Текст книги "Grace"

Автор книги: Calvin Baker

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

17

Before leaving the house the next morning for a meeting with my lawyer, Westhaven, I checked my e-mail, and found a dozen messages from Anna, each more wrathful than the last. “I have the number of the police, and I’m not afraid to use it,” she concluded.

Police? I turned off the computer without answering her, and made my way up to see Westhaven, fearful of what I had gotten myself into.

His offices were in an art deco building in Midtown, where the security guard scanned my identification before directing me to the elevator bank, where another guard checked the credentials I had just been issued. I went through a turnstile, then ascended an elevator whose doors opened onto a nondescript office suite of understated good taste. Westhaven’s assistant met me at reception and escorted me down the labyrinthine halls to his office, which was filled with books, diplomas, furniture carefully selected to demonstrate wealth without ostentation, and otherwise all the signs and codes you want from an attorney who understands the workings of the world. That it weighs you by a scale of outward signs. That it holds these things to be who you are and what you are worth. But the signs are false. A sign is not the thing. Both the measure that scale takes and the reading it gives are a delusion. But lives are shaped by it nonetheless. I paid Westhaven’s crazy fees not because he knew more of the law than others, but because he saw more of the world through his own eyes.

Whatever problem I had he always put in clear perspective. And, as I had neared his office that day, I’d begun to have the sense of calm security I always felt there. He saw life, without cynicism or idealism, and so was a counselor of the first order. Learned, yet respectful of what he did not know. Discrete without being secretive. Shrewd but honest. Sophisticated but never condescending. Skeptical, yet open to new possibilities. Conservative without losing consideration for dreams and those who chased them. Intelligent. Modest. Intolerant of fools.

When I entered his office, he was busy at his computer, which looked out over the park, with his back turned to the door. It was eleven fifty-nine on my watch, and at noon precisely he stopped his other task and bounded energetically from his chair to greet me.

“Good morning, sir.” He extended his hand warmly to take mine in a good, reassuring grip. He favored bow ties, and spoke with an easy, Middle American manner and cadence that belied the steel in his eyes, sharp and bright as bayonets, as we chatted amiably.

“You seem well,” I said, feeling a peace of mind to be sitting there that morning.

“I had the most wonderful evening yesterday. My wife got us tickets for the entire Henry tetralogy at Cherry Lane. Last night was Henry V, and as I watched it, I could not help being struck that all true kings be measured by the hardships they face in order to know the full measure of the world.”

“But not all who know hardship become great kings.”

“It is the test of the man,” he said. “With the best of them, I like to believe all is possible no matter what misstep. Those who are not the best, we are probably wise not to be too entangled with,” he smiled, as we settled down to business, “whatever it may seem to profit us. Now, what gives me the pleasure of seeing you today.”

I explained to him the situation with Davidson, which was that I had not been paid, as he took notes.

“Interesting, I do think they owe you an additional payment,” he said, scanning a clause he had negotiated. “With your permission, I’ll contact the production company to see whether that doesn’t get things moving along. If it does not, well, it will. Let’s assume for the time being it was only an oversight they need to be reminded of.” He tapped his hand reassuringly on his desk. “However, that’s only business,” he looked at me. “May I ask you a personal question?”

“Of course.”

“How is everything else?”

“We would be here all morning if I answered that fully.”

“Well, I do not have to be in court today.”

I explained to him the e-mail I received that morning, as he nodded empathetically, although it was impossible to know what he was thinking, or searching for, as he listened intently.

“Well,” he sighed when I finished. “All of it is simply part of human nature. You shouldn’t castigate yourself. Let it wash down the stream, and try not to step in that part of the river again, which you will not if you take it seriously, as you should and do most things.”

“That is good of you to say.”

“I say it because it is true,” he replied, “and I see no earthly reason you should be less than fully happy.”

“What do you advise that I do?”

“Nothing,” he counseled. Real problems do not fire warning shots.

“And people who are unwell always tell us so, if we do not ignore what they are saying.” He looked at me, and wrote down a number on a piece of heavy, embossed stationery. “You may have missed what was being told to you. If you are open to it, you might consider a visit to Dr. Glass, who did wonders for me a few years back when I was going through a rough patch.”

“Is it obvious?”

“To others? No. To me? I know you.”

“All the same, I do not want my head shrunk.”

“Read the saints, then. They will put your mind at rest.”

I took the phone number in any case, and thanked him, agreeing to call the following week about the contract.

When I reached the street again, I reconsidered his advice and saw no reason to resist being helped. I called Dr. Glass’s office. There was an appointment that afternoon, which I took since I was already in Midtown, and I made my way across the park.

When I arrived Dr. Glass had stepped out for an emergency, but her colleague, Dr. Nando, agreed to see me instead. He listened, as I explained why I had come, and immediately suggested some pills for depression. “If Dr. Glass were here she would say it is more complex than that, and you are suffering not so much a mental reversal as enantiodromia, a mind-spirit split, and the only way to heal that is to embrace your deepest consciousness, all of which you know on some level, but which is different from comprehending. That is a question of being. However, unless – what for? – you want to go beating through the metaphysical weeds in search of the roots of your most ancient sadness – ghosts unheard a thousand years – you should just take the pills.”

I declined the pills, thinking to get another opinion before submitting to them, but accepted a prescription instead for something to help me sleep. As I folded it into my jacket pocket, I asked if there was anything else I could do besides the drugs. He told me sport, and “Dr. Glass might suggest you follow your heart, and less your head.”

I left the office, thinking as I walked of all the things they tell you as a kid, which, by the time you are an adult, are supposed to have worked their way inside of you. If they have not, or if you have discovered the things they first told you are insuperable lies, then through this rupture – between what you believed and what you have discovered to be true – everything else threatens to come tumbling out, until your entire being is up for grabs as you try to figure out what to stuff back inside and what to leave down in the dirt of the crossroads. Let the devil take it all.

18

Westhaven was right; I needed to take better care. He was wrong about Anna, though. The situation did not clear up when I ignored it.

On the way home from the psychiatrist I decided it would be better to get away for a while than to take the medication. I contacted Schoeller to find out if it was too late to join his bachelor party. It was not, but I would have to scramble to make plans.

I was able to use miles instead of buying a last-minute ticket, and the next day I went to see my doctor for a checkup and vaccination. I also wanted to ask about the pills Dr. Nando had suggested.

“Good drugs,” he said. “Clean, few side effects. But I can prescribe pills for you. If you ever need a prescription let me know.”

“Thank you.”

“How is life otherwise?”

“I’m worried about dying.”

“Why? You’re in perfect health.”

I’m not worried about death, I’m worried about dying. That I have not done enough. That there would be no more meaning even if I had. That the most savage among us, or else the most savage parts of all of us, prevail. I’m afraid there is no sense in life, and if there is I fucked up and missed it. That there are no second chances. “That’s good to hear” was all I said.

“Relax. You have a lot of road ahead of you,” he reassured me. “You’re just a little exhausted. Take a vacation, it will help you regain perspective.”

“I’m going to Brazil next week.”

“You will need a yellow fever vaccine. While you are at it, you should get diphtheria, and there’s a new vaccine you should have too. When was your last hemoglobin, by the way?”

“Eleven years.”

“They only last ten.”

“What’s the new vaccine for?”

“Diseases guys like us don’t get.”

“Who gets them?”

“Guys who don’t take the vaccine.”

He was a good doctor, but he was locked in a death dance with the insurance company for every nickel he could charge them. I played my part and took the shot.

The next day I went to get new contact lenses from swaybacked Dr. Nelson. When he hunched over the microscope, though, he was the image of Hephaestus, as he worked a miracle to make me see better.

I was glued together pretty well after that, but I still felt something was wrong. I could not point to anything specific. There was simply something wrong, and I did not know what. When Nell called that afternoon, telling me she had to see me right away, it seemed to confirm my diffuse worries.

“How did you find that one?” she asked incredulously, when I arrived at the restaurant where she had asked to meet. “A real Adela Quested.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Never mind. That girl from the club, Anna.”

“I don’t want to get into it. She’s—”

“Crazier than the Mad Hatter on angel dust, is what she is,” Nell said, cutting me off.

“She’s just dull.”

“Did you do anything with her?”

“No. Why?”

“Listen,” she hunted around in an enormous green leather shoulder bag, until she retrieved a tiny, white, metallic square. “You know, she’s been calling everyone. I don’t even know how she got this number,” Nell said, waving her hand over the device, which woke up with the sound of Anna’s voice defaming me in the vilest terms.

“Oh. Why do you say that?” I heard Nell coaxing her along, in her best Linda Tripp voice.

“Because I can,” Anna said. “Who does he think he is?”

“He’s one of the most decent people I know,” Nell said at length, after Anna had gone on long enough to discredit herself completely. Good old Nell. “If things between you were not what you wanted, maybe it is because you were not honest with him or yourself, and now you’re angry. I don’t know, Anna. I wasn’t there. Then again, maybe it’s because of the way you were raised, or the things in your head.”

“My last—”

“I’m not done,” Nell said. “But I have what I need. Listen, I know you’re not from here. I know you don’t know what you’re doing. But I do, and if you don’t stop all of this immediately you are going to find yourself in very serious trouble. Do you hear me, Anna? It’s not the kind of attention you want,” Nell finished, perfectly composed and perfectly frightening. “I see through you like a broken window. I just thought you should know that.”

“I don’t know what to say,” I said, as the recording ended. “You taped your conversation with her?”

“I cover my backside,” she said unapologetically. “I thought you did, too. Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“I thought it would go away,” I said.

“I should have seen through her whole innocent act at the club, sorry. You know what happened to Matt.”

“You weren’t the one thinking of taking her home. Yeah, I know.”

“What did she say to you?”

“Does it matter? It’s the risk of taking someone home.”

“You know, and I’m not saying this because she’s from the South, half of people still live in the nineteenth century.”

“You let it hinder you, or you take it in stride.”

“I’m glad you can make light of it.”

“Thanks to you,” I said.

“Fifty percent of people can’t see beyond their own experience.”

“I’d say ninety.”

We let it drop, as Nell read my unarticulated thoughts, at least the ones that were uppermost. The thoughts beneath that were hidden from her. How could they not be? They were still hidden from me.

“Just find someone good and solid. There are tons of great girls. Only be careful,” she motioned with her hand to imply the city, to incriminate the Western world, “of the bad ones.”

“Well, as my Aunt Isadora would say, you do the best you can. The rest is in the hand of the Creator.”

“That is a nice thing to say. You don’t believe it, do you?”

“It is what my aunt says.”

I was sanguine when I left Nell, but as I rode the subway home I was struck by how horrifically wrong things could have gone, and not only from taking home a stranger; from any arbitrary deed committed or not committed, by yourself or anyone else. A rushed decision, haphazard luck, bad timing. The world was full of disasters-in-waiting. It made me numb to think about, until the only way I could keep from being consumed by paralysis was to grasp that paralysis was exactly the trap laid by my enemies.

Once I saw this I tried to let the entire episode flow into the past. I knew the larger pattern and meaning, but it was not the rope that would hang me. Beyond that, I tried to find in myself the smallest parcel of empathy for Anna. More than that I could not do, but that tiny parcel was enough. From no higher principle than I believed forgiveness a virtue. Not a moral one, simply the self-preserving virtue of knowing the heart that cannot expand in forgiveness – even for those who slight it, even for those who have no claim to it whatsoever – is the most devilish instrument in the world.

19

It had been a wretched spring and, as I boarded the flight to Brazil, I was glad to be putting it behind me for what I hoped would be a new start. By the time I changed planes in Atlanta the hot air felt restorative, and I started immediately to relax, pleased to be out of the city, as the heat made me sweat and aware of my own body. Before boarding my onward flight I checked my messages, and saw Nicola had sent me a text telling me she would be in New York that week. I wrote back to let her know I would be out of town, then downed a sleeping pill.

As I turned on my noise-canceling headphones the artificial quietude was flooded by sour memories and the crippling feeling of a vast, cosmic emptiness. I realized I had lost my orientation, would not even know how to properly describe myself other than the role required of me in a particular context. My present role was traveler on an airplane, and I could neither name any self nor feel anything solid beyond the contours of my seat pushing up from the floor of the suspended flying machine. I had no other beliefs. The feeling attacked violently, from deep within, threatening to overwhelm all my faculties, until finally I plugged my headphones into the jack and turned on the in-flight entertainment system to crowd out the emptiness.

Twenty minutes into the movie, I started to doze off from the pill, and went to the bathroom to remove my contact lenses and brush my teeth.

I do not know what happened next, but when I awoke there was an oxygen mask over my face. The steward told me I had fainted in the aisle, but that it was probably only exhaustion. I nodded lethargically, and went back to sleep.

When I awoke it was morning, and we were over the coast of Bahia. I fell back asleep and did not wake again until the wheels of the plane touched the runway in Rio. I retrieved my luggage from the carousel, bought a newspaper and café com leite, then exited the terminal to find a taxi.

I was soon stuck in the morning rush hour, overwhelmed by motion sickness from the stop-and-go traffic. I opened the windows to let in the fresh, humid, air, but was soon choked by the exhaust of whizzing motorbikes and diesel fumes from trucks. I was forced to close the window again, and curled up in the seat and closed my eyes in an attempt to keep from vomiting.

The driver, seeing me fidget, caught my eye the next time I looked ahead, and asked if I was okay. I told him the pollution was making me ill, and he suggested an alternate, if longer, route. I agreed and we pulled off the highway at the next exit. When he saw I had regained my composure, he began to re-create for me an argument he had had with his wife that morning. My Portuguese was limited to the superficial amount I could remember from a college class, combined with cognates from other Latin languages, which was perfect for his purposes, since it allowed me to follow the story only if I kept absolutely alert to what he was saying. He gleaned this, and smiled. He needed someone to hear him, so I listened as he filled the sealed interior with his woes.

We finally pulled up to the hotel, a boxy, glass-and-steelaffair from the seventies whose best days were well in the past. Its single charm was in being directly on the beach, with palm trees offering shade all around, beckoning optimistically.

When I went up to my room I found the interior as rundown as the exterior, but was pleased to discover I had a little balcony that opened to the sea. It was still early in the morning, and I opened both the double doors to let in the breeze, then lay down for a nap.

I had only just closed my eyes and started immediately to dream, when a banging at the door blasted me wide awake. From the ruckus in the hall I knew it was my friends, and opened the door to find Schoeller, Freddo, and Doc, who lifted me in a great bear hug. “There he is, in the cheapest goddamned room he could find,” Doc said, peeking around the room. “We are glad you came, but why are you so mean to yourself? You live once. Everything is available to you. Why not take it?”

“I flew right,” I said.

Doc had arrived in college after a stint in the Navy, where he was stationed in the Pacific doing intelligence. He had spent two years after that living with a tribe in Micronesia, until it was time for him to either take a wife or come back to the West and try to unify his experiences. After all of that he took school with a grain of salt, working hard enough to get into medical school, but not so hard that there was ever a Friday he did not skip classes to play golf. “Come on, let’s get this man to the beach,” he said to the others, after looking me over. “He needs a sun cure.”

They had been drinking since breakfast, and before I could change for the beach someone pushed a caipirinha into my hand. I went to get my swim trunks and bathing towel, and we headed down to Leblon.

It was nearly winter in the Southern Hemisphere, but still warm enough for the beaches to be packed, the tourists to be sunburned, and the homeless people to sleep out on the sidewalk. As we passed I gave a real to a mother begging with her child hitched against her hip, who was immediately harassed by the security guard from a nearby business, informing her she was begging too close to the entrance of a nearby mall. The way he spoke to her reminded me we were at the southern terminus of the old slave belt, whose northern edge was the Mason-Dixon line.

“You should let those people be,” Doc said to the guard: “Beggars are holy. They trust the universe to provide all they may need.”

“Maybe, but they’re bad for business,” Schoeller said.

The city was in the midst of a financial boom, and the air along the grand boulevard at the front of the hotel was charged with the thrill of new money vying against the anxiety of the old.

All of it melted at the shore into the democracy of the sea, along with my own worries. It was my first time in Rio, and the country felt like the New World in miniature, so much so that by noon, as we lunched at a beachfront café, I felt perfectly at ease with what to expect.

We retired for a siesta after lunch, and did not go out again until evening, when we had a lavish dinner atop Santa Teresa. After eating we piled into taxis, and Doc gave the driver an address across town. We drove out through the hills surrounding the city, past the outskirts of a ghetto, which looked like every other ghetto – kids too old for their age, premature sicknesses, somewhere to buy liquor, somewhere to play fútbol, a dancehall, no visible means of egress. I felt my earlier sense of division return, and began to watch everything from a remove, trying to decipher the society around me, until we eventually reached an industrial district, where we rolled two levels down a garage ramp, before stopping at a security gate.

Schoeller spoke into the camera at the gate, and the metal barrier receded into the ground, opening onto another ramp, which took us down a third level, where we were greeted by a doorman at a lavish, well-guarded marble entranceway, with a discreet sign above the door that said unironically, Cielo.

The manager came to the entrance to welcome us, and escorted us into a sumptuous room with a walk-in humidor and wine cellar stocked with mature wines and aged cigars. In the room next to it was a chef grilling aged Argentinean steak, and in a larger room, girls in every corner, each more beautiful than the last. The room was furnished with antiques modeled after the Topkapi Palace, with rare Persian carpets and Ottoman artifacts. Only the girls were young. Tall girls, short girls, thin girls, buxom girls. Sweet girls, ruthless girls, desperate girls, good girls who had lost all trace of innocence, cynical girls whose experience of it had ended before their childhoods. Black, white, Asian, indigenous, mestizo, octoroon, quadroon, cafuzo, castas, they only have names for in the local language, and others they just invented with the last people to get off the boat and had not named yet. Whatever you wanted, whatever your unvoiced fantasy, whatever moved through you, dancing together in groups, laughing and winking, as we toured that palace of vice.

“Bunga bunga,” Freddo said.

“Technically,” Doc corrected, “bunga bunga requires the presence of water.”

“Please,” Schoeller begged, “don’t be a fucking pedant tonight.”

“I can’t believe you are having your bachelor party here,” Freddo said. “You’re getting married.”

“And when I get married I will be married,” Schoeller answered. “I am not yet.”

“Do you mean you will give up places like this once you are married?” Doc pressed.

“No.”

“He’s not marrying for love. Should he also give up pleasure?”

“What are you marrying for then?”

“Because we share the same values, and are devoted to the same way of life.”

“That makes it okay?”

“Once I’m married, it will mean something different to come to places like this, is all I mean.” He was marked by resignation as he looked around.

“I don’t care that he’s lying to his wife,” Freddo protested. “I care that he’s flaunting it, and making all of us complicit in his lying.”

“Please shut up, Freddo.”

“I can’t be here,” Freddo protested.

“Why not?” Doc demanded. “You are not forced to do anything. What are you afraid of?”

“It is because you see bodies. I see the poor girls I grew up with. I see my sister. My mother.”

“That is just a real cry for help.”

As much as I disliked agreeing with Freddo I shared his qualms, but for different reasons. Brothels were the nexus of everything I objected to. Besides commoditization of the body, the other interests colliding there were equally nefarious: human trafficking, drugs, violence, and a global network of corruption that flowed back into the legitimate economy. It was in fact one of the points where the legitimate and illegitimate markets mingled, and otherwise upstanding citizens aided all that civil society must necessarily abhor.

I did not say anything, but took it all in as we toured the rooms, more curious than anything else. I had never been inside one before. But the girls were beautiful, in so many different ways, as though someone had assembled a working definition of female beauty until, as we rounded a corner to the penultimate room, it was impossible to know where to focus your attention. There a forty-foot-high waterfall cascaded down from the ceiling, and a group of sirens frolicked in a pool beneath it.

“There,” Schoeller said, clapping his hands toward the water, as Doc fished in the interior pockets of his jacket and started passing around pills, “is the bunga, baby.”

“What’s this?” Schoeller asked, taking one of the pills Doc had passed.

“Molly.”

“The others?”

“China. Bolivia. Adderall. Sugarcubes. Valium. Methadone. Morphine.”

I knew then it had been a bad idea to come, but simply declined everything, until Schoeller lit a long, thin-stemmed pipe and passed it my way.

“What kind of hash is this?” I asked, exhaling a beautifully exotic taste in a plume of violet smoke.

“The opium kind,” he answered.

My muscles relaxed, and soon turned liquid, as the room began to swim pleasantly around me; I found a divan to relax on, while the others fanned out through the club, each in search of his respective desire. The last I remember of any of them that night was watching Doc leave around midnight with a coven of flame-haired she-devils. To do what, I could scarcely imagine.

My mind was swimming happily along the edges of the room, watching the light bend and colors merge, as I fused deeper and deeper into the divan. I had the sensation of falling through a trap door and descending ever deeper, until all that existed was music and color and light. I was completely oblivious to where I was when an Amazonian goddess appeared from the ether, and sat down next to me. She only spoke Tariana, a native language, and our conversation was halting at first, but soon felt completely fluent as she opened an app on her tablet that showed pictures of various poses, starting with starfish, and growing progressively more tantric.

“I do this, and this, and this if I like you. If I don’t like you, I do this. This if you’re good, and this if you are wicked.”

I wanted all she showed me, as I looked at her and wondered what it would be like to fuck a goddess.

Even if I had decided to leave with her, it would have been impossible, because I could not find my limbs. But as I lay there debating with myself, two other women approached, a tall, light one and a taller, dark one. Both looked like mutants from some further stage in human evolution as they sat down on either side of me.

“What language?” The taller one asked, as she took my head in her lap, while the other took my feet, stretching me out between them. The light one spoke Italian, Arabic, and Spanish; the dark one Japanese, German, Afrikaans, and Dutch. In the state I was in I spoke them all as we laughed and they asked if I wanted to go upstairs. Temptation was wearing me down, and I thought to go, telling myself it would be worthwhile if only for the experience. However, through a colossal and super-valiant effort of will, I declined.

They left and I was proud of my willpower, self-satisfied that I remained true to my discipline, as I watched the lights and color bend so that there were no longer angles in the room, only swooping curves of red and purple emotion until I locked eyes with a woman standing directly across from me, who I remembered seeing when I’d first entered, but had lost sight of amid the undifferentiated faces. When our eyes locked, though, she came to me right away, smiling enigmatically and asking what had taken me so long.

She was a large-eyed, big-bosomed country broad, no other term would do; there was something earthy and old-fashioned about her seductiveness. The kind of woman you hope to find on a lonesome night: apple-bottomed, quick-witted, bewitching, Old and Middle English words from the womb and the milk of the language.

Not beautiful, maybe even a little bit homely if you were slow and missed the point; when I looked at her, there was no explaining it, my dick signaled like a compass. A roost cock, keening and crowing to her soft heat as she sat down and took me in her lap, rocking me back to my first body.

“You work in entertainment,” she said perceptively, “but you were in the army before.”

“Close,” I answered, asking how she knew. She shrugged, and ordered herself a drink and put it on my tab. We began to talk and I poured out my tribulations, my conflicted desires, my whole damn life. She crooked her head to the side, looking down at me, and told me to wise up, I had a grand life if I looked the right way.

“Let me get you a spyglass, Watson,” she said. I still didn’t understand, and she didn’t answer again, only slid down and cradled herself against me to show me what she meant.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“I should not,” I answered. “It is against my code.”

“Your what?” she asked.

“My code.”

She laughed. “That is because you still do not know what is right for you, or what you want. If you did you wouldn’t say should. You would say will.”

“I don’t will anything from this place,” I said. “That’s not what I’m about.”

“Come with me, let me find out what you’re about,” she teased.

“I suppose you will help me know what I want, too,” I said.

“Yes,” she answered, turning serious. “The body has a knowledge of its own.”

“I do not sleep with odalisques.”

“You still do not understand, do you? That’s not what I am.”

“What are you doing here, then?”

“I am a professional lover.”

“What does that cost?”

“What is that worth?”

“What is the difference?” I looked up at her, but she was just a light among all the lights.

“The qualia of experience,” she answered.

“That’s a fine word.”

“I used to read in the library, when I dropped out of school and moved to the city to find a job.”

“You should have stayed in school.”

“If I would have had money.”

I had studied enough languages to appreciate the complexity of the verb tense she had constructed. “That took effort to master.”

“The compound subjunctive,” she said ruefully, “is the story of my life. If I would have known, if I could have done, if it should happen that. If it were up to me. Should it ever be. It’s not really the same in American as Brazilian, though. It’s the official verb tense of mad visions and inconsolable sorrows, and belongs to poor people and dreamers. This lifetime brought to you by the subjunctive tense.”