Agnes Mallory (21 page)

‘So?' he said, stretching his arms along the sofa back, circling one hand. ‘You're still an honest man?'

I nodded. ‘Yeah, I'm still an honest man.'

Both his thick forearms lifted and fell. ‘So the Buckaroo's not so bad, after all,' he said.

Now Myers, on the other hand, told me a story. Took me to lunch for it – a rare enough event to carry some weight in itself. We went to a Chinese place he favored. It was hidden away in a Pearl Street basement and the government types avoided it, so this too was portentous.

Fired up as I was, though, I had to wait for his purposes to be made manifest. Toying with my plastic chopsticks, smiling shrewdly as best I could. There was no use expecting Myers to talk while he was eating: Suprisingly, the man was one of the most disgusting and voracious eaters I've ever seen. It was the outlet in his gentle Jewish soul for all the demonic powers. He shoveled it in. Tie tucked in his shirt front, napkin over that and tucked into his collar. He worked the sticks like a crank and made sucking noises like a straw at the bottom of a milkshake while noodles and shrimp tails and broccoli spears shot and slithered over his face into the hole. Like a film of a man vomiting shown in reverse. Then, his plate shiny and clean, he sat back as from a job well done and sipped from his water glass – his kidneys couldn't deal with Chinese tea. And he said mildly: ‘Hortense Manero. You know Hortense Manero?'

‘Sure,' I said. ‘Federal prosecutor. Sure.' I picked at my chicken bits with the chopsticks; I always ate very delicately around him, hoping he'd catch on.

‘Funny story,' said Myers. ‘Remember – oh, about a year ago – the Barco killings in Queens? Guy came in said he was an FBI agent …'

‘Made the people kneel down …' I said softly.

He yanked his napkin free and daubed his chin with it. ‘Drug killing, right, terrible, seven people shot dead.'

I whispered: ‘Yes.'

Well, this sort of thing happens, of course. You hear a word for the first time and the next day it turns up in a crossword puzzle and so on. Synchronicity; no call for panic. It had been months since Agnes's letter, and it was a fairly spectacular case, still unsolved, anyone might have mentioned it. But for all that, I met this introduction of Myers' with your basic thrill of superstitious terror. I was given to superstition about the letter anyway because its effects on me were both unexamined and profound. My father's relationship with Evelyn Sole – I'd fretted plenty over that now and then through the decades. But my suspicions about my mother's actions lo those twenty years ago, these were unacknowledged, so their confirmation in the letter – and the jolt of that confirmation – were also subterranean events. When Myers mentioned the killings – shot that bridge from the silent imagination to our rollicking, urgent and political world – it was as if I'd dreamed about a specter who handed me a golden key, and then woke to find the key clutched in my hand. I shuddered. I got goose flesh on my arms.

‘The FBI part, though, was apparently on the bothersome side,' Myers said. ‘To the investigators. They thought it might have accounted for why the Barcos let the killer in. Because they were already afraid, the Barcos, they were taking precautions. So, you know, the investigators were worried the killers might have had actual credentials of some kind. It might also,' he went on in a speculative tone, ‘have accounted for why they were so obedient. You know, the killer ordered them to kneel down …'

‘Yes. Yes, I know.'

‘Anyway, Joey Turpentine. He's this guy, this informant. Probably a killer, should be in prison two, three times already, consecutive life terms. Bu-ut – the FBI – he tells the FBI he can get them this, get them that, go undercover: they let him out and he works for them. The question is: who else does he work for? Because recently, he's been making some important connections with the Colombians. In all events, Miss Prosecutor Manero, she should live and be well, invites him in for a chat because she's working with him on some
fakakta
drug corruption thing. “Joey, what can you tell me about the Barco killings?” she says. Joey smiles – this is what I heard – he gets out of his chair. He walks to her desk and there are newspapers all over it:
Times, Newsday, Post, News
. He picks the newspapers up one after another. Drops them down. He says, “You see the Barco killings? Does anyone care about the Barco killings? You solve the Barco killings, you get, what? One headline, two headlines.” He opens the papers. He starts pointing to stories, like, here, here and here. “Leamer,” he says to her. “Freeman,” he says. “Umberman. The Mayor. You're anti-corruption, Hortense,” he says. “Stick with corruption. Me – I can get you Buckeroo Umberman. Umberman – he can get you everybody else.” And Hortense, God love her, Hortense says,' – and here he suppressed a laugh to signal the punchline – ‘“All right. That makes sense. So get me Umberman.'” Myers sipped his water. He shook his head. ‘That makes sense,' he repeated, relishing the humor of it.

After I'd managed to wrestle my eyeballs back into their sockets, I found myself babbling, ‘Well, I don't know what Umberman's up to. The assessors are over at the Board of Assessment. The hearing officers were all in place before I got there. I hear some cases, I see some files, but half the time I'm in meetings. I'm swamped under piddling review requests. I mean, until the president dies, I don't even have any real power.'

‘A funny story,' said Myers, ignoring me. He tilted his head sleepily to one side. Closed his eyes, lifted his shoulders, smiled his moist, rabbinical smile. ‘I thought you'd enjoy it.'

It was like a bout of hypochondria for the next week or so, that sort of waffling panic. Is it cancer or just a mole? Was I in jeopardy from the Feds or was I not? Did I know anything? Well, what? That some assessments were ridiculously low? That some were unnecessarily high and then knocked down instantly while the lawyers from the MacBride Club took their fees? What was an assessment but a matter of informed opinion anyway? And besides, I might not have even noticed these things. I was scrupulously honest myself, and I had lots of plans for reforms once I actually took the reins. I was really in the clear – or was I? Cold sweats in dead of night were followed by unearned, illogical waves of relief. Yet relief won out in the end. The panic was just worn away by inaction, which I suppose is how hypochondriacs finally die.

Nonetheless, when Agnes's second letter arrived a few weeks later at the start of my August vacation, I was prepared to read it almost as oracular. What new stage of my life would begin with this, pray tell?

Dear Harry,

I waited till I was feeling a little better before writing you again. I didn't want to leave you with the impression I was in despair or anything. I'm not in despair – or if I am, I don't want to leave you with that impression. The winter is just hard up here, that's all. Everyone shut up in their houses, no one visiting, no one to talk to. This summer has been better. I can get out and swim in the river in the morning before going to work and in the afternoons I can walk in the woods looking for logs to haul back to my studio. I am back waitressing part-time at
Fitzgerald's
at night too, so I get to see the old restaurant gang again, or what's left of them. And I'm pretty much off the tranquilizers, so the whole situation is a lot healthier. If I can stay clean for six months, Roland will let me have the baby as much as I want. Frankly, I'm not sure how I feel about that after what happened. That is, I'm desperate to see her, but also scared. Fucking terrified is more like it. And then there's my work, which pretty much obsesses me. I guess I don't know how I feel exactly. I keep thinking about how simple and great everything seemed in the old days. When I first met Roland, the
Fitzgerald's
gang used to come over all the time in the mornings and afternoons. Everyone would bring some vegetables or something and I'd make a huge tureen of soup and some loaves of fresh bread and just leave everything out on the wood stove for them. They used to call me Ma Sole for a joke, as in Oh Ma Sole, Rock Ma Sole and so on. I'd go into my studio and chisel away, but keep the door open so I could hear them in the living room, talking and laughing, eating soup, Roland noodling the guitar, Jack on the saxophone or whatever. Roland played at
Fitzgerald's
, that's how I met him. He sang there every Friday and Saturday night, these sensitive folk-rock songs, very early-Seventies. There's a lot of that up here – I think this is where the Sixties came to die. Anyway, here was this lanky six-foot-four guy in jeans and cowboy boots with blond hair down to his shoulders and this cute Mr WASP face. I used to hang around the restaurant late pretending to clean up just so we could have a beer together at the bar and talk when everyone else was gone. Finally, one night, he set his empty glass down on the counter, looked across the bar at me, cleared his hair off his forehead, smiled his Pepsodent,
goyische
smile and said, ‘So – are we gonna do this or what?' That was it. It was love.

I think those were actually the best days of my life: after he moved in and when his friends would come by and I would work and they would play and compose. I even had work showing in a gallery then – not a gallery, just a crafts shop off Route 12, but Lily, the woman who ran it, put a few of my pieces in with the handmade potholders and coat pegs and mailbox windmills etc. And she did sell a piece of mine from time to time. And people were always coming up from New York to ski or fish and what-not so at least I had the illusion of gaining a wider audience. Of course, when my really big chance came, I fucked it up completely in typical self-destructive fashion. This was about two years ago – almost exactly two years ago now. This woman, this New York gallery owner, had been spending the summers here and she'd seen some of my pieces and mentioned to Lily that she wanted to see more. So I got very excited. I started working away like a madwoman trying to make enough good new stuff to show. And, at the same time, around May, I got pregnant. Well, I was sick as a dog. And crazy: there were so many hormones coursing through me I looked like Cruella De Vil in that red-eyed close-up just before she drives off the cliff. My schedule was: work, puke my guts out, scream at Roland, cry, then puke my guts out again, then go back to work. I don't usually use maquettes but I was making them then just so I could twist their fucking heads off, that's how I felt. And after this long period when I'd really been feeling good about my work, everything I did started to look like shit to me again. And summer was coming and the Gallery Woman was coming and … yaaagh! So just about the middle of June, I got this idea, this inspiration. I had this gorgeous piece of spalted pine I'd found in the forest. It had these wonderful black lines running through it, and it was just at the edge of decay, so soft you could almost gouge it with your hands. I saw this gesture in it, this striving gesture, like a monkey reaching itself into existence out of the core of a tree, and I saw a face, a woman's face, where the monkey's face would be. The wood had only had a couple of years to dry, I knew it wasn't ready, but (with just a brief pause to puke my guts out), I locked myself in my studio and set to work on it. No chainsaw, no compressor – the wood was too fragile. It was just me and the gouge and the mallet whacking away. And a week went by and the thing came free of the wood – perfectly. And another week went by and it was beautiful. Roland and his friends were wandering in from the living room to watch me go. I was almost finished, I was down to the three milimeter chisel, doing detail work. And, all of a sudden … I hit worms. I shaved a strip away and found this inch-wide medallion of rot right at the base of the monkey's left breast, and these thick, white hideous grubs came squiggling out of it spilling onto the floor. Instantly, I puked my guts out. I mean, I'd known the wood was spalted, I'd known it was too wet – the whole thing was totally my own fault – but fuck that shit: what was I going to do now? So I thought: All right, I've still got some room to maneuver. I'll dig out the rot, plug it, shape the thing down a little, maybe the bad stuff doesn't go so deep. So I did that – a few hours' work. And I was very lucky – it wasn't deep at all. I didn't even need a plug. I worked the contours down past it. Even I could hardly tell the difference. When I was finally finished, I relaxed on the sofa weeping and retching, and Roland sprayed the piece for me to kill any grubs that were left inside. Then, for the next two days I rubbed varnish on it, layer after layer. Then I painted it. Then I varnished it again. I figured: Any of the little shits that are left are sealed in there for good. Die, you bastards! And that was it. A month went by. As promised, Gallery Woman came to Lily's crafts place. Thin as a spindle, wearing three hundred dollars worth of khaki from Banana Republic. Dropping her g's and pretending to be a human bein' because she was out in the country with us folks. But, for all that, as Lily pointed out, she was at least original enough to be sniffing around outside the city – and looking at wood too, which was still very
outre
– so we had some hope. Her husband saw the monkey first – I'm told; I wasn't there. Hey, look at this, hon, he says. She looks up and stops in her tracks. Lily said she could see the thoughts running through her mind: Whoa! Shit! Talent! Art! Yes, but is it …
in?
Can I put words to it that give it a cachet? Fresh … no, no … radical innocence – maybe … a radical retro look at feminist evolution … yes, that might fly … and the fact that it's heartbreakingly gorgeous that could be a … a … an ironic post-modern parody of the concept of Beauty … Yes! And all the while, she had started moving closer and closer to the work. Circling it, dodging her head this way and that, eyeing it from this angle, that angle, until finally, she was right up close to it, her nose almost touching it – because the wood does that, that soft wood is so beautiful it's like flesh, you want to taste it and stroke it and practically fuck it, it looks so good. So she was right there, right in front of it. And just under the left breast, she slowly became aware of a movement. What's that? Her eyes shifted. A fleck of dust seemed to stir on the surface of the wood. And then there was another fleck. Sawdust – there was a little circle of sawdust gathering there as if by magic. It got thicker. A pinch of it sprinkled to the floor. Gallery Woman followed it down, open-mouthed – then she looked up again … just in time to see the fattest, ugliest, whitest, slimiest grub of a worm writhing and struggling out from inside the sculpture. Her high-pitched scream – her screams, because she screamed again and again, her body rigid, her hands spasming in front of her – could be heard, I'm told, at the campground about five miles up the river. Even I had to laugh when Lily told me. Of course, then I wept. Then I screamed at Roland and puked my guts out …