Life Goes to the Movies (20 page)

That rubber bullet, the one that passed through her head? She showed it to me just as I was about to leave, she hands it over to me, a souvineer
[sic]. I said, “Are you sure?” She says, “What do I need it for? It’s done with me.”

More newspaper clippings about the riots—though none mention either Crowley House or anyone named Steele. The entries resume with Dwaine meeting
the redheaded woman from Crowley House.

…
We sat in a pub engaged in that most popular Irish pastime, debating the so-called Troubles, as they’re known here. By now I’m VERY
motivated, and say so. She puts me in touch with a guy named Dermott, a.k.a. “Captain Midnight”, a hospital orderly by day, by night
Commander in Chief of the INLA, that’s Irish National Liberation Army to you innocents on the far side of the pond, another violent spin-off
of the IRA, specializing in acts of mass destruction after midnight, as in KABOOM!—hence Dermott’s comic-book character
nom de plume.

A week later these two guys come to the flat where I’m staying. We sit down to tea and they riddle me with questions, you know, personality
profile shit, wanting to make sure my Claddagh is in the right place (‘tis Ireland, my Ireland). Once they decide that I can be trusted they
give me my first basic assignment, namely to spy on a certain hotel lounge called the Egalitine [sic], where British officers swill away their
guilt nightly. The lounge is owned by a cat lick (that’s slang for Catholic) named Bruce who’s been told repeatedly not to serve the
Brits. My assignment: sit at a table with my notebook looking like a bored stupid tourist (“That should present no problem for you, eh,
Yank?”), gathering as much reconnaissance as possible—how tables and chairs are arranged, where officers stand or sit, when they come
in, when they leave, and so on. “Give us everything you can, lad,” they tell me quietly, and then they leave.

So, what does you’re[sic] newly minted lower-rank terrorist do? He goes to the “Egg,” as it’s called, orders up a pint, and
sits there at a strategic table with his notebook open, trying to look nonchalant as he makes his notes. Two days into my spying mission, I’m
sitting there and who should walk in but the very two Brit officers who sat me down and slapped me silly at the Crowley House? No shit, they sidle
up to the bar. I’m thinking, man, this is too much for me. But I’m being tested, remember? And have a mission. So I start sketching
them, little thumbnails of their faces. I’m sketching away, jotting notes, transcribing snatches of conversation, trying to be the soul of
discretion when one of them turns and sees me and, sure enough, hops off his stool and comes over. And I’m thinking, now you’ve done
it, boy now you’ve stepped in it big time, now you’re gonna DIE. Then the guys he was talking to slide off their stools and follow him.

Oh fuck, I’m thinking, oh fuck, oh fuck.

The first goon says, “Let’s see the notebook, lad,” and I hand it over to him. He flips through it, with me sitting there
dripping sweat, knowing if they recognize me, or decipher my handwriting, that’s it, I’m cooked, I may as well sing
Amhán na bhFiann
or spit in the fucker’s eye. The goon nods his head and says, “Good hand you’ve got. But tell us, lad, what’s the idea,
hey? Why draw us?” He doesn’t recognize me!

“I’m an art student,” I tell him. “Visiting from New York.”

“A Yank, is it?”

“New York, New York,” sings one of his pals. “My kind of town.”

“Leonardo’s got you dead to rights, eh, Ben?”

“You gonna do us in color?” the sergeant says, handing my notebook back.

“Yeah, sure, why not?” I say. (Does he not know flop-sweat when he sees it, lads? Or does he assume we Yanks always perspire like that?)

“Just don’t make me ugly like you made him!” says the other goon.

They all laugh as they shuffle back to their table.

Three days later, at exactly two minutes to midnight, a yellow Morris Minor
[my papa’s car!]
stuffed with a mixture of C-4, gasoline and Grade-A horseshit pulls up in front of The Eglantine Lounge. Two minutes later a timing device made
using an old electric clock engages a trigger mechanism, discharging 12 volts from the car’s twin six-volt batteries through a set of jumper
cables into the smelly mixture. The blast blows out windows two miles away. In all seven people are killed, including the lounge’s Fenian
owner, Bruce, three Brit officers, and two soldiers. Cheers arose when, at a cell meeting three days later, Captain Midnight proclaimed, “The
Egg, ladies and gentlemen, is now officially an omelet.”—a tactless observation, I agree, but one that met with howls of approbation
and—

The next page is torn out.

So is the next. The rest of the notebook yawns empty.

5

It’s past midnight. My parents went upstairs and to bed hours ago. Aside from the growl of the furnace and the hum of the dehumidifier, the house
is silent. I switch off my desk lamp.

Through the narrow high basement window moonlight creeps, watery and gray as dishwater. I feel mildly poisoned by Dwaine’s past, as if it were
some rare toxin or radioactive isotope that has entered into my bloodstream through the fingers that have touched his black book. Why does he insist on
dosing me with his life?—with his history? with his impossibly cinematic past? A soldier, a would-be priest, a Peace Corps volunteer, a
filmmaker, a terrorist. What next? A lion tamer? An astronaut? A Secret Service agent? A stamp collector? A prizefighter? A pimp? What isn’t
Dwaine Fitzgibbon capable of doing?

Once I’d have given anything to know. Now I don’t wantto know. Anything.

Go away, Dwaine.Please.Leave me to my dull Connecticut aspiring bourgeoisie life.

6

Days later he writes me again:

I just had the most amazing dream. I’m riding in the back seat of a limo with Dustin Hoffman. Me and Dustin, man, we’re having a
helluva time, really paling it up, when suddenly Dusty leans over and kisses me on the mouth, tongue and all. At first I’m shocked, but then,
not wanting to offend the star of such classics as
The GraduateandMidnight Cowboy,
I play along, but after a while I start laughing. Dusty says, “What’s so funny?” I say, “I’m not gay!” He says,
“Me, neither!” And then we both crack up. Then the chauffeur turns around and takes off his cap, only
heturns out to beher,andshe
turns out to be Venus, who’s lying here next to me as I write this letter to you, babe. The bottom line being that a month from now Ms.
Wiggins and I are tying the knot, so get those red overalls dry cleaned and pressed and stick a white carnation in the button hole, ‘cuz like
it or not you are and always will be my best man.

7

Montage, night:

A canvas-tented barge docked on the Brooklyn side of the East River. Summer drizzle softens the night air as the fabled bridge sizzles with traffic
overhead. Ice mermaids cradle silver caviar buckets; oysters in cracked shells drift on foaming seas of chipped ice; jumbo shrimp cling to the caldera
rims of lurid cocktail sauce volcanoes; a swing band in vanilla jackets and gold cardboard derbies swishes and whumps rhythms into the drizzly dark.
The river wears three diamond bracelet bridges on its black sleeve. Across the oily dark waters Manhattan wastes as much electricity as possible.

Maybe it’s because my mother makes bridal headpieces for a living, but I never cared for wedding receptions. Champagne makes me dizzy, so do
hothouse flowers and a choice of prime rib au jus or poached salmon in dill sauce. This barge’s steady swaying doesn’t help matters.

I lean against the railing, watching the pattern of lights stitched in gold across the water, sipping champagne despite my queasiness. Across the dance
floor the newlywed groom spins his bride. Dwaine wears a white tuxedo, its lapel bloodied by a carnation. Venus floats on a cloud of taffeta and silk.
Her white arms pour out of her sleeves like cold milk from a twin-spouted pitcher. They’ve been dancing for an hour, at least.

A dozen yards from me, standing side by side against the same railing, Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgibbon watch their newlywed son dance. Mr. Fitzgibbon wears a
slate blue serge suit, smokes a fat cigar and looks like a bald paunchy Kirk Douglas. Tufts of white hair sprout from his nostrils and earlobes. Dwaine
called him “black Irish,” but he’s not dark at all, not dark enough, anyway, to hide the gin roses that blossom on his cheeks. Nor
does his wife look the least bit like she’s descended from Moorish slaves. A small woman with a pinched nervous bird face, she waves her
husband’s cigar fumes theatrically away from her nose but makes no effort to remove herself from them.

What are Dwaine’s parents doing here, anyway? I wonder. Didn’t he disown them, or vice-versa? I had put the very same question to Dwaine
earlier.

“Two things the Irish can’t resist,” he replied, his breath reeking with cigars and gin, “weddings and wakes. Any excuse to get
tanked.”

A waiter floats by. I toss back my champagne dregs and nip myself a fresh flute. The waiters and I are dressed exactly alike. How was I supposed to
know that only butlers and waiters wear blackties with tails?

The dance ends. Dwaine breaks away to maneuver among guests, shaking hands, slapping backs, yelling out orders to photographers and caterers, presiding
over his own wedding like Joseph L. Mankiewicz directing Cleopatra. Is this the gritty filmmaker I once knew and loved? Can Dwaine possibly be
the force behind this gaudy, overproduced tripe? Where are the dope needles? Where are the lobotomy victims, the spurting amputees? Where are the
bullet holes and the buckets of (fake) blood?

8

A wedding cake shaped like an old-fashioned movie camera is wheeled onto the barge deck. As best man it’s up to me to give a toast. The band
drummer taps a perfunctory roll. My tongue lubricated by five flutes of bubbly, I stammer out something to the effect that life with Dwaine, however
likely to be fraught and unpredictable, is just as bound not to be dull.

“To Mr. and Mrs. Dwaine Sean Fitzgibbon,” I slur. “May theirs be a colorfully fucked-up future!”

My specious speech earns a smattering of applause, but not from Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgibbon, who glare at me as bride feeds cake to groom. Just as Venus
turns to feed me a slice a tugboat blunders by, churning up a swell that rocks the barge on its moorings, causing those less seaworthy among us—a
population including yours truly—to lose their balance. Venus and I grab hold of each other, only to tumble as one into the cart that holds the
cake. And down everything goes.

“I always thought you were sweet,” she says to me afterwards, wiping frosting from my tuxedo lapel with a wet napkin. Under the colored
lights strung over the barge Venus’ cheeks glow tutti-frutti.

“That was a nice little speech you gave there,” she tells me while wiping.

“Spare me, Venus. I spoke crap.”

The smell of vanilla rises and flares. It takes me all my self-control not to pull her into my frosted chest and kiss her—not a brotherly,
best-man kiss, either, but one designed to complicate things infinitely.

The Blue Danube
starts playing. Dwaine snatches his bride back onto the portable dance floor. I watch them waltz. For a moment I forget I’m on a barge. I’m
deep in space, alone among planets and stars, watching them waltz across the Milky Way. The heavens close in, engulfing water, buildings and bridges.
I’m about to skip out of the universe altogether when suddenly the brightest planet in the sky swings by, grabs me by the arm and drags me out
onto the dance floor.

“Come on now,” Venus says, seeing my reluctance. “The best man is supposed to dance with the bride. It’s tradition!”

As in Van Gogh’s most famous painting the blazing skyline swirls. Bodies drift, vessels and buildings bob, skyscrapers sway. Suddenly the barge
starts pitching violently, hawsers snapping, breaking free from the dock to drift away on swollen seas. Having grabbed the video camera from the
photographer the groom records our careening dance.

“Take one!” he shouts. “Treachery on the high seas as best man woos fickle bride! Laughter, tears, curtain!”

The dark waters rise and I lurch.

Groom keeps shooting as best man pukes over barge rail.

9

A month and a week after the wedding Venus phoned. I was asleep in the basement when the telephone rang. It was after midnight. Guessing that the call
was for me and wanting to spare my parents a rude awakening, I hurried up the stairs in the dark. On the way I knocked over a bottle of calamine lotion
I’d been applying to the mosquito bites I got at my job, emptying those barrels of parts cleaner solvent at dusk. The bottle shattered with a wet
thwack on the cement basement floor. I turned to see the pink puddle spread like a lugubrious dream of summers past, then darted the rest of the way up
the stairs to grab the phone on the fourth ring.

“Nigel? You sound out of breath.”

“I just ran up a set of stairs,” I said, my heart thudding against my chest. Compared to the always cool basement the upstairs air felt
soupy. A thin bright slice of moonlight shone under the kitchen door. Since the wedding, except for a postcard from Spain where Venus and Dwaine
honeymooned, I hadn’t heard a thing from them. I sat in the dark hallway.

“How are you?” I said, my voice fuzzy with sleep.

“Oh, I could be worse.” She didn’t sound right.

We waded through a river of small talk. Her voice sounded fragile as if spun from glass. Finally she got to the point.

“Dwaine’s missing,” she said. “He’s been gone for a week. He just disappeared.” They hadn’t fought, she said.
“You don’t have any idea where he is, do you, Nigel?”

I almost mentioned his hideaway under Times Square, then thought better of it.

“He used to go visit his brother’s grave.”

“Dwaine has a brother?”

“Jack. He’s buried in Calvary Cemetery.”

“He never said anything about a brother. When did he die? Howdid he die?”