Pinball (30 page)

As the birds were outfitted for battle, their owners argued the pros and cons of using gaffs and slashers. Two men near Domostroy talked about the fighting cock’s extraordinary instinct to battle other cocks—always, everywhere, without any apparent reason. It was an instinct so deep, constant, and overpowering that no human, however savage or motivated, could comprehend it. One of the men described an incident that had occurred at his cousin’s cock-breeding farm in Florida. During a violent hailstorm, heavy winds blew down most of the pens and coops, freeing the birds, and by the time the storm was over, most of the birds were dead. Freed from their prisons, they had fought each other to death on the spot.

Domostroy walked around, listening as the women in the room chatted with each other about jewelry and fashion, exercise classes and rejuvenating cosmetics, and the men talked intently about fighting cocks.

Most of the men at the party were middle-aged, a few already gray or bald, generally of average height and slightly heavy around the hips, with firmly masculine features and energetic, flamboyant mannerisms. The women, shorter than the men, their plump round figures exaggerated by tight gowns, were vivacious and feminine, with elaborate hairdos, heavy makeup, and bright shades of red lipstick. The men’s excitement over the coming cockfight soon spread to most of the women, particularly as the initial bets began to be placed. Several of the younger women eyed the Paganini, anticipating the time when the fights would be over and the men would turn their attention to women, music, and dancing.

The man who was to act as referee stepped forward
and called for the first two pitmen, and two men with aprons over their tuxedos and fighting cocks in their hands got into the fiberglass enclosure, the cocks twitching, readying themselves for battle. A stir of excitement filled the room, and at that moment the referee gave Domostroy the signal that it was time for music.

As Domostroy struck the first chord, the pitmen handed their roosters over to the referee, who examined the spurs on their legs, weighed them, and declared them eligible and properly matched according to regulations. From his position behind the console, Domostroy then saw the cocks struggling to peck each other, as the guests, screaming and shouting and placing last-minute bets, crowded around the pit. The pitmen set the cocks down a few feet apart on the spongy mat floor and scurried out of the pen; instantly, tails stiffly erect, feathers ruffled in fury, the birds moved in on each other, circling, staring angrily. Then they collided. Savagely tearing and exchanging blows with their beaks and spurs, they beat their wings frantically and became airborne for an instant, their legs stretched out like those of attacking eagles. As they came down, they rebounded, sinking their spurs into each other, until blood began to seep through the feathers on their necks and torsos. They went on raking each other, landing blows, hooking their spurs, wrestling each other sideways to the ground, flying up, falling down, and half blinded by blood and torn feathers, tipping over,, colliding again, their torn muscles hanging out, until one bird suddenly collapsed, barely twitching in the pool of its own blood, and its opponent, in the final rage of victory, rushed to it and with one faultlessly aimed strike of its beak dealt the prostrated enemy a mortal blow. With the fight over, the guests collected on bets, and the owner of the winning bird scooped it up triumphantly and carried it off to examine its injuries, while helpers tossed the dead bird into a refuse bag. Just then, the pitmen introduced two new birds for the next fight.

To smother the continued clamor of excitement around the pit, Domostroy was asked to play louder, so he turned the Paganini up to full volume and began to improvise.
Soon, a sound indistinguishable from that of a rock combo was blasting through the console’s six stereo speakers, and by means of its preset tone selectors and autorhythms—Latin rock, patchanga, merengue, bossa nova—Domostroy was giving the Cubans every romantic song he knew, rendered with a Latin flavor in a variety of instrumental voices including flute and celesta. Although the noise around the pit did not diminish, and the rounds of fighting and betting and cleaning up went right on, a group of the Cuban women began to gather around Domostroy and dance with each other, applauding the player for his best selections.

He was in the middle of a slow dance piece when a pair of strong hands covered his eyes from behind, a scent of delicate perfume invaded him, and a woman’s voice menacingly whispered in his ear, “Guess who?” He pressed the foot pedal that automatically maintained his preset beat and said, “I can’t!” but even as he said it he knew there was something familiar about the voice, although he couldn’t conjure up the image of the woman who went with it.

“Well, try,” she said, and that was enough.

A flash of excitement burst within him. “Is it Donna Downes?” he asked.

“That’s me!” she said, laughing happily and removing her hands. She told him to keep playing, and as he turned toward her he saw her in her full splendor—her hair piled on top of her head and fixed with little sprigs of fresh flowers, her neck and shoulders bare—wearing a long violet gown that wrapped her body snugly down to the middle of her thighs and then fell loosely over her knees and ankles. Before he could think of what to say to her, another fight climaxed in the pit and a roar of excitement filled the room. Domostroy automatically increased the volume of what he was playing and speeded up the tempo, and unexpectedly, Donna sat down next to him and began to play along. Under their four-handed improvisation, the music blasted the room.

Soon an intermission was announced, and everyone was invited to the buffet supper in the next room. In the
pit, men replaced the rubber floor covering and tied up the plastic bags containing the bloody corpses of dead roosters. Still uncertain of what to say to Donna and timid in her presence, Domostroy offered to escort her to the room where the buffet was laid out.

In the next room a gray-haired Cuban beckoned to them. Whispering that he was her date for the evening, completely at ease, Donna introduced Domostroy to him and to her other friends as someone whose music she had known for years. In the party’s din the word
music
must have been lost, for her friends all seemed to assume she and Domostroy had known each other for years.

The Cuban was a retired widower who lived near Donna’s parents. He had met Donna through them soon after he moved to America, but, he added quickly, only recently had he thought of asking her out. Cocknghting was his great passion, he confessed, and that was the reason he lived in the South Bronx, an area where cock-fighting had become so popular that the local state assemblyman, to please his Hispanic constituency, had tried several times—unsuccessfully—to introduce into the New York State legislature a bill aimed at legalizing the sport.

Their conversation was interrupted by an announcement that the second round of fights was about to begin, and Domostroy excused himself and returned to his post at the Paganini. Much later, when Donna and her friends were leaving, she came over to say good-bye. She told him that she had received his note and intended to call him soon; she was thinking of entering the upcoming Chopin competition in Poland, she said, and wanted to talk to him about it, as well as about Warsaw, where, she remembered reading, he had studied music at the Academy as a young man. Even though she said it with warmth and feeling, Domostroy felt she was simply being polite and would probably not call. After all, why would she respond to his desire?

A few nights later, he was having a nightcap at the bar in Kreutzer’s when Donna showed up looking for him.

With her figure outlined by her faded jeans and pullover and her hair falling freely over her shoulders, she looked girlish and free.

They moved to a corner table in the empty dining room, and for several moments Domostroy remained silent, feeling intimidated by her presence. When she told him that she had often been tempted to call him after their initial meeting at the Etude party, he became braver and loosened up enough to tell her that he had often thought about her too. He had been surprised, he said, to see her at the cockfights, and he asked whether she regularly attended such bizarre events. She answered that, given the life she had been born to, very little struck her as bizarre or extreme. The cock’s rage to kill was its whole life, she said, so it was only natural that the cockfighting pit should be its means to death. What was bizarre to her, she said, was that there were so many black people, born into the countless ghettos of America, whose rage to live could never be fulfilled, at least not in the pits of Harlem or the South Bronx.

When he did not answer, she began to talk about her life, as if to explain herself to him. She told him that she was presently living—on and off—with Jimmy Osten. Then she asked Domostroy why he had written her the note and what he wanted from her. He replied that he wanted to talk to her because he had a sense that his music was not remote to her; that, through her, he too might arrive at a point where he no longer felt remote from it—or from himself.

“What is it that you want to know about me?” she asked, and he sensed that she expected him to ask her about her musicianship, her studies, or her piano-playing plans, but for some obscure reason that was not at all malevolent, he went straight to the truth.

“Tell me about your life with that actor.”

Taken aback by his words, she stared at him for a sign of hostility, but when she found none, she appeared miserable, overcome by disgust.

“Who told you about him?” she asked sullenly, then checked herself. “I’m sorry—it doesn’t matter, does it? But why do you ask?”

“I want to know you, Donna,” he said quietly, “and because I might not have another chance, I feel it’s important to ask you about someone you cared about.”

She searched his face for signs that she could trust him. Then she composed herself and began to speak, her voice calm, her eyes resting on his, gauging his reaction as she surrendered herself to her past.

“Please keep in mind, Patrick, that I can’t explain what I’m about to tell you,” she said, placing her hand on his, unconsciously smoothing his skin with the pads of her fingertips as she spoke.

“Recently, leafing through some magazines in the Juilliard library, I came across a scientific article about female sexuality. It said that when a woman gets excited sexually, whether by physical contact or through her imagination—the amount of vaginal blood and the rate of her vaginal pulse both increase. Yet the researchers found that during orgasm, although the rate of the vaginal pulse increases, the amount of blood decreases, and even though this information was obtained by the use of sophisticated research techniques, medicine has not been able to offer an explanation for it.”

She stroked his hand, as if expecting him to answer her, and she stared at him. But he did not answer. He watched her hand on his, and the thought that she would soon go home filled him with anxiety.

“If such a simple physical thing is still a mystery to science,” she said, “I guess I’ll never know what it was about Marcello that made me love him.”

Domostroy felt the incomprehensible world of her past rise like a barrier between them. Her green eyes stared at him without expression, and meeting her gaze, he wondered whether that barrier would ever crumble before the groundswell of his feeling for her.

She had been in love for the first time, she said, when she was twelve. She and the boy used to slip out at night and meet in a burned-out building near her family’s
apartment in Harlem. The boy was sixteen and white, and he always acted frightened, probably because everything around him was black—the night, the mood, the burned-out building, the girl he was squeezing. They met and kissed and petted a number of times, until barely a week after he had deflowered her with his hand, one night the boy’s parents sent the police after him. She and the boy were found necking in the ruins, and because the policemen were white, her boyfriend was no longer alone in the blackness. They herded Donna into a police van as if she were a stray dog, took her to the station, and charged her with soliciting for the purpose of prostitution. She was locked overnight in a cell with two other women—black prostitutes who treated her as tenderly as if she were their daughter—and then she was released in the custody of her father, who made her promise never to see that white boy again.

The incident taught her that even though she was not guilty of soliciting lovers, she could still be arrested for it. By the time her family moved out of Harlem and into a more affluent South Bronx neighborhood, she had developed spiritually; now her sexuality was no longer awkwardly clitoric; she was rid of shame, defiance and fear, and openly resentful when other boys tried to fulfill her manually. In her erotic life she saw herself as sexually precocious. The knowledge did not disturb her. She liked the idea that she could be as carried away by sex as some of her high school friends were by coke and hash, and even then, in her mid-teens, she decided that she would always be the one to take the initiative: she would solicit only those lovers who seemed to be worth the experience.