Koko

‘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 tumbledown shacks, lounging policemen, 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.

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