The man stopped. He turned and looked at Jack, and his face filled with blood and his shoulders slumped. He walked away, vaulted the turnstile and returned to street level. Jack watched him go and then took the book from his pocket and opened it. He turned the pages to the first poem, then looked along the platform at the woman. She was looking steadfastly the other way, down the track and into the tunnel of darkness from which would come the steel tube to transport her to the next moment of self-doubt or joy. She was pretty, and Jack glanced at her a few more times, in the hope that they might catch each other’s eye.
Thank you for helping me, you’re a lovely man.
You’re welcome.
Are you alone?
Yeah.
Shall I hold you?
I’d love that.
I would love that too.
But she didn’t look back at him.
16
The morning was bitter. Cold currents out in the bay nudged a miniature breeze through the pot plants on the balcony of One Lex. The serrated leaves on the birches in Gramercy Park were the only evidence that Leo had not slept through spring, summer and fall.
Swayed by an aberrant nostalgia, he diverted south to the French Roast on Sixth Avenue. This had been Leo and William’s breakfast haunt for many years, before Leo had got William his job in the attic with its earlier start to the working day, and before William and Joy’s idea of what constituted New York City had shrunk to the twenty blocks either side of West 36th Street. Back then, Leo and William had had breakfast together every single day of the working week. Leo missed that, and it was sentimental of him to take their old window seat. He had presumed that such wistfulness would be saved for old age.
He watched a nearby table where a grandfather with a slow, high-pitched voice and ill-fitting dentures, his son and three grandchildren – two boys and a girl – formed a raucous table of five. The children were not tall enough to sit and get sufficient down-force on their knife and fork to cut their food, not even with their elbows reaching for the ceiling, so they stood and ate that way, pressing their chests against the table and leaning across their food to be as close as possible to the conversation. Leo was older than the father, younger than the grandfather. He was, he imagined, possibly a little of both men (except without the family of course, he reminded himself, as if he was a fool to liken himself in any way to men with children.)
‘I need to use your phone, Pop,’ the father said.
‘Why?’ the grandfather asked.
‘Why! To shovel snow.’
The kids liked this line. One of the boys sniggered.
‘No, you cannot.’
‘What am I, twelve? Lemme use your phone, will you?’
‘What sort of call is it, personal or business?’
‘It’s personal, I gotta call their mother.’
‘Why are you calling Mummy?’ the young girl said, swivelling to look at her dad while harpooning her food.
‘’Cos I wanna talk to her, sweetie.’ The dad stroked her hair and gestured her to concentrate on her food. ‘Dad, give me your phone.’
‘As long as it’s not work – you are not calling work, not all day, that’s the whole point of today, Melissa said so.’
It was loving between them and it was robust. They both turned to watch a tall, Edith Sitwell type of woman walk past on Sixth Avenue, with a boxer dog on a lead. The younger boy leapt. ‘Look! Look! That’s a pitbull, it’s so mean-looking, a pitbull, look!’
The brother and sister rebuked him theatrically. ‘THAT’S NOT A PITBULL!’
‘YESITISSSS!’
‘It’s a boxer, you fool.’
‘It’s a pitbull, I saw a movie about them!’
‘Still doesn’t make it one.’
‘What movie?’ the father asked. ‘What movie did you see about pitbulls?’
The boy shrugged. ‘I dunno, just some grisly movie.’
The father looked horrified. The grandfather leaned back in his chair and spread out his arms and announced to his adoring juvenile audience, ‘It’s a boxerbull, you all got it right. They’re from Mongolia. That was a male boxerbull. Boxerbullis ferocissimus, from the Latin Boxerbullissimo, meaning “he-of-flattish-face”.’
The two boys narrowed their eyes at each other and sat up straight, then roared.
‘That’s not true!’ the younger boy called out, uncertainly.
The eldest boy squirmed, as if tickled, and painted a smile across Leo’s face without Leo knowing it. The granddaughter stared open-mouthed and silent with a sausage on the prong of her fork at the wondrous creation that was her grandpa, and further down the restaurant a middle-aged woman who was keeping her recent diagnosis a secret so as to save her family the misery of the whole predictable unfolding scenario watched Leo’s smile intently and listened to the kids’ laughter. The dad placed an arm around his younger son and sat back, letting his belly relax over his belt. The phone call to Mummy seemed forgotten. He whispered to the boy, ‘I think you’re right, it’s got some pitbull in there somewhere.’ The boy studied his dad’s face adoringly before being noticed. Laughter like that must be fantastic, Leo thought. He laughed with William and Joy but not like this, not belly laughter like this.
On Sixth Avenue, Leo buttoned his coat up tight against a physique less slender than when the coat was new. His eagerness to go to work was as uncharacteristic these days as his return to the French Roast had been fanciful, but he missed seeing William every day and was glad he’d gone back.
He felt the fractional taste of snowfall on his lips and noticed a profound, sudden drop in temperature across the neighbourhood. He looked south down Sixth Avenue where grey snow clouds filled the gap in the skyline. Fast on the heels of the stillness came a single gust of wind, moving northwards up the avenue like an empty wave and flicking the blossom from the trees. Above the heads of the people, blossom danced and swirled and Leo felt like the only man who could see it. The tumbling cloud came off the bay, billowing out across the harbour, full of snow, casting downtown into unnatural shade, and, as the cherry blossom flew horizontally from the trees, thick, feathery snowflakes descended vertically through the petals. Leo watched the white and pink against the dark green paintwork of Sammy’s Noodle Shop. He inhaled the smell of melted chocolate from a street vendor. The snow and the blossom tumbled and flew and for the first time in half a decade he dared to hold his gaze down Sixth Avenue, and the snowstorm hurried towards him and he cried at last for the people who had died and the children of his who would never be born and he clenched his fists against the stupidity of how he had allowed time to dance over him. The snow came thicker now and sent the spring-clad populace scurrying for cabs and cover. The wind dropped and the blossom fell with the snow; they danced and dropped together and landed on the sidewalk where the flowers remained and the flakes made a brief impression, then melted away to nothing.
Leo’s cellphone trembled against his ribs. He took a call from the clinic. The doctor could see Finn at noon. Leo took a look back through the window of the French Roast to see what the children made of the spring blizzard but he saw only himself reflected against a glare of white. He walked carefully on the slush despite his impatience to arrive. He called Astrid, asked about her weekend plans and commented on the snowstorm, before asking if she had organised a cellphone for Finn yet.
‘I have been at work for eight minutes,’ she told him. ‘One of which has been invested in this conversation with you. No, I have not yet sorted out a cellular phone for the boy.’
‘Is he there?’
‘Yes, which is curious considering you fired him.’
‘You’re too literal for your own good,’ Leo said. ‘Make sure he doesn’t leave.’ He felt a lightness in his walk, and the memory of the swagger he possessed when growing his business and taking lovers as if the day would never end. There was a time when he felt in control of everything he was interested in, where he chose these streets and they didn’t choose him. And in the spiri
t of that time he commanded a taxi to be his and it took him to Fountains. ‘My dear man,’ he said, when William answered his call, ‘I am heading towards the Fountains Emporium Coffee Shop, no less, upon the fourth of your many floors, if you’ll join me.’
William recognised this cocky voice from the past. He had forgotten it. It made him smile, despite his captivity. ‘I can’t. I’m not allowed out. I can’t even invite you up because George White is coming to see me. I’ve complained about the situation.’
‘You complained? Good for you.’
‘Well, I didn’t complain exactly.’ William laughed at himself. ‘I didn’t complain at all. I just said I needed to talk to him about being confined to my room.’
Leo redirected the cab towards the gallery. ‘Will, could we not have our breakfasts again? I miss them. You could get your limo to bring you to the French and wait for you while we eat and chat, then take you to work?’
‘I miss the breakfasts too. It’s a car not a limo and I hate it. I hate all this, I just want my old routine back. I miss Susan. I don’t mean I miss Susan, that’s not what I meant to say. I mean, I worry about her not getting enough rest.’
‘Of course. What does my sister think about it all?’ Leo felt a bit mean for mentioning her.
‘That it’ll blow over and go back to normal.’
‘Sure I can’t talk to George for you?’
‘I’ll do it. But, thanks.’
‘Will?’
‘Yes?’
‘Joy’s right. It will blow over. I’ve got a good feeling today, about everything.’
‘She is normally right about things.’
‘That’s the spirit.’
By the time Leo reached 26th Street, the snow had stopped and the clouds were stretched thin across the sky, torn here and there to reveal the pale blue lagoon above. Leo marched into the gallery. ‘Good morning, young man! What’s new?’
‘Nothing much,’ Finn said. ‘I’m obsessing about my bollocks.’
‘Welcome to the rest of your life,’ Leo replied, without breaking stride to his office, where Astrid was laying out a set of slides.
‘Good morning, good morning!’
Astrid raised an eyebrow at Leo’s vigour.
‘What are we up to?’ he said.
‘You are looking at these, the Croatian painter I told you about, very very young and very very good. I am hung-over and not to be messed with, and your little puppy is fiddling with his snow globes.’
‘Indeed…’ Leo replied. He turned and watched Finn moping at the periphery, one hand rammed inside his pants. ‘You’ve a doctor’s appointment at noon,’ he called out, ‘so stop worrying.’
They sat down for coffee, around the main desk, upon which Astrid doggedly placed the lightbox that bore the Croatian’s work.
‘Could you wash your hands, please?’ she said to Finn. ‘You’ve been inside your underwear all morning.’
‘Is your underwear clean on?’ Leo asked, conspiratorially.
‘What? Er, yes…’ Finn said.
‘Then he doesn’t need to wash his hands,’ Leo said, and passed Astrid the plate of croissants. ‘But he can go last.’
Finn looked at Astrid triumphantly. She ignored him, theatrically, but the corners of her mouth raised a little. ‘What do you think?’ Astrid asked.
‘The Croatian?’ Leo replied. ‘Pretty work, devoid of ideas. Empty. We’d sell them but I don’t want to.’
Finn watched Astrid slump and knew that Leo would not have noticed. And his heart sank as Leo pushed the slides across to him.
‘Take a look and tell us what they make you think of, in your own time, in your own way,’ Leo said.
‘Uh-uh.’ Finn shook his head. ‘I’m not going to say any stuff about anything any more – just gets me in trouble.’
‘That wouldn’t work,’ Astrid said. ‘You can’t work here and not have opinions.’
‘There’s a difference between being honest about art, which you are, very, and telling my clients they’re wankers,’ Leo said with the indulgent smile that Finn provoked in him.
‘Yes,’ Astrid said. ‘Be honest, but choose when not to air your opinions.’
‘That’s just lying.’
‘No, it’s not,’ she said. ‘It’s being polite. It’s holding back. Having a filter. You have to learn these things. They are skills.’
‘You do it all the time already,’ Leo said. ‘You don’t tell everyone you walk past who is fat that they are fat. You do it every day: you filter your thoughts all the time, unless, in your own case I suspect, you’re angry or you feel attacked.’
There was a pause, in which Finn suspected he was meant to be stunned by their wisdom. Leo seemed different this morning and Finn saw no point in being dutifully silent when they were telling him to shoot from the hip, and given that he was a dying man with a noon appointment with the reaper’s fuckbuddy.
‘Okay,’ Finn said. ‘If we’re talking honestly. I think she –’ he pointed his croissant at Astrid ‘– doesn’t want to be your dogsbody. And she only plays the role of tough person because being your… I dunno… mother is not what she wants so she’s not being herself. And if you let her make some decisions on the paintings without making changes to everything she does, then she could be herself and then she’d probably be a bit more of a laugh. I think you want to change that waitress’s life because she’s black and does a badly paid job and you want to sleep with her. When you’re my age you can say, “I really want to fuck that waitress,” but because you are seriously old you feel you have to disguise it and say “I really want to help her.”’
In the silent aftermath of the emotional carnage rained on them by a quiet young man’s unedited opinion, Astrid blushed and came close to taking a bite of her croissant, and Leo supped his coffee and the gallery began to feel new to him again. And he knew that, if the boy didn’t remain, he might lose something (he had no idea what) that would never be offered him again. He shut his eyes and saw a single petal of cherry blossom falling, falling, falling, tumbling through the air, head over heels, and landing softly, so beautifully softly on the sidewalk, and he knew that, if he could only believe in gentle landings, then he could allow himself to take pleasure in this city again.
Finn left early, to take a long, slow walk across town to the clinic. But walking simply made him more conscious of his testicles. He took a seat in Stuyvesant Park. His right hand remained tucked inside his underwear, touching the lump inside his ball sack, and guaranteeing him a bench to himself.
The clinic was airless and stifling. The hum of machinery infiltrated Finn’s head, intensifying in unnoticeable increments until it was deafening in its own way. The packed waiting room and general inertia of the place told him he was not going to be seen at noon. The first hour he waited gave him ample opportunity to sweat in exactly the region he had most wanted not to, plan his funeral, to fantasise that before the tumour reduced him to rubble he would have the good health – and testicular armoury – to have a sexually athletic love affair with Amy, fly to England to finish off his uncle, escape back to New York and die with Amy and Jack at his bedside. He wrote his eulogy.
Ninety minutes after his appointment time, with the original cast of the waiting room replaced, he asked the receptionist when he would be seen. To do so was a mistake, and he knew it as soon as he’d spoken. The receptionist reminded him that he was a fit-you-in, such status being, it appeared, a notch lower than jihadists and mothers that supplied crack to their own children. A further fifty minutes passed. Finn filled it by opening negotiations with the eternal powers that be, so that, in the event of God and heaven existing, he received a room in a different wing of the afterlife from his mum and dad.
Dr Minnis was in equal parts charming and repellent, and mistaken in the belief that Finn would be captivated by his preference for English soccer over American football. Framed photographs of Dr Minnis’s two sons were peppered over his desk and shelves, and were of such blandne
ss that Finn wondered if the children had come with the frames. Crate Minnis and Barrel Minnis. Finn filled out a questionnaire about his general health and sexual habits while Minnis spoke of his own sporting achievements at high school and med school before announcing that it was time to take a look at the ‘worrisome area’.
‘You going to apologise for the two-hour wait first?’ Finn asked, remaining resolutely seated.
Dr Minnis was caught between his sitting and standing positions as if unleashing a fart while popping up on to the surf. And behind his thousand-dollar laser-white smile the rest of his face was a cradle of confusion, his eyeballs lava lamps of bewilderment. ‘Yes,’ he gasped, finally straightening up, ‘my boys love their soccer.’ The life had been squeezed out of him and he said little else, other than to mutter rudimentary instructions to guide Finn through the process of pulling his trousers and underwear down and lying back. Afterwards, as he washed his hands, he said, ‘We need to get that looked at.’
‘You just looked.’
‘I mean a scan.’
Dr Minnis kept talking but scan was pretty much the last word Finn had heard. He went back to the hovel and prepared for death.
Scan.
A cocksucking motherfucking scan.
He cried in bed. All the things he could have cried at in his life and hadn’t, but tonight he shook from sobbing and he knew he was going to die. The anger rose in him. Dying was all that anyone did in his fucking family. Sleep didn’t offer itself up as an option so he went out and bought booze and cigarettes, to herald the onset of a non-smoker’s certain cancer. He placed them on Glenn’s circular table, where they remained, unconsumed. He thought of Amy. He wanted to call her. He wanted to hold her. But he guessed that she didn’t want a bollockless chemo-raddled boyfriend. There was no one in the world he could trouble with his dying without feeling that he was being the most tremendous pain in the arse, and that was what he had always felt about being his parents’ son, that he and his brother had been an annoyance to them, he much more so than Jack.
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