19 Purchase Street (56 page)

“At least then it would lose only when it was told,” Gainer said.

Vinny laughed. “We've been watching the obituaries,” he said.

“Too early for that,” Gainer said.

“How about putting a call into Hine,” Chapin said.

Gainer wasn't for it.

“Pretend you're calling from Zurich, just checking in or something.”

Gainer did wish he knew what was going on at Number 19, what Darrow's reaction had been when he saw that much of The Balance gone. Like Orpheus, looking at his own death.

“Anyway, when do you think we'll be able to unload the money and take our cut?” Chapin asked.

“No more than a week, Hine said.”

“You plan to stay over here for the entire week?”

“Long as I have to,” Gainer said.

“Doesn't seem fair. This is a rat hole.”

“It's not bad.”

“It's not exactly Caneel Bay,” Leslie put in.

Gainer told her: “No reason for both of us to be here. Why don't you go get a good night's rest?”

“Maybe I will,” she said.

Gainer didn't think he should leave the money, didn't think he could. He'd been with it all the way and something kept telling him to stick with it. However, he thought, possibly he just wasn't listening to another side of him that complained he was being too cautious, stubbornly tough on himself.

Chapin took him aside, told him: “Listen handicapper, really, Vinny and I don't mind hanging out here, keeping watch over the stash for a couple of days or so.”

“Thanks but—”

“What is it … you don't trust me, or what?”

“It's not that, it's—”

“Do you good to take a break. I know Leslie could sure use one.”

Gainer glanced past Chapin to Leslie. She really wouldn't leave without him, he thought. He ought to consider her, what she was having to go through because of her caring about him. The least he could do was make it a little easier. Loud enough for her to hear he asked Chapin: “Can you take it here for a couple of days?”

“No problem.”

“Okay, say until Tuesday morning.”

Leslie had already gathered up their ASPs and was headed for the stairs.

An hour later she was at her place on East Seventy-fifth taking the longest bath of her life. As the suds of a huge bar of Penhaligon soap fluffed like worked-up cream on her, she thought that her allotment of two and a half rats definitely weren't here. Did that mean someone had five?

Gainer showered. He had noticed the glow of a tiny red light on the wall next to the dimmer in the foyer, had never noticed it before. When he was drying off he asked Leslie about it.

“That's Rodger,” she said casually.

“How is it him?”

“When the light's on it means he's home next door in case I want to see him for some reason. You know, if I feel like talking or have a problem or whatever.”

Gainer thought of Rodger only a wall away, a man he'd never met but had come to think of as someone he knew well.

“Don't let it bother you, lover,” Leslie said.

“It doesn't,” Gainer lied.

When Leslie was out of the tub and dried, she put on a white floor-length cotton robe, so fine a cotton it was nearly transparent. She had Gainer sit before her dressing table and be shaved. He let her but didn't completely relax, pressed her breasts with the round of his shoulder, kneed her mound as though not knowing he was doing it while she stroked away his three-day bristles. She was astraddle his thigh when she finished beneath his chin.

He was hard.

As though she hadn't noticed until that moment, she did a little “Oh!” A mixture of surprise, delight and mock fright. She kneeled, kissed his cock as she would his mouth.

He noticed she still had the open straight razor in her hand.

“It's been days,” she said.

“Has it?”

“Only in the movies women don't keep count when it comes to that.”

They laughed.

“But before anything,” she told him, “I need to have my aura cleansed. Will you do it for me, lover?”

“Sure thing.”

She removed her robe and lay front down on the bed. Gainer started at her feet and performed his version of her air-scouring motions with his hands. He felt foolish at first but then he got into it, scoured vigorously and as close as possible to her skin without touching her.

“Don't forget to discard the negativity,” she said.

Gainer imitated what he'd seen her do, snapped his hands as though flinging a filthy substance from them. He cleansed the length of her the required three times back, three times front.

“That's better,” she murmured.

He was still hard.

M
ONDAY
brought rain.

Not on and off sprinkles but a steady drizzle with umbrella destroying gusts.

Gainer had to put out of mind going up to the Bronx for an afternoon of soccer. That prospect was an additional reason persuading him to leave the money and Ellis. Damn rain. He didn't mope about it but mentioned it to Leslie a couple of times while they stayed in, read and nibbled and napped feet to feet and sometimes toes to crotch at opposite ends of a down-filled
lit de repos
.

They were like that when he jumped up and started to dress.

“Where are you going, lover?” Leslie asked.

“Just thought I'd take a run out to Ellis to make sure everything's all right.” A twinge of distrust had gotten to him, shot through him like an all-over gas pain. That money out there was his life.

“Stop worrying.”

“I can't.”

“Chapin and Vinny won't let anything happen to the money.”

Gainer got as far as the door, slowly turned and came back to her. Still feeling uneasy.

They went out early for some honest pasta at II Monello and then used the intermission at the Winter Garden to sneak into the second part of the Twyla Tharp Dancers.

Got to bed and to sleep before midnight.

Again, around four, the security of the money out on Ellis was so heavy on Gainer that he had to get up and decide whether or not to go check on it. He got as far as one shoe on.

He slept badly until seven.

It was an ideal morning, the rain having washed the air. Not a cloud, the sun had the sky all to itself. Today's weather should have been yesterday's, Gainer thought.

He and Leslie returned to Ellis. The money was exactly as they'd left it.

But not the attic.

There were soft drink and beer cans, pizza crusts and a couple of battered pie tins full of stubbed out cigarettes. Half-finished sandwiches, Hostess Twinkie wrappers, at least a dozen porno magazines. Evidently Chapin had made himself right at home.

Chapin and Vinny were glad to leave the place. Stayed only long enough to ask if Gainer had heard anything from Hine and to say that a Harbor Police Patrol launch had cruised close by along the east seawall that dawn but hadn't appeared to be suspicious. Probably a once-a-week routine patrol.

As soon as Chapin and Vinny were gone, Leslie set about cleaning the attic. Inspired by the possibility of having to endure every rat in the place. Gainer helped, hauled the trash and leftovers down and out to the incinerator building that was located on the extreme opposite corner of the island, as far away as possible.

When he returned from doing that he tried to just sit and watch the comings and goings in the harbor, but he was fidgety.

Leslie was relaxed, content reading
The Seth Material
by Jane Roberts.

Every time Gainer shifted his position the rattan chair complained with creaks.

Without taking her eyes from the page, Leslie told him: “Tell you what. You go play soccer and I'll keep watch over the loot.”

“No.”

“You'd really like to play, wouldn't you?”

“It's not that important.”

“Okay.”

Then, after a silent while, she asked, “Where would you play today if you were going to?”

“Up in the Bronx.”

“Same place where I went with you to watch that time?”

“Crotona Park.”

“You ought to go play.”

“Think so?”

“Definitely.”

“I wouldn't feel right about it.”

“You don't feel right now.”

“You'd be stranded out here.”

“So, I'll run you over to the Seventy-ninth Street Basin and pick you up there later in the afternoon. Say, five-thirty. Wouldn't that give you time enough?” She seemed to be asking herself as much as him.

“You wouldn't mind being alone?”

“Not at all.”

“Sure?”

“I'll just read.”

That he'd needlessly worried about the money the day and the night before helped convince Gainer that he ought to be at least a little less paranoid about it. Soccer was tempting.

“You deserve it,” Leslie said.

An hour later, shortly before noon, Gainer was in the Bronx, crossing over from One hundred and seventy-third Street into Crotona Park. The loose-fitting shorts he had on were old and unevenly faded, his T-shirt had holes in it and the sweatshirt tied by its sleeves around his neck was a gray five-dollar second from a street vendor. His soccer shoes, connected by their laces, were slung over his shoulder. He had better gear, a couple of expensive warm-up suits, but never wore them up here.

As soon as grass was beneath his feet Gainer picked up his pace, from a stride to a lope to an easy jog. Across Crotona Parkway to the playing field. He hadn't been there for several weeks and some of the guys let him know he was welcome by acknowledging that he hadn't been around, asking if he'd been sick or away or in the can. Santiago and Tricky Rodriguez had arrived about half an hour earlier and were just completing their warmups. They came over to Gainer and did a few more while he did his.

“We got shirts today,” Santiago told Gainer. “They dropped out of a window.”

Tricky Rodriguez held one up, a green, long-sleeved mostly acrylic shirt with two white bars around the chest and two around the upper arms.

“Sharp,” Gainer said.

“I saved you one,” Santiago said, tossed it to Gainer, who tried it on. The shirt was extra, extra large.

“Wrong one, that's mine,” Santiago said, exchanging it. Not that he was large enough for that shirt; he preferred whatever he wore to be loose. He was a rangy two-hundred-pounder, had long legs and arms. His coloring was medium to very black, his teeth somewhat tobacco-stained. The red irritation in the corners of his eyes and around his lids was also from a kind of smoking. It was Gainer's guess that Santiago was thirty. He was sure Santiago had served time because he often referred to one guy or another as someone he'd been “inside” with. Tricky Rodriguez was only about five-seven and a hundred forty. He was a freckled Puerto Rican with a slight speech impediment, a lisp that gave his Spanish a Castillian flavor. He could not have been more than twenty-three or -four. One reason he was called Tricky was he was good at magic, especially sleight of hand. Saturdays he dealt a three card Monte game on the bottom of a cardboard carton downtown on Fifth Avenue and around Rockefeller Center and along Fifty-seventh. He could handle the cards as well as anyone, but someone else had to do the spiel for him and that cut down on his take.

“We' ain't playing just pick up today,” Tricky said.

“The guys from Sound View Park are coming up,” Santiago explained.

“Trying to tell me you already have a full side?”

“We ain't got but eleven shirts and I just gave you yours, didn't I?”

“You sure?”

“Hell, yeah, we need you.” For emphasis, Santiago gave Gainer a playful but sharp shot to the stomach that Gainer toughened up for just in time.

Gainer continued with his warmups. Did thirty toe-touchers and twenty side-stretches. Some backbends that made him feel the knots come undone along his spine. After that he did some deep breathing, taking air in slowly, holding it in for a long moment to get all the goodness from it before letting it out. He deep breathed for each part of himself: head, shoulders, thighs, calves, deep breathed as though all his skin were capable of inhaling, ventilating, nourishing. He got up, stood with feet apart, felt solidly related to the earth but at the same time light on it, balanced and capable of making swift shifts of movement. The state of mind and body soccer players call being “grounded.”

Gainer would need to be very grounded, considering the condition of the field. It was a bare, overplayed place at its best. Now, from Monday's rain, its dirt was mud and and the critical areas in front of each goal were puddled. The dimensions had been paced off, one hundred and thirty yards by seventy-five yards, and marked with flour, a twenty pound bag of Pillsbury someone somehow didn't pay for.

The match began at one-thirty only because that happened to be the time when the ball was put into play. It would last as long as anyone felt the need to score. There would be a half time or time out when the majority of both sides decided they wanted it.

Green shirts and white shirts went at it. A swarming kind of game resembling the so-called Total Soccer that the Holland and West German teams had improvised in 1974, but lacking its strategy. All ten players on either side played both attack and defense as the opportunities and spirits dictated. There were no absolute territorial positions, no assigned zones of responsibility as in classical soccer. The result was often a melee with twenty players crowded into a section of the field trying for the ball. And, as a further result, there were many breakaways, some going almost the entire length of the field.

The outstanding player for the Sound View team was a mestizo from Santa Marta, Colombia, by the name of Jeanaro Lopez. He had had two tryouts with the Tampa Bay Rowdies of the North American Soccer League. Ten minutes into play Jeanaro took a long, leading cross pass and had only Gainer to beat. Jeanaro came right at him, controlling the ball effortlessly in stride as though it were attached to his feet. He misled Gainer with his eyes and shoulders, skipped on one foot, did a couple of little stutter steps and was that quickly by and on his way to the goal. The goalkeeper had even less of a chance. Santiago's shrug at Gainer said he himself couldn't have done any better.