Lowboy (21 page)

“Two years ago this March.”

“I see.” Now he recalled a cursory obituary in the
Times
: a heart attack in some obscure airport motel, alone and in bed, with all the sordidness that kind of death implied. “Right at the time your son’s condition worsened.”

“Alex had stopped coming around by then. He had troubles enough of his own.” She might have been talking about the sad fate of a man she’d once met on a train.

“No love lost between the two of you, I take it.”

“Not by the end.” She began to say something else but stopped herself. “That’s a ridiculous expression, isn’t it? ‘No love lost.’ When Alex was alive I might still have taken it literally.” She sat up and took back the album. “More important things than that were lost, of course. Our son was lost.”

As he watched her he became aware, dimly at first but then ever more clearly, how far from reason and prudence he was straying. Soon the fact of it was inescapable. His awareness, however, was a passive thing as he sat there and let her relieve him of his last defenses. In time it seemed to disappear entirely.

“I want to show you one more picture. Do you mind?”

“I don’t mind at all.”

She balanced the album on her knees and turned its pages measuredly, bashfully, playing the role of the doting parent. No. She’s not playing any kind of role, he told himself. Don’t belittle her because you want her. You put your head down freely on the block.

“Here,” she said, smoothing the cellophane down. “Here he is at the library. A few months after his fourteenth birthday.”

He leaned toward her and looked. The same delicate head, more beautiful now than seemed necessary in a boy, backlit before a flight of granite steps. The same wide-legged stance, the same carefully combed hair, the same downward tilt of the shoulders. The face was also the same but its expression had changed to one of simple panic. A grin was fixed to the front of it like a screen around an operating table.

She shifted away from him and coughed into her fist. “When I explained to Will that he was getting sick, a few days after we’d been to visit Kopeck, he read every book on schizophrenia that he could find. He learned that he didn’t have much time—or maybe he could feel it, I don’t know—and he asked if he could be excused
from school. When I got him a note from Kopeck he seemed almost proud of it.” She coughed again. “There was no need for a doctor’s note, of course. He could never have gone back to school. He was hearing voices already, talking to himself, giggling for no reason, all of the usual symptoms. But he kept himself under control at the library, at least at the beginning, and by the end of that month he was practically an expert. I asked him one day—a particularly good day, I remember—what he thought we should do. He smiled at me in an indulgent sort of way and took my hand. ‘We’ll have to wait for the end of the world, Violet,’ he said. He was treating me as though
I
was the patient, as though I was the one who needed looking after, and I suppose in a way he was right. ‘What do you mean, Will?’ I asked. ‘What world is going to end?’ He reached over and patted me on the shoulder. ‘My world, obviously,’ he said. Then he kissed me on the cheek and went upstairs.”

Lateef sat on the edge of the couch and waited. Violet’s eyes were closed again but she held herself stiffly upright. Say something to her, he ordered himself. But of course he said nothing. The lamp had started to flicker, like the beam from an old film projector, but that might have come from watching her so closely. He knew that his desire was obscene in light of everything she’d told him but the knowledge had no effect on him at all.

“You deserve better than this,” he said dully. The air seemed to have been sucked out of the room. “A better kind of life.”

She opened her eyes. “Are you proposing to me, Detective?”

“Miss Heller,” he said. He took her tentatively by the shoulder. Her body twitched under his fingers, then relaxed. “Violet—”

Her eyes went flat. “No one but Will calls me by that name.”

The telephone rang as he took his hand back from her shoulder. An actual bell, a bright and childish alarm, antique as everything else in that place. For the first three rings she sat motionless, staring helplessly at her hands, as though the sound incriminated her. Then she darted past him out into the kitchen.

When the ringing stopped short he assumed that she’d answered:
he waited for her to speak but she said nothing. Only then did it occur to him that she might not have picked up in time. The phone rang again as he got to the kitchen and this time she answered at once.

“All right,” she said calmly. “It’s all right now.”

It was clear to him then that she’d been expecting the call from the beginning.

V
iolet? Hello? Please say something Violet. Please be answering and saying It’s
all right
.

All right. It’s all right now.

I fucked up Violet. There’s blood coming out of my clothes.

Are you hurt, Will? Is there any pain?

Will?

I don’t know about that. Pain? There’s no pain.

Good. That’s good. Now take a breath, if you can, and tell me—

What’s funny is she tipped me over backwards. She got up all of a sudden and that was a surprise and when she made the cut I fell and laughed out loud. She’d obviously been waiting with the key. It was a simple thing. She ran back down the stairs like a fucking track rabbit. I didn’t want to do it anymore. I watched her go Violet. She just hopped right away. You don’t know what I’m talking about. You don’t even know what a track rabbit is.

That’s right, Will. I don’t know. Would you explain it to me?

Was I supposed to do it Violet? I thought I was supposed to. If I wasn’t I’d never have pulled down my pants.

First tell me where you are. If you tell me that, then I can come and find you. I can listen to you then. I’d like so much to hear—

Hear what Violet? I don’t want to hear anything. I want not to be hearing. I want everyone to shut their mouth already. Uhhh—

Who’s there, Will? Who’s everyone? Can you tell me that?

Uhhh. You know who.

I don’t know, Will. I want you to tell me.

You know who. You know who. I stopped taking my meds.

Your meds are the only way to shut them up, though, aren’t they? I talked to you about that. You made me a promise. Remember the promise you made to me, Will? Remember what Dr. Fleisig—

They shut up too much with the meds. It gets quiet. It all gets so flat.

You sound quiet too. There’s a funny kind of buzzing on the line. Are you maybe calling from a payphone?

From a payphone in a station in a tunnel. That’s all right. A payphone is a coin-operated machine.

Why are you being so quiet? Why are you whispering? Are there people around?

Close enough Violet. In the doorway. Three of them together. For a long time they were in the other room.

Can you tell me the name of the station? Which station is it?

A good station actually. One of the best. Ladies in raincoats are talking about us. Trains going by. It’s one of the finest stations on the line.

They have raincoats, the ladies? Is it raining there?

Uhhh—

What kind of line is it, Will? Is it a letter or a number?

No Violet. Uhhh. No no no no.

That’s just fine. It doesn’t matter. Can you tell me what color it is? Can you tell me that?

I’ve been cut up actually. Emily did it. She sat straight up and chopped me in two pieces. She cut me right between the tits.

Where’s Emily now, Will? Is she all right?

Will? Hello? Is Emily with you right now? Is she there?

Uhhh.

Will, please answer me. I’m begging you.

Yes and no Violet. Yes and no.

Oh God, Will. Oh God. Please don’t say that.

I told her everything Violet. I didn’t mind. I told her about the weather and my calling and about the Musaquontas. I told her a joke and I followed her and I put on someone else’s clothes. A whole new look for me and sexy. I gave her money. Dark blue jeans with dice on the back pocket. An oxford shirt. A sweater. She gave me a green belt too behind the curtain. She did the Robot Violet. She gave me kisses.

Emily would never want to hurt you, Will. Emily’s your best friend. Are you listening to me? Emily wouldn’t—

Oh yes she would Violet. Close your mouth now. How could you know anything? Were you there? That fucker. I told her about my time at school but she tried not to hear it. She was stupid and she was scared shitless in the tunnel. She did too much talking. We got to the platform and she giggled at me and rolled her eyes like someone from the school. She couldn’t hear a single word I said. She told me everything was
beautiful
. She liked the arches best. There were chandeliers and skylights. Are you ready? I asked her. She liked that too. She went up the stairs. I thought I was supposed to do it then. There was this calling Violet. It gave me directions. It called me up and said to do that thing.

What sort of things did it—

Have I told you about my calling yet?

Not yet. Maybe you could—

Who’s that with you there? Who’s talking?

Nobody’s talking. No one’s here but me. Tell me what your calling said.

Well listen carefully everybody! Attention please! Because there’s not much time.

What are you talking about, Will? There’s plenty of time. Just take a breath and close your eyes and try—

There is a hurry Violet. Time is actually very tight. First of all I’ve only got two quarters.

Can you tell me the number of the payphone there, maybe, in case you run out of money? It’s all right to tell me. It’s better.

I love you Violet.

I love you, too, Will. You know that I love you. I would never— Why was I born Violet? Tell me why.

Goddamn it, Will, give me a straight answer. Slow down and catch your breath and tell me—

7186738197. It could be anybody’s.

Hold on. 718.673.819—

Why are you saying the number out loud? Hello Violet? Who are you talking to?

You’re in Brooklyn, is that right? Are you on the F line?

Payphones only ring in the movies. No one gets a payphone call. I’ve never gotten one ever.

That’s not true. I used to call you at the hospital, don’t you remember?

Will? Hello?

What hospital Violet? What hospital do you mean?

I’m sorry, Will. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to call it that. What I meant was when I called you at the—

You must think I’m stupid Violet. You must think I wear my underpants on the outside of my clothes.

Hold on a second, hold on—can you please wait a second—don’t stop—

What’s that? Violet? VIOLET?

It’s nothing, Will. I’m sorry about that. I just dropped the—

Who’s with you Violet? Who the fuck is that?

It’s nobody, Will. No one’s here. I told you already—

Will, can you hear me?

Will?

T
he sun was declining and the firepits were glowing and oilcolored nightbirds were warbling down from the trees. The birds and the fires and the voices made a chorus. His own voice was in it. Dead air whistled through the tenements and bottles cooed and sparkled in the weeds. Sunlight cut into his body like a blessing.

He walked down the street with his left eye shut against the sun and his fingers hooked together at his neck. Smoke rose straight up from the ground in silver lines. Two boys with socks on their hands were kicking something in a rolled-up paper bag. He walked with one foot on the curb and one foot off. There were cars on the street but most of them sat flatwheeled on the ground. Pelts of carbon swaddled them. He found one that he liked and climbed inside.

The windows were broken but the front seat was warm. A smell of sunbaked Naugahyde and shit. A sticker on the dash said strictly for my ninjaz. He sat up and pressed the heels of his palms against the wheel. He revved and coughed and sputtered, shifting gears. His shirtfront snapped and crackled as he breathed. He tapped it with
his finger and watched the bloodflakes settle in his lap. Snap crackle pop, he mumbled. He sat back in the seat and shut his eyes. Nothing left now but patience. Snap crackle pop. Nothing left to do but wait until the fire.

Under the street at that moment a train shot through a station unstopping. The rails sighed and protested as they will. Emily lay stretched between them. She looked up at Lowboy as the train hit the junction and gave him a thin Christian smile.

A noise woke him suddenly and he jerked himself upright with both hands still braced against the wheel. The two boys he’d seen before were squatting on the hood with the toes of their bare feet curled against the dash. Crumbs of windshield squeaked under their heels. They were lightskinned and somber and they seemed to know him well. The smaller boy pointed at something on the seat behind him.

“Happy birthday,” said the boy.

“Girlfriend’s first name,” the other boy said. His voice was highpitched and polite.

Lowboy looked cautiously over his shoulder and saw the bag that they’d been kicking up the street. Dark with tar or grease along the bottom. A bag for a Jamaican beef patty or a chicken cutlet sandwich or a beer. He reached behind him and brought the bag over the seat and held it toward the boys but neither of them took it. He opened the bag himself and looked inside and saw the carcass of a stillborn dog.

“Get up,” said the small boy. “No sleeping.” He worked the words out thickly through his teeth. The other boy yawned. The sun behind them made them look like cutouts. They frowned at him but he felt safe and careless. He felt sleepy and untouchable and still.

When he kept quiet the taller boy sucked in a breath and let it out and eased his body down onto the pavement. He squinted at his feet and shuffled slowly clockwise and let his knuckles drag along the hood. He stopped at the passenger-side door and opened it. The smaller boy’s eyes never blinked. He ran his tongue along his teeth and nodded sadly. Lowboy stared back at the boy and listened to the glass chittering and wondered how he’d gotten to that place.

He was starting to remember when the taller boy’s hand closed over his mouth. The hand smelled like rust and old treebark and crumbling bricks. It touched his face lazily, heavily, the way that it had moved across the hood. Aged fingers testing and exploring. When he sat up the hand covered his eyes.

A wheezing. A rustling. The crackling of paper.

The hand withdrew soon after but his eyes refused to open. He felt the seat sag and buckle as someone got in. Cursewords were uttered. It was not the small boy’s voice or the other boy’s either and it was like no voice that he had ever heard. He had never heard it but he recognized it. He had heard it since the day that he was born. Careful now, said the voice, and immediately everything went shrill.

“Okay, Alex,” Lowboy said, covering his ears. “Okay, Dad.” He had no idea what business his father had in that godforsaken place but he knew that it was no business of his. A hand slipped into his shirt pocket and he let out a frightened breath and slumped forward until the seatbelt caught and held him. He couldn’t remember having put it on. He was about to cry out when the boys cleared their throats and the voices came to life and started shouting.

When he opened his eyes he was alone in the car. The sun was the same but the sky had changed colors and the seat was dark and cool against his back. The brown bag was empty. The glass had been arranged into small bright piles along the dash but he couldn’t make sense of the pattern. He sat up and looked at the street. A group of women stood clustered at the far end of the block but other than
that he saw no one. If he listened closely he could still make out the voices, at times even understand them, but the wind through the car was a thousand times louder and so were the sounds of his body.

He sat for a time watching the women on the corner, feeling the sun on his face and his forehead, adjusting to the faintness of the voices. Their laughable faintness. He wondered how on earth it could have happened. The piles of glass possibly, or the little dog’s body, or some other trick he had no knowledge of. He decided that the two boys were behind it. They’re the opposite of Skull & Bones, he thought. Two personal angels. So straightfaced and quiet. He pictured them to himself, the smaller boy talking and the taller one moving, as if picturing them would get them to come back. He decided that their names were Quick & Painless.

Now that it was quiet again he could think about Violet. He’d have liked to have her with him in the car. She’d have fussed about the bloodstains but that would have been all right. Now that it was over, now that he’d done everything he could, there was no reason for them not to be together. He turned his head and imagined her sitting in the passenger seat, smoothing down the creases in her jeans, picking bits of broken glass out of her hair. It’s no good Violet, he’d have told her. I tried my best to do it. I tried twice. There’s nothing to do now Violet and I’m sorry. She’d have taken his hand in hers and he’d have let her. He might even have laid down in her lap. He imagined her jeans against his cheek, the beautiful mannish jeans she always wore, warm and rough against his forehead like the canvas of a sail. He’d asked her once to take him sailing, he remembered. Come on Violet, he’d said. One of your boyfriends has to have a yacht. She’d laughed at that and called him Little Jacques Cousteau.

He covered his eyes with his shirtsleeves now and pictured her. Violet, he said in a whisper. Listen to me. Are you there. There were two little boys here Violet did you send them. Two little angels. If you sent them Violet could you please send them back.

He was still waiting for an answer when someone broke off from the group on the streetcorner. A blackhaired woman of no particular age, hesitating as if she expected to be called back, fussing with the catches of her latticed limegreen pumps. No one called her back. She took off her glasses, thick owlish lenses in tortoiseshell frames, and polished them with the hem of her miniskirt. The others ignored her. When she’d finished with the glasses she put them back on and started resolutely up the street. The pumps were high but she moved smoothly and easily once she started walking. The skin on her knees turned blue and gray and green as she came closer. She’s cold, Lowboy thought. How is that possible.

She was even with the hood before she saw him. She cocked her head and arched her back and shivered. She was close to the window, close enough to touch, and though her body was set for walking she stayed still. She let her eyes roll past him up the street.

“That ain’t going to ride you,” she lisped. “Do you know why?”

He sat back in the seat and shook his head.

“Out of gas.”

He looked at the gas gauge and saw she was right. “Is this your car?”

“Not from the South Side, are you, son.” She squinted at him. “You look just like that actor. Bradley Pitt.”

“Downtown,” said Lowboy. “Not actually from the Bronx.”

She curled her middle finger around the lock. “What you come to the Point for, Bradley? For a date?”

“I’m looking for some boys,” he said. “Two small boys. Quick and Painless.”

She laughed and coughed and laughed a second time. She kept her lower lip over her teeth. “You on the wrong street for that, Bradley. Try up on Edgewater.”

“Not the wrong street,” he said. “There were two little boys. They threw a paper bag into the car. A dead dog’s body. They came
around the car and touched my face.” He hummed to himself and sighed and tapped the wheel.

She considered him awhile. “Best not stay out here, Bradley. You want to go someplace and call your mother.”

“No mother,” he said. He shook his head. “No calling.”

“Your papi, then. Whatever.” She pursed her lips. “Stay out in this ride you getting fucked.”

“I want to get fucked,” said Lowboy.

“You what?”

He frowned and slid away from her and pressed his hands together in his lap. “I’ve got money,” he said. “I’ve got $600.”

She slid her glasses down her nose like a professor. “$600?” she said. “On you right now?”

He bobbed his head and blew a kiss at her.

The door rattled open and the car’s engine started and they were driving or else she was pushing him by the elbow down the street. The tenements the firepits the oilcolored birds. The song of Quick & Painless playing backward. He saw the two of them watching from under a stoop and he waved at them and they pulled back into nothing. They couldn’t follow him where he was going.

She took him to a place where the street humped and narrowed and turned back on itself like Ouroboros. They stood side by side and stared up at a building. The steps were limegreen. A poodle looked down from the fire escape with its head stuck in a plastic coneshaped bonnet. Does that make it bark louder, thought Lowboy. Does that keep its head out of the rain. He thought of the dog on his father’s old records: his master’s voice. What master, he wondered. What voice. They passed into a foyer with gray scalloped walls and then up a cracked waterstained staircase. Then down a low hallway. Then into a fivecornered room.

“What’s your name?” said the woman. She was making the bed.

“Lowboy.”

“That’s not a name. What kind of name is that?”

“Like a dog,” Lowboy said. He watched her bend over. “Like furniture.”

“A dog, huh?” She laughed at him. “A pussy retriever? You look more like a little squirrel to me.” She pulled off her sweatshirt. “Nobody tell me they church name, doggy. That’s all right.”

Lowboy said nothing.

“I got a name like that,” she said. “Everybody call me Secretary, account of my glasses.” She let the sweatshirt drop onto the floor. “I hate that shit.”

“Who calls you that?”

She sat down on the bed and shrugged. “All of them dried-out bitches.”

“Secretary,” he said cautiously. Getting the sound of it. He reached over and took hold of her hair.

“Don’t come up on me yet, doggy.” She coughed again and pushed his hand away. “Sit down here next to me.” She pulled her right foot up and unbuckled the pump. Her leg was as glossy and softlooking as a baby’s. A line of stubble above the ankle with the shiny skin behind. She let her right foot go and lifted up the other. Why is she taking her shoes off, thought Lowboy. How do the shoes come into it. It occurred to him then that he might have the wrong idea about how it was done. But as he looked at her sitting squatly in her underthings, massaging her heels, he knew one thing beyond the slightest doubt. It would happen now no matter what else happened.

While he waited for her he looked around the room. Silhouettes bobbed and flitted past the curtains. Doubts visited him but he dismissed them. The room took up the whole of his attention. A door in the far wall hid behind a dresser. A tearshaped lightbulb jittering like a candle. A snapshot of a man in uniform. Her father, he decided. The wall above the mattress was festooned with curlicues of yellow paper. They twitched and rasped in concert with his breathing,
working free of their staples, a sound like roaches trapped inside a box. In time he saw the slips for what they were.

“Receipts,” he said. He pointed at them. Secretary was hanging up her clothes.

“That’s my diary, doggy. That’s evidence.”

“Evidence?”

“Damn right.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. She was folding her sweatshirt. She did it very quickly and precisely.

“What’s your church name?” he said.

She stopped and looked him over. The room seemed smaller than before. He turned his head and tried to count the staples.

“Maria Villallegas,” she said. She said it as though he’d asked her something secret. “You can read it on those slips if you can read.”

“Maria Villallegas,” he repeated. The name felt brittle in his mouth. “Villallegas,” he said carefully. “Is that right?”

She smoothed the sheet down under him and sat him up and pulled his zipper open. “How about you just call me Secretary.”

“Secretary,” he said loudly. “
Secretary
.” She was between his legs now. Her lips came graciously apart. She was keeping him quiet by putting her head in his lap.

“You ready, doggy?” she said. “You look it.”

How can she ask me that, thought Lowboy. He bit down on his tongue. How is it that she can say a word.

“Don’t stop, Secretary,” he said. She didn’t stop. “I want to—”

Something tapped against the window and she stopped. A bottle or a watchface or a cane. Something ungiving. She stopped and cursed quietly and pushed herself up off the floor. She got up because a man was at the window.

“The fuck away, Ty. Somebody dating me.” She cleared her throat. “A man. A little boy.”

A little boy, Lowboy said to himself. He put a hand over his face and hid behind his fingers. A man.

The man at the window spoke measuredly and without any cursing.
Secretary held the curtain closed. To hide the man from me, Lowboy decided. Or possibly to hide me from the man. Secretary cursed and spat and rolled her eyes but she never spoke until the man was finished. Their voices never touched. Lowboy wondered what would happen if they did.