Unfortunately, I fell asleep. So that when Dr. Tulp did come in I greeted her first with a grunt then a disoriented shriek sparked by my perception, in the dim light, with the balloons bobbing in the middle distances and flowers and flower stalks strewn across the floor and various surfaces, that it was Mr. Kindt, not Dr. Tulp, who was moving, not through my room but instead some grotesque, aqueous grotto, toward me. I quickly recovered though, so that when she greeted me and said, what’s going on in here, Henry? I was in a position to smile and invite her to come over and take a seat by the bed. Her response to this was to flip on the lights, press the call button, then chew out the nurse for letting me, in so many words, trash the room.
This definitely didn’t look too good for my prospects, and I probably would have given up on them right then, but instead of instructing me and the nurse to start cleaning up, she told the nurse that would be all, waited until she had left the room, then turned the lights back off.
Do you want me to turn this dimmer up?
No, that’s all right, she said. In fact, it’s perfect in here.
Perfect, huh? I said.
Dr. Tulp batted at one of the balloons as she crossed the room to the chair. There was a balloon within my own reach so I batted at it. Our balloons drifted off in opposite directions for a few feet then went back to bobbing.
I once took part in a school rendition of The Tempest, said Dr. Tulp, as she sat down, leaned back a little in the chair, and crossed her long legs. We did a kind of flower thing like this for the cave. We also hung metallic streamers and blinking Christmas lights and pasted plastic jewels all over the place. When he saw it, the director said it looked like the interior of one of those Bangladeshi restaurants and wondered if we wanted to call for takeout.
I bet you played the wizard’s daughter.
No, I played the wizard’s slave.
Well, I would have liked to have seen that, Dr. Tulp. I said this with as much come-hither as my voice could muster. She didn’t, so I tried something else.
I was in some plays in school.
Oh?
Do you want to hear about them?
Dr. Tulp looked thoughtfully at me. I took this to mean I should go ahead. I started to tell her about playing the donkey in the Bremen Town Musicians, but she cut me off.
No?
She shook her head. I have to admit this flummoxed me a little. I pulled my legs up and wrapped my hands around them. She leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees.
Did you do this for me, Henry? she said. Her pale white hand did a pretty little back dive as she said this. I imagined it back-diving and back-stroking across the room and out the window. I imagined my own hand following it, out into the air high above the streets.
Well, yeah, I said.
It’s nice, she said. I mean it’s awful and you look awful, especially in that old suit, but it’s nice. The gesture, I mean. You may think I’m impervious to flattery but I’m not. In fact, I like it very much.
The hand that had been swimming reached out and touched a bit of sheet on the bed. A big smile lit my face.
Can I call you Nicola? I said.
I’ve scheduled you for surgery, she said.
What? What are you talking about? When? I said.
She leaned back, looked at her watch, looked at me, pressed the call button, and said, now.
TWENTY-THREE
The brief adventures of Henry and Tulip began in a little tattoo parlor on Orchard Street, where Tulip went to work on my chest, repeatedly jamming a needle into the strip of skin covering my heart.
What is it? I asked.
You can look later, she said. It’s just something simple. A souvenir. The irritation will go away soon.
She brought me over a glass of water and a couple of Tylenol and told me to take them. I did so, then wiped my mouth, then told her I’d had a dream about this place, only it had been transformed into a kind of operating room and we were all swimming around and she was cutting Mr. Kindt to pieces. She was smiling and cutting into him and talking about it and pretty soon we all came over and watched. By the end we were in a kind of semicircle around the operating slab while she cut and tugged.
Sound familiar? I said as I put my shirt back on.
How funny, she said.
Yes, I said. Did you bring Anthony here after your drinks?
Be nice, she said.
Then we went to Grand Central.
Grand Central Station was recently renovated. Renovation meaning that a lot of expensive shops have been added, and that you can really truly and profitably look up at the ceiling in the central concourse, which has reclaimed its brass and marble heritage, and learn a thing or two about the zodiac, because now it has been cleaned.
Scorpio, said Tulip, looking up at the ceiling, how about you?
I said what I was, and Tulip said, Mr. Kindt too, and I said, speaking of, any idea what was going on tonight?
What do you mean?
You know: the namesake of the namesake and the namesake is a corpse with an alias and the recent trend in his relationship with Cornelius and the thing about stepping forward.
Tulip shrugged.
I looked at her.
She shrugged again.
So I said, O.K., now what?
Now we go.
What do you mean, go?
We’re taking a little trip.
Right now?
Soon.
But first she wanted to show me something. We went down one of the two conjoining chandelier-lit slopes that mediate between the upper and lower levels of the station and stopped under a central walkway, near enough to the Oyster Bar that I thought that was where we were going. Instead, Tulip told me to go stand over in one of the corners of the intersection made by the two slopes and the passage leading down from the restaurant.
Turn around and put your face against the wall, she said.
Seriously? I said.
It’s clean. Or clean enough.
I leaned forward. The tile, where I touched it, was cool against my forehead, which was pleasant, as thinking about my dream and Mr. Kindt and Rembrandt et al had gotten me a little heated. I pressed my forehead harder against the tile, took a deep breath, then pulled away and looked over my shoulder. Tulip was more or less doing the same thing in the opposite corner, looking very good doing it. Then she was talking to me.
Henry, she said.
Her voice seemed to be coming out of the piece of tile in front of my face.
Nice, I said.
How’s your chest?
It hurts.
That’s normal.
What’s the tattoo?
Like I said, it’s a little keepsake.
Something to remember you by?
That’s right.
Are you going somewhere?
We’re going somewhere.
Where?
We’re leaving, getting out.
Out of New York?
You interested?
Very. I guess.
Good. But, Henry, promise me something.
Sure.
No more comments about Anthony, all right? That’s boring. You have to give it a rest. Mind your own business.
O.K., you’re right, sorry, I said.
Anyway, we are creepy, Henry. Anthony has a point.