An Absence of Light

He got out of the car, locked it, and walked across to the cafe. The neighborhood night smelled of the ship channel, a mixture of bayou and bay water, of diesel engines and foreign ports, of neighborhood kitchens and other-country foods. Graver inhaled deeply of the smells and let them carry him back eight years.

He pushed open the door and stepped inside. La Cita had never been much of a place, but it had been a good cafe. Now the once warmly lighted interior that had smelled of Greek and Mexican food was a gloomy twilight of neon beer signs, and the air was a bad breath of stale bodies, dead cigarettes, and rancid grease. Behind the bar a heavy Mexican woman was huddled under a small, goose-neck lamp reading a magazine. There were a few dark visages in the corners, but he walked past them to the back door and stepped out into the patio where strings of low-wattage, colored lights were draped back and forth above the stained concrete dance floor. Here everything was the same, the cinder-block walk that formed the sides and, across the back, a series of low-arched openings through which he could see the slow-drifting lights of ships moving through the channel. And the chunky wooden tables that randomly bordered the edges of the patio were still there too. But on this hot summer night only three or four of them were occupied by a few men and women who looked as though they had never had a chance at anything or, worse, had thrown it away and never had learned to forgive themselves.

Walking to an empty table toward the back corner, Graver sat so that he could see the door that opened onto the patio from the tavern. Behind him, through one of the arches, he could hear a tug grumbling softly past the wharves. He ordered a bottle of beer from a young man who had one side of his chest caved-in, causing a shoulder to sag and making him walk crab-like as though always having to correct a drift He distinguished himself in this shabby setting, however, not by his deformity, but by having an immaculate haircut which he had combed to perfection. He also wore a dazzling white waiter’s apron which, in this setting, undoubtedly was considered a foppish flair.

As Graver drank his beer, a wraith of a man in his early thirties got up from where he had been sitting alone and put some coins in the jukebox on the far side of the dance floor. He returned to his table, and in a moment the accordions and cornets of a conjunto began playing while the man lighted a cigarette. As if by request, two worn prostitutes wearing tight dresses that barely reached past their crotches and accented their obtruding stomachs, left their male companions at their table, stepped onto the dance floor, embraced, and began dancing. Seemingly oblivious to the sprightly rhythm of the conjunto, they moved mournfully about the floor, the calves of their thin legs knotted tightly as they crane-stepped on high heels that scratched across the gritty concrete floor, stomach to stomach, the arms of each draped over the other’s shoulders, their foreheads together in unsmiling partnership.

Graver watched them, as did their companions and the wraith. Nearby a man and woman ignored them and shared a thick joint of marijuana in a sweet, mauve haze. When the music stopped the women returned to their companions, and Graver finished his beer.

Five minutes later Victor Last walked out the back door of the cafe, looked quickly around the courtyard, and started toward Graver, passing through the patches of colored lights in his casual, loose gait with which Graver was so familiar. He was wearing straw-colored, full-cut linen trousers with pleats, a blousy and wrinkled long-sleeved silk shirt, and a light tan, soft-shouldered sport coat with patch pockets. His dun hair was stylishly long, though barbered around the ears and neck, and combed back with a lock falling carelessly over his forehead.

He smiled modestly as he approached Graver who stood, and the two of them shook hands.

“Sit down,” Graver said, motioning to the chair across from him.

Last nodded and sat down. Graver could see him better now and was surprised to see that Last must have had some hard years. Though he still was lean and had a good tan-the sun had streaked his dun hair with blond strands -his face was incredibly wrinkled, his eyes pinched with crow’s feet and the corners of his mouth beginning to pucker. He looked like he had suffered a lot of sun and had given in to the rum and tequila of former days. Whatever he had been doing in the last eight years, he had done it with a vengeance.

Last grinned at him from across the table, slumped back rakishly in his chair with his legs crossed at the knees. Graver noticed his teeth were still white and even.

“You don’t look any differently, Graver,” Last said. “You must’ve made a bargain with the Deevil himself.”

“You know I don’t make bargains, Victor,” Graver said. “The Devil will have to stand in line like everybody else.”