On the Nickel (19 page)

‘Don't trouble yourself, ma'am. I thank you kindly.'

‘You're very welcome.' She took over and pushed the chair up the zig and zag of a ramp that doubled back to the front porch. ‘I'll get you some writing paper, Jack. I want to talk a little before I call Gloria.'

He nodded his concurrence. This woman's body had once driven him mad with desire – an actual virgin in her late forties who had been so rattled by noticing her new sexual desires that she'd had one foot on the gas and the other on the brake at all times. With a pang he remembered her stripping off a dance top and saying something like, ‘Of all these fruits you may partake,' which utterly bushwhacked an unexpected vein of innocence that he'd found buried deep inside himself, too. More prosaically, he remembered that it had been several worrying days before he could actually penetrate the object of desire, testing every non-toxic lubricant known to science.

‘Let's go in my private office. I'll have some food and coffee sent in. Black and strong, as I remember. Jack, I do remember a lot.'

He nodded and made a desperate writing gesture in the air, glad she couldn't see his face. He felt fiery tears welling up and would have to brush them away discreetly when she wasn't looking.

‘Yes, paper and pen. Sorry.'

He heard a phone being picked up. ‘Jenny, would you send Kenisha Duncan out front with a really big breakfast for a friend of the house. His name is Chopper. And send about half that much to my office with two black coffees.'

The phone hung up. ‘Oh, my gosh, I'm sorry.' She'd parked him facing a wall, only inches away, in fact facing a classy Cuban poster for a play called
Madre
that had plucked out of the Guernica mural Picasso's image of the screaming head-thrown-back woman with a dead infant in her arms. Isolated, it was a stunning image, but it seemed pretty much out of place around here. She turned his chair around and he tried to keep his eyes away from the unbearable radiance of her face. It was a tiny office, full of filing cabinets and a few of her paintings, plus a small battered desk. The paintings weren't any of the old ones he remembered, but he did remember her bold heavy-outline style. She handed him a yellow pad and a pencil.

‘I'll bet there are things you need to tell me, or want to,' she said. ‘Curse me if you want for absconding and hiding away. Take your time. It's good for me to just look at you a little. Pretend I didn't say that.'

I HAVE NO CURSES. SO THEY SPRUNG YOU. TOO GOOD A WORKER ON THE OUTSIDE TO WASTE.

‘It doesn't work that way, Jack, but that's not important. How have you and Maeve been?'

SHES SUPER. SHE HAD SOME BOY PROBLEMS BUT ITS OK NOW. He didn't mention the gangbanger or the pregnancy or the
girl
problems. It was all too complicated for notes on a yellow pad. WE LIVE IN BOYLE HEIGHTS WITH GLORIA. Part of him wanted to write that it was a struggle keeping Gloria happy, but
no.
No hint of that.

‘I liked Gloria a lot,' Sister Mary Rose said. ‘Obviously a strong woman. I gave her a copy I kept of that old painting of you. Remember?'

PLEASE DONT ASK ME TO REMEMBER. HOW DID YOU GET OUT OF THE CONVENT?

‘Oh, it's a long story, Jack. It took a bishop to decide I was better suited for service than adoration, and he had to overcome my deep-seated reticence.'

Reticence.
He laughed, and a little sound came out. She had virtually fled full speed back to the convent after a taste of the violent world, his violent world. He remembered clearly the last words she had spoken to him, from her hospital bed after his job had got them both badly hurt, but he wasn't about to remind her in his present state.
I don't think you're going to make it, Jack.
That was her way of dismissing him and his world in order to re-enter hers.

‘But tell me how you come to be mute and – you know – your legs.'

He wrote as briefly as he could about being buried alive in a massive landslide after a dynamite blast, and the fact that the experience had re-triggered his lifelong claustrophobia, something she would remember from their own ordeal down the storm drain. He didn't think his condition was permanent, but it annoyed him when various shrinks said the same. He had no idea what would unlock his body.

‘That's so sad. I'll pray for you.'

WAVE A DEAD CHICKEN OVER MY HEAD TOO.

‘Don't be mean, Jack.'

I WONT PRETEND TO BELIEVE IN GOD, EL. AND YOU WONT PRETEND TO LOVE THE STORMS OF FREEDOM.

‘Wow, that's full of beans.' Her idiom always had been dated. ‘Are you quoting?'

He nodded, but she didn't push it, and he didn't have to admit he couldn't remember whom.

‘I know you're not fond of religiosity – that was your word – but would you give me permission to pray over your affliction?'

NOT RIGHT NOW. TALK TO ME OF YOUR LIFE – THESE 10 LOST YEARS.

‘Not lost. I don't know if the details matter so much. I was cloistered in Mount Grace Convent in St Louis. It's not a vow of utter silence as you think of it; it's a
rule
of silence. We speak when we have to for reasons of health or urgency. “You're burning the vegetables.” But not very often. It
is
very quiet and peaceful. And we do leave the walls for some purposes. We wear gray robes outside instead of the rose ones that we wear within, in order to be less … showy. Here's something for you to scorn if you wish, Jack. We have Adoration Periods before the image of Jesus. It's crepuscular – I read that word about the activity period of domestic cats. Generally for about forty-five minutes early in the day and an hour in the evening. Maybe you'd like them better if I called them meditation periods. Contemplation is our only real outlet. I'll demonstrate.'

She lowered herself to her knees beside the wheelchair, which made him extremely uncomfortable, but she closed her eyes, and there was no way to protest her prayer other than whacking her on the head.

‘Blessed Mother, our Lady of the most Blessed Sacrament, be with me at this time which I am spending in the presence of your divine Son and another good man. I ask you to be my companion and to help me and to help this man. Reveal your divine Son to me, O Mary. Make me love Him as you did and inspire me to live for Him and for others. And do what you can for Jack Liffey, please. Amen.'

‘Ack-ack.'

ENOUGH PRAYING PLEASE.

‘Almost. Blessed Mother, may this man regain his speech and the power of his legs so he may do God's will in the world. I know God desires the return of missing children. This is a good man here, even if he does not believe. I know this for certain, as you do. Amen.'

ENOUGH ELEANOR! TELL ME NOW ABOUT YOUR ESCAPE.

‘You shock me twice. I haven't been called Eleanor in ten years. Oh, once or twice. And that's a cruel word – “escape!”' She touched the word on his page as if to lessen its power in some way. ‘The Mother Superior decided I wasn't happy at Mount Grace – well, not
suited
to the contemplative life, though I thought I was doing my best. She had the bishop speak to me at length, over many months. He decided it was either Catholic Worker or Catholic Liberation that would suit me better. Direct service to the poorest of the poor, and a little sense of social struggle thrown in. I think you can approve that. My old Liberation House down in Cahuenga had been closed down, so he sent me here. A shelter for battered women, if you haven't divined it.'

OF COURSE. JUST REMEMBER, EL. THE MASSES OF POOR WEREN'T CREATED JUST FOR YOUR OWN SPIRITUAL ADVANCEMENT.

She puffed out a breath of shock. ‘Oh, you can be such a hard case still. But you're so right, Jack.' She stood up and squeezed his hand. ‘It's why I loved you so. You made me think. I'm sorry. I know I mustn't say love.'

I LOVED YOU TOO. WE MET EACH OTHER AT A NEEDY TIME FOR BOTH OF US. IT WAS AN AMOROUS COLLISION. THE HEAT MAY NEVER BE REPRODUCED. CALL IT AN EVIL FRUIT IF YOU LIKE.

‘Never. I
never
will, Jack. You opened me up in so many ways. Oh!' She covered her mouth like a bashful Japanese girl, realizing the literal content of her words.

DONT BE EMBARRASSED. WERE ALL WILD BEASTS TOO. IM SURE EVEN MOTHER MARY KNOWS THAT. Sleeping with God must have been quite a trip, he thought.

‘Oh, I do miss being beside someone wise.' She moved toward him, glacially, as if drawn by a great magnet through some immensely resistant medium.

Eleanor Ong reached out and rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘As smart as nuns can be, there's something always a little spoiled and childish in our protected state. All that moral earnestness and caring for others without any real personal connection to them. That's one reason I took myself back into the domain of silence.'

DIDNT YOU FIND YOURSELF SHRIVELING INSIDE?

‘I don't really want to answer that. The bishop and I talked for so long. The official answer has to do with the abiding love of Jesus, the company of the saints, and the richness of the world of the spirit. But, honestly, I missed
you
terribly, Jack. For years and years. I missed your company and your skeptical goading and your jokes and your good heart. Did you miss me at all?'

It took him a while before he nodded, ever so slightly. He tried to write but his hand shook, and he pressed so hard on the pad to still his fingers that he snapped the pencil lead, and then he had to wipe tears against his shoulder. She'd taken her hand away, and soon he noticed she was locking the office door and he nearly panicked.
No, please.

She touched him in many places, cheek, neck, shoulder, ear, mostly innocent, like a sculptor working the final shapes into a clay maquette, and then she was sitting in an impossible position over the chair arm, kissing him and shuddering and bawling with too many emotions flooding out at once, her hands grasping the back of his head. ‘I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.' He remembered: her feet pressing down hard on accelerator and brake at the same time.

His own arms went around her and he seemed to have lost control of them in a new way. This is what they used to call a swoon, he thought. And today they only call it lust. Their mouths found one another, and when his tongue wouldn't probe her mouth in return, physically wouldn't, despite his willing it, he became self-conscious of his disabilities. Move, legs, dammit. But they only tingled.

As gently as she could, she lowered him to a hooked rug that provided minimal padding, and her hands worked at his clothing. At some point she stopped what she was doing and stared into his eyes, resting on all fours above him, half undressed herself. ‘Nod if you want me to stop.' She was gasping for air. ‘I've got to be fair.'

‘Ack-ack.' It was no struggle now: he shook his head.

Several times there were knocks at the door, and they both stayed as silent as they could each time. He assumed her sense of guilt was tremendous – what she was doing locked away in her private office in a women's shelter where men were not allowed at all, and certainly not male lovers, but a sense of release overwhelmed him. He hoped this wasn't going to interfere with his feelings for Gloria, but he had no power to stop now. He noticed how he had swollen uncontrollably. Zen master of the penis. That mystic still worked.

‘Jack, oh!' Over and over she cried out. He remembered the surprisingly sharp-voiced bark, and how he had once loved it and watched for it and triumphed in her surrender to passion. She was just about as tight and closed off as he remembered. Surprisingly his tongue began to work.

Later, covered with sweat, she rolled off him and lay beside him holding his hand, catching her breath softly.

‘I don't care what I've done,' she announced. ‘It's wrong, but we're not monsters. We'll both survive this.'

He had no energy to write a note, but he nodded, hoping she saw it. Sexual heat inevitably creates such confusion, he thought. And such purpose. The body had taken over, with far too much to do to think about what the mind was getting itself up to. Sweat and other secretions – the whole world had been about nothing but moistness for a long while.

He did not look closely at the fleeting guilt-tinged thought that this event had been more powerful than it had ever been with Gloria or anyone else, even Eleanor herself, in the before. It was circumstances, that was all. But he remembered the ancient feeling that he and Eleanor were burning each other down to ashes with their combined fire. Deep inside, he had a sense that nobody believed they had a right to something like this.

He forced himself to breathe more slowly and deeply, and he began to notice thoughts gathering like alibis. Maeve. Gloria.
I couldn't help it. Forgive me. Oh, yes, I will certainly lie about this down the road a little.

‘Jack, I have to think of this as the will of God. I can't fully know His will. I realize I didn't pass unmarked through my first love of you. And I was clearly ambushed by my passions today. But I make no claim on you. In ten minutes, when I can speak calmly, I'm going to dress you and put you back up in your chair and then call Gloria to get you. Here, write. Do you hate me?'

She handed him the pad and pen and then rolled away from him and wept uncontrollably.

Jack Liffey set the pad aside and rose to his knees. His knees worked. He grinned. ‘You wouldn't happen to have any chewing gum, would you?' he said aloud.

‘C
hewing gum?' Eleanor wrenched herself erect, startled.

‘Bad joke. Sorry.' After uttering those few words, his throat already felt raspy.
Whoa,
he thought.
If this is recovery, it truly is beyond amazing. Take it in while you can, all sensation, all wonder, and all awe. You won't have something like this again.

‘Jack, talk to me.'

Bad joke indeed. Maybe later he'd tell her about the Indian Chief in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
and his first words after an interminable period of feigning being mute – thanking McMurphy for a piece of Juicy Fruit. He had no real excuse for the joke, only a kind of ecstatic leap, giving the momentary jest its sway.

‘Wait.'

In a more urgent context he had to focus now on what it was that had released him to speak aloud, unlocked that precious gift. She had prayed over him, of course, but, more significantly as far as he was concerned, she had offered the shock of their all-consuming lust. Omigod, he thought. Could that have been the catalyst?

Legs, now. One more test. He used his hands to help lift himself alongside the wheelchair, grasping its black plastic arm for support and almost toppling himself as the chair came off balance to his weight. His legs were shaky with disuse, but they had unmistakably helped lever him erect, and he sat down heavily on the floor, truly stunned.
Oh, yes,
he thought,
I staggered, I
am
staggered.

‘I don't know I want this to be happening right here,' she said.

Eleanor fell on her knees beside him, and started thanking God privately. At least she was offering up the prayer in silence, he thought with relief. He'd probably rather thank some Greek goddess of intense sensual emotion – who was that? Aphrodite? – though that explanation had its own problems. Who could doubt that intense pleasure brought about many life-transforming shocks? And there had been hints of the return for days. Whoa.

He wondered if surprises like this – anomalies, sudden visions, seeming cures – would go on being spiritual prostheses for true believers forever. The pilgrims to Lourdes, to the Ganges, the Madonna of Guadalupe at Tepeyac. He wanted nothing to do with what Eleanor would undoubtedly insist was heavenly intervention. No thank you and move on. No secret had torn free from the realm of angels.

God, listen now, neither you nor the psychologists did this for me. I claim that passion like a fiery sword was driven through my mind by my own ecstasy, by the beast we loosed. Anyone who denies this has forgotten that terrible jolt of a moment of emotion from just beyond the mundane either/or. And it wasn't just sexual orgasm. It was that intense and overpowering shock wave that comes unpredictably in our daily orbit around the commonplace.

‘Jack, God bless, can you walk now, too?'

‘Of course. Can't everyone?'

‘Oh, don't deny the miracle,
please.'

‘I'm becoming myself … once again, that's all. My muscles are a little anemic from lack of use. Yes, you helped do it for me – by fucking me like crazy. Sorry, but God didn't fuck me. We always knew how to burn each other to the ground. Emotion like that unlocks everything. You know that. Just hold me close … and keep God to yourself.'

She braced herself and helped lift him to his feet to hug him, weeping in spasms against him. He sensed the relief and joy in her and something else, too. Mortification?

Inside himself, he felt a kind of amnesty. Deep down, nobody really believed they had a right to this kind of sudden reprieve, he thought. Small changes hid away beneath daily living, working their transformation in the dark, and then suddenly made themselves manifest. A butterfly bursting the chrysalis. Whatever had happened, he accepted it gladly, but he would not let it suggest magical worlds.

‘God's love …' she started.

‘Don't. Don't make this … supernatural.' He coughed from the rawness of speaking with his unused throat, but he knew it was urgent to talk now. ‘Assign it to your own love. I do. You gave me what I needed. I love Gloria, too – but for whatever reason, she couldn't give it these days in the way I required. Maybe she was too needy on her own hook. Or she was too angry at me for everything. For abandoning her to silence. Maybe you were free of all human encumbrances for that half-hour, maybe that's just what it took.'

‘Jack, don't make it all pedestrian.'

‘I love you and I love Gloria.'

‘I know you do. No matter what happened, I'm not going to turn my life upside-down again, I can't. I want you to go back to Gloria, but don't you dare forget what happened today. Some day it may bring you to God.'

That chopped him down to size. ‘You didn't hear me, did you? I don't believe in meaning – most especially religious meaning. I'll never forget what you've done for me, Eleanor, how could I? But I won't let it build a fantasy palace.'

She said nothing more as she helped him dress where he had sat hard on the chair, then grasped him with both hands without kissing him, her head two feet above his own, and she lifted. He wrapped his arms around her waist. Then she pulled free and stood up and went to unlock the door, leaving him balancing with one hand against the chair. She held the door for a moment as if against an onrush of the hostile world, and then she went to sit at her desk, like someone exhausted.

‘When you can, please call Gloria,' he requested. ‘I have enough trouble trying to come up with some neutral explanation for my great cure. Lies get complicated.'

‘I wish you didn't have to lie, Jack.'

‘What is the truth? Should I tell Gloria that I can walk and talk again because you fucked my brains out? Oh yeah, with a little help from Mother Mary?'

She turned her face away. ‘I understand, Jack. Please. You mustn't make fun of idle wishes. Or religious impulses.'

But she had only the home number on Greenwood and that didn't answer. He realized he should know Gloria's cell number by heart, but for too long he'd relied on the note on the fridge, or the one in his missing wallet, or the one on the all-purpose writing pad that had buggered off with his wheelchair.

By dint of immense physical efforts that had hurt her quite a lot, Maeve had licked and spit on her right wrist for lubrication and finally wrenched her small hand out of its steel hoop, scuffing the widest points raw and leaving a long red abrasion below her thumb. But she was free now, rubbing her sore hand against her hip and dangling the cuffs as she walked cautiously in and around the collapsed cubicles to find Conor. He was lying full length, with cuffs on his ankles through a loop of heavy chain over a substantial pipe.

‘I got loose. Oh, owwie! How're you doing, bluesman?'

‘You're a miracle,' Conor said.

‘That's why I'm here,' Maeve said, but when his sheeplike eyes fixed on her, she added, ‘Kidding, guy. There aren't any miracles. Look at that sore on my hand. If I could work miracles, I'd snap my fingers and turn you loose, too.'

‘I gotta get loose. I'm gonna go crazy.'

‘I suppose I can stand here tugging on that chain for months, or I can abandon you for an hour and go get some help.'

‘Being here alone is pretty scary.'

‘Gotta be, mister. I'm sorry.'

He took a deep breath. ‘Don't stand there explaining. Get out of here.'

She patted his shoulder once and headed for what looked like a fire exit door. As she hurried, she grabbed the embarrassing handcuff swinging from her left wrist, and tried to make it seem like no more than a counter-culture bauble.

She pushed open a crash bar into blinding daylight. Luckily no alarm went off. She tried to orient herself immediately to this particular door in this particular building to be able to find Conor again. An abandoned-looking brick building directly across the street displayed a newish sign saying Good Lucky Toys, Jung Park, over the number 528. But what street was it? Was it east–west or north–south? The sun was overhead but for all the camping and orienteering she'd done with her father, she was too jangled to work out directions by the sun. She would have to reach a corner street sign to find out.

And then, to her astonishment, only two blocks to her left she saw a vertical sign for the Fortnum Hotel, the neon tubes mostly broken away and dangling. Painted on the sidewall of the building were the fading words Air Cooled, with cartoon ice congealed on the drop-shadow letters, probably sixty or seventy years old, and beneath that, Central to all Attractions. Almost without conscious decision, Maeve ran toward the Fortnum.

* * *

Samuel Greengelb and his neighbor Morty Lipman were doing their best down in the sub-basement to inspect the piping with flashlights and see what had been done to sabotage the big boiler that provided steam heat to their radiators four floors up. The damage looked obvious – maybe twenty feet of vertical one-inch pipe had simply been removed and the lower end capped off with a shiny new iron cap.

‘Sammy, this is illegal. They can't
do
this. Who do we talk to?'

Greengelb led the way to the one working pay phone in the neighborhood, at the mini-market, and dialed 911.

‘Help, already!'

‘What is your emergency, sir?' He could tell it was a colored woman responding.

‘They cut off our heat.'

‘Is someone hurt at your location?'

‘We're freezing to death at night,
nu.
Isn't that enough hurt?'

‘Where are you, sir?'

‘We live in the Fortnum Hotel on San Julian Street. We got proof here that the owners are cutting off heat to drive us out. Pipes are missing.'

‘What is your name and address?'

‘Samuel Greengelb, Room 322. So … I'm not ashamed or afraid, not a bit, to report a crime.'

‘What is the crime, sir?'

‘Cutting off the heat in the middle of winter so some
farshtinkener
owner can drive away his long-term tenants and make the rooms into fancy lofts for yuppies.'

‘I think I agree with you, sir, but I don't know the crime,
exactly.
In fact, if you're not in immediate danger of harm, I'm going to have to hang up to free this line. I can advise you to call another number.' She gave him the number, but he didn't even bother to copy it down. Why take all the trouble with some city agency that would put him on hold for an hour and then take months to send someone out? From that game, he was well acquainted. ‘Sir? Did you get the number I told you?' He was amazed that she had enough sympathy to stay on the line a little longer. Coloreds were often such kindly people.

‘So, what if I said I have ice growing on my face?' Greengelb said. ‘Cold is cold, madam. It can kill.'

‘Sir, it's fifty-eight degrees outside right now. The ice on your face will melt pretty fast. God bless you and a good morning.' The line went dead.

Greengelb's expression must have shown that she had hung up on him.

‘We could try the rebbe at Anshe Emes Shul,' Morty said, as they left the mini-mart and headed back toward the hotel.

‘Feh, and we could read Torah and
davnen
with a bunch of Chasids for the rest of our life. There's got to be a city department that forbids this. But you know what it's like
kvetching
to a civil servant who all he's thinking is where to eat lunch.'

‘I know. The under government is a bunch of Kafka rats in tunnels. But the Jewish rats are still searching for justice, always.'

‘I think we can fix the pipe ourselves and then put our own lock on the boiler room door,' Greengelb said.

‘Now
you're talking.' Morty almost cackled.

‘I know a plumber owes me a favor.'

‘Uh-oh. I know a carpenter owes me lots of favors. You don't never want to breathe the air around this guy if it's after three or you get second-hand drunk …' Morty slapped himself on the cheek and grinned. A little joke, perhaps.

‘No, no, this Fishkin is sober as a judge, believe me. Stop
kvetching.
I even wrote down his important number – the number reserved for his Jewish mother in the event of being late for lunch.'

Morty laughed. ‘I had one of those, too. I made sure it went to the city zoo.'

Samuel Greengelb sighed. ‘I saved my special number for if the Messiah ever called.' They had got back to the hotel. The desk clerk had gone missing for some reason. They went down to survey the damage to the boiler again.

‘Hey, guys!'

They both glanced back up in surprise and Greengelb brought their flashlight around to see a girl at the top of the stairs. He seemed to remember her, but he wasn't sure. Short term, he was having his troubles.

‘The guy at the desk told me you went down here, but he sure didn't look like he wanted to tell me anything and then he split. Your friend Conor Lewis needs your help. Pretty quick. He's not far away and he's stuck in handcuffs.' She showed off her own set of handcuffs by dangling the free one.

‘Bad
mazel
,' Morty said.

‘Is this about that boy with the guitar?'

‘Yes,' Maeve said. ‘Hurry, please, Conor's really scared. And he's all alone.' She changed her tone. ‘Musketeers, he needs you.'

‘Listen, you fucker. Either you tell us where the girl has gone, or I'll let my friend here loose to carve you into a party decoration,' the big golden-blond one threatened. The shorter one was playing with his knife, sending it from hand to hand with intricate flips and leaps.

‘I don't know, I don't
know,
I don't know. I swear. Honest to God, I swear. She won't be coming back. Please don't hurt me.'

McCall pressed a large thumb against Conor's nose. ‘Can I give you some advice, tweak? Don't be such a pussy. Nobody likes a pussy. But
nobody.
So is this girl your girlfriend?'