Текст книги "All That Follows"

Автор книги: Jim Crace

Соавторы: Jim Crace,Jim Crace,Jim Crace
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Leonard need not return to the dining room at all. He can easily push through the fire door in the hall and escape directly onto the sidewalk. Wouldn’t that be wisest? Wouldn’t it make sense simply to go back to the apartment alone and at once and let Nadia and Maxie figure it out for themselves? He can say that he was drunk, confused, got lost, misunderstood their plans. Whatever he does, inventing excuses will be easier than facing T-shirt Man again or walking back to the table looking damp and smelling urinous. He’s lost enough face already: the disappointment that Nadia and he will not be partners, the news of her pregnancy, its continuing uncertainty, his timid Englishness, which Texas has made unignorable, the demanding prospects of tomorrow’s AmBush.

The problem is, he has already walked out sulkily on Maxie, at the end of that humiliating performance in the Four T’s. It was a mistake and not one that he should repeat. It wasn’t worth the dime. Besides, he’s said this barbecue will be his treat. If he runs off without picking up the check, they will think he simply doesn’t want to pay his whack. He can guess what Maxie might say. “That British dude is tighter than tree bark. Won’t help us out with, you know, doctor’s fees. Won’t even pay for supper. What do we get for our fine hospitality? A carton of orange juice, is all.”

No, Leonard must face the music, so to speak, and go back to the dining room. He splashes his face with cold water, washing away the taste of meat and lip blood and the sting of pickle. He listens carefully. No sounds close by, just water, distant traffic, and music from the bar next door, a thrashing bass. A deep breath, then, and he will push the restroom door back. He gives it a solid shove, but the door will not open entirely. It sticks halfway. He puts his shoulder up against it and tries again, too soon to realize that what he thought was the toilet cistern refilling is in fact his old assailant’s wheezing lungs. The man’s been waiting – and evidently smoking – in the hallway behind the restroom door. Now he’s even less amused, and has as his excuse the pair of knocks he’s taken from the door handle and the sudden loss of his half-burned cigarette. “Sorry,” Leonard says for the third time, closing the Gouchos door behind him. He says nothing else. His chin is punched, a heavy rising blow, his head banged back against the cinder-block wall with a porous thud. He bites his tongue. Another blow. His nose this time. Another blow.

The punches do not hurt exactly, but they are shocking, shockingly efficient, as if a chiropractor rather than a boxer has carried out some restorative procedure on his face. He’s been straightened out. His skeleton is realigned. Even the impact of his skull on the wall seems soft at first. But, so soon after washing away the taste of meat, Leonard’s mouth is full of blood again, not cooked, not smoked, but fresh and privately familiar. Now T-shirt’s fingers are wrapped round Leonard’s throat and he is hurting, finally. His feet are barely touching the ground. All his weight seems to be hanging from the man’s thick arms. His face is turned against the cold cinder blocks. He feels as weak and helpless as an overcoat being hung up on a hook.

T-shirt is muttering under his breath. Leonard makes out the word Brit, repeated as a curse. “Look,” he says, as best he can, given that his windpipe is so constricted. He means to offer more apologies, an explanation, some recompense perhaps. That seems urgently wise. “I’m sorry if—” His assailant unexpectedly backs away, goes limp in fact, releases his throat hold so that Leonard drops onto his knees and is staring into the man’s rodeo belt and gut. T-shirt hovers for a moment, halves in height, his eye whites, now level with Leonard’s own eyes again, suddenly visible in the low light of the corridor, and then he falls forward onto Leonard’s shoulder, a sudden penitent, exhaling like a punctured cushion.

“Jesus,” Leonard says, flattened almost, fearing/hoping that the man has had a heart attack, a stroke. He’s fat enough. Evidently from the stink of his breath and his fingers he is a heavy smoker too. Leonard is already beset with awkward possibilities. What should he do? What should he tell the monster’s wife? Who’ll take the blame? “Jesus Christ,” he says again, and starts to push against the leaden body pressing down on him.

“Jesus won’t help you,” someone says. T-shirt Man is rolled aside. Leonard is being pulled by his wrist. He does not recognize his savior straightaway. Then he sees the hair. It’s Maxie. Maxim Lermontov. He has blood on the knuckles of his right hand and a short gray-and-black handgun in his left. “So get up off your knees,” he says.

HE WAS GONNA KICK YOUR ASS.” Maxie is sitting at the window with a tablecloth round his shoulders while Nadia combs out his hair, pushing back the long, loose strands from his forehead, reluctant to begin the conscript cut for his disguise.

“You don’t know that.” Leonard is still angry and embarrassed, but Maxie does not seem to understand his discomfort. “You had a gun. I saw it in your hand.”

“That’s the best place for a gun.”

“Where the hell did that come from?”

“It came from right under my shirt. Like this.” Maxie produces his pistol again and swings it on his forefinger.

“I mean, where did you get it from?”

“Down the street. Go get one yourself. You hand the man the money and he hands you a pistol. This sweetie’s a Taurus 1911. Rock-solid.”

“Why would I ever want a gun? Why would you? Don’t point the thing.”

“They’ve got guns, that’s why. If it’s in their toolbox, then it’s gotta be in yours. That’s how the revolution’s won. That’s how the shitty world is changed. We’re talkin’ Russia 1917, Cuba, Vietnam, um, you know, armed rebellion, the just and mighty barrel of a gun. You shoot first and you don’t get pronounced first. That’s pronounced dead, Leon. Game over. If it wasn’t for the people’s firepower, there’d still be czars … back home.”

“Well, that’s debatable.” There never have been czars in Canada.

“And you know what? If you’d had a sidearm under your belt tonight, in the restroom, you could’ve shot the fat guy’s pecker off. Job done.”

“Why would I do that?”

“That’s what he would’ve done to you. That’s what he’s gonna do next time he catches sight of you.”

“You absolutely don’t know that.” Leonard turns to Nadia for support, but she only raises her eyebrows.

“Oh yes, I do. Abso-fucking-lutely, man. I know his brand – he owns three, four guns, one for each of his bellies. He’s drunk most nights on Shiner Bocks. He don’t forget. He don’t forgive. And the sticker on the fender of his pickup doesn’t say KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD. It says DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS. Yessir, he was always fixin’ to kick your ass as soon as you started speakin’ through it.”

“Why would he want to kick my anything? That’s crap.”

“That’s what he’s kickin’ outta you, my friend. Because you’re British and you’re talkin’ about his president in not so many words and this is Texas U.S.A. and that man’s havin’ dinner with his wife and they’re both patriots, they’re red-state, redneck, red-blooded Americans. And then you’re lookin’ at his tits, like he should lose some weight or what. And then you’re tellin’ him you absolutely love his shirt, indeedy-dee-doowah. Nice work. That’s gonna make you friends round here. Plus that guy was in a meat stupor. That means he’s like a stag in rut. Don’t mess with him. If he wasn’t gonna beat up on you, he was gonna beat up on someone else. He was in the zone for poleaxin’, all three hundred pounds of him. Then you show up, some British guy who’s dumber than a box of hammers, and as good as put your chin up to be clobbered. Go right ahead. Take aim.”

“So you say.”

Maxie laughs, genuinely amused, happy to be arguing. “Believe me, comrade. Even I was tempted to beat you up and I agreed with everythin’ you said, except about the shirt. So.”

“You were tempted to beat me up? That’s nice.”

“Nice I came and hauled you out of there. Nice I know the basic rules of engagement, like kick butt or get butt kicked. One day you’ll look at your big smile in the mirror and know who to thank for havin’ any teeth left. You’d never play that cheesy saxophone again. How’d that be?”

“I don’t think he meant to do me any real harm.” Cheesy?

“You don’t? Now who’s to say? You don’t negotiate with guys like that, is all I know. This is what the world is all about. You always have to stand up to those punks. Or always be a loser. That’s my philosophy.”

“Well, my philosophy is that discussion is always better than concussion. I might’ve calmed him down myself if you hadn’t interfered.”

“You think?”

“I was just explaining to the guy—”

“You’re in the restroom with your zipper down and someone sticks his shoulder in your back. And you explain? And you apologize? That’s not the way we deal with dickheads in America. You should have pissed all over him. Instead, what do you do? Listen to me, Leon. What do you do?” Maxie knows the answer. Leonard pissed down his own leg. Leonard pissed on his own shoe.

“What could I do? You saw the size of him. How many times do I have to repeat myself?” Leonard adopts an American accent, more East Coast than East Austin. “I was gonna speakto him.”

“Jeez, Leon, who are you, Neville Chamberlain?”

“Oh, please.”

“That’s a conversation I’d have liked to hear. You’ve got two fat lips and some guy’s fist halfway down your throat and you want to open a peace conference. Where’s the brains in that?”

“Where’s the brains in sending someone back home or to his wife, well … bleeding?Bleeding and unconscious.”

“He won’t be goin’ home. Not yet. He’ll be needin’ stitches. He’ll be needin’ crutches. He was lucky, point of fact. I could’ve shot him in the knees and he’d be limpin’ till he dies. Fuck him, anyway. And fuck his wife.”

“And you’re supposed to be against the war.”

“Leon, now I’m warnin’ you. Don’t cheapen it. Don’t get confusin’ this or that, because the way I feel, all dandered up, I might be tempted to take a poke at you myself, just in the name of fair play. And parity.”

“What kind of father are you going to make?”

“He’ll be the perfect dad,” Nadia says, interrupting finally, her hands still resting on his full and springy head of hair. “No need to make it personal.”

Maxie stands, stretches out, and takes hold of Leonard’s shoulder, a fifty-fifty grip, loose enough to be mistaken as friendly contact, firm enough – after it is held for far too long – to hurt a little. “Best keep it calm, Leon. Don’t say another word.”

“Maxie, this is all I want to say. You went too far. You frighten me. You’re hurting me. You really hurt that guy.”

“Yes, I did. Oh, boy, I hurt him bad.”

“Congratulations.”

“It’s deserved. We walked all over him.”

“You walked all over him. I didn’t touch the man.”

“Well, yes indeedy-deed. Comrade Leon walks away unscathed.”

Leonard pushes Maxie’s hands away and turns toward his room. “I’m not unscathed. I’m hurt.” He points at the cuts and bruises on his face and flexes his shoulders. “I’m hurt real bad,” he adds. “By bothof you.”

“Real bad? You’ve no idea what real bad means. The fat guy knows.”

“Enough.” Eee-nuff!

“See, that’s it, you’re still runnin’ off … Some two-trick circus pony you turned out to be, either runnin’ off or down on your knees—”

“Leave him. Let him go. You guys are ugly drunk. Let’s fix your hair before the evening’s completely spoiled and wasted.” Nadia pushes Maxie back onto his seat and holds up her scissors, clicking the blades. “Sit still and stop talking, unless you want to bleed,” she warns. She lifts the first tress and pulls it clear of his scalp, starting at his widow’s peak. “You’re sure of this?”

“Just cut.”

“Farewell, the lunatic fringe.”

“Amen.”

When Leonard comes back an hour later – he has to show he isn’t in a sulk – his face and nostrils wiped clean of blood, his bruises dressed, his trousers changed, Maxie has become a different man. His black mustache and sparse and adolescent beard have gone. Nadia’s cut has almost reached the top of his head. All the hair around is harvested and cleared. It’s only stubble that remains, black bristles on white, unweathered skin, and two inches of Mohican, standing straight and vulnerable as wheat. He’s nothing but an exclamation mark. A crest. A military plume. But already Maxie is virtually unrecognizable. The familiar piled hair made him unmistakable. Perhaps that’s why so many people greet him on the street. They recognize the hair and think they know the man. The loss of hair has aged and brutalized him – criminalized him, in fact. His lips and nose seem huge. His eyebrows – till she trims them too – hang heavy on his face, like bats. And once the Mohican is gone and Nadia is rubbing Maxie’s scalp with the same tea tree oil that Leonard has rubbed into his bruises, the original Sniper Without Bullets has disappeared entirely. Nadia holds up the mirror. “You clean up good,” she says, though she does not sound impressed; regretful, rather.

“He looks like a skinhead,” suggests Leonard. “Or like a serviceman.”

“What kind of serviceman, Leon? Am I fixin’ TV sets or swimmin’ pools? Or am I fixin’ for Uncle Sam?”

“We’re speaking different languages. In England, servicemen are … army personnel. They don’t fix anything. That’s for sure. You look like a marine.”

“No bull. Just look at me. Back to the bone. Ain’t that a head of hair?”

“Looks more like rawhide than a head of hair.” Leonard disapproves of what he sees, of what the haircut has confirmed.

“Yessir, I’m all spit-shined and polished up. So hats on, ladies. Let’s go greet the president.”

11

IT IS A SAPPHIRE, late October day, warm enough for shorts or hiking pants, but Leonard does his best to dress conservatively, a Bush supporter, though to dress like a Republican in Texas does not necessarily mean the light jacket, trousers, and button-down shirt that he has chosen from his few British clothes. It could mean the cowhide boots and the pair of Wranglers cinched by a buckle bigger than your brain that the president favors for himself at weekends. Or even the full black and unlikely business suit that Maxie has, without a word of explanation for its provenance, taken from his closet. His court suit, possibly. He looks less like a skinhead now, and less like a serviceman. His scalp stubble is only thirteen hours old but has already darkened. Today he seems most like an excitable Baptist pastor heading for a prayer breakfast or gospel brunch, with, at worst, a nerdish streak. No one can see how muscular he is, or wildly menacing, or know for sure what he has tucked under his shirt.

“My, don’t you look the part?” Nadia says, picking off bits of fluff and thread from the back and shoulders of his suit.

Maxie is surprised and elated by the sight of himself, it seems. He turns and twists in front of the mirror, changing his expression. “Well, look at me. I’m Tony Perkins for the day. So welcome to the Bates Motel. Your shower’s ready, Mr. President.” He glimpses Leonard’s tense, unsmiling, damaged face in the mirror. The men have not yet exchanged a civil word this morning. The fug of last night’s fights and squabbles has not cleared. Besides, Leonard is too nervous to be civil – and he is hoping to engineer a final row, something upsetting enough for him to take offense and run from Austin in a righteous huff, flying out while Bush is flying in.

“Buck up, Leon,” Maxie says eventually. “That’s yesterday. Today is gonna be your fifteen minutes of fame. We’re on active service now. Be big about it, man. Step up to the plate.” He pulls Leonard toward the mirror, gently, playfully. “Be sweet.” For a moment the pair pose, an arm round each other at the waist. Leonard knows that he has been defeated. There’s no escape. Then Nadia, still in her pajamas, comes up behind and rests her chin where their two shoulders form a cleft. “See what I see, right there?” asks Maxie, not entirely without irony. He jabs his finger at the mirror. “I see the Three Musketeers. Ain’t we the Bushbashers today? Ain’t we the warriors?”

“You don’t look good,” Nadia says, on tiptoe at their backs. Leonard can feel a soft breast pushed against his shoulder blade. She smells of warm cotton, a more provocative odor than any bottled scent.

“You don’t like the cut, lady?” Maxie rubs a hand across his scalp. “Feels like baby seal to me.”

“You’ll do just fine. No, I mean Leon Trotsky here.” Nadia pulls Leonard away from the mirror and sits him on a high-backed kitchen chair in the bright light by the window. “You look too weird like that. They’ll never let you through. I’m going to have to fix that face.”

“Boy, yes,” says Maxie. “A little field surgery. Hide those gaping wounds.”

Nadia stands between her one-time British boyfriend’s legs and dabs off the remnants of dried blood on his lips and jaw with a Q-tip. She cleans him up with arnica gel. “Bit shiny now,” she says, holding Leonard’s chin and turning his face into the light. “What we need”—she rummages inside her cosmetics bag—“is this. This is going to minimize the shine. This is going to make you matte. Grab hold.” She drops the moisturizer into Leonard’s hand and leans into him.

“Jesus, have you seen what’s in this stuff?” he asks, squinting at the small print on the tube and reading out the listed ingredients. “Palm oil, propylene glycol, cyclomethicone, stearic acid, hydroxylated milk glycerides, talc …” But Leonard is only trying to distract himself. The closeness of Nadia’s breasts to his eyes and face, that half-buttoned pajama top, that bedclothes smell (is it the smell of pregnancy?), the pressure of her knees on his when she opens her legs to crouch and peer at his cuts and bruises, have made him start to sweat, and worse. He wants to reach out, lay his hand across her abdomen, and bless the child. He wants to touch her everywhere. That’s why he’s come to Austin, isn’t it? Not to be caught up in some madcap plot. “Cetyl alcohol,” he reads, while Maxie stares across the room at him, shaking his head. “Sodium magnesium silicate, tocopheryl acetate …” He’s trapped. There’ll be no flying out. He no longer wants to find excuses, actually. What he most wants, for Nadia’s sake, is to be her bold comrade. “Titanium dioxide, paraffin—”

“Enough already,” Maxie says. “Paraffin schmaraffin. Who gives a shit? Let’s go. Come on, Snipers, hit the street.”

AmBush does not work out quite as Maxie hoped. The three participants set off at different times and follow separate routes downtown. Leonard is the first to leave. Following instructions, he walks along Seventh as far as the interstate and then cuts across the Red River district toward the southeast corner of the Capitol and its encircling lawns. He couldn’t get lost even if he tried. The sunset-red granite building with its commanding dome and its zinc-skinned goddess of liberty presiding over Austin is almost never out of view.

Leonard is carrying his passport, six ten-dollar bills, his ticket to the Laura Bush address, a Book Festival program, and spare keys to their apartment. “Penny plain is the order of the day,” was Nadia’s advice. She wrote her dissertation on Mondavi’s resistance handbook Infiltration and Identityand so knows the tested protocols of blending in, including the recommended contents of their pockets. Avoid too little and too much, is the rule; carry nothing to raise alarm, nothing to reveal your plans should you be stopped and frisked. She dropped an apple in Leonard’s pocket as he left the loft, “for authenticity, while you’re in line. Apples are the most innocent of fruit, Mondavi says.”

“Go tell it on the mountain. Let my apple go! Lermontov says.” Maxie is in a strangely expansive and skittish mood, now that AmBush draws close.

Leonard is eating his apple as he crosses San Jacinto Street. He does his best to keep to an unsuspicious pace as he nears the southern entrance to the Capitol and the already bustling festival tents in the streets beyond. He can hear some poet reading too close to the microphone, and there is laughter from a second tent and then applause. The adjacent streets have been closed to traffic by the Austin city police. Their cruisers are parked across the roadway. Only official vehicles can pass. Leonard is expecting to be challenged and half hoping to be turned away. He will have failed, but he will have done his best, or seemed to, anyway. To Nadia. Yet no one pays attention to him or any other pedestrians, even the ones who have not dressed like Republicans. The city police are entirely relaxed, just taking it easy with their thumbs in their belts and their backs against their cars. Why not? The day is mild. The president might wave at them.

It is not until Leonard has walked through the southern entrance gate that he sees anything of note: a family of five, three girls and their parents, dressed up Sunday smart and waving the Stars and Stripes together with a photo portrait of a uniformed young man. His name and dates are written underneath: Pvt. Alexander M. Sharp, 1987–2006. Leonard calculates the young man’s age and makes the appropriate face. It is a dreadful war, he reminds himself. It’s in this family’s interests that he’s here, on active service, though they might not appreciate it now. One of the girls has a T-shirt inscribed “Lubbock Loves Laura.” The father has a Bible in his hand, which he waves at Leonard and anyone that passes. “Support ourtroops,” he says. “God bless America.” And Leonard offers him and his family “Good afternoon” in return.

Although there is more than an hour yet before the scheduled arrival of the president and his wife, there is already another protest group gathering among the rose beds, lawns, and monuments on the west side of the Capitol and loosely circled by state troopers in their Boy Scout uniforms. This is the “silent fucking vigil” that Maxie has talked about, organized by the Texas antiwar coalition. Their message is laid out on a banner on the grass in front of them in letters three feet high and made from photographs of all the soldiers who have died in Iraq so far – Alexander M. Sharp included, presumably – and some Iraqi civilians: TROOPS. OUT. NOW. BRING OUR BOYS HOME. There are about thirty demonstrators, but the numbers are growing by the minute. They are working hard to show restraint and dignity, facing forward in two rows like veteran soldiers, doing their best not to fidget, talk, or seem amused or even angry when a younger, tattooed man, not one of them, calls out repeatedly and manically, from behind their backs, “Bring our girls home. Save one for me.”

Leonard could step up and join the vigil here and now. This is more his type of protest than the one he’s caught up in. He could happily stand in the second row, his bruised face well hidden, staying quiet and grave, until the president goes home again. These are people he can be at ease among. He understands their etiquette. Not one looks less than peaceable. He’s tempted to stroll across and offer them his smiles, more sincere smiles than the ones he gave to the family from Lubbock, until he is invited to take part. But he has to toe the AmBush line – and that means staying distant and discreet, not drawing any attention to himself or seeming to be anything other than a man who’s keen to hear the first lady talk about children, libraries, and reading. He turns away and kills time by walking round the building, looking at the monuments, “all the fucking brass and marble,” as Maxie has described it. “Monuments to whom?” Leonard asked. And Maxie replied, much to his own amusement, “Well, it sure ain’t Willie Nelson. And it sure ain’t Reckless Kelly.” What Leonard finds instead are tributes to a Texas that is both historical and cinematic: the heroes of the Alamo, Texas pioneer women, the Spanish War veterans (though not the Spanish War that Leonard cares about), the Boy Scouts of America, the Pearl Harbor survivors, the fighting men of the 36th Infantry Division, the heroes of WWI. Its lyric is vainglorious, “God and Texas, Victory or Death” rather than “Come lie with me, my Texas rose.”

By the time Leonard has examined most of the many monuments and numbed himself by reading the legends and dedications, as he had tried to numb himself that morning with the moisturizer ingredients, the atmosphere in the Capitol grounds has modified. The vigil has been separated from its banner and pushed back fifty yards toward Lavaca Street and the festival tents, where the protesters are required to be dignified, disapproving, and silent out of sight of the Capitol’s main entrance. The save-a-girl-for-me campaigner, after being frisked for drugs, is “taking a walk,” as advised. A platoon of state troopers has created a security corridor through which the ticket holders for the Bush event are required to walk. Secret Service men, in suits not dissimilar from Maxie’s but wearing sunglasses, ear sets, and chest holsters, stand on the Capitol steps watching everything and everyone. Security at last. Leonard’s throat goes tight and dry in seconds. He wishes he had kept the apple now. Eating it would give him something innocent to do while he takes stock, while he identifies his options. He needs a coping strategy.

It is only when he sees a now familiar shorn-headed man walking confidently toward the Capitol steps that he is prompted – is obliged, perhaps – to show himself and get in line, a few yards back from Sniper No. 1, and begin the shuffle forward into the shadow of the dome. He’s frightened every step of it. Self-conscious too. The bruises and the cuts are bad enough, but there is also women’s makeup on his face. He spreads and smudges it when he wipes away his sweat. There are flesh-pink marks on his jacket sleeve. He takes deep, cooling breaths. This is Leonard’s single chance to prove and validate himself in Texas. Maxie has made that much clear. “Be big about it, man,” he said, meaning that any other option would be small. So Leonard stays in line, fixes his eyes on the scalp ahead of him, and concentrates on Private Alexander Sharp, his cruelly wasted life. What’s the problem, anyway? What’s he frightened of? He reminds himself of Nadia’s reassuring gloss, delivered over breakfast that morning when Leonard admitted to feeling nauseous: This is just a demonstration. At a seat of government. In a democratic state. Against an elected leader. What could be more natural or more American than that? All he has to do, as agreed in every detail, is wait until Laura is at the podium, and when, as she must, she says childfor the first time, simply get up on his two hind legs and shout toward the president.

“Shout what?”

“Jeez, Leon, speak your mind. Just make it loud. And keep it short and simple, yeah? All I’m sayin’ is, in circumstances such as this, ‘Out’ is way more eloquent than”—Maxie holds up his clenched fist, Mr. Perkiss style—“than ‘Let’s battle for the death of the fascist insect that preys on the lives of the people.’ You won’t get deeper in than ‘Let’s.’ You hearin’ me, my good advice?”

Leonard hears him. He’ll plagiarize the giant-sized words from the silent vigil on the lawns. He’ll call out clearly and with a space between each word, “Troops … Out … Now.” That’s his opinion, after all. U.S. troops and UK troops. And, as Nadia reminds him, as a Briton in America, he has the right, a duty even, to speak his mind; that’s what alliance means. “Respect with honesty – like, show them that you care by telling them the truth.” Anyway, it hardly matters what he shouts. As Maxie says, he cannot expect to get beyond the first two words before he’s bustled away, maybe pushed and shoved a bit, maybe questioned fiercely by one of those men in sunglasses, and then probably turned out onto the street as soon as the Bushes have returned to Crawford. The worst that can happen is that they all get slammed into Travis County jail for a night of “sobering up” with all the other weekend criminals, the drunks and speeding drivers, the wife abusers and the crackheads: “That’s why you’re carryin’ those six ten-dollar bills. Protection money, man. You gotta watch your ass.”

For a moment Leonard imagines being put into a cell with Nadia. Then something worse: he’s sharing a cell with T-shirt Man, whose eyes are black and whose wounds have not begun to close. “So, Brit, do you love my shirt today?” he says; his great hand takes the wad of ten-dollar bills and reaches out for bones and saxophones to crush. Leonard shakes away the thought and next imagines – hopes, almost – that rather than a jailhouse beating, he gets heroically deported. The police and FBI see he’s British, not a U.S. national, and feel obliged to treat him gently. They’re allies, after all. They run him out to the airport and they put him on a plane, untouched, unscathed. They add his name to those not welcome in the U.S.A., along with other progressive icons: Fidel Castro, Graham Greene, Paul Robeson, and the Marxist drummer Eber Hardt, one of Leonard’s idols, a complex and percussive man. They stamp his passport deportee, and – his heart jumps a beat at this – they say he won’t, “as in never,” be allowed back in again. “Don’t even try it, bud. You’re not welcome here. You disrespect our president.”

But what kind of jazzman can’t work in America? That’s unthinkable. Eber Hardt’s exclusion all but ruined his career. What Leonard does today might scupper his career as well. There is a dollar cost to everything. He shuffles forward in the line, trying not to panic but to persuade himself there isn’t any danger of exclusion. He must believe in order and civility, that in America men in uniform and men who work for agencies will show restraint and moderation as a matter of training, as a matter of course, as a preference. They won’t throw random punches or flout the rules or trample on his rights or send him home to Britain on a whim. Leonard will not be the victim of a beating or a rubber stamp for deportees, just the appropriate victim of procedures, and such procedures will not be capricious or violent. In America, it must be safe to exercise a right of protest, even a noisy one. Safer, probably, than exercising a right to barbecue.