Ian entered Essex Street with a light rain falling. Dark storefronts stood locked with corrugated metal blocking their entry. Lamplight skittered from newly formed puddles to the side mirrors of parked cars. Long-legged women crossed the sidewalk in front of him teetering from shadow to shadow. At the end of a block he turned right into an alley and walked down an aisle of wet pavement, lightly strewn garbage, random windows pouring vague, sooty light down from above. He glanced back behind him at the street and the pale neon in the distance marking more-ordinary pastimes. Then he walked up some low wooden stairs and pushed open a door and entered.
A seething crowd had gathered within. As if the vast structure had been erected around them to contain the hunger and yearning of this motley assemblage, like a meeting place of worshippers on an isolated prairie, waiting for their designated minister to appear. A zinc bar behind which bottles glowed with elixirs and from which drinks ushered forth in antique glasses frothing, bubbles gyrating, pale melon-colored concoctions tilting in front of dark-green-painted walls, lifted by ringed fingers attached to bodies seated on tattered velvet banquettes.
He made his way past the bar through the first crowds to an area of tables set for dining in front of a low stage, curtained and lit with footlights. Handsome men in rippling silk shirts fetched bottles and racks of glasses steaming from the kitchen, platters of hot utensils. Waitresses slid in between the tables placing candles and programs of the night’s festivities. They wore stained pink silk bustiers and garish blue-and-yellow stockings, red-and-gold leather high-heeled shoes, and they drifted through the dusty haze like strings of colored holiday lights come to life, fairy-tale apparitions, both charming and decadent, lewd. He had given his name to the maître d’ and was being seated at a table near the stage.
Watching him across the clouds of smoky light in the yellow atmosphere was Jonathan.
He caught Ian’s eye and wound his way among the tables and pulled out a chair. He carried a premium whiskey and set it down. He lifted the glass and drank before he spoke. Then he said to a waiter, He’s drinking too. Same thing.
Music played. A band in the pit, riffing a slow, grinding Dixieland melody mixed with an alternative moan, a groaning from an organ, and an electric fiddle.
Ian and Jonathan clinked glasses.
I’m glad you called. Here’s to your impending fatherhood. Congrats, said Ian.
Jonathan downed his drink and thanked him. You should see Miranda. She is fucking glowing.
That’s nice, Ian mustered.
Yeah, fatherhood, he said, looking into Ian’s eyes for a moment and then at the stage.
Yes, well, I wouldn’t know much about it.
Maybe you should, said Jonathan, still looking away.
Ian knew that Steve had told him everything.
And after a tense silence:
Am I here to be judged? said Ian, noticing the shot of whiskey kicking in. Because I feel like shit—actually much worse than that—already. You couldn’t possibly say anything to me that makes me feel more guilt ridden and sick than I already do. But in case you’ve forgotten I didn’t know about any of it at the time. And it’s your father who doesn’t want me to have anything to do with her. So don’t go assassinating my character.
Hey, said Jonathan. Fine.
A long silence between them filled by the first part of the show, circus performers in vaudevillian burlesque, avant-garde strippers, explicit tableaux, an MC in a G-string with a staccato voice that ricocheted from every corner of the space like gunfire. Colored lights filtered the action and bathed it in oranges and violets, wild orchids, and techno greens. Dancers kicked, comedians mugged. The first of several intermissions came. Ian gathered the courage to ask Jonathan about Poppy.
How is she doing?
Jonathan’s face acquired a look of concern and brotherly knowledge. She seems good, he said. Almost finished with high school. We weren’t sure she’d really make it, he went on, downing another shot, but it looks like she’ll get the diploma, he said.
How about her state of mind? Ian ventured.
I’m not so expert in that area, Jonathan answered, smiling broadly and looking down, the creases around his mouth angular and sexy, knowing and oblivious. As you may have noticed, he continued. But she seems okay to me. Looks gorgeous as always, a little skinny maybe, I guess. A little goth these days but nothing too scary. She’s quieter, thank God.
Quieter?
Yeah. Not always broadcasting her opinions and criticisms. Keeps to herself. In her room a lot. And gone a lot, I hear from Patrizia. Out at night, you know, the normal high-school sullen act.
Sullen? That doesn’t really sound like her.
What is this? Paternal concern? Jonathan lifted his hand and raised his eyebrows to get a waitress’s attention.
Ian felt an anger swirling amid his inebriation. A new cocktail. The mixology of emotions.
Yes, he said, maybe it is.
The lights went off. Abruptly. The curtain rose. Another round of parading bodies, a bawdy sketch involving a dancing bear and a girl grinding an organ, a cowboy entering and shooting the bear. Blood, damage, the wailing girl. A psycho western. The bear gets up, bloodied, and keeps dancing. It never falls. The entire cast emerges, carrying pistols, the group whips and lunges in a suggestive and macabre choreography. The crowd has advanced from ceremonial to ecstatic.
—
Beside Ian and Jonathan sit two overflowing tables, one filled with Russians, the other a group of Indians, Ian thinks. Mostly men in fine suits, a few women in sheer dresses made of silk tissue, fiery sequins, threaded nothingness. They are all whooping and crying out, grinning, gesturing, their faces composed in shadowy oil-painted portraits, hung at varying levels in this moving gallery of dusty light. When the curtain falls again the patriarch at the table of Indians and the patriarch at the table of Russians are engaged in some kind of unnatural ancient ritual. There stand against the wall in a great glass display case bottles of the world’s most expensive champagnes. Salmanazars, jeroboams, containing liters and liters of liquid worth tens of thousands, more.
—
First the Russian ordered one of the most expensive bottles. The lights went up, flashing. A drumroll. Waiters carried the bottle and glasses on a silver tray. Spectators stood. The Indians at the table bowed to the Russian, as he uncorked the bottle and let it flow freely to the outstretched flutes, spilling over diamond-braceleted wrists, foaming over the tablecloth, dripping down men’s chins. This continued. The Indian purchased the next-most-expensive bottle. Again: the lights, the music, the drumroll, the silver platter. Now the Indian patriarch uncorked the bottle and walked the outer perimeter of the table, pouring the liquid directly into his supplicants’ mouths. It rolled down their faces like tears. Candles sputtered on the linen. Guttural swallows and raucous swoons. The Russians applauded. The Russian patriarch summoned the maître d’ and whispered to him. The maître d’ rushed through a door. Moments later, the proprietor came out, a well-groomed man in his thirties, and shook the hand of the Russian, congratulating him on purchasing the most expensive bottle in the establishment: $70,000. Lights flashed in strobing exultation. The band unleashed a wail and the drummer ripped. The entire staff emerged, following the bottle, which was too large for a platter, which was carried by three shirtless waiters like a body, sacrificial, their bare muscular arms stretched upward, over the heads of patrons, stiffly straight, Egyptian, carved in stone. The curtain rose, dancers flung themselves around the stage, the men offered the bottle to the Russian, and he gestured for them to shake it, all three of them, with himself at the helm. They shook the bottle. They continued to shake. And then he uncorked it and it burst open and the spume curved like a geyser and bathed the heads of his progeny in a waterfall of froth, like some monster disgorging an ocean, a swallowed kingdom thrown up into the sky, pluming, falling down in an aurora borealis of raining excess. The Indian—or where was he from? Ian couldn’t tell anymore, his mind was
a cave and he wandered through it with a lantern and torch, searching for a point of light to guide him—the patriarch from the other table, took off his jacket. Took off his tie. Stepped away from his chair and walked over to the Russian. He bowed to him and knelt down before him. The Russian lifted the bottle and poured the last drops of liquid onto the head of the kneeling and proudly defeated man. The game was over.
—
Walking home, leaving the scene of such supernatural decadence, he is grateful for the normal shrieking of revelers out on the streets and the sharp horns that ring out now and then in the hot night air. He welcomes their piercing, cutting through his thoughts. As if against his will he sees the horrors of his evening, and his thoughts travel instantly to Poppy. How can she grow in a world like this? It is impossible for him not to worry about her. It felt necessary to consider her present, and even more her future: how would she possibly make her way? If he considered these ideas too deeply he felt ashamed, as if he even had any right to care about her, and tormented by his ignorance and irresponsibility.
—
Four in the morning and Ian veers unthinkingly when he enters the lobby and finds himself in front of the elevator that leads to Alix’s side of the building. He presses the button for her floor. Why he’s there at that hour she doesn’t know, he doesn’t know, but she grants him succor, lets him slump on her couch, offers tea.
By 4:40 he had told her everything. A long rambling confession and then a series of questions and answers. She got up and refilled her mug. A weak navy light out the windows. What are you thinking? he said. She didn’t reply. She finished her tea and left the cup on the counter. She went into the bathroom and turned on the water. Steam began to mist up the mirror. She closed the door and took off her clothes and stepped into the hot water, as hot as she could bear it. He was knocking on the door, saying, What is happening? What are you doing?
I’m taking a shower, she called out.
Why? he said.
Because after what you’ve told me I need to take a very long, very hot shower.
—
While he sat on the couch he remembered Poppy sitting on his couch. So fragile and so alive.
—
They talked as the day rose. He tried to remember every detail of his relationship with Poppy, his motivations, his feelings, what she’d said, what they’d seen. He was back to telling Alix about his adventures, only this wasn’t any adventure; it was some compressed version of a lifetime, a journey, an ascent, a descent, a horror, a moral awakening. Sometimes she asked him questions about his relationship with Poppy that were impossible to answer. I didn’t know myself then, he explained. But I love her differently now, this he could say truthfully. Alix had her own opinions. How he must have known, subconsciously, who Poppy was. Alix was hurt. Ian tried to keep the conversation calm but his heart was not calm. Neither was hers.
—
No past. No present. The future the only thing that mattered. Poppy’s future. There was no future for him except hers. Love is not romantic. It is savage, dramatic, mundane, unfair. The purest love he’d felt was this love. He was in pain but it was not suffering. It was the grief of real love. He listened to Alix talking but in his heart he spoke to Poppy: I love you. I’m so sorry. I will do everything I can for you. I will find a way to take care of you.
—
He thought about the picture Poppy had slashed and put in the plastic Baggie and thought that he should have kept the shreds and tried to keep her, keep in contact with her, but he didn’t know how. He voiced her name out loud in his mind.
—
When Alix was finished talking he said, I’m sorry.
It’s okay, Alix said. You didn’t know.
Should I leave?
Where will you go?
To the theater. I have a tech rehearsal. We open next week.
I wish this were a rehearsal and we could change the story, Alix said. I wish I could change all of it: no me, no Diana. That you’d never met Diana but that there was a Poppy for you—at least a decade older, of course—and it was all okay.
He didn’t say anything. He looked at her tensed face, the softest lines around her mouth, her dry hair, her familiar eyes.
You mean you wish that you never existed? This never existed? Our friendship?
Then you wouldn’t have met Diana.
I might have.
But I introduced you, she was my aunt, I got you into her class. And you became close to her by hanging around with me.
He leaned his head back.
Alix, that’s called life. This could have happened a million ways. It’s not your fault. You’re the last person whose fault this is.
That’s all true. But I still feel guilty.
Don’t. Hate me but don’t hate yourself.
That would be a change.
Please, try.
I don’t think I can manage it. I actually hate myself more now than ever. And you, I hate you too, she said looking up quickly from downcast eyes. I hate both of us. I hate us both so much that I want to die, she whispered.
He was quiet for a while.
Don’t say that, he said.
I can’t change.
We have to.
How do we change? she said.
I don’t know, he said.
I think you do, she said. I think maybe you already have.
—
After he left she stood for a long time in the kitchen. Boiling water, watching the flame, pouring the tea, breathing the steam. A ceremony. Fire and water. The elements. She was like a creature emerging from hibernation, hungry for the simple things. It was a blue spring day, sun piercing the window, reaching out to her. Why was she even drinking hot tea? Because she was cold, always cold. Even on this summer morning of shocking yet everyday beauty—the trees on the roof terrace of the building across the street swaying, touching the cerulean like paintbrushes making loveliness come alive—she wanted fire, steam, heat. Would she always, always feel cold? Ian’s love for Poppy, illicit, unnatural, hit her as a betrayal. A chill in her bones like a wind rattling the frame of her being. An unlit candle behind her eyes. She turned on the oven thinking that she might cook something but knowing perfectly well that she would not.
A minor vibration. An invitation. A valve. The oven waiting. Her watching. Watching herself, mortified.
33
PATRIZIA RECEIVED the call from Poppy while at the reproductive endocrinologist’s office. She was having some blood work done. Checking hormones. She answered the phone with one hand while the other stuck out to the side, arm straight on the armrest, tourniquet tightened, bright red filling the tube like fresh paint being poured. She listened only half attentively, part of her watching the nature program playing on the far wall across the room, baby penguins, baby elephants, baby lions, a part of her focusing on her breath to take her mind off of the puncture, part of her noticing the slight bump in the abdomen of the nurse and wondering if the nurse was pregnant and then part of her managing her jealousy, her sinking hopes, her calculation of how old the nurse must be—probably thirty tops—and then silently wishing her luck while not knowing, really, if the nurse was actually pregnant. All this transpired while she listened to Poppy haltingly explain that she would be spending the night, and probably the weekend, at her friend’s house and that’s where she’d been yesterday and she was so sorry she hadn’t called but only e-mailed earlier to explain.
Which friend? Patrizia asked, with vigor. She was trying to assume a more disciplinarian demeanor after having completely overlooked last night’s indiscretion.
Jas…Jasmine, Poppy said. Jasmine Carpenter.
Carpenter? Who’s that?
She’s new this year. She’s been over to the house but I don’t think you’ve met her.
Where does she live?
In Brooklyn. Far.
What neighborhood? Patrizia asked, rolling her sleeve back down.
Yeah, she’s new, Poppy said. She’s brilli
ant. A math genius. I’ve got to go. I have a class.
Poppy, I asked you what neighborhood.
Patrizia was ushered into a dimly lit examination room. As the door closed and she prepared to undress from the waist down and put her feet in the stirrups for a sonogram, she said: Text me later with Jasmine’s number. Steve will want to know where you are. Poppy, will you please remember to do that?
—
They’d already made Poppy end the call and taken back her phone.
—
She forgets how she got here. Already the elevated subway ride, the burning fires on the plains, are less than a memory, have receded into irretrievable negative space. She forgets how she got from the station to this corpse of a house, its innards in ruins, wires falling, swinging from the ceiling, boards loose, a black mold metastasizing along the wall. That the world goes on in a place like this is incomprehensible. Then it isn’t. It is more than possible. Now she knows a new pain, can’t tell if it is a return of many old pains or something actually new, but it seems new, a never-before-experienced desire to die purely as a way out.
—
If Steve were here he would see his empire—so crafted, so controlled—attacked at its most damaging and personally hurtful point. A sleek animal shot in its soft eye.
—
A man reaches out in the dark and takes hold of her hair and grabs her as if she were on a leash. He walks her into the middle of the black space and swings her down on a damp mat. Several bodies have materialized in the room. One kneels behind her with his knees pressing on her hair and tightening around her head. Another’s eyes dart and swim in the gloom like round white fish as he grabs one arm and a leg. Another looms, towering, and spits out that they are not going to do anything to her now, as if this were not doing anything. She screams until someone covers her mouth. She bites the hand. It flies off for a moment and in that instant they smash something against her tongue, far back, toward her throat, cover her lips again, and tell her to swallow. The men’s voices have been rising and rising in crude excitement until they seemed not human but beings made of lava, corrugated metal, and dried blood. An unruly race of degenerates. Clubs dangling off their joints instead of limbs. Wretched wolves as big as ragged bears but not animal, instead mechanical. Their movements as if programmed by the sickest hack. Wild robots, abducted from the living, stripped of feeling and turned against life.
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