19 Purchase Street (33 page)

From there he went up to Fifty-seventh to an imitation Chinese restaurant where some male gays hung out, heavy bookies and loan-sharks. There were five at the bar in similar tailored gabardine and Countess Mara neckties. Playing liars' poker. Each of the men had a stack of dollar bills in front of him. They were just using the singles, not to be flashy, actually were playing a hundred a hand. One of the bookies, the one whose territory took in the Plaza, the Sherry Netherland and the Pierre hotels, declared nine nines so often it got to be a joke, but the one time when he was called he had five of them and the others had four between them. That made the Chinese bartender laugh. The four losers tipped their drinks over on purpose.

A woman came in. Young but going brittle. She sat two stools down from Gainer, ordered a Chablis spritzer. With the briefest possible glance she decided Gainer was neither vice nor a trick, so she ignored him. From her shoes that were wrong and too cheap for her silk dress, he took her as a working girl. Hookers usually saved their better shoes for their own times.

It seemed as though he just opened his mouth and it came out—asking her did she know a woman named Vicky.

Maybe fifty Vickies, was her answer.

Then how about a Danielle Hansen?

The hooker rotated her silk-covered ass and the rest of her a half turn away from him.

From the Chinese hangout he took in windows down Fifth, cut west on Forty-seventh where all the diamonds were hidden for the night, and on to the upper part of the city pool that was Times Square.

He had not been around there on foot for years. There were changes, but the place had the same hustle to it. Anything for money. Standers off to the side looking to pull some out of the flow. Gainer felt a little insulted when a young black tried to sell him, of all people, a
hot
Cartier watch for two hundred that was a bad plated copy with no works in it. That old scam. Gainer checked his reflection in a store window, didn't think he looked from out of town.

About nine-thirty he was on West Forty-fourth, where the lights of all the legitimate theaters put a flattering glaze on even the beat-up taxis while it defeated every woman's make-up. Gainer's sense of unreality was suddenly heightened by it. Pretty soon it was intermission, and just like old times he chose a musical, drifted inside and old luck sat him in an empty on the center aisle. He half heard a couple of apparently happy and sincere songs and vaguely saw dancers be vigorous and enthusiastic one more time. Most distracting for him were the curtain calls, applauding until his hands hurt. Like old times.

Afterward, headed back across Times Square, he had an urge to get a tattoo. The name
Leslie
needled in the most elaborate scroll forever across his upper arm.

Instead he went home to her.

H
ER,
in a white cotton tie robe, snuggled into the corner of his couch. Without the television or any music on or a book or even a magazine near her. As though she'd been held there waiting exactly in that space.

She put her arms around him as far as they would go, hugged for a long while before kissing. Her mouth, as usual, spoke in many tongues. Often it conveyed reminders that she loved, and other times that she wanted. Now her lips were just slightly slack and her tongue not as softly plumped up as it could be.

“Hungry?” she asked.

“No. You?”

“I had a huge lunch at La Grenouille.”

No one goes to Grenouille alone, Gainer thought. He put toe to heel and removed his shoes, unbuttoned his shirt all the way down and pulled out the tail of it. He went into the bathroom, washed the city from his face, neck and hands, returned to her. “Anything good and rotten on TV tonight?”

“I didn't look.”

He picked up the television schedule saved from last Sunday's
Times
.

“Rodger's in town,” she said.

“So, hang out a flag,” Gainer mumbled.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“He wants me to go with him to Boston for a couple of days.”

Nothing from Gainer. He kept looking at the television schedule.

“I'll bet you didn't take any Remedy today, did you.”

“No.”

She dropped some into him. “How about your cayenne?”

“A couple of capsules,” he lied.

Ground cayenne pepper was her newest natural cure-all. Good for cleansing the system, the sinuses, blood pressure, heart problems, headaches, even stomach ulcers. Gainer doubted that anything so scorching could help an ulcer unless in some way it cauterized it. He didn't tell her that, just washed down the cayenne capsules she gave him whenever she was looking, and when she wasn't, palmed, dropped, tucked them anywhere he could that was out of sight. She was constantly finding them in his pockets and down between the cushions of the couch, but she was patient about it. The cayenne was supposed to counter his depression. She took hers straight, from a spoon, as though she relished it. Her eyes watered. Her tongue needed air. Which made Gainer suspect that whatever the benefits derived from cayenne might be they were related to doing penance.

“When do you have to go?” Gainer asked.

“Day after tomorrow. But I really don't
have
to.”

“How would Rodger take it if you didn't?”

“It sounded important to him. God knows why. All I do is sit around crossing and recrossing my legs, flashing for a bunch of wealthy old hypocrites.”

“Karen Akers is on later.”

“It doesn't seem to matter to you one way or the other.”

“What?”

“Actually, Rodger hasn't been very demanding of me, has he?”

“No.”

“Fair's fair, I suppose.”

“Yeah.”

“I couldn't have spent altogether more than a week with him, since you and I …”

“Eleven days, ten nights,” Gainer said. He rolled the television section into a tube, held it like a bludgeon.

Leslie was pleased that Gainer knew exactly. To keep from showing so with a grin she kissed him. “You know,” she said, “in the heart of my heart I'd much rather stay and be with you—even if it is only part-time these days.”

“I know.”

“You need me.”

“You need Rodger.”

That wasn't said resentfully by him, nor did she deny it.

“You're my love,” she said, and began massaging the back of his neck. With one hand and then with both, really going after his tension. And while doing that she said: “Sometimes I believe I could easily do without having a lot of money. After all, practically everyone does and I couldn't possibly be all that weak. We could have children. It's not too late for me to have at least one child. I wonder what it's like to have sex trying to make rather than prevent. Must be marvelously fulfilling, don't you think? Perhaps what I ought to do someday is to go to a shrink and get the monies treated out of me.”

“Some day,” Gainer agreed, though they were words that he'd heard from her numerous times, a sort of litany that seemed necessary for her.

It was time for Karen Akers.

Gainer took off his shirt and Leslie her robe and on the couch she snuggled in the cave of his arm while their favorite singer was on Channel 13. Red, straight-to-the-shoulders hair that was banged to make her pale, very pretty, well-boned face incongruously diminutive. Wearing black
smoking
and a white silk shirt open at the collar as though the atmosphere she created around her was too warm for a tie. A long white silk scarf hanging left and right from under her lapels. Key-lighted and singing it right at everyone:

…
Oh, and she never gives out
,

And she never gives in
,

She just changes her mind
…

What would it be like, Gainer wondered, to be able to give someone—no, not just someone—to be able to give Leslie a new Rolls Corniche for her birthday, dark brown, initialed, a phone in it and an eighteen karat key for her to start it with. To be responsible for all the softest available gloves that she ever put her hands into, and all her shoes. Every inch of silk that would ever touch her. Walk into Harry Winston's and say for her you wanted something better.

…
hot lips brushing
,

hot cheeks flushing
,

Strictly entre nous
…

Maybe, Gainer thought, it would be good for him to have her away for a while, give him a breather.

But he doubted it.

The Thursday morning Leslie wasn't there he slept later than he'd been sleeping recently. He woke up with a very hard hard-on and an awful emptiness. He didn't bother with breakfast, not even coffee, hastily washed and dressed, although there was no reason to hurry.

The safety deposit key was inside its own special envelope among collar stays and other such things in a porcelain box on his dresser next to the Tiffany framed photograph. As Gainer removed the key and put it to pocket, he caught on that image of the mother. He hadn't caught on her like that in quite a while. The old thought came back that it wasn't much of her.

Norma's safety deposit box was in Manufacturer's Trust, the big branch of that bank on Avenue of the Americas. Gainer had never been to it, although he had signed the signature card that gave him access, and Norma had reminded him every so often that in any case of emergency he should go and get into it.

There wasn't much there. Eight thousand dollars in hundreds with a rubber band around them. The deed to her United Nations Plaza apartment with Gainer named as owner. A moderately valuable art deco diamond and sapphire bracelet she'd bought at Parke-Bernet in response to an auction whim but had never worn because, as she said, it wasn't enough to be killed on the street for. And a single sheet of white paper folded twice with 3L-18R-6L-5R-3L typewritten on it.

Gainer took everything with him and went directly to Norma's apartment, which actually was his.

He had been putting off going there, but felt up to it today. He still wasn't sure how he would respond to coming into touch with so many things that had been in touch with her. The dresses and blouses and … he was relieved to find all that had been taken care of. By Leslie, no doubt. The closets and dresser drawers and cabinets were empty and freshly lined with paper. All of what had been in them was packed in cardboard cartons stacked against the wall in the entranceway. Prominently scotch-taped to one were the telephone numbers of the Goodwill and the Salvation Army.

One carton was open and set aside.

It contained Norma's various papers. Receipts, cancelled checks, records and such. Placed in on top of those was the purse Norma had taken to Zurich; left for him by Leslie to go through, he assumed.

He wandered around, sat in Norma's bedroom chair for a moment, looked into the refrigerator that was spotless and had only an open box of Arm and Hammer baking soda in it.

Yes, Norma, I love Leslie.

He went back to the bedroom, kneeled down and flipped back a corner of the rug and its rubber undercushion, used a quarter to pry up a square foot section of the parquet floor and uncovered a safe.

Norma had once shown it to him. Not its contents, only its location. The series of numbers and letters on the sheet of paper from the safety deposit box were, of course, the combination. He opened it right up and removed a sheaf of letters bound by a lavender grosgrain ribbon. He noticed the Zurich postmarks, the Germanic handwriting, the name of Alma on the return address. There were also about ten old postcards, those from the mother, that Norma had preserved despite so many changes of place. Nothing else in the safe except Gainer's and Norma's birth certificates and an envelope containing an engraved business card:

P
RIVATE BANK
W
ALDHAUSER

B
AHNHOFSTRASSE
12-24

8022 Z
URICH
, S
WITZERLAND

On the back side of the card in Norma's hand was written in ink the word
Necco
and beneath that SF-1259. Diagonally across the card in pencil, smudged and evidently written previously, was the notation: min. dep. 50.

It was, of course, the private bank in Zurich that Norma kept her money in. She had once pointedly told Gainer that she did. A numbered account—SF-1259, access code
Necco
, he now knew.

Gainer put the things he had gotten from the safe into the carton that held Norma's other papers and her handbag. He took the carton home with him and placed it by his chair at the window. He opened the window, let in the harbor water smell, the spoil of the city, blended with the fresh of the sea. He drank a Heineken and didn't answer the phone twice. His thought had been that someday soon he would tend to the carton of Norma's papers, but he was drawn to it now, sat and reached into it.

Her letters from Alma.

Gainer tugged the ribbon loose. Hesitated. These were meant for Norma's eyes only, he thought, and was about to retie the ribbon when something told him he should not feel like a meddler. Something outside himself, it seemed, invited him to look into the first envelope.

He read all the letters, slowly, taking in as much as he could, the feeling, flavor of each sentence. Read them chronologically, one side of a tender history from which he was able to gather reflections of the other, lost side. Many of the amorous passages were so unashamedly direct they came off as defiant. In the lines and between them was the desperateness of lovers apart, victimized by distance and convention. Frequently mentioned was the eventuality of Alma and Norma being together permanently in New York, and in that regard Gainer seemed to be the obstacle, would first have to be dealt with, informed. Alma was understanding about that but, naturally, impatient.

How simple it could have been, Gainer thought as he read the final “lovingly” of a closing and slipped that letter back into its envelope. Maybe if he hadn't tried to make all those matches with men for her. It pained him to think that ever, even for a moment, he had stood between Norma and happiness.