by T. Gertler
“Sex is part of the Divine plan, not a plot. Carry a pack of Trojans in your pocket on Saturday night, but it doesn’t make you a man.”
Lulu zipped up his jacket defiantly. “Yeah, but it helps keep me from being a husband.”
She had a piece of Black Forest cake. She had two refills of coffee. At the pay phone near the kitchen a chain yanked at the phone book when she opened it. Heat and cries in Spanish came from the kitchen. She checked under Lightman, Lietman, Leitman, Liteman, Lytman, Leytman, Lyetman, and Leyetman, but there wasn’t any Dina or D. She lived in the bookstore, just as Vincent had said. There wasn’t any Laurits Rabuchin, either. Suzanne wondered if Rabuchin’s wife—Howard’s other lover, according to the blue letter—knew about Dina Leitman. Did they all go to bed together, trading literary insights? She could try that. She’d read Tolstoy, even if she’d skipped the boring parts. She found Newman Sykes listed, with an address on West Eleventh Street. Dina Leitman might be there. Suzanne had a vanilla milk shake and French fries.
In late evening she walked to Eleventh Street. At the garden entry of a brownstone across the street from Newman Sykes’s place, she crouched behind a stone planter on a pedestal and peeked through ivy. There was a spider web in the ivy, connecting threads from leaf to leaf. Inside the planter were balled-up gum wrappers and a twofer for an off-Broadway musical. She had to get a message to Dina Leitman. The ivy shivered in a breeze. It would be a message about the limits of selfishness. Something soft rubbed against her legs. She was too frightened to scream. It was a cat, gray or apricot. Only white on its paws showed clearly in the dark. Hugging the bag from the Karatasi bookstore, she stepped out in front of the ivy and stood openly on the sidewalk.
—
They were three pages into Chapter II, “The Pool of Tears.” Matty’d had her bath and smelled of the designer soap he’d given Suzanne for Mother’s Day. He’d already had four juice glasses of Grand Marnier, a Christmas gift from the print shop that turned out Rosemary. The bottle wouldn’t have lasted so long—wouldn’t have lasted past January, in fact—but for some reason it had been left in its red and green foil-wrapped carton on the floor of the hall closet. He discovered it when he came home that afternoon and dropped his laundry ticket while hanging up his cardigan. He wouldn’t have discovered it at all if Suzanne had attended to the laundry the way she was supposed to. If his luck held, he would be around to get another bottle next Christmas; and he would send it, with his own greetings replacing the printer’s, to the university president. That hoarse tenor on the office phone a few hours earlier had promised, “I’m keeping an eye on you, Mr. Ritchie. Our reputation doesn’t benefit from a deranged husband’s bill of particulars darkening the sky over our campus. You may be completely innocent of any wrongdoing. You may not. I stood by Professor Diamond until the jury returned a verdict of guilty. It turned out he actually had been manufacturing speed in the chem lab. I believe in free enterprise, but I was disappointed. He was using school materials. In your case, Mr. Ritchie, I would advise you: when in doubt, keep your pants on.”
He read aloud, pausing for sips from ineffably smooth glass number five. The book, a 1938 red leather-bound edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with gilt-edged hand-sewn pages and four-color Tenniel pictures and an engraving of Lewis Carroll’s signature in red on the title page, had cost fifty-five dollars at a cubbyhole bookstore flaunting its quaintness on Madison Avenue. “I’ll give you forty-five,” he told a robust old woman at the register. She chewed on a tiger’s milk candy bar. “How about if we forget the tax?” he asked. He had to salvage something from this day of endangered writers and accusing letters and an insubordinate former mistress and a sullen, disappearing wife. Her mouth full, the old woman asked, “Cash?”
The cream-colored handmade paper hadn’t yellowed; black Caslon Old Style type bit sharply into it. The slipcase, with a red leather spine and marbled paper covering, had faded spots and a blue inkstain. He could have bought a paperback edition with black and white drawings and a glopped glue binding for under three dollars, but he hoped luxury would impress Matty with the importance of the occasion. He was making amends for his negligence; somehow she had gotten far along in life without knowing this book. She wasn’t going to hear a story, she was going to have an experience.
He sipped and mumbled,
“I’m sure I’m not Ada,” she said, “for her hair goes in such long ringlets, and mine doesn’t go in ringlets at all; and I’m sure I can’t be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she, oh, she knows such a very little! Besides, she’s she, and I’m I, and—oh dear, how puzzling it all is! I’ll try if I know all the things I used to know. Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and…”
“You get the idea,” he said. “Four times five isn’t twelve.”
“I know, Daddy,” she said. “I know long division.”
“You look bored. Are you bored?”
“I like it when you read to me. But I’m sorry Mommy missed dinner.”
“I’m sure she’s sorry too.”
“When is she coming home?”
“When she does, she’ll come in and kiss you while you’re sleeping.”
“Then how will I know?”
“You’ll know.”
“But how?”
Sitting at the foot of the bed, he leaned against the wall, to get more comfortable. From under the covers her toes pushed his thigh over the covers. “You have enough room?” he asked. He took another sip and lost his place. He ended up two pages ahead of himself, near the end of the chapter. After he read a paragraph, he said, “Something’s not right.” Matty didn’t answer. She was sleeping.
—
It came back to him, not the way he’d imagined it would, not as a reward or praise, but it came back. He was standing naked at the window of the dark apartment, waiting to call Clare. He turned off the air conditioner—the night was cool enough—and opened the window. Down on the street a man backed an old convertible into a parking spot in front of the building. A woman on the sidewalk gave the man directions. “Keep going, keep going. I said keep going.” The car’s headlights didn’t clear the rear fender of the car in front of it. The man shouted, “Forget it.” The woman got in the car and they drove off.
That was when he saw the other woman, standing on the sidewalk across the street. She seemed to be looking up at his apartment. She clutched a package. In darkness and the shifting shadows of ginkgo leaves, she seemed to be looking up at him. She didn’t move. He thought he knew her, or he wished he knew her. She might not have been real. Her face in shadows pledged forgiveness. He might have imagined her, so powerful was his desire for an angel against reason and tidiness. If she had held out her arms, he would have gone to her, naked as he was. The pressure of her fingers on his forehead would absolve him of thought. He wanted her to bless him, and his cock stood up.
The bathroom door opened behind him. A strip of light showed his nakedness to the street; he moved away from the window. “Please turn off the light.”
The light went off. When he looked down at the street again, the angel was gone.
“Why don’t you close the curtains?” Melanie asked, blond ponytail loosened. She was still undressed, all hipbone and cheerfulness. Hugging him, she discovered his erection. “Well, well,” she said proudly. “I told you not to worry.” She closed the curtains and turned on a light.
He squeezed his cock, stroked it. He admired its tension and its deepening color and the drop of clear liquid glistening at the head. He wanted to wave it out the window at passers-by. He wanted to call Clare and say, Guess what. He became afraid that it wouldn’t get hard again unless he did whatever he had done to get it hard now.
“Come here,” Melanie said.
On the way back to bed with her, he wondered what he was supposed to do next.
She thought of pumpkin bread. If Dina Leitman and Newman Sykes were in the house across the street, they were hiding.
It was too early for pumpkins. A light went on. She saw a naked man at a window. He disappeared. It would have to be zucchini bread. Sift flour. Walking back to the bookstore, Suzanne tried to remember ingredients. The Karatasi shopping bag hit her knee. She didn’t know if Dina Leitman would be there. It was closed. She had to return the keys anyway.
One fit the top lock, one the bottom. Her cleverness frightened her. She went inside the dark store. Through the front window stacked with books a street lamp lighted tables of books. Top-heavy bookcases leaned toward her. She passed through their shadows.
She put the keys back on the shelf under the cash register and left the shopping bag on the counter. She took copies of Laurits Rabuchin’s letter and the store’s pen from her purse and set them on the counter too.
The stairs curved up and away from her. The second step creaked. She tested the next step with a cautious foot. She’d met the Atlantic Ocean with the same foot fifteen years before. A band of seaweed wrapped her ankle. Climbing to the balcony, she heard a woman’s voice. A door opened on a lighted room. She squinted into the crack along the hinged side of the door. Dina Leitman was sitting alone in a bed and reading aloud from a notebook. Everything around her was white.
It was terrible to be young and ignorant. It was worse to get old and still be ignorant. A scholarship named for Dina Leitman would be really nice.
“ ‘He turns her over and enters her from behind; in her new-found freedom she wails with excitement and fear….’ ” Dina Leitman scribbled something, went on reading. “ ‘He turns her over and enters her from behind; in her new-found freedom she sees only her hands opening on the orange sheet, and she wails in pleasure and in fear.’ ”
It sounded like something Howard would approve of. If she could write, she would write like Dina Leitman. They might have been friends. The wood doorframe was cool at her cheek. They looked a little bit alike, she thought. The reading voice faded. The next-to-last step creaked again.
Downstairs, she emptied the shopping bag on the counter: the two books, the two cans of lighter fluid, and the matches. She sprinkled lighter fluid on the books. Dust with flour. She struck a match and dropped it on the books and leaped back. There was a flash, then flame. She waited for the flame to spread, but it went out, leaving blackened patches on the Italian poetry book. The cover of Bandaged Moments curled.
She ripped out a page of poetry, crumpled it into a ball, sprinkled it with lighter fluid, and added a lighted match. The page burned on the counter. As it burned, it opened and closed like a fist. She ripped out another page and fed it flat to the first one. It fluttered, it writhed. A cinder flew out. The fire died in ashes.
She moved a wicker trash basket from behind the counter and put it at the foot of the stairs. A rattan sliver punctured her forefinger, produced a bead of blood. She licked it off, testing the flavor. She tore the cellophane wrapping off 250 Years of Japanese Art, by Neuer and Yoshida. The cellophane crackled as she pressed it between her hands. She added it, and the copies of Rabuchin’s letter, to the paper already in the basket. She baptized the trash with lighter fluid, but didn’t ignite it.
In the stacks where Dan had gone that afternoon, she found more copies of Bandaged Moments. The pages she tore out of a copy blotted blood from her finger. She dropped them on the floor. Add lighter fluid. Stir gently.
Among a bin of prints were some wrapped in cellophane: old lithographs of beruffled men with captions in French, maps of the world depicting the four corners occupied by personified winds, their cheeks bulging with air. Fold in lighter fluid.
She dropped a lighted match on the prints, another on the pages from Bandaged Moments, and another in the wicker basket at the foot of the stairs. It was like lighting a birthday cake. Three flames burned steadily in the large room.
The familiar carved R caught her eye at a table of paperbacks: a Winter ′74 issue of Rosemary. She spread it open until the spine cracked, and pulled it apart. She arranged the pages along the bottom of the stairs, leading up from the burning wicker basket, and poured the rest of the lighter fluid over them.
The darkened store had come alive. There was a pleasant hushed rustling in the stacks. The bin of prints flared. Burning cellophane oozed down to the floor, to the pages spread there. Near the stairs the basket glowed.
She took her library card from her wallet and tossed it in the basket. The heat at her hand surprised her. Something dropped. A print had bowed, burning, to the floor. Flames followed the arch. It was more beautiful burning than it had been as a print. She wished she could kiss the flames, they were so beautiful. The pressure on her bladder felt worse than it had when she was carrying Matty. She pulled down her pants and squatted on the floor and peed. She patted herself dry with the hem of her dress. Another print fell, and across the room the basket itself caught fire. It shimmered inside a suit of flame. Pages of Rosemary on the floor beside it lighted.
On the rare nights when company had visited with her parents, she’d felt cheated by her father’s announcement, “Time for bed, sunshine.” Now too she left regretfully, knowing she would miss the best part.
—
The prints burned. Paint on the wall changed to alligator skin. Pages of Bandaged Moments made a trail of fire on the floor. Flames spread up along the books in the stacks, feeding on upstanding loose pages, torn paperback covers, unfiled pamphlets of avant-garde poetry on recycled paper. The metal shelves heated; The Flies of Western North America, by Cole and Schlinger, warmed beside The South Goes North, by Robert Coles, which wasn’t supposed to be in that section. On a bottom shelf an aisle over, the bound uncorrected proofs of a book about Van Eyck, The Quest for Mrs. Arnolfini, by Lee Vight, Ph.D., browned along with Vasari’s Lives of the Artists and Vlaminck’s Dangerous Corner. The basket and the pages from Rosemary joined in flames at the foot of the stairs, where the first riser and the first tread smoldered.
—
The paragraph was as good as it was going to get, no matter how many times she read it aloud. Her throat hurt. She checked her jeans pocket for the scrap of paper with Vincent Bask’s number. Going out with him would be something else to write about. It wasn’t a date, it was material. Her face crowded her compact mirror.
At the open door of her room she hesitated, hearing noise downstairs. Burglars hoping for free best-sellers? Or was Dan working? Light flickered on the normally dim balcony. The shadow of the balcony railing wavered on the back wall. She stepped out into heat and light.
Below her, the store burned. Steel struts twisted and steel shelves relaxed. Books—it might have been the poetry section—tumbled to the floor. Shelving collapsed on top of them. The bin of prints on fire crashed. At the bottom of the stairs a black pattern of basket broke in the heart of flames. Three steps were on fire.
Screaming his name, she ran to Dan’s apartment. She turned on the light and saw a room like hers, plain, with everything in it painted white, except that he had three black and white photograph posters on a wall: Lenin, Lincoln, and Ray Charles. The light went out.
She ran to her room—the light was out there too—and in darkness relieved only by stars and a clouded fragment of moon through the skylight she collected her manuscript, much of it the only copy of new writing, and added the picture of her dead dog. By the time she ran back to the balcony with her pages in her arms, the fire had climbed more than halfway up the stairs. From down in the store came a loud popping. Flames reached as high as the top shelves of bookcases, eight feet and up. Another strut sighed and collapsed. Books flew into the flames. It was part of the used anthropology section. Smoke thickened over the fallen bookcase. Above her the ceiling groaned. Sprinklers spat water, a brief hissing in flames; the sprinklers stopped. A wall of heat pressed against her. The fire advanced up the stairs.
Again she ran to Dan’s room, thinking to escape through the window. It had bars on it. Beyond them she saw a brick wall and the dark street behind the store. She took a white chair and, keeping her pages on t
he seat, carried it back to her room and shut the door.
The chair wobbled on the bed. Balanced precariously, she reached to the skylight. It was high above her. She climbed down cautiously: she would die by fire and not of a broken neck. “Help me!” she screamed. “Help!” The smell of smoke filled the room. She sat down on the white bed and cried.
—
The call to the 911 operator came from a woman. She sounded almost sleepy. She gave an address and added, as an afterthought, “There’s a fire there. Really.”
—
She tucked the white bedspread along the doorsill. At the sides and top of the door smoke drifted in. It stung her eyes and made her cough. Heat scratched her face. It wasn’t happening to her. In California at that moment her mother and father were watching a movie on TV. She was trapped in the movie they were watching. She wanted her mother to hold her and say everything would be fine. She wanted to apologize to everybody she had ever met. Her life had been so short and pointless, she thought, that she had enough time for it to flash before her eyes twice. She wished she had been a grownup woman who’d written books and loved a man and had a baby, all in a hurry. She’d been worrying that she wasn’t real; now she would learn how painfully real she was.
She flew above her terror to take notes—she wishes she’d been kinder; fear makes her clutch the bedspread—so that if she survived, she’d be able to write about it. “You’re weird,” she said aloud between coughs.
She heard sirens far away. Wood crackled outside the door. Or it was the door crackling. “I’m here!” she screamed. Now she knows it’s too late, now she knows she’s going to die. She hopes she dies from smoke inhalation, not burning. She should have paid attention over the years to newspaper stories headlined “Tragic Fire in Brooklyn Kills Six.” Always the same headline. Didn’t the victims die of smoke inhalation? She doesn’t want to be a victim in a newspaper story. She’s somewhere else, laughing, with sun in her eyes. It’s a field bordered by flowering trees. Central Park? A dog leaps up for a Frisbee. She shades her eyes with her hand.