Mr. Kindt liked to sit in the front row. He liked, in looking up at the screen, he said, to have to arch his neck, and he liked for his neck, as a reminder, he said, to have to hurt.
Reminder of what? I asked.
Of my namesake, he said.
Your namesake? I said.
But he didn’t answer.
Sometimes, as we watched, I would let my hand move behind Mr. Kindt’s pale white neck and I would allow my fingers to exert a certain amount of pressure that Mr. Kindt, his desire to have his neck hurt notwithstanding, loved.
It was this deep enjoyment of orchestrated experiences in which pain and pleasure lay tightly coiled that had prompted Mr. Kindt, I presumed, to take out a membership at the Eleventh Street Russian baths, a venerable mobster-frequented establishment where what I took to be blast furnaces filled with boiling, beet-red lumps of flesh coexisted with sinister massage cabinets and a deep icy pool. Because of a recent change in management policy, a coeducational sweat-extruding experience was available most days, meaning both Tulip and I could accompany Mr. Kindt and partake with him of his biweekly round of steams and saunas and lashings with oak leaves. It was Mr. Kindt’s rule, one that Tulip and I were both happy to comply with, that if we went with him we did all of it. So it was that, to my surprising delight, I had a huge guy sit on my back, soap me up, whack me with oak branches, and time and again pour near-frozen water on me. Also, of course, I got to witness Tulip, who was built even more extraordinarily than I have helped you to imagine, in a wickedly petite gold-and-green bikini, receiving the same. It was also pleasurable, though differently, less dramatically, to watch Mr. Kindt — in part for the blissful smile that would spread over his mottled features as he was being smushed and swatted, in part for the gleam, through the dim, burning air, of his little blue eyes. So it was, anyway, that after changing into bathing suits, over which, at the start of each session, we draped a sort of house-issue smock, we went down into the steamy gloom of the baths and moved together from one area to the next, a progression that always ended with a collective shriek in the pool of ice water and a race, well, a race between me and Tulip, back upstairs.
Sometimes we went out to eat. When Mr. Kindt wasn’t at home he liked variety in his dinners, which meant we split time between North African, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian. Mr. Kindt’s preferred Indian establishment was a little spot on the corner of First and Sixth. The tiny dining room was festooned to the point of feeling overrun with garlands of flashing red lights that were reflected, in ever-receding depths, by panels of glossy plastic and hand-cut disks of wrinkled foil. Mr. Kindt, who was well liked by the staff for his generous tips, loved the minuscule tables and the jostling of the waiters and the 3-D wallpaper and the accelerant effect all this had on the complex combinations of tastes and smells. “Cardamom diffused throughout a blend of lamb and cream and good Bengal curry is magnificent, but cardamom diffused throughout a blend of lamb and cream and good Bengal curry under blinking Christmas lights is sublime” being the sort of remark he was apt to offer us or the waiter or even fellow diners.
Mind your fucking business, the larger and more aggressively postured of a pair of young men sitting at a table near us said one evening after Mr. Kindt had directed a like observation in their direction.
Pardon me, gentlemen, but you are my business, Mr. Kindt said.
Both young men slowly turned their heads toward Mr. Kindt.
Then both young men flinched.
Oh …, the smaller of the two said.
Not to worry, Mr. Kindt said. The two of you will leave now and when you leave I will put money on your table to pay for your abrogated dinner. How was your abrogated dinner? I hope that you had time to enjoy one or two bites before you addressed yourselves so unpleasantly, so gratuitously, to me.
We should have known better, the larger one said.
Yes, you should have known better, so good-night, boys. Good-night, boys, and don’t fucking come back, Mr. Kindt said.
When the two of them had left, Mr. Kindt reached over and put some money on their table. He also took a piece of their untouched chicken tikka and put it on Tulip’s plate.
Everywhere we went, Mr. Kindt paid. He always had a tremendous amount of cash with him and he was not averse to slipping a couple of twenties into my pocket at the end of an evening before I went home. After a while, I asked Tulip about this, and if she thought Mr. Kindt was expecting a little something in return.
He’s just generous, she said.
Right, I said.
She smiled.
Why don’t you ask him what he wants? I don’t know.
I did. It was evening, and he had just been showing me something about the lights in Tompkins Square Park from his window, how “lovely and scattered” they were, especially through the black netting, like some kind of “sparkling sea creature,” or maybe, I said to myself, not really getting what he was trying to show me, like a sparkling sea creature that has been blown to bits. We were still standing there, gazing, when I said, Mr. Kindt, is there anything you would like me to do for you?
He looked up at me.
How do you mean, Henry?
I mean you’ve been very generous.
Have you been enjoying yourself?
Sure. Yes — absolutely.
Well then that’s perfect.
So there’s nothing I can do for you?
You can get Tulip off my bed and tell her it’s time to eat.
I looked at Mr. Kindt.
I meant I could help you, if you needed it, with your business engagements, or with, you know, anything you want.
Mr. Kindt took my arm. He held it for a moment in one of his cold little hands then let go and gave it a few pats.
Don’t worry about my business affairs, they are quite well looked after, such as they are at this late stage in my career, my boy, he said. As far as anything else goes, I am an old man and like to talk and I do not like to talk alone. Tulip has been a wonderful companion to me, but it occurred to both of us that another friend might be even more wonderful, and now we are fortunate to have you. It is certainly true that, on occasion, friends do things for each other, but for now I’m not sure what it is exactly besides rousing that lovely wisp of a Tulip you can do.
I looked at him.
He looked at me.
All right, sure, I said.
EIGHT
The early, the innocent, the unambiguous days and nights in the hospital gave way to an indeterminate period during which I thought I had received my discharge orders and returned to the world of cars and bricks and clogged gutters — where things went well then badly then worse — but then I was back or had never left, I had never left, there I was, and in the deep and dark hours of the night I woke from the dream of wind and voices and met an old man.
May I call you Henry? he said.
Yes, of course, I said.
My name is Aris Kindt.
I saw you today when they were looking at your throat are you sick they tell me I’m not well but I’m better what’s wrong with you? I said.
I know, he said.
What do you mean, you know?
His upper lip curled a little. He shrugged.
Well, Mr. Kindt, may I call you Mr. Kindt, then you also know that I’m a thief — that I’m thieving in this establishment, that I’m making a fucking killing. And speaking of fucking, I wouldn’t mind, that is, with my doctor, she’s a peach, a pale yellow one with funny ears, do you know her?