“I like that,” Jack answers, grinning. “You want to coauthor?”
Starshine smiles in relief. She knows she’s in the clear now, at least for the moment, that Jack’s thoughts have drifted from his deathbed to his futon. And somehow, although in hindsight the routine seems as old as a stock chess opening or the lines of a high school play, in the passion of the moment, it never fails to leave her breathless. She will purr, she will gasp, she will dig her nails into the folds of his back and shake the apartment like an earthquake and he will do anything and everything, like no other lover she has ever known, until she falls to earth with drool oozing down her chin and neck. She knows what is coming. So does Jack. He pours himself another glass of bourbon and polishes it off in one shot. Then he is upon her.
But this time is different. Usually there is lightning; today there is thunder. It begins with a soft patter, the gentle rhythm of a spring shower, but it rapidly swells to an angry gale. Starshine focuses on Jack, blocks out everything but the contours of his chest, his arms, the feel of flesh against flesh and sweat lathering her stomach and the violent energy building between them, inside them, then concentrates on her own orgasm, on getting over, on getting through, but her head is spinning, throbbing, with the furious roar of impending destruction. Of artillery, of blasting, of hail pelting tin. The entire universe explodes around her in a deafening eruption of flesh and hair and fluids—and then she is through, over, lost in silence. All she can hear is Jack’s hard breathing and the incessant labor of someone behind her head, on the opposite side of the plaster, pounding the wall with what sounds like the sole of a shoe. She is too content to be ashamed.
“Fuck this,” growls Jack. He rolls off her and pulls up his trousers. “Goddamn neighbors! I’m going down for a cigarette, babe. I’ll be back. “
And this is how it ends, how it always ends. There is no afterglow with Jack Bascomb. For a short interval he is all hers, voracious, craven, but then he recovers like a patient from a bout of fever and he needs his space, his time, his air. Starshine hears the clatter of metal as he retrieves his keys from the table, then the dull thud of the door. The person on the opposite side of the plaster slams the wall one final time, maybe for emphasis, and goes back to his business. Starshine is abandoned to her thoughts. She stares up into the sagging ceiling, into the water wounds, into the chipping paint. She has had her pleasure. Now comes the pain. It is always the same with Jack Bascomb. Somehow sex with Jack drives her back into her adolescence, into her life before Jack Bascomb and Colby Parker and all the others. Into her life before men. Alone in Jack Bascomb’s dimly lit apartment among his books and heirlooms, she is once again an ugly duckling, the plain, talentless child who nobody loves. She is once again irrelevant, neglected, a prop in her parents’ incessant warfare, an obese teenager deserted by a narcissistic, bankrupt father to care for a dying mother with a soul as fragile as an ostrich shell. Her mind is suddenly flooded with all the hidden insecurities and fears she has struggled so long to bury. She is Starshine before she bought the bicycle, before she discovered her own beauty. She is nothing. And she refuses to be that again.
Starshine runs her hand over the scars on her wrists.
Slowly, decisively, she buttons her blouse.
THE LOWER EAST SIDE
The pale of settlement beyond the Bowery is the one New York City neighborhood in which Larry has never quite felt at home. The pushcart vendors plying Orchard Street intimidate him; the pickle vats along Roosevelt Park render him tense. Every Wednesday, he introduces a fifth column of outsiders into this last refuge of Old World Jewry, exposing wealthy gentiles and High Holiday suburbanites to the rich texture of immigrant life, but the frequent visits have done nothing to surmount his unease. If anything, they have intensified it. The Dutch admire the dingy sanctuary of the Bialystoker Synagogue and the Tenement Museum’s glass-enclosed artifacts with detached respect. They gaze up at the roof of the Ritularium and feign regard for the caftaned Hasids who collect rainwater in cisterns for use in their mikvah baths. They shake their heads at the interior windows between apartments that turn-of-the-century slum lords constructed to evade the zoning codes. They gorge themselves on pan-fried blintzes and pierogis. But although they defer and praise, they do not relate. Larry alone feels a comradeship with the small-time peddlers and elderly widows who cling to the haunts of their forebears—not just Jews, but Greeks and Poles and Romanians—and it is this undesired fellowship that makes him self-conscious. His maternal grandfather ran a haberdashery from one of these run-down storefronts. His paternal grandfather examined fresh eggs for embryos at a processing plant on Montgomery Street—a man his own father, Mort Bloom, boasts worked 365 days each year and an extra on leap years. Both of his grandmothers stitched gloves at the same Cleveland Place sweatshop. Their shame is Larry’s inheritance. Although the Blooms have since escaped the warrens of the Lower East Side, traded in their workmen’s aprons for judicial robes and lab coats, the guilt of urban poverty still afflicts the third generation. This heritage is a latent genetic malady, a Tay Sachs disease of the soul, which may smite without warning. These streets explain why Larry’s father phones every month to press his son to apply to law school; they drive Larry’s quest for literary immortality and his fear of failure. But their legacy runs far deeper than mere psychology. For it is this swarming ghetto, amidst the bedbugs and rats, where four short broad-faced Eastern European peasants tendered the promises and whispered the sweet nothings that ensured their progeny its ugliness.
Larry leads his entourage on a skin-deep tour of the community from Seward Park to the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge, then consigns his charges into the hands of the local merchants. The younger couples will take photographs of themselves crossing Delancey Street and load up on designer brand knockoffs imported from Hong Kong. The older couples will purchase leather goods and accessories for grandchildren, belts and ties and purses, before recessing to a Kosher sandwich at Katz’s Delicatessen or a more expensive but legitimate entrée at Ratner’s. Although this downtime is not part of the official itinerary, it suits both shepherd and flock. The Dutch are tired of Larry’s blather. He is fed up with their boredom. This separation ensures that when they reassemble at four o’clock in front of the old police headquarters and board the coach for midtown, neither party will resort to violence. So it is a happy arrangement. Except that Larry has two hours to kill among the remnants of his heritage and not enough time to wander too far afield. For a brief while, long before Larry’s affiliation with Empire Tours, there was one oasis east of the Bowery that could draw him down to this Ashkenazi Sahara: a hole-in-the-wall deli called Napthali’s Noshes. The inauthentic ambience and decidedly gentile clientele made the sojourn tolerable, while the well-done brisket and extra-lean pastrami elevated him to gustatory heights. But this Disneyfied eatery went the way of all preserved flesh, so Larry usually passes his Wednesday afternoons hiking up to Tompkins Square Park and back down again. Today, however, P. J. Snipe is waiting for him at the bridge entrance.
Larry greets Snipe and brandishes his bouquet as evidence of his date. The tour supervisor shakes his hand and then waits for the Dutch to disperse. Rita Blatt hangs back at a distance of several yards, but makes no effort to leave him. Snipe inspects her warily like a high priest warding off a leper and then discharges a thick wad of phlegm onto the pavement.
“Did you hear the news, Bloom?” Snipe asks. “We’re up shit’s creek without a paddle.”
“About this morning?”
“Yes, about this morning. It’s absolute dog piss.”
“I don’t see why it’s such a big deal,” says Larry. “I think these Dutch actually enjoyed it.”
“Who cares about these cretins? They’ve already paid for their tour. But after what happened this morning, we won’t be able to lead a group of armed robbers through Fort Knox. You did hear the news, didn’t you?”
“I’m not sure,” Larry answers with trepidation. “What news?”
>
“That middle-aged broad with the Dutch consul turns out to be the wife of some big-time manufacturer. The television crews ran a short clip of the riot on the noon newscasts and they caught her on camera. They didn’t even know what they had their hands on until the husband saw the coverage and ran out of his office shouting that his wife was porking a Fish Head. He made it as far as Municipal Plaza and dropped dead of a heart attack in the parking lot. Say, you must have passed right by there. You didn’t see anything?”
“Not a thing.”
“Anyway, Bloom, now Empire Tours is front-page news. And you know what that means. That means we’re shoulder deep in dog piss.”
“I see your point.”
“Don’t see my point,” growls Snipe. “Eat, breathe, and shit my point, okay? Every two-bit journalist in this city would love an exclusive with the Dutch tourists who helped expose the scandal of the millennium. That’s what they’re billing it. That and Nethergate. Do you hear what I’m telling you, Bloom? You’re a wanted man. You need to keep these cretins as isolated as possible. Make sure they stay far away from trouble and get them back to their hotels in one piece. We’ve already taken the liberty of rescheduling their flights. They’re on a KLM charter out of Kennedy at ten thirty this evening. No need to hold them here overnight and give the media a crack at them. So be on the lookout, Bloom. And whatever you do, don’t talk to any reporters.”
Larry glances at Rita Blatt. She has retreated into the shade of a sickly poplar. She smiles at him when he looks at her and waves her fingertips.
“What about her?” Larry asks.
“Who the hell is she?”
“The reporter from the Downtown Rag. The one doing a feature on historic tours. She showed up at Castle Clinton and said you had okayed it. “
“Dog piss,” says Snipe. “Just our screwy luck. But you know what to do, Bloom. Act like a man and ditch her.”
“Ditch her?”
“That’s right. Lose her. Scram. Gone. Good-bye. Make it look like an accident.”
It would be my pleasure, Larry thinks. But easier said than done.
“And Bloom—”
“Yes?”
“I’ll see you up in Riverdale at seven o’clock. Here’s the destination.”
Snipe gives him a business card with the grandmother’s address printed on the back. Larry is about to object—he needs to meet Starshine in the West Village at eight thirty—but his boss is too quick on the draw. He numbs Larry’s fingers with a ruthless handshake and immediately hails a passing cab, leaving his employee speechless at the curbside. The move is just like Snipe, Larry thinks. Act first, ask later. It makes Larry’s blood boil, but it works. The self-serving prick will earn brownie points with his floozy of the week while Larry’s dream date dines alone. He wishes he could call Starshine and postpone by an hour, but then she might outright cancel. She keeps a busy social calendar. His only hope is to drive like Big Louise and hope for the best.
Larry lights a cigarette and sets off for Tompkins Square Park. He has walked half a block before he senses Rita Blatt strolling beside him. She has stowed both her notepad and her umbrella inside her heavy canvas bag, so she no longer resembles an uptight journalist. Yet liberated from the protection of her professional disguise, the newswoman appears all the more undesirable. Her so-called shtick is her only redeeming grace. It justifies her appearance in a way that a circus sideshow legitimizes dwarves and bearded ladies. Without it, she appears haggard and spent. Like a plywood puppet, Larry thinks, crowned by a papier-mâché head.
“Where to?” she asks.
“Just walking.”
“Then you won’t mind walking me up to my flat, Larry, will you? It’s not terribly far. Avenue A on the park. I want to phone the office to let them know that I have a story. My angle is going to be romance and tourism—putting the guy back in tour guide. I have a camera up at my place. You won’t mind a photo, will you? And we’ll need to put those flowers in some water. “
Larry tenses and instinctively clutches the bouquet to his chest.
“You can knock off the act. Just because I’m into this angst-ridden high-strung journalist shtick doesn’t mean I’m not also a woman. I can tell when a guy has a thing for me. Call it a sixth sense. So there’s no point in us wandering around the city all afternoon, playing cat and mouse games, and then exchanging phone numbers like characters in some 1950s romantic comedy, when you find me attractive and I don’t think you’re half-bad yourself. I know I’m very forward, maybe even a wee bit presumptuous, but it saves a lot of unnecessary grief in the long run. So I’ll put the flowers in water and you’ll get the grand tour of my place and we’ll take it from there. But I have to warn you. I’m seeing somebody else, and I’m not ready to give him up. I believe I already mentioned that, but I want to put all of my cards on the table. So, anyway, what are you thinking?”
“I don’t know,” answers Larry.
He lets Rita Blatt lead him up Essex Street and onto Avenue A. She prattles endlessly about the gentrification of the neighborhood, about why she didn’t attend journalism school, about her considerable experiences with psychiatric treatment and relationship counseling and New Age “personal enhancement” at the Society for Secular Harmony. Some people leap from one form of self-examination to another; Rita Blatt prefers the synergistic approach. The more varied the therapeutic techniques, the better her prospects for overcoming her insecurities. And she is unquestionably a woman with an insecurity for every occasion. Larry knows that he owes it to Rita Blatt to set her straight about the flowers, to inform her point-blank that he’s both psychologically and probably biologically incapable of meeting her expectations, but he lacks either the heart or the courage. Most likely a combination of both. He has limited experience rejecting amorous proposals. The few times he has turned down an advance—the blind receptionist at Empire Tours who resembles a porcupine, a broad-shouldered alcoholic neighbor in her late fifties—the spurned women have turned hostile. Larry understands their rage. One had to swallow a lot of self-respect to proposition an ugly person; finding out that even someone you find unattractive won’t date you is a damning blow. So Larry truly sympathizes with these poor creatures. He has been on the other side of the conflict and suffered his own slights at the hands of marginally passable females. The last thing he wishes to do is wound Rita Blatt’s already fragile ego. He would also like to avoid a drubbing with an umbrella. So he walks and listens, desperately searching for a plausible escape, until they arrive at Tompkins Square Park.
Rita occupies a sixth-story walk-up at the far end of a constricted passageway. The lighting in the corridor is poor and it does not improve inside the confines of the journalist’s dreary flat. Her porcelain lamps cast somber ringlets of light from under thick gray shades. The only window in the main room looks out onto a narrow air shaft. Larry surveys the apartment from the vestibule while Rita rummages her kitchen cabinets for a vase. Her walls are plastered with travel brochures and posters from classic films. Katharine Hepburn smiles over Athens. Marlon Brando and Karl Malden keep watch on either side of Milan. A small wooden table stands in one corner, supporting an old computer and a stack of neatly folded undergarments. A futon mattress abuts the far wall. The greater portion of the cramped room is occupied by cardboard boxes heaped high with manila folders. The sparse decor suggests a stage set from an off-Broadway play—ones of those gritty, working-class plays touting frugal living that Larry’s father finds so edifying. This is a home without joy. It reminds Larry of his own apartment.
“Take a load off while I pour us some drinks,” Rita calls from the kitchen. “I’m sorry there are no chairs. I used to borrow a couple from a friend, but then she moved to Astoria and took them back. So what’s your poison? Cheap red wine or cheap whiskey?”
“Nothing, thanks. I’m on duty.”
He sits down on the mattress and rests his feet on the faded linoleum.
“You have to have something,” says Rita.
“It will loosen you up.”
“I’ll have a glass of water.”
“Water it is,” agrees Rita. “Draft or on tap?”
The journalist emerges from the kitchen carrying two paper cups. She cozies up beside Larry on the futon, much too close, and swizzles her wine with her pinkie. He inches away and looks pointedly at his watch.
“We should be getting back,” he says.
“We have plenty of time,” answers Rita. “Don’t be so uptight.”
A crash behind the plaster cuts off any further discussion. It is rapidly followed by the distinctive sound of human bodies compressing springs. Katharine Hepburn’s smile appears suddenly indecent.
“What’s that?” asks Larry for no particular reason.
“Every Wednesday,” says Rita. “It only lasts about ten minutes.”
The sound intensifies. It is punctuated by masculine grunts and feminine moans.
“It gets to me sometimes,” says Rita. “Some people have no respect for other people’s personal space. But I imagine I make just as much noise, so I never say anything. My guess is that the crackpot next door has a standing appointment with a call service.”
“Whatever,” says Larry. “It’s still outrageous.”
And all the hostility he has been nursing toward Rita Blatt now shifts to the indecent sound behind the plaster. What right do these people have to torment this single, funny-looking woman every week? Their lovemaking seems spiteful and cruel. They must be driving poor Rita mad. Their duet is already driving Larry to the brink after only a few seconds. And he won’t tolerate it. He’ll fight fire with fire. Larry thinks of the nasty old biddy who used to live below him in Morningside. If he so much as walked to the bathroom after midnight, she would pound on the ceiling with a broomstick. He couldn’t fathom her obsession with silence. Why couldn’t she have just accepted that some friction is an inevitable part of life and that certain irritations are beyond human control? Now Larry understands. He removes his loafer and hammers the plaster behind the mattress.
The Biology of Luck Page 14