Beautiful Leah Bishop with her wide lips, endless legs, snowy skin and golden head of hair, barely the youthful age of twenty-one; it was the day after we'd made out in the back of her NYU theater, that heated confusing moment when I popped the question on every young man’s mind (would you do me the honors of giving me my very first blow job?) and was promptly slapped, quite hard, with instructions to leave; by her tone of voice, probably forever. After all, she did have a boyfriend. And there she was, just as I remembered her, standing on the rooftop watching the first tower fall. She was watching the World Trade Center the very moment I made my way down the stairs of the North Tower. I'd never even considered the possibility before, and yet it was swiftly confirmed in Mahoney's camera. The thought was haunting.
“So what do you think?” Mahoney finally said.
Oh my God! Chester Hamilton the Third on the television.
I said: “I can't seem to make sense of the plot.”
“Oh, believe me, there's a plot.” On the television Leah sobbed into her fingers. “There’s a plot everywhere. They're like jigsaw-pieces scattered across a table. You just have to catch them at the right moment and look for the connecting edges.”
Footage cut away from September Eleventh to Chester Hamilton the Third telling Mahoney, in his parrot-like squawk of a voice, to get the camera out of his forking face. Some other people I didn't recognize sliding down Brownstone's banisters. Garbage truck lumbering through the street. Mommy and Daddy sparrows attacking a hungry predator bird. Donkey again. Richie breaking a board with one swift karate splice of his hand. Leah Bishop, laughing uncontrollably with more men, and rather recently from the looks of it, glass of wine clutched in her fingertips. Four residents smoking a joint at the foot of a couch while watching the Wizard of Oz, backed by the soundtrack of Pink Floyd. That same woman who I'd seen walking the greyhound stepped out from a taxi with the same dog and entered the building.
“See, a storyline should be like classical music. You never really know where it’s going. Themes jump in and out of it, but if there's the right emotion, then that's what really hooks you into the human experience. And that's really what life is, a series of emotional responses. People come in and out of everyone else's life, and the crazy part is everyone seems to think they're the center of the universe. If you think about it, nobody really lives the fullness of a plot all the way through since it takes so many comings and goings through the fabric of existence, from a wide variation of people, to properly tell it, which makes the plot itself rather irrelevant to the core of human experiences.”
The footage cut to Richie and me parallel parking the Matrix on the evening prior (it really was a beautiful swoop job) and trudging towards Brownstone with my camera bag and carry-on. I hadn't noticed it before, but Mahoney captured Sinatra parking his Nissan Cube on the curb.
“See that man right there?” Mahoney paused the frame long enough to point at my mystery follower. “What's that guy's story? He was parked out there all night, you know, just sitting there, staring up at Brownstone.” And then the possibility occurred to him. Mahoney slapped my arm. “Hey, he's not, you know..... with the mafia or anything, is he? I mean, you're practically on their hit list and all.”
“I'm not on anyone’s hit list, Mahoney.”
Mahoney lifted both hands. “Hey, man, I got the dude on camera. If you wash up in the Hudson I'll happily hand this over to the coppers. You can count on Mahoney for that.”
The thought was actually very much appreciated. But I didn't want to discuss it any further. “So that's what your movie is about, the random comings and goings in people's lives? It all seems so, meaningless.”
Mahoney made a lobster-like clicking sound with his mouth and pointed a trigger finger at me. His thumb fell down as its hammer. “That's the problem with most films. They train you to think our stories, real stories, are all so straight forward and compact. But it doesn't work like that. Like it or not, our stories are intertwined now, buddy. The universe is trying to tell us something. Brownstone is trying to tell us something.”
“And this apartment building, it’s kind of like the universe gathering up many individual experiences to tell one complete story.”
“Giddy-up,” more lobster clicks, “Don't forget to throw in a few isms for the philosophy majors and we've got ourselves a movie. I’m even thinking about contributing an animated sequence for the kids.”
“Speaking of isms...” I didn't like how that footage of Leah on the rooftop made me feel. His camera eye really was poetic and beautiful. I was glad I saw it, despite how quickly and unexpectedly something so intimately close and personal sprung on me, but I didn't want to witness any more of it. Not then. Not with a distant Leah Bishop on the other side of the hall, closing me off from her life again. “I should probably go. I've got a few isms that I'd like to read about at the New York City Library.”
“So how's it going with your lady friend over there? Quite the siren, isn't she?”
“Leah's an old theater friend from high school, that's all. I’m not about to sail blindly towards her intoxicating voice and crash a sailing vessel against the rocks, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“It is intoxicating.”
“No, really.”
“Mm-hmm, those are the best kind of little black book contacts, the let's hook up for a night and fantasize over what might have been sort of friends. You recognized her in the movie, didn't you?”
“I might have spotted her in a couple of scenes.”
“She's my leading lady, and she sure does like the boys. Who wouldn't want that rack?” Mahoney nudged an elbow into my rib. “Huba-huba. You know what I mean?”
“I think I do.” I said it with an air of puzzlement, as if there was a slight possibility that I didn't catch his drift, and stood to leave.
“Well, look up, my fugitive apprentice,” he said. I tried to correct him; I wasn't fleeing the law, only missing in action so far as the press was concerned; and cleared my throat to say so but he continued. “You never know what might happen. Brownstone has a plan for you. There's magic in the rafters.” He pointed up. “I wouldn't lie about something like that.”
“Now that you mention it, I've always thought New York had an air of magic to it.”
“I was referring to Brownstone.”
“Oh right, you mean this building, the documentary and all.”
“Magic,” I thought he might be serious about that.
“I'll make sure to steer clear of the leprechauns on my way down.”
“Oh, they're real, all right. I've got one on video. You want to see him?”
“I'll wait for its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.” I opened the front door and attempted to close it behind me. Maybe he was a little on the side of loony, and maybe I'd just sat down next to that same someone in his sagging underwear.
He said: “Sure thing, buddy.”
I closed the door to 401 and stood in the hall. Apartment 402 was still clamped shut. I thought about the long legged lady with wide lips and a head of gold on the other side of it and Mahoney's video footage of September Eleventh as she watched the South Tower fall. My cheek felt suddenly wet. A couple of undesired sniffles followed. I wiped it off and started down the steps. The thing is, the entire way down Brownstone's four floors, my ankles throbbed.
19
AT THE NEW YORK CITY LIBRARY, Fifth Avenue, I sipped from a Starbucks Grande Vanilla Latte, reclined at an outside table, and cracked open the book I'd been reading that summer, Schulz and Peanuts. Skies were bright in Manhattan. It actually only ended up raining across the Hudson in Jersey, go figure. Sinatra was sniffing my trail. My instincts instructed so much. But I also briefly saw him somewhere in the vicinity of Macy's. The funny thing is he seemed more captivated craning his neck up at the Empire State Building than he was of my posterior. I couldn’t blame him. The city was magical like that.
I didn’t get very far in my reading before turning my thoughts
on Mrs. Chamberlain, which in turn gave way to the gorgeous woman in heels walking down Fifth Avenue, a sight for sore eyes. Sinatra would likely agree. He was probably already staring at her. Just then Kitty Wells asked the age-old question on my iPhone, Will Your Lawyer Talk to God? Caller I.D. pronounced JOSEPHINE.
I said: “Not even forty-eight hours into your honeymoon and you can’t stop thinking of me. I can’t say I blame you, but I don’t exactly approve, either.”
“I’m in-between buckaroo sessions and giving Charlie a chance to recover,” Josephine said.
“Sounds painful.”
“You bet your purple bottom it is, for him, anyways. How are things? The media hasn’t been kind. I’ve been worried.”
“The Jordan River is deep and wide in my soul.”
“Save the poetry.”
“If you must know, I’m being followed.”
“Are you in a public place?”
“The New York City Library.”
“Are you with anyone?”
“Only about eight million pedestrians, in varying increments, of course.”
“I can’t stop thinking about Elise and those people or things or whatever they were who visited you in her apartment on the Fourth of July and outside of her hotel on the night of my wedding.”
“Yeah, well, apparently purple bottoms are the fashionable trend this summer season for the Bibeau sisters.”
“Shut up and listen. When Elise and I were little girls, it was a very frightening time for the both of us. First our father dies in the 89 Earthquake, but you know that much. And then there’s Andrea’s various live-in boyfriends and come-and-go husbands.”
“Go on.”
“It didn’t help that Elise was, well, special. I can’t really think of a better word to describe what she could think, and far more importantly, do with those thoughts. It’s sobering. But every rose has its thorn, and that’s about when Elise’s imaginary friends started showing up, with the earthquake. The scarecrow was one of them.”
“You mean like Ray Bolger…”
“Mm-hmm, The Wizard of Oz. Elise read just about all of those books.”
“The MGM movie used to come on every year, in the autumn.”
“Exactly, Elise and I were both scared of the Wicked Witch and the flying monkeys. I mean, what child wasn’t?”
“I hated those guys.”
“But the scarecrow; Joshua, when it aired that November in 1989, after the San Francisco Earthquake, the playful fear of entertained children was suddenly so very different with Elise. She was deathly terrified.”
“Because he appeared to her; the scarecrow….as an imaginary friend.”
“He used to visit our room at night.”
“But you never saw or heard him.”
“No, only her one-way conversations as she stared at thin air or faced the wall. It was always creepiest when she held conversations in the mirror.”
“Like Alice and the Looking Glass House.”
“At first I played along. I mean, everyone knows a childhood imaginary friend isn’t real. We all had them, and why should I be any different. But with Elise, the kind of conversations she claimed they’d have, and the places they’d supposedly take her. I’m talking about bright lights and missing time here, like what you said you experienced on the Fourth. It just wasn’t normal for any girl approaching adolescence. I even had to pull away and beg her to play with our Barbie Dream House once in a while, or talk about boys, like normal girls. And then Dennis came along.”
“Andrea’s boyfriend; he was the one that sexually abused her.”
“Has Elise ever talked about him?”
“Very little to none. She rarely mentions his name, if ever. It’s a painful topic.”
“The first time he molested her, I remember it well, probably better than her repressed memory does. He let us stay up late and watch that Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange on HBO. He got drunk, like disgustingly drunk. And when Elise and I were both scared during that rape scene, he invited us to sit on his lap.”
I didn’t say anything. I let the honks of various cars and the passing pedestrians do all the talking from my end.
“Dennis had a boner. It was disgusting. I don’t even want to think about it. I immediately climbed down. Elise must not have caught on, or known what it was, for that matter. If only I could go back and change things.”
“Don't let hindsight send you on a guilt trip. Just thank God the creep didn’t victimize you too.”
“But Joshua, that droog from Orange, that’s when he first started coming around, in her mind at least. He was the worst of the bunch. As my sister would explain it to me, he was their prince or commander or something.”
“Who were they?”
“As in there were others.”
“Great.”
“All those Wonderland creatures, she used to talk about the Mad Hatter, and that dragon, what was it called?”
“The Jabberwocky, it was one of Lewis Carroll's nonsensical poems.”
“And it was nonsensical.”
“It still is.”
“You talked about those clowns.”
“Pierrots,” I corrected her. “Like something out of an early twentieth century circus from Paris. I've seen illustrations of them on reprints of old posters.”
“I can't recall hearing about them before. Not from Elise, anyways. I don't know, even my childhood memory is pretty suppressed, but they seem to describe a series of old antique dolls with porcelain faces that the Sisters displayed, about half a dozen of them, back when their collection was thin. I sort of remember being afraid of them. Tell me this isn’t some sick game of yours. You’re not taking a squat on my childhood, are you?”
“Josephine, I’d rather tell bad jokes to a crowd of drunken Al-Qaeda terrorists with rusty saws than take you head-on.”
“You’re damn straight.” Josephine took in a breath. “I’m glad you told me.”
“Thanks for believing me.”
“I think Charlie can get it up again.”
“Let's keep that on a need to know.”
“I should probably go. After all, it is my honeymoon.”
“If you hurt one hair on his head….”
“That man who’s following you, he’s not with that droog fellow, is he?”
“Probably not, and I don’t think he’s a cop.”
“No. He’s not. They don't have the budget for this sort of thing.”
We both said it at the same time. “Mancini.”
“He obviously doesn’t want you dead.”
“Good to know.”
“Yet.”
“Damn.”
“He won’t want the added media attention.”
“Maybe I should stop whistling Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony everywhere I go. It might give him ideas.”
“Mancini’s trying to pull any information on Alex’s whereabouts, and if there's any chance in hell that you might lead to him, he'll be on you like corn on the cob. I actually feel some sympathy for that fool, despite the fact that he’s not my client.”
“Josephine, you’re becoming…. almost human.”
“Just tell me, promise me you don’t know where Alex is, that you hadn’t any part in this.”
“I haven’t a clue.”
“Joshua, stay safe. And come back from New York in one piece.”
“Have I ever let you down before?”
My family lawyer remained silent.
I said: “On second thought, don’t answer that.”
20
THAT'S WHEN IT ALL STARTED coming together, with Josephine's phone call. The illogical, by a startling upswing of imagination, started to become logical again. Funny how leaps of faith snub all human understanding to master the impossible; the scarecrow, Mad Hatter, Pierrot militiamen, and all that I've written about in Wrong Flight Home. There were still a few unaccounted-for faces in the equation, like that sexually promiscuous woman barely held together in strap
s of leather, the words PORNOCRATES inked across her back, or the enforcer with the painted face of a skull. But even their commander, as Elise once recognized him to be, sporting the words EMINOR across his arm, was modeled, it seemed, after that evil droog from A Clockwork Orange. They were all somehow connected to Elise's troubled childhood, a regurgitation or subconscious undercurrent, if you will. I was right on that observation. Far more importantly they had something, and perhaps everything, to do with her current decisions, including ironically enough her recent leanings towards atheism.
The homeless man.
The very thought of him propelled me to my feet and hurdled me up the steps into the Fifth Avenue entrance of the New York City Library.
“I'm looking for Oz books,” I said to the librarian.
She was a stunningly gorgeous librarian, if ever I'd seen one. Not that librarians are normally unattractive; she was however a cutie-patootie in every sense of the word, of average height and slender, professionally dressed in a white blouse and mini-skirt, with a thin narrow jaw that held complimentary facial features in place. Her tightened skin hinted at an equally stern demeanor (a couple of wrinkles jetted out from the outer crease of her lips), especially with the dark head of hair tied back into a pony-tail and box shaped glasses that completed the ensemble. Despite my excitement over the homeless man's potential identity, I stopped to talk with here merely on the basis that she was adorable, in a saucy sort of way, and there was nothing more invigorating than asking directions from a stern but potentially saucy woman.
“L. Frank Baum or Gregory Maguire?” She said, never looking at me.
“Baum,” I grinned.
I've always been a mighty believer in the smile of a Chamberlain. For hundreds of years tales have been spoken, how women would tear their clothes off at the mere sight of a Chamberlain grin. But the librarian never looked at me, thereby putting my theory concerning the Chamberlain grin on hold.
Slender fingers went clap-clap-clap on her keyboard.
“The Children's Center,” she said, and gave me Wizard's catalogue number, never once taking a chance at the nudist converting charms of my smile. “Do you need directions?”
Goodnight Sometimes Means Goodbye (Wrong Flight Home, #2) Page 16