Paradise Man

by Jerome Charyn

  “Good to see you,” said the count. “How are the sables doing?”

  “You’ll have to ask my partner Nick. He’s the creative one. I wouldn’t know how to design a coat.”

  The count brought him to Florinda Infante’s table. She haunted Mansions’ window like a huge, angular cat. Florinda was descended from a noble Tuscan line—had an emperor somewhere in her house, and a couple of whores, Holden could imagine. She was a tall beauty with a purple streak in her hair. Holden sat down and Florinda put a leg in his lap. She bit his ear in front of the count.

  “What can I bring you?” the count asked.

  “Go away,” Florinda said.

  The count laughed, then bowed to Florinda, and hobbled toward that cave beyond the bar where most of the aristocrats liked to eat lunch. Mansions was a cafeteria for countesses and kings.

  “Why won’t you sleep with me?” Florinda asked, swallowing half of Holden’s ear.

  “Because of Robert,” he said.

  It was a lie. He had slept with Florinda, but Holden was still in love with his wife. And he grew sad in bed with Florinda Infante, who hugged him like a cobra and had all the passion of her ancient house, and he’d think of Andrushka’s face glowing under him and want to cry.

  A king arrived at the table. Holden couldn’t tell one king from another, or recollect the thrones they’d lost. This king was new. His name was Alfonse, but Florinda called him Fatso.

  “Fatso, come and meet Holden ... he kills people.”

  “Darling,” Alfonse said, “who doesn’t?”

  She thrust two fingers out at Alfonse to form a gun. “It’s not a joke. He’s a bang-bang boy.”

  “Then I’d like to borrow Holden.”

  “Fatso, you couldn’t afford him,” Florinda said, her mouth shining near the window. The king walked away.

  Holden took Florinda’s leg off his lap.

  “You’re cross,” she said. “I love it when you’re cross. Your brow wrinkles, and you look like Galileo, or some deep mysterious Jew.”

  “Florinda, you shouldn’t give out all my tricks. Fatso might take you seriously.”

  “Then sleep with me.”

  “Let’s have lunch.”

  Other kings came over. Or counts. Holden couldn’t say. They kept asking him about his tailor. They were jealous of his handkerchief, the ribs on his shirt, the green line of his socks, the bewildering orchestration of the colors he wore. Every part of Holden had been fitted by hand. The men at Mansions were always morose around him. They couldn’t solve the mystery of his clothes. They didn’t care what Holden did. He could have been a gravedigger. But they had to know who dressed him.

  Florinda’s face developed a dark blush. Holden was in trouble. She was crazy under that burning skin.

  “Holden, how did you like her ass?”

  “Whose ass?”

  “Fay’s,” Florinda said.

  Holden growled inside his chest. Did Infante have to tell his wife all of Holden’s tricks? Every king in the cafeteria would soon be aware of his business.

  “Do her tits sag?”

  She’d bite his head off if he didn’t give her some satisfaction. “I think so,” he said, dreaming of Andrushka’s tiny breasts.

  “Her husband ought to thank you. I’ll tell him that the next time he comes to my table. He’s a big oaf with curly hair. Always signing autographs ... he signed one for you.”

  How could he remember Rex Abruzzi’s signature among all those counts and kings? He couldn’t concentrate on the rich. He closed his eyes at Mansions.

  “Holden, he’s hardly ever here. Rex prefers the Odeon. With all the art glitz. The count doesn’t seem to care about playwrights.”

  Holden ordered asparagus for lunch.

  “It’s depressing,” Florinda said. “You can’t just sit there with a plate of asparagus.”

  “Why not?”

  “People will laugh. They’ll say I have lunch with barbarians.”

  “I am a barbarian.”

  “You are not,” Florinda said. “You’re a misguided little boy.”

  She ordered a rack of lamb for Holden and herself.

  He watched the bones under her mouth as she chewed. He finished his asparagus. She was like a sleek tub of electricity. He’d get a tiny shock whenever he touched Florinda.

  Holden looked across the street. One of his rats was waiting.

  “Florinda, I have to go.”

  “Stay,” she said, clutching Holden’s pants. “I never eat dessert alone.”

  “You have the goddamn restaurant. Everybody knows you. Sit with a couple of kings.”

  “If I wanted a king, I’d have come in with a king. I’m warning you. Don’t leave.”

  Holden tried to stand up, but Florinda dug into his jacket and went for Holden’s gun. Holden had to squeeze her fingers around his heart.

  “It’s sexy,” she said. “Feeling you like that.”

  Her perfume clogged his head like some kind of monstrous vapor. While he struggled with her, his eyes caught the purple streak in Florinda’s hair. She had no shame. Mansions could have been her private cafeteria. She ruled the chef, the count, all the little kings. He sat down again, let go of her hand, watched her dissect a glazed pear with a miniature knife and fork. She drank her coffee and let him drift.

  “Holden, I’ll come and visit you one night. You’ll see.”

  “And what if Robert’s in the next room?”

  “He’ll have to suffer,” she said.

  Holden passed a few countesses and kings, with tiaras and scarfs and centuries of royal blood. He tipped the headwaiter, some lesser prince who’d lost his country and his title.

  “Goodbye, Monsieur.”

  Holden was always Monsieur in the cafeteria. He couldn’t get out the door. Count Josephus tugged at his sleeve.

  “Congratulations.”

  “I’m not getting married,” Holden said. “Why congratulate me?”

  “For solving that kidnappers’ case.”

  “Count, you’d better keep quiet.”

  Holden crossed Lexington Avenue and approached Gottlieb, a seventeen-year-old boy with delicate features. Gottlieb had the hands and face of a girl. He was a runner at a high-priced whorehouse. He collected sandwiches, shined shoes, slipped from door to door like a ghost with big ears. He was the best agent Holden had ever had. But he was reckless. He’d bound himself to Holden’s fortune, and he’d fall when Holden fell. He talked like Holden, dressed like Holden, had the same library of video cassettes. He couldn’t live without Destry Rides Again.

  “Holden, get off the street.”

  “Are Red Mike’s sisters coming after me?”

  “Forget Mike. That’s ancient. Have you been messing with the Mariels?”

  “I did them a favor. I took out the Parrot and his woman. They were giving the Bandidos a bad name. The Mariels should offer me a medal.”

  “They will. After they put you in a basket.”

  “Talk sense.”

  “Some of the jíbaros are after you.”

  “Then find out what I did to them. How can I do penance when I don’t know my sins?”

  “I’m not a mind reader, Holden ... sorry, I gotta blow.”

  The kid danced around the corner and Holden stood on Lexington Avenue in a priceless silk tie. He couldn’t walk around all the time looking like Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Goldie had a saying: the finer the clothes, the more anonymous the man. One duke was like any other. But what if it was all a tailor’s dream?

  He took a cab down to the Manhattan Bridge and hunkered in the shadows, sniffing cold air. He couldn’t win a war with the Mariels. They worshipped chicken blood and little dolls and would cook Holden into a soup and suck his bones if they were unhappy with him. They did voodoo with their rice and beans. Holden wouldn’t interfere with a god in a red dress. The kid had to be wrong.

  Holden snuck into a cellar on James Street and took the underground route to Mrs. Howard, landing in
her back yard and knocking on her window before he let himself in. A guy could get shot in the pants if he didn’t establish the right code.

  He searched the apartment for Mrs. Howard and the Marielita.

  “Mrs. H?”

  He went from living room to bedroom to Mrs. Howard’s telephone bank where she deciphered all the messages from Holden’s rats. He loved listening to her on the telephone with a rat. Her dialogue could have been pieces out of Rex Abruzzi’s play. She developed particular songs with particular spies. He’d hear her talk about rocks and oceans and cattle on Mars and then she’d get off the wire and the cattle became Coke bottles filled with gasoline or another kind of bomb. Mrs. Howard never put anything on paper. She wouldn’t declare what she had until she saw Holden himself. None of his spies could get into trouble, no matter whose phone was tapped. All they ever talked about were rocks and heavenly cattle.

  Holden looked up and saw Mrs. Howard with a gun in his face. She held onto the Marielita with her other hand.

  “You shouldn’t pounce on people, Holden. You frightened the girl.”

  “Did you learn her name yet?” Holden asked.

  “She’s not into names. Names aren’t her thing.”

  “Then what is her thing?”

  “You,” Mrs. Howard said. “She’s in love with you, Holden. I tried to talk her out of it. Loving you can get a little hairy.”

  “She talks English?”

  “When she’s in the mood.”

  The Marielita looked funny to Holden. Mrs. Howard had dressed her in satins and silks from her personal closet. Holden forgot. Mrs. Howard was a tailor too.

  “Loretta, can you send her somewhere? We have business to discuss.”

  “Christ, Holden, she hears me on the phone. I don’t keep secrets from her.”

  “Well, I do ...”

  Mrs. Howard whispered to the Marielita and the little girl disappeared in her silks. She could have been the queen of Persia, or an island princess. She wore lipstick, and her tiny nails were polished.

  “Holden, you’re the rudest man around.”

  “I still need my messages.”

  “Then that’s what you’ll get. Carmen Pinzolo wants to kill you, but she can’t.” Carmen was Red Mike’s baby sister. She’d had a crush on Holden for years and years. He’d fed her ice cream on his lap. But he couldn’t keep her there after she was nine or ten. She developed breasts and started to bleed like a woman. Red Mike had to take his sister out of school. Teachers were proposing to her in the hallways. Mike got her a tutor. The tutor proposed. Mike broke the tutor’s mouth and started teaching her himself. But Carmen’s musk drove him crazy. He created a convent for Carmen, sent her to live and learn with an old Italian witch. She stayed in exile until she was seventeen. And then Mike begged Holden to marry her, so at least his little sister would go to a friend and his heartburn wouldn’t be so heavy, but all Holden could think about was Andrushka. Red Mike locked Carmen in the house. She’d escape, look for some man to be with, and Mike would destroy the unlucky bastard. Now, Holden thought, now Carmen can get married.

  “Why can’t she kill me?” Holden asked.

  “Because the girl will never find a gun. The whole family is in the toilet. The Pinzolos can’t touch you.”

  “I’m glad ... Gottlieb says the Bandidos are after me.”

  “Bandidos? I’ll check it out.”

  “Are you sure nothing came through the wire? Gottlieb isn’t a romantic kid. He doesn’t fantasize—”

  “Holden, either fire me or trust what I say. No one’s mentioned any Bandidos. I’ll start calling. Now get out of here and play with the little girl.”

  Holden left Mrs. Howard to her telephone bank and looked for the Marielita. He found her under a table, like the first time, with those big leopard eyes.

  “Dada,” she said.

  “I’m not your dada. I’m Holden. Querida, talk to me.”

  “Dada,” she said.

  “All right, I’ll be your dada. But talk to me.”

  He got nowhere with the girl. She sat under the table, staring out at Holden in her silks. The little harbor lady, queen of Mariel. And Holden had a sudden shiver, like a bag of light in his skull. He was her dada in some way he couldn’t define. Holden had conceived a leopard girl. He’d been born in Avignon, the city of popes, with a stitch under his heart; the stitch grew. He had no mom he could remember, though his dad talked of a woman who sprang out of dark medieval streets. He was supposed to look like that phantom lady. Now a daughter had popped out of his chest.

  “Mademoiselle, what can I bring you from Paris? Perfume? A new doll? A lollipop that looks like a bridge? Or a sable coat from the Swisser’s French collection?”

  “Holden, are you propositioning that little girl?” Mrs. Howard asked, standing in the door. And for a moment, in that trick light of a room masked with metal blinds, Mrs. H. was his father’s mistress again, the longlegged beauty of his boyhood, the woman he desired most.

  “I was being friendly, that’s all,” Holden said. “Christ, will you give her a name? I have to know what to call her.”

  “She’s yours. You name her if you want.”

  “I can’t,” Holden said. “It’s not decent, picking names for a girl who’s already formed.”

  “You can always form her again.”

  “That’s playing with God.”

  “But you were born in God’s home town.”

  He was sensitive about Avignon, where the popes had gone to live hundreds of years ago, seduced by some French king. It felt like a holy place to a boy who never had much religion. Holden Sr. despised God and His papal palace. He was like a prisoner in Avignon until Goldie rescued him.

  “I called every contact we have,” Mrs. Howard said. “There’s nothing on the street about the Mariels. It’s a whisper, Holden. Get Gottlieb to reveal his source, and we’ll know.”

  “I can’t compromise the kid. The Bandidos would roast him alive.”

  “Then you’ll have to suffer the suspense. No one can help you, Holden.”

  “Dada,” the Marielita said.

  Loretta scowled. “That man doesn’t deserve you, child. He talks about Parisian lollipops. But you wait. He won’t deliver.”

  Holden stooped to nuzzle the leopard girl and tasted her lipstick.

  “Go on,” Mrs. Howard said. “Cozying up to a child like that. You ought to be ashamed.”

  “I am.”

  He hugged Mrs. Howard before she could escape. He recalled her aromas when she’d lived around him, a black woman in a white brassiere who smelled like sweet country grass. He’d loved her all through junior high. It was only Andrushka who’d relieved him of the spell. It was Holden’s misfortune that he was a monogamous man. He couldn’t exist with more than one sweetheart in his head.

  Andrushka

  6

  HE HAD A CROQUE MADAME at a café near the Swisser’s office. He loved grilled cheese crowned with an egg. The croque madames at American bistros were a tasteless pile of toast. He gorged himself whenever he got to Paris. The Swisser had found him an apartment on the rue du Dragon. But Holden preferred a hotel. There was no one to greet him at the apartment, nothing but neighbors who never smiled and a concierge who wondered why the mysterious American didn’t need a mailbox. The apartment looked out onto a wall and the lower margins of a roof; it felt like a prison with tiled floors. Holden had gone from the airport to the apartment, stood on the tiles, stared at the pocked white wall, and registered at a hotel on the Place St. Sulpice, where no tourists ever went. The manager always seemed to have room for Monsieur. Holden’s French was rotten. But he could gesture with his mouth, make the little explosive noises of a Frenchman. He’d lost a mom in Avignon, but he must have picked up something from the frogs.

  He had his second croque madame and suddenly he could feel a pair of eyes, soft as a spider, sitting on his chest. Holden smiled. His shadow had come into the café. Billetdoux. Billetdoux always followed hi
m when Holden came to France. He worked for a French furrier who was scared of Holden. Holden had kidnapped the furrier five years ago, a certain Mr. Bronshtein, who was feuding with Holden’s senior partner, Bruno Schatz. Bronshtein had insulted Bruno’s mannequins at the Paris fair, corrupted his messengers, and stole Nick Tiel’s designs. It was a disaster for Bruno Schatz. His whole inventory had been compromised. That’s when Holden kidnapped the furrier, brought him to one of Bruno’s warehouses behind the Gare d’Austerlitz, sat him down in a huge, empty loft, so that Bronshtein had a world of ceilings to look at, and waited until the furrier began to weep.

  “Don’t kill me,” Bronshtein had said, crawling to Holden on his knees. He had a lot of metal in his mouth, a face of golden teeth, and Holden felt sorry for him, because he hadn’t been instructed to hurt the furrier, but to tease him and harrow his life a little.

  “Will you make restitution to the Swisser?” Holden had to ask.

  “Certainly,” the furrier said.

  “You’ll repay him for ruining his winter line.”

  The furrier took a checkbook out of his pocket that was like a long flat boat and began to scribble numbers in the book.

  “Mr. Bronshtein, this is a deal between gentlemen ... we’ll take cash.”

  “How much?”

  “Swiss will leave that up to you. He knows you’ll be generous about the damage you’ve done.”

  Holden escorted the furrier out of Bruno’s warehouse and put him into a cab. Now Bronshtein had a fever the minute Holden was in town. And he hired Billetdoux, a bumper from Marseilles, to watch Holden. It was almost like a friendship, Billetdoux and him. The big bumper could have hid a gun factory inside his overcoat. His head looked like it had been assembled with a hammer. Billetdoux had seams under his ears. He reminded Holden of a bionic caveman, a brute with interchangeable parts. Holden asked the waiter to bring Billetdoux a glass of lemon water.