The Believers
Page 32
In the kitchen, a small team of caterers was preparing plates of smoked fish and Rosa, looking fetchingly biblical in a black headscarf, was standing by the refrigerator being interrogated by Julie and Colin about Audrey’s funeral oration. “This ‘tribe’ thing,” Jean heard Julie say, “what’s it about, then? Is it free love and all that?”
“I really couldn’t say,” Rosa replied. “You’ll have to ask Mom.”
It occurred to Jean now that Audrey might be lurking in Joel’s office, sneaking a joint. But down in the basement, she found only a couple of waiters taking a cigarette break and discussing the work of Stephen Sondheim. At the sight of Jean, they jerked into professional postures of doleful respect. “Oh, sorry! We were—”
She raised her hand to silence their apologies. “It’s quite all right. Stay where you are. I was just looking for someone.”
She climbed back up the stairs and at last caught sight of Audrey. She was standing in the hall by the living room door, receiving the condolences of a white-haired man in jeans and rainbow suspenders. Jean waited at a tactful distance for the man to finish, but as soon as Audrey noticed her, she beckoned her over and curtly dismissed the speech-maker. “Ex-Weatherman,” she said, gesturing at his back as he trotted off into the living room. “I thought I was never going to get rid of him…” She smiled at Jean expectantly. “So? What did you think? It went off pretty well, no?”
Jean chuckled. “You are a dark horse, Audrey. I had no idea you were planning that.”
“I wasn’t sure until the last minute if I was going through with it. I was convinced I’d lose my bottle.”
“It was quite a coup de théâtre you pulled off.”
Audrey’s expression darkened. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she said. “It wasn’t a fucking Broadway show, you know. It was my husband’s funeral.”
Jean opened her mouth and then closed it again. The time for confidences was over, it seemed. Henceforth, not even she was to be privy to what lay beneath Audrey’s official pose of happy tribeswoman. “No, of course,” she stuttered. “I only meant…Public speaking is always a kind of performance, isn’t it? What you said about Berenice was lovely.”
Audrey shrugged, grudgingly mollified. “Yeah, I worked hard on that. I really wanted to get it right. For Joel’s sake.”
Mike appeared behind Audrey now and tapped her on the shoulder. “Sorry to bother you, Ma, but have you seen Karla? I can’t find her anywhere.”
Audrey shrugged. “I expect she’s around.”
“I looked upstairs and outside. I just can’t imagine where she is.”
“Well, not to worry—”
“But it’s her father’s funeral reception. She can’t just have gone off.”
Audrey sighed. “Do stop whining, Mike. She’s probably gone off for a quiet little blub somewhere. Why don’t you let her be?”
A quarter of a mile away, Karla was standing in the Fourteenth Street subway station, waiting for the L train to take her to Brooklyn.
Just tell me where you are, Khaled had said when she called him from the street. Wait right there, and I will come and get you.
But Karla needed to maintain momentum. She did not want to hang around. “No,” she had told him, “I’m coming to you.”
A rat was moving about on the tracks. Distractedly she observed its jerky, rodent motion. What would Mike do when it finally dawned on him that she was gone? He would not leave the reception straight away, she was sure of that. For a while at least, he would skulk on the sidelines of the party, torn between despising the Litvinoffs’ fancy friends and yearning to be accepted into their magic circle. Eventually, the desire to be acknowledged would override his animosity, and he would accost a few of the more famous guests. But they would be unnerved by his strange, angry sycophancy, and would quickly move off, mumbling excuses about drink refills and needing the bathroom. Infuriated by these unaccountable rejections, he would give up and go. He would ride the 4 train all the way back to the Bronx, and an hour or so later, when he arrived home, vibrating with pent-up fury and carefully plotted rebukes, he would find the apartment empty….
The train roared into the station and Karla stepped forward, planting one foot on the yellow line at the edge of the platform. What if this were all a vast mistake? What if she surfaced from her romantic dream a few months from now and discovered that she had ruined her marriage for nothing?
Ding-dang, the doors slid open.
It was not too late; she could still go back and tell everyone that she had been out for a walk. Mike would reprimand her; life would go on.
Ding-dang, the doors slid shut. She was on the train.
Her car was filled with a tour group of wide-eyed, slack-jawed French boys. She sat down and closed her eyes, letting herself be lulled by their pretty-sounding, incomprehensible chatter. After a couple of stops, the door to the next car slid open with an angry clang and a scruffy, middle-aged black man stumbled in. The tourist boys stirred anxiously. “Hello, ladies and gentlemen,” the man said. “My name is Floyd. I am homeless and suffer from diabetes and epilepsy. Please don’t be nervous. I ain’t begging. I’m here to entertain you.”
He closed his eyes and let out a long, wordless falsetto note. The song was “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” a silly novelty number that Karla had always associated with oldies radio stations and kitsch. But now, hearing it sung in this dingy subway car, she was struck by its beauty. How simple and true it seemed! How filled with the mystery and sadness of life!
The train suddenly emerged from the tunnel, and the car was filled with daylight. They were crossing the Williamsburg Bridge. From the window, Karla could see the Brooklyn waterfront spread out before her: the Williamsburg clock tower, the brownstones of Brooklyn Heights, the smokestacks of the Navy Yard, the skyscraper cranes of Red Hook pointing yearningly out to sea. She thought of Khaled, waiting for her in his apartment, and willed the train to go faster. If she didn’t get there soon, he might disappear, or decide that he didn’t want her after all.
Floyd finished his song and began walking up and down the aisle, holding out a crumpled paper bag. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you enjoyed my musicality, please show your appreciation with a financial donation. Nothing is too little or too large. I take coins, bills, checks, American Express…”
The train was pulling into the station by the time he reached Karla. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said with a bow as he took her dollar bill. “Thank you and God bless you.” The doors opened, and he jumped off. As the train began to move off again, Karla glimpsed him standing on the platform, sorting through the money in his bag. She had just enough time to raise her hand in an awkward gesture of salute and farewell before the train picked up speed, and she was plunged into the darkness of the tunnel once more.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am very gratef Number Yaddo and to the MacDowell Colony for allowing me to take two brief but highly productive holidays from domestic life in order to work on this book. I would also like to thank Jennifer Barth, Amanda Urban, Juliet Annan, Gill Coleridge, Sarah Coward, Norman Rosenthal, Melvin Konner, Scott Rudin, Patrick McGrath, Patrick Marber, Tshering Dolma, Marina O’Connor, Colin Robinson, and Lucy Heller for all sorts of help, literary, technical, and otherwise, that they gave me while I was working on this book. Above all, I am thankful to my daughters, Frankie and Lula, who always ask when I’m going to be done writing, and to my husband, Larry, who never does.
About the Author
ZOË HELLER is the author of two previous novels, Everything You Know and What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2003. She lives in New York.
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ALSO BY ZOË HELLER
Everything You Know
What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal
Credits
Jacket Illustration by Gray318
Jacket type by Wi
ll Staehle
Jacket design by Evan Gattney
Art direction by Archie Ferguson
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
“Soliloquy” copyright © 1945 by Williamson Music. Copyright renewed. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
THE BELIEVERS. Copyright © 2008 by Zoë Heller. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780061971327
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