The Sky Below

by Stacey D'Erasmo

  The Stolen girls might have been gossamer and cardboard, but they were hard to resist. I could say that I myself had read all eight books for a laugh, but that wouldn’t be honest. I read them because I couldn’t put them down. There was something about those girls. You wanted to be close to them. You wanted them to win. You wanted to be them, click-clicking through Singapore in a ripped teddy, with the secret code written in invisible ink high on your bruised inner left thigh.

  “The little bitches,” said Fleur warmly. “But they bought me some great houses.”

  After that moment, that unmasking, over the chanterelles, I began to hang out with Fleur. We had some fun. I learned that she had a husband of many years, Morty, who didn’t like to go out much, so sometimes I escorted her to an opening or a show—always in my best white shirt (I had only one that good), smoothest pants, a suit jacket, and a blue tie with a darker blue stripe. I never so much as kissed Fleur on the cheek, but in the evenings when I was carefully ironing my shirt, straightening my blue tie, I felt as if she was dressing me. Smoothing the shoulders of my jacket. Looking me over proprietarily. I liked the feeling. I was her walker, sure, but I knew that I also looked a bit like her gigolo to other people, and I liked it that I looked that way to them. It made me laugh, and it also made me feel that anything, any life, was possible.

  The morning that Morty called, I knew something was wrong. Morty had never phoned me before. “Can you come over?” he said. “Becky wants to talk to you.” My heart tightened. I had never been to Fleur’s house before, either. Usually I waited on the street for her with the chauffeur. I found my shirt and tie, my jacket. I took a cab to Central Park West. A maid led me through room after room of a bellowingly huge apartment. We passed French Provincial tufts and swags and porcelain and big paintings of springtime meadows and ornamental bronze things with curlicues, knickknacks everywhere, twin vases with flower arrangements the size of headdresses on Vegas showgirls. Anything that didn’t gleam, puffed; every ornate knickknack was an event, possibly a catastrophe. There were more end tables than there were ends. It was very quiet. The maid didn’t say anything.

  Morty materialized in a long hallway. He was a very lean, grizzled, unshaven man of sixty-five or seventy in an ancient pair of baggy-assed jeans and a Clash T-shirt. He looked like an old rocker. Fleur had told me he imported rare clocks; he supposedly had a shop in the East Fifties. “This way,” he said in deep Bronx tones. “She’s awake now.”

  He led me to a room in the back and left me there, closing the door behind him. Fleur was reclining on the gold divan that day, too. She looked very slight, just a ripple in the layers of cashmere and silk. Her face was like an ax blade, resting against a silver pillow with gold tassels. Her eyes were half closed. I couldn’t tell if she was asleep or awake. There was nothing in the room but the divan and a laptop, open on the floor, its screen dark.

  With an eerie feeling I realized where I was. I had entered the sanctum sanctorum, the place where Becky became Fleur and vice versa. The source of all of it, the stories and the cash. The air in that room felt flatter, dustier; it didn’t have the faint scent of lavender and furniture polish that permeated the rest of the apartment. There was a dirty glass ashtray on the floor. I hadn’t known she smoked. I tried to put together the cruddiness and randomness of the room with the elaborate, single piece of furniture in it, but I couldn’t. It felt more intimate here than if I was in her bedroom, with the old venetian blinds on the window and thousands of dollars in shiny fabric on—well, who knows what it was under all that? Maybe it was a few desk chairs and a lot of pillows, all lashed together with a clothesline. A silver and ebony cane with the price tag still on it leaned against one wall. Nervously, I shot my cuffs. “Gabriel,” Fleur said, speaking slowly with a new, slight slur. “It’s nice to see you. Sit down.”

  It was only then that I noticed that her face appeared to have broken in half and been carelessly glued back together. That one of her hands was curled stiffly in her lap, like a small hoof. That her usual light was dim, flickering. She’d had two strokes, she explained slowly, two cock-s-s-sucking strokes in a single day. Two. She held up two fingers with a certain amount of pride. One measly stroke could never take her out. He needed an accomplice. I took her uncurled hand and she grasped mine tightly. I could feel the sharp, surprisingly strong points of her bones on my fingers. She gave a raspy sigh.

  “I need some help,” she whispered. “I have a strict deadline. They won’t wait! The m-motherfuckers.”

  “All right,” I said, still unclear as to what she meant. Fumbling with one hand, I found a pen and a scrap of paper in my jacket pocket. “Shoot.”

  She nodded. She gave me an outline. Because I knew the books so well. Because she trusted me. Because—she didn’t say this, but I knew it was true—she just wasn’t ready not to be Fleur Girard anymore. She wasn’t ready to go back to being Rebecca Sharp; she knew what the next stop on that train was.

  So. I took it all down in the tiny handwriting I used to write poetry in the corners of my boxes. She nodded again. One side of her mouth slanted now, pulled down by an invisible force. Her face looked like the joined masks of comedy and tragedy. Suddenly, irrationally, I wanted to pick her up and hold her tightly against me; I wanted to say, Don’t go. Please don’t go. Don’t turn back into Becky yet. If she turned back into Becky, I would turn back into—well, I didn’t know who, exactly, but I resisted it with all my might. I didn’t take my hand from hers, though she was hurting me. She was stronger than she looked, as if she’d been boiled down to pure will. She intertwined her fingers more closely with mine, pressed harder. “Don’t fuck it up,” she whispered. “I’m trusting you, Gabe.”

  “Okay,” I said. I looked at the outline, which I’d written shakily, as if I were the one who’d had a stroke. The scrap of paper, I noticed, was an ATM receipt for forty dollars, plus the two-dollar fee. “Why me, Fleur?”

  She closed her eyes, pursed her lips, considering. “I need a young man,” she said. “A discreet young man. Can you be discreet?” All her s’s were soft at the edges.

  I looked at her, fallen there, crumpled, on the gold divan: the littlest Sharpstein girl, the last one, the one with a temper. If I say I kind of fell in love with her at that moment, that wouldn’t be accurate; but it wouldn’t be accurate, either, to say that what we entered into was purely a business arrangement. As with Sarah, and those kneeling men long ago in the bus station bathroom in Florida, I don’t know what Fleur and I became that afternoon, in the cruddiest room in one of her several well-appointed houses. I know that we became something. I know that she changed me. No whirlwind of bulls, no sonic booms. I just found that I couldn’t let go of her small, cool, powerful hand, which was nearly transparent with age and ambition and bad habits, and she couldn’t let go of mine: our bones had fused. At the same moment, something fluttered inside me, like a little red bird on the tip of a slender branch: opportunity, illuminated. An opportunity I’d figure out how to use later.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Very discreet.” I folded the ATM receipt and put it in the breast pocket of my jacket.

  The side of her face that could move relaxed. “Good,” she said. She released my hand. With an effort, she reached under a gold pillow with silver tassels and pulled out an envelope. She held it out to me. “There. Come back in a week.”

  Two minutes later I found myself standing on Central Park West, feeling somewhat bewildered and shaken. What had just happened? Fleur’s building, behind me, was massive and white, awninged and heavily ornamented, fully stocked with doormen and footmen and jesters and what have you, but it felt as insubstantial as an image projected on a screen and as if it could dissolve as quickly. I turned around to make sure it was still there. It was. The doorman frowned at me. I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the envelope Fleur had handed me. It was full of cash. Three hundred dollars in clean, flat twenties. Wrapped around the twenties was a note in shaky handwriting. You help me, it r
ead, and I’ll help you. I slid out a twenty and stroked its smooth surface. It wasn’t creased or dirty, like the twenties in the bus station bathroom, but it felt as charged, as magical, as illicit. I carefully slid it back into place with the others, put the envelope in my pocket, patted it, and briskly walked away from the building.

  It turned out that it wasn’t all that hard to imitate Fleur’s particular mix of speed, violence, cunning, and rough sex. Style wasn’t her strong suit anyway. Her writing was slapdash, but it was propelled by unstoppable drive. You knew from page one that the book in your hand was going to get where it was going like a shot. She always outlined the action for me. Once I got the hang of it, the actual writing was pretty easy, like painting by numbers. And by now I could slap a sentence together as well as the next person. We finished Stolen Kisses (bonus! an extra silver brick!) and began on Stolen at Twilight. It was a goof. And month after month, my freezer slowly filled with nice, cold, foil-wrapped bricks of money. They delighted me. I could buy anything with them, go anywhere I wanted. I tried not to think too much about the fact that, since Morty had ushered me into Fleur’s writing room over two years before, I hadn’t seen her off the gold divan. I sometimes wondered if there had been yet another stroke, a further neurological step down that she’d kept even from me. I purposely stopped short of imagining that in any detail.

  ***

  On this chilly day, Fleur considered my suggestion about the nuclear reactor and the ramp. “Yeah,” she said. “That could work. Write that down.”

  I wrote it down.

  She smiled her half-smile. “Ah, the little bitches,” she said. “Gabe. What do you think? Should Natasha get raped over there in the corral?”

  “Again?” I asked delicately.

  Fleur looked confused, then annoyed. “Miranda then. Write that down.”

  I wrote it down.

  She nodded and resettled herself on the divan. “Good boy.” Her eyelids began to lower. A minute later, she was asleep, faded away to a streak of silver in all that gold. The white tip of the cat’s tail thumped once against a patch of brocade, then disappeared into a fold of white cashmere. The immobile curl of Fleur’s left hand, with the flash drive in it, rested on that same white fold.

  She was so small now on her throne, so frail. I doubted she weighed as much as a hundred pounds. I wondered if Morty came in after I left, to pick her up and put her on one of the mammoth, tufted white sofas like clouds in one of the countless other rooms. That ebony cane with the price tag on it was leaning exactly where it had been leaning a year ago, collecting dust. I knew that it might be leaning in the same place a year from now. And then one day, just like May, Fleur’s light would go out. Her voice would diminish to a rough-edged point, then disappear. There wouldn’t be any more Stolen books. Our time together would be over. Gabriel, broke.

  “Fleur? Fleur?”

  She snorted, woke. “Rape Natasha. What do you think? Would that work?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “What about Miranda instead?”

  She nodded slightly, like a general acknowledging a foot soldier. “Possibly.” Her s’s slipped, leaned drunkenly against one another. “Not a bad idea. Gabe, when’s your birthday?” She pushed herself up the slope of shining pillows, wide awake now.

  “November.”

  “Tell Morty we should throw you a party. Listen. Did I ever tell you what Morty was doing when we met?”

  I sat back. “No, what?” I said. I liked this one.

  “Fixing my sister’s car. Yeah. He was a car mechanic, dating my sister Myra. He doesn’t know shit about clocks, except the big hand is on the hour and the little hand is on the minute. Even that, I’m not so sure.” She laughed.

  “Was he a good mechanic?”

  “That he could do. He got Myra’s motor running, that’s for sure. She almost killed me for stealing him.” She laughed again, ruefully. “God, I miss her.”

  “I know.”

  “Longest legs you’ve ever seen. Like a dancer.” Fleur sighed. “Ovarian.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I hope she didn’t suffer.”

  “She did suffer,” said Fleur. “She suffered terribly. You can’t imagine how much she suffered. Now Barbara, she was the smart one. She invested very wisely. Guess what in.”

  “What?” Recycling.

  “Recycling. Is that amazing or what? Very forward-thinking.” She tapped her forehead with her good hand. “Pancreatic.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” I said. “Horrible.”

  “It was. Like being hit by a train. Her kids are nightmares. If they ever call you, don’t call them back.” A melancholy expression crossed her face.

  “What about Linda?” Linda had been the oldest, Fleur’s favorite.

  Fleur brightened up right away. “Oh, she was kind. Biggest heart you ever saw. She did everything for us. Brushed our hair, got us ready for school, told us what was what. She figured out a way to send us all to summer camp upstate, sewed our names on our shirts: Linda, Barbara, Myra, Rebecca. Us four girls, we were a team. Couldn’t get a piece of paper between us. You know what happened to Linda.”

  “She died in her sleep,” I said. “The day after Christmas.”

  “That’s right. When’s your birthday?” With her good hand, she fussed at a bit of cashmere. “Too hot.”

  I covered her good hand with mine. “Fleur.”

  She frowned. “I’m sleepy.”

  “My birthday is in November. Fleur. You know I’m an artist. Or trying to be.” I winked in the roguish way she liked.

  She yawned. “Yeah.” Her eyelids were lowering again.

  “And you know how tough that is, how I work all the time. Fleur?” I jostled her lightly. “Fleur. It’s tough. And art supplies are so expensive.” I waited, but nothing happened. She watched me, half asleep, half awake, like the white cat I never saw. “I’m wondering if we could double my fee? Since I’ve helped you out so much?”

  “No,” she said, quite clearly.

  I tightened my grip on her good hand, to keep her from slipping away into sleep. Her gaze widened. “But the thing is, well, you know, I really have helped you a lot. And that’s a private thing between us, how much I help you. How much I want to keep helping you. I love the Stolen girls—I can’t wait to read the next one, even though I know what happens. I worship you, Fleur. I admire you tremendously. But if it were ever to become less private, this thing of ours”—I gestured to the invisible bridge between us, to our unseen fused bones—“then I wouldn’t be able to help you anymore. And that would break my heart. You can’t imagine how much I look forward to our time together. It’s my secret life. But, wow, it really has to stay a secret, doesn’t it?” I clucked my tongue. “You’re the star. I want to make sure we keep it that way.”

  “Linda,” she said, taking her time to enunciate the syllables. “Barbara, Myra, Rebecca. I’m the last one.” She shook her head against a gold silk pillow. “Jesus Christ. Gabe. Jesus Christ.”

  I didn’t say anything, maintaining my grip on her hand. With an effort, she withdrew her fingers from mine, reached behind one of the gold silk pillows, and pulled out an envelope. Then, slowly but deliberately, she reached back in and pulled out another. “Here you go, my boy. When are you coming back?”

  I took the envelopes. I gently plucked the flash drive from the curl of her left hand. “How about in a week?”

  “Make it two.” Her eyelids began to lower again.

  “Fleur. Thank you.”

  “Forget it, kid. Did we say Natasha or Miranda?”

  “Miranda.”

  “All right. All right. Come back in a week.”

  “Okay.”

  “No—make it two.” She reached for my hand, grabbed it, and squeezed. Her small bones pressed hard against my fingers. “We’ll throw you a birthday party in November. Big party.”

  “Great.” I saw myself through room after silent room. In the room with the grand piano, I spotted an intricate cut-glass pine
apple. I slipped it into my pocket. I continued on, past the enormous white sofas like clouds, down the ornate elevator, through the echoing lobby, and out into the street. Central Park West regarded me with its wide, blank, guarded stare. I patted the reassuringly heavy envelopes in my breast pocket. I loved the money, I loved the money, I loved the money. Fleur and I had that in common. She loved the money too. Underneath, she understood why I had to do what I had to do. Why should Morty get it all? To buy more clocks? All I was doing was borrowing against the time we might not get to have together, because of an accident of age and the body. Time wasn’t my fault.

  I made my way home, pleased. Third Avenue, Second Avenue, down Seventh Street, up my battered stoop and the cracked marble stairs in the grimy hallway with the fluorescent ring lights (two were always out) and into my precious rent-controlled apartment. Caroline’s name was still on the mailbox in her blocky handwriting. Fifteen years ago, the three largeish rooms had needed a paint job; now they needed that and plastering, too, but I had no intention of alerting the landlord to my existence. I still signed Caroline’s checks, a small hoard from an ancient bank account, for the rent.