The Blue Book (16 page)

Elizabeth hopes to get though her afternoon by watching a film, sampling the vessel's lively schedule of current hits.

Don't think of a man A and give him a name, a line to his back and knowledgeable hands. Or if you must, then imagine that he's cultivated solitude because of his own guilt, has made sad habits by choice, prefers them, and is in no way your responsibility.

You ought to leave him to himself.

Too many things have been his choice and have been wrong, untouchable.

It's been two days.

No Arthur.

She let him go and he has gone.

Which has left her – predictably, pathetically, as if she were seventeen, and helpless and knew no better – has left her with chafing evenings, hours that gnaw, with walking and waiting in public places and drinking too much coffee, because there is no more harm caffeine can do her: she doesn't relax, she can't get sleepy, she has moved beyond espressos and their minor damages, but might as well add them to the general, miserable, bad inward thrumming. She likes their taste. She wants to have something she likes, for it to be there and simple.

Two days – not a sign of him.

Two
days –
Smile at me
.

Two.

Man.

Is he trying to tell me something, or not saying anything at all?

Was this the end of it?

Derek is with her. ‘It's like a fucking prison.'

‘It's like the opposite of a prison.'

‘Why are you drinking so much coffee?' Derek smells of their cabin, of stale sheets and boring skin. ‘Coffee always makes you weird.' Derek beside her in the cinema.

Beth, it's true, is nursing a cardboard cup of coffee. ‘I've never not drunk coffee.' She has it mainly because its warmth calms her hands, because walking with a cup has always made her feel at ease – as if she were at home in a street, or an office building, or a multi-purpose auditorium plunging forwards and forwards with a ship. ‘I've never not drunk coffee. Are you saying I've never not been weird?'

‘Yes.' He would have started laughing by now if he was well, if they weren't trapped, if she was better at being a nurse, or being a girlfriend. Or both.

I nurse my coffee, but not my boyfriend. What does that say about me?

What does that say about him?

Beth wanted to be here, where the air is thinned with theatrical height and inoffensive and the weather is far away and does not whip, or punch, or moan and this is a dark place where nothing half-recognised will catch her eye and then hurt her.

Derek starts again, ‘No, I don't think you're weird. I think . . .' And he sounds uncantankerous and small, as if he is trying to begin a sentence that is about how his plans have foundered and that all is not well with the week and perhaps them, perhaps there is something wrong with what they are.

We don't want to deal with that, though – not with so many days still to cross. Jesus . . . Especially if it's true.

She ought to rub his shoulder, his knee, be consoling, but she's tired of not being happy with him and guilty if she leaves him and is without. She is also sick of weaving him along to his sun lounger – it is now effectively his and he gets ratty if anyone else is in residence. She would like to ditch fretting beside him in the Winter Garden with the blankets, the mugs of hot water, the mayhem through the glass.

‘The film will distract you – it's a boyfilm with stuff blowing up.'

‘Don't fucking patronise me.' Derek is clamped in his seat, virtually phobic about motion, tensed in the face of everything he can't avoid. ‘This is the bow – we're in the bow – the bow goes up and down the most – we need to be in the middle.'

And, indeed, the lighting bars hung ready for the shows (all dancing displays currently cancelled, due to bad weather, the performers being unable to leap or frolic safely on an uneven surface) and their state-of-the-art lights are creaking, swinging, while the screen sways gently in the manner of a sail on a soft day.

‘If you focus on the picture, it won't move.' And she does say this patronisingly, perhaps even intends to.

I know he's ill, I know he hasn't eaten properly in a while – and I will get him to the doctor tomorrow – he can have the injection, they've said that might work – but sod this. I am not responsible for his condition.

He should complain to the captain.

Several passengers already have, made requests to the skipper suggesting he ought to do something about the waves, take steps, get them not to bang against the hull . . .

Francis would be happy to know that his joke came true – any word can work a spell.

Or no word – doesn't matter who you are, the weather can still fuck you. The wealthy, though – they want what they want and they have to have their say – their word.

Or else they're simply optimistic.

Maybe they just have a sunnier outlook than normal when it comes to the human condition. Maybe the wealthy just believe we can change, or survive anything.

‘Fuck off.' Derek's voice flat and nasal.

Survive anyfuckingthing.

It doesn't kill you to assume that.

Just sometimes other people.

‘Fuck off.'

Maybe there's something about me that seems to be leaving, left, and maybe he wants to change and deal with that – decide in advance that he hates me, then he won't mind when we're over.

That's what I'd do.

That's what I am doing.

Beth has decided to hate elsewhere: a man who sits in cafés with the one book he always carries, reads and reads it like a meditation, a repeated song – stylish cover.

A book from me.

I used to give him presents.

And he gave them to me.

Now we give each other discontent.

Could be worse. The proper subject for consideration would be what he gives to other people – Arthur – the man A, full of keys to private locks.

In he comes with gifts you shouldn't want.

There's a wife at home amongst the furniture and ornaments and all the beautiful litter of a shared life and she keeps on asking for her husband, even though she's completely aware that he is dead. And it is nothing but human to breathe and feel inside a skin that knew him
and to grieve – to think with a mind that heard him and
to grieve – to still carry the needs that meant she would, over and over, touch him before she could even intend it, her love faster and deeper than her will, and to grieve. And it is normal, reasonable, for her to reach out and seize absurdities once he is gone.

It is, after all, absurd that she continues and he does not.

It is much less absurd to demand he come back: to be, in that way, optimistic.

To be absurd and optimistic is not the same as being stupid.

The wife, the widow – she isn't stupid.

She is hurt.

And she is – though it seems rude to mention – a millionairess. Properties, stocks, shares, she is both cash- and asset-rich, has several millions. Lucky her.

And if there was once a probably unpeculiar soul, a boy who folded himself away and made a package, a distasteful secret, of himself – who grew in a box of his own making – then he might later have become an adult specialist in hurt. And he also might be a connoisseur, a collector, of the wounded and prosperous, might gain an interest in their fortunes. Lucky them.

Or him.

There might, of course, be innumerable times when he doesn't even mention charges as he carries out his work. He might simply make it excellent, effective and an act of love and cherish the days when his spine feels upright, evolved, and he is clean and takes pride in the services he embodies: his restoration of lives through – admittedly – grotesque and intrusive lies, but if the lies are beneficial where's the fault?

In other contexts, though, there is this compromising truth: that he has to earn a living, pay his bills. Which gives rise to the question: why not pick out a few, a ludicrously wealthy few, and have them pay for all the useful happiness of others?

And there are many reasons why not – good, sane reasons – but they may be less convincing than the discomforts inherent in poverty and powerlessness: he wouldn't wish those on anybody – including himself.

So, having made his dark decisions, his compromises, he can choose his marks.

And, for them, he becomes a smiling and attentive parasite.

He would rather not.

But he does have to.

And maybe he goes to the wife, the widow – who is called Peri Arpagian and who misses her husband, who was called Mels Arpagian. And maybe the man fixes her inside the sort of assistance that will never set her free. And maybe she knows no better and is glad and grateful to him while he manipulates and deceives her and rations the warmth of his attentions to keep her weak, because maybe he needs her to be addicted – to him – and so he makes sure to arrange it.

And this means that in many other ways he'll be tender; he'll fly to New York – where Peri lives and he mainly does not – at her request. He will get on a plane, although he loathes them – although his too many air crash seances have left him soaked with pitiful, lengthy deaths, falling and lonely screaming amongst strangers, the tumble of belongings in vicious air. There are rooms and rooms inside him filled with the abandoned living, the guilty living who still remember sick confusions of flight numbers and the way they begged reality to offer survivable options: that their loves had altered flights, that plans had changed. They prayed for the salvation in mistakes –
she might not have boarded, he did mention he might stay an extra night
. Nevertheless, the man climbs aboard to be with Peri in hours, almost whenever she says he's needed. Almost. And there are Sundays when he'll go with her to garden parties, evenings when he'll agree to dine with her at the Metropolitan Opera Club, when he'll walk her on his arm into her parterre box and then sit through the onstage posturing and repetitions: the big women shouting, the men with unruly arms, the unlikely conjugations of their fat romances.

Although he dislikes opera heartily, he never suggests that she shouldn't endow it with vertiginous sums. There is plenty of Peri to go around.

He has glanced towards the Director of Major Gifts at this or that black tie occasion and known they were both thinking –
There is plenty of Peri to go around.

And Peri has the man's numbers and, quite often, he can talk her through an empty night and into the grey hours of morning if she wants it. His silences and absences are very rare – the minimum necessary to spike her need – because he mainly aims to please.

Then again, it's not hard to please the addicted: only starve them a very, very little and then feed them their substance of choice.
Let them score and they'll adore.
And if
he
is the substance, then what could be more beautiful than the way he'll descend through the cloud cover, place his seat in the upright position, secure his tray table, grind through the landing, the trudge to Immigration –
here for pleasure, visiting a friend – yes, I do visit her a lot – nothing romantic, no, she's old enough to be my mother – no, I'm not into that –
claim his bags and then look for his name on a sign in smeary block capitals –
A.
LOCKWOOD
– a nod to the limo driver holding it, and the slide out of Newark, relax and roll straight for her building, walk in and chat politely with the doorman – who is called Richard and who likes A. Lockwood, thinks of him as a friend, and invites him to head on up. And then he'll ride the elevator – art deco, all original – while it rises fifteen floors and then opens, always slightly disconcertingly, right into Peri's home, which is an apartment in Beekman Place: French antiques, bay windows, East River views and a balcony furnished with manicured shrubs.

He visits with Mrs Arpagian regularly, has cultivated her devotion, her craving, over a period of years. He has sought out her wounds and then closed himself inside them like a bullet fragment left there to corrode. And he takes care – professional and conscientious – to note her furniture and ornaments and all the beautiful litter of her previously shared life and he continues to learn from them. He is in the habit of asking to use her bathroom and then trotting about through her flat: gliding into bedrooms, armoires, closets, medicine cabinets. He has gradually fumbled and investigated every tender place within her privacy. He has made it his business – because it is his business – to gather information.

Not that she doesn't flat-out tell him virtually everything he could require without his asking. Not exactly a challenge, Peri Arpagian.

Treated me like a sickly nephew from the outset, like a lost son: patted and doted and, in her way, spoiled. Gave me a scarf – not a Patek Philippe, or a Gauguin study, or an Alfa Romeo, not any of the marvels that she could afford – just a scarf and some cake. Personal gifts – no desire to impress, or dominate.

You know that you've got them, the rich, when they give you presents anybody could, when they try to be ordinary for you.

First time I went over, it was snowing unstoppably and the weight of Manhattan halted under it, but I'd said I would be there, so I was. I walked – for an hour – round and round, up Sixth Avenue and along, down First and along, that hideous sting every time I turned into the breeze – a punishment for what I have to do, a little fee –
I couldn't see a cab anywhere and I've never got the hang of the subway
– the subway doesn't run near there: no one who matters would want it, so it doesn't approach –
I'm so sorry, I think I'm late, am I very late?
– arrived damp, dishevelled, perished – the cruel air off the river had murdered my ears – Richard looked askance. If it hadn't been for the tailoring – has an eye for a suit, our Richard, quite the dandy on his days off – if I hadn't pointed up the British accent, then he wouldn't have let me in – expected or not.

But arriving in genteel need, I knew she'd love that, want to fuss: summon Imée to dry out my shoes and socks, make arrangements for slippers. A man in your house in slippers – you'll keep him for longer than you ought. You'll talk to him. You'll give him stories that he really shouldn't have.

I stayed the night – spot of dinner, nothing fancy, meat, veg, figs with cheese, more conversation – confide in her and she will be confiding – and then we watched a Rock Hudson movie: likes her Home Entertainments does Peri, has the Recreation Room with the walnut, out-of-tune piano and the fancy sound system with walnut speakers and the fancier projector and the specially painted wall to enhance the image and the floor-shaking speakers you know she'd enjoy even if they weren't upstairs in a two-storey, soundproofed apartment – cranks them up for Saturday mornings with Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw: shivering the windows, swinging the walls back a little, waking the floor almost to dancing, almost to that – like a type of fury, her need for noise, huge music, her hunger to be touched by it. She wouldn't care if she damaged eardrums throughout the block, left her neighbours sleepless, cracked their walls.

Not that she does, but that's her choice – her behaviour is always her choice. Millionaires don't like restrictions: laws – even natural laws – are so rare an intrusion, they'll always seem clumsy, blasphemous.

After the film I'm kitted out in a dressing gown and pyjamas – not her husband's, they're from the days when she had guests, when they had guests – and then a quiet goodnight and off to sleep in Egyptian cotton. I kissed her cheek before we parted – made the gesture crisp and English, gallant, non-threatening. She smelled of imported honeysuckle soap.

No work until the following afternoon and only a brief session then – asking her to lead me to an object – clasp my fingers round her wrist so they can listen – thinness of ageing skin: shy, fuzzy, indecisive and then this hardmetal, proudmetal, fierce intention, it lashes in. I'm walking with her, quartering the room, and she can't
help but lead me, shout with her bones that we have to head for the little table and her husband's
wristwatch. We almost stumble when we reach it, overly anxious
to arrive, and there's a triumph in her, a glee, when I lift it up –
oh, yes, he was asking you to think of this
– and then letting it speak to me –
something that touched him every day: he knows my business better than me, he's very strong in this, strong man
– remains of Ralph Lauren cologne in the leather – she still keeps the last bottle, evaporating, fading: probably inhales a little when she can bear to, can stand the pain. No son to inherit the watch. No child to inherit anything. But now she has me and I can tell her about Mels, be somebody else who remembers him, who knows him.

It felt as if we'd just been introduced.

But Peri was mine from the start, from the shoes.

That's all it took.

Sweet Peri – bending while her servant watched her, undoing my laces, removing each snow-ruined shoe, inviting me all the way in.

She was nothing but ready.

And necessary – a valued contributor to my own little Welfare State of the Beyond – from each, according to their capacity: to each, according to their pain.

But it's still like stealing, like watching a neighbour's windows while I wank, like slipping my fingers inside an old lady and working her until she pays, until she wants and pays me every time.

She sent me home with coffee cake and the scarf.

Coffee cake wrapped by the silent and observant Imee who disapproves of me, but who makes up a package which is both waterproof and lovely – sets it in a blue paper bag with blue cord handles, from a stationer's uptown. Peri's household economises and helps to save the planet by reusing bags, which is cute – relatively cute. And then Peri brings the scarf – new, Italian cashmere – a little treat once meant for Mels Arpagian, although I don't say so yet – but I appreciate it, offer effusive thanks and then throw in a moment when it seems to strike me, have significance, and I let my eyes well, but control it. I intend her to notice, but also be controlled, so she can navigate our goodbye without breaking fully up against the thought of Mels – the man she lived with for forty-three years and who was named after Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as a joke. Mels, who happily fed America its own uranium. (And who also mined copper and silver and gold – mainly those – and had some other interests; he did diversify . . .) Mels who defended the price of his shares, who wouldn't pay to seal abandoned workings, who contaminated water, who poisoned Navajo miners – and their families – who had a sunnier outlook than normal when it came to the human condition, believed we could change or survive anyfuckingthing – a true optimist who burrowed far and wide underneath Utah. Mels who enjoyed a joke.

Good sense of humour – clearly, in various ways, a nice man – started up from cabbage soup and chilblains, too many brothers and sisters, the unwanted offspring of unwanted immigrants – and he didn't completely erase what that was like. He could be charitable. His family had been touched by the Armenian genocide – could tell you stories that made you weep, him too. He was not socially inactive, was benevolent to people often – as long as they weren't sick or destitute because of something he had done.

I might have been his friend.

If it weren't for the poisoning issue and the breathtaking greed.