The Coming Storm

by Paul Russell

  He hadn’t come straight home as he’d promised the cop. Leaving the park, he’d wandered till he found a diner on Lexington where he could warm up and refuel with a cup of acid, unconsoling coffee; then he’d resumed his search, this time on city streets, though he knew if Betsy had left the park she’d be dead by now, run down as she blithely crossed the street.

  Betsy, he called out inwardly, as if imploring the row of serene antique Buddhas that gazed at him from their perches on the wall. But of course there was no answer. The Buddhas, who knew where Betsy was, who knew everything and weren’t telling, smiled their enigmatic smiles.

  He needed desperately to eat; he would make himself breakfast. He would crash in his bed for a few hours. Then he would try to figure out what to do next.

  And who knew? Maybe the cop was right, maybe Betsy would turn up at his dad’s building, only he suddenly realized, with a sick feeling, that that was impossible; she’d never been to his dad’s building. He was so stupid, so stupid. He didn’t deserve to live.

  In the kitchen, the green marble countertop was a thicket of empty wine and Stolichnaya bottles. A bowl holding traces of inky Beluga floated in a larger bowl of melted ice. Caviar and cocaine and Stoli. His dad must have been in a pretty good mood. Once long ago—he was five or six—his mom had come into his bedroom and awakened him from sleep. “Come,” she’d said, and taken him by the hand. A reception was under way. There were dozens of adults standing in groups, talking and laughing and, as always, drinking. On the dining room table a great crystalline bird had alighted. “A firebird,” his mom whispered, “carved out of ice.” He’d never beheld anything so beautiful. Its glassy neck arched; its translucent wings were poised for magnificent flight. A black mound of beady caviar filled the hollow in its back, and he was allowed a taste from a tiny spoon.

  In the morning it was gone—and not too many months later, his mother as well.

  The refrigerator held bacon, eggs, orange juice, the kind of breakfast his dad loved. Missing Tracy Parker acutely, Noah searched the cabinets for oatmeal, granola, but found only a box of Lucky Charms left over, presumably, from the summer—before Tracy Parker, when he’d actually eaten such rubbish. But now Lucky Charms, with all their evil sugar, would just have to do. He had just begun to pour the cereal into a bowl when he suddenly sensed he was being watched.

  His father stood, arms crossed, in the doorway. He wore a white bathrobe open down his broad, furry chest. His face was dark with stubble.

  “You don’t just walk in,” Noah Senior said in the flat, neutral tone Noah most feared. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Having breakfast,” Noah said.

  “I don’t mean that,” his dad told him.

  He hadn’t planned what he was going to say; he’d intended to sleep and then work something out. He didn’t have the presence of mind, as he so often did, to formulate a reasonable lie.

  “I’m in a lot of trouble,” he blurted out.

  Noah Senior said nothing. He walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of beer, popped the cap off with an opener, then took a long, long swallow.

  “I lost my teacher’s dog,” Noah said.

  Noah Senior took the bottle from his lips and looked at him blankly.

  “I’m fucked,” Noah went on. “I got mad about some stuff. I sort of lost my head. I thought I had to get away from all the shit up at school, so Betsy and I hopped a train down here—”

  “Who the fuck is Betsy?” his dad asked in that same flat voice. He had the terrible post-coke look in his eyes, half wild, half dead. A couple of beers in the morning usually worked wonders for him.

  “Tracy Parker’s dog,” Noah said.

  “She ‘came down’ with you,” his dad said mercilessly. Coke, or at least its aftereffects, made him hyperprecise.

  “I mean, I brought her down,” Noah corrected himself. “I made her come with me. And then, I don’t know. She was on a leash and, I don’t know, she just got loose and ran away. I looked everywhere. I couldn’t find her. It was in Central Park. I don’t know what to do.”

  He refused to cry in front of his dad, but a tear nonetheless spilled down his cheek.

  Noah Senior paid no heed. With another long swig he finished his beer. “When did all this happen?”

  “Right now. I mean, like, two or three hours ago.”

  Noah Senior set his empty beer bottle down carefully on the counter. He was never hungover the next morning, but he could be very careful in his movements for a few hours.

  “What on earth were you doing in Central Park?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know,” Noah told him, with at least a degree of candor.

  “Noah,” said his dad. “What do you mean you don’t know? What the hell is really going on with you?”

  As if to betray him with the truth, Noah’s hungry stomach growled, a long low rumble that filled the silence.

  “I just don’t know what’s going on,” he repeated clumsily. “I’m starving, Dad. Can I eat?”

  “Talk to me,” Noah Senior commanded sharply. “I don’t want bullshit. I don’t have time for it. Tell me the truth here.”

  Could he honestly say he didn’t have a clue what the truth was, or even where the lies should begin? He occurred to him that, if he wanted, he could hurt Tracy Parker. He could destroy him. Make all hell break loose.

  “There’s this teacher,” he said as his dad reached into the fridge for another beer.

  “This had better not be another Mr. Brookner story,” Noah Senior said ominously.

  “No,” he said in hasty retreat. “It’s nothing like that.” But the accusation hit him like a body blow. It was the Mr. Brookner story all over again, wasn’t it? How could he have failed to realize such a simple, obvious thing? He had no power over Tracy Parker at all. Whatever power he had had already been used up a long time ago. “If I could just start over somewhere new,” he’d told his counselor. And moving to a new school actually had made a difference for a while. He’d worked very hard to fit in, so hard that he’d managed to convince himself he’d never written those stories about his teacher, that his stupid spying roommate had never found them, that Mr. Brookner had never had to see any of those embarrassing fantasies scrawled in a script he was already quite familiar with. He had really come to believe, after a year and a half, that the boy who had gotten caught red-handed in a scandal so minor but so personally devastating that he still burned to think of it—that that boy was someone completely unrelated to Noah Lathrop III.

  “Then what is it about this teacher?” Noah Senior drilled him.

  “I was friends with him, Dad. He was helping me. I think I fucked everything up.”

  “Helping you, how?”

  “With everything. My schoolwork. My self-esteem.” Once again his stomach complained, a sound like a low moan. For a single moment there he had wanted revenge, but now, thwarted, a strange loyalty kicked in. Whatever happened, he wasn’t going to let Tracy Parker take the shit when it had all been his fault they were in this mess in the first place. He wasn’t going to be the little faggot, he had told himself; he wasn’t going to write stupid sex stories like that anymore. He was going to squelch those ghosts dead away.

  Now here he was all over again.

  “I don’t like this, Noah. You’re not telling me everything.”

  “I am,” Noah pleaded. “I took Tracy Parker’s dog and the dog ran away. Aren’t you listening to me?”

  Noah Senior reached in the fridge and took out a third beer. “I don’t have time for this,” he said disgustedly. “When am I going to stop picking up the pieces for you, Noah? I’m sick of picking up the pieces.”

  It left Noah with nothing to say.

  “You want to know what I think sometimes?” his dad went on, even as Noah struggled to consider the possibility that what his dad said was true, that despite everything he thought, he actually did rely on his dad again and again to do exactly that: to pick up the pieces of w
hatever it was he’d broken this time. “I think you’re your mother’s fucking revenge on me,” Noah Senior said fiercely. “Everything she did was a royal fuckup. Sound familiar? And she never could understand why somebody like me didn’t have the time for that. But I’ll tell you why I didn’t. I know I have my faults. My worst? I’m impatient. I’m ruthless in the pursuit of my goals. I do not brook fools or idiots. See, I don’t think people like you or your mother understand me at all. I don’t think you’ve ever taken the trouble to. You’re too busy living off the things you claim to despise about me. I work hard to make the money I’ve made. I don’t sit around on my ass. I work hard and I play hard, and I do not apologize. Have you ever seen me hungover? Even once?

  “You don’t know half the things I do. You can’t even seem to fucking remember the name of the country I have perhaps unwisely invested a quarter of my capital in. You don’t bother to know that I am not just the capitalist exploiter it’s so convenient for you to see me as. Who do you think is paying for the restoration of the Golden Mosque? Who donates thousands of dollars in medical supplies to the children’s hospital in Bukhara? Who supports practically a harem of ex-wives and girlfriends? I do those things.” He jabbed himself in the breastbone with his pointer finger and continued to jab. “Who has sent you to the best schools? Paid for the best fucking therapists on the block? Who took you to London and you spent the whole time sitting in the hotel moping? Like I said, I’m a busy man and an impatient man. I’m a haunted man, Noah. The Lathrops are not long-lived. Maybe you should think about that. We drop dead around age sixty. I don’t have time in my life to put up with bullshit, my own or anyone else’s. And neither should you.”

  His dad spoke passionately but not angrily. By the end his voice was calm, even mild. “Some people matter, Noah, and other people don’t. I think, in this life, you choose whether you matter or not, and it’s up to you and you alone. I know you think I’m a hard man. Well, guess what, Noah: it’s a hard world. It’s a world that knocks you down and then kicks you a couple times when you’re down for good measure, and as soon as you pull yourself back up, be prepared for one thing: The world can’t wait to kick your teeth in all over again.”

  He’d finished his third beer, and set the bottle on the counter beside the two other empties. He took a deep, defiant breath. After an uncompromising night, Noah Senior was up and running.

  “Now,” he said. “I’ll shower and put on some clothes. We’ll rouse Gunila and A. J.—you didn’t peek in your room, by any chance? I think you’ll find our friend passed out on your bed. The world was spinning a little fast last night. You make yourself some breakfast before that stomach of yours declares civil war. Then let’s go find that fucking dog. What’s its name? Betsy? What a stupid fucking-ass name for a dog.”

  It was the last thing he’d expected: that his dad would marshal the troops like this on a frigid Saturday morning to rescue his ass once again. But then he grudgingly had to admit that his dad had a flair for the unexpected.

  “If you think she’s still in the park, then the park’s where we look,” said the perfectly sober man. “We’ll start where you lost her.”

  There was of course no reason for Betsy to stay in the park; it was only Noah’s hunch. But she knew nothing of cities, he reasoned, only the bucolic grounds of the Forge School, and so he hoped she would stick with what she knew. What he knew, on the other hand, and with a dark clot in his heart, was what an adventurous little dog she was, capable of anything.

  With some trepidation he steered them as best he could to the Ramble. If his dad was aware of the significance of a boy—or anyone else—wandering that territory alone after dark, he made no mention of it. But then maybe he already knew everything and no longer cared. Maybe, ever since Mr. Brookner, he had known, and Noah, the little faggot, had only been pretending to himself there too.

  “If I see one beagle I’ll see a pack,” A. J. announced. He carried a silver flask of bourbon to ward off the morning’s demons. Gunila, as always, seemed icily imperturbable. As far as Noah could tell, a firebird of ice herself, she did not begrudge his dad’s nocturnal excesses, but neither did she partake beyond her capacity—probably not a bad sign for marriage number three. The Stolichnaya Spokesperson to the World was not one to let herself get too swept away by anything, even Noah Benjamin Lathrop II.

  The beauty of women never, as a rule, haunted Noah, but this morning Gunila, dressed in tight black ski pants and black leather jacket against which her platinum hair shown dazzlingly, seemed strangely possessed of an uncomplicated, straightforward beauty. Not for the first time he found himself wildly desiring to desire her. What was there, after all, for somebody like him? He could go straight—fat chance, ha ha—he could heroically fall in love with the man of his dreams, only to be shunted aside at the first sign of inconvenience; he could get AIDS and leave early through that door. What was he supposed to do? Proclaim to Gary and Tim and Kevin and the rest of the Forge’s pathetic band, “Hey, you know the Fatwa? Well, I’m a Fatwa too. And I limbo dance. So watch out”?

  Under the metallic gray morning sky halfheartedly spitting snow, the park showed an altogether different aspect. Gone was the dark side he had so disastrously courted. Joggers were out, their uniforms flashing incandescent. Luckier people than he leisurely walked their dogs on a leash, and he went up to them disconsolately to ask had they seen a stray beagle, had such a creature come nosing around their own dogs seeking comfort or play? But no one had seen a thing. Stalwart on their benches or reclusive in the underbrush, the homeless, the drunk, the derelict, slept on, oblivious. From time to time his dad stopped to shake one of them awake, wave a ten-dollar bill for encouragement, but again, no one had seen a thing.

  They trooped up the park as far as the museum and then back down, fanning out and regrouping like those flocks of pigeons that flew off in a great agitation at their approach only to settle back in once they had passed.

  That he had done what he had done to Betsy was unforgivable. He had not, had not, had not, he told himself, done it out of malice or ill will. He had done it like he did everything in life: because he was addle-brained, because he hadn’t been taking his Ritalin, because he got frustrated so easily, upset when he didn’t get his way, because even under the best of circumstances he was not to be trusted.

  At every trafficked cross street his eyes squeamishly searched the gutters. Once, a brown form lying in the middle of Seventy-second, where it cut through the park south of the lake, made his heart stop, but when he ventured closer it turned out to be nothing more than a discarded half-full garbage bag.

  “Betsy, Betsy,” echoed the call in A. J.’s capacious South Carolina slur and Gunila’s Swedish lilt, voices without the audible anxiety of his own. His dad cupped his hands together and shouted with an authority sure to make every Betsy within range, whether animal or human, come running.

  But it was all to no avail, and by midmorning, tired and cold and disheartened, they decided to call off the search.

  XVII

  Nothing, it seemed, was too cruel or disheartening for the mellifluous newsreader from the BBC. “In Sarajevo today,” he reported urbanely, “the exodus of Serbs from their homes continued, despite UN assurances that they would be treated fairly after the Muslim-dominated government takes control. Caravans of trucks and overloaded automobiles clog the icy roads from Vogosca to Pale. Some Serbs have reportedly vandalized or set fire to their homes before beginning the trek—” Switching off the little shortwave radio, a Christmas gift from Claire, Louis resumed his fastidious slicing of a kiwi. He supposed the news should please him. The tide had turned; now the Serbs, who had caused so much suffering, were themselves suffering. But it gave him no pleasure. Indeed, it only confirmed his secret fear: Life was war, nothing more or less. Morality was a farce, compassion a luxury. The less-powerful struggled to overthrow the more-powerful; the more-powerful fought desperately to cling to what was theirs.

  He had been thinking, b
oth last night and this morning, about Jack Emmerich—thoughts no doubt provoked by the sight of Noah Lathrop standing in the snow, holding Tracy Parker’s little beagle on its leash as angry sparks darted from the chimney of Jack’s old house. So he had been lied to. Tracy Parker had betrayed him, as Jack Emmerich had betrayed him. Once again everything came together uncannily, as if one’s secret fears proved to be the very structure of the world itself, its pattern, its inevitability.

  Was one drawn to such recurrences, or did one, in one’s way, engineer them? A midwinter afternoon, luminous with a sudden snow flurry bursting from the peach-colored sky; Main Street, outside the Heidelberg; the headmaster, a charismatic visionary to whom one had devoted oneself with unflagging allegiance for twenty years; a student whom one knew as well, knew quite well, in fact, having spent any number of evenings in his company during the last six months, enchanted by Wagner, conversation, even—in those long ago, less strict days—a sip of wine. One presumed headmaster and student had been enjoying a late lunch off campus, hardly a sin but nonetheless an exception; by sheer accident one had emerged from the stationer’s store across the street, unseen but nonetheless seeing an affectionate touch that lingered half an instant too long and could easily have been nothing more than a trick of the changeable light. But instinctively, against all reason, one suddenly knew. And then a month later a distraught Arthur Branson was in one’s office and everything—the grand adventure gone mad, the threats and coercion, a great man unhinged by passion’s darker currents—spilled into plain view, never again to be unseen.

  Had Jack been guilty of such abuse before? There had always been stray rumors about goings-on at the farm, easily discounted at the time as envy, overheated imaginings—absurd stuff, really. He could see now how, in a sense, all Jack’s affections had been dubious, whether for Stefan George and other things German, or for Arthur Branson, or all the sundry infatuations in between. Jack had been a master of many things great and small. He had been superb. Only with Arthur something had gone terribly wrong, and to this day Louis could still not account for it, except that in such relationships it was surely inevitable, was it not, that something—even everything—go terribly wrong?