Paradise Man

by Jerome Charyn

  “They’re tourists, Holden, that’s all. They’ve never been to America. It’s a big thing to them. And what harm can they do? They don’t understand a word of English.”

  “They didn’t need English in Avignon.”

  “Shh,” Billet said. “You mustn’t anger them. They have no conscience and they have no shame. And they’re not booked, Holden. They have an open agenda. They might harm the little girl.”

  “You shouldn’t have said that, Billet. I like you. You saved my ass in Paris.”

  “I like you too. But I had to bring the Castigliones. Swiss wants his paper back.”

  “If you touch the girl, you’ll have the Bandidos on your back. They consider her a goddess, Billet, a very sacred being.”

  “I’m used to goddesses,” Billet said. “Besides, we’ll be in and out. Today it’s New York, and tomorrow we’re gone. Holden, you can’t win. Help yourself. Negotiate with the Swiss.”

  “Come on. You’d bump me anyway. With or without the paper. That’s why those two homicidals are here.”

  “I have some pull with the old man,” Billet said. “He listens to me. Give me the paper, and I’ll drive Jupe and Jean-Paul to the airport.”

  “And then you’d come after me. I know the Swiss. I was valuable to him as long as I didn’t hit on a vulnerable spot. Now he’ll always have to worry about his Holden ... I’d hate to bump you, Billet.”

  “Bump me, kid?” And Billetdoux started to laugh. The seams swelled along his face. “We have you three to one.”

  “But this is my city. And I have the santita on my side.”

  “I told you. She doesn’t belong to our church. She can’t melt guns and grenades.”

  “She doesn’t have to melt anything,” Holden said, and he shoved around the three men, clutching the santita. He would waltz across town, get rid of them one by one, with his fist, his mouth, or his Beretta Minx. He’d deal with the butchers of Marseilles, lead them on a lovely chase in Manhattan. It was like the merry-go-round he remembered from his boyhood on the plains of Queens. He’d ride the same wooden horse with his dad. It was one of Holden Sr.’s rare pleasures. His dad would take him to the amusement park that assembled once a year on an empty lot across the street from Holden’s house. He’d climb up on the horse with his dad, turn with the music, and escape the other riders. Women in gaudy gowns. Men in toupees, holding the sides of their heads in that wind the horses made. Kids like Holden, laughing, crying, clutching their moms and dads. And the young dukes of the block, with their hands under a sweetheart’s skirt. Holden recalled the length of a thigh, skin so pale against red, red underpants. The girls always seemed to swoon while the horses rocked along their circular path. And Holden had the deep wish that his dad could take the wooden horse out of this narrowing path and into some other merry-go-round, where he and his dad would be the only riders.

  He didn’t know the Castigliones very well, and he hadn’t counted on their lunacies in the middle of Lexington Avenue. Jean-Paul shot him in the side with a little Spanish beauty, an automatic with its own blue muffler. A .22 short. It was as if the bullet had never torn through the cloth of his coat, but simply entered Holden and started to travel. He could feel it twist under his shoulder blade. His knees dropped a little and he felt a band of pain, like a taunt ribbon inside his body.

  Jupe got closer to him. But Holden wasn’t in some kindergarten class. He swerved away, bumping that mean little man in tropical clothes against the window of a lingerie store. Holden discovered a pair of lace pants that he would have liked to see on his darling. But he couldn’t imagine too much. He had a bullet inside him and two homicidals at his back.

  He led the santita into an atrium that was swollen with plants. The plants were much more spectacular than any tree. He’d entered a jungle between glass cuttings and walls. And those bumpers from Marseilles followed behind him. Billetdoux held back a bit. He was fond of Holden, Holden could tell with that .22 short sitting under his ribs. There was hardly any blood. And Holden didn’t have to grab his side. He held the santita, because he wouldn’t allow Billet’s two homicidals to touch the child.

  Jupe approached him again, crooning with delight about the hole his brother had made in the paradise man. “Mon vieux,” he called Holden. “Mon vieux.” He had sweat on his lip. His face was square as a box. He could smell the kill. And Holden turned like some extraordinary dancer and punched Jupe between the eyes. It wasn’t with his customary force. He was carrying a bullet. But Jupe was stunned. He stood under the glass sky, with his hands in his face, and Holden started to strangle him. Men and women stared at Holden, as if he were part of some mime troupe, performing in the atrium.

  “Jupe,” Holden whispered, “je t’aime.”

  But that other lout of a brother was nearly upon him, and Holden shoved Jupe into Jean-Paul, and continued down the promenade with the santita. His strength was gone. And Holden started to suffer. It wasn’t his own death that bothered him. He was lucky he’d survived as long as he did. His bumper’s intuition had carried him in and out of dark rooms. He could have been whacked in the head years ago. Some lost, forgotten saint from Avignon, the mistress of a pope, had nourished Holden, watched over his life, blessed him once or twice. But there were limits to what a saint could do. And as he drifted with the bullet, he could no longer protect the leopard girl.

  “Barbara,” he said. “Run ... come on,” he told her. “Go find Dolores.”

  But the santita wouldn’t release his hand. It was all simple to Holden. He’d shoot Jean-Paul with the Beretta Minx, and Billet would have to disappear. Because Billet couldn’t afford a wedding with the New York police. And how many more times would Holden have to be shot before he gave Jupe a permanent sore throat? But he had to save the santita. He couldn’t fall down until he sent her away to that madrina in El Norte, the madrina who must have raised her.

  His eyes darted in his head. He saw Jean-Paul again with that little Spanish shooter. “Vaya,” he told the leopard girl. Because he intended to blow out Jean-Paul’s brains along a promenade that was like an indoor jungle, and he wanted to give her the chance to run. Holden didn’t know a thing about the little girl. But he loved her with that crazy animal love of a man who’d been wild all his life.

  “Go on,” he said. “Do I have to give you a slap?”

  She took Holden’s fingers and led him through that jungle and back out onto the street. Holden was lost. The bullet in his lining had ruined his sense of direction. The santita was his compass. She started to wail in her Creole tongue just as Jupe and Jean-Paul arrived from the atrium. It was a ferocious song. And Holden realized that Oyá, the African goddess, had possessed an ordinary little girl from Queens. The santita swayed her hips. And Holden was still alarmed. Because a goddess could go in and out of a girl’s body and abandon her to some kind of orphanhood.

  They were on Vanderbilt Avenue. Jupe and Jean-Paul were a couple of noses away. The santita danced and sang. But she couldn’t sing up an army. And Holden would have to find his own dark river in Manhattan. He took out his Beretta Minx and aimed it at Jean-Paul. The twins were furious. They hadn’t expected an American bumper to behave like that. Jupe and Jean-Paul stood across the street. And Holden entered the Yale Club with the santita. He’d fleeced a couple of businessmen inside that club. The businessmen had gone to law school with Robert Infante. They’d borrowed money from Aladdin and were hoping that a couple of Yalies didn’t have to repay an old debt. But they hadn’t counted on Holden. Holden trapped them in the toilet. They scribbled checks on the toilet wall. But he hadn’t come to collect markers today. He sat on one of the couches near the reception desk. He looked like a Yalie. But his college was Bernard Baruch. His side started to sting.

  The doormen were dressed like admirals. Goldie would have admired their blue coats. And Holden had a touch of nostalgia for the Yale Club. He remembered the marble sink in the men’s toilet. There were combs on the sink in a jar of pungent blue water. The stalls
had doors with wooden slats. There had been nothing like this at Bernard Baruch.

  Jupe and Jean-Paul entered the club like a couple of kids from Provence, but they had a problem with the doormen. They couldn’t seem to grasp the Yalies’ dress code. The twins weren’t wearing neckties. They would have shot their way past the doormen if Billet-doux hadn’t been behind them. Billet understood the consequences of killing doormen at the Yale Club. So he counseled the twins and also calmed them. But Holden knew it was a question of time. Billet would wait outside the club while the twins went around the block to the nearest haberdashery store.

  Holden wondered what species of necktie the twins would wear when they returned to the club. He’d have to give them both a bumper’s special between the eyes. But there were too many Yalies in the room. How would Barbara escape if Holden started whacking people?

  Barbara grabbed his hand and led him to the telephone booths. She couldn’t reach the phone. Holden had to lift her and look for quarters in his pants. Barbara talked into the telephone in that Creole tongue of hers. She didn’t say much. A word or two and she stared at Holden. “Dada, what’s the name of this palace?”

  “It’s not a palace. It’s the Yale Club. On Vanderbilt Avenue. Used to be a golden address.”

  “Yale Club,” the little girl repeated into the telephone, and then they returned to the couch. Holden’s side was killing him. Should he sneak the girl into the men’s toilet and ambush the twins from one of the stalls? He wouldn’t have felt right taking the santita into a toilet. “Go on,” he said. “Hide. Can’t you see. The bad boys are coming.”

  But she wouldn’t hide. Should he give her to one of the doormen as a package to hold? But she’d wind up in some shelter for little girls. Holden didn’t like that. He’d rather keep her and suffer the consequences. If he stood close enough to the door, he could whack both homicidals and run. Run where? The bumper could hardly move. And he had spots in his eyes, like coals on a leopard’s back.

  Lord, he begged, please don’t let me drift. But he couldn’t even tell which Lord he was praying to. His father didn’t believe in any Grand Seigneur. Holden Sr. was a bloody atheist. And Holden himself never had much use for God. But he prayed.

  Lord ...

  And Holden had to smile. Because the Lord had a funny apparatus. Men with white hair had come into the Yale Club, Mariels. They were impeccable this afternoon. Wore neckties with their quilted suits. It didn’t matter that each Mariel had one brown shoe and wore glasses with a missing lens. None of them had violated the club’s strict code.

  Barbara got off the couch and danced over to the men. And Holden could afford to dream. Billetdoux wouldn’t have messed with Bandidos inside the Yale Club. The bumper closed his eyes, thinking of palaces, popes, his darling, and his dada’s dead mistress.

  Frog

  19

  FAY DREAMT OF RED shoes in the window at Fausto Santini. She’d been waltzing down Madison Avenue like a fisherman’s wife, searching for shoes. It was almost three months ago. She’d stopped at Vittorio Ricci. But the red was too red, and it didn’t match the gown she had to wear at the lieutenant governor’s ball. She hadn’t been out with her husband in such a long time. She’d forgotten the nature of his eyes. Green, but how green? She’d been hanging around with Paul. And people trembled at the sight of her. Paul Abruzzi’s date and daughter-in-law. They held hands at the lieutenant governor’s table. And she didn’t care what all those assemblyman’s wives thought of her. They were frightened of Paul. A district attorney could dig into anyone’s past. And she’d come to a den of thieves. Fat wives with jewels on every finger. Hubbies with gold money clips. She drank matzoh-ball soup in the land of beg and borrow. College deans, assemblymen, bankers, crooked lawyers and their cronies would line up and pay homage to Paul. They bent so far, Fay could see their bald spots. They brought her flowers and boxes of Godiva mints.

  “Where’s the great author?” they asked.

  “He’s busy,” Paul would growl. “Busy writing plays.”

  People stopped mentioning Rex. And she didn’t have to make excuses. She was with Paul in a pair of red shoes from Fausto Santini. She’d stroke his neck while some grubby little man was at Paul’s feet, asking for favors. But she didn’t love Paul. She admired him, liked him, fed off his power, but she’d never have run away with Paul. She ran away with Sidney ... to Tenth Avenue. Sidney could shake her blood. He didn’t fondle her in Cadillacs, take her to the lieutenant governor’s ball, see her in red shoes. Paul liked to belittle Sidney and say, “Sidney’s a gentle psychopath. He has no more brains than his dad.” But she hadn’t been introduced to his dad.

  “I knew him,” Paul had told her at the lieutenant governor’s table. “The man was an ape. He belonged in a textbook on abnormal psychology. The son’s like his dad ... only he’s had more of a success. He’s good at killing people.”

  “I care for him,” she’d said.

  And Paul had slapped her in front of a thousand people. The lieutenant governor’s wife peeked out at her from under her husband’s armpit. And all the other wives started to sneer. Fay could have written a treatise on assemblymen’s wives and the jewelry they wore. The relationship between gold in an ear and the lack of sex. But she wasn’t a sociologist any more. She didn’t have to weigh lives in terms of silver and gold. She ran from the table and Paul shoved assemblymen aside and followed her to the door.

  “You can’t go,” he said.

  “I am going.”

  He seemed much more passionate than Rex, who liked to slouch in pajamas with a pencil in his hand.

  “I won’t let you,” he said, and he had eyes like a little boy. She could have done anything with Paul, undressed him, sat in his lap, stole his handkerchief, delivered a speech at the lieutenant governor’s table about assemblymen’s wives and their rubbery tits. But he turned sullen and played district attorney when he should have rubbed and kissed her where he’d slapped her face. “Come back ... you can’t humiliate me like this.”

  And she walked out on him and went to live with Holden. Holden gave her a pistol to wear. It was the oddest romance, because he was hardly ever around. He could have been fighting in some foreign war. But she was crazy about his silences, because she’d been with men who talked all the time. Rex had courted her with speeches out of Pirandello, until she wondered if she’d married Pirandello’s ghost. And Paul had opinions on every ballet in the land. Holden didn’t have opinions. He drank in whatever performance she took him to. He dressed like a British lord. Nothing was accented, nothing stood out. His voice was soft. He never shouted.

  He had an angular look, like he was searching for something. A pair of red shoes? His mouth was strong. His eyes sat deep in his head. She’d wanted him the moment she saw him in Far Rockaway, in Michael’s wretched hut. He’d killed the three bothers as silently as he’d looked at her, without even savoring her breasts. No man had ever sized her up with such polite concentration. Michael’s brothers had stared at her bottom, their brains exploding with big ideas.

  “Godiva,” Michael had called her after his brothers took her clothes. But her hair wasn’t long enough to cover her ass. She was settling in with Michael, having a good time, a holiday from her husband and Paul, when Holden arrived like some figure out of Pirandello. Sad and doomed. She could tell he didn’t want to kill Mike.

  She’d never asked for Holden, and there he was. She’d fallen under his curtain of doom. She belonged to Sidney, not through marriage, not through the shared birth of a child, or the practice of fathers-in-law, but through some elemental song, like a nursery rhyme she might have discovered at three or four. He was her dark, silent partner-prince, her playmate, and it had nothing to do with kissing her, or how practical he was at touching her parts. Michael had driven her insane in that hut. She’d screamed until the walls began to rock like the waves outside her window. She hardly ever screamed with Sidney. But she dug under his arm as if they’d been sleeping together thirty ye
ars.

  And still she thought of those red shoes. The toes stuck out like a canoe. The heels were thin as wire. She was the tallest cunt at the lieutenant governor’s table. She flirted with the politicians, destroyed their wives with the most ordinary smile, because they didn’t amount to much with all their silver and gold. And she was Lady Godiva in her red shoes. Poor Michael had guessed right. She was a woman who loved to prance without her clothes. She’d have stood on the table at the lieutenant governor’s ball, slapped her hips, and danced with nothing on but her red shoes, and no one would have disturbed her. She’d come with Paul.

  Now she was hiding, but she didn’t know who she was hiding from. Sidney had told her to shoot if a man or mouse pushed through their door. She understood eating habits in Melanesia, mating in Manhattan among rich and poor, blue-collar crime ... but she couldn’t even say what Sidney had done. She drank soup in his absence. She thought of Michael’s brothers staring at her body. She dreamt of red shoes, supposing that if she conjured hard enough, Sidney might appear.

  She heard footsteps in the hall. Her first impulse was to darken her eyes for Sidney, so he’d think of her as his own big blonde cat. But she didn’t rush into the bathroom for her eyeliner, because it wasn’t Sidney’s steps she’d heard. She removed the pistol from that leather stocking near her heart, aimed it at the door. Someone knocked. She didn’t like the sound of knuckles on wood.

  “Who is it?” she asked.

  “Paul.”

  She unlocked the door with her left hand, because anyone could come around and impersonate Paul, and she wasn’t taking chances. Paul was astonished to see a pistol in his face. “Did Holden give you that?”

  “Yes,” she answered, without inviting him inside. “He taught me how to fire. We had target practice in New Jersey.”

  “Put it away,” Paul said. “You don’t need a gun. I’m the district attorney.”