He climbed one flight of stairs. Then another. Still no sign of habitation.
Which made him no less nervous than that party had.
Finally, on the top floor, he heard voices. The windows were too dirty to admit much light, but a bit of gray sun fell in from a trapdoor in the ceiling. This must also have been why it was so cold in here—why Charlie could see his breath. As he approached the ladder that led to the roof, his heart went John Bonham on him. He hadn’t been lying when he’d told Dr. Altschul he was acrophobic. But to chicken out now would be to admit that he’d chickened out back at Beth Israel; that these investigations weren’t serious at all.
He emerged behind a chimney. Or half a chimney, rather. The rest had collapsed on the swaybacked roof. Around the broken bricks came voices, one male and one female. The girl he’d danced with at the Ex Nihilo show was passing a joint to the black guitarist who’d plied Charlie with beer. He was saying, “I don’t understand why we can’t get rid of them …”
“That’s why they’re called homing pigeons, D.T.”
The guitarist scratched his lymon-colored hair. “Fair enough, but why have they all decided to call that shed home? There weren’t more than ten of them a week ago.”
They were staring down at an outbuilding in the back garden, whose roof, Charlie saw, was covered not with snow, but with roosting birds. There must have been a hundred. The chickenwire coop the guitarist leaned against stood empty. “We could just shoot them …,” he said, thoughtfully.
“And bring the cops? Plus Sol would kick your ass. It’s his coop to begin with. Or anyway, he stole it fair and square. Hey, Sol—,” she called.
All of a sudden, Charlie was being hauled aloft by the collar of his jacket. The winter sky wheeled around until he was face to safety-pinned face with Sam’s so-called friend, Solomon Grungy. Fee-fi-fo-fum. “Look what I found.”
“It’s that kid from the show,” said the girl. “What’s he doing here?”
“Get off me!” Charlie sputtered. And when he’d been set down again: “I’m buddies with Sam Cicciaro, remember?”
“Yeah, but like what the fuck are you doing here, kid?” said the black guitarist.
Charlie was terrified, so close to the edge. Someone seemed to have stolen the saliva from his mouth. “We were here last summer. He invited us.” Nodding toward the hulking Grungy. “I don’t know if you know, but Sam got hurt real bad over New Year’s.”
“Of course we know. What are you trying to say here—that we wouldn’t know?”
Charlie didn’t know what he was trying to say.
“Nicky should hear about this,” the guitarist decided. “Anyway, let’s get him downstairs, before Sol’s pigeons come shit all over us.”
“I already told you, motherfucker. Those are not my fucking pigeons.”
They forced Charlie onto the ladder and then back down the stairs. On the second floor, in a room whose walls were papered entirely with record sleeves—dozens of copies of Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream & Other Delights—they found someone sitting lotus-style on the bare floor. Nicky Chaos. How had Charlie missed him on the way up? The other three seemed proud of themselves, or expectant, as if waiting for Nicky Chaos to recognize the value of the human sacrifice they’d brought him. But he was wearing steel-rimmed spectacles now that made him look surprisingly civilized. He put down the book he’d been holding. Scratched his chin-beard. Rubbed a tattoo on his arm. “No, no, it’s coming back to me. Backstage Charlie, right?”
A funny thing about charisma: the same people who can make you feel an inch tall can also make you feel huge, fortified, sometimes almost simultaneously. Charlie was all of a sudden eager to explain. “I just followed my feet here. I was at the hospital.”
“They let you in? We figured that place would be crawling with pigs.”
Charlie hadn’t meant to imply he’d actually made it to Sam’s room. “She’s in a coma.”
There was another bristly silence, and then Solomon snorted behind him. “So what, you want a shoulder to cry on?” The green-haired guy, D.T., started laughing, coughing, cough-laughing. But Nicky Chaos’s speaking voice, a resonant baritone from which only a lunatic would have extrapolated his musical stylings, quieted them down.
“Sol’s right, people want things, what did you come down here for, Charlie?”
“I don’t know, you’re machers, right? People who … who do stuff. That’s what Sam said.”
“And what does that mean to you? You want to paint some posters? Call the call-in shows, march around singing protest songs, that’s going to make you feel better?”
Charlie took a step forward. Solomon started after him, but Nicky, still sitting, waved him off with a tattooed hand. Charlie’s own hands clenched. He towered over Nicky Chaos. And vice versa, it seemed, weirdly. “I want judgment. I want to find whoever did this and bring vengeance down on their heads.”
How naked his voice sounded, here in this cold house, in the gloom. But Nicky’s came just as soft, like the two of them were alone. “Is that what you’re about, kid? Avenging angel? Harbinger of doom?” When Charlie didn’t answer, Nicky nodded, and hands from behind began patting at his sides, at his pockets, little nuzzling animals. By the time Charlie realized he was being searched, the hands were holding his shoulders. He’s clean. Nicky rose and made the sign of the cross. “Te absolvo.” Then: “Jesus Christ, man, I had no idea you were one of us.” His laugh reeked of reefer. “But let’s get you fixed up. Sewer Girl, I need to powwow with your old man here for a minute, but why don’t you go and see if we’ve got some medicine downstairs for the Prophet Charlie.”
The girl led Charlie down to the kitchen, where all the doors had been taken off the cupboards. Inside were mostly mouse droppings—he could smell, he thought, the chemical tang of the poison—but she managed to come up with a teacup. After rinsing it and putting on some water to boil, she plopped down across from him at a crippled cardtable. By daylight, her vibe was maternalish. And at the same time still sexy. She probably outweighed Charlie, but it was all kind of pushed to the right places. A belly you could lie against. The big, warm thighs he’d felt against his own, dancing at the Vault. She didn’t seem to mind him staring at the shadowy place her tits made when she leaned forward, either. Having shed her coat, she was wearing only the thigh-length Rangers jersey and scuffed white go-go boots; with her sleepy eyes, she looked kind of like that one sexy Muppet who played in the band. “Are you cold?” When he nodded, she reached for his hands and rubbed them between her own. Then she took out another joint, lit it, shook out the match. “You want?”
“I’ve got pretty bad asthma.”
“How old are you, Charlie?”
“Eighteen,” he said, rounding up. And, slightly defiant, “Why? How old are you?”
“Twenty-two. But I’ve been here before, if you know what I’m saying.”
“I don’t believe in reincarnation.” He imagined test-driving the word: I’m a Christian now.
“It’s because you’ve got a young soul. But that’s cool. Chaque a son goût. My mom used to say that.” She paused for a coughing fit that sounded like her lungs climbing out of her mouth. Her big face went lovely with color. “It means each to her own, something like that. She was kind of a hippie, there at the end. Now she’s probably a bird or a deer or something terrific.” She took another puff, considered him through the harsh, sweet smoke. “You know your friend Sam was missing a mom, too. We bonded over that, way back when.” And when he didn’t say anything: “I’m kind of the den mother here.”
“Can I ask something, though? You guys go by initials, right? S.G., D.T.—”
“D. Tremens. D. for Delirium.”
“I get that. But why do they call you Sewer Girl?”
“Nicky says I’m stuck on a lower level of consciousness. Because I’m from Shreveport, or whatever. It’s like, if you didn’t grow up in the city, it’s hard for dialectical materialism to be your bag. I still get sentimental
about moms and deer and my horoscope and stuff.”
“That was like Sam’s least favorite word, though. Sentimental. Did you ever read her ’zine?”
“You don’t miss a trick, do you?” she said, and rose to pour the tea. From inside a go-go boot, she retrieved a little baggie of pills. Methodically, she crushed one under a spoon and scraped the crumbs into his tea. “You’ve had a rough day, this way we’ll be on like the same wavelength.” He couldn’t do more than sip the tea, almost choking from the heat, but he could feel the pill working pretty much immediately, unless that was his imagination.
“Hey, are you hungry?” she said. “I always get hungry this time of day. The getting-high time of day.” She laughed. “Which is every time of day. I could run out and get us a treat.”
He didn’t have any money. But that was cool, she said. It was like part of her job, to welcome novices. She’d be back in a flash. She put a long, fake-fur coat on over her jersey—no pants—and went out, leaving Charlie alone. He got up to examine the kitchen, staggering a little. The Quaalude, or whatever it was, was stronger than what Sam used to get, or else he was more receptive to it. Waterstains swelled and subsided like big, brown jellyfish on the plaster above. Soon, he was lost in the maze of cracks winding down from the molding. In one place was a fist-sized hole. He pushed at a bit of plaster experimentally; it skittered down into darkness, but the sound of it hitting bottom was lost behind what seemed to be a gray metallic buzz back in his fillings. He realized this was the fume hood, which for some reason was over the sink and not the oven. He turned it off.
The others were tromping now down unseen stairs, heading out into the backyard. Through the cigarette-stained window, he watched them disappear into the outbuilding, under a lintel of birds. Plant life rose thigh-high between here and there. It spilled over into the next yard, and the next, these yards flowing together, walled in by tenements, all surrounding that little aviary, or fortress. He was still standing over the sink with his tea, swimming down into the dark cursive of winter weeds, when Sewer Girl returned.
“Oh, geez,” she said, reaching for the fume hood. “Charlie, the fans have to stay on. There aren’t many rules here, but that’s like number one.” She offered him a crumpled-looking pastry. Had he ever tried pasteles? “I live on Long Island,” he said, and when the synapses fused in her brain she started laughing again; it really was the squarest place on earth, wasn’t it? Charlie didn’t mind. He liked sitting there stoned and pretending not to watch her tits jounce around like grapefruits in a sack. He knew it was the drugs making him feel better, but after the day he’d had, was that so wrong? And wasn’t this how Sam had felt, hanging out here? Maybe he’d said this last part out loud, because it seemed like they were talking about her again. It was amazing, said Sewer Girl, how devoted people were to Sam. Men, especially. “Nicky wasn’t always happy about that, but that’s because he sees so much more than the rest of us. He always puts these things in terms of like how is it going to affect the Phalanstery. You know—is it going to compromise the project.”
From within the gauze of the drug, something solid struggled to surface. He could make it out: shape, size, and color. “What project? You mean Ex Nihilo?”
“You’re probably going to want to take that up with Nicky.”
But when Nicky came in from the cold a few minutes later, he put his hand on Sewer Girl’s shoulder and said Charlie had had a big day, maybe it was time he headed home. The rest of them had work to do.
“Can I come back?” Charlie asked.
Nicky’s smile then was a thing of beauty—an artful rip in the denim of time. “Oh, sure. Oh, most definitely. We expect you back, Prophet. Once you’re in, you’re in.”
30
THE RANCH HOUSE OFF THE CUL-DE-SAC had shrunk since the fall, like some kind of withered organ. But at least there weren’t news-wagons everywhere, sinking into the slushy lawn, klieging up the siding, waiting to endow with sinister significance images of its last remaining occupant checking his mail. Richard walked around to the backyard, but for the first time that he could remember, the aluminum hangar was silent, its great fans immobile. Maybe Carmine had gone to the hospital, and they’d passed right by each other at some point in the last hour, one commuting out, one in. Then Richard thought he saw movement behind the sliding door to the kitchen. He mushed back up to the icy patio. On the other side of the glass, the fridge was open, a little parenthesis of light; Carmine, wearing only a towel, had bent to place something on the bottom shelf. The sight of his friend peering in seemed not to startle him when he straightened. The door slid open. “Sorry,” Richard said. “I came out to see how you were doing.”
“I was about to shower,” Carmine said, as if the words took a second to reach him.
You should have stopped there, Richard would think, looking back; far be it from him to stand between a man and his shower. But when had he ever known when to stop? “You mind if I come in for a minute?”
Carmine, unembarrassed by the graying sag of his own chest and gut, or possibly unaware of it, stepped aside to let him pass.
The kitchen table was still set for two. On one of the placemats sat some rosewood beads; on the other, a cylinder of Duncan Hines cake frosting. “It’s Sammy’s birthday,” he explained.
“I remember.”
“I was hoping to get the icing on quick while the shower warmed up, but the cake’s too hot. The stuff just melts. They don’t tell you on the package.”
“How’s she been, Carmine?”
“Depends when you saw her last.” It was entirely possible that this was an honest statement, not meant to make Richard feel guilty about his two-plus weeks of radio silence.
“It was the last time I saw you. In the waiting room New Year’s Day.”
“Critical but stable, is what they’re saying now. Whatever that means. Like, ‘It’s bad, but it’s not getting worse.’ ” Richard could hardly stand to look at Carmine’s biblical near-nakedness, or even at the hands closing around the frosting tube. They wanted work to do, cartridges to pack, necks to wring. Outside, the sun had withdrawn from the sky in defeat, but not a single light was on in here. “You need a beer?”
“I’m pacing myself,” Richard said. “I’d take a glass of water, though.”
Carmine went to the tap. There was a groan, a shuddering, a curse. “The goddamn pressure in this house. I forgot the shower was still on.”
“Don’t worry about me, go take your shower.”
“No, no, let me go shut it off.”
“Please, Carmine. I can wait here until you’re done.”
Carmine muttered something to himself and padded off down the hallway that led to the bedrooms. Richard had been back there once before. Now the avocado shag looked gray. Dimness made the water in the pipes seem louder.
Samantha’s room, he had reason to know, was the second door on the right. The blue curtains, batiked with sunflowers, had been left halfway open. Other remnants of girlhood lingered here and there—the dressing table with stickers on the mirror, the canopy affixed to the bed. Back in the fall, dozens of Kodachrome photographs had been clothespinned to lengths of twine on the wall opposite the window, but those were gone now; he could just barely make out the darker rectangles on the paint where the sun hadn’t bleached it. Carmine must have let the cops take anything that could conceivably be evidence. Not that this was any of Richard’s business. It was only that cynical omnivore, the newspaperman, who would have allowed himself to be excited by, for example, the plastic bucket of laundry parked in front of the closet, as though the room had been vacated only minutes ago. Still, just hypothetically, what might Richard have been looking for, were he looking for something? The dressing table’s center drawer was locked. He thought about checking under the mattress; it was where, as a kid, he’d kept the dirty playing cards Cousin Roger had brought back from the Italian front. Then he spotted the film canister on her nightstand. Inside was the key. The drawer slid open with
a woody squeak. He found at the bottom a trio of homemade pamphlets or magazines, unlined paper stapled twice in the fold. Each cover was a jumble of text, some of it written, some of it typed, some of it cut out of magazines and stuck on like a ransom note, all of it photocopied. Issue 1. Issue 2. Issue 3. The last had a piece of Scotch tape still clinging to the outer edge. 25¢ at the top. You want this. But now the water sluicing through the walls had stopped, and Richard, with his sharpened senses, thought he heard doors opening and closing. He jammed the pamphlets into the back of his waistband, covered them with his sportcoat’s tails, and hastened out into the hall, trying to remember how many inches ajar her door had been. He’d just taken his hand from the knob when Carmine spoke up. “You need something back here?” Richard had never seen him like this, in a starched white shirt. Comb-lines in his slicked-back hair.
“Just the can, Carmine.”
“There’s one off the living room. You know that, you’ve used it before.”
“Right.”
He slipped past Carmine without meeting his gaze and went to try to piss in the front bathroom. As he stood above the robin’s-egg toilet, with its carpeted lid, various selves did battle. Some part of him sensed some other part trying to meddle with what was clearly now the story. And he’d sworn he wouldn’t get himself mixed up with his subjects this way again. Not after Florida. Hadn’t he told Pulaski that the goal was just to finish the profile? And yet there was this dissembling body, this conglomerate Richard, returning to the kitchen, reiterating that he was sure Samantha would be okay (which he wasn’t), and that Carmine should get some sleep (which he probably couldn’t), and just generally knitting that doily of horseshit you were expected to insert between the bereaved and the fact that no one, in the end, made it out of this life alive. “I meant to tell you,” he said. “I managed to track down my friend, the Deputy Inspector.”
Carmine had taken the cake back out of the refrigerator to smear on icing with a butter knife. Now he paused, considering his handiwork. “Why’d you do that?”
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