Trump Tower

by Jeffrey Robinson

  “You know.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “For breakfast?”

  “For . . . you know.”

  Alicia assured her, “No, I don’t.”

  Throwing on her top, she headed out the door. “Bye. It’s been lovely sleeping with you.” Cyndi stopped, came back to grab her packages from Firenzi, leaned over and kissed Alicia. “I promise to call you, darlin’, if I’m ever in town again.”

  TINA OPENED her eyes, saw the other side of her bed was empty, smiled and wrapped her arms around one of her many pillows.

  The best thing about mornings, she thought, is waking up alone.

  Second best, she decided, is going back to sleep alone.

  She hadn’t always thought this way. When she was in school, and even when she started working, she loved waking up with some guy wrapped around her, turning him on, then climbing on top of him.

  Those were, as she called them, her better-than-cornflakes mornings.

  And in the beginning with David, who was always ready whenever she was, mornings suited her. When he wasn’t around, if she wanted to, it was easy to find someone else. That suited her too.

  But now, being older and wiser than she was when she was younger and just as eager—and with a lot more miles on the clock—waking up alone, then going back to sleep, and waking up alone again, was the new better-than-cornflakes.

  THERE WERE plenty of other churches downtown, but he particularly liked Most Precious Blood, which backed onto Mulberry Street in Little Italy, because it reminded him of the churches he’d known in Europe.

  The priest’s voice rang out in prayer. And the congregation answered in unison.

  Every Sunday morning, early, Pierre Belasco would walk there, no matter what the weather was like, and get there before mass so that he could light two candles. He would then take a seat in the back of the large room with the gorgeous altar and sit there alone with his eyes closed, breathing in the incense and thinking about what might have been.

  CARSON STOOD on the baseline, tossed the ball high into the air, reached and jumped to get it, slamming his racket through the ball, and watched as it screamed across the net to land inside the box on the other side, clipping the line.

  The young black boy standing at the net said, “Great serve.”

  “Strike one.” Carson picked up another ball, readied himself by bouncing it several times, got set, tossed it in the air and slammed it across the net in exactly the same place.

  “Wow,” the boy said.

  “Strike two,” Carson nodded. Then he did it a third time, placing the ball within an inch of where the other two had landed.

  “Awesome.”

  “Strike three.” Carson pointed to the boy. “And that is how it’s done.”

  “But . . . come on, those were fast balls. Anyone can serve fastballs. How’s your curve?”

  “Okay,” Carson said. “Go stand at the corner of the box. Inside the service area . . . there at the corner of the baseline.”

  The boy rushed to the other side of the net and stood where Carson told him.

  “Now,” Carson said bouncing the ball, “don’t move.”

  “Why?”

  “‘Cause I’m aiming for your feet.”

  The boy nodded.

  Carson bounced the ball a few more times, looked at the boy’s feet, threw the ball high in the air, leaped into his serve, and sent the ball heading directly for the boy’s feet, but as it crossed the net it began to curve away and wound up hitting inside the service area, but on the other side.

  “Wow,” the boy screamed, “did you see that damn thing curve?”

  “You like that?”

  The boy fetched the several dozen balls Carson had served during his practice session and put them back in the wire basket. “How fast do you reckon?”

  Carson put his racket in the sleeve and zipped it up. “Not as fast as I used to be.” He walked to the other side of the net and took a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket. “Thanks.”

  The boy took the money and smiled, “Thank you. I mean, that curve you put on it . . . where’d you ever learn . . .”

  “Takes a lot of practice,” Carson said. “I think we’re on Court Two in an hour. You want to work the game?”

  “Yeah, I can do that,” the boy said, then added, “Hey, Mr. Haynes? Will you sign a ball for me?”

  “Sure. Got a pen?”

  “No. You got one?”

  “No.”

  “Promise you’ll do it later?”

  “Promise.” He looked at the boy. “You play?”

  “I’m trying. They let us warm up if we get here real early, you know, before the members and guests.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Where’s your racket?”

  The boy explained, “I got my brother’s old racket at home, and if no one’s around, I can usually borrow one from the locker room . . .”

  “Here.” Carson handed him the racket he’d been using. “Go on over there. Let’s see what you can do.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” Carson took out another racket, and for the next hour—until Tony Arcarro and Lee-Jay Wesley Elkins showed up with Elkins’ partner in tow—Carson volleyed with the boy, shouting at him from across the net, “Plant your feet first . . . keep your head down . . . arm straight . . . go for the passing shot . . . swing through the ball . . . quick, come into the net . . . great shot . . . don’t stand still . . . move, quick, move . . .”

  “So now you’re a teaching pro,” Arcarro called to him.

  Carson had worked up a little sweat. “Come on in,” he said to the boy, and walked over to where Arcarro was standing with the two other men. “Doing my good deed.”

  Arcarro told the others, “Carson is the oldest Boy Scout in America.”

  “Hey, thanks,” the boy said. “That was great.” He handed the racket back to Carson.

  “Keep it.”

  The boy’s eyes opened very wide. “Keep it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “I can keep the racket?” The boy kept saying, “Thank you . . . thank you . . . this is awesome . . . wow . . . thank you . . .”

  “You ready?” Arcarro asked Carson.

  “I still have time for breakfast?”

  “Nope,” Elkins said. “Maybe now I’ll stand half a chance.”

  Carson said, “Maybe.”

  But the fourteen-year-old boy, still standing there admiring his gift, mumbled, “No way.”

  And he was right.

  DAVID PLANTED his feet firmly in the grass, looked again at the green some eighty yards away, wiggled his pitching wedge, steadied himself, brought the club back slowly, and swung through the ball, sending it high into the air.

  “That’s good,” his caddy said.

  “Y’all better believe it,” David said, watching the ball hit the green about nine feet past the pin, bounce, then spin back, rolling nearly five feet toward the hole before finally stopping. “Better believe it.” He handed the caddy his club, who exchanged it for a putter.

  “Ah . . . horseshit,” David said when he saw it.

  “What?” the caddy asked.

  “Damn. I’ll never make the putt with this thing. I left my good putter on the plane. Damn.”

  He missed the putt to the right by two inches.

  TINA STAYED in bed all morning.

  When she heard Luisa downstairs, she picked up the phone and dialed the kitchen. “Good morning,” she said. “Coffee and maybe some melba toast, please. That’s all I want.”

  “Yes, Señora,” Luisa said.

  But by the time she’d brought up the tray, Tina was fast asleep again.

  CYNDI RACED into her bathroom and filled the huge tub for a bath.

  She got undressed, left her cell phone on the upholstered chair next to the tub and, when the tub was n
early full, tossed in one of those flavored bubble-bath bombs.

  It exploded with foam in the water, filled the tub with bubbles, and suddenly her bathroom smelled of vanilla and peach.

  Slipping into the water, she lay back and, with vanilla and peach flavored bubbles up to her neck, she waited.

  At exactly ten o’clock, her phone rang.

  “What time is it in Italy?” she asked.

  The count’s gravelly voice responded, “It is four in the afternoon.”

  “And where are you?”

  “I am in Rome . . . in my study watching football. Where are you?”

  “I am in my bathtub, the way you asked.”

  “Naked in your bathtub?”

  “No,” she joked. “I’m wearing one of those wetsuits that surfers wear, with a mask and swim fins . . .”

  He laughed. “I wish I could see you . . .”

  “I think you prefer football.”

  “No. I prefer you.”

  “Then you should get someone to make your computer work and I would show you . . .”

  The two of them talked for a long time—mostly about Cyndi being naked in the bathtub—until the Count said, quietly, “I must go.”

  “Until next week,” she said and hung up.

  By now the water was getting cold, so she flicked the hot button with the big toe on her right foot—the tub was custom-made and didn’t work with a normal tap—and hot water started to pour into the tub.

  She used the big toe on her left foot to push the little button marked “Drain” so that as more hot water came in, the colder water on the bottom drained out, until the water was hot enough.

  Then she closed the drain and turned off the hot water and lay back to wait.

  At exactly eleven o’clock, her phone rang again.

  The Sheikh demanded, “Where are you?”

  “If you really must know . . . I am naked in my bathtub.”

  “Ah . . . this is very good.”

  “What time is it in Kuwait?”

  “I am in Doha.”

  “Okay, what time is it in Doha?”

  “Early evening.”

  “And what are you doing?”

  “I am alone in my suite. I have been working all day, and I am going out to dinner in a little while. What are you doing?”

  “I am in my bathtub, naked, the way you asked.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “No,” she giggled, “I’m here with Ali Baba and thirty-seven of the forty thieves. The other three are waiting in the hallway. They didn’t have tickets.”

  She thought that was funny.

  He didn’t. “Never joke with me about that. I need to know you are alone.”

  She assured him, “Yes, I am alone.”

  “Good,” he said. “Now tell me what you look like and what you are doing . . .”

  She talked to him—mostly about being naked in the bathtub—until the Sheikh said, “This is very good. I will go now.”

  As soon as she hung up with him, she put her big toe on “Drain” and lay there until all the water was out of the tub.

  She stood up, got out, and stepped into the large shower on the other side of the bathroom, where she washed off the bubbles.

  Drying herself, she went to her bedroom and, still naked, climbed into bed.

  She closed her eyes.

  And as she fell asleep, she thought to herself, “What some girls have to do to pay the rent . . . oy vey!”

  ALICIA PULLED herself out of bed, got into the shower, threw on some sweats, made coffee, and sat down at the dining room table to go through her notes from yesterday.

  “L. Arthur Farmer,” she said. “Did you live here? Are you alive? Where are you?”

  She randomly scanned a couple of hundred Google entries on him but couldn’t find anything that answered any of those questions.

  Except, perhaps, for the where are you part. Farmer’s main business had an address and listed a phone number, not in Trump Tower, but in Saginaw, Michigan.

  As far as Google was concerned, the last public sighting of Farmer had been in 1972 at a political fund-raiser in Florida for Richard Nixon. But there were almost as many entries suggesting that the sighting had not actually happened.

  She found a reference to a more recent sighting that claimed Farmer had made an appearance in Federal District Court in San Francisco to testify in an antitrust suit against a consortium of freight shippers who were trying to take over the port. But when she looked into it further, instead of actually appearing in court, he’d consented to being deposed in a lawyer’s office.

  Other than that, there really wasn’t anything in the way of sightings, or even recent facts about him. And though there were tens of thousands of Google hits with his name, nothing showed up anywhere—except the NBC archives—that satisfied the search terms, “L. Arthur Farmer” and “Trump Tower.”

  Then she stumbled across something that struck her as downright bizarre.

  It was a reference to a hearing that had apparently taken place in the Michigan Senate in 1974 that was entitled, “The Influence of Finfolkmen over the In-State Business Affairs of L. Arthur Farmer.”

  The influence of what? She read it again, then Googled “Finfolkmen.” Up came several thousand references to a religious sect that hailed originally from Scotland and had settled in the eighteenth century in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

  She clicked on a few of the links, read a couple of brief histories, and decided these people sounded very strange.

  Next, she Googled “Finfolkmen” and “L. Arthur Farmer.” Sure enough, several hundred references appeared. From what she read, it looked to her like this religious sect had worked its way into Farmer’s life.

  Going deeper, she found a Detroit Free Press reference to the Michigan Senate hearing. “Amidst rumors that a religious group based in the Upper Peninsula has effectively taken control of all access to Farmer, State Senator John Penrose Selkirk (R-38th) tabled an adjournment motion before the committee that was accepted, effectively ending the inquiry before it even began.”

  Now she queried “Finfolkmen” and “Trump.”

  Nothing came up.

  She read the NBC database reference again. “A mysterious buyer, believed to represent L. Arthur Farmer, has become the first residential tenant in Donald Trump’s Tower.”

  Alicia didn’t understand why that reference should be the only one. Maybe, she rationalized, because it was 1979. Pre-Internet. That was the only thing that made sense to her. Or maybe, she thought, he never lived here and that’s why there’s nothing anywhere else.

  Then she looked again at the Free Press blurb again. “. . . has effectively taken control of all access to Farmer.”

  The phone rang.

  Finfolkmen?

  It rang again. “Hello?”

  Tina said, “Hey . . . meet you downstairs in half an hour?”

  Alicia saw that it was already 12:15. “Oh my God . . . I didn’t know it was this late. I’ll be there.”

  Hanging up, she bookmarked all the pages she wanted to save, shut down her laptop, and went to get ready, still asking herself, L. Arthur Farmer, where are you?

  18

  Tina told the driver, “T’ien,” and he asked, just to be sure, “That’s . . . what . . . Ninety-Second between Madison and Park?”

  “Yes,” she said, “that’s right,” and sat back.

  “I’ve been looking forward to this all week,” Alicia said.

  “Me, too.” Then Tina leaned close to Alicia and whispered, so that the driver couldn’t hear, “Apparently . . . Felipa . . . now this is the rumor . . . Felipa claims there actually is one masseur at T’ien.”

  “No way.”

  “Way.”

  “Really?”

  “Apparently. I’ve never seen him, and no one ever mentions him, except Felipa, who says that he’s there to do . . . you know . . . the full-body thing.”

  “Get out.”

  “That
’s the rumor.”

  “You heard this from Felipa Guillermo?”

  “At the party the other night.”

  “I thought all she did was the entire Argentine polo team . . . and their horses . . .”

  Tina laughed.

  Alicia wanted to know, “This masseur have a name?”

  “I asked the same question,” Tina confessed. “Alas.”

  When they arrived at the beautiful white stone, five-story townhouse, Tina told the driver, “Four hours.”

  There were no signs out front to say this was T’ien—in Cantonese it means “heaven”—but then heaven is not the sort of place that has to advertise.

  The women who need to know where T’ien is and how to get an appointment, know.

  A young Chinese woman greeted them at the door. “Miss Lee, Miss Melendez, it is so nice to see you both again.” She introduced herself as Huan and brought them into a small lobby area, where there was a low couch and a red bamboo desk. Huan checked their appointment times and took their credit cards. “I will return them to you at the end of your visit,” she said. “You are very welcome here,” then escorted Tina and Alicia to the elevator.

  Bringing them up to the second floor, Huan showed Alicia into one of the private changing rooms, and showed Tina into the changing room next to it.

  Inside was a bamboo table with a leather box, slippers, a very thick, very heavy terrycloth robe and a large bamboo basket.

  Both women undressed completely, put their jewelry in the leather box, and folded their clothes into the bamboo basket.

  Alicia had remembered to leave most of her jewelry at home. She was only wearing her small Piaget watch. But Tina was wearing a Bulgari sapphire ring and a Cartier watch, plus the gold Tiffany ankle bracelet that her father gave her for her twenty-first birthday. She took them off and left them sitting right there on the table.

  Both women came out, wearing nothing but the terrycloth robes.

  That’s when Tina remembered her gold and diamond navel piercing, excused herself, went back to the changing room, and left it there with the rest of her jewelry.

  Huan locked the changing rooms and accompanied Tina and Alicia to the third floor.

  She brought them into a softly lit room with two chaise lounge beds and a small table with a teapot. Soft Chinese music was playing on hidden speakers. After motioning to Tina and Alicia to lie down, Huan poured them each a small cup of herbal tea, then left them there to sip their tea.