It’s a Terrence Propp.
11
Sylvia can remember, with an almost visceral, at times uncomfortable clarity, this late-fall afternoon, a Friday and a day just like today when she was walking home from Ste. Jeanne d’Arc and all the old men down Duffault Ave were out in the gutters with their ancient wooden rakes pushing leaves into piles and lighting them on fire, back when it was legal, and the wind was picking up and just engulfing her in the smell of leaf-smoke. And it was after three o’clock and there was about an hour of sunlight left to the day. The sky was already this same slate color, this exact ghostly feel to it, low clouds but a kind of brittle clarity to the air. And after Elsie Beckmann turned off at Jannings Hill, Sylvia was walking alone and she knows, she’s certain, she was daydreaming, completely into some imagined world, though she no longer had any remembrance of what it was. She does remember being brought back to Duffault Ave, though, by the awful weight of her schoolbooks and by the coating of sweat that had broken out under her uniform. She can remember thinking how strange it was, perspiring in the middle of this October wind.
By the time she made it up the driveway to her back door, all her strength was gone and she sat down on the back stoop and just put her head down on her knees. She has no idea how long she sat there before her mother lifted her and carried her up the rear stairway to the apartment and put her on the couch.
For the next forty-eight hours, Sylvia sweated out the worst flu and fever of her life to date. She mumbled and cried every time the cold washcloth on her forehead was changed. Sylvia has no recollection of those nightmares. She doesn’t even have much of a picture of her recovery beyond eating Campbell’s chicken noodle soup off a tray in bed, while watching some old forties movies on the little black and white TV that Ma propped up on the dresser. Sylvia was well again by Monday and back at school on Tuesday.
And now, for whatever reason, that Friday afternoon, walking home from school, after the first symptoms of fever came over her but before she collapsed on the back stairs, those moments comprise the most haunting memories of her childhood. She has no idea why, but the feeling of light-headedness, the smell of the leaves being burned, the unnatural clarity of the darkening sky, the warmth building up under her arms, the heaviness of her feet inside her shoes — all of these sensations continue to be as real and strong to her as the day they first happened.
And it’s how she feels now, at this exact moment, walking down Verlin Avenue, as if locked in slow motion in comparison to the people passing by. She’s a block from the Skin Palace. When she came down to the lobby, another bouncer directed her down a long, dim corridor toward a red exit sign and she emerged out the rear of the building. When the sun and air hit her, she lurched into that same light-headed, slowed-down state as that Friday afternoon fifteen years ago.
It’s not exactly an unpleasant feeling, though there’s almost a latent fear that sickness will come. It’s more this otherworldy pocket, this dreamy, growing warmth that’s threatening to go out of control from the start. There’s a tightness to the joints, but at the same time an almost loose feeling to the skin, to the whole head. She knows that she needs to be hailing a taxi or calling Perry. But it’s as if her knowledge of this has little or no connection with her inability to make her body comply, as if the center of her intellect has shifted and is now located in her legs and feet. They’re pulling her along Verlin, keeping her in motion, though she doesn’t know where it is she’s heading. This isn’t the way out of the Canal Zone. It isn’t the way back to the apartment.
She walks another half-block. The feeling seems to begin to dissipate one second and reassert itself the next. She suddenly wonders if maybe she was hurt worse than she thought in the skirmish. Maybe she’s got a slight concussion. She forces herself to stop walking and leans up against a lightpost. She takes some deep breaths and closes her eyes. She stands completely still for a few minutes and starts to feel better, then puts her hand up to her cheeks and forehead and they feel normal to her. It’s probably just the shock of the past hour, she decides.
She stands up from the lightpost, gets her balance, and glances across the street to see Der Geheime Garten. The café Mr. Quevedo mentioned. The place where she can find the story of Terrence Propp.
And then she’s moving across the street and in the front door. The café is narrow but deep. The ceilings are ridiculously low as if the restaurant had been contract-built for the sole enjoyment of dwarfs. The lighting is dim and the deep red walls don’t help. Against the far wall is a short marble bar backed by a mirror that has naked, Reubenslike women painted on it. There are maybe a dozen or so tables, only one of which is currently occupied, by a gangly, pale, anemic-looking boy with large ears that wing out from his head. He doesn’t seem to notice her standing in the entryway. There’s a fat paperback titled Zoopraxography spread open on his table, but he’s engrossed in a spiral notebook, chewing on a blue pencil.
A small man with jet black, slicked-back hair and what looks like a greasepaint mustache, just this tiny dark line above his lip, comes out of a back room carrying a tray, sees Sylvia, smiles and moves toward her. He’s dressed in a suede-looking dinner jacket that matches the color of the walls. He’s wearing a silver earring in the shape of an American Beauty rose.
“A table?” he asks and she nods.
He looks back over his shoulder at the almost-empty room and says, “And will there be anyone joining you?”
She doesn’t like the remark, though she thinks it was fairly innocent. And she’s hoping the guy can lead her to Rory Gaston. So she says, “No thank you,” and he grabs a single menu from the top of the maître d’s station and says, “This way, please.”
He seats her in a rear corner of the place. He places the menu over a chipped-up china setting, a kind of antique ink-blue plate trimmed with tea roses around the edge.
“Could I get you something to drink while you study the selections?” he asks.
She’s about to shake him off when her mouth opens and she hears herself order a Pernod.
“Very good,” he says, his spirits seemingly brightened by her choice, and he marches off to the bar.
Sylvia sits still for a long minute and collects herself. She runs her hands through her hair a few times. She looks around the walls for a pay phone to call Perry but doesn’t see one. And then she realizes that she doesn’t want to call Perry. Because she knows he’ll be crazy when he hears about what’s happened. It would be an appropriate reaction. She leaves the house. She walks down to the border of the worst part of the city. She sits down and drinks tea in an erotic bookstore with an elderly, blind Latino that she’d never laid eyes on before. She walks into the middle of a goddamn riot and wrestles with a cop, for God sake. She loses a camera. And she waits out the balance of the storm in the most beautiful pornographic movie theatre in America watching scenes from Glutton For Ravishment II with the director and starlet. How would she end that phone call—Be home soon, Perry. Just having a cocktail in the Whorehouse Café …
The waiter returns with the drink and puts it down on the table. “Does anything appeal to you?” he asks and when he sees her confusion he eye-motions to the menu.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “I haven’t had a chance to look.”
He nods and goes to turn away and she says, “Hold on,” and picks up the menu, thinking maybe she should put something in her stomach, maybe it would settle her down and help her think.