The shopkeeper is engaged with a customer when Larry enters. The old man’s beard may be longer, his paunch somewhat fuller, but he is otherwise unchanged. A spitting image of his own facsimile, down to the rolled shirt sleeves and the pencil tucked behind his ear. Only now he appears excited. His leathery skin has suffused to a deep vermillion and he is gesticulating wildly at the handsome young business-type across the counter. Larry pretends to browse the aligned vases of lilies and heliotrope to avoid appearing meddlesome. But he listens to the proprietor’s harangue with a certain amount of self-satisfaction. The Armenian is fully living up to his expectations.
“You expect me to help you,” cries the florist, “but you don’t listen to a word I say. Did I not warn you against the cactus? Cacti are particularly ill-fated specimens. A chrysanthemum, I say. A chrysanthemum or a Hawaiian pineapple. The luckiest vegetation around! But a cactus? You might as well give her a broken mirror. “
“Okay, okay,” concedes the customer. “But she said she wanted a cactus. If a woman wants a cactus, you can’t bring her a chrysanthemum. You certainly can’t offer a pineapple. Isn’t there anything else that might work? A happy medium of some sort?”
The Armenian throws up his hands.
“I do what I can,” he says. “But happy mediums cost money.”
“Money is no object.”
“That’s right,” says the Armenian. “You are a man of much wealth, my friend, but little luck. I will arrange for you a bouquet of butterfly orchids. Strong chromosomal properties, radiant color. Twelve dollars a blossom. But I warn you once again, my friend, that your cause is a difficult one. Extremely difficult. I can read your fortune on your face and it is markedly grim. Two misfortune genes. That bodes the worst of luck. Something dreadful will inevitably befall you. “
“That’s my concern, not yours,” retorts the customer. “Please just pack up the orchids.”
The Armenian retreats into his stockroom and returns momentarily with an arrangement of bright yellow blossoms. He rolls them in wrapping paper, shaking his head as he labors, and presents the package to his hapless patron.
“I wish you more luck, my friend,” he says. “Maybe my fortune will rub off on you. We will hope for the best. But it is a shame that such a wealthy man is cursed with so tragic a fate. It is unconscionable. Two misfortune genes! Your parents should never have been permitted to wed. They are not happily married, are they, if you do not mind my asking?”
“They are quite happy,” the customer answers tersely. “Thirty-seven years.”
He deposits two hundred-dollar bills on the counter and departs without taking his change.
“Bah!” says the florist, waving the departing customer out his door. “That man knows nothing. I warn him. Three times I warn him. But does he bother to listen? He will dig himself an early grave. “
The Armenian rests his elbows on the countertop and offers Larry a conspiratorial grin. As though to say, “Let us bond over that man’s foolishness.” As though to say, “I know you are infinitely more reasonable than him.” If the florist remembers Larry from his earlier visit, his features betray no recognition.
“How are you today, my friend?” asks the florist.
“Not too bad. I was hoping to get a half-dozen red roses.”
The Armenian steps around the counter and rests his rump against an iron plant stand.
“We talk business soon, my friend,” he says. “First, I must look at you. Come closer. Don’t be afraid.”
Larry steps forward. He does not mind humoring the florist.
“Yes!” shouts the Armenian suddenly. “Yes! Yes! Yes! Fleshy nose. Drooping ears. Broad cheeks. It’s uncanny.”
“What’s wrong?” Larry asks nervously.
“Nothing is wrong, my friend. At least for you. Quite the contrary: Everything is right. You have the most fortunate genetic composition. It’s as plain as the nose on your face. You’re a one in a thousand, my dear friend. Two good-luck genes. You look just like me. “
Larry grimaces at this accusation. He recognizes the similarities between his own soft features and the Armenian, but he certainly doesn’t consider this a cause for excitement. The absence of a wedding ring on the florist’s hand is not lost on him.
“You are frowning,” says the florist. “You do not believe me.”
“I’m not very lucky,” Larry answers diplomatically.
“Maybe not yet. But soon enough. I will tell you a story. I live up in the Bronx. Across the street from me lived an old woman. A delightful lady, but cursed with ill luck. Year after year, I tell her that she must be on her guard. That she carries two misfortune genes. But she does not believe me. She thinks I’m foolish. She laughs at my warnings. My other neighbors also laugh behind my back. How can she be unlucky? They ask. She has lived past ninety. She is in good health. Her grandchildren visit her…. But I know the truth! I know!”
“I’m sure.”
“Yesterday,” says the florist, “Her fate caught up with her. A burglar bludgeoned her to death. How do you like that?”
The Armenian beams like a proud parent. He couldn’t appear any more satisfied if he had murdered the woman himself. Larry wonders if the peculiar old man is capable of homicide, if he’d sacrifice an elderly neighbor for the benefit of his pet theory. People have committed worse crimes for lesser reasons. The desire to play God can be overwhelming. This seemingly innocuous old man might easily be a disciple of Leopold and Loeb, the Sweeny Todd of Atlantic Avenue, poisoning his customers with toxic foliage. It is possible, Larry thinks. But highly unlikely.
“A half-dozen roses,” says the florist. “Roses are unlucky. Chrysanthemums would be a much better choice. But in your case, my friend, it will not matter. “
“How much will that run me?”
“Bah! Money. We are like brothers, my friend. I never charge a companion in good fortune. And a half-dozen roses is nothing. A trifle. They are—how do you say in this country?—atop the house.”
“Thank you,” stammers Larry.
“No, my friend. Thank you. “
The Armenian wraps the bouquet. Larry watches the old man work, measuring the cellophane, clipping the stems. He wishes he had something to give the florist in return for his prophesies of good luck, something to reciprocate for the roses. But such a gift is beyond his means. He has immortalized the man in his manuscript, he thinks. That is a worthwhile offering. The very sort of gratuity the Armenian would most appreciate. They have traded fame for fortune, Larry notes with amusement. That is an even exchange. The old man’s theories will acquire an international audience while Larry will gain Starshine. And all will be happy.
But he must not think this way, he decides as he thanks the florist. Not yet.
The day is still young. He must still recross the bridge.
CHAPTER 8
BY LARRY BLOOM
Jack Bascomb is a dead man.
He served his nation valiantly at Inchon, garnering a purple heart and an officer’s commission, but later drank his way out of a field job with the Department of Agriculture and died of alcohol poisoning, penniless and homeless, in the lavatory of a roadside saloon on the outskirts of Sierra Vista, Arizona. His body found its way into the local potter’s field at the county’s expense, his wallet into the hands of a fugitive. And it is this second Jack Bascomb, Weatherman emeritus and migrant carpenter, who pays tribute to the name on his social security card by living the life of a corpse. The metastasized cancer cannot take credit for Jack’s air of morbidity. The disease is impotent; it can only kill him. But there is something much deeper in his composition, maybe a self-destructive impulse, maybe a chromosomal proclivity for misfortune, that cloaks the aging radical in the shroud of a young martyr, of a tragic victim, of a man who no longer exists. His very presence seems anachronistic, symptomatic of an account imbalance in the Book of Life. It is as though he is the last slaughtered revolutionary of the lost generation, part Bobby Kennedy, part James Dean, r
eprieved like Lazarus to give voice to their collective suffering. He plays the role well. His scraggly mane, a vineyard of black and white tresses, submits to no tonsorial snip; his denim jacket reeks of clove cigarettes and stale sex; cardboard lines the toes of his boots. Yet when Jack Bascomb speaks, lets the contents of his soul roll from his lips in stentorian paragraphs, his voice resonates with the music of a better world. Jack’s words are triumphant, even messianic. But they come from somewhere beyond the grave, like the visitation of a bygone prophet, their jubilee for those who will enter the Promised Land though he may not. He carries on his tongue a prophesy of social justice, of wealth redistribution, of each receiving according to his or her needs—and his every word gives voice to a vision that owes debts to Jesus Christ and Karl Marx and Malcolm X and even Timothy Leary, yet at the end of the day, is distinctively his own. While Starshine makes love to Jack, each Wednesday on the pretext of lunch, she purrs and writhes to the cadence of a cadaver.
The neighborhood has gentrified around Jack Bascomb’s walk-up. He moved into the sixth-story apartment on Avenue A back in the mid-eighties, at the height of the urban crisis, when the smart money was on continued arson and blight. Decades of neglect had transformed the sidewalks of Alphabet City into a heath of crack vials and syringes, a community garden for the denizens of the Riis Housing Projects and the tent villas in Tompkins Square Park. These were environs for a rusted militant to take pride in, daily corroboration of his forgotten foresight. Nothing pleased Jack more than the popping of gunshots outside his windows in the wee hours of the morning, as soothing as the uncorking of champagne bottles, confirming that little trickles down except ambition. Only now, the after-dark orchestra really does play a bubbly symphony as the brazen gangs of yore have yielded their turf to the offspring of limousine liberals. Jack’s un-air-conditioned flat, furnished at tag sales and infested with roaches, used to be the regional standard; the Gestapo antics of a Republican mayor have recast it as a relic. The streets no longer belong to Jack Bascomb. He prefers to cloister himself in his outdated apartment, seated at his home-built folding table, honing his carpenter’s skills and composing his memoirs. That’s where Starshine finds him, at the appointed hour, self-medicating shamelessly with the door ajar.
“One pill, two pill, red pill, blue pill,” he greets her. “Now that’s poetry. Simple language, strong rhyme scheme, implied conclusion. Walt Whitman for the post-industrial age.”
The capsules aligned across the tabletop remind Starshine of aircraft taxiing toward takeoff. They include appetite stimulants, protein inhibitors, and painkillers of every variety. Some of the medication has been manufactured in the micromanaged laboratories of the nation’s leading pharmaceutical conglomerates; much has been home brewed in the cellars of cranks. The original source doesn’t make a dime’s worth of difference to Starshine’s lover. He acquires the pills from the shady homeopath on the third floor, a defrocked pharmacist, in exchange for woodwork. And they serve their purpose. They cause drowsiness, weight loss, nausea, moodiness, poor digestion, and probably sperm count reduction, simulating virtually all the side effects of radiation therapy without in any way inconveniencing the cancer. This suits Jack perfectly. He will suffer the full effects of treatment without any hope of recovery, so that in his last breath he can curse the American government for denying him chemotherapy. It is all part of his master plan.
Starshine wipes the veneer of dust from a wooden chair and waits while Jack downs his pills with a chaser of bourbon. He winces with each swig, savoring his own pain with all the gusto of an early Christian flagellant. Starshine examines his hairy arms, still muscular despite his illness, admires the serpentine tattoo that runs the course of his bicep. He is a man’s man, she thinks, a feral brute tempered only by intelligence. If he were younger, if he were healthy, she might toss her other lover to the wind and follow her fugitive to Amsterdam. He’s dashingly handsome in spite of his ragged clothing and unshorn locks. He’s the smartest man she has ever met. And he’s even a powerhouse between the sheets. In many ways, Jack is leagues ahead of Colby Parker’s daily phone calls and hothouse offerings. But there’s the other side of Jack, the insecure tirades, the alcoholic binges, the recriminations, the self-accusation, the perennial irritability, and, above all, the inescapable detail that Jack Bacomb was a man born to live alone. And to die alone. This is his preordained destiny, Starshine knows, and not hers.
“All done,” says Jack. “I’m high as a kite on placebos. I feel like I could die a dozen times in one day.”
“Don’t be that way, Jack. It’s not funny.”
“You didn’t expect me to save any pills for you, baby, did you?”
“Not today, Jack. Please. It has been a dreadful morning. You know that other guy I’m seeing, the one you called the Lyndon Johnson of lawn chairs? Well, his father died today, dropped dead in a parking lot.”
“Conclusive proof of a generous God.”
“Jesus, Jack. I can’t deal with this shit. Can’t you show an ounce of compassion?”
“For the competition? Not this time around. I already told you, baby, you can screw anybody you please, but I don’t want to hear about it. I’m trying to avoid circumstantial jealousy. It’s bad for the liver.”
“And then this maniac chased me halfway up Mulberry Street. It was just awful.”
“Was he cute?”
“Enough,” says Starshine, her frustration mounting. “What’s gotten into you today?”
Jack pushes his chair away from the table with both hands. He turns to face Starshine and rests his palms just above her knees. “I’m sorry, babe,” he says. “I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just that I woke up this morning, and I had a vision, one of those rare moments of prescience and clarity that you read about in Augustine or Proust. It was like acid and ambrosia and the finest cognac all rolled into one. It was like a private showing of Woodstock, baby. You can’t possibly imagine the totalizing effect it had on me. It was the defining moment of my life.”
“Why does that make me so nervous?” asks Starshine. Somehow, she fears that Jack wants to make his vision the defining moment of her own life as well. “I don’t know if I can handle a private showing of Woodstock.”
“There were flowers everywhere, baby. Poppies, tulips, orchids. You were standing in an endless meadow of the most dazzling flowers, flowers in every direction for as far as the eye could see. And the amazing thing was that there were no price tags, no migrant workers weeding between rows, no toxic chemicals poisoning the soil. It was paradise on earth, the Elysian fields right here in our backyard. I could tell it was someplace close, somehow, but I wasn’t sure where. And then suddenly I knew. It just happened. One minute, I had no idea where to find this utopia, and the next, it was as though I’d been handed a road map. And do you know where you were, baby?”
“Where?”
“I’ll tell you where, baby. Amsterdam. That’s where. You were alone in Amsterdam and I was dead. That’s what’s going to happen, isn’t it? It’s not a matter of if, only of when. “
Starshine stands up and braces her arms on the back of her chair. She owes Jack an answer, she has owed him an answer for nearly three months, be she is afraid of the consequences. Jack—unlike Colby Parker—can get along well enough without her. If she rejects his offer, he might emigrate to Amsterdam on his own. He might even do it on the spur of the moment to spite her. She knows he has already made arrangements for the private plane, corralled some ex–Black Panther who operates a charter airline into his death plan. Jack intends to die among socialists and tulips, in a nation with universal health care and state-run industries. She is the only elusive factor in his scheme. Sometimes, she finds herself hoping that he will die before she has to make a commitment, that the cancer bell comes to her rescue, but then she despises herself for her cowardice and her cruelty. She does not want to decide, she thinks, because in some perverse, illogical way, she believes that Jack will not die until she makes up her mi
nd. The longer she stalls, the longer he lives. His death, she knows, will devastate her.
“I don’t know, Jack,” she says. “I just don’t know.”
“You do know,” Jack answers, his voice wavering. “Deep down in the core of your being, baby, you must know. Otherwise, we’d already be picking tulips in wooden shoes. It’s sad though, isn’t it? I fuck God knows how many women, must be hundreds, and when I finally find the only one I ever should have fucked, the only one I ever really fucked and meant it, I’m out of here like yesterday’s news. It kind of makes you wonder….”
“Please, Jack,” says Starshine. “I love you. You know that, don’t you? It’s just circumstance.”
“Maybe I should have done things differently. Maybe I should have cleaned up my act and written cookbooks like Bobby Seale. Can you believe this shit? Bobby-kill-the-pigs-fucking-Seale, the goddamn poster boy for the revolution, he’s written a goddam cookbook. Barbeque’n with Bobby. It’s right there in the window at St. Mark’s Books. That’s the kind of shit that makes you want to say fuck the revolution and buy a condo in Florida or a fruit plantation or God knows what. It turns my stomach. “
“How about Humping with Jack?” suggests Starshine. “After all, you never have gotten around to cooking me lunch. Don’t they say you should write about what you know?”
The Biology of Luck Page 13