Keys of Babylon (31 page)

Then Kaz, after the meal and the cider and their Lithuanian moonshine, we went swimming. I kid you not. A midnight swim on the huge beach, and those two planets close together beside the moon. Are they Venus and Saturn? You can see them from over there, Kaz. Do you look up at the cosmos with your darling dentist and ponder the starry particles? Oh, I know you do, dear Kaz, I know. And we stripped off on the town beach under the lights strung down the promenade, people shouting and screaming in the Ghetto. As if they were drowning. And we ran and ran over the wet sand. The sea was way out. It was incredible, Kaz, I thought the sea had disappeared, even though there was a white line in the distance where the waves were breaking. And I was down to my grey bra again, Kaz, and I thought no, just do it, and I peeled right off. Knickers too. And so did the boys.

Now Petr, he's a little Lithuanian dumpling. But Virglijs? O Virgilijs is a Baltic shark. How he knifed through the neon surf under the lighthouse. Naked, Kat. All of us naked and wild. Wild as children naked in the night. And neither of them turned or said a word. Nice tits? No. Nice arse? Never. Just ran past me, feet slapping like fish, and plunged in and I plunged in and nearly died. Nearly died, Kat. On a hot August night at the fag end of Europe.

That shocked the homebrew out of me, the horrible cider we'd passed around in a plastic bottle big as a fire extinguisher. And yes, I thought. Spinster or married, boys or girls. What's it matter? I'll sit in Alchemia's candlelight and nurse my cup and remember the black beach under the neon. The promenade lights on their whistling ropes. Because that's the beach where I dived in head first, the beach where I thought, wouldn't it be great if the Roid Boys dived in, if the Mutant Crew dived in too, under Venus, under Saturn? Good conjunction or bad? Well, I don't know. But it must mean something, Venus and Saturn, twins in the sky.

And I felt as if I was washing it all away. Because if we can get out of our heads surely we can shed our skins. Washing all the
gowno
away. And soon the water was warm around me and I put my head under the waves. You know how I hate that, but I felt sleek and lithe. Felt free. The boys were whooping like swans. And then we all found one another and we walked back across the beach under the esplanade lights. But in the decent darkness.

And that's my pension, Kazia. When I'm down to my last few zlotys, or the red cents of the European Union, which God preserve, it's the beach I'll remember. The beach that will see me though my irongrey spinsterishnesses. Call it my intellectual pension. Yes, I'll remember running naked under the pink Welsh moon, my arse wobbling like floodlights on the water.

Don't worry, I'll write soon, Kaz, and tell you how I'm coming back, and when. But first let me work out all the other things I have to do. All this complicated astrology.

Love from the wild side, your Coney Beach Butty Baby, Zuzi the Banshee

August 13, 7 p.m. The Broadway Dive, 2066, Broadway, Manhattan, New York

Yea, heavy. And still gigging. Still gagging. But it's going to stop.

I'm in the Broadway Dive where Amir and I used to come. Once this bar had peanut shells all over the floor. Seemed a real pit, but it was the shells made it famous. Cleaned up now but at least it doesn't gleam. No, no gleaming. So it's bearable.

But the old woman's gone. She used to sit in the counter corner, skin like a beermat. Cracked blue heel hanging out of a slip-on. Peppermint schnapps right up to the bevel of the bar.

About two blocks away, the Plaza's shut. That's even harder to take, our favourite cinema becoming apartments. Think. I'm never going to feel that Plaza darkness creeping up my skirt again, the spongy red carpet with its dorito pieces. And all the posters went straight to collectors. Very knowing.

Yes, think. Because when you think you know New York, when you think at last you're used to something, they immediately tear it down and you're on the back foot again. Scuffling for dimes. The Afghan restaurant we used to love? That's gone too. Gone overnight. The Cedar Tavern? No more. All gone, all going, all up for grabs. And what's replacing it is not for me. Not for me because it's not my time. We all have a time. It comes, it peaks, it has an eternally sad falling away. All those little stones that make up a mountain? Falling away and slithering down? That's
scree
. Yes, scree. What a great album title. Scree. And I'm on the scree, honey. I'm going down. Screaming.

Does that sound old? Well at least I'm old enough to know what I don't like. Look, I'm not fucked and I'm not busted. But I'm facing up to things. Next week I hit the big five. The lion at bay. And next week I'll be home and if I ever come back here there'll be bigger changes than a cinema closing. Than some new landlord sweeping a floor.

Next week there's a party I don't want. My mum's idea, mum seventy and sexy, tanned by Marbella, not the tube, and mum's partner, a great big bewildered builder called Brian who lucked in big time, who's so generous to me I could cry, his champagne already in the booze fridge, yes, they've got one, they've got everything, Brian's hands so gentle on my waist that time we danced in the twilight, shirtsleeves down to hide his ruined tattoos, a gold hooped earring that might have made him rakish, but doesn't, because there's no gypsy cool in Brian.

Dad too. I'm taking Dad to the shindig. Dad who might nurse a shandy in his wheelchair and sneer at the canapes. Sourpuss Dad, last explorer of the vinyl frontier. Yes, fifty. Dad's girl is fifty. Fifty, her empty womb. Fifty her hairy nipples and fifty her loose front tooth for which no tooth fairy has a remedy. Not that Brian wouldn't write a cheque. Not that Brian wouldn't be absolutely desperate to pay.

And, you know what? I'm going to take Brian's money. Oh yes. Because teeth are different. Teeth count. Especially here, teeth count. They count in the united states of teeth, they count here in the Manhattan of teeth, and on the Broadway of teeth teeth still and will count. Even above 100 Street teeth count and will count more with every passing year. Teeth will count as they tear down the cinemas and build the highrise. Teeth will count as they sweep the floor and put the Guinness up to seven bucks. Teeth will count all right. The currency of gleaming teeth. I think of my father and his codeine-killed brown stubs. Nicotine brown, my old man's mouth. Goat breath.

But, as I said, it doesn't gleam here yet. Not quite yet. So I push at my tooth with the tip of my tongue and make a big smile at the room. Then take another black mouthful. Pouring the blackness into myself. Which might be a lyric. Oh yes, oh boy, another lyric. The waters, these black waters, these black waters of oblivion. Only some bastard has got there first.

I've tried, but I'm having problems keeping up payments on the Inwood place. The landlord wants to know about the next six months. Yes, I hear you. Ask Brian. Tap good old Brian, because it's easy for Brian, Brian with the hot tub he doesn't use, the golf clubs and golf cart he doesn't use, the computers he never switches on. Because Brian is a simple soul. What Brian wants is the midnight-blue Alpha Romeo Spider with that creamy leather interior.

The same colour as meadowsweet, Bri, I said to him.

Is it, Rhi? he beamed. That's nice.

Brian parks his motor at the golf club where he doesn't play. Or Brian stays home because Brian has the full Sky package with 24-hour sport on the telecinema. Let's see. Aussie Rules. Snowboarding. Girls in little gold pants playing beach volleyball. And panels. Panels of pundits talking stats and transfers, lists of the greatest-ever Kenyan middle distancers, the best Brazilian World Cup freekicks. Ultimate's the word the pundits use. So Brian uses it. A lot. Everything is always ultimate for Bri. The big man's word in the big man's world.

Oh, and my mum. I think Brian still wants my mum. But Mum is older than Brian, and on dodgy ground because of it. Her face is lovely, heart-shaped and strong. But as to the rest? Someone left the cake out in the rain. Now if Bri had anything close to an imagination, she wouldn't get near. But there's no accounting for lack of taste. So, yes. I could ask Brian about the apartment.

Course, love, course, he'd say, delighted. Have to come out there one day, won't I? Glad to see you doing so well.

You know, sometimes I feel Brian looking at me out of his life of Brian and I can guess what he's thinking. Bet she's never had a shag. That's what Brian's thinking. Well think all you can, Bri. But if I'm going to tap him twice, maybe it's not for the room. Because Amir says he's given up on the US. Amman's the place now. The place for film, for digital, the place for Amir. Where his parents happen to live. His melancholic mother. Cheap, he says.

Amir wants to make a film about shepherds in the desert. Their life in a landscape like another planet. No water, black rock. But a purple sky all shot with stars. Then, a film about the Tower of Babel. Amir says he knows where it is. Or before that, a short piece called ‘Suq of Souls', about the market he took me to in Amman. You see, Amir's bored with the tours. Film's the future.

Move on, he laughs. Or else.

Or else what? I say.

Or else I send you back to McDaddy's in Big Stone City.

Not Big Stone City, I say. No, daddy, no.

Now I cross to the bar and pick up a Jacky Dee, double, because this is my last before the gig. It's a special gig tonight. In a museum. Usually they have classical duos there, or po-faced poets from the shorn lawns of academe. But I've been visiting the Roerich for months now, a hidden-away brownstone over on the rather discreet One Hundred and Seventh Street. Hey, that's a verse. Don't worry, I'll remember it. And I love it at the Roerich. So quiet. Some days it's only me and the paintings, the smiling Buddhas of copper and bronze. Yes, the hush of the Nicholas Roerich Museum is the biggest kick I'm getting these days. Where I can look into myself and out the other side into the universe.

Seriously, I've become contemplative. Contemplation rules. I wander the museum and look at the paintings of Tibet, the monks in the mountains, the monks contemplating away like fury. Yeah, those monks. Sly or what? And the weirdness they believe in. So tonight I'm going to do all the contemplative songs I know, including my little ode to Topaz Street, which is the title track of the next album, and my song about Dad, spark out on his couch, my songs of vigil and songs of loss, all the soft songs off the CD, the CD here with me now, my precious amulets these CDs, my album that is selling slowly but still selling.

Because that's all I want. That's all I ever wanted. My music for the people to hear, locked up in these silver circles, holy to me as Tibetan prayer bowls, the sound I make, the sound I'm making, paying the bartender and crossing Broadway, out amongst the poor people now in the heat, this heat stinking of the Texas T Rotisserie and the Mexican dry cleaning, and who knows where these poor people will sleep tonight under all this glass, all this concrete, the subway trains running under my feet, the 1 train, the 3 train, the rivers of shit, the rivers of rats, and yes I'm ready as I'll ever be because I'm getting where I need to be and that's exactly where you'll find me. On the brink.

August 13, 5 p.m. Zichron Ya'akov, Israel

Go to Fatoosh, everyone said. If you're in Haifa, you must try Fatoosh.

The woman next door drove me to the hospital the first few times. Then she pointed out there was a bus. Some people wouldn't dream of taking the bus. For obvious reasons. But after a few journeys, everything seems fine. In Haifa, I go by taxi to the hospital, and am with David for two hours, two afternoons per week.

But David's friends at Sachs say we should come back to New York. So that's what I'm thinking. Back where I started. Or didn't start. Not back to West End Avenue, because the apartment is sold. But what about those new places down by the water in Battery Park City? they ask. The ones the Slovakians are building. So modern. And the river walks are fabulous.

Maybe. I look at David in his blue gown and think he should be home. David's a Manhattanite. His sister is there on 107 Street. Yes, Rebecca should see him again. I know she will never come here.

At our place in Zichron I sit where David sat, on the ridge in our garden, looking at the Mediterranean. There's a triangular view of the sea, like a page turned up.

Yes, time is slow. That's what I like. Olives drop and I pick up the rubbish the mongooses have pulled out of the bin. There is a family of mongooses in the undergrowth between this and the next house. I see them in the early morning. They are clever, yes. It's as if they're learning. And they're big. I would never chase them, as David used to, back into the undergrowth. David in his shorts and sandals, waving a collector's magazine. His glasses glinting.

The doctors say he might soon be discharged to somewhere nearer me. But his friends want him home in an apartment by the river. Beside the Hudson that flows both ways. With a live-in carer, they say. Leave it to Sachs. Yes, David was good to the bank. And the bank remembers its own.

One afternoon the nurses were changing him and they said it would take some time. See the town, one suggested. I know you're back here on Thursday.