The City When It Rains (6 page)

Joanna ordered a margarita. When it came, Corman watched her move her finger around the salted edge of the glass just as she always did. He had known her for almost two years, and little things had become predictable—the way she lit a cigarette, always with the tip held slightly upward, or the way she rubbed her eyes, never with her fist, her palm, her little finger, but always with the side of her index finger. It was as if there was a code which dictated these movements precisely, locked all history in a helpless chain reaction.

“Have any luck today?” Joanna asked.

“In what?”

“Money.”

Corman shook his head. “I pitched a few things,” he said, “but nobody moved on them.”

He added nothing else and instead let his eyes rove the restaurant, taking in its ocher walls, dotted with huge red sombreros and cowboy gear, bridles, stirrups, a pair of leather riding chaps, the tools of someone else's trade.

Joanna smiled sympathetically. “It's been a long dry spell,” she said.

Corman glanced up from his own drink. “It's been raining for two days.”

“I mean as far as money's concerned,” Joanna explained.

“Trang's threatening eviction,” Corman told her.

Joanna looked alarmed. “Really? Is it that bad?”

“Bad enough.”

“Well, I'm good for …”

“No, thanks.”

“It happens to a lot of people,” Joanna said gently. She remained silent for a moment, then added hesitantly, “There's an alternative.”

“A steady job, I know. I'm looking into something.”

“What?”

“With one of the dailies,” Corman said. “Light stuff.”

Joanna smiled. “That seems promising.”

“It's society stuff,” Corman added. He elbowed away a bowl of taco chips. “Trivial stuff. It doesn't mean anything.”

“Yes, it does,” Joanna told him flatly. “It means money. Survival. That's what it means.”

Corman nodded resignedly and took a sip from the beer. “So, how's Larry?”

Joanna's face darkened slightly. “You really shouldn't ask me about him.”

“Why not? He's your husband.”

Joanna's eyes darted away. “Well, what can you say? Kids make strange bedfellows.” Her finger circled the rim of the glass again,dislodging small granules of salt. “Does Lucy know about him?”

“Larry?”

“Yeah.”

Corman shook his head. “No. Why should she?”

“Honesty.”

“Bullshit,” Corman said.

“Travis knows about you,” Joanna said.

“Travis is in college.”

“What are you afraid of, Corman?” Joanna asked him, her face turning very serious. “That your kid will hate you because you slept with a married woman?”

“It would complicate things a little,” Corman said dismissively. “She's nine years old.”

Joanna smiled weakly. “And you want to protect her?”

Corman ducked behind his drink, took a quick sip.

Joanna's finger made a third circle, as she eyed him carefully. “I'm not sure I love you, you know,” she told him bluntly. “I never have been.”

Corman smiled softly as he lowered the glass. “Same here,” he said.

They made love late in the evening, slow, already somewhat tired, Friday night love. When it was over, Joanna walked to the window, her body wrapped in a sheet, and stared out at the city.

She'd come from the Midwest, and her body had a lean, prairie emptiness to it, a sense of something which lived openly and needed very little tending. The urban crouch Corman often noticed in other women was completely absent in Joanna. She walked the streets almost heedlessly, as her mother must have walked the limitless fields of Illinois.

“Larry's in Florida,” she said, without turning toward him.

Corman said nothing. He lay on his back and watched her. He could see how the folds of the sheet nuzzled her softly, rested smoothly on her hips and clung with a kind of ghostly affection to her shoulders.

“He'll be back on Monday,” she added.

Corman sat up, pressing his back against the back of the sofa bed. “What's the matter, Joanna?”

She didn't answer, and Corman slid back down beneath the cov-ers, thought of the old city, wondered if love had been simpler there. If it had been, he was reasonably sure it was oppression that had done the trick, made everything look harmonious. “Want a drink?” he asked after a moment.

She shook her head, still watching out the window.

His eyes drifted away from her, and he could see the small red light of his closet darkroom. On the small shelf just inside the door, the woman still lay sprawled across the rain-swept street, her doll nestled in a soggy blue blanket. To the extent that history would remember her, it would be like that, just as it remembered all victims in their darkest moment. The old shooters had known exactly how to capture the dead in their muddy fields, the stricken in their frozen grief, the bony faces gathered behind the rusting wire. He wondered if, in a moment of irony, they'd ever been tempted to call out some brief instruction:
Okay, now, say cheese.

“I'd better get home now,” Joanna said as she suddenly turned from the window.

Corman nodded softly. “Okay.”

She gathered her clothes and walked into the bathroom. When she came out again, she looked exactly as she had in the restaurant, hair neatly combed, not so much as a loose strand to betray the night.

“I'm sorry,” she said as she came up to him. “I'm a little down.”

“I'll walk you to the train,” Corman said.

She decided on the bus instead, the 104, which lumbered up Eighth Avenue, then crossed over to Broadway at Lincoln Center.

“I'll call you in a couple of days,” she told him.

They were standing near the northeast corner of 47th Street, shielded from the rain by one of the small porno theater marquees that stretched out over the sidewalk.

“Larry's due back on Monday,” Joanna said.

“Yeah, I know.”

She drew in a deep breath, her face oddly strained. “He found a lump,” she said.

Corman looked at her. “Where?”

“Groin.”

“Did he go to the doctor?”

“On Monday,” Joanna said. “He's scared. I've never seen him scared.”

“I'm sorry, Joanna.”

She turned away from him, her eyes following the quickly moving traffic. “People grow on you, don't they?”

“Yes.”

She faced him again, squarely, like someone laying it on the line. “We'd have to …”

“Of course.”

She smiled slightly. “I'll let you know.”

The bus arrived, leaning heavily, its long black wipers gliding rhythmically across the windshield. An old woman sat at the front of it, fingering the top of her red-tipped cane.

“See you, Corman,” Joanna said as the hydraulic doors wheezed open.

He kissed her quickly, affectionately, without desire. “If there's anything I can do,” he told her.

She stepped onto the bus, glanced back at him as the doors closed. “Just answer the phone,” she said.

Corman nodded as the bus pulled away, then stood for a moment, watching it move more deeply into the heavy night-bound traffic.

“How much to get in?” someone asked suddenly from behind him.

Corman turned, saw a stocky little man standing at the ticket window of the theater. The woman behind the glass looked up, her eyes sharp, animal-like, a wolf nudged from sleep.

The little man lurched slightly, dragging a huge elevated shoe beneath him. “How much?” he repeated.

Corman couldn't hear what the answer was, only saw the woman's lips twitch crisply behind the glass, then the little man shake his head disappointedly as he walked away.

CHAPTER
SEVEN

L
UCY WAS SLEEPING
very soundly on Mrs. Donaldson's sofa, her hands tucked under the pillow. Corman could see her small white feet, and just above them, the rolled cuffs of her dark blue jeans. “I'll take her home now,” he said.

“She could stay the night,” Mrs. Donaldson told him, as if it would be safer that way, as if no little girl could ever be more secure within a man's rough care. “You wouldn't have to wake her.”

“No, I'll take her home,” Corman said determinedly as he walked past her, through the small square foyer and into the living room to where Lucy lay motionless on the sofa.

There were little shrines all over the place, plaster saints, nativity scenes. Christ hung from almost every wall, wracked with pain and disillusionment. The Virgin was all around, too, poised on the edge of a table or standing on either side of the mantel, her face more serene than any parent had the right to be, unfeelingly composed, too accepting of her child's dark fate.

“She didn't give you any trouble, I hope,” Corman said as he knelt down to pick Lucy up. Her body was warm, terribly soft. She moaned gently as he lifted her, ran her tongue across her lips, then nestled her head into his shoulder.

“She's a sweetheart,” Mrs. Donaldson said.

“Yes, she is.”

At the door, Corman turned back toward Mrs. Donaldson. “I'll pay you tomorrow, if that's okay.”

“Whenever.”

“Anyway. Thanks.”

“Good night, then,” Mrs. Donaldson said as she closed the door.

Corman walked the few yards down the hall, fiddled awkwardly with his keys until he finally got the door open, then took Lucy directly to her bed. It was never made, and so there was nothing to turn back or tuck in. He simply laid her body across the mattress, tugged loose one of the covers that formed a tangled bundle at the foot of her bed, and drew it over her.

He watched her a moment, then walked back into the living room and stood by the window as the rain ran down the glass in silvery streams.

After a while, he glanced back at the sofa, thought of taking out the bed but decided not to. Instead, he pulled a chair up near the window, unstrapped his police radio and let it rest in his lap. It was a simple UNIDEN handset, and, next to a camera, it was the one indispensable tool of the city's free-lance shooters. Corman kept it tuned to the frequency of the SOD.

Special Operations Division was a central clearinghouse for all the city's hour-by-hour distress. When a car slammed into the Brooklyn Bridge or a train caught fire in the Bronx or a man anywhere walked into a fast food restaurant and started shooting, it came first over SOD. It worked twenty-four hours a day, and there was hardly a second of that silence which the stringers called “dead air.”

Now, as Corman turned it on, something was happening at Broadway and 174th Street.

Click:
In his hand? What?

Click:
Uh, we don't know at this time. We just got an EDP in the hallway.

Click:
Eighth floor, right?

Click:
That's right.

Click:
Okay, Ten-17.

A soft whoosh came over the radio for an instant. Then another click and the voices continued, but different voices, another call, this one for a medical unit, a fire in a restaurant.

Corman lit a cigarette, edged himself onto the wide windowsill, and listened. Outside, the soft beat of the rain continued through the night.

Click:
We got a problem with the EDP.

Click:
Advise.

Click:
A Ten-27.

Things had suddenly gotten more complicated at 174th and Broadway. The EDP had a gun.

Click:
You got a positive on that?

Click:
Affirmative.

He had been spotted with it.

Click:
Identification?

Click:
Negative.

They didn't know who he was.

Click:
Request location.

Click:
Ten-11.

Or exactly where he was.

Click:
Do you think he's still in the building?

Click:
Affirmative. Request backup.

It was getting dangerous. The radio responding unit wanted help.

Click:
Ten-17.

It was coming.

For an instant, the frequency went silent, then another click, another call, a bus had overturned on the Major Deegan Expressway and several people were wandering half-dazed among the stalled cars and onlookers. Another EDP was running half-naked along the FDR Drive.

Corman walked into the small kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee. He could tell it was going to be a long night. It was almost two in the morning already, and he had not even begun to feel the first fleeting drowsiness.

He brought his cup back into the living room and sat down once again on the windowsill. The voices had returned, and the first had grown a bit more tense.

Click:
We have a definite negative at the exits.

The EDP had not left the building.

Click:
How are you proceeding?

Click:
Floor search. Up and down.

Click:
Any response on the Ten-17?