Telegraph Avenue

“I hope you were not counting on going to work for Gibson Goode anytime soon. Because as far you are concerned, Gibson Goode has moved on.”

Archy Stallings looked uncomfortable and unhappy, arms crossed, scowling, sharp corner of the record bin poking him in the ass. Maybe he was using the pain to focus himself, keep himself on his guard. Titus was not sure how loaded or sober the man was.

He had made his funeral speech, flowing all over the place, Indians, Vietnam, gumbo, Sly Stallone. At the end of his disquisition on what an undifferentiated mess life was to him, the man had choked up. In that instant, Titus had played a scene in his mind: The pregnant lady got up, put her arms around her baby’s daddy, he put his hand on the giant-size belly, and they decided that in the end, as long as life was going to be an undifferentiated mess, they might as well not fight it anymore. Make a place in the mess for a baby, a baby who would have a mother and a father, one small victory for the good kind of doubt and confusion over the bad. But in reality, when the movie in Titus’s mind came to an end, it turned out to be Julie’s father, Nat, giving Archy the hug of consolation. The box of tissues got passed around.

Then there was some drinking, for sure. Beer, wine, Cokes. People drank it all. They ate up the food, bum- rushed the buffet like freed prisoners, bees on a melting Popsicle. An hour later, it was all gone. A lone can of tonic water floated in a cooler, untouched among the ice cubes for quite some time, and eventually found its way into the company of a bottle of gin that never made a public appearance. The last Saturday afternoon of the summer went about its business, and it got to be time to ride on over to the cemetery, if you were going.

When the food was gone, the undertaker gave out instructions to his nephews and organized the procession to the cemetery, suggesting to some people that they let others do the driving, speaking in a kindly whisper far from the warlock voice he was using on Archy Stallings. Then the lid got lowered for the last time on Cochise Jones, and Titus played a scene in which he persuaded a few trusted confederates to join him in a heist operation to steal the clothes off the dead man before they were lost forever to rot and darkness and oblivion. Trap the hearse between a couple of tractor-trailers at an intersection, pull up in another hearse, switch caskets. Never let that beautiful thing, the Aztec number, go wasted in the ground. By the end of the scene he was cutting in his head, Titus found himself deep into creeping himself out, picturing a piebald cadaver rotting in the stainless leisure suit. Thing was made of space-age materials, no worm was ever going to touch it. Eternal as a Twinkie.

“So, you and he,” the undertaker was saying, “you are calling it quits. Is that what I am to understand?”

“I know you would be happy about that.”

“I would only be partway happy,” the undertaker said. “Which is the same as not happy at all.”

“We close the store, Nat’s bound to drop this whole protest thing. You won’t have to worry about that anymore.”

“Your friend already did his damage to me,” the undertaker said. “Now Rod Abreu has come sniffing around this whole deal, acting to the world like he is trying to eighty-six it. Letting Gibson Goode think he’s an enemy and needs to be kept close, as the saying goes. Needs to be won over. Right now, today, Rod Abreu is sitting at the Coliseum, letting G Bad pick up the tab for the nachos.”

Titus could not see the undertaker’s face, only the steely curl of the pompadour thing at the back of his head. But from the sound of his voice, he must be looking disgusted, contemptuous. It was an easy enough expression to imagine on the undertaker’s face.

“Tell me this,” he said, “if you close your store, curl up in a ball like a little pill bug, what are you going to do for a job to support your child?”

Only a second before, Archy had seemed fucked up, puzzled. He had this pudding look to his cheeks. Now it was all concrete and stone.

“I am going to see Mr. Jones on home,” he said. “And we ain’t finished doing that yet. I don’t need to ride with you. I have my own car.”

“Do you have a map to the gravesite? You’re going to need a map.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Mountain View, two hundred and twenty acres. Hundred and fifty thousand people buried there. Five, six funerals a day. You got the Jews in one place, Chinese over there. Black folks sprinkled all through it. Talk about Brokeland Creole. Mountain View Cemetery, that’s the only place you ever actually going to find it. But you need a map. You need guidance.”

“Oh, okay. You’re going all Jedi on me now.”

“Hear me out.”

“Going Morpheus.”

“You don’t deserve it, boy. But I am still willing to help you. We can get this mess straightened out. Luther has something I want. Nothing crazy, illegal, not drugs, guns, stolen goods, none of that. All right? Or yes, the thing was stolen, but it was stolen from me! It’s mine! I mean, seriously.” His voice broke, raspy almost to the point of a wheeze. “It’s mine, he has it, and I want it back. I have money, Luther’s broke. I figure maybe you’ve heard one or two things about me over the years that might have planted a seed in your imagination. When you are an undertaker and you come from a whole family of undertakers, people are going to hold all kinds of wild beliefs about the way you go about your business. So I want to reassure you. I don’t want to hurt Luther, do not want to mess with him, the Lord knows, Archy, I want nothing to do with that man any more than you do. That old boy wore me out a long time before he got around to wearing you out. I am a respectable businessman, I sit on the city council. I am not a gangster, and I know what people say about me, but it’s lies and rumors and folks letting their imaginations run away with them. One time when I was a young man, I made a mistake. A long time ago, right out of the navy. I made a mistake, but I was lucky, and one way and another, with some help from your father, credit where credit is due, I was able to put it behind me. Stopped running wild and acting a fool all the time. Got serious about life and settled down and did good for myself. Things did not go so well for your father. The whole time I was rising, he was sinking down. For the past ten, twelve years, he’s been coming around here, sometimes sober, most of the time so high or so drug-sick, he could not even really talk. But most of the time he managed to get his palm out, and I always crossed it with some cash for him.”

“He was blackmailing you.”

The undertaker didn’t respond to that. “Everything gets put where it belongs,” he said. “You can still find yourself standing behind the information desk in the Beats Department at the Dogpile store on Telegraph Avenue, dropping science on the youngsters when they stop in to pick up the new Lil’ Bow Wow, getting that employee discount to bring home one of those Baby Mozart DVDs, teach your new child to play the cello while he’s sleeping.”

“And I have to do what?”

“Son, I know you know where he is.”

“I honestly don’t.”

Crouched down in the bathroom with Julie leaning in over him, Titus heard the man lying. At the body shop, it had made him furious to see the contempt his father showed toward his own pops. Now Titus felt sorry for the dude, so twisted up with hate that he could not even let his poor, old kung fu ex-junkie daddy get paid back money he was free and clear owed.

“Have it your way, then,” the undertaker said.

For the first time, you could tell, Archy was thinking. Going back over it all. Making up his mind to do what he was going to do.

“I have no reason to want to enable that man,” he said. “And I have known you all my life, Brother Flowers. But I can’t help feeling like I’m seeing a side of you I never really believed was true.”

“Just conducting business.”

“Nah. You’re an undertaker. A mortician. Burying a dead man, supposed to be more than just business.”

“Well—”

“You never once told me, ‘I’m sorry for your loss. Mr. Jones was a fine man and a sharp dresser,’ or anything of that type.”

“Well, I am sorry,” the undertaker said.

But by that time, man was already on his way out the workroom door, headed for the cemetery and whistling “It’s Too Late.”