“Ah, that’s nice, baby. I knew you’d understand.” He stretched and winced. “Damn! I could use a good hot soak. They only have a shower where I’m staying.”
Which was Anna’s cue to invite Felix back to her place, because she had a big tub, and in short order Felix was soaking away, with Anna sitting on the edge of the bath, admiring her hero, and plying him, on request, with iced beers, cigarettes, and sandwiches.
Eventually, Felix got out of the bath and stood naked and dripping on the bathmat. From where she sat, Anna could see that he was bruised also on the thighs and midsection. She felt a wave of pity and admiration for him. Felix made no move to dry himself off. He just stood in front of her, with his groin at the level of her mouth. “Hey,” he said and jerked his hips, so that a drop of bathwater jumped from his stiffening penis to splash on her face. Blissfully, she closed her eyes and took him in.
Anna sat in a chair watching Felix snoring on her bed. It was close to midnight. He had walked in and plopped down immediately after getting sucked off, and had been out ever since. Felix was not one for tender afterglows. He had a brutal streak: no, not brutal, she edited, strong, vigorous, masculine. It excited her, she had to admit; he was so different from the male schoolteachers and administrators she mixed with every day, or the floorwalkers at the department store. They were rabbits compared to Felix. Imagine, taking on a gang of thugs singlehanded!
He stirred and rolled over. She hoped he would wake up and make love to her. She had stripped and put on a bathrobe to make it easier. Fuck me, she thought, concentrating hard. Get up and fuck me! She felt herself blushing. What’s happening to me, she thought. I’m becoming a sex-crazed schoolteacher. The thought struck her funny. It’s true. She didn’t know how much she would give up to have a nice warm, hairy man in her bed, but she knew they hadn’t got there yet. The thought struck her as so funny that she chortled out loud.
At the sound, Felix popped his eyes open. His body tensed as it always did when he awakened. “What? What’re you sitting there for?” he demanded.
“Nothing. Just looking at you.”
He scowled and swung out of the bed and walked to the bathroom, saying nothing more. Anna turned the lights low, turned on the radio to a soft music station, lay down on the bed and stretched out in what she thought was a fetching pose. But when he returned he had his pants on and he was buttoning his shirt. Her face fell.
“What’s the matter?”
She summoned up a weak smile. “Nothing. I just thought you’d, you know, stay.”
He seemed to look at her for the first time, taking in her bathrobe and the way she was lying on the bed. A wolfish look came over his face and he bent over and shoved his hand roughly between her thighs. “Oh, can’t wait for it, huh?” he said, his face close. He still smelled of the whiskey. “Hey, baby, I’ll be back real soon. I’ll jam it in you good. But now I gotta go. My friend Steve’s getting off his shift at one and he’s gonna lend me his car so I can move my stuff over here.”
“Your stuff? What are you talking about, Felix?”
“What do you mean, ‘what am I talking about’? I’m gonna move in here, today, like we said.”
“We didn’t say, Felix. I said you could stay here when you got lonely, but we never talked about you moving in.”
“Fuck that!” he cried. “I’m moving in. What is this shit now!”
Anna recoiled at his tone and at the frightening expression on his face. Immediately, all Anna could think about was her last conversation with Stephanie. Her rational doubts about Felix and what he really was came rolling forth, like freeze frames from a movie: the funny credit cards, the sleazy bars he took her to, the vague and grandiose “business” he was in, the fight he got into last night. Anna was skilled at unraveling the lies of naughty fourth-graders and now she began to apply her skills to Felix.
She got off the bed, flicked on the lights and snapped the radio off. “Felix,” she said sternly, facing him, “we have to talk. I mean moving in together is serious business. And, you know, we never talk seriously. We go out, we have dinner, we jump into bed, and bang!, you’re out of here. Not that it’s not great, in bed and all, but I don’t really know anything about you. Like, I tried calling you last night, the number you gave me, and this guy was really nasty to me, he said you’d be out all night.” She looked at him appealingly and held out her hands, palms up. “Felix, what am I supposed to think? Maybe you’re seeing other women … ?”
Without warning, Felix hit her across the jaw. She staggered back against the wall and brought the bedside lamp crashing down. He grabbed the front of her robe, pulled her upright and backhanded her again. She screamed, “Felix! Stop! For God’s sake …”
“Shut up, you lying cunt!” he screamed back. He punched her hard in the stomach, a neatly executed chudan oi zuki, and she crumpled to the floor, gasping. He kicked her in the side, still yelling at the top of his voice, “Bitch! Cunt! I’ll kill you.”
She crawled on her hands and knees toward the kitchen. When she got some breath back, she started crying, and between sobs screaming herself. Somebody started pounding on the other side of the bedroom wall with a solid object. Dimly, Anna heard a woman’s voice yelling, “Stop that noise or I’ll call the cops!” Anna screamed louder and kept crawling.
He followed her into the kitchen, lashing out with his foot every couple of steps. He might have hurt her more, but he was still stiff from the beating at the dojo. She crawled under the kitchen table, and curled up beneath it, with her head covered by her arms, weeping and listening to Felix smash up her kitchen.
The table was a solid pine job, built into the wall and anchored to the floor at the outboard end. Felix yelled, “Don’t hide from me, cunt! Don’t hide from me! You’re gonna get it, you lying bitch! Bitch! You’re gonna wish you never been born,” as well as similar statements that quite undermined the image of the suave international executive he had tried so hard to cultivate. He blamed Anna for this loss of face, too, and his inability to get his hands on her flesh at this instant redoubled his fury.
After he had broken everything in the kitchen he could reach, he got down on his side and grappled under the table, hoping to haul her out, but Anna flailed her legs so wildly he couldn’t get a good purchase. Besides, his bruises really hurt in that position. He stood up and, good black belt that he was, began to smash the top of the table, accompanied by the traditional grunts and yells.
He had succeeded in breaking through one plank, when there came a loud knock on the door, and a voice: “Police, open up!”
Felix took a deep breath, brushed back his hair, went to the door and opened it. There were two cops standing there.
“We had a report there’s been a disturbance here,” said the nearest of the two, a square-faced blocky man of about forty-five. His partner was dark, skinny, and much younger. Felix noted that they both carried two-foot-long black flashlights. He said calmly, “No, there’s no problem here, Officer. Who sent in the call?”
“You mind if we take a look around?” said the first cop, and before Felix could object they were both in the kitchen. Anna had crawled out from under the table and was sitting on a chair, her head in her hands, sobbing.
“Just a little argument, Officer,” said Felix, smiling, the lord of the manor. The older cop made Felix with a two-second glance: a scumbag, he concluded, and probably not the husband. The place is torn up, he observed, and in his experience it was mostly the boyfriends who tore up. The hubbie wasn’t going to rip out the shelves and then when he made up with wifey, he has to put them back again. The hubbies take it out on the wives and kids. On meat.
He turned his attention to the woman. “Everything OK, ma’am?” he asked politely. She seemed to have difficulty finding her voice. “Yes,” she croaked. “No.” Then, “Could you ask him to leave, now?”
“This your apartment, ma’am?”
“Yes, it is.”
Felix moved in Anna’s direction and she flinch
ed. The cop’s arm came up slightly as he moved between them, and Felix could feel the skinny cop move into position behind him. Those fucking flashlights. He had to be cool.
“Anna,” he said. “Honey … God, I’m sorry … I’m sorry.”
“Felix, I’d like you to leave now, just go, just leave me alone.”
“You heard the lady, Felix,” said the older cop. “Let’s get dressed, OK?”
Felix went into the bedroom and got his shirt and jacket on, and his shoes and socks. The skinny cop followed him in and watched from the doorway, impassively. Felix ignored him. He went into the bathroom and combed his hair. Then he picked up his attaché case. In his imagination, briefly, he played out for himself a scene where he whipped out his new bowie knife, slashed the skinny cop’s throat, ran into the kitchen and gutted the other one, and then got to work on Anna again. He’d have to tie and gag her first, to keep her quiet, so he’d have time for a really good job. He’d start on her tits …
“Hey, lover boy! Hey, Felix! Look alive now, we ain’t got all night here.”
Felix snapped out of his reverie. They were too far apart, and they had those goddamn flashlights right in their hands. He’d never make it, and if he didn’t get all three of them, he’d be in deep shit with the cops here in Manhattan, too, and he couldn’t afford that.
He allowed the cops to accompany him out of the apartment. He heard Anna double-bolt and chain the lock behind them. She’d calm down, the dumb cunt, but there was no denying that his plans were a shitpile right now. As they entered the hall Felix saw that the door of the apartment opposite was partly open. Felix saw Stephanie Mullen’s face for an instant before she slammed the door.
“Is that her?” Felix asked the cops. “Is that who called?”
“Just move along, buddy,” said the older cop wearily.
“I’ll remember that,” said Felix, grinning.
CHAPTER
8
When Karp arrived, at just five minutes to noon, Santa Monica pier was packed with tourists and local office workers in search of a greasy lunch in the open air. The air was thick and hot under a silvery sky, laden with pale vapors from the Pier’s line-up of small eateries, every offering of which was either fried or carbonated. It was Karp’s kind of place.
He bought a chili dog with onions and a soda and went over to the rail that edged the boardwalk. From there he could observe the spot where the man and the boy with the balloon stood in the postcard picture. Karp had to lean over as he ate his chili dog, so that the grease and bits of chili would drip on the ground and not on his shirt. When he straightened up, Little Noodles Impellatti was standing next to him.
Karp nodded and finished his chili dog. Noodles waited politely, saying nothing. He was dressed in a white silk jacket and a black shirt open at the neck. He had a good tan and wore large sunglasses. He looked like what he was, a gangster on the lam.
“So,” said Karp at last, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. “Any trouble?”
“I’m here,” said Noodles. “What’s the score?”
“The bad guys are ahead,” answered Karp, and he briefly went over what he had learned from Guma.
Noodles took this in without emotion. He leaned on the rail and looked out to sea. “Tona, huh? I did some work for him once. He’s good.” He looked at Karp, waiting. Karp realized, with something of a shock, that Noodles had placed himself in Karp’s hands, as agreed, and considered that this was the end of his contribution to their escape. Karp had assumed that Noodles would be a treasure-trove of clever Mafia-style evasion plans. But having cut himself off from everything that had directed his life, Impellatti was now as passive as a stone at the bottom of a hill. That’s why they call them button men, Karp thought.
“We have to hide for a while,” Karp said lamely.
“Good idea,” Noodles replied. Karp couldn’t tell whether the other man was being sarcastic. Probably not, he decided.
“Um, have you got a car?” Karp asked.
At this, Noodles lowered his sunglasses and looked at Karp as if Karp had asked whether he had a nose. “Yeah. I got a car. Where’re we going?”
An hour later they were headed north on the San Diego Freeway. Impellatti’s scant possessions were in the trunk already, and it had taken only moments to check Karp out of his motel. He still hadn’t told Noodles where they were going, and Noodles hadn’t asked again. He seemed content enough to be behind the wheel of a fast car, attentive to orders.
There was almost no conversation during the drive. The two men had little enough in common besides business, and Karp was not inclined to bring up business. When he interrogated Impellatti it would be in a formal setting, with a stenographer. Either that or some thug would kill them before they got back to New York, was Karp’s thinking, and the thought made for a sort of timeless quality in the journey, a version of what the sages called Living in the Now.
Karp watched the brown California hills flash by, and the pastel cities named for obscure saints. The car was large, cool, and comfortable, and Noodles was one of the best drivers in the country. The afternoon wore on, the shadows lengthened on the hills. Karp dozed against the glass of his window.
He was brought awake by a change in the motion of the car.
“Where are we? Something wrong?” he asked thickly, rubbing the sleep away.
“No. You said the San Jose exit. This is it.”
“Yeah, OK. Head for Los Gatos on 17. Then take 546 into Ladero. I’ll give you directions from there.”
They continued through progressively smaller and dustier towns, the road becoming narrower and rougher, until they were on a mere farm track, high in the Santa Cruz mountains.
“Hold it. This is it,” said Karp, consulting a crumpled slip of paper. A white sign nailed to a pine tree read “Alice Farm.”
“We’re going here?” asked Noodles.
“Yeah. My wife lives here. I mean my ex-, I mean my soon to be ex-wife. I’m in the middle of a divorce.” Why did I tell him that, Karp wondered a second later. It’s none of his business.
“I don’t believe in divorce,” said Noodles. “You could always work something out.”
Great, thought Karp, I need a morality lecture from a Mafia wise guy. He said, “You just believe in murder, right, Noodles?”
Noodles looked offended. “That’s different. It’s business. I was talking personal.”
They continued up the farm road in silence. A tractor trundled around a bend and Noodles pulled the car over to let it pass. It was driven by a large tanned woman wearing a red bandanna on her head, but otherwise naked from the waist up. Noodles stared after her until she vanished in her dust cloud. “What is this, some kind of nudist colony?”
“Why? Don’t you believe in nudism either?”
“I could give a flying fuck. But if they’re flakes … you know? Flakes make me nervous.”
“No flakes, Noodles. These are all solid citizens. OK, here we are.”
They had driven into a dirt yard outside a large gray farmhouse. Children and chickens scratched happily in the dirt. There was the smell of smoke from a wood fire. Karp got out of the car and stretched. The children stopped playing and stared at him. There were six women sitting on the wide porch that ran along the front of the house. They were shelling peas, knitting, lounging, chatting. They also stopped when they saw him, as if he were someone come with a telegram to announce the death of a loved one. One of the women pulled a T-shirt over her bare upper body. Another of the women stood up abruptly, and Karp recognized his wife.
She looked good, he thought. She was wearing tan shorts and a white sleeveless shirt that showed off her taut, tanned limbs. Her hair was sunbleached and shorter than it had been and her face was clear of the nervousness he remembered from their New York apartment days.
They greeted each other warily, while the other women looked on with expressions ranging from hostile to mocking. Susan herself seemed embarrassed. She led him into a small room in th
e back of the house and served him some iced tea. They sat in chairs at a dusty white enamel table and talked awkwardly about their separate lives. She was at peace. Karp was happy for her. Karp’s life was going fine. She was happy for him. Karp didn’t mention Marlene, nor did Susan mention her relationship with her lover.
An awkward silence then. Karp looked at her and tried to see her as a no-sexual object, or at least one that was not sexually available to him. He couldn’t quite do it. Despite himself he was making comparisons between Susan and Marlene. Susan was basically more good-natured and forgiving than Marlene. There was, or had been, a sweetness, a comfortable yielding quality of body and spirit about Susan that Marlene definitely did not have, that he desired. It meant peace to him with a woman. But then why did he care so much for Marlene? He blanked this out of his mind, but not before Susan had responded to his stare.
“What are you looking at?” asked Susan.
“What?”
“You were staring at me.”
“Oh, sorry. Just musing on times gone by. If I had done this, if you had done—et cetera. Like that.”
She smiled and said, “Hey, it wasn’t like that. It was just something that happened. It’s nothing to be sorry about either way.”
“So, we could still be friends, and like that.”
“Sure,” she said. “I’d like that.” She really was good-natured.
“Great,” he said. “Let’s get divorced then.”
He brought out the no-fault papers and explained them. He handed her a pen. She smiled thinly and said, “I guess I should use Susan Karp.”
“It’s your name.”
“Funny, I haven’t used it for years. We call ourselves with our mother’s first names or we make one up. I’m Susan Belles.”
“That should make your mom happy. She thinks all this is my fault.”
“All this? Oh, my being gay. Yeah, Mother did always think that anything that happened could be traced to some man.” She signed the documents. “There. The end of Susan Karp. Free at last, free at last, great God almighty, free at last.”
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