The Biology of Luck (13 page)

Starshine glided from counter girl to canvasser without the cushion of a golden parachute, without even the security of unemployment benefits. Wing-tipped loafers merit severance packages; barefoot women get paid under the table. So she stumbled through a series of short-term positions, maxing out her credit cards, nearly making ends meet, one foot on the threshold of gainful occupation and the other in the door of the almshouse. She answered phones for an East Village piercing parlor, rolled bagels in a mom and pop doughnut shop, played hostess at a short-lived restaurant for sadomasochists. One summer, she clerked at Brooklyn's only vegan pet-food store; another, she painted fire hydrant heads for the city's Department of Public Works, red for high pressure, green for low pressure, until her foreman decided to finger-paint the inside of her uniform. She even tried out as a lap dancer for an upscale Tribeca strip club, but never replied to their job offer. In four years, Starshine has briefly dabbled with babysitting, lifeguarding, fact checking, copyediting, dog walking, billboard design, yoga instruction, reproductive counseling, acupuncture promotion, and vintage clothing retail, a veritable pharmacopeia of thirty-six different jobs that don't require footwear, only to conclude that employment of any sort is both arduous to obtain and highly overrated. Her goal has always been fame, not fortune. As a teenager, long before she'd cycled off her extra baby fat and conquered her relentless acne, before she'd learned to color her hair so it looked more natural that it did without dye, her fantasy had been to walk into a room as though strutting onto a stage, forcing all around her to take notice. Fame was the opposite of isolation, of insignificance. Fame meant you mattered. But rising above the fray in a city where overexposed, underqualified young women are as abundant as Norwegian rats and summer mosquitoes, standing out in this mecca for would-be
celebrities, where each displaced heartland farm girl aspires to be a fashion model and every undiscovered waitress in a tight sweater fancies herself the next Lana Turner, has proven itself an elusive feat. And Starshine's lack of a specific calling, what she terms her versatility, has made it all the more difficult. For Starshine doesn't covet any particular form of stardom; she doesn't yearn to play Broadway or sing at Carnegie Hall or dance at Lincoln Center. She simply wants to be famous, a household name. The end is imperative; the approach incidental. So in the meantime, having served her apprenticeships and mastered the art of marginal employment, she ekes out her living from month to month on the payroll of the Cambodian Children's Fund.

Starshine's appearance eases the monotonous routine of the building staff on her way into the office: She lets the lobby clerk ogle her cleavage while she signs the register, smiles at the elevator porter until he turns red as a sugar beet. An overalled maintenance worker carrying a ladder pauses in the corridor to undress her with his eyes. She throws him a seductive leer over her shoulder. It is fun; it is harmless. Off the streets, in the quasi-public office building that the Children's Fund shares with the Better Business Bureau and the Veterans Administration, the attention of strangers is flattering. And evanescent. She is protected by the comforts of numbers, by the knowledge that these men are professional gawkers and not personal threats.

The waiting room is empty when Starshine arrives. There's no sign of Jessie, the part-time receptionist. The girl is one of Starshine's favorite living beings, a nearsighted Irish kid out of the Bronx who speaks with a thick New York accent and runs the office like a machine tool shop. She's all spunk, that Jessie, and Starshine loves her to death. But today, just when Starshine wants to pick her brain for romantic advice, get an opinion from someone who has been around the block a few times, a counterbalance to Eucalyptus's morning sermon, it seems that the girl has gone into hiding. Starshine tries the conference room and pokes her head into the supply closet. No luck.

“Anybody home?” she calls out.

“Give me a minute!”

The voice pierces the door of Marsha Riley's office, followed moments later by the rounded form of the fund director herself. Marsha is a widow on the far side of sixty. Her features are sharp, her breasts heavy, her hair colored a synthetic shade of henna. The scallop-shell chain around her neck jingles when she walks. But although Marsha is not pretty, not even for a matron of a certain age, she carries herself with the self-assured elegance of a woman who has outgrown such a minor constraint as homeliness and never looked back. Capitalizing on her husband's small legacy and her extensive connections, she has launched a one-woman crusade for the most innocent victims of the wars of Indochina. And if she can be the archetypal hostess, a poor man's Pamela Harriman who quotes Shakespearean sonnets while smoking cork-tipped cigarettes, she can just as easily bombard you with detailed accounts of the atrocities in Cambodia and Vietnam. Marsha has no compunction when it comes to procuring pasteurized milk for infants or shielding toddlers from land mines. She will talk and put her money where her mouth is. She'll march her way onto the floor of the statehouse or into a cell at Riker's Island. She even made headlines in the late-1980s for pouring a martini into the lap of the Senate Minority Leader. There is no limit to Marsha Riley's love for young people. She has devoted her golden years to playing foster-grandmother to the foundlings of Harlem and Brownsville and to raising funds for the orphans of Southeast Asia. Maybe this is altruism. Maybe it is compensation. For Marsha's love is the peculiar breed of adoration, bordering on awe, unique to maternal women without children. She showers Starshine with all the affection she might show her own daughter, and yet, possibly because her devotion is so universal and non-discriminating, Starshine has never been able to reciprocate.

“What a morning!” declares Marsha. “If it hasn't been one thing, it has been another. Make yourself a cup of tea, dear, and come sit with me a minute. I'm more than ready for a break.”

“What's going on?” Starshine asks. “Where's Jessie?”

She pours herself a glass of hot water in the office kitchenette
and settles down on one of the vinyl love seats in the waiting room. Marsha sinks into the swivel chair at the reception desk and rests her chin on her crossed arms.

“Jessie's grandmother passed away,” says Marsha. “She sounded like a truly amazing woman. She was ninety-seven and still stitched her own dresses. I'm—well, I'm not nearly ninety-seven—and I can hardly sew on a button. I guess ninety-seven's a ripe old age. All the same, I wish the dear lady could have held on another week. The phones have been ringing off the hook all morning. “

“It's pretty quiet right now.”

“There's a reason for that, dear. I pulled the central cable out of the jack. It was getting so bad I could barely hear myself think. I didn't have a choice. “

“Why are we so popular all of a sudden?”

“This is why,” says Marsha, sliding the op-ed page of the
Daily News
across the reception desk. “The Catholic Archdiocese issued a statement condemning euthanasia at VA hospitals. Read the cardinal's column. The old windbag doesn't hold his punches. He uses the words
pandemic
and
genocide
in one sentence. And I particularly like the passage about more soldiers being murdered in the wards of New York City than in foxholes abroad. But take a look at the bottom of the article. “

“It says call the Veterans Administration to protest. Am I missing something?”

“Nothing the rest of the city hasn't already noticed. That's not the contact info for the Veterans Administration. That's
our
address and phone number. I already called the city desk at the
Daily News
and the editor assured me he confirmed his information with the building switchboard. So I called the switchboard and they said they don't know anything about it. Meanwhile, every Sunday school teacher and Knight of Columbus in the city has a death wish for us. And they're not just calling. There were two priests and a seminary student waiting in the corridor when I showed up this morning. It's never-ending madness.”

“I'm glad you're the boss. All I have to do is canvass.”

“I don't deserve this grief, dear,” says Marsha. “I go to mass every Sunday.”

“This too shall pass.”

“Not soon enough. The important thing is that I need you to cover the office for a couple of hours this afternoon while I go down to Saint Patrick's and convince them to issue a retraction. Is three to five okay?”

Starshine rapidly calculates the amount of time she will need with Jack and Aunt Agatha. Five o'clock for the Staten Island ferry is pushing it, but she knows she can duck out early. She has done it before. She is about to agree to hold down the fort when a visitor enters the office. The newcomer is a tall, reedy white man who stands bent forward like a broken bulrush. He desperately needs both a shave and a change of clothes. Starshine rolls her eyes at Marsha. Another crazy. They're always headed to the Veterans Bureau to vent their frustrations, but somehow they end up at the Children's Fund upstairs by mistake. Ninety-nine percent of the time these veterans are thoroughly benign. Once, however, a deranged ex-marine bit Starshine on the ankle, resulting in weeks of panic and a battery of medical tests, so she cringes instinctively at the stranger's approach. She keeps one hand near the telephone to call security. Just in case.

“How can we help you?” asks Marsha in a singsong voice. “What can we do for you at the
Cambodian Children's Fund
?”

The visitor steps forward rapidly and slams a stack of carbon copies on the reception desk. “How come you don't answer my letters?” he demands. “I'm fed up with this shit. I know my rights. “

“If you would kindly tell me your name, sir,” prompts Marsha.

“My name's King. David King. You know who I am!”

The man's nostrils flare when he speaks; a tick afflicts his left eye. Starshine picks up the telephone receiver and realizes that the lines are dead. She has no idea where to find the central cable.

“Are you sure you're looking for the Cambodian Children's Fund?” asks Marsha.

“How the hell should I know who I'm looking for?” the man shouts back. “All you fuckers give me such a runaround. Go fucking here! Go fucking there! Nobody ever listens to a motherfucking thing I got to say. Meanwhile, I don't get my money. You're all a bunch of gold-shitting Jews and I still don't got my money.”

“Please keep your voice down, sir,” says Marsha. “I think you've come to the wrong office.”

“Don't tell me to keep my fucking voice down! I'll decide when to keep my fucking voice down! You be happy I don't come back and slit your goddam throat. Nobody fucking listens to me!”

The man leans over the reception desk and pounds his fist on his stack of papers. Starshine glances at the door, examines her route of escape. Marsha Riley remains stationary, her heavy arms folded across her chest. Then the man turns to his left, as though trying to scratch his shoulder with his chin, and begins arguing with his own elbow. Starshine picks up the words
Isaiah
and
cupboards
. It suddenly clicks. This is the demented lunatic whom Jessie was fuming about last week, the guy who thinks the messiah is camped out under his kitchen sink and wants to government to perform an exorcism. Or something like that. Starshine didn't take much interest in the story at the time, and she is no more interested now. She pays her taxes. She works for a good cause. She even volunteers twice a month at the Presbyterian Mission. This man is not her problem.

“If you'll kindly follow me, Mr. King,” says Marsha, stepping around the reception desk and taking the veteran by the hand. “I'll take you up to the Veterans Bureau. Okay, Mr. King? Maybe they'll be able to help you.”

The fund director leads their visitor to the door.

“Three to five, dear,” she says to Starshine. “Don't forget.”

And then she's gone.

Starshine leans back on the love seat and rests her feet on the magazine stand. She's disappointed in herself and this makes her furious. Why can't she muster more compassion for this unfortunate veteran? Is she really such an evil person that she feels nothing but
disgust? It's not his fault that he can't tell a watermelon from a water buffalo. It's not the florist's fault that he's old and lonely. Hannibal Tuck and Jesus Echegaray and Bone, even Bone, are just doing the best they can with what they have. And yet she dislikes them. As much as she wants to take them by the hand and heal their wounds, to play Marsha Riley to all the lost souls in the city, she doesn't have it in her. She's too insecure, too busy, too self-absorbed. But there's more to it than that. Starshine knows the reason she dislikes these men is not that she's a bad person—not even because she isn't so far removed from them herself, because if she hadn't burned off nearly half her body weight and stumbled upon the right skin creams, she could easily have remained unlovable. She dislikes these ugly, confused, desperate creatures for a much deeper, much darker reason. She dislikes them because time is not on her side, because beauty is ephemeral, because, soon enough, she will look like Marsha Riley and then like Aunt Agatha, because it is only a matter of calendar cycles before men no longer turn their heads when she passes.

But no!

She will not think about that.

She is Starshine. She is beautiful. She is happy.

Nearly all of New York's treasured literary luminaries, during some particularly vexing season preceding their apotheoses, have contemplated premature self-censorship in the torrential eddies of the East River. The waterway itself plays an integral role in this rite of passage. The jagged floes of ice that choke the harbor in late fall and early spring foster the appearance of glacial progress, of the soft lap of a gentle stream, while the aquamarine glimmer of the surface at midsummer transforms one of the world's most unforgiving currents into a rural swimming hole. To the bankrupt poet, to the jilted lover, to anyone who yearns to elude the doubt within and the din without, the tidal strait between Manhattan Island and her favorite suburb offers the specious illusion of easy death. Melville prepared for the plunge from the breakwater on the South Street promenade, Whitman at the railing of the outbound ferry, both men redeemed by some Darwinian impulse, maybe some epic vision, which enabled them to change leaden water into lyric wine. Hart Crane rejected the limpid estuary for the brackish swirl of the Caribbean Sea. In each generation, from Washington Irving's to Truman Capote's, countless young men of promise and talent have examined the rippling foam between the nation's literary furnace and her literary playground, questioning whether the reams of manuscript in their Brooklyn lofts will earn them garlands in Manhattan's salons and ballrooms, wavering between the workroom and the water. And the city has done everything in its
power to assist these men, to ease their affliction and to steer them toward the most judicious of decisions. It has built them a bridge.