Well, okay, the reflection admits, maybe some identities do shape up better than others thanks to the clothing of grace and good fortune. Of course, of course, of course, of course. Some identities are significantly richer than others, you’d have to be a fool to deny it. Better, more magnificent sins enacted on satin sheets in the penthouse, with music piped in through the floor grates along with the perfume, lend a certain robust glory to a man’s memory trove. Whereas some existences are empty dry sockets giving off the radiation of pain, victimization, mere shadows on the wall, dim bulbs, lethal vicissitudes, black holes in space, gigantic gravitational vacuums piloted by hungry ghosts…
Nathaniel finds that he is sweating again as these gigantic formless concepts tumble out of the window glass’s reflection into him, taking up mental occupancy. The unpleasantness of these ideas causes him to radiate a nervous malodorous sweat that he himself can smell and be offended by, and to remedy the smell of himself, he rushes to his closet to put on a clean shirt. He searches among the hangers and in the dresser drawers for the blue Brooks Brothers that his sister gave him, once upon a time, the one with thin rust-colored vertical stripes and a button-down collar, the shirt that always cheers him up, the wonder-working shirt. Wearing it makes him into a serious man, what they used to call a man of parts. Outside, snow has started to fall and is tapping against his bedroom’s window glass. The cardinal is no longer chirping, his reflection has disappeared, and the shirt’s not here—it has gone conspicuously missing. The dresser drawer advertises its own emptiness. And what about the white shirt his stepfather gave him, the one tailored in Italy, the elegant Fratelli Moda? What about that one? That one isn’t here either.
Where did they go? Who would burglarize two shirts?
Where are my shirts?
16
AT ONE OF THE TABLES in the dining area of the People’s Kitchen sits Ben the Burglar, alone, slurping his soup. He wears a red cap. He eats with his gloves on, spoon in his right hand, lit cigarette in his left. Today he sports a pair of old tortoiseshell glasses, a 1940s look, that of a chump in a downtown diner wearing a cheap disguise, behind which his junkie eyes peer at his fellow citizens. A bruise shines from the left side of his jaw. Deep film-noir shadows fall on him; blue smoke rises from his head. It is four o’clock in the afternoon, and Nathaniel sits down next to him uninvited.
“Whad I do this time?” Ben asks without looking up. He swallows, then takes a puff from the cigarette.
“I’m missing two shirts,” Nathaniel says. “I think you know where they are.”
“Would you let me finish?” Ben slows down the eating process, savoring each bite of potato, carrot, and stew meat. Why hasn’t he taken off his gloves? He needs a gangster affectation.
“You broke into my place again. That was unfair.”
“So?” Ben smiles. “You didn’t mind when I did it before.” Confessions of misdeeds apparently emerge easily from this hard-boiled guy. Like any tradesman, he takes pride in his work and in a job successfully accomplished. He smiles coldly, blowing smoke upward toward the ceiling. It is an era when people still know how to smoke and eat at the same time.
“So why did you take those shirts?”
“You forgot to lock the door again, for starters. I took a pair of pants, too,” Ben says thoughtfully. “And a pair of shoes.”
He’s now madly grinning with self-love. Also, his speech has slowed down, an effect caused by the good life of cigarettes, food, and opiates. For him, heroin is to experience what salt is to rice. It makes it palatable.
“How come you took them?”
“How come? I was on commission.”
“You were what?”
“You’re funny when you pretend to be deaf.” Ben gazes up at the ceiling with merriment. His eyes mist over. Life is one long spree. He taps out ash on the coffee cup’s saucer, then rotates the cigarette’s tip on the china, a delicate gesture suitable for a dollhouse.
“On commission from whom?”
“‘Whom.’ I like that.” He shakes his head in admiration. “You sure got yourself a good education somewhere.”
“Oh, fuck you, Ben.”
“Okay, there you go, fuck me,” Ben replies, rubbing his chin violently before lifting his eyebrows to express radical innocence in the line of questioning from this overeducated spoilsport. After taking one last long drag from his cigarette, he stubs it out on the saucer and exhales smoke through his teeth. He resumes foraging in the bottomless bowl of soup, prolonging the moment to excruciation, a delay that evidently delights him, because he smirks. Now, with his left gloved hand, free of the cigarette, he lifts a piece of bread, taking a delicate bite. The bread has been slathered with butter, and butter affixes itself to his chin, giving him the look of a polished wooden marionette.
“Coolberg. It was Coolberg, right? He found you.”
The burglar shrugs. “A man’s gotta eat.”
“Which you’re doing. For free. It’s not as if you’re dining off your ill-gotten gains.”
“That’s right. I gave the ill-gotten gains to Luceel. My wife. You remember her. You let yourself meet her, which she didn’t want to do, with you. She didn’t like your looks. She didn’t want to make your acquaintance. Listen, I tell you what.” Ben straightens up. His comic momentum appears to have diminished. “So here I am, okay, right? Eating?” He talks and chews with his mouth open, exposing his nutrition. “So. Okay. So look around at my kingdom.”
Nathaniel involuntarily takes in the People’s Kitchen. Its sights and smells—the graying dust on the front windows, the vinegary odor of cooked food and gamy dirty clothing, the collection of cast-off benches and chairs on which the four other shabby diners sit, absorbing what nourishment they can, the cars on Allen Street rumbling by in a gray audible haze—the entire scene, he knows, should depress him with its overtones of despondency, what his stepfather used to refer to, smilingly, as miserabilium. Gray day, grayer mood. But no: he feels comforted and slightly elated to be here among scruffy outcasts. These are his people.
“So what’s your point?” Nathaniel asks.
“My point? My point? Listen, there’s gotta be a word for people like you, people who get off being around people like me. I’m just trying not to go down the drain here, man. Maybe you haven’t noticed: my future ain’t what it used to be.”
He rubs at his chin. He is working himself up and shivers with agitation.
“You look at me. Okay, I got a habit. Also I got a pregnant wife, but we love each other, me and Luceel, and you come in here, asking me questions like I’m some award you got in the Good Deed Department. You sit there, college boy, pretending like I got a whole bunch of choices in life, a cookie jar full of cookies. You got a word for yourself, for what you are, you little shit, you slimeball educated fuck?” He says this quietly, with scary neutrality.
“A sentimentalist,” Nathaniel says. “But I thought we were talking about my stolen shirts.”
“Whatever.” Ben takes another bite of bread. Outside a siren passes. “So, on account of you once made me a cup of coffee, I’ll say this to you, at least: No, it wasn’t whoever you said it was, Iceberg or Coolberg or Kustard or whatever the fuck his name is or was, who asked me for a couple of your shirts and the other stuff. Hey, someone comes up to me, askin’ for help on a job, offering money, I don’t ask this jerkoff who they are and what they want this shit for. I just do it.”
“So who was it? Who was he?”
“Not a ‘he.’ It was a her. Your girlfriend.”
“Jamie? What would Jamie want with my clothes?”
“That’s funny. You’re funny. Jamie. I like that. Me, I do my women one at a time. Sorry to disappoint you. I never heard of this Jamie. Wasn’t her.”
“Theresa?”
“That’s the one.”
“How’d she find you?”
“Guess you must’ve told her about me.”
“Did she talk to you here?”
Ben shakes his he
ad emphatically. “We’re finished, you and me. No more questions, and no more answers neither.” Ben takes his spoon and taps it twice on the soup bowl. “No, wait a minute, I just thought of something.” He turns to gaze through his film-noir eyeglasses at Nathaniel for a long moment, during which the sounding clatter of dishware comes out of the kitchen, and Ben takes a stagy cigarette from his shirt pocket, sticks it into his mouth, and lights it with a safety match. Outside on the street, a car hoots. “You know what? I’m better than you.” He inhales and nods, agreeing with himself. “Much better. I love my wife, is the thing. I don’t have to apologize about that to no one. Okay, I’m a big screw-up. I’m a flop as a moneymaker. Mistakes were made. But I’m okay with that. You could even say I was happy, once I was dead.” He points the cigarette at Nathaniel, and Nathaniel flinches. “And you are whatever you are.”
17
HIDEOUSLY PERKY and upbeat, Theresa on the phone informs Nathaniel that, yes, indeed, she will certainly discuss the theft of his clothing (a joke! for heaven’s sake! a joke!), but, no, she will not do so at his apartment or at hers, which she refers to as “ma maison,” the sexy irony in her voice side by side with comic pretentiousness. Then she coughs and says, “We’re certainly not going to have a ‘long serious talk,’ as you call it, while we’re sitting around somewhere. I don’t like sedentary quarrels.” Instead, they will meet at Delaware Park at the west end of the pond, and together they will jog until they reach the zoo, whereupon they will greet the lions and tigers and bears in the name of humanity before turning around and jogging back. Recriminations, she says with her customary cheerful detachment, are staged more effectively while doing something else, such as exercising or monitoring wild animals. He offers to pick her up, but she says that she will walk over to the park from Hertel Avenue by herself, as a warm-up.
Halfway there, adjusting the volume control on the VW’s staticky inadequate radio while gazing out at the block south of the Central Park Grill, Nathaniel notices a man walking his dog, a huge mottled mongrel probably acquired at the pound. The dog pulls the man forward at the end of his—the dog’s—leash, the man himself in the forward-tipping posture of a pre-topple, and just when the man does in fact lose his balance and Nathaniel simultaneously finds a good strong radio signal, he has one of those crippling thoughts that occasionally come into the mind unimpeded: Theresa is of course Coolberg’s lover. She plays the chords of betrayal every day as a lark, monogamy being a hilariously bourgeois bad habit, as is, or was, the story of her ex, Robby the Robot who resides in Berkeley, and furthermore, if he—Nathaniel—actually loved her instead of just thinking that he did, he would have already called her by now. He would have called her immediately. He would have confided in her, man to woman, lover to lover, as soon as he had found out from Jamie, who (the epiphanies will not stop) is the woman he actually loves, that Coolberg was clothed in his—Nathaniel’s—autobiography. And now his actual clothes.
The pronouns are getting horribly mixed up. His, hers.
I am sometimes oblivious but seldom obtuse. Now I am both.
Maybe I am not actually here anymore.
18
IN THE PRECISE SPOT where she had said she would be, Theresa, wearing warm-up garb, stands stretching and flexing, and when she catches sight of Nathaniel, she smiles. It’s tough to carry through on a grudge against an attractive insincere woman when she smiles at you that way. The smile is like an irresistible cheap song. Nathaniel smiles back. He can’t help himself. No wonder they call what she has a winning smile. She wins. She always wins. Her hair’s held back in that same ponytail she had displayed when he first met her, and now she leans over to limber up, placing her hands almost flat on the ground, and when she straightens, she takes him in her arms quickly and kisses him in a perfunctory good-morning way.
“April fool,” she says.
“It’s still November.”
“You’re so serious,” she announces, tapping his chest. “And literal. You’re earnest. I don’t like that part of you. Well, are you ready to run?”
He nods. She takes off her sweatpants and trots over to Nathaniel’s car, which she evidently knows is always unlocked on principle (another one of Nathaniel’s principles, like the nonexistence of a watch on his wrist), and drops them in.
Before he has been able to stretch or loosen up, she takes off. Theresa has gained the distance of a city block when he finally catches her. He’s reasonably fit and manages to overtake her without too much trouble, but when they reach a jogging path, she sprints ahead of him.
“So what’s your question?” she asks him, throwing the words to him, backwards, behind her.
“Those shirts?” he asks. “That burglar?”
“Him? Ben? You introduced us, remember?” Nathaniel remembers no such thing. “Anyway, I wanted to wear one of your shirts, to have you close to me. Really, Nathaniel, I do have moments like that.”
Nathaniel jogs around a hissing overfed goose, which lunges at him, and he tries to coordinate his pace with Theresa’s. But she has a habit of changing her speed whenever he’s next to her. A bird seems to be flying alongside him, and one of his familiars, a bag lady with a Band-Aid on her forehead caked with dried blood, stares at him fixedly from a bench. He runs off to the side to make way for another jogger, and when he does, Theresa slows down.
“I don’t think I believe you. I think you gave my clothes to Coolberg.”
“Why would I do that?” She falls in behind him. “Well, maybe I did do that.”
“Are you seeing him?” he asks, throwing off the words to the wind.
She says something that sounds like “Seeing him? Of course I’m seeing him,” and Nathaniel would feign surprise and stop dead in his tracks, but he can’t pretend to be shocked—it would be insincere shock—and besides, he’s in no position to complain to her about anyone’s sexual duplicity. He’s not angry because he’s not jealous because he doesn’t love her. Also, she can’t see the expression on his face, so why bother? “And you,” she seems to say, from behind him. “You’re balling that dancer, that cabdriver.”
“How do you know?” he asks the wind.
“I followed you once,” the wind says to him, without inflection. “I looked in through the window at you two. She was performing for you. Scarves and shit. Very Isadora Duncan.”
This seems possible, so he drops the subject. Why isn’t she angry, if she took the trouble to be a voyeur? Maybe she just has a little curiosity about him, a shallow blank desire that lighted on him before it found its way into another corner, to another object, a suitable target for her brand of erotic whimsy. She is a kind of avant-garde lover, the type who will try anything without being truly invested in it. Voyeurism suits her perfectly; from where she watches, she occupies a zone of safety.
“Is Coolberg wearing my clothes right now?”
“Could be. He’s writing a story. He needs to be you for a while.”
“Oh, no.” He feels as if he’s been kicked in the stomach. He struggles for breath as he runs. At last he manages a question. “What’s the story about?”
Theresa catches up to him, jogs alongside him for a minute, then accelerates. Ahead of him, tossing up mud and dirt from her running shoes, she says, “He’s writing a book called Shadow.” She’s panting slightly now from her exertions. “The first part is about a solar eclipse. The second section is set around the time of World War I and is about someone named Pierre Chadeau who’s followed around by his cousin, Henri l’Ombre, a ghost, who died on the front in Belgium. The third part takes place entirely at night. That’s the one with you in it.”
“What role do I play? What do I do?”
She slows down again, turning around, jogging backwards, facing him. She seems to have no fear of stumbling or running blindly, backwards, into anything. She raises her hands to her forehead and sticks her index fingers out toward him, as horns. “You’re the devil,” she says, grinning.
19
THE ZOO SH
OULD HAVE BEEN loud and smelly, with children milling around taunting the big cats for having been caught and caged, their kiddie-mockery accompanied by peanut shells launched toward the bars, and contemptuous laughter hurled at the now harmless teeth, the useless claws. There should have been trumpeting by unhappy elephants, desperate despairing silent roars sent up into the air by the voiceless imprisoned zebras, and there should have been peacock-shrieking.
But sometimes it happens that we enter a public place and find that, for once, the law of averages has broken down. We step gingerly into the darkened movie theater; the film starts, and we are the only ones in attendance, the only spectators to laugh or scream or yawn in the otherwise empty and silent rows of seats. We drive for miles and see no one coming in the other direction, the road for once being ours alone. Our high beams stay on. Where is everybody? The earth has been emptied except for us as we make our stuttering progress through the dark. We take each turn expecting that someone will appear out of nowhere to keep us company for a moment. In the doctor’s anteroom, no one else is waiting and fidgeting with nerves, and the receptionist has vanished; or we find ourselves alone in the fun-house at the seedy carnival, where, because of our solitude, there will be no fun no matter what we do; or we enter the restaurant where no one else is dining, though the candles have all been lit and the place settings have been nicely arranged. The waitstaff has collectively decamped to some other bistro even though they have left the lights on in this one. The water boiling in the kitchen sends up a cloud of steam. The maître d’ has abandoned his station; we can sit anywhere we please. The outward-bound commuter train starts, but no one else sits in the car, and no conductor ambles down the aisle to punch a hole in our ticket. In the drugstore no one is behind the cash register, and the druggist has left the prescription medications unmonitored on their assorted shelves. We enter the church for the funeral, and we are the first to arrive, and we must sit without the help of the ushers. Where are they? No sound, not a single note or a chord or a melody line from the organ loft, consoles and sustains us.
The Soul Thief Page 8