Burning Down the House (23 page)

I
N THE AFTERNOON
Ian received a text from Jonathan about getting together that night at a club on the Lower East Side. Late. Ian felt a queasy relief reading the message backstage, glad that the rift between them was healing, and at the same time wary of what Jonathan's motive might be, what ingenious aggression and subtle torture he might have in store. Standing amid half-clad dancers and warming-up singers, actors scanning lines, flirting, exchanging their daily gossip of past triumphs and indignities, Ian instantly responded that he would meet Jonathan and was ready for whatever debauchery ensued. The club was an after-hours nightspot called the Purse. Salacious acts were performed for an audience of mega-celebrities, minor celebrities, international billionaires, and locals with nine-figure balance sheets accompanied by models and sports figures and the occasional artist. The club opened at 11:00 p.m.; the show started at 1:00 a.m. Guests were advised to arrive by midnight.

Ian entered Essex Street with a light rain falling. Dark storefronts stood locked with corrugated metal blocking their entry. Lamplight skittered from newly formed puddles to the side mirrors of parked cars. Long-legged women crossed the sidewalk in front of him teetering from shadow to shadow. At the end of a block he turned right into an alley and walked down an aisle of wet pavement, lightly strewn garbage, random windows pouring vague, sooty light down from above. He glanced back behind him at the street and the pale neon in the distance marking more-ordinary pastimes. Then he walked up some low wooden stairs and pushed open a door and entered.

A seething crowd had gathered within. As if the vast structure had been erected around them to contain the hunger and yearning of this motley assemblage, like a meeting place of worshippers on an isolated prairie, waiting for their designated minister to appear. A zinc bar behind which bottles glowed with elixirs and from which drinks ushered forth in antique glasses frothing, bubbles gyrating, pale melon-colored concoctions tilting in front of dark-green-painted walls, lifted by ringed fingers attached to bodies seated on tattered velvet banquettes.

He made his way past the bar through the first crowds to an area of tables set for dining in front of a low stage, curtained and lit with footlights. Handsome men in rippling silk shirts fetched bottles and racks of glasses steaming from the kitchen, platters of hot utensils. Waitresses slid in between the tables placing candles and programs of the night's festivities. They wore stained pink silk bustiers and garish blue-and-yellow stockings, red-and-gold leather high-heeled shoes, and they drifted through the dusty haze like strings of colored holiday lights come to life, fairy-tale apparitions, both charming and decadent, lewd. He had given his name to the maître d' and was being seated at a table near the stage.

Watching him across the clouds of smoky light in the yellow atmosphere was Jonathan.

He caught Ian's eye and wound his way among the tables and pulled out a chair. He carried a premium whiskey and set it down. He lifted the glass and drank before he spoke. Then he said to a waiter, He's drinking too. Same thing.

Music played. A band in the pit, riffing a slow, grinding Dixieland melody mixed with an alternative moan, a groaning from an organ, and an electric fiddle.

Ian and Jonathan clinked glasses.

I'm glad you called. Here's to your impending fatherhood. Congrats, said Ian.

Jonathan downed his drink and thanked him. You should see Miranda. She is fucking glowing.

That's nice, Ian mustered.

Yeah, fatherhood, he said, looking into Ian's eyes for a moment and then at the stage.

Yes, well, I wouldn't know much about it.

Maybe you should, said Jonathan, still looking away.

Ian knew that Steve had told him everything.

And after a tense silence:

Am I here to be judged? said Ian, noticing the shot of whiskey kicking in. Because I feel like shit—actually much worse than that—already. You couldn't possibly say anything to me that makes me feel more guilt ridden and sick than I already do. But in case you've forgotten I didn't know about any of it at the time. And it's your father who doesn't want me to have anything to do with her. So don't go assassinating my character.

Hey, said Jonathan. Fine.

A long silence between them filled by the first part of the show, circus performers in vaudevillian burlesque, avant-garde strippers, explicit tableaux, an MC in a G-string with a staccato voice that ricocheted from every corner of the space like gunfire. Colored lights filtered the action and bathed it in oranges and violets, wild orchids, and techno greens. Dancers kicked, comedians mugged. The first of several intermissions came. Ian gathered the courage to ask Jonathan about Poppy.

How is she doing?

Jonathan's face acquired a look of concern and brotherly knowledge. She seems good, he said. Almost finished with high school. We weren't sure she'd really make it, he went on, downing another shot, but it looks like she'll get the diploma, he said.

How about her state of mind? Ian ventured.

I'm not so expert in that area, Jonathan answered, smiling broadly and looking down, the creases around his mouth angular and sexy, knowing and oblivious. As you may have noticed, he continued. But she seems okay to me. Looks gorgeous as always, a little skinny maybe, I guess. A little goth these days but nothing too scary. She's quieter, thank God.

Quieter?

Yeah. Not always broadcasting her opinions and criticisms. Keeps to herself. In her room a lot. And gone a lot, I hear from Patrizia. Out at night, you know, the normal high-school sullen act.

Sullen? That doesn't really sound like her.

What is this? Paternal concern? Jonathan lifted his hand and raised his eyebrows to get a waitress's attention.

Ian felt an anger swirling amid his inebriation. A new cocktail. The mixology of emotions.

Yes, he said, maybe it is.

The lights went off. Abruptly. The curtain rose. Another round of parading bodies, a bawdy sketch involving a dancing bear and a girl grinding an organ, a cowboy entering and shooting the bear. Blood, damage, the wailing girl. A psycho western. The bear gets up, bloodied, and keeps dancing. It never falls. The entire cast emerges, carrying pistols, the group whips and lunges in a suggestive and macabre choreography. The crowd has advanced from ceremonial to ecstatic.

Beside Ian and Jonathan sit two overflowing tables, one filled with Russians, the other a group of Indians, Ian thinks. Mostly men in fine suits, a few women in sheer dresses made of silk tissue, fiery sequins, threaded nothingness. They are all whooping and crying out, grinning, gesturing, their faces composed in shadowy oil-painted portraits, hung at varying levels in this moving gallery of dusty light. When the curtain falls again the patriarch at the table of Indians and the patriarch at the table of Russians are engaged in some kind of unnatural ancient ritual. There stand against the wall in a great glass display case bottles of the world's most expensive champagnes. Salmanazars, jeroboams, containing liters and liters of liquid worth tens of thousands, more.

First the Russian ordered one of the most expensive bottles. The lights went up, flashing. A drumroll. Waiters carried the bottle and glasses on a silver tray. Spectators stood. The Indians at the table bowed to the Russian, as he uncorked the bottle and let it flow freely to the outstretched flutes, spilling over diamond-braceleted wrists, foaming over the tablecloth, dripping down men's chins. This continued. The Indian purchased the next-most-expensive bottle. Again: the lights, the music, the drumroll, the silver platter. Now the Indian patriarch uncorked the bottle and walked the outer perimeter of the table, pouring the liquid directly into his supplicants' mouths. It rolled down their faces like tears. Candles sputtered on the linen. Guttural swallows and raucous swoons. The Russians applauded. The Russian patriarch summoned the maître d' and whispered to him. The maître d' rushed through a door. Moments later, the proprietor came out, a well-groomed man in his thirties, and shook the hand of the Russian, congratulating him on purchasing the most expensive bottle in the establishment: $70,000. Lights flashed in strobing exultation. The band unleashed a wail and the drummer ripped. The entire staff emerged, following the bottle, which was too large for a platter, which was carried by three shirtless waiters like a body, sacrificial, their bare muscular arms stretched upward, over the heads of patrons, stiffly straight, Egyptian, carved in stone. The curtain rose, dancers flung themselves around the stage, the men offered the bottle to the Russian, and he gestured for them to shake it, all three of them, with himself at the helm. They shook the bottle. They continued to shake. And then he uncorked it and it burst open and the spume curved like a geyser and bathed the heads of his progeny in a waterfall of froth, like some monster disgorging an ocean, a swallowed kingdom thrown up into the sky, pluming, falling down in an aurora borealis of raining excess. The Indian—or where was he from? Ian couldn't tell anymore, his mind was a cave and he wandered through it with a lantern and torch, searching for a point of light to guide him—the patriarch from the other table, took off his jacket. Took off his tie. Stepped away from his chair and walked over to the Russian. He bowed to him and knelt down before him. The Russian lifted the bottle and poured the last drops of liquid onto the head of the kneeling and proudly defeated man. The game was over.

Walking home, leaving the scene of such supernatural decadence, he is grateful for the normal shrieking of revelers out on the streets and the sharp horns that ring out now and then in the hot night air. He welcomes their piercing, cutting through his thoughts. As if against his will he sees the horrors of his evening, and his thoughts travel instantly to Poppy. How can she grow in a world like this? It is impossible for him not to worry about her. It felt necessary to consider her present, and even more her future: how would she possibly make her way? If he considered these ideas too deeply he felt ashamed, as if he even had any right to care about her, and tormented by his ignorance and irresponsibility.

Four in the morning and Ian veers unthinkingly when he enters the lobby and finds himself in front of the elevator that leads to Alix's side of the building. He presses the button for her floor. Why he's there at that hour she doesn't know, he doesn't know, but she grants him succor, lets him slump on her couch, offers tea.

By 4:40 he had told her everything. A long rambling confession and then a series of questions and answers. She got up and refilled her mug. A weak navy light out the windows. What are you thinking? he said. She didn't reply. She finished her tea and left the cup on the counter. She went into the bathroom and turned on the water. Steam began to mist up the mirror. She closed the door and took off her clothes and stepped into the hot water, as hot as she could bear it. He was knocking on the door, saying, What is happening? What are you doing?

I'm taking a shower, she called out.

Why? he said.

Because after what you've told me I need to take a very long, very hot shower.

While he sat on the couch he remembered Poppy sitting on his couch. So fragile and so alive.

They talked as the day rose. He tried to remember every detail of his relationship with Poppy, his motivations, his feelings, what she'd said, what they'd seen. He was back to telling Alix about his adventures, only this wasn't any adventure; it was some compressed version of a lifetime, a journey, an ascent, a descent, a horror, a moral awakening. Sometimes she asked him questions about his relationship with Poppy that were impossible to answer. I didn't know myself then, he explained. But I love her differently now, this he could say truthfully. Alix had her own opinions. How he must have known, subconsciously, who Poppy was. Alix was hurt. Ian tried to keep the conversation calm but his heart was not calm. Neither was hers.

No past. No present. The future the only thing that mattered. Poppy's future. There was no future for him except hers. Love is not romantic. It is savage, dramatic, mundane, unfair. The purest love he'd felt was this love. He was in pain but it was not suffering. It was the grief of real love. He listened to Alix talking but in his heart he spoke to Poppy: I love you. I'm so sorry. I will do everything I can for you. I will find a way to take care of you.

He thought about the picture Poppy had slashed and put in the plastic Baggie and thought that he should have kept the shreds and tried to keep her, keep in contact with her, but he didn't know how. He voiced her name out loud in his mind.

When Alix was finished talking he said, I'm sorry.

It's okay, Alix said. You didn't know.

Should I leave?

Where will you go?

To the theater. I have a tech rehearsal. We open next week.

I wish this were a rehearsal and we could change the story, Alix said. I wish I could change all of it: no me, no Diana. That you'd never met Diana but that there was a Poppy for you—at least a decade older, of course—and it was all okay.

He didn't say anything. He looked at her tensed face, the softest lines around her mouth, her dry hair, her familiar eyes.

You mean you wish that you never existed? This never existed? Our friendship?

Then you wouldn't have met Diana.

I might have.

But I introduced you, she was my aunt, I got you into her class. And you became close to her by hanging around with me.

He leaned his head back.

Alix, that's called life. This could have happened a million ways. It's not your fault. You're the last person whose fault this is.

That's all true. But I still feel guilty.

Don't. Hate me but don't hate yourself.

That would be a change.