Together they tugged and they pulled. Still the foxglove wouldn’t budge. Claire began to think that maybe it had a mind of its own. Why move the thing to a sunnier spot when it had grown this indomitable where it was? Perhaps it would very simply refuse. No, it couldn’t do that. Iris was determined. It could very well up and die, though. No. No, on second thought, Iris would keep it alive just by watching it. She’d talk it back to health if she had to. Now Iris stuck the pitchfork into the hole and wobbled the lower roots. Son of a gun, marveled Claire, she’s stronger than I am, the old faker. Iris looked at her quickly, maybe reading her thoughts. “It’s chust a matter of balance,” she explained. “Like jujitsu.” And out came the foxglove.
“I see.”
“Und den you can put dose pansies back in the shadow,” Iris instructed her, the kindly film star to the Mexican gardener. Claire didn’t mind, though. She’d waited for so long to get in touch with the old woman that she kept doggedly on, her nails already split and caked with black. And Iris didn’t bother with conversation. She stood alongside quietly, apprehensively watching for signs of any agonized branch.
The Mayor was performing for Natasha, Iris’s poodle, who watched condescendingly from the ivy. He covered his complete routine of independent jumps and snout grovels and he did them well, then flopped to the ground with a weary change of heart.
Claire’s knees were black now, too. The white shorts she’d borrowed from Zinnie were stained with grass. “Oh, hell,” she said when she saw that.
“Dat’s all right,” Iris prodded her impatiently with the shovel handle, “you’ll get your reward in de other vorld.”
So Claire continued. There was a whole new other hole to dig to put the flower in. She had a great belief in the “other world.” She also knew that foreign diabolical spirits could enter into your body without your even knowing it if you put yourself in a susceptible position. Such as going to Macumba ceremonies and uncrossing your legs when the devil came in. Don’t laugh, she told herself even as she started to laugh into the mud. Remember the zombie girl down in Rio? Yes, it was true that that girl had let herself in for it, selling her soul to Fatiema the hag just to hook up with some no-account hot socks from the Gerada de Ipanema. What had she paid her? Forty dollars? Something like that. A couple of laughs. And it had worked. Yes, indeed. That beautiful man had hung around that girl as though his life had depended on it. It had, sort of. She’d had to give him all the money she’d earned in San Paulo. The girl would sit there in the Gerada de Ipanema with her vodka lime and stare at the carnivali world with vacant oozy eyes and wait for him. And he’d beat her, too. That poor girl. She hadn’t had much of a life but she’d had him. She’d had what she’d really wanted and gone for … easily, simply … on a dare, really. But she’d done it. Yes, not everybody believed in it, but Claire knew that you could have anything you wanted in the world. All from black magic with chickens flying in a grungy candlelit “church.” You could have what you wanted all right. What they didn’t tell you was all that went with it, what a price you had to pay. Claire knew. She’d been the zombie girl.
“I hope,” she leaned back on her haunches and pulled her hair into a knot, “that you mean the life after death and not the ‘life’ of walking death.”
Iris took one step backward. Always pale and powdered as good Queen Elizabeth in her final days, Iris went one notch paler still. “Dat’s enough!” she whooshed her hand back and forth at Claire. “Dat’s goot! You did a fine chob. Dat’s enough.” She yanked the trowel from Claire and gave her a push on the shoulder. Not a love tap, either. The Mayor, lounging imperiously in the portaluca, sprang to life. His four dainty feet churned with rapid ignition before he could right his portly girth. Once up, he gallivanted across the lawn to his Claire’s side. He didn’t go so far as to bare his teeth, but his gaze was steadfast animosity. No matter that Lü the cat prowled just underneath the porch. Or that Natasha watched him, not so haughtily now, from the ivy. When push came to shove one stood fast in the face of all terrorism. “It’s all right, boy,” Claire bent down and unruffled him with soothing strokes. “It’s all right.” She wasn’t the least intimidated, he noted. Let the old biddy do her own gardening, by jingle. Or hire a man, the way everyone else did. When they reached the end of the shrub, Iris did a most surprising thing. She tottered after them in her chorus girl slippers and shouted, out of breath from the strain of the run, “Come back tomorrow around four und I’ll giff you a nice fenugreek tea. Yes?”
“Ja wohl,” Claire grinned without turning. The long crooked shadow of Iris reached out like a club-footed path in the street.
CHAPTER 8
Johnny stood bewildered in the camera shop. The salesman laid a seventh possibility into his hands.
“Now this little model has automatic everything. Right down to your lens opening.”
Johnny didn’t know what a lens opening was but by now he was afraid to ask. “Okay. Now let’s see that first one again.”
“Which one, sir?”
“The first one you showed me. With the gizmo that made everything look close up.”
“That’s a lens, sir.”
“Yeah, that one.”
The salesman went back under the counter. “Here we are, sir.”
Johnny studied the unfamiliar apparatus. “Now would you say a professional would use this lens?”
The salesman dabbed his upper lip with a hanky. “With which camera, sir?”
“Oh. With this good one here.”
“Oh, no, sir.”
“Well, which one would he use it with?”
“A professional would never use that camera.”
“I get it. So show me again which camera a professional would use.”
“The Nikon, sir.”
“The one that means I gotta go for my lungs.”
“That’s the idea, sir.”
“Hmm. And professionals wouldn’t use any other camera, huh? Never?”
The salesman flung his left arm into the air and discovered his watch. “Well. Some do use the Canon. Or the Olympus.”
“Yeah? So how much is that … the Olympus.”
The salesman wrote the new price on a piece of paper already cluttered with outlandish numbers.
Johnny shook his head and muttered. “And the Canon?”
“Together with which lens? With that model you looked at three.”
“Okay. Go back to the Olympus.”
“That’s the one on special.”
“Yeah, but it’s still good, right?”
“Sir?”
“I mean it’s not some fegazey outfit?”
“Fegazey?”
“Yeah.” Johnny took a deep breath. “Like fake.”
“Certainly not.”
“And that comes with the flash and all?”
“I did tell you that, yes.”
“Oh. You did?”
“Several times, sir.”
Johnny clicked his gum and looked at the guy. “Wrap up the whole thing.”
“The OM-2S with accessories, sir?”
“Yeah.”
“Will that be gift wrapped, sir?”
“Sure. Go ahead. Wrap it up nice.”
The salesman, in his element now, went about the elaborate job of dressing up each package in its own bold yellow paper, precisely slicing off any excess with a ruler and then zooming one blade savagely along the blue string ribbon and voilà! one curly decoration just as saucy as you please. He presented the attractive tower of boxes to Johnny. He stood before the counter patiently; what’s more, he was all smiles.
“Will that be all, sir?”
“No. Now you can take the whole thing and shove it up your padooza. I wouldn’t buy nothin’ from you if you were the last salesman in Queens. Now I’m gonna go down the street and buy the whole kit & kaboodle from the competition, you nasty little piece a garbage.”
It was nine o’clock at night and Claire still wasn’t at home. She’d gone to pick u
p her nephew at Freddy’s place, so there were two things he could do. He could wait right here in front of her house and have her see him waiting when she came back. Or he could go up to Queens Boulevard and surprise her, risking missing her altogether if she came home a different way. That wouldn’t be too good because then her mother would tell her that he’d been there and by the time he caught up with her she’d have had time to arrange her face however she wanted. He couldn’t risk that. He had to see her eyes in their moment of recognition, before she disguised them with propriety. This was crucial. He had to see if she was going to be as happy to see him as he was going to be to see her. The present he had for her in the shopping bag was incidental. The icing on the cake. He made a silent bet with himself that she’d refuse it, too. That was the kind of girl she was. Only he was going to make her accept the camera no matter what. He’d see to that. Johnny paced up and down the walk. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t remember what she looked like. He could get the hair, the mouth, the eyes … but he couldn’t put them all together. One thing he had in front of his face as though it were painted there was that ass. Johnny cleared his throat. He paced back and forth a few more times. Mrs. Breslinsky stuck her head out the window.
“Sure you wouldn’t like to wait in here?”
“Oh, no,” he blushed at his thoughts so inappropriate to her mother’s vicinity. “I’ll just wait awhile out here. Couple a things I gotta ask her.” He looked down, puzzled, at his fancy shopping bag. He could hear the crickets.
“I see. Well, if you change your mind.”
Johnny waved and smiled. The hell with this. She’d probably take Park Lane South. He hopped in the car. Another thing. If she was coming along Park Lane South she might run into that Stefanovitch bastard. He took the corner without stopping for the sign.
Freddy’s place was across the boulevard from the municipal building. He could leave the shopping bag in the car or he could lug it with him—no, he’d walk in empty-handed and take it from there. Of course there was nowhere to park. The hubbub of the street made it impossible. And of course he would be driving Pokey’s whale of an Oldsmobile. He’d tuned it up for him and now he couldn’t get rid of it. Pokey had discovered the delights of his snappy sports car and wasn’t in a hurry to give it up.
He pulled up dead in front of the joint underneath the NO STANDING sign and put Pokey’s shield number on the dashboard, rejoicing as he always did that with his responsibilities came privilege, this probably being his favorite one. Not that there were that many anymore. Used to be, a cop was respected for the chances he took. You went in to the fruit and vegetable store, the guy wouldn’t let you pay. You got your coffee and doughnuts from the diner, the cashier would wink and you’d zip out the door. And you took care of those places. You risked your life for a couple a lousy hundred bucks in the cash register anytime you went around back when you saw a screwy light on at three in the morning, and those owners, they used to appreciate it. Now? Jeez. Now the same owners made a stink when they saw you cuff up the suspects too tight. It was all rights and privileges for the criminals these days. No doubt about it. The city wasn’t changing … it already had changed.
He slammed the door shut and walked up the pink marble stairs. Self-consciously he pushed his hair back. He hated joints like this. Women all tensed up and on the make. Men, if you could call them men, with hairdos and nipped-in waists and shellacked eyelashes. A fellow in a chartreuse shirt down to his knees eyeballed him up and down. He could have slapped him. Then, through a forest of good-luck-bannered potted plants he saw the back of her head at the bar. She was tapping her fingers impatiently along an empty bottle of Perrier. At least she wasn’t chatting away happily with some creep. (In reality, she was waiting for a moment alone with Freddy. She was going to tell him exactly what she thought of his slimy interlude with Carmela.) The kid, beaming, was being detained by a silver-eye-shadowed flight attendant type who was cooing and oohing all over him. She bent over, breasts exposed, and gave him the celery stick from her bloody mary. Michaelaen clung shyly to his father’s hand. Shit. Johnny didn’t want to talk to him. He turned on his heel before Claire could see him and went back outside. What if Freddy was going to drive them home and they went out the back way through the parking lot? He went back in. A lawyer type in a dinner jacket approached Claire and he saw the two of them banter back and forth and then laugh out loud. He watched Claire blow an easy stream of smoke in the man’s face and deliberately turn her back on him. And that takes care of that, thought Johnny with relief.
Derickson, from the 102 and looking every bit of it, was mopping long-stem glasses behind the bar. The other bartender was either off or on a break. Johnny knew he wouldn’t risk blowing Derickson’s cover. Derickson was too smart to do anything more than look right through him, but at the same time he didn’t feel like letting the whole station house know that his interest in Claire was anything more than professional. Bunch of old fishwives. He went back outside. He noticed that his palms were wet. What am I, delirious? he asked himself. He walked across the boulevard to the big stone statue, a naked statue of a man the old-timers called the Fireman. There he was, this huge muscular Greek, balls ass in the middle of traffic. There was a wooden bench there, mercifully free of bums, and he sat down on it, watching the door all the while. Even if they went out the back way he could still see them from here. And then he saw the Mayor. He must have walked right by him several times, for there he was, tied with his clothesline to the parking meter in front of Freddy’s place. Johnny flew across the street. “Hi ya, Mayor,” he greeted him affectionately. “You remember me, don’t you?”
The Mayor watched him blandly. He’d been following Johnny’s indecisive helter-skelter all along. Now there was no doubt in his mind that Johnny was smitten with Claire. Although he’d guessed that from the start, way back in the confusion over the kosher chicken. If there was anyone who had a nose for that sort of thing it was himself. Now what was this? Johnny was untying the clothesline and escorting him across the boulevard. This was a rare opportunity indeed. What exotic strains of frowziness might he encounter here? Truly he did love Natasha, only once you were as old as, let’s do face it, he now was, each opportunity that presented itself, handed to you, as it were, was well worth taking. One might never have the chance again. Alone, he would never even consider the risk of crossing a boulevard. Why he’d never been across a boulevard. And now he was. He was just becoming involved in what could very well be the musk of a dane when he felt his clothesline stiffen. He looked about. Across Queens Boulevard he could see Freddy coming down the steps with Claire and Michaelaen. Claire was being very cool toward Freddy. You could see that even from a distance. Michaelaen wasn’t keen on leaving at all. He loved that place. As many french fries as he could lay his hands on. All of a sudden Claire threw her arms up into the air. Back and forth she raced. Then around in a circle. Michaelaen, always distinguished, did not panic. He was quite used to the disappearance of the Mayor. He’d grown up within the routine of it. However, he did put his thumb in his mouth and kept it there. Freddy ran inside and came back out. Claire was looking underneath the parked cars. The Mayor thought all right, a game’s a game, but this one has gone far enough now. He looked up at Johnny, who was looking idiotically spellbound and crackling his knuckles.
Claire was thinking of the stricken pairs of eyes she would face back at home if she didn’t find the Mayor. Frantically, she craned her neck in all directions. Someone could have hit him and he might be lying out there broken and bleeding and with no one to care for him. And all those cars just nonchalantly speeding by. She broke out in a fervent sweat. Freddy put an arm of solace around her shoulder and she flung herself free of him. “Look!” hollered Michaelaen. He pointed towards the newsstand on the corner. There was a pedestrian crossway there and an entrance to the subway. Out from the exit, Tut from his tomb, emerged the Mayor, waddling, pink tongue dangling, and Johnny Benedetto rushing accommodatingly behind.
<
br /> “Your honor!” Claire fell to the ground.
Johnny squatted beside her. “I just happened to be coming up from the subway,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, “and who do I see but the dog here.” It wouldn’t hurt for her to think destiny had played a hand. She’d like that sort of thing. And so she did. Her eyes, when she looked up at him, were pools of sparkling wonder. This grateful ardor, if it hadn’t come from such a cheap trick, would have caused him no small joy. Uncomfortably, he stood back up. Michaelaen claimed his rightful end of the leash and they walked in a tight band back to the restaurant.
“This is wonderful,” said Freddy. “If you hadn’t come out from the subway at that exact moment.…”
Claire shuddered at the torrent of possibilities. Michaelaen watched Johnny with careful admiration. He didn’t know quite what to make of Johnny. Both Claire and Freddy spoke derisively about him but he noticed they both buckled to attention the moment he was around.
“Were you going to take the bus or a cab?” Freddy asked him. “I’m just taking Claire and Michaelaen home. I’ll drop you all off at once. You don’t live far, do you?”
Johnny looked over at Pokey’s Oldsmobile. “I’ll just hop on the …” he was about to say “bus” when he saw a lady parking cop writing out a ticket. If they all left now he could stop the bitch. She could see the detective shield in there. What the hell was the matter with her?
“I wouldn’t think of that,” Claire said.
“No, really. It goes right by my house. I’d rather.” He looked past her at the traffic cop. Claire followed his eyes. All she saw was a taxi full of pretty girls in gauzy dresses disembarking.
Park Lane South, Queens Page 13