The Biology of Luck

by Jacob M. Appel

  “I swear. You have my word. Now will you tell me already? The anticipation is killing me.”

  “Very well. Are you ready to become the first person to hear the Great American Sentence, Larry Bloom?”

  Larry nods. “I’m more than ready.”

  “Here it is,” says Borasch.

  He clears his throat and pauses dramatically.

  “An American man endowed with sufficient wealth,” he declaims, “can purchase anything, but an American woman endowed with sufficient beauty does not need to.”

  Larry is speechless. Her stares at this mentor in utter awe, his brain racing for words. Ziggy Borasch appears before him in an entirely new light. How could Larry ever, even for one moment, have questioned this man’s genius?

  “So?” Borasch demands. “So what do you think?”

  “I think,” Larry answers, emphasizing each word. “I think that I already knew that.”

  He drops a ten-dollar bill on the table and walks out. He does not look back.

  CHAPTER 11

  BY LARRY BLOOM

  The bishop of the Society for Secular Harmony praises himself daily at half past six.

  His Mystic Eminence, a tubby fifty-seven-year-old Yonkers native, is the eldest of nine children. One of his brothers owns a discount clothing outlet. The other has a cushy desk job with the Westchester County Department of Public Works. Four of his sisters are married to members of the Knights of Columbus and the Yonkers Volunteer Fireman’s Association. The fifth choked to death on a chicken bone. The sixth is a Carmelite nun. These are facts that the bishop wants you to know. His Mystic Eminence is a third-generation alcoholic. His father, a motel clerk, beat him frequently with a barber’s strop. His grandfather, a sometime longshoreman and hell-for-leather fighting man, beat his father with a plywood board. His mother died of undiagnosed hepatitis. These are also facts the bishop wants you to know. His Mystic Eminence dropped out of Roosevelt High School. He served three months at Rikers for aggravated assault, five years upstate after an arson-for-hire scheme. He lied his way into a dealing job at a posh Atlantic City casino. He mastered the art of card counting, took the bus out to Vegas, and pocketed fifty grand before the house caught on and blacklisted him for life. These are facts of which the bishop gladly informs you. He even wants you to know that he founded the Society for Secular Harmony hoping to turn a quick buck. The tenets of his creed demand absolute honesty: exposure precludes humiliation; secrets breed strife. He further instructs his disciples—the hundreds of lost young men and women who sporadically attend his mutual congratulation sessions—that personal enhancement will be achieved through unabashed narcissism. The only true sin, he preaches, is sin itself.

  His Mystic Eminence holds court in a converted Tribeca loft on Reade Street. The international headquarters of the Society for Secular Harmony consists of a cramped reception chamber and a spacious chrome-and-mahogany chapel. The plate-glass windows in the chapel offer worshippers a stellar view of Washington Market Park and the flagship marquee of Cheeses of All Nations. The walls of the waiting area are windowless and painted a tacky shade of canary yellow. Freestanding cork barriers separate the two rooms. When the devotees arrive for secular mass, they must file past the bishop’s Lilliputian Japanese wife, who stands at the chapel entrance brandishing a donation basket. Her Mystic Eminence speaks only a few sentences of English, but her tongue reportedly has many other talents. This is also a fact the bishop wants you to know. He is an insecure, self-centered mountebank, a man of few scruples and limited social graces, but he harbors no delusions that he is duping anyone with his lavender robes and scepter of ersatz emeralds. The bishop willingly wears his shortcomings on his sleeve, declaring himself an adulterer and a swindler and a philistine, perfecting a variant of the good life that permits him all transgressions except hypocrisy. He is both medium and message.

  The bishop stands behind a silver-plated lectern to praise himself.

  “I have cheated on my income taxes,” he bellows, “and I am a worthwhile person. I have lusted after my sister-in-law, and I am worthwhile person. I have driven away from the scene of an accident, and I am a worthwhile person.”

  Starshine reclines on a plush pink cushion while the bishop prays. She is surrounded by two dozen other congregants, teenagers wearing baggy pants, broad-hipped college girls, heavily pierced twenty-somethings, slender women in their early thirties who still carry themselves like overweight undergraduates. All rest on the pillows that serve as pews. All are enraptured. And with the exception of a recovering Hells Angel camouflaged with tattoos, and a grossly obese black man in a bright orange cap, all are white and female. Maybe this homogeneity stems from the nature of the Secularist message, feeding as it does on the appetites of that particular species of urban dweller who has much excess time and little self-esteem. Or possibly the marketing methods of the community: a few well-placed ads in alternative magazines and substantial reliance on the power of the spoken word. But most likely the reason that the Society for Secular Harmony resembles a Bryn Mawr class reunion is that the bishop, despite his bulbous nose and drooping ears, is hot as hell. On the street, of course, you’d walk past him. His physical attributes are few and far between. Yet behind his bully pulpit, engaged in his daily ritual of vainglorious self-denunciation, His Mystic Eminence acquires a magnetism that is part arch-patriot, part arch-revolutionary, part rising caudillo. He is Fidel and Eldridge Cleaver and Reverend Moon all rolled into one. Any of his followers would screw him in a heartbeat.

  Starshine—although she’d never admit it to a living soul—lusts after the bishop. To him, she owes the greater portion of her confidence and beauty. During her first session under his tutelage, arranged by a bovine roommate who later became a corrections officer, the bishop counseled Starshine to take pride in her own excess flab. You are fat and you are a worthwhile person, he trumpeted. You are physically repulsive, and you are a worthwhile person. He compelled her to stand emotionally naked before his spellbound congregation and to repeat his pronouncements. Starshine bawled her way through the initiation rite and didn’t leave her apartment for the following three weeks. She rummaged her bathroom cabinets for sleeping tablets, but later lobbed the pills out the courtyard window in disgust. She nearly took a carving knife to her wrists for a second time. The stench of vomit emanating from her wastepaper basket grew overpowering. Her roommate threatened to phone the police. Those were the darkest weeks of Starshine’s life, the bottom of the abyss, the capstone on twenty years of misery. And then, without warning, the floodgates broke. Starshine woke up one June morning nine years ago, bought a prewar Higgins from a bicycle repair shop in Red Hook, and rode off eighty-five surplus pounds in six months. She fasted all day. She passed her nights in front of the bathroom mirror. Every leaf of boiled cabbage required an entry in her calorie notebook. She sewed herself a new wardrobe, found a slender roommate. Nine months later, she returned to the Society for Secular Harmony to boast of her shortcomings. Only there weren’t any. Not really. Foibles, yes. But no true failing. She had become the person she’d always wanted to be. She will never forget her own overwhelming beauty that evening—the evening she first fell in love with the bishop.

  His Mystic Eminence has nearly completed his sermon.

  “I have defrauded a prostitute,” he declaims, “and I am worthwhile person. I have shoplifted a bottle of vermouth, and I am worthwhile person. I have called my wife a yellow whore behind her back, and I am worthwhile person.”

  The bishop pauses and clears his throat. He is beaming with self-satisfaction.

  “Those are my accomplishments of the day,” he says. “I am proud of each and every one of them. I am better than all of you. I will worship no gods before myself. I will value no human beings more than myself. I am the most worthy person I know. “

  The bishop’s pronouncement is met with heated applause. The woman adjacent to Starshine, a dour creature holding an umbrella, slaps her hands together as though murdering
mosquitoes. She smiles at Starshine.

  “He’s just wonderful, isn’t he?” she says. “Just wonderful.”

  The bishop asks if anyone else would like to share her accomplishments of the day. The woman with the umbrella steps up to the lectern and blows awkwardly into the microphone. Her hair is coarse and her face is too narrow. When she speaks, in a nasal, almost bleating tone, she reminds Starshine of Bella Abzug without a hat.

  “I’ve never done this before,” the woman announces. “But as they say, there’s no time like the present. So let me see…. . I’m extremely insecure, and I’m still a worthwhile person…. I’m sexually aggressive, as difficult as it may be for you to believe, and I’m still a worthwhile person…. I’m presumptuous, and I’m still a worthwhile person…. I’ve libeled a tour guide because he thought he was too good for me, and I’m still a worthwhile person….”

  The speaker loses steam after her confession of libel. Starshine tunes out. She hates listening to the pathetic creatures who succeed the bishop, but she knows a premature exit might incur his displeasure. And she really doesn’t mind daydreaming on soft pillows. It’s a relaxing way to end an otherwise grueling workday. But she’d survived it! She has warded off Colby Parker’s Italian adventure and Jack Bascomb’s Amsterdam pilgrimage and countless other propositions of a far less delicate nature. She has overcome the bureaucracy at the Dolphin Credit Union. She has made peace with her dying aunt. All of her tasks have been accomplished. Now she can relax. There is still the matter of dinner with poor Larry Bloom, the quandary of the anonymous love note to unravel, but if he doesn’t mention it, neither will she. It isn’t worth the bother. She isn’t insecure and she isn’t presumptuous and she hasn’t libeled anyone. Life is good.

  A light tap on her shoulder startles her from her reverie. The bishop’s wife is standing over her like a waitress in a sushi restaurant. Starshine intuitively dislikes Her Mystic Eminence. The woman’s unnatural hold on her charismatic husband is unnerving.

  “Miss Starshine,” the bishop’s wife whispers. “You get ring.”

  Her Mystic Eminence mimes the act of answering a telephone receiver and then tugs at Starshine’s hand like a young child. Starshine follows the Japanese woman into the reception chamber. Her stomach tightens with premonition. It feels as though a swarm of butterflies are fox-trotting across her innards. Only her roommate knows where she is and only a true crisis would lead her to summon her from the chapel. Starshine understands this phone call can only mean one thing. Her dear Aunt Agatha is dead. Although she has braced herself for this moment, her preparations have been futile. The tears are already mounting as she picks up the receiver.

  “This is Starshine,” she says.

  “Hey, it’s Eucalyptus,” her roommate answers. “I’m sorry to call you like this, but under the circumstances, I wasn’t sure what else to do.”

  “They called from the nursing home, didn’t they? My aunt died. I can hear it in your voice. “

  “Your aunt’s fine, as far as I know,” says Eucalyptus. “You’re the one that’s going to die.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve got a major problem on your hands, darling, and I can’t deal with it right now. I’m supposed to meet Frederico in Soho in twenty minutes. We’re patching things up. “

  The sound of distant shouting emanates from the telephone receiver.

  “Jesus Christ! What’s going on?”

  “Listen, darling. I don’t have the time or the energy to explain. But you need to get your ass home as fast as you possible can. Trust me on this one. “

  “Please tell me what’s going on,” Starshine demands again. “You owe me after this afternoon.”

  A long pause follows, as though Eucalyptus is weighing her loyalty to her roommate and her tusk supplier. “Let me paint you a picture. About an hour ago, Bone showed up with your water bed. And while he was dismantling your old bed to get it through the doorframe, Jack Bascomb stopped by to plead his case for Amsterdam. I was sitting in the kitchen with him when a distraught Colby Parker arrived in tears. He’s inherited two hundred million dollars outright, you know—not including his trust fund or what he’ll get when his mother dies. Anyway, the two of them were one dirty look away from murdering each other, when …”

  Another long pause. Starshine hears Colby Parker shouting in the background, senses the vessels pulsing in her temples.

  “When what?”

  “You’re not going to believe this…. The Jesus freak from downstairs starts pounding on the door…. I know you’re going to hate me for his, but I gave up and let him in. And do you know what he wanted?”

  “My head on a silver platter?”

  “Your hand in marriage.”

  “No!”

  “He asked me for advice on how to propose to a sweet young lady like yourself,” explained Eucalyptus. “He thinks I’m the one pounding the bedsprings. “

  This is all too much. Starshine can hardly think. “So he’s the one who slipped he note into our mailbox. Not Larry. “

  “Wrong again,” says Eucalyptus. “It wasn’t either of them.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because …”

  Starshine knows the answer even before she hears the words.

  “Because it was me, honey. I wrote you that note.” A newfound desperation rises in Eucalyptus’s voice. “How can I not be in love with you?”

  Starshine doesn’t answer. She does not know what to say.

  “You’re not angry, honey, are you?” asks Eucalyptus. “Starshine? Are you there? Please say something….”

  “I need to go,” she answers. “We’ll talk later.”

  Starshine slowly returns the receiver to its cradle.

  “Is all good?” asks the bishop’s wife.

  “Fine,” Starshine answers absentmindedly. “Just fine.”

  But she is not fine. She is as not fine as she has been in many years. She feels betrayed, isolated, friendless. And then she thinks of Larry Bloom. It cannot be a coincidence that she is having dinner with him tonight. Certainly not. If there’s anybody who can help her through this predicament, it is Larry. She knows he will not judge her. He will not interrupt. He will not offer unsolicited advice. All he will do is listen, hanging on to her every word, until she talks her way through this madness and is able to see things more clearly.

  THE BRONX

  The dead woman did not live in Riverdale.

  Her two-story red-brick home stands at the northern terminus of Corlear Avenue, in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, at the helm of a row of small single-family dwellings boasting matching fenced gardens and one-car garages. Oak trees line the sidewalk at regular intervals; dogwoods and red maples cast shade from behind hedges. Sprinklers sputter on many a manicured lawn. These streets were once brimming with children, shirtless toddlers of indeterminate gender, but the youngsters have long since worked their way through the state university system on Regents’ Scholarships and relocated to ranch-style houses in Rye and Scarsdale. They have left behind aging parents and rusted swing sets. The elderly stroll the neighborhood at early evening like shellshock victims after a conflagration. Ancient couples, the men always taller, promenade to and from their regular corners in silence. Sunken-cheeked widows scowl over rubber-soled walkers. Their enclave of ethnic Catholics and Eastern European Jews will soon succumb to the pressures from the south, the working-poor blacks and Puerto Ricans who have already claimed Morrisania and Tremont and the Grand Concourse as far north as Bedford Park, which might help explain Snipe’s dishonesty, his placement of the old woman’s residence up the hill in more fashionable Riverdale, but it cannot absolve him of his other prevarication. Snipe’s second lie is not a lie of embellishment, but one of omission. He has neglected to inform Larry that his girlfriend’s grandmother, although ninety-seven years old, did not perish of natural causes.

  Larry waits for his boss on the dead woman’s flagstone stoop. He chain smokes and discards th
e butts in an earthenware pot that probably once housed a geranium but now contains only hardened soil. He traces his fingers over the rusted impression of the name McMull on the mailbox. Across the street, he knows without checking, a similar mailbox will display remnants of the name Kalkhazian. The florist’s house is easy to identify. It is the only dwelling without a hedge of azaleas and rhododendrons, the only lawn bereft entirely of foliage. The Armenian’s clapboard home stands on a garden of raked earth. This does not surprise Larry. He imagines the man eschews flowers in the same way Larry avoids guided tours. But Larry does fear the prospect of encountering the florist. It is embarrassing enough to be standing on the dead woman’s porch, before the wall of yellow police tape announcing the crime scene, so that every passing senior citizen can eye him as the still unapprehended murderer. Larry tries to look official—pacing decisively, glancing irritably at his watch—so that they won’t suspect him. So that they won’t phone 9-1-1. Although no one has officially informed him that the nonagenarian has been bludgeoned to death, his instincts tell him that the girlfriend’s grandmother and the florist’s neighbor are one and the same. This explains Snipe’s urgency. It also means that there is absolutely no way in hell Larry is assisting him in his “recovery” effort.

  The tour director and his girlfriend arrive on foot at twenty minutes to seven. Jessie McMull is a pale Irish girl whose face is dominated by a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. She carries herself like a teenager, not so much walking as skipping, running her hands along the fence posts as she goes. Larry half expects her to cartwheel onto the porch. Instead, she stops directly in front of him and taps the side of the earthenware pot with her shoe.

  “You’d better take those butts with ya,” she says. “Nobody’s gonna know we’ve been here.”

  Larry obediently retrieves the cigarette butts and stashes them inside his pocket. He walks down the path and refuses Snipe’s hand.