Manhattan Nocturne (12 page)
Read Manhattan Nocturne Online
Authors: Colin Harrison
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I found the performance wildly self-indulgent yet strangely moving.
“We were secretly married three days later, back in New York.” Caroline's voice betrayed no happiness at the memory. “I didn't bother inviting anybodyâthe whole thing was too weird. He arranged for a judge to come to his apartment. I took a taxi. We hadn't even slept together, but that night we did. He asked me not to use birth control, and I said okay. I don't know how I didn't get pregnant. We knew each other all of six months, and in that time we had, like, seven weeks together. He was working on films, flying to L.A., that kind of stuff. He bought this apartment and we started to pick out furniture ⦔
She stopped. All of what she was telling me sounded pre-partory to something else, but I said nothing. “I'm sure he slept with other women in that time, but he was very caring toward me, and given the strangeness of the way we'd met,
I didn't complain, although in time I
would
have. He came back to the city in August, really busy. He had an office in the Village, and he was busy there, and he had meetings with peopleâstudio people, production people, screenwriters, whoever. At night we would spend some time together and I'd go to sleep. Then Simon would go out. He had a guy who drove around with him, Billy Munson. Billy knew the city really well. Simon would go out and just look for things, situations, whatever. I once asked him if I could go with him and he said no. Sometimes he made tapes.
I didn't complain, although in time I
would
have. He came back to the city in August, really busy. He had an office in the Village, and he was busy there, and he had meetings with peopleâstudio people, production people, screenwriters, whoever. At night we would spend some time together and I'd go to sleep. Then Simon would go out. He had a guy who drove around with him, Billy Munson. Billy knew the city really well. Simon would go out and just look for things, situations, whatever. I once asked him if I could go with him and he said no. Sometimes he made tapes.
“So after one of those nights he didn't come back. I wanted to call the police but I waited for an extra day, because I knew that if I was wrong, he would be angry about the publicity, people saying look, his wife doesn't even know where he is. Then I called them and the days started to go by and I started to get really, really scared. Of course as soon as he started to miss appointments, everyone started to call, freaking out, worried. And then the police found him downtown ⦔ Caroline tilted her head back, eyes shut. “Somehow I wasn't really surprised. But I was mad. How could he have the nerve to die or get killed or whatever just when we'd gotten started? I'm
still
sort of angry at him. But very sad, too. We used to sit up at night watching movies, and he'd see something and stop it and go back and explain the camera angle and the light and how the dialogue worked. He knew all the dialogue.”
still
sort of angry at him. But very sad, too. We used to sit up at night watching movies, and he'd see something and stop it and go back and explain the camera angle and the light and how the dialogue worked. He knew all the dialogue.”
Caroline stood up and as she began to drift along the walls of the apartment, I admired the length of her legs, the perfection of her neck. “For a long time I used to think the detectives would figure it out. They say they haven't given up, but I guess they have. The stupid
private
detectives are worthless, truly, except that one of them got me a copy of the file, the one I showed you last night.”
private
detectives are worthless, truly, except that one of them got me a copy of the file, the one I showed you last night.”
“Has the studio helped?” I asked.
She shook her head. “It's a whole bunch of new executives from the time he was there. He's dead, so he can't make them any new money, you know? I mean the movies he did still make money, but it's all residualâ” She interrupted herself.
“Do people come to you with all kinds of problems? Things they know about?” she asked. “I imagine you know all sorts of important city officials and everything.”
“Do people come to you with all kinds of problems? Things they know about?” she asked. “I imagine you know all sorts of important city officials and everything.”
“People sometimes come to me, yes.”
“Like what, who?”
The answer, I saw, was a necessary step for her. She wanted to understand herself as doing something that was not extraordinarily strange. “A couple months ago,” I said, “the girlfriend of a cop came in and told me about how her boyfriend beats up dealers. That's not unusual, except that one of the dealers is his brother. Then I had one not so long ago, an old guy who reads my column tells me how his wife, who had an artificial hip, they live in Brooklyn, got run over by some kids in one of those boom carsâran her over going forty miles an hour and didn't stop. Never caught. That kind of thing, people come in, you know.”
“They want notice, some sort ofâ”
“They want a transaction, they want to tell about what happened, what they feel about it.”
She pondered this.
“Of course, some just want attention,” I added.
“I'm not exactly in that category, I don't think. I
don't
want you to mention me in your column.”
don't
want you to mention me in your column.”
“Right.”
“I want it all kept between us.”
“Right.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “You were very drunk last night.”
“Yes.”
“You saidâ”
“I said the crazy things drunk men say.”
I suppose these words challenged Caroline, for she smiled and came over and stopped an inch before me. I examined her face carefully, the smooth foreheadâyounger than my wife'sâthe eyebrows and large blue eyesâflashing with amusement as they watched my ownâthe high cheekbones, the nose, slightly on the strong side, the mouth, the lips pursing suggestively, then her eyes again. So blue you could just go into them. She was adding velocity to whatever it was that
we were about. She drew a little breath and held it, looking straight at me. She had returned from the place that I wanted to go; she knew why people went there, she could show me my truest self, she was amused by my turmoil, she expected me to succumb to her, yet she would not judge me by it, for it was in the natural order of things. She let her breath out and glanced downward, her lashes dark, then glanced up again, then pressed her index finger against her bottom lip, pressing it ever so lightly, the fingernail the beautiful waxy white of cake icing, and then the coy pink tip of her tongue appeared, touching her finger, which then, ever so slightly wetted, the swirl of the fingerprint glistening, moved from her lips through the air to mine, and when I looked from that finger back to her eyes, she was staring into me with an appetite that went past me and whatever sexual ministrations I might be capable of and beyond, into the far reaches of her own desires.
we were about. She drew a little breath and held it, looking straight at me. She had returned from the place that I wanted to go; she knew why people went there, she could show me my truest self, she was amused by my turmoil, she expected me to succumb to her, yet she would not judge me by it, for it was in the natural order of things. She let her breath out and glanced downward, her lashes dark, then glanced up again, then pressed her index finger against her bottom lip, pressing it ever so lightly, the fingernail the beautiful waxy white of cake icing, and then the coy pink tip of her tongue appeared, touching her finger, which then, ever so slightly wetted, the swirl of the fingerprint glistening, moved from her lips through the air to mine, and when I looked from that finger back to her eyes, she was staring into me with an appetite that went past me and whatever sexual ministrations I might be capable of and beyond, into the far reaches of her own desires.
“If I were you ⦔ she whispered.
“Yes?”
She pointed at my waist. “I'd turn it off.”
She kept her eyes on mine.
“Turn it off?” I said.
“Turn it off.”
The beeper.
“You're fun,” I said.
She nodded once. “Yes. I am fun.”
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Her bed was enormous. She pulled a barrette from her hair and tossed it onto a dresser, followed by her watch, then began to take off her clothes, pulling her T-shirt above her head and letting it fall inside-out onto a chair. Her bra was delicate and black and pressed her breasts toward each other. Then her eyes looked downward as her fingers touched the button of her jeans. Never have I felt such guilt, never such excitement. I could feel the blood filling my penis heavily as I slipped out of my shoes and shirt and pants and underwear. At my age, I'm neither embarrassed nor proud of my bodyâI
haven't gained the weight that a lot of men do, and I still get to the club maybe once a week. She, on the other hand, was magnificent in her nakedness. She had not dieted away her essence like so many women in New York; she was fleshy and full, with muscle in her arms and back and thighs.
haven't gained the weight that a lot of men do, and I still get to the club maybe once a week. She, on the other hand, was magnificent in her nakedness. She had not dieted away her essence like so many women in New York; she was fleshy and full, with muscle in her arms and back and thighs.
“Just stand there a moment,” I said.
“Why?”
“You know why.”
I noticed a cluster of lines and colored shapes on her shoulder blade.
“What's that?”
She turned and looked over her shoulder. “That's what's left of my butterfly. That was the wing.”
“Tattoo?”
“Yes. I have one more time. The doctor uses a laser.”
“Hurt?”
“Not too much. The laser breaks up the ink.”
“I sort of wish I'd seen it. The butterfly, I mean.”
She looked at me. “It was beautiful.”
Then she slipped beneath the sheets.
“You're shaking,” she said.
“Yes.”
We took our time. Her passions did not embarrass her. The winter light was low across the city outside the window. She held my tongue tight with her teeth; another moment, in another position, she closed her eyes and frowned, as if concentrating on an intricate piece of music. I remember her fingers splayed out on the sheets, grasping and releasing, I remember the blonde hair caught in her mouth, and the earring that came loose and fell upon the sheet that she reflexively whisked to the floor, and the width of her hips in front of me, and my sucking as much of one of her breasts into my mouth as possible, suffocating on it, and the firm tumescence of her nipple, which I could feel touch the roof of my mouth. I remember that in the last moment I pushed as hard and deep and as urgently as I could, pushed against my own inconsequence and with the meanness that most men possess. And later, I pressed my face into her warm flat belly and felt
a gladness bloom in me, a gladness that life was still presenting me with possibilitiesâthat, right or completely wrong, I had embraced, in the form of this woman, the strangeness of possibility itself. I was wrong to have fucked her, but I had not been wrong to have
wanted
to; no, that was very right.
a gladness bloom in me, a gladness that life was still presenting me with possibilitiesâthat, right or completely wrong, I had embraced, in the form of this woman, the strangeness of possibility itself. I was wrong to have fucked her, but I had not been wrong to have
wanted
to; no, that was very right.
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In my daughter Sally's pre-kindergarten class, there is a boy who was born without a jaw. I see him on the mornings I take Sally to school. There, among the happy chaos of the classroom, the children peering at picture books or playing with blocks, he stands, his arms stiff at his side, eyes darting about, watching all, a boy who has not so much a mouth as a wet, backward-slanting orifice with one or two teeth visibly protruding. Above the top lip is the face of a handsome youngster, with bright eyes and a head of brown hair; below, a dream of fleshly horror. He is otherwise quite normal, I've heard, quite bright. He can't speak, and there is no prospect that he will speak normally for decades, if ever. I've also often seen the boy's parents, who are gray with exhaustion and disappointment. I admit that my heart is tight and small, that I shy away from them and don't wish to meet their eyes, and that nonetheless my attention is drawn with sick fascination back toward the boy's face; if possible I steal a second glance at it, if only to reaffirm my revulsion, to derive cheap comfort that this has not been
my
fate. How difficult it must be for the family, how easy my daughter's life must seem compared with their son's. I would not trade places with the father of that boy for anything. Cut me up, I won't trade places. What is it like, I wonder as I kiss Sally good-bye in the mornings, to have a child like that? Could I take it? Do you blame fate or chromosomes or God? Does the husband, I wonder, see the boy's face when he is having sex with his wife? Is there enough love and calm and money in this family to carry it through the inevitable operations and disappointments and complications and frustrations? And if not? What is a family made of? From what I can tell, the boy's family
doesn't seem to be doing all that well; the husband is overweight by a good eighty pounds, his manner joyless. I want to put my arm around him and say I am sorry as hell that this happened. I want to indicate to him that I see his suffering, but instead, as his son says good-bye in sign language, always I am a coward and slip past, through the door, out of the momentary prison of their grief. I imagine that the father works in an office somewhere, servicing other people's needs. He looks like he might sell somethingâinsurance or advertising perhaps. He makes a salary good enough to afford the school's tuition, but I suspect that every spare dollar the couple earns is spent on the son, somehow, or because of him. There was a time when this man was himself a boy, a boy on a bicycle, the wind whipping his hair, then a young man falling in love; now he is a gray forty-year-old burdened by fat and a son with a serious birth defect. And the wifeâshe is haggard and defeated, her skin sallow with deep circles under the eyes. I imagine that she is the one who deals with their son's special meal requirements and visits with therapists and so on, who asks the doctors about the sequence of the bone-graft operations. She is the one who manages the family's edifice of torment. Either one of those parents would give anything for their son to have a normal jaw,
anything
. And were mother and father somehow to gaze through the porch window of the Wren family, say, in the happy, noisy hour before school, either one would see what was now forever lost to them and testify that they, too, would be capable of such joy,
if only
. And either one of them, particularly the husband, himself subject to the winds of male lust, would tell me that I was insane to be gambling with the wholeness of a family.
I don't
care how good the sex is, it
isn't worth
it
, the husband might whisper into my ear.
Look at me, look upon
destruction.
And listening carefully, respectfully, I would nod my agreement.
my
fate. How difficult it must be for the family, how easy my daughter's life must seem compared with their son's. I would not trade places with the father of that boy for anything. Cut me up, I won't trade places. What is it like, I wonder as I kiss Sally good-bye in the mornings, to have a child like that? Could I take it? Do you blame fate or chromosomes or God? Does the husband, I wonder, see the boy's face when he is having sex with his wife? Is there enough love and calm and money in this family to carry it through the inevitable operations and disappointments and complications and frustrations? And if not? What is a family made of? From what I can tell, the boy's family
doesn't seem to be doing all that well; the husband is overweight by a good eighty pounds, his manner joyless. I want to put my arm around him and say I am sorry as hell that this happened. I want to indicate to him that I see his suffering, but instead, as his son says good-bye in sign language, always I am a coward and slip past, through the door, out of the momentary prison of their grief. I imagine that the father works in an office somewhere, servicing other people's needs. He looks like he might sell somethingâinsurance or advertising perhaps. He makes a salary good enough to afford the school's tuition, but I suspect that every spare dollar the couple earns is spent on the son, somehow, or because of him. There was a time when this man was himself a boy, a boy on a bicycle, the wind whipping his hair, then a young man falling in love; now he is a gray forty-year-old burdened by fat and a son with a serious birth defect. And the wifeâshe is haggard and defeated, her skin sallow with deep circles under the eyes. I imagine that she is the one who deals with their son's special meal requirements and visits with therapists and so on, who asks the doctors about the sequence of the bone-graft operations. She is the one who manages the family's edifice of torment. Either one of those parents would give anything for their son to have a normal jaw,
anything
. And were mother and father somehow to gaze through the porch window of the Wren family, say, in the happy, noisy hour before school, either one would see what was now forever lost to them and testify that they, too, would be capable of such joy,
if only
. And either one of them, particularly the husband, himself subject to the winds of male lust, would tell me that I was insane to be gambling with the wholeness of a family.
I don't
care how good the sex is, it
isn't worth
it
, the husband might whisper into my ear.
Look at me, look upon
destruction.
And listening carefully, respectfully, I would nod my agreement.
Yet. Yet there I was, standing inside the wet black box of Caroline Crowley's shower, washing my dick. All the surfaces of the shower had been cut from an ebony marble that sparkled with starry constellations of quartz. It looked a foot
deep, a thousand dollars a running yard. I smelled her soap and the shampoo and thought better of anointing myself with these odorsâLisa would notice instantly. Then, dressed, I said I had to go, and Caroline nodded, perhaps sadly. The moment was tender, but not happy, more like we'd both just been wounded. The room felt ashen and cold. We made no reference to my wife or her fiancé. We made no reference to the utter inadvisability of what we'd doneâit loomed there, stupid and monstrous. She was hunched in an armchair in a white bathrobe with her legs drawn up beneath her, seeming to have passed into a mood of contemplation. There is something about the first sex with a person that invites recollection of all the other first times, near or far, that form the chain of one's memory; the step that takes us into ecstasy with a new partner is also, by the logic of time, another step toward death, and if we are not chastened by anything else, we had best be chastened by this. I left Caroline pulling a tortoiseshell comb through her yellow hair. My encounter with her had in no way diminished my love for my wife and childrenâno, that is plain enough; the mystery is that my love for them did not preclude the possibility that I might now love Caroline Crowley, too, in that sudden, sickening, unstable way that one craves and should rightly fear.
deep, a thousand dollars a running yard. I smelled her soap and the shampoo and thought better of anointing myself with these odorsâLisa would notice instantly. Then, dressed, I said I had to go, and Caroline nodded, perhaps sadly. The moment was tender, but not happy, more like we'd both just been wounded. The room felt ashen and cold. We made no reference to my wife or her fiancé. We made no reference to the utter inadvisability of what we'd doneâit loomed there, stupid and monstrous. She was hunched in an armchair in a white bathrobe with her legs drawn up beneath her, seeming to have passed into a mood of contemplation. There is something about the first sex with a person that invites recollection of all the other first times, near or far, that form the chain of one's memory; the step that takes us into ecstasy with a new partner is also, by the logic of time, another step toward death, and if we are not chastened by anything else, we had best be chastened by this. I left Caroline pulling a tortoiseshell comb through her yellow hair. My encounter with her had in no way diminished my love for my wife and childrenâno, that is plain enough; the mystery is that my love for them did not preclude the possibility that I might now love Caroline Crowley, too, in that sudden, sickening, unstable way that one craves and should rightly fear.
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