Lush Life

by Richard Price

  In the vast sniffly rustle that followed the speaker back to his seat, Billy abruptly stood up again, hoarsely whispered to Minette, “I’m sorry, I can’t do this.” He was halfway up the aisle before she could even open her mouth but then wheeled and came back down, leaning into his daughter this time. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I’ll see you at home.”

  Then bolted for good.

  “Mom?” Nina’s voice floating away from her. “He’s not going to hear me talk?”

  Minette, suddenly a wet mess, responded by leaning in and touching foreheads.

  “Mom,” Nina said more sharply, recoiling from the Eskimo tap.

  “Just . . .” Minette smiled at her. “Give him a break.”

  “Me? What did I do?”

  Yolonda leaned forward and touched Minette’s shoulder. “Is he OK?”

  Minette turned to them while wiping her eyes. “Just needs some room.”

  “We can probably get someone from the squad to drive him home.”

  “Just . . .” Smiling tight. “Thanks, thank you.”

  Yolonda touched Nina’s hair, whisper-cooed, “It’ll be OK,” then leaned back into Matty. “Hope he doesn’t step in front of a bus.”

  Leaning over the balcony between the telephoto cameras, Eric avoided looking at Ike’s family, at the two detectives sitting behind them. He gazed instead at the hundreds of mourners, wondering, and how could you not, if it had been he who took that bullet, how many people would have shown up here? Who would even think to put something like this together? And what could they possibly say? It seemed like Ike dead had more of a connection to this world than himself alive.

  The second speaker was from the balcony presser, his thin black suit, narrow black tie, and Elvis Costello glasses giving him the appearance of a seventies skatalite.

  “Hi, my name is Jeremy Spencer? And I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Hi, Jeremy!” half the kids in the audience shouted in unison. “We’re alcoholics too!” Like the world’s biggest in-joke.

  “How is that funny,” Yolonda side-mouthed. “The kid died drunk.”

  “The morning after the night that I first met Ike,” Jeremy began without notes, “I was just coming off my half of our hangover, sitting there in Kid Dropper’s with a soup bowl of coffee, had my first good idea in a week? The minute I put my hands to the keyboard, he snuck up behind me, whispered in my ear, ‘Anybody’d write a poem’d suck a dick.’ ”

  People howled, and Jeremy waited for them to quiet down before dipping his head to the mike again.

  “No offense to either party.”

  Another howl, the speaker giving up a half-smile.

  “Like Russell said, Ike was always so sure we would make it. To be friends with him was to be a member of an elite club, the future Hall of Famers of America. To be friends with him automatically made you the best unknown writer, actor, singer, accountant, tap dancer, bouncer, social worker, hot-oil wrestler of your generation, and it was just a matter of time before everybody realized it. And, yes, Ike always said, time we had in spades.

  “And like Russell too, anytime I felt depressed, started to lose faith in myself, I’d go into whatever bar Ike was working at, he’d take one look at me, slide me a cold one on the house, say, ‘Don’t even think about quitting. You’ll regret it for the rest of your life.’ . . . He made me feel like we were all blessed with so much talent. Then he’d say, ‘But, Jeremy? Talent without drive is a tragedy.’

  “He’d say, ‘Look at me. Do you think I’d be killing myself doing this shitwork day after day if it wasn’t anything more than a means to an end?’

  “At which point I would have to say, ‘But, Ike, you’ve only had the job since Monday.’ ”

  Another a big laugh out in the sea, Matty surprising himself by joining in.

  He should at least call upstate to find out what was happening in court with the boys, but then was gratefully distracted by a kid from the middle of their row brushing sideways past his knees, trilling, “ ’Scuse please, ’scuse please,” in her eagerness to get to the stage.

  “Hi. My name is Fraunces Tavern?”

  The crowd laughed and whistled for the dolled-up raven-haired girl onstage in high, fur-seamed Uggs and a low-cut dress the red-orange hue of Fiestaware. “Hi there.” Waving to her people. “My perspective on Ike was a little different than everybody else so far? First of all, I’m different. I don’t want to be anything? You know, except on Halloween?

  “I know Ike because we, how do you say, dated, on and off for about a year, year and a half, not like in-love dating? But Ike? . . . Am I allowed to even say this?” she faux-asked Boulware the MC, sitting in the front row. “Ike was like,” gazing out, “Ike was like, great in bed.”

  The cheering was explosive, people jumping up and whoo-hooing.

  Minette abruptly turned her head profile to Matty to hide her smile from Nina, who sat there rigid as a stick, Matty smiling in complicity, but he didn’t think Minette caught it.

  “Ike was like one of those guards in front of Buckingham Palace? You know, totally erect—not, I didn’t mean that, I’m cleverer than that, give me a break, now.” She beamed, floating on the laughs.

  “I meant he was always ready, you know, clap-on-clap-off ready to, you know . . . I mean, guys being guys, it doesn’t sound like that big a deal? But he was always so present with me, never, like, you know, close your eyes and go at it. I mean, he had fun, with me.

  “And for me, it wasn’t about, you know,” and she cut loose with a chesty yodel, people rolling on the floor. “It was about being with someone who really, really enjoys you, makes you feel good about yourself. What Ike knew, or just, maybe intuited is a better word, was that the secret to being a good lover is that, A, knowing you’re not in this alone, and, B, once you get that established? Sometimes you can pleasure the other person most by pleasuring yourself.” She paused again, waiting for the first confused laughs to build, then build some more, knowing that people needed to chew on it, then, “That didn’t come out right. Oh, c’mon, you know what I’m saying.”

  The one person not laughing along was Ike’s sister, who, cupping her wounded arm, glared at her brother’s friends with sheer disgust.

  “In my life?” Fraunces Tavern said. “I know, well, I hope, that I will be with more, you know, men who I’ll maybe have more passion for? But I will count myself very, very lucky if I ever have that much, just, fun with a guy again.

  “I miss you, Ikey, and I’ll see you in my dreams.”

  Stepping off to whistles and cheers, red-faced with her coup, she slid past Matty’s knees again and collapsed back into her midrow seat, into a flurry of whispers with her friends, her eyes wild in her head.

  “You know, if she took better care of her skin?” Yolonda side-mouthed. “She’d be nice-looking.”

  In the aftermath of Fraunces Tavern’s performance piece, the room slid into a coughy silence, everyone waiting a little too long for the next speaker. Checking the program, Matty saw the reason for the delay, then looked to Minette to see how she was going to play it; and when she reluctantly showed the batting order to her daughter, Nina froze, just like Matty thought she would.

  “Now?” The kid white with horror.

  Steven Boulware, rising from his seat on the aisle, looked out over the audience. “Nina Davidson.”

  “Nina.”

  “I’m not going up after that!” her voice breaking.

  “Do you want another person to go before you?” Minette asked as calmly as she could.

  Nina slapped the tears from her cheeks and stared straight ahead.

  “Nina Davidson.” Boulware raised a finger. “Going once . . .”

  To Matty’s left, Fraunces Tavern, still flush-faced with victory, alertly and hungrily absorbing every last sigh and coo, every last review, was drawn to the heated whispering in the row ahead of her. And quickly putting together what the drama was all about, what her own unwitting part in it was, she just caved, the
sweeping high of a moment ago turning to a painfully transparent self-loathing.

  “Nina Davidson, going twice . . .”

  “Nina.” Minette put her lips to her daughter’s ear. “If you don’t get up there, you’ll regret it the rest of your life.”

  “Tough shit on me.”

  Boulware then looked directly at her, smiled with mock reproach. “Oh, Ni-na . . .”

  “Mom,” she hissed pleadingly, and Minette reluctantly signaled Boulware to back off.

  “Well, I guess that leaves me,” he said, then headed for the stage.

  The notion of sitting there for Boulware’s eulogy was intolerable, so Eric trotted down the stairs and out the door, straight into some kind of marching band gathered on the front steps of the Langenshield: a crowd of frizzle-haired kids too young for their beards and handlebar mustaches; sporting Shriner hats, top hats, derbies, jester caps, and burnooses, frogged and beribboned tunics, aviator goggles and Salome veils, with trombones and tubas, slide whistles and sousaphones, cornets and kazoos; too fucking whatever it was, and doing an immediate about-face, he returned to the service, to Boulware, to the exhausting effort of not looking at the cops and Ike’s remaining family.

  “What to say that hasn’t been said,” Boulware began. “ ‘He gave me hope, he made me believe in myself, he made me . . . believe.’ ‘Where do I go now. Who do I turn to.’ ” Then, looking out at his audience, “Ah, Jesus, the perils of speaking last.”

  Nina abruptly stood up and, with her eyes trained on the floor, walked to the short stairs at the side of the stage as calmly as if she were coming up to receive a diploma.

  Boulware faltered, not sure what to do. At first he stood his ground, then tentatively backed away from the mike, then offered it to her with a courtly sweep and bow, backstepping afterwards into the shadows like a presenter at the Academy Awards.

  Nina stood there, eyes downcast, her multipage speech crushed in her fist.

  The silence seemed to go forever, Matty watching Minette’s shoulders rise then lock with the breath in her lungs.

  The room waited as Nina gathered herself.

  “My brother invited me to come down here and hang out with him and see his new place two weeks ago,” Nina murmured into the mike. “I said OK . . . But then I really didn’t feel like going, so I called him back on the day and said I had a team practice.”

  Again the room waited for her.

  “I’m so sorry . . .” she blurted. Racewalking to the wings, she was back in her seat and staring straight ahead before Boulware could even reclaim the mike.

  “Happy?” Wiping her eyes.

  Minette just squeezed her daughter’s hand, her face, the slice of her face that Matty could see, wet and atremble.

  “I have to make a call,” he said to Yolonda.

  Absorbed in dialing his ex-wife on his way to the front door, Matty almost crashed into Billy, the guy standing with one hand straight-armed against the curved half-wall that separated the rear of the main floor from the vestibule, his head bowed, like he had been listening to the speeches as if they were coming over a staticky tuner.

  “Hey,” Matty said.

  “Hey!” Billy quickly straightening up as if he had been caught at something. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to be here?”

  His eyes were flabby with sleeplessness and he looked like he hadn’t been near running water all day.

  “I didn’t know I was supposed to,” Matty said.

  “That guy ever come in?” Billy said. “What’s it, Eric Cash?”

  “No.”

  “No. Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “What did I tell you about that?”

  “No, I know.”

  “You let me worry about that.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m just saying . . .” Matty softened his tone, then jumped as he heard his ex-wife’s voice in his hand. He shut off his cell. “You know, I have to say, from everything they’ve been talking about in there? Your son sounds like a terrific kid.”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Billy beamed.

  “So how are you holding up.”

  The question seemed to hit Billy like sunshine, provoke in him a rush of euphoria. “Amazingly well actually.” And then just as quickly as it came, Matty saw it leave, Billy’s features shriveling to the center of his face. “Real good.”

  “Good,” Matty said, staring at the phone in his hand. He wasn’t going to call home. He didn’t want to know.

  “Are you going back in?”

  “No,” Billy said, then gestured vaguely to the street. “I’m just, you know, waiting on the car.” Then, “Could you tell . . .”

  “Tell . . .”

  “Tell, Nina, tell her what she said . . .”

  “Go in and tell her yourself.”

  “I will,” waving Matty on.

  • • •

  On his way back down the aisle Matty bumped into Mayer Beck, sitting on the aisle in the back row, his skullcap finally in harmony with his surroundings.

  “Sad, huh?” Beck said.

  “Not now.”

  “Maybe I should have said, the perils of speaking next to last,” Boulware started over.

  “Jeremy, what was it Ike said to you? ‘Anybody’d write a poem would suck a dick’?”

  There was a wave of soft laughter in the hall.

  “Well, as much as I loved Ike, as much as he was my soul brother, my roomie, my spiritual Siamese twin, I just have got to bust him here. He didn’t make that up. He got it from my dad. That’s what my dad said to me when I told him I wanted to be an actor: ‘Anybody’d write a poem’d suck a dick.’ Ike always thought that was a riot, but in my family it was no joke. In my neck of the woods, unless you could play for Joe Pa, throw like Willy Joe, you worked in coal. The first person in the family ever to graduate college goes to his parents and tells them he wants to be an actor? ‘Are you mocking us, Steve? Are you spitting in our faces?’ It was no joke, Ike . . .

  “But I hung in, I hung in.

  “Then I gave up.

  “Ike came home one day to find me packing. ‘Steve, what’s up?’ I said I was quitting. That I was tired of it. Four years of speech and voice and movement and script analysis and performance technique and improv and Shakespeare and Ibsen and Pinter and Brecht and Chekhov. Four years of workshops and studios and agents and auditions. Four years of rejection. Four years of hearing my dad in my head every time I failed: ‘Anybody who’d write a poem . . .’ Ike, it’s time. I quit.

  “And then I braced myself for one of his world-famous pep talks.

  “But do you know what he said to me? He said, ‘Good. Because you weren’t a real actor to begin with.’

  “Baiting me, you know? But no. He said a real actor, any kind of real artist, is constitutionally incapable of uttering those two words: I. Quit. ‘Real artists don’t pack,’ he said to me, ‘real artists are stuck and all they can do is pray that they get good enough to make it work for them. So, it’s good you found out now, Steve. You need any help with your luggage?’ ”

  Boulware took a beat to share a laugh with himself and a few others.

  “So pissed off . . .

  “Well, I had one last audition the next day. For the second lead in some small movie. The character was supposed to be a drop-dead ladies’ man,” looking down at himself, waiting for the laughs.

  “I go in there, read, the casting director says, ‘You’re all wrong.’

  “Duh.

  “I’m halfway out the door, she says, ‘Hold on.’

  “Then she hands me fresh sides, says, ‘But his best friend is a fat guy.’

  “My first callback . . .

  “I go in the next day, I am that fat guy. She says, ‘Come back next week and read for the director.’

  “My second callback . . .”

  He put his hands in his pockets and pondered his shoes for a long beat.

  “That’s what we were out celebrati
ng that night . . . That’s what all the barhopping was about. My re-birthday.

  “I don’t know if I’ll get that part or not, but in the end it doesn’t make all that much of a difference. Because, Ike?” addressing the ceiling. “I now know this. I am an artist. I will not pack, and I will not quit. I’m still here, Ike, and I am staying.

  “I would say you’ll always be in my memory, buddy, but it’s more than that. You will always be at my side.”

  Eric, unable to believe his own ears, decided he simply misheard the whole thing and so, in the immediate silence that followed Boulware’s eulogy, felt nothing.

  People were sitting there now in a silence punctuated by scattered gulps and sighs as they pondered a blown-up photo of Ike from his college facebook, Eric Burdon’s “Bring It On Home to Me” coming through the speakers. But the slide show was over, the image going nowhere, his never-changing grin up there, the immobility of his languidly curled fingers having none of the life-implying momentum of snaps on a carousel; in fact, it seemed to mock the notion of life after death. No one thought to rise, no one seemed capable until Boulware stood up and, signaling to the back, triggered the surprise entry of that ragtag Sergeant Pepper’s Preservation Hall marching band, which began streaming in from all doors, coming down every aisle blasting “St. James Infirmary” like noisy angels of mercy. They made their way down to the front of the room and began to climb the side stairs to the stage from either end, regrouping up there and facing the mourners while still blasting the hell out of that tune, the volume bleaching out the lifelessness on the screen, people so grateful, everybody up, and then like the cherry on top of the sundae, a baby-faced black kid done up like Cab Calloway in a white swallow-tailed tux and white sneakers, his hair straightened and styled with a forelock as big as a horsetail, came slow-whirling down the aisle with an ivory baton in his grip, people screaming out their pleasure, their relief, cameramen scurrying like beetles all over this guy as he slip-slided up the steps to the stage, then down again, up and down those three short steps like the music had him going inside out, until he finally came front and center and arching over backwards began conducting with that elegantly slim stick, the shooters rushing the stage like bobby-soxers now, the mourners outright howling, Ike Marcus going, going, and when that kid started singing, Cab Callowailing like he was at the Cotton Club, gone.