Beneath the Neon Egg (20 page)

He wonders.

What cosmic balance could the snuffing of a single flame disturb? Surely Sam had his reasons. Cancer. It is just difficult for Bluett to accept. Sam had said not one word about it, had been full of the light of infatuation for this woman—Svetlana Krylova, the realtor said her name was. Fiancée? Sam had said he didn’t want to marry. When could he have found out he had cancer—the day he had that look in his eyes?—and how could he have known or decided so quickly that it was hopeless and incurable? Some cancers are like that, though, Bluett knows. Dan Turèll found out about his throat cancer and died within months. In great pain.

But there is another question that won’t leave him alone. When exactly did Sam sell her the apartment? He’d never mentioned a word about that, either. When did it happen? And how could she already be in the process of selling it? And given that Sam loved his kids so much, how could he not have left at least a share of the apartment to them? It was a roomy apartment, well located, with at least a partial view of the lakes, and a moody view out the back, and Bluett knew for a fact that it was paid off—worth a good two million crowns on the current inflated market, $350,000. Even a fifth of that to each of the kids would have given them some kind of start in their young lives. How could Sam have neglected that? And the “fiancée” was letting it go for a million and a half. Fast sale.

Part III

Pursuance

Charlie Parker leaning up against the paint shop’s stone stoop

Charlie Parker behind the bar

Charlie there throwing a coin in the juke

look now Charlie’s dancing to “The Great Pretender”

twenty years after his American death—

—Dan Turèll, “Charlie Parker on Isted Street”

11. Bad Religion

Into the dark comes the sound that drags him out. He reaches for the little clock to silence it, dozes, holding it in his hand, thinking, What day is it? Monday? Tuesday.
It is not good to let yourself sleep now
, even as he slides down into the cozy dark again.

There had been a time some years earlier, just after he finished high school, a period of two or three years when he was on his own, slowly realizing that now he was responsible for his life. He could do what he wanted. No hindrances. No help, either. His father was dead. He went to college at night and had a crummy job in a management trainee program at the Bank of New York at 169 Maiden Lane, near Wall Street. His friends had squeezed many a cheap laugh out of that address: 169 Maiden Lane. He was to start by spending three months in a series of departments, learning the details of the bank’s daily operation.

At the time he is thinking of, he was in the Stock Transfer Department, he was eighteen, and his job each day was to put small white pieces of paper, stock coupons, in number order. This was long before the microchip. The numbers were red, printed in the upper right-hand corner, six digits. The lesson he was to learn was the extreme importance of this small, seemingly insignificant task being performed accurately every single day. There were thousands of stock coupons, each indicating a stock transaction, and if they were not organized so as to be immediately traceable, the entire stock transfer system could break down. This could happen very quickly, and even a one-day breakdown could cost the bank large sums of money.

Bluett’s training director wanted Bluett to understand the experience of this task by
living
it for a time, morning to evening, day after day.

Bluett often overslept and arrived late for work, and his training director had a way of looking at him when he punched in past nine, a way of very slowly turning his face to gaze at Bluett while raising his wrist to his eyes to show that he was looking at his watch. He said nothing, but the message was clear, and Bluett, when he woke late in the morning, would be gripped by terror and loathing at the thought that he would have to be subjected to this performance once again.

His training director’s name was Hagin—Mr. Hagin, he was supposed to call him. Mr. Hagin had large brown eyes, and his nose ran apparently without his being aware of it, so that there was usually a line of transparent mucus between one or both nostrils and his upper lip. Bluett dreaded having to look at him, dreaded his days, dreaded getting in late.

One morning when he woke late, the dread of being looked at by Mr. Hagin was so great that he decided he would play sick, stay home all day. He lay in bed waiting in agony for nine
a.m.
so he could phone in and get it over with, but once he had called and told his director’s secretary that he had a terrible toothache and had to go to the dentist, he felt suddenly liberated. The whole day lay before him, free, a bonus, a paid sick day. He wouldn’t even lose money for not being there. He went back to bed and read the newspaper, dozed, masturbated. He ate lunch in bed watching some old film on TV and dozed some more.

Finally, around four in the afternoon, he got out of bed, showered and dressed, went out for a walk, met some friends for a beer. When he went to bed that night he was not tired so he read for a while, but he still could not sleep. An hour passed, two hours, three. At 3:45
a.m.
he was still awake, and he knew he would never wake on time in the morning, so he set the clock for nine to wake him just in time to call in sick again. He told Hagin’s secretary that he had had a painful extraction of an impacted wisdom tooth (something one of his brothers had experienced once), and the pain had kept him awake all night, and now he had to go back to the dentist to have the operation completed.

Afterward he sat in his underwear on his threadbare second-hand sofa in his seedy little East Fourth Street apartment and saw doom smudged all over the grimy pane of his one window. What would become of him? What could he do?

Perhaps because the questions were so intensely felt in his heart, answers were produced from somewhere inside him. It was as though a door had flown open in his mind to reveal a slate on which were printed the words:
if you do not get up early and work hard, others will look upon you and say he does not get up early and work hard
.

And then, the primary truth:
you have to get up when the alarm clock rings
.

From that day on, he had no trouble in his working life. The knowledge that he had no real choice but to rise when the clock beckoned him saved him from the chaos into which he had slowly been slipping simply because he had no argument against it, simply because the yearning for ease, for the cocoon and womb of sleep, had no counterweight to pull him free. Now he knew what the sound of the clock meant, why it is called an
alarm
clock: Sound the alarm! Danger! You are sunk over your eyeballs! Rise!

And now all these years later, for perhaps the first time in two decades, he wakes with a start, the alarm clock in his hand. He has gone back to sleep instead of rising. In panic, he checks the time: Only twenty minutes have passed. He is his own boss now, but then it is even more important that he have control over himself. Five pages a day minimum. To pay his bills, remain solvent, he must do five pages a day minimum on average per week.

Yet still he does not rise. He reaches the clock back to the bedside table and stretches, his eyes drooping, picking through the fog of his brain for something that seems to want his attention there. He is thinking about God, about what he ever meant by the word God, but he does feel that he has seen God—even if God or god is utterly beyond his ken—and he feels that he has seen the ungodly, and tries to sort through these thoughts, which are confusing him.

The word
God
, then, transforms in his mind into
the box
. Sam said something about putting a box in his storage room. Had he actually done so? Bluett has no idea. He can scarcely remember anything about it. What had Sam said? He had a box of things he wouldn’t want anyone to see if anything happened to him. Had he already known something then? And what did he mean? Did he mean for Bluett to destroy the box if anything happened to him? Did he actually say that? And if he did, what would Bluett do? Should he just destroy it? Could he? Was it legal? Should he try to contact Sam’s kids, his ex-wife, give the box to them? But that must be precisely what Sam was trying to avoid if he put it in Bluett’s basement room.

He throws off the covers and sits on the edge of the bed, thinking about the storage room, but he rises and crosses to the bathroom, past his little work room, and glimpses the neat stacks of paper on his desk, awaiting him. He is already half an hour late. He thinks of how Hagin would have looked at him for coming even ten minutes late. Half an hour!

Thinking about Hagin, Bluett realizes that was almost twenty-five years earlier. Hagin would be . . . how old? Must’ve been at least forty then. So he would be sixty-five now. Retired. An old dude. Probably with a good retirement plan, too. Which Bluett could not say for himself.

Standing there on the living room carpet, he stares blankly at the masks on the wall, the didgeridoo, thinking about the basement, the storage room.

No.

Five pages.

He shaves, brushes his teeth, dresses, carries a glass of juice to his desk, and looks at the new projects that arrived in Saturday’s post: a series of articles for the personnel newsletter of a Danish drug firm that has gone international. The first article, nearly done, seven pages long, is titled, “The Joys of International Exchange.” Clearly the aim is to loosen people up to the idea that they may be called upon to move to one of the company’s other departments in England, Thailand, or the Philippines.

Bluett reaches for the red Gyldendal Danish-English dictionary on the wall shelf above his desk and gets to work.

He translates in pen on a yellow pad first, doing a literal translation, which he then keys in on his laptop, turning the sentences away from the Danish idioms into purer English equivalents, studying each phrase carefully to be certain he has not semiconsciously gotten snagged in a Danish structure, in a
faux ami
, closing his eyes to wait alertly for the correct English phrase to float up into his mind, the
mot juste
. Funny, those expressions are all in French—from the time French was the lingua franca.

From time to time he rises from the desk, stretches, does a few push-ups, brews a cup of Nescafé, trying always to have some little translation puzzle in his mind before he does so in order to keep himself rooted in the work.

When he has completed the third page of the article, he glances at the clock and is surprised to see he has worked through lunch time. It is already past one. He eats a ham and cheese and lettuce sandwich standing up in the kitchen, watching the gray sheepdog pace the concrete yard below. Bluett taps on the window, but the dog does not look up. Snubbed by a dog. Then he drinks a glass of water, brushes his teeth, and goes back to his desk.

For a moment before he starts back to work, the thought of the box flitters across his mind. He ignores it, plunges back into the text.

He compels himself to do six pages, to prove to himself that he is in control, and when he is done, well into the second article, it is just past four. He stacks the pages he has worked on and corrected in red ink. Tomorrow he will key in the corrections, do another five pages. He has nothing to complain about. He thinks about taking a drink before going down to the basement, stands before the shelf of bottles in the kitchen, considering.

There is a knock at the door. The sound startles him, jerks him into a near crouch there in the kitchen as he considers not answering, pretending he is not home.
Should install a peep hole
. Another tap.

Nonsense.

He opens the door and sees his daughter’s smiling face.

“Raffaella!”

Unalloyed pleasure sweeps his heart as he hugs her, touches her cheek with his lips, cool and fresh with winter, looks at her again, tall and bright-faced, long auburn hair draping the shoulders of a long camel coat. He hears distant music, notes she is wearing earphones—the Discman he gave her for Christmas.

“What are you listening to?”

She plucks one bud from her ear and puts it to his. He hears a low voice burbling words in a slurred growl, hears the words
disease . . . infect me . . . reject me . . . don’t want to exist
. He frowns amicably.

“Bad Religion,” she says. “They’re really tough. You could borrow it if you want. Could I get my Arab on Radar back?”

“Noise Rock,” he says and steps back to let her in, watching with pleasure how she acts as if it is her own place, hanging her coat on the wall hooks in the little foyer, going to the kitchen for a Coke from the refrigerator that she knows he stocks for her. “Got any potato chips?”

“On the counter there.”

She glances out the back window. “Oh, look, Dad! That dog is so
cute
! Aw, look, he’s all lonely and sad out there alone by himself. Look, he’s so lonely he wants to go in! How can they do that to him?”

Bluett slips the CD she’d left him into her coat pocket, puts on Coltrane, selects “Central Park West,” pours himself a vodka while she turns on the television, surfs to MTV, and he comes back and douses Coltrane while some big black dude wearing an unbuttoned vest and no shirt raps.