The Biology of Luck (11 page)

She has been inside Blooming Grove on two prior occasions. Once, at the behest of her aunt, to purchase white lilies for her uncle's grave site; the other time, to plead with the Armenian proprietor to cease dispatching a dozen long-stemmed red roses every hour, on the hour. Both visits traumatized her. The lilies proved to be as scarce as the roses were abundant. If the florist seemed perturbed that a bouquet of mixed spring flowers, irises and daffodils, wouldn't substitute for the lilies, the prospect that anyone might turn down virgin roses at $62.50 a dozen, especially when they came in crystal vases nuzzled by asparagus ferns and hypericum clippings, turned out to be beyond his comprehension. He seemed to think that the clockwork delivery was part of some familial dispute, maybe even a legal matter. Her request yielded to his entrepreneurial instincts, to the fear that he might open himself up to breach of contract litigation. But if Starshine can take on the Dolphin Credit Union, she heartens herself, if she can establish her footing in the arena of high finance, then she can stand up to this Armenian peddler and buy her fruit basket. At least, she hopes she can.

The proprietor allows her little time to adjust to the steamy, pollen-rich air of the shop. He is stocky, bearded, his broad forearms jutting from rolled shirtsleeves, a pencil stub balanced above his ear. He is on the far side of forty, the near side of seventy; his craggy, sun-dried skin defies further precision. The man could easily pass as an extra from
Zorba the Greek
. Starshine is his only customer at midmorning. He saunters forward, wiping his palms on his chlorophyll-stained apron and then rubbing them together like an overzealous butcher at some dubious abattoir, sizing up his patron's limitations and possibly her market potential. Starshine steps backward at his advance.

“How can I help you this morning, my dear young lady?” he asks, his voice rising as he speaks like the call to some exotic house of worship. “It is a long time we haven't seen you.”

“I need a gourmet fruit basket,” Starshine explains. “To bring to a nursing home.”

“A basket for a nursing home,” repeats the florist. “Baskets we have. Many, many baskets. I do hope your loved one is not too ill. “

“Not
too
ill,” retorts Starshine. “All I need is a fruit basket. I'm in a hurry. “

She glances at the wall clock to emphasize her time constraints. She does happen to be in a hurry. She is due at the Children's Fund at noon, but her primary fear is that she will become the sole repository for the florist's pent-up longings and stymied ambitions. Men have the noxious habit of unburdening themselves to her, exposing their secrets and frustrations and anxieties with the zeal of a colporteur unloading religious tracts, confiding their gambling debt and the injustice of their child support payments and the final moment of their dying parents. The men who do this are often middle aged, often small-time clerks, often the sort of self-styled undiscovered geniuses who, under different circumstances, might dabble with necromancy or National Socialism. They are lonely souls who have no one to talk to, men for whom a brief intimate conversation with an intoxicating young woman is their only available substitute for casual sex. Starshine genuinely feels sorry for these men, for the widowed token clerk at the Nassau Avenue station, for the pockmarked dairy-counter attendant at the Safeway, for the Armenian florist, but not sorry enough to indulge them. That way lies madness and stalking.

The proprietor lifts a segment of the countertop and instructs her to follow. They pass through a narrow corridor, lined with potted African violets and bags of fertilizer, emerging into a stale, cedar-paneled chamber which does double service as both work chamber and stockroom. A carpenter's bench runs along the far wall; metal trays and plant stands clutter the entryway, also block the emergency exit; desiccated spider plants and wandering Jews hang from the exposed rafters. The unfinished floor is littered with wood chips and an array of empty clay pots. The room stands as a testament to the
green thumb's Jekyll and Hyde existence, the grisly underbelly of sacrifice which makes possible the grandeur out front.

“So we need a sixty-five-dollar gourmet basket,” says the Armenian.

“Forty-five,” objects Starshine. “Forty-five is my upper limit.”

Her host flashes her an almost hostile grin; she can see the points of his canines.

“I must have misheard you, my dear young lady,” he says. “But forty-five, sixty-five, no matter. I'm sure your loved one will appreciate the thought as much as the deed.”

It is questionable whether Aunt Agatha will be in any condition to appreciate either. The woman is eighty-one years old, permanently bedridden, marginally cognizant of the outside world. Her sole source of pleasure, other than the feel of fruit, is to sneak an illicit cigarette and puff herself to a head rush through her tracheotomy. A twenty-five-dollar minibasket might meet her needs. But Agatha Hart does have her moments of lucidity, those spells when the old battle-ax is liable to grill the nurse's aides on the precise dimensions of Starshine's offering, and Aunt Agatha, her surrogate mother through all those years of adolescent turbulence, is the only family Starshine has left. She's worth forty-five dollars. If Starshine had the money, if she could raise the money, Aunt Agatha would be worth sixty-five dollars, sixty-five thousand dollars. Starshine entertains the thought of marrying Colby Parker and expending his entire fortune on guavas and grapefruits, sending dear Agatha into eternity with the entire national citrus crop, but her aunt would be much happier with a forty-five-dollar basket and the continued independence of her niece. And so, for that matter, would Starshine.

The Armenian settles onto a wooden crate and examines the tags on various gourmet baskets. His shirt slides up when he bends forward, exposing a back of dark brown moles and tufts of gray hair. Starshine stares down into his bald spot. She is conscious that he is a larger man than she had first thought, that he has planted his body between her and the corridor. This is a neurotic concern, she knows.

The proprietor is harmless. A charlatan, yes. Possibly even a letch. But not a rapist. She tries to focus her attention on fruit.

“A nursing home, you said. Forty-five dollars. “

“That's right.”

“You can't include wine for forty-five dollars. Are you sure you couldn't stretch to sixty?”

“My aunt doesn't drink.”

“Your aunt doesn't drink,” echoes the proprietor. “Myself, I take a glass of retsina every morning. It stills the nerves. How about figs and dates? Does your aunt have a sweet tooth?”

“I was hoping for something with fresh fruit. My aunt isn't actually going to eat the fruit, she's just going to feel it. “

The proprietor nods knowingly. “All is now clear, my dear young lady,” he says. “Fruit to feel. Nectarines, apricots, carambola. For fifty-five, I can throw in a pineapple. “

“Perfect,” says Starshine. “But no pineapple.”

“As you wish, but it's a lucky pineapple.”

“A lucky pineapple?” Starshine hears herself asking.

“That's right. Strong genetic stock. Most of your pineapples these days come out of Thailand or the Philippines, but this is an Hawaiian pineapple. Among the luckiest fruit in the world. Maybe your aunt will appreciate it. “

“No, thank you.”

Starshine searches for a path around the Armenian, but there is no easy escape. She does not wish to be rude. She does not want to flee without her purchase. He has swiveled to face her, the cellophane-wrapped basket resting on his wide lap, his hands braced against the edge of the crate as though he might pounce. This is monologue stance: Starshine has endured it before. Although she doesn't know the content, at least the specific content, she anticipates the form. It will be long. It will be pointless. It will be painful.

“So few young men and women these days appreciate the significance, the truly earth-shattering significance, of genetics,” declares the Armenian. “At least, not the genetics of fortune. They're
worried about curing this disease, about that disease, about birth defects, about AIDS, but nobody takes any interest in the biology of fortune. Did you know, my dear young lady, that good luck is an inherited characteristic?”

Starshine shakes her head. She scans the carpenter's bench for scissors, garden shears, any instrument with which she can defend herself if the Armenian's verbal assault deteriorates into attempted foreplay. This has also happened before. One minute, she was suffering through a discourse on the panacean qualities of the Nagami kumquat, and the next thing she knew, the Chinese grocer has his hand between her thighs.

“Your ignorance does not surprise me, my dear young lady,” continues the Armenian. “You are not offended by my use of the word
ignorance
, are you?” My words are limited. I was born in a different country. In another world. My name is Kalhhazian. John Kalkhazian. And I may call you …?”

“Starshine.”

There are no potential weapons on the carpenter's bench, only a paper cutter.

“A pretty name, Starshine. Well, Starshine, it saddens me profoundly that so few Americans, especially younger Americans, appreciate the gravity of genetics. I will venture that you don't even know your own genes, that you've never explored the fate in your own gene pool. “

Starshine shakes her head again. She wishes she knew how to deal with these situations. She wishes she were Eucalyptus. That she were Jack Bascomb. That she were a man.

“I happen to carry a matching set of good luck genes. The odds against a pair are one in one hundred, maybe one in one thousand. This in itself seems like a testament to my good fortune, doesn't it?”

“I'm sure.”

“Lady luck smiles on me. I've survived a jet crash, a bout of malaria. My wife and daughters died in the crash, but I walked away without a scratch. I just stepped out onto the tarmac in Ankara. Even
the paramedics said it was a miracle. I started going to church to thank Saint Gregory. But then I had some tests done, official medical tests, and I found out about my chromosomes. I can show you the proof.”

The proprietor reaches into the folds of his apron and shoves three faded, time-scarred pages into Starshine's hands. They are written in Armenian. She feigns interest, examines them closely, and returns them to her captor.

“They're not in English, of course,” he explains, “so unfortunately you can't read them. But you do understand their significance, I hope. My genes are as lucky as those of an Hawaiian pineapple. I will live to be one hundred fifteen and die peacefully in my sleep. It is all part of the genetic blueprint. “

The Armenian rises suddenly, pushing himself forward off the bench, and Starshine cringes in advance of the blows—but they do not come. Instead he stuffs his paperwork back into his apron and hands her the fruit basket. “Are you sure I can't interest you in a pineapple, my dear young lady? They're very lucky fruit. “

“Okay,” Starshine agrees readily. “I'll take it.”

Her entire body relaxes. He isn't a predator after all, just a benign crank. He looks so pathetically harmless with his dress shirt half-tucked. Now she regrets suspecting him, feels awful about his dead wife and daughters. Of course, she'll buy his pineapple. It is the least she can do. She is afraid she may burst into tears. She follows the forlorn man back into the empty display room and scrounges in her pockets for the last of Hannibal Tuck's offering. She is running low on cash, but this is nothing new. Poverty is old hat to Starshine. Money was meant to be spent.

“Thank you for listening to me, my dear Starshine,” says the Armenian. “You brought me much joy this morning. So few young people have time to listen. Especially to an old man like me. I hope your pineapple will bring you and your aunt much great luck. “

“I hope so too.”

“Promise me you will come back again.”

“Scout's honor,” lies Starshine. “I promise.”

She has already decided that she will
never
return again. To do so would be indiscreet, even cruel. The old man needs a confidante, probably a lover, but there are some things she knows she will never have it in her to give. Maybe, she finds herself musing, without any conviction, the Armenian's good luck gene is some sort of late-onset phenomena that will bring him fame and fortune in his golden years. Maybe he'll become the Grandma Moses of the flower industry. She wouldn't begrudge him the prosperity. If she were an over-the-hill Armenian florist trapped in a life of isolation and routine, she'd also probably subscribe to pseudo-scientific theories, and believe in the genetic luck of pineapples, and lecture pretty young women. But she isn't.

She is Starshine. She is in her prime. She is a spring beauty carrying a fruit basket through the heart of Greenpoint. The day still spreads out before her like an endless starscape, like a Whitman poem, its possibilities infinite, an entire city holding its breath in anticipation. Her crises melt under the noonday sun. She balances the fruit basket on her head and she feels like Carmen Miranda. Like a celebrity. Like the sort of woman for whom ships are launched, for whom kingdoms are imperiled, for whom epic literature is composed.

And she is.

Although Gotham takes pride in never sleeping, thrives on a reputation as the arbiter of “making it,” and secretly considers itself the only world-class city west of Paris, in one respect the hemisphere's unofficial capital lags behind even the average elementary school: New York City does not have a lost and found. This omission reflects a conscious decision on the part of the municipal power brokers, their concession to the unforgiving doctrine of logistical impossibility, an admission that some municipal services were created more equal than others. It is marvel enough, they argue, in a city of eight million residents, in five boroughs claiming more Jews than Jerusalem, more Italians than Venice, more Puerto Ricans than San Juan, that the trash is collected twice weekly and the traffic signals function and the offtrack betting parlors are inspected on a semiregular basis. A lost and found would be the boondoggle of a quixote. Where are the resources, the political capital, the constituent groundswell to support such a superfluous frill? It is true that, on rare occasions, having misplaced a silver tie-clip or a gold-plated cigar case, a reform-minded iconoclast on the city council will lobby zealously for the establishment of such a repository, but his fervor will last only until the next election season, when he will either abandon his cause célèbre for the higher ground of school vouchers and random drug testing, or he will awake one November morning to find himself the newly appointed vice chancellor of some outer borough community college. As a result, there will never be a
meeting ground for the countless tokens and keepsakes mislaid each day on the streets of the metropolis, a place where shopping bags may socialize with children's shoes, and plastic key chains can hobnob among fraternity pins, for ever since the Dutch patent-holder dropped the first calfskin glove on the cobblestones of the East River jetty, it has been determined that the city's bereft shall be left to their own devices, compelled to rely on the kindness of strangers, while their portable property seeks shelter in the pouches of knaves or sacrifices itself for the good of the commonweal and donates its heft to the landfill. South Street and Battery Park City have been built upon the ashes of misplaced correspondence. Larry's magic letter will not be recovered.