The 25th Hour (17 page)

What does D’Annunzio look like when she dances? Jakob wonders. Is she dancing with a boy or with Naturelle? Mary D’Annunzio and Naturelle Rosario dancing together. That’s an image to keep you warm on a winter’s night. Jesus Christ, they’re an orgy of vowels.

What must a man never ask in a Victoria’s Secret shop?
And who the hell is LoBianco to be moralizing? And where is LoBianco now? Did he make it home safely, or is he curled up and snoring in the corner of some Christopher Street old men’s bar? Old and queer and out of work. Happy New Year.

The three men stand at the railing and look down at the dancers below. D. J. Dusk mans his turntables from a platform raised above the dance floor. He stands in the eye of an amber spotlight, flanked by sound monitors and generators that blow clouds of white smoke; he deftly flips a needle onto a spinning record’s groove, and a burst of Keith Jarrett piano rises over an industrial backbeat.

‘Look at her!’ Kostya yells to Monty, pointing. ‘In black tank top! Swedish, you think? I never fucked woman with blond bush! Have you? Ah, look who I ask!’ He elbows Slattery and winks. ‘Mr Puerto Rico over here!’

‘Why don’t you shut your mouth,’ says Monty.

Kostya can’t hear him, but he sees the expression on Monty’s face. ‘I offend you? I apologize, my friend! Do not be angry with me!’

‘Where’s this girl you’re taking me to meet?’

‘Down in the Blue Room! You ready? I go make sure she’s there. You like this girl! This girl is very nice!’

‘All right, I’ll be down in a minute.’

‘You go down here, you fuck her, you come back up and drink with your friends! That is party!’

‘In a minute.’

Kostya pats him on the back and walks away. Monty looks at Slattery, follows his friend’s gaze down to a corner of the dance floor, and spots Naturelle and Mary in a cluster of sweating dancers.

‘She looks good in silver,’ says Monty, just loud enough for his friend to hear. ‘Don’t you think?’

Slattery stands straight as if poked from behind. ‘Who, Nat?’

‘She’s beautiful. She’s the only woman – I’ve told you this, right? – Naturelle is the only woman I fantasize about after sleeping with her. I still do. Sometimes I’m riding in the subway and all I can think about is getting home and getting her naked. That’s pretty normal, I guess.’

‘I guess,’ says Slattery. ‘Pretty good kind of normal.’

Monty watches her. She has great confidence on the dance floor. She moves well, and she knows she moves well; the music skips beats and changes rhythms but Naturelle is never thrown.

‘How’s work going?’

Slattery shakes his head and points at his ear. Monty repeats the question, louder.

Slattery nods. ‘Work is good. This morning was big, very big.’ He waits to see if Monty will ask but Monty does not ask, so Slattery says, ‘I brought in two million dollars in about nine minutes. That’s pretty close to a record. Not too many twenty-seven-year-olds are playing with that kind of money.’

Monty watches as a shirtless, muscular white man, his arms sleeved with tattoos, crowds his way into Naturelle’s circle and begins dancing with her. ‘So how much of that do you see?’

‘What do you mean, like a commission? There is no commission; that’s not the way it operates.’

‘So two million for them means zero for you?’ The shirtless man has bent close to Naturelle to say something to her. She shrugs and spins away.

‘It’s all about the bonus,’ says Slattery. ‘The more money I make for the bank, the more I make for myself. We have this system now called capitalism. I don’t know, I think it might work.’

Two young men walk toward them on the balcony. When they see Monty they clap him on the back and shout in his ear. Both wear expensive suits without ties, thick gold chains glittering below their open shirt collars. Slattery watches the dancers. Now the tattooed man is speaking to Mary. Mary grabs hold of his belt and begins gyrating her hips into his pelvis.

‘Six more months,’ says Monty, after his friends have left.

‘Speak up!’ Slattery hollers, and Monty nods.

‘Six more months and I would’ve come to you, said, Here, here’s the loot, what do I do with it? Let you play with it. Buy some stocks, kick back. Watched the coin multiply. Six more months. I got greedy. That’s what happened. I got greedy and then I got fucked.’

‘You can’t think about that stuff.’

‘Yeah, I can. That’s all I
can
do is think about that stuff. I’ll tell you what, Frank,’ says Monty, his voice calm and steady. Slattery has to bend closer to hear him. ‘I’m not going to make it. I always thought I was a tough guy, always thought I could take anyone, but it’s a joke. I’m not going to make it. There’s a thousand guys harder than me inside that place, and they’re going to use me up and end me. Look at me! I’m a pretty white boy. I will not survive seven years in there.’

‘Yes, you will. You’ve got to.’

‘You’re not listening to me.’

‘You don’t have a choice, Monty.’

‘What?’

‘I said you don’t have a choice!’

‘I have a choice. If I choose not to go in there tomorrow, I will not go in there tomorrow.’

Slattery nods. ‘You’re not running, though. If you wanted to run you’d already be gone.’

‘I’m not running,’ says Monty. ‘There’s another way out.’

‘That’s stupid talk,’ says Slattery, shaking his head. ‘You’ve got to be strong—;’

‘Strong? It’s over, brother, finished. Strong for what? What do you want me to do, bite my lip when they start in on me? Don’t tell me strong. Don’t stand there like you know what to do.’

‘You’re smarter than all of them,’ says Slattery. ‘Listen: you are. One week and you’ll have the place figured, you’ll know the names, the scenario. Just—;’

‘Let me explain the first night to you. Picture this, all right? First night, the place is overcrowded, they’ve got bunk beds set up in the gym to handle the overflow. You with me? Next thing I know all the guards are out of the room, they’re laughing as they leave, looking at me and shaking their heads.
White boy, you are miles from home
. Boom, I’m down on the floor, someone big’s got his knee in my back. I’m trying to get away, but there’s too many of them. One guy starts smacking me in the face with a pipe. He knocks out my teeth; I’m choking on my own blood. They’re kicking me in the ribs and I throw up, and there’s teeth in there, I see my teeth in a puddle on the floor. They knock them out, they knock them all out. You know why? So I can give them head all night long and they won’t have to worry about me biting. They’ll make me a suck puppet for every yard queen in the house. And what if I make it the whole way through, what if I make it seven years, minus eighty-four days for good behavior? Then what? I’ll be thirty-four years old when I get out. What kind of job am I going to get? What skills will I have? I’ll be a punked-out convict with government-issue dentures. What the fuck is the point? I’ve studied this, Frank, believe me. I’ve looked at the options.’

‘Thirty-four is still young. Listen to me, would you? Hey, listen to me. You’re still going to be a young man. I’ll be set up by then; I’ll be running my own place. You and me, we’ll start something up. No, come on, hear me out. I’ll be working, Monty, seven years I’m working. I’ll work harder than every Ivy League fucker down there. And when you get out . . . we’ll start something up. I’ll buy a restaurant, or a bar on the Upper West Side. There’s big money in a good bar. I’ll put in the cash, you’ll run the place, we’ll own that neighborhood. Couple of Irish kids from Brooklyn, Jesus, how can we not have a bar? Green beer for St Paddy’s Day, free hot dogs for Monday Night Football. Shit, one night a week I’ll work the door, I haven’t done that since college. Think about it. Old-fashioned jukebox sitting in the corner, pool table in the back—;’

‘Frank, can I tell you something? I appreciate this, okay? But I don’t see a future in it. I don’t see us working together. I don’t see me and Jake hanging out. I don’t see me and Naturelle. I don’t see it.’

‘I didn’t mention them,’ says Slattery softly. Monty is not looking at him, he shows no sign of having heard, so Slattery speaks louder. ‘I never mentioned Jake. I never mentioned Naturelle.’

‘Just you, huh?’

‘Tell me something, okay? Have I ever broken a promise to you? Have I ever once in my life broken a promise to you? Have I ever said I would be somewhere and not shown up?’

Monty is quiet for a moment, staring at his hands. ‘No.’

‘I’m telling you I will be there and I will be there.’

‘Okay,’ says Monty. ‘But you’re not going to be there tomorrow.’

Slattery nods and says nothing.

‘So I’ve got a favor to ask you. You’re my brother, right, my best friend?’

‘You know that.’

‘I need you to do something for me.’

Slattery waits.

‘Not here,’ says Monty. ‘We can’t do it here. Can you come uptown with me and Jake? I’m giving him Doyle.’

Slattery smiles. ‘I was afraid you were giving me the dog.’

‘Nah, Doyle can’t stand you. We’ll leave here in a little bit. I’ll meet you back in the VIP room, okay? I’ve got to say goodbye to some people. Sound good?’

‘Whatever you want,’ says Slattery. ‘You know that.’

‘Good.’ Monty returns his eyes to the dancers. The shirtless man is lying on the floor, curled up on his side, his hands between his legs. Mary and Naturelle are nowhere in sight. ‘Our friend Jake,’ says Monty, ‘has picked himself a winner.’

Sixteen

Jakob stares at the black steel question mark and sips from his glass of champagne. He wants to be home, stretched out in his warm bed. He has been awake for too long.

The red room is growing crowded. Jakob does not recognize any of them pushing through the velvet curtain, these loud-speaking men holding champagne flutes in ringed fists, lean women who stand in clusters, heads bowed together, murmuring in low tones. Jakob sits alone on the sofa and eavesdrops, tries to fish phrases from cross-currents of accent: Brooklyn, New Jersey, Boston, Dominican, Eastern European, Puerto Rican, Brazilian. He hears the name Monty spoken in four different languages, a dozen dialects, but always the same hush descending, the way friends sitting shivah mention the departed.

Jakob wonders how many would gather for his own farewell party; he compares the imagined group to the crowd before him and feels a sharp pain at the smallness of his life. Who would come? A bunch of English teachers in chalk-stained blazers; Paul from the math department; Slattery; two or three college friends who would huddle around the whitefish and swap good Jakob stories for eight minutes, exhausting all the good Jakob stories. Monty’s existence seems impossibly dramatic, guns and prostitutes and South Americans, a life worth hearing about. If someone wrote the history of us, Jakob thinks, if someone decided to tell the story, where would I be?

The room is hazy now with cigarette smoke. D. J. Dusk lays down a heavy bossa nova beat, Elis Regina calling out one phrase in a looped sample. Three women in the center of the room drop their purses on the floor and dance around them, vigilant and abandoned all at once. Jakob imagines strolling out to join them, their skeptical looks fading into stunned admiration as he swings his hips in a provocative manner, drops into a perfect split, begins walking on his hands. He frowns. I can’t even imagine myself dancing well, he thinks angrily. I’m picturing a gymnastics routine. He drinks the last of his champagne, tries to stand, is not successful. Oh, boy, he thinks, I’m drunk.

He dips his head against the sofa’s velvet armrest and closes his eyes. Don’t drop the glass, he tells himself, his last coherent thought before the fuzz of dream logic occupies his mind. Don’t spill the milk.

The next thing he senses is the pressure of a warm body curled up alongside him, a hand unwrapping his fingers from the champagne flute’s stem. Somewhere deep down in his consciousness an alarm rings, a muted bell clanging
danger!
But the red velvet is too comfortable, the heavy heart-thump of bass too embryonic, too lulling, everything too warm.

He feels fingernails following the curves of his ribs and some part of him knows the name that goes with these fingernails; another part of him knows that this is what he wants – these nails, this warm body. The name and the want never collide but skitter around the edges of his mind like repellent electrons.

But then a tongue curls along the inside of his ear and he hears his own name whispered by a voice he cannot render anonymous. Jakey, comes the whisper.
Jakey
.

He keeps his eyes closed for another moment and wishes the whisperer into a dream, but she doesn’t fade away; her tongue, nails, and voice linger on him. He opens his eyes and sees Mary D’Annunzio straddling him, a knee on either side of his lap, her hazel eyes peering at him from below his Yankees cap. A strong urge comes over him to damn the rules and regulations, but he remembers himself, with an unpleasant start, in time.

‘Whoa, what are you doing? Mary, get off me.’

Mary shrugs and falls onto her back on the red velvet cushions, her black Doc Martens still resting on Jakob’s thighs. ‘Don’t panic. Nobody here gives a shit.’

‘I give a shit,’ he tells her, shoving her feet off him. ‘What do you mean, nobody gives a shit? Do you know what happens if somebody sees me – us – like that?’

He observes that it’s true, though; nobody in the room seems to have noticed them. The three women still dance around their purses; the men still argue loudly, gesturing with their cigarettes; Daphne still maneuvers through the thick of it with her tray of cocktails.

Mary, lying on her back with her feet dangling off the edge of the sofa, is also examining the crowd. ‘You know what? I’ve got a feeling the Campbell-Sawyer faculty don’t spend much time in the VelVet VIP room.’

Jakob sits up straight, rolls his shirtsleeves down to his wrists, buttons them. ‘I’m here, right? You never know.’

‘I just kicked some guy in the balls. He’s on the ground throwing up.’

‘Did you? That’s nice.’ Jakob leans forward and rubs his temples with his thumbs. ‘Mary?’

‘What?’