‘Now,’ she said, ‘lunch.’
She started down his chest towards his groin, licking the Jell-O as she went. ‘Mmmm, you taste delicious. I like the strawberry best …’
Between her rapidly flicking tongue and the friction of the warm, viscous Jell-O, it was an erotic experience beyond description. In the middle of it, the bathroom door flew open and the Great Zorbini strode in. The Sicilian took one look at his wife and the startled Jeff, and howled, ‘Tu sei una puttana! Vi ammazzo tutti e due! Dove sono i miei coltelli?’
Jeff did not recognize any of the words, but the tone was familiar. As the Great Zorbini raced out of the room to get his knives, Jeff leaped out of the bath, his body looking like a rainbow with the multicoloured Jell-O clinging to it, and grabbed his clothes. He jumped out of the window, naked, and began running down the alley. He heard a shout behind him and felt a knife sing past his head. Zing! Another, and then he was out of range. He dressed in a culvert, pulling his shirt and pants over the sticky Jell-O, and squished his way to the depot, where he caught the first bus out of town.
Six months later, he was in Vietnam.
Every soldier fights a different war, and Jeff came out of his Vietnam experience with a deep contempt for bureaucracy and a lasting resentment of authority. He spent two years in a war that could never be won, and he was appalled by the waste of money and matériel and lives, and sickened by the treachery and deceit of the generals and politicians who performed their verbal sleight of hand. We’ve been suckered into a war that nobody wants, Jeff thought. It’s a con game. The biggest con game in the world.
A week before Jeff’s discharge, he received the news of Uncle Willie’s death. The carnival had folded. The past was finished. It was time for him to enjoy the future.
The years that followed were filled with a series of adventures. To Jeff, the whole world was a carnival, and the people in it were his marks. He devised his own con games. He placed ads in newspapers offering a colour picture of the President for a dollar. When he received a dollar, he sent his victim a postage stamp with a picture of the President on it.
He put announcements in magazines warning the public that there were only sixty days left to send in five dollars, that after that it would be too late. The ad did not specify what the five dollars would buy, but the money poured in.
For three months Jeff worked in a boiler room, selling phony oil stocks over the telephone.
He loved boats, and when a friend offered him a job working on a sailing schooner bound for Tahiti, Jeff signed on as a seaman.
The ship was a beauty, a 165-foot white schooner, glistening in the sun, all sails drawing well. It had teak decking, long, gleaming Oregon fir for the hull, with a main salon that sat twelve and a galley forward, with electric ovens. The crew’s quarters were in the forepeak. In addition to the captain, the steward, and a cook, there were five deckhands. Jeff’s job consisted of helping hoist the sails, polishing the brass port-holes, and climbing up the ratlines to the lower spreader to mast the sails. The schooner was carrying a party of eight.
‘The owner is named Hollander,’ Jeff’s friend informed him.
Hollander turned out to be Louise Hollander, a twenty-five-year-old, golden-haired beauty, whose father owned half of Central America. The other passengers were her friends, whom Jeff’s buddies sneeringly referred to as the ‘jest set’.
The first day out Jeff was working in the hot sun, polishing the brass on deck. Louise Hollander stopped beside him.
‘You’re new on board.’
He looked up. ‘Yes.’
‘Do you have a name?’
‘Jeff Stevens.’
‘That’s a nice name.’ He made no comment. ‘Do you know who I am?’
‘No.’
‘I’m Louise Hollander. I own this boat.’
‘I see. I’m working for you.’
She gave him a slow smile. ‘That’s right.’
‘Then if you want to get your money’s worth, you’d better let me get on with my work.’ Jeff moved on to the next stanchion.
In their quarters at night, the crew members disparaged the passengers and made jokes about them. But Jeff admitted to himself that he was envious of them – their backgrounds, their educations, and their easy manners. They had come from monied families and had attended the best schools. His school had been Uncle Willie and the carnival.
One of the carnies had been a professor of archaeology until he was thrown out of college for stealing and selling valuable relics. He and Jeff had had long talks, and the professor had imbued Jeff with an enthusiasm for archaeology. ‘You can read the whole future of mankind in the past,’ the professor would say. ‘Think of it, son. Thousands of years ago there were people just like you and me dreaming dreams, spinning tales, living out their lives, giving birth to our ancestors.’ His eyes had taken on a faraway look. ‘Carthage – that’s where I’d like to go on a dig. Long before Christ was born, it was a great city, the Paris of ancient Africa. The people had their games, and baths, and chariot racing. The Circus Maximus was as large as five football fields.’ He had noted the interest in the boy’s eyes. ‘Do you know how Cato the Elder used to end his speeches in the Roman Senate? He’d say, “Delenda est cartaga”; “Carthage must be destroyed”. His wish finally came true. The Romans reduced the place to rubble and came back twenty-five years later to build a great city on its ashes. I wish I could take you there on a dig one day, my boy.’
A year later the professor had died of alcoholism, but Jeff had promised himself that one day he would go on a dig. Carthage, first, for the professor.
On the last night before the schooner was to dock in Tahiti, Jeff was summoned to Louise Hollander’s stateroom. She was wearing a sheer silk robe.
‘You wanted to see me, ma’am?’
‘Are you a homosexual, Jeff?’
‘I don’t believe it’s any of your business, Miss Hollander, but the answer is no. What I am is choosy.’
Louise Hollander’s mouth tightened. ‘What kind of women do you like? Whores, I suppose.’
‘Sometimes,’ Jeff said agreeably. ‘Was there anything else Miss Hollander?’
‘Yes. I’m giving a dinner party tomorrow night. Would you like to come?’
Jeff looked at the woman for a long moment before he answered. ‘Why not?’
And that was the way it began.
Louise Hollander had had two husbands before she was twenty-one, and her lawyer had just made a settlement with her third husband when she met Jeff. The second night they were moored at the harbour in Papeete, and as the passengers and crew were going ashore, Jeff received another summons to Louise Hollander’s quarters. When Jeff arrived, she was dressed in a colourful silk pareu slit all the way up to the thigh.
‘I’m trying to get this off,’ she said. ‘I’m having a problem with the zipper.’
Jeff walked over and examined the costume. ‘It doesn’t have a zipper.’
She turned to face him, and smiled. ‘I know. That’s my problem.’
They made love on the deck, where the soft tropical air caressed their bodies like a blessing. Afterwards, they lay on their sides, facing each other. Jeff propped himself up on an elbow and looked down at Louise. ‘Your daddy’s not the sheriff, is he?’ Jeff asked.
She sat up in surprise. ‘What?’
‘You’re the first townie