The Biology of Luck (22 page)

Walking briskly down Forty-Fourth Street, toward Sardi's and the Belasco Theater, Larry experiences the same inchoate longing with which he has grappled since childhood. The neon lights of the Great White Way, nothing more than a glitzy enclave of swank carved between Hell's Kitchen and the Tenderloin District, somehow force him to confront his physical appearance. The dazzling marquees advertising
Cats
and
Phantom of the Opera
remind Larry that he will never walk into a room, much less onto a stage, and dazzle his onlookers. Some men command dinner parties and nightclubs with their distinguished features and lightning charisma. Larry will never be one of these anointed creatures. At the same time, he shares no bond with the homeless vagrants and small-time hustlers who lurk the outskirts of Times Square, the purveyors of designer drugs and teenage pornography, the downtrodden dregs who work the warehouses, whorehouses, sweatshops, and sex shops that keep Broadway's lights shimmering. They are the truly hideous. Larry is merely unattractive, middle class, ordinary. Like his father. Like his grandparents. Like the multitude of New Yorkers who walk from midtown to Seventh Avenue at five thirty each afternoon to board the IRT for home. Although Times Square is a battleground, the international crossroads of those who appear on magazine covers and those who use those magazine covers for insulation, Larry is merely a disinterested spectator to the combat. He holds absolute no stake in the outcome. If there were any feature of the theater district to which Larry could relate, it would not
be found among the gaudy dramatic placards or the flashing XXXs of the video rental shops, but a block away from Times Square on Sixth Avenue. It is the National Debt Clock. Ticking. Ticking. Ticking. But accomplishing nothing.

Larry pauses under the awning of the Marriot Marquis to light a cigarette. The avenue is a tunnel of warm air and neither cupping his lighter with his hand nor using the corrugated siding of a nearby newsstand as a wind block accomplish that goal. He has retreated into an alcove of concrete between the Minskoff box office and a trash dumpster when he hears his name. He instinctively strikes a defensive pose, dropping one hand to his wallet and shielding his face with the other. This is not a neighborhood in which he expects to be recognized.

“Larry Bloom! I never thought I'd catch up with you.”

Ziggy Borasch accosts Larry and backs him into the dumpster. The philosopher rests his palms on his knees to catch his breath. His entire body is quaking and the veins in his temples have swollen to capacity. Clad only in a pair of dungarees and tennis shoes, sans shirt and socks, his chest hairs a thicket of perspiration, Borasch no longer resembles an absentminded scholar. On the beach, equipped with a metal detector, he might pass for an eccentric. At the intersection of Broadway and Forty-Fourth Street, there is no mistaking him for anything other than a maniac.

“You nearly killed me, Bloom,” says Borasch, pounding his chest. “How do you expect me to keep a pace like that?”

“I'm in a hurry,” says Larry. “I need to be in Riverdale in two hours.”

“You have plenty of time. That gives us at least an hour to celebrate.”

“Celebrate?”

“I did it, Bloom. I have the sentence.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“Not here. Not on a street corner. Let's get a cup of coffee and I'll explain.”

“I don't have time right now,” says Larry. “I'm going to be late for my date.”

Ziggy Borasch deflates like a punctured tire. The maniacal gleam fades from his eyes and they take on a wooden cast that matches his expressionless face. Larry does not possess the ruthlessness, maybe merely the self-interest, to ignore the desperate whims of his single-minded friend. Not even for Starshine. He glances at this watch and then at Borasch's listless eyes. There is no contest. If the philosopher can find a restaurant in Times Square willing to serve him in his scant attire, Larry will yield him the time for a cup of joe.

“So where to?” asks Larry.

Borasch leads Larry up Broadway, against the commuter tide, peering through the windows of crowded restaurants. He devotes equal attention to upscale bistros and self-service food courts, as though deciding which establishment to bestow the luxury of his patronage upon. Nothing meets the needs of the occasion. Some restaurants are dismissed as too crowded. Those boasting vacant tables are inherently suspect. Every place is either too bright or poorly lit or unlikely to brew its own coffee. And Ziggy Borasch absolutely refuses to drink instant coffee. So they march northward, impatient homesteaders and bare-chested frontiersman, drawing stares from tourists and locals alike. Even on Broadway, they are worthy of attention. Larry fears that his companion intends to walk him all the way to Morningside. Or possibly Riverdale. But the philosopher ducks east onto Fifty-First Street and stops decisively before the Equitable Center. Under the distinctive maroon awning of Le Bernardin.

“We can't eat here,” says Larry.

“Why not? It's a special occasion. I can afford it. “

“You're not wearing a shirt.”

Borasch stares down at his chest as though this is the first he has heard of the matter.

“I'm sure they'll give me a jacket and tie,” he says. “They do that in posh restaurants. I'm a paying customer. I have my rights. “

Larry examines his deranged companion. Borasch's ponytail
has come undone and strands of long silver hair dance before his eyes. Then he looks through the windows of New York's finest restaurant, absorbing the distinguished bankers and lawyers savoring appetizers of foie gras and crepes. Larry has gazed through these windows many times before. Usually, he notes that at the diners are nearly all male, all good looking. Today, it strikes him that every last one is wearing a shirt.

“Please Ziggy,” says Larry. “It will take too long. Some other time. “

Ten minutes later, they are seated at a wooden table in an Irish pub on Sixty-Third Street. A chalkboard rests behind the bar announcing baseball odds. The walls are decorated with the head shots of obscure actors and association football pennants and an inordinate number of Rheinhgold clocks. Across from their booth, two burly young men in matching New York Yankees paraphernalia are sharing a pitcher of Coca-Cola. The soft drinks are the giveaway, Larry thinks. Undercover cops. He sips his club soda and waits while Ziggy Borasch measures three packets of sugar into his cup of black coffee.

“So?” prompts Larry.

“They must have brewed this shit yesterday,” says Borasch. “It tastes like carburetor fluid.”

Borasch pushes his coffee cup to the center of the table and appropriates Larry's soda.

“Are you going to tell me the sentence?” Larry asks.

“In a minute, in a minute. I need to calm my nerves.”

Borasch's minute lasts a quarter of an hour. Larry is about to risk prompting his mentor a second time when the philosopher looks up from Larry's drink.

“I was in my apartment, working on my opus,” he says, “when the most beautiful woman I've ever seen dropped a basket of fruit in my doorway. So I helped her retrieve the fruit, thinking I'm doing her a favor, and then she had the nerve to hit me up for money. For some cockamamie charity. I forget what it was called. And then it struck me, Bloom. Like Martin Luther in the outhouse. Like Franklin and his kite. That pushy kid had more to reveal about American culture,
about the state of American capitalism, than all the Emersons and Edisons ever will. Do you see my point?”

“More or less.”

“My point is that people work all their lives trying to pay off their bills. College loans and mortgages and God knows what. Our entire society rests on the principle of acquiring capital. Nothing sounds better than the clink of money in the bank. Absolutely nothing. So why in hell do people give their hard-earned dollars to charity? And why do they give each other gifts? Why? Why? Why?”

Borasch pounds the table with his fist. Larry glances apprehensively at the undercover cops, but they are too busy playing thumb football with a quarter to notice the proximate threat.

“I don't know,” Larry says in a soft voice. “Why?”

“I'll tell you why,” answers Borasch. “And when I tell you why, you'll understand my excitement. You'll see that I'm not as nuts as you suspect, just because I'm willing to demand service at Le Bernardin without a shirt on. I never thought this day would come, Bloom. But promise me one thing. If something should happen to me—let us say I were to walk out of this dive and be plowed down by a bus—swear to me that you'll preserve my work. Swear it!”

“I swear. You have my word. Now will you tell me already? The anticipation is killing me.”

“Very well. Are you ready to become the first person to hear the Great American Sentence, Larry Bloom?”

Larry nods. “I'm more than ready.”

“Here it is,” says Borasch.

He clears his throat and pauses dramatically.

“An American man endowed with sufficient wealth,” he declaims, “can purchase anything, but an American woman endowed with sufficient beauty does not need to.”

Larry is speechless. Her stares at this mentor in utter awe, his brain racing for words. Ziggy Borasch appears before him in an entirely new light. How could Larry ever, even for one moment, have questioned this man's genius?

“So?” Borasch demands. “So what do you think?”

“I think,” Larry answers, emphasizing each word. “I think that I already knew that.”

He drops a ten-dollar bill on the table and walks out. He does not look back.

The bishop of the Society for Secular Harmony praises himself daily at half past six.

His Mystic Eminence, a tubby fifty-seven-year-old Yonkers native, is the eldest of nine children. One of his brothers owns a discount clothing outlet. The other has a cushy desk job with the Westchester County Department of Public Works. Four of his sisters are married to members of the Knights of Columbus and the Yonkers Volunteer Fireman's Association. The fifth choked to death on a chicken bone. The sixth is a Carmelite nun. These are facts that the bishop wants you to know. His Mystic Eminence is a third-generation alcoholic. His father, a motel clerk, beat him frequently with a barber's strop. His grandfather, a sometime longshoreman and hell-for-leather fighting man, beat his father with a plywood board. His mother died of undiagnosed hepatitis. These are also facts the bishop wants you to know. His Mystic Eminence dropped out of Roosevelt High School. He served three months at Rikers for aggravated assault, five years upstate after an arson-for-hire scheme. He lied his way into a dealing job at a posh Atlantic City casino. He mastered the art of card counting, took the bus out to Vegas, and pocketed fifty grand before the house caught on and blacklisted him for life. These are facts of which the bishop gladly informs you. He even wants you to know that he founded the Society for Secular Harmony hoping to turn a quick buck. The tenets of his creed demand absolute honesty: exposure precludes humiliation; secrets breed strife. He further
instructs his disciples—the hundreds of lost young men and women who sporadically attend his mutual congratulation sessions—that personal enhancement will be achieved through unabashed narcissism. The only true sin, he preaches, is sin itself.

His Mystic Eminence holds court in a converted Tribeca loft on Reade Street. The international headquarters of the Society for Secular Harmony consists of a cramped reception chamber and a spacious chrome-and-mahogany chapel. The plate-glass windows in the chapel offer worshippers a stellar view of Washington Market Park and the flagship marquee of Cheeses of All Nations. The walls of the waiting area are windowless and painted a tacky shade of canary yellow. Freestanding cork barriers separate the two rooms. When the devotees arrive for secular mass, they must file past the bishop's Lilliputian Japanese wife, who stands at the chapel entrance brandishing a donation basket. Her Mystic Eminence speaks only a few sentences of English, but her tongue reportedly has many other talents. This is also a fact the bishop wants you to know. He is an insecure, self-centered mountebank, a man of few scruples and limited social graces, but he harbors no delusions that he is duping anyone with his lavender robes and scepter of ersatz emeralds. The bishop willingly wears his shortcomings on his sleeve, declaring himself an adulterer and a swindler and a philistine, perfecting a variant of the good life that permits him all transgressions except hypocrisy. He is both medium and message.

The bishop stands behind a silver-plated lectern to praise himself.

“I have cheated on my income taxes,” he bellows, “and I am a worthwhile person. I have lusted after my sister-in-law, and I am worthwhile person. I have driven away from the scene of an accident, and I am a worthwhile person.”

Starshine reclines on a plush pink cushion while the bishop prays. She is surrounded by two dozen other congregants, teenagers wearing baggy pants, broad-hipped college girls, heavily pierced twenty-somethings, slender women in their early thirties who still carry themselves like overweight undergraduates. All rest on the pillows
that serve as pews. All are enraptured. And with the exception of a recovering Hells Angel camouflaged with tattoos, and a grossly obese black man in a bright orange cap, all are white and female. Maybe this homogeneity stems from the nature of the Secularist message, feeding as it does on the appetites of that particular species of urban dweller who has much excess time and little self-esteem. Or possibly the marketing methods of the community: a few well-placed ads in alternative magazines and substantial reliance on the power of the spoken word. But most likely the reason that the Society for Secular Harmony resembles a Bryn Mawr class reunion is that the bishop, despite his bulbous nose and drooping ears, is hot as hell. On the street, of course, you'd walk past him. His physical attributes are few and far between. Yet behind his bully pulpit, engaged in his daily ritual of vainglorious self-denunciation, His Mystic Eminence acquires a magnetism that is part arch-patriot, part arch-revolutionary, part rising caudillo. He is Fidel and Eldridge Cleaver and Reverend Moon all rolled into one. Any of his followers would screw him in a heartbeat.