The City Below (42 page)

"You're saying it was the wiseguys who lynched the thing, not you?"

"Yes. That is what I'm saying."

"How'd they get my suit, then? They've got the judge in my suit."

Joan blurted, "Your suit?"

"Yes, my suit."

Squire opened his hands. "It must have been in the boxes, in the garage."

"Right Sure. I guess this
has
been reconnaissance, Nick And what I'll report is that it's worse over here than they think."

"Good, Terry. You tell them that And don't forget, when you tell them about the kids lost in the firing range, remember this—some of them are your nieces and nephews."

"I remember."

"Well, you don't act like it."

Terry pushed away from the table.

Joan felt embarrassed for him, the defeat she saw in his face.

"We'd better be going," he said. He reached to Didi. She met his hand with hers. "Thanks, Didi. This was great."

"You're coming back though, right?"

"Yes. Sure, Didi." Terry stood and crossed to her, to kiss her forehead. "Thanks for taking such good care of Ned."

"Don't mention it, Charlie."

Terry laughed at her use of his old nickname and kissed her again. She got up, but unsteadily.

Squire stood, but he remained at the table as Joan, Terry, and Didi moved into the foyer.

Joan turned back toward the dining room, remembering her lighter. She stopped in the threshold just as Nick, with his back to her, picked the lighter up. He studied it for a minute, then put it into his pocket.

Joan felt the blood rush to her face once more, as if she herself had just been caught in an act of theft. The boldness of the man.

As he turned toward her, she looked away. She wanted to go right over and slap his face, but also, something made her skin tingle, like dirty movies had at frat house parties. She moved into the foyer again.

At the door, Nick and Terry shook hands stiffly. Then Nick faced Joan. "So anyway, welcome to Boston," he said. "Don't believe what you read." He kissed her cheek, but his left hand went to her waist, inside her jacket His finger found the hem of her sweater and, for an instant, rested on the bare skin of the curve above her hip.

"What?" she blurted, meaning, You touched me there?

His eyes twinkled. "I said, Your eyelashes, I'd swear they're real."

Joan stared at him. You're really his brother? You're really going to keep my gold lighter?

By not making an issue of the theft, she realized suddenly that she was his accessory, and then she thought, My God, he wanted me to see him take it. He wanted to see what I would do. She took Terry's arm, holding on to him all the way down the stairs. On the sidewalk, she leaned against him and whispered, "Get me out of here."

"Not yet," he said. "Not just yet."

At the car, they pushed the canvas top back. Terry said, "You drive. Let it coast back, with me."

Terry walked down the hill to the carriage house. The large double doors were still closed, but he could hear the boys inside. Joan edged the car toward the curb cut, as if they'd planned it.

He hopped onto the green hood and stretched to his full height, just able to reach the black pretend corpse. He pulled it loose, then turned and dropped the lifeless dummy into the car, behind the seats.

Joan revved the engine, wanting out. But Terry remained on the hood, looking across at the large sign again:
Rally at City Hall. Monday at 11. Resist!
Yes, he thought, resist.

He hopped down and got in. Joan popped the clutch and the car shot forward. But just as abruptly, she had to hit the brakes, because right in their path at the crest of the hill stood Squire.

He wore that smile of his.

She thought, Now here comes my lighter.

But no. He was holding the plant sheathed in a cone of lavender paper. He moved quickly toward them, to Joan's side of the car. "We forgot to give you your presents. This is especially for you, Joan." He had unpinned the paper and was now folding it back. The plant featured a graceful set of leafy stalks a foot high, out of the center of which had sprouted a stunning pair of purple-veined black orchids. It was like the plant in Gramps's room, only more beautiful. The flower's liplike petals opened around deep red wounds from which the stigma-tipped ovary styles protruded. Other petals, hoods, overlapped the pistils. "I grew it for you."

The flower shimmered before her. She felt the color coming into her face again, that color. Tiny beads of water glistened on the petals. The plant seemed to move toward her slightly, because of him.

The colors went, now that she really looked, from deep red to purple to cobalt, never quite—like his clothing—all the way to black. The black feces of the frightened children she had seen on television passed through her, and then these faces, here. The boys at the high school, the drunks in their mammoth, crude car, the glum Marshals in the grotto of their carriage house. All their disappointment and all their fear went through her. On impulse she said, "Did you ever hear of Saint Roch?"

"What?"

"A dark holy man pictured in medieval chapels. From his wooden staff a black flower miraculously sprouted."

"Like this?" Squire brightened.

"The flower was black because Saint Roch nursed victims of the plague."

"Jesus," Squire said, "the plague!" But he was grinning. He looked for Terry's eye: What's with this broad? But Terry was staring at his own hands.

Squire offered the plant again. "It's rare. Not miraculous, maybe, but rare. The black milium. Soil moist, but never wet. A cool room, but lots of light. Okay?" He lowered the plant to her hands. Even the paper wrapping the pot, once her fingers touched it, seemed delicate. He had not used the kitsch foil wrapping she associated with cheap florists.

But she corrected herself. That he was a cheap florist was her former prejudice. He was anything but. "Thank you," she said.

He bowed. Then he held up a small envelope. He opened it and produced a small flower. It was green and white, delicate, lovely. "Remember these?" he said to Terry, reaching across. "I make them now."

Terry took it numbly. A shamrock boutonniere, pin and all. Squire tossed his head at the crushed black heap in the seat well. "I'm sorry about that."

"Right," Terry said. He held up the shamrock. "Thanks, Nick." And to Joan, "Let's go."

Joan held the orchid toward Terry. His distaste was undisguised, but she gave him no choice. He took it onto his lap. She put the car in gear, then hit the gas, thinking, Still no gold lighter.

Without Terry's having to tell her, she knew to take the next left.

"And left again, at the corner," he said as they approached Main.

"I know." She sped into City Square, past the precinct house, toward the bridge across the river that marked the Charlestown boundary.

"Stop," he said. "Stop here!"

She did, just short of the bridge. Ahead, on the left, was the congested Italian neighborhood, yet another hill, another spire. But he pointed the other way, toward North Station. "That's Boston Garden. I've told you about it, where Bright lost his eye." He held up the orchid. "An earlier gift from the fabulous Doyle brothers."

He got out of the car, put the orchid on the pavement, and took the dummy out of the well, spreading it on the back of the car. Joan got out and came around beside him. He unfastened the buttons of the out-of-fashion black suit, its narrow lapels and cuffed trousers. He methodically removed the stuffing from the corpse, letting the rags and bunched newspapers fly in the wind. Then he pinned the shamrock to the lapel of the suit. He folded the jacket and rolled the trousers around the shirt cardboard on which someone had written the obscene epitaph. He stood up with the bundled suit.

Joan slipped a hand inside his arm. "I can't believe they used a suit of yours."

"Fuck the judge. Fuck Charlie."

"Why did they call you that?"

"An old nickname."

"Because of Charlestown?"

"Because of this," he indicated the suit. "Charlie Chaplin. You wouldn't get it There's a lot you wouldn't get."

"Oh, Terry." She squeezed his arm, rested her head against him.

"Joan, I..."

Each wanted to find the other. But despite the way their bodies pressed together, there was a sea between them. He pulled away, turning to heave the suit into the filthy harbor water, toward Old Ironsides. They watched it slowly sink in sewage. The feeling was, they watched
him
sink.

His eyes drifted up to the rigging of the ancient ship, all those crosses, and then to the white spire of Paul Revere's church. When he looked, finally, at Joan, his sadness had been replaced by anger. "Saint Roch? Jesus Christ, you're telling him about some fucking saint? Saint Roch?"

Anger, she felt it cleanly, at her, as if he'd tracked this strange route her emotions had just taken.

He bolted away, circled the car, and got in on the driver's side, slamming the door. He pressed the ignition button so hard she saw his thumb go white.

"Get in," he ordered.

She did, but only after picking up the orchid plant.

He said, "I'm going back to the apartment to pack some things. Then I want you to drive me to Logan. I'm going to D.C."

"To see Bright?"

"To see the senator."

"Oh, Terry." She put the plant on the floor between her legs and leaned across the gearshift to him, an assertive move of the kind she'd once regularly made in that car. She put her mouth on his and kissed him. "Not tonight."

"I have to go. I want him up here Monday. It's what you wanted, isn't it?"

"But now I see how much more complicated—"

"Fuck complicated, Joan. You were right the first time."

She kissed him again, thinking: Not "fuck complicated," love; fuck
me.
It was a phrase she could not use with her good, straight husband, a man—yes—without curves. She felt wholly turned on, and refused to think why.

"Hey," he said, coming up for air, "it's only Washington. I'll be back tomorrow. Monday at the latest."

"I'll be waiting, sugar." It relieved her when he laughed and squeezed her hard. He began to pull away, but she held him. "What does he do—really?"

"Nick? I don't ask. My brother has a lot of irons and a lot of fires."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't talk about this, okay?" He turned back to the wheel, and soon he had the motor roaring, the wind hard in their faces. Talk was impossible, and she was glad.

She was glad, also, to have him behind the wheel for the ride back to Cambridge. She needed to think, to sort out what had just happened.

Also, if Terry was driving, she could hold the fragile orchid carefully, out of the wind, away from her husband. This is so direct, she thought, so obvious. Yet Terry, poor Terry, hadn't a clue. She stared at the blooms all the way up the river, thinking that not even in Georgia O'Keeffe had a flower ever seemed so erotic. "Black milium," she said aloud, words lost in the wind. "Black milium."

E
VEN BEFORE WAKING
, Terry heard the unmistakable sounds, the frantic pulse of two breathers out of synch with each other, the rail of a bedstead thumping against the other side of the plasterboard wall at his head. The noise was a bank of rough clouds that floated into his dream, warning of a storm, filling him with fragmentary
sensations:
a knee touching his ribs, another knee pressing his opposite thigh, a hand pushing against his chest, then withdrawing, then down again on his heart; his own hand cupping a languorous breast, a nipple in the sweet spot of his palm; music, particular music, a driving rhythm, spurts of blood bubbling the sea between his legs. His thumbs were in the waistband of underwear. His grooved fingers were digging into some moist cavity of flesh...

He opened his eyes.

A curtain above him lifted in the warm morning breeze. He forced his mind first outside that window, toward the sounds of light traffic drifting in from Independence Avenue, the chirping of birds, branches and leaves rustling, the complacent noise of a September morning on Capitol Hill.

"Oh ... oh ... Bright ... here!...here!...hon!...hon!"

The woman's throaty whisper carried through the wall. Terry pictured her, the black sheen of her skin, her breasts swaying as she straddled Bright, her head bent above him, brushing his face with the soft wire of her Afro ...

Not Afro. Not black. The woman Doyle had met last night was white. She was short, had brown hair, wore a loose-fitting summer dress, was pretty and happy looking, like a nurse or teacher. She had a dramatically crooked tooth, and when she smiled, Terry had found himself worried about her, what it had been like to grow up in a family that could not get those teeth fixed. Her name was Suzie. She was with Bright when he'd met Terry at the airport, and the three of them had gone for dinner to the '89 in Georgetown, and then to Mister Charlie's. She was a funny kid, and Terry liked her, but her presence had made it impossible to talk to Bright. They'd had a lot to drink, and carried on as a raucous trio, but when they had returned to the apartment, Terry had stepped aside like the knowing roommate he used to be.

Now he was cold. He had slept in his underwear, beneath a yellowed sheet that was now twisted at his waist. He was wet with perspiration, and the breeze at the window was what chilled him. The sofa cushions had gapped beneath his spine. The arm cushion bunched under his head was damp.

Sound contortions continued at his ear, the low male notes of a moan hammering a woman's whine; the bed sent its vibrations into the wall. "You!...you!...you!" Bright's voice seemed ignited and unfamiliar, though Terry had heard his friend in the throes of orgasm before. He knew that McKay always called his lovers "you" at such moments, to avoid the risk of a wrong name. He had recommended the method back in the days of Terry's initiation into the rituals of D.C.'s frenzied bison hunt, but Terry had never succeeded as a hunter. After his years in the seminary—"prick on ice," Bright had called it—Terry knew he had forever lost several steps to his friend. He was secretly in awe of the way Bright had reinvented himself in Washington. Bright had encouraged Terry to do the same, but McKay had seemed supremely detached from the effect of his smoldering personality. It was Bright who'd introduced Terry to raunchy French cigarettes; the defiant angle at which those stubby weeds rode on the perch of Bright's lips had been a vivid first lesson that some blatant affectations can succeed. How Terry had loved walking into Mister Charlie's or the Cellar Door with him, as if with Richard Wright or Jimmy Baldwin, a black man back from Paris. Terry was his Camus. In addition to his rakish eye patch and loose-limbed strut, Bright wore an aura of sexual readiness. His entrance charged the air of pubs and coffee joints. Girls lifted their heads, whites as often as blacks, and each boy knew at once that his plans for the evening were at risk.