The Late Child (36 page)

In a town where Elvis and Mr. Sinatra sang to millions, over the years, the thought that Sonny wanted to be a singer so badly that he would keep trying, even though it was just to old couples at a Chevron station—couples who were just taking a little break from driving around America in their declining years—well, you had to admire persistence, at least she did.

When it turned out that Jay had no interest in making up—he was soon sleeping with a checker at the Big Bear supermarket—Harmony
opened the door a crack to Sonny. She knew it was a mistake, he wasn't her kind of guy, but then her kind of guy wasn't working out too well—it wasn't helpful to Pepper to hear her mother called a slut, not to mention having to watch her get knocked over a couch. She decided that maybe someone with a milder approach would be better, and Sonny seemed mild. She just hadn't reckoned with his problem with rejection, really it was a major problem. Once they finally did become lovers Sonny's problem with rejection took some pretty extreme forms—for example, he expected her to hold his dick all night, if she even took her hand off it long enough to scratch her nose or turn out the bedside light Sonny would begin to feel rejected. At first it was a little endearing, that he wanted her to stay so close, but later it definitely presented some difficulties. He didn't even like Harmony to go to the potty by herself—if she went in her own bathroom and started to close the door he got a desperate look on his face.

“Sonny, I'm just going to the bathroom,” she would say, hoping he would see that it was no big deal.

“Do you have to close the door?” Sonny asked.

“Well, it's more private if I close the door,” she said. “I don't follow you when you go to the bathroom, do I?”

“No, but I wish you would,” Sonny said.

“Sonny, I don't want to watch you use the potty,” Harmony said. “I think you should have a little privacy.”

“Why, if I don't want it?” he asked.

Some of their conversations made Harmony feel a little crazy; they made her realize she should have given Sonny a pass and stuck with her kind of guy. At least none of them got a desperate look in his eye if she needed to use the potty. They hadn't insisted that she hold them by the dick all night, either.

Now Harmony could tell just from a brief moment of eye contact that Sonny Le Song was still a man whose emotions lay close to the surface. Why did I have to meet him? she kept asking herself, or asking God or fate or whatever power had caused Sonny to show up on West Seventy-fifth Street at that particular time. It was probably the one moment in her whole life when she
would be on the opposite street corner. But nothing gave back any answer, not Sonny, not the heavens, not anything. The fact was, she met him, in his cowboy boots and his old mashed hat, on a rainy day in New York.

The question that had to be answered was what to do next. Laurie was being very patient, but Harmony could tell that she thought it was a little odd that she would give him so much attention. “Hi, how are you, hope I can see you again when I have more time,” would have been Laurie's approach.

“Sonny, could you just give me your phone number?” Harmony asked. “Laurie and I have to get home—but if you'll give me a phone number I'll call you in the morning.”

“Babe, if you only knew how I missed you,” Sonny said, but at that point Laurie Chalk whipped back into her aggressive New York mode and cut him off.

“Buddy, she said she'd take your number, which I think is certainly generous under the circumstances,” Laurie said. “If I were you I'd just give her the number so we can go. She's had a tragedy, you know. She needs to get some rest.”

Sonny just ignored Laurie, as if she didn't enter into the matter at all.

“Let's go, Harmony,” Laurie said, grabbing her arm. “We asked this man politely to let us be. I don't know what his problem is, but it's his problem, not ours.”

“I don't have a phone number,” Sonny admitted. “Sometimes if I have a gig they let me sleep under the tables. But I think I'll be getting a situation in the Poconos in about a week. I think things will be looking up.”

“You mean you're homeless?” Laurie asked.

“Well, until the situation in the Poconos comes through,” Sonny said. “I have a gig tonight though. I expect I'll have a place to sleep tonight.”

“Where's the gig?” Laurie asked.

“Way uptown,” Sonny said. “It's an old folks' home—a lot of old Jewish grandmothers. They won't turn a nice boy like me out on the streets.”

“Well, nice to meet you,” Laurie said. “I hope it works out in the Poconos.”

Harmony had no idea what the Poconos were—the name just rang no bells. She felt a little torn, though—she
had
offered to call. Maybe knowing Sonny wouldn't be so bad if she could just know him over the telephone. It was pointless, though; he was homeless and had no phone.

“Is it the old folks' home on a Hundred and Tenth Street, south side?” Laurie asked.

“That's it—if you want to come to the show I'm sure I can get you on the list,” Sonny said.

Evidently he considered them dumb enough to believe there would be a waiting list for his concert at the Jewish old folks' home. Even Laurie, who lived in New York City and considered herself unshockable, was a little shocked by the novelty of that idea.

“Oh, Mr. Le Song, it's too bad,” she said. “We have to get home. Eddie's going to be on the Letterman show tonight, and we promised we'd watch.”

A second later she wished she hadn't said it. How was the little dope going to feel? Harmony's five-year-old was going to be on the most popular talk show in America, and Sonny Le Song was singing—if he was singing, even that small claim could be a lie—at an old folks' home on 110th Street. Why in God's name did we have to meet him? she asked herself—but, like Harmony, she got no answer.

“I know that old folks' home,” Laurie said. “If they let you spend the night they'll let you stay for breakfast. That's when Harmony will call.”

Sonny Le Song didn't answer. He just stood on the sidewalk, mute, looking at Harmony with the same needy brown eyes that he had trained on her years ago, when he wanted her to hold his dick in her hand for a few hours.

“Bye, Sonny,” Harmony said, as she allowed herself to be led away. After a while she looked back and saw that Sonny was standing right where he had been when they left.

Laurie looked back and saw the same sight.

“We can bring him home if you really want to,” she offered.

“I don't really want to,” Harmony said.

“Do you still have a soft spot for the guy, or what?” Laurie asked.

Harmony shook her head. It wasn't really a soft spot. Mainly it was just the memory of him singing at the Chevron station that touched her.

“Maybe it was the rhinestones,” she said, thinking out loud.

“What rhinestones?” Laurie asked.

“He used to wear rhinestones when he sang country-western,” Harmony said.

“Were you in love with that guy?” Laurie asked, once they rounded the corner onto Columbus Avenue. Sonny Le Song still stood right where they left him.

“If there was ever to be a movie of your life Joe Pesci could play him,” she added.

“I was never in love with Sonny Le Song,” Harmony said. She had been inclined to let the question slide by, but that didn't seem fair; after all, it was an easy question to answer. Of course, Sonny didn't know she had never been in love with him, he was so naive that he assumed women only slept with men they were in love with. He didn't consider sympathy or the hots or any of the various other reasons why a woman might find herself in bed with a guy she wasn't in love with.

“I bet he was in love with you, though—not that that's
your
problem,” Laurie said.

“It wouldn't have been my problem if I had walked down another street and never met him,” Harmony said.

“It still isn't your problem,” Laurie said. “He's a grown man. His clothes were clean. It's not like he's been sleeping under bridges or something. He may have a girlfriend here, for all you know.”

“He was always neat,” Harmony remembered. As to the question of girlfriends, who could say? Even when Sonny was so in love with her that he hated to leave her side long enough to allow her to answer calls of nature, he still found time to keep in touch with all three of his ex-wives, all of whom lived in Las Vegas. Now and then he would show up in the evenings and she would catch a whiff of a perfume that was not her perfume, but Sonny always maintained that it was fans who had just been particularly enthusiastic about hugging him after his set at the Chevron station or wherever he was performing at the time. Sonny wasn't much of a singer; it was hard to imagine fans being
that
enthusiastic. Now and then she had the suspicion that there
might be girlfriends but she didn't really have time to press any investigations.

That was about the time when she was beginning to see Ronnie, who did a lariat act at some of the smaller casinos during the afternoon lull. In fact, she began to have regular dates with Ronnie—he had a blue pickup with a campershell where he kept his ropes, and he was very proud of the fact that he had been able to squeeze a waterbed into his pickup. The waterbed even had a wave mechanism. Harmony wasn't too fond of the wave mechanism; in her experience sex on waterbeds was tricky enough even without the wave mechanism. Particularly it was tricky if you had a guy who had gymnastic expectations of the sex act, as Ronnie did. Still, she and Ronnie had regular dates for a while; crawling into the campershell with Ronnie was pretty exciting—exciting enough at least that the question of whether Sonny had a girlfriend was not uppermost in her mind. She had always been of the live-and-let-live persuasion, herself; one of her problems was that she had never run into a man who was of the same persuasion. Ronnie certainly didn't have a live-and-let-live attitude—he just couldn't take Sonny seriously as a rival, Sonny was too chipmunky. Anyway, Ronnie was totally vain about himself as a lover, so vain that it never dawned on him that a woman who could sleep with him on his waterbed with the wave mechanism would have the slightest interest in sleeping with anyone else at any time for any reason.

“Are you real upset about leaving Sonny on the street?” Laurie asked.

“No,” Harmony said. She had begun to feel very tired, though—what she really wanted was to sit down. She felt sort of saggy.

“How far is the subway?” she asked, so tired that she felt like she might be stumbling in a few more steps.

Laurie stopped her for a moment, and felt her forehead.

“I think you're feverish,” she said. She immediately waved for a taxi. Before the taxi even started moving again, Harmony closed her eyes.

“I wish we hadn't met Sonny,” she said, as they were walking up Laurie's stairs. “I know I'm going to think about him now.”

When they got to Laurie's apartment nobody was there. While Laurie was making tea Harmony took off her clothes and wrapped up in an old bathrobe Laurie loaned her. She lay down for a minute, to wait for the tea, and when she opened her eyes again Eddie was sleeping in the bed with her—he had his pajamas on, too. She awoke to a New York morning, and the smell of tea. Laurie had put a big cup of tea on the bedside table. Eddie was still asleep, and so was Sheba. Laurie sat in a rocking chair by the bed. She had just washed her short brown hair and was rubbing it with a towel.

When Harmony was a little more awake she noticed that there were tears on Laurie's cheeks.

“What's the matter, honey?” she asked.

“Just the same thing,” Laurie said. “Just the same thing that's always going to be the matter.”

She rubbed her wet hair again, and then put her face in the towel for a moment.

“Don't mind me, drink your tea,” she said. “Everyone said Eddie was terrific on Letterman.”

Harmony felt surprisingly rested. She felt like it might be a day when she could get Eddie dressed, and make him a waffle, if Laurie had a waffle iron. She also felt it was time to have a few goals. One goal—the main goal, at the moment—would be to go home.

“Laurie, could we go to Oklahoma today?” she asked, whispering so as not to wake up Eddie and Sheba.

Laurie looked a little startled by the question.

“Have I upset you?” she asked. “I was really hoping we could have more time. We haven't got to talk about Pepper very much.”

“Laurie, I didn't mean go without you,” Harmony said. “I want you to come too.”

Then she remembered Sonny Le Song.

“Laurie, can I get the number of that old folks' home?” Harmony asked. “I think I better call Sonny. If I don't I'll feel guilty all day.”

“You don't have to feel guilty, and you don't need the number,” Laurie said. “Look out the window.

“I'll go with you to Oklahoma,” she said. Then she put her face in the towel again.

Harmony got out of bed and hugged her. Laurie made room for Harmony in the rocking chair—fortunately it was a large rocking chair. Harmony hugged Laurie real close, while Laurie sobbed. Laurie was too thin—probably she hadn't been eating correctly since Pepper's death.

While she was rocking Laurie, Eddie opened his eyes and took in the scene. Harmony put her finger to her lips, to let Eddie know that she and Laurie were sharing a private moment. She hoped that Eddie would be patient and not pop up and start making breakfast demands until Laurie had had an opportunity to pour out a little more of her sorrow. After all, that was why they had come to New York and accidentally made it possible for Iggy to fall off the Statue of Liberty: so she and Laurie could grieve together about the girl they had both lost.

Eddie seemed to understand perfectly—he lay very still, with a solemn look on his face. Iggy was sleeping at his feet, which was a good thing. With Eddie and Iggy both awake there was going to be some noise: they were little boys, after all.