Men Like Air

by Connolly, Tom

  Why would our friends want to leave all this for a whole year? That’s a lifetime? Who the hell chooses to go camping in Turkey? How can they claim, in 2006, that a country like Jordan is perfectly safe? William asked himself these questions as the McGuires’ itinerary repeated on him like bad meatloaf. There came a short burst of traffic on Ninth and Tenth Avenues, and with it the clatter of loose panels on a semi-trailer, and then the roads cleared simultaneously and the city was silent again, momentarily post-apocalyptic. Into the silence returned the whistling man, brushing the slats aside to emerge on to the sidewalk. The plastic slats were now in darkness. The man rolled down the shutters and locked up and put a cigarette in his mouth. He bowed his head to light his smoke and as he took a drag he tipped his head back and looked at the clear cold night. He saw William at the open window and raised a hand. William waved back and watched the man descend into the deep bowl of swathed tarmac on Dyer Avenue, the sinkhole that fell into the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel, with west midtown growing into something new above it, something made of glass not brick and in no way unique to William’s city.

  William tapped on the bathroom door and Joy let him in. Wordless, they rotated around the cramped space, he washing his face at the bathtap while Joy washed hers at the washbasin, he brushing his teeth at the basin as she sat on the toilet seat and peeled the contact lenses from her eyes. She raised herself a few inches, lifted the seat beneath her and threw her lenses into the bowl. They didn’t mention Di and Jeff Maguire.

  She brushed her hair at the living room window and he filled two glasses with water and walked past her to the bedroom and placed a glass each side of the bed. He folded back the duvet and opened the curtains and turned off the bedside lamps, allowing the pleasant, soft, cool glow of light on Worldwide Plaza to illuminate the room. It was a light they enjoyed making love to. ‘Cinematic light for non-cinematic bodies,’ she would say, and he would protest on her body’s behalf. And he was right to, because in the warm curves of Joy’s body he had found pleasure and sanctuary that he once thought impossible, and he yearned for her body these days more strongly even than twenty-seven years ago. He yearned for it tonight, to be held by her, to come in her, to sleep in her arms, where all was safe and known and there were no surprises.

  She joined him in the bedroom and placed a vitamin pill beside his glass of water and one beside hers, for the morning. She threw her gown on the chair back and climbed into bed and lay on her back without kissing him. She would find no solace anywhere tonight, not in William, and not in her love of the Lord, which was not immune to the mood swings she worked so hard to hide from the world.

  She looked at the ceiling. ‘Why did you volunteer to knock on the door?’ She said it without accusation and without warmth. She said it to the soft urban glow of the room.

  He lay on his side and held her hand. ‘I’m not sure.’ There was silence. He stroked her arm. ‘So, I’m not your hero any more?’ he teased.

  ‘Something could have happened to you. What would become of me if something happened to you? What would I do? Our friends go away and you start doing things impulsively. I’d be dead if something happened to you. We discuss everything. That’s the way we’ve chosen. If you’re going to break ranks then maybe I will too.’

  She turned her back. The air brakes on Dyer Avenue beckoned William’s thoughts out through the window to the city and the many things he loved about the beginning of each new day of his life in this town, and the inevitable rebooting of his and Joy’s contentment which the morning could be relied upon to bring. Joy’s breathing came interspersed with the occasional heavy sigh, designed to draw attention to her displeasure and the fact that she was not yet asleep and should not be ignored. This continued for ten minutes, and made William smile (a smile that Joy could hear perfectly well), until she rolled over and cuddled up to him. He put his arms around her and squeezed her and she laughed to herself.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ she asked.

  ‘Di and Jeff.’

  ‘And…?’

  There was silence.

  ‘Why would they want to do that? Yuk.’

  She loved him for saying that.

  10

  Finn woke in the hovel to the noise of an animal being tortured on a nearby rooftop. He dragged his clothes on, splashed cold water over his face and discovered the heating had packed up. Behind the building, men worked on imprecise projects at the lock-ups and lean-tos of corrugated iron. Radios played and steam gushed from vents out into a day colder than the last. The sound of the wailing animal continued. It struck Finn that, in going to prison, Glenn had taken a step up in the world. He missed Dilly’s body.

  A man smoked a cigarette and watched his dog, a dark-faced German Shepherd that winced at being called by name. Marvyn. The man, strong and slothful, wore a red satin track suit, bare-chested and the pillow of his belly exposed. Marvyn sniffed the broken paving slabs. The man nodded to two passing teenagers and took a call on his cell. He erupted into booming laughter and muttered ‘hee hee hee’ as if they were three words in their own right. A couple with two young girls crossed the green steel footbridge which spanned the East River Drive. As Finn pressed his face to the window to watch them, the girls pressed their faces to the wire mesh and waved at the fast cars below, and it brought to Finn’s mind a narrow road bridge across the A21 and his father’s idea to take his wife’s ashes to the lake she drowned herself in.

  ‘It’s a beautiful spot, boys.’

  It’s the place, Finn and Jack had each independently thought, of her last and worst anguish and a constant reminder of her suicide. Only their father could have come up with such a flawed idea, and seen it through.

  ‘Like we want to come here to think of her,’ Jack had whispered, at the water’s edge.

  ‘Like we want to go anywhere,’ Finn had said, merely thirteen.

  He watched the girls on the bridge wave goodbye to the traffic and follow their parents into the East River Park and he reminded himself that he had not shared with Jack the fact that he had dumped their father’s ashes on to the A21 from the bridge at Stocks Green. He was never going to tell Jack that; he didn’t want to vex him or hurt him spiritually, only physically. He would put other ashes into the urn or tell Jack he had scattered them somewhere nice, at some pretty lookout spot with a wooden bench to sit on and a nice fucking view where Jack would be free to reinvent the past on his rare visits home.

  There were games of softball and soccer in the park. Two fencers duelled on purple concrete. Joggers ran parallel to the highway and the river. An elderly couple meandered with their arms threaded together, on a ritual stroll from their apartment in Peter Cooper Village to the Williamsburg Bridge and back, and Finn wondered if they had children and grandchildren who loved them and saw them; if they had got things right or not. The man in the red tracksuit was on the other side now, legs splayed, hands on hips, belly out, staring at a women’s soccer game.

  Finn watched the factory buildings and funnels on the far side of the river draw themselves in thick charcoal against a sun-stunned white sky. Shouts rose from a ball game and the turbulent river spat shattered glints of yellow light from close to the shoreline. A ferry was swallowed up by the shadows of the bridge and Finn headed out. At the foot of the stairwell a man shuffled through a pile of junk mail. He was in his early thirties but he already looked abandoned. He wore a heavy woollen suit that had a bad smell. He had no shirt and no shoes or socks. Beneath a beanie, his spectacles were taped together and sat on his face at an angle, distorting his eyes. His voice was faint and nasal.

  ‘Did you hear my fox sound?’

  Finn squared up, just a little. ‘It woke me up.’

  The man sniggered through his blocked sinuses. ‘You can’t blame me for the hours a fox keeps.’

  Finn glanced at how the shoulders of the man’s suit slumped lifelessly on an inadequate torso, and at the dark hairs on his pale, bare feet. He wanted out of the building but at the do
or curiosity stopped him.

  ‘You have a pet fox?’

  The man nodded his head triumphantly. ‘You had to ask! I never said I had a fox. I said I had a fox sound.’ He peered at Finn like a man who needed glasses, not a man wearing them. ‘I’ve got thousands of sounds. Most of them would defeat you.’

  Finn smiled politely. He walked out of the long shadows of the tower blocks. East Houston was wide and bright and bleak where the cross-town river breeze collided with the uptown harbour draught. There was no sign of Amy, or of anyone, at the Gay Hussar so he headed west. On the sidewalks of West 25th Street, outside the housing projects, a bitter Friday morning unfurled. People sold household possessions, used clothes and cheap jewellery from sheets laid out on the sidewalk. A man sanded down the legs of a kitchen chair and beside him was a stool with a ripped vinyl seat which was freshly taped up and it was not clear to Finn if the stool was for sale or for the man to sit on. If he’d asked, he would have been told that it was both. The sidewalk was a murmur. All was serene and all was desperate and it seemed improbable to Finn, the wealthy man a few corners away in the big art shop with a paid job for him. But something about the morning and the cold, crisp, sun-filled air hitting the streets advised Finn not to let suspicion darken the day or shut any doors.

  Beyond Tenth Avenue, the crockery and old T-shirts were replaced by canvases and installations. He arrived five minutes early and felt more comfortable than he had expected to. It wasn’t that he trusted Leo, that was out of the question, but he felt he couldn’t be let down by a place like this because he expected nothing from it. Not, he decided, such a bad position to start from.

  For his own part, Leo felt insecure. He had long suspected that his sense of humour had deserted him and, now, Finn’s presence was sure to expose that fact. As he opened up a box of croissants from Maison Claudine, he asked Finn what he thought of the paintings currently on show. Finn smiled politely and caught the smell of warm, buttery dough and batted away the longing for a home that it stirred in him. He slid his hands into his pockets and his shoulders up to his ears and pulled a face that said he’d rather not answer. It was the non-committal way in which he had learned to survive the adults in his life, and it felt natural to use it here, with a man who was most certainly too good to be true.

  ‘The artist, James Williamson, is from California,’ Leo told him. ‘I’ve represented him for fourteen years.’

  ‘I wanna go to California.’ That felt like a safe thing to say, and honest.

  ‘Do you like them?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Leo’s face invited more from him, and kindly.

  ‘They all look the same, you know,’ Finn muttered, ‘water towers and stuff.’

  They fell silent and Finn battled his guardedness with a wish to be polite to this man who had not yet screwed him over.

  ‘Like The Last Picture Show,’ Finn said, to appear more willing.

  ‘Ah! A wonderful film,’ Leo said. ‘A classic. You like films?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Finn replied, more openly. It was good to be asked a question he knew the answer to, and it encouraged his curiosity. ‘How much do you get? Eighteen grand for a painting the size of a tea towel. How much do you get?’

  ‘Fifty per cent.’

  ‘Seriously, though…’

  ‘I am serious. I get half.’

  Finn was incredulous. ‘Half?’ Spoken like a cold bullet.

  Leo nodded.

  ‘Fuck right off!’ He laughed the words out of his throat. ‘You didn’t paint it.’

  They fell silent. Leo stood his ground, feeling unexpectedly relaxed. ‘Go on,’ Leo said. ‘Keep going. What’s in your head?’

  Finn shrugged. ‘How much you give to charity,’ he muttered.

  Leo laughed to himself.

  ‘That’s what’s in my head. When you’re little you think anybody who makes loads of money gives most of it away so that things are even. But that’s when you’re little.’

  ‘You like things to be even?’ Leo asked the boy.

  Finn pulled a ‘dunno’ face and retreated. He was not from a background where discussions unfolded like this. He smiled, in case he had sounded rude. Like many with the ability to wreak physical damage, he was placatory by nature.

  To avoid further conversation, as he was tired of the concentration it took not to self-destruct, Finn walked around the gallery. Leo observed him. It was like having an animal on the loose – not a dangerous one necessarily, but an unknown quantity, outside its natural environment.

  It was the quietest shop Finn had ever been in. As the morning wore on, his thoughts drifted to ways of delaying his return to the hovel. He tried Dilly’s cell from the landline in the store-room. She didn’t pick up and he didn’t leave a message asking her to post him the Hemingway book, even though that was what he wanted. He felt no need for her until he thought of being in Glenn’s place alone, and he suspected that this was not a kind way to need someone. He asked himself, would he have sex with Dilly in Long Beach if it was the only way of getting his book back? He believed fervently he would not, but felt uncomfortable that he could not promise it to himself.

  Leo was distant, sometimes looking out across the street towards the Dot Yi in the window of the Bovenkamp Gallery. Chelsea was calm. The gallery was quiet. Astrid filled the void, as she picked at a meagre, lifeless salad.

  ‘I’ve joined the Kabbalah faith in the last year, young man, and it’s a huge part of me now – not that it’s changed my outward life so much, but my inner life is a Kabbalah one these days.’

  Finn noted that he was addressed as ‘young man’ only when being sent to prison, sexually dominated, and, it now seemed, at work.

  ‘It’s something I’d like to talk about, if you’re interested, now that it seems you really are gonna, you know, work here, which is extraordinary.’

  Finn smiled and let the hair fall over his face, as his eyes tended to tell the truth. His take on religion and organised spirituality was so negative that he chose not to share it.

  ‘You know what?’ Astrid said.

  He shook his head. How could he possibly?

  ‘You’re the first person I’ve told I’m Kabbalah who hasn’t immediately said, “Is that the Madonna thing?” You should be very proud of that fact, I mean that.’

  That, Finn said to himself, would be because I have no idea what Kabbalah is. In truth, he had very little notion of what Madonna had ever done to get so famous. So he smiled politely at all of it, which only encouraged Astrid.

  ‘What annoys me,’ she said, ‘is why pick on Madonna? Everything has its famous members, doesn’t it? I mean Tom Cruise is in the Scientology one – he’s their, you know, big name. Every religion has celebrities attached. Judaism has Woody Allen. Catholicism has the Pope. So why pick out Kabbalah?’

  The phone rang and Astrid grabbed it. Finn looked at Leo helplessly. ‘I’ll give a sign when I know what anybody round here is talking about.’

  That made Leo’s mind up: the boy was staying. It was worth having him here just to watch him try and make sense of Astrid. First, though, Leo needed to buy himself some time to work out what Finn was going to do. He had no idea of the boy’s abilities, and was aware that Astrid knew this and was waiting for it to unravel.

  ‘I won’t make a habit of asking you to run errands but I have a little ritual with my sister and my brother-in-law and I thought you could do it for me this morning, if you don’t mind?’

  Finn shrugged. ‘It’s your shop. You tell me what to do.’

  Leo wrapped the second box of pastries in a carrier bag and handed it to the boy, gave him an address and a set of keys and pointed him in the right direction.

  ‘So –’ Astrid sat back on her chair ‘– having given a complete stranger, petty thief and illegal worker the keys to Joy’s apartment, you can now try and work out what the heck you can get him to do while I continue to do all the work that a qualified new assistant was going to take off my hands.�
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  ‘That’s the sum of it,’ Leo said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Remember how you said it’d be good to get fresh input when writing our brochure intros?’ she mocked, ‘Well, get the little thief to do that.’ She plunged her vocal cords into the deepest, most guttural voice she could get out of her famished frame. ‘All art looks the same and this is all like todal bullshit man and paintings cost like way too much. The end.’

  She had made Leo smile without at all meaning to.

  ‘Oh, God, no…’ she sighed.

  ‘What?’ Leo said.

  ‘You’re perking up.’

  Finn swallowed the streets with his stride. It was a shiver through the length of his body, how good it felt to have a job in this town. The smile on his face turned heads. Nothing on Tenth Avenue escaped his hungry eye: the Ethiopian smartphone repair booth, the low-rent gold-trader, the Korean grocery store… every little detail was perfect for being unrecognisable from home. A florist’s spilled on to the sidewalk and Finn stopped a moment with thoughts of Amy but he wasn’t sure if she’d want flowers from him, and he felt bad towards Dilly. He walked on, as fast as was possible with the box of pastries balanced in his hand. Outside a second-hand furniture store, a man reclined on a deckchair in the cold sunshine, wearing a pair of shorts and sunglasses, his saggy grey-haired chest arched to the sky. Finn squinted in the sun and laughed to himself and remembered how he and Jack used to walk this same way, fast as they could without running, fidgeting with laughter, once a year when their mother baked a cake for the Barnado’s tea party on the estate. The shapeless, inedible once-a-year cake that the boys were charged with delivering to the community centre on Manor Road, and the year they finally became too embarrassed to do it and ditched the cake in the bins outside the Robinson Crusoe pub and tried to keep a straight face the rest of the day, back home. It became an annual ritual, Finn and Jack taking their mum’s cake to the pub bins, and often they’d see Steve Bachelor, landlord at the Crusoe, sunbathing on a lounger in the car park with music blaring out and a face that didn’t care what anyone thought of him.