Baltimore Noir (11 page)

She strolled down Fawn Street, almost to Gough, before finding a dumpster where she ditched the bag. She doubled back to Exeter. Angie wasn’t worried. Two thousand people were crowded in Little Italy tonight, out to enjoy the film festival.
Cinema al fresco
would generate tons of garbage. Nobody was going to be pawing through the dumpsters in the morning.

On Stiles, at the far end of the bocce court tucked between High and Exeter, she found her brother and his team, all duded up and slicked back, their asses being whipped by
paisanos
on Social Security, wearing team shirts, Bermudas, and tube socks. She perched on a park bench painted red, white, and green to watch the massacre, wondering, not for the first time, how Johnny could bet serious money on a game that was a cross between lawn bowling and horseshoes. After a while, she wandered off and bought herself a meatball sub and ate it at the corner of High and Stiles, where Johnny found her later, just as it was growing dark. He carried a couple of lawn chairs.

“Sorry I’m late, sis.”

She presented her cheek for a kiss.

He unfolded a chair, placed it on the sidewalk, and held it steady while she sat down. “Glad you stopped by.”

“I’m starving,” she said. “What’s in the box?”

“Dessert,” he said.

“From Vaccaro’s, I trust,” she said, holding out her hand for the box.

“How’s Mom?”

“Just fine,” Angie replied, liberating a chocolate-dipped cannoli from a square of wax paper. “She thinks I should get a life.”

“And Providence?”

“Not so good as when Buddy Cianci was mayor, but thriving.” She took a bite of the cannoli, savoring the sweetness of it on her tongue, feeling giddy. “You should visit sometime, Johnny.”

“Maybe I will,” he said, “if I’m not on call over Thanksgiving.”

From the third floor bedroom of John Pente’s apartment directly over their heads, a blue stream of light projected the opening scenes of
Moonstruck
onto a blank white billboard across a parking lot crammed with people: a street festival meets the drive-in, but without all the cars.

“They always start with
Moonstruck
“ her brother explained, “and end with
Cinema Paradiso

“All Italian?”

He nodded, chewing, his mouth full of amaretto tiramisu. “Mostly.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out a printed schedule.

“So if it’s mostly Italian, how come they’re showing
A Fish Called Wanda
next Friday and not
The Godfather?
” Angie asked after reading it over.

Johnny licked whipped cream off his fingers. “The neighborhood would never go for
The Godfather,
” he said.

“Why not? It’s classic.”

“You know.” He tucked his hands in his armpits and tipped his chair back to rest against the formstone.

“What?” Angie said, comprehension dawning. “Too much like home movies?”

Johnny snorted. “Yeah. Everybody thinks we hang out on street corners with stupid meatheads named Vito saying ‘fahgedaboutit’ all day.”

Angie laughed out loud. “Does any rational person
seriously
believe that every Italian-American family has a mobster or a hit man somewhere on their family tree?”

“Stereotypes,” said her brother.

“Cultural bias,” said his sister, settling back to enjoy the movie. “Fahgedaboutit.”

Author’s note: When the seal pool at the National Aquarium in Baltimore closed for renovation in early 2002, Ike and Lady were sent to live at the Albuquerque Biological Park. Ike died several years ago, at the ripe old age of thirty-two, but Lady, now thirty, thrives in New Mexico

LIMINAL

BY
J
OSEPH
W
ALLACE
Security Boulevard-Woodlawn

A
s always, the rabbi had spoken in calm, measured ones. If we could learn to see them, we’d recognize that our existence is full of liminal moments,” he’d said, “times when we’ve already left our previous life behind, but have yet to take the step into a new one. A liminal moment represents the space between an ending and beginning—a critically important gap, and of course potentially a very dangerous one.

That had been three days ago. Now Tania Blumen’s head banged against the motel’s bathroom wall, unloosing a blue-green flash deep within her skull. Pain followed after a respectful pause, radiating along her jawline and cheekbones like thunder pursuing a lightning bolt.

“God, I’m sorry, sweetie,” the man said to her, his voice wet, his hands grasping the waistband of her panties and tugging. Something stung her on the hip: his fingernail tearing her skin. “I didn’t mean to do that, I’ll never do it again, I promise,” he said. “If you’d just listened to me, trusted me … Didn’t you know this was going to happen? You must have known. I’m asking so little, and you’re making it so hard—”

Liminal moments.

Tania guessed this qualified as one.

“Room 213,” the teenage clerk at the Round Tripper Inn said. “Out that door into the courtyard, up the stairs on your right.” His eyes were on her face. “You need help, come back and ask.”

“The room,” Tania replied, “it says the number on the door?”

The clerk blinked. “Sure.”

“Then I’ll find it,” she told him.

“Oh, wait,” he called as she hoisted her bag over her shoulder and turned away. “I forgot to tell you.”

She looked back.

“Mr. Sims isn’t here yet. He called to say he’d be a little late.”

Tania stood still, thinking. Thinking: Still time to turn around. Still time to get on the bus and head back home.

And face Yoshi. And tell him she’d lost her nerve.

She went out into the courtyard.

Two bus rides, that’s all it took to get from Falstaff Road to Security Boulevard. Yet it was a different world.

Tania stood blinking in the milky spring sunshine, the pounding in her head competing with the ceaseless roar, like a river in flood, of the boulevard a block away. No one she knew would ever find her here. The people from her neighborhood didn’t work at the Social Security offices, those giant buildings that towered over the neighborhood like active volcanos. They didn’t shop at the Old Navy, rent movies at the Blockbuster, buy sandwiches at the Subway and cars at the Chevrolet dealership over there, with its giant plaster fox.

And they didn’t stay at the Round Tripper Inn.

But that was the point, wasn’t it?

The room was suffused with brownish light filtering through closed curtains decorated with crudely stitched crossed baseball bats. The queen-sized bedspread displayed a repeating pattern of gloves, and the lampshades were designed to look like baseballs. Two garish paintings of a tubby Babe Ruth hung on the wall, a mirror with an inexplicable seashell frame between them.

Tania felt shaky. She hadn’t been able to eat breakfast this morning, or even dinner last night. Tzom, Yoshi had named it. The ritual fast. Purification, it was said, was an essential part of the journey. But looking at her face in the mirror, at its pallor in the room’s earthy light, Tania didn’t feel pure.

“In the midst of a liminal moment, you are out of the world,” the rabbi had said. “For that time, it is as if you no longer exist.”

A keycard hissed as it slid into the slot outside the door of Room 213.

Almost at once, Tania knew.

“You’re so beautiful!” Gary Sims spoke in tones of awe. “Even more beautiful than the photographs your uncle—”

“Yoshi.”

“Your Uncle Yoshi sent me. Beautiful!”

“Thank you,” Tania said.

Her face was hot. It did not feel like her face at all.

“Don’t thank me,” Gary said, placing a heavy shoulder bag and a smaller, flatter case on the bed, then turning back toward her and clasping his hands in front of his chest. “I should thank you, Tania. For giving me this chance.”

Gary smiled, nodded his head, made a little bow toward her. He was maybe thirty-five, but looked younger, with a round face, a wispy beard and mustache surrounding red lips that stood out against his pinkish skin. Just an inch or two taller than Tania’s 5’8” and always in motion, hands knotting and releasing, foot tapping, head tilted to one side, then the other, as he looked at her and away.

Making Tania feel like something heavy and ponderous, a cow, an elephant, in comparison.

But Gary seeming to think otherwise. “I couldn’t tell from the photos, but your nose is perfect,” he said. “Those little buttons—they just don’t show up well. And those girls who get their noses broken and reset—” His hand went up and pushed at the tip of his nose. “They look like pigs, don’t you think?” Another quick glance. “With you, though, I was worried about a bump. You know, a lot of girls like you have that bump right here—” Touching the bridge of his nose now. “But not you.”

A lot of girls like me.

“I’m so glad to be here,” he said. “It was worth the drive.” Looking suddenly shy, he reached into his pocket. “I brought this for you.”

A long silver necklace, interlocking links, a chain. Hanging from it was a Jewish star.

He placed it around her neck, arranged it so the star rested in the little indentation between her breasts. It shone against the navy-blue of her Goucher sweatshirt.

Tania knew then.

She understood exactly how this worked.

And why it worked.

“Your uncle told me you don’t have a computer at home.”

She shrugged.

A sympathetic grimace. “Why not?”

“My parents won’t let me.”

“Yes, that’s right.” He laced his fingers, pulled them apart. “And I’ll bet that’s not all they’re unfair about. You probably even have a strict curfew, right?”

She shrugged again.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” He looked thoughtful. “How old are you, Tania?”

“Seventeen,” she said. “Like my uncle told you.”

He shifted his weight from foot to foot. “So beautiful, so bright, but so … stifled. Held back. Distrusted,” he said, shaking his head. “Believe me, I’ve heard it before, more times than you could believe.” His gaze touched gently on hers. “Seventeen is old enough to start making your own decisions, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” she said. Then: “That’s why I’m here.”

“I know.” His eyes were full of sympathy and understanding. “I’ll help you, Tania,” he said. “I swear it.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed, unzipped the smaller of the two bags he’d brought, and pulled out a laptop computer. He unfolded it, rested it on his knees, and pushed a button. The computer hummed, and a moment later the screen turned from black to gray to blue.

“Let me show you what we’ll be doing together.” He gave her a slantwise look, then patted the bedspread beside him. “You won’t be able to see from way up there,” he said. “Sit.”

When she hesitated, his face turned solemn, as if he was on the verge of taking offense. “Sweetie, I feel like we already know each other so well,” he said. “I understand you. I know what you’re trying to escape from. But you have to trust me. So keep me company. Sit.”

She sat.

It was called TeenHeaven. The letters were spelled out in a flowing script with a pink heart where the “a” should have been. The Place Where All Your Non-Nude Dreams Come True,” a second line read.

“Whose dreams?” she asked.

He turned his head to look at her. She could feel the heat of his leg just a few inches from hers, and all at once she was aware of her body. Her heart pounding beneath her breasts, the band of her panties digging into her hip, a tickle of sweat snaking down the back of her neck.

“Yours,” he said softly. “Your dreams, Tania.”

“And theirs too.” She glanced at him. “The members.”

“Yes,” he said. “And why not? Why shouldn’t we please them? They’re men and women who appreciate the energy and spirit and beauty of youth, and are willing to open their wallets to prove it.”

His smile was warm on her face.

“But deep down they’re nothing to me—just ghosts, phantoms out there in cyberspace. Numbers on a credit-card slip. You …” he sighed. “You’re real. You’re sitting right here with me. And your dreams are the only ones that matter.”

A row of portraits, eight in all, each contained within an oval of a different pastel color. Cameos, they looked like, or popsicles, or candy eggs with girls trapped inside.

Pretty girls, fifteen years old, sixteen, seventeen. A name below each portrait, with the i’s dotted with smiley faces: Jessica and Kristi and Nata, Suz and Miki and Beatriz. Smiling at the camera or giving it a pouty look.

“This is where I’ll be?” Tania asked. “Here?”

“At first,” Gary said. “Just at first.”

He reached up and brushed the side of her face with his fingers, the lightest of touches. “I’m amazed by you,” he said. “You must be the most beautiful girl in Baltimore. I know that the camera will love you as much as I do.”

She blushed.

He turned back to the computer. His fingers moved across the touchpad, the moisture from her cheek leaving momentary trails on the gray surface.

“Here’s how it’ll go,” Gary said. “We’ll do the first few shoots today, here. I’ll introduce you on TeenHeaven as my newest discovery—” She heard him take a breath. “Boy, will the members be happy to meet you And then, in a couple of weeks, we’ll get together again and do a full-scale session, maybe ten, twelve different outfits. Get a thousand great shots, easy, and use the best of them for the grand opening of your own site.”

He paused, thinking, then smiled at her. “What say we call it ‘Blooming Tania’?”

Glorious Gloria was tall and slender, with dark, wiry hair and olive skin. She often wore short-shorts, halter tops that were a size or two too small for her, long dangly earrings, brightly colored headbands. She always looked only half-awake, smiling sleepily over her bony shoulder at the camera or lying on a tan sofa in a living room with splintery floors and peeling wallpaper, her toes pointed to accentuate the length of her legs.

Starlight Stacy lived on a farm someplace warm. Even in winter she was always outdoors, feeding the chickens in her shorty pajamas, posing in muddy boots and a bathing suit amid rows of vegetables, scraping the flesh of an orange off the peel with her even white teeth, swinging on a tire in a miniskirt.

Dream Jeannie had freckles everywhere: her face, her arms, between her breasts. All her photographs were taken indoors. She almost always wore bathing suits, and had moved from tankinis in her earlier galleries to thongs in her most recent, suits so insubstantial as to leave her practically naked.

Tania felt her face grow hot again.

“I know,” Gary said. “Not until you’re ready. But you’ll be amazed at how fast you become comfortable with the … more revealing outfits. Everyone does.”

Joyful Jane, though, didn’t look comfortable. In fact, her modeling name seemed like a joke, or an indictment. She never smiled, never once, as she posed. Her large, dark eyes and prominent cheekbones gave her a vulnerable look.

“My shy one,” murmured Gary. “Popular because she’s shy.”

“She looks like me,” Tania said.

Gary glanced up from the screen at her face. “Not a surprise, really.”

Tania looked at him.

“Sweetie, you come from the same tribe.”

“Everywhere,” he told her. “They’re from everywhere. Gloria is from Sandy, Utah. Melanie—I didn’t show you her—lives in Froid, Montana. Stacy hails from Balm, Florida—”

“Are those real places?”

Gary laughed. “Yes, and there’s a million more just like them. All filled with girls desperate to get out.”

Tania thought about that. “So all your other models are from small towns?”

“Uh-huh. Big-city girls cause too many problems.” Then he shook his head. “Well, Jane lives in Milwaukee, but she’s the exception to the rule.” He smiled. “Just like you are. The same exact kind of exception.”

He gave a fond laugh at the confusion on her face. “Where did your family come from, Tania? Russia?”

“The Ukraine.”

“Same thing.” His hand touched her knee for emphasis, withdrew. “Look, sweetie, I know about Jews. Immigrant Jews. They don’t move here looking for big-city lights. Wherever they settle, even if it’s New York or L.A., they build their own small town.”

Again that quick touch. “Take you. Your address says you live in Baltimore, but I know that you’re really from the village of Park Heights. It might as well be a thousand miles from anywhere. You shop at your own stores, eat in your own restaurants, keep with your own kind. It’s true, isn’t it?”

She nodded.

“Especially for the girls,” he said. “I mean, you don’t even get to have a computer. Too busy learning to cook while the men read the Bible, right? You wouldn’t even know about me if your uncle hadn’t broken away from the tribe and told you.”

He smiled at her silence. “Let me ask you something,” he said. “Those jeans, that sweatshirt—is that how you get to dress at home?”

“No,” she said.

“Of course not. You have to, like, cover up everything, right?” He frowned, on her side. “And do they ever tell you you’re beautiful?”

She shook her head.

Radiating warmth, he leaned toward her, reached out and rubbed the back of her neck. “Well, you are,” he said. “I love Blooming Tania, my girl from the Baltimore shtetl.”

He pronounced it “shteedle.”

There would be enough money for everyone to be happy, he said.

“You’ll earn fifty dollars an hour for the shoots, which will usually take two or three hours.” He looked up from the camera he held on his lap. “Imagine—a hundred dollars, two hundred, for just an afternoon’s work! Have you ever had that much of your own?”

She said no.

“But that’s just the beginning. Just the beginning, Tania! Once I set you up in your own site, you’ll get ten percent of each membership fee. Right now, memberships go for twenty-five dollars a month, but it’s heading up up up.” His face lit up. “Think of it! Starlight Stacy has almost twelve hundred members—I write her a check for almost three thousand dollars every month from memberships alone. And, Tania, I think—I
know
—you’ll do even better.”