City on Fire (58 page)

Then he and his protégé were eye to eye, in a silence that echoed the long one from ’75. It was only in the fall, on the phone, that Nicholas had made excuses for taking all this time to decide, and Amory could repeat the gesture of indulgence he’d first used years ago, on Block Island, with that other boy he’d thought to use then—what should have been a beautiful killing of birds, relative to the number of stones. The problem, really, had been a misapprehension about control. You couldn’t trust people to be tomorrow what they had been yesterday. Yet he knew now that with fear, as with fantasy, you didn’t need to. They would control themselves. And if he’d just observed that these so-called Post-Humanists had found a new object for their rage, then he also needed to know they were afraid. Afraid of all Amory knew. Afraid of all he could do. He left off rubbing his arm and raised his hand to signal for the check, and when the waitress came he thanked her in the same florid Spanish he used on the Subcomandante. Then he turned to Nicholas. “¿Y me olvido de algo primordial, quizás?”

It was time the boy saw that he’d been caught out: his father was neither a Latin American ethnic nor an intelligence officer, but only a pleasant-looking former medic, a widowed surgeon living in Newton, Mass. And the son was, among other things, a world-class dissembler who’d watched one too many James Bond films.

“That is to say, there’s one other thing we should cover.” Amory moved the drinks from the middle of the table and returned to its place the Daily News. He’d never before seen Nicholas speechless. He admired the effect of his hand resting there, a white spider tapping a leg. “This unpleasantness in Central Park … I feel I should assure you I had nothing to do with it. For if I had, if either of us had, it would be entirely outside the scope of our agreement, and the protection that extends.”

“What unpleasantness? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Nicholas stared him in the eye, to avoid looking at the paper. Which was another mistake; that he felt the need to lie here was so revealing. The Blight Zone he’d helped bring about not only hadn’t defeated him; he was planning to retaliate … and something would have to be done about that. But no sense rushing anything. Amory played the long game. “No? Even now, no idea?”

“Not a one,” Nicholas managed. “But I think I’d better split before someone gets the wrong idea about the two of us.”

Only after the boy was gone did Amory reach for the remaining mezcal. And oh how it did burn. The woman outside coughed again. He felt in his pocket for the nickel from earlier. He could always have moved to another booth, but you acquired a taste for self-assertion, a kind of pride. For Amory, there had been no diplomas from a Princeton or a Yale; he hadn’t had the connections of his witless brother-in-law. But since acquiring the Block Island house, he’d kept on the walls the family pictures of the people who’d owned it before, the way tribal chiefs hang on to scalps. And look at him now—facing, and accepting, the colder burning that was life on earth. He would force the rest of them to accept it, too. He looked to the woman outside the window, rapped the nickel on the glass, right by her head. And when she turned and he showed her his true face, her cough died in her throat. He didn’t even have to motion her along.

49

ON THE SUBJECT OF HATE, Charlie’s Bible remained ambiguous. Which probably, given the ambiguity of every other power that might have guided his misguided life, he should have seen coming. Like how on the first day of high school his mother had told him to be himself, even as she reached out to straighten the clip-on tie she was making him wear. He could hear her upstairs now, her feet pressing faint concavities into his ceiling as she roamed from oven to fridge, humming along with the old countertop radio she hadn’t touched in years. She must have wanted something to fill the silence, since tonight the person she would normally have been on the phone with was speeding toward them through the dark. She’d sent the twins to the sitter’s; it was to be just the three of them at dinner. Any minute now, she’d call down for Charlie to come up, which meant he was running out of time to figure out how to feel. He continued to page halfheartedly through the little green Bible. Taken as a whole, the thing offered not much of the frictionless and abstract loving-kindness he’d found back in January in the eleventh chapter of Mark, the love of bumper stickers and old pop songs. Instead, God the father was largely a god of sticking it to your enemies—“Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones”—and even meek Jesus threatened the disloyal with everlasting fire.

A car door slammed outside. The doorbell was the same cheery two-tone that a few years ago would have summoned Dad to the front hall. The whole house was disloyal, Charlie thought. And here came Mom calling down for him. Well, screw that. Let them greet each other, shake hands, hug hello, whatever, he refused to be rushed. From along the baseboard, he retrieved the red tee-shirt he’d worn back in pee-wee league. There’d been only the one size, extra large, because no one wanted the fat kids to feel selfconscious. Some of the iron-on letters had begun to peel off, but you could still make out Charlie’s number, unlucky 13, and the name of the team, which had also been the name of the sponsor, Boulevard Bagels. (Go … Bagels!) Last summer, he’d cut the sleeves off and sliced big vents from mid-torso to armhole, exposing tufts of armpit hair. He appreciated the way the shirt turned his ugly body into a weapon against the world. The way it said, See what you did to me? It fit so tight now you could count his ribs. In the mirror, he mussed pomade into his regrown hair, got it to stand up in small orange hedgerows. He stuck out a sick-looking, grayish-pink tongue and placed on it an eggy white spansule. Disco biscuits, Nicky called these, which was why Charlie had to fight embarrassment every time he asked for more. Disco sucked and would always suck, Every Good Punk Preferred Speed—but the Phalanstery was a kind of potlatch for narcotics, and given a choice, Charlie would take the slow drown of downers every time.

The pill’s coating had started to melt on his tongue, and soon its bitter innards would reach his taste buds, so he swallowed it dry, relishing the little pain as it passed the Adam’s apple. He snapped shut the old mint-tin where the rest of his stash was stashed. (The ’ludes wouldn’t fit in his Pez dispenser.) He lifted his big, black combat boots and clomped slowly up the stairs, enjoying the tremendous noise each step made, imagining his mother and the faceless man cowering. He paused behind the door, hand on knob. Even now it wasn’t too late to fall back downstairs, to hurt himself bad enough for an emergency room visit. It might have been a respectable way out. Instead, he committed a disloyalty of his own: he opened the door.

The man in the foyer was neither as grotesque as Charlie had hoped nor as handsome as he’d feared. Just alarmingly chipper as he held out a hand. Charlie, a foot taller, could see down onto the lush carpeting of his head. And the toupée was only one of a number of ways in which the man was the opposite of Charlie’s father. They also included his rabbity front teeth and his Star of David medallion and his turtleneck; Dad never wore turtlenecks. “Morris Gold,” he said. “Call me Morrie.”

The drugs and the costume were doing their jobs: they gave Charlie distance and power. He ignored his appalled-looking mom and seized the hand and didn’t let go. “I was starting to think you were imaginary.” It oozed from his mouth like refrigerated syrup.

Mom chuckled nervously. “Charlie doesn’t normally dress like this.”

“This is fashion, Ramona, my daughter’s friends all wear this stuff.” The pressure of the man’s hand was perfectly calibrated, neither over-firm nor effeminately limp; he didn’t seem to realize that Charlie was crushing it into powder. In his other hand, the neck of a jug of pink wine looked diminutive, sweat dampening the label. “I wasn’t sure red or white, so I split the difference.”

“Should I get that into the fridge?”

“I’ll do it.” Charlie watched his own hands, at the end of hundred-foot robotic extensions, grab the bottle. Mission Control, his brain, had to issue distinct commands to get him safely through the swinging door. Rotate 110 degrees. Extend left foot. Extend right foot. Lower arm. And then the long bulbs in the kitchen were lighting the countertop like porn: rods of sweaty cheese prodding cocktail olives, spinach lolling in wooden bowls, pale crisp lettuce leaves cupping ice-cream scoops of tuna salad. There were six of these, in case anyone wanted seconds, and for dessert, her famous apricot balls, toothachingly sweet. And amid it all, irrigated by a paddy of its own juices, the brown bulk of the brisket. The smell was too much for Charlie. He braced himself over the sink for a minute, waiting to throw up, but had the presence of mind to reach out and turn off the radio, so that if the voices now moving into the dining room were to rise above a murmur, he might be able to hear what kind of impression he’d made. When it turned out he wasn’t going to puke up the pill, he decided he needed a drink. He removed the wine’s little foil collar and stared at the corkscrew until it became apparent how to use it. David and Ramona had never been drinkers. He hadn’t even known they owned proper wineglasses, honestly, but there they were, in a cabinet above the range hood. He poured three, one substantially fuller. He drained that one down to match the others. He turned the radio back up, turned it to a station playing one of the hirsute wanker bands beloved of his peers. It had the virtue of being loud, at least. Activate thumbs. Two hands around three stems. Back through kitchen door; rotate.

One look at his mother’s flushed face told him they’d forgotten him completely. Had there even been, as he turned, the flash of a hand retreating from tablecloth to lap? He set the glasses down hard, imagining the stems breaking loose from their vessels, the vessels toppling, but they didn’t. Nothing was ever to Charlie’s satisfaction, any more than he ever was to anyone else’s. As he loomed over the lovebirds, a gawky obstacle, Mom was obviously weighing whether to say anything about the wine in his hand; he’d never drunk alcohol in front of her before, not counting the Manischewitz at Passover. In the end, though, she was the picture of sophistication. Morris raised his glass. “To old friends and new.” Only when his mother went to start bringing out the food did it occur to Charlie that maybe she was as scared as he was. And now he was alone with the suitor.

Silent treatment didn’t work. Morris Gold was one of those people who was comfortable with silence, believing he could make it stop at any time. “So, Charlie,” he said, after a while. “Your mom tells me you’re a musician.”

“Nope,” Charlie said, and took a gulp of wine. The glass clinked against his teeth.

“Now where did I get that idea?”

Charlie resented the mildness of his adjustment, the way he sought to dispel the friction by treating Charlie as an adult. Trying to offend this man was like trying to offend a coat-rack! “But I listen to a lot of music,” he blurted, finally. “My mom hates it.”

“I remember when I was a kid, the grown-ups all thought our music was the devil, too. Bo Diddley on the Ed Sullivan Show. I figure it’s one of the great privileges of youth, to cut loose from your folks. That about how it seems to you?”

He had that well-meaning, man-to-mannish thing that good junior athletic coaches have, and Charlie’s traitor heart longed to respond. He tried to feel the monitory shade of his father nearby, but he felt so little of what he wanted to feel these days. Luckily, his mom chose that moment to come back with the tuna salads, resuscitating his anger, like a hand around a guttering flame.

Right up through the main course, Charlie did his best to be unresponsive, and to savor the weird holes this punched in the grown-ups’ talk. It was mostly vapid anyway: What a long winter it’s been! Heating oil’s spiking. Did you hear the County might cut the school year to 180 days? He felt almost sorry for Mr. Gold. How could he stay interested in a woman whose idea of conversation was to recite the contents of that morning’s paper? Then Mom surprised him by changing the subject to the City. It had gotten so bad, she said, she was afraid to send Charlie in even for a doctor’s appointment. There had been that thing on the news. From right here in Flower Hill. Had he seen it? Charlie tried to focus on what she was saying, but his head felt packed with gauze. Like no one could reach him in here, where it hurt.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Mr. Gold said. “I think if you keep your wits about you, and stick to the good neighborhoods … I was just last week at Russ and Daughters. You know Russ and Daughters, Charlie? Whitefish like you wouldn’t believe.” He inspected his coffee with a twinkle, as if he expected to find a whitefish swimming there. Then he pushed his dessert plate, streaked with the entrails of apricot balls, out onto the tablecloth. “Delicious.”

Mom dabbed her mouth with her napkin—the good kind, linen. Softly, she said, “Those were always David’s favorite.”

“No they weren’t,” Charlie blurted. “They weren’t his favorite.”

It was like he’d snapped his fingers in front of a hypnotized person; it was the first thing out of his mouth all night she seemed to have heard. “I beg your pardon?”

Dad’s name had been another knife to the solar plexus. Or no, it wasn’t the name. It was the ease with which she tendered it, with which Mr. Gold took it, as if they had talked about David Weisbarger before. All this time had passed with Charlie and his mom avoiding the subject, which he’d told himself was because it was still so painful to her. “His favorite was German chocolate cake, with the coconut.”

“It’s a figure of speech, honey. He always liked the apricot balls, you know that.”

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop turning him into a figure of speech!” Charlie was rising now, and rising and rising, thin as a wisp of smoke.

“Honey, are you okay? Your hands are shaking.”

“Don’t turn this on me! You’re the one using Dad.”

At which point Mr. Gold spoke up. “Charlie, why don’t you take the dishes in and let your mother and I have a word before I go.”