White Tiger on Snow Mountain (25 page)

5:14 AM blkrose signed on

I AM THE REAPER I GATHER PRECXIOUS TEARS HRVEST OF SORROW

5:15 AM blkrose has gone offline

I went back to bed but could not sleep. I rolled around and thought about cigarettes and sex and all the other things it hurt to want until I felt strangled in the sheets. I kicked free and got
up to make coffee. Then I went back online, glancing quickly at the email from my client, requesting more rewrites and a conference call. (Did I think they should say “khakis” or “chinos”? Was khaki a color or a whole lifestyle? Did the word “chinos” sound more Hispanic or Chinese?) I answered quickly, then switched to Google Maps, but there were a great many Pine Streets in New Jersey, and restricting my search to those with houses numbered 42 didn’t help much. Then I remembered her story about stumbling across the strip club: Way the fuck out on the turnpike, she’d said. Past the airport. It stunk.

I was pretty sure I knew where that was, having smelled it myself, the fumes from chemical plants mingled with rotting wetlands. I guessed that when she found the place, she’d been living in one of the richer suburban towns, heading out to some slum or crap strip mall her dad’s friend built. So the club had to be along the roads that crossed the stink zone from the rich neighborhoods into Newark. Also, I guessed that if the club was “a place to land,” then the cheap house she’d rented after getting fired would be nearby. I started searching for bars and strip joints, pinning them on the map, and found one, JR’s Cafe Fantasy, that had a Pine Street 7.2 miles away.

Then I rented a car and, for the first time in a long while, I left the island. The rain lifted, at least to the rooftops, where it clung like a sequined shroud, and with the GPS calmly urging me on in a seductive female voice (“Go straight, go straight, two miles . . .”), I felt my way through the spiraling infrastructure of on-ramps and off-ramps, junctions and waste fields, with planes plowing the low clouds and poison leaching from the smokestacks, here a black scribble across woolen gray sky, there a sudden belch of fire, like a bubble rising from a petrochemical
plant’s silver tower. I followed the signs and signals, ignored the quietly insistent voice telling me to turn left into oncoming traffic, and found the right exit at last.

Weeds, corrugated warehouses rusting purple in the damp light, an auto body shop with a guy in a ball cap out front smoking in a swivel chair, a giant sleeping Costco, a mass graveyard of smashed cars stacked stories high, a cat squeezing under the fence. There were no addresses on the buildings or signs on the streets—this was nowhere, and the people who came already knew where they were headed—but I arrived eventually at an intersection where something called New Palermo Clam House and JR’s Cafe Fantasy faced each other, lit by shafts of sun that had found a way through the murk. At first glance it was the thought of those clams that gave me chills. The strip club seemed merely sad, its garish sign rotating for no one atop a pole. There were no windows on the black building, only one shut door with a sign forbidding entrance to those under twenty-one. The potholes in the parking lot shone with silver rain.

I parked and went in. It was impossible to see anything in the dim, carpeted foyer except a vague figure behind a counter.

“Welcome to Junior’s,” said a kindly voice. An old man in a mustache and pink golf shirt materialized. “ID please.”

I showed him my license, paid ten bucks, and went inside. It was a low-ceilinged, windowless space, like a basement with no upstairs. The walls were mostly mirrored, the ceiling was sparkled black stucco set with spotlights, and there was a long stage where a couple of girls listlessly turned on poles and a bar in the back where a muscley dude in a cutoff T-shirt lounged, absently fingering his phone. There were three other customers: Two
were IT types in short sleeves and tan slacks (badly wrinkled, they should switch to my employer’s chakhinos), one with an ID still on a lanyard around his neck, the other with his Bluetooth in. They sat stiffly at a table, ogling the girls. Huddled at the end of the bar was a lone gunman type, frazzled fringe of hair and army jacket, staring in fury through thick glasses. The girls looked tragic. One was crackhead thin with limp boobs and lanky red hair. The other was brown-skinned and composed of soft rolls, with deep creases between her thighs and ass, ass and belly, belly and upper belly, upper belly and breasts. Her purple nipples stood out like valves on overinflated tires. Neither of these women, moving like zombies at aerobics class, could possibly be blkrose.

I approached the bartender. “Excuse me,” I shouted into his face. The music was very loud. Some kind of dance pop number.

“What do you need?” he screamed back.

“Actually I’m looking for a friend. I think she dances here sometimes. White girl. Dark hair. Big boobs.” I felt like an idiot, realizing how little I really knew about my pal. Her background, education, religion, everything was a blank. We were inside out: We knew only the things other people hid from one another. We shared our shameful secret identities and turned around our masks. Then I had an idea: “She goes by Rose. She dances to Cameron Diaz and the Ying Yang Kids?”

“Rose Black?” he said.

“That’s her. She around?”

“Nah, not in a while.”

“Know how I can reach her? It’s kind of important.”

“Nah, sorry.”

“You don’t have her contact information on file?”

“Maybe if you ask the manager. What’s her real name?”

“Sorry?”

“Her parents didn’t call her Rose Black, dude. That’s her stripper name. What’s her real name?”

“Oh, right. I’m not sure.”

“Some friend. You must be close.”

“No, ha-ha, it’s true, we’re not. But there’s been an emergency.”

“Sorry, dude. No can do. So unless you want a drink, relax and enjoy the show.”

“Listen, how about this?” I went on. “You call her. Don’t give me the number. Just please call and see if she’s OK.”

He leaned in and poked my chest, as though pressing a mute button. “Dude, I told you. No. Can. Fucking. Do.”

“But . . .” I felt a shooting pain in my shoulder. It was a set of large fingers in a Spock grip, pressing some nerve in my neck, almost as hard as Amy did. The fingers belonged to an even larger man in a black T-shirt, parachute pants, and ponytail. He smiled down at me.

“Problem here, sir?” he yelled into my ear.

“No,” I gasped. “Everything’s fine, thanks.”

The bartender came around, grabbed my other, nonparalyzed arm, and began twisting it up around my spine. “You were just leaving, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “But can I just see the manager on my way out?” I was now bent double, as though I were trying to touch my toes with my face. My limbs were numb.

“I’m the manager,” Ponytail said. “Step into my office.”

Holding both my arms, they ran me out the door and into a mud-filled pothole. The sunlight was dazzling. The clouds had cleared. A rainbow appeared over Newark.

“You know, sir,” the manager said, looking down as I struggled to my knees, “what creeps like you don’t get? These girls are just entertainers trying to make a living. They’re not fantasy objects or property or something. They’re real people with lives, thoughts, feelings of their own, just like you. Except, of course, way hotter.”

I nodded. It was true.

“Cashmere in there has three kids to support,” the bartender put in. “Dude, her husband lost a leg in Iraq. And Sparkle, the redhead? She’s working her way through social work school. She’s going to focus on homelessness.”

“Go home,” the manager suggested as they walked away. “Forget about the girl. And get a life.”

42 Pine Street was being renovated. There was a dumpster in the driveway full of old furniture and a stack of paint cans and tarps on the porch. No one seemed to be around. I approached cautiously and peeked through the unshaded window. A ladder stood in the middle of the empty room. There seemed no point in knocking, but also no point in giving up. I pressed the doorbell. Nothing. I knocked. Silence again.

I was about to go when I heard it. Weeping. Whining. A high-pitched note that I felt, in my spine, could easily be a girl, bound and gagged, too weak to scream after hanging in a closet for days. I tried the door. It was unlocked.

“Hello?” I yelled. “Is anyone here?”

I stepped inside. “Hello? Sorry to intrude. Hello?” I stood still, thinking maybe I was wrong, and then it came again: low, high, tearful, a moan from behind a door down the hall. Fear raced through me, an irrational desire to forsake the mission, to get in the car and drive home and hide in my room. Instead I knocked.

“Are you in there? Do you need help?”

Now it came louder, a whimper, a yelp. I opened the door, leaping a foot high in terror as a fuzzy white kitten shot through my legs and disappeared into the house.

Holy shit. I caught my breath. The door led to a small, empty, harmless bedroom. The window was up, no doubt how the cat got in, though why it was too stupid to jump back out, who knows? As my heart rate slowed, shame replaced the fear. In a dusty wall mirror, I regarded my woeful visage in disgust. This whole thing had been a prank. Blkrose was a sad old man or three bored teenagers. Time to listen to the manager and go home. Then I noticed the closet, partially ajar, reflected in the mirror behind me. There was something in there. I opened it. Two mangled hangers hung from the pole. One cheap black stiletto shoe lay in the corner, heel snapped. And scratched into the wall paint, crooked as a child’s scrawl: HELP ME.

I left. Sex slave or prankster or child playing hide and seek, there was nothing more I could do. The sun was fading. It was cold but it smelled like spring. There was still old snow caked in the corners, gathering soot in a delicate pattern like dark lace on white thighs, but the big thaw had begun. Two crows hunched on the house across the street, as if they had followed
me from the river. One cawed, mockingly, and flapped his torn black wings.

In April the calendar changed to pandas romping and munching bamboo, and Dr. Chang decided I too was ready for the next phase. She suggested a special incense so rare and exotic as to be unknown even in Chinatown. Amy had to get it for me from Queens. You took a slice of the herbs, which came in a tube like sausage, and sandwiched it between a slice of some stuff called moxa, which burned slowly like punk, and one of ginger, then pinned it all together with a needle and set it on the lower belly, in a spot that I found by measuring from my navel. Then you lit up and relaxed.

The healing process was becoming increasingly abstract and unbelievable in direct proportion to its effectiveness: The herbal pills were just medicine after all, the needles poked something somehow, the cups at least touched my skin, but this? How would smoke passing near to my body help? Yet dismissing something that worked just because I didn’t understand it seemed as foolish as believing in nonsense.

So I tried it at home, lying on the floor beside my bed, just to see the results. First, it stunk. Next, I felt a warm tingling sensation that I thought might be the magic working. Then the tingling became painful and the warmth became really quite hot, but I’d been told to let it burn out to ash, so I gritted my teeth. Finally, when I checked, there was a small blister on my skin.

Dr. Chang seemed bemused. It turned out I had shoved the pin too far, through the ginger, which was meant to protect my skin. As it was, the metal heated and scorched me.

“You burned yourself? Why?” she asked.

“I didn’t realize it was burning me. I thought it was working.”

She shook her head—clearly I was hopeless—and showed me again. But when I got home I found a note from the landlord demanding that I stop cooking whatever I was making in the house, so I decided to try the park. It was the first really fine day.

I found a shady sheltered spot near the river and lay down. I prepped the little sliced treats precisely as instructed, got my old cigarette lighter going, and set it on my belly like an especially delightful hors d’oeuvre. It was nice. In the trees above me, tiny sparrows chirped and chortled in a constant bubbling stream, flitting among young leaves and twinning branches, like a happy tapestry weaving itself in the sun. The perfume wafted over my face and blew away, leaving my skull pleasantly filled. I shut my eyes, and the little jewels beneath my lids began to float and weave, just like the tree above. I felt I too might drift away, like smoke, if weren’t for the grass under my hands.

“Excuse me, sir.”

Returning to earth, I opened an eye. “Huh?” A circle of police faces peered down at me. I sat up in panic, toppling my little tower. “What is it?”

“Sorry to disturb you, sir,” one older cop said. He was a ruddy blond fellow. “What are you doing exactly?”

“It’s this Chinese herb my doctor gave me. You can take it away if you want. It just cost like five dollars in Chinatown,” I lied slightly to simplify things. “It’s supposed to help me quit smoking. To be honest, I couldn’t think of what law I’d be breaking.”

“You’re not actually,” the cop agreed, then frowned sheepishly and leaned closer. “Some of the tourists complained.” I
looked around. I had failed to notice a large nearby structure, some kind of vague monument of wood and stone and steps. Tourists were snapping photos of each other with the Statue of Liberty in the background. Also, they had an excellent view of my belly. The cop shrugged. “They think you’re smoking pot.”

Ridiculous, I thought, if anything it looks like I’m smoking hash. Instead, I just said, “Oh, sorry. I’ll stop.”

“No, that’s OK,” he said. “You relax and enjoy your herbs. Have a good day, sir.”

“Thanks, Officer!”

He leaned in deeper as his comrades wandered off. “Is it working?”

“Sorry?”

“With the smoking. Is it helping? I’d do anything to quit.”

“I kind of think it is,” I told him. “I know it sounds nutty. You should try it.”

I was too self-conscious to light up again, so I stamped out my stuff and went home. It was just as well. There was a sudden snow flurry that afternoon, white confetti tumbling down like an overstuffed cloud had burst, freeing a flock of flowers. It didn’t stick, though, melting on arrival like sugar on a tongue. That was the end of winter.