SoHo Sins

by Richard Vine

  54

  As soon as we entered the apartment, Melissa turned on me in a dramatic huff. It was almost like being married again.

  “I didn’t even get to see the good stuff at the party,” she said. “Do you treat all your girlfriends this way?”

  “I don’t have any girlfriends lately.”

  “Well, it’s no wonder.”

  “In fact, Missy, you’re my only sweetheart now.”

  “Maybe.” She plopped herself on the sofa and crossed her arms. “And maybe I changed my mind.”

  “What can I do to make it up to you?”

  “You can give me a drink.”

  “Grapefruit juice, Sprite?”

  “You know what I want.”

  “We’re not in Europe here.”

  “You are. In your head, half the time.”

  “Have you started reading my mind now?”

  “Oh, long ago.” Draping herself on the cushions, Melissa gave me a beseeching look. “Don’t be such a drag, Uncle Jack. I’m not a child, you know. Not after tonight.”

  “Maybe not. All right, one drink.”

  It had been a hard day for us both. I went to the kitchen and poured a scotch for myself and a small glass of white wine for Melissa.

  I intended to deposit her at home and make my difficult explanations to her mother softly, in the gathering dark. But my phone had a voicemail from Angela, saying she’d be late at the hospice with Philip—“he’s so agitated, poor darling”—and could I please keep Missy at my place and let her sleep in the guestroom if she got tired.

  When I returned to the front, Missy was standing in the middle of the living area, crying silently. Her body shook in waves. I put down the drinks and grasped her shoulders, pulling her close against my chest. Her tears quickly wet the front of my shirt.

  “Is Paul going to die now?” she asked.

  “Maybe. More likely, he’ll sit in prison for a very long time. Hogan thinks that, with the laptop and sex tapes, we can prove he killed Amanda.”

  “Good. And now they’ll leave Daddy alone?”

  “Completely.”

  “And no one will bother my mom anymore?”

  “No, why should they?”

  I calmed Melissa and got her to sit down once more on the couch. Another burst of tears came out of her, like an exorcised demon. Once she was breathing easily again, I sat in the Corbu chair facing her and handed over the wineglass.

  She took a long, deliberate sip.

  “It’s too bad Paul can only die once,” she said.

  It was much the same way I felt about Nathalie’s last, diseased lover. “Once will do nicely,” I said, “if it’s awful enough.”

  We talked for a long time that evening. After an hour or so, I started feeling a little out of myself from two or three scotches. Melissa pulled her legs onto the black leather of the couch and half reclined. I saw her stare at the framed photograph on the table beside me. As always, she wanted to know more about Nathalie.

  “Were you happy together?” she asked.

  “Happy? That’s a very big word.”

  “Were you?”

  “I’ve seen happiness, Missy, but only from a distance.”

  That’s about right, I thought. The way a man astray in the desert sees gushing springs and green shade, an exquisite mirage. I tried to believe in contentment the way Hogan believed in God, but I didn’t have the same knack.

  “OK, so you weren’t happy really. Then why did you stay married?”

  “Nathalie wanted it that way.”

  “What did you want?”

  “Whatever she wanted. Or just about.”

  “You weren’t the boss?”

  “I was the small-town boy from upstate New York, and she was my chic Parisian wife. I never stood a chance.”

  The night was deepening. I got up to turn on the floor lamp by the couch. As I leaned across her, Melissa idly took my right hand and kissed the fingers.

  “Hey, that tickles,” I said.

  “You’re no fun. It’s supposed to drive you mad with desire. I read about it in Seventeen.”

  “Maybe it only works on teenagers.”

  “It worked on Paul.”

  “Don’t.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t make bad jokes.”

  “Maybe I’m joking, and maybe I’m not.”

  I couldn’t think about that. I couldn’t, but I did. For a long time back in my chair, I thought repeatedly about Paul and Missy, playing out all the potential scenarios.

  The hour was getting late. As the night continued to darken, Melissa’s head began to nod. Finally, still partially sitting up with her legs curled on the couch, she fell into a fitful sleep.

  I sat motionless in the leather chair, watching her just five feet away. In the lamplight, her face—though blessed with the smoothness of her brief twelve years—was not entirely untroubled. She seemed to be dreaming of something real, something less than perfect. Her hair was tousled, and her head had fallen to one side against the cushion, offering the line of her neck to the faint mellow light, the flesh sleek as a dagger to the point where her blouse buttoned at the point of its V.

  Shifting in the chair, I tried my best to look away. But as my eyes swept down from her throat, they traversed—quickly at first, then more deliberately—Missy’s long torso and short skirt and the crook of her legs.

  I took another drink of scotch and forced myself to concentrate on the tinkle of the melting cubes, on the tart, smoldered fragrance of the liquor. It was not fair. It was not fair or right to be left alone like this, in the deep night with my memories of Nathalie and the young, supple Melissa lying like a gift on my couch.

  When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I got up and bent to her and gathered her up with my good right arm. She shifted her weight against me, snuggling.

  “You need to go to bed now,” I said.

  Her answer was faint but distinct: “All right.”

  There were no stairs to climb, just the sparse sweep of the loft space to stumble across. When we got to the bedroom door, the interior was black as a cave and I could not reach the light switch with my bad arm.

  “Help me,” I said.

  Melissa only leaned against me more firmly. “No,” she mumbled. “I like the dark. It’s OK.”

  I steered her to the bed, and we sat down heavily side by side. She took her arms from my neck, and a moment later I felt her hand slide over one side of my face, then the other.

  “You’re awfully scratchy, Uncle Jack,” she said.

  I kissed her once on the cheek, not wanting to smell the sweetness of her hair but smelling it anyhow—breathing it in. I stood up.

  “You scared me at the dance party tonight,” Melissa said.

  “I was scared, too.”

  “You acted funny. For a while, I couldn’t see you. Only Paul.”

  My hand moved forward in the dark until my fingers touched and tangled in her hair.

  “And now,” I said, “I have to go and do my penance while you sleep.”

  “Not yet.”

  I waited, my hand still on her head, as if in benediction.

  “Be good and undress me,” she said.

  I took my hand away. “Don’t be silly. Go to sleep now.”

  “I can’t sleep in these cruddy clothes, honey. Think where they’ve been tonight. Please.”

  “You’re too big to be undressed by a man.”

  It sounded absurd, backwards, even as I said it.

  “It’s not ‘a man’; it’s you, Uncle Jack.”

  “No, that’s a job for your mother.”

  “She’s not here. Neither is Daddy. Please. I really need to sleep.”

  The darkness was thick and protective, and I reached down and found the bottom edge of her sweater and lifted it over her head. Her arms fell to her sides again. Around the edges of the room’s blackout shades a hint of lesser darkness entered, and my eyes began to adjust enough to distinguish Melissa’s l
ank figure from the surrounding gloom. I stroked her head again, and undid the buttons of her blouse. As I pushed the fabric back off her shoulders, my hand slipped inadvertently over her training bra and its tiny breasts.

  “What are you doing?” she asked sleepily.

  “I’m undressing you for bed.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  When I unfastened her belt, she lay back and raised her hips so that I could slide the little plaid skirt down her legs. Her exposed skin, cool to my returning touch, was sleeker than I could have imagined, beyond any memory.

  One by one, I rolled off her stockings, the last of her uniform.

  “I’m cold,” Missy said.

  “Get under the covers then.”

  I lifted the blanket for her, hearing the swish of her legs entering the cotton sheets.

  “Where are you going to sleep?” she asked.

  “I don’t sleep very much anymore.”

  “Poor baby, that’s so unhealthy.”

  “I’m going to have another drink and wait up for your mother.”

  As I stood by the bed, I could hear Missy shifting under the blankets. “Kiss me good night, Uncle Jack.”

  “No, I’d better not.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. Just take my word for it.”

  “I can’t sleep without a good-night kiss.”

  It was a trick, and I knew it. The moment I bent to her lips I would feel her arms around my neck, sense her flowing beneath me, pulling me down. I would have nowhere else to go.

  “Where are you?” Melissa said.

  My answer came as a whisper, “I’m next to you, sweetheart.”

  “Where?”

  I bent toward her, and as I moved something changed. For some unknown reason, stupidly, I thought of Hogan. I saw him sitting in his armchair at home in Bayside, talking to Dorothy. Somehow, the image of the domestic pair, and of Hogan’s bald pate, spoiled everything.

  “I’m going now,” I told Melissa. “You’ll be fine.”

  “You don’t want to kiss me?”

  “No.”

  She sighed exaggeratedly. “Silly man.”

  55

  I left the bedroom and went back to my chair by the windows. In the faint lamplight, the paintings on the surrounding walls seemed alive. Like ancestor spirits, they crowded around me—works that I could have sold to enable Nathalie to be treated in New York. Here they remained, however, because she preferred her French medical team and because I so resented the nature of her illness and its miserable source.

  Nathalie had great regard for France’s system of health care, and maybe she knew best for herself. She had contracted the disease in Paris; she had heard the curt diagnosis months later in a seventh arrondissement clinic. It seemed only right to deal with the infection there. She and her doctor could smoke their unfiltered cigarettes as they discussed her prognosis; they could quote literature back and forth to ennoble the long, gruesome course of her treatment. She seemed to feel, if not well, at least resigned to the illness in her native environs.

  So, after two years of IVs and bedpans, of catheters and MRIs, Nathalie died there in her precious homeland, with a Gallic disdain. Near the end, she spoke of death as an obnoxious intruder, a foreigner—one who would drag her off to some alien uncultured country.

  After the burial, where her French friends dropped single roses onto the casket, I returned to New York to live among our early Rymans and Scullys, those stylish abstractions looming with silent reproach now on the white walls around me.

  Back then, Philip thought I should simply forget about Nathalie, let loose, and run a little wild for a while. He didn’t much lament the end of my marriage, or see why I should either. How could he? Nathalie was a bad case, the bitch. But she was my bad case, and I loved her. Maybe I loved her because she was such a bad case. Maybe the anguish she gave me was what I wanted most in the world. At least it made me feel alive, and now, for a long time, I had scarcely known if I was living or dead.

  I drank one more scotch and listened to the wind in the cornices of the buildings next door, while I carefully catalogued the night sounds along Wooster Street—the rustling of a homeless man going through garbage bags, the slurred voices of late drinkers looking for cabs.

  All the time I sat there, I concentrated—at the deepest level—on the blond sleeping girl, telling myself that I must not cross the loft again, must not approach the narrow, flimsy door that stood between myself and Melissa.

  And, remarkably, I did not.

  Instead, I sat by the dark windows and very methodically drank. I don’t remember how much or how long. At one hazy point, I thought that I heard Missy’s voice, far and muffled, speaking my name. But it was probably just some terrible longing or fear. Finally, as my eyes were beginning to droop, Angela telephoned.

  “Everything all right there, Jack?”

  “Fine. Melissa is sleeping.”

  “It’s been a god-awful day. Philip won’t let anyone else feed him now. I do nothing for hours but read aloud and wait for him to feel hungry again.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s rather lovely, in an exhausting way. I need a couple more hours here. Will you just look in on Melissa to see she’s not having one of her nightmares?”

  “Does that happen often?”

  “From time to time, ever since the Amanda thing.”

  “Kids imagine too much.”

  “It’s gotten even worse since we moved back to the city.”

  “What should I do if she’s awake?”

  “Just talk to her. Speak softly and rock her.”

  “Like a baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. Melissa won’t admit it, but she likes to be held when she’s scared.”

  “You think it’s what she wants?”

  “I know it. I’m her mother, Jack. I know what’s best for my child.”

  “Yes, you must.”

  “She’ll fall asleep in your arms.”

  “All right, then. I’ll go check on her now.”

  “You’re a dear.”

  Once I hung up the phone, I stood in the middle of the empty room for a couple minutes, feeling the scotch gather at my temples and begin to seep deeper into my brain. Then I walked for an eternity across the loft.

  At the door of the guestroom, I tried to listen for Melissa’s breathing, but the wood was too dense.

  I pushed the door open, letting the faint hallway light spill in. On the lower half of the bed, one bare leg, sleek and gleaming, lay fully extended on top of the covers. The girl’s chest rose and fell regularly. She needed to be tucked in, to be covered.

  When I approached, Melissa’s respiration changed.

  I stood over her—watching and guarding, I told myself. But I was a little too drunk to be entirely sure. Across a great abyss, I reached down and touched Missy’s forehead, sweeping back a wave of fine hair that draped across her left eye and cheek. She gave a subdued moan in response. Then a single word came out of her slumber.

  “Daddy?”

  “No.” I answered her under my breath: “No, honey. It’s Uncle Jack.”

  “Oh good, I’m not dreaming. It’s you.”

  “Your mother asked me to check.”

  “She did? You didn’t want to see me yourself?”

  “More than you know.” Groping in the dark, I found the tangled blanket and sheet. I straightened them with my good hand, guiding her leg underneath.

  “That feels so nice,” she said.

  “The covers?”

  “Your hand, Uncle Jack.”

  “I’m going now.”

  “No one ever stays with me. Why?”

  “Maybe someday, Missy.”

  “Someday you’ll stay, or someday I’ll know why you don’t?”

  “Yes, one of those.” I took a step back and paused, listening as her breathing deepened.

  “Night, ni
ght, love,” she said. “Kiss me.”

  My own breathing slowed.

  “I did once,” I lied. “You’ve forgotten already.”

  “Oh? I’m sorry. One more.”

  She was not really awake, and I did not bother to explain. What could I say, anyhow?

  “Please, Uncle Jack.”

  It was her last plea, arising out of a dream. As she sank into sleep again, I turned and closed the door of the bedroom behind me and walked back to the dim living room.

  Settling, depleted, into the chair, I poured another scotch and watched the liquor turn the melting ice cubes to amber. I breathed in the fumes with each sip.

  In this world, I thought, the world where Melissa sleeps, there has to be limit, a boundary you don’t cross.

  Well, obviously, I had done as well with that resolution as with all the rest. Face it, Jack, the crossing begins the moment you first imagine, too vividly, just how the encounter would unfold, what you would see, how forbidden and good it would feel. The beauty, the excitement. That was sin. Even if you’re an artist—or, like me, an artists’ pimp.

  And I’m not even the worst. I thought of the Virgin Sacrifice audience, those eager perverts watching expectantly for the climactic moment, fast-forwarding to El Burro’s clinch. At least I had never rooted for someone with Paul’s disease to succeed, never waited with delirious longing for the violation to occur. Which is more than some people can say, including those who might presume to judge me.

  I was losing count of my drinks.

  Oddly, intoxication was my small moral victory that evening. It distracted me. In my hour of greatest temptation, I did not yield to the worst urgings of my impure heart.

  Are there virtues of inaction, I wondered, just as there are sins of omission? I would have to ask Hogan.

  One thing was certain, no one will ever know the pain it cost me—that simple act of forbearance on a cold night at the end of November years ago. Was it a great accomplishment? Was it even worth mentioning? Probably not. But it has enabled me to look back at my life without utter revulsion.

  I got up and paced the room, touching small random objects, forbidding my feet to turn toward the guestroom and Melissa.

  I ended up by the high windows, looking out, seeing nothing. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? That was one of the verses Hogan had e-mailed me from that damned bible he reads too much, the black leather-bound volume that almost falls apart in his hands. Now the words were stuck in my head.