Troika (10 page)

Fotopoulos extended his hand. “Deal.”

That night, flush with both cash and optimism, Julian took Sophie not to the cheap bar on Stanton with the great burgers but out
for a grand dinner in the West Village. They settled into a cozy banquette; seated side by side, their shoulders touching, supporting each other, they reveled in the pop of the wood in the fireplace, the smells of pizza and cedar-plank salmon escaping from the wood-burning oven, the beautiful, prosperous people. Julian recalled the magical dinner with Frankmann and Kira, and he wondered what ever became of the young painter. He considered the series of unrewarding jobs he had held since college. And as he reached for Sophie’s hand, he—like Frankmann at the age of eighty—wondered what role he might one day play in the world.

The ability of Fotopoulos to avert foreclosure with Julian’s money—with
Frankmann
’
s
money—first surprised and then infuriated the developer. When Austerlitz learned that Julian was bankrolling the landlord, that minor intimidation would not expel them from the building, he increased the pressure. Hardened by decades of competition in the city’s vicious real estate market, Austerlitz knew every trick and was willing to resort to most of them. The developer hired a retired detective who was crooked enough to imply violence but, given his age and comfortable pension, disinclined to resort to it. The man showed up, unarmed, at Julian’s apartment one evening, intending to bribe him with a knapsack full of cash. “A down payment on a new apartment,” he said, raising the bag.

When Julian responded with nothing but a shake of the head, the man opened the top of the knapsack and turned it sideways, revealing stacks of hundred dollar bills. He pushed the bag toward Julian. When Julian again shook his head, the man refastened the bag and placed it on the hallway floor. He made a circular gesture with his folded right arm, a loosening up of the shoulder joint that was not a precursor to violence but a test of the young man’s resolve. The detective looked for signs of panic that might indicate some
willingness to compromise, a timorous reaction that he had elicited so often during his years on the force.

Julian, though, remained composed, leaving the detective to wonder if the young man’s poise was the result of an exceptional confidence or if Julian’s mind was so dull that he could not process the implications of his disobedience. And then, with a shiver, the detective considered another possibility; he wondered if his inability to instill fear was caused instead by his sagging pink skin, his tight-fitting suit, the osteoarthritic difficulty with which he had rotated his arm—if he had crossed into that age where a man can evoke fear only with a gun or the power to sign a paycheck.

Austerlitz was the most rational of economic animals, and when he heard the detective’s report he understood that he had little choice but to raise his bid for the tenement. Resigned to an additional expense, he arranged to meet with Julian and Fotopoulos.

“How much do you want?” the developer asked, pointing to the building.

Fotopoulos looked at Julian, who nodded his encouragement. “Three times your last offer,” the landlord said. The price was millions more than the previous bid, but still within the high end of the range that Austerlitz deemed acceptable. Cursing the added cost, Austerlitz extended his hand in agreement. But before Fotopoulos could shake it, Julian cleared his throat, nodded again and held up four fingers. Fotopoulos smiled. “Four times,” he said with a wild grin. “Make it four.”

Austerlitz withdrew his hand and considered the price. He stared at Julian, assessing his character. He saw in the young man’s eyes not the denseness about which the detective had speculated, but a fierce yet quiet resolve, a determination that could not be shaken by another man; it was a look that he admired—calm and purposeful.

“Fine,” Austerlitz said. “You’ll have the money by the end of the week.”

The next time Julian pulled a receipt from an ATM and checked his bank balance, he confirmed that he was worth several million dollars. This big score was not a terminal event that sated his desire for financial success; instead, his sudden wealth had an energizing effect—for after translating Frankmann’s commercial theory into practice and finally eliminating the disconnect between his talents and his accomplishments, Julian was just getting started.

J
ulian would later recall that the beginning of
the night
was as perfect as a night could be—the opalescent twilight that seduced Pollock and Rothko and de Kooning, a light that sliced through the sky at seemingly incongruous angles, as if several suns of varying intensity hovered on different planes above, a light that blistered off the waves of the sea, yet softened to the north and tickled the textured bay.

Julian directed the car down Further Lane and pulled over to the side of the road, a hundred feet from the party. He stepped out of the vintage Porsche Speedster, a silver beauty from the late 1950s that he had obsessively restored. Julian and Sophie inhaled the air, sweet and saline, that blew in from the south, from the sea. Julian marveled at his good fortune, at the remarkable way that a life can, out of nowhere, change for better or for worse—the randomness, the violence of the swings, the transience of people, of things, of money,
of states of being, the delusion of security and constancy to which a person reflexively clings.

Julian walked around the front of the car, opened the passenger-side door and extended a hand to his wife. As Sophie stood, he noticed the curve of her lower back, revealed by the tantalizing aperture in her dress. He guided her under a birch pergola, beneath drapes of pungent purple wisteria. They stopped to admire the house, a grand, weathered Georgian mansion with arachnoid fractures in the façade and a dead branch of ivy that wrapped, denuded, around a first-floor window. The cracks and the lifeless bough triggered in Julian a recollection of the orphanage, of the decay and debasement of his childhood. He wondered how it was that the neglect of a mansion, the indolent disinterest in its upkeep, could actually suggest even more confident wealth than a well-maintained home—while the same flaw in an orphanage, a crack running from the roof’s edge down to the front door, merely magnified the wretchedness of the place.

The party was not atypical for a party in this particular town during the summer season. In attendance were several prominent bankers, men whose sartorial ease (a frayed collar, a carefully placed abrasion on the khakis, a scuffed loafer, a braided string bracelet) didn’t so much hint at fiscal sobriety as it howled an insincere
aw-shucks
, as if their purposeful sloppiness could mask their great prosperity, a false modesty that, in light of his own impoverished upbringing, Julian found distasteful.

There was a cluster of those with inherited wealth who, comforted by proximity to their similarly situated peers, stuck closely together; it was this group with which Julian felt most comfortable, because even though their birthright was the opposite of his own, he related to the absurdity of being born into such an extreme, to a person’s being defined by something that he had no role in creating. For Julian, having been both poor and then rich, there was little
difference between the outliers of poverty and wealth; for those who were born into money, every accomplishment was—in the eyes of others and sometimes even themselves—unfairly diminished, explained only by their good fortune and the advantages that accompanied their legacy. For those born impoverished, those same great accomplishments were too unfairly diminished, but in that case by the cynical suspicion that any such accomplishment could only be achieved through either extraordinary luck or the commission of a crime.

Julian and Sophie were not big drinkers: a couple of glasses of wine at dinner, a beer or two at a ball game, the occasional cocktail after work. When Sophie went out with her girlfriends, she might splurge; she might have one or two martinis, feel the hot flush in her cheeks, a numb buzz, then back home not to make love with Julian, but to fuck him in a collegiate stupor, evoking the rebellious, sloppy sexuality of her youth.

At the party, Julian and Sophie drank more than usual. They reached for flutes of champagne that, with bizarre frequency, danced by on tarnished trays. To save their appetites for the meal, they nibbled on frugal hors d’oeuvres, but realized an hour into the party that dinner would not be served, that their hosts’ intention, consistent with the maintenance of the home, was to offer only drinks and sparse snacks with an early end to the evening. Dehydrated from a day at the beach, their stomachs not adequately filled to counteract the carbonated alcohol, Julian and Sophie experienced a simultaneous wooziness.

A rivulet of perspiration sluiced down the channel in Sophie’s lower back. She reached for Julian’s elbow and steadied herself. “Let’s go,” she said.

Julian nodded. “Agreed, but I don’t think I can drive. I’m a little buzzed.”

“Come on, babe, it’s only a half mile,” Sophie said, playfully pushing Julian toward the car.

“Let’s just walk,” Julian countered, as he slipped from Sophie’s grasp. “It’s a nice night, and we can get the car in the morning.”

Sophie extended her hand. “Give me the keys. I’ll drive.”

Julian held the keys behind his back. “Come on, Sophie, it’s only a fifteen-minute walk.”

“I’m tired, don’t want to walk. We’ll be home in two minutes. Please, my feet are killing me.”

Julian thought about the short ride home, about his desire to please Sophie—and he capitulated. He guided her to the car. He opened the passenger door, got her settled in the low bucket seat, and waited until her right foot rested on the floorboard. He walked around the front of the car, pausing to place his fingertips on the hood for balance. Julian opened the door, settled in behind the wheel and ignited the engine.

The last words he said to Sophie before the deer jumped out from behind a hedge on Georgica Road, before he overcompensated, turning the wheel violently to the left, before the car crashed into a utility pole, before Sophie went through the windshield . . . before all that, Julian’s last words to Sophie—words that he would forever regret—were
fine
,
I
’
ll drive
,
but if anything happens
,
it
’
s your fault
.

I
’m in the club, it’s the middle of the afternoon and real slow again. I’m sitting at the bar and it’s just a few regulars, the fat guy who’s here so often I’m beginning to think he either lives here or he’s a narc, and the smelly lawyer who’s been coming around a lot since he lost his license. I’m chewing on a piece of ice, wondering about big stuff, what I’m gonna do with my life or if this is it. Jade walks by and gives me a wink and says hang in there, sweetheart, ’cause she knows I’ve been down lately and I told her how I’m thinking about quitting, maybe working in the diner with my mom.

The front door swings open and in comes the sun, big and bright and throbbing like it’s got a life of its own. It lights up the dark bar for a few seconds, shows all the scuffs on the walls, the stains on the seats, the pimples and wrinkles on the girls’ faces. And while the door’s open, while we’re getting a big reminder that things aren’t
what they seem, everything freezes and we all stand still. The bartender has a rag in his hand, holds it there, Lopez is frozen to the pole, and we hold our breath and wait for the darkness to come back, for the fantasy to return. In steps a small man with glasses and thinning hair, late thirties is my best guess. He’s not a handsome man but sweet-looking, and he’s got a limp that’s real noticeable. And from a distance I can see he’s got one normal shoe and one shoe with a real thick sole to give his leg a few extra inches.

I see him talking to Schultz, who’s back from medical leave. The small man raises his hand to shoulder height, looks around the bar and squints in the dark—which, best I can tell, is the opposite of what you should be doing in a dark room. Schultz nods and points over in my direction. The man looks at me from across the room, stands there for a bit like he’s trying to figure out if he really wants to do this, then limps toward me. I’m thinking maybe I’m gonna get my first dance of the day, make a bit of money, so I straighten up real fast, lip gloss and a toss of the hair, a mint in my mouth and straighten out my skirt. The man approaches me, stops a couple of feet away and in a real soft voice, shaky and nervous, he says sorry to bother you, but you wouldn’t be Perla, would you?

I look him in the eye, try to size him up. I can’t make him out, good or bad, so I say no bother, and yes, I
would
be Perla. The guy puts out his hand, shakes mine, and says pleasure to meet you, my name’s Roger. Well, Roger, why don’t you have a seat. And I tap the chair next to me, cross my legs real proper and wave to Jade. She comes over and I say Roger, it’s your lucky day, ’cause I’m buying
you
a drink, so what’s it going to be? Roger orders a bottle of beer and I get a ginger ale, even though it’s not feeling like much of a treat today. I make eye contact with Jade and glance in the direction of his thick shoe and that’s my cue to Jade not to play the hundred-dollar
joke, ’cause what we’ve got here is a man who’s seriously disabled and the least we can do is have a bit of compassion for the man. Now, Roger could be a total prick for all I know and doesn’t deserve one ounce of compassion, but I believe in karma and for now I’m playing it safe and gonna treat the guy real nice. And no matter what, life’s got to be harder for him than it is for the same exact guy who’s got two good feet.

I start off asking Roger the usual questions. Where you from? How long you in town? Turns out he’s from up north, New York area, and just down for a few days. Jade comes over with the drinks and Roger reaches for his wallet before I can even open my purse, says it’s on me. Jade gives me a wink, thank God, that says don’t worry, I’m not playing the joke, and then she tells him it’s fifteen bucks. Roger pays the tab with a nice tip on top and looks around in wonder at the girls and the lights. I put my hand on his thigh and say you want a dance, baby? Right here for twenty or over in one of those private rooms, and I point to the VIP Room and the Champagne Room.

Roger takes a sip of his beer and says no, thanks, you’re real pretty and nice but I’m not here for a dance. I’m a friend of Julian’s, you see, and it just wouldn’t be appropriate. Julian, I mumble, and I’m trying to process what I just heard ’cause it’s been a couple of months since I saw him and there’s been no news from him since then. And it’s pretty painful to share so much with a man and even though he’s married and I’m just a stripper, and I really don’t have a right to any expectations, to have him just disappear on you is real hard.

I straighten up and cross my legs real tight. You a friend of Julian? Julian from New York?
Married
Julian, who hasn’t called me in forever? And Roger nods, yup
that
Julian. I’m a little confused and a lot angry. I down my ginger ale to make it look real dramatic,
but it’s not as big a gesture as it would be if I had vodka or scotch or something alcoholic. Then the orange slice somehow gets stuck on my lip, dangles there for a sec, falls in my lap, and I feel like a big fool.

Roger smiles, puts his hand on my wrist, real soft, and says please hear me out, Perla. Julian’s my closest friend, I work for him too, the guy I’m most loyal to in the entire world. Julian sat down with me last week, said Roger, I met someone down in Florida. She’s beautiful and kind and doing a difficult job with dignity, grace, professionalism. That’s the thing about Julian, he appreciates mastery and commitment, doesn’t care if you’re a brain surgeon or a bank robber. Or if you’re painting a bathroom or the Sistine Chapel. Roger gets flushed in the face, says the Sistine Chapel’s in the Vatican City, in Rome. And I laugh and say really, Roger? I had no idea. Just ’cause I’m a stripper doesn’t mean I don’t read. I give him a little poke in the chest and tell him, you know, Roger, I don’t have a formal education, but I had a father who knew more about the world than most people with a degree. So one more condescending comment from you and I’m sending you back to Julian in a body bag, your entrails in a separate bag.
Entrails
. See, that’s a big word. Not long, but big.

Roger lifts his hand from my wrist and takes a quick sip of beer to wet his throat, wipes his lips with the back of his hand and apologizes. I’m so sorry, it’s just that I get nervous around pretty girls. And he looks down at his foot, winces and bends over and rubs his right calf. I’m just awkward when it comes to girls and I’m always saying stupid stuff, so nothing personal and no reflection on you. I’m looking at the man, all thin and hobbled and bumbling through a conversation, and it occurs to me that this Roger is a tender man. And I think of my dad, and how he used to cry so easy, like when he saw a three-legged dog limping down the street once in Plantation or the little boy at the mall in Hialeah who couldn’t find his parents.

Roger downs his beer and you can tell from the way his face twists that he’s not used to drinking booze. The reason I came down here, he says, is because Julian can’t come down for a while, he’s got stuff going on in his personal life and some business things too, and he wanted you taken care of. Roger pulls an envelope from his back pocket and hands it to me. There’s ten thousand in here, he says, and shrugs his shoulders ’cause it’s a little weird to just hand a girl ten grand for nothing. Now, never in my life did I have ten thousand dollars to my name, let alone in my hand, and I’m feeling so giddy and excited that I can hardly hold on to the bar stool. And I’m thinking how happy my mother is gonna be and how we can pay the rent on time, pay off some credit cards and maybe buy myself a pair of sandals that I saw in Coral Gables.

I open the envelope and look at the bills, all brand-new and lined up perfect like they just got printed at the bank. I put my nose close, breathe in deep and sure enough there’s the smell of fresh cash. But then I feel some nausea in my stomach, ’cause something about getting all this cash for doing nothing, something about getting all this cash from someone you have feelings for, something about it feels a little cheap and demeaning to me. It makes me feel bad, worse than getting twenty bucks for a dance, ’cause at least there’s an equal exchange when I’m stripping. Dance, money. Dance, money. Here, it’s just money with nothing in return. There’s no
quid pro quo
. I know that, too, a bit of Latin.

But I get over the bad feelings fast, real fast, ’cause at the end of the day I’m a practical girl and all this cash is a huge deal. Thanks, I say, and try to jam the thick envelope inside my clutch, a tiny silver bag that I’ve been using ever since one of the girls got her keys and phone and ID stolen out of a locker. I look at Roger’s face real careful, at his old dress shirt, at his cheap, plastic watch. I wonder how it is that Roger and Julian are friends, how two people with such
different looks, such different styles, could be good friends. Looks to me like they come from different worlds.

I flag Jade and give her the ’
nother round
motion, a circle in the air with my index finger. You flew down here, all the way from New York, just to give me this envelope? Roger nods yes. And Julian asked you to get on a plane, give me this envelope, and then go back home? Yes, again. And you got no other business down here but bringing me this money? That’s right, no other business. And you don’t mind doing that, spending all this time traveling just for one errand? Roger looks at me all confused, seriously confused, like he really doesn’t understand the question, like I spoke in a strange language, maybe one that’s not even invented yet. Do I mind? Do I mind? Not only do I not mind, but it’s an honor to do something like this for Julian. An honor, I ask, why would it be an honor? I want to know, ’cause it seems more like a big old burden to me.

Jade places the drinks on the bar. I pull a hundred out of the envelope and hold it up to her. This one’s on me, I say. Jade snatches the bill from my hand and flashes it under the light, front then back, and asks this real or you just print it yourself? I say it’s real as they get and Roger here gave it to me. So Jade leans over, gives Roger a big wet kiss on the lips and struts off. Now, Roger looks like he just got licked by a bulldog and wipes his lips with the back of his hand. Then he knocks down half the bottle in a few gulps, clears his throat, says I’m going to tell you a story, a story about Julian. And maybe when I’m through, you’ll understand why I get on a plane for Julian, why I’m grateful to have the chance to get on that plane, why there’s nothing I’d rather do than get on that plane and fly down here for that man and hand a girl like you an envelope full of cash.

You may have seen that I’ve got a bum leg, he says, and points to his funny-shaped shoe. It’s shorter than the other by three and a half inches, and the foot’s deformed. It’s thick and rounded and I
have three toes that are fused together, like one big toe. My father has the same thing. My granddad, too. It’s a genetic deformity. And that’s one of the things I love most about my mother, because she knew when she married my dad, when she decided to have a child with the man, that there was a high likelihood she’d have a kid with a deformed foot. But she loved him so much, and how couldn’t you, that she did it anyway. Ignored her parents’ advice, even a doctor who said it would be foolish to go into it knowing damn well what was going to happen. But she was crazy about the man.

Anyway, I loved to play sports when I was young, but the foot made it impossible to compete. I mean, I could limp around the schoolyard a bit, but competitive games, organized sports, were off-limits for me. Football was my favorite, but hard to play for a boy with my sort of problem. Still, the coach was fond of me and the other kids on the team had some compassion and they voted me on the team, said I could be the scorekeeper, keep the stats, and even though I couldn’t play, they’d give me an honorary spot on defense. They even got me a uniform with my name on the back, put me in the team photo. On game day, I got to stand on the sidelines in my uniform and support the guys. It was a great season for me. My parents came to every game, and even though they knew I would never play, they rooted like I was a starter. How many times did my father introduce me to his friends as
my son
,
the football star
.

We had a terrific team that year, led by Julian. He wasn’t the biggest guy on the team, but always the most intense, competitive guy on the field, wiry and fast and a threshold for pain that most of us really couldn’t comprehend. He was also smarter, it seemed, than our coaches, and he would always be huddling with them, drawing up new plays, different defenses, whatever could give our team an advantage. Sometimes it almost felt like
he
was the real coach.

Julian was a mysterious guy—intelligent, handsome, but very
distant from almost everyone in school. Rumor was he was born in Russia, Siberia they said, and that he lived in an orphanage. They said he came to the States when he was ten or eleven, and maybe that’s the reason why he was a bit withdrawn, aloof. It’s not that he wasn’t friendly, just remote and cool, like he was years ahead of the rest of us, like he was on to bigger things. They named him prom king, but he declined, didn’t even show up. He was salutatorian, too, but refused to give a speech.

Salutatorian, Roger says with a smile ’cause he knows what’s coming, that’s second in the class. Fuck you very much, I say like a lady. Now, that’s a word I never did hear before, and I make a mental note to look that up when I get home. Roger takes another swig of beer and looks around the room for Jade. She sees him, nods and struts on over to the bar to get us another round. Fortysomething years old, and the girl’s still got a little shake in her booty.

We were undefeated during the regular season, Roger says, tops in the county and one of the best in the state. Julian was the only one on our team who played offense and defense, wide receiver
and
safety. So we were in the county championship against Livingston, and we were winning by one point with a minute left in the game. It was a tough one for us. We’d already lost five players to injuries, all on defense, one guy starts throwing up and he was on the sideline, too. Then one of our guys, Clarke was his name, and he had all sorts of mental problems, he gets thrown out of the game for fighting. So, Livingston is on its own ten-yard line, down by a point with a minute left in the game. We keep them off the scoreboard and we win. Simple as that. Julian gathers everyone in the huddle and spells out the defense, tells the guys to stick to their assignments, no free-lancing. Sure enough, the first play of the drive, our cornerback gets hurt, and with all the other injuries, we don’t have any more defenders who can play.