Manhattan Is My Beat (12 page)

“You’re from Ohio?”

It was eight P.M. They were sitting in Rune’s gazebo, listening to the Pachelbel Canon. Rune had eight different recordings of the piece. She’d liked it for years—even before it had caught on, the way
Greensleeves
and
Simple Gifts
had.

Richard continued. “I’ve never met anyone from Ohio.”

She was wearing a black T-shirt, black stretch pants, and red-and-white-striped socks. She’d done this as a homage to Richard’s costume the other night. He, however, was in baggy gray slacks, Keds, and a beige Texaco Service shirt with the name Ralph embroidered on the pocket.

This man is
pure
Downtown. I love him!

Rune sang, “ ‘What’s round on the ends and high in
the middle? It’s O-Hi-O!’ That’s it. One more syllable and Rodgers and Hammerstein could’ve written a musical about it.”

“Ohio,” Richard said thoughtfully. “There must be something in that. Solid, dependable. Working-class. Sort of metaphoric. You were there and now you’re”—he waved his hand around the loft—”here.”

“It’s a nice state,” she said defensively.

“I don’t mean anything bad. But why’d you come here and not Chicago or L.A.? A job?”

“No.”

“I know. Boyfriend.”

“Nope.”

“You moved to Manhattan by yourself?”

“To go on a real quest, you
have
to go by yourself. Remember
Lord of the Rings
?”

“Sort of. Refresh my memory.”

Sort of? How could he not remember the best book of all time?

“All the hobbits and everybody started out together, but in the end it was Frodo who got to the fiery pit to destroy the ring of power. All by his little-old lonesome.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding. Not sure what the connection was. “But why Manhattan?”

Rune explained. “I didn’t spend a lot of time at home in the afternoons. After school, I mean. My dad was pretty sick and my mom’d send my sister and me out to play a lot. She got the dates and boyfriends. I got the books.”

“Books?”

“I’d hang out at the Shaker Heights Library. There was this book of pictures of Manhattan. I read it once and just
knew
I had to come here.” Then she asked, “Well, how ‘bout
you?
“

“Because of what Rimbaud says about the city.”

“Uhm.” Wait. She’d
seen
the movie and hated it. She
didn’t know
Rambo’d
been a book. She thought of the cardboard cutout in Washington Square Video—of Stallone with his muscles and that stupid headband. “Not sure.”

“Remember his poem about Paris?”

Poem
? “Not exactly.”

“Rimband wrote that the city was death without tears, our diligent daughter and servant, a desperate love, and a petty crime howling in the mud of the street.”

Rune was silent. Trying hard to figure Richard out. Downtown weird
and
smart. She’d never met anyone like him. She was watching his eyes, the way his long fingers went through a precise ritual of pulling a beer can out of the plastic loops that held the six-pack, tapping the disk of the top to settle the foam, then slowly popping it open. Watching his lean legs, long feet, the texture of his eyes. She had a feeling that the posturing was just a facade. But what was underneath it?

And why was
she
so drawn to him? Because there was something she couldn’t quite figure out about him?

Because of the mystery?

Richard said, “You’re avoiding my question. Why did you come here?”

“This is the Magic Kingdom.”

“You’re not addressing Rimbaud’s metaphor.”

Addressing?
Why did he have to talk that way?

Rune asked, “You ever read the Oz books?”

“‘Follow the yellow brick road,’ “ he sang in a squeaky voice.

“That’s the movie. But Frank Baum—he was the author—he wrote a whole series of them. In his magic kingdom of Oz, there were lots of lands. All of them are different. Some people are made out of china, some have heads like pumpkins. They ride around on sawhorses. That’s just what New York is like. Every other city I’ve ever been in is like a discount store. You know—clean,
cheap, convenient. But what, basically? Unsatisfying, that’s what. They’re
literal
. There’s no magic to them. Come here.” She took his hand and led him to the window. “What do you see?”

“The Con Ed Building.”

“Where?”

“Right there.”

“I don’t see a building.” Rune turned to him, her eyes wide. “I see a mountain of marble carved by three giants a thousand years ago. They used magic tools, I’ll bet. Crystal hammers and chisels made out of gold and lapis. I think one of them, I forget his name, built this castle we’re in right now. And those lights, you see them over there? All around us? They’re lanterns on the horns of oxen with golden hides circling around the kingdom. And the rivers, you know where they came from? They were gouged out of the earth by the gods’ toes when they were dancing. And then … and then there’re these pits underground, huge ones. You ever heard the rumblings underneath us? They’re worms crawling at fifty miles an hour. Sometimes they get tired of living in the dark and they turn into dragons and go shooting off into the sky.” She grabbed his arm urgently. “Look, there’s one now!”

Richard watched the 727 making a slow approach to LaGuardia. He stared at it for a long time.

Rune said, “You think I’m crazy, don’t you? That I live in a fairy story?”

“That’s not bad. Not necessarily.”

“I collect them, you know.”

“Fairy stories?”

Rune walked to her bookshelves. She ran her finger across the spines of maybe fifty books. Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm,
Perrault’s Fairy Tales
, the Quiller-Couch Old French stories, Cavendish’s book on Arthur and three or four volumes of his
Man, Myth and
Magic
. She held up one. “An original edition of Lady Gregory’s
Story of the Tuatha Dé Danann and of the Fianna of Ireland
.” Handed it to him.

“Is it valuable?” Richard flipped through the old book with his gorgeous fingers.

“To me it is.”

“Happily ever after …” He scanned pages.

Rune said, “That’s not the way fairy stories end. Not all of them.” She took the book from him and began thumbing past pages slowly. She stopped. “Here’s the story of Diarmuid. He was one of the Fianna, the warrior guards of ancient Ireland. Diarmuid let an ugly hag sleep in his lodge and she turned into a beautiful woman from the Side, that’s the other side, capital S—the land of magic.”

“That’s sounds pretty happy to me.”

“But that wasn’t the end.” She turned away and stared past her dim reflection at the city. “He lost her. They both had to be true to their natures—he couldn’t live in the Side and she couldn’t live on earth. He had to return to the land of mortals. He lost her and never found love again. But he always remembered how he much he’d loved her. Isn’t that a sad story?”

She thought, for some reason, of Robert Kelly.

She thought of her father.

Tears pricked her eyes.

“You sure have a lot of stories,” he said, eyes on the spines of her books.

“I love stories.” She turned to him. Couldn’t keep her eyes off him. He was aware of it and looked away. “You were like him, coming after me. The other night, all dressed in black. I thought of Diarmuid when I first saw you. Like a knight errant on a quest.” She scrunched her face up. “Accompanied by two tacky wenches.”

Richard laughed. Then added, “I
was
on a quest. For you.” He kissed her. “You’re my Holy Grail.”

She closed her eyes, kissed him back. Then said suddenly, “Let’s eat.”

The cutting board in the shape of a pig was her kitchen table. She cut open a round loaf of rye bread, spread mayonnaise on both sides. She noticed him watching her. “Watch closely. I told you I could cook.”

“That’s cooking?”

“I think I can really cook. I just haven’t done it much. I have a bunch of cookbooks.” She pointed to the bookcases again. “My mother gave them to me when I left home. I think she wanted to give me a diaphragm but lost her nerve at the last minute, so she gave me Fannie Farmer and Craig Claiborne instead. I can’t use them much. Most recipes you need a stove for.”

She poured cold Chinese food from the carton onto the sliced loaf and cut it in half. The cold pork poured out the sides when she sawed the dull knife through the bread, and she scooped up the food with her hands and spread it back between the domes of rye.

“Okay,” he said dubiously. “Well. That’s interesting.”

But when she handed him the sandwich he ate enthusiastically. For a skinny boy he had quite an appetite. He looked
so
French. He really
had
to be François.

“So,” he asked, “you going with anybody?”

“Not at the moment.”

Or for any moments in the last four months three weeks.

“Half my friends are getting married,” he said. He went through his beer-can ritual again, his long fingers beating out a hesitant rhythm on the top of the can, then opening it and pouring the beer while he held the glass at an angle.

“Marriage, hmm,” she said noncommittally.

Where was all
this
headed?

But he was on to a new subject. “So what’re your goals?”

She took a big bite of rye bread. “To eat dinner, I guess.”

“I mean your life goals.”

Rune blinked and looked away from him. She believed she’d never asked herself that question. “I don’t know. Eat dinner.” She laughed. “Eat breakfast. Dance. Work. Hang out … Have adventures!”

He leaned forward and kissed her on the mouth. “You taste like Hunan mayonnaise. Let’s make love.” His arms encircled her.

“No.” Rune drained her second beer.

“You sure?”

No …

Yes …

She felt herself pulled forward, toward him, and she wasn’t sure whether he was actually pulling her or she was moving by herself. Like a Ouija board pointer. He rolled on top of her. They kissed for five minutes. Growing aroused, that warm water sensation flowing up her calves into her thighs.

No … yes … no.

But she was saved from the debate by a voice shouting, “Home!” A woman’s head appeared up the stairway. “Zip it up!”

A woman in her late twenties, wearing a black minidress and red stockings, climbed up the stairs. High heels. Her hair was cut short in a 1950s style and teased up. The hair was black and purple.

So the roomie’s date hadn’t turned out the way she’d hoped.

Rune muttered, “Sandra, Richard, Richard, Sandra.”

Sandra examined him. She said nothing to him but to Rune: “You did okay.” Then turned toward her half of the room, unzipping her dress as she walked, revealing a thick white strap of bra.

Rune whispered. “She’s a jewelry designer. Or that’s
what she wants to do. Days, she’s a paralegal. But her hobby is collecting men. She’s slept with fifty-eight of them so far. She has the score written down. Of course she’s only come twenty-two times so there’s some debate on what she can count. There’s no
Robert’s Rules of Order
for this sort of thing.”

“I suppose not.”

Richard’s eyes followed a vague reflection of Sandra in the window. She was on the far side of the cloud wall, stripping slowly. She knew she was being watched. The bra came off last.

Rune laughed and took his chin in her hand. Kissed him. “Darling, don’t even think about it. That woman is a time bomb. You get into bed with her, it’s like a group grope with a hundred people you don’t know where they’ve been. Christ …” Rune’s voice grew soft. “I worry about her. I don’t like her but she’s on some kind of weird suicide thing, you ask me. A guy looks at her, and bang, it’s in the sack.”

Richard said, “There’re ways to be safe….”

Rune shook her head. “I knew a guy, a friend used to work at one of the restaurants I tended bar at. I watched his boyfriend get sick and die. Then I saw my friend get sick and die. I was at the hospital. I saw the tubes, the monitors, the needles. The color of his skin. Everything. I saw his eyes. I was there when he died.”

An image of Robert Kelly’s face came back to her, sitting in the chair in his apartment.

An image of her father’s face …

Richard was silent and Rune knew she’d committed
the
New York City crime: being too emotional. She cleaned up the remnants of dinner, kissed Richard’s ear, and said, “Let’s watch a movie.”

“A movie? Why?”

“Because I have to catch a killer.”

CHAPTER TEN

She’d already seen
Manhattan Is My Beat
once but watching it this time was different.