Skin Trade (7 page)

He reached in his pocket and pulled out a wallet. Stuffed inside was a crumpled black and white photograph of him and his parents and sister.

He held it up to the light. “I was a cute kid,” he laughed. “But small, and all the hair. I thought I was Paul McCartney. I always got shit for the hair, remember? How about breakfast? We could go somewhere.”

We left the bookstore and went to a café two doors down. Fallon went up to the bar for cigarettes. He was a well-set-up guy, big – my height – and a couple of years younger. Fallon moved easily. He had on good black cords, a rumpled red pullover, leather jacket. He looked completely American.

I hadn't seen Joey for, what was it, almost thirty years. Josef Igorovich Fialkov. For a couple of years we overlapped at school. He was always ahead of his grade, and we hung out because he was the only kid I ever knew who really cared about jazz.

I taught him. I played him my
Hot Fives
album, then I discovered Stan Getz and he finagled
The Steamer
for me, God knows how. I still have it.

Joey fixed things, it was what I remembered most, Joey could fix anything, a radio, the purchase of a time-share in a Beatles publicity photo, chocolate, an excuse to cut school. Once he re-wired a lamp for my mother. He hung around our place all the time; my mother said he had charm which was not a Soviet quality, so she liked him for it. He was a freak to his own family; they were the kind of working-class family we all despised, good Party people, loyal, dogged.

Fialkov's family lived in a crummy apartment building on the outskirts of Moscow. The father was a Stalinist prick who named his kid Josef for his hero and beat the shit out of him. He was a maintenance man at a big
newspaper, a drunk who came home, when he came home, filled with the righteous propaganda he read off the presses.

The mother worked in a meat factory; you could smell her when you went to their place. She kept icons in both rooms. The ancient photograph of Joey and his family was so potent it sucked me back so I could smell the past.

Over coffee I said to Fialkov, “You speak the lingo here?”

“My mother made me learn French. She was a meat packer but she had pretensions. She had relatives in Belgrade, it gave her an air. Somehow, in her mind having foreigners in the family elevated her, you know? Maybe she brought them home with the sausages.”

“My mother made me do French too.”

“Your family was different. I remember them. I thought you were a really lucky guy.”

“Yeah.”

“All I wanted was to get out, my first agenda. Your family left for Israel, that was it, there wasn't anyone I could talk to. I heard you went to America later. You didn't know how much your family meant to me then. But I was a kid. You were what? Fifteen, sixteen?”

“Something like that.”

“I was thirteen years old. But I knew there was better than the big shit we called Communism. I knew because of you and your mother.”

“We were real assholes back then.”

“Not you,” Fallon said. He picked up the coffee when it came and smiled. “Not Artemy Ostalsky. You were my hero.”

“So where do you live now, in New York I mean?”

“Tribeca. You?”

“Broadway. Near White Street.”

“A couple of blocks from me. Great. You travel a lot, Artie?”

“Some. You?”

“Business stuff. New media. I got in early. I got out in time.”

“Smart.”

“Luck, mostly. I got in on the ground floor, bought, sold. Silly money. Put the cash away. Somewhere, Artie, I got lucky.”

“You were always smart.”

“I could fix stuff. But you were the rebel. You were the kid who knew about rock and roll and jazz. You knew everything about the West. You could speak English before anyone. You had a godfather who could travel and bought you records, didn't you? You told me about Willis Connover's jazz hour on ‘The Voice of America'. My father beat me so bad when he found me under the covers listening to it, I couldn't sit down. I didn't care. Remember outside GUM where there were older boys in big gaberdine raincoats with the collars turned up, like young old guys? And the terrible pubescent mustaches on their upper lips? And you could get some kind of disks off them, Chubby Checker singing ‘Let's Twist Again'. Two rubles.” He paused for breath. “I'm sorry. I know. I talk too much. Sometimes I think my head is so jammed with junk, it will explode.”

He grinned. He had a stupendous recall for detail and one thing led to another, so as soon as he thought about
Chubby Checker he was talking about dance crazes. I could hardly keep up.

“You always had shoes that matched,” he went on.

“Jesus, Joe, how can you remember all that shit?”

“You even made me Joe. You said Art was your Western name, and everyone thought this was the grooviest thing we ever heard. Anything that was West was, like, good. It was,” he sighed deeply, “good! Then you said we should all have a Western name. Remember? The Borises even fought over who would be Bobby. Anatoly, you remember this guy, you made him Nat, like Nat King Cole. I think there was a Yevgeny who became Gino. So I'm Joe Fallon. Are you OK? You seem distracted.”

I was thinking about Lily. “Yeah, sure, I'm sorry.”

He crushed out the cigarette he was smoking and pulled another one out of the pack. “I tried to quit.”

“Me too.”

“You want to eat something? Have some breakfast or brunch or something? I'm starving. I've been up since six this morning.” He hesitated. “It's OK. You probably have stuff to do.”

“Let's eat something.”

“Here?”

“Fine.”

While we ate bacon and eggs and croissants, people looked at Fallon. He was a handsome man; the dark hair fell over his forehead. Behind a pair of stylish glasses with tortoiseshell frames, his eyes were friendly.

After we ate, he tossed the cigarettes on the table and we settled in with more coffee and smoked a half pack
between us. We reminisced like guys do, half emotional, half joking, catching up. I was glad it was daylight. I was glad I wasn't alone. When I was alone and thought about Lily I was jumpy, febrile, nuts.

In 1978, Joe got out of Moscow. He spent a few months in Brighton Beach, earned some bucks, went to LA and got himself into college. He became an American citizen and went into the Air Force, where he had the run of the new computers just coming onto the market. By the time the PC thing was happening, he was on his way.

“Kids?”

He grinned. “Three.”

“Wife?”

“Two. First a Russian girl because I was lonely, she was lonely, we were students. Our boy is twenty-two, if you can believe. Billy.”

“Then?”

He flinched. “Her name was Dede. We had two kids. She was so great.”

“Was?”

“She died three years ago.”

“Christ. I'm sorry.”

“Cancer. They got it late. I wanted to kill the son-of-a-bitch doctor who told us she had cancer, but she said to me, ‘Darling, it's not his fault.'”

“I'm sorry.”

“I left Scarsdale when Dede died. Our daughter Lisa's in her first year at Yale. Alex, he's seventeen, he's in prep school. I wanted him home, but it's what he needed. Before they went away, I was a regular suburban daddy.”

“It sounds good.”

“I loved it. I'm kind of at loose ends. I travel a lot now. Hey, sorry. This is gloomy stuff. You want more coffee?”

“Two Russian guys in Paris, you got to have some kind of gloom, right?

“I don't feel Russian.”

“Me either. I never did.”

“I killed myself getting rid of the accent. When I heard my accent, it was like a bad smell, I wanted to be American.”

“I know what you mean.”

“You do?” He looked grateful.

I nodded.

“When Gorbachev got in and things changed, I realized there was this huge country and nothing in it and everybody wants something. I held off. I wouldn't do business with them, you know. For ages. Dede said this is nuts, I'll go with you. She even learned Russian. And I saw Russia through her eyes and it looked better. Sort of better. She could be in Moscow and look at the churches, the pictures, the museums, the subways, she could think about Chekhov, she could enjoy the Bolshoi. She made friends there. She made it OK for me again.” He put his hand on my arm. “So what happened to you?”

“We left Moscow, we went to Israel. After the army, I beat it to New York. I became a cop. I liked it. I do private stuff now.”

“You're married? Kids?”

“Not married.”

“Happy, though?”

“I was.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

He saw I was restless. He said, “I should let you go,” and reached for the check.

I wanted to say: don't go. I wanted to tell him about Lily, but I didn't. I didn't tell him because there was no point and I didn't really know him, didn't know what casual conversation he might have with someone who would talk too much. I had no leads on Lily's case. After twenty years on the job, even though I had quit the department, I was still a cop. I kept my mouth shut.

Joe said, “I really am going to let you go. I'm at the Raphael, and I have an office here. I'll write the numbers down.” He pulled a business card out of his pants pocket and scribbled on it. “Listen, if you want to talk or anything, or get some food, I don't want to pry, but you look like a guy who's not feeling so great. Whatever it is, I could maybe help.”

“You're still good at fixing things?”

“I try.”

I got up. We shook hands, punched each other on the shoulder like American guys do. I said, “I'll call.”

“You take care, Artie.”

“Yeah.”

Fallon zipped up his jacket. “Hey.”

“What?”

“You still love Stan Getz?”

“Lily?”

There was a muscle that twitched in her cheek. Once I imagined I could see her left eye flicker. Later that morning, after I ate breakfast with Joe Fallon, I sat with Lily. She wanted something from me; I felt she wanted to tell me something. I sat by her bed and stared at her face, but it was blank and she was locked up inside her own body, plugged into life-supports, silent. When I leaned over her, the down on her eyelids seemed to flutter in my breath.

In a corridor near Lily's room, I found Dr Lariot. I couldn't meet his eyes, I was too scared of what I might see, so I kept my eyes fixed on the plastic name-tag on his coat and said, “I want to take her home. To New York.”

She wants to go home I told him, but it was me who wanted it. I wanted my life back. Lariot put out his hand and I shook it, and finally I looked up at him, a mild-looking guy, going bald, dark-brown skin. Around us people rushed up and down the hospital corridor.

I dug in my pants for some cigarettes. “Can I take her home?”

“Absolutely not. You can't smoke in here either.”

“Why not?”

“It's terribly risky, moving her. Please believe me, this is not a good idea.”

Holding the unopened pack of cigarettes, I stood in the corridor and looked at him.

“Let's go outside,” he said. “I could use one of those.”

In the hospital courtyard, in a garden where there was frost on the grass, we smoked and walked. It was after eleven, but barely light; only a smudge of gray showed in the sky. Winter.

“What if it helps her? What if it helps to be at home?”

“I'm afraid you'll have to face it one way or another. I think it's going to be an enormous battle just to keep her alive. And even then it will be difficult.”

“Even then what?”

“Even then there's a lot to cope with.”

“You don't think she'll make it, you mean.”

“I don't know.”

“She'll make it.” I wanted to grab his lapels and shake him and make him agree with me.

“There's a child? In America?”

“Yes.”

“You'll need some help.”

“I could use your help.”

“We're doing everything we can,” he said in an officious voice.

“How?”

He tossed the cigarette into a patch of snow. “I'm sorry you're unhappy.”

“Everyone's just sitting around, and she's lying there.”

“There's nothing we can do except wait.”

“I can't do that. I can't do nothing. Maybe there's some other doctors I can talk to. There has to be someone.”

He was offended. “If you like,” he said. “That's fine. Do as you like, Mr Cohen, but it won't make any difference.”

“That's pretty fucking harsh.”

“Yes.”

“How the hell do you know what's inside her head?”

Lariot stiffened. He crossed his arms over his white coat. “It's all about time, and to tell you the truth,” he said, his voice edgy now, irritated, angry at me, “if she doesn't come out of the coma soon, she may not come out at all.”

“Just another number to you guys, win some, lose some. Right?” I was mad at Lariot because I knew he was telling the truth.

I left the courtyard and went through the hospital to the street entrance. My phone rang. It was Carol Browne.

Christ, I thought. Just what I need. Carol fucking Browne, European chief for Keyes Security. She worked out of London, where I'd met her, and she was coming to Paris. She wanted a meeting.

She was a frosty little woman and she sounded pissed off. In the street I leaned against the hospital wall and listened to Browne and pictured her at the other end.

She was twenty-nine, small and efficient with big glasses and a faint, patronizing smile. Some of the guys at
the Keyes London office referred to her, behind her back, as the Garden Gnome. She talked the language of focus groups and marketing. She looked like a woman who went to the gym every day.