Shark Infested Custard (25 page)

       "Why?"

       "We're Catholics, Eddie, as you know, but she's a woman Catholic, and they take all that shit seriously. Well, at first she wouldn't even believe me, so I told her to call the doctor. Dr. Silverstein—and you might want to remember this, Eddie—wouldn't tell her shit over the phone. So the next day she went to see him. Meanwhile, you know, I was back home again, and still no ass, you see. She had to get this thing straightened out. So when she saw Silverstein, and proved who she was, he confirmed the operation—that I'd had it for more than six months, and we could screw our heads off if we wanted to."

       "So everything was okay?"

       "Hell, no! Then she had to see the flicking priest. He's a real prick, and he comes over to the house for dinner about twice a month. You ought to see the bastard drink my Chivas Regal—like wine, man. Here's the thing, Eddie. She would've done anything he told her to do, and he sure as hell didn't tell her not to screw anymore. I mean, he could've told her that, but he didn't. He merely let her figure it out for herself, which was worse. He told her that a woman could not deny her husband, which is right, but he also reminded her that the purpose of sex was procreation. This way, you see, she more or less had to make her own moral decision. And she decided, now that it was impossible for her to get pregnant, because I had the vasectomy, that there was no longer any purpose in having sex any more. She'd never cared much about it in the first place. I tried to reason with her—you know, what difference is there between the half-assed rhythm system, which is a way to avoid pregnancy, and a sure way—but she wouldn't accept the logic. She's too emotional."

       "Well, Don. If you ever want a divorce, you've got grounds for one. No judge would ever go along with that crap."

       "I'll never get a divorce, Eddie. If I did, I'd lose my daughter. The way things are now, I'm stuck, that's all. But I'm going to get out of it one of these days. Anyway, to get back to Nita Peralta. It took awhile, but she was so happy about Clara and me being reconciled it pissed me off. So I finally told Nita the truth about what was going on with my sex—or non-sex—life. She, too, you know, is a Catholic. And she's a virgin, too, believe it or not—"

       "No!" Eddie laughed.

       "No, she really is, Ed, and I feel kind of sorry for her. She's supporting her mother and her uncle, and about three teenaged kids—cousins or something. She's past thirty now, and she's still saving her box for a husband. But because she's taking care of all that family—her grandmother did live with her, but she died—Nita missed out on getting married. With Cuban girls, if they aren't married by the time they're nineteen or twenty, they can forget about it. Twenty-five is just about the outside limit, and then they have to settle for losers. The only chance for Nita to get married now, if she has any chance at all, is some old widower, unless she marries a white man—a Protestant. And she'd never do that."

       "Hell, she's white, isn't she?"

       "I guess so, but you know what I mean. All Cubans have got a touch or so of the old tarbrush. On an island like that, there is no way to avoid it. Even Castro is one-fourth nigger, you know.

       "Anyway, Nita's still saving her box for someone. But not her ass. The way Catholic women work these things out in their minds is really something else, Eddie. But she began to brood about my lack of sex, and all, and she worked it out inside her head that it was okay for me to screw her in the ass, but I couldn't touch her anywhere else, you see. Not even a kiss—because a carnally-minded kiss, you see, would be a mortal sin. I wish to hell I'd had a tape recorder when she came to me with all this stuff. She had this real serious expression, and her big brown eyes were wide as she rattled through the whole explanation. It was hard for me to keep a straight face, but I did—somehow. A serious Cubano is weird enough, but a serious Cuban female—Jesus. She went on and on, and she kept throwing her arms and hands around as she got excited about it. But the upshot of the whole business was that I ended up by cornholing her over the desk here. I didn't mind. It was something to do, and at first I was slipping it to her every damned day. Then I got turned off somehow, and unless I'm desperate I just can't do it. Once a month, maybe—or five or six weeks go by, and then I call her in. She got worried when I slacked off, but I explained to her that it was like marriage. You do it a lot at first, and then only occasionally. I told her to talk to her girl friends about it—those who were married—and they'd tell her the same thing. So she did, and they did, and it worked out all right. What really turned me off, I think, was the fear that she'd tell the priest about it in confession. We go to the same church in the Grove, you see. I don't want that rummy bastard to get anything on me."

       "Maybe she told him already, and he hasn't let on."

       "No, not that bastard, Eddie. He drinks my Chivas like wine, man, and if he knew about Nita and me he'd be after a big donation."

       "You don't believe in the church, do you, Don? How the hell can she possibly think that her ass is exempt from sin, if—" Eddie laughed, and then choked, shaking his head.

       Don grinned. "There's nothing wrong with the church, Eddie, it's the people in it. People are always going to find a way to do what they want to do. Once Nita had worked this idea out in her squirrelly mind, she was set to carry through with it. She's loyal to me, she was worried about me, and she came up with a way to make me happy. In her heart, maybe, or deeply buried inside her mind, there's probably a doubt, but she's managed to suppress it. If she 'didn't'' have that doubt, she would've checked with the priest first, and asked 'him'' if it was okay. D'you see what I mean?"

       "Sure, I see it. But I was asking about you, not Nita. What kind of Catholic does that make you, you bastard?"

       Don shrugged. "I go to Mass on Sundays. I'm a pretty good Catholic. I believe in the church. I haven't been in a state of grace since I got the vasectomy. But I figure that sooner or later the church'll get around to authorizing vasectomies. And when they do I can go to confession, and get all this crap unloaded and off my mind."

       "Suppose you die in the meantime, Don, and you aren't in a state of grace?"

       "How'd you like some coffee, Ed?" Don crossed to the door and opened it. "We keep a pot—"

       "Forget the coffee," Eddie said. "We'd better get along. I had three cups before I called you from the Pancake House."

       "When will we be back?"

       "In two, maybe three hours. We'll land in Ft. Myers, have lunch, and then fly straight back. But we'll have to take both cars. I won't feel like driving back downtown from Opa-Locka, when it's closer for me to Miami Springs, so you'd better follow me out. I'm flying to Chicago tonight."

       "Okay," Don said, nodding. "In that case I'll just call it a day."

       Don told Nita Peralta that he would see her in the morning, and the two men drove to the Opa-Locka Airport.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Flying made Gladys sick. Eddie had seen to that.

       To get away from Gladys once in awhile, to have a little time to himself, he told her that the airline had ordered all pilots to fly ten additional hours per month in light planes as "refresher" training. Gladys didn't know anything about airplanes or the airline, and she had accepted the story as the truth. It had made her angry, however, because it seemed unfair for the airline to give such an order and then make the pilots pay for their own rentals.

       "If they're making you do it," Gladys said, "they should pay for the planes."

       "They don't look at it that way" Eddie told her. "Besides, that's why they pay us so much money—so we'll have enough dough to pay for little extras like that. The way they look at it, they're doing us a favor. Most of us pilots like to fly light planes anyway, and by ordering us to do it, you see, we can take the expenses off our income taxes."

       Gladys knew a lot about money, and she was mollified that Eddie could write off the plane rental fees.

       Eddie didn't like to lie, and he had wondered, later on, why he really hadn't wanted to have Gladys along when he went flying, but flying seemed about the only area left to him where he could be completely alone. He didn't mind having Gladys around all the time. Most of the time, it was very pleasant. He liked to have her drive him to the Miami International Airport and pick him up when he came back from his regular flights. He avoided the parking hassle that way. He liked having her along when he went to a movie in the afternoon, or talking to her at dinner, or when they watched TV at night. But sometimes a man wanted to be by himself. Gladys often did things she didn't want to do, just to be with him. So Eddie had given up a few things he liked to do because he knew that she didn't really enjoy them. But she was with him all the time.

       In the evening, around ten p.m., Eddie liked to stretch his legs. The four-block walk to the 7/Eleven store was just about right. He would walk down there, get a Coke and a bag of peanuts, browse among the magazines, and then buy the early edition of the next morning's 'Miami Herald''. Gladys accompanied him on these walks, which meant that he had to wait for her while she put on fresh make-up and got dressed for the walk. When he wanted to take a little walk, that was what he wanted to do—then—not wait twenty minutes for Gladys to take off her old make-up and then put on all fresh make-up. But he went along with it, and waited, even though it made him impatient.

       He still had the early morning jogging to himself, too. Gladys had bought a new sweat suit and red leather Keds with white racing stripes so she could jog with him in the morning, but she had only lasted for one morning and one block before she quit and walked home. Eddie had set a fast pace, and trying to keep up with him had made her breasts hurt. So all Eddie had left was the jogging and the flying. The rest of the time, during the three or four days a week he was in Miami, Gladys was with him. She was with him all the time, it seemed.

       She had begged to go with him on the first Cessna flight, all excited about the idea, because she had never flown in a light plane before. This was about a month after he had moved into her house. As soon as he got some altitude he had sideslipped into a falling leaf, zigzagging sharply for a fairly swift drop of about 200 feet. Gladys had vomited all over her purple slacks and white sandals. He had flown back to the Opa-Locka airport only ten minutes after take-off.

       "What caused that terrible drop?" she asked, as she scrambled out of the plane.

       "Air pockets," Eddie lied. "They happen all the time, and I had to fight for control."

       But even if she had given up flying with him, she usually drove him to the Opa-Locka airport and waited for him to come down. And this made Eddie a little irritated—knowing she was just sitting down there in the Twin Services rental waiting room, flipping through old 'Aeronautical Journals'', bored out of her skull for two or three hours. The slight feeling of guilt he felt had diminished some of his pleasure in being alone up there.

       If she hadn't been in Fort Lauderdale, she would have been with him today, not saying anything, but pouting jealously because he and Don were going to be alone for two or three hours without her. In some respects Gladys reminded Eddie of Schatzi, the German shepherd bitch he used to have as a boy. When he used to put his arm around his mother, or kissed her goodbye when he was leaving the house, Schatzi would bark and snarl. Until he broke her of the habit by beating her with a rolled newspaper, Schatzi would snap at his mother's legs.

       But having Don with him in the plane was a lot different from having Gladys. Don probably had a hundred questions to ask, but Don could sense that Eddie didn't want to talk while he was flying. If Eddie had wanted to talk, why would he rent a plane for $55 an hour? So Don was quiet, and looked out the window. Gladys would have been asking "What's that?—and that?—and that?" Of course, just to have Don or anyone else along was distracting, in a sense, because if Don hadn't been with him Eddie wouldn't have been thinking about him. But then, Eddie didn't mind thinking about Don, because if he thought about Don he wouldn't have to think about Gladys. And thinking about Gladys, now that he had made his decision, was painful. He wanted to wait until he had some more distance, until he was in Chicago, maybe. Then he would think about Gladys.

       Don, Eddie thought, was like a chameleon—a social chameleon—because he could adapt himself to almost any group or social situation—blend right in and be accepted, even though he never said much of anything. Basically, though, Don was a sad guy, a sufferer. Although he didn't show his pain or complain about anything much unless he was fairly close to a man, as he was with Eddie and Hank, and Larry, sometimes. But even then Don had to be coaxed a little to get him to talk about his problems.

       That story about Nita and the rim-job was probably true. Otherwise, Don wouldn't have told it on himself. Eddie would never have told a story like that to anyone if it had happened to him. And yet, in a curious way, he had admired Don's courage, or humility in being able to tell him about it. Don could talk about it, Eddie supposed, because he was a Catholic. Catholics were used to making confessions, or conditioned, as children, to talking about intimate matters to nuns and priests, and so it probably didn't bother them any. Also, Don being an Italian and all—that probably had something to do with his crying when he got drunk. Italians were very emotional. Eddie hadn't cried since he was twelve years old, and that was when Schatzi was run over. She was a good old dog, Schatzi. Eddie had refused his mother's offer of a new puppy. He hadn't wanted another dog. Another dog wouldn't be old Schatzi. Some things were just too damned intimate to discuss.

       Eddie certainly couldn't talk about his sex life with Gladys to anyone, although Hank had asked him questions about it several times. Every time, Eddie had merely grinned and shrugged. He had driven old Hank right up the wall. But what he and Gladys did together would never be told to anyone. He didn't even like to think about it. Jesus. He had had his share of ass in his time, but he had never done 'that'' with anyone before! Eddie wasn't a prude. He didn't mind talking about sex, in general, like admitting you balled some chick three times in one night, or something like that, but going into the intimate details was just too gauche.