Solos

Solos

A Novel

Kitty Burns Florey

This book is dedicated to

Ron Savage
,

with love and thanks

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started …

—T. S. E
LIOT
,

F
OUR
Q
UARTETS
: L
ITTLE
G
IDDING

By at the gallop he goes, and then

By he comes back at the gallop again.

—R
OBERT
L
OUIS
S
TEVENSON
,

W
INDY
N
IGHTS

1

Step on no pets

(October 2002)

Emily Lime is walking up Bedford Avenue. She is wearing black jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt that just covers the blue zipper tattooed around her right wrist.

The tattoo is something she deeply regrets.

It doesn't seem right that because of a little Mexican weed and the incredible discount offered by Diane the Tattoo Monarch, she made a decision at age nineteen that resulted in a wrist zipper she will have to live with for the rest of her life. Someday she will be a doddering old crone in a nursing home with a zipper tattoo. Admittedly, it's a beautiful, deep blue zipper, the dainty tracks neatly done, the pull falling slightly to one side the way a real one might. No one would say Diane is not a genius. But hardly a day goes by when Emily doesn't wish it weren't there. On the subway, she always studies the ads for laser tattoo removal and wonders if having it taken off would be as painful as having it put on. She has decided it probably would, and instead has taken to wearing cuff bracelets over it. She has three—a beaded one she made herself, a leather one she found at a craft show in McCarren Park, and a silver one she bought when Dr. Demand gave her the check for her last
BREAD
photograph.

Today the sleeve of her T-shirt does the trick.

It's a warmish day at the end of October, as warm as June, but fall is in the air. Emily has just gotten over a bad cold, and it's her first day out. She still has the cough, but she finally feels normal after almost a week moping around her loft, drinking seltzer and looking out the window at the tugboats on the river and the puffy white clouds over Manhattan Island. The sky is brilliantly blue. Emily's dog Otto walks jauntily at the end of his red leash, his tags ringing like bells. They both love this walk up Bedford—a walk Emily has taken almost daily for eleven years and Otto for six.

They pass the sushi place, the Mexican restaurant, the video store, the Syrian deli, the Polish bakery (whose
BREAD
sign Emily has photographed a dozen times), the new baby shop that has a pair of studded black leather booties in the window, and Marta's Beauty Salon, whose faded pink-and-green sign has probably not been retouched since 1966. They pass Mr. Suarez, with his Chihuahua, Eddie, in his pocket and a shopping basket full of soda cans. They pass the Pink Pony Thrift Shop with the
WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND
sign on the door, and the used-book store and its new café, where they can smell the hot apple cider all the way out on the sidewalk. The smell seems exactly right, a perfect match to the brown leaves on the ground and the V of geese overhead and the signs in the drugstore window advertising Halloween candy.

Emily is on her way to the park, where Otto can be let off his leash to run freely in the dog enclosure. This is the best part of Otto's day, and Emily is glad she can take him herself. All the time she's been sick, she's had to have Marcus take Otto out at ten dollars a run. Her cold cost her over fifty dollars in dog-walking fees. Plus another hefty chunk for the long-distance bills she racked up when she began to feel well enough to talk on the phone but not to go out. And eighty dollars for the tweedy sweater she shouldn't have ordered off the Web from Eddie Bauer to cheer herself up, but did. All that is nothing, of course, compared to the debt of gratitude she now owes to Anstice, her landlady and friend, who is much too good to her, and who knocked on her door every day with various practical gifts: Nyquil, more seltzer, a
New Yorker
, a DVD of
Watership Down
, a pint of home-made applesauce from the Greenmarket, and a pot of chicken soup she made herself from her late grandmother's late cook's recipe.

Emily also owes Anstice the rent.

As she hoped, Marcus is at the park with his Saturday morning crew: Rumpy, Chipper, Elvis, and Reba. Marcus beams when he sees her. “You have risen!”

“Yes,” she says. “Still coughing, still a little stuffy, but basically I am healed.” She inhales deeply through her nose. “See?”

“Impressive. When did you get better?”

“I began to feel almost okay last night. I had the most wonderful day yesterday. I curled up with Otto, and Izzy perched on my foot and unraveled one of my socks, and we all watched
Watership Down
.”

“Sounds like heaven.”

She smiles at him because she knows he means it literally: For Marcus, heaven is animals. Marcus looks not unlike a cute animal himself. He has just had his hair cut very short, and it's like soft suede against his narrow head. His ears, like his chin and his nose, are small and unassuming. Emily's friend Gene Rae once said, “There's something very
woodland creature
about Marcus,” and she was right. Marcus has the face of a squirrel, or a chipmunk, including the luminous, watchful eyes, which are, however, the green of cats' eyes, and show a rim of white below the iris, giving him a misleadingly lazy, lustful look. Today he's wearing a T-shirt that was once olive but has faded so that his eyes and shirt almost match. Emily, who never tires of looking at people, regards him with delight.

“The world is a new and beautiful place.” She means since her cold cleared up, but she also means that it just
is
, reliably, on a daily basis.

Marcus looks alternately at her and at the dogs in his charge. “Check out Elvis,” he says. Elvis is leaping around friskily with a branch in his mouth. “Who would believe that dog is twelve years old?” Then he looks back at Emily. “Do you want to play Scrabble later?”

“I can't today. I really can't. It's so beautiful, I have to go out and shoot.”

“Shoot where?”

“I don't know exactly. I thought I might drive out to Long Island. Northport, maybe. Or Centerport.”

Marcus nods approvingly. “As long as it's a port.”

“Yes, or a fort.”

“Or a court.”

“No, I really mean it. There's a town called Fort Salonga right near there.”

“There is? On Long Island? There's a park in Africa called Salonga.” Marcus always knows things like this.

“Isn't there an actress or somebody, too?”

“I don't know.” He never knows things like that.

When Emily takes Otto off his leash, he rushes over to Elvis and Reba, whom he loves, and the three of them run around together, barking crazily. Emily and Marcus lean against the fence and watch the dogs. Mrs. Buzik is sitting on the broken bench with her ancient poodle, Trix, at her feet, and a man Emily doesn't know is there with a big rottweiler who keeps nudging Rumpy with his nose.

“Go on, Trix,” Mrs. Buzik says. “Go on and play with your little pals. Get some exercise.”

“How's she doing, Mrs. B.?” Marcus asks.

“We take it one day at a time, Marcus. One day at a time. Both of us.”

“She looks good, though.”

“She's a poodle. It's her job to look good.” Mrs. Buzik takes a flowered handkerchief out of her pocket and holds it in her hand. “But She's been okay. No incidents lately.” Her mouth opens wide, and she sneezes loudly and wipes her nose. As always, Emily is impressed with the perfection of Mrs. Buzik's denturs, which look better than any real teeth she has ever seen. “There. I knew I was going to do that.”

Emily has recently stopped saying “God bless you” when people sneeze, but often feels bad about the skipped beat it leaves in the rhythm of the conversation. So she says, “I hope you're not getting a cold. I'm just getting over a real killer.”

“There's something going around, I hear,” says Mrs. Buzik. “I'm praying I don't get it. That's all I need.” She leans down to the dog. “Go on, Trix. Get out there and play. It'll do you good. Get the bowels moving.” Mrs. Buzik lives alone in a particularly dingy fake-brick-fronted house on Driggs Avenue, which she owns but on which, according to her tenants, she hasn't done any maintenance in at least ten years. No one can figure out if she's very rich or very poor. She is an unfathomably old woman who, like her house, must have once been stunning: deep-set dark eyes, a fine long nose. She still gets up every morning and puts on eyeliner and mascara and blue shadow and red lipstick, and winds up her sparse hair in a colorful scarf. “I'm just waiting until Miss Priss here does her business, then I'm off home. My daughter is coming over to take me to the market. My neighbor told me they got canned salmon on sale, ninety-nine a can. I like to mix it up with mayonnaise and those Greek pickles.”

Rumpy and Chipper have found a stick, and Rumpy is trying to get it from Chipper. Marcus looks vigilant: Rumpy is unpredictable. Their struggle takes them close to Trix, and she gets up, looking offended, and moves under the bench, but the activity has apparently given her the idea because she squats and starts to do her business.

“There she goes, Mrs. B.,” says Marcus.

“What a relief,” Mrs. Buzik says. “I thought we'd be sitting here all day.” She stows her hanky in one pocket and takes a plastic bag from another.

“Here, I'll get it.”

“Oh, Marcus, you don't have to do that.”

“I insist.”

In one graceful motion, he takes the bag from her and scoops up Trix's business. Then he ties the ends together, pivots, and tosses the whole thing, underhanded, into the trash can.

“You're a saint, Marcus.” Mrs. Buzik gets up stiffly. Trix looks suddenly animated, sniffing amiably at Reba, who has flopped down near her. “See? She feels better. Come on, then, Trix. Let's get going.”

“So long, Mrs. Buzik,” Emily says. “Don't get that cold.”

“Have you ever tried those Greek pickles? They're a lot cheaper than the Polish. I get them at that deli up on Manhattan, by the church. I take the bus up there to shop, or my daughter drives me. They got the bargains. A dollar fifty-nine for a big jar. They're good with the salmon.”

“Sounds delicious,” Marcus says. “Though I'm not much of a pickle man.”

“Just like my husband, may he rest in peace. If he ate three pickles a year, I'd be surprised.” Mrs. Buzik winks at Emily, exposing a wrinkly oval of lavender-blue shadow. “Men!”

They watch her hobble away, her bright scarf bobbing, the dog plodding along beside her. The man with the rottweiler snaps his dog's leash back on and, wordlessly, they leave.

“Jeez. Friendly,” Emily says.

“He's a friend of Lamont's.”

“Is he a Tragedy Club person?”

“No, he's the guy who's subletting Jeanette's loft. I think he's probably just shy.”

“You say that because you're a saint, Marcus. He didn't even talk to his dog. He's probably one of those guys who buys cheap generic dog food and forgets to keep the water bowl filled.”

“Nah, Lamont said he's okay. I forget his name. Ted or something. Bob. Jim.” He pauses. “I wish I could remember. I hate forgetting people's names.”

“You have such a thing about names.”

Marcus nods soberly. “Yeah, I do.”

Emily likes Marcus's obsessions because she shares so many of them—names, area codes, zip codes, anagrams, palindromes. She wonders if it can possibly be true that Marcus moved to Williamsburg for its palindromic 11211 zip code. She says, “Ask Lamont at the party tomorrow.”

“I will.” His face brightens. “I'm giving Lamont that picture of Daphne I took last summer when I was sitting for them. Remember? The one where she's curled up in the bathroom sink?”

“It's adorable.”

“I put it in a frame.”

“He'll love it.” Emily jangles Otto's red leash. “Well, I should get cracking if I'm going to get to Fort Salonga.” She has a brief coughing fit, during which Marcus looks at her with concern. She shakes her head and flaps her hand in the air the way coughing people do when they want to convey that they're all right even though they seem all wrong. Then she calls, a bit hoarsely, “Hey, Otto! Let's move on out of here.”

“You sure you're okay?”

“I'm okay. I need a bottle of water.”

“Good luck today. I hope they have a lot of bakeries and stuff. Watch repair shops.”