A bathtub-size bucket of ice, full of cold beer, awaited them in the gym; wine corks were popping. Huge slabs of roast beef and platters of sausages weighed down the picnic tables--not the usual cheese-speared-on-toothpicks fare.
"Who ordered all this food?" Jack asked Leslie.
"I did, Jack. Peewee had to make a few more trips."
Wolverine Wally and Flipper Volkmann were having a heated argument. "A Michigan matter," Badger Schultz was saying diplomatically, as he forced himself between them. Badger's wife, Little Chicken Wing, had taken Mrs. Oastler's arm. Joe Ink, from Tiger Skin Tattoo in Cincinnati, placed his hand on Leslie's shoulder--the tattoo on the back of his hand was an ace of spades overlapping an ace of hearts.
"If you're ever in Norfolk," Night-Shift Mike was saying to Mrs. Oastler, "I'll show you the town like you wouldn't believe!"
"They loved her!" Leslie said breathlessly to Jack. "Invite them to stay, Jack," she added. (Slick Eddie Esposito was showing her the Man's Ruin on his belly; it was Daughter Alice's work.)
"Invite all of them?" Jack asked Mrs. Oastler. "To stay with us?"
"Of course with us!" Leslie told him. "Where else can they stay?"
Maybe not the Skretkowicz sisters, Jack thought--maybe not both of them, anyway. Why not just the one who hadn't been married to Flattop Tom? But he realized you couldn't control a tattoo artists' party; you had to go with the flow, as Alice's generation would say.
Miss Wurtz was in fine form, praising the bikers' first-time performance. Ever the nondrinker, Jack watched over the boarders like a sheep dog. But everyone was extremely well behaved, the dispute between Flipper Volkmann and Wolverine Wally notwithstanding--and not even that Michigan matter had resulted in a fight.
It was a mild surprise that Mrs. Oastler's former classmates appeared to be having a good time, too. The Old Girls had not seen so much skin on display in a great while--if ever. The St. Hilda's gym was hopping; there was nonstop Bob Dylan on the CD player.
From his mother's description of Jerry Swallow as a traditionalist, Jack should have recognized him. A pretty woman wearing a nurse's cap was tattooed on one of his biceps; it's h
ard to be more of a traditionalist than that. The writing on Sailor Jerry's shirt was in Japanese, as was the tattoo on his right forearm. "A Kazuo Oguri," he told Jack proudly. So Jerry Swallow had come all the way from New Glasgow, Nova Scotia--not to mention that he'd made over a hundred phone calls.
"Old-timers keep in touch, Jackie."
Jack thanked him for coming such a long way. "Life is a long way, young Mr. Burns," Sailor Jerry said. "Nova Scotia isn't all that far."
Later in the evening, when Jack thought he'd introduced himself to everyone--the boarders' choir keeping him company like his not-quite-virgin guards--he spotted a recognizable presence at the far end of the gym. Bob Dylan's "Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35" was booming from the CD player when Jack edged his way toward the shy, stoned figure weaving to the music under the basketball net. His dreamy countenance, the gray wisp of whiskers on his chin--as if, even in his late forties or early fifties, his beard still hadn't begun to grow--and something self-deprecating in his eyes, which were perpetually downcast, all reminded Jack of someone whose confidence in his own meager talent had never been high. (Not now, and not when he'd been Tattoo Theo's young apprentice on the Zeedijk.)
"Not another broken heart," Alice had told Robbie de Wit, when she'd said good-bye. "I've had enough of hearts, torn in two or otherwise." Hence Robbie had settled for Alice's signature on his right upper arm--the slightly faded Daughter Alice that Robbie revealed as Jack approached him.
"Still listening to der Zimmerman, Jackie?" Robbie said.
Bob's refrain wailed around them.
But I would not feel so all alone,
Everybody must get stoned.
"Still listening to den Zimmerman, Robbie."
"I'm really not in the same league with these guys," Robbie de Wit told Jack, gesturing unsteadily toward the rest of the gym. "It didn't work out for me in Amsterdam."
"I'm sorry to hear that," Jack told him.
"I'm in Rotterdam now. Got my own shop, but I'm still an apprentice--if you know what I mean. I'm doing okay," he said, his head bobbing. The receding hairline had fooled Jack at first--as had the egg-shaped forehead and the deep crow's-feet at the corners of Robbie's pale, watery eyes.
"What happened in Amsterdam, Robbie? What happened to Mom? What made her leave?"
"Oh, Jackie--don't go there. Let dying dogs die." (Robbie meant "Let sleeping dogs lie," but Jack understood him.)
"I remember the night she was a prostitute. At least she acted like one," Jack said to him. "Saskia and Els looked after me. You brought Mom a little something to smoke, I think."
"Don't, Jackie," Robbie said. "Let it go."
"My dad didn't go to Australia, did he?" Jack asked Robbie de Wit. "He was in Amsterdam the whole time, wasn't he?"