Marilyn the Wild (12 page)

Rupert slinked away from his father's house, crippled by jars in his pockets. He was trying to shake that journalist, Tony Brill. He stumbled in and out of street corners, his ankles beginning to swell from the pressure of jars sliding off his hips. Esther had to jump from building to building, protecting herself from nosy people and cops of the Puerto Rican and Jewish East Side. Rupert found her on Suffolk Street. She was a choosy girl, hiding in a tenement with gargoyles near the roof, rain spouts with broken noses. He entered through a window on the ground floor, grabbing his pockets and heaving them over the sill. He could follow Esther's ascent in the building by the drawings over each set of stairs. She'd crayoned faces next to the landings, faces with swollen foreheads and frothy mouths: men and women drugged with the burden of their own heavy brains. The drawings stopped abruptly at the fourth floor. Rupert didn't have to peek any higher. “Esther,” he called. “It's me.”

She sat on her haunches in deep concentration, wearing a blanket, like a Brooklyn squaw (Esther depised street clothes). She was cooking something in a pot, with the Sterno can Rupert had given her. The stink coming off the pot settled under Rupert's tongue; he walked around the room biting his jacket to keep from swallowing his own poisoned spit. “What the hell are you making?” he shouted with Esther's fumes in his eyes.

“Food,” she said “Food for Isaac.”

“Isaac's not a schmuck. He won't drink mud out of a pot”

“Then I'll feed it to him. I can stuff Isaac anytime.”

“How?” Rupert asked. “Are you going to mail him some doctored horseradish?”

“No. I'll sneak it into his lousy Headquarters.”

“Esther, Isaac's got a fortress on Centre Street. You know how many guns there are on every floor? Detectives sleep in the woodwork. You can't pee without an escort.”

“So what?” she said. “I'm not going to hold Isaac's prick.” “Esther, listen to me. You haven't eaten in four days.” He smacked the bulges in his pockets. “I have my father's sour pickles. I have stuffed cabbage. I have grape leaves.”

“I'm not hungry.”

Esther had been cold to Rupert over the past week; she blamed him for losing Stanley Chin. They'd all gone out to Corona because Manhattan was flooded with cops and gorillas from Mulberry Street. They were shrewd enough to outrun the gorillas, who seemed stranded outside Little Italy, and couldn't tell the difference between a ski mask (Esther's contribution to the gang), a wool helmet, and a winter scarf; these gorillas must have come from a warmer climate, where a sane person wouldn't think of putting a rag on his head. But the lollipops weren't so sure of the police; cops came smart and dumb, and even a dumb cop could signal Isaac with a portable radio.

Corona was Rupert's idea; he intended to plague Isaac from a fresh neighborhood. The lollipops would attack grocery stores, spit Isaac's name at their victims. But a gang of baby Chinamen had followed them out on the Queensboro line, old compatriots of Stanley Chin's from his days as a strong-arm boy for merchants and Republican politicians on Pell Street. The gang was seeking revenge; Stanley had insulted his former employers, the Pell Street Republican Club, with his raids on Chinatown as a member of the lollipops. These baby Chinamen, called the Snapping Dragons by their enemies, had no interest in Rupert and Esther Rose; they weren't out to punish a pair of round-eyed Jews. They jumped on Stanley's back outside the subway stop in Corona, wrestled him to the ground, broke every single one of his fingers and toes, while Esther screamed and dove into their ranks, and two unoccupied Dragons held Rupert by his arms. Esther forbid explanations from Rupert. With her head burrowing in the groin of a Snap Dragon, she'd heard the pop of Stanley's fingers. Rupert had come out of Corona unmarked.

She stared at his unwieldy jacket. “Take that thing off,” she said. “It makes you look like a traffic cop.”

Rupert obeyed her. He stood with goose bumps sprouting on his chest. He couldn't get her away from that concoction she was brewing for Isaac. His motives were simple: he wanted Esther to fuck. Rupert had a perfect right to be lascivious with her. He worshiped Esther's body, loving the damp skin of a Yeshiva girl, the exquisite bends in her shoulder, her arching wings, the salt he licked out of her navel, the swampy aromas from the underside of her knee, the scissoring of her thighs. He had touched one junior-high-school girl before Esther, felt the exaggerated pimple on this girl's chest, dry, odorless skin, and the random hairs that grew out of the hems in her underpants. But he couldn't have conceived the delicate, moist machinery of a female's parts without Esther. Rupert would have murdered the whole of Essex Street for the privilege of putting his face between Esther's legs, or fucking her until her neck throbbed with the power of her orgasm.

She would give him nothing today. Rupert understood that. Esther was punishing him for Stanley's fall. Should he break his own thumbs to please her? The denial of her body terrified him. He would have groveled on the dirty floor to suck Esther's kneecaps if he knew this might arouse her, or at least catch Esther off her guard. He stuck his hands in his armpits to keep them warm. He shivered and sulked, the goose bumps snaking up and down his spine.

Esther whipped one elbow and cast her blanket out at Rupert, drawing him into her reach. They stood belly to belly in the cold; then Esther relocated the blanket, and they descended together, with a rub of their hips, while Rupert's pants came down. They rolled on the blanket, Rupert amazed by his sudden change of luck. No matter how many times their bodies clapped, he would never fathom Esther's needs. But he didn't question the grace of sleeping with Esther. She'd grounded him in a blanket, and he was stuck with bits of wool over his ears, Esther underneath. He crept into her, loosening her thighs with a fist that hadn't quite lost its baby fat. Esther had her frenzy with Rupert's hair in her mouth. Now she lay still, watching the agitation build in his nose. Esther knew what it means when a man begins to blow air. She brought Rupert out of her with a great squeeze of her abdominal muscles before Rupert had the chance to snort in her face (Yeshiva girls didn't believe in condoms, diaphragms, or coils). Rupert dribbled on her chest He wasn't surly. He tried to paint her bosoms with his come, draw on Esther with a sticky finger, but she wouldn't let him. She snatched up her blanket and returned to the pot.

“I need some ammonia for the soup,” she said.

Rupert put on his pants. “Why ammonia?”

“Just get some for me.”

“Esther, I can't trade in pickles for cash. Who's going to give me free ammonia?”

“Steal it,” she hissed into his ear. “Don't come back without my goods.”

Rupert fled the building with the same bottles and jars (he'd forgotten to empty his jacket). He stumbled out into the narrow gutters of Suffolk Street, his sneakers sliding over raw stone. He hitched up his pockets and tried to remember if the Cuban grocery stores carried ammonia. He couldn't determine the nature of Esther's stew; whatever she was feeding Isaac, would it come hot or cold? A fat man in a vague, military coat cornered him on Norfolk Street. It was Tony Brill. Rupert sneered.

“Follow me, man, and I'll torture your balls. You know what I do to people. I'm Rupert Weil.”

Tony Brill ran after Rupert. Soon both of them were huffing insanely for air. The journalist managed to claw three words out of his throat. “Talk to me.”

They rested on opposite sides of a lamppost Rupert extended his palm. “Cash, you fuck. Gimme all your money.”

Tony Brill urged a torn dollar into Rupert's palm. “That's it. Now will you talk?”

Rupert made a fist, the dollar showing through his fingers. He had his ammonia money; he was too exhausted to steal from a grocery.

“Rupert, you can be a famous man. Tell me, do you suffer when they call you an urban bandit? What's the significance of your refusal to touch cash? Is it blood you want, not money? Will you and Esther raid stores without Stanley Chin? Are you a different kind of Robin Hood?”

“No,” Rupert said. “I'm my father's boy.” He pushed Tony Brill off the sidewalk and ran towards a section of grocery stores.

Esther was tired of churning soup in a scummy pot; she could hear the suck of bubbles underneath the scum. Nothing but ammonia would ever quiet such a noise. She'd make Isaac swallow her soup with his ears. There was more than one way to poison a big Jewish cop. Isaac would piss blood by tomorrow. Rupert was too soft. He couldn't punish the Chief without Esther Rose.

Yeshiva girls aren't blind; she'd seen the fat on Rupert disappear. Who was gouging Rupert's cheeks? Isaac the Pure. All of Rupert's dread came from the big Jew. She'd told him. “Rupert, you love your father too much. Is it your fault he's under Isaac's thumb? Why didn't he pack years ago and move out of Essex Street? Isaac's killing your father. Don't let him kill you.”

He'd get angry with her. “How the hell do you know so much? Did your rabbis teach you the philosophy of Philip Weil? My father's scared to move. You expect him to crawl over the Brooklyn Bridge? He'd die in a strange place. Ask the scientists. You can lose your head if you stray from where you were born.”

“We'll find him another one. When your guts shrivel, it's too late.”

“Stop talking about my father; Leave his guts alone.”

It didn't offend her. She could only love an obstinate boy. The sweat would pour from his eyebrows. The hollows in his cheeks would curl. He was handsomer to her than Isaac's baby, Mr. Blue Eyes. She wouldn't take down her underpants for tie prettiest cop in the world. She was particular about the men she laid. Truck drivers, grocers, JDL boys, but no blond detective could get on her list.

The soup in Esther's pot smelled worse than the semen of a Williamsburg cat. The vapors were attacking her sinuses. Esther had to get out. She grabbed for her pea coat. Her fist burrowed into her sleeve like the skull of a groundhog, but she wouldn't button up. The blanket dropped below her calves. Esther didn't believe in skirts. You couldn't feel the wind on you if your legs were muggered in cloth. She had a ski mask balled in her pocket. She could bring terror to the neighborhood by pulling that mask over her head. Merchants would scream, “Lollipop, lollipop,” and rush to the deepest corner of their shops. Seeing a merchant quake couldn't satisfy her any more. The merchants had a king with curly sideburns. Isaac the Jew. Esther swore to unhinge him.

The first time Rupert brought her into the East Side, to Norfolk Street, Essex, Delancey, Grand, Esther had realized the conditions of this territory. “Who's the big tit here? Tell me the name of your rabbi.”

The boy couldn't answer her. “Esther, what do you mean?”

“Somebody's been squeezing these blocks for a long time. It's too quiet. There isn't a drop of anarchy on East Broadway. Where's the chief?”

Rupert thought for a moment. Then he mumbled, “At Police Headquarters.” And he told her about Isaac, and Isaac's grip over hoodlums, policy men, shopkeepers, Seward Park High School, Ida Stutz, Mordecai, Philip, and Rupert himself. “He stinks,” Rupert said. “But nobody's willing to say it.”

Esther understood. Isaac was the Moses of Clinton and Delancey. Hadn't the idiot priests at her school shoved stories into her face about the sanctity of patriarchs? The Jews had more fathers than Esther could bear. An army of fathers with a single word under their tongues: Obey. When she married, said the priests, wouldn't her husband be like a father to her? A father who could enjoy Esther's parts. She'd have to cleave to her father-husband, make herself bald for him (hair on the female scalp was a sign of degradation and lust), feed him, fuck for him, mend his shirts, rub the pee stains out of his skivvies, stuff her womb with male heirs.

A wife was little better than any beast of the field. She was instructed to close her eyes and grunt when her husband climbed on top (intercourse in all other varieties, or positions, was immodest and perverse). He, the lord of the house, had to fuck with the Torah in his head, while his wife suffered the stab of her master's knees and prayed for a male child. Thank God for menstruation, Esther figured. A wife with blood in her drawers was unclean property. Her lord couldn't drink from her cup, or graze her with a forefinger after the first trickle. Then she had her nights and days to herself. She couldn't become pure again until she removed the wax from her ears and dipped her pink scalp into a pool of slimy water. These were the joys of a Yeshiva wife.

Esther had a solution. She could become Isaac's bride. It would be no marriage of convenience, arranged by rich uncles, with fat dowries and long trousseaus. Esther would bite away the traditional Ladino blessings. She'd construe a marriage without bridal veils and jeweled canopies as old as the Moorish occupation of Seville. There would be nothing between Esther and Isaac other than pride, venom, and a goatish itch. Bride and groom would ravage one another on their wedding night, fornicating with the energy of absolute hate. She'd tear off Isaac's nose with an early orgasm. He'd pound her kidneys with every smack of his hard, policeman's belly, and scald her groin with his steamy come. She'd suck up all the delicate glue in his eyes. Isaac would rage with his fingers over the shells of his face, ruined by the powerful flicks of Esther's tongue. The butchery would continue into the morning, when the remains of Esther and Isaac would be found in the crush of lavender wedding sheets: two well-preserved shinbones and a purple knot of blood.