It seemed to her that the dark room was swallowing her up into one of its elixirs. She tried to stand but found herself frozen in place. She felt a familiar hand grip her arm. Follow me, a low voice said. The voice betrayed nothing as it led her through a dark passageway and out of Avedis’s workshop and just as they entered the twilit gardens Parvin lifted her head from staring at the ground in front of her feet and saw her dark handsome beloved striding purposefully forward, her hand in his. I have been instructed to dispose of you, he said, turning around quickly. Hyacinth looked in her eyes as if to say: Everything will be fine. But she couldn’t be sure. The gardens bled into a palace stairway. The two figures made a sharp left onto the stairs. A crowd of the Sultan’s henchmen passed them, dragging Avedis. His cries faded away as they hurried off.
We were wrong.
We were.
She won’t end up with Avedis.
It doesn’t look like it.
She was putting on her coat and turning on the lights.
It’s time to go. The nurse is coming.
Don’t go.
She stopped buttoning her coat.
I’ll be here tomorrow.
She kept buttoning.
Don’t go.
I have to go.
•
When Joe and Vivian said good-bye inside the car it was a Sunday afternoon in Brooklyn and the sun was out. He held her awkwardly in the front seat and she was crying and with his eyes closed he remembered when he’d seen her cry before, that day at the museum. He remembered the way her tears had been reflected in the glass, drops of gold sliding downward to the jungle floor. He heard the hollow sounds of children’s voices echoing in the vast room. He felt Vivian’s restrained yet passionate presence standing next to him. He saw her face on the body of a tiger.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1936
Pearl stood in the doorway holding the door open when he came home. She was wearing a pretty blouse and her smart skirt and she had a dish towel in her hand. Her face was glistening with perspiration and her hair was pulled back at the sides and then loose in back. Her face looked young like a twelve-year-old girl’s but her hands were thin and veined and he never liked to look at her knuckles. They showed how hard she had to work. Her wedding band swam around on her finger like a Life Saver. Her ankles were crossed and she was wearing heels. She almost always wore heels. He could smell a pot roast in the oven and through the doorway he could see the living room in a haze of afternoon light, the simple furniture blurred and softened and welcoming and beyond that a shaft of late sun slicing through the kitchen and he could glimpse it and it looked like home.
At dinner she said, How did it go? Did the band like you?
They did. Nice guys.
He took a forkful of vegetables. He chewed them thoroughly. He chewed for a long time.
Do they have any gigs coming up?
A few. Out of town.
She was getting him more roast.
Anything overseas?
Possibly. But that work is harder to get, you know. Not as many liners crossing these days.
That’s such a shame Joe. It’s such good money.
She smoothed her skirt and sat back down.
What’ll we do?
We’ll be fine, he said.
He took her hand across the table.
Only another year until I graduate. I’m doing well this semester. I’ll be getting legal work soon.
I’m glad you’re feeling optimistic, she said. Because I went ahead and bought these.
She took two tickets from her pocket and put them in his hand. They were for Count Basie Christmas Eve at the Roseland Dance Palace. He put them on the table and stared at them.
Pearl …
We deserve to have some fun, she said.
He held her hand and looked at her.
I know how much you like to go dancing, she said. Remember when we used to go? I know I’m not the best dancer, but …
He kept holding her hand and looking at her.
I’m not too shabby, she said.
2005
So who was he?
Who?
The person you lost.
She had been far away: the Bosphorus, a yellow kitchen, Roseland.
He was a journalist.
What kind?
A war correspondent.
I see.
She looked down into his back and saw the muscles tense slightly under his shoulder blades. It was where his wings would have been.
I met him when I first moved back to New York, around the time I first found work dancing. We lived in the same building. His studio was the floor above mine. He was a little older. He was out of college a few years.
A college boy. A fancy college, I bet. Smart, I bet.
Yes.
He took a deep breath. Keep talking, he said.
He was writing pieces about fires in the Bronx or waste transfer stations. He was on the Metro desk. He was just starting out. I was just starting out too. I was in a show, Off Broadway. It was doing well. We were talking about finding a bigger place.
She wasn’t thinking now she was just talking and she put her hand on his neck. Then suddenly he turned his head and she saw the muscle turn in his neck and it was like a long stretch of sand curving ahead she was walking along a beach in early May the air still stung and the sun threw out a cold unwanted light. The tide pulled things away. She was walking with Sam near his parents’ summerhouse but his parents were away they were always away and he said that he thought they should be together. He came up to her and pulled her close. Her hair blew in front of her eyes. The ocean was gray it had no blue in it and no green in it just gray and molten an almost colorless expanse of moving liquid and to her it looked beautiful that day she felt safe.
She kept her hand on his neck and she saw things she had not wanted to see: Sam in a restaurant the waiter hovering and then sliding away as Sam was telling her that they would be sending him it was a big step it was a vote of confidence it was very important for his career. She saw Sam’s parents at another dinner this time a restaurant with many waiters and his parents were very polite to her, too polite, she could tell they didn’t take her seriously even though her background was good but what had she done with it? She hadn’t gone to college she was a dancer her family was from New York but where was her mother exactly? Yes, they had heard of the college where she taught but they quickly changed the subject and asked Sam more about his plans. She had wanted to say that they weren’t really Sam’s plans they were plans that other people, institutions, governments, and countries had made for him but she knew she would sound young and foolish and immature. His father was boyish and had been successful in local politics. His mother came from so much money she could afford to look unfashionable and she seemed basically kind but she would never have wanted anything like this dancer for her son and she seemed eerily excited that he was being sent into another world because he would move on from this infatuation. Of course she must have been terrified but to Honor she seemed like someone so rich for so long that it wouldn’t necessarily occur to her that anything bad could happen. Later, Honor thought that she was wrong. She realized that what she had observed was an entirely public performance and that she had absolutely no idea what someone like that would think or feel. At the service his mother had looked like somebody who had been pieced together from different bodies. Her eyes did not look like each other. Her head seemed attached to the wrong person. She didn’t see anyone or look at anyone and it was as if she had never met Honor. Honor signed the book along with everyone else.
Honor gripped Milo’s neck tighter. She saw Sam with a different face: brown skin and his hair in a black scarf. He had been blond, fair, skin pink from the desert sun. They told him he stood out too much. He was too easy a target. They told him to get makeup and darken his skin. He wrote to her on the back of a Do Not Disturb sign that the brown cream would stain his clothes and rub off from his neck. His neck she
could picture his neck inside one of his loose button-down shirts. In New York he dressed like the rich boy he was, but messy. She saw his neck it was strong but not tough he was not tough and when she had heard he had to disguise himself she thought that there was no disguising this kind of difference. He was brave and he was confident and he thought he could hide but he was not devious or savvy or cunning enough to pretend he was someone he wasn’t. He couldn’t even lie.
In the end though it was not his disguise that saved him or gave him away. He wasn’t a hero or a coward. They pulled the truck over. They killed everyone. It didn’t matter what he looked like.
Do you see what I see?
The truck, he said.
Yes, she said.
I’m sorry.
She took her hand away and said, That’s what I lost. That, and a lot of other things.
You’ll tell me about those another day, he said.
Maybe, she said.
Then one day they told him that he was getting better and could go outside and could have visitors sit with him outside. There was a yard with some benches. It was spring again. It was cold. He asked her if she would come as a visitor. She asked him if he ever had any other visitors. He said, No. There’s no one to come visit. So many visions, she said. So few visitors.
She’d never seen him wearing a coat before. She brought a present. She gave him the little box.
Don’t get mad this time. It’s just a present, not a party.
I won’t, he said.
It was a watch.
I noticed you never wore one, she said. Do you already have one?
I used to. This is beautiful.
He put it on.
You’re not going to rip it off and throw it across the street are you?
No. I’m never going to take it off.
She was on a bench. He wheeled closer to her. He kissed her. They held hands in the cold. A bird bounced around on the dirt. The clouds looked like they were waiting in the sky.
I’m going to use it to time myself when I do my exercises.
Honor allowed herself a smile.
They tell me you’re doing well, she said.
I think I am. They say I’ve become more responsive. He gave a sheepish handsome grin.
You’re going to stand up and walk for me?
I’m going to do more than that.
He looked right into her and through her and she thought she could see into him straight into his head and then through him past this building past this city someplace else.
What are you going to do?
Dance.
And one day he did walk. He walked a step. Then he walked more until he walked the length of the corridor. He walked by himself to their room. He walked right up to her and he took her in his arms and he held her up and he put her on the table.
1936
Vivian went to hear him play. There were planets turning in the cigarette smoke that swirled in the yellow light. The red tips of the fingers of the hostesses clicked against the little table when they cleared her drink. Another one, honey? they asked through dark lips. She ordered another but she didn’t drink it.
Onstage he tilted slightly backwards and looked taller and thinner and his shirt stuck to him when he began to sweat. Then he leaned forward and the strap hung around his neck and his strong neck hung low and he looked solemn and calm like a horse in a field. Then he lifted only his head back and the moaning low music he had been making flew out from him in a smoky ribbon and circled in the air and it spiraled up to the pitch black of the balcony and it kept streaming heavenward and crying in the night and it was a long desperate animal howling and she knew that things would never be as easy as this again.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Joe knocked on the door. He walked in and Pearl was standing in front of the dresser facing the speckled mirror. She was looking down and so her face was absent from the reflection. She was fiddling with the clasp on her bracelet and she still hadn’t put on her makeup. She was half dressed in her slip that was already wrinkled and her filmy stockings.
Can I help you? he said.
I’m having so much trouble with this, she said, not looking up.
He came up and put his arms around her from behind and closed the clasp so quickly it seemed a kind of magic.
Thank you, she said, still not looking up.
Is everything all right?
Now she looked at him. Her eyes seemed tired and small.
I don’t know, she said. But she did know. Then she said: I’m not feeling well.
She walked over to the bed and sat down.
You seemed okay a little while ago.
I know. But I’m not now. My head hurts. Maybe it’s the flu. I’m so sorry. I know how much you were looking forward to this.
I’m sorry you’re not feeling well. He was ready. He had on a suit and his best black shoes.
Then she stood up and ran to the bathroom. He held her hair out of her face. He offered to stay home.
No, Joe, you should go. Why don’t you see if Bud will go with you? He’s on his own tonight.
It was Christmas Eve. Outside there was a deep stillness and the neighborhood felt empty. Random noises shot through the darkness up to the window from time to time, a car honk, a child’s voice, suddenly piercing the blanket of quiet.
I can’t leave you home like this.
You can’t stay with me either. You’ll be miserable. You’ll make me miserable, she said, smiling. She was still in her slip with her bracelet still on and it rattled against the kettle when she poured water to make tea.
Go, she said. I wouldn’t feel right if you stayed. And when you come back you can tell me all about it.
When he called Vivian’s house her mother answered and she sounded weary and then surprised and delighted as if this would be the most exciting event of her evening. He was after all a distant relative by marriage and she was always happy to hear from family. He heard her call Vivian and he could imagine the dim rooms with dark rugs and the carved old-world furniture. He could see Vivian reading next to a lamp. She would be surprised to hear from him. She would think he had gone out for the holiday evening with Pearl. She had known about the plan and she had also asked him not to call so often. They had tried to stay away. She had said she didn’t want to see him if he couldn’t tell Pearl and so far he hadn’t. He couldn’t. He had tried once or twice but the words were trapped in his head like dice in a cup and the hand wouldn’t come off the top. But tonight he felt sure Vivian loved him. He could see her look up from her reading and hear his name and without thinking her body would bring her to him. He pictured her as she contained her pleasure. He saw her mother handing her the telephone. He pictured her mother walking off down a dim hall. He pictured the old man lying under heavy sheets in the bedroom, his vibrancy turned in on itself and his stillness a kind of ancient unwavering judgment. For a moment Joe felt afraid. And then it passed.
On Broadway a row of buildings that sat low and drab during the day were lit up like demented birthday cakes at night. The signs on the roofs blared with red and white and the words in gigantic black letters or scripted in flowing light spelled out the names of bandleaders or movie stars and biggest of all were the names of the places themselves like billboards for imaginary worlds. Loew’s Mayfair, Lindy’s restaurant, the Paradise, the Strand, the Winter Garden, the Rivoli, Casa Manana. The Cotton Club, the Brass Rail, the Roxy, the Capitol, the Continental, and Roseland. Just a few blocks up at Fifty-sixth Street stood the Broadway Tabernacle. It had been a theater but was now a church. Vivian was waiting for Joe on the sidewalk. The specks of metal in the pavement lifted up and seemed to glitter in midair. Everything glittered.
It was more beautiful than he had expected. A universe with the rules suspended, made for dancing, the music blowing through the crowded lobby. He helped her with her coat and handed it over the little table to the hat-check girl and took the small piece of painted wood with the black numbers on it tha
t she handed to him. He felt the smooth wood between his fingers and pushed it in his pocket. He fumbled in his jacket for the tickets. He was holding the two tickets in his slightly trembling hand pressing forward with the crowd to get inside when he thought he saw someone he knew from law school who would know Pearl and he turned his head suddenly very close to Vivian’s and told her she looked beautiful and handed the tickets to the ticket taker whose foot was tapping a beat against the floor.
A half hour later a horn sounded from backstage to signal that the main act would be coming soon. They had been listening to the opening band and were still waiting. Because it was Christmas Eve some revelers wore Santa hats or had brought bells to jingle and now they filled the silence between the orchestras with laughing and occasional jingling, a plaintive jubilance, a maudlin symphony. Joe and Vivian did not have bells and were not wearing hats and they stood amidst the revelers and then they snaked their way through the crowd and stood off to the side. He held her in his arms in a dark corner of the ballroom. Is this okay? he said.
She looked up at him and two streams of light seemed to rise toward him from her eyes. He reached for the wall next to her head with his hand. Above her right eye there was a lifting of the lashes and the brow that gave her a questioning, needing expression. In the left eye there was only a green spun with blue and yellow. Nothing wondering there. The calm poise of the left eye made it hard to distinguish the longing in the right eye and for a moment it made him distrust his instinct that she loved him. But it was too late to change anything. He put both his hands against the wall and began to kiss her. She kissed him back.
Suddenly, he heard the cover of the piano keys lift up across the room above the now dwindling sound of the bells and the muted brush of heels on the dance floor. He turned his head to look toward the stage and her lips grazed his cheek. There was no one there yet. Just a body gliding offstage behind the curtain, someone setting up. He turned back and kissed her again. Then the lights dimmed. His heart was beating in his head and her lips felt raw. He took her hand and pulled her back onto the dance floor.
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