19 Purchase Street (3 page)

Norma wasn't the least indecisive about what to pack, nor did she strew things about. It seemed as though she was merely filling the bags, giving them proper weight and believable content, the way she removed things several at a time from drawers and didn't sort through. In twenty minutes she was done. She zipped, buckled and locked both bags and placed them in the foyer along with the thirty-incher. There was only one visible difference other than size. The thirty-incher had a red and white, rather than a brown, leather identification tag attached to its handle.

She tried Drew's number again.

His service was still answering and he hadn't called in for messages. She decided to trust her intuition. Quickly she changed into what she'd wear on the flight. She left the luggage in the foyer, went out and took a taxi uptown to Second Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street.

There was the Roosevelt Island tramway, all orange and blue and advertising itself thirty feet above street level. A tram car was about to depart. Nevertheless, Norma, on impulse, took the time to go into one of the small shops in the mall at the base of the tram station, a place that sold only candy. She bought all the Necco wafers the store had, five packs, three chocolate, two assorted. Because recently Drew had remarked that while Godivas and Teuschers were fine, they weren't any better to his taste than Neccos had been twenty-some years ago.

Norma ran up the steps. In contradiction to the usual city behavior, the tram's departure was delayed especially for her, the time it took her to purchase her ticket and get aboard. Her heart was pounding from rushing. She thanked the other eight passengers and the tram operator and then they were underway, suspended from a cable, proceeding above the city, going against the taxi yellow grain of the avenues: Second, First, York. And FDR Drive, the traffic headed home in both directions, the various car colors attractive from that high vantage. Actually, everything appeared cleaner from up there, the city's deterioration not nearly so apparent. The East River was almost as calm as a creek and closer alongside on the right the Queensboro Bridge was, as usual, being painted, splotched with orange.

From the tram on the way over Norma could also make out Drew's apartment. His was the highest at the south end of the Roosevelt Island complex. She knew it by heart. Whenever she happened to be going up or down FDR Drive she would glance across the river to it. At night his lights on, even the bathroom light, was their signal that he was home. Then she could rest easier. Other times she believed she could sense when he was there.

As today. His door wasn't bolted inside. She let herself in with her key.

He was where she had pictured he would be. Seated alone at the corner windows. Possibly he had noticed her walking over from the tram, although from what she understood he seldom looked down in that direction. Usually he paid attention to the river and whatever happened to be on it, or the Lilliputian animation among the highrises across the way, which were otherwise as dimensionless as a postcard.

Norma went directly to him, saved her hello until it was accómpanied by her hand lightly on his bare shoulder. She also said her name for him. Only she called him Drew, short and familiar for Andrew, which she knew he disliked. To most people he was Gainer.

He offered his face up for her kiss. There was love for her in his smile. He said: “I thought I was supposed to pick you up.”

“You were,” she said matter of fact, not wanting to break it to him right off.

He was wearing a pair of blue lightweight cotton shorts and white athletic socks, knee-high socks that were pushed down to his ankles. His legs were extended across the lap of another chair, shins layered with gauze compresses. On the floor nearby was a clear glass bowl containing an amber liquid.

“Okay by you if we leave later, say around seven or eight? Otherwise we're liable to hit some tie-ups on account of vapor locks.”

She didn't object.

“Leslie called, just a few minutes ago, from Oak Bluffs.”

“You should take
all
your calls.”

He got that and agreed with a slight nod. The trouble was his phone numbers were spoiled again. He had two separate lines, with two different numbers, both unlisted. Each time he had the numbers changed it was a relief to be that abruptly out of touch with the people he'd given the number to at the spur of a promising moment. When last the numbers were changed he'd vowed to be more discreet, conscientious about it, only Norma and Leslie and a few business connections would know what to dial. But now, just four months later, he couldn't pick up for someone he wanted to speak to because more often it would be someone he'd rather avoid. Anyway, next week when he got back from Martha's Vineyard he'd have both numbers changed and unlisted again.

“When did Leslie go up?” Norma asked.

“Early yesterday morning. Had herself flown. She wants us to bring some Zabar's raisin pumpernickel and a pound of birthroot.”

“That's a pretty sizable order.”

“She said there are a couple of holes in the screen porch that the mosquitoes are finding. She wants to use birthroot on her bites.”

It would be truly Leslie, Norma thought, not to use anything for her mosquito bites until Drew got there with that carnal-sounding herb. Until then, she'd just scratch and bear it.

Norma's attention went to the room. She hadn't been there in three weeks. There in the corner were the
Realities
, six years of them next to an equally high stack of
Daily Racing Forms
. A forsaken shoe, a silver spike-heeled sandal, was almost out of sight beneath the couch. Three starfish from an Aruba trip were stuck like a personal constellation on one of the windowpanes. On the low table on the face of an edition of a Nabokov novel was a .32 caliber automatic. Next to a perfect dandelion pod preserved forever in a semi-sphere of clear plastic. Next to the telephones with adaptors attached by simple suction to their earpieces and wires running from them to a pair of Sony M-101 micro cassette recorders. On an alcove wall a numbered and signed Jasper Johns print was hung opposite a framed collection of counterfeit U.S. paper money.

There were enormous pine cones in a natural basket near a leg of the authentic eighteenth-century armoire. The double doors of the armoire were open to reveal a twenty-four inch Trinitron and a Betamax. On the shelves above, video tapes, bootlegged Truffauts and Loseys and Kubricks along with others, such as
Misty Beethoven
and
Inside Marilyn Chambers
. Representing not so much the quality of him but rather his scope, Norma knew.

“Your plants seem to love it here,” she said. He had quite a few hanging and standing around.

“Because I ignore them.”

She doubted that.

“They're trying to get my attention by looking good,” he said.

Norma picked a withered leaf from an otherwise flourishing Ficus tree. She'd given up on Ficus. They always appeared so healthful and irresistible at the florists but became terminal as soon as she got them home.

“That's the one I swear at,” Gainer claimed.

Norma felt up in under the tendrils of an obese Swedish ivy. Its soil was damp, cared-for.

Gainer removed the compresses from his shins, saturated them again by dipping them into the bowl of amber liquid. His legs were severely bruised, gashed open in places.

Norma had to look away from them.

His legs were hurt from being kicked while playing soccer. They were always hurt to some extent because he never gave them time to heal, played at least twice a week.

Soccer was his game.

He'd chosen it long ago before there were teams such as the Cosmos. When he was ten he'd gone alone on the subway to various remote city fields that usually didn't even have any bleachers to watch German New Yorkers against Polish New Yorkers or whoever. A weekend league of amateurs that occasionally got its scores noted in the smallest type in the
Daily News
. A few of the older players had once been with well-known European teams. Fred Holtz was one of those Gainer especially remembered. A block of a man with badly scarred knees who, during a warmup, had shown the boy, Gainer, how to bring down and control the ball with his chest. That same afternoon Holtz had scored two goals, the second from twenty yards out to win the match. And, afterward, on the sideline, while wiping at the perspiration that was dripping even from his blond and gray hair, he had acknowledged Gainer again with his eyes. Shared some of that important moment, was the way Gainer took it and kept it.

These days, eighteen years later, Gainer frequently went over to Randall's Island and got into a pick-up game. However, where he enjoyed playing most was in the Bronx on a field with practically all the grass run off it. The guys he played with there were Hispanics who had become used to being unemployed.

The compresses were again in place on his outstretched shins. He took notice of a blue and white private helicopter as it set down across the river on the huge red X of the Sixtieth Street Heliport. Almost immediately it lifted off and side-swooped eastward. Taking a heavyweight type to his estate on the North Shore or even more likely sent in from out there in moneyland to import some high-priced company, Gainer thought. Offhand he asked Norma, “How's Phil?”

“Who?” As though the name was meaningless.

“That Phil from Michigan.”

“What's that you're putting on your legs?”

“Peach pit tea.”

“What good does it do?”

“For one thing it appeases Leslie.”

Norma sat in the fat armchair diagonally across from him. She smoothed her hair back with both hands.

Gainer recognized it as her look before a fib.

She told him: “I haven't heard from that Phil.”

“Why, do you think?”

A shrug.

More than likely, Gainer thought, Phil had become discouraged after having made too many unreturned phone calls or heard too many transparent excuses. For a while earlier in the year Norma had spent some good times with the man, seemed to be reacting happily to him. Then she returned from one of her regular trips to Zurich. Changed. From then on she starved the relationship.

“Phil was strange,” she said ambiguously, though insinuating something a little sinister.

When recently Gainer had suggested introducing her to someone, she'd said lightly but pointedly that she'd prefer to do her own casting. Nevertheless, Gainer now told her: “At Clarke's the other day I met someone you might find interesting.”

Norma was away in other thought.

“Seemed a nice guy, in his forties, full partner in a law firm.”

After a moment she came back, asked: “What color tie was he wearing?”

“I didn't notice. Why?”

Norma decided. “It was blue, a dark, sincere blue. Is he married?”

“Was.”

“How many times?”

“Once, I believe he said.” Twice was more believable, Gainer now thought.

“Better he should be a lawyer at lunch without a tie …”

She had a point.

“… and married,” she added.

“Why married?”

“Drew, honey, if there's to be a divorce at least I should have the pleasure of being the cause of it.” She couldn't keep a straight face.

Neither could Gainer.

She remembered the Neccos, dug into her bag and got them, tossed a roll to Gainer.

He was pleased, and, as usual, exaggerated his surprise for her. With one of the candy wafers in his mouth, melting, he remarked, “It's like tasting memories.”

Norma thought perhaps the mood of the moment might help soften what she had to tell him: “I can't go up to the Vineyard.”

“Why not?”

“I have to make a carry.”

He lowered his head and rubbed at his brows roughly with the heel of his hand, as though to prevent having to look at something that wouldn't go away.

“There was no way out of it,” Norma said.

“You've only been back a week—”

“Two actually.” It seemed even longer to Norma.

“I thought their rule was at least a month between carries.”

“I reminded them of that but it didn't matter. They seem to be in a bind of some sort.”

Gainer stood abruptly. The wet compresses on his shins were disregarded as they fell to the floor. His stride across the room seemed purposeful, although all he did was get that day's racing form from the hall table, organize its pages and place it on the top of the stack in the corner. “They don't get into binds,” he said.

“Darrow implied as much. He said he wanted me, particularly me, to make this carry. Someone he could surely depend on, he said.”

Gainer pictured such words coming from Darrow, and Norma soaking them up, falling for the flattery. “Darrow phoned you?”

“I drove up there.”

“Did you have to?”

“Probably not, but it was a nice day to get out of the city for a while.”

No use reminding her again that she should keep her contact with Number 19 as remote as possible. Usually the carry was brought to her by an intermediary, not always the same man but always someone nameless and neutral-looking who brought the full suitcase and took away the empty. Gainer believed it was safer for Norma not to get closer to Number 19 than that, but she took it as merely his way of viewing things through his street-cautious nature. Hadn't her years of affiliation with Number 19 proved that? She'd always been treated well by Darrow and the others, in little ways made to feel that she truly was a trusted favorite. She wished Gainer would be more tolerant of them. That would make the situation more comfortable for her. As things were, the illegal side of it was always being stressed.

Norma retrieved the compresses, dropped them into the bowl that she set aside where it wouldn't get kicked over. “Hine was there today,” she said. “On his best prep school behavior, as usual. I can't help but feel a bit sorry for Hine, the way Darrow talks right through him.”