Miss Bohm knocks on Agatha’s door to announce a visitor and then leaves Starshine to her mission. Starshine finds her aunt propped up on a stack of pillows. The old woman is not wearing her wig and her thin wisps of white hair give her an otherworldly, almost angelic appearance. Agatha stares when her niece enters.
“Who’s there?” she demands in a mechanized voice.
“Hi, Aunt Agatha,” says Starshine. “I’ve brought you a basket of fruit.”
“I don’t want fruit. It rots and it stinks. I want a cigarette.”
The old woman sniffs and blinks her vacant eyes.
“What kind of fruit?” she asks.
“Nectarines, oranges, plumbs, apricots.”
“Bosc pears?”
“Yes, Bosc pears. I remember what you like.”
“How many?” demands Agatha. “How many pears?”
“Five,” Starshine lies. There is only one.
“What a waste of money,” says Agatha. “I could have made do with one or two.”
“Only the best for my favorite aunt.”
“Then come here and give your favorite aunt a hug.”
Agatha extends her arms like a sleepwalker and Starshine folds into her embrace. The old woman’s body smells of industrial soap and disinfectant. She is too clean. Like an object on permanent display in a museum. And it is this aroma, such a contrast to her surrogate mother’s lost smell of burning wood and hyacinth, upon which Starshine blames her discomfort. She sits down on the edge of the bed. She will make this a short visit.
“So how have you been since last time I saw you?” asks Starshine.
“I died twice. They melted me into glue.”
“So how have you really been since the last time?” Starshine asks again.
“I don’t remember. I can’t think back that far.”
Starshine places the Bosc pear between her aunt’s fingers. The old woman cradles the fruit in both hands and picks at the stem. Then she raises it to her nose and nuzzles the smooth skin against her cheek. A thin smile curves across her face. She is like a little girl with a new toy, a woman after orgasm, a mother caressing a newborn child. This is her happiness.
Agatha lurches forward suddenly and opens her eyes.
“I remember what I wanted to tell you,” she exclaims. “I told the nurse to remind me, but she didn’t. She’s not very efficient. She gets confused and makes all sorts of mistakes with my medication. Yesterday, she tried to trick me into taking two round pills. I told her I take one round pill and one long one. And she had the nerve to argue with me. She’s liable to kill someone.”
“What is it you remembered?” Starshine prods.
“Code names!”
“Code names?”
“Did I ever tell you how your mother, rest her soul, came to name you Starshine?”
“After the song, right? The song by Strawberry Alarm Clock.”
Aunt Agatha frowns gravely. “That’s what we told you. That’s what your mother, rest her soul, thought at first. But it was pure coincidence that the song came out that year. It was an excuse to give you the name, but not the reason.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It was Luther’s idea of a joke. His way of pulling a fast one on all of us. Particularly your father. Luther despised your father. He used to call him a war criminal without a crime. ‘My baby sister threw herself away on that monster,’ was one of his favorite mantras.”
“Names,” says Starshine. “Code names.”
“That’s right. Well, the Office of Strategic Services—that was where your uncle served during the war—used to have code names for big shots. Mostly foreign big shots. Not official names, mind you, just the names they used around the office. I still remember some of them. The men’s names were always insulting. Prime Minister Churchill was Old Fuss and Feathers. And … let me see … Hitler was Napoléon’s Penis…. That’s right…. But the woman’s names were often rather beautiful….”
Agatha closes her eyes and falls back into momentary reverie.
“Aunt Agatha?”
“What?”
“Code names. You were telling me about my name and code names.”
“That’s right. I was, wasn’t I?”
“You were.”
“I remember now. The women all had … how shall I put it? … names suited to their appearance. I won’t tell you what Luther called Mrs. Roosevelt. But you should know who you were named after. You were named after Claretta Petacci. She had the code name Starshine.”
Starshine racks her brain. The name does nothing for her.
“Aunt Agatha,” she finally asks. “Who was Claretta Petacci?”
“I’ll tell you,” says Agatha. She grasps Starshine’s hand and speaks as though sharing a secret of grave national importance. “It was Luther’s idea of a slap in your father’s face. Claretta Petacci was Benito Mussolini’s favorite prostitute.”
“You know that’s not true. You made that up.”
“It’s the God’s honest truth. She died hanging from a meat hook!”
“Please, Aunt Agatha,” says Starshine. “Don’t get all worked up.”
“Do you hear me?” Agatha shouts. “A prostitute!”
The outburst has drained the old woman and she slumps suddenly into her pillows. Her breath seems to fade away under her heavy woolen quilt. A soft breeze flutters the curtains, dances through her tufts of gray hair. Agatha’s face is expressionless, her frail arms slack at her sides. She is not dead. This is merely a regenerative nap. It is nature’s version of the dress rehearsal, an opportunity for the victim to recuperate for her next assault against the past, a warning to friends and family that the curtain call is forthcoming.
Starshine shudders. She wipes a tear from her face and plants it on Agatha’s cheek with her index finger. Then she kisses her aunt’s forehead and presses her hand. She can feel the brittleness of bone. This is good-bye.
“I love you, Aunt Agatha,” says Starshine. “I truly do love you.”
And she does love her aunt, cherishes the old woman for all that she has been and for all that she has done, but this must be her final visit. She can no longer endure these pointless stories, the sterile air of Bayview Manor, the pervasive climate of death. She knows that each short stay abrades her own life, somehow scrapes the varnish off all she has worked for, and that her aunt—if the old woman were capable of understanding—would want her to stay far away.
She clenches her fists.
She is Starshine. She will not lose her beauty. She will not grow old.
PART III
THE HEART OF THE NIGHT
TIMES SQUARE
Mort Bloom attends a Broadway play once each month.
Mort Bloom is Larry’s father, although he often regrets it, a fifty-seven-year-old chemical engineer who accepted an early retirement package from Johnson & Johnson. He is short and beefy. His hands emit a faint scent of shampoo. Mort Bloom is a practical man of little culture and less imagination, an inveterate suburbanite who relishes a five-dollar cigar and the contours of his Barco lounger, and passes his mornings cursing at the stock listings in the New York Times. His deepest regret is that he didn’t study aeronautical engineering to pursue a career in avionics. His private fantasy is to co-own a minor league baseball franchise. His publicly stated ambition is to purchase a condominium on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona, which will reduce his property taxes and enable him to play golf in February. Dry heat and prickly heat compose the gamut of his dinner table conversation. Mort Bloom is, in short, the very last person one would expect to find in a playhouse. And yet, every month for thirty-two years, excepting a brief hiatus for the removal of his gallbladder, Larry’s father has boarded the Metro North train in Hastings-on-Hudson to catch a Sunday matinee in the theater district. He eschews glitzy musical and tourist traps; Oklahoma! and South Pacific are not to his taste. But he has seen much of Strindberg and Mamet, William Inge and Paula Vogel, even the collected works of Bert
hold Brecht, and although Mort rarely enjoys the experience at the time, more often than not leaving the theater with the nagging suspicion that he has missed something crucial, like the plot, the experience grows on him over the course of the ensuing four weeks, as he summarizes the story line for acquaintances, until he is finally convinced that he has gotten his money’s worth. Then he goes back for more. And since his wife never accompanies him on these outings, for although she enjoys theater, she cannot abide public transit, Mort Bloom exposed his only son to twelve plays each year from the time of his bar mitzvah through his departure for college. That, Mort believes, is the primary reason his son is such a good-for-nothing screwup. He may very well be right.
Walking briskly down Forty-Fourth Street, toward Sardi’s and the Belasco Theater, Larry experiences the same inchoate longing with which he has grappled since childhood. The neon lights of the Great White Way, nothing more than a glitzy enclave of swank carved between Hell’s Kitchen and the Tenderloin District, somehow force him to confront his physical appearance. The dazzling marquees advertising Cats and Phantom of the Opera remind Larry that he will never walk into a room, much less onto a stage, and dazzle his onlookers. Some men command dinner parties and nightclubs with their distinguished features and lightning charisma. Larry will never be one of these anointed creatures. At the same time, he shares no bond with the homeless vagrants and small-time hustlers who lurk the outskirts of Times Square, the purveyors of designer drugs and teenage pornography, the downtrodden dregs who work the warehouses, whorehouses, sweatshops, and sex shops that keep Broadway’s lights shimmering. They are the truly hideous. Larry is merely unattractive, middle class, ordinary. Like his father. Like his grandparents. Like the multitude of New Yorkers who walk from midtown to Seventh Avenue at five thirty each afternoon to board the IRT for home. Although Times Square is a battleground, the international crossroads of those who appear on magazine covers and those who use those magazine covers for insulation, Larry is merely a disinterested spectator to the combat. He holds absolute no stake in the outcome. If there were any feature of the theater district to which Larry could relate, it would not be found among the gaudy dramatic placards or the flashing XXXs of the video rental shops, but a block away from Times Square on Sixth Avenue. It is the National Debt Clock. Ticking. Ticking. Ticking. But accomplishing nothing.
Larry pauses under the awning of the Marriot Marquis to light a cigarette. The avenue is a tunnel of warm air and neither cupping his lighter with his hand nor using the corrugated siding of a nearby newsstand as a wind block accomplish that goal. He has retreated into an alcove of concrete between the Minskoff box office and a trash dumpster when he hears his name. He instinctively strikes a defensive pose, dropping one hand to his wallet and shielding his face with the other. This is not a neighborhood in which he expects to be recognized.
“Larry Bloom! I never thought I’d catch up with you.”
Ziggy Borasch accosts Larry and backs him into the dumpster. The philosopher rests his palms on his knees to catch his breath. His entire body is quaking and the veins in his temples have swollen to capacity. Clad only in a pair of dungarees and tennis shoes, sans shirt and socks, his chest hairs a thicket of perspiration, Borasch no longer resembles an absentminded scholar. On the beach, equipped with a metal detector, he might pass for an eccentric. At the intersection of Broadway and Forty-Fourth Street, there is no mistaking him for anything other than a maniac.
“You nearly killed me, Bloom,” says Borasch, pounding his chest. “How do you expect me to keep a pace like that?”
“I’m in a hurry,” says Larry. “I need to be in Riverdale in two hours.”
“You have plenty of time. That gives us at least an hour to celebrate.”
“Celebrate?”
“I did it, Bloom. I have the sentence.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“Not here. Not on a street corner. Let’s get a cup of coffee and I’ll explain.”
“I don’t have time right now,” says Larry. “I’m going to be late for my date.”
Ziggy Borasch deflates like a punctured tire. The maniacal gleam fades from his eyes and they take on a wooden cast that matches his expressionless face. Larry does not possess the ruthlessness, maybe merely the self-interest, to ignore the desperate whims of his single-minded friend. Not even for Starshine. He glances at this watch and then at Borasch’s listless eyes. There is no contest. If the philosopher can find a restaurant in Times Square willing to serve him in his scant attire, Larry will yield him the time for a cup of joe.
“So where to?” asks Larry.
Borasch leads Larry up Broadway, against the commuter tide, peering through the windows of crowded restaurants. He devotes equal attention to upscale bistros and self-service food courts, as though deciding which establishment to bestow the luxury of his patronage upon. Nothing meets the needs of the occasion. Some restaurants are dismissed as too crowded. Those boasting vacant tables are inherently suspect. Every place is either too bright or poorly lit or unlikely to brew its own coffee. And Ziggy Borasch absolutely refuses to drink instant coffee. So they march northward, impatient homesteaders and bare-chested frontiersman, drawing stares from tourists and locals alike. Even on Broadway, they are worthy of attention. Larry fears that his companion intends to walk him all the way to Morningside. Or possibly Riverdale. But the philosopher ducks east onto Fifty-First Street and stops decisively before the Equitable Center. Under the distinctive maroon awning of Le Bernardin.
“We can’t eat here,” says Larry.
“Why not? It’s a special occasion. I can afford it. “
“You’re not wearing a shirt.”
Borasch stares down at his chest as though this is the first he has heard of the matter.
“I’m sure they’ll give me a jacket and tie,” he says. “They do that in posh restaurants. I’m a paying customer. I have my rights. “
Larry examines his deranged companion. Borasch’s ponytail has come undone and strands of long silver hair dance before his eyes. Then he looks through the windows of New York’s finest restaurant, absorbing the distinguished bankers and lawyers savoring appetizers of foie gras and crepes. Larry has gazed through these windows many times before. Usually, he notes that at the diners are nearly all male, all good looking. Today, it strikes him that every last one is wearing a shirt.
“Please Ziggy,” says Larry. “It will take too long. Some other time. “
Ten minutes later, they are seated at a wooden table in an Irish pub on Sixty-Third Street. A chalkboard rests behind the bar announcing baseball odds. The walls are decorated with the head shots of obscure actors and association football pennants and an inordinate number of Rheinhgold clocks. Across from their booth, two burly young men in matching New York Yankees paraphernalia are sharing a pitcher of Coca-Cola. The soft drinks are the giveaway, Larry thinks. Undercover cops. He sips his club soda and waits while Ziggy Borasch measures three packets of sugar into his cup of black coffee.
“So?” prompts Larry.
“They must have brewed this shit yesterday,” says Borasch. “It tastes like carburetor fluid.”
Borasch pushes his coffee cup to the center of the table and appropriates Larry’s soda.
“Are you going to tell me the sentence?” Larry asks.
“In a minute, in a minute. I need to calm my nerves.”
Borasch’s minute lasts a quarter of an hour. Larry is about to risk prompting his mentor a second time when the philosopher looks up from Larry’s drink.
“I was in my apartment, working on my opus,” he says, “when the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen dropped a basket of fruit in my doorway. So I helped her retrieve the fruit, thinking I’m doing her a favor, and then she had the nerve to hit me up for money. For some cockamamie charity. I forget what it was called. And then it struck me, Bloom. Like Martin Luther in the outhouse. Like Franklin and his kite. That pushy kid had more to reveal about American culture, about t
he state of American capitalism, than all the Emersons and Edisons ever will. Do you see my point?”
“More or less.”
“My point is that people work all their lives trying to pay off their bills. College loans and mortgages and God knows what. Our entire society rests on the principle of acquiring capital. Nothing sounds better than the clink of money in the bank. Absolutely nothing. So why in hell do people give their hard-earned dollars to charity? And why do they give each other gifts? Why? Why? Why?”
Borasch pounds the table with his fist. Larry glances apprehensively at the undercover cops, but they are too busy playing thumb football with a quarter to notice the proximate threat.
“I don’t know,” Larry says in a soft voice. “Why?”
“I’ll tell you why,” answers Borasch. “And when I tell you why, you’ll understand my excitement. You’ll see that I’m not as nuts as you suspect, just because I’m willing to demand service at Le Bernardin without a shirt on. I never thought this day would come, Bloom. But promise me one thing. If something should happen to me—let us say I were to walk out of this dive and be plowed down by a bus—swear to me that you’ll preserve my work. Swear it!”
The Biology of Luck Page 17