Mysteries of Motion (11 page)

Within a meteoric week of that night and the next, Mulenberg’s spirits and fortunes had risen again, in an almost palpably breeding way. Yet the woman herself, aside from her decent manners, in no way resembled his wife—nor those other women either. Perhaps it was her very median-ness which had convinced. On Mulenberg’s newly embarked-upon travels, doubly extended because of the necessary business repairs, he’d begun to test carefully, finding that to a degree beyond any the banker would ever dream of, there did seem to be a most solemnly direct line between his copulations and his successes or failures.

Though he had no special perversions, he did prefer that his girls, those goddesses out of the machine who performed his fate for him, be sensational rather than cozy—and, wary of personal connection, he never repeated them. Both habits seemed to him deductively natural. His subconscious clearly was afraid it might find out that its “process” could happen with anybody. The conscious Mulenberg had proved it. He would never again, of course, leave that process in the hands of one woman. After the Oklahoma widow, none of the women he chose was his contemporary, or came from anywhere near his own lifestyle—nor did any of his night attendants ever look anything like Trixie Bjornson, later Tess Mulenberg.

The girl leading him stopped him short, in front of a narrow brownstone wedged between two warehouses. They were now on a block between Seventh Avenue and Broadway, across from an all-night garage in the open rear of a big apartment house, a 1940s affair of bow-knotted bay windows and freckle-colored stone. The house they faced had a ground-floor store to the right of the entry, a discount toiletries, shuttered now. Three steps led down to the outer door; probably a buzzer system released a locked inner one. Three stories rose above; the first one up had boarded windows, probably an extension of the store. Two upper floors of flats, that would be, either floor-throughs or divided front and back. After college he and his friends, making their maiden flight East, had lived by the dozens in such houses, then cheap. Brownstones, recessed yet street-wise, anonymous by the thousands, servicing the young of his day, the archaically old, a host of failed sexual partners not yet known as “singles” and all the human degrees between adventure and atrophy, were for no other reason always memorable.

They went down the steps and through the outer door. Yes, there were the letterboxes: three, a bell-press below each. Would she buzz now to some accomplice above?

She took out a key hung round that long neck. He noticed the skin texture, not oily brown, not powdery slate—a satiny opaque. Two of the letterboxes had names he couldn’t distinguish; the third was the store’s. Two floor-throughs then, no duplex. A fine indolence idled in all his limbs. Adventure always took him like this. But though he had luck, he never depended on it.

“Give me the gun.”

Turning without the slightest wince—yes, her eyes leveled with his—she handed him the purse which had been bobbing against him. He slung it on his left wrist and followed her up the stairs. One flight. Two. Not a stickup then, or a kidnap; maybe she carried the gun the way some women now carried police whistles or spray cans of Mace. Or maybe the two floors did constitute a house. Where the women shanghaied the customers? If this turned out to be some sort of setup, would he leave? He wasn’t sure.

The second floor had only one door, with the customary peephole. Nobody peered from it. She opened up. He followed her cautiously, into a lighted flat, and stood there blinking. He was no longer a man whom the sight of a home rug or a remembrance of candles made nostalgic. Rooms satisfied him, or were ignored. But here was the flat in which he and his kind, two years out of school and not yet going back home, had lived with their new wives or girls, or alone. There was that same fireplace—more depersonalized, no matter what the incumbent put on its mantel, than the young Mulenberg, brought up on a ranch, had thought a fireplace could be. He’d had just such a black iron grate. Along with the day bed, in his time covered in one of those monosyllabic all-wear fabrics: “Duck? Rep? Sail?” which the clerks had used to emit like hiccups. Her couch was puffed leather, old and good. There were the books, quite a lot of them, and the single desk, with just such a reading lamp as he would have coveted. To his right, the windows that would give on the street were heavily draped; he’d made do with the landlord’s shades. Beneath the windows was a second and ampler sofa he could never have afforded. Opposite him, a fold-back door would open on the “efficiency” kitchenette, spick-and-span or roachy. Or with dime-store ruffles edging the shelves, if there had been a girl. To his left, back of sliding doors prized if remaining, or vanished as here, would be the windowless inside bedroom; he glimpsed a coverlet. Beyond, separated by a screen, probably a third small space, dressing room or studio, or for the too-soon child. In the bathroom at the very end, the door would be hung with a robe and a mildewed towel, or a robe and a nightgown, with the douche bag meekly below.

But this place, though it might look much the same, even to the trivia of color, pottery and picture flung overall like a light scum attesting to the owner’s modernity, must cost a packet now.

Besides, just beyond the kitchen there was a bar. Even with only four bottles on it, it wasn’t due the owners of his day for another ten years. He walked over to it, easily but slowly, in case there was a catch to this somewhere. There was of course—he could feel that. But not whether it would be dangerous. Or rather, how.

She let him examine the bottles. A Chivas, a Jack Daniel’s, a Russian vodka. She must have a good clientele. And a Campari, a drink you came down to, rather than chose. Were her clients all old? Though he wasn’t, chill struck him. There had to be a connection, spotted by her, in him.

She was holding out a glass to him, not dime-store. He poured himself a Daniel’s, sniffed it for knockout drops, reached into the cabinet below—yes, an ice bucket there but empty, brought it out with an inquiring stare, nodded over his shoulder at the kitchenette, and was rewarded with a nod.

No roaches in the kitchenette, no ruffles either. Opening a small undercounter refrigerator exactly like the one in his private office, he gazed at two splits of champagne, a pate under a glass bell, four large mushrooms also under glass, some French mustard and a round of dark bread. No chic white wine. But the soda was where it should be, lined up on the door shelf. Sitting on his haunches, he brought out two bottles and held them poised. He felt his age, and yes, his inexperience. That was what she made him feel, already. Untutored, in he didn’t yet know what. Was she never going to speak? He wouldn’t until she did.

He came toward her, the bourbon in the left hand, which almost certainly had a gun inside the purse knocking at its wrist, the two sodas in his other. The two bottles clinked. Was she deaf? She’d served herself a Campari and was drinking it all the way down, watching him. Corny drama-school trick. Even so, he appreciated the line of her throat. Could she be stupid, lusciously thick with it, a pig of the sort some men were happiest with? Not with that arch to her nose, the thin ironic mouth. That figure of hers meant nothing; he’d seen the same glory on an institutionalized moron. The flush whetted her high cheekbones, as if the Campari were coming up in them. He marveled that he could see it; her skin in its own way was changeable. Under that silver nail lacquer the nails would be as ham-pink as any honest serving-girl’s. She wasn’t one of them.

She put her glass on the table between them with a straight-arm sweep, waited for her draperies to be quiet again and said, “You’re smart.”

A pulse jumped inside him. So was she. So was her voice. Let his subconscious tell him why he felt so relieved.

He opened a soda and drank from the bottle, setting down the bourbon, the full soda and the empty, to leave his hands free. If she thought he was, he had better be. Smart. Weighing why this should count, he faced her and opened her purse. Yes, there was a gun in there. He slid it out. Dainty as her refrigerator but a lot older, though it had been kept fireable. Carefully he flicked it, and once again. Loaded. Tiniest safety he’d ever seen. He wondered where she got the cartridges for such a toy. It lay in his palm, scrolled like a watch. On the barrel an ivory square about the size of a sugar lump was etched with a curly black
O.

“Yours?”

“My stepbrother’s.” Her accent had a lilt. West Indian? Dominican?

“What’s your name?”

“Veronica.” Not much left of the accent, whatever it was. Been around New York.

“Veronica,” he nodded. He always asked it. First part of this—incident, that was routine. “Nice name.” He always said it.

She moved past him to the table where he’d set the bottles and the glass, shifting them all to a tray. Right; they’d make a ring on what seemed good wood. But unnerving. Usually, in these small matters the customer was always right. “Sorry.”

She turned to face him. “Veronica—Oliphant.”

He blinked. It was the photograph on the table she wanted him to see. And the name—to hear? He came closer. In the picture this girl, younger, was centered between an older woman, handsome but nothing like her, and a young man much like the woman. Light-colored, both of them. Mulatto, East Indian or West, Mexican or South American highland—the two of them could be anything, almost. Not the girl. An intensity at his elbow made him go slow on the man. “That lady your mother?”

“Stepmother.” She gestured toward a gaunt old rocker in a corner. “Died year and a half ago. She had a weak heart.” She tapped the picture, looking up at him. “So does—Ollie. That’s his excuse.”

For what? Was he supposed to know?

“Your brother.” He made it a statement.

Her elegantly small nostrils clenched. “Step.”

He blinked. What was safe? “You two look younger there.” It stood to reason, if she did.

She shrugged. “My first year in high school. I knew from nothing. And he didn’t wear those turbans yet.”

“Turbans,” Mulenberg said. Rapidly he went over all the turbaned locales in his triangle. “Make one look older, don’t they. Make him.” Wasn’t she going to tell him her brother’s full name? How could he get her to? Then it struck him that Ollie could be short for their last one. Meanwhile he’d have sworn he had never met that young man anywhere. “So. Oliphant.”

“We’d just come down,” she said, staring at the picture.

“Down?”

“From Montreal. He never tell you?”

Who did she think he was? Somebody else. But who.

Mulenberg looked down at the gun in his hand. Very slowly he said, “He never—tells me much.”

Those wingy brows tautened. “Doesn’t sound like Ollie.”

He moved the gun in small arcs. “So you’re—Ollie’s sister.”

“Step. There’s no blood between us.”

And she didn’t want there to be. He twiddled the gun. “That cameraman—he Ollie’s pal?”

She laughed. Alto, even beautiful. But he didn’t like it. “Mine,” she said lightly. “He does work for the network, but not as a cameraman. We borrowed it.”

“You work for the network?”

“I—have.”

“Were we on camera?”

“No. Or, I dunno. Why should we be?”

“You tell me. You did the corralling.”

When she grinned he could see that early picture in her. Until she knit those brows. “Blackmail, you mean? Nuh. Even Ollie wouldn’t.”

Enough. “Who owns this place?” Mulenberg said, hard.

She heard. Straightening to it. “We both do. She left the house to us jointly. Vivie. His mother. To keep us together.” Again that shrug. “He lives upstairs.”

“He up there now?”

“Of course not.” She cast him a sidelong glance. “Isn’t he—waiting for you?”

So she’d taken her stepbrother’s gun? But a man could have another one. Again he went over the countries, the cities: Teheran, Bahrein, Afghanistan. Nothing in Libya, Algiers. Africa wasn’t his beat.

“Why’d you bring me here, Veronica?”

He saw he’d reached her. Their own names always did.

“So you—wouldn’t keep too many more of—” She trailed it off softly. “Those dinner dates.”

Dinner dates. With whom? She couldn’t mean him. A faint something stirred at the back of his brain. He couldn’t quite get to it. Plunge blind, then. “You’ve seen me before?”

She nodded, quizzical.

“Where?”

She tossed her head at it. “Where do you think? In front of those steps you and your sidekick are always standing. Same place I picked you up from. Nuh.” She snorted, snapping her fingers.

He thought no white fingers could do it like that. Like castanets. “Other nights, you saw me?”

An underburnish warmed her again. “Four times.” Was it a sigh? “And once—I followed you.”

That would be four months. “Since February?”

She gave him a teachery look. “March, April, May, June.” This was June. “In May I—even followed you. Getting up my nerve. But then you—”

“Last month?”

She nodded. “May.”

Last month. “But then I—but then I picked up that girl,” he said. A tall blonde in a bright green dress and though it was a cool, bright day, wielding a parasol from which several other men already hung by the eyes. Picked him up right outside that shop which sold sexpot underwear. Walked Mulenberg three blocks before she would speak to him. They had dropped the competition by then. When they connected, she closed the parasol. Explaining later, “It makes me more statuesque.” A girl from Florida, with a greedy swamp smile. Not a great find. “At the corner of the Hilton—better than the Americana corner, anyway.”

She wouldn’t grin. A whore would have.

He went up close enough to her so that he could feel his breath rebound. “What do you know? About Ollie and me?”

“That you’ve borrowed too much money. From his friends.”

“Bor—” He hadn’t borrowed money for years except for tax-deduction purposes. Whereupon his accountant would advise, and it then was done for him. “Who are—?” An uneasy crawling tickled the back of his neck. “I mean—which friends?”

“Which do you think?” Bending forward to the table on those long swoops of arm, she shook her head slowly. “Couldn’t figure you. You’re not at all what I expected. Nuh—I suppose everybody’s dumb somewhere.” One long hand pinched her other upper arm with a tug, as if she was righting a sleeve. She expelled her breath. “Get out of it with Ollie, Mr. Ventura. He’s bad news.”