Beware the Solitary Drinker (9 page)

“Just like Sherlock Holmes,” he said.

“What?”

“Sherlock Holmes did cocaine.…The seven per cent solution.” Carl followed my movements as I chopped the powder. “I don't normally do this stuff.”

“Well, don't start on my account. This shit cost a hundred and twenty bucks a gram.”

In the meantime, Janet had snapped up my piece of straw, hitched up her sleeves, snorted to clear her nose, and bent to the task. I hadn't really counted her in.

“I thought she was straight,” Carl said as she swooshed up a line, leaving nary a grain. He took his place behind her. “Actually, I like the stuff,” he said.

I didn't know if I did. Cocaine matched up too well with selfishness and greed. We all used to smoke the herb together, even went out of our way to find someone to share with. This snowy stuff I tried to keep for myself, telling my friends I didn't have it when I did. Doing too much of it, not keeping track on purpose. Maybe the fun was gone.

“Everybody's always willing to do coke,” I told Carl.

The coke hit me. Janet sparkled in front of me. Carl was a great guy. The cubbyhole office became an enchanted villa. As Janet's gaze swept around the tiny room, her eyes caught up with mine. We smiled at each other. Our eyes locked. She was so alive, so wired. I moved closer to her, then stood beside her so that if she moved, if she wanted to, we could touch each other.

This electric attraction sparkled in the air. Carl babbled on about ants while Janet and I kept looking at each other. I got more and more excited because I could feel her wanting me to kiss her. This whole love affair and seduction took place without a word being spoken. The ardor flared and in a little while leveled off in the high plains. We were even a little shy with each other as we came down a bit.

When things calmed sufficiently, Carl and Janet got back on the trail.

“If your friend Danny didn't kill Angelina, we have to do something,” said Janet.

I had the distinct thought in the back of my mind that things weren't as simple as, at this moment, we all seemed to think they were. But I plowed ahead anyway. “Could the guy you saw Angelina with that night have been Ozzie?”

Carl's face froze; he turned white. I thought he was about to keel over from cocaine death. Instead, he said, “Of course.”

“It could have been?”

“It could. I wouldn't swear to it, but it could've been.”

The coke that had heated my blood to boiling moments before now turned the blood cold. We stood in that room in an eerie silence.

Ozzie lived in one of the big apartment buildings just east of Broadway on 110th Street. A bunch of people lived there: Betsy, Nigel, Duffy. It was where Angelina had lived in a sublet efficiency apartment.

Now was the time for some action, I decided. The first thing was to talk to Danny. It was time for him to come clean, at least with me. Peter had gotten bail set on the drug charge and the band came up with the money, so Danny was back playing music. On Friday nights, he played with a jazz band at a club on Amsterdam in the Nineties.

Janet insisted on coming with me. I didn't know whether she was getting me deeper into this thing, or I was dragging her in. We argued for a few minutes on the corner, then when I looked her up and down a couple of times and she looked back, I realized something was happening here and I didn't want to let go of her just yet. We picked up one of the hordes of empty cabs pouring back down Broadway after the night trip north from downtown and were whooshed over to the club at 94th Street before I had time to think of what I would do or say when we caught up with Danny.

Arriving in the middle of a set, Janet and I sat at the bar and listened to the music. The jazz sounds were mellow: piano, horn, drums, and Danny on bass, the club almost somber. Danny leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, the way he usually played. But something was calmer about him, the sound and the setting were perfect for him. After listening just a few minutes, I realized Danny was a jazzman; rock and roll was a sideline.

When the set ended, without having let on he knew we were there, Danny walked slowly to where we sat at the bar. Shaking hands with me, he looked at Janet. His face was calm and impassive. Maybe the music soothed him, or maybe he was high. Janet jumped off her barstool; she looked ready to spring into action, just barely held back. She kept looking at me as if to say I should do something faster and looking at Danny as if to apologize for my slowness.

“Can we talk?” I asked him. He led us to a table.

“This is my story,” I said as soon as I sat down. “I saw you and Angelina the night she was murdered.” Danny stiffened and looked away from me. Then he looked back. “But Carl van Sagan also saw someone with her after that, after she was with you.” Danny's expression didn't change. “Angelina's hands were tied with her sweater when they found her body. She didn't have a sweater when I saw her with you.”

“We don't think you killed her,” Janet said. I was as surprised as Danny. Janet sat on the edge of her chair, and her voice was so tense she squeaked.

There were lines of pain in Danny's face and his expression remained inscrutable. He seemed sort of empty. “What do you want with me?” he asked.

“Did you see Ozzie that night?”

“Yeh, in the lobby of Angelina's building on our way back.…I thought it was either you or him who told the cops.”

“You saw me, too?”

“On Broadway. I didn't know if you were mad because I'd hooked up with Angelina. You didn't say hello.” His expression didn't change but he looked me in the eye.

“What about Ozzie? Did Angelina talk to him?”

“Angelina didn't want to see him.”

“Did he see you?”

“I don't know.”

“Why didn't Angelina want to see him?” Janet leaned toward Danny, hanging on his words. He seemed both interested and disturbed by her intensity.

“She didn't say.” He paid more attention to the glass of ginger ale he was drinking than he did to Janet.

But she lost none of her intensity. “The police think they found your footprint in the park.”

Danny shook his head. “Maybe they did. I was there. We walked in the park.” He looked at me again, and now there was something in his expression—maybe hope. “But Angelina didn't have a sweater. She wore my jacket.”

“Did you go to her apartment?”

“No. I thought we were going to. She changed her mind when we got to her block.”

“Why? Could it have been seeing Ozzie that changed her mind?”

“No. I think she decided before we saw him. She said she'd come to my place in the afternoon.”

“Did she see anyone else?”

“ I don't know.…I don't think so.”

“Why did you go to the park?” Janet asked him. “Isn't it dangerous to go in the park at night?”

“Not then. It was almost morning. She wanted to go there…to look at the river. She said she went there a lot to look at the river.”

Danny went back to work. Janet and I took turns in our respective rest rooms with my folder of blow. After, she sat in the chair next to me, pulling her silky dress up over her knees and crossing her legs. I had all I could do to keep my hands off her thigh. While I wriggled in my seat, she smiled flirtatiously, put her arm through mine and leaned toward me so her breast brushed against the muscle of my arm and her bare leg pressed against me. I let my hand drop to touch her leg. She didn't wear stockings, so I rested my hand against the cool white skin of her thigh. Later, when I touched her breasts, she looked into my eyes and then held my hands against them.

When we waited, arms around each other, on the sidewalk in front of the club for a cab, she said, “I want to make sure that you know that you touched me because I wanted you to.”

The driver of the cab that streaked kitty-corner across Amsterdam Avenue and skidded into the gutter in front of us turned out to be Ntango, an Eritrean refugee, one of the regulars who came with the other exiles late at night to Oscar's. He was stoned and as usual glad to see me, speaking in his low monotone mumble and calling me “Mr. Brian” in a Peter Lorre tone of voice. We chatted about life on the Upper West Side, good times at Oscar's, and the trials of driving a cab. He refused payment for the fare, so I wrapped up half of what was left of my blow in a piece of paper from Janet's notebook and gave him that.

Ntango worked a horse hire, which meant that he got his cab for a flat fee, paid it off with what he made in fares, and kept the rest, a rung up the ladder, he maintained, from the fleet cab he used to drive. He'd also gotten hooked into a dispatcher and insisted that Janet call him whenever she needed a cab. He said this while holding the door open for her and bowing graciously.

“He's quite charming,” Janet said as he sped away. “Wise and sad. What's Eritrea?”

I didn't want to talk about Ntango. As fine a person as he was, he had too much trouble about him, reminding me of the oppressed and suffering of the earth. At this particular moment, most everyone he'd ever known in childhood, who hadn't already been killed in the Ethiopean war, was starving to death. I didn't want to think about those things. I didn't want Janet to think about those things. I wanted to be reckless and happy and joyful. Who needed to think about pained and whacked out Ntango, hurtling through the streets of New York in his cab, dodging memories of his mom and dad, sisters and brothers, dying alongside the dirt roads of northern Ethiopia?

“He's also the most beautiful man I've ever seen,” Janet said.

“All the Eritreans are,” I told her. “Powerful argument in favor of miscegenation.”

Inside my apartment door, Janet looked around her. “I don't know if I should be doing this,” she mumbled.

“I think you're beautiful,” I said. She made a little mumble-murmur of pleasure and nestled against me. We kissed in the doorway, and I realized it was for the first time. In some kind of ecstasy of kisses and caresses we made our way to the bed. I took off her underclothes from beneath her silky dress and unloosed her breasts from her blouse and bra. She was all smooth and firm: her breasts, the muscles rippling along her thighs, her hips, the softness and firmness of her ass. When I entered her, I reached back and caressed the taut muscles of her thighs. We stopped for a moment while she wiggled out of some more of her clothes. Then, I came at her from the back, holding her breasts in my hand pushing against her, entering her again. Once more, we stopped. This time, I lowered my head to between her legs and caressed her with my tongue. She came twice. When I sat up, she kissed me wetly all over my mouth. Once more, I entered her, rising and falling in her while she held me in a bear grip with her legs until I exploded. When we were finished, I was panting. Lying beside her, I wanted her just as much as I'd wanted her before we'd started. I just couldn't do it again. Not right then, but there was no let up on the wanting. Could it always be like that for her? I was afraid to ask in case it was. She didn't cuddle afterward, just withdrew into her own space. Not at all shy about her nakedness, she just lay on top of the bed while I looked at her.

Around noon I woke up, ready for her again and reaching for her, but she wasn't in the bed. She'd gathered her things and dressed. I got the feeling she was trying to leave before I woke. I got up and put my arms around her. She stood stiffly, resisting when I pulled her toward me.

“I wish we hadn't done that.” She stood still, letting my hand rest on her shoulder, waiting, stiffly, lifelessly.

“It wasn't frivolous,” I told her. I knew what I felt, but it was way too early to say that.

“This was a mistake,” she said, her voice as stiff and cold as her stance. “I hope you don't think it means anything.…I'm really confused right now. I don't think you should have taken advantage of that.”

I'd started to pull her toward me, to hug her, but felt so much resistance I drew back.

She took a few steps back and looked at me directly. “Did you ever make love with my sister?”

I didn't answer.

“I want to know,” she demanded. Having already made up the answer, she was furious, so her voice shook with her anger.

“It's not any of your business.”

“You have to tell me.”

We stared at each other for a solid minute, but I didn't say anything.

“I don't know anything about you. You're forty years old. You didn't just drop off a shelf. Were you ever married?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any kids?”

“A son.”

“Where?”

“In Brooklyn.”

“Do you see him?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes softened with sympathy. But it wasn't much help. Like feeling sorry for Ntango. Pissing against the tide.

“It must be sad not being with your child.”

When I opened the door for her to leave, I said again that what happened hadn't been frivolous. She wasn't listening. Instead, she was looking at a wrinkled, torn piece of paper that had been stuck under my door. The writing was almost illegible, done with a flat pointed lead pencil. The note said, “Brian, Meet me at the Dublin House tonight.”

We both looked at the note.

“Who's that from?” Janet asked, suspicion frosting her voice.

“I don't know.”

“How can you not know? Of course you know.”

“How the fuck would I know? There's no name.”

“Who leaves you notes?”

“No one.”

“Is that from a woman?”

“I told you I don't know who it's from.”

“Was some other woman supposed to be here?”

“No.”

“What kind of friends do you have who write notes without signing them?”

“Who said it was a friend?”

When Janet left, I felt a silence and an emptiness to my apartment that I wasn't used to. I'd been in the apartment for years. It was roomy and almost bright. I thought it the most comfortable and safest place in the world, a haven from the clang and rush of the city. Now, when Janet walked out the door, it seemed empty. I stood in my own foyer looking at my own apartment wondering where everyone had gone.