A Ship Made of Paper (47 page)

Lorraine notices an empty chair at a nearby table, but as soon as she makes a move to retrieve it the doors to the Bistro fly open and three men, or boys, charge in, one of them holding a handgun and the other two carrying rifles. Their faces are covered by rubber Halloween masks: Frankenstein, Dracula, and Mickey Mouse. Frankenstein, who has the handgun, leaps onto the little stage behind the bar and holds a gun to the singer’s head. Dracula and Mickey Mouse push their way into the room, waving their rifles back and forth, shouting, “On the floor, on the floor, get your sorry asses on the motherfucking floor.” And even though the Bistro’s customers are plunged into a collective terror, it takes several long moments for any of them to comply.

Daniel and his party lie upon the floor. He and Kate both lie facedown, chins resting on left forearms to keep mouth and nose off the boozy grime, and their right arms reaching toward each other, until their fingers touch.

“Don’t worry,” Daniel whispers.

Kate doesn’t make a sound, but she mimes the word “fuck.”

What was once a raucous crowd of nightlife revelers is now fifty-eight extremely quiet men and women, all of them on the sticky floor, except for Doris, who remains standing behind the bar. Her boyfriend is wide-eyed, his face drained of color, he is a corpse with a guitar. He remains in his folding chair, with a gun to his head, held by a robber disguised as

[ 323 ]

Frankenstein. Sometime during the transition of this being a room full of drinkers to this being a room full of people lying flat on the ground, someone has told Doris to open up the cash register and now she is handing its contents to Frankenstein, who looks weirdly attenuated and graceful, reaching toward her to receive his bounty while keeping his gun pressed against her boyfriend’s temple.When he has the money, Dracula comes over and takes it from him, and drops it in a mesh laundry bag, at which point Frankenstein yanks the wires of the bar phone out of the wall. He grabs the singer by the back of the shirt, lifts him out of the chair.

Mickey and Dracula go from person to person, collecting cash, credit cards, cell phones, keys, watches, and jewelry. Mickey Mouse stands over them, crouching, to collect their worldly goods; Daniel, despite having told himself to do nothing to antagonize him, cannot resist the impulse to peer through the eyeholes in the masks, to somehow make contact with the human eyes within: shiny brown eyes, young, arrogant, glittering with energy. He drops his wallet and forty dollars in cash into the laundry bag, which tops it off. Mickey pulls the drawstring, ties it in a knot, and then slides the unshapely sack across the floor, toward the bar, where Frankenstein picks it up. Dracula has another laundry bag under his shirt, he pulls it out and holds it open in front of Kate. She is slow to empty her purse into it, and he prods her with the greasy barrel of his rifle—it stencils a little broken O on her skin, and she utters a sound of distress, more from surprise than anything else.

“All right,” Daniel says, in a level, almost paternal voice. “We’re all going to be real, real careful here. Okay?” He doesn’t want to make a reassuring gesture with his hand, or any gesture, but he slightly widens his eyes, as if to say,
Listen to me, I know what you’re going through.

“Fuck you,” Dracula replies, his voice muffled behind rubber. Eventually, with everything of value collected—even tie pins, cuff links, and cigarette lighters—the three masked men leave. No one has tried to be heroic.

Even as those who have been told to lie down begin to get to their feet, the Bistro remains fearfully silent, except for the sounds of feet and furniture a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r

scraping on the floor. Kate has put her arm around Lorraine, who is sobbing softly, and Daniel, who now that the crisis has passed feels light-headed, almost giddy with relief, stands next to Kate, pats her shoulder reassuringly.

“It was those boys, wasn’t it,” Susan Ferguson says. “The ones who ran away during the storm. I heard they were still in the area, taking things, camping in the woods, or in empty houses. It was them.”

Kate nods slowly, her lips pursed. “I think you’re exactly right,” she says.

“Oh, we don’t know that,” Daniel says. “We don’t know anything.”

His voice is completely wrong, he sounds like he is trying to jolly them out of their thoughts.

Marcia Harnack, a lawyer who specializes in real estate, is standing nearby and has heard their conversation. “That’s what I was thinking, all through it,” she says. She is a woman with the body of a strong man and the voice of a shy little girl; she clasps her hands when she speaks, as if asking for forgiveness for being too large. “Star of Bethlehem. It’s what I thought when they first came in.”

“Why did you think that?” Daniel asks.

“They were definitely black,” says George Schwab, short, hard, and hairless, a little seersucker bomb in his blue-and-white suit. He has been selling off five-acre parcels of his family’s old orchards, and Marcia has been helping him structure the deals.

“And how’d you figure that?” asks Daniel.

“I saw their skin, that’s how,” says George. He rises up on the toes of his tasseled loafers and clenches his small fists, as if a lightning bolt of fury has just gone through him. “We were almost slaughtered like a bunch of cattle in here.”

“You didn’t see their skin, George,” Daniel says. “No one did.”

“Don’t tell me what I saw and didn’t see,” George says, his voice getting higher, as if it, too, had toes to rise upon. “You’ve got your own agenda.”

By this he clearly means Iris, and Daniel’s attachment to her, but Daniel has no choice but to ignore it. By now, two of the customers whose cell phones have been overlooked are calling the police; others join in the speculation and argument.

[ 325 ]

“They’re the ones who robbed the Goulianos house,” Fortune Pryor says.

“They completely trashed that sweet little house where Esther Roth-schild used to live,” Libby Young says.

“This is really fucked up,” Daniel says. He feels like standing on a chair and exhorting the lot of them. His neighbors have become a dangerous collective, drunk on its own bad ideas. “This is really really really fucked up,” he says, louder now. He feels Kate’s wifely, cautioning touch on his elbow. “They could have been Chinese,” Daniel shouts out. “They could have been Mexican, Polish, they could have been kids right from here.”

“Shut up, Emerson,” someone bellows from the front of the bar.

There is a scattering of applause, murmurs of agreement.

“No one saw their skin,” Daniel says, as forcefully as he can.

“I did.” This is shouted by George.

“I did, too.”

“I did, too.”

“I did, too.”

The more opposition Daniel meets, the more righteous indignation he feels. His eyes burn in their sockets, fury courses through him, his legs tremble. “I’m ashamed of this town,” Daniel cries.

Now Kate’s gentle touch has become an urgent tug. She pulls him toward her and says into his ear, “Daniel. Please. We’ve all heard you.”

“Can you believe this shit?”

“They just think you’re going on like this because you’re with Iris.”

She says it with extraordinary kindness. Her eyes are soft with sympathy, she shakes her head.

“Let’s just get out of here?” Lorraine says. “Can we please?”

Derek Pabst and another Leyden cop are the first of the police to arrive, followed shortly by four members of the state police. It takes nearly two hours for statements to be taken and reports to be written up, and when the Bistro’s customers are finally able to leave it is nearly three in the morning. No cars have been stolen, but since all the keys have been taken, the customers must either call for a ride home or walk. It is Daniel’s habit, however, to leave his keys in his car and he a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r

leads Kate and Lorraine through the cool night rain to his car, two blocks away.

As he drives them back to what was once his house, Lorraine, in the backseat, exclaims, “I just don’t get it. You left your keys
in
your car? I just don’t understand why you’d do that.”

“He always leaves them in the ignition,” Kate says. They are already a mile out of the village, driving through the wet, luminous night.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Lorraine says.

It strikes Daniel that perhaps she means to suggest some foreknowl-edge on his part, or even a degree of collusion with the robbers. And though confronting Lorraine is as far from Daniel’s temperament as reaching over the backseat and giving her a smack across the face, he cannot resist asking her, “What are you suggesting, Lorraine?”

“Everyone in the whole place seemed to know who those guys were,” she says. “And you were jumping through hoops to make them think otherwise.”

“And?”

“It’s just weird, that’s all.” Lorraine is slumped down, the back of her hand is pressed against her forehead.

“Our nerves are shot,” says Kate. “All of us. I’ve never been robbed before.” She clutches her chest, trying to make light of it. “Oh my God.

I’m a crime statistic.”

“They didn’t rob you the first time they came to your house?” Lorraine says.

“No, not really. I told you. They wanted to use the facilities.”

“Gross.” Lorraine shudders. “But you were right next to them. Were they the same ones who just held us up?”

“How can she know that?” Daniel says.

“It’s important,” Lorraine says. “They should catch those fucking kids and feed them to the wolves.”

“I agree,” says Daniel. “Or maybe a lynching.”

“Our nerves are shot,” Kate repeats. She pats Daniel’s knee, and then leaves her hand resting on it.

“They took two hundred and thirty dollars off me,” Lorraine says.

[ 327 ]

“And my wallet, my address book, my Filofax, all my credit cards. My
life
was in that bag.”

“That could be the problem right there,” Daniel says.

“Fuck yourself,” Lorraine says.

They arrive at Kate’s house. The windows blaze with light. A weather-worn old Ford is in the driveway. Kate sees Daniel react to the unfamiliar car and tells him, “That’s the baby-sitter’s.” He nods, surprised by the little trickle of gratitude that goes through him. Lorraine climbs out of the back door, waits for Kate with her back to them both. Kate powers down her window and says to Lorraine, “I’ll be right in. I just want to talk to Daniel. For a minute.” Lorraine shrugs without turning around and trods off to the house.

Kate waits for Lorraine to let herself in, and then she turns to Daniel.

“I miss you. What do you think about that? Do you miss me?”

“Derek was acting so strange toward you in there. Did you notice that? It was as if he was furious with you.”

“It’s fine. We had a communication problem, and it’s all ironed out.

Can you answer my question? Do you miss me?”

“Of course I do. And Ruby. How is she?”

“Fine, we’re both fine, we’d like you to come home.” The ping of that little hammer blow of confession breaks her voice.

“Kate . . .”

“You know what?” she says. “I never told you, I mean I never actually said the words ‘I love you.’ But I do. I love you.” Her eyes glitter, the color rises in her face. She seems moved, even inspired by her own words. Having said what was for so long unutterable, she now feels capable of saying anything. “I love you.You’re my guy, you’re my sweet man. I just assumed you knew, but now I see that sometimes it needs to be said.”

“This is so painful, Kate.”

“You’re involved in something with her that’s simply never ever ever ever ever going to work out, and I want to give you the chance to get out of it, and come back.You deserve that chance, Daniel.You really do. People get stuck in their bad decisions and they think nothing can undo a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r

them. Can I be honest with you? You look like you’re about to pass out.

But I know what’s going on in that house of hers. That man’s not going to suddenly get better. She’s going to be looking after him for a long, long time. And that’s the best-case scenario. We don’t even want to talk about worst-case. But the fact is, you did this to him. For whatever reason, it was you.”

“Whatever reason? It was an accident!”

“Maybe you’ve been looking to even the score ever since those black guys kicked you down the stairs.”

“That’s the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard.”

“Blacks and whites don’t get along,” she says. “Too much has happened. It’s ruined. If something doesn’t begin well, how can it end well?”

Daniel is silent, trying to think of something to say, some way of ending the conversation without enraging her, a way of sending her into the house that won’t be humiliating. But Kate interprets his silence as Daniel’s somehow being swayed, or even
moved
by what she is saying, and she puts her hand on his chest in a familiar, nostalgic way, and then quickly leans in to him with a deep, possessive kiss.

[ 18 ]

Morning.Warm dusty light pours through the uncurtained windows.

Daniel has kicked the covers off his bed, and though he has slept only four hours, he is awake. His penis is hard, in a slightly disconcerting and even irritating counterpoint to his otherwise grim state of mind.
Relax, you idiot.
He stares at the ceiling, with its chicken-skin paint job, and thinks about the money he lost last night. His mind is pierced by the pic-adors of sudden money anxieties. He has made the mistake of totaling up the money he would have made had he stayed in New York at his old firm.

He is minus about three hundred grand from that lovely decision. Two years now, he has been living in the half-life of his former affluence, but some time ago, without his admitting it to himself, his savings were de-pleted, the clothes he had bought when he was flush had begun looking like old clothes, his hair has forgotten what it is like to be cut by a master, and he no longer has that cheerful, ironic, healthy animal sheen of a young man with more money than he needs. He has never computed how much money he had been saving by living with Kate. Even coming up with about half of the monthly mortgage payments—and lately he has come to suspect that the sum she requested was less than half, that she was floating him to an extent—he was exempt from phone, electric, and heating bills; and groceries, which he usually paid for in full, used to cost in a month less than he was now spending in restaurants in a week.