Manhattan Is My Beat (23 page)

She’d wrapped it up, the bracelet.

But then walking up to Third Avenue—past the discount clothing stores, the Hallmark shop, the delis— she’d decided the wrapping paper was too feminine. It had a viney pattern that wasn’t anything sissier than you’d see in the old
Arabian Nights
illustrations. But Richard might think they were flowers.

So halfway to his apartment she slipped her hand, with its newly polished nails—pink, not green or blue, for a change—into her bag and tore off the paper and ribbon.

Then, waiting for the light on Twenty-third Street, Rune started to worry about the box. Giving him something in a box, something supposed to be, what was the word?, spontaneous, seemed too formal. Men got scared, you gave them something that was too premeditated.

Goddamn men.

The nails went to work again and opened the box,
which joined the crumpled Arabian paper in the bottom of the leopard-skin purse. She held the bracelet up in the light.

Wait. Was it too feminine?

Did it matter? He was a
philosopher
knight, remember, not the kind killing peasants with a broadsword. Anyway there
definitely
was something androgynous about him—like Hermaphroditus. And now that she thought about it, Rune decided that was one of the reasons they were so compatible. The male-female, yin-yang was in flux for both of them.

She put the bracelet in her pocket.

See, what it is, I was buying one for me—remember I told you I love bracelets, so what I did was I saw this one, and it looked too masculine for me and I thought, well, it just occurred to me you might
…

Rune stopped for the light. She was in front of an Indian store, sitar music and the smell of incense flooded out into the street. The light changed.

See, I got this special deal at a jewelry store I go to. Two for one. Yeah, no shit. Amazing. And I thought: who do I know who’d like a bracelet? And, guess what? You won
…

Crossing the street.

Then she saw his apartment building a block ahead. She tried to be objective. But was still disappointed. It was a boxish high-rise, squatting in a nest of boxish high-rises, a little bit of suburbia in Manhattan. She couldn’t picture her black-clad knight living among tiny widows and salesmen and nurses and med students from NYU.

Oh, well … She continued along the sidewalk and stopped outside his building.

Hey, Richard, would you like a bracelet? If not, no big deal, I could give it to my mother, sister, roommate … But if you’d like it … It’s a pretty radical design, don’tcha think?—take a look at it
.

Rune stepped away from the building and looked at her reflection in the window.

Oh, a bracelet? Rune, it’s fantastic! Put it on me. I’ll never take it off
.

She polished the silver on her sleeve then dropped it into her pocket again.

Oh, a bracelet. Well, the thing is, I never wear them
….

Well, the thing is my girlfriend gave me a bracelet just like this the day she killed herself
….

Well, the thing is I’m allergic to silver
….

Goddamn men.

Seeing him, with that dark hair and the long French face, that crazy electricity hit her again. She knew her voice was going to shake, and she thought, goddammit, get this under control.

What’s best? Flirty, surprised? Seductive? She opted for a neutral “Hi.” She stood in his doorway. Neither of them moved.

He gave her one of those scary we’re-just-friends looks. He almost seemed surprised to see her. “Rune, hey, how you doing?”

“Great, good…. You?”

Hey, how you doing?

“Okay.” He nodded and she saw he was definitely uncomfortable. Though he kept the smile on his face. There were major explosions in her. Wanting to vaporize away, wanting to ease her arms around him and never leave. Mostly she wondered what the hell was wrong.

Silence, as an elderly lady with a jutting, sour mouth walked her cairn terrier past, glancing disdainfully at them. Richard said, “So how’s the video business?” He looked her up and down. Didn’t say a word about the
new outfit. Glanced at the earrings. Didn’t say anything about them either.

“Good. Okay.”

“Well, why don’t you come on in.”

She followed him inside.

Wait, she thought, looking him over. What’s going on? He was wearing a baby-blue button-down shirt, tan chino slacks, and Top-Siders. Ohmygod, Top-Siders! Nothing black, nothing chic. He looked like a yuppie from the Upper East Side.

Then she glanced around his apartment. She couldn’t figure it—that somebody who wore black leather and tapped the tops of his beer cans with such elegant fingers could live in a place with white Conran furniture, rock and roll posters on the wall, and a metal sea gull statue.

A copper sea gull?

“Just let me check on something.”

He disappeared into the kitchen. Whatever he was cooking smelled great. None of her girlfriends could get that kind of smell out of a kitchen. Lord knew,
she
never had.

She was examining his bookshelves. Mostly technical books about things she didn’t understand. College paperbacks. Stacks of the
New York Times
and the
Atlantic Monthly
.

He came back into the room. Stood with his arms crossed. “So.” Skittish now.

“Uh-huh. So.” She couldn’t think of anything to say for a moment. Then she blurted out, “I thought, maybe, after dinner, you might want to go for a ride. I found a great place. It’s in Queens, a junkyard. I know the owner. He lets me in. It’s really radical, like a huge dinosaur graveyard. You can sit up on some of the wrecks—it’s not gross dirty, you know, like garbage—and watch the sunset over the city. It’s really wild. It’s your mega junk-yard….
Okay, Richard, come on. Tell me what I did to fuck up tonight.”

“The thing is—”

“Hi,” came the woman’s voice from the door.

Rune turned to see a tall woman with long, blond hair walk through the open door. The woman was wearing a gray pin-striped suit and black pumps. She gave Rune a friendly glance, then walked up to Richard and hugged him.

“Rune, this is Karen.”

“Uhm, hi,” Rune said. Then to Richard, “Your message? About dinner?”

Karen lifted a perfect eyebrow knowingly, took a bottle of wine out of a paper bag, and disappeared tactfully into the kitchen.

“Actually,” Richard said delicately, “that was supposed to be Thursday.”

“Wait. The message said tomorrow. And the date on it was yesterday.”

He shrugged. “I told the guy I talked to—Frankie somebody—I told him Thursday.”

She nodded. “And he thought
today
was Thursday. Goddamn heavy metal. It’s destroyed his brain cells … Shit, shit, shit.”

Yo, Fairy Godmother! Yo! Wave your magic wand and get me the hell out of here.

“Listen, you want to stay? Have some wine?”

That’d be a pretty picture, she thought. The three of us sipping wine while he’s waiting for me to leave so he can put the Tantra moves on too-tall Karen.

“No, think I’ll go.”

“Sure. I’ll walk you to the elevator.”

Oh, don’t argue
too
hard now.

Richard continued. “Oh, wait, let me get you what I have for you.”

“My surprise?”

“Right. I think you’ll like it.”

“So, Rune, how do you know Richard?” Karen was calling from the kitchen.

Yeah. He picked me up the other night and’s been trying to fuck me ever since.

“Met in a video store. We talk about movies some.”

“I
love
movies,” Karen called. “Maybe we could all go sometime.

“Maybe.”

Richard appeared from his bedroom. He was carrying a white envelope.

That’s
my present?

“Be right back,” he said to Karen.

“This sauce is
so
good,” she called from the kitchen. She stuck her pert head into the doorway. “Nice meeting you. Oh, love the earrings!”

As they walked to the elevator Richard said, “Karen’s a friend. We work together.”

Rune wondered: How does somebody work
with
you when you write novels?

They got four doors down the corridor before he said, “This’s a little awkward but she and I
really
are just friends.”

“W e
are
going out, aren’t we? You and me, I mean.”

“Sure, we’re going out. I mean, we aren’t going out all the time though, right? We
can
have other friends.”

“Sure. That’s the way it has to work.”

“Right.”

I am absolutely going to murder Frankie Greek….

He pushed the down button.

Aren’t
we
in a hurry.

“Oh, here.” He thrust the envelope at her.

She opened it. Inside was an application to the New School, over on Fifth Avenue.

A joke. It had to be a joke.

“I’ve got a buddy works for admissions,” Richard explained.
“He told me they’re starting this new program. Retail management. You don’t even need to get a degree. You get a certificate.”

She felt sick. “Wait. You’re giving me career counseling?”

“Rune, you’re so smart, you’ve got so much energy, you’re so creative…. I’m worried about you wasting your life.”

She stared, numb, at the paper in her hand.

Richard said, “You could work your way up in the video store business. Become a manager. Then maybe you could buy a store. Or even a chain. You could really be on a hell of a vertical track.”

She laughed bitterly. “But … that’s not
me
, Richard. I’m not a vertical-track kind of person. Look, I’ve worked in that diner I told you about, in a bike repair shop, a deli, a shoe store. I’ve sold jewelry on the street, done paste-ups and mechanicals for a magazine, sold men’s colognes at Macy’s, and worked in a film lab. And that’s just in the couple years I’ve been here. Before I die I’m going to do a lot more than that. I’m not going to devote my life to being manager of a video store. Or any other one thing.”

“Don’t you want a career?”

She felt utterly betrayed. More so than if she’d found Karen and Richard in bed, an event that was probably only minutes away.

When she didn’t answer he said, “You should think about it.”

Rune said, “Sometimes I get this idea I should go to school. Get a degree. Law school, maybe business school like my sister. Something. But then, you know what happens? I have this image. Of myself in ten years at a cocktail party. And somebody asks me what I do. And—this is the scary part—I have an answer for them.” She smiled at him.

“Which is …?”

He didn’t get it. “
That’s
the point. It doesn’t matter; the scary part is that I
have
an answer. I say, ‘I’m a lawyer, an accountant, a hoosey-whatsis maker.’ Bang, there I am. Defined in one or two words. That scares the hell out of me.”

“Why’re you so afraid of reality?”

“My life is real. It’s just not, apparently,
your
kind of reality.”

He said harshly, “No, it’s
not
real. Look at this game of yours …”

“What game?”

“Find-the-hidden-treasure.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Do you understand that a man was killed? Did it ever occur to you that it wasn’t a game to Robert Kelly? That you could get hurt? Or a friend of yours could get hurt? That
ever
occur to you?”

“It’ll work out. You just need to believe …”

She gasped as he took her angrily by the shoulders and led her to a window at the end of the hallway. Pointed outside. Beneath them was a mass of highways and rail sidings and rusting equipment—huge turbines and metal parts. Beyond that was a small factory, surrounded by standing yellowish water. Mud. Filth.

“What’s that?” he asked.

She shook her head. Not understanding.

“What
is
it?” His voice rose.

“What do you mean?” Her voice crackled.

“It’s a factory, Rune. There’s shit and pollution. It makes a living for people and they pay taxes and give money to charity and buy sneakers for their children. Who grow up to be lawyers or teachers or musicians or people who work in other factories. It’s nothing more than that. It’s not a spaceship, it’s not a castle, it’s not an entrance to the underworld. It’s
a factory
.”