Planet Willie (3 page)

So I just
spiral right back down. Drive back on up the access road a half mile or so
until I find what I’m looking for, a little dirt road running back into what
must have once been farm country. Jumbo planes ease down over brown fields and
telephone wires. I turn off into a field, kill the engine, and take the
thirty-eight around to the front of her. Step a few paces back from the grill,
steady my legs, and lift the gun. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord
my soul to keep. I’m not saying it’s easy, but I pull the trigger, then pull
again, six shots as regular as heartbeats. Then it all goes quiet, and though
you want to make it a sad story, the truth is it’s so good I reload and step in
a bit closer for another round. Six like lightning, blam blam Willie the Kid.
And I want her to explode for me, but mister she just sighs. What the hell,
rest in peace. From there it’s not a long walk to New York City.

3

The address
Shore’s given me for Fernanda’s gallery is in Soho, not far from a little roof
apartment where I once stayed a month or so with a girl who played tambourine
in an up-and-coming rock band. Great American hope on the tambourine, this
girl, and mister did she practice. I’d wake at eight in the morning with the
sun blazing down on the corrugated tin roof the owner hadn’t bothered to
insulate, and man she’d just be beating time. You’d worry about the mental
capacities of such a girl, and you’d be right. Personality like a metronome.
Eight-fifteen and I’m out on the streets. Don’t need coffee, need a briefcase
of horse tranquilizers. Ended up spending whole days in the Public Library
trying to get cool and flipping through the pages of books I never read. It
took a few more years out on the road to make a bookworm out of Mister Willie
B. Lee, the B as in I don’t have to tell you.

I take a taxi
into the city, which must still be one of the greatest rides on the planet. The
Empire State Building comes into view, and you can’t help but get that little
lift. We work through traffic down to Soho, where a lot’s changed since I last
visited. Back in the day, Soho was where regular people still lived. Now even
the diners have bouncers and stores are selling thousand-dollar tennis shoes. I
don’t guess anybody plays tennis in thousand-dollar shoes.

I ask the taxi
driver to cruise up Fernanda’s street until we find the address, passing quite
a few other galleries with art in the windows of the sort I’d need a few drinks
in me to even begin appreciating. Fernanda calls her place
Shore
, and it
looks as if her father’s money has been put to good use. It’s one of the
biggest places on the block, with some of the biggest windows, and the art in
those windows actually looks as if it might someday make somebody’s wall feel
good about itself.

I pay off the
driver and move my suitcase out onto the sidewalk beside an open flatbed truck,
from which a crew of men in overalls are unloading what look like boarded-up
paintings. The door to the gallery is open, and this redhead in reading glasses
is standing there looking nervous. Could be thirty, could be sixty, and there’s
not a chance in hell this is Fernanda Shore. Her hair’s pulled back in a tight
bun, and the only makeup she’s got on is green lipstick. She’s the kind of
woman who makes herself ugly to punish the male species, though honestly I’ve
never met one of the species who felt the slightest guilty pang. Anyway, it
gets worse. She’s got this string of painted rocks round her neck and is
wearing what looks like a faded wedding dress. I’m thinking of Miss Havisham,
from ol’ Charles Dickens’s
Great Expectations
, because Miss Havisham
joins the circus is the overall effect.

A bell rings
from inside the gallery, and she turns to go back inside. I follow her in,
where she’s picked up a phone from a big desk carved from what looks like
ebony. From what she’s saying, it sounds like they’ve got a big art show that
night, which must be what those fellas are unloading from the truck. I pick up
a paper off the desk and glance down a list of prices, and you just can’t
believe the number of zeros down there. Old masters, lots of what look like Dutch
and Italian names, though no sign of our friend Botticelli or his school. I
have a look around the place. White walls going up a couple stories, with
catwalks and more art up in the balconies. Hardwood floors stretching
everywhere and a mix of styles on the walls, from modern finger painting to
landscapes that look pretty old. From the stereo a woman in a sexy voice sings
over electronic beeps in a language that may be Scandinavian. We’re the only
ones in there, Havisham, me and this Scandinavian number, and if I know how
Fernanda bought the place, I wonder how she pays the bills.

“Can I help
you?” Havisham says, like she knows perfectly well she can’t. She’s hung up the
phone and is giving me the smile she’s memorized for smiling occasions. You get
the feeling she’d be disappointed if I went ahead and wrote out a check.

“I certainly
hope you can,” I say, giving her a grin that starts slow and carries right up
through the eyebrows. The Facelifter, I call it, and it will generally give you
a few seconds to work. Generally discombobulates, the Facelifter, and as
predicted Havisham lifts a hand to fidget with her hair.

“Your hair
looks fine,” I say. “I’m looking for Fernanda Shore.”

“Oh,” she
says. Cranks up that smile even bigger, and I’d hate to have to give a name to
this one. I mean you can just see those tendons working, such that you realize
for the first time what a terrible thing a tendon is. “I’m sorry,” she says,
“but Ms. Shore is out.”

“Does she by
any chance have a phone number where I could reach her?”

“Oh we don’t
give out Ms. Shore’s phone number.”

“Then maybe
you can help me,” I say, beginning to get a bit irritated with Havisham. This
is going nowhere, so we may as well get there quick. “I was hoping to buy a
little painting today,” I say. “Maybe something fifteenth century. You have
anything fifteenth century? To my mind there hasn’t been any really superior
painting since.”

“We do,” she
says, not liking me any more as an art lover. “What did you have in mind?”

“Well let me
see,” I say. “I’m a great admirer of Mister Leonardo da Vinci. You’re probably
familiar with his Mona Lisa. Also designed a helicopter, Leonardo, although I
don’t imagine you sell those. If not Leonardo, then there’s always
Michelangelo, am I right? Also I’m a Madonna freak, principally her early
music, and also anything on canvas of the mother of Jesus Christ. A Botticelli
Madonna I would find particularly satisfactory. Hell, even a school of Botticelli Madonna. Trained them well, didn’t he? So if you’ve got one of those, I
don’t even need to see it. You can go ahead and start wrapping it up.”

“I’m sorry,
but we don’t have any of
those
,” she says, the face going even tighter
if you can believe it, such that I am getting truly fascinated.

“Then would
you tell Ms. Shore I stopped by,” I say most politely. “Willie Lee’s the name.
Tell her I’ll just see her tonight at the show if I don’t run into her before.”

Then I walk
right out of there and turn down the street with my suitcase in my hand.
Through the gallery window I can see Havisham still watching me as she picks up
the phone again. Probably calling one of her girlfriends. I’ve just met the
most amazing man.

A block down I
come to a cafe and decide to stop in for a drink to help me get over Havisham.
The beer tastes good, so I order a little digestif, and as I’m digesting, these
two kids come in looking like Halloween. He’s got on what looks like a soccer
uniform and a goofy Russian military cap. She’s got on a pink beret, a
camouflage tank top, and these shiny pants made of enough material to outfit
with parachutes a medium-sized air force. The kid lets her open the door for
him. You can tell it’s not out of laziness but the result of some philosophy
he’s worked up for himself. Pitiful posture too. They’re both over six feet
tall and may be on a hunger strike.

The place is
empty, but they go ahead and sit down at the table right next to mine, which
I’d like to attribute to my breathtaking charm if only Twiggy weren’t looking
through me like some department store mannequin. Anatomy class in a tank top,
she is. So emaciated you get ideas. I mean maybe you’re not a tit man after
all. Maybe you’re a clavicle man. I’ve seen crazier, and crazier may be the
kid, who though he can’t be more than three feet from me actually picks up his
hand and waves.

“How you folks
doing,” I say.

“Howdy
partner,” he says. “Welcome to New York.” Twiggy ignores us both. She’s picked
up her knife and is carving something into the table in full view of the
waiter. The kid orders beers and proceeds to tell me that he and Twiggy are
Albanian, from Albania. They’ve come to America on a grant from their
far-sighted government. Both artists, apparently. Twiggy also appears to be a
deaf mute.

I ask him what
kind of art, he tells me he’s a hyper-realist. Twiggy, on the other hand, is into
video installations. “Fascinating field,” I say, though honestly it sounds a
bit like the tambourine. You can be the best tambourine player in the world,
but it’s still a tambourine.

Then he wants
to tell me about avant-garde and the new revolution. I take it the kid’s not
real used to opportunities for conversation, certainly not with Twiggy, so I’m
happy to oblige. Then he won’t shut up. Meanwhile Twiggy’s cutting away whole
chunks of their table, and I’m starting to feel like a charitable institution.

“You two show
your work in the galleries down around here?” I ask.

Kafka, as I’ve
decided to call the kid, laughs out loud, his voice cracking a bit. He’s got a
few chin hairs that won’t make a beard and big innocent eyes that will never look as tough as he might want them to.

“What galleries?” he says, looking out the cafe windows and pretending to search the street high
and low. “I don’t see any galleries. I see a few financial brokers selling
investments to the capitalist power structure, but I don’t see any galleries.”

And what do
you say to that? I wish I knew, but honestly I have no idea, so I ask if by any
chance they’ve heard of any of the owners of said financial brokers,
specifically a Fernanda Shore. Twiggy stops carving to give this some
attention, not that I’m sure I want it. She looks up with that knife in her
hand like she’d just as soon carve me as the table. Kafka too, for that matter,
who clears his throat and stares down at his beer. You can see who wears the
pants in this relationship, and honestly you just can’t believe these pants.

We finish our
beers with some small talk about the weather and New York City, then Kafka
wants to know if I have a place to stay. He knows a little artist’s hotel
nearby where he can get me a special rate. I’m in no need of special rates with
the kind of finance I’m carrying around, but I figure I’ll drop off the suitcase
and walk around the neighborhood a bit before Fernanda’s show that night. Also,
who knows, there may be something more to be learned from Albania.

Out on the
street we pile into this old Volkswagen Beetle with a portrait of Che Guevara
airbrushed across the hood. Kafka drives us up past Washington Square Park to a brownstone on a side street just north of New York University. There’s a
greasy-looking falafel shop on the ground floor and stairs that lead up to a
glass door and a buzzer. Kafka tells me to go on in, and he and Twiggy will
catch up with me later. I ring the buzzer and push through into what looks like
an apartment building. A hand-printed sign directs me down the hall to a steel
door that says Hotel Blue, and though experience has taught me never to spend a
night in a hotel with a hand-printed sign, it has also taught me that sometimes
you can’t be too picky. I ring another buzzer and go on in to a little
reception room that may well have been painted blue sometime during the
administration of President William Henry Harrison, the hero of the battle of Tippecanoe. Now it’s color of an ashtray and smells like one too. So ashtray blue, I’d say
to Shore if asked.

A few kids
Kafka and Twiggy’s age sit around on busted couches smoking cigarettes like
they’re a main food group. They’re dressed like somebody opened a time capsule
from the nineteen sixties and was selling costumes cheap.

“Welcome!”
says a big broad in a bathrobe from behind a desk that also comes in handy as a
brassiere. Rarely have I seen tits of such magnitude. She smiles and runs a
hand through her hair, which is long and streaked with grey. I tell her Kafka
said she’d have a room. She smiles. I ask if she happens to have one available,
and boy she smiles. I tell her my name is Inigo Montoya and I’ve come to avenge
the death of my father, which gets me the most charming smile. Doesn’t speak a
word of English except welcome, apparently. Story of my life. Lack of
communication. Figure maybe it’s a sign, like maybe English language
instruction was my true calling. Denied it all those years. Professor Willie.

She shouts
over to one of the smokers in what I figure is Albanian. Sounds like Italian
with engine troubles. “How many nights you stay?” he asks. I tell him I’ll
start with one and try to avoid the second. He nods at the woman, who takes a
key from out of the breastworks and rises to her feet with the aid of some
complicated breathing techniques. She leads me down a dim hallway in her bare
feet until we come to a door, which she unlocks before waving me into a room
smelling of incense that almost makes me wistful for my cloud. The bed looks
clean though, and I figure it will do. I nod to the woman, she gives me the key,
and I listen to her breathe back down the hallway.

Exhausting,
really. In some Albanian flophouse losing my philosophy. I unpack a few things
and put the gun in a drawer. Then I slide open the window for some fresh air,
strip down to my underwear, and do some deep knee bends, some pushups, even a
few bonus sit ups. You want to keep the body honed. Afterwards I dig around to
see if maybe I’ve missed the minibar. An optimistic nature, mine, despite all
evidence to the contrary. Well there’s not one, so I go back out to reception
to see if somebody can rustle me up something wet, only to find that Kafka has
arrived. He’s in heated conversation with the costume party, such that he
doesn’t see me standing there.

So I do a
little drinking pantomime for the elephant woman. She smiles and starts to get up,
but then I get worried she’ll go to all that trouble for a glass of water or
something, so I do some more of the drinking motion and stumble around a bit
like a drunk, meaning to make myself clear. About this time Kafka notices me
flopping around, and I ask him if he thinks he could get me some bourbon.