Debasements of Brooklyn

by Ira Gold

  I venture, “Ivan, listen to me. I had nothing to do with what happened at The National.”

  He jerks Ariel’s head back with force. I imagine Ariel’s neck snapping.

  Only a low-pitched moan emerges from her.

  “Where are my friends now?” Ivan screeches in a voice so full of fury and pain that he shocks me back into the world.

  “We’re free now, Ivan.”

  “Free? I have no one.”

  This dumb Russian fuck is as sentimental as any of us and this will be our deaths. The friends he mourns had never been his friends. I’m sure Vlad considered whacking Ivan as often as Vinnie debated clipping me. They let him beat up people because they were too lazy to do it themselves. That was the extent of their affection for him.

  “Do you know what freedom is, Ivan? Freedom is the right to say two plus two equals four.”

  He spits on the ground. But this comment arouses his interest and slows him down.

  I continue, “Vlad could force you to believe any bullshit, no matter how false. He was your connection to the old country, but he was never your friend.”

  “Where you read two plus two is four?”

  “In Orwell. 1984. Also in first grade.”

  “I got better one. Freedom is saying two plus two equal five. Dostoyevsky. Underground Man. Fuck the Crystal Palace. Fuck the mathematicians. Ha ha. Two plus two equal five because that is what I want. I make rules.”

  “I don’t know if I agree.”

  “Orwell sucks cock. Informer, rat for secret police in England.”

  “Dostoyevsky stole from his wife and was a degenerate gambler with the math skills of a mosquito.”

  Ivan raises his gun. “You know about degenerate gambler from father, right?”

  “Son of a bitch,” I leap over the car’s hood and Ivan pulls down on Ariel’s hair and she screams in pain. He levels the gun at my eyes so I freeze.

  Suddenly, the night turns totally silent. The streetlamp illuminates the three of us like a spotlight. On this dead-end street the babbled confusion that so infests my brain finally silences itself. The fogginess that normally shrouds people and events lifts, and the scene comes sharply into focus. I welcome death. I hope Ivan pulls the trigger.

  Ivan releases Ariel, who’s too stunned to move an inch. His scar pulses like a neon light. I myself feel embraced by the damp spring night. The breeze nips at my cheeks and nose, and cools my rushing blood.

  Despair can easily overtake you, but a death wish has no real staying power. If you don’t die at the right moment, the force that drives flowers upward also yanks you back from the brink.

  I laugh.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I love Dostoyevsky’s work.”

  “So why you talking shit?” Ivan finally lowers the gun. “Orwell is not bad.”

  Ariel stumbles and collapses. She lies at our feet as our discussion continues. “You know,” I tell Ivan, “my father who never made recommendations gave me The Gambler to read so it must be special.”

  “Orwell hated Stalin dictatorship. So I understand why he become rat. Also, his essay on politics and language is best.”

  “What are you going to do now, Ivan? You’re free of our ancient attachments, free from blood, from tribe. You finally made it to America.”

  “I have family. Kids are in school.”

  “I could talk to Pauli Bones for you.”

  He sneers in a way that only Russians can sneer, with such endless contempt that it causes vertigo. But Ivan’s right. Pauli will whack me before he does me any favors. Knowing what I know, I’d be lucky if Pauli Bones just lets me stay disappeared. I ask Ivan, “Can’t you take your family to somewhere until things settle down here?”

  “People there will kill me. People here will kill me. Seems no one wants Ivan alive.”

  “And you’re far from the worst of us.”

  Ivan shrugs. “This business eats people young. I need to be on the street here.”

  “Yeah. Listen, I should pick Ariel up and put her in the car.”

  “Sure.”

  Ariel has risen to one knee.

  Ivan pockets his gun and watches me go around to the driver’s side. His eye sockets twitch. I tell him, “You can light out for the territories, too.”

  “I’m not so American like you. I stay here with my people. I just want to say good-bye.”

  I wedge myself between the open door and the driver’s seat. “What makes them your people? A love of Pushkin and vodka? Because you live with them?”

  “Because I will die with them.”

  “That’s a hell of a philosophy. You can die with anyone, no problem.”

  “Yes, it makes no sense.”

  “Find a nice town. Spend your days selling dope and reading in a clean, well-lit café.”

  “Wouldn’t that be pretty,” says Ivan. And with his huge shoulders hunched, he walks into the night.

  Ivan will never leave Brighton Beach, Little Odessa, for any place in the universe. He has convinced himself that it’s here that his destiny must play out. Maybe he’ll be okay. Maybe Vlad’s successor will enjoy his national literature and will not treat Ivan as a dangerous aberration. Maybe Ivan will expand his own pharmaceutical businesses to the point where his literacy will not infuriate his superiors.

  Probably, however, he will remain the same outcast in his world as I had been in mine. A small-time dealer should never have as much perspective. On the outside he will appear like every other thug, but once he opens his mouth, no matter how much he fumes and curses, Ivan will give himself away, alert the gangsters to a broadness dangerous in the closed world of moneymaking enterprises. The broader the perspective, the less tied to your group on the ground. Reading anything beyond a sports magazine raises issues of loyalty.

  I fold myself into the driver’s seat and glide the car out of the spot. I don’t glance into the rearview mirror until I turn a corner.

  Ariel straightens up in her seat and asks, “Is he gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the other end of the world.”

  At this hour there is little traffic into Manhattan.

  “You’re not going to regret this,” Ariel says, her energy returning in powerful currents. “We’ll have a life together. Regular sex. No games this time.”

  “I told you a hundred times, I don’t mind the games.”

  Ariel’s hand gently lands between my legs. “You’re so sweet. But I’ve played myself out for now. Why don’t you believe me?”

  Is that possible? Can a woman who took such pleasure in extreme masochism really renounce this type of eroticism as if it were no more than a childish interest in princesses? Well, can I tell myself that I’m not really a violent person? Can she lie about what turns her on? Never mind the mystery of others. People have little idea about their own selves.

  Her warm hand feels good rubbing my jeans-encased penis. I ask Ariel if we should take the FDR or the West Side Highway.

  “It’s the same,” she says.

  “Come on,” I tell her. “I can’t do this by myself.”

  “Then go up the east side to Houston. Take a right on the Bowery and a left at Bleecker.”

  We make it to the end of the world in twenty minutes.

  “Pull up in front of the white brick building, the one with the green awning.”

  Ariel walks in slow motion to her door, awed by the possibility of a new life. She says, “I never thought I’d make it back.”

  “Don’t get used to it. We can only stay a day or two.” I grab my bag from the trunk. It contains everything I need but feels weightless.

  In her still awed tone, Ariel adds, “I haven’t been in my apartment in a year.” Then, frowning, she concludes, “I’ll have to get an agent to sublet it again.”

  The elevator creeks up to the fourth floor. The hallway is odorless, like one in a hotel. People in Manhattan don’t cook.

  “The a
partment might be in terrible condition,” she warns. “Don’t be shocked.”

  I’m so tired that I’d sleep on a bed of broken glass.

  She opens the door and flips on the light.

  “I told you. It’s nothing much.”

  Ariel is not wrong about this. The living room couldn’t be more than fifteen by fifteen, with one wall painted peach and two windows facing south. I go over to them and peer onto Thompson Street. It’s good to have a street view, to be able to see what cars are pulling up in front of the building.

  “Let me show you around,” Ariel says.

  Besides the living room that has a couch, a rug, a television sandwiched between two bookcases, there is a bathroom and a bedroom, neither worth describing. I check out her bookcase and she has an eclectic mix of masterpieces and shit. She must have been into Thomas Hardy at one point because she owns five of his novels; at another time she searched the Chicken Soup series for spiritual enlightenment.

  “Nice place.”

  “Thanks,” Ariel says. “At least Joan left it clean.”

  There seems to be nothing else to do but to have sex. I start to remove her clothes when she pushes me away. “Wait. I need my suitcase from your backseat.”

  “Leave your shirt off.”

  Downstairs, I pull her bag out of the car. It’s five times as heavy as mine. In the elevator I open it to peek inside. On the top there is a thin layer of underwear, jeans and T-shirts. Underneath are the sex toys—creams, feathers, ropes, cuffs, dildos, paddles. She hasn’t brought her whole collection, but there’s enough stuff here to spice up a de Sade orgy.

  Back in her apartment, Ariel pulls me into the bedroom. We sit on the edge of her bed and she orders me to wait. “We’re starting new,” she says. “I don’t have to drink to stay sane or use instruments to get me off. And you don’t have to use fuck every other word.”

  I judge that she finished her little speech and I remove her bra. Her breasts spring free and I gently bite her nipples. Ariel moans. “Do me a favor.”

  I lift my head off her chest. “What?”

  “Get the nipple clamps from my bag.”

  I hesitate. Ariel explains further, “This way I can go down on you while I’m still being stimulated.”

  “Sure,” I say. “It’s an engineering issue.”

  I rifle through her bag for the tools she needs. The clamps look nasty, like metal clothespins. But Ariel gasps with pain and gurgles with pleasure as they go on.

  She sucks me dry. Then she lies on her stomach and I go down on her. My tongue rakes her quivering cunt. As soon as we finish, Ariel jumps off the bed and unclips the clamps.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.”

  But she’s agitated. She wants a drink.

  “Let me show you around the neighborhood.”

  “It’s almost midnight.”

  Ariel crawls onto the bed and looks down into my face. “You aren’t a killer, are you?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because you can’t be. You’re the most gentle man I’ve ever been with.”

  “So what are you worried about?”

  “Nothing. I just want to know if my instinct is right.”

  “With instincts there is no right and wrong. You just follow them.”

  “You’re not going to tell me?”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  She lies parallel to my own body, stiff and cold. “If you don’t tell me,” she says with a fierceness that the alcohol used to cut, “I’m going to get a drink.”

  “I never killed anyone. I couldn’t do it if I wanted to.”

  Ariel buries her face into my chest. Her muffled voice bounces up, “I knew it. I knew it.”

  41

  A New Beginning

  The morning brings the first spring day without a hint of winter chill. We walk to Soho and breakfast at Balthazar.

  On the way we talk about how we’re going to get by. It’s a tense conversation. We’ll leave New York, at least until things cool down, tomorrow. Ariel doesn’t want me to sell pot because my suppliers might give me up. After the Ivan incident, she now believes me when I tell her that my acquaintances play for keeps.

  At the restaurant, our first time outside together fully clothed since the day we met, Ariel pretends we’re a normal couple, “So what are you reading?”

  I sip the coffee. No one had actually ever asked me this before. “Still the Aristotle.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. What is good? How does one live a good life?”

  “Important questions.” Ariel keeps the conversation going despite strong headwinds. “So what does Aristotle say?”

  “Search for truth. Appreciate beauty. Avoid assassination. Respect others. Have oral sex at least twice a week and strive to please the gods. It’s an ancient formula and I don’t know how much relevance this has today.”

  “The old masters knew everything. A little updating,” Ariel encourages. “That’s all.”

  I say no more. The waiter puts down our omelets. Before he walks away, she asks him to bring her a Bloody Mary. She concludes, “This is going to take awhile.”

  “Fucking A,” I respond.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writers, like all criminals, need aiders and abettors, safe houses, and connections. So I’d like to acknowledge Shane Solow, who fenced this manuscript to Martin. Also, thank you to Michael Popkin and Betty Engelberg, who blackmailed me into continuing writing with their decades of encouragement (and who also made sure I had paid work). And to Ira Elliott, who stuck his editorial knife into the soft underbelly of what I had judged impenetrably great. Only by his locating these weaknesses could the writing become stronger. Finally, Randi Priluck, whose love and support for a megalomaniac baffles all who know her. I love you too.