The Empire of the Dead (10 page)

“What about that building over by Fifth?” Bern asked. “The one you asked me to survey yesterday?”

“Oh, I think we'll give Sam the lead on that one. It's pretty straightforward, no? Why don't the two of you chat for a bit, get to know each other, then you can stop by my office, Wally, and pick up the basement specs, okay?” Landau withdrew.

Bern set his briefcase on the floor and motioned toward the empty chair. Murphy sat and studied the
DISASTER TIMELINE
. “Whoa,” he said.

“Reminds me of the seriousness of our calling,” Bern said.

“I think it would freeze me up to look at that every day.”

“So. What gets you moving?” Bern asked.

“Oh! Possibility!” Murphy said. “All the ways to
do
this terrific city. Parks, for instance. You work much on parks? They're such marvelous liminal spaces.”

“Meaning—?”

“Well, the way I see it, city parks are ironic, right? I mean, we all live here because we like the urban fabric. But we demand, along with our elevators and automated bric-a-brac, groomed trees, spiffy gardens …”

“Contrast. Relief,” Bern said. “Seems natural.”

“Yeah. Clearly, we crave both. So parks … maybe we play around with them a little, right? …
extend
the city into the park, say, with metallic sculptures … concede to nature, but
remind
the stroller—”

“I don't follow you,” Bern said. “What—you'd soften the ugly by
adding to it
?”

“No, no, no!” Murphy said, laughing. “Don't be so literal, Wally.”

“Designs
are
literal.”

“I'm just saying, introducing a little whimsy, a bit of the unexpected, into something like a city park can educate public taste, so—”

Bern rolled up his drawings of the light scoop. “It's easy to laugh at public taste,” he said, standing stiffly. “But it can't be dismissed. People's preferences are based on pretty sound principles. Comfort, shelter. They're not as unsophisticated as they seem.” He hated his scolding demeanor. This young man … the perceived threat of him … had put him on the defensive, forced him into a more conservative stance than usual.

“But,” Murphy began, “a sudden ironic awareness …”

“What about the poor slob who just wants to sit somewhere nice and eat a sandwich?” Bern said.

Murphy rose. “Well. I'm sorry, Wally. We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. I was just thinking aloud with you.”

Bern shrugged. “It's nothing. I'm sorry, too.”

Murphy pointed at the rolled-up sketches under Bern's right arm. “I didn't mean to steal your thunder. Landau gave it to me as a kind of test, I guess. I didn't know.”

So. Smart
and
nice. Bern couldn't stand him.

Murphy turned to leave. He waved at the tragedies on the wall. “Seriously, though. I'd think about something else here, Wally. This can't be good for you. How about a pinup of Lindsey Lohan?” He grinned, an attempt at lusty camaraderie, but—who was Lindsey Lohan? Apparently, Farrah Fawcett had slipped into the ether while Bern wasn't looking. He was surrounded by too many young people.

“Catch you later,” Murphy said. “Thanks.”

Bern said, “Sure.”

The basement specs were uninspiring. Bern phoned the building's owner and made an appointment to survey the place three days from now when he'd survived his colonoscopy. He stuffed his light scoop sketches into a drawer and spent the rest of the afternoon arranging and rearranging the drawing implements on his desktop.
American Venus. German Fabers. The Conte charcoal leads. Resilient steel nibs for his pens.

Various moods required a graphite arsenal. Differing shades of hardness. Was this a “dark line” day (after all, he'd begun this morning thinking of Marla), or was Bern feeling more delicate than that? What kind of mark would suit him in this moment? He picked up a pencil, rejected it, tried another, and wound up drawing nothing.

Early that evening, in his apartment, he read the “Before the Procedure” brochure his doctor had given him on his last visit. Tomorrow, clear liquids all day, but nothing was forbidden him tonight except foods peppered with whole seeds (popcorn, berries, nuts, breads, cereals, tomatoes). Twenty-four hours earlier, he had stopped taking his blood-thinning pills. On the kitchen counter, he set out the disposable bottle and the pouches of powder to be mixed with water when the time came. He'd leave work early tomorrow, come home around two, and begin the purge.

He took the elevator down to the lobby. Outside, he moved past the Clinton, the old brownstone next door housing the elderly and the blind. At Sixth and West Twenty-third, a gray-haired man sold knockoff watches, wallets, and cell phones next to a row of newspaper dispensers: Gay Singles ads. Three steps away, on the corner, two army recruiters stood in front of a rickety folding table, passing out pamphlets.

The sidewalks glistened. They were dry: no water, film, or oily substance.
With existence
, Bern thought.
Glistening with existence
? Could this be joy, he asked himself. If so, why did it flood him now? He was alone. His last love, a delightful young woman, had just returned to
her
former lover (maybe Bern really
preferred
being on his own?). He was facing an invasive procedure, possibly a layoff (
damn
that young man!) …

But here he was in the world. What joy!

Gum cast from the mouths of others, ground into the concrete, pushed against the rubber bottoms of his shoes. The air was as green
as sea water. Bern glimpsed rust and peeling paint, cracks in glass, chips of fleshy pink in the faces of fire-red bricks. The back of an old warehouse blazed azure in the low-shooting sunlight, shimmering, insubstantial.

Chatter. Argument and song. Everywhere, the talk on the streets was loud and vital: a huge collective breath riding a smell of burnt pretzels and car exhaust. The city would talk all night.

Across a thronged avenue, a glass wall fronted another glass wall around a bank atrium, milk white and coolly fluorescent: “ephemeral architecture,” a style favored by Bern's younger colleagues. Transparency, a blurring of outside and in. Bern liked the lightness; on the other hand, it seemed to him undeniable that one of the things people sought in their surroundings was the illusion of permanence. To admit, up front, that nothing will stay, the steps, the floors, the streets … all we'll ever know …

Bern shivered. Victor Serge, it was—a Russian writer he'd read and admired in the past—who said, “What is terrible when you seek the truth is that you find it.”

Huddle and cling, behind cheap walls. It's what we have, Bern mused. At least that. The thought encouraged him.

He hurried along the streets, the primeval urban forest, while all around him, in bright headdresses, beads, and skins, the city's savage children, young and old, danced with one another, whooping, howling.

By the time he reached Bleecker Street, his heart galloped: not from physical exertion, but rather from anxiety, anticipation about his upcoming procedure. His future at the firm. His senses were keen tonight! He would wander, relish the air—do whatever he pleased.

He had read in the paper about a place called Fish, an unpretentious new eatery at Bleecker and Jones with a waterfront ambience. This evening, before tomorrow's monkish diet, he would live in style—yes, by gum (as his grandfather used to say)!

Salmon on ice in the front window; dim lighting; a worn mosaic
floor. The waitress's quick, graceful gestures pleased him. He ordered Blue Point oysters and Angels on Horseback. A glass of chardonnay. He took his time, savored every swallow. The waitress was in training. She neglected to take the empty oyster platter from his table until he was nearly ready to leave: the ice melted, and when she picked it up, water splashed all over the floor and into Bern's pant cuffs. “No problem, no problem,” Bern told her as she blushed and scurried back to the kitchen.

On the street, afterward, Bern passed a scruffy man on the corner, in cutoffs and no coat, shouting at passersby, “You've all had
your
dinners! Now give me some money so I can have mine! Jesus wants you to, Goddamn it!”

His heart beat crazily. He ambled past the Village Vanguard and saw the name Paul Motian on a handbill posted by the door. The drummer and his band were scheduled for a nine o'clock show: thirty minutes from now. Beneath the club's red awning, Bern hesitated. He was fading. It had been a hard day and tomorrow would be harder. Did he still have the gumption to mingle with strangers?

A figure emerged from the shadows, a mummy wrapped in a khaki jacket. Bern's heart kicked. “Fuckface,” the man mumbled, holding out his hands. Bern slapped a dollar into the fellow's grimy palms and, to end the encounter decisively, hustled down the steps into the jazz lair.

The dark basement room hadn't changed much—not in years. Red floor-to-ceiling curtains hung behind a piano, a set of drums, and three or four microphones. A smell of beer-soaked cotton rose from cushions along the back wall seats. Black and white photographs of musicians formed crooked rows over the tables, reflecting thin blue beams from spotlights near the stage.

Abandon hope, all ye who enter
: a distinct Underworld, the Vanguard, a journey out of—into?—a dark wood. Fleetingly, Bern imagined finding venerable Dante (surely a jazz lover) at a table here, nursing a beer with Virgil or, if the moon and stars aligned just
right, his old flame Beatrice. The poet would be wearing his red robe and laurel crown, maybe sporting a Brooks Brothers tie. Bern paid his cover and found a sturdy chair against the wall away from the door. From here, he had a view past the floor tom-tom to the bass drum's pedal. Good. He liked to watch a drummer's feet: the music's anchor.

At a table next to him, two girls he took to be in their early twenties sipped tall, orange drinks. Their talk, full of academic jargon, pegged them as New School types. Creative writers.
Back story
,
deconstruction
,
narrative arc
—at the moment, they seemed to be deconstructing the erotic potential of a boy with whom they shared a class. Hardly angels—but then, this was the Inferno, was it not? Bern relaxed with his beer.

An old co-worker of his, Pete Somebody, a man who'd passed away many years ago, used to brag to Bern that he'd seen the famous Bill Evans sessions here in June 1961. Paul Motian on drums, Scott LaFaro on bass—just days before LaFaro died in a car wreck. “It was the last set of the night, few folks left in the club,” Pete would say (his story, well rehearsed, never varied). “The trio went into a lovely little tune called ‘Jade Visions.' Evans lowered his head—he almost touched the keyboard. His hair, soppy with sweat, raked the tops of his fingers. Then he reared back, shaking. I was in the front row and, man, did I get drenched! In my eyes, on my lips. At first, I thought, ‘How disgusting!' But then I realized, ‘Jesus! This is
Bill Evans
's sweat!' I didn't wipe my face all night.”

Bern smiled, recalling poor old starstruck Pete. Apparently, the New School girls mistook his smile for flirtatiousness, and flashed him loopy orange grins. He bent to his beer. His heartbeat had slowed, but disturbing pulses rippled through his chest and upper arms. He knew this wasn't angina—but the mild ache he felt in the middle of his back now, right between the shoulder blades, worried him. Maybe it
was
better to sit here, surrounded by others. Just in case.

He looked up, squinting into the dim light, his fellow patrons
gaudy silhouettes … how many here in '61, on the night Pete loved to recall, had died since then? Pete. Evans and LaFaro. How many objects in the room remained from that time? The curtains? Some of the chairs? The photographs on the walls? Traces of Evans's sweat on the floor, preserved under layers of wax.

What was it like for Paul Motian, now an old man, to return to the club night after night, a space he'd played regularly for more than forty years, so many of his band mates missing or dead?

Now, Motian appeared behind the drums. Wiry. Bald. Wearing shades. The curtains whispered.
Don't look back
, said his ghosts (or so Bern imagined). The corners of the drummer's mouth curled down. “Okay,” he said. The word seemed to conjure his fellow musicians. Bern was aware of the instruments' sounds before he saw fingers and lips manipulating pedals, keys, and strings. But in an instant there they all were: arms, legs, and heads, pumping, swaying, kicking. Breath. More breath. A flitting rhythm filled the room.

Motian played smoothly, occasionally lunging toward his cymbals, always guarding his chest (maybe Bern was projecting). Recently, when one of his clients learned that Bern had survived double bypass surgery, seven years ago, he exclaimed, “Me, too! Last year—and guess who I met, afterward, in cardiac rehab? Weird jazz guy, drummer—Motian is his name. I never heard of him, but my buddies tell me he's famous. He never said much, just did the treadmill. I hear he's back playing now.”

Motion waved his sticks, counting the band into another tune. Bern rubbed his chest. No, not angina. Right before
his
surgery, what he felt was a slow constriction inching like thick, hot oil through his arms and lungs. If that's what he experienced again tonight, he'd take himself straight to St. Vincent's. This, he figured—the ache, the elevated heartbeat—was the anxiety he'd felt all evening. Agitation about work. His colonoscopy. Seven years ago, when the boiling oil choked his arteries and he couldn't catch his breath, he had taken a subway to the hospital (a ride he didn't remember). The doctors laid him on his back. They hooked him to a heart monitor and fed
him nitroglycerin pills, which gave him a grainy headache. He stayed there overnight, dreaming of Nicaragua, the last place, and the last time, he'd thought he was going to die. Nicaragua. He was thirty-one years old then. On a bus one evening, on an architectural tour of the northern half of the country, he had wound up in a town called Ocotal, near Honduras. From across the border, Contra rebels lobbed mortar shells into the mountains east of town. When the blasts began, Bern was standing in a grungy motel john, staring out the window at a Red Cross ambulance. His ears popped. His bladder blazed. He couldn't stop the stream. As the bombs fell, he pissed himself and the walls. I'm going to die holding my dick, he thought. God bless my tax dollars.