Blind Moon Alley (17 page)

“No fine,” he says. “She's a regular here. She's gonna have to see the judge. You're not gonna get her out of this one.”

I'm sure that somewhere in this town is a bull that disagrees—I've just got to find one with empty pockets. I can't let the Madame rot in here alone.

I dial the Red Canary and wait to speak with Myra. I'll tell her where she can find the hidden key to my apartment; then I'll ask her to take a hundred and forty dollars out of Angela's shoebox and bring it me. She's the one who said friends help each other. I sure hope she meant it.

Starting with my mother, who left my father and me right after I was born, the women in my life have routinely cut out when I needed them most. I'm sure Johalis is still expecting to put Myra on that list, but he's going to be disappointed. Myra came to the stationhouse straight from the Red Canary, chewed off a piece of Thorndyke's ear, and paid my fine with her own money. I'll bet I'm the only albino bartender who's ever been sprung from this place by a hazel-eyed knockout in a lavender evening dress.

Once we were safely outside the building's steel doors, she told me she felt guilty. This was all her fault, she said. I'm sure Johalis would have agreed had he been with us, but I shrugged it off. I told her I knew what I was getting into when I took that envelope. She hugged me for absolving her of her guilt, pulling me so close I could smell the scent of her skin underneath her perfume. I could see the burden of self-hate lift from her shoulders, and her smile took the same albatross off mine. We flagged a taxi and I had the cabbie take us past Rittenhouse Square. Myra didn't care how badly I stunk—she snuggled up to me, handed me a flask of gin, and put her head on my shoulder. I cranked down the window and sucked in the hot, humid, smog-filled air, rinsing it down with a swig or two of Gordon's. The mix of smells and flavors—Myra's hair tonic, the exhaust fumes from late-night delivery trucks, the juniper-laced alcohol—somehow tasted of home.

That was last night, and Myra's still here today.

She's sitting on the couch, wearing one of my shirts with her legs folded beneath her. This is the first time I've seen her without makeup, and she looks more beautiful, and more mine, than I would have ever dreamt. I'm enjoying this and I'm not about to ruin it by speaking with Johalis. I'm also not going to look at the mirror—or out the window at Ronnie's Luncheonette.

I've got a chicken roasting in the oven; the smell is wafting through the apartment. The radio is playing Rudy Vallee, I'm pouring martinis, and Myra is telling me the lies I love to hear.

“The burn on your neck is looking better,” she says. “It's just your ear now.”

“Thanks,” I say. “When I go by the Hy-Hat on Monday, I'll stop at the doc's and have him take a look.”

I hand her a martini and we clink glasses. We don't need to talk about how we feel—the fear, the helplessness, the uncertainty. Once you've seen somebody tormented in grade school, it's easy enough to fill in the blanks.

“So things are okay now?” she asks.

“Not exactly,” I say. “Doolie's shutting the Ink Well for a couple of weeks. He wants to lay low until the heat dies down. It doesn't matter, though. I'm done there. He says he doesn't feel safe as long as I'm around. And I can't say I blame him.”

I take a slug of my martini and give it a second to land before talking again.

“But getting rid of me isn't going to help,” I say. “Reeger will still be hunting down Garvey, and he'll still be nailing the Ink Well to do it. I've got to find Garvey before Reeger does. I'll give him all the cash I've got—including whatever you give me in your envelopes—then I'll get him the hell out of the country. I'll tell the cops he died. Reeger won't believe me, but he'll have no proof otherwise. Then I'll start passing your envelopes on to Reeger and everybody will be happy. It's still the only way I can see getting out of this.”

“It might work,” she says. “But if it does, promise me you'll be the one giving Reeger the money. I'm done dealing with him. I'm tired of getting pushed around.”

She should only know how I feel.

“Fine,” I say. “Just stay the hell out of his way until I find Garvey. That means disappearing from the Canary for a while. You're no safer there than I am. Reeger'll come down on you as hard as he's hammering me.”

“Where else can I go?”

I don't have an answer. The Ink Well sure isn't safe. And Madame Curio's is no longer a secret.

I shrug my shoulders.

“Maybe you're already there,” I say and wave my hand at my parlor.

Myra doesn't say anything but she looks relieved, as if she no longer has to fake being the beautiful woman that she is.

“I can't hide forever,” she says.

“Neither can I,” I say.

I sit next to her on the sofa and neither one of us speaks as we finish our martinis, content to enjoy the comfort of each other's company in silence. When dinner is ready, we saddle up to the counter, eat chicken and green beans, and chat about the old days as we listen to the radio. Then I take out the orange sherbet I'd brought up from the Ink Well and set aside for Angela. I fill two bowls, give one to Myra, and lead her back into the parlor. She's too beautiful at twilight to miss, so I raise the window shade and let the evening do its work. The glittering pink and blue light coming from Ronnie's sign wraps her in a lavender halo.

“Maybe it's time,” she says. Her almond-shaped eyes are wide open, sparkling like a flute of bubbly.

“Time for what?”

“To take off,” she says. “To disappear. Maybe it's time for the two of us to run off to Hollywood. Leave this mess behind us.”

I'm stunned that she still remembers. And I can see she's serious. My ears turn as hot as andirons. I figured the day would come she'd walk away from the Canary, but I never expected that she'd still want to leave with me.

“We could do it,” she says, her voice is now gushing with the childlike excitement she was robbed of back at Elementary School Four. I'm trying to keep a level head but her energy is intoxicating, her buzz infectious. “We'll just go. You don't have to find Garvey. Let your friends track him down. They can pass him the money. Screw Reeger.”

I think it out. There's nothing stopping me. All I'd need is a few days. I'd have to square things at the Hy-Hat on Monday; I'd also have to tell the champ and Johalis that I'm leaving. Johalis will have a few comments, but I'll dodge them. Every mutated cell in my body is pushing me to put Myra in the Auburn, drive west, and never look back.

She's leaning forward in her chair, staring at me as she waits for an answer.

I'm wondering where we'll get the money. To leave here. To get there. To live.

She's hanging on my answer—her eyes firing like spark plugs.

“How's Thursday?” I say.

She lunges at me and plants her lips on mine. The kiss comes with the kind of reckless passion reserved for school dances and wedding nights. She swirls her tongue around mine and then traces it up my white jawline and along the rim of my blistered ear. Then she pulls away, looks me in the eye, arches her back, and lifts my shirt over her shoulders. The flickering lights accent her light-brown shoulders and small, rose-tipped breasts. I open my arms and we lock our bodies into each other as we fall to the floor, giddy from the roar of an ocean that's three thousand miles away. I want to swallow her up, carry her back to sixth grade so we can take the whole ride again and do it right this time. I kiss her lips, her tan forehead, the smooth skin behind her ears. I think of the abuse she took, how she cried at the hands of her classmates, her neighbors, all of the co-stars and bit players of her adolescence. And I remember how I did the same. I pull her close and promise myself I won't let it happen again to either one of us.

We roll, tumble, moan, ache, and kiss like the kids we never had a chance to be. And when we're done, we lie on our backs, breathing heavily, staring at those gleaming pink and blue lights as they streak across the ceiling's broken plaster beams. Myra palms her hair off her damp forehead and curls her body up against mine. The open window lets in an evening breeze—the first I've felt in a long time—and it cools my sweaty neck. Maybe it's me, but I swear it smells of saltwater.

CHAPTER 11

Doc Anders is looking at the rim of my ear, which now resembles the inside of a pomegranate—purplish-red with prickly whiteheads and watery blisters. But I'm not worried about what the doc has to say, not when I'm about to run away with the woman who's been saying she loved me for twelve years.

The only loose end I have to tie up is at the Hy-Hat. I'm not looking forward to it. I've got to tell Calvin that his stint has ended. I've never cut anybody's pay before, but if I leave Philly the champ will surely come back to New York—and I can't afford to pay two managers, not without a weekly check of my own. Now that I think about it, maybe Doolie will hire Calvin to fill my spot behind the bar at the Ink Well. I'll suggest it, but that's all I can do. It's not as if Doolie's turning to me for recommendations.

The doc dabs some ointment onto my ear with a white cotton cloth and asks me about my father's hand.

“You know the champ,” I say. “He can't wait until that cast comes off.”

I'm speaking the truth, but I just left my father and he didn't say a word about the cast. All we spoke about were my plans to head west with Myra in the morning.

“He'll have his hand back soon,” the doc says. “Only a few more weeks and he'll be good as new.”

We're sitting in the doc's office because he knows I can't stomach his examination room. Lying on that metal table makes me feel like a freak, like some kind of science experiment gone wrong. It's worse when his nurse is there. She takes notes on my blotches and blisters as if she's looking at a skeleton in a bio lab—except this skeleton has a beating heart and exceptionally thin skin.

The doc tables the cloth and slides his spectacles down his nose.

“You're not using the cream enough,” he says, eyeing me over his horn-rimmed frames.

“I only skipped one day,” I lie. “The cops locked me up and I fell asleep right in the rays of the sun. What was I supposed to do?”

“You could've tried staying out of jail in the first place.”

Of course he's right, but I let it slide.

“It burns like a bastard, doc.”

I'm not sure he's listening but that's usually the case when I chat with him. He turns away from me, mutters to himself, and rummages through his cabinet. Then he clucks his tongue and leaves the room. When he comes back, he's got a box of teabags in his hand.

“Wet these and use them to soak the burn,” he says. “Every morning.”

I tell him I'll do it, even though I know I won't. I'm leaving with Myra this week—I'm not about to put off the beaches of the Pacific because I'm dabbing a teabag on an ear that will be pale, white, and albino until the end of time.

The doc looks at my eyes. “They're shaking,” he says.

“I'm used to it.”

He nods. “Nystagmus.”

I've heard the word before. It's a fancy term that medical people use for shaking eyes. It might as well mean
fucking albino
.

The doc walks over to his cabinet, pulls out a small tube, and hands it to me. It's the same stuff he gave me the last time, or damn close. I slip it into my pocket.

“How's that young lady you were chasing after?” he asks.

He's talking about Angela and I'm not sure what to tell him. Every time I'm here, I'm talking about a different woman that I love and how she almost loves me back. I'm not about to say that I've fallen back in love with my sixth-grade crush—and that she's hiding in my apartment until we skip town on a crooked cop. He'd have every right to open my chart and check off “idiot.” But he's not the one with the blistered face. And he's not the one who made plans to run off with that classmate so many lonely years ago.

“She's fine,” I tell him, which I'm assuming is the truth.

His eyebrows arch in surprise. “Glad to hear it,” he says.

I'm glad he doesn't follow up with anything other than his standard medical advice—use the emollient and the eyedrops, stay out of the sun, and wear the dark glasses—because my half-truths are getting closer and closer to half-lies. He writes a prescription for more cream, as if I'll ever reach the bottom of the tube he just handed me.

Once I say so long to the doc, I step out of his office and into the blazing sun. I pop my fedora on my head, wrap my scarf around my jaws, don my dark glasses, and walk up the shady side of 87th Street. The Auburn is hot as hell, so I crank down all the windows before taking off for the Hy-Hat.

It's a short ride but I take it slowly, avoiding sunny streets, and practicing my conversation with Calvin.
I've got to let you go. I'm giving your job back to my father. Good luck at the barbershop.