Kockroach (9 page)

She pulled back quickly. It was not what she was expecting. She had expected to hear of the blood pounding, the fingers tingling, she had expected to learn something of the thrill in the raw exercise of power. What she felt now was like going down a fast elevator, a deflating sense of disappointment. Disappointment, she realized with a touch of shame, in Mite.

“Did you ever think, Mite?” she said enthusiastically, trying to mend a rent maybe only she felt. “When I first saw you, you looked like a drowned rat. It was raining, ferociously, and you ran into the Automat, your jacket pulled over your head. And then you hit on each table, one after the other, looking for a piece of change.”

“I remembers.”

“And after a while you finally came over to my table, water still dripping off your hair onto your face, and asked me for your usual thirty-nine cents.”

“And you gave it.”

“Why thirty-nine cents, Mite? Why not a dime like everyone else, or a quarter? Why thirty-nine cents?”

“Was a Joe I knew when I was still a boy, an old guy what met me in the public library of all places.”

“What were you doing in a public library?”

“I was reading, what do you think? I used to be quite the reader, and not just comic books, thick books.
The Count of Monte Cristo
. You ever read that?”

“It’s a boys’ book.”

“Yeah, especially for a boy what’s been getting his butt kicked all over the schoolyard. Anyhoo, this old guy he taught me when you’re asking from dough always be specific, a set amount it gives comfort to the mopes paying out. He taught me a lot. Everything I done in the Square, it’s like I’m following his blueprint.”

“He did you a favor.”

“I suppose.”

“Suppose? Why look at you. Look at all the money you have now, eating in the finest restaurants. Look at the way they treat you, like royalty. You’re Pinnacio.”

“Pinnacio?”

“The guy you told me about, the manager now in Hollywood. You told me about Pinnacio like he was a talisman, a symbol that everything was possible. I bet the up-and-comers don’t talk about Pinnacio anymore. I bet they talk about you.”

“Go off.”

“You found it, Mite. What did you call it?”

“The pineapple pie?”

“That’s it. It always sounded so tasty.”

“But still, sometimes I feel the suit is too tight.”

“Buy another,” she snapped.

“See the thing is, Celia, the thing is,” said Mite, who was clearly trying to tell her something, who was obviously struggling to make himself understood, “my mother was trapped. I don’t know I ever told you about my mother.”

“No,” said Celia, not sure she wanted to hear about his mother, there, in the “21” Club, drinking red wine and eating red meat and watching Jimmy Durante tell stories at his table.

“She was…she had…I never told no one before, but she had these episodes, she called them. Episodes. They was more like the whole world crashing down. She would spin around and her eyes would roll up the back of her head and she’d be shaking and quivering and she’d fall down bang to the floor and there’d be nothing there, nothing there. The first was this big surprise and the second was not such a surprise and after that she just didn’t want to go nowhere in case it happened right there, on the street, with everyone watching. So it was like she was trapped by this thing, this affliction of emptiness which I never told no one about but which scared me small. It still does.”

“Do you want more wine?”

“Yeah, sure. And now I see those mokes in their suits, wage slaves Old Dudley called them—Old Dudley was the guy what set me on my way—the suckers riding the train in and working on someone else’s money and then riding the train back. Better they hang themselves with them ties, he used to say. Except what are they going back to, Celia? The wife, the
kids, the family I never knowed because my dad he ran and my mom she had her episodes, the little houses that Levitt he’s building for them out on the Island with them picket fences. And you know, it gets me wondering.”

“That’s not you, Mite.”

“Why not? Why the hell not? I could wear gray, not green. I could fold my paper on the train, fold once, fold twice, a little bend and there it is, the baseball scores ready for my perusal. Hey, Don, how’d them Gints do yesterday? I could like opera, maybe, or that queen from Tennessee.”

“Mississippi, actually.”

“Well, nows I understand. But see there’s a whole ’nother layer in the Square that I know nothing about. All them theaters, all them parties at Sardi’s, all them books I don’t read no more. Look around, these mokes are all part of it, why can’t I be too? Sometimes I feel as trapped as my mother she ever was, like I got the same affliction and the emptiness it’s pouring down on me like rain.”

“Mite, stop. Please.”

She didn’t want to hear this, his anxieties and doubts, the weepy telling of his childhood traumas. It was selfish, she knew, he was trying so hard, she could tell, but still his confession was more than she could bear. She needed him to be a cartoon, an amiably winning surface of strut and language whose number had hit and who now was taking her along for the ride. And that other stuff, that darker stuff, the Blatta stuff that tightened his collar, for her that was more than just part of his color, his charm. For her that was, somehow, the root of everything. So she didn’t want to see the undersized
boy tending to his epileptic mother after his father had run away. She didn’t want to see the gangster straining against the violence of his trade and yearning for the bland homilies of suburban life. She didn’t want to see the man, naked and alone, bewildered by his existential anxieties. For God’s sake, did he think he was the only one with the specter of emptiness threatening to swallow him? Didn’t he realize that the surface he wanted to discard, that edge of darkness that sickened him, was the only thing protecting her from the same damn specter? So no, she didn’t want to hear any of it, not because of what it said about him, but for what it said about her taste for pearls and wine, her new job on the day shift, her growing hunger for animal flesh cooked rare.

“I’m sorry, Celia. I don’t want to ruin your dinner. I just thought you’d understand what it meant, and all, feeling trapped.”

Like she was slapped. “I don’t feel trapped.”

“You know what I meant. We all of us are in—”

“Mr. Pimelia, sir?”

The man who appeared at their table was portly and sweating as he stood, literally, hat in hand. She had seen others just like him on other nights, all clothed with either greater or lesser aplomb but all with the same terror in their eyes. This one had a golden ring on one of his fat fingers and the neatly trimmed beard of a man who wasn’t used to standing, literally, hat in hand. She was so relieved to see him it was like he was a reprieve from the sentence Mite was about to impose upon them both.

“Aw hell, Cooney,” said Mite, who didn’t rise to greet
the man but instead glanced at Celia as if the appearance of the man proved his point, and then sawed into his steak, untouched during his awkward revelations. “How’d you get in here?”

“I’m sorry to disturb your dinner, Mr. Pimelia.”

“Yeah? So come back when we’re done.”

“Can we talk?” The man glanced at Celia. “In private?”

“What’s to talk about?” said Mite, sticking a piece of meat in his mouth, chewing, continuing to talk all the while. “You’re late again. Two weeks this time.”

“The closing, Mr. Pimelia, they keep putting it off. Now it’s a problem with the deed. The buyer is ready and willing, but they keep putting off the closing.”

“And that’s supposed to be our problem? You knew the terms. More wine there, Celia?”

“Yes please,” she said brightly. Mite poured the last of the bottle into her glass, raised his hand, snapped his fingers.

“Yes, Mr. Pimelia,” said Peter, who had appeared quickly and silently, and was now standing just behind the man with the beard. “Is there a problem? This man said he was a friend of yours.”

Mite glanced up at the man in the beard and then said, “No, no problem. We’re out of wine here, is all. And get Jimmy over by the bar another bottle of whatever it is he’s drinking and tell him I gives my regards.”

Peter leaned over, snatched the empty bottle from off the table. “Very good, Mr. Pimelia.”

The man with the beard watched until the maître d’ had left and then began again with his pleading. “I can’t make the
two-fifty, per, Mr. Pimelia. I just can’t. You’ll get it all when we close, I swear, with some extra. But just now, I tried to get the five I owe you.”

“And this week’s too.”

“Of course, yes, I tried. And I can’t.”

“You got a house, don’t you?”

“And three kids, Mr. Pimelia, and a wife and a mother-in-law living in a first-floor bedroom.”

“Aw, Cooney, we don’t want to hear about your mother-in-law, please, we’re eating here. Look, you got something to say, you want to make a deal, make it with the big guy.”

The man’s eyes swam like two fish, left, right, bulging forward. “No please, God, no. That’s why I came to you, Mr. Pimelia, to avoid going to him.”

“But Cooney, there’s nothing I can do. If you can’t make the payments or a deal with the big guy, there is nothing I can do.”

Mite sawed at his steak and then looked up at Celia. Celia glanced at the man and though she believed she should have felt pity, compassion, horror over what was being done to him and his family, what she felt instead was a familiar tremor of thrill at being part of some force powerful enough to shake a man like that to his core. The affection she felt that instant for Mite grabbed at her heart, and if he had asked her just then for anything, anything, she would have given it gladly and without hesitation.

“What about that ring you’re sporting there, Cooney?” said Mite, while still staring at Celia. “The big gold one. How much it worth?”

“I don’t know. It has sentimental value.”

“We’ll call it five.”

“It’s solid gold, with two diamonds and a ruby, Mr. Pimelia.”

“How big are them diamonds?”

“Mr. Pimelia, please God, I don’t remem—”

“How big?”

“Half carat each maybe.”

Mite raised his eyebrows and smiled, still looking only at Celia. “All right, you’re lucky you got me on a night when my mood is sweet and I might just be in the market for a ring. I’ll need to resize it, and that will cost me, still I figure it’s good for seven-fifty.”

“But, but—”

“Take it off.”

The man hesitated and then, quickly, he began scrabbling at his finger, trying to yank off the ring. It wouldn’t budge past the knuckle. He gave it a twist, tried again, his face strained with the effort.

“I’ll tell him you’re clear up to this week. But next time don’t come back to me like this. Either bring the money or go see him. And Cooney, believe me when I tell you this, it’s better you find him than he finds you.”

“I understand,” said the man, his voice slow and constipated as he struggled with the ring.

“All right, all right, let’s have it.”

“I’m trying, Mr. Pimelia,” the man said, his face twisting grotesquely from the effort. “All the nervousness, my hands are swollen, but I’m trying.”

Celia edged a small crock of butter his way.

She was still feeling a quivering thrill at what she had done when she looked up. Her heart leaped when she saw him. He was coming toward them, energetically darting through the crowd, arms outstretched. His bent back, his famous nose, a great gleam in his eye.

“Mickey, you son of a gun,” came the celebrated rasp, full of merriment and rhythm, “how you ended up with the swellest dame in the room I’ll never know. It’s a mystery, it is. Guess my good news. Guess. All right I’ll tell you. I made a killing today in the market. Yes indeed. I shot my broker. Mickey, my friend, you look like a million. So how the hell are you?”

Kockroach does
not dream. The inner mechanisms of his brain won’t admit to gorgeous flights of fantasy and it need not trouble itself with working through the unsolved dilemmas of the day because Kockroach’s day has no unsolved dilemmas. He does what he needs to get what he wants and moves on. In fact, Kockroach’s life has little day in it. He falls peacefully to sleep at the earliest announcement of the early dawn, the dreamless sleep of the innocent, if innocence is remaining true to inner character, and arises only as the promise of night begins whispering in his ear. What song he hears from the onset of night is the song that has serenaded his species awake for a hundred thousand millennia:

“Darkness comes, sweet darkness, so arise, ye scions of the night, and devour.”

At the first rap on his door Kockroach scurries from beneath his bed. He has slept his peaceful slumber in the lovely narrow gap between the bedsprings and the floor, but still the covers and sheets of the bed are tossed and twisted with some fierce abandon. For a cockroach, a night without sex is like…well, how would one even know? He pushes himself
to standing, protects his eyes with the dark glasses, strolls, naked and unabashed, arms rising languidly in his contrapuntal step, to the door, which he opens.

The man in the red jacket studiously keeps his gaze averted as he rolls in the cart with its twin domes, like two great silver breasts. He parks the cart, bows stiffly, and silently backs out of the suite, leaving Kockroach alone.

Kockroach lifts one dome to find a huge bowl of ice topped with thick pink shrimp, cooked but still in their shells, their little legs clutching at the ice. He dips his hand into the red spicy sauce, licks his fingers clean with his long tongue, and then one by one jams the shrimp into his mouth. He masticates with abandon, letting out a strange series of chortles with each snap of the jaw. He has taken a great liking to shrimp, their briny sweetness, like the briny marshes in which his great and noble forebears first evolved. The lovely crunch of their thin shells reminds him of the crunch of chitin eaten after a molt.

Beneath the second dome lies a great rack of lamb, the bones arranged in a crown, pink paper hats on the tip of each rib. Kockroach lifts the rack, each hand grabbing a number of ribs, lifts it above his head, and then, in a savage jerk, rips it apart. He snaps at the tender chunks of meat rolling off each rib, first from one hand, then the other, and back again, ripping the meat with his teeth, mashing it to pulp with his molars, swallowing the sweet roasted muscle before snapping at more. His lips, his cheeks, his body is smeared with the grease of the rack. When the meat is gnawed off he starts on the bones, crushing them in his teeth, sucking out the marrow.

This fascination with meat, with bone and marrow, with the slippery strips of fat that line each stria of rib, is a corruption of his essential cockroach nature by the carnivorous traits of his human body, and yet, yet…it feels right, oh so right. It is different, yea, but not a departure, nay, not a departure at all. Instead it is a great evolutionary step forward, a natural progression from the discovery of fire. This is how cockroaches would eat had they the wherewithal to hunt larger prey, to cook their victims over savage fires, to smear the grease of their roasted conquests across their abdomen, their legs, their genital hooks.

He struts around, his back arched, his legs stepping high, holding the final remnants of the ribs in the air as the light reflects off the smears of fat on his body, struts and laughs and revels.

He is in the shower when the man in the red coat arrives to roll out the cart. The shrimp are gone, muscle and shell. All that’s left of the rack of lamb are the tiny paper hats, tossed carelessly across the floor.

Kockroach sits back in the stiff, high chair, the white robe cinched around his body, his glasses on, his grimace fixed, the lower part of his face covered with hot white foam. A man scrapes at the foam with a straight razor. A female rubs his nails with a yellow stick. A man is in the corner shining his shoes. Mite sprawls on the couch, his feet on a coffee table, talking.

“The girls are all out, Jerry, all but Sylvie what says it’s so
painful she can barely walk. Don’t know what it is with her lately, but she ain’t bringing in what she was, no surprise the way the skin it hangs off of her like a baggy sack of nylons. She’s on the sleeve, I think, but everyone knows not to sell to our girls so I don’t know where she’s getting it. Having her around, it’s bad for business, gets the other girls upset and, truth be told, she ain’t so appetizing to the buyers. We need do something about her soon.”

Kockroach says little when Mite speaks, but it is not out of a paucity of words. He has learned much of the language, picked it up on the run from conversations overheard, from statements barked by his associates, from the movies Mite sometimes takes him to on hot, slow nights. He now knows the names of the parts of his new body, the names of the human things that surround him. He has collected strung-together bits of noise that he sounds out during the gaps in his sleep until they are polished and ready for the world. The sentences he has learned are short, to the point, active, orders aped from the most powerful humans he has come across. And along with the sentences he has learned a trick about speaking with humans: the fewer sounds you make, the more they respect and fear you; the fewer sounds you make, the more you maintain control.

“The protection’s been coming in like clockwork, no worry there, not after what you did to Paddy’s place and then to Paddy’s wife. Once word got out, the others what was holding back all fell in line like tenpins. Oh she’s walking again, by the way, case you was worried, Paddy’s wife, though she ain’t walking so well.”

The man with the straight razor cleans off his blade and strops it on a leather strap hanging from his belt.

“Today’s collections is on target,” says Mite. “Pinkly’s late with his hundred, but I talked to his mom and she says he don’t come up with it in a day or two she’s good for it. I think she’s got a stash somewheres underneath a mattress so it pays to let him get behind. Rickland paid, Somerset paid, Bert is out of town but his girl’s still around so he’ll come through. And you’ll love this. Seven twelve came up, which is Toddy’s number, son of a bitch. He owed us six plus, but as soon as I heard the number I got to his runner afore he did, so he’s up to date.”

“Show me,” says Kockroach.

“Sure, Jerry, sure. You know I’m always square with you.”

Mite reaches into his jacket, pulls out a thick envelope, drops it onto the coffee table with a solid thwack. The female working on Kockroach’s nails slips and digs a knife into the cuticle. Kockroach’s hand suffers not a twitch as blood wells on his fingertip. The female cleans it off nervously with a white towel.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

“Who isn’t?” says Kockroach.

“I marked out with a paper clip the
Nonos
’s cut, for you to give him the way you like,” says Mite.

Kockroach nods.

“The
Nonos
wants to meet everyone at midnight. Nemo made sure for me to tell you not to be late.”

Kockroach shrugs.

“That’s it, I guess.” Mite drops his feet from the table, slaps
his thighs and stands. “I’ll see you at midnight then. Have yourself a good night, Jerry.”

“What about Cooney?” says Kockroach.

Mite freezes for an instant, and from behind his glasses, Kockroach notices.

“I told you he made up three payments a couple weeks ago,” says Mite.

“I didn’t see the cash.”

“He made it up in trade. He gave us this.” Mite screws a thick gold ring off his finger. “I had it sized for me and took the spinach out of my cut, but if you want it, Jerry, be my guest.”

Mite flips the heavy ring to Kockroach, who examines it carefully, notices how small it is, notices the shiny metal, the square diamonds, the ruby, and then bites into it as he has seen others bite into gold.

“Swell,” Kockroach says, tossing it back to Mite. “Keep it for yourself. But what about this week?”

“He’s due, yeah,” says Mite, examining the ring with evident disappointment, a bite mark ripping now through its face, “but I think we should give him time. He’s been jabbering something about the city holding up his deal. I checked out what he’s saying and it’s on the up. Once the deal closes and he flips the building he’ll have plenty to pay what he owes and a premium to boot. He’s got a wife and three kids, he needs a break.”

“I think so too, sweet pea,” says Kockroach, his grimace, half hidden by the foam, growing wider.

Mite nods, turns to leave.

“Hey, Mite,” says Kockroach, “how about a game?”

The attendants have departed. Kockroach, still in his white robe and his dark glasses, sits at a table across from Mite. Between them lies the board with its array of brown and white squares and the little wooden pieces. Together they are performing a human ritual that Mite has taught to Kockroach, a ritual called chess.

“What are you up to, Mite?” says Kockroach as he stares at the board.

“You know me, Boss. I’m never up to nothing.”

“Sweet pea.”

Kockroach has learned to enjoy the give-and-take over the board. Mite’s was the first name he learned in the human world and he relies on Mite for much as he runs the business of running Times Square, but Kockroach is not certain he can trust Mite anymore. If you know what a human wants, you have control. But Kockroach is no longer sure of what Mite wants. At first he assumed that Mite wanted exactly what he himself wanted: money, power, sex, shrimp, sex. But Mite was never about sex, and money, power, and shrimp seem no longer enough for him, and that is the cause of Kockroach’s concern. This mistrust has leaked into all their business dealings. The hesitancy Kockroach noticed this very night is merely another example. But Mite, who is suitably deferential to Kockroach in business, is anything but deferential in the ritual. He schemes, he traps, he attacks without mercy. The only time now Kockroach feels Mite is being completely honest with him is during the ritual of the game.

It took Kockroach a long time to gain an understanding of the ritual. Not the pieces and the moves, that was easy. The slopey pieces move entirely on an angle. The piece shaped like the head of a wasp jumps up and over. The moves and rules of this chess were easy, it was the purpose of the ritual that confused him. It seemed to him at the start a type of battling. When Mite first slipped his large female piece into Kockroach’s side of the board like a knife and knocked over Kockroach’s boss piece with the cross on top, Kockroach felt a spurt of fear. Now what? he wondered. He tensed his whole body, ready for a confrontation, sad at what he’d have to do to the little man. But Mite merely reached out his hand. “Good game, Jerry,” he said. “Keep at it and you’ll get the hang,” and that was it. Everything after the ritual was the same as before. It seemed to have no meaning. Kockroach didn’t understand. Time after time Mite toppled Kockroach’s boss piece and nothing changed.

Until something did change, and it slammed into Kockroach like a revelation.

In his first games, Kockroach examined the board and made what appeared to be the strongest move. If a square could be occupied he occupied it, if a piece could be killed he killed it. Cockroaches live eternally in the present tense and he performed the ritual like a cockroach, but each game ended with Mite knocking Kockroach’s pieces off the board one after the other before swooping in and killing his all-important boss piece.

“Where did you learn this chess?” said Kockroach early in their practice of the ritual.

“From Old Dudley, what taught me the ways of the world,”
said Mite. “I ever tell you about Old Dudley? He said chess was a good thing to cotton to, teaches you how to think ahead.”

“Think ahead,” said Kockroach. “What’s that?”

But slowly, game after game, Kockroach began to understand. Mite moved that little piece there for a reason; if Kockroach killed Mite’s little piece, Mite could kill a stronger piece. If Kockroach moved here, Mite would move there. If Mite moved there and Kockroach moved there, then Mite would move there. Kockroach saw deeper into the game, the rituals lengthened, Kockroach came closer and closer to killing Mite’s boss piece.

But that wasn’t the fantastic change. As Kockroach stared at the board, sequences of moves played out in his head in glorious ribbons of possibility that grew and lengthened and weaved from the now to the then until, like some sort of strong magic, he was no longer playing only in the present, he was playing in the future, too.

“You’re getting tougher, Boss,” says Mite as their current ritual heads toward its conclusion. “You been taking lessons?”

“From you, Mite. Only you.”

“You got me pinned here. You got me pinned there. Looks like I’m in serious trouble.”

“Looks like.”

“Except watch this.” Mite moves his wasp. “Check.”

Kockroach stares at the board. The ribbons of possibility that had been reeling through his head suddenly shrivel. His boss piece is under attack. He has one possible move. He makes it.

Mite moves the female piece that had been protecting his boss piece, leaving his boss piece vulnerable. Kockroach is
ready to rush in and kill Mite’s boss when Mite says, “Checkmate.”

Kockroach stares at the board for a moment longer before he topples over his own boss piece.

“Nice game,” says Mite, reaching out his hand as he stands. “It won’t be long afore you own me.”

Kockroach, still staring at the board, ignores Mite’s outstretched hand as he says, “I own you already.”

“Maybe next time, Boss,” says Mite. He pulls back his hand, hitches up his pants, heads to the door. “Maybe, but I doubt it.”

Kockroach keeps staring at the board, willing the ribbons of possibility to reappear and flutter in his brain. The purpose of the ritual, he has learned, is not the game itself, not who kills whose boss. The purpose of the game is these ribbons rippling into the future. Through the practice of the ritual, he has leaped out of the arthropod’s slavish devotion to the present tense.