Fresh Kills (17 page)

Ponytails jiggling with effort, two of the little partygoers were taking lessons in tending babies from the woman who looked like a pole dancer. One of the girls rocked the fake baby in her arms knowingly. “These are not like dolls for little girls, you know,” she said. “These are like real babies.” She was very certain.

The nurse held one of the dolls out to Luda who recoiled from the feel of the rubbery flesh and pushed it back at the nurse. She was distracted by a row of computer screens across the aisle.

Face red, she climbed onto a stool in front of one of the screens.

“What is it?” Luda said to me.

A young guy with a digital camera tried to take her picture, explaining that he would put it in the computer and she could then choose hair and eye color. Then a doll, looking just like Luda would be produced.

I didn't know if Luda understood any of the English, but she was too high on sugar and excitement to care. I translated; I told her about the lookalike dolls; and she started crying.

“I don't like this,” Val said. “It's creepy. Come on Luda, darling, let's go dance.”

Silently, Luda cried; obediently she followed Val towards a dance floor that had been set up in an open space and the two of them jiggled around to the music from the karaoke.

“POS,” someone whispered as I glanced at a trio of girls smearing make-up on their faces.

“What?”

“Parent Over Shoulder,” whispered the girl who wore a white bunny jacket as she spoke into the pink cell phone, which she dropped because her hands were greasy from eating pink potato chips. The phone bounced, its case made of something pink, thick and rubbery, the girl picked it up and began giggling into it again. POS, she said again, meaning me.

“Hey.”

I turned around. It was Billy, who wanted me to see the radio-controlled car pit downstairs, and I started after him but I got sidetracked by Luda who was calling my name from the dance floor.

“I'll meet you down there,” I said to Billy.

He shrugged, and turned away.

“Wait,” I said, but he was already gone.

“He's a really great-looking boy,” a voice said. It was Lily Hanes.

“Thanks.”

“It's Billy Farone, right?” She leaned lightly against a rack of rag dolls with yellow hair.

“Yeah.”

“Beth is here.” Lily waved an arm in the direction of a gang of girls dancing; the tallest one with the black hair was Lily's adopted daughter.

“I can see. She looks terrific. She's going to be tall, like you.”

“Can't be the genes,” Lily smiled. “How are you, Artie? I've missed you.”

I said I was fine and tried to ignore the effect her words had on my gut.

Lily looked good. Her red hair was pulled back from her face and she was wearing a green silk shirt and black jeans. I didn't know she was back from London.

The last time she'd been in New York for a while, I had seen her a couple of times. I went to her apartment to visit Beth who I had helped her adopt. I felt connected to Beth and sometimes I took her to the movies and then home. On those occasions, Lily and me, we were polite, like divorced people who had made their peace. I never drank with her. I never even sat down at her place. A while back I'd heard she and Beth had both gone back to London.

I said, “You're in the city for good?”

“I hope it's for good.”

“On Tenth Street?”

“Yes. Always. I only ever sublet my place.”

“Alone?”

She smiled. “Should I assume you mean, is Beth living with me?”

“She looks great.”

“She'll go back to London next week.”

“She's going to be with what's his name, Ted, Ned, Fred, the one you married?”

Lily said, “He already had a family from a previous marriage and it's good for Beth when she's there, all the kids, the house with the garden. She wants to spend the summer there, maybe stay for part of the school year.”

“You OK with that?”

“I don't know. She adores her school. I don't mind her getting some of her education in London. I go over. She comes here. We'll see. It makes me sad when I'm not with her.”

“Not sad enough to stay married to what's his name?”

She changed the subject, “I came to see you last summer. I went to your place. I waited outside.”

It wasn't long after Maxine and I got married and I had seen Lily waiting outside my building. From my car, I had seen her standing in the rain and I had driven away.

“You didn't answer my calls, either,” she said.

“I'm sorry,” I said and realized there wasn't any tension between Lily and me now; maybe after all the years we could be friends.

Lily looked around her.

“I hate this kind of shit, spending like this for a kid's party, but it's what people do now,” she said. “They give parties for one-year-olds at the Four Seasons that cost thousands. I heard about a woman who turned her apartment into a zoo and
brought in animals. I mean it's insane, talk about fiddling while Rome burned. You want to talk about Billy? You want to tell me?”

“You think there's any booze in this place?”

“If Tolya's giving a party, there will be booze,” she said and I followed her as she made her way towards a soda fountain in the middle of the room.

Everywhere were security guys; Tolya had his people out in force, Russians made of muscle and tattoos. Although dressed in red and white striped shirts, they still looked like weight-lifters, their huge arms like slabs of meat.

Suddenly, a clown jumped in front of me and made faces. I pulled back. I always hated clowns. Hated them even when I was little and a trip to the Moscow Circus was the only entertainment going. My mother took me to it and I cried all the way home, she said. I was five.

We got to the soda fountain and Lily climbed onto a high stool and I got on the one next to her.

“Hello,” said a milkmaid in a ruffled apron. “We have grown-up pop for the grown-ups,” she said and pulled a bottle of pink champagne from a miniature fridge behind a soda fountain.

Reaching across the soda fountain for a bowl of Red Hots, Lily began tossing them in the air; she caught each one in her mouth, and then downed them with the champagne. “Hey, this is good stuff,” she said.

“How long do they let the kids stay?”

“All night,” said Lily. “It's a slumber party.”

“Christ.”

“So tell me about Billy.”

“Yeah, well, he did really great in the place in Florida, and they said he could have a couple weeks at home. I went down to get him because Genia – you remember Genia? – she went pretty nuts when they sent Billy away. She wanted him to go
to one of those hotsy-totsy schools for kids with problems, kind of school that costs ninety grand. The judge didn't agree with the idea.”

“Artie darling, you know judges put kids in those schools when they're emotionally fucked up and have maybe a brush with the law, shoplifting, selling weed. Not like Billy.”

“I know. But when I saw him and talked to his shrink, and having been with him, I know he's OK. You think it can happen like that?”

She looked at me with the pale gray eyes, and I knew she'd tell me the truth. Lily Hanes, who I'd been with on and off for more than ten years, was never coy, never smuggled messages, didn't lie.

She put her hand on my arm. “Yes,” she said. “I have to believe that.”

“Thanks.”

“I'm not just telling you what you want to hear. I'm a fucked up old leftie, and I believe in nurture, and if Billy had a screwy childhood, but someone in Florida got hold of him and got him to understand himself, why couldn't he be better, and if you don't believe that, what's the point? There's always some fucking fashion in head cases, you know? So they discover Asperger's syndrome, that's supposed to be a way to describe variations of autism, but now everybody has it. You're a guy and you're a self-centered prick and your wife turns fifty and she realizes you've been focused only on your work, so she says, you know he's kind of Aspergerish. So many brilliant guys are now supposed to have some version that they call it Geek Disease. The dumb ones they label Fragile fucking X Syndrome.”

“Billy doesn't have that stuff. I talked to his shrink. What's Fragile X?”

“Genetic shit, mostly boys, they did a lot of criminal studies over at Riker's, inmates, a lot of them have it,” said Lily. “Like
I said, I have to believe a lot of this genetic stuff is bullshit, and if you fall for it it's like being some kind of fucking Calvinist or something, no free will, everything's wired into you pre-birth, you might as well stop trying. Christ, I could sure use a cigarette. You want to go out on the street for five minutes?”

“Thank you.”

“You're not going to get weepy on me, like some old Russian who's thinking of home and the silver birch trees, are you?” She smiled. “Come on.”

I wanted to go out on the street for a cigarette with her. I wanted everything with her.

“It's just nice to see you,” I said. “Do you remember that time we rode the Staten Island Ferry at night for hours?”

“Don't,” Lily said.

As we looked for an exit sign, I spotted Tolya. Surrounded by ten-year-old girls sitting on the floor in a circle, he was playing a guitar and singing a Russian love song to them. No band, no bass, no backing of the kind he'd had when he was a rocker, Tolya's voice was pure. Standing at the back of the circle of children was Billy. For a moment he stood and listened and then turned and walked away.

“Did you know Tolya could do that?” I said to Lily.

She nodded. “He used to sing to Beth when she was little. Lullabies, too.”

“Now you're crying.”

“Don't be silly,” she said.

At the back of the circle of girls listening to Tolya I found Valentina who was sitting cross-legged, her arms around Luda. She got up off the floor.

“Do you know where Billy is?”

“He's fine, downstairs, playing with cars and video games. He said he'd come back up for the birthday cake. I'm Valentina,” she added, holding out her hand to Lily. “Tolya's kid.”

“This is Lily Hanes,” I said.

“I know that,” Val said. “I'm really happy to meet you. Gosh. Hi. My dad talks about you all, and I mean
all
, the time!”

“Hi,” Lily said. “I need a cigarette.”

Val looked at both of us and said, “Go on. Go.”

It was midnight. The streets were empty. The air was cold, the sky clear and we stood outside the toy store. Lily's cigarette smelled good. She passed it to me and I took a deep drag.

After a while, she started laughing. She laughed hard, like she always laughed in my dream – I dreamed about her more than I wanted to admit. It was infectious and for a while we stood on the empty street, and laughed.

“What?” I said, catching my breath.

“It was so completely hilarious,” she said. “The store. The toys, Tolya in those red pants, you and me trying to party with ten-year-old girls who look like they're going on thirty, and the fake babies, and the milkmaid.”

Lily's shoulder was touching mine and right then I knew it would never be any good without her. Standing alongside her, it was as if I could breathe again.

I thought about Maxine and the girls, about the apartment, about everything. I would stick with it, best I could. I wouldn't sleep with Lily, either. I had to talk to her, though; I had to see her.

“It's no good,” she said. “Is it?”

“No.”

“No good with us apart, I mean.”

“I know that was what you meant,” I said.

“What should we do?”

“What do you think?”

“I don't know. Nothing, probably.” Lily took my hand and leaned her head against mine. “I feel better. Seeing you,” she said, then she tossed the butt of her cigarette into the curb
where it landed in a tiny puddle and floated, like a miniscule boat. “I can feel OK so long as we can see each other once in a while. We should go back in,” Lily said. “Artie?”

“Yeah?”

“It'll be OK with Billy, you'll see. It'll be good.”

The screams were shrill and compulsive and seemed to go on forever, the sound of a small girl screaming so that you figured her lungs would explode. It was like a car alarm going off in the night except it was terrified and terrifying.

In the crumpled purple dress and dirty pink tutu, Luda was huddled on the floor of the toy store, Val crouched next to holding her as best she could. Next to them, also on his knees, his arms around Luda's shoulders, was Billy. Head down, he was whispering to her.

Lily had taken Beth home. Tolya had the rest of the kids at the soda fountain and was singing Beatles songs with them while the milkmaid dished up ice cream to keep them distracted.

Luda gave another horrifying scream and Billy suddenly jumped up, his face blank, then turned and ran across the floor, and down the stairs. I started after him. Tolya saw me and caught my arm.

“Let him be for a minute. I'll send one of my guys down to make sure he's OK. Her screaming scared him.”

“What happened?” I said.

“The dolls.” He tossed me a pack of cigarettes. I didn't care what store policy was. I lit up.

“What?”

“Look, I better keep these kids quiet until we can get them home. It was the dolls they make to look like the children,” said Tolya, pointing to a shelf with a row of dolls that had Luda's face.

“Why did you make so many?” I said to the woman running the computers.

“I thought she said she wanted six to take home. I didn't understand. The boy said that's what she wanted, he translated.”

“Which boy?”

“The tall one with the dark hair.”

“Hey, wait.” It was Miss Jelly Bean calling me, but I was already running for the stairs. When I got to the lower level, I asked one of Tolya's muscle guys where Billy was and he told me in his crude Russian that the boy had slipped past him.