by Mark Helprin
“Don’t worry,” said Kitten, spreading his arms in a winged gesture. “It’s a sure thing.”
Freddy began to get up.
“Wait,” Kitten commanded. “You don’t have to do anything now but listen.”
Freddy sat down and Kitten continued. “All right, the accountant goes to lots of fancy, big-time parties. One night in Kalorama—he’s stoned, he hardly knows where he is—he finds himself at the home of Arthur and Marina Clovis.”
Freddy looked up from his plate of crab. “Don’t know them,” he said.
“You’ve never heard of Arthur and Marina Clovis?”
“No.”
“Office parks.”
“Office parks?” Freddy asked.
“Don’t you know what an office park is? You must be from another planet. Trust me, they’re billionaires. And they have huge parties. So, last winter, in a snowstorm, the accountant finds himself, without knowing how he got there, in their living room, with two hundred people watching an actress do a striptease in a fur coat, like Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita, but you wouldn’t know about that, either.”
“I know about that,” Freddy said. “I taught myself to use a projector so I could sneak into the screening room at three o’clock in the morning and run it for my own edification.”
“What screening room?”
“A screening room in the ghetto,” said Fredericka. “They have them, you know.”
Kitten took a bite of crab. “Whatever. My friend turns from Anita Ekberg because he’s not interested in that for the moment, because he’s hungry, starving, but the college students and actors who work for the catering service are busy watching Anita Ekberg, and their trays have gone empty. So Larry—that’s not his name, but let’s call him Larry—glides around the house in search of something to eat. He’s as kissy as a skunk and doesn’t know at all where he’s going. And then, according to him, the Red Sea opens, and he has what he calls ‘the three great visions.’
“He walks down a little hall, into an elegant study—a gas fire, dark wal-nut panelling, a big globe. You know, the way a decorator would make a place not for someone to study in but to feel important in. If you want to study, you go to the library and sit with a hundred people who smell bad. Doing that is to concentration what a hot oven is to baking bread. I used to study refrigeration mechanics in Central Park. When a place is not yours, it holds no distractions.”
“What did he see?” Fredericka asked with the curiosity of a child.
“In one corner, lit by a little spotlight, one of the world’s ten free-agent Swastika 34 Eggs, just what his fence was dreaming about. He waltzed toward it and turned a bewildered circle or two before he got there, but it was a Swastika 34 Egg, one of the top three.
“He didn’t even have time to regret that it was in a house that dripped with alarms and servants, and that therefore he’d never be able to steal it. Why no regret? Because he went back out the door—he says he felt as if he were on an invisible conveyor belt—down the hall, and into the kitchen. Ah, he says, food. The kitchen is tremendous, filled with Ecuadorans, Ethiopians, and Vietnamese working at black granite countertops under diffused fluorescent light that leaves no shadows. In a kind of cathedral of black stone, frosted glass, stainless steel, and polished birch, they roast beef, make hors d’oeuvres—those are snacks . . .”
“I know,” said Freddy.
“. . . and open Champagne. Larry by this time has forgotten all about the Swastika 34 Egg. All he wants to do is grab a roast beef, hold it in his hands like a concertina, and eat it like an ear of corn. The Champagne is irresistible because he’s extremely thirsty. His mouth is so dry he’s afraid he won’t be able to open it so he can drink, but he knows he wants at least a magnum, and that he’ll get it.”
“Oh dear,” said Fredericka.
“And the cakes, caviar, and grilled shrimp don’t escape his notice, either. But for some reason he holds back, and sits down on a duck press. The duck press is in a little alcove, in shadow, and no one in the kitchen notices him. It’s as if he’s invisible. Who knows, maybe he is?”
Kitten took a long drink of beer. “Half an hour passes, maybe an hour, and he doesn’t move. Now they really can’t see him, because they’ve actually seen him a number of times and yet been unaware that he was there, so they’ve accommodated him out, so to speak, and he’s just a part of the landscape. An Ethiopian puts on his coat and leaves by the kitchen door, two feet from invisible Larry. Then the two Vietnamese go. Who’s left? The Ecuadorans, not a single one over five feet tall. They have to stand on stools to work at the counters and get to the cabinets. One of them works full time for the Clovises and lives in. The other two are day workers, or night workers as the case may be. The live-in takes off her apron, kisses the man, and goes off toward her quarters. Larry remains invisible.
“He watches her walk right past him and down the hall. But she stops, turns around, and goes back. Larry turns and sees that the man and woman who remained are in a corner near the cookbook shelves, kissing. The man’s hands are doing a customs inspection of her inner thighs. Uh-oh, thinks Larry, because even in the state that he’s in he remembers that the live-in kissed the man goodnight.
“Live-in walks back to the granite island in the centre of the kitchen. No one sees anyone else, but Larry sees everything. Live-in gets up on a stool and reaches toward the centre of the counter, where two daffodils are sitting in a crystal vase, as fresh as daisies. For a moment Larry and live-in are held by the bright yellow and green beneath the very white light. It’s beautiful. Even in the cold of winter, daffodils come from the Clovis greenhouse, which, at the edge of a cobblestone courtyard, sits in an ultraviolet haze like a beached flying saucer.
“Live-in seizes the flowers and, remembering where they came from, perhaps because she herself had picked them, glances toward the greenhouse. What does she see in the corner? A brown mass, like a bear, moving slightly, cutting off the clean lines of the greenhouse etched by the ultraviolet light. She shades her eyes to see better, squints, and grimaces. For a moment, time freezes.
“But then comes an explosion of Inca curses such as the District of Columbia has never heard. Have you ever been in the seriously overcrowded kitchen of a Chinese restaurant when a fight starts? It’s worse even than that. Thank God they’re all so small. It’s like the Battle of Verdun, with Teddy Bears. Larry, of course, is just sitting there. Live-in goes through a ten-minute tantrum and then turns and marches to a closet, whams open the door, pulls a coat off a hanger—breaking the hanger in two—slams the door, puts on the coat like a four-year-old in a huff, and storms out.
“From habit, she stops by the keypad near the door and arms the alarm. Then she steps out and the door shuts behind her. The alarm is blinking and beeping, its way of saying that it’s about to arm, when someone moves in another room that isn’t programmed for exit delay, and half a dozen sirens go off. Live-in turns about on the path and runs back. As soon as she enters she punches in the disarm code, a couple of feet from Larry. He’s an accountant. The four digits appear in his brain like that big building they have in Hollywood that says 20th Century Fox—I always wanted to go there—and they glow in front of his eyes.
“Then she goes to a phone at a little built-in desk, dials an eight hundred number, states the Clovises’ account number—six digits permanently engraved in Larry’s brain—and speaks the passwords. Then she storms out, and the man runs after her. The woman takes two coats from the closet and follows, leaving Larry all alone in the kitchen. He’s perfectly free to write down the codes and passwords, but he doesn’t have to any more than he would have to write down his own name.
“This is only the second of the visions, but he doesn’t know, so he grabs a magnum of Champagne and drains it. Why not? Feeling really happy, he orbits back into the living room, where most people have gone home.”
“You mean whence,” Freddy said.
“No, I mean where.”
“You m
ean that their homes are in the living room?”
“No, their homes are on the streets, in lots.”
“No, their houses are off the street, on lots.”
“Fine. Whence. Okay?”
“Just go on,” Fredericka said.
Kitten went on. “You know when a beer bash or something is almost over and it gets very quiet and sad? People who have been screaming for six hours suddenly talk as if they’re on their deathbeds. Larry fit right in, because no one knew him and he didn’t say anything. He just sat on a couch and stared at a fish tank. Or maybe, according to you, Moofoomooach, or whatever your name is, he sat in a couch, and stared whence a fish tank. Behind him, Marina Clovis, lubricated with drink though degreased by time, was having an earnest conversation with a friend. What do rich people talk about?” Kitten asked, anticipating that the soul brothers could not possibly know.
Receiving no answer, he asked again. “What do rich people talk about?”
“History,” said Freddy.
“Nope.”
“Clothes,” said Fredericka, with great authority.
“Uh-uh.”
“No?”
“No. Rich people talk most about, in ascending order, furniture, vacations, breast implants, watches, smoked fish, adultery, and servants.”
“That’s new to me,” said Freddy.
“What would you know? Do you know why they talk so much about servants? Because they live with them. They’re surrounded by them, and naturally there’s a lot of tension. The servants have to go through their whole lives and bring up their own children on less money than sits on the mistress’s dressing table in the form of little sparkling rocks. Let’s say the Clovises pay live-in three hundred dollars a week and the value of her room and board is another three hundred. That’s six hundred. After deductions from the paycheck, live-in’s got the equivalent of five hundred a week and change, let’s say five-fifty. That means that if at home she neither ate nor drank, nor fed her children, nor dressed, nor spoke on the telephone, nor had any medical expenses, went anywhere, or did anything, she could in ten years accumulate as much money as the Clovises paid for one of their BMWs parked near the greenhouse. They have three BMWs, a Rolls, and a four-wheel-drive thing with cup holders. I don’t steal those: people who want one won’t buy one hot. They’re for dentists and college professors.”
“So what?” Freddy asked.
“One Rolls, one fuckin’ piece a’ metal, and it’s more money than live-in, her husband, and her parents—who are still in Ecuador because they can’t afford to come here—see in their whole lives. It’s a big attention-getter. These people see their children die sometimes, in front of their eyes, because they can’t pay to save them, and then they see all that money immobile in the houses of the rich, unused, unthought of, forgotten in a quiet corner.”
“Are you some sort of revolutionary?” Fredericka asked.
“Of course not, I’m a car thief. If there was a revolution, no one could afford cars, or, for that matter, anything else.”
“Then why are you telling us this?”
“To explain why rich people talk about servants.”
“They don’t,” said Freddy.
“They do,” said Kitten, “because they know, underneath, even if they don’t know that they know, that these people with whom they live in the same house and to whom they entrust their alarm codes, their cooking, and their children, would in many cases slit their throats. Hey, look, it’s better than Ecuador, but these people are not idiots. They look, they see, they adjust, they wonder, and they say, ‘Why not me?’ Wouldn’t you? That’s why a rich man’s house is never at peace. A rich man’s house is a nervous outpost in a long and never-ending war.”
“Actually,” said Freddy, “the tension of which you speak is an all-pervasive poison that restricts the natural breathing of the upper classes. I should be glad of its absence and to be unoppressed by its weight.”
“Yeah,” said Kitten. “So Mrs is talking to her friend. All Larry can see when he tries to turn his head is lighted Plexiglas, goldfish, and big hair. Ecuadorans, according to the lady of the house, are great. She calls them ‘my little Inca dinca doos.’ They’re cheap. Terrific. If they can’t feed their children protein, it’s okay, because Marina Clovis can buy a Frank Sumatra or a Swastika 34 Egg. They’re not surly. They don’t mind being four foot ten and washing Señor Clovis’ underwear. You should get a few: it’s cheaper than lunch at the Palm.
“And as Larry sits there, his eyes floating in their sockets and every word sucked into his brain like Libyan cell phone transmissions drawn into Fort Meade, she summarizes the Inca dinca doos’ schedules and habits. Monday is their day off, and, at two, Marcia, the live-in, leaves for Fairfax, where her sister lives with a family of Pakistani opticians. That’s great, Marina Clovis says, because except for the first Monday of each month, when she and Arthur go to the board meeting of their foundation from four to seven in the evening, the house always has someone in it. ‘It’s only unattended three hours a month, and, of course, it’s alarmed to death.’
“Larry’s eyes were like the windows of a grand-slam slot machine. We know where the Swastika 34 Egg is. We know that it’s genuine. We have a fence for it and a price. We know when the house is unattended. We know the alarm code. And we know the password.”
“Why don’t you just steal it?” Freddy asked.
“Are you kidding? Larry’s an accountant. Accountants don’t steal physical things. And I can’t, because in DC I’m galactically hot. We need soul brothers.”
“Us?”
“Why not?”
“I’m sorry,” Freddy said, recoiling. “My upbringing and inclination do not lend themselves to the theft of paintings.”
“It’s not a painting,” Kitten said derisively. “You think modern artists can paint? It’s grocery string smeared with zebra blood, attached with blue thumbtacks to the ceiling and the floor so that it stretches at a forty-five-degree angle. It’s called Piece Twenty-three of Thirty-four Egg at Forty-five Degrees. Yo, grocery string smeared with zebra blood. We need soul brothers to carry it away.”
“Why?” Freddy asked.
“Come on,” Kitten said. “You know.”
“I don’t believe we do.”
“Lawyers don’t steal physical things, either.”
“What does it have to do with lawyers?”
“There are two kinds of people in the District of Columbia: lawyers and soul brothers. Anyone else sticks out like a camel in a funeral procession. If you’re going to get out of there unobserved, you have to be one or the other, and we can’t get a lawyer who’s honest enough to commit so straightforward a crime. That’s why we need soul brothers. That’s why we need you. You were born to it.”
TWO GOLDEN SHADOWS moved quickly down Rhode Island Avenue, accelerating purposefully near rubbled lots or burnt-out houses where addicts in stupors were splayed in the heat and humidity. After crossing several sets of railway tracks, they came to more populated areas where they occasioned comments such as, “Hey, Stokely Carmichael joined the circus,” and, “Catch this, Odetta and her brother.”
“Freddy, I’m nervous. Do you think these people know we’re royalty?”
“No, they think we have dietary deficiencies.”
“Can’t we take the Tube?”
“The American tube doesn’t accept sterling in large notes.”
“Couldn’t we go back to Kitten?”
“We’re not thieves, Fredericka, and even were we, the only way to contact Kitten is through Raphael at the squid shop in Benning Road. I don’t know where that is, it’s probably closed on a Sunday night, and, given a choice and the fact that it’s probably closer, wouldn’t you prefer the British Embassy to Raphael’s Squid Shop?” That sealed their course, and they pushed on until Logan Circle, from which it was easy to make their way to Embassy Row. At the gate of the British Embassy they were met by an American policeman.
“Would you ri
ng up Edmund St John du Plafond, the first secretary?” Freddy asked, with the happy air of someone who has survived a dangerous wreck.
“Embassy’s closed.”
“I know the embassy’s closed. Still, I would like to speak to the first secretary, Mr du Plafond.”
“You can come back tomorrow.”
“Of course I can, but I would like to speak to him tonight.”
“But you can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I told you; it’s closed.”
“Officer,” said Freddy, “he’s a friend of ours. Please ring him up, won’t you?”
“All right, I can ask. Who are you?”
“Say ‘The Master of Moocock.’ He’ll understand.”
The policeman stepped away and seized a phone. “Lunatics at the gate,” he said. “What should I do?” He listened, and then turned to Freddy and Fredericka. “Are you British subjects?”
“No,” they had to say.
“They’re not.” He listened to instructions, and said, “Go to your own embassy.”
“This is our embassy,” Freddy said. “It really is ours. We’re not overawed. To us, it’s like a garden hut at Hounslow. Let me have the phone.” He snatched it. “Hello, I’m so sorry for this irregularity. I’m looking for Plaffy. We thought we might try here before we went to his home. I’m not asking where his home is, I know where it is. Oh, I see. I see. Very well. Thank you.”
Freddy took Fredericka’s arm and pulled her back down Massachusetts Avenue. “They softened when I referred to him by his sobriquet—very few people know it—but he’s in Tokyo.”
“Oh no,” said Fredericka. “Where are we going to sleep?”
“On the ground, as we did last night.”
“Not again.”
“Sometimes I sleep on the ground for weeks at a time.”
“I don’t.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
“We can stay with a friend of mine who lives in a gorgeous house in Georgetown. It’s not far from here.”
“You have a friend in Washington?”