by Jim Nisbet
“Son of the city of Novgorod.”
“Yes,” Vassily said, looking curiously at Quentin. “Do you speak Russian?”
“Only to the extent of pronouncing the names in big Russian novels like, say, The Story of a Life?”
The son of Novgorod’s expression did not change. And he retained his grip on Quentin’s thumb. This in turn prevented Quentin from retrieving from his valise his copy of the book, against which he had redeemed a trade slip at the used bookstore.
“Konstantin Paustovsky?” Quentin clarified.
“Never heard of him,” Vassily replied.
Vassily might not know Charley Powell after all, Quentin concluded. So what use would there be in actually showing him the book?
“He sounds like a Jew,” the Russian speculated.
Quentin had never thought about it. He had no idea. But—“So?”
“They shouldn’t let Jews write novels,” Vassily said.
Quentin laughed in his face.
The Russian laughed too.
Each of them laughed as if he knew something the other didn’t.
“Pleased to meet you. Thanks for the coffee.” Quentin waited a moment. “Now what? We thumb wrestle?”
“Sure.” Vassily curled a lip. “Why not?”
Quentin made as if to shake loose the grip. The other man held firm. “I’m not your buffed gym rat,” Quentin winced. “That’s why not.”
Vassily released the grip. “Quite so.” His smile hardened. “I know.”
Quentin opened and closed his hand a few times. “You seem to know a great deal. Would you like to explain this knowledge? Otherwise, since I don’t wrestle, maybe we should call it a day.”
“Oh,” Vassily said, “it’s too soon for that.” He sipped his coffee and set the cup back on its saucer. “Far too soon.”
“Look.” A gust of wind blew the flakes of pastry off the Wall Street Journal. It almost took the paper, too, but Quentin slapped it back to the tabletop. LET THE DOMES BEGIN, another headline read; LIBERAL FILIBUSTER FAILS, read its subhead. “Since you know so much, you probably are aware that I’m sick, homeless, and alone. Which of them is it, exactly, that you find so attractive?”
“Charley Powell,” Vassily repeated.
Quentin rolled his eyes and fixed them on Vassily. “I wouldn’t know Charley Powell if he fell out of the awning,” he pointed upward, “onto this table,” he pointed downward. “Do you not understand?”
“His sister,” said Vassily.
“His sister,” Quentin stated flatly, “is a lush who doesn’t make very much sense most of the time.”
Vassily nodded, as if in agreement.
“Especially after dark,” Quentin added gloomily.
“But he loves her,” Vassily replied. “Or thinks he does. At any rate, she’s all he has. And she loves him.” Vassily opened a hand and studied its palm. “Or thinks she does.”
Quentin took up his coffee spoon, idly parted the foam atop what was left of his cappuccino, and set it down again. “Why are you bothering to know these details about two people who don’t know you?”
“Which two people?”
“Which two people? Why—Charley and Tipsy—Teresa—Powell.”
“It’s true that I don’t know Teresa,” Vassily said. “But Charley, I do know.”
Quentin eyed Vassily. “You know Charley?”
Vassily showed Quentin the back of his left hand. “Pinky finger: gone.” With a curious dexterity, he curled that finger out of sight. With the other hand he removed his Homburg, revealing a bald head, and passed the theoretically maimed hand over it. “Bald—like me.” He replaced the hat and pointed at his left forearm. “No tattoos.” Vassily smiled without humor. “Unlike me.”
“Well,” Quentin said slowly, “you certainly know more about him than I do. It sounds like you know more about him than his sister does, too.”
Vassily replaced his hat and leaned over the table. “Charley’s coming to San Francisco,” he said matter-of-factly.
Quentin said nothing, but he felt certain that Vassily could read this truth in his eyes. He didn’t bother to deny it. “I’ve heard that his visit has been postponed or canceled. But, either way, what of it?”
Vassily sat back in his chair. “Charley is my friend. He did a big favor for me once. In Florida.”
“Yes? What was that?”
“It’s not important.”
“It’s not? You came all the way from Florida for something unimportant?”
Vassily shrugged. “Everybody wants an excuse to visit San Francisco.”
“Do I assume that you were in prison with him?”
Vassily said nothing.
“So what are you telling me? That you’ve come to California to return the favor?”
“Exactly,” Vassily said. “To return the favor.”
“So what’s that to do with me?”
Vassily tilted his head to one side, considered Quentin, and then tilted it to the other side and considered him some more. At length he said, “Very little, one hopes.”
This made Quentin uneasy.
The Russian stood up. “Sincerely.” He fished a black leather passport wallet from the inner breast pocket of his Chesterfield and, making no attempt to conceal the fact that it contained many banknotes, he selected a twenty and a business card and dropped them on the table. “I was a waiter for a while,” he said, setting his saucer atop the twenty, “in Brighton Beach, when I first came to this country. If you would see that the young man receives this before you leave? I’ve enjoyed our little breakfast, Mr. Asche. If you hear from Charley, please pass him my card. Or, if you like, give me a ring yourself. In fact, if you would take the trouble to call me without letting Charley know anything about it, I could surprise him. That would be fun for us both.”
I wonder, Quentin thought to himself, what Novgorodovich considers fun.
“I’d be only too happy to make it worth your while.”
It was only then, as the Russian was replacing the wallet into his jacket, that Quentin noticed the tattoo. It was a teardrop, in black ink, and it had been needled into the fold of skin between thumb and forefinger of the Russian’s right hand.
So, Quentin thought to himself. If I were possessed of a similar tattoo, our teardrops would have kissed, so to speak, as a result of that curious handshake.
The Russian retrieved his umbrella. Quentin took up the business card.
Vassily Novgorodovich
PetroPozhirat, LLC
Moscow, London, Havana
Beverly Hills, Guandong, Caracas
33-01-46-09-88-88
That’s almost certainly a Paris phone number, Quentin thought to himself, yet the city isn’t named. “What,” he said aloud to the card, “no email?”
Vassily smiled. “Too insecure.”
Quentin bowed the card between thumb and forefinger. “How grateful?” he asked abruptly.
Vassily blinked.
“Did you hear me?”
“I heard you.”
“Well? Charley shows up. I call you. What’s it worth?”
Without another word, Vassily hooked the handle of the umbrella over his left arm and retrieved the wallet. His thumb pulled the corners of bills over the tips of its adjacent fingers with practiced celerity and when finished the Russian slipped the wallet back into the depths of the Chesterfield with the one hand while the other slipped one edge of a thickness of bills into the little chrome coil that held the cafe’s laminated menu and wine list, on the table, hard by Quentin’s elbow. The uncaptured edges of the banknotes fluttered in the breeze.
“A retainer, Mr. Asche.” Vassily unhooked the umbrella from his left elbow.
“And after the call?”
“I’ll double it.”
“What if he doesn’t show? After all, it’s been years since he and his sister last met. What if he remembers that they both must like it that way?”
“This may be his last chance to see her,” Vassily sai
d.
“How is that, exactly?”
“Prison was hard on him.” Vassily sucked a sympathetic tooth. “His whole life has been hard on him. His health has suffered. His liver is compromised.”
Quentin said nothing.
“The shock of seeing his old friend Novgorodovich will do him good. And when Charley sees what is coming to him because of me, because of what he once did for me, well …” Vassily spread his hands and smiled. “Maybe it will do him two worlds of good. Maybe he doesn’t have to work so much anymore. Maybe he can stay in San Francisco and take care of his sister.” Vassily smiled.
“Change his life, you mean?”
“Both their lives. For good.” Vassily nodded at the business card. “That telephone number rings anywhere in the world. Except Patagonia.”
“Patagonia …” Quentin repeated thoughtfully.
“An excellent provider.” Vassily raised the umbrella. “Unfortunately, it’s not publicly traded.” As if by magic, a taxi pulled to the curb. The Russian tipped his hat. “I look forward to hearing from you, Mr. Asche.”
The Russian opened the curbside door. Crisply displayed in bright red LEDs, the fare on the meter was one hundred and twelve dollars.
That’s a busy cab, Quentin thought.
The door closed. The taxi motored up the hill and took a right on Taylor.
Quentin counted hundred dollar bills. They were crisp, and there were twenty of them.
He’d just sold Tipsy’s brother to a total stranger for two thousand dollars.
He didn’t even need the money.
He folded the bills in the middle and began to turn their thickness end for end, between his thumb and forefinger and the tabletop.
At length, when his eyes refocused from a distant third-story architrave, he saw that the Russian had forgotten his newspaper.
No, he said to himself, as he dropped the money and the Russian’s business card into the side pocket of his jacket, today I am not reading a goddamn newspaper.
EIGHTEEN
WHEN CHINA JONES RETURNED TO THE DE HARO STREET COTTAGE AT 3:30 in the morning, Pacific Standard Time, he walked right past the For Sale sign posted on a stake at the foot of the sixty-nine wooden steps.
True, it was still dark.
Having achieved the top of the steps, however, he could hardly have missed the Notice to Vacate Premises by Order of the Sheriff of the City and County of San Francisco. But he might as well have. He punched his key right through the lower right hand corner of it, and penetrated the lock.
It takes quite a few glasses of calvados to get on top of three grams of blow especially, good blow. Fortunately, that well-groomed poofster in the cashmere Chesterfield had been willing to stand China all the calvados he wanted, at fifty bucks a pour, so long as China went home with him afterwards and wasn’t too metabolically awry to stay awake while the guy did his thing, and asking all kinds of irrelevant questions the while, chattering quite like a proper blow monkey himself, and China, plied with more than his share of the eight-ball of veterinary grade cocaine, could hardly get a word in edgewise—China snapped his fingers—he, China, was right on top of just about everything, and the client did his part to ensure this by buying the rest of the bottle. At five hundred dollars, Patsy had cut him quite the deal. China noticed that the snap of his fingers conveyed little actual snap—in fact, it had been inaudible. He hadn’t felt it, either. But, as with almost everything else in his life, he didn’t wonder about it. He had his priorities. And a nice home it had been, too, high atop Nob hill with a wall of windows overlooking the roof of Grace Cathedral, not to mention a sound-proof room full of toys nobody under twenty-one should ever be allowed to know about, let alone to look at. Make it eighteen. Well, China reconsidered, speaking as a former prodigy, make it sixteen. Not the front door of the cathedral, mind you, but the roof. Gargoyles and spires and tiles the color of post-vampirized complexions in bad light, which is to say, ashen by design, cinereous by proclivity. He snapped his fingers again. How come no audio? Was he that fucked up? Don’t push it. Don’t ask, don’t tell, don mask, do swell. Take responsibility for your excesses. He’d often been loaded sufficiently to delay the auditory coordination between a given sound and his conscious perception of it, but he’d never been sufficiently loaded to block audio reception altogether. Well, there’s always hope. Or had he? He frowned. Does coke-induced tinnitus block all audio input up to a certain volume? Or just some of it? He couldn’t remember. Maybe he never knew. He could hear the tinnitus, 5000 hertz and maybe 40 decibels—pretty loud. Plus several other frequencies, none of them harmonic. Loud to the exclusion of nocturnal fog susurration among eucalyptus leaves, a key turning in a lock, the snap of thumb and forefinger. He cocked his wrist and poised one finger atop the thumb. Had he? Did it? More to the point, was he? Temporarily deaf that is? That is, that is, is? He studied the setup. The cuticles were discolored. Did he really want to know? He opened the hand. Better not. He uncocked the wrist. The keys fell to the floor. Home anyway. He lowered the hand and looked at the keys. Soundless impact. Footfall on the moon. Spooky keys. Spookeys. He skirted the keys gingerly. Home, anyway. He glanced over his shoulder. Pick up those gleaming-in-the-gloom suckers later. On the way out. On the Way Out.
Something special there is about a trick who isn’t worried about the money, even if there are other issues, like total absence of post-fellatio remorse for example; like here’s an extra hunnie for barebacking; like here’s five hunnies for letting me tie you up; like don’t worry about the whip, it’s a small one; Miou Miou the Inquisitor, China the quizzed; like I must have passed out, because the next thing I know, it’s like, don’t let the door spank those tight little buns on their way out, Honey. Different kind of honey. What’s the Spanish for honey? Miel; and the Spanish for adios is adiós.
“Oh, Daddy,” China remembered himself as suggesting, “don’t you want me to stay over?” He pointed at the window. “We could attend early Mass.” What he was really thinking was he’d never get a cab at that hour. But what he said was, “Don’t you just love it when Monsignor lays that cool wafer on your hot tongue?”
Miou Miou, who had exchanged his beautifully tailored ensemble for a kimono and an ascot beneath which he sported fuchsia polyvinyl chloride lederhosen with appropriate zippers, blue nylon suspenders embroidered with little white anchors curlicued with rope, a chrome dog collar, and a cattle prod in a belt holster—started laughing and couldn’t stop. His face turned red, he started to cough but, still, he couldn’t stop laughing. Finally he had exhaled a plume of Turkish tobacco smoke, extra-fragrant because cut with tarball, toward the ceiling, wiped the smile off his face, asked China what part of Adiós he didn’t understand. It means goodbye, you are out of here, go with God, pick your deity, think of it, glamourpuss, more laughter, as a school night, contemptuous laughter, a rough trade-school night.
China considered his mental hologram of the apartment. Deep-cushioned chairs and two divans upholstered in striped silk, a well-stocked bar, Dalidá’s smokiest on the sound system, ruby velour drapes framing two floor-to-ceiling window walls, it was a corner unit, carpet to die for or face down in, hand-blown glassware on display in beveled glass cabinets, a fourth wall of books, among them two leather-bound meters of a lasciviously illustrated Oeuvres of the Marquis de Sade. China had none but the vaguest notion of the author, but lascivious he understood. The edition was impressive. He would have bet all those old bindings smelled good, too, but by then his sense of smell was totally AWOL. Despite forty-five minutes of methodical sex, not a hair of the client’s expensive coiffure looked out of place. It wasn’t a rug, either, as China had ascertained by palpation. What brand of mousse could it be?
I could choke this guy in the midst of hot sex, China had mused to himself, and live here for a month before anybody became the wiser. But, he sighed, that would be murder. And for what? Mere luxury beyond a mere mortal’s mere imagination?
Plus, if the client’s mother we
re still alive, she would be calling every day.
The client had ushered China towards the front door with his cigarette hand, palm up. The gesture appeared quite gracious and, suddenly, China found himself in the hall with the apartment door closed behind him. The building was so quiet, its paneling so opulent, its carpeting so thick, China barely heard his own footsteps as he failed to walk a straight line down the corridor to the elevator. Even the tinnitus seemed muffled. The buttons were old, a black ceramic pair vertically stacked in a brass escutcheon. Why not me? he rhetorically asked, pushing the Down button. As the car soughed and clacked its way up the shaft to meet him China noticed a security nacelle, a black hemisphere about four inches across. It glowered down at him from atop the gilt frame enclosing the brightly buffed brass arrow, which tracked the elevator’s progress through a semicircular arc—L, G1, G2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, PH: that’s us. The car’s doors split open, silent as a bivalve. China dispensed a little salutatory wave toward the security camera, entered the car, and it wasn’t until after the doors closed that he realized that he was so high both his ears were ringing, not just the one, in multiple frequencies, too, and he had cottonmouth sufficient to desiccate a rain forest. He touched the seam of his back pocket, then cannily stole a glance from beneath the ledge of his sagittal crest at one and another corner of the elevator, where its walls met its ceiling. He saw no camera, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one, nor did it mean Security wouldn’t be waiting for him downstairs anyway. He pressed his ass against the wall. He could feel it. The bindle of meth was extant. He’d managed to get through a date without sharing his personal stash with the client. They’d exhausted the client’s own bindle, guy wanted some more, fuck him, he had the money, he could buy it himself. But if China were going to sleep before noon he would need some booze or downers.
Halfway down the nine stories China impulsively depressed the button marked PH. Could a satisfied client refuse him the dregs of a lousy bottle of calvados? The machine did not respond. Instead it deposited him on floor one, where its door opened onto the narrow and oppressively bright art deco entrance lobby. China looked at his own reflection in a floor-to-ceiling mirror directly across the hall from the elevator. Not particularly flattering. He punched the PH again. Again, nothing happened. He tried the button that closed the doors. Nothing. He tried the button for the garage. No response. This elevator, he realized, would yield not to a passenger’s whimsy, but to a code or a key. How discerning. How discrete. How secure. How exclusive. How excluding. How lonely the loneliness of the nocturnal blow monkey.