Paradise Man

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Paradise Man Page 10

by Jerome Charyn


  “But you told me before that you might not have killed him if I hadn’t been naked.”

  “It’s true. I loved Red Mike. And if we’d talked, if we’d argued it out, and you were in a dress, it’s conceivable I wouldn’t have killed him. But he’d have had to make me an offer. I wouldn’t have left the bungalow without you.”

  She bumped him again. “Then it was like a game, with its own rules and regulations. Two black knights, and only one could win.”

  “That’s the problem. I didn’t win. Mikey’s dead. And you were happier with him than you are now.”

  “But I am happy ... with you.”

  Holden laughed, and the stitching hurt his head. “Happy with me? Take a closer look. I got death on my face.”

  “So did Michael.”

  “And Eddie? And the Rat?”

  “It didn’t matter. They wouldn’t have survived without Michael. Killing them was a kind of mercy.”

  The bitch in the long black socks could have been a lawyer. She’d have danced around Infante in court, seduced judge and jury with all her clothes on. She was Oyá with a pale face.

  He heard a funny, winding noise, a metallic shriek, and Holden jumped off the bed. He knew what that noise was all about. It was the factory’s supersonic smoke detectors. Aladdin had alarms and systems that were as sensitive and musical as the most fabulous violin. Because the company couldn’t afford a fire—Aladdin would lose the Paris show without Nick Tiel’s scribbles. Nick couldn’t recall the patterns that dropped out of his head. That’s why Holden guarded all his scribbles, and flew with the prelims to France.

  He grabbed Fay and went to his closet, wrapped her in a cashmere coat. He could feel the waves of heat. The factory was burning. But it couldn’t have been an ordinary fire. The alarms would have located it, the sprinklers gone off, and half the company would have knocked on his door, standing in a pile of water. But the house wasn’t wet. Someone had sabotaged the sprinklers. Holden didn’t have to dig. He recognized the signature. A Cuban cocktail. Benzene and God knows what in a bottle. Huevo used the same recipe to destroy hundreds of betting parlors. There was never an explosion, nothing to warn Huevo’s victims. The artist would treat his bomb like a baby bottle, pack it in salt, bring it to a gentle boil, and you’d have a fire in your lap.

  Holden shoved Fay under the coat and then he opened the door with his collar up to his eyes. The heat slapped his face. There was bedlam around him. Nick Tiel’s nailers ran like wild geese, clutching skins and dropping them.

  “Forget the fucking minks,” Holden said. “The fire door, the fire door.”

  Infante bumped into him. He wore a scarf around his ears. One end of it was on fire. Holden put his hands inside his coat, made himself a pair of mittens, and slapped at the fire. “Where’s Nick?”

  “Don’t know. I didn’t see him.”

  Holden left Fay with Infante and went into that storm. The nailing boards were on fire. The fixtures had begun to melt. Fluorescent bulbs popped over his head. Glass flew at him, but Holden had his hat. He could feel little bites in the turban.

  He got to Nick’s door. It was locked from the inside.

  “Nick, it’s me, Holden. Will you come out, or do I have to die waiting for you?”

  The door opened. Nick Tiel was clutching his patterns and his clothing dummies. His eyes were terribly pale. He was in a fright. He couldn’t hold on to his entire inventory. Holden grabbed the dummies, with Nick’s designs pinned to them, said, “Come on,” and led Nick Tiel out of the fire.

  Holden’s eyebrows had been seared. His face was a mask of smoke. He looked like a monkey in a Saville Row suit. But he got Nick to the far side of the fire door.

  The fire chiefs had arrived. They wore coats down to their ankles. Holden had Infante handle them. He climbed down the stairs with Nick Tiel and Fay.

  There was a crowd of Greeks on the sidewalk, like a bitter chorus. They stared at the dummies and enjoyed the prospect of Aladdin’s ruin. But Holden hadn’t lost a scribble in the fire. He found a telephone booth and called Harrington’s garage. The chauffeur arrived before the last fire truck. They delivered Nick Tiel to his penthouse on Sutton Place. Holden went upstairs with Nick, boiled a cup of soup for him, put the soup and soda crackers on a tray, and walked him out to the terrace.

  “Holden, your head’s all black.”

  “Drink the soup.”

  He watched the tramway over Roosevelt Island, little cars in the sky, and stared out at the shores of Queens. “It’s fucking gorgeous ... I wouldn’t mind living here.”

  “Holden, was it the Greeks? Did they set us on fire? But Infante was right there. And he owns those miserable bastards.”

  “It wasn’t the Greeks.”

  “Then I don’t get it.”

  “Nobody was after your designs, Nick. Some Marielito’s been trying to kill me. The same guy who planted the chicken in my office. Huevo.”

  “That maniac? What the hell did you do to Huevo?”

  “I’m not sure. He thinks I stole a little girl from him.”

  Nick had come out of his haze. He stared at Holden. “What little girl?”

  “Remember the Parrot and his mistress? Well, I found a little girl under the table. I took her with me and lent her to Mrs. Howard.

  “Just like that? Without telling me and the Swiss? You had instructions, Holden. You were supposed to mop up the Parrot and everything that belonged to him.”

  “Fine, Nick. Then you strangle the little girl.”

  “That’s not the issue. You put us in danger, Holden.”

  “Could be, but I wouldn’t let the Swiss know about it, because you’ll have a civil war on your hands. The girl stays with me until I give her back.”

  “Since when do you set our policies?”

  “It’s not a policy, Nick. It’s just something I have to do ... I’m sorry. Take care of yourself.”

  Holden went down to Harrington’s car. Fay shivered next to him. He sucked his teeth. She’d entered his life with that curly hair and those three killings in the bungalow. He knew he wouldn’t be taking her back to Rex.

  11

  HE BROUGHT HER TO his mattress pad in Chelsea. It was a risk. Because each person who came to his pad compromised him a little. Of course, he could lock it up and sneak into the storefront he had on White Street. But he’d begun to leave a trail.

  She didn’t collapse on his couch. She changed his blackened bandages, and Holden had one more turban. She looked into cupboards, found his survival food. There was wine under the sink and seltzer in the fridge. She prepared a tuna casserole, and they sat on the couch together, nibbling with plates on their knees. The twig had never prepared a casserole in her life. She didn’t know how to cook. And Holden thought, this must be how it is to have an ordinary wife.

  They hardly talked. Holden listened to her chew. He touched her hair. She smiled. He didn’t ask her about her children, or the climate at the Central Park Zoo. She could have left the mattress pad, put down her plate and disappeared. Holden wouldn’t have stopped her. But she’d crept inside his guts with her curly hair, and he didn’t want her to go.

  He couldn’t remember how they’d started kissing. He hadn’t reached for her. But suddenly they were lying on the floor and Fay was undressed, like she’d been at the bungalow. And he said without thinking, “Are you comfortable, dear?” It wasn’t crazy of him, because she was his dear. He had to put a hole in Mikey’s head to find his proper darling. He’d met all his other women in Aladdin’s showroom, or at Muriel’s place. He’d looked at them, liked them, gone to bed—even married one of them, the twig, because her fragile toughness moved him, and how could he not love a seventeen-year-old named Andrushka? But his years of mourning her, missing Andrushka with a terrible grief, while she lived on the rue de Vaugirard, had dropped off Holden with the help of a .22 long. How could he explain it otherwise? He didn’t love Andrushka anymore.

  He spent five days with his darling in the ho
use. She cooked from Holden’s cans. They watched whatever Holden had on the VCR. She lived inside one of his bathrobes. He made love to her in the bathroom, while she braced her arms against the toilet seat. He watched the ripples in her back.

  On the sixth day they ran out of spices, and she went down to the grocer in Holden’s overcoat and returned with pies, meat, and gallons of ice cream. And it was then that she declared: “Sidney, I’ll need some clothes.”

  “We could buy them. I’ll get Harrington to drive us to Macy’s ...”

  “Not new things. I’d like my clothes. I’ll take a cab uptown.”

  “But Harrington could—”

  “I’d rather not arrive in a limo. It’s simpler, darling. You’ll see.”

  His hand was shaking. “When will you be back?”

  “Oh, an hour or two, if I don’t have complications ...”

  “What if the children start to cry?”

  She laughed. “You’re worse than a husband. Tina’s at boarding school. And Adrianne’s in Arizona, visiting with a friend.”

  She said goodbye, and he felt broken. He called Mrs. Howard. There was a scratch in his voice he couldn’t hide.

  “Mrs. H., have people been asking for me?”

  “They don’t have to ask. They know you’re with Abruzzi’s daughter-in-law. You and her are the sensation of the month.”

  “You heard about the firebomb?”

  “That’s all been fixed. Infante’s had Cuban carpenters around most of the week. Nick is back in the designing room.”

  “And the skins? We must have lost a fortune in sables.”

  “They’re insured. The company stands to make half a million on the fire. We’d love to see you, Holden. Barbara’s been asking about her dada. I didn’t have the heart to tell her there’s another woman in the case.”

  “I’m not her dada. Anything new on Huevo?”

  “Not a bump.”

  “Well, I can’t let him go around dropping benzene torches outside my office. I’ll lose my reputation.”

  “Edmundo has an army looking for his ass, and that hasn’t bothered Huevo at all.”

  “You’re supposed to encourage me.”

  “I am.”

  He put down the phone, and he was still trembling. Fay’s absence felt like a bullet cruising around in his head, a .22 short that dug into his ear and started to chip against his skull. Holden sat like a wounded boy and waited.

  It grew dark. He closed his eyes. It was like the times he waited for Loretta Howard to come home when she was still with his dad. She’d spring upon him while he was dozing in his chair, and she’d have some tiny gift for him: toffee or hazelnuts, and she’d be dressed like a dream, with a hint of perfume behind her ears, and if his dad came home first, Holden would sulk, because he wouldn’t have his hazelnuts or a hug, and he’d watch the door for Loretta, watch and wait until the lock turned slowly, and his heart would pound. She’d have to deal with his dad, soothe him before she could come to him, and he’d wish his father dead. It was that moment when his career was made. He’d become a bumper in his father’s house.

  He must have been snoring, because he hadn’t heard his darling knock. He forgot to give her a key. He opened the door, and a kind of happiness crossed his face. His cheeks were red. The bumper began to blush. She had one small suitcase and a shopping bag filled with trinkets. It didn’t seem worth a trip uptown, frightening him with her absence when he could have bought her anything she desired. “Darling,” she said. “I wasn’t away that long ... there were neighbors. I couldn’t cut them off. And Rex was home.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing much. I needed a vacation from him and the girls.”

  “Does Rex know about me?”

  “Of course.”

  “And he wasn’t angry? I mean, a man can run off with his wife just like that and it’s okay with Rex?”

  “You’re not a stranger I met on the street.”

  “Almost. I met you in a bungalow. I shot Red Mike. That’s not exactly a marriage.”

  “But we aren’t married. I’m your sweetheart.”

  “Tell me,” he said, taking the suitcase and the shopping bag, “have you ever run away with a man before?”

  “No, not that I can think of.”

  “I’m the first?”

  “If you don’t count Michael. I didn’t run away with him. He took me by surprise.”

  “Michael, it always comes back to Michael.”

  “But that week with him prepared me for you ... would you rather I left?”

  His hand was shaking again. “I didn’t say a word about leaving. We were having a conversation, that’s all. I’m glad you’ve come back.”

  “You don’t sound glad.”

  “I was worried that Rex or somebody would convince you to stay uptown.”

  “But didn’t I promise you?”

  “Fay, should I tell you how many promises I’ve had to eat?”

  “But I belong to you, Sidney.”

  “Yeah, now that Mike is dead. Would you be here if I hadn’t killed him?”

  “Probably not ... but you might not have wanted me, darling.”

  It was true. His whole goddamn romance hinged on Mike’s death. He kissed Fay and his terror was gone. They explored the trinkets in her shopping bag. She had a crazy little animal with its head on backwards so it could see its tail.

  “That’s you, Sidney. You’re so suspicious, you can’t swallow without turning your head. That’s why I love you. You take nothing for granted.”

  “My dad was a suspicious man. The United States was after him all his life. He lived in exile until a friend sneaked him back into the country.”

  She took out other trinkets: a cloth cat stuffed with pine cones, a jar of jelly beans, little brass pots that she arranged on Holden’s windowsills, a torn doll, a pencil sharpener from her hometown in Illinois, wedding souvenirs, a sorority pin, locks of hair ... like a history of Fay in miniature, a map that she distributed in Holden’s rooms, a little circus of herself. And it amazed Holden that she could stuff her past into a shopping bag and carry it downtown. He had nothing like that, no menagerie.

  She entwined her life with his and built her own contours in the apartment, a borderland where she kept her animals and her clothes. She was happy here. That’s how it seemed to Holden. The mysterious lady who’d arrived out of some catacomb, appeared in Far Rockaway without her clothes, another man’s wife, devoted to Rat and Eddie and Red Mike.

  One afternoon while Fay napped he walked over to Aladdin. Holden couldn’t believe what the Cuban carpenters had done. The whole fucking factory was restored. The nailers were at their benches. The cutters waltzed around Nick Tiel’s dummies with tape measures like yellow collars at their necks. The fluorescent lights hissed over his head. His title, last name and first initial had been redone on his door. His office opened with the same old key. He still had a VCR. He could smell the fresh paint, but there wasn’t a single bubble in the wall that could remind him of the fire. He went into his closet. Some of his underwear was gone. An old shoe. But his wardrobe had survived the crisis. He packed his favorite clothes and left without consulting Nick.

  Holden hid out in Chelsea with his love. His apartment was on Tenth Avenue, near a seminary with a garden in the middle. Holden could see the young seminarians from his bedroom window. He’d had three semesters at Bernard Baruch, where he’d studied banking and Aristotle, and he wondered now if the seminarians were discussing Aristotle and Aquinas or Qaddafi and the fate of the world. He’d enjoyed his three semesters at Baruch. Swiss had sent him there to master the art of accounting so Holden could help with Aladdin’s books. But he was much more valuable out in the field. How could Swiss have known beforehand that an eighteen-year-old kid would have such a talent for bumping people? College began to interfere with his work at Aladdin. The kid was studying all the time. Holden had to drop out. And he watched the seminarians with remorse. He envied t
heir Aristotle. But suppose he’d become an accountant? Would he be a fat cat, like Infante, with an aristocratic wife who loved to eat at Mansions around a lot of kings?

  Holden took care of a different sort of books. He collected for Aladdin. And he bumped. Fay caught him at the window, recognized his sadness, and took him in her arms. “Sidney, we shouldn’t sit around like this. We have to get out.”

  And they went to the movies together, to the theater, to concerts, to performances of dance. Holden knew there was a danger. But he had Harrington drive him to all the shows. He searched under the seats for a Cuban cocktail. He was that animal with its head on backwards. He had to be.

  He couldn’t avoid Fay’s old girlfriends, who’d appear at concerts and eye Holden as if he were Ali Baba in a British suit; they must have known he was the one who’d rescued Fay and killed the three bad brothers. He could feel a sexual edge to their glances. Who were these girlfriends? Had they gone to Swarthmore with Fay? They chattered about a universe Holden couldn’t enter at all. Benefit concerts. Charity balls. A pianist named Vladimir. A dance company out in Brooklyn where women whipped men with their hair. Had he seen Pixote? No. El Norte? A Nos Amours? They weren’t into Destry Rides Again. And Holden gave up pretending he had the least bit in common with the girlfriends. He was Fay’s bandit lover, the vice president of a fur company who couldn’t even quote the price of Canadian mink.

  But she never called him Sidney in public, and she didn’t leave him floating in a corner with the girlfriends. She stood next to Holden, touched his arm. And whatever brought her to him—the feud between a district attorney and wild men in Queens, her own strange marriage, Red Mike, the barrel of a .22 long—there was nothing tricky about Fay’s devotion to her bandit.

  He had to find Huevo, but he went to the theater with Fay. He ignored little Barbara and Mrs. Howard. He wouldn’t visit Gottlieb. Holden had gone off the street. He’d glued himself to Fay’s curly hair. He’d never been so passive, not even with the twig. He forgot he ever had a secret service.

  And then Holden bumped into his own tail at a temple on Fifty-fifth. He’d arrived with Fay to watch a dance company at City Center. They had seats in the sixth row. Holden was content. He held Fay’s hand. She never lectured him. He watched. The first dance was about the Fourth of July. He could see the women’s nipples under their tights. It didn’t turn him on. They were moon creatures to him, dancers on a stage. Fay had been a dancer once at college. But she didn’t have that crystalline look, a body made of prisms and planes. She was much rounder than the women in this company. He decided that he loved round women after all. The twig had been an accident of fate.

 

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