“So what’s right for us? Where are we going to live?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
That was our second night in our bedroom on Rivington Street opposite La Perla restaurant; the night was hot but the sidewalk tables were crowded and noisier than ever.
Amy frowned. “Are we going to stay in your uncle’s house forever?”
“You don’t like it here?”
“Remember when Charlie and Paulette were living in that little house on the pond?”
“Is that what you want?”
“More than this dump.”
“What about going out west? Should I put the ad in those papers? I can go online today and do that in an hour.”
“Billy, I don’t want to live in the boonies with just a bunch of cows and dumb horses to talk to.”
“You said you wanted to live on a ranch.”
“Well, mostly I wanted to be a bull rider. And I guess that meant living on a ranch. But when I thought about it…”
She let it hang there.
“You changed your mind,” I said.
“Billy, I’m a kid. I say things sometimes just to see how they sound and if I can really live with them. Don’t you ever do that?”
I understood. “So where,” I said, “do you want to go?”
“We could stay here in the city. I like New York. Find some apartment with A/C.”
“Let me think about it all tomorrow,” I said. “It’s late now. I’m sleepy.”
“Tomorrow your parents are coming. They’ll want us to go back home with them. I mean, want you to go back. To their home. Me, they don’t care about. I can go anywhere.”
“But we won’t do that, Amy. We’ll live our own life.”
Uncle Bernie and Ginger had eased out after dinner to a party up on York Avenue. From there they were going to Connecticut for the rest of the weekend. Amy and I hadn’t been invited; there was a limit to how much we could be included in adult social life. What would we do at a grown-ups’ party? People would drink wine, smoke pot, dance salsa, flirt. They’d be uncomfortable that we were there. If we stayed in the city, or went anywhere, we would have to make our own friends. But other kids would have parents and homes. Those parents would see us a bad influence. We would be on the outside of everything.
Outsiders had to seek other outsiders.
I knew this next stage of our life wasn’t going to be easy. What mattered was for Amy and me to be together. We’d settle on a place we both liked and we’d make a life. It would be a challenge. I loved challenges. Even if they got the better of you, you knew at the end that you hadn’t cut along the dotted line and you were bigger for battling. Maybe that was my problem: I always wanted to be bigger than I was.
“Let’s play backgammon,” Amy said.
Ginette had taught her how to play, and we’d played a few games out in Amagansett. She wasn’t especially skillful but she threw great dice. Maybe, I thought, we should move to Las Vegas.
It was eleven o’clock and it had been a long day — good cooking takes a lot of energy — but I said okay. I’d brought my travel set. We opened the board out on the rumpled sheet.
“Want to play for money?” Amy asked.
She had no money. She had access to my cash supply. Maybe I should have given her a stash of her own, or an allowance, but I didn’t know how to do that gracefully. I realized that if she lost to me at backgammon she’d just add it to her debt, like for the piercings, that she was going to pay back to me when she got a job.
“Sure,” I said.
“How much?”
“Ten bucks a point.”
“Hey, that’s a lot.”
“So what? If you lose, you can owe it to me.” I’d had an inspiration. We played, and I made a couple of careless moves. The second time Amy said, “You left a blot.”
“No fun if you don’t take risks.”
An hour later she was two hundred and sixty dollars ahead.
“I quit,” I said. “You’re too good for me tonight.”
“I was lucky.”
“I got sloppy. The dice punished me.”
“You only have to pay me two hundred, Billy. I owe you sixty for the studs, remember? Oh, yeah, plus the tax.”
“Forget the tax. The tax is my treat.”
“And you don’t have to pay me until tomorrow.”
I yawned.
“Are you tired, Billy?”
“It’s midnight. I just don’t know if I can sleep in this heat. Maybe I’ll take a shower. Cool down.”
“Want to smoke a joint?”
“What?”
“You might sleep better.”
“You don’t have a joint.”
“Don’t I?” Amy grinned.
“Where did you get a joint?” For one bad moment I thought that Uncle Bernie gave it to her.
“From this dude in the shop on Astor Place. Ahmad is his name. He lives in Paris when he’s not in New York. He’s a friend of Marisa, the lady who pierced my lip. Marisa is from Cuba.”
“This guy Ahmad gave you a joint? Just like that?”
“He gave me one free when I bought one. Ten bucks is all it cost. It’s Humboldt Big Bud. From Humboldt County, California — spelled b-o-l-d-t, he said. Supposed to be the best. Ahmad really knows about dope, what’s the absolute best and what’s only just medium okay. So, yeah, that’s another ten I borrowed from you. You only owe me a hundred and ninety.”
“You have them here?”
She reached under the mattress where we were sitting, where we’d just played backgammon, and came out with a crumpled pack of cigarettes. They weren’t cigarettes, she explained, they were bidis, from India. They came in a skinny yellow paper packet that had a picture of Ganesh, the elephant god of success. She’d got them from Ahmad as part of the deal, although you could buy them anywhere in Manhattan; they were pure Indian black tobacco. These bidis were mango-flavored. And they were smaller than cigarettes and wrapped in a natural caramel-colored leaf, also pure Indian. She made them sound as if they came from the organic produce section of Whole Foods.
“Have you smoked one yet?” I asked.
“In the shop, when Marisa pierced me. Just a hit, so I’d relax. See, they look a lot like joints, so you can hide the real joints in the pack. No one can tell. I can tell.” She pulled one out of the pack. “Want to try?”
“Is that a bidi or a joint?”
“I’ll let you guess.”
“Amy —”
Her warm brown eyes sparkled. “Billy, tell the truth. Have you ever smoked dope?”
Simon, after he had tried and failed to get me interested in tobacco, had done the same for marijuana. I’d had two tokes, and coughed a lot, and the grass had done zilch for me.
Amy listened to my smoking history. “Well, it probably wasn’t anything like Humboldt Big Bud. And you must have sucked it down too fast. You have to sort of let it slippy-slide into your tummy.”
“Amy, who got you on to dope?”
“I’m not on to it. I just say yes when someone offers. It’s fun.”
“Who offered? The girls at school?”
“They wouldn’t give me the time of day. Ginette offers.”
“Your mother?“
“Carter’d kill her if he knew. I guess she figured she was doing me a good turn.”
“Amy, your mother is a drug addict.”
“No, she’s not a drug addict.”
“You told me she was.”
“I told you she did the twelve-step program.”
“And failed it. She was stoned when she stabbed you, wasn’t she?”
“Drunk.”
“Amy, do you want to be like her?”
“I’m not like her. But I can smoke a joint now and then, can’t I? If it doesn’t do me any harm?” She looked annoyed. She produced a book of matches and lit what I knew right away was a joint, not a bidi. The tip glowed a ragged cherry-red.
I was her friend, and I didn’t want to be
the kind of friend who’s always saying, “Don’t do this, don’t do that.” I had to take her as she was, just as she did me. But that didn’t mean that I had to smoke.
“No, thanks,” I said.
“You scared?”
“I guess so.”
“It didn’t do anything good for you when your brother gave it to you, right?”
“That’s true.”
“Did it do anything bad to you?”
“No.”
“So what are you scared of now?”
Maybe she was right and it would help me to sleep through the heat, cool down my dreams.
Amy took a toke, sucked slowly, and then handed it to me. I wasn’t sure how to hold it the right way. The first thing I did was drop the joint on the bed. The ash came off and burned a little reddening hole in the sheet.
I smothered it with the end of my T-shirt. I’d ruined a good quarter-inch of Humboldt County Big Bud.
I thought Amy would be annoyed. But she smiled and said, “Billy, you’re nervous.”
“Well, maybe.”
“Just relax. Here, take it. Don’t squeeze so hard with your fingers. Let me light it for you.” She scratched a match on the box. “Now, suck it down. Real slow. Slippy-slide.”
I tried. It was so hot and sharp in my lungs that I broke out coughing.
“You got some in there,” Amy decided.
“… Did I?” I could hardly speak.
She took another hit, then offered the joint to me again. Although my lungs felt like they were on fire, I tried a second time. This time it was easier.
Now there comes a period that I’m not so sure about. It crept up on me. At first I felt nothing, just heat spreading throughout my chest. Then I thought, oh, wait… something’s happening. Oh, that’s interesting. Ooooh. Wow. I felt dizzy and it seemed a good idea to lay down on the bed. Things became very colorful. A high-speed electric can opener seemed to be whirring around inside my brain, peeling off layer after layer of brain cells. This happened at a level beyond dizziness. I flew above the earth. I landed in the wooden belly of a ship at sea. The ocean was a powerful purple color. I gripped my oar.
I don’t know how much time passed.
“You all right, Billy?” Amy’s voice came to me from far away.
“I’m doing fine.”
“You sure?”
“I’m having a great time on this ship,” I said. “But it’s hard work rowing. How about you?”
“I’m not so good.”
“Why not?”
In a quiet voice she said, “I think I’m going to die, Billy.”
“What?”
“I think I’m going to die.”
It took a while for the words to register and make sense. I worked my head up a bit, and then I propped myself up on one elbow. The room — or my mind — was veiled in a violet-colored mist.
“Amy, what did you say?”
“I’m cold.”
I could see her now. I didn’t know how much time had passed or how many hits of the joint she’d taken. She was curled up in a chair, pulling her knees as close as she could to her chest so that Madonna’s face on her T-shirt was all scrunched up, making as tight a ball of herself as was possible. Amy was always pale; she had tender-looking skin. Now she was so white she looked transparent. Not good. I thought about it for a while.
“Get under the covers,” I suggested.
“I can’t move.”
All I wanted to do was go back to my ship and that cool dark blue ocean, but I knew I couldn’t do that. I had to put that on hold. I lurched over to Amy. She leaned her head against me. I felt the chill of her forehead against my ribs.
“Are you still cold?” I asked.
“I’m freezing, Billy.”
I got my arms under her and hauled her across the floor to the bed. She didn’t resist but she didn’t help. She was dead weight and hard to move. I dragged her across the wooden floor and across a bit of wrinkled carpet and managed to shove her up on the bed, and then I worked for a time with the sheets until I spread them over her, while she curled up again in a ball. On the floor I found the pale blue nylon blanket that I’d tossed off the bed the night before, and I doubled it and draped it over her.
“Better?”
“Don’t put me in there,” she said.
“I’m not putting you in anywhere.”
“It’s so cold,” she whispered. “My blood’s turning to ice. The blood in my hands and feet is ice-cold and it’s moving toward my heart. Inch by inch. I can feel it coming for me.” She spoke to me quietly, patiently, as if she were a teacher explaining some simple scientific matter to a child. “In the wrist now. Real slow. But I can’t stop it. When it gets to my heart, my heart will freeze. Then I’ll die. You understand what I’m saying?”
I knew that what she described wasn’t true but I also knew that she’d convinced herself it was true, and so it might happen.
“Where’s the Princess? Can’t she help you?”
“She’s cold, too.”
“I’ll keep you warm,” I said. “Then you won’t freeze. You won’t die.”
“Yes, Billy.”
I didn’t know if she meant “yes, I’ll die” or “yes, keep me warm.” And it didn’t matter because I was clawing through the violet mist that was all around me, doing what I had to do to save her. Moving made my head ache. That can-opener was still peeling out levels of gray matter. I’m going to pass out soon. If I pass out, Amy might die. I can’t pass out. I have to help her.
Have to fight.
“The Princess was made of glass,” she said. “When they locked her up, she cracked.”
Can’t give in. Don’t give in.
I snugged into bed with her and reached out to hold her in my arms. She didn’t resist. I was hot and she thought she was freezing. I felt her forehead with my palm. It was true: she was scarily cool. She shuddered. But I believed that if I gave her all my heat, she wouldn’t die.
My heartbeats were so strong, so deep, so loud, that I was frightened by them. I began to boil. I was a kettle of water on the stove. I felt the sweat drip from my head into her hair. My sweat made her hair grow wet.
“See? Now you’re warm, Amy. I’m giving you heat. Do you feel it?”
I wiped my forehead with the sheet. If I sweated on her too much she’d get wet, colder.
I don’t know how long we lay like that. The lamp was still on so it was light enough for me to see my watch but I couldn’t make sense of where the hands were. I heard the merengue and the chatter from La Perla so it couldn’t have been too late. Odors of fried things and hot sauces floated in the air. Time seemed like a long slow wind blowing across a humid plain.
“Can you get me something to eat, Billy?”
I might have been asleep, because my whole body jerked when Amy said those words.
“What?”
She asked me again if I could get her something to eat.
“Are you still freezing?”
“I’m cold but my blood’s not so icy now. I don’t think I’m going to die. But I almost did. I’m hungry. Is there any food?”
“I’ll have to go upstairs and get it. I’ll have to leave my oar.”
I was willing to do that, and I climbed out of bed. I was in my underwear, damp from head to toe. I took a few cautious steps. I didn’t hear any sounds in the house. Everyone who lived in the house must have been out partying.
I crawled up the two flights of stairs on my hands and knees.
In the kitchen I foraged for food: I found a cold duck leg, the cold roast potatoes, a chocolate cupcake and a jelly donut from Uncle Bernie’s stash, and a bottle of apple juice. I didn’t know how to carry everything safely down so I dumped it all in a paper bag I found under the sink. The walls of the kitchen were circling around me. Whoo-ee. I worked my way down the two flights of stairs. I did it sitting down. Bump bump bump.
I had forgotten knives and forks. Amy and I stuffed the food into our mouths like
animals. I knew that Amy was all right now, that she was saved from whatever demon that had clutched at her and made her believe that her heart would freeze. I lay down on the bed. To save Amy, I had kept my own demons at bay. Now I could face them. Let them do their worst. The water poured in on me. The water was everywhere. It stretched as far as I could see.
I was an oarsman. The ship belonged to Christopher Columbus and it was pitching and tossing on an ocean without wind, but until the wind blew again my mates and I had to row. I didn’t understand that because the ships of Columbus had sails and they hardly ever rowed. But that’s the way it was. My hands hurt and the muscles of my back ached from the labor. I looked through the porthole at the foam of blue water, and I saw that the ocean was composed of a heavenly choir of brown-haired maidens who swayed and sang while their long hair floated in the air around them. I called up to Christopher Columbus on the quarterdeck: “Chris, head more north. You can make your landfall on Long Island. And I can go home. And you can discover America instead of that place you called San Salvador. Chris?”
I heard Amy say, “Billy?”
“Uh-huh?”
“You’re calling out for someone named Chris.”
I tried to explain that I was in the galley of the Santa Maria, headed for the Bahamas, and she was a fat, slow ship. We’d run out of wind.
I sprang up from the bed. Amy was sitting next to me with her hand on top of my hand. Our hands were greasy from the duck. The bedside lamp cast interesting shadows. I couldn’t hear the people chattering and the cutlery clattering across the street in La Perla. I was hot again. I yanked off my Jockeys and left them in the bed. I was naked. So what? I was broiling alive.
“What time is it, Amy?”
“Quarter to three.”
“Whoo-ee.”
I looked out the window facing Rivington Street. I turned to face Amy — I had lost all shyness. I said, “Hey, I know exactly where I am. I smoked a joint with you and I got stoned. That’s why I thought I was rowing across the Atlantic Ocean. I’m not a galley slave. I’m not in the Santa Maria. We’re here in this house in SoHo and across the street there’s a Puerto Rican restaurant called La Perla. We had dinner tonight with Uncle Bernie and Ginger. I roasted two ducks.” I took a deep breath of the night air, which seemed to weigh more than usual. “But if all that’s true, Amy, can you tell me why I’m looking out the porthole and all I can see is the ocean, and it’s made up of a heavenly choir?”
Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 04 - BOY ON TRIAL - A Legal Thriller Page 26