The Biology of Luck (15 page)

These men know nothing of that beautiful young girl, of course, except that her smile touches something primal inside them. And what would they say if they did know? If she added her own girlhood pictures to those of the destitute orphans—of a tearful ten-year-old being warned to smile at her own father's funeral so that her mother wouldn't worry about her? Or candid photographs of her flabby forearms bleeding under the hot tap of the bath on the night of her high school prom? What would they say of her weekends alone tending to her dying mother—of those long afternoons spent lamenting that pretty girls had boyfriends to help them, husbands to help them, attractive male nurses clamoring to offer assistance? Most likely, these men would shrug off her suffering. They don't want to know her, after all. They don't even want to sleep with her. All they want is to think that she'd be willing to sleep with them. It is prostitution without intercourse. And for Starshine, who unabashedly thrives on the attention, provided it is fleeting and stringless, coaxing money from these men is easier than turning a trick.
Almost
always.

Park Slope offers both an element of risk and the potential for a lucrative payoff. This is true of most gentrifying neighborhoods, particularly in the outer boroughs, where newly flush artists and starter couples jostle the long-time locals for space. The indigenous population, usually working class and presuburban, contributes according to its means. Young mothers frequently donate a smile and ten dollars in cash; young fathers hem and haw before producing a twenty. These interactions pose little threat and generate less reward. It is the young artists, an overwhelming proportion of whom are single men under forty, who will either fill Starshine's coffers or fray her nerves. Some write checks on their parents' accounts for hundreds of dollars; others expect her to return their generosity quid pro quo. Once, in Astoria, two thirty-something men whom she mistook for
a gay couple locked her in their bathroom and she was forced to flee down the fire escape; the police later scoffed at her charges. One another occasion, a college kid clasped his hands around her ankles and begged her to sleep with him. Not a month goes by without some unpleasant episode, a brush with the city's up-and-coming population of gropers and fondlers and flashers, but Starshine has been canvassing long enough to spot the danger signs and retreat. Sometimes, of course, a perfectly nondescript door hides the gravest of threats.

Starshine has been working Seventh Avenue for nearly an hour when she approaches apartment 4B and pushes Ezekiel Borasch's buzzer. Her take for the day already exceeds $450. If she picks up another fifty, she can depart to meet Jack with a clear conscience. But one glimpse of Borasch, standing arms akimbo in his doorway with a maniacal leer in his eyes and a cigarette drooping between his lips, and Starshine knows she has rung the wrong bell. “Don't look so put out, girl,” says the large, unkempt man by way of greeting. “
You
rang
my
bell.”

He's wearing only dungarees. No shirt, no shoes. It's enough to make her turn on her heels and run. But that could invite pursuit. So Starshine takes a deep breath and politely states that she has accidentally pressed the wrong buzzer. Her fruit basket slips from her hand as she speaks, dispatching apricots and plums between Borasch's bare feet and into the unknown.

“Oh, shit!” exclaims Starshine.

“Nothing to worry about, girl,” says Borasch. “It's just fruit. Life will go on. “

He steps into the apartment and sets about retrieving the lost harvest. Some of the nectarines have rolled a considerable distance, under tables, behind bookcases, and Borasch must crawl around on the carpet to retrieve them. Starshine is surprised to find the flat relatively hygienic. Stacks of notepads and hardcover books clutter the upholstery, and the remains of a desiccated philodendron decay on the radiator, but there are no visible traces of grime and squalor. The room is in much better shape than Jack Bascomb's studio. And Ziggy
Borasch, scrambling around the carpet on all fours, appears much less ominous. She has already inched into the apartment herself and rested the remnants of her basket on the back of his sofa when Borasch steps forward with the salvaged fruit. He holds two nectarines and a plum in one hand, two apricots in the other. He reminds Starshine of a juggler, of an oversized, bare-chested court jester. She can't help smiling as she takes the fruit.

“So what charity do you work for?” Borasch asks unexpectedly.

Her question puts her back on her guard.

“You're raising money for some cause or another,” Borasch says again. “There's nothing to be ashamed of. You showed up expecting some old lady ready to shell out her life savings to save the whales or preserve old buildings or something, and I scared the living daylights out of you. But there really isn't anything to worry about. This happens all the time. A couple of years ago, a foolish young woman from the Nature Conservancy ran down the stairs and twisted her ankle. I had to phone the police and it put a dent in my workday. So speak up and account for yourself, girl. What charity?”

“The Cambodian Children's Fund,” stammers Starshine.

“Never heard of it. I bet you want to know how I figured you out.”

Starshine edges back toward the door. Borasch isn't scoping out her breasts or thighs; he's staring her straight in the face. His eyes are sharp as needles. She has encountered men like Ezekiel Borasch once or twice before—her Uncle Luther was one of them—the rare breed of desperate souls who wander through life looking for some elusive formula. Most men are driven by longings for sex and companionship; they want to unload their burdens onto your lap, to drown you in cacti, to follow you home like unwanted puppies. But a select few want to sponge you of your wisdom, to take rather than give, as though a conspiracy of beautiful young women intentionally conceals life's greater meaning. These men are smart. They are also often dangerous.

“You rang my buzzer, not the downstairs bell,” says Borasch. “That means you had to be in the building already. Now if your alleged friend had buzzed you in, you would have known her apartment
number. The names aren't listed in the lobby, but they are printed on the doors. So I figured you were either begging for money or delivering Chinese food.”

‘Well, I should be going,” says Starshine. “I'm sorry about the fruit.”

“Aren't you going to ask me for money?”

Starshine takes another step backward. She braces the fruit basket against her chest.

“Do you want to donate to the Cambodian Children's Fund?” Borasch runs his hand through his disheveled mane as though deep in thought.

“Not in a million years,” he finally says. “Why would I give money to an organization I've never even heard of before?”

His tone is not aggressive. If anything, it is almost curious, but Starshine has had enough of Ezekiel Borasch for one afternoon. She can't provide this man with meaning any more than she can offer sex to the Armenian florist or security to Colby Parker. It's not a matter of
won't
. It's a matter of
can't
. Why don't men understand that? If she capitulated to the needs of every man who wanted something from her, there wouldn't be any Starshine left. She's already being picked to pieces by two men. There isn't any more of her to go around.

‘I'm sorry for disturbing you,” says Starshine. “I'll be going now.”

Borasch stares past her. “Why would I give money to an organization I've never even heard of before?” he asks again—only this time, his voice is distant and philosophical. “Why would anyone give money to anyone else? It's so contrary to the national ethos. So downright un-American.”

“I'm going,” Starshine says again.

She backs through the doorway, keeping her eyes on Borasch. Better safe than sorry. She's thankful for her caution when the man suddenly breaks free of his trance and charges toward her, past her, through the fire door and into the stairwell, shouting like a lunatic as he goes.

“I've got it!” he cries. “I've got it!”

Nope, mister, you've lost it, Starshine thinks—but this is none of her business. She momentarily debates pulling shut his door, but she wants as little responsibility for this madman as possible. She has seen what a man like Ezekiel Borasch can do to a woman. Her Uncle Luther, at one time a well-respected journalist for the
Herald Tribune
, devoted the last twenty years of his life to studying evil. His pet project was a series of interviews he conducted with widows of war criminals. What made their husbands tick? he wanted to know. How could a man butcher millions of innocent civilians and then read bedtime stories to his children? Her uncle's eyes would fluctuate between sharp and glassy; he often repeated the same rhetorical questions for hours upon end. And he died with absolutely nothing to show for it. But how poor Aunt Agatha suffered! Starshine was still living with her mother at the time, so she missed the worst of the business, but she has heard her aunt's horror stories of serving tea to Lavrenti Beria's daughter-in-law and cooking dinner for Mrs. Heinrich Himmler. Pure torture! So Starshine truly doesn't care what Ezekiel Borasch has got—what pet theory, what clinical psychosis—as long as he doesn't share it with her.

She unlocks her Higgins and coasts up Atlantic Avenue to Court Street and then over the Brooklyn Bridge, the fruit arrangement perched awkwardly in her bicycle's wicker basket. The bicycle causeway doubles as a pedestrian crossing, so she must navigate an obstacle course of middle-aged power walkers and camera-happy tourists. The sightseers have the nasty habit of congregating in packs. They bottleneck the access ramps and clog the straightaways in the best tradition of wayfarers everywhere. They're just making the most of the afternoon, doing as they've been told. Their guides should know better. Starshine makes a point of shouting at the irresponsible tour leaders who refuse to curb their charges; this is among her strongest pet peeves. But this particular group of tourists—either Dutch or German, by their appearance—is conspicuously unchaperoned. It's no wonder they're congesting the footpath. Starshine speculates on
the whereabouts of their commander, having recently read in the
Downtown Rag
that an average of three city tour guides die in the line of duty each year, two by suicide and one decapitated by a traffic light, but the bottom line is that she's actually pleased she can't find him. Starshine is feeling fully elated for the first time all day. She has survived breakfast with Colby; she has obtained her fruit basket. Her mood isn't conducive to yelling.

She hooks a right off the bridge onto Centre Street and rides several blocks standing up. Uptown traffic is light in the early afternoon and she is in no hurry. If she is early for her lunch with Jack, he will make her wait. That is his style, his way of marking his territory. Not that much different from what she does with Colby. Maybe that's the grander meaning that men like Uncle Luther and Ezekiel Borasch are seeking. Maybe life involves the pairing of unsuitable people, those who wait and those who keep others waiting, and the key to happiness is finding the one person with whom you share the same internal chronometer. But who really knows? The bottom line is that she can either kill an hour in Jack's apartment, enduring the silence and stench of stale sex while she waits for him, or she can walk her bike through the Lower East Side at a gingerly pace and savor the aroma of fresh leather and homemade kielbasa. Starshine would much prefer to savor.

Chinatown is among Starshine's favorite neighborhoods. At least, in small doses. It is one of the few enclaves in the city where her beauty carries no weight. She can wander up Hester Street and back down Canal Street without so much as one catcall or obscenity. If she crosses into Little Italy to explore the cheese shops and pastry cafés, she will be inundated with suspect praise. Surrounded by pagoda telephone booths and the aroma of smoked mackerel, she feels entirely sheltered. The difference between the two communities is night and day. And it is where these worlds collide, at the intersection of Mulberry and Canal Streets, where her own glorious day takes a turn toward premature darkness.

The wall of televisions in the window of Lin's Electronics has
attracted a large throng. The faces reflect a mix of Mediterranean and Asian ancestry, sprinkled with the occasional Waspy intruder, suggesting a broadcast of wide appeal, so Starshine edges her way into the crowd. And then she nearly screams. It is so sudden, so unexpected. And it is so revoltingly public. Although she can't hear the newscaster's words, they are captioned for all the world to read in both Latin script and Chinese ideograms. Poor Colby! Poor, poor Colby! It is truly ghastly! Starshine cringes when they cut to the videotape: first the paramedics loading his father's body into the ambulance, then his mother escorting the Dutch consul to some heritage bruncheon. The headline text below reads:

F
URNITURE
B
ARON
G
ARFIELD
L
LOYD
P
ARKER
D
EAD AT
79 D
ISCOVERS
W
IFE'S
I
NFIDELITY FROM
N
EWS
F
OOTAGE OF
G
RANT'S
T
OMB
R
IOT
M
ILLIONAIRE
C
OLLAPSES IN
P
UBLIC
P
ARKING
L
OT
D
UTCH
G
OVERNMENT TO
R
ECALL
E
NTIRE
D
IPLOMATIC
C
ORPS.

Starshine jostles her way through the spectators, pushing, prodding, desperately searching for open air. Her bag falls to the ground and loose change rolls onto the pavement. She doesn't care. She hastily retrieves the bag, resisting the assistance of a muscular man in a business suit, and plows her way down the sidewalk. She is no longer thinking of Colby Parker's parents; she is thinking of Colby and herself. Somehow, she recognizes that this is the breaking point of their relationship, the moment of decision. Starshine mounts her Higgins and attempts to wipe the tears from her eyes. Then she catches sight of the muscular man in hot pursuit.