Sky, however, was different. As was her way, she took the initiative, whispering her plans for the night to Bradley Marsalis over their last supper. Not tonight, he said, and she shrugged. “Okay. I’ll call Stash or Club and see if they’re up for some fun.” Furious, insulted, but obliged to stick to the game plan, Brad said good night at her lobby door, and phoned her a few minutes later, saying, “Okay, you win, but not here. Meet me at the room.” (The room was the soundproofed five-star hotel suite booked year-round by the S&M Club for the use of its noisier members. Bradley Marsalis, it was revealed, had made the booking several days in advance, which went to prove premeditation.) Sky never reached the room. A large black sports utility vehicle pulled up beside her and a voice she recognized said, “Hi, princess. Climb aboard. Horse asked us to give you a little ride.”
Twenty, nineteen, nineteen, Solanka counted. Their combined age had been just three years more than his.
And what of Jack Rhinehart, who lived through a dozen wars only to die miserably in Tribeca, who wrote so well on much that mattered and so stylishly on much that didn’t, and whose last words were, deliberately or by necessity, both poignant and inane? Jack’s story was all out in the open, too. The theft of the shotgun by Horse Marsalis. Jack’s invitation to his S&NI Club induction ceremony. You made it, man. You’re in. Even when they arrived at the Spassky Grain Building, Rhinehart had no idea he was close to death. He was probably thinking of the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut, imagining masked girls naked on podiums, waiting for the sting of his sweet lash. Solanka was weeping now. He heard the killers insist that, as part of the ritual, Rhinehart needed to drink a brimming jug of Jack and Coke, the spoiled kids’ tipple, at high speed. He heard them order Jack to strip and reverse his underpants, in the name of club tradition. As if it were being tied around his own eyes, Solanka felt the blindfold they had used on Jack (and afterward removed). His tears soaked through the imagined silk. Okay, Jack, are you ready, this’ll blow you away.—What’s happening, guys, what’s the deal? Just open your mouth, Jack. Did you clean your teeth like we said? Good Job. Say aah, Jack. This’ll kill you, doll. How pathetically easy it had been to lure this good, weak man to his death. How willingly—giving five high, getting five low—he stepped into his own hearse and took his brief last ride. Lord, rock my soul, the singer cried. Good-bye, Jack, Solanka said silently to his friend. Go on home. I’ll be calling you.
Neela took Malik back to Bedford Street, opened a bottle of red wine, drew the curtains, lit many scented candles, and disrespectfully selected a CD of Bollywood song classics from the fifties and early sixties music from his forbidden past. This was an aspect of her profound emotional wisdom. In all things pertaining to feeling, Neela Mahendra knew what worked. Kabhi meri gali aaya kard. The teasingly romantic song lilted across the darkened room. Come up and see me sometime. They hadn’t spoken since they left the graveside. She drew him down onto a cushion-strewn rug and laid his head between her breasts, wordlessly reminding him of the continued existence of happiness, even in the midst of grief.
She spoke of her beauty as something a little separate from herself. It had simply “showed up.” It wasn’t the result of anything she’d done. She took no credit for it, was grateful for the gift she’d been given, took great care of it, but mostly thought of herself as a disembodied entity living behind the eyes of this extraordinary alien, her body: looking out through its large eyes, manipulating its long limbs, not quite able to believe her luck. Her impact on her surroundings—the fallen window cleaners sitting splay-legged on various sidewalks with buckets on their heads, the skidding cars, the danger to cleaver-wielding butchers when she stopped by for meat—was a phenomenon of whose results, for all her apparent unconcern, she was sharply, precisely aware. She could control “the effect” to some degree. “Doesn’t know how to switch it off,” Jack had said, and that was true, but she could play it down with the help of loose-fitting clothes (which she detested) and wide-brimmed hats (which, as a sun hater, she adored). More impressively, she could intensify the world’s response to her by making fine-tuning adjustments to her stride length, the tilt of her chin, her mouth, her voice. At maximum intensity she threatened to reduce entire precincts to disaster areas, and Solanka had to ask her to stop, not least because of the effect she was having on his own state of body and mind. She liked compliments, described herself as a “high-maintenance girl,” and at times was prepared to concede that this compartmentalization of herself into “form” and “content” was a useful fiction. Her description of her sexual being as “the other one” who periodically came out to hunt and would not be denied was a clever ruse, a shy person’s way of tricking herself into extroversion. It allowed her to reap the rewards of her exceptional erotic presence without being troubled by the paralyzing social awkwardness that had plagued her as a stammering young girl. Too astute to speak directly of the strong sense of right and wrong that quietly informed all her actions, she preferred to quote the cartoon sex bomb Jessica Rabbit. “I’m not bad,” she liked demurely to purr. “I’m just drawn that way.”
She held him close. The contrast with the Mila liaison was very striking. With Mila, Solanka had allowed himself to sink toward the sickly allure of the unmentionable, the unallowed, whereas when Neela wrapped herself around him the opposite was true, everything became mentionable and was mentioned, everything was allowable and allowed. This was no child-woman, and what he was discovering with her was the adult joy of unforbidden love. He had thought of his addiction to Mila as a weakness; this new bond felt like strength. Mila had accused him of optimism, and she was right. Neela was optimism’s justification. And, yes, he was grateful to Mila for finding the key to the doors of his imagination. But if Mila Milo had unlocked the floodgate, Neela Mahendra was the flood.
In Neela’s arms Solanka felt himself begin to change, felt the inner demons he feared so much growing weaker by the day, felt unpredictable rage give way to the miraculous predictability of this new love. Pack your bags, Furies, he thought, you no longer reside at this address. If he was right, and the origin of fury lay in life’s accumulating disappointments, then he had found the antidote that transformed the poison into its opposite. For furia could be ecstasy, too, and Neela’s love was the philosopher’s stone that made possible the transmuting alchemy. Rage grew out of despair: but Neela was hope fulfilled.
The door to his past remained closed, and she had the grace not to push against it just yet. Her need for a degree of personal and psychological privacy was considerable. After their initial night in a hotel room, she had insisted on using her own bed for their encounters, but made it clear that he wasn’t welcome to spend the night. Her sleep was filled with nightmares, yet she didn’t want the comfort of his presence. She preferred to battle her dream-figments alone and, at the end of each night’s wars, to wake up slowly, and definitely by herself. Having no alternative, Solanka accepted her terms, and began to grow accustomed to fighting off the waves of sleep that habitually rolled over him at lovemaking’s end. He told himself that it was better for him this way as well. He was, after all, suddenly a very busy man.