“Oh, Rose. You were so brilliant, so good. It wrecked me, it really wrecked me. Just hit me so hard.”
Rose was surprised at Lou’s emotion. And he wouldn’t let her go.
“When you took the rings off, I just . . . you have no idea. You are a genius. I am . . . like shattered . . .”
“Thank you, Lou” was all she could say. He pulled away and introduced me as his secretary. She extended her hand and shook mine firmly.
Lou just kept staring at her. “What a fuckin’ performance. Just . . . just . . . I wanted to ask . . . you know . . . because you’re an actress and you experience pain in imaginary ways . . . does it . . . does it . . . does it mitigate the suffering you feel in real life? . . . I would think because you’re so consciously used to it and you have a perspective, an objectivity, you know? . . . There’s a distance, right? . . . Does it help you in real life when everything starts to fall apart?”
Rose kissed him on his forehead. “It doesn’t hurt any less, Lou.”
“No, but tonight, when you took the rings off, you had to know, right?”
“Had to know what?”
“Sorry. I’m sorry. I write songs about . . . you know . . . but you . . . I’m like an actor but I’m not . . . I’m just . . . I’m sorry . . . I gotta go. Great work, my friend.”
“Do you want to get a drink? We can talk if you like.”
“No. I have to go, Rose. Thank you . . . Call me, please.”
“I will. Thanks for coming tonight.”
“Of course. It’s my privilege.”
On the street I felt some drizzle falling. Lou was walking up Seventh Avenue and stayed five steps ahead of me, mumbling to himself. He stepped off the curb and stuck his hand up. A cab swerved toward him. I ran to catch up and hopped in the cab after him. He wouldn’t slide over in the seat and I had to climb over him. He closed the door and told the driver to take us to Washington Street.
“I need to make a stop, Tim.”
“Okay.”
“You’ll have to wait in the cab.”
“Okay.”
We got to Washington Street way downtown and it started pouring again. Lou went into a building and I sat in the cab for almost an hour as the meter slowly ticked away, dime after dime after dime. I had no problem waiting.
thirty-three
It was dark when we left his building and hit the streets. We turned down Smitty’s offer of a ride downtown and decided to take the bus. I don’t remember why we didn’t catch the subway but I think it was Veronica’s decision. We avoided making eye contact and walked three blocks to the bus stop in silence. There was an ice cream truck idling at the corner of 204th Street and Broadway.
“Do you want an ice cream? My treat.” She said it without looking at me.
“No thanks.” I was honest. I didn’t say it out of spite. I just genuinely had no appetite for ice cream or anything else. I can’t say that I was angry at her or felt betrayed or double-crossed. I was feeling something but it wasn’t really directed at her. Well, it was but it wasn’t. It’s hard to explain.
“Would you mind if I got myself one?”
“I’ll get you one.” I felt it was my duty. “What do you want?”
“C’mon, Matthew. You know exactly what I want.”
It may have been the first and only time I ever heard her say my name. Now I know that sounds strange and it is possible that I’m wrong, but I cannot remember her saying it any other time.
I did know exactly what she wanted. I walked over to the truck’s window and bought Veronica a Bomb Pop. I used the twenty-dollar bill that Smitty gave me for services rendered. The ice cream man was not happy at having to break such a large bill and he made me wait until he served three or four other people. I understood, and I was sorry. It was a lot of change to make for something that cost twenty-five cents but I wanted to get rid of the filthy twenty as soon as I could.
I unwrapped the Bomb Pop, twirled a napkin around the bottom of the stick, and handed it to Veronica. She finally looked at me and said, “Thank you.” She wasn’t exactly happy but she was in a much better mood than just a few minutes ago when we left Smitty’s.
If you didn’t know, a Bomb Pop is a red, white, and blue Popsicle shaped like a torpedo. Each color is a different flavor. Red is cherry, white is lime, and blue is raspberry for some strange reason. The colors are three separate sections but after a few minutes of sucking, they all blend into a purpley-blueish blur. This of course leaves you with bright blue lips, tongue, teeth, and hands. Which is exactly what happened to Veronica as we rode the M100 down Broadway.
With each stop the bus made, the purpler Veronica became. By the time she finished her pop, the stains were so deep I feared they would be permanent. I had seen this before though. She never failed to make a mess of it. And she didn’t care what she looked like or what anybody else thought about it. I loved her for that. It was something that always made me very happy to see. But today was different. Today it was the saddest thing in the world.
We both got off near Union Square. Veronica went into a diner to use the restroom. When she came out she was clean again, all traces of blue washed away. I escorted her as far as Astor Place, where she told me it was best we parted ways. And making no future plans, we said goodbye. No kiss.
I watched her walk down St. Mark’s Place until she disappeared into the wilds of Alphabet City.
I headed north on Third Avenue. It was about a three-mile walk to my house and I don’t recall any of it. The next thing I remember is knocking on Lou’s door.
thirty-four
I heard the music before I got to his door. It was open just a sliver so I pushed it a little wider. He was on the rug playing an acoustic guitar. I had never seen him with anything but an electric. He played a very simple riff over and over again. Two chords. It was hypnotic—concentrated and sad.
And so was he.
He didn’t notice me for about thirty seconds because his head was bent and cocked at an odd angle down toward the gaping orifice of the instrument. There was a photograph and a red tank top at his feet. He may have been staring at either one of them. Or both. A bottle of Johnnie Walker Black sat a little to his right.
He looked up and saw me in the doorway. He didn’t stop what he was doing but gave enough of a nod to say I was welcome to come in. I didn’t want to interrupt him but I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay inside of that moment with him . . . inside the quiet. It felt right. It almost felt good. I sat on the floor across from him. I didn’t feel like a guest. I belonged there. It was mine as much as his that day.
“I’m composing a symphony, Tim. It’s something I think I will be very proud of.”
He kept on strumming the two chords of his song. It was sparse, stark, and bare, but I’m sure he was hearing much, much more than what was coming out of his guitar.
“It’s a symphonic suite. Very formal and structured with scrupulous discipline. I’m putting everything I have into this one. Everything I have and everything I can get . . . The New York Philharmonic strings, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir—no, fuck the Mormons . . . I’d rather the Vienna Boys.” He glanced at me. “I want the middle part to sound like the last day of heaven . . . celestial voices, violins, and cellos. I love cellos. The cello is the musical instrument that resembles the human voice more than any other.”
He stared at the photo. As my eyes got used to the room’s dim light, I could see it was a picture of him and Rachel. He was sitting on her lap and her arms were wrapped around him in a very protective way. She was wearing the same red tank top that was on the floor in front of him.
“Tim me boy, this will be the first rock song to change water into wine, feed the multitudes, and raise the dead from their tombs.”
This last statement made him chuckle.
“And as the middle part hits its coda, God reaches down with His purple and His finger and grabs Adam right by the apple. Then the words start coming. And now I’m the coldest motherfuc
ker who ever walked a block in Harlem mid-December. Bobby Sledge, a.k.a. Bobby Rikers, carried a straight razor in his boot. Every time he went to the toilet he’d dip the blade into the bowl before he flushed whatever it was that came out of him. So the blade was constantly contaminated with all kinds of breeding bacteria, amoebas, parasites, and boogeymen. Woe unto she who got a bit of Bobby’s blade.”
Lou stopped playing the guitar, took a big swig of Scotch, and lit a cigarette. He coughed five or six times after the first long drag and hacked up something nasty into a tissue. Then he stuck the smoking ciggy back into his mouth and resumed his riff.
“And Bobby’s gonna just tell the truth, man, right in the middle of the fuckin’ church. He’s gonna lay out all of the cold, heartless, pitiless reality of this gutter we call life on earth.”
Another pause in the music as he took a long pull on his cigarette.
“And then, just as sudden as it started, it changes; bang! And now it’s 1957 and we’re on a street corner in the Bronx in the middle of the night and Dion and the Belmonts are serenading all our sisters and our mothers and our lovers. Shit, maybe I’ll ask Dion to do it himself, sing a few bars or a chorus. That would be very cool. You like Dion, Tim?”
“I like ‘The Wanderer.’”
This made Lou laugh. “You got good taste, kid. Maybe I’ll get you instead of Dion.”
He stopped talking and kept playing for a long time. It seemed like it would go on this way forever. Then he started singing: “Love has gone away, and there’s no one here now . . .”
He repeated these lines over and over. I’d never heard his voice sound that way before. It was a delicate, fragile, wounded voice and it echoed off the thick white of the walls. Then he added: “Took the rings off my fingers . . .”
The last phrase broke him. He kept strumming but stopped singing. He didn’t cry or sob audibly but the tears fell on his hands and strings.
I reached for his cigarettes without asking. It was both deliberate and unconscious and I had never done it before. He caught me out of the corner of his eye but didn’t question my being so bold. I think it pleased him, though his face was so full of misery I can’t say for sure. The fight and ferocity had left him. So had the cruelty and viciousness he could access in an instant. The child was in his eyes; I felt like his older brother.
The three silver rings he wore on his fingers were gone. And so was Rachel. I didn’t have to ask. The song was proof beyond a reasonable doubt. She was gone and he would be too. I couldn’t imagine him remaining in the home they shared. I don’t think he liked being alone yet there weren’t many people he liked being with. Knowing this made me feel special.
He changed the rhythm of the song; the pace quickened and he started singing again. There was a new tension in his voice as he repeated the phrases about his lost love.
After several refrains he began to chant: “Come on and slip away . . .”
I wasn’t sure what that meant. Did it mean to die? Did it mean to withdraw from the world and all its heartbreak and violence? Did it mean to get as high, as numb, as anesthetized as possible?
He stopped his song. It was abrupt like the needle being yanked off a record. His hands and arms went slack over the guitar like he was cradling it. Like he was shielding it from all the evil in the world.
He lifted his head, the tears stopped. I had a strong desire to talk to him about Veronica but I knew I couldn’t. Not because this was a bad time, I just felt in my bones that it wasn’t in the cards and I’d never be able to bring it up with him.
But just as soon as this thought dissolved into the air of the room, Lou turned to me and said: “Why didn’t you tell me your girlfriend’s pregnant?”
Bang.
* * *
I will never know for sure if Veronica was pregnant at that exact moment he mentioned it, but it was a possibility, one that I hadn’t entertained, though certainly possible . . . So why did he say that? . . . Did he know something I didn’t? And if so, how? . . . Did he tap into some strange clairvoyant energy that became accessible to him because of the deep despair that swallowed his mind, cracking open some kind of psychic window? Or was it not true at all? . . . Just some out-of-the-blue random statement, a spurt out of a brain soaked with Scotch, speed, and sorrow? I will never know . . . and I didn’t know how to answer.
“What?” was all I could handle saying to him.
“Why didn’t you tell me your girlfriend’s pregnant?” He repeated it without breaking his gaze.
“That’s not possible,” I lied.
“Did something happen?”
“No. Nothing happened at all.” Another lie. What he was saying scared me.
“I’m sorry, Tim. I don’t know why I would say such a thing. I’m in a bad way, my friend.”
“It’s okay.”
“I think I need to sleep.”
I took that as my cue and stood.
“You can stay. I’m going inside to lie down. You can stay in here. We got a TV.”
I hadn’t noticed it before but there was a brand-new RCA color set in the corner of the room.
“Make yourself at home.” He got up and walked to the bedroom.
I turned on the TV. It came on quick and loud. I felt the noise was inappropriate so I turned the volume all the way down. On the screen was an old black-and-white movie. A bunch of hobos were sitting by a fire near the railroad tracks. One of them was cooking something in a big cauldron, the others passed a bottle of wine. The cook had big, sad eyes and was either singing or praying as he stirred the pot.
Lou was watching from the corridor. “Oh, that’s a good one. What’s his name? That actor? I love him.”
“I don’t know.”
“You can put the sound up, it won’t bother me.” Then he reached in his pocket and tossed me a key chained to a rabbit’s foot that had been dyed blue. “If you need to go, lock up and leave the key downstairs.”
I put the sound up. The bum was singing a church song, a gospel song about the heaven that waits and the god who forgives.
Lou was still watching. “Mulligan stew,” he said.
“What?”
“That’s what he’s cooking. Mulligan stew. The hobos put whatever they can find into the pot and the mulligan mixer makes it into a stew. It’s gotta have some kind of meat or chicken parts, though, or at least an organ, to be a mulligan. Without meat it’s just called beggar’s stew. I had some mulligan once, just outside of Pittsburgh. I was skeptical but it was delicious as fuck. Surprised the shit out of me. Like when I busted my left pinkie.”
“What?” I couldn’t follow his train of thought.
“Limitations, man. I couldn’t use my pinkie for four months. I didn’t think I was gonna be able to play guitar till it healed but I wound up writing three dozen tunes I’d never have come up with if I hadn’t lost the use of the pinkie.”
I didn’t see the connection he was making yet it still made sense somehow.
“It’s like when you bust a string on the guitar and you see all these different possibilities you never saw before on the fretboard.”
Lou walked into the bedroom, closed the door, then opened it and walked back to the living room. He stood right over me.
“One more thing before I forget . . .”
Here it comes. I knew it. He was going to ask about the money. I was about to apologize and promise him I would somehow repay him, but before I could open my mouth he mussed up my hair and said: “Your bass is in the closet. Make sure you take it with you.” Then he turned and went back down the corridor.
“Thanks, Lou.”
“Thank you, Matthew. Use it in good health.”
The stress on my real name was unmistakable. I heard him giggle behind his bedroom door, the bastard.
I watched the rest of the movie and let myself out.
thirty-five
Veronica and I hadn’t been in touch since we parted at Astor Place. I called her a few times but she was never home an
d any message I left went unreturned. More disturbing was the fact that she hadn’t returned to school. I went down to her building on several occasions and waited across the street for a few hours but never saw her come or go. I didn’t have the courage to ring the bell which made me question if I really wanted to see her at all. But why else would I have been standing outside her house?
The truth was I missed her terribly. I felt so close to her, closer than I’ve ever felt to anyone, and at the same time I felt so far away. I wanted to see her every day for the rest of my life and I wanted to never see her again as long as I lived.
But mostly I wanted to see her. Be near her. Next to her. That’s all. That would have been enough. I’d have been happy not saying any words at all.
The last day I stood watch, her building seemed different to me. I was suddenly struck by its extreme rectangularity. Looking up toward the roof from my post across the street, it loomed before me, long, black, and suffocating. It was only a five-story structure but the two buildings that flanked it were less than half its size. The two skinny trees in front were equidistant from the doorway, which was dead center, giving the whole picture a cold and formal frame. Something about the symmetry disturbed me. It was as if the building was alive and breathing and staring right at me. It made me feel like it didn’t want me there.
That same day I saw Sanoo come out of a taxi and go into the building carrying a big bag of groceries. I only watched her for thirty seconds or so but the difference between her and her sister was blatant and clear. Veronica’s face was both open and mysterious and her smiles came unexpected, like a warm afternoon sun in February. At twenty-one, Sanoo’s face had already set into a hardness that expected the worst in people, with a readiness to attack at the slightest provocation. She frightened me. There was no approaching her at all.
* * *
After three weeks of radio silence, I asked our history teacher Mr. Gorman if Veronica had switched schools. I liked Mr. Gorman and he liked Veronica. He called her “Countess,” with the accent on the second syllable. I think the nickname pleased her.
The Perfume Burned His Eyes Page 12