Ghost Music (3 page)

But this afternoon she had seemed so distracted, and so fey. I simply couldn't imagine her rolling around in bed, screaming and laughing. And—rightly or wrongly—I had felt that she had been asking for my help or my protection or somebody to confide in, at the very least.

I went to the front door, and opened it a little way. Tony Bennett
was singing,
“Why do you run and hide from life? To try it just ain't smart.”

I was still listening when Malkin, Kate's fluffy white cat, came up the stairs. She sat on the opposite side of the landing, giving me a baleful stare.

“Hey, puss,” I coaxed her. “What's your mistress up to? Come on! Just for once, stop pretending that you don't know how to talk. All cats can talk, don't try to deny it.”

Malkin continued to glower at me, saying nothing, but purring like a clapped out air-conditioning unit.

“You want to come in? How about a saucer of milk? I'm sorry, I don't have any Wild Kitty in the fridge, but I might be able to stretch to a can of anchovy fillets.”

I opened the door a little wider and stepped back. “Come on, puss. What is it, you don't like milk? You'd rather have a shot of El Tesoro? That can be arranged.”

My phone started to play “Hang On, Sloopy” and I briefly turned around. When I turned back, however, Malkin had disappeared, like one of Magician's conjuring tricks. Vanished, evaporated, without even the sound of her paws pattering down the stairs.

I closed the door and went to answer the phone. It was Margot. She sounded as if she were calling me from somebody's party. A girl in the background was calling out, “Margot! Margot! Come here, will you? Michael has something
so-o-o
wild to show you!”

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“Sure, I'm terrific. I'm at Lydia's birthday party. I just wanted to know if
you
were okay.”

“Of course I'm okay. I've been working, that's all. At least I
was
working, until they started having an orgy downstairs.”

“An orgy? Your well-heeled neighbors? How about that! Maybe you moved into the right apartment after all!”

“Well, I don't know about that. They're playing Tony Bennett records.”

“Oh, God. Better than Barry Manilow, I suppose.”

“Listen . . . did you call me for any special reason? I really need to get some sleep now, so long as all this orgasmic screaming doesn't keep me awake.”

“I did, yes. I was worried about you. I just wanted to make sure that you were okay.”

“Of course I'm okay. Why shouldn't I be?”

“We did this fortune-telling tonight, with real Tibetan beads. They're so accurate, it's scary. They even knew that my sister was sick.”

“Okay . . . but why are you calling me?”

“Because I asked the fortune-teller if you would be happy in your new home. And he kept coming up with two beads, which means ‘raven,' and that means bad luck. He said you would suffer pain, and broken bones, and burning in a fire. Most of all, he said you had to stay well away from a woman who had nobody walking beside her.”

“So what the hell does that mean?”

“I don't know. I asked him myself, but he kept on saying the same thing, again and again. And the other thing he said was, ‘a white memory is watching you . . . so keep your door locked.'”

“‘A white memory'? What's ‘a white memory' when it's at home?”

“I have no idea, Lalo. Don't shoot the messenger. I simply thought you ought to know how your divination turned out, so that you can take the necessary precautions. As it is, I'm glad you're okay.”

“Thank you, Margot,” I said, tiredly.

“That's all right. I love you, Lalo, and I don't want you coming to a sticky end. Ever.”

I put down the phone. Downstairs, the Tony Bennett song had ended, although I could still hear voices and bumping sounds. What the hell were they doing—rearranging the goddamned furniture? I felt like putting on my hiking boots and doing a thunderous Cossack dance all around the living room. But then
I thought—no, that would be childish. I was going to have to live with the Solways for the next few years, I would just have to get used to their little soirées. They wouldn't have an orgy every night. At least I hoped not.

I took a long, hot shower, until the plumbing began to rumble, and then I toweled myself off and went to bed in my N.Y. Mets boxer shorts. I could see a three-quarters moon through the bedroom window, until it disappeared behind the Franks Building. The night was much quieter now, except for the echo of sirens and the rumbling of traffic. At least Tony Bennett had put a sock in it.

I wondered what was going on downstairs—whether the three of them were lying in an octopus-like tangle on their bed, passing a joint from one to the other.

To my annoyance, I found myself murmuring, under my breath,
“Another love before my time made your heart sad and blue . . .”

I was coming down the stairs the next morning when the front door to the Solways' apartment opened and Victor Solway stepped out. He was wearing a dark brown linen sport coat, almost the same color as his deeply tanned face, and tasseled brown loafers.

“Hey, the new neighbor,” he said. He smelled very strongly of Armani aftershave, and there were dark circles under his eyes. “Victor Solway. Welcome to the madhouse.”

“Gideon Lake. Hi. Doesn't seem too mad so far.”

“Oh-ho. You obviously haven't met Pearl.”

“No. I haven't had the pleasure.”

Victor Solway put his arm around my shoulders as if he had known me for years, and said, in a confidential tone, “Jonathan Lugard used to live upstairs from you. Jonathan Lugard the artist? Pearl was his model.”

“I never heard of Jonathan Lugard, sorry.”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I hadn't either, before we moved here. But apparently they revered him in art circles. He died about five years ago, and when he died, Pearl inherited everything. The third-floor apartment and all of his paintings. She's worth
millions
. The trouble is, she's going doolally, and she keeps forgetting that Lugard has shuffled off to Buffalo. She wanders around wearing nothing but this old pink bathrobe, expecting him to come back at any moment and ask her to pose for him.”

“Wow,” I said, for want of anything better to say. Victor's breath smelled of hexachlorophene mouthwash, but there was an
underlying odor of stale shiraz, and I prayed that he would take his arm off my shoulders and give me some personal space.

But Victor gripped me even tighter, and glanced behind him as if he were making sure that nobody else could hear what he was saying. “I'm giving you a friendly warning, that's all. If Pearl sees you coming up the stairs, she's very likely to think that it's her long-lost Lugard, and she'll drop that bathrobe before you have time to scream.”

He laughed, three sharp barks like a German shepherd, right in my face, but then he let me go. I tugged at my shirtsleeves to straighten them, and tried to smile.

“But honestly, you'll love living here,” Victor told me. “And from the investment point of view, you couldn't have made a better choice. I should know. Victor Solway International Realty, Inc.—that's me. Top-class property, all over the world. You keep this apartment for five years, you'll get at least two-point-five when you sell it. Maybe three. In fact, I'll sell it for you, myself, personally, with cut-price commission. Two-point-five million, plus, and I kid you not.”

“Wow,” I repeated. I wished that I would stop saying “wow.”

Victor said, “I hear that you write music for the movies. Well, I was told that you were a musician, and I made a point of checking, before you moved in. I didn't want a heavy metal band living upstairs.
Ha!
”

“No, no,” I assured him. “I've scored some movies, yes. But I mainly write TV commercials, that kind of thing.”

“Obviously you're
very
successful at it. Written anything I should know?”

“I doubt it.” I wasn't going to sing the Thom's Tomato Soup song, not again, especially if Victor had never heard it either.

“Well, muchacho . . . I guess we'll be bumping into each other, from time to time. Come on down for a drink, why don't you? How about Saturday morning, around eleven thirty?”

“Sure. Sounds good. Thank you.”

Victor leaned very close to me again, and I found myself tilting backward.

“By the way,” he said. “I invite some of my friends back, now and again. If it ever gets a little too boisterous for you, don't hesitate to knock on the floor. One knock for keep it down, two knocks for shut the fuck up.”

He let out three more barks and slapped my shoulder.

“Thanks,” I said. “I'm sure I won't have to. Knock, I mean.”

I was just about to tell Victor that I had met Kate yesterday afternoon, and that she was supposed to be having lunch with me today, but for some reason I decided not to. I didn't exactly know why, but I thought that maybe I should wait until I knew a little more about Victor and Kate's relationship.

Victor opened the front door, and the morning sunlight flooded in. “I'll see you Saturday, okay, if I don't see you before?”

He bounded down the steps and hailed a passing cab. I stood in the porch for a few moments, watching his cab until it reached the end of St. Luke's Place and turned right into Hudson Street. When it had disappeared, I felt strangely relieved.

I looked across the street toward the park. Behind the high wire fencing, three small children were running around and around, their arms outspread, trying to make themselves giddy. Two men were perched on the back of a bench, with their feet on the seat, talking and smoking. And there, half-hidden behind one of the trees, stood a young woman with a baby stroller. It was Kate.

I shaded my eyes with my hand. Maybe it was somebody who just
looked
like Kate. But, no—it was definitely her, wearing a charcoal gray coat and a light gray woolly hat. In the bright sunlight, her face looked very pale, almost blurred. The baby in the stroller looked about five or six months old. I guessed he was a boy: he was wearing a blue knitted bonnet with ear-flaps, and a little dark blue duffel-coat. He was twisting around to catch Kate's attention, but she seemed to be ignoring him.

I half raised my hand and gave Kate a wave, but she didn't wave
back. I didn't even know if she had seen me. I thought about going across to her, but she seemed so lost in thought, and after the rumpus I had heard last night I wasn't sure what I was going to say to her. “Have a good evening, did you—you and Victor and whatever-her-name-was?” I waited for a moment longer, and then I went down the steps and started to walk east, toward Seventh Avenue. I was heading for The Two Brothers seafood market on Carmine Street for fresh tuna. Before I went around the bend in St. Luke's Place, however, I turned back, to see if Kate was still there, standing by the tree, but she had gone.

A ragged cloud passed over the sun, and the day suddenly turned chilly.

I opened the front door just as my wall clock chimed 10:30. I went through to the kitchenette and unwrapped the two inch-thick steaks of yellowfin tuna. I rinsed them under the faucet, patted them dry, and then laid them in a shallow white dish.

I hummed a new theme I was writing for
Eagle's Pass
, a new TV series about a pioneering family in Oregon. Half adventure, half comedy and half mushy-sentimental
Waltons
-type weepie.

From another shopping bag, I took out a Chinese cabbage, two bunches of scallions, a knobbly piece of ginger and a clear cellophane envelope filled with
hijiki
seaweed. I emptied the seaweed into a bowl and covered it with warm water to soak.

I was grating the ginger when I heard the most timorous of knocks at my door. Wiping my hands on a tea towel, I went to answer it. Standing on the landing was an elderly woman with wild white hair, wrapped in a soiled pink satin bathrobe.

“I'm very sorry if I'm being a nuisance,” she said, almost in a whisper. “But I was wondering if Jonathan was with you.”

I shook my head. “He's not, no.”

The woman craned her head to one side, trying to see past me, into my living room. “You're quite sure? He was only going to Blick's to buy some new brushes. He said he'd be back in twenty minutes.”

“No, I'm sorry. There's nobody here but me.”

She stared at me, her mouth pursed like an Egyptian mummy. I could see that, decades ago, she must have been beautiful. Her
bone structure was perfect. Wide forehead, high cheekbones, finely delineated jaw. But now her skin had withered and her green eyes had faded. She was barefoot, underneath her bathrobe, and her feet were like claws.

“
You're
not Jonathan, are you?”

“No, I'm not Jonathan. But if I see him, I'll tell him that you were looking for him.”

“Thank you,” she said. Then she frowned at me again, and said, “I
do
live here, don't I? I'm not just visiting? This isn't a hotel?”

“No . . . you live here. Do you want me to take you back up to your apartment?”

“Yes, that would be very noble of you. Whatever happened to nobility? I used to know Claude Rains, you know. I knew him very well. Now
he
was nobility.”

“Claude Rains? Didn't he play the Invisible Man?”

“That's right. The Invisible Man. But they used a double, most of the time, when he was wearing his bandages. It was only the
real
him in the inn scene.”

I stepped out of my apartment and took hold of the woman's elbow. “Come on, let me show you back upstairs. You must be Pearl. Mr. Solway downstairs, he was telling me all about you.”

“Mr. Solway? Never heard of him. The people who live downstairs, their name is Huxtable. George and Doris Huxtable. They have an awful dog, but don't tell them I said so, will you? Never stops barking. I heard it this morning. Yap, yap, yap!”