Hot Poppies

by Reggie Nadelson

  “I can believe it.” The wine went down easy. In the kitchen I found another bottle and opened it. Flirting was Babe Vanelli’s automatic mode and I was happy to fall in, drinking the wine, wiping out the worries, waiting for Lily.

  “The cameras don’t lie, you know? Trust what you see. People suck up to me all the time so’s I’ll make them look fabulous, but it’s all there. Or not.” She took the TV remote and switched it on. “Some weather. So,” Babe said, kneeling up on the sofa so she could reach the bookshelves and change the CD to James Taylor. “So, you’re Artie Cohen. Lily’s Russian cop.”

  “Was. I was.”

  “Was a cop?”

  “Was a cop. Was a Russian.”

  “I never heard such a New York accent in my life.”

  “I haven’t been Russian since I was sixteen. I left. I did some time in Israel, then I came here.”

  “You were in jail in Israel? What’d you do, whack a rabbi?”

  “I was in the army. After we left Moscow, we spent a few years in Israel.”

  “I’d’ve figured you for a New Yorker, born and bred. You sure don’t look tired and huddled to me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Women come on to you a lot because you’re a cop?”

  “Some.” Too many, I thought. “How come I always go out with such wingnuts?” I once said to Rick. He said I didn’t notice the good ones. Until Svetlana, who was dead. And Lily.

  “You tell them cop stories?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “You think they get it right on TV? I did make-up once for some TV cops,” she said.

  “Sure. It’s just like TV.”

  “Don’t smile when you say it. You like being a cop?”

  “I did. Once.”

  “How did you start?”

  “I thought it was glamorous,” I said, but I thought Babe deserved better. “I was naïve. I thought I could maybe help people.” I poured more wine. “Then I got a taste for blood.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing.” I didn’t like talking about this stuff much so I pulled the snapshots out of my pocket. “What do you make of these?”

  “Who are they?”

  “It doesn’t matter. You see anything?”

  Like someone else would read palms, Baby read the faces. She held up Pansy’s picture. “This one, I bet you, is a beauty behind those glasses. This one is sad”—she held Rose up to the light—“this is a girl with too much bad make-up that doesn’t work. That’s what’s so sad.”

  “Spell it out for me.”

  “She’s tried to make herself up to be pretty, she wants to look good. Women do it, hon, all day all the time, you know that, but this girl could make you cry she wants it so bad. Like her life depended on it.”

  Babe got up and handed me the pictures and I followed her into the hall. Picking up a leather jacket from a chair, she put it on.

  “Take care of yourself,” I said. “There’s a lot of scum out there.”

  “I always have this.” Babe opened her bag and showed me the lipstick. She pulled the cap off the pink enamel tube, twisted it once and a knife popped out.

  “Jesus. Where’d you get it?”

  “Any ladies room in any club in town. Whatever you want. Lipsticks with knives. Mace in hairspray cans. Someone carts the stuff around town in a Bloomies shopping bag. So stay well, hon,” she said. “Artie, hon, you don’t know anyone has a place I can use for a couple days? My heat’s completely fucked-up. I got a hot date coming in from the coast Saturday, Lily said maybe you’d know something.”

  “I’ll make a couple of calls. I’ll give you a ring.”

  “Hey, no worries,” she said.

  She reached up and caressed my face. “You’re a very good-looking guy. I like blue eyes. You can’t lie if you got blue eyes like yours.” Babe kissed me lightly. “You want to go out with me sometimes?” She winked. “I’m kidding. Artie?”

  “What?”

  “Lily likes you a lot, you know. I’ve known her all our lives and she likes you a whole lot. More than you know.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t fish. But you know what you should do, though?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Give her a child.” Babe was probably a little bit stewed from the wine. I was too. Lily had never mentioned a kid. Never. “I’m telling you,” Babe said again, “what Lily really wants is a child.”

  8

  “I’m very very glad you’re here.” Lily leaned against me and I forgot all about what Babe Vanelli said. I got a handful of her flesh; it was warm and soft against my fingers. “Maybe this is what married life is like. The guy waiting for you at home, the wine open.” She took off the blue sweater and her white silk undershirt slipped off her shoulders.

  Through the thin fabric, I could feel her breasts. The nipples were hard. I try to think of them as breasts. Steven, this guy I ride a bike with, tells me that all men are pigs, but how big a pig you are boils down to whether you think of them as tits or breasts, so I’m trying not to be a pig. I’m forty years old, I’m still trying to get the woman thing right. With Lily it was right.

  It was after six when she got home and by the time we got to the bedroom, where we were now, she’d shed most of her clothes; most of mine, too.

  I walked across the room to turn off the news.

  “What’s that on your legs?”

  “What’s what?”

  “Your legs, my love. There’s things on the back of your legs like blueberry pies.”

  Like an idiot, I bluffed. “I fucked up shooting some hoops the other day.”

  “Really?” Lily took a white terry-cloth robe and wrapped it around her. “When was that?” She tied the belt. “I think I want a drink,” she said.

  I put on the sweats I keep at Lily’s place and went back into the living room where she was already pouring the Scotch. The lights were on and the yellow walls glowed. Avoiding the sofa where we could both sit, Lily sat down on the weathered leather chair she’d picked up in a junk store. “So,” she said. “Hoops!”

  So I told her. I gave her the picture of Rose and she put her glasses on and peered at it. “It’s the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. All the aspiration, all the desperation. Who is she?”

  “A dead girl. A dead girl who worked in a sweatshop and wanted her family to think she made it in America. But it’s not my problem any more.” I was lying and Lily knew it.

  “Yes it is. Once you took that phone call yesterday morning you were in it. I’m not mad, Artie. It just scares me.” But she was mad.

  “I did a favor for a friend is all. I owed him.”

  “I see,” she said in a voice that I hate a lot. I’m crazy about Lily, but there are times I get it wrong with her and I never know exactly why. The phone rang.

  “Don’t answer it,” I said. “Let’s go to bed instead.”

  Lily picked up the phone and listened for a second, her expression tightening. Then she slammed down the receiver. “What’s going on, Artie? What is this?”

  “What?”

  “I could hear them breathing.”

  “It was a crank call. You’re on TV. People know your face. You get crank calls. Maybe it was a wrong number.”

  “I don’t want this again, Artie. You get that? Last time, I almost got cut up by a man with a knife who knew where I lived. You almost got killed. Ricky got whacked. I think you’re already in this thing and you can’t get out. Won’t get out. You need it. It’s your drug. You know something? Your legs look like shit, you probably haven’t slept in a couple of days, but by God, Artie, you look more alive than you have for ages. Ages.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  She wandered through the living room, straightening out books on the coffee table, fiddling with records on the shelves, adjusting flowers in jugs, her back to me.

  Maybe it was the booze, the painkillers, the scars on Rose’s face, the scumsuckers tha
t jumped me, or Babe’s talk of kids, I don’t know. I should have kept my mouth shut, but I didn’t. I swallowed some Scotch and said, “What is it with you? You only want to hear about the weather? You should watch that, you could end up on Hard Copy and call it journalism.”

  “You’re not really going to law school, are you, Artie? Nothing is going to change, is it?” She pulled the Yellow Pages off a shelf. “So what about this?” she said. “Look. Private Investigators: Matrimonial, Armed Escort, Asset Location. I sure wish you’d locate some assets for me. Look, Artie.” She shoved the book under my nose. “Sherlock Hound. A private dick, isn’t that what they call these guys? You could do that. Sherlock Hound! I love it.”

  She tossed the book on the sofa and banged open a window. Lily leaned out into the snow. I grabbed her hand but she pushed me away. I shuffled through her record albums.

  “Where’s that Tony Bennett album I gave you? The vinyl with Bill Evans.”

  Lily slammed the window shut and drained her glass.

  “Where is it?”

  “I’ll get you another one,” she said. Don’t push me on this.”

  “I’m pushing.”

  Sucking an ice cube, she said, “OK, you asked. I lent it to someone.”

  “Who someone? It’s Frye, isn’t it? You gave my album to him.”

  When Phillip Frye went back to London last year, I thought it was pretty much over with him and Lily, but Frye keeps coming back like green peppers. Phil Frye is married, he always will be. But he calls her, she jumps. Frye’s one of those do-gooders, always on some cause. Amnesty. Humana. Something I never heard of. He’s crazy about the poor and the sick, preferably in faraway places, and from what I can tell he’s a vain, sanctimonious guy. I think he lays a lot of guilt on Lily. Or maybe I’m just jealous.

  She wears the diamond earrings and the cashmere and she laughs about the family of old radicals she comes from, laughs pretty bitterly about it, but it goes deep. If a bum in the street asks Lily for money and she doesn’t give, she feels lousy all day.

  I poured myself more Scotch. “Why don’t you just dump him?”

  “I could have asked you the same question about Svetlana a while back,” she said, but she put her arms around me and kissed me on the mouth, a big wet cartoon kiss. “This is stupid. Isn’t it?”

  “I guess.” I didn’t want to hear about Svetlana. Svetlana was dead.

  “I’m sorry about the album, really. I am.” She kissed me again and put on a CD. Bing Crosby sang “White Christmas”. Lily put her arms around me. “You have to have Bing when it snows, don’t you?”

  “I don’t get Bing Crosby.”

  “What’s to get? You always say that. There’s nothing to get. It’s not Wittgenstein. It’s not Umberto Eco. It’s just goddamn Bing Crosby in an argyle sweater and a pipe singing ‘White Christmas’. OK?”

  When it’s good, it’s great; when it goes sour with me and Lily, it’s like this. On the piano was a picture of Lily in an oval frame. I picked it up. In it, she was about two, hair on top of her head, wearing a tiny summer dress, carrying her teddy bear by its arms. The bear had no eyes. “My mother took them out so I wouldn’t swallow them,” she said once. “It’s the only time I ever remember her worrying about me.”

  What Lily secretly yearns for, I sometimes think, is a regular guy, a doctor, a businessman, someone who will take her to the ballet and the opera—I hate them both. Instead, she’s stuck with Phil Frye and a knucklehead like me.

  My beeper went off. I ignored it. To hell with it. It could all wait. All the dead people, all the people I owed. I was scared and mad and I wanted her. I pulled her onto the floor.

  The phone rang.

  “Leave it.”

  “I have to.”

  “No.”

  “You’re hurting me.” She took her arm away and made a big show of examining it. “Christ, Artie, that really hurt.” We both knew it didn’t. She pushed her hair back, went to the kitchen and got the phone. I stood in the door.

  “Hi, Phil,” she said and let the door swing shut.

  In the bedroom, I got dressed and put on my shoes—I had to hold onto Lily’s desk to get them on, my legs hurt so bad. A folder lay open on the desk and, out of habit, I turned the pages.

  “Precious to God,” the brochure began and there were pictures of children and tales of woe. Children available: Ecuador, Korea, Romania, China. “Precious to God” is how the children were described. There were application forms for adoption in triplicate, filled out neatly in her handwriting, and Lily’s mugshot, grim but game. The brochure in my hand, I barged back into the kitchen and waved it at her. It was a mistake.

  “You’re not serious, Lily, are you? ‘Precious to God’?”

  “Just go away, will you?” Lily covered the phone with her free hand and looked up with a hurt, angry expression. She pushed her hair away from her face anxiously. “Scram, Artie, OK? It’s not a joke.”

  As I left, I heard her purr into the phone in the husky voice she sometimes used with me. “Hello, Phil?” she said. “I’m still here.”

  9

  At the Red Swan, business was pretty good in spite of the snow. It had been snowing for thirty-six hours solid when I left Lily on the phone and went to Henry Liu’s place down off Broadway. Phil Frye was a piece of crap. I wanted a drink, there was nothing happening anyhow because the snow jammed up everything and everyone.

  Henry Liu’s was a landmark. Even if, like me, you didn’t normally have much business in Chinatown, you knew about Liu, who owned dozens of buildings along with the Red Swan. Liu, by reputation, was an old-time boss, the head of a big family association, a man who put his mark on Chinatown and everyone in it, including the police; rumor had it he had been the rabbi to at least half a dozen commanders in the 5th Precinct. I’d also heard that he had a snake tattooed around one wrist and wore a million-dollar platinum Patek Philippe on the other.

  The ground floor of the three-storey food palace contained a fancy supermarket. A few people cruised the aisles, most of them rich babes with great tans, big furs and limos idling outside at the curb. There were lacquered ducks that resembled designer handbags and barrels of rare mushrooms that cost more than diamonds, and the women picked them over, rapacious looks on their faces, like they’d never had a decent meal. One babe, a full-length white fox coat over her shoulders, her slim arm wound with a gold Bulgari snake—I always read Lily’s fashion magazines in the can—bought abalone at eight hundred bucks a pound. Her fingernails were black as dried blood.

  Snappy hostesses in sharp black silk suits patrolled the restaurant upstairs, walkies in hand, high heels going tap tap on the marble floors and the see-through stairs where Liu had installed twinkling lights. The women guided guests up and down as if it were an ancient court in a walled city, this caste to that level, lesser mortals below, gods to Liu’s private dining room. Like eunuchs at the palace, the muscle consisted of beardless young men who wore wire-rim glasses and Armani suits. I didn’t know much about Henry Liu but, from the treatment I got, I figured, somehow, he knew about me.

  “Have you eaten?” one of the hostesses inquired. “Would you care to dine? Drink?” She was solicitous, attentive, fawning, and so were the suits, as if Liu had been told I could be bent. In the second-floor restaurant, where a band played, I settled on a leather stool at the curving black glass bar, munched prawn crackers, sipped Scotch and watched the action.

  A wedding snaked its way in and out of the tables, the older couples doing a dizzying two-step, posture perfect, feet moving in intricate patterns, like teams of figure skaters. The little kids bopped around, the teenagers formed a conga line then broke up and did the macarena. Waiters staggered under vast trays loaded with platters of food. The smells made me hungry and, before I even asked for a menu, a plate of lobster and rice was delivered to the bar, compliments of Henry Liu. Where was Mr Liu? I asked. Busy, an Armani told me politely. I finished the Scotch, ordered a beer and ate.

 
; When I finished, I sat around a while. Jerry Chen arrived, which I half expected—he said he ate at Liu’s most nights—and so did Pete Leung, which surprised me. Chen sat alone at a table, eating and reading Vanity Fair. Pete was escorted to a large table where he was surrounded by men in suits. But when he saw me, he beckoned me over. He got up and shook my hand and introduced me to the men, who also shook my hand.

  Pete moved away from the table and lowered his voice. “I have to talk to these men for a few minutes, Artie. I try to do legit business down here. It’s difficult. Hello, Jeremy.” As soon as he saw Jerry Chen, his voice chilled right down.

  Pete said, “Jeremy told you we knew each other?”

  There was real antagonism between them, which was weird, considering the Taes asked me to get Chen in on the thing with Dawn. Pete was Dawn’s husband after all. Maybe down here everyone knew everyone, but the tension between these two you could slice up for dinner.

  “I was just fixing with Artie to have a meal,” Pete said. He didn’t invite Jerry Chen and Chen, looking angry, went back to his magazine.

  “I’m sorry, Artie, I just couldn’t stand him, not tonight. All the swearing. The posturing. Is he gone? Can you see?” Pete craned his neck. “Look, I’m at my wits’ end with Dawn. She goes out by herself. I’m scared all the time for her,” he said. “Help me if you can,” he added, which was tough for a guy like Pete. I said I’d try, and then he went back to the table of men.

  Chen was waiting for me in the lobby.

  “This meeting is accidental?”

  “I eat at Henry’s most nights, like I told you,” Chen said. I let it ride.

  “You want to talk about you and Pete Leung?”

  “What should I fucking say about Pete Leung? Should I ask myself what the fuck he’s doing here at Henry Liu’s eating with a bunch of guys who support Taiwan, who hate the commie dicks on the mainland fifty years after they took over, before some of them were even born?”