Odditorium: A Novel (20 page)

It was several minutes before they finally located Pierce sitting at a shadowy corner table beneath a sepia photograph of Joe Louis twisting Max Schmeling’s head around with a right cross. He was negotiating with two rice-powdered dollies who not long ago had made him the target for tonight and, without a word, helped themselves to seats at his table.

Dodie and Charmaine had known each other since junior high. They shared an apartment in the West Village. They worked for competing ad agencies but met each day on their lunch hour to promenade up Madison Avenue sharing a joint. Their one consuming ambition was to escape this urban anchorage for a brand-new hot blood dimension—a world, as Dodie often spoke of it, of Europe and yachts; and their sensitive antennae rated Pierce as someone with access.

“Don’t mind the ladies, they’re part of the floor show,” he said and made perfunctory introductions.

“What a beautiful name.” Charmaine slurred her words, having earlier ignored Dodie’s admonition that Tuinals did nothing for one’s charm. “Are you French?”

Tildy poked at one of the floating roses. “Not yet.”

“I was in France once,” Charmaine said quietly, unable to remember if this was a true anecdote or one she’d invented. “We flew over for a pâté festival.”

Up on stage the drummer broke into a solo. He was a scrawny kid with a pencil mustache, a propeller beanie atop patent-leather hair and a head full of boogie shuffle licks as plain as a dental chart. The audience whooped him on; it was like a pep rally. Even leaning across the table Pierce had to shout to be heard.

“Miss Florida is lovely, a bloody vision. I’m forced to say she looks too good for you.”

“Kiss mine.”

“Think about it, think about some of the women you were running with in the past. They had the shakes. And black circles around their eyes.”

“Well, dig it, the past has passed. Mister Christo will be running on the fast track from now on.”

The drummer was into his windup now. Coming out of a tomtom onslaught, he popped off the stool, keeping the pulse alive on bass and hi-hat, bobbing his head and twirling his sticks. Real gone. He hit a brief mambo rattle on the cowbell and slung the sticks to one side. Only half turned, barely looking up, Tildy speared them both in one hand with two perfectly timed rotations of her wrist.

She faced Dodie and Charmaine with an ingratiating smile, offered them on an open palm like breadsticks. “Souvenirs?”

“Zowie.” Dodie clapped both hands to her head. “That was fantastic what you did.”

“I was alone a lot as a kid,” Tildy said. “Learned to catch insects on the wing.”

Charmaine looked on adoringly but turned shyly away when Tildy met her eyes, to stare down her own cleavage, plucking at the rounded collar of her black silk pyjamas right out of a
Terry & The Pirates
panel.

The band returned for a couple of rideout choruses to heavy applause.

“Yeah, thank you. Copacetic.” The alto player brought his palms together as he bowed. “We gonna cool off right now, but we’ll be back later to sock you and knock you nonstop.”

“Hey, black shoes, you oughta hock those instruments.” This from a deep voice at the bar.

A lot of dead air among the Milbank party. Pierce stared hard at the dollies, but they held their ground through this obvious exit cue.

“I gather you ladies aren’t going to give up without at least one glass of champagne,” he said. “Right, then. Champagne for everyone. I feel loose tonight.”

He pressed one of the illuminated buttons on a small console under the table and within seconds the sommelier arrived. He was dressed like the best man at a London wedding and wore around his neck a large plastic skeleton key treated with phosphorescent paint.

“Julio, a magnum of the Henzlicht-LaFosse. From Admiral Nimitz’ private reserves, and
très sec
, if you please.”

“On its way, Mr. Milbank.”

Julio wafted off to call the “cellar” on the intercom. There, two craftsmen were kept busy decanting California wine into bottles bearing counterfeit labels. The bottles were then rolled in a trough of wood ashes and finished off with mylar cobwebs sprayed from a device originally contrived by a producer of television commercials.

Slipping off her pumps, Dodie extended one stockinged foot under the table in search of Pierce. “You seem to have a lot of pull. How come we haven’t seen you around here before?”

“I was probably playing Scrabble in the back room.”

“Do you know Steve personally?” Working her way across Pierce’s instep, Dodie turned to fill in the newcomers. “Steve is the spirit behind the Canteen. He’s like an independent compass for environmental design.”

“Steve is a very beautiful and creative man.” Charmaine sighed dreamily. “When he made love to me it felt like I was being sculpted.”

“How about that.” Christo leaned back in his chair. “Well, I once fucked Johnny Carson all night.”

“And what do
you
think about that?” Dodie said challengingly.

“I think I have a nicer asshole,” Tildy snapped.

And then, before things could get really ugly, the champagne arrived.

Pierce filled their tulip glasses and proposed a toast to “Our visitor from Dixieland.” Tildy permitted him to kiss her hand.

“I’m a great student of accents,” Charmaine said. “I’ll bet you’re from Alabama.”

“Nope. I come from Louisiana.” Tildy brushed foam off her lip. “With a banjo on my knee.”

“I was in New Orleans once,” Charmaine offered. This one was for real, a memory all too vivid.

She’d flown down for the weekend with a bartender who was in on a lead-pipe scheme to doctor the ninth race trifecta at Evangeline Downs. Except this kid trainer was wired for sound, and when the payoff man whipped out his envelope, Pinkerton agents were all over him like a blanket. Charmaine spent most of Saturday night tied to the bed with extension cords and woke up in the hallway Sunday morning locked out of the room with nothing but a ripped T-shirt, a black eye and a pair of paper shower slippers. Rule #1: Don’t come on to the bartender.

The bandstand receded on worm-geared tracks, was replaced by a back-alley stage set complete with knothole fence, cardboard lamppost and suspended crescent moon. Half a dozen showgirls pranced out to a vamping piano. They wore pink tights with marabou tails appended and pointy ears on their pink berets. They had whiskers grease-penciled on their upper lips; in nasal thirds reminiscent of the Boswell Sisters, they sang,

“We’re fuzzy little alley cats

In a special kind of heat,

We’re all stoked up on catnip

And we love that boogie beat.

“Prowl girls, howl girls

And wag your silky tails …”

The piano rumbled and they rendered some rudimentary and not quite synchronized dance steps.

“Put me up there.” Dodie gestured awkwardly with her empty glass. “Put me up there and I’d show you some moves’d stiffen the neckties in this dump.”

“Dammit.” When Pierce’s fist hit the table, it rattled the lampshade. “What is it? You crib all your dialogue from comic books or what? Why don’t you just cool your jets for ten minutes and be ornamental.”

The pink kittens gurgled.

“Fish may be our favorite dish

But meat is also yummy …”

Tildy felt dizzy and hot. She unknotted her scarf and held it over her mouth. Christo asked if she was doing okay.

“I’m going to go wash my face,” she said.

All eyes at the table turned to watch her go.

“Nice bounce,” Pierce commented.

Charmaine, paralyzed with adoration, listened to her own sedated breathing and wished she were a boy.

Tildy sat in front of a large spotlighted mirror and examined the flanks of her nose for blackheads. Didn’t have the billboard looks of those two back at the table, but there was something solid there, something durable. Lucien used to tell her she’d make her way in the world because there was upright character showing in her face. Thanks, Dad. You should see me with makeup.

She gathered a ridge of skin between index fingers and squeezed until a translucent plug of sebum wormed up out of a blocked pore.

“No, never do that. It leaves pits.” Charmaine swayed in the doorway, twisting the orange scarf in her fingers. “I ought to know. My sophomore year in high school, I had the worst acne in my homeroom.”

“That’s all right,” Tildy said, dabbing saliva on the red spot. “My face needs a little distinction anyway.”

Charmaine moved up to the mirror and plucked at her fawn-colored bangs. “In this city your face is all you’ve got. I dote on mine. Lemon and egg white every morning … But it used to be horrible. I just hid out in my room for months, like I was a leper or something. Then this old Armenian lady who lived next door, one day she gave me some cuttings from a bush she had growing in her yard. Told me to strip the bark, boil it up with the leaves, then soak pieces of cheesecloth in it and tape them to my face before bed. The stains it made. I must have gone through fifteen pairs of pyjamas that summer. But by September my skin was like glass. Better than it is now.”

“And it’s beautiful now. Egg whites? Is that what you said?”

Charmaine turned her back to the mirror. The scarf was wound around her wrist and diagonally across her palm like an improvised bandage. “It was a transformation all right. Boys started to come after me and my new face. They told me I had a different look, older somehow. They’d touch my cheek like it was something from outer space that glowed. I fell in love with a few of them. I had a baby. A little girl. Tara didn’t cry, not ever. She just seemed above it all. Sometimes sitting by her crib watching that face,
I’d
want to cry. It was so soft and white, I almost expected it to come off on my fingers when I touched it. Like powder. She had a mobile hanging over her crib and one night it got twisted around her neck somehow and she stopped breathing. She just lay there with this necklace of toy lambs.”

Charmaine wobbled her feet and shrugged. There was regret in her voice, but no grief. It was like anything else: a plush apartment, a snazzy car—you had it for a while and then it was taken.

“That was how you found her? My God.”

Tildy meant only to touch her shoulder but it was too long a stretch; her hand came to rest on the upper slope of Charmaine’s heavy breast. They looked at each other for a moment and then Charmaine sank to her knees, one arm around the back of Tildy’s chair.

“Don’t be sad,” she said, lowering her head onto Tildy’s lap. “It doesn’t make any sense to be sad. You can’t keep hold of anything in this world. Not even your face.” Sitting up, pushing Tildy’s hair back. “You ought to show more of your cheekbones, you know.” Charmaine caught Tildy’s hands and held them against her breasts. Her eyes glistened. “They’re a little tender. I’m about to get my period.”

Uh-huh. This was where Tildy always seemed to be coming in.

“Next time,” she said, backing away. “Maybe next time.”

The stage was empty when Tildy returned. So was the bottle of champagne; so was Dodie’s chair. The partners were puffing casually on needle-thin reefers.

“We shook off our little hustler,” Pierce said. “You do the same with yours?”

“More or less.”

“Fluffheads,” Christo grumbled. “But at least they matched the decor.” All evening he had been able to think of little beyond his new business horizons. Pierce was free with promises; it was always a bull market with him. He was also someone who needed to be repeatedly pinned down. But Christo could not make his opening, could not find the words. An unfamiliar sensation. “So here we are, just the three of us.”

“Just the three of us,” Pierce repeated. “We should get cozy.” He motioned for them to bring their chairs in closer. “We should just be loose.”

Tildy avoided his eyes, focusing instead on the white satin handkerchief spouting like a fountain out of his blazer pocket. She found him, thus far, completely uninteresting.

“So what happened with the entertainment? I like to watch dancers. Used to be one myself.”

“Really.” Pierce tipped his shoulders forward and she felt his smoky breath on her face. “I might have guessed as much from that physique of yours. Very supple. Like an otter with curves. What was your specialty? Tap? Flamenco? Ballet?”

“Nothing so special. My boogaloo was popular.”

Stagelights flashed on and the band members hurried out. They began furiously tuning their instruments.

“Let’s have some of those doughnuts.”

“Let’s order a drink.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

Pierce negotiated his Packard roadster through a flying wedge of taxis.

“Is this yours or did you rent it for the evening?”

Pierce smirked and flicked Tildy under the chin. “This car has been in my family for years.”

“Didn’t I tell you, kid?” Christo said, pouting in the back seat like a birthday boy who’d gotten nothing but savings bonds. “This guy’s a real ruling-class worm. If he hadn’t got so wrapped up in the dope business, he’d probably be working for the State Department.”

“And doing a superb job. I had three years of Russian, you know.”

It finally occurred to Tildy to ask where they were going.

“My place,” Pierce answered, and his voice went all rich and silky. Like Bela Lugosi.

A cone of balsam incense smoldered in an ashtray on the desk. Fibrous blue smoke moved through a shaft of lamplight in the slowly shifting patterns of dawn at sea. Pierce bent over a mound of white powder glittering on a mirror.

Only weeks ago, on the eastern slopes of the Peruvian Andes several thousand feet below the altiplano, leaves from the shrub Erythroxylum coca had been harvested. Two Indians wearing cotton sport shirts under their ponchos, murmuring to one another in Quechuan, had dumped the leaves into an old oil drum containing a solution of potash, kerosene and water, and left them to soak. After several days the precious alkaloids had been leeched out in the form of a brown paste left behind when the leaves and their marinade were discarded. A former classmate of Pierce’s (at St. Eustatius Prep of Sharon, Connecticut—“It is the Spirit that quickeneth”) serving with a Peace Corps agronomic project near Tingo Maria came in a jeep and collected the paste. Packing it in two Zip-lock bags, wrapping it in a thin sheet of lead to circumvent possible fluoroscoping by the Post Office, he dispatched it to Pierce’s mail drop, a one-room apartment on Staten Island that contained one mattress, one chair and a clock radio. Back at the duplex, in a makeshift lab installed by Looie, Pierce, using a simple method involving treatment with hydrochloric acid, manufactured three remarkably clean ounces of what had been until 1903, in name only now, a key ingredient in the world’s favorite soft drink.