“Life’s always got lots of stuff to be hopeful about,” I said without much hope.
***
“Thanks for coming with me,” I said when we got to my flat. Natalie loved riding in limos, even this understated one. On her way back from the airport—her previous ride with Frank—she had gone by her school, stopped off at a friend’s so he could take both of them back to Natalie’s house, with a side trip around the neighborhood. Now another chance at fake celebrity.
“I guess you’re going to play the blues,” she said as I got out. There are some people who can cheer you up on their vitality alone. She knew this, but knew also when her power wasn’t working. Like now. She moderated her tone with a reflective smile. That didn’t stop her popping her head out the sunroof, waving and yelling as Frank eased her out of the scene.
CHAPTER 18
I got back to 5B in the early evening. Man, I needed to get those rollers out of my head. Easy to envision a parade of caskets: my father, Molly, The Five, Portland, Kirk, Francine. The one today. Probably Claudia. I played scales for a while, slow when I wanted fast, fighting my mood. I played songs. Mine. Kirk’s. “Coerced.” I felt I should be hungry but wasn’t. Maybe, I thought, if I do something I don’t normally do…shunt this commuter train onto another line. I ran a bath. Why do you want a bath when it’s wet out? Nah, I didn’t want one but, once run, I went through with it. It was far too hot. I crouched with burning feet, swooshing cold water. I was down all right, a deep, nourishing down, a completeness to it. It was the proper, human, reaction to this death. I just needed some time by myself to go through the tired nihilistic arguments, latch onto the affirmative again.
Then the entrance intercom buzzed. I dried off my feet, red from scalding, and went to answer it. It was Sula. Had I given her my address? I buzzed her up, left the front door cracked open and went to get some clothes. Then I changed my mind—I can’t explain why. I went back to my bath. Something about being interrupted.
“Is it okay for me to be here?” Sula asked through the cracked door.
“I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Can we talk?”
“Sure. Come in, I’ve got nothing to hide.”
She sat on the toilet seat, keeping her eyes fixed on mine. After a long day with Natalie Sula was so full size, complete, curvy, complicated.
“So you have come to visit me in my sarcophagus.” I tried for a lightness of touch. Thwonk.
“Such a Greek word,” she said, pronouncing it. “Did you have fun in Paris?”
“Fun? Not really. You’ve seen my moods.”
“I know I should not come to here, but I had to know.”
“Know what?” I swished some water for dramatic emphasis. Still too hot.
“How angry you are….with me. I know you wanted me to be at the funeral today. I know this deeply. Also, I know myself. So…what happens if it is a tie game? Yes, without question I should stand by my man; in similar way you should understand my weakness and let me not to go. Jim, I have never been so far along with a man. What are the rules? Is it my foul? If it is you can…whatever you think I deserve. I offer myself to you.”
I sighed heavily here. Her question, its answer, how it tied in with my mood, was a skein of twisted strands. “I’m just sad is all. Why create, why build up such formidable characters, all that knowledge and experience, heart and soul, only for them to come crashing down again? Why not just take a shortcut and not start in the first place?”
“You may give to others, before that.”
“Pass the baton before your race is run,” I said, with the straight-ahead cadence of a song. Maybe it was one. Well, Hardcastle had done that, however haphazardly and irresponsibly, bequeathing to our world a son, Kirk. There was the end of that line. All roads led back to misery.
I looked into Sula’s eyes. This indomitable, confident, complete, extravagantly intelligent soul had been worried about me. Me! She smiled.
“I shall watch your back.” That’s what it sounded like.
Passion predominates. More passion. Such treasures to savor. We struggled half-wet to the bedroom. She laid beside me, still clothed, her bright-white smile saying, Yes, now. I started madly at buttons, my heart racing to see her turn this way and that to help with her unveiling.
We came to a temporary halt. Her left forearm looked as if it was badly dented and hammered straight, thinner than the other, a skin graft near the elbow. Now I understand that pause in the bathroom at the museum. This was what she was about to reveal back then. More personal than mere nakedness. I kissed it.
“Don’t. Please.”
“Why not? It’s part of you.”
“I have better parts.”
“I want all of you.”
Paths and permutations. The road followed. The ache of the road left alone for now; but all of them run to the same mutually-willed destination. No, I must insist on all the roads all the time. I want to take them fast; I want to take them slow. Before urgency gets the better of me I reach over to the nightstand. “We need protection,” I say, reaching over her, a humming stroll of a mission about five months ago (or so it seemed) when her text message read “not yet.”
“No. I want all of you. You bring me your gift; I must keep it. Please.”
I started to say something but a slender finger found my lips. Sula had that resolved, committed look that all men understand; few face down.
I have always been careful here. You don’t survive years on the road any other way. I should ask specifics; she should wonder about me. Everything about this woman involves risk. Why should this be any different? A sense of something elemental just now, as if we are far back in time, a cave, the ice building, hemming us in. Survival unclear. We are in this until the end. At the end.
There’s something about death that demands you affirm life. There’s something about life that contains death in each moment. Oh, I want her with the hunger of the gravedigger’s spade for soft loam. Digging, digging so that we can fall, together, into this squared cell and sleep in each other’s arms. Forever is okay with me.
I’m slow with her. No rock ‘n’ roll. Only late night, chairs-overturned-on-tables jazz. I can’t help but be worried about her head, the damage it’s sustained. I think of the times I’ve had a headache and gone for it anyway. The way you have to keep things below that point where the throbbing pain in your temples wins out. Enough flame to bubble; not enough to boil over. That’s what I was trying to do on her behalf. How you start out is how you continue.
“You are very soft with me,” Sula said, her right leg over my left, her thick, black hair tickling my chest.
I kissed her neck to avoid her eyes. My caution needed to be my secret. Already she was too good at reading me.
We laid there quietly for some timeless time.
Afterwards Sula sat up, stretched, hands heavenward, demonstrating a heft of breasts. They were Homeric, I decided, with their wine-dark areolas. “I must go soon,” she said.
“Sula!” Again that slender finger was on my lips. She bent over me, kissed my forehead, as if I was a cherished child, or a rebel off to the firing squad. This had all taken an age of buildup, now over so fast.
“Do you think it is okay to do such things in the shadow of a funeral? It is bad luck maybe?” She didn’t sound all that serious.
“Sula, it’s an unbearable tragedy…to think of all those weeks we’ve wasted.”
“The French call it Little Death…and there is death.” She went quiet, assessing my tolerance level to go further. “Maybe now we lose everything. We cross the river. Maybe we are strangers on the other side.”
There’s this post-coital phenomenon called small talk. I should give Sula the pamphlet. A snippet of a vignette popped into my head: a former girlfriend, a model, lying much like Sula, talking about a shopping expedition the next day. She needed to exchange a top but she had just been to that mall to buy it. Yes, she�
��d go to some other store instead.
Sula turned her back to me now. It was funny; at our new, deeper level, we couldn’t look at each other with any penetration. I guess we needed time to absorb what had happened, what it meant, who we were as a couple, how that connected with the unwinding of the years.
I took her chin, rubbed it, and pulled her face toward me. A hint of down above her lip. Those white incisors, occasional bubbles there. I knew enough not to bring her head around towards me; she wanted privacy. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I am okay. I was just thinking of the funeral. I hope it’s not bad luck to start this way.”
“You’re the one who says there’s no such thing as luck, that it’s all random. That we’re always trying to assign meaning to that randomness.” Okay, I sounded petulant. All I wanted to do was relax.
“I am sorry. I know this is not the time. Yet I worry about risk. This is deeper, you see, and because I like you I have to tell you about how I am thinking because you will understand, which is why I like you except if I tell you I risk you not, not understanding, you will, but not liking what you understand and then where will I be? Us…be. How can I be so stupid?”
I pulled her around to face me. Held her tight. I didn’t know what to say.
She rested her head on my chest. “I can hear your heart,” she said, her low, soft call rattling some inner pane.
“What does it sound like?”
“Schoolchildren. They are playing.” I think this was a joke.
More circles. Silence now; a deep, brooding silence.
“It is such a not efficient system, especially for males; you have only energy to build and swim for the prize. Female lion does most of hunting, all of the child stuff: she dies at sixteen. Male lion lies around most of the time and licks himself. He saves energy to fight for mate; he dies at eleven.”
“Lack of exercise?”
She slapped me playfully. “Look at you. You have fought hard to get me. I am very glad you did. I am proud of you. But what if this fight takes months away from your older years and this is my fault? Should I not feel guilty for this?”
Wrestling or other playfulness ensued. When we took a breather I said, “There’s more than death and sadness to, to this.”
“I see it, yes, of course. At same time I cannot help it how I feel. It is nice, of course it is, but there is emptiness too. I am only child; now you are too. We have established we are excellent for mating, but we will not mate. You say ‘end of the line’? All those who have gone before to make us, all those lives, these ancient family people, they look down on us; they say ‘so this is where it all stops?’ Is that not sad?”
“That’s not very polite—to watch us like that.”
She gave me an eloquent slap, just enough force to call it that. Now she turned away from me. “Why must I say these things? Why? I will scare you away. I know this, I know this risk, yet still I do it. I want you…(she paused here) and yet I do this. (Long pause.) Can it be that some part of me must destroy…?”
Well, there was one obvious way to quiet her. I did that hard, kissing her as if the strength of my passion could quell any kind of doubts. Except, damn it, now I was thinking about funerals, luck, risk. She turned away; I kissed the side of her neck.
“What are you doing behind my back?” she asked, teasing.
“Waving to the ancient family people.”
CHAPTER 20
I had half an hour before the police arrived; I couldn’t imagine what they wanted from me. I burnt five minutes calling Jolanta in Krakow for the fifth time, not expecting an answer since the first four calls were fruitless. Either she was on an extended vacation, or she didn’t want to talk to me. Then, futile calls being the theme here, I called Dr. Catherine Drysdale, my third attempt to reach her. I couldn’t work up enough interest to leave a message on her machine.
“Mr. James Shalabon?” the disembodied voice asked over the entrance intercom. It was the police. It was time for me to help them with their inquiries. An anonymous-looking policeman with big shoes, dark looks and slow moments showed me to his car, blocking traffic on our road. All he would tell me was we were off to Scotland Yard. Half an hour later, having traversed a major cross section of tourist London in a light snowfall that disappeared once it hit the roads and the sidewalks. Once we arrived, I was squired through security, into an elevator up to the third floor, then installed alone in a conference room. I waited a long ten minutes. I stared at a tourist poster of Scotland on the fake wood wall opposite me. It was the prototype of any cheap conference room you’ve ever been in: rectangular table with dark, fake wood veneer, cheap fake chrome-tubed legs, same tubing echoed in the chairs. There was a gouge in the tabletop near me. I imagined a knife pulled as an interrogation heated up.
Finally my escort entered with two bland, unassuming middle-aged men in cheap suits. They looked like insurance agents on the wrong side of a premium adjustment. They were so anonymous-looking that I remember them as Red Tie and Blue Tie. They took seats opposite me, arguing some fine point of procedure all the while. Finally, they moved their focus to me. My escort excused himself; the questions began. But not before I was advised that our interview was being recorded.
“To ensure the quality of your service?” I asked. It was only time I would be so flip.
“Do you know a Mr. Panos Lamzaki? If so, how?” Blue Tie started, all business, not looking at me.
“Yes, I know him.”
“How do you know him?”
“My girlfriend’s father.”
“How many times have you met him?”
“Never.”
“Talked, on the phone?”
“Once.”
“Corresponded?”
“Never.”
“Do you know one Nigel Sparshott?”
“Yes.”
“How did you come to know Mr. Sparshott?”
I explained about my scheme of insinuating my way into Lamzaki’s lair with a vessel sale, and that I had decided not to go ahead.
“You decided that,” Blue Tie said, emphasizing the “decided” sarcastically. “How do you explain this?” He handed me a poor quality copy in small print, one of those fill-in-the-blank forms. USD $5,000,000 (Five Million US Dollars) had been typed into one of the blanks, above which I read Southstar Industries Inc. and its address in Panama. Above that my name and London address; down below a credible version of my signature.
“What is this?” I asked.
Blue Tie ignored my question. “It’s a loan agreement,” Red Tie pitched in.
“I have never seen this document before. I haven’t signed anything.”
More questions. I can’t remember them exactly, except they were specific enough to tell me that Southstar was being monitored for various, unspecified criminal operations. Money laundering and drugs were mentioned.
“Have you ever received money from Southstar?”
“I’ve never heard of them.”
“Answer the question, please.”
“No. Never.”
“Have you ever met or otherwise transacted with anyone claiming to be from Southstar?”
“No.”
“You are acquainted with one Anastasoula Lamzaki?”
I affirmed that.
“How did you meet her?”
“Imperial College, ran into her. Complete chance.”
“Sometimes it can look like this. Please think carefully.”
I explained the circumstances of our meeting, all the while trying to keep my head above water in this raging, heaving sea.
Now Blue Tie dropped that line, letting his questions about Sula expand in my mind until they exploded.
“Are you saying she’s involved with Southstar?”
All I got was a prim, annoying smile.
I was getting hot, wanted to start yelling. They were playing games with me, and it was working. No matter how much I stepped back
and told myself it was a game, the heat followed me. I was certain this had to be Lamzaki’s doing, a cannonball across my bow. Now I wondered, was he capable of dragging his own daughter into this mire?
I said, “He’d do that to his own daughter?”
For the first time Blue Tie smiled. It wasn’t subtle; the point he was emphasizing—Lamzaki was dangerous.
“The loan; he could have only known about that from Sparshott. Sparshott’s your man.”
“Mr. Sparshott is helping us with our enquiries.”
Sparshott must have gone to Lamzaki with my idea, currying favor with a large potential client. Either that or Lamzaki’s people got to him by following me.
The questions continued, more scattershot now. I couldn’t see a logical thread through them. A string of company names I hadn’t heard of, which I confirmed. Locations I had never been to. People I didn’t know. On and on. I was trying to pay attention, all the while trying to keep my equanimity. I tried to slow down this rush to judgment; it was a game though. Lamzaki had sent a snarling backhand at my skull, rang my bell, a toll announcing the end of my campaign for his daughter.
Abruptly, Blue Tie was finished. I wanted to ask how much trouble I was in, but didn’t want to give Blue Tie the opportunity to ignore yet another of my questions.
Now it was Red Tie’s turn.
“You have been asking questions about one Claudia Steyning.” His style was more direct; he looked at me.
I managed an eloquent grunt.
I answered his relentless questions. I explained the circumstances of my being in the flat above hers. How I had met Claudia’s daughter.
“From your questions about Mrs. Steyning, one would almost conclude that this is some sort of detective exercise.” The way he pronounced those last two words…such withering condescension. And I thought he was the good cop of the two. I was getting more and more irritated. Was this his intention? I chose a defiant silence. These people had no right to grill me like this. They hadn’t even offered me tea, damn it!
Little God Blues Page 21