The Exquisite (14 page)

I made my first and only serious play for Dr. Tulp’s affections not long after my latest distressing conversation with Mr. Kindt. I had the feeling, and I was not wrong, that things, if not coming to a head, were shifting into a terrain that would be murkier, more confusing, harder to effectively negotiate, so before one of her scheduled visits I threw off my hospital regalia, scrubbed myself at great length under an extra-hot shower, shaved carefully, then put on the only noninstitutional clothes I had—the ragged but clean three-piece vintage suit I had been wearing when I was brought in. I always used to like to apply a reasonable amount of thick pomade to my hair, and had managed to keep up this practice even when I was spending both nights and days on the streets, but there wasn’t any available in the hospital, so I contented myself with pulling my wet hair back tight against my head and holding it there until it was more or less dry.

Establishing an agreeable ambience in any hospital room is a problem, and for a while I shoved and pulled various objects—like the bedclothes, the dirty linen hamper, the curtains, the TV—this way and that, then experimented with various arrangements of the room’s key infrastructure—the bed, the side table, and the chair. When I was satisfied with the configuration, I made a quick trip around the ward and gleaned two fairly fresh bouquets of flowers and half a dozen still somewhat buoyant green and gold balloons from a recently vacated room, and did a few things with them.

The effect, when I was finished, was interesting, if not impressive, which I thought would be likely to play well with Dr. Tulp. I was certainly hoping this would be the case when she considered me. I had lost a pretty good deal of weight by this point and my suit, which was already a little baggy, fell, let’s say, differently than a suit should, and of course I didn’t have any shoes, only my large white slippers. Also my skin had gone a little sallow during my stay, so that under the bright light in front of the bathroom mirror I had a kind of jaundice thing going. But doctors are trained to see past surfaces, to look at the greatest corporeal horrors and smile, or yawn, so I didn’t have any trouble imagining that Dr. Tulp’s gaze would cut right through the really only mildly deficient portions of my exterior aspect and appreciatively palpitate the softer, richer surfaces beneath. Well, that’s what I was counting on. Just in case, I pulled the curtains closed and turned off all the lights except the one with the dimmer switch beside my bed, which I set nice and low. I then splashed a little alcohol on my cheeks, rubbed them with a dry bar of soap in hopes that some of the fragrance would stick, did the same with my wrists and ankles, then climbed onto the bed, crossed my arms and ankles, and set out to wait.

Unfortunately, I fell asleep. So that when Dr. Tulp did come in I greeted her first with a grunt then a disoriented shriek sparked by my perception, in the dim light, with the balloons bobbing in the middle distances and flowers and flower stalks strewn across the floor and various surfaces, that it was Mr. Kindt, not Dr. Tulp, who was moving, not through my room but instead some grotesque, aqueous grotto, toward me. I quickly recovered though, so that when she greeted me and said, what’s going on in here, Henry? I was in a position to smile and invite her to come over and take a seat by the bed. Her response to this was to flip on the lights, press the call button, then chew out the nurse for letting me, in so many words, trash the room.

This definitely didn’t look too good for my prospects, and I probably would have given up on them right then, but instead of instructing me and the nurse to start cleaning up, she told the nurse that would be all, waited until she had left the room, then turned the lights back off.

Do you want me to turn this dimmer up?

No, that’s all right, she said. In fact, it’s perfect in here.

Perfect, huh? I said.

Dr. Tulp batted at one of the balloons as she crossed the room to the chair. There was a balloon within my own reach so I batted at it. Our balloons drifted off in opposite directions for a few feet then went back to bobbing.

I once took part in a school rendition of
The Tempest,
said Dr. Tulp, as she sat down, leaned back a little in the chair, and crossed her long legs. We did a kind of flower thing like this for the cave. We also hung metallic streamers and blinking Christmas lights and pasted plastic jewels all over the place. When he saw it, the director said it looked like the interior of one of those Bangladeshi restaurants and wondered if we wanted to call for takeout.

I bet you played the wizard’s daughter.

No, I played the wizard’s slave.

Well, I would have liked to have seen that, Dr. Tulp. I said this with as much come-hither as my voice could muster. She didn’t, so I tried something else.

I was in some plays in school.

Oh?

Do you want to hear about them?

Dr. Tulp looked thoughtfully at me. I took this to mean I should go ahead. I started to tell her about playing the donkey in the
Bremen Town Musicians,
but she cut me off.

No?

She shook her head. I have to admit this flummoxed me a little. I pulled my legs up and wrapped my hands around them. She leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees.

Did you do this for me, Henry? she said. Her pale white hand did a pretty little back dive as she said this. I imagined it back-diving and back-stroking across the room and out the window. I imagined my own hand following it, out into the air high above the streets.

Well, yeah, I said.

It’s nice, she said. I mean it’s awful and you look awful, especially in that old suit, but it’s nice. The gesture, I mean. You may think I’m impervious to flattery but I’m not. In fact, I like it very much.

The hand that had been swimming reached out and touched a bit of sheet on the bed. A big smile lit my face.

Can I call you Nicola? I said.

I’ve scheduled you for surgery, she said.

What? What are you talking about? When? I said.

She leaned back, looked at her watch, looked at me, pressed the call button, and said, now.

The brief adventures of Henry and Tulip began in a little tattoo parlor on Orchard Street, where Tulip went to work on my chest, repeatedly jamming a needle into the strip of skin covering my heart.

What is it? I asked.

You can look later, she said. It’s just something simple. A souvenir. The irritation will go away soon.

She brought me over a glass of water and a couple of Tylenol and told me to take them. I did so, then wiped my mouth, then told her I’d had a dream about this place, only it had been transformed into a kind of operating room and we were all swimming around and she was cutting Mr. Kindt to pieces. She was smiling and cutting into him and talking about it and pretty soon we all came over and watched. By the end we were in a kind of semicircle around the operating slab while she cut and tugged.

Sound familiar? I said as I put my shirt back on.

How funny, she said.

Yes, I said. Did you bring Anthony here after your drinks?

Be nice, she said.

Then we went to Grand Central.

Grand Central Station was recently renovated. Renovation meaning that a lot of expensive shops have been added, and that you can really truly and profitably look up at the ceiling in the central concourse, which has reclaimed its brass and marble heritage, and learn a thing or two about the zodiac, because now it has been cleaned.

Scorpio, said Tulip, looking up at the ceiling, how about you?

I said what I was, and Tulip said, Mr. Kindt too, and I said, speaking of, any idea what was going on tonight?

What do you mean?

You know: the namesake of the namesake and the namesake is a corpse with an alias and the recent trend in his relationship with Cornelius and the thing about stepping forward.

Tulip shrugged.

I looked at her.

She shrugged again.

So I said, O.K., now what?

Now we go.

What do you mean, go?

We’re taking a little trip.

Right now?

Soon.

But first she wanted to show me something. We went down one of the two conjoining chandelier-lit slopes that mediate between the upper and lower levels of the station and stopped under a central walkway, near enough to the Oyster Bar that I thought that was where we were going. Instead, Tulip told me to go stand over in one of the corners of the intersection made by the two slopes and the passage leading down from the restaurant.

Turn around and put your face against the wall, she said.

Seriously? I said.

It’s clean. Or clean enough.

I leaned forward. The tile, where I touched it, was cool against my forehead, which was pleasant, as thinking about my dream and Mr. Kindt and Rembrandt et al had gotten me a little heated. I pressed my forehead harder against the tile, took a deep breath, then pulled away and looked over my shoulder. Tulip was more or less doing the same thing in the opposite corner, looking very good doing it. Then she was talking to me.

Henry, she said.

Her voice seemed to be coming out of the piece of tile in front of my face.

Nice, I said.

How’s your chest?

It hurts.

That’s normal.

What’s the tattoo?

Like I said, it’s a little keepsake.

Something to remember you by?

That’s right.

Are you going somewhere?

We’re
going somewhere.

Where?

We’re leaving, getting out.

Out of New York?

You interested?

Very. I guess.

Good. But, Henry, promise me something.

Sure.

No more comments about Anthony, all right? That’s boring. You have to give it a rest. Mind your own business.

O.K., you’re right, sorry, I said.

Anyway, we are creepy, Henry. Anthony has a point.

I’m creepy?

But she didn’t answer, wasn’t there anymore.

I found her a couple of minutes later standing by the information booth soaking up, she said, the train station atmosphere, something she had liked to do as a kid.

I wasn’t quite done talking, I said.

So talk, she said.

But, beyond elaborating on the subject of creepiness, which suddenly seemed to me painfully self-evident and basically played out, or trying to dig a little more at the conversation we’d had at Mr. Kindt’s, which seemed to be covered by the creepiness thing anyway, I didn’t really have anything to say.

There were plenty of people going by and Tulip blabbed a little, in watered-down Mr. Kindt style, remarking, for example, on the patterns the people made striding across the regularly cleaned marble floors and going up and down the marble staircases and I said, uh huh.

Then it was time to catch the train we were apparently interested in, so we went downstairs to track 122, which was hot and crowded despite the late hour. There were a couple of conductors conferring at the top of the platform, wearing their tall blue hats and short-sleeve shirts, and the inside of the train was brightly lit, but cool and surprisingly quiet given the amount of activity. I thought then of that feeling you get on a train that is just leaving the station, going slowly, and all the heads in the car are rocking back and forth and the lights blink on and off and there is a strange calm. Thinking about this, I began to feel a little better and more hopeful.

This is very nice, I said.

Yes, it is, Tulip said.

Where’s this train going? I didn’t look.

No idea. It’s the New Haven line. I think Portchester is one of the stops. Maybe Stamford.

So we’re just going to see where it takes us?

She looked out the window at the gray platform, her face clearly reflected in the dirty glass.

Mr. Kindt wants you to murder him, she said.

Come again, I said.

There’s a script.

I looked down at my hands. They looked in need of some scrubbing. I felt my face flushing, the heat coming back. Is that why we came out tonight, so you could tell me that? Was that the whole point?

It was Aris’s idea. He wanted me to be the one to ask you.

Why?

Think about it.

I thought. Just then the conductor came over the intercom to announce the train’s imminent departure. People kept coming in, taking their coats off, putting bags on the overhead racks, unfolding newspapers, opening books.

What kind of murder are we talking about? I said.

You’ll have to ask Cornelius, he has the script now.

I’m asking you.

She didn’t answer.

He wanted you to ask because it’s part of the script.

Tulip nodded.

I would have figured he’d go for something more exotic. Something intricate or whatever.

His tastes are sometimes surprising. I mean, his favorite game
is
Operation.

He wants it to play like a movie, something a little racy. His lovely young friend, who stands to gain in some significant way, persuades a creepy young ne’er-do-well down on his luck to bump him off. It’s like a poor man’s version of
The Postman Always Rings Twice
.

Tulip smiled. That ends badly, she said.

It certainly does.

And I wouldn’t say you’re down on your luck.

But you would say I’m creepy.

Yes, but not that you’re a ne’er-do-well.

After she said this she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

Was that part of the scenario?

She didn’t answer. Instead, she said, I am kind of lovely, aren’t I?

She was. There was no doubt about it. There was no, in fact, getting around it, not for me.

Why not Cornelius or the knockout or the contortionists? I said. He could have gotten something cheap and thrilling out of them. Why me?

I don’t know, she said. Because it turns out you’re good. Because you got him excited with all those descriptions of murders. Because, clearly, he’s eccentric. Because he’s a rich guy from Cooperstown who likes to play, among other things, crime boss in the village.

Play
crime boss?

I was kidding. Exaggerating for effect. It’s just that by now he doesn’t have to do anything. He’s like a consultant. He does some things for some people. Other people do things for him.

People like Cornelius.

Tulip nodded.

O.K., and while we’re at it, what about Cooperstown, where he made his big stake? What did he do besides supposedly weaving straw baskets before he took his famous swim? Before Cornelius helped him to “step forward,” whatever that means.

What do you think it means?

I think it means something besides a swim and a bet happened that night. Am I close?

What do I know?

Considerably more than I do, I thought. Or should have.

He likes you, Henry. He wants a turn. Forget the other stuff. Forget Cooperstown. They’ve got issues. They’ve known each other for, what, a million years? It’s their thing. Love and intricacy. Let’s leave it at that.

Tulip gave me a little shove. I gave her a little shove back. By this time we were standing out on the platform and the train was pulling away. It moved slowly into the dark tunnel that would take it across the Bronx, out of the city, and into the lamp- and moonlit suburbs, where mysteries of another order abounded and people drank cocktails out of cut glass and swam, etc., only after the sun had set behind beautiful trees. For a moment, I had the feeling that I was still on the train as it snaked its way through the dark. As it seemed to me I sat there, head bobbing while the lights went on and off, Tulip’s hand snaked down my arm, over my wrist, and her fingers curled tightly around my own. She squeezed, leaned close, bit my ear, and, reprising Cornelius’s speech from dinner the first night, said, “If they dyed by violent hands, and were thrust into their Urnes, these bones become considerable.”

I’m leading a strange fucking life here, I thought.