The Deed (14 page)

“That’s what I
thought
it meant,” said J.D. excitedly. “You’re all right, son.”

“I don’t know if it means all that,” Jason said, smiling, “particularly that last little rider. I’m pretty sure it’s just the land itself, not everything on it.”

“You just haven’t thought it through,” Nick interjected. “If I build a house in your parents’ backyard without their permission, I don’t own it—they do. All these people who built buildings on your land are trespassers, pure and simple.”

“You’re probably cleared to shoot the bastards,” J.D. suggested.

“I don’t know,” argued Paul. “I’m pretty sure they’d have established some sort of squatters’ rights after the first two or three centuries.”

“Killjoy,” said Nick.

Paul shrugged. “Look, I hate to be the voice of reason,” he continued, “but you
do
know this isn’t plausible, right?”

“Of course,” Jason replied.

“No, she’s right,” said J.D. “Amanda is, I mean. Indian tribes
are
always winning land-rights and fishing-rights battles and so forth. I read something in the
Times
just a couple of months ago where the British in New Zealand had violated some treaty from the 1800s and the Maoris won back a big chunk of land.”

“But we’re not talking about a hundred acres of underdeveloped suburb on the outskirts of Bumfuck,” said Paul. “This is ground central for planet earth.”

“The toast of the globe,” suggested J.D. with a dramatic flourish of his beer.

“So let’s assume it’s real,” Paul continued, turning back to Jason. “The deed exists,
and
you find it,
and
you turn out to be the heir in question. What court is ever going to award you the tiniest little corner of Manhattan?” He quickly surveyed the table. “What Alzheimer’s-addled judge is going to give you one square foot of Trump’s train yards, or Helmsley’s hotels, or—”

“Take it easy,” Jason protested. “I’m not delusional, I’m just mildly interested in the idea that an ancestor of mine might have had some sort of role in the history of my city.”

“Ooh, ‘my city,’” said J.D. to Nick, angling a thumb at Jason. “Get him. La-de-dah. All hail the king.”

Jason cracked up at this. “I mean the city I live in, you dolt.”

“Prepare to be asked to take out a large loan for unspecified ‘research,’” warned Paul.

“Oh, lighten up, Nancy,” said Nick. “Let a man humor the girl and get laid, willya?”

Becky let out an exasperated little sigh. “I was
wondering
when someone was going to drag the conversation to the lowest common denominator.” She looked at Nick. “But I didn’t wonder
who
it was going to be.”

“Seriously, Jason,” said Nick. “In all seriousness, here—” He paused, leaning conspiratorially into the middle of the table. “I’m due about twenty percent of this shit.”

“Here it comes,” said J.D.

“There’s five of us—musketeers to the end, Jason,” said Nick. “Don’t forget.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jason laughed. “Pack your bags, asshole. You’ll be lucky if I give you till sundown to get the hell off my land.”

“How many times have I saved your life?” Nick wondered. “Remember when we were all in that lifeboat, and I said, ‘No, no; let’s everybody eat
my
leg…’?”

“Are you
stoned?
” Jason demanded, grabbing the pitcher and pulling it close to him, dementedly sloshing beer all over the table. “I want it all! All of it, do you understand?” He let out a calculatedly deranged laugh. “It’s
mine,
I tell you!
Mine!
”

The squeal of the garbage truck’s brakes went on and on and on in an accelerating blare of elephantine fear, as if it had been skidding sideways for blocks, clearing a wave of haplessly stampeding pedestrians before it. Lying awake in his apartment two stories above the fray, unable to close the window or even cover his ears without an unthinkably energetic muscular contraction, Jason clenched his eyes shut and moaned.

A tentative morning breeze kept picking up and releasing a corner of the shade, widening and contracting a hot triangle of sunlight across Jason’s back, at the foot of the bed where he lay, facedown, sprawled in exquisite agony. Outside, trash cans clanged into the back of the truck.

With a melodramatic groan, Jason hoisted his aching face from the fetid bedsheets. Nausea shivered his frame as he encountered his own body’s smoky, alcoholic reek, and steel marbles of pain blurred his vision into hazy myopia.
Existence is pain, says the Buddha,
his mind grumbled. Squinting and frowning like a newborn pup, Jason gamely propped himself on one elbow and surveyed the room.

On the floor beside the bed a pair of suit pants had twisted themselves into an awkward tent, one leg inside out. He was still wearing the shirt, a rumpled white Oxford, indifferently buttoned, one shirttail tucked into cotton boxers. He reached up to his hairline, and was immeasurably relieved at not encountering a necktie knotted bachelor-party style around his forehead.

Clumsily, he rolled right and fumbled in the nightstand drawer for a trusty bottle of ibuprofen; he found it by feel, then cursed as he peeled off an arc of fingernail on the childproof cap.
Come on, buddy; hold it together,
he urged with quiet desperation, huddling on the edge of the bed and shaking pills into his hand. Atop the nightstand an oversized Tsing Tao beer, nearly full, had sweated condensation into a ring at its base; he dimly recalled having bought it at a deli while staggering home on autopilot.

“Jesus Christ,” he growled, emptying a half dozen pills from fist to mouth, staring dumbly at the beer. “‘When,’ already.”

With a grunt, he forced himself to his feet, socks half sloughed off, and began to lumber toward the kitchenette, pausing en route as another shudder of nausea rippled through him. An archway leading to the tiny kitchen was crowned by an oversize framed print of the
Mona Lisa,
no less, larger than life. A Magic Marker signature in the lower right-hand corner read: “To Jason—handsa offa my wife, ha-ha! XXOO, Leonardo.” He patted the side walls as he stepped through, part course correction, part relief at the continued solidity of the material world.
Good wall, nice wall.
The tile floor looked cool and invitingly horizontal.

And then he was squinting into the glare of the refrigerator, scooting aside jars of condiments and a withered carton of Chinese food dating back to some long-dead dynasty—the fridge’s total contents, except for one item.

“Ha!” Jason managed in weak triumph, retrieving it: a large, new bottle of V-8.

Elbowing shut the fridge, Jason discovered to his chagrin that he couldn’t loosen the lid. He tried again, this time making a conscious effort not to grind his teeth, which magnified the crippling ache in his head.
Here’s a setback.
Pausing for breath, he looked at the bottle, lid still doggedly glued shut, and set it down on the edge of the sink to dry his sweaty palms on his boxers. And then disaster struck: The V-8 bottle somehow slipped its perch and toppled into the sink, busting on impact with a hollow pop.

“Fuck!” said Jason aloud, watching seven blended vegetable juices bubble as one into the drain. He looked down at the wide-mouthed juice glass in his hand and dramatically lobbed it into the sink as well, where it shattered satisfyingly. He stared in idiot exultation.

“You see? No God,” he said, to nobody in particular.

He turned, defeated, and began to retreat to the womb of the bed, the still-warm bed with the flannel sheets and the rumpled pillow that was right there, a few feet away. A few steps along, already planning the leap, Jason noticed the answering machine light flashing patiently on the nightstand. He paused, sighed, and turned down the volume to a safe decibel level before pressing the replay button.

As the machine rewound, collecting its thoughts, he lay back on the bed wearily and rubbed his eyes.

“Hi, Jason—it’s Amanda,” said the machine. “I wanted to make sure we were still on for tomorrow morning.”

“Fuck off,” he barked at the ceiling.

“I assume we’re on,” the machine continued, ignoring him, “so can we say…ten o’clock? I’ll pick you up on the southwest corner of…call it Eighty-first and Broadway. If that’s too early, just call me before I leave.”

With growing despair, Jason sat up again and forced his eyes to make the short hop over to the clock radio, where red LEDs blinked out 9:38 in devilish joy.

“I’m not going,” he said aloud, suddenly six years old. But it wasn’t true. Already his feet were reaching for the floor, his hands rubbing color into his cheeks, his eyes scanning the room bitterly for a baseball cap and sunglasses.

Fifteen minutes later, still hungover but with a brown paper bag tucked under one arm, Jason stepped out of H & H Bagels, stuffing change into a front pocket with his free hand in open defiance of the amateur doorman’s empty cup. He donned his shades under the awning, shielding his brain from the relentless photon torpedoes that gently warmed the Upper West Side, and braced himself for what was, to people who weren’t quite as hung over as he, probably considered a nice day.

Walking over to the literal corner of Broadway and 81st, Jason dropped one foot over the curb and surveyed the shores of Broadway, filtered through soothing Ray-Ban earth tones. Brunchers clustered like bananas around tiny outdoor tables: hot babes in tank tops and ball caps braving the still-breezy April day; college buddies with smoothly retreating hair-lines, sipping bottomless mimosas and eating a thousand variants of eggs Benedict. Some languidly read the first half of the Sunday
Times,
the nonessential stuff they release on Saturday because it takes two days to read the behemoth; others, giddy and punchy, dropped silverware and cracked one another up with details from the previous night’s escapades.

Enticed by the warmth emanating through his shirtsleeve, Jason uncrinkled the top of the bagel bag and buried his nose in it, drinking in the agreeably doughy smell. Undaunted, a team of Clydesdales thundered mercilessly up the inside of his skull.

Why am I here?
Jason asked himself, frowning, even as he turned from the sidewalk attractions to stare uptown into the traffic, eyes peeled for a car to distinguish itself as his ride.
I bought a perfectly good bed for just this sort of situation.

He remembered discussing going to the reservation with Amanda, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember whether he’d actually promised to go. Probably all part of her diabolical plan. By all rights, he should be at home sitting on the john, with Safire’s column spread before him and his cheek comfortingly chilling against the side of his marble sink, patiently waiting for Amanda to get the hint and stop buzzing the intercom. And yet, here he was, manning a street corner with boyish optimism, a warm gift sweating up his hand. She’d told him, in quite unimpeachable English, that she wasn’t interested. So why was he here?

Because penises can’t hear,
said a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Nick.
Because despite all evidence to the contrary, deep down you still think you’re gonna get your peepee in her tepee.

Well, it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do this weekend. Updating his résumé, for all his procrastination, was a ten-minute affair: one job to add, one date to change, a few vigorous action verbs to reshuffle. It was a matter of control, he supposed. This whole nonaffair with Amanda was too unpredictable for his liking; it resonated uncomfortably with everything else that was helter-skelter in his life.

Just once I’d like to get my hands on the wheel,
he said to himself, watching a BMW slam on the brakes to avoid humping the back end of a delivery truck.
Take the world for a little test drive.

Moments later, an enormous copper-colored station wagon lurched without warning toward the curb in front of him, careening aside at the last minute as if ricocheting off his personal aura. The weather-beaten, lumbering creature, engine bellowing impatience, seemed truly a marvel of mechanics; for all he knew, it was the largest car ever to shave the face of the earth.

“Nice entrance,” he said appreciatively, through the now-open passenger window, voice rising to counter the clanking roar.

“Hop in,” she invited warmly. “Watch the spring.”

Jason lowered himself into the car, executing a quick pelvic thrust to avoid a twisted pigtail of metal that poked menacingly up through the cracked vinyl of the seat. “How’s it going?” he asked. Amanda was wearing a tight, short-sleeved white T-shirt and faded jeans; loose hair cascaded messily over her shoulders.

“I feel
great,
” she said enthusiastically, gunning the engine and merging recklessly into the traffic before sparing another glance toward him. “You, you don’t look so hot.”

“Mmm, well,” he said, raising a hand to his forehead. “I apparently got caught in some sort of brick storm last night.”

She smiled wryly. “I’m glad you could make it, Jason. This is going to be fun—you’ll see,” she promised slyly.

He shook his head. “Nothing’s going to be much fun for Jason today, I’m afraid.”

As Amanda steered them through the shifting traffic pattern around the 72nd Street subway station, Jason settled for acclimating himself to the car’s interior. The floor at his feet was littered with a mélange of debris: scattered papers and beer cans, fast-food bags, a lone boot, a few battered paperbacks, assorted grimy pens and pencils, a crumpled tampon box. Beside him, the pocket on the passenger door bulged with maps, napkins, and the lid of an old Ho Hos box scribbled with phone messages. A tangle of Mardi Gras beads dangled from the rearview; an actual wad of gum held the car’s registration to the base of the dashboard, between his knees.

“You baby-sit monkeys or something?” he wondered.

Amanda shot him a disapproving look. “Now, that’s just plain judgmental.”

“Sorry,” he replied. “Brought you some bagels,” he offered, holding up the bag.

With delicate fingers she accepted an onion bagel, still warm to the touch. “Thanks,” she said, eyeing it with obvious approval, and he watched as she sank her teeth in. Toasted scabs of onion tumbled teasingly into her crotch.

She had a hypnotizing presence, he decided, meaning it literally. When alone, he could easily dismiss her, forget her gentle geometry, forgive her disorganized brain. Her proximity changed the equation, he realized with a smile as he allowed his gaze to trace her face in profile, skiing lightly off the end of her nose.

“So give me a preview,” coaxed Jason as they saw the first signs for the Midtown tunnel. “What’s your mother like?”

Amanda studiously kept her eyes on the road. “Yeah, I guess I ought to prepare you a little,” she said thoughtfully. “Mom’s very…intense. An activist, you’d probably call her—very, very into tribal matters. She’s the sachem, like I said before, the tribal leader. Our tribe has always been governed by women.”

“So…is sachem a job, or a title?” Jason replied. “I mean, are there actual duties or responsibilities, or is it mostly ceremonial…now?”

She frowned. “It may not have as much practical application these days, granted. But my mother considers herself a living link in an unbroken line of leadership that stretches back more than a thousand years.” She paused momentarily. “She’s sort of the official keeper of the best interests of the tribe. She speaks for the Manahata; she provides advice and counsel for the whole tribe. That’s the nonpolitical part of her job.” Here she turned to face Jason. “It’s not ceremonial to her, at least,” she concluded.

They entered the Queens/Midtown tunnel, rolling downhill along the bottom of the East River and rising again on the far side, off the island. Jason hooked the toe of his sneaker into the tampon box, lifting it off the carpet. “Whose reservation is this again?” he asked. “The other tribe’s?”

Amanda nodded. “It’s complicated.”