Wherever There Is Light (25 page)

The possibility of Kendall's discovering that he owned the building had occurred to him when he bought it from Siano, but he believed his motives were pure and assumed if it came up, all he'd have to do is confess. “You pay market-rate rent. What's the problem?”

“My boyfriend riding to the rescue.”

“You hated South Orange. I didn't want you to be unhappy.”

“I didn't hate South Orange. I wanted to live in Greenwich Village. And I wanted to find an apartment by myself.”

“You'd still be looking.”

“I'll never know, will I?”

“I was trying to help you,” he said, his voice breaking.

“You were trying to own me.”

“Own you? I was afr—”

“Afraid? Afraid I'd leave? Buying this place was like buying me.”

“That's bull—”

“You can't own me. Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Outlawed slavery.”

“Renting you an apartment is slavery?”

Kendall began patting the pockets of her flannel shirt in search of her cigarettes.

“On the sofa,” Julian said.

Kendall looked up at him. The outrage was gone. Her eyes glistened with tears.

“Why, Julian?”

“Because . . . because I always wished somebody would help me. My mother gave me a ticket for a boat—that was to make things easier for her. Abe gave me a job—that was to make money for him. I did for you what nobody did for me.”

“I trusted you, Julian. You knew what I wanted. Why'd you ignore it?”

The tears streaking her face made him feel both helpless and enraged. Julian knew the smart move would've been to apologize. Except he wasn't sorry. On top of that, he resented Kendall's bohemian crap and that she was oblivious to the fact that he didn't share her romantic vision of the hard life. His life had been hard enough.

Julian, regretting each word as it came out of his mouth, said, “Maybe because I didn't grow up with a chauffeur and servants. Because no department store owner ever opened early for me. Because I don't think dead-broke drunks at Chumley's are chic.”

Poets may rhapsodize about moments that last forever, but this moment couldn't end too soon for Julian. Kendall was glaring at him with loathing, and Julian was thinking that he'd never hold her again.

“Kendall,” he said.

And she slapped him across the face. “Get out.”

His cheek on fire, Julian left her key on the refectory table, retrieved his hat from the floor and put it on, picked up his suitcases, and went out.

The last time Julian cried, he was fifteen years old and crossing the Atlantic on a ship from Hamburg to New York. He was standing on deck in a moonless night with the vast, dark ocean beyond the rail, and wondering how he would survive. His loneliness had enveloped him then, a sense that he was condemned to live without connections, and he'd wept until he was exhausted enough to go below and sleep without dreams.

Now, as Julian sat in his Packard with the defroster blowing and a tightness in his chest, he recalled that rolling ship and looked through the snowmelt on the windshield. A couple walking away from his car toward Sixth Avenue paused in a pool of moonlight and turned to speak to each other, their words spirals of smoke in the ice-clear air. The girl, her hair flowing out from under a knitted slouch hat, stood on her tiptoes to kiss a boy in a duffel coat. That tearful night on the ship Julian had promised himself that he'd never cry again. For thirteen years he'd kept his promise, though watching this moonlit sculpture of lovers ratcheted up the pressure in his chest. Their kiss ended, and as they disappeared around the bend in Minetta Street, Julian rested his forehead on the steering wheel, wrapping his arms around his body, and began to weep like a lonely teenager sailing to an unknown land.

A
glacial wind sliced through the fifty-five thousand football fans in the Polo Grounds and challenged the warming capabilities of the Irish whiskey-spiked coffee that Eddie, Julian, and Donovan were drinking from paper cups. The game was meaningless: the Giants had already won their division, but whenever New York and Brooklyn squared off, the faithful packed the stadium. Donovan hadn't said much to Julian other than asking him if he'd given their conversation any thought.

“Some,” Julian had replied, which was true, though most of his thinking since Thursday had been about patching up things with Kendall. He assumed that she would call, but by Friday evening he hadn't heard from her, and all through Saturday, while he did paperwork at his office and ate dinner with Fiona and Eddie at the Tavern, it required every ounce of his willpower not to pick up the phone.

Julian was gazing at the field without following the game when an announcement crackled over the public-address system: “Attention, please. Here is an urgent message: will Colonel William J. Donovan call operator nineteen in Washington.”

Donovan went to find a pay phone and returned looking like a guy with terminal heartburn. “Can you give me a lift to LaGuardia?” he asked.

Eddie answered, “I'd drive ya to California to get out of this wind.”

Donovan didn't say anything until he was in the back seat of Eddie's Chrysler.

“Japs bombed us in Pearl Harbor. They beat the shit out of our ships. We lost a lot of boys.”

Julian said, “The Germans in on it?”

“Won't know till I get to the White House. Hitler and Mussolini signed that Tripartite Pact with the Japs, so the Germans and Italians will jump in on their side.” Donovan tapped Eddie on the shoulder. “O'Rourke, what would you wanna do in a war?”

“Stay home.”

Julian and Donovan chuckled.

“That won't cut it,” Donovan said.

Julian had told Eddie about his lunch with Donovan at 21. Eddie said, “Can't be a spy, Wild Bill. I got red hair and I'm too good-lookin'. Nobody ever forgets my face.”

“You got other skills?”

“I can drive drunk.”

Julian fiddled with the radio. CBS had more details. The Japs had also bombed American bases in the Philippines, though Hawaii had taken the worst of it.

“Thanks for the lift, boys,” Donovan said at the airport. “Be in touch, Julian. I'll lay two to one we'll be fighting Nazis by the end of the week.”

As Eddie drove onto the Grand Central Parkway, he said, “You gonna go to work for Wild Bill?”

“Think so. Wanna come along?”

“Nah. I'll take my chances with the draft. The Army gives ya medals for shooting SOBs instead of frying ya in the chair. That ain't so bad.”

Eddie was trying to amuse him. Julian wasn't listening. He said, “You mind going through the Midtown Tunnel and hanging a left on Seventh?”

“Yeah, I do. You wanna talk to Kendall—use the phone. Pretend you're normal.”

“You're an expert in normal?”

“Not till I met you.”

Eddie was only half kidding and, against his better judgment, did as Julian requested. On the avenue, the sidewalks were nearly deserted, as if everyone, save for a few seedy celebrants anesthetized by rotgut, was scared that the Japs were about to blow up the city.

Minetta Street was empty, and no one answered Kendall's door. Julian could've picked the locks with a penknife, but if Kendall came home and nabbed him in her place, that would be it. Out of desperation, Julian turned the doorknob. It wasn't locked. He felt guilty going in and told himself, as his hand flicked up the wall switch for the chandelier, that he was just making sure Kendall was safe.

“Kendall,” he said, and his voice sounded as hollow as he felt.

The furniture was gone, and there were no pictures on the walls. He inspected the kitchen. The cabinets were bare. He checked the towel rack and medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Nothing. Then the darkroom. Empty. The silhouette of the bed was imprinted in the dust on the pine floor. In the closet, a wooden hanger from Bamberger's was on the metal rod. The hanger was Julian's. Kendall must have brought it with her from South Orange. Julian didn't take the hanger. It was the sole piece of evidence that he had once belonged here.

Julian got into the Chrysler. Eddie noticed that his eyes were wet.

“She's gone,” Julian said.

“Gone? Where to?”

“Don't know. Ciccolini wasn't in. She couldn't rent anything in the Village so quick. I'm guessing she's in Harlem. You hear from Otis?”

“A letter ten days ago. He won't be in from Lovewood for another week.”

“There's that reporter from the exhibit, Simon Foxe. Kendall was friendly with him.”

“Friendly? Or, ya saying, friendly?”

“I'll let you know.”

In the morning, Julian phoned Ciccolini. Kendall had paid her rent but didn't leave a forwarding address. Julian told him to tear up the check. Then he dialed the operator and asked her to connect him to the Sapir Gallery. An answering service said that Mr. Sapir was out of town until Thursday. Julian considered his options with the radio on and FDR requesting that Congress declare war on Japan. The war felt less real to him than his heartache. Julian placed a call to the
Pittsburgh Courier
bureau in Manhattan and asked for Simon Foxe. He wasn't in.

On Tuesday, Julian went into New York by himself and asked a waiter at Caffe Reggio if Kendall had been around. No dice. Julian searched Washington Square, imagining that he saw her standing by the Garibaldi statue in a wash of diamond-blue light. At Chumley's, Julian duked the bartender a fiver and asked him if he'd seen Kendall. He hadn't. Wednesday was worse. Julian spoke to Donovan, then tried to pack, but his mind was crowded with movies of Kendall and Simon. None of them were helpful except as a motivation for Julian to surpass his previous martini record, so that when he woke up on Thursday, he felt as if Ted Williams and Hank Greenburg had been beating him over the head with their bats.

After three aspirin, a bottle of ginger ale, and a hot shower, Julian called the gallery. When Léo got on the line, he said, “Mr. Sapir, I moved into an apartment that Kendall Wakefield used to live in. There's a box of her stuff, and the landlord says I should give ya a jingle to get an address for her.”

“Feel free to send it here. I'm certain Kendall will reimburse you for the postage.”

“Nah, I know she's up in Harlem. I'll drop it off. All I need is an address.”

Léo said, “Very thoughtful of you. She's at the Hotel Theresa. I believe it's on a Hundred and Twenty-Fourth Street.”

“Thanks.”

Julian phoned Eddie.

“I need a ride,” he said.

“Why am I doing this?”

“So I don't shoot anybody. Including myself.”

In the lobby of the hotel, none of the Negro men and women on the couches and chairs around the radio turned when Julian and Eddie crossed the green, brown, and gold Oriental rug to the front desk. The elderly clerk, with a crown of cottony hair and the dark, craggy face of a bored tribal chieftain, was leaning over the desk listening to the news. That morning, Germany and Italy had declared war on the United States and Congress was about to return the favor.

“Ain't that somethin'?” the clerk said. “All these colored boys be rushin' to die for Uncle Sammy when most of 'em can't get theyselves a sandwich at a lunch counter.”

“That's something,” Julian said, and slid a twenty to the clerk. “Kendall Wakefield in?”

“That pretty young thing over to the Crossroad with half a Harlem.”

“What's going on?” Julian asked.

“The owners, Mama and Papa B, they youngest boy went down with the
Arizona
at Pearl, and folks be keepin' them company.”

“Jesus,” Eddie said.

“Thass right, young fella. And a lot more be goin' to Jesus before this mess be over.”