The Biology of Luck (23 page)

Starshine—although she'd never admit it to a living soul—lusts after the bishop. To him, she owes the greater portion of her confidence and beauty. During her first session under his tutelage, arranged by a bovine roommate who later became a corrections officer, the bishop counseled Starshine to take pride in her own excess flab. You are fat and you are a worthwhile person, he trumpeted. You are physically repulsive, and you are a worthwhile person. He compelled her to stand emotionally naked before his spellbound congregation and to repeat his pronouncements. Starshine bawled her way through the initiation rite and didn't leave her apartment for the following three weeks. She rummaged her bathroom cabinets for sleeping tablets, but later lobbed the pills out the courtyard window in disgust. She nearly took a carving knife to her wrists for a second time. The stench of vomit emanating from her wastepaper basket grew overpowering. Her roommate threatened to phone the police. Those were the darkest weeks of Starshine's life, the bottom of the abyss, the capstone on twenty years of misery. And then, without warning, the floodgates
broke. Starshine woke up one June morning nine years ago, bought a prewar Higgins from a bicycle repair shop in Red Hook, and rode off eighty-five surplus pounds in six months. She fasted all day. She passed her nights in front of the bathroom mirror. Every leaf of boiled cabbage required an entry in her calorie notebook. She sewed herself a new wardrobe, found a slender roommate. Nine months later, she returned to the Society for Secular Harmony to boast of her shortcomings. Only there weren't any. Not really. Foibles, yes. But no true failing. She had become the person she'd always wanted to be. She will never forget her own overwhelming beauty that evening—the evening she first fell in love with the bishop.

His Mystic Eminence has nearly completed his sermon.

“I have defrauded a prostitute,” he declaims, “and I am worthwhile person. I have shoplifted a bottle of vermouth, and I am worthwhile person. I have called my wife a yellow whore behind her back, and I am worthwhile person.”

The bishop pauses and clears his throat. He is beaming with self-satisfaction.

“Those are my accomplishments of the day,” he says. “I am proud of each and every one of them. I am better than all of you. I will worship no gods before myself. I will value no human beings more than myself. I am the most worthy person I know. “

The bishop's pronouncement is met with heated applause. The woman adjacent to Starshine, a dour creature holding an umbrella, slaps her hands together as though murdering mosquitoes. She smiles at Starshine.

“He's just wonderful, isn't he?” she says. “Just wonderful.”

The bishop asks if anyone else would like to share her accomplishments of the day. The woman with the umbrella steps up to the lectern and blows awkwardly into the microphone. Her hair is coarse and her face is too narrow. When she speaks, in a nasal, almost bleating tone, she reminds Starshine of Bella Abzug without a hat.

“I've never done this before,” the woman announces. “But as they say, there's no time like the present. So let me see…. . I'm
extremely insecure, and I'm still a worthwhile person…. I'm sexually aggressive, as difficult as it may be for you to believe, and I'm still a worthwhile person…. I'm presumptuous, and I'm still a worthwhile person…. I've libeled a tour guide because he thought he was too good for me, and I'm still a worthwhile person….”

The speaker loses steam after her confession of libel. Starshine tunes out. She hates listening to the pathetic creatures who succeed the bishop, but she knows a premature exit might incur his displeasure. And she really doesn't mind daydreaming on soft pillows. It's a relaxing way to end an otherwise grueling workday. But she'd survived it! She has warded off Colby Parker's Italian adventure and Jack Bascomb's Amsterdam pilgrimage and countless other propositions of a far less delicate nature. She has overcome the bureaucracy at the Dolphin Credit Union. She has made peace with her dying aunt. All of her tasks have been accomplished. Now she can relax. There is still the matter of dinner with poor Larry Bloom, the quandary of the anonymous love note to unravel, but if he doesn't mention it, neither will she. It isn't worth the bother. She isn't insecure and she isn't presumptuous and she hasn't libeled anyone. Life is good.

A light tap on her shoulder startles her from her reverie. The bishop's wife is standing over her like a waitress in a sushi restaurant. Starshine intuitively dislikes Her Mystic Eminence. The woman's unnatural hold on her charismatic husband is unnerving.

“Miss Starshine,” the bishop's wife whispers. “You get ring.”

Her Mystic Eminence mimes the act of answering a telephone receiver and then tugs at Starshine's hand like a young child. Starshine follows the Japanese woman into the reception chamber. Her stomach tightens with premonition. It feels as though a swarm of butterflies are fox-trotting across her innards. Only her roommate knows where she is and only a true crisis would lead her to summon her from the chapel. Starshine understands this phone call can only mean one thing. Her dear Aunt Agatha is dead. Although she has braced herself for this moment, her preparations have been futile. The tears are already mounting as she picks up the receiver.

“This is Starshine,” she says.

“Hey, it's Eucalyptus,” her roommate answers. “I'm sorry to call you like this, but under the circumstances, I wasn't sure what else to do.”

“They called from the nursing home, didn't they? My aunt died. I can hear it in your voice. “

“Your aunt's fine, as far as I know,” says Eucalyptus. “You're the one that's going to die.”

“What?”

“You've got a major problem on your hands, darling, and I can't deal with it right now. I'm supposed to meet Frederico in Soho in twenty minutes. We're patching things up. “

The sound of distant shouting emanates from the telephone receiver.

“Jesus Christ! What's going on?”

“Listen, darling. I don't have the time or the energy to explain. But you need to get your ass home as fast as you possible can. Trust me on this one. “

“Please tell me what's going on,” Starshine demands again. “You owe me after this afternoon.”

A long pause follows, as though Eucalyptus is weighing her loyalty to her roommate and her tusk supplier. “Let me paint you a picture. About an hour ago, Bone showed up with your water bed. And while he was dismantling your old bed to get it through the doorframe, Jack Bascomb stopped by to plead his case for Amsterdam. I was sitting in the kitchen with him when a distraught Colby Parker arrived in tears. He's inherited two hundred million dollars outright, you know—not including his trust fund or what he'll get when his mother dies. Anyway, the two of them were one dirty look away from murdering each other, when …”

Another long pause. Starshine hears Colby Parker shouting in the background, senses the vessels pulsing in her temples.

“When
what
?”

“You're not going to believe this…. The Jesus freak from
downstairs starts pounding on the door…. I know you're going to hate me for his, but I gave up and let him in. And do you know what he wanted?”

“My head on a silver platter?”

“Your hand in marriage.”

“No!”

“He asked me for advice on how to propose to a sweet young lady like yourself,” explained Eucalyptus. “He thinks I'm the one pounding the bedsprings. “

This is all too much. Starshine can hardly think. “So he's the one who slipped he note into our mailbox. Not Larry. “

“Wrong again,” says Eucalyptus. “It wasn't either of them.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because …”

Starshine knows the answer even before she hears the words.

“Because it was me, honey. I wrote you that note.” A newfound desperation rises in Eucalyptus's voice. “How can I not be in love with you?”

Starshine doesn't answer. She does not know what to say.

“You're not angry, honey, are you?” asks Eucalyptus. “Starshine? Are you there? Please say
something
….”

“I need to go,” she answers. “We'll talk later.”

Starshine slowly returns the receiver to its cradle.

“Is all good?” asks the bishop's wife.

“Fine,” Starshine answers absentmindedly. “Just fine.”

But she is not fine. She is as not fine as she has been in many years. She feels betrayed, isolated, friendless. And then she thinks of Larry Bloom. It cannot be a coincidence that she is having dinner with him tonight. Certainly not. If there's anybody who can help her through this predicament, it is Larry. She knows he will not judge her. He will not interrupt. He will not offer unsolicited advice. All he will do is listen, hanging on to her every word, until she talks her way through this madness and is able to see things more clearly.

The dead woman did not live in Riverdale.

Her two-story red-brick home stands at the northern terminus of Corlear Avenue, in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, at the helm of a row of small single-family dwellings boasting matching fenced gardens and one-car garages. Oak trees line the sidewalk at regular intervals; dogwoods and red maples cast shade from behind hedges. Sprinklers sputter on many a manicured lawn. These streets were once brimming with children, shirtless toddlers of indeterminate gender, but the youngsters have long since worked their way through the state university system on Regents' Scholarships and relocated to ranch-style houses in Rye and Scarsdale. They have left behind aging parents and rusted swing sets. The elderly stroll the neighborhood at early evening like shellshock victims after a conflagration. Ancient couples, the men always taller, promenade to and from their regular corners in silence. Sunken-cheeked widows scowl over rubber-soled walkers. Their enclave of ethnic Catholics and Eastern European Jews will soon succumb to the pressures from the south, the working-poor blacks and Puerto Ricans who have already claimed Morrisania and Tremont and the Grand Concourse as far north as Bedford Park, which might help explain Snipe's dishonesty, his placement of the old woman's residence up the hill in more fashionable Riverdale, but it cannot absolve him of his other prevarication. Snipe's second lie is not a lie of embellishment, but one of omission. He has neglected
to inform Larry that his girlfriend's grandmother, although ninety-seven years old, did not perish of natural causes.

Larry waits for his boss on the dead woman's flagstone stoop. He chain smokes and discards the butts in an earthenware pot that probably once housed a geranium but now contains only hardened soil. He traces his fingers over the rusted impression of the name McMull on the mailbox. Across the street, he knows without checking, a similar mailbox will display remnants of the name Kalkhazian. The florist's house is easy to identify. It is the only dwelling without a hedge of azaleas and rhododendrons, the only lawn bereft entirely of foliage. The Armenian's clapboard home stands on a garden of raked earth. This does not surprise Larry. He imagines the man eschews flowers in the same way Larry avoids guided tours. But Larry does fear the prospect of encountering the florist. It is embarrassing enough to be standing on the dead woman's porch, before the wall of yellow police tape announcing the crime scene, so that every passing senior citizen can eye him as the still unapprehended murderer. Larry tries to look official—pacing decisively, glancing irritably at his watch—so that they won't suspect him. So that they won't phone 9-1-1. Although no one has officially informed him that the nonagenarian has been bludgeoned to death, his instincts tell him that the girlfriend's grandmother and the florist's neighbor are one and the same. This explains Snipe's urgency. It also means that there is absolutely no way in hell Larry is assisting him in his “recovery” effort.

The tour director and his girlfriend arrive on foot at twenty minutes to seven. Jessie McMull is a pale Irish girl whose face is dominated by a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. She carries herself like a teenager, not so much walking as skipping, running her hands along the fence posts as she goes. Larry half expects her to cartwheel onto the porch. Instead, she stops directly in front of him and taps the side of the earthenware pot with her shoe.

“You'd better take those butts with ya,” she says. “Nobody's gonna know we've been here.”

Larry obediently retrieves the cigarette butts and stashes them inside his pocket. He walks down the path and refuses Snipe's hand.

“What's going on here?” Larry demands.

“What do you mean?” Snipe responds innocently.

“You didn't tell me this was a crime scene.”

“You didn't ask. No big deal.”

“No big deal?” demands Larry. “Your friend's grandmother was murdered, wasn't she?”

“Shhh!” orders Snipe. “As far as you're concerned, she fell in the bathtub and the police patched the place up as part of their routine. That's the party line, okay? That's what Jessie told me and that's what I'm telling you. “

“I'm sorry,” pleads Larry. “I can't help you.”

“That's dog piss, Bloom. Of course you can help us. Now hurry up and let's get this over with. I'm not the one who's so desperate for time. The sooner you stop being such an imbecile, the sooner we'll be in Co-Op City and you can do whatever you damn please.”

Snipe has a point. Larry is going to give in to his boss eventually, as he always does, and clinging to the moral high ground, when he knows that descent into the valley is inevitable, seems fruitless. And even if he refuses to yield, even if he manages to resist Snipe's pressure, resistance will take longer than acquiescence. It always does. Larry can read the writing on the wall. Tomorrow, he can send Snipe his letter of resignation, but for today, he must remain a prisoner of the tour director's depravity.