"So why didn't you leave a message?"
"What's the point? You already have my number."
"But then I'd know you called, honey."
The girl couldn't act but she could read an audience. Just as I was asking myself why I came, she switched away to get me some ice water, shaking it hard enough to blow out the candles on the tables.
"I'm on my break soon," she said when she came back. "We can watch the show together."
"What show?" I asked her, barely controlling my enthusiasm.
"Oh, it's so good. It's like a play, or something. Just wait. That's why it's so full tonight."
I crunched a flaky croissant between my teeth, sipped the ice water. She left the little glass bottle on the table. I wondered if trendoid B-girls drank tap water when they hustled salad-bar customers for drinks.
Bonita came back. Sat down just as the lights dimmed. I could see a couple of men setting up the stage. The lights came up. Tall, big-shouldered man was facing the audience, a Doberman lying at his feet. Looked like one of those Pacific Northwest lumberjacks, long brown hair, ropy muscle all along his forearms. He had a power drill in his hands.
"I know how things work," he told the audience, mouth a thin line. "When they get broke, I fix them."
The big man had a straight-ahead stare. Empty and flat, not challenging, not backing off either. Talking like it was coming from inside his head.
He lived in the basement, he told the audience. Janitor. Lived in a lot of places, some of them not so nice. And he did some things in those places, not nice things. Now he just wants to live in his basement, fix whatever's broke. The crowd was quiet, listening to his story.
The dog didn't bark, he told us. Some freak had carved him up when he was a puppy, cut into his throat. "But he still works," the man said. His voice had life in it, but subdued, an undertone of Wesley's dead-robot sound.
There was a kid who lived in his building. Slow in the head, but a sweet boy. He was scared of monsters coming for him in the night, so the man made him a machine. Just a bunch of flashing lights on a box with a toggle switch. The kid liked the machine. Slept good for the first time.
The kid went to a special school. His teacher, Dr. English, told the mother that the machine was a placebo. A fake, but one the kid believed in.
One night, the kid started screaming and he didn't stop. An ambulance took him away. The man visited him in the hospital. The kid told him the machine wasn't any good anymore.
The man said he was sorry— he'd build him a better one.
The man said he knew how things worked. Did some checking. Seems this Dr. English used to work at another school up North. The school had been closed behind some sex abuse scandal. Some teachers indicted, Dr. English resigned. The man called the kid's school. Dr. English was out. Broke his arm in a ski accident. Funny, the lady on the phone said, Dr. English only came to their school from his old job because he hated the cold weather.
The boy lived on the second floor. There was a fire escape leading to the ground.
We watched, listened as the man put it all together. Watched as he painstakingly drilled holes through the center of two hard rubber balls, strung a loop of piano wire between them. Tested it by snapping it in his hands.
The man was getting dressed. Dark jacket, pair of gloves, a black watch cap on his head. When he pulled it down, it turned into a ski mask. "Tonight, when it gets dark, I'm going to show this Dr. English a machine that works."
The stage went dark. Somebody gasped in the audience. Then the applause started. Built to a peak. Stayed there.
The man came back out. The announcer took the mike, called his name. David Joe Wirth, A pretty girl at a front table stood up, waved a fist at him, her dark ponytail bouncing. He smiled. They left the front together.
I watched the crowd. Wondered how many of them shared the Secret.
47
Later, in Bonita's studio apartment on the fringe of the Village.
"My roommate will be back soon," she whispered, sliding the tube skirt down over her hips.
Later, at her kitchen table. "Did you get it?" she asked me.
"Get what?"
"The play. The one we saw tonight. I didn't, the first time he did it. See, the teacher at the school, he was molesting that little boy. And the boy's mother, she trusted him. That's why the machine didn't work…the one the janitor made for him…the monsters weren't all in his head like they thought."
"Yeah, I got it."
"Isn't it disgusting…what some people do?"
"Yeah."
"I wonder where she is, Tawny. I thought she'd be home by now."
"It's okay, I gotta take off myself."
"She's going away next weekend. You could spend the night…"
"If I don't have to work, I'll call you."
"You better," sitting in my lap now, squirming.
"Bonita, I feel pretty stupid about this, but…"
"What?"
"Well, I wanted to buy you a present…just to show you how much I care and all. A charm for your bracelet…I saw one I really liked…a little gold heart…"
"Un-huh…"
"Yeah, but by the time I got to the store, tonight, it was closed. So, I was wondering…I don't mean to be crude or anything…you know the crazy hours I work…Could I give you the money, let you pick it up for yourself?…I mean…"
"Oh, you're so sweet, honey. I don't mind at all."
I handed her five fifty-dollar bills, folded in half. She put them on the table without looking.
"You have to go right now?" she purred, squirming some more. Maybe she wasn't such a lousy actress.
48
I cut myself shaving the next morning. Took a plump leaf from the aloe plant on the windowsill, punctured it with my thumbnail, smeared it on, watching Pansy sneer at my clumsiness. Thinking of Blossom and her goddamned health advice.
Ate slowly. A rosette of michetta roll, hard crust, hollow inside. Only place you can get them in New York is this Milanese bakery in Brooklyn, on the Bushwick border. Real Italians. I'd been going there for years— never heard them say Mamma Mia once. I smeared cream cheese on each piece as I snapped it off. Drank my ice water, swallowed the beta carotene and vitamin C.
Blossom again.
If I ever went over her back fence one night, I wouldn't need cash. Or lies.
I snapped out of it, looked over to the couch. "Want to go for a ride, girl?"
Pansy's tail thumped happily.
Saturday morning, bright and clear. We took the Willis Avenue Bridge to the Hutch, headed north. All the way to the wilds of Dutchess County, almost a two-hour drive.
Teenage girl hitching by the side of the road. I thought of a maggot who picked up a girl like that in California. Raped her, chopped her hands off so there wouldn't be fingerprints, and dumped her in a culvert. The little girl lived, somehow. The maggot's already been paroled— it's not like he robbed a bank or anything. I read he got arrested again in Florida. For shoplifting. The paper said he stole a hat, but he'd paid for another item he had in a bag. A box of diapers.