Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets (27 page)

I smiled at Solanas. My feet were itching, tapping the floor in a syncopated rhythm that only Sherlock could understand. “I would really like to walk.”

“E
AST
,
TOWARDS THE
Alphabet! Beyond the Village, there’s a city, a city of the Alphabet, Avenues of letters!” I said, exiting the greasy spoon six dollars lighter but carrying two copies of Valerie Solanas’ self-mimeographed
S.C.U.M. Manifesto
, inscribed
‘Too bad you’re men. You’d make O.K. broads— Valerie.’

The grey New York light was coming up, and you could see dark shapes shuffling, junkies twitching in failed sleep in East Village Park, behind iron railings. A shaft of light pierced the gloom and murk.

I looked for the street sign. “Avenue A. Direct sun, at dawn, every now and then. I thought I had enough of sunlight In Country, but I like it over here, in this quiet corner.”

“It’s not so quiet, John. There are plenty of dark things prowling these streets, and I don’t mean rodents. People, John. The worst kind that skulk in shadows and desire harm to their fellow man. I’ve been considering this area.”

He looked at me, up and down, appraising.

“John, what would you think about leaving the Chelsea hotel? Moving somewhere a bit more permanent? Shall we turn here, on Avenue B? There’s something I’d like you to see.”

We walked along another two blocks, shapeless husks huddling in doorways, nestling with the bags of garbage on the street, shopkeepers opening their doors to conduct business through bars. Downtown New York.

Sherlock stopped in front of number 221 Avenue B. A bakery, the bars on its front window painted white, a bright sign over the door. There was a bell over the door that rang as we walk in.

“Mrs. Hendrix. How are you this fine morning?” He grinned at her, his teeth glowing almost blue in the light of the fluorescent tubes overhead.

Mrs. Hendrix was a well-kept black woman dressed in a navy blue chef’s uniform, with a white starched apron and a few stray smudges of flour dusting her arms. “Mr. Holmes. You’re here mighty early, aren’t you?”

“My colleague and I have just had our breakfast over near Washington Square Park, and I thought I might show him the rooms for rent. Alone, I might be a little worried about making the rent, but with a second person... well, if he’s willing to come in with me, then we’d never have a thing to worry about.”

She looked at us, with her big smile on her face, and as it dropped off, the temperature dropped by several degrees. “My husband and I like you, Mr. Holmes, and we’re not worried about what you do in your rooms, but the rent. You have to make the rent. Every single month, due on the twenty-fifth, late on the first, understand? Or you’re out on the first, that day.”

“Mrs. Hendrix, I wouldn’t dream of being late. You and I are going to be the best of friends. Frustrating, I’m sure, at times, but I think we understand each other, and you’ll have nothing to fear from me, as long as you don’t bother about what we do. I will do experiments, sometimes, and Doctor Watson here will assist me with his medical and chemical knowledge.”

Her smile reasserted itself, erasing any hint of malice and covering the world weariness she felt. “Okay, then, want to have a look?”

T
HE SECOND FLOOR
was filled with ovens, sacks of flour, paper bags, the leftover junk of running the bakery. “You have to pass through here, but just stay on this side of the tape, and try not to track any mud through or anything. Health department rules. Not that they inspect much, but you never know. Not with a ‘spade’ business.”

She pointed to the ovens, with the pipes running from them. “My husband worked on ships in the war. We heat the water from the bakery ovens so there’s plenty of hot water until around midnight. Building heat, too.”

We went up to the third floor. It was a massive, open space, swept clean but could use a good scrub. “Used to be storage for a magazine company during the war. They had some clerks up here before that. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter, but the heating’s covered and the windows open, top and bottom. You get a good airflow in summertime, here and on the fourth floor. I’ve done enough stairs, though, so you can go up to the fourth yourself.”

“There’s another floor?” My entire room in the Chelsea wasn’t a tenth of this space. Fourteen-, maybe sixteen-foot-high ceilings of bare wood. You could dance in here. There was nothing but a couple of hard chairs and a simple table.

“Yep. There’s an old bed up there, too. Just the one. My husband and I lived up here while we were fighting with Stuy Town, before that Mr. Lorch let us move in to his place.”

I remembered them. The
Post
had written a scathing editorial about letting ‘that spade family’ move in and ‘corrupt’ the all- white enclave.

Sherlock looked at me, rubbing his fingers against his thumb. I reached into my pocket and gave him the ten-dollar bill he had given me a few hours before outside the Chelsea. I was overdue there, and I wasn’t going to pay them another dime. I was going to live here.

“Mrs. Hendrix, we’re happy to take the floors, effective today. Right now, if that’s all right?”

She turned from the top of the stairs. “That’s no problem. Y’all do what you need to do. I’ve gotta get keys cut, but y’all stay here if you need and they’ll be ready as soon as we can get them out. Breakfast rush about to start. First of June, now. See you on the first of July, if not before.” The bills disappeared underneath her apron.

Sherlock looked at me. “This floor alone is worth it, isn’t it? Shall we look upstairs?”

The next floor was the same, if a little cleaner. There was a bed, made up, with a dust cover on it, and a small rough wooden dresser.

“We’re allowed to do what we like. Put up walls if we want, or not. And Mrs. Hendrix wanted to keep the furniture up here, said that it was too much trouble to bring it down. And free breakfast. Anything left over from the day before. I think your trim waistline may expand, if you’re fed enough.”

I yawned.

“Poor John Watson. I’ve tired you out with my manic walk the length of Manhattan Island. We should lie down.” He pulled back the dust sheet.

“This is the one thing. The blue beauties will make you yawn, tired and exhausted, but you’ll have trouble sleeping.”

“I’m sure we’ll find something to do.” He pulled me to him, to those lips and that lovely long face I’d been dreaming of all night.

A
SINGLE RAY
of actual sunshine wandered across the floor, motes of dust sprung up from our bodies twinkling in their slow journey to the floor. “Look at the dust, Sherlock. Floating there, swirling. Lighter than air. It’s like magic.”

“Not at all. They’re very light, but not lighter than air, or they’d float up and we’d have far less sweeping. They’re just light enough that the lift from swirling air molecules, from tiny temperature changes can slow their descent. The sunlight is heating the air as it streams through the window. That’s your magic, John. Motes of dust are simply pawns in the sun’s game.”

“Take the joy out of everything, don’t you?”

“Not everything, John.” He smiled at me, then, the first time I saw his secret smile; the one he only shared with me, and only when we were alone. That smile told me that this, that we, were special, but that it wasn’t to leave the confines of the private lair we would build for ourselves, there above Alphabet City.

“Pawns.” He sat up, moving faster than I could even think of moving. “Tell me something, John. Do you remember Valerie Solanas? Did she strike you as a pawn? Someone who would do something, unasked, for someone else?”

I thought about her. “Not really. She seemed more... more like someone who was used to playing her own game, changing the rules of the game she found herself in.”

“Exactly, John. She’s a queen, able to make any moves, playing her own game, but she is without the luxury of her own board. Acting as a pawn. Driving towards the opponent’s back row, to regain her crown.”

He got up and walked to the window.

“But she’s not in control, is she?”

“That’s exactly it, John. She’s not in control of her life, and she’s trying to work out who the king is.”

“Or the player of the game.”

“Or the player of the game. She’s the most resentful pawn ever committed to the game, and that makes her dangerous. She’s a puzzle, isn’t she? Where’s that manifesto of hers? I’m of a mind to read it. Ms. Solanas, you are a bit of a puzzle, aren’t you?”

He padded back from the window, casting a long, lean shadow across the floor, rifling through the pockets of my pants looking for those ragged sheets with purple writing on them.

O
VER THE NEXT
two days, I’d packed my few belongings for my new home at Avenue B, and Sherlock had turned up the next night with an array of tough youths carrying boxes and crates of notebooks and chemical apparatus, a coffee table made from a cable spool, and a few chairs that looked like they’d spent some time on the street.

It was starting to look more like a home than anywhere I’d been since before the War.

Sherlock was still talking about Valerie. We’d run into her once more on the street, and talked to her about her
Manifesto
. Sherlock wanted to know more.

“Go on, John. Find out what you can about Valerie from your contacts at the Factory. Keep an eye out for her, and talk to her if you have to, but if you can follow her without her noticing, that would be helpful.”

I didn’t know why we were so interested—why
he
was so interested, that is. I would have been happy to have whiled the weekend away with day-old cakes and bread. I had some deliveries that could be made to the Factory, though, so I went ahead, not knowing what to expect. Everyone had the same reaction. Nothing outstanding, for the Factory. Billy and Paul were there, ready to get their prescriptions, only too happy to share catty gossip.

“Valerie? Who?”

“You know. The street dyke. Twitchy.”

“Oh, yeah. Creepy. Did you see her screen test?”

“Eyes like dark holes, staring into your soul.”

“Not attractive, really. Could be, if she put on makeup or something. Could be better, anyway. Better than street chic. Eau de Hudson, like she usually wears.”

“There was something about her, though. Something interesting. She was clever, when she wasn’t too twitchy. Maybe if she’d been fed.”

“Some days she’d be so angry, railing about men and scum. Other days, she’d be real personalable. Friendly. She used to come in with Irene, sometimes, but we haven’t seen them together in months. She just keeps coming in shouting at Andy about her script. He gets so many scripts from people. What’s he supposed to do?”

“And money. She’s always asking everyone for money.”

“Speaking of, Doc. What have you got for us? We loved those black beauties last time. Got us right through the move. What do you think of the new digs? Union Square? Next big thing?”

“Orange OPs. Phew. Those things’ll keep you going, all day, and all night long”

I finished my business and walked back to the Chelsea to see a few patients for some business there.

It was strange, heading up there. I had a pocket full of money, and another full of tablets, and I was ready to see the back of that place. Sure, lots of people had written loads of stuff there, and it was a collection of plenty of interesting people, but did it matter anymore?

Sherlock was in the coffee shop next door, sitting with a greasy looking man in a brown suit with heavily macassar’d hair. Pencil-thin moustache, impeccably dressed, like he was just catching up with the Beats. They were out, man, didn’t he know? Sherlock saw me and took his lovely long hands and knocked on the window. I went and ordered a coffee.

“John! How are you? Can I introduce you to Maurice Girodias, of the Olympia Press? Mr. Girodias is a fascinating individual, having published some of the more influential works over the last twenty years. Arthur Miller, Nabokov and others. Mr. Girodias, this is Doctor Watson. He’s called Doc by his friends. Don’t call him John. He hates it. Just indulges me.”

“Pleased to meet you?” He half-stood and gave me a limp handshake. My impression was cheap macassar and a cheaper suit, though he had quite the breakfast in front of him: eggs benedict, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and coffee with the sugar jar next to him.

Sherlock went on. “We appear to have a mutual friend. Ms. Valerie Solanas. You remember her, John?”

He was up to something, but I had no idea what. I made a show of screwing up my facefor a moment. “Short woman, flat cap, sheepskin coat?”

“That’s her. Mr. Girodias is her publisher. Or will be, when he can find her, of course. He’s got a manuscript, and is hoping to get a second, maybe even a third, isn’t that right, Mr. Girodias?”

“It is, actually. We call them the Travellers Companion books. Great literature that offers a... a traveller, one on his own, a break from the day-to-day grind. That traveller might need some stimulation. That’s what we provide. Dirty books, sure, but dirty books for the discriminating reader.”

There was something about this Girodias. His accent was English overlaid with French, but a coarse English and the French sounded more like it was from the movies than from growing up in Paris, but what did I know? Just that I didn’t like him. I spent a lot of time with unsavoury characters, freaks, and castouts of prestigious families. I didn’t mind
strange
, but desperation rolled off of him, despite his rolls of money and the way he encouraged us to order whatever we wanted on his cheque.

“How did you and Valerie come to meet?”

He looked at both of us as though we were part of the vice squad. To be fair, Sherlock’s clean-cut face and short hair would make him look like a bad rookie who has put on civvies and been thrown out into the wilds of Southern Manhattan to catch gamblers, pimps, and johns. “Nothing like that, I assure you. No, no, no under the bridge and down the alley liaison for me.” He strained so hard to pronounce “liaison” in a French fashion that I was afraid he was going to pull his larynx.

“No, we were introduced by the daughter of one of my
financiers.
” (That strain again.) “Adler. Irene, I think? Lovely family. Lovely woman, actually. Intelligent. Spent quite a lot of time at the Factory. The only one of the Superstars that was a real Superstar, if you know what I mean. Knew of my taste for
la controverse
. Good for
le commerce
. You know. She told me of the
manifesto
of
Valérie
and I knew I should meet her. With such an endorsement, I knew I should meet her and get her on my author list. So I did.”