“Wow!” Brooklyn said. Her eyes were a color he had never seen, a copper sunset over a green country field. “I never thought I’d meet anyone from New York.”
Breathing was the thing now. Simple respiration. He squeezed her hand affirmatively. The air around them smelled of baby wipes. “Surely in the hospitality industry,” he managed to say.
“I’m in accounting,” she reminded him. “So what’s Brooklyn like? Is it crazy?”
Barry thought of Seema’s friend, Tina or Kina. “It’s really crazy,” Barry said. “The people, they ride these old-fashioned bicycles. And I never know what anything is. They have doughnuts made out of spaghetti.”
Brooklyn sighed. “I gotta say, I never learned to ride a bike,” she said.
“It’s really easy,” Barry said. “I could teach you in under ten minutes.”
Brooklyn smiled. “Is Brooklyn like that show on HBO?”
“It’s exactly like that show,” he said.
“Huh,” Brooklyn said. “I guess I wouldn’t know what to say around girls like that.”
“Those people are silly,” Barry said. “They have no authenticity. That means they’re not real. You have authenticity.”
“I know what it means,” Brooklyn said.
“Anyway, you would rock Brooklyn,” Barry said. “Let’s go sometime. There’s a lot I can teach you. A lot about the world that you’d find interesting. Useful, even. You remind me of someone else I met on this trip, back in Baltimore. You remind me of myself when I was younger. You want to improve yourself. I’ve done a lot in my life, made hundreds of millions, but it’s not enough. I have this friend, Joey Goldblatt, and I told him that if after we die our epitaph says that we ran super-successful funds, then we’ve failed. There’s so much more to the world than money. But first you have to have lots and lots of money. Then you can do all the really good stuff. Like mentor people.”
Brooklyn was thinking about it. “Well,” she said. “I do want to succeed. I don’t want to be unchristian about it, but I do want to come out ahead. Like, be a business leader.”
The PA system screeched to life. “Tuscaloosa,” the driver sighed, as if he had had his heart broken there. “Fifteen-minute stop, Tuscaloosa.” Great, just as their conversation had started to flow. Just as she had basically told him she wouldn’t mind working in finance. Fuck you, Greyhound.
Brooklyn got off in front of him, her denimed butt leading the way, and Barry had to squeeze past Fam-Man to get out first. “Easy,” said Fam-Man.
They were parked at a RaceWay convenience store opposite an EasyMoney check-cashing place. Brooklyn hit the Frito-Lay aisle, stopping by each choice with an inquisitive finger on her chin. He scanned the aisles quickly for something special to get her and finally found a row of Kind bars. Strange that they would have them all the way down here. She would love one of those. He trotted through the store, but she had already left. There was a low-burning heat in his nostrils, a teenage pinch of romantic despair. He grabbed the dark chocolate with sea salt, paid quickly, and ran into the humid evening. Sure enough, Brooklyn was talking to Fam-Man, who was eating a plate of chicken while somehow smoking a cigarette at the same time. Like Brooklyn, Fam-Man also had blond hair, but it was dreaded into little stalks, and his dye job looked sloppy and contrived. Country, thought Barry malevolently. He could try to squeeze into their conversation, but what if more stupid words came out of his mouth? Oh, this wasn’t fair. Meanwhile, the $3.69 Kind bar, a significant chunk of his present net worth, was melting steadily in the heat. He decided to climb on the bus and hope that Brooklyn would make the right choice and continue to sit by his side.
From the window, he watched Brooklyn and Fam-Man. Every once in a while she would laugh uproariously. Barry wished he could make her laugh like that, instead of talking so seriously about her work and education and prospects for self-improvement. But that’s what mentors did. Fam-Man was doing funny stuff like feeding some chicken bones to an ambling dog from the check-cashing place. He loved her laugh even more than he loved the way she filled out her jeans.
The bus driver was yelling at everyone to get on the bus. Many “sirs” were exchanged. Brooklyn climbed the stairs with Fam-Man on her heels. He touched one of her bare shoulders and tried to steer her toward his side of the aisle. If Barry lost her to his rival, he thought he would just get off the bus in despair and bed down in the cheapest motel in Tuscaloosa. But Brooklyn scooted in next to him. “Real nice chatting with you,” she said to Fam-Man.
Barry felt sorry for him. Fam-Man slumped into his seat and popped open his shit phone. “No, fam, she’s still sitting next to that guy,” he said. “Her kin from Jefferson County. Homewood. Yeah, I told her about my 4Runner.”
“Hey, I got something for you!” he said. He produced the Kind bar. “This is what everyone eats in Brooklyn.”
“Should we split it?” she asked. “Chocolate and sea salt.”
“It’s supposed to be very healthy and slimming,” Barry said.
Brooklyn opened a bag of Nathan’s hot-dog-flavored potato chips she had just bought. “Is this from Brooklyn, too?” she asked.
“No,” Barry said, very sternly. “That’s just not—”
“Authentic,” she said. They smiled. She took a bite of the Kind bar. “Huh,” she said. “It’s super salty.”
“But it’s the good kind of salt,” Barry assured her. “Probably from Hawaii or something.”
“Have you been to Hawaii?”
Barry nodded his head modestly. “Just Molokai and the Big Island,” he said. “And Maui, of course. Kauai. Oahu. Let me ask you, where do you picture yourself in ten, twenty years?”
“I guess as a hotel manager. Maybe at the Dallas Marriott City Center. My cousin works there. It’s beautiful.”
“That’s it?” Barry said. He knew right away that he was belittling her dreams. “I mean I think someone like you, the potential is boundless.”
Brooklyn looked at the remainder of her Kind bar. “I guess maybe in real estate,” she said, very quietly.
Barry was not approaching this tactically enough. He wanted to relate to her that she was an extraordinary person, but everyone probably told her that. Coming from a guy on the Greyhound, even one who claimed to have made hundreds of millions of dollars, it didn’t amount to much. Her iPhone rang. She picked it up with a smile on her face. Barry was worried. “Hey, Coach,” she said. “Yeah, I’m on the bus to Jackson. Yeah, I’ll call you when I get there. Nicole’s spending too much time being cooped up in the house with Momma. She’s gotta be in school or get a job. There’s a website that’ll teach her how to write a résumé. It’s super simple. Or I can help her on Sunday after church. That’s not what I said. You know I’m real proud of her. Yeah, Coach, put me in!” She laughed for a while. “Yeah, I love you, too,” she said. She hung up and turned to Barry. “Sorry about all that noise.”
“I like watching you talk,” Barry said. “Who’s Coach?”
“That’s my dad.” She laughed. “I guess it’s goofy that I call him that.” Barry didn’t think so at all. He would give anything for Shiva to call him Coach one day. To call him anything, really.
He had settled into this peaceful mood of just admiring her. This was a real person. None of that New York “sophistication.” No wonder Barry was fleeing the city. No wonder so many of the women he met in bars below Fifty-seventh Street looked at him like he was the enemy. One girl he had stared down in a bar on the Bowery had actually said to him, “I’m sorry, but I feel like you’re ejaculating all over me with your eyes.” Brooklyn had no biases. She wanted to be a hotel manager. She wanted to live in Dallas. She had a degree in leisure studies. She called her father Coach, and they’d laughed together, plotted her family’s affairs. These were the dreams and actions of a consistent person. He was falling steadily in love.
Brooklyn yawned
and put her head on his shoulder. “Gosh, I’m tired,” she said. “You mind if I finish that Kind bar later?”
Barry leaned his own cheek into her hair. It smelled of apricot with an undercurrent of musk. Maybe it was her mention of church, but he remembered a brochure some Seventh-day Adventists had left at their house on Little Neck Parkway before his father and Luna the sheepdog had chased them off the property with extreme prejudice. A lion and a lamb lying side by side, their faces entwined in tenderness.
Lightning shook him out of his reverie. While they continued to snuggle in the near dark, a serious storm had begun. The highway was lit up by opposing high beams. He rubbed against her cheekbone. She let out a little laugh. Her lips tasted of salt and sugar and the dust of the road. She deflected his tongue and then reached up to whisper in his ear, “My mouth is kind of gross.”
“No, it’s not,” he said, but she would only let him kiss her cheeks and sealed lips, his nose canvassing the rest of her face. He willed the storm to continue and the darkness to gather around them. He couldn’t see her face, but he knew she was smiling. There was a motel sprawl building around them, and the density of Waffle Houses increased, which maybe meant they were approaching Jackson. “Your nose kind of looks like Jon Stewart’s,” Brooklyn said. “Your eyes, too. Although his hair’s a lot more gray.”
“Oh,” Barry said. “Wow. Thank you.”
“It’s nice that you think about my work and all,” she said. “My father always tells me to look for boys who are into my mind.”
“I am all about that,” Barry said. “Every woman I’ve dated has been super smart.”
Brooklyn stared into his eyes. She traced his lips with her index finger. “And you know what else?” he said after she had taken her finger off his lips. “I also came from a place where people didn’t value ambition. But I got out.”
“You left your family?”
“It was just my dad. And it wasn’t a healthy relationship.”
“Guess I’m just looking for a good reason to leave, too,” she said. “But I got my sister and stuff. She needs looking out for.”
When they got into the station, Fam-Man ran off the bus without glancing their way. It was getting close to ten. The driver had turned on the lights. Barry and Brooklyn blinked at each other awkwardly. She used the screen of her iPhone to fix up her face a little. He had unplugged her phone cord and helped take down her Puma duffel bag. They waited for their luggage to emerge from the hold of the bus, his rollerboard full of watches and Shiva’s rabbit toy and her other two very large duffel bags, one a Puma, the other colored like a leopard. “So where do you recommend I spend the night?” Barry asked.
“Oh, that’s easy! The Marriott. It’s a five-minute walk from here.”
He had been prepping this thing he was going to say to her and he prayed it wasn’t a deal breaker. “My wallet was stolen in Atlanta,” he said. “So all I’ve got is cash. And I’m guessing you need a credit card to check in to a nice place like the Marriott.” He wanted to show her that he thought well of her job. “I’m good for it, I swear.”
Brooklyn reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll fix you up,” she said. “Stop worrying.”
Barry somehow managed to carry all three of her duffel bags and roll his own luggage to the hotel. He wasn’t doing so badly for a forty-three-year-old, even though he hadn’t exercised in forever. An early night fog circulated around the empty corners of the old city, feeling noirish, like those Hopper paintings Seema had forced him to look at during a recent supposedly romantic cultural weekend for just the two of them. Jackson made no sense, as if its urban planners and architects had just rolled the dice over and over. Ugly office buildings ran into old art deco jewels. Most of the population must have retreated to the suburbs or wherever they lived when the sun went down, but tiny pockets of habitation still thrummed here and there, a lone nightclub, the sounds of jazz from a hotel lobby. White seniors peeked out of a neon-lit window of a restaurant, examining Barry and Brooklyn with curiosity bordering on concern. Just how unusual was it for them to see a tall older Jew and a pretty black woman walking down the street together in the night? The Mississippi flags outside the state office buildings bore the Confederate emblem in their upper-left corners. Brooklyn’s phone rang again. “Hey, Coach, so I’m going out with some friends tonight. I might be late or I might just stay over.”
Barry couldn’t believe where this was headed. He didn’t even have to make a long pitch like when he was a kid, or his first time with Seema. But how could he reconcile the need to both touch Brooklyn and mentor her? And how much experience had she had with boys her age? Could he satisfy her?
The Marriott was an ice pick stabbed into the heart of the city. Black people in suit and tie were serving underdressed white people in the hotel’s lobby. Brooklyn ran behind the front desk, where an older bespectacled lady, not unlike Layla’s mother in her dress and composure, was talking into the phone. She returned with a room key and her leopard bag. “You’re amazing,” Barry said. “I’ll settle up tomorrow.”
“Ta-da!” Brooklyn said when she opened the door to their room. There was free bottled water, he made a note of that, and when he pulled open the curtains he saw the monumentally lit outline of the capitol dome, which was a huge affair for a state so small and poor. Could he live here? Could he start again? He had an erection. He put his arms around Brooklyn, felt her heat. “Baby, let’s order room service before it stops at eleven,” she said. He pressed her into his groin, but she pushed him away with a smile and handed him a menu off the nightstand. “Bus makes me hungry,” she said. “Get the buffalo wings hot with the blue cheese and ranch dressings so we can mix and match. And the shrimp cocktail and two Lazy Magnolias.” The food came right away, and it was sixty dollars. How the hell was Barry going to afford that on top of the room charge?
They sat cross-legged on one of the beds, eating quickly and silently. Brooklyn had set the TV to a show called House Hunters. She licked her fingers after every wing. He started kissing her again as soon as they were done. “Let me brush my teeth, honey,” she said.
When she came back from the bathroom, she took off her top and exposed a very simple white cotton bra. Her skin was cut through with beginner’s cellulite, especially at the stretch of her breasts. He loved all of it, even the tattoo of a rose above her right hip bone and the word BLESSED above the left. This was his last chance. He could turn back now. Leave the story untold. Open the possibility of something bigger, more beautiful. Imagine if he had become Seema’s friend instead of her lover and husband. Imagine how much easier his life would be now.
But it was no use. He grabbed her hard and pressed himself against her. “Oh God,” he said.
He wanted to go down on her, but she wouldn’t let him. “Let’s try it like this,” she said. She took his hand and parked it safely in her wetness, while taking gentle hold of him. Nobody really had actual sex anymore since the Internet, but it was fine. They kissed each other a lot and he tried to let his fingers slide inside all of her. “Easy, easy,” she said at times, showing him how, as if this were his first time. She tasted entirely of toothpaste, and, after they got established, the sounds she made were sweet and kind, as if Barry was responsible for all of her happiness. Barry came in long operatic arcs, but Brooklyn merely shuddered to a stop.
He was dizzy with love. He wanted to celebrate the moment some more, to share all of himself with Brooklyn. He walked over to his suitcase and took out the watch winders and the manual watches.
“You didn’t tell me you were a watch salesman!” Brooklyn said.
Barry smiled. “No, no,” he said. “I work in finance. I just love watches and I took a bunch of them on the road with me.”
Brooklyn scooted over to the luggage. The fact that a stunning young woman with bare genitalia was examining his watches was probably the best thing that had ever ha
ppened to Barry. Every clock in the Swiss Alps was ringing for him. He wished he could post this photo on WatchSavant, his favorite watch website, but of course they had standards and practices. “I love this one,” Brooklyn said, holding the glowing shape of the F.P. Journe, arguably the most attractive of Barry’s watches. “Are you saving up for a Rolex?” she asked.
Barry laughed. But it still kind of hurt. He could correct her, point out that the F.P. Journe and the Patek cost at least three times the average new Rolex. He wanted her to respect him. “This watch retails for thirty thousand,” he said.
“There are neighborhoods in Jackson where you can buy like a house for that much,” she said. Her tone wasn’t accusative. “Oh, my gosh, look at this!” She pulled out Shiva’s rabbit-in-the-box and turned the crank. The happy song of Peter Cottontail filled the room. The rabbit popped out of his metal home holding the orange carrot before him. “Cute!” Brooklyn said.
Barry was confused. When she stuffed the rabbit back and turned the crank again, he felt himself getting angry. “That’s not for you,” he said. “It’s a toy.”
Brooklyn looked back at him, her copper eyes worried.
“It’s just that you might break it.” She dutifully put the rabbit away in his luggage between the Patek in white gold and the passport made out in Bernard Conte’s name. She pulled on her panties. “I’m sorry,” Barry said. “Thing is I’m divorced, but I have a son. And I was going to give that to him one day. Or send it to him.”
“You must miss him, being on the road and all,” Brooklyn said. Barry lay down on the bed and motioned for her to come near him. She lay down and he put her head on his chest. He stroked her crinkly blond hair and made figure eights in the luster of her left shoulder.
Barry remembered her saying she might want to work in real estate. She also said she didn’t want to leave her family. What if, after This Side of Capital imploded, he would start a new fund with her as his chief of staff? Starting a fund in Mississippi would be so counterintuitive, the press alone would be incredible. He pictured a photo in the Journal, maybe him and Brooklyn standing outside a grand old town house beneath a magnolia, the sign reading ABSALOM INVESTMENTS. And they could do his Urban Watch Fund on the side.
Lake Success Page 20