The Biology of Luck (12 page)

He performs the requisite inquiries nevertheless, calling the Maiden Lane McDonalds from a pay telephone, leaving his name with the porcine deputy at the Castle Clinton information kiosk. He emphasizes the importance of the lost letter, while stressing its purely sentimental value, strenuously insinuating that the missing envelope contains neither food stamps nor cash. It would be no skin off his nose if Stroop & Stone's decision became public knowledge, of course, if his fate were even broadcast on the nightly news, but he understands that once the seal on the envelope has been broken, the bearer will most certainly destroy the incriminating evidence of his treasure hunt. Such is human nature. The letter will be returned either unopened or not at all. And not at all, the catchphrase of Larry's floundering existence, seems to be the writing on the wall. He could always phone the agency and relate his misfortune. He could tell them that he was mugged, even kidnapped by bandits. Or own up to his own incompetence. They certainly wouldn't cancel their offer on the basis of a one-time mishap; it wasn't as though he'd lost the manuscript. Accidents happen. Yet the names Stroop & Stone are as imposing to Larry as those of Scylla and Charybdis to the most cowardly of mariners. He recollects the white parlor in his parents' suburban home, a salon of Duncan-Phyfe chairs and Wedgewood china from which he'd been banished for the perpetuity of his childhood, so that the stately Duncan-Phyfes and delicate Wedgewoods acquired personal
attributes, anthropomorphized into lords and ladies of a forbidden kingdom; similarly, the prospect of confronting the implacable Stroop and the impenetrable Stone sends seismic waves through his abdomen. He will have to write to the agency and request a second reply. He dares not brave a phone call. And that means that when he tenders his affections to Starshine this evening, in the upscale Greenwich Village bistro where he has had a table booked since late April, he will have to present himself as Larry Bloom tour guide, the author of an unpublished manuscript, one of thousands of wishful scribblers in a city of aspiring literati. She will laugh rather than swoon.

The return of the Dutch tourists forces Larry from his self-pity. They descend the gangway of the Ellis Island ferry like so many newly arrived immigrants, renewed, prepared to banish all memories of past misfortune and to explore the gold-paved streets of the welcoming metropolis. They have gorged themselves on knishes and cotton candy; they have purchased T-shirts and tote bags. Many of the older couples have bonded over sepia photographs of peasant families and have pooled their outrage at the immodest group showers in the delousing stations, so they are now able to exchange snapshots of their nieces and nephews in the recklessness of timeworn friendship. Van Huizen, a coffee-table book tucked under one arm, is resolutely talking the ear off a wizened specimen sporting an inverted collar. The priest cups his hand around his ear as though riveted by his companion's knowledge. Only when the pair advances down the boardwalk to the information kiosk, the historian rambling, the cleric smiling in complete serenity, does Larry surmise the truth: Van Huizen' disciple has turned off his hearing aid. The Dutchman has found the ideal audience. That is a minor blessing, Larry thinks. The last thing he needs on such a bleak afternoon is a blue-streaker poking at his buttonholes. He is waiting for the last of the stragglers to congregate in a half circle when Rita Blatt prods him in the ribs with the point of her umbrella. Larry suddenly wishes he too were hard of hearing.

“I have a couple of questions I've been meaning to ask you,” she ventures. “I figure I better grill you now, or I'm liable to forget.
You know how it is. I once interviewed this woman who compulsively adopts foster grandchildren, more than a hundred at one time or another, and I got so caught up in her photo albums that I didn't inquire whether she had any children of her own. I had to write around the matter and it left a glaring hole at the heart of my story. So, if you don't mind, can you tell me the most interesting thing that's ever happened to you on the touring circuit?”

“Oh Lord,” answers Larry. “I have no idea. It's pretty much your run-of-the-mill, nine-to-five job until you get fired or decapitated by a traffic light. Will you let me think about it?”

“Think, think, think. Take as much time as you need. I'll lob you another one while you're combing that old gray matter. A more personal question. You won't mind, will you? Some people get all huffy when you start asking about their private lives. They don't understand that it's nothing personal, that I'm just doing my job as a reporter as best I can. But like I was saying … Have you ever developed a—what shall I call it—a romantic attachment to one of your customers? Some pretty young girl from some exotic land?”

“Never,” says Larry. “That would be against company policy.”

“That is too bad,” says Rita, still smiling. “It would have made such good copy. But the day is still young. One never knows what will happen on the streets of the Big Old Apple. That's the amazing thing about New York, isn't it? Of course you already know that. Why else would you have become a tour leader?”

“It pays the bills,” Larry answers curtly. “And some things never happen.”

He turns from Rita to his charges and addresses them in the slow, stentorian, pseudo-conversational tone that is the dialect of his trade. He strives to walk the tightrope between the official and the officious, imparting information without intimating ignorance, to convince his hardy Dutch burghers that he is knowledgeable, witty, hardworking, that he is a replica of themselves, albeit on a minor scale, and that is therefore worthy of a generous gratuity. It is all artifice, stratagem. He meets their expectations halfway. Lurking deep within
their consciences, of course, beneath their benevolent transfixion, is the knowledge that their leader cannot be what he appears, that he must harbor his own longings and sordid fantasies, yet—in the way that grammar school pupils hold their teachers upon the loftiest pedestals of purity and compassion, even after they develop doubts—the Dutch burghers steadfastly refuse to be disappointed. Larry's thoughts can drift through self-pity and self-hatred, even toward suicide, as long as his legs carry them past city hall and over the Brooklyn Bridge. It is an arrangement of mutual convenience.

The mercury has risen into the eighties by midday and as the tour group puts distance between itself and the waterfront, Larry leading backward like some crab chieftain at the helm of a crustacean pilgrimage, ties are loosened and sleeves are rolled up. Even these decorous Dutch burghers, immune to the forces of lust that prey upon the lesser souls in the park, cannot withstand the unrelenting prowess of heat. Perspiration trumps decorum; comfort conquers convention. Larry loosens his collar in front of the gates of Saint Paul's Church during his discussion of the Great Fire of 1776, incorporating the move into his description of the rising flames, as he has done so many time before, simulating the illusion that he is acting on his guests' behalf and not his own. Then he leads his charges up lower Broadway, past the ornate vertical thrust of the Woolworth Building, onto the manicured green at the foot of city hall. There is no longer a teenage temptress to inspire his lectures, to enkindle his passions, so he toes the straight and narrow path of the official guidebook: His Dutch will hear that city hall was constructed at the outermost fringe of development in 1811; that the northern side of the structure was finished with common brownstone, rather than marble, because no self-respecting New Yorker was ever expected to stroll beyond Chambers Street. They will
not
learn that Mayor Jimmy Walker built the twin marble staircases inside for two underage sisters he met at a speakeasy. Larry's pockets are empty; sweat glues his shirt to his shoulder blades. He senses the indifference in his voice, his hackneyed anecdotes that boast all the verve of chewed string, but does it really
matter? The words of Whitman and Melville may live long after their bridges and wharves have crumbled, but his own utterances will soon lie buried like those of some muted Milton in a country churchyard. He is neither a poet nor a lover, but only a paid hack. As much of a sham as Snipe or Van Huizen. Maybe even more so. They possess the power of self-delusion. He doesn't even have that poultice. Who in God's name does he think he's going to fool?

Larry crosses Park Row, ambles up Spruce Street and makes an offhanded reference to the welded-copper monument on the facade of Pace University's main building. It is Henri Nachemia's masterpiece, the sculptor's lustrous tribute to
The Brotherhood of Man
. If only such a consoling fraternity actually existed! But Larry recognizes the bitter truth, knows it as well as he knows the back alleys and unmarked byways of the traffic knot south of Dover Street, understands that the city is nobody's friend and that daily life is not the labor of love that leads one toward some sublime and exalted pinnacle of self-actualization, but merely a tedious and malignant struggle for survival. At least for him. A handful of anointed souls rise above the humdrum and the fray, but these are good-looking men, talented men, men who are conspicuously not Larry Bloom. The greater part of humanity lead lives of not-so-quiet desperation and die unnoticed. These, at least, are Larry's bitter thoughts at the moment. Yet even he is surprised, if confirmed in his own worst suspicions, when he rounds the corner of Gold Street and spies, smack in the middle of the municipal workers' parking lot, belly-up like a beached porpoise in the sun, a white-faced and wide-eyed human corpse.

Larry sees the body over Van Huizen's shoulder and breaks off his spiel in midsentence. Although he has never seen a dead man before, not even at a funeral, his instincts tell him that the victim is long past hope. There's something finite in the man's heavenly gaze, something rigid in the thick arms reaching for his throat. Larry pushes his way quickly through his entourage. He bends over the body and instinctively checks for a carotid pulse. It is an exercise in futility. The sorry fool before him has died unnoticed, like so many
others, and neither his ritzy pocket watch nor double-breasted suit have made his death any more memorable. A rich, portly man has died and must now struggle to pass through the eye of a needle. It is sad. It is inevitable. It is life. And yet somehow, as Larry rolls the cadaver to its side, he feels a whole lot better. Not because he is alive and this other man is dead; he is not that heartless. It is rather that the deceased businessman exudes a certain placidity, even a refined composure, which reminds Larry that death is not a negative, but a neutral. If Larry does not achieve immortality through prose, he will never know what he has missed. He will never suffer.

The Dutch tourists have encircled their leader and his unfortunate companion. A camel-nosed woman announces her credentials as a physician and confirms Larry's diagnosis. The man is unequivocally dead. But what now? The summer heat has cleared the back street of pedestrians, and the guard booth at the parking lot entrance stands unmanned. The future of the dead man is entirely in the hands of Larry's party. And he is their leader. He must take action. As much as he'd like to avoid the wear and tear of a police investigation, especially on such a harrowing afternoon, one look at the man's corpse warns Larry that he cannot abandon the departed to his fate. The beleaguered soul has been betrayed by his own body, ravaged from within. He deserves better than a mass of heat and flies. While Larry calculates whether he is better off transporting the corpse the four blocks to Police Plaza or simply calling the local precinct, Rita Blatt intercedes and dials 9-1-1 on her cellular phone. Neither she nor the Dutch tourists appear terribly fazed by the corpse. Van Huizen begins to tell a story about a time he found a stray arm on the beach, and then Rita Blatt relates her experience visiting the morgue for a feature on abandoned body parts. The Dutch tourists begin snapping photos with the deceased. The scene acquires a comic, almost festive dimension that disgusts Larry. His burghers are acting as though the man has died for their entertainment, as though he were just some prop for their anecdotes, and Larry will not endure it. The crisis is over. It is time to hit the road.

“Let's get going,” he announces crossly. “The police are coming. We don't need trouble.”

The Dutch murmur their collective assent. They have no desire for trouble. If their leader suggests that they have done their duty, then he knows best. They still have bridges to cross, churches to admire, souvenirs to purchase. They have already experienced enough of police and ambulances for one day. Only Rita Blatt appears unconvinced, but she buckles under Larry's icy glare. He runs his hand over the dead man's forehead and draws shut the deep blue eyes. Then he points his finger northward, toward the bridge, and leads his entourage forward at a rapid clip. This is a tragedy, but unlike the loss of the letter, it is not
his
tragedy. Besides, Larry assures himself, the deceased man will be provided for. His body will be examined, recorded, and appropriately dispatched; a team of driven pathologists will sample his liver and lungs. Gotham takes care of its corpses.

Larry briefly envies the dead man. Then he suffers a burst of perverse insight, one he knows he can never share, in which he conceives of the municipal morgue as New York's greatest irony: What is it, after all, except a lost and found for the dead?

Starshine's first job in New York, as a nineteen-year-old nonentity fresh off the bus from San Francisco, was working the cash register at a Kosher-style delicatessen on Broome Street. The proprietor's name was Nat Napthali. He was a stunted, droopy creature, a pension-fund manager turned restaurateur, who sincerely believed that with enough up front capital and a wax pencil tucked behind his ear, he could reap a cash cow from overcooked brisket and third-cut pastrami. His goal was to franchise, to “do for the Jews what Pizza Hut had done for the Italians.” Napthali's Noshes survived for nine months; Starshine's tenure lasted eleven days. She despised the ingrained stench of sizzling meat that seeped into her pores during the workday, that accompanied her home like an unwanted puppy; she hated Napthali's gambit of intentionally overpaying her at the end of a shift to probe her integrity. But more than anything else, she detested the proprietor's oblique and ongoing critique of her attire. He never said Please wear this, please don't wear that. Instead, he confined himself to periodic barbs of the most pernicious sort, speciously casual observations on the height of hemlines and the merits of pantyhose and the podiatric dangers of wearing sandals, all phrased in the abstract to preclude any response. But when he finally informed her, point-blank in response to an accounting error, that a successful businesswoman showed less thigh and more thoroughness, she pulled up her skirt, gave the dumbstruck old ass a lot more than thigh, and stormed out. The next
morning, Starshine adopted her employment mantra, a variation on the counsel to mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes, and she has never since worn shoes to any job interview. She stashes them in her handbag beforehand as a matter of principle. It they won't hire her barefoot, she won't do their bidding.