Loss (2 page)

There were women but none of them mattered much. I never fell in love. I wrote thrillers, I wrote mysteries featuring my heroic PI King Carver. I didn’t copy Corben but I was surprised at how similar our tastes and capabilities were. I thought my shit blew away his shit.

Thirteen years went by like that, fast but without much action. I lucked into the job as a manager/handyman of Stark House. I lived in Apartment A½, a studio nearest the basement. So near it was actually
in
the fucking basement. It was the basement. I hadn’t sold a novel in almost two years. I kept writing them and sending them to my agent. The rejection letters grew shorter and more tersely formal as time went on. I’d lost what little momentum I might’ve ever had. Eventually all the manuscripts came back and I stacked them on the floor of my closet hoping I might one day have the courage to burn them.

Maybe I had been waiting for Corben, or maybe he’d been waiting for me.

We used to walk past Stark House when we were kids and discuss the history of the building. It had always accommodated misfits of one sort or another. There were rumors about it a little more cryptic and wondrous than the rumors about every other building.

In the late nineteenth century, it had been owned by a family of brilliant eccentrics who’d turned out scientists, senators, and more than a few madmen. A number of murders occurred on the premises. Local legends grew about the shadow men who served the politicians. They said the Stark family carried bad blood.

In the early twentieth century, the place had been converted to apartments and became home to a famous opera singer, a celebrity husband and wife Broadway acting team, and a bootlegger who’d made a fortune from prohibition. They said there were secret walls. I searched but never found any. The place still called to life a certain glamour nearly lost through time. The wide staircase bisecting the lobby gave the impression of romantic leading men sweeping their lovers upstairs in a swirl of skirts, trains, and veils. The original chandelier still hung above as it had for over a hundred years and I waited for the day it tore from its supports and killed us all.

I knew Corben would eventually try to buy the building. I was lucky to have gotten in before him. Even his wealth couldn’t purchase Stark House outright. When he and I finally met face to face again after all those years, neither one of us showed any surprise at all. We didn’t exchange words. We shared similar blank, expressionless features. He must’ve mentioned something to his wife later on because I caught her staring at me on occasion, almost as if she had plenty of questions for me but didn’t want to trespass on such a mystery-laden history.

It made perfect sense to me that I would fall in love with Gabriella Corben virtually the moment I met her.

Upstairs, Corben screamed, “Wild Under Heaven! Ancient Shadows!” I never quite understood what kind of point he was trying to make when he ran through his list of titles. Gabriella spoke sternly and more stuff got knocked over. I heard him sob. It gave me no pleasure hearing it. Finally a door slammed and another opened. The corners of the building echoed with the small sounds of the lurking outcast phantoms slinking in and out of shadow. The old-fashioned elevator buzzed and hummed, moving between the second and third floors. I heard footsteps coming down the stairs, and she was there.

I briefly glanced at Gabriella Corben and gave a noncommittal grin. She moved halfway down the staircase and sat in the middle of the carpeted step, her elbows on her knees, watching me. She wouldn’t discuss their argument and wouldn’t mention him at all. She never did.

My hidden, unrequited love was a secret even from her. Or perhaps not. She was perceptive and understanding and probably knew my heart as well as she understood her husband’s, which might’ve been entirely or might’ve been not at all. He and I still weren’t that different. He was up there screaming out loud and I was down here braying inside.

I went about my business. I did my work. I waited for her to say what she wanted to say and I willed the muscles in my back not to twitch.

I knew what I would see if I dared to look over my shoulder. A woman of twenty-five, comfortable beneath the finish of her own calm, with glossy, curling, black hair draped loosely to frame her face. Lightly freckled from the summer sun, her eyes a rich hazel to offset the glowing brown of her skin. Her body slim but full, her presence assured. I caught a whiff of her perfume combined with the heady, earthy scent of her sweat beneath it. I must’ve looked like a maniac, polishing one foot of banister over and over, so damn afraid to turn around.

Where she went a kind of light traveled. She carried it with her. It lifted my heart and left me stunned. It was a feeling I wasn’t accustomed to and for a long while I fought against it. I had learned to live with resentment instead of romance. It was my preferred state of being until she came along. Now I burned in silence.

She said, almost sleepily, “You ever wonder what it would be like if you could dig down through all the layers of polish, the paint and wax, peeling back the years, say going in a half inch deep, to a different time, and see what life here might’ve been like back then?”

A half-inch deep. Probably eighty years. “I suspect you’d find a lot of the same.”

“Really?”

“Life wasn’t so different. Maybe you wouldn’t trip over a guy who sat in toxic waste in front of the MOMA, but there’d be somebody comparable, I bet.”

“What could be comparable to that?”

I shrugged. “A lunatic juggling hand grenades. A World War One vet used to panhandle out front here back in the twenties, and if he didn’t make enough coin he’d chase people around with a bayonet. He spooked the neighbors on the other side of the street by flipping around one of those German hand grenades.”

She waited but that was all I knew about it. Most tales about real people only had a modicum of interest to them, and no real ending. I didn’t want to lose her attention and said, “There’s always been plenty of crazy.”

“I think you’re right. How about the rest of it?”

“The rest of it?”

“Life. Lots of happiness? Beauty? Romance?”

“Sure. This lobby is so nice that there’s been a lot of weddings performed right here, at the foot of the stairwell. The publicity shots were gorgeous. They’d have horses and carriages lined up out in the street, and after the ceremony the wedding party would hop in, ride over to Fifth Avenue and down past St. Patrick’s Cathedral. If the families of the bride or groom had enough pull, they could get the Cardinal’s okay to have the church bells ring as the carriages went by.”

“That must’ve been lovely.”

Dorothy Parker and one of her lovers used to drunkenly chase each other through the halls of Stark House in the raw, but that didn’t quite have the right kind of romance I was going for. “A couple of silent film stars met on the fifth floor back in the twenties. They split their time between Los Angeles and New York and lived next door to each other for a couple of years before ever meeting.”

“Which apartments?”

By that she meant,
Which of my rooms
? “I don’t know.”

“Okay, go on.”

“When they did run into each other here it was supposedly love at first sight. They got engaged a week later. The press went nuts with it. They made five movies together too.”

“I think I heard about that. Didn’t they commit suicide? Jumped off the roof?”

I was hoping to skip that part. Corben had told her more about the place than I thought he might. Or should’ve. Or maybe she’d been talking to some of the other tenants, though I couldn’t figure out which of the shut-ins might actually chat with someone else.

“Yeah, when sound came in. They both sounded too Brooklyn, and no matter what they did, they couldn’t get rid of the accent.”

“Death by Brooklyn,” she said. “How sad.” She put her hand on the banister and floated it down inch by inch until she’d almost reached the spot I was polishing. She tapped it with her nail. The length of her nail, a half inch, eighty years. “I’ve heard there’s been even more tragedy as well.”

“Of course. Plenty of births, you get plenty of deaths.”

“And not all of it by natural means certainly.”

“Why do you want to hear about this stuff?” I asked. For the first time I looked directly at her, and as usual, the lust and the ache swept through me. She pulled a face which meant that Corben had been talking up the house history and she wanted a different viewpoint.

“Murder’s pretty natural,” I told her. “I don’t know if that guy ever bayoneted anyone or if the hand grenade ever went off, but there’s been a few grudges that ended with a knife or a handgun. One guy pushed his brother down the elevator shaft, and one of the scientists blew himself and his dog to hell mixing up some concoction.”

“Scientists?”

“Some scientists used to live here.”

“And their dogs.”

“Well,” I said, “yeah.”

“Oh, I see.” She chewed on that for a while. I moved up a couple steps, working the banister, easing a little closer. I could see her reflection in the shine. I fought down the primitive inside me trying to get out. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe she was just waiting for me to carry her down the stairs. But I didn’t make the move.

Gabriella said, “Have you ever considered doing a book about it? The building?”

I didn’t want to admit the truth, but she had a way of cooling the endless blazing rage inside me. My loud thoughts softened and quieted, even while I went slowly crazy with wanting her. “Yes, when I was a kid. I’ve always been intrigued by the building. There’s always been a lot of talk, a lot of rumors.”

“But you don’t want to write one anymore?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

It was a good question, and one I wasn’t prepared to answer. It took me a while to say anything. “I have my own stories to share, I suppose. I don’t need to tell this place’s legends and lessons. And it doesn’t need me to tell them anyway.”

I turned and she smiled at me a little sadly.

I knew then exactly what Corben was doing and what was now ripping him up inside. The damn fool was trying to write a book about Stark House.

~ * ~

A minute later the front door was awash with a blur of black motion, and Gabriella and I wheeled and moved down the stairs together, as one, like I’d seen in a dozen classic films I could name.

Our bare arms touched and I tamped down the thrill that flared through me. She placed a hand on my wrist and my pulse snapped hard. It was odd and a bit unsettling to know that such small, commonplace human actions could still send me spiraling toward the edge. I hadn’t realized I was quite so lonely until that moment.

And there it was, the first sighting of Ferdinand the Magnifico, looking dapper as hell in his old world Victorian-era black suit, lace tie. And this too, our initial meeting with the monkey, Mojo, leashed to his master by a sleek length of golden chain, who hopped around doing a dance in his little jacket and cap while holding his cup out. This also wasn’t exactly the grand romance I’d been hoping for, but I’d take whatever I could get.

“Halloo!” Ferdi shouted. Behind him scattered out on the sidewalk stood crates, boxes, and a small assortment of furniture. He must’ve hired some cheap uninsured movers who would only carry your belongings curb to curb.

Mojo jumped back and forth as far as his chain would allow. Gabriella smiled and said, “Are you certain you can bring an animal like that into this building?”

“Animal!” Ferdi cried. “This is no animal, madam! I assure you! This is my partner, Mojo, a gentle soul no different than you or I, with a heart filled with benevolence and an obligation only to make children laugh!”

She ignored the side of his trunk that stated in bold yellow letters FERDINAND THE MAGNIFICO, and asked, “And just who are you?”

“I am Ferdinand! And this is our new home! Today we move into Apartment 2C of the Stark Building!” He glanced at me, but, like all men, he couldn’t keep his eyes off Gabriella for longer than that.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Ferdinand.”

“Just Ferdinand, madam! Are we neighbors? Say it is so!”

“Just Gabriella, Ferdinand,” she said. “And it is so, we’re neighbors. And this is Will.”

“Well then, as you say!”

I bit back a groan. He was the kind of person who shouted everything with a joyous cry. If the decibel level didn’t get you, the enthusiasm might. The monkey looked more like my kind of person. He grinned when you looked at him but otherwise just kind of held back, watching and waiting to see what might be coming his way. Printed on the monkey’s little hat was the name MOJO. A button pinned to his fire-engine red jacket read THE WORLD’S ONLY TALKING/WRITING CHIMP. There was a pad with a pen attached by a string in a small bag around his neck.

Mojo pressed his tin cup out to Gabriella. He was insistent. She gestured that she had no cash on her and I pulled a quarter out of my pocket and snapped it off my thumbnail into his cup. I expected him to say thank you, seeing as he was a talking monkey, but Mojo only hopped twice, squeaked, took off his hat and bowed.

“If he talks, why does he have a pad and pen?”she asked.

“He prefers to write!”