Chapter 33
New York City
Sarah was showering when I received a text from Higgles that snapped me back to reality. A job in the Dominican Republic, my first since I’d settled with Sarah.
“You know, you’re just like that boy,” she said, toweling off.
“Which boy?” I lay in bed watching her, my mind churning over the prospect of the new job and how best to break it to Sarah. I didn’t want to set any ripples in motion with our relationship. While a marriage proposal was nowhere in sight, I liked what we had going. The idea of having a place I actually wanted to return to sent a warm glint of contentment through my body.
“The one from the kid’s book. I know you know it. A little boy who runs away from home, gets trapped in a bad place. It’s a classic.”
“Where the Wild Things Are?”
“No,” she said, buttoning her blouse, “not that one.”
“Harold and the Purple Crayon?”
“No, a different one. I know you know it.” She explained the story as best she could. She didn’t remember much. “What I remember was that he was a brat.”
I smiled. “So you’re saying I’m a brat?”
She picked out a skirt. “Well, yes, but that’s not why you’re like him. Or not the only reason.” She tried to explain. “Something happened to the boy, his mother dies or she’s a lesbian or she runs away—I don’t remember, but something happens and he does something he shouldn’t do.”
“What?”
She shook her head.
“You are the worst storyteller in the world,” I said. “Go on.”
She poked me in the side, then leaned down and ran a finger across my lips before continuing to dress. “Well, he does something he can’t change and ends up in this place that wasn’t day and wasn’t night. It’s where night stops being night, you know?”
“I’ve been there,” I said. “It’s called the DMV.”
She pouted in the mirror. “I’m being serious.”
“So am I,” I said. “How am I like this boy?”
Lifting her head, she studied the ceiling for the answer. Her face was still sleep-swollen. “Sometimes it seems like you’re not really awake.”
“Explain.”
“Well, you know when you’re asleep and dreaming but you’re kinda conscious of everything going on around you in the room? You seem like that,” she said. She paused in front of the mirror, studied her outfit. “Trapped and you can’t get home.” She looked at me. “How’s this outfit look?”
“Great.”
She grabbed her purse and keys.
“Hold up,” I said. “I’ve got something I want to talk to you about.”
The words stopped her. “You mean like talk talk? You’re not planning on breaking up with me just as I head out for work, are you?”
“What? No.”
“You have an STD?”
“God, no,” I said. “I just need to leave town for a few days, that’s all.”
She kissed me goodbye. “Tell me tonight when you buy me dinner. I heard about a new place in Harlem I want to try.”
That evening, I met her at the gallery and we took a cab up to Strivers Row.
Princess Big Thighs was a twelve-table restaurant with burlap tablecloths, a cigarette-scarred piano, tin ceilings painted orange, and sixty-watt lighting tucked away in a brownstone. No telephone number, no sign. You’d ring apartment A2 and tell whoever answered that you wished an audience with her highness. After being buzzed in, you’d walk through the parlor of the ground-floor apartment, pass an old man watching a Mexican dance show and eating marshmallows, and through a kitchen that smelled of burnt popcorn and out the back door into the yard. Crossing the small scrub of lawn, littered with broken chairs and coffee cans filled with cigarettes, you’d find yourself at the basement door of the abutting brownstone. Knock twice, pause, knock once, pause, then knock twice again.
The door would open to reveal a thick-set woman, heavily bejeweled. Princess Big Thighs. “Uh-huh?” she’d ask.
You’d tell her you’d like to have some dinner. She’d gaze over you, then, if she felt you were worthy, shoo you in.
Sarah and I were shooed in and pointed toward the last open table. We were the only whites in the place. Princess Big Thighs came around with water.
I asked for menus. “Menus?” she said. “No menus, sweetmeat. You sit. You eat. You pay. It’s that simple.”
Princess went to the piano and banged out a song she’d made up on the spot. “Scrawny white girls ain’t nothing but lies,” she sang, her voice like that of a bus engine starting.
Fried ham, squash, walnut bread, and gravy. “Red or white wine?” Princess asked. We ordered a bottle of red, which ended up being excellent. Sarah held the bottle up to the light, read the label aloud. “Remember the name. And that it’s vintage,” she said, then went on about the importance of wine being vintage. She wouldn’t stop talking about it.
There was a red-eye to Santo Domingo. I had my Tomas Cartright passport and cash on me and planned to fly out in a handful of hours. I planned on coming back, though I hadn’t figured out how to break the news of my Kam Manning to Sarah. I didn’t know if it’d mix well with a steady relationship. But as the meal went on, I found myself pouring forth, telling her my life story, things I’d never told her before. Things I’d never told anyone before. Growing up in Iowa, the death of my parents and Clement, even my time in the shelter, but not about Ray-Ray or Higgles. I stopped short of telling her about either of them or my Kam Manning.
Sarah sat back in her chair, her face expressionless but her eyes heavy with tears. Then she leaned across the table and kissed me and cried while Princess Big Thighs sang.
For the first time in a long time, I felt cared for. Safe.
Even loved.
Pulling back, Sarah shook her head. “This is all…we need to slow this down.”
“Slow down?”
She nodded.
“You mean—”
“Yeah. We need to take a break.”
“From each other?” A fit of laughter and crippling nausea battled their way up my stomach, fighting to be the first out. “I don’t understand. What just happened?”
“It’s just that, I don’t know. Your unloading on me makes me realize that we’re…” She didn’t finish.
After five minutes of awkward silence, punctuated by even more awkward talk, I got up to leave. “I just need some time to think,” she said, and ordered another bottle of wine for herself. “The red vintage,” she told Princess Big Thigh.
On Malcolm X Boulevard I hailed a cab and told the driver to take me to JFK. Rattled, confused, and panicked, my brain couldn’t fire a clear thought. It was the same way I felt after my parents’ death.
Crossing the Triborough Bridge into Queens, my phone rang. It was Sarah, crying. “I’ve had time to think,” she said between sobs. “Come home. I want you home.”
My voice sounded before any thought formed. “I’ll be back in three days,” I said. “I promise I’ll be back.”
Chapter 34
On the flight to the Dominican Republic, I studied the maps in the back of the in-flight magazine. I’d taken up Ray-Ray’s habit of studying atlases, charting my travels, understanding where I’d been. I tried to see if there was a pattern, some logic. I tried to figure out the course I’d taken so I could see what was to come next.
I had to see my future.
But even after four cocktails and two hours of staring at the dots marking the cities of the world, I saw only a map.
I tried to sleep, but my mind refused to shut down. The Sarah situation bothered me, especially how impressed she has been that Princess Big Thighs served vintage wine. She took it to mean that the wine was good, but vintage has nothing to do with the quality of the wine. It simply means that all the grapes u
sed in the wine were grown and harvested in that year.
In the background churned another thought, one that seemed to always be running, consuming energy. Had my father been drunk that night, the car wreck never would have happened. I’m positive they’d still be alive.
When I landed in the Dominican Republic, I found out the job was actually in Haiti. Getting over the border was easy, though the drive was slow and arduous. I found my contact, a Swiss UN aid worker in Petionville who couldn’t keep his eyes off the young boys. “It must hurt very much,” the man said, handing me a packet filled with documents.
I took the packet, stuffed it in the waistband in the back of my jeans. “What hurts?”
“Your testicles,” he said. “Your boss has a very tight hold on them.”
I told him to fuck off and headed out.
Getting back across the border wasn’t so easy. Some asshole winged a beer bottle at my rental. It smashed on the driver’s side door, the glass sparking through my open window and cutting my cheek. The Dominican border guard labored over my paperwork, saying it could take hours to process me. Sixty bucks sped me through.
When I returned to New York three days later, Sarah and I picked up where we’d left off. She acted like our night at Princess Big Thighs had never happened, that she hadn’t backpedaled when I’d opened up to her. All was forgotten. It was like time had been edited, the part she didn’t like clipped out and discarded. As for my Kam Manning, she didn’t ask where I’d been, wasn’t concerned about the cut on my face. She didn’t even seem to notice.
My wound healed quickly, but a heaviness hung over me like a lead wool blanket, the kind used at the dentist when you’re X-rayed. The question why? cropped up more and more. Why Kam Man? Why Sarah? Why wake in the morning? I forced my way through the days like they were paint-by-numbers, everything plotted and prescribed. I made the motions, followed the instructions, and when night arrived, I had created something that loosely resembled living.
I texted Higgles. Send an address. I’ll FedEx.
I set up a PO Box in Chinatown, gave him the number, and told him to send the payment—plus an extra $600 for expenses.
No reply to my request. It was like I had spooked him. I looked at the documents, which seemed innocuous: a bunch of flowcharts, a note from some guy named Fritz to Liz congratulating her on her promotion, and an old-school floppy disk. The kind that are actually floppy. In my hands, the information was worthless. I had no idea how or where it fit into the big picture. Keys with no locks.
I heard nothing from Higgles for four days. I texted him again. Another day passed with no reply. Finally, he texted an address. It was a residential area in Seattle. Send it to Robert Tanke, he wrote.
The name chimed a note in my memory. He was the director of the homeless shelter. The whole game shifted more into focus. Higgles, whoever he was, must have known the director.
Robert P. Tanke, JD. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. And those who can’t teach, run homeless shelters. Attorneys have a reputation for being sharks, but Tanke had the backbone of a newborn. A stern look would topple him over. I could easily see how Higgles, possibly living or working at the homeless shelter, could use Tanke to his advantage, setting up the Kam Manning headquarters there with little-to-no fear of blowback. It was probably where he met and recruited Ray-Ray. Then Ray-Ray had recruited me. The Amway business model.
A week after I’d overnighted the package, I got my money. Or at least part of it. Higgles had gypped me expenses.
Atlanta was the next Kam Man. I texted Higgles that I wouldn’t do it until he paid up full for the DR job. He swore I’d be paid in full once the new job was done.
I wasn’t. Nor was I paid in full after Turks and Caicos, Vancouver, or Salt Lake City. Higgles always held back a few hundred dollars, enough to be irritating but not a deal breaker.
I kept sending the packages to Tanke’s place, but I played it cautious, changing up the PO Box where my payment was sent, not wanting Higgles to know exactly where I was. Still, a tickle of worry often ran over my skin. Out for walks, I’d find myself stopping in the street and quickly turning to gaze behind me, certain I was being followed. I felt eyes on me, but I never found anyone.
Never once did Sarah question my taking off for a handful of days. She never asked where I went, what I did, how I made money. I should have been thrilled by the lack of scrutiny. I had a free pass, the ideal situation. Strangely, it depressed me. The less interested she seemed in what I did, the more urgent my desire was to tell her. Only, I didn’t. Princess Big Thighs was my lesson learned. Opening up to her only made her retreat. So our conversations, our interactions, stayed surface level, never dipping very deep.
Until one hot, late spring afternoon, as we lie in bed listening to the shouts and laughs of children playing in the street, she surprised me by asking, “Do you want kids?”
The room’s air swirled thick with the scent of sex and fig-scented candles. The bedsheets lay on the floor in a tangle.
“I hadn’t really thought about it. But no, not now.”
Sarah wiped the sweat from her face with a pillow, then picked a pubic hair off her tongue. “Not ever, you mean.” She lifted a hand to stop me from interrupting.
I wasn’t planning to interrupt.
“Which is fine, I guess,” she said. “Hey, at least you know. At least you’re honest.” Sarah stood, her naked body pale, lovely. “Most people aren’t even smart enough for that,” she said. “They think just because they can have kids they should have kids.”
“So you don’t want kids?”
She leaned her head out the window, eyeing the street, the children, the action. She spoke over her shoulder. “I want them, kinda feel entitled to them. But then what are feelings anyway? Just a mix of chemicals, a stew of stuff.”
Pulling herself back in, she turned to me, her eyes hard with a thought. I could see that she’d come to some decision. “I wasn’t going to ask,” she said, “but what do you think about visiting my parents for the Fourth of July?”
The words sounds great formed but got caught in my throat.
Sarah was moving the relationship forward by settling. I could see that. It wasn’t so much that she desired to spend the rest of her life with me, but that I was available. My guess is that she’d assessed her life and determined that I, while not ideal, was good enough. First was the visit to the folks, then, when her lease ran out in the fall, a move to Queens or Jersey City. Add to that the talk of kids and it was clear that my status was being upgraded from casual boyfriend to serious boyfriend. Fiancé, then husband, wasn’t far behind.
A flush of blood surged to my head. Having a wife, a family, wasn’t an idea I feared, but not like this. Not as a consolation prize, something based on convenience. On giving up.
“So what do you think?” She picked up an old Art in America, flipped through the pages, playing the whole thing off like it was no big deal.
I swallowed hard before I spoke. “You know, Sarah, it’s just that I’m broke.”
She closed the magazine, looked at me confused. “What do you mean? I thought you had money?”
“I do have money. I just mean…listen, I don’t think I can do this and do it right.”
She didn’t understand.
I got out of bed, slipped on my underwear. “Why don’t we get a coffee or something?”
She laughed, but it was forced. “God, what’s wrong with you? You act like I just told you I’m pregnant.”
My stomach twisted like a slug being salted. “Are you?”
She shot me with a look of disgust. “You know, just forget it.” She kicked my pants toward me. “Buy me a coffee.”
At a café brimming with laptops and Ray-Bans’ we settled at a sticky table. The waitress delivered a chocolate croissant and two lattes. “I’m sorry,” I said, taking Sarah’s hand.
She pulled it away. “You should be. I mean, it’s not a big deal.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to meet them, it’s just that I’ve been thinking about us, and I think—”
“Ah, shit.” She stared at me, stunned. “Really, you’re doing this here? Breaking up with me?”
A thorn of ice scraped the edge of my heart. No, I thought. By the time I finally got it out, it was too late. Sarah was crying loudly over her croissant. “Why?” she asked again and again. “What’d I do?” The café crowd kept their heads down, focused on their phones or laptops, acted like they were ignoring us.
“Listen, I’m not breaking up with you.”
“Then come with me for the Fourth.”
I shook my head, feeling gutted and awful. “Let’s be healthy and see how things go.”
The tears came hard. “Wow. ‘Let’s be healthy’? What the fuck has our relationship been, unhealthy?” She took my fingers in her hand, wrenched them back hard. It hurt. “I let you move in, become part of my life. I open myself up to you and this is what I get?” she asked. “I gave you the best days of my life.”
I didn’t know what to say, and so I said the wrong thing. “We’ve only known each other seven months.”
“Seven days, seven months, seven light-years. Whatever,” she snapped, standing. “Betrayal is still betrayal, no matter the amount of time.”
Light-years, I wanted to tell her, are a measure of distance, not time.
“I didn’t expect much,” she said, “but I expected more.”
The crowd couldn’t help but stare as she stormed out, banging against tables on the way.
I sat motionless a moment, feeling the heat of glares on me. Finally, just to do something, I picked up the croissant Sarah hadn’t finished and took a bite. I couldn’t get it down. Chase after her, I told myself. Say you’re sorry, that you’d love to meet her parents. Instead, I called the airline, booked a flight back to Seattle. Laying down a twenty, I told the waitress to keep the change.
Only after, with my flight airborne, winging westward, did I wonder why I had done what I had done.
Where Night Stops Page 9