We stepped outside into dusk, into the suddenly chilly late-evening air. I pointed to the Tilt. “You want to say hello to Leo?”
“It smells in there,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
“Yeah, Leo doesn’t want people getting too comfortable.”
“It smells like Leo,” she replied, shaking her head.
We went south toward the house, staying on the east side of the street, away from Leo and his jukebox, passing brick and fireproof steel doors and cast-iron railings, crossing the rounded cobblestones, slowing to take in the ginger-and-pepper scent wafting from the Thai takeout shop before heading west toward the murky Hudson, toward Greenwich Street, toward home.
Suddenly, Bella stopped and pointed to our house. I followed the line of her gaze and saw him: a menacing-looking man standing on our front steps.
“I know him,” I told her, and I could see she was relieved.
Mabry Reynolds came down the steps. The muscular security guard still wore his police-style blue shirt and navy polyester slacks, but had traded in his steel-toed boots for a pair of black running shoes. A heavy blue coat added bulk to his thick frame.
We crossed Harrison and I told Bella to go inside, and she went up the steps, acknowledging Reynolds with a nod and a smile.
“I’ll take the groceries,” Bella said.
Reynolds turned to me, reached, took the paper bag. He walked it to Bella, extending his leg across the four steps to hand it to her.
“Thank you,” she said.
Reynolds nodded.
As Bella closed the door, Reynolds came back to me.
“What’d you hear?” I asked.
“Not much,” he said. “Brown was an old guy. People are saying he shouldn’t have been driving.” He ran his hand over his bald head. “Nobody said ‘serves him right,’ but it’s rough out there.”
The cold wind off the Hudson kicked up and smacked my pant-legs against the backs of my calves. I began to shuffle and sway. “Anything on Montana?”
He said no.
“Nothing?”
“Nobody is talking about him, no.”
“Yeah, well …”
He reached into a rear pocket and withdrew a small envelope. “Principal Langhorne sent this.”
I took the envelope.
“What’s it about?” I asked. My name was typed on the front.
He shrugged.
“Something about Montana?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and he moved past me, into the shadows, toward a beat-up Dodge Scamp parked in front of the hydrant on the north side of the street. I followed him.
Awkwardly, I offered, “You need anything? Drink of water, maybe? Use the phone.”
He shook his head as he opened the driver’s-side door.
On the backseat, there were pink and lavender plastic ponies and Chunky Board books. Reynolds had a daughter of his own.
We stood for several seconds in the bracing wind blowing east.
Finally, I asked, “How am I going to get closer to Montana?”
“No idea,” he said slowly.
“There’s something off about Williams, isn’t there?” He shrugged. “Vice principal to Dr. Langhorne won’t have much to do.”
“And the teacher, Amaral. His story is what?”
He bit his bottom lip, he nodded to himself. “Bad divorce. Wife kicked him out, then she took their boy to her folks in Georgia.”
“Good teacher?”
“Must be, if Dr. Langhorne keeps him around.”
I said, “Dr. Langhorne knows everything.”
Reynolds smiled.
“Tell me something he doesn’t know,” I said.
“You mean about Williams and Amaral?”
A ferry crossing the choppy river let go with a blast of its guttural horn. “Sure,” I said, “Williams and Amaral.”
He shook his head and frowned disagreeably. “Can’t be true. Not no more.”
“Why not?”
“Amaral isn’t inclined, if you know what I mean.”
I said, “Which is why his wife left.”
“Probably.”
“Has he been working?”
“Every day,” he replied.
He slid into the car, closed the door. The engine was stubborn, but it kicked over and Reynolds left.
I went up the stairs and into the house.
“What?” Bella asked. “You look confused.”
She’d already begun to prepare the sandwiches. The vinegary potato salad sat in a bowl, as if it were a center-piece. Two place mats had been set out.
I sat at the kitchen table and hunched into my coat. “I asked one question, I got about nine hundred answers.”
“Must have been an outstanding question,” she mused.
“I guess.”
“And what’s that?” She pointed to the small envelope on the table.
“The damnedest thing,” I replied. “A letter from the principal of the school I went to.”
“Why did you go to a school?”
“Not for you,” I said as I tore open the envelope. “Unless you want to commute to 125th Street.”
I read the letter:
“Dear Mr. Orr:
I understand your greeting this morning was less than gracious. I offer my apologies on behalf of myself, my staff, our faculty and our student body. All are welcome here, sir, and ought to be met with the dignity we expect to receive ourselves.
Yours truly,
Everett Langhorne, Ph.D.”
At the bottom were Langhorne’s initials, followed by the initials of his secretary. I nodded. Someone had tipped him off. Miss Oliver, or maybe Reynolds.
“Let me see,” Bella said.
“Don’t get any mustard on it,” I said.
The movie was They Were Expendable, starring Robert Montgomery. Bella was up in my bedroom, watching her programs, snacking. After a Yoo-hoo and a garlic pickle, she was eating a bowl of cheese popcorn to accompany a show about serial killing and the occult, with a dash of romance tossed in when the blood wasn’t cascading.
I stretched out on the sofa and nodded off. I woke up with Bella shaking me by the shoulder.
“Ten o’clock already?” I asked.
She was in a t-shirt, and barefoot. “B-ball tomorrow.”
I sat up. “I’ll be there. Bring your best.”
“My best what?”
“It’s just an expression,” I said as I stood.
“That’s good. I want to learn all the expressions.”
We headed toward the stairs. “All my expressions are from the ’80s. We’ll go to the courts on West Fourth to pick up new ones.”
She was ahead of me. “Cool.”
She reached the top of the stairs and more or less bounced down the short hall and jumped into bed. As I caught up, she grabbed the Salinger from the nightstand. “I’m going to read for a while,” she said.
I was going to say something: Bella, did you think about Mama today? Bella, don’t be mad at me; I’m trying to understand your moods. Bella, about Harteveld…Did seeing Judy upset you? You know, I went to talk to Beck’s wife. Don’t let that letter from Langhorne fool you, Bella. This is still some fucked-up world.
But I said nothing. She seemed happy. Content, at least. We would play ball in the morning. That’s how it should be. Then we’d have our typical Saturday-night date, alone, and that was all wrong.
We’re trying to get by.
“Good night, Dad,” she said.
“You’re kicking me out?”
“This is a good book.”
“OK. Good night, little angel.”
I left the door ajar, and I went downstairs.
I passed the shimmering TV, the by-now-warm bottle of Badoit on the table, and went to my study.
Mei Carissima:
Is it possible that I will spend my life endlessly, repeatedly, trying to save you and Davy?
Or that I do what I do not to learn to take down Weisz, but to
make amends for my negligence, my arrogance, my self-satisfaction?
And that I would abandon Bella to do that?
I would hurt Bella?
Stupid. Asinine. Ridiculous. Really stone stupid.
That line of thinking—which amounts to nothing more than an attempt to catalogue my misery, to file me under … I don’t know, whatever—is burning a hole in my brain tonight. Unbelievable.
See, that’s why I reject Harteveld.
You understand that, I know. You would not tolerate that level of hostility.
I can hear you defending me, your jawline quivering as you try to hold back the fire. And you would, to a degree, control your temper. You would begin slowly, deliberately: “My dear Dr. Harteveld. Perhaps it is a problem of language. Or perhaps I am not familiar with this American custom …”
Or would you suggest that I listen?
Would you suggest that I listen to someone who does not understand?
She uses the word “atonement,” Marina. And “vindication.” I should atone for what I’ve done. If I acknowledge that I’m seeking atonement through my actions, I will be vindicated.
This, instead of simply doing what must be done.
At least she mentioned revenge.
I wouldn’t reject a suggestion that I seek revenge. Who wouldn’t entertain such thoughts?
But be it for justice, for revenge, to make something wrong right again, for whatever reason, Weisz has to be taken down.
And if that’s so—and it is so—how is it better to do so seeking vindication instead of revenge?
Bella.
OK. All right.
OK.
But, in the end, knowing little about Weisz and my true ambition, what Harteveld is doing is suggesting that I make my mission something noble, something that might in some way satisfy. So that when I succeed I will feel whole again.
And I will be whole again if I—I don’t know. If I help children, help our friends?
No, I completely reject that. Completely.
That is tantamount to a suggestion that it matters not if Weisz is taken down.
Oh no, Marina, don’t say that.
You were with me, dear, early this afternoon. I could feel you at my side. I felt the heat of your breath, the warmth of your hand on mine. I saw the light dance on your hair.
We were in London. I don’t know why. Of course I do: I was walking toward you. First along a drab, nondescript block in midtown, cracks in the sidewalk, shallow puddles, and I thought of London. Remember? The light flooding the Courtauld Institute Galleries was perfect—the sun had pushed through the gray at the moment that we entered the top-floor room—and were alone with Van Gogh and the golden wheat and the tumult and solitude, and with Monet and his violet mountains and jagged, rocking seas at Antibes. By the time we were ready to leave it was raining again, and we were prisoners under a lifeless dome. We hid for a moment in a red phone booth, then ran to a pub off the Strand and had pints of Bass Ale before the Ploughman’s Lunch arrived. Bass, you pointed out, was what the forlorn girl in Manet’s “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère” had served. I kissed you: Your lips tasted of cream and barley and hope.
And I thought of you as I walked from Harlem along the stretch of Fifth Avenue, with its cobbled sidewalks and robust trees, where we fell in love; or where I fell in love with you: where we’d walk along hand-in-hand and I would listen as you went on about a single work we’d just seen and we’d stop on a bench under these robust trees and you, with the faintest trace of an Italian accent, would explain to me the relationship between art and the world—a stretch sometimes, too much rapture; even a neophyte such as I knew that. But did I mind? Not at all, because I knew, listening to you, trying to see things as you did, trying to share your passion, that I was about to change: Indirectly, but indisputably, you were changing me.
An afternoon with you, your ebullience, your effusiveness, thin, perfect hands waving madly all over the place, your black eyes and splendid face beaming as you bounced off the bench to make a fine point, taught me more about what life could be, ought to be than I’d ever known before, than I would have thought possible. I knew somehow that what you had was what I needed. With you, I would feel rather than be, understand rather than see; I would live rather than only exist.
I interrupted your fevered soliloquy on Bellini’s Saint Francis in the Desert.
“I love you,” I said. “I do.”
You stopped and stood upright. “Oh,” you said. (Do you remember this as clearly as I do?)
“That’s it?” I said. “‘Oh’?”
But I wasn’t threatened, dear. I knew it was going to be fine.
“You say it in a strange way,” you replied, “like you are making an announcement.”
“If I was making an announcement, I would stand up on this bench and shout it. Maybe I ought to do that.”
You came to me and you kissed me on my mouth. “I love you, Terry,” you whispered. You kissed me again, and again, softly, tenderly, and you ran your fingers on my cheek. “That is how you say ‘I love’ the first time.”
That was almost 13 years ago. The leaves were impossibly green, the sky was as blue as it can be, and all around us, on Fifth, in the park, on that bench, there was life and laughter and purpose.
And today, I sat on that bench. And, for more than an hour, I waited for you.
I could feel you, hear you.
You did not come.
Oh God, how I miss you.
A presto, Marina.
All my love,
T.
NINE
I nudged Bella awake and, as she dug in the laundry room for the right clothes, went back to my study, where I’d stayed last night until almost 2 A.M. As the heat from the floor vent stroked my bare ankles, I switched on my PC and went online. In minutes, I was where I needed to be.
Amaral, Perry G., was a dues-paying member of the American Federation of Teachers. He had to be: Dues were automatically deducted. But there was no home address, no other data.
A mouse-click to a more conventional search, to an online phone directory. Amaral’s phone number was listed.
He lived at 455 West 14th. That would be near Tenth Avenue.
Not far from Little West 12th, where Aubrey Brown was found, cold blood on his blank face.
And very far from Fort Washington Avenue.
Reynolds said Amaral’s wife got the apartment before she took off to Atlanta.
I’d bet Williams knew where Amaral lived now.
As I snapped off the computer, I heard faint strains of Monk’s “Ruby, My Dear” in my head.
“Push it with your fingertips,” I yelled.
But she shoved the ball toward the asphalt with her palm and it flew up and nearly caught her in the face.
She was at the other end of the court. “All right, just run it back. No, no, don’t try to dribble. Just pick it up and run with it.”
It was going to be a beautiful day: The early-morning sun was bright above the Houston Street courts; for now, thoughts of Harteveld and her allegations had been banished. Cars flooded Sixth, rolling off the Williamsburg, off the FDR. The shop owners on MacDougal were unfurling their awnings, spraying the sidewalks with water. At the other end of the long playground, two men in their 40s were playing a spirited game of handball. They grunted as they slammed the little black ball against the graffiti on the tall cement wall.
Bella was wearing one of my tattered old St. John’s t-shirts and her school gym shorts, black high tops that I had to lace up for her and a purple beret, and about nine rubber bands on her wrist.
“Come here.”
“I want to shoot the ball,” she said.
I took the ball. “Let’s loosen up.”
“I’m loose.” She jangled her arms, rolled her head. “See?”
“No, first, let’s run a little drill I know that’ll get us going.” Frankly, I needed the work. I no longer had a routine. I took it when I could get it.
&
nbsp; She followed me until we were under the basket. I said, “Let’s walk to the other end. I’ll throw you the ball. You throw it back.”
We began. So far, so good. I threw it, she caught it, she threw it back; then again. We reached the half-court line.
“Boring,” she sang.
I bounced the ball and she caught it.
“Good. That’s a bounce pass. Give it back.”
She led me nicely and we stayed at it until we reached the other basket.
“OK. Now, let’s do it running.”
And we did and she wasn’t half bad: She dropped a pass near the foul line but, reacting quickly, she slapped it back and I didn’t have to break stride.
We turned. “Let’s push it hard.”
We went up and down, up and down, up and back. She started out laughing, but very quickly became serious, almost intense; and then she was out of breath. She put her palms on her knees and hunched over.
“Give me the ball,” I instructed. I dribbled down the court, threw the ball hard against the wall and it came back to me as I turned. I caught it in stride, dribbled hard and passing the foul line, took off and dunked the ball, slamming the rim with my forearm. The ball hit the ground with force.
“I want to do that,” Bella yelled.
I tapped the ball, caught it in one hand, then rolled it the length of the court to her. She stopped it with her foot, picked it up. With the ball between her hands, she stared up at the rim, calculating. She tucked the ball under her arm and started toward me.
I walked out to the top of the key and clapped my hands. She tossed the ball to me. I caught it, turned and shot. Nothing but net.
“Terry Orr. Number 44. For three!”
I turned.
“Hi, Mr. Mango,” Bella said.
Jimmy Mango was standing near the sideline. His sky blue t-shirt was saturated with sweat: He had been one of the men playing handball at the other end. I hadn’t recognized him beneath his straw cowboy hat and red bandanna. His tube socks reached his bony knees. His costume made him look like a classic rube.
Closing Time Page 15