“Meg’s been telling tales out of school.”
“Is it true?” she asked.
“I’m surprised you didn’t already know. I thought Peter would have told you.”
“Peter and I don’t really communicate much. We just grumble at one another in passing. Even if we did speak in full sentences, I doubt he would have wanted to tell me anything positive about you. It is positive, isn’t it?” she hedged.
“It’s good news, yes, but I don’t think you’d recognize my writing. I don’t feel enough like a god anymore to snicker down my sleeve at my characters. You spend seven years in Brixton and you see what real hopelessness is like. Living on the edge isn’t having to move into a Tribeca condo because you were forced to sell your place in Amagansett. I couldn’t write a book about Wall Street now. I wouldn’t want to.”
“You sound different.”
“I’m old, Ames,” I said, before I could catch myself using my pet name for her.
“No one’s called me that in a very long time, Ken.” Then she stopped and there was silence, but something in her breathing told me she wasn’t finished. “Come see me.”
“I–I can’t. I’m leaving first thing and-”
“No, Ken, tonight. Right now.”
This wasn’t what I had envisioned. Of course, I had thought of Amy constantly since I agreed to come up to New York. And I’d fantasized about us bumping shoulders on the street or us hailing the same cab, but not this. If I was going to see her again, I wanted it to be when the book was out and I had something tangible to prove all the pain I’d caused her, and myself, had come to something worthwhile.
“I’m beat, Ames. I don’t have it in me now. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to go anywhere except to the elevator.”
“What?”
“I’m in the lobby.”
Twenty-Six
Of course, in my fantasies Amy hadn’t aged a day: her hair was black and cut in a simple bob, her face unlined, her sad mouth smiling only at the corners. Her gold-flecked green eyes, the most God-awful sexy eyes on earth, would glow in low light. Her breasts, always so firm and assertive, would be untouched by gravity and time. And the rest of her body, paradoxically lean and lush, would fit together with mine, as it always had even at our worst moments. Of course there would be speckles or smudges of paint on her jeans, T-shirt, and running shoes, on her hands, cheeks, and forehead.
The lighting in the Algonquin lobby is famously soft. Still, when she stood up from the sofa and edged around the marble coffee table, Amy’s eyes did not glow green. Her hair was indeed black, but long and lined with threads of gray, and any hints of happiness in her smile had been buried deeper than Brixton coal. Gravity had been kind to her body, but she was too thin. It didn’t suit her. She had abandoned her uniform of T-shirt, ripped black jeans, and duct-taped running shoes for a proper woman-of-means wardrobe: a tasteful white cashmere sweater, navy blue flannel slacks, and gray heels. Paint? Not a drop on her. Yet, when she came up to me, softly stroked my cheek with the back of her hand, and kissed me lightly on the lips, none of the rest of it mattered.
When I fell out of the moment, I noticed that I was kissing Amy and not lightly. I noticed too that she was kissing back. It was a stupid thing for both of us to do, really stupid. Then again, we had been stupid in love with each other. It was always like that between us: we knew better, but couldn’t help ourselves. It wasn’t like we’d had some blissful period together at the start before it all went south. We were trouble for each other from day one. Yet no matter what damage we inflicted on each other or, worse, on ourselves, we were completely and utterly stupid for each other. Even now, ten years totally removed from each other’s lives, it was still there. That’s why it had taken us so long to fall apart in the first place.
I grabbed her biceps and pushed her away. Not because I could feel everyone in the lobby watching us. Everyone but the cat. The cat couldn’t give a fuck and neither did I. I pushed her away because this wasn’t the way I wanted it to happen. I’d wanted her respect, not this. Falling into bed for us would have been as easy as falling down and if we were going to fall, I didn’t want it to be about how unhappy she was with Peter Moreland.
“I’m sorry, Amy. I can’t do this,” I said, looping a strand of her hair behind her ear.
I moved her gently aside and made for the lobby door. I needed air, more air than was in the hotel lobby or maybe in all of Manhattan. Thank goodness she didn’t follow me out. I couldn’t have withstood a scene out there on the street. That was such a part of the dance of Amy and the Kipster. I so didn’t want that to be part of my life again. Bent over, taking deep, slow breaths, I cursed Meg for doing this to me. And knowing Amy could not stay inside the lobby forever, I took my hands off my knees and walked east along 44th towards 5th Avenue.
As I walked, I thought I heard a familiar sound. It was the sound of a truck’s ignition. Jim’struck! Jim’s truck sounded like that. I was so fucked up that I actually started looking for his old F-150. I didn’t find it, of course. Hearing it was a product of wishful thinking and a longing to be rescued. I needed more than just fresh air. I ran across 44th, headed back west and ducked into the garage where the Porsche was parked. From the entrance of the garage, I watched the front of the hotel. When Amy finally left, I went back up to my room and retrieved the.38.
There had been a time when I knew exactly where to find trouble and what kind of trouble I would find when I got there. But the trouble I had in mind would have a gun in its hand, a gun pointed at me, and there would be a gun in my hand too. There was a gun in my hand, a.38 with one bullet in the chamber. Then I put it away.
Having exhausted all the old familiar places in Manhattan, I drove the Kipster’s Porsche to some of his former Brooklyn drug haunts. Brooklyn was where I went when I was desperate for blow, when I didn’t give a shit about how many times the coke had been stepped on. What I discovered was that in my absence more than just the Liars Pub had been turned into a theme park. The whole of New York City, it seemed, had been scrubbed clean and neutered, turned into a silly Las Vegas hotel-like version of itself. Even Red Hook, once the toughest neighborhood in all of New York, had gotten its ass wiped and been forced to take a long soapy shower. I mean, it had an IKEA and cutesy little tapas bars.
Good thing about Brooklyn is that it’s big and I knew there couldn’t have been enough soap and disinfectant to scrub behind the ears of all its neighborhoods. About twenty minutes or so after I’d left Red Hook, I was driving up Linden Boulevard at a crawl. I pulled off Linden onto a side street and into the mostly vacant parking lot of a strip mall. It was the time of morning when it was either very early or very late, the time when too much alcohol, frayed nerves, and perceived slights led to blood. And the only business still open in the strip was what looked to be a third-rate topless joint. The lurid red neon sign flashed Black Honey. If I couldn’t find trouble in East Flatbush at that time of the morning in front of a topless bar named Black Honey, I wasn’t going to find it anywhere. Forget Red Hook. Much easier, I thought, to pick a gunfight at a topless bar than a tapas bar.
With the motor still running, I sat on the front fender of the Porsche. The.38 was in my waistband and tucked behind the bottom of my famous brown corduroy blazer. I could hear the muffled thumping of the drum machines through the door and walls of Black Honey. No one entered or left, but it was only a matter of time till somebody came outside to smoke a cigarette or a joint or tried to cop some drugs to keep them awake till the sun rose up. I didn’t have long to wait.
Three hard-looking black men came staggering out the front door of the club. They were all in their early thirties. At first, they didn’t notice me at all. They were just laughing a little too loudly, fist-pounding, jostling each other around: the same shit all half-in-the-bag guys do outside topless bars. Then one of the men noticed me noticing them.