High Crime Area (18 page)

(Was Harvey trying to cure himself of his drug addiction? Or had Harvey some other, medical condition, for which he was being treated? I'd gathered from careless remarks he'd made that he had infusions at the clinic—his white blood count was “low” and he was anemic.)

I knew to urge my brother to drink water. Several glasses of water a day.

“There's a danger of dehydration. You don't eat, drink, sleep, take care of yourself properly.”

“‘De-hy-dra-tion.'”

Harvey contemplated the word as if tasting it on his tongue. But the taste didn't interest him.

“Harvey, you could die.”

“‘Harvey, you could die.'” Harvey considered this phrase, dubiously. “It doesn't scan. It doesn't fly. Though the vowels exude a kind of dull-anxious concern. A kind of
mock concern
. Not that this fictitious ‘Harvey' will die but merely
could die
. Which is a fact for all who live—
could die
.”

Harvey seemed to be paying only a peripheral attention to me, absently caressing his mutilated ear that flamed when so touched.

“‘How scale walls of Hades'—this came to me last night. In the night. Note the short ‘
a
' sound. Vowels are a sort of string upon which words are strung. I think so. I think this is my discovery, but it may perish with me.” Harvey laughed, scratching the flaming ear.

It was late morning. I saw that Harvey would not speak to me in any serious way. Another day lost to us. Unless I worked on the Eweian translation in which, in fact, I had lost faith. Yet working diligently and even obsessively
without faith
did not seem to me a terrible fate, when the alternative was yet more terrible.

In the apartment there were strange languidly wafting odors.

Each day, new odors emerged of faint decay, rot. I'd thought it was the ancient refrigerator but even after I'd cleaned and scrubbed the interior, the smells remained. When I was gone from the apartment, to work in the little library for instance, and returned, the odors were always slightly different, as if the air had been agitated in my absence. Especially if I was away for some time. The apartment might show signs of visitors—rearranged chairs, boxes of books shoved from one place to another. And Harvey sprawled on a small sofa in the living room, notebook on his knee like one who has made a refuge for himself in the midst of great chaos: earthquake, flood.

At Harvey's nose, a perpetual glisten of moisture.

He is a junkie. You know of course. A junkie has no shame.

In a bemused voice Harvey said, as if thinking aloud: “Montaigne discovered at the age of thirty-eight that death is light and airy—he'd been thrown from his horse, trampled. He experienced no ‘other world'—no God, no Savior. He'd been Catholic of course—everyone was Catholic at that time and in that place, in sixteenth-century France. Montaigne saw that life is the long haul. Dying is the easy way.”

“And how did Montaigne know this?” I asked, exasperated. “Had he died, and returned to write about the experience?”

“He almost died. It was
near
-death. His ‘soul' slipped from his body, according to his account. For some time, he floated outside his broken body.”

“We all do,” I said. “It's called dreaming.”

“Lyd'ja! You gon drive us to 'Lantic City, yes?”

Somehow it was—
yes.

Couldn't say
no
to Maralena. Basking in Maralena's hectic warmth and when Maralena spoke of Lyd'ja as
my girl friend
I felt such happiness, no poetry could begin to express.

With Maralena was her
girl friend
Salaman. And another
girl friend
Mercedes.

It was upsetting to me, when Maralena came to our apartment with her cousin Leander. Made me sick with jealousy when Maralena joked with flat-faced Tin.

And sometimes, I had reason to think that Maralena and girl friends of hers came into the apartment with other men, individuals whose faces were becoming almost familiar to me, though I had no idea of their names or who they were—shadowy figures at the periphery of my brother's life. It wasn't clear to me whether Harvey was being exploited by these individuals or whether in some mysterious way Harvey was exploiting them.

Those nights when Harvey hastily shoved me into the back room—“For your own safety, Lydia.”

Somehow it happened, I was to drive Maralena, Salaman, and Mercedes to Atlantic City. Leaving in the early afternoon from Trenton and returning that night late.

Maralena, Salaman, Mercedes—these were dazzling young women with faces of the kind you see on billboards beckoning you to the casinos of Atlantic City.

I felt privileged to be driving them. To be their white-skinned
girl friend
.

Harvey smiled a pinched smile. Harvey might've been jealous.

Saying, meanly, “They will bleed you dry, little sister. Be forewarned.”

I didn't think so. Maralena was my
girl friend
.

Hadn't Maralena given me her cell phone number with the admonition to call her
any time day, night
if I needed help.

Let myself be cajoled into driving Maralena and her friends to Atlantic City and to “lending” them money—most of what remained of what I'd withdrawn from my University account.

Of the Atlantic City casino-hotels—among them Trump Taj Mahal, Bally's, Harrah's, Tropicana, Borgata—it was the
faux
-luxurious Borgata my friends preferred; Showboat and Rio they scorned as “low-roller” casinos—“For old folks, that come in buses. And some in wheelchairs, in buses.”

We started off at the slots. Here was low-stakes gambling, a kind of bargain-basement gambling that carried with it nonetheless a certain amount of drama and suspense. At least for those who expected they might win.

Pulling a lever to start into motion cartoon-fruit symbols spinning past my face seemed to me a gesture of such extreme futility, there was a childish abandon to it. Or maybe it was just the nearness of Maralena, Salaman, Mercedes who were dressed like giant tropical birds in tight-fitting sparkly clothes, high heels, dark-lace stockings. Maralena had silver piercings in her ears and left eyebrow; Salaman had dark-red-streaked hair and piercings in her face and elsewhere, she hinted, inside her clothes; Mercedes, the youngest of the three, had both piercings and tattoos, visible and hidden, and the loudest shrieking parrot-laugh. Mercedes teetered in gold-gleaming high-heeled boots to the knee; she had to show her ID to get into the casino, a fake ID (so I gathered) but the bored security guard, charmed by the girls, didn't investigate closely.

Within minutes at the slots I'd lost thirty-six dollars' worth of tokens. Hardly a surprise!

I imagined Professor A. regarding me with stern disgusted eyes.

Lydia?
—is that your name?

When someone won at slots—(which was fairly frequent, when the win wasn't a
big win
)—the machine lighted up giddily and music erupted in mock-hysterical celebration as, like a sudden spasm of vomiting, tokens flooded out of the mouth of the machine to be caught by the lucky winner in a cardboard container.

The idea was to arouse envious attention on the floor. To attract others to play the slots, imagining that they might
win big
.

My festive companions moved from machine to machine trying their luck. No skill was involved—just brainless luck. Of the three, Salaman actually came out eighteen dollars ahead.

“Girl, you gon
win big
tonight. This be a good prem'ition!”

On the drive from Trenton Maralena and her friends had spoken excitedly of a blackjack dealer whom they knew from Trenton, and it was this Jorge whom the girls sought amid the blackjack players. But no one seemed to have heard of Jorge—“Maybe he not workin tonight, that'd be shitty but you got to figure the man have to take some time off, yes?”—so Maralena reasoned. Much of the time Maralena was in the habit of addressing her girl friends with her back to me, as if she'd forgotten my presence. Their exchanges were high-pitched and bird-like and barely audible to me like exclamations in a foreign language amid the noise of the casino.

Why was I here! Why, with these glamorous young women whose toffee-colored skin glowed in the casino's delirious lights, drawing strangers' eyes irresistibly—why
me
?

Harvey had smiled pityingly at me when I'd left the apartment in my sole dress-up clothes—black nylon stretch-band slacks, cherry-colored velour top, black ballerina slippers. While I was driving on the Garden State Parkway to Atlantic City Maralena had tried playfully to “tease out” my hair with a comb, a pick, and hair spray, but the result was more of fright than of glamour.

“She real pretty,” the girls said of me, to one another, as if I were not present, or couldn't be expected to understand their speech, “only the girl got
smile
more, show she
hot.
”

If Professor A. could see me now, with my
girl friends
in Atlantic City! I felt a deep flush of shame and incredulity at the thought.

(Professor A. had recently sent me an email, which I had not yet opened, still less answered. The director of the Newcomb Fellowship program had sent me several emails, which I had not yet opened. And there was some difficulty with the bank in the University town in which my fellowship installments were supposed to be deposited... All of these matters hovered in the distance like casino lights glittering and winking in the stark New Jersey night. Shut your eyes, such lights disappear.)

Gorgeous Maralena, Salaman, Mercedes were part of a small hectic crowd around a blackjack table. Was this a “hot” table? Were players winning here? The dealer wasn't Jorge it seemed but his dark-gleaming eyes slid onto Maralena, Salaman, Mercedes with a certain zestful recognition. He was a light-skinned Hispanic with a thin mustache, tight stylish clothes and a look of sly bemusement. A robot programmed for blackjack, the mechanical motions of a card game of stunning and lethal simplicity. His hands shuffled cards, his hands doled out cards, his hands swept up and retrieved cards and in the interstices of such motions your fate was determined: win, lose.

The girls were so fervent, so hopeful. Of course, they'd been drinking. Their drinks were festive and tropical as their clothing and hair. Not for their white-skinned
girl friend
Lyd'ja to warn them
The house always wins. That is the point of casino gambling.

They'd have liked me less, if I spoiled their excitement with such warnings. Maralena would not swoop upon such a dour boring person and wetly kiss the corner of her mouth.

Within minutes, however, the girls had lost money at blackjack. Precious five-dollar tokens, swept away by the Hispanic dealer with the thin mustache. There had been the expectation—(maybe I'd felt this too)—at least, the childish hope—that being exceptionally pretty “sexy” girls with an obvious if unacknowledged rapport with the blackjack dealer, that they would have a better chance of winning than more ordinary players of whom most were middle-aged white men with raddled jowls.

There had to be some special reward in Atlantic City, if not elsewhere, for looking like Maralena, Salaman, Mercedes.

“You play with us, Lyd'ja! C'mon, girl! We got to get back what we lost, can't go home broke!”—so they plucked at my sleeves.

“I don't think so,” I said faltering, “blackjack isn't my—game,” but they laughed at me, not altogether pleasantly I thought but as you'd laugh at an exasperating relative slowing you down by dragging a paralyzed leg, or a blundering blind relative. “We gon pay you back, Lyd-ja—long before we headin home. But you got to
help
.”

So I stood with them at the blackjack table. I was a hesitant player, destined to lose. At least at the slot machine my failure had been less conspicuous. Blackjack was an exhibitionist's game—you had to expect to win, or your instinct was to stand mute, and withdraw your tokens. To lose a bet
publicly
—this was hard.

But we lost. And we lost again.

“Fuck!”—Maralena's voice was not so musical now but New Jersey nasal and flat.

When we drifted from the blackjack table at which we'd lost, the blackjack dealer didn't so much as glance after us. Two rowdily inebriated couples pushed in eager to take our places.

Abruptly then we left the classy Borgata, which my companions bad-mouthed as a
stuck-up shitty place.
They'd bypassed craps, roulette, baccarat—these games intimidated them. Even blackjack took too much thinking. My companions thought of gambling as an opportunity to
win.

The remainder of the Friday evening we spent at Trump Taj Mahal on the Boardwalk. Here, amid a sleazier sort of glamour, the girls seemed to feel more comfortable. The crowd was younger, less well dressed, with less money to spend; louder, brasher, more conspicuous drinkers. Despite its prime location on the Boardwalk, the Trump Taj Mahal was visibly run-down. (The famous Boardwalk itself was run-down, too. Homeless men were camping on benches and in doorways trying to shield themselves from the chill wind off the Atlantic Ocean; some of them looking so still, stiff and cold, wound in filthy blankets like mummies, Mercedes was moved to giggle nervously—
Them ain't corpses are they?
) But inside the garishly lit casino roaming men were attracted to the girls, bought them drinks and “bankrolled” them so that they could continue gambling.

This was the purpose of coming to Atlantic City, I realized. They'd made the trip before. They'd “gambled” here before. The prizes of the evening had to do with free money, so to speak, plucked by the girls like overripe fruit on a tree.