Burning Down the House (12 page)

The following night she rode up in the elevator and rang the doorbell to Ian's apartment and he greeted her without a smile for the first time. She could sense his hesitation as he stood on the threshold, one foot holding the door ajar, as if he were frightened by her presence. Her head, a riot of confusion, throbbed painfully. He let her in: the rooms looked the same as before, but she breathed in a different scent, not of another woman but of a cleanliness that admitted no earth, no skin, no dirt, and she could tell that he had scrubbed the apartment clean of their passion, of her, and she could see him now, sitting in a chair, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

I
AN LEFT POPPY
sitting in the corner of the couch with her face in her hands while he stood up to walk to the kitchen to get her a glass of water.

I'm so sorry, he said, heading back toward her. His voice had the flat unreverberating sound emitted by someone who knows that the only words available to him are useless clichés, however true they might be. His face was pale and strained, nervous and determined. He could not believe that he was in this situation, and his amazement at the circumstances made him seem robotic and unconvincing.

I know this seems crazy and completely out of the blue, but I promise you it's the best thing for both of us. I love you. I know you don't believe me right now, but it's true. Please, can you please let me see your face? Poppy? Poppy. The last thing in the world I would ever want to do is hurt you. Please, Poppy. Please believe me.

He sat down on the couch and with the water in one hand he tried to touch her arm or stroke her hair. She batted him away. He was putting the glass very gently on the coffee table when Poppy lifted her head and pulled one elbow back as if she were stretching a bow. It wasn't something she'd ever done before except perhaps in a nightmare and now it surprised her with its ease. She furled her fingers into a fist and raised her arm up high and put her weight behind her shoulder and slammed her naked anger against his back and hit him and then she did it again.

They fell onto the couch. Ian was trying to restrain her, but he could not. Poppy knelt above him with her forearms grasped in his hands and her face reddened with fury, her eyes vivid blue. Her wide eyes, usually searching, now glared. Her expression not its typical, gently mocking self. She shook her head and the brown bangs of her short haircut flew to the side. The line of her long clean neck straightened. She began to kick. She pressed her full weight into his hands and kicked into his shins, into the couch, sending a pillow onto the floor. She bent her bony knee into his thigh and tried to knee him with her other leg in his groin. She was flailing like an enormous bird. Ian only held on more tightly. She writhed until his arm buckled and he let go of her for a moment. She fell onto his chest. They jerked on top of each other. Then his breathing slowed and they stopped moving. Ian wrapped his arms around her while she cried. When she pulled away and got off of him and stood up she knocked over the glass and swept her hair out of her eyes and went to the bathroom.

She splashed her face with icy water until she could not feel her hands. She sat on the toilet with the lid down and took a number of deep breaths, studying the pattern of small black and white hexagonal tiles on the floor. When she had calmed down she went into the living room and scooped up her bag and her jacket and fished around in her pocket for some keys and dropped them on the rug. Then she slipped her feet into her low suede boots and told Ian what she thought of him and left the apartment and didn't wait for the elevator but instead ran down the eleven flights of stairs.

On the sidewalk Poppy marched with a steady step and the wind ruffled her hair and she moved her lips the tiniest bit while she talked in her head. It was going dark outside, violet bands of light sliding between the buildings. Shapes massing in shadows like old twentieth-century film negatives thrown on top of one another. Weaving red taillights drawing quickly disappearing arcs and lines between the otherwise disconnected people. Night didn't fall in New York so much as rise, the saturation deepening, the volume lifting, the energy elevating and heightening people's consciousness of themselves, their sensations or their thoughts, depending on who they were.

What were you thinking? she thought.

You were thinking that he was cruel and that this was the worst thing that had ever happened to you.

That was smart, have a temper tantrum and behave like the teenager you are which is probably why he wanted to end it to begin with.

Would you just forget about him? He's pushing forty. Well, he should pick on someone his own age.

Poppy stopped at a corner and waited for the light. She could feel the doubts accumulating and dispersing through her mind and body, and beneath them, a deeper river of pain like a second nervous system, an even-more-hidden network of hurt. The idea that this was the worst thing that had ever happened to her was ludicrous. She had lost her mother when she was six. This was just a reminder. So why the searing heat in her solar plexus like a sword being slowly pulled out? This had to stop. In her mind she stood with Ian on a high rock, and miles below them pooled a glassy ancient lake. There was no sound at this altitude, on this craggy cliff of sublime remove. A glowing white sky behind his head. She looked at his face, the fine tracings of lines around his gray eyes like hieroglyphics, letters of another alphabet. If only she could read them she would understand so much. But she couldn't. They didn't mean anything. That's what I must seem like to him, she thought, meaningless. Then she raised her arm and put her hand on his chest and pushed him. He fell soundlessly down and that was it.

S
TEVE HAD TAKEN
to holding some meetings in the apartment. He liked to have people brought to his study directly. He would be reading or writing when they arrived and they would be seated beside the large low round gleaming marble table, asked what they would like to drink, brought the drink with a square linen cocktail napkin, and be made to wait for Steve until he finished his work. He had an enormous office and several conference rooms at his headquarters in Rockefeller Center, but he preferred to speak to certain business associates in the privacy of his own home. Since these meetings were always held during the day when the boys and Poppy were in school and Patrizia out and about in the city, Steve knew that Neva would be free on occasion to greet these guests and accompany them to his library. He had several assistants at the office and there was a secretary at home too, but she had her own little room, and as Steve explained, as if he even needed to, to Neva, the secretary was handling household matters, scheduling, event planning, returning deliveries, making appointments, and so on, but he did not involve her in his business affairs. He trusted Neva, he said, enough to give her this important task. And, speaking to her in a low whisper, as he made notations in a notebook, he expressed his interest in having her stay in the room during the meetings.

Neva asked him what his purpose was in all this.

Steve adjusted his glasses and kept writing. He stopped for a moment as if he were going to answer her but then kept writing while she stood there, in his study, her spine aching from standing so still.

Steve shut his notebook and checked his computers and then closed a few screens and took off his glasses. He breathed deeply and wiped his huge hand over his face. It looked like a massive tarantula grappling with its prey. When he was finished with the gesture he breathed deeply again.

There is no one else in my employ I can trust in this matter. Anyone I bring into this from my team will try to persuade me to act against my conscience.

He looked about the room. He nodded toward bookshelves and maps, glass-covered model ships, photographs of natural grandeur taken by the great American landscape photographers, mesas and cliffs, canyons and boulders, waterfalls spilling and tangling down, framed and matted, hung at ideal viewing height.

These business associates of mine, he said, they may seem harmless or as though they want to collaborate with me for our mutual benefit. They may appear to bring useful suggestions or valuable opportunities. Yet they would devour me. Any ground I give them will be despoiled. This country was built by raping the land and these people would take it to the furthest extreme, pioneers of depravity. This is what they don't understand: nature conquers all. And by nature I don't mean man's nature or wildness I mean the endless timeless force of nature. Nature will bring them down in the roughest way but I do not want to be brought down and so I am forced to fend them off, hold something sacred. These are vicious people and I am going up against them naked.

Naked?

Unprotected, outside the law. I could bring the law into it but then they would have me killed. There are too many of them, everywhere, and I would expose myself by bringing in the law. No, I have to stand up to them myself.

Why me? Why do you need me?

A witness. I need a witness, someone strong who will not send me the message to cave to them and who will show no fear.

How do you know I won't?

I don't. I'm trusting my instinct.

Neva stood before him. She had elevated her style of clothing after having worked for the family for a few months and now she wore a neutral-colored blouse, a black skirt, and black leather boots. They were not expensive but the effect was elegant.

If nature conquers all, then why bother to fight these people? she asked. Eventually, they will lose.

Steve angled his large head. His chin jutted out and his eyelids drooped. He spoke slowly: Eventually is too long. What they want to do is too terrible.

Why is it your responsibility to stop them?

I can't stop them. But I can keep them off my property. I don't have to give them a place to violate.

They will find someplace else.

Steve looked at her with a menacing, rocklike determination. Yes, he said. But not my place.

She thinks he looks like one of those heads on Mount Rushmore but thousands of years from now, when the wind has worn them down, not to the bone, not to dust, but softened them and in so doing made them more ferocious because they have lasted, their softer edges expressing their endurance. She looks at him and it is like the Sphinx staring at Mount Rushmore, two monuments, two ruins, sand blowing, no people, stone and clay.

A few days later Neva greeted two men at the door and escorted them to Steve's study. She seated them on the couch and brought them bottled water. Steve kept working at his desk. His fingers tapped rhythmically. Eventually he took off his reading glasses, sighed, and stood up. He looked at the two men sitting on his couch. One was slender and tall, the other of average height and very broad. Steve's face was furrowed, sagging, thoughtful. He breathed deeply and nodded for Neva to close the door. She did so and stayed in the room.

The slender man was named Warren. He was some kind of sinister professional. He had a briefcase on his lap. His long arms dangled at his sides. He spoke first.

Did you have a chance to think about our proposal?

I did, Steve said.

Warren looked at the broad man. Excellent, Warren said. He began opening his briefcase as he said: We were concerned you would dismiss the idea outright.

That's not your problem, Steve said.

Warren stopped. He spoke without lifting his head from looking down at his briefcase.

Do we have a problem?

Yes, Steve said. We do. But it isn't that I didn't think about your proposal.

Warren looked again at the broad man and then back at Steve, who was by now leaning against his desk, towering.

We have a mission to get this thing done, Warren said.

Steve didn't answer.

You know this will happen with or without you.

Steve unscrewed the top of a water bottle with his articulate fingers. I'm aware that this is the direction our world is going, he said.

So you want to be a part of it, we assume.

Don't assume.

You'll go out of business without us.

Maybe. Eventually.

And that's okay with you?

That's not your concern. You do what you want.

Warren rose and looked beyond Steve out through the large windows that contained a view of the park. The apartment was on a high floor on a side street between Madison and Fifth. It was late February and the waves of bare trees rippled from the East Side to the West. Warren had no idea that Patrizia had assumed they would take the full-floor apartment with a treetop view of the park up the block, but that Steve had preferred this more stealth penthouse off of Madison. Warren shrugged his shoulders at the vast expanse of distantly writhing branches. Real estate, he said. It doesn't mean anything to me. It's just property. He walked toward the door and asked Neva where the restroom was located. He looked back at Steve, who was wheezing the slightest bit, the water bottle held to his lips. I'm not coming back, he said. You know our offer. Warren took a moment to look at the broad man who was still seated calmly and then he opened the door with his skinny hand and was gone.

Steve had by now seated himself in a club chair facing the couch. The broad man had a wide face. His name was Wolf. That was his first name and he used it with everyone. He sat very still looking across the apricot marble table shot through with gray and white veins, back at Steve. Wolf came from Eastern Europe and had arrived in the United States when he was fourteen. He lived in Brooklyn, near the water. He couldn't remember how exactly he'd gotten into the business he was in, but it seemed inevitable, like the tides. This was the way the universe was tilting, toward hotels, strip malls, and the women who worked there. He was just making business possible. He watched Steve and he watched the enormous sky out the window white and foamy like the ocean on a foggy day.

Mr. Zane, what don't you like about our proposal?

Steve stared at him.

You understand what I don't like. You don't need me to explain it to you.

You are a man of high morals, is that what you're telling me? Wolf asked.

You flatter me, Steve said.

But isn't that what it is? You think you are above this kind of thing?

Steve stood up and walked around his desk. Some pigeons had risen and were winging toward the clouds, moving like dark gray letters across the blank page of white sky.

If that's how you want to think about it, Steve said.

Wolf said nothing.

Steve walked back toward the couch. As he sat down again in the club chair he said, offhandedly, I think of it as a question of being human or not.

Wolf's entire body tensed.

You are saying we are inhuman?

I didn't say that. I don't know what you are.

But you think you're better than us?

I'm not thinking about myself in terms of you. I am merely acting on my own principles.

What if we destroy your business?

How exactly can you do that?

We use other malls, other hotels, and we make those developers and landlords more successful than you.

So they'll make more money. That doesn't mean I'll be unsuccessful.

Eventually.

Eventually I'll be dead. So will you.

This is a terrible position you're putting me in.

What would be a good position? I let you do illegal, immoral, inhuman things on my property? That's a good position?

This is going to happen someplace.

Not my place.

My boss is going to be disappointed.

That's not my problem.

He is willing to pay you a tremendous cut of the profits. Almost fifty percent.

Steve looked like he might pound his fist into the chair, or into Wolf, but he did not do it. He leaned in very close toward Wolf, and Wolf's head instinctively moved away. Then Wolf gathered his strength and stood up. Without standing Steve seized his arm. Wolf looked at Steve's hand on his arm and Steve removed it. Steve stood up and the two men stared hard at each other high above the low marble table, Steve's head reaching up toward the ceiling while his eyes gazed through Wolf. Wolf's legs solidly planted on the ground.

I won't sell people, Steve said.

You wouldn't be doing the selling.

I would be giving my permission, enabling it, and then taking a portion of the proceeds. That's close enough.

Isn't that what you do in all your properties?

You misunderstand completely. That's what's wrong with you and your boss.

It's all the same, Wolf said.

If I had a gun I might kill you, Steve said.

Neva watches them from the corner of the room. Her heart is pounding. She is somewhat afraid but more than fear she feels ashamed that she has ever doubted Steve or that at one time she had expected to despise him. She is confused, alarmed, feels stupid and amazed. Impressed by Steve's refusal, his fearsome and tragic determination. She is afraid of him again, but in a new way. She respects him.

Wolf's face was red. The veins in his neck stretched. He stuck out his hand.

Well, I'll be going then, he said.

Steve looked at Wolf and his wide-set nearly black eyes. He was staring not at Steve but out the windows. A darker shade of white had covered the sky, as if the brightness had been turned down. Another handful of birds appeared to be thrown into the view, this flock rising as one and breaking up into words and sentences. Steve took Wolf's hand and shook it briskly. He nodded for Neva to open the door. She did and Wolf pressed his hand against his tie and made his way around the low table and slid out of the room. He was gone.