (21 page)

A black-naped tern flies across the face of the Singapore one-dollar note. A black
band like a burglar’s mask covers its eyes, and behind it hovers a spinning chaos
of intertwined circles twisting
together like the strands of a cyclone. So the bird agitates its wings in terror,
and darkness overtakes the land.

Mr. Lucas? Mr. Bundy?

Banking, the man says. Investment banking. We do a lot of work in Singapore.

Me too.

Hell of a nice place, Singapore. And if you’re in the money business, it’s hot, and
I mean
hot.

One of the hot new places.

“Bobby,” the stewardess asks, “what would you like to drink?”

Vodka, ice-cold.

“Mr. Dickerson?”

Mr. Dickerson will have a Miller High Life.

In Nam we used to say: Vodka martini on the rocks, hold the vermouth, hold the olive,
hold the rocks.

Oh, you were never in Nam?

Sounds funny, but you missed a real experience. Not that I’d go back, Christ no. You
were probably on the other side, weren’t you? No offense, we’re all on the same side
now, God works in funny ways. But I did all my demonstrating with an M-16, hah hah.

Bobby Ortiz is the name. I’m in the travel industry.

Bill? Pleased to meet you, Bill. Yes, it’s a long flight, might as well be friends.

Sure, I’ll have another vodka, and give another beer to my old pal Bill here.

Ah, I was in I Corps, near the DMZ, up around Hue.

You want to see a trick I learned in Nam? Good—I’ll save it, though, it’ll be better
later, you’ll enjoy it, I’ll do it later.

Bobby and Bill Dickerson ate their meals in companionable silence. Clocks spun in
no-time.

“You ever gamble?” Koko asked.

Dickerson glanced at him, his fork halfway to his mouth. “Now and then. Only a little.”

“Interested in a little wager?”

“Depends on the wager.” Dickerson popped the forkful of chicken into his mouth.

“Oh, you won’t want to do it. It’s too strange. Let’s forget it.”

“Come on,” Dickerson said. “You brought this up, don’t chicken out now.”

Oh, Koko liked Billy Dickerson. Nice blue linen suit, nice thin glasses, nice big
Rolex. Billy Dickerson played racquetball, Billy Dickerson wore a sweatband across
his forehead and had a hell of a good backhand, real aggressor.

“Well, I guess being on a plane reminded me of this. It’s something we used to do
in Nam.”

Definite look of interest on good old Billy’s part.

“When we’d come into an LZ.”

“Landing Zone?”

“You got it. LZ’s were all different, see? Some were popping, and some were like dropping
into the middle of a church picnic in Nebraska. So we’d make the Fatality Wager.”

“Like you’d bet on how many people would get killed? Buy the farm, like you guys used
to say?”

Buy the farm. Oh, you sweetheart.

“More on
if
someone would get killed. How much money you carrying in your wallet?”

“More than usual,” Billy said.

“Five, six hundred?”

“Less than that.”

“Let’s make it two hundred. If somebody dies at the San Francisco airport while we’re
in the terminal, you pay me two hundred. If not, I’ll give you one hundred.”

“You’ll give me two to one on someone dying in the terminal while we’re going through
customs, getting our bags, stuff like that?”

“That’s the deal.”

“I’ve never seen anyone kick off in an airport,” Billy said, shaking his head, smiling.
He was going to take the bet.

“I have,” Koko said. “Upon occasion.”

“Well, you got yourself a bet,” Billy said, and they shook hands.

After a time Lady Dachau pulled down the movie screen. Most of the cabin lights went
out. Billy Dickerson closed
Megatrends
, tilted his seat way back, and went to sleep.

Koko asked Lady Dachau for another vodka and settled back to watch the movie.

The good James Bond saw Koko as soon as he came on the screen. (The bad James Bond
was a sleepy Englishman who looked a little bit like Peters, the medic who had been
killed in a helicopter crash. The good James Bond looked a little like Tina Pumo.)
He walked straight up to the camera and said, “You’re fine, you have nothing to worry
about, everybody does what they
have to do, that’s what war teaches you.” He gave Koko a little half-smile. “You did
well with your new friend, son. I noticed that. Remember now—”

Ready on the right? Ready on the left? Lock and load.

Good afternoon, gentlemen, and welcome to the Republic of South Vietnam. It is presently
fifteen-twenty, November three, 1967. You will be taken to the Long Binh Replacement
Center, where you will receive your individual unit assignments.

Remember the darkness of the tents. Remember the metal lockers. Remember the mosquito
netting on the T-bars. Remember the muddy floors. Remember how the tents were like
dripping caves.

Gentlemen, you are part of a great killing machine.

This is your weapon. It may save your life.

Nobility, grace, gravity.

Koko saw an elephant striding down a civilized European avenue. The elephant was buttoned
into an elegant green suit and tipped his hat to all the charming ladies. Koko smiled
at James Bond, who jumped out of his fancy car and looked Koko straight in the eye,
and in quiet clear italics said,
Time to face the elephant again, Koko.

A long time later they stood in the aisle, holding their carry-on baggage and waiting
for Lady Dachau to open the door. At eye level directly before Koko hung the jacket
of Billy Dickerson’s blue linen suit, all correctly webbed and criss-crossed with
big easy-going, casual-looking wrinkles that made you want to be wrinkled yourself,
as easy and casual as that. When Koko glanced up he saw Billy Dickerson’s blond hair
ruffling out over the perfect collar of the linen suit. A pleasant smell of soap and
aftershave emanated from good old Bill, who had disappeared into the forward toilet
for nearly half an hour that morning while no-time turned into San Francisco time.

“Hey,” Dickerson said, looking over his shoulder at Koko, “if you want to call off
that bet it’s okay with me, Bobby. Pretty crazy.”

“Indulge me,” Koko said.

Lady Dachau got the signal she was waiting for and opened the door.

They walked into a corridor of cool fire. Angels with flaming swords waved them forward.
Koko heard distant mortar fire, a sign that nothing truly serious was happening: the
Tin Man had just sent out a few boys to use up some of this month’s quota of
the taxpayers’ money. The cool fire, frozen into patterns like stone, wavered beneath
their feet. This was America again. The angels with flaming swords gave flaming smiles.

“You remember me mentioning that trick?”

Dickerson nodded and lifted an eyebrow, and he and Koko strolled along toward the
baggage area. The angels with flaming swords gradually lost their numinosity and became
uniformed stewardesses pulling wheeled carts behind them. The flames curling in the
stone hardened into stiff cold patterns.

The corridor went straight for perhaps twenty yards, then slanted off to the right.

They turned the corner.

“A men’s room, thank God,” Dickerson said, and sped on ahead and shouldered open the
door.

Smiling, Koko sauntered after, imagining an empty white-tiled place.

A woman in a bright yellow dress who passed before him exuded the hot, bloody aroma
of the eternal world. For a moment a bright sword flickered in her hand. He pushed
open the door of the men’s room and had to shift his case to one side to swing open
another door almost immediately behind it.

A bald man stood at one of the sinks, washing his hands. Beside him a shirtless man
leaned over a sink and scraped lather from his face with a blue plastic razor. Koko’s
stomach tightened. Good old Billy was far down a row of urinals, more than half of
which were occupied.

Koko saw his tense, haunted-looking face in the mirror. He jumped at himself out of
his own eyes.

He went to the first urinal and pretended to pee, waiting for everyone to leave him
alone with Dickerson. Something had gotten loose inside him, buzzed under his ribs,
made him so lightheaded that he wobbled.

For an instant he thought he was already in Honduras, his work was either completed
or ready to be begun all over again. Under an immense sun little brick-colored people
milled around a comically provincial airport with tumble-down shacks, lounging policeman,
and dozing hounds.

Dickerson zipped up, moved swiftly to the sink, passed his hands through a stream
of water and a stream of air, and was gone almost before Koko came back to the men’s
room.

He hurried out. The loose thing in his chest buzzed painfully against his ribs.

Dickerson was moving quickly into a huge room where carousels
like black volcanos whirred and gouted suitcases down their ribbed flanks. Nearly
everyone on their flight was already gathered around the second carousel. Koko watched
Dickerson work his way around the edge of the people waiting for their bags. The thing
in his chest slipped down into his stomach, where it flew like an angry bee into his
intestines.

Sweating now, Koko crept through the people who stood between himself and Dickerson.
Lightly, almost reverently, he brushed his fingers over the linen sleeve that held
Dickerson’s left arm.

“Hey, Bobby, I don’t feel right, you know,” Dickerson said, bending forward and lifting
a big Vuitton suitcase off the belt.

Koko knew one thing: a woman had picked out that bag.

“About the money thing. Let’s eighty-six the whole idea, okay?”

Koko nodded miserably. His own beat-up case was nowhere on the carousel. Everything
had gone slightly blurry around the edges, as if a fine mist hung in the air. A tall
black-haired woman who was a living sword plucked a tiny case off the belt and—Koko
saw through the descending mist—smiled at Dickerson.

“Take care,” Dickerson said.

A uniformed man walked unerringly up to Dickerson and passed him through customs with
a few questions. Dickerson strode off to a window to have his passport stamped.

Dazed, Koko saw his own suitcase thump down the side of the carousel and glide past
him before he thought to lift it off the belt. He watched Dickerson’s steadily dwindling
body pass through a door marked
EXIT-TRANSPORTATION.

In Customs the inspector called him “Mr. Ortiz” and searched the ripped lining of
his suitcase for diamonds or heroin.

At Immigration he saw flaming wings sprout from the uniformed shoulders of the man
in the booth, and the man stamped his passport and welcomed him back to the country,
and Koko grabbed his old case and his carry-on bag and ran to the nearest men’s room.
He dropped the bags just inside the door and sprinted into an open toilet. As soon
as he sat down his bowels opened, then opened again. Fire dripped and spurted from
him. For a moment Koko’s stomach felt as though a long needle had pierced it; then
he bent forward and vomited between his shoes. He sat in his own stink for a long
time, his bags forgotten, thinking only of what was there before him.

Eventually he wiped himself off, moved to the sink, washed his face and his hands,
put his head beneath the cold water.

Koko took his bags outside and waited for the transfer bus to take him to the terminal
from which his New York flight would leave. The air smelled of chemicals and machinery:
everything before him looked two-dimensional and newly washed, drained of color.

In the second terminal Koko found a bar and ordered a beer. He felt that time had
stopped—that it waited for him to wake it into life again. His breathing was shallow
and slightly rushed. At the front of his forehead was a light, empty sensation, as
if some moderate pain had just ceased. He could remember very little of what had happened
to him during the past twenty-four hours.

He could remember Lady Dachau.

Gentlemen, you are part of a great killing machine.

Ten minutes before boarding, Koko went to his gate and stood looking out the window,
an unobtrusive man seeing an elephant in a suit and hat rearing up out of a wide dark
pool of blood. When the first-class passengers were called, he filed on board and
took his seat. He told the stewardess to call him Bobby.

Then everything really was all right, the sweet ache and buzz came alive within him
again, for a pudgy man in his thirties dropped a briefcase into the aisle seat, shrugged
off a green knapsack and set it beside the briefcase, removed his suit jacket to expose
a striped shirt and dark blue suspenders, and snapped his fingers for the girl to
take his jacket. The man shoved the knapsack into the overhead compartment, picked
up his briefcase and squeezed into his seat. He scowled at Koko, then began to root
through the contents of the briefcase.

“I don’t suppose you’re a betting man,” Koko said.