by Bright,R. F.
39
Throughout the land, those who could make it to a The Church were queuing up to watch tonight’s episode of Trooper Brian Stahl, NPF. Representatives Murthy and Thomka would watch it from their box at Valhalla Alley, but in the meantime there was an endless train of long-stemmed gazelles displaying a new designer’s sleepwear collection called: Beyond Les Boudoir.
Murthy was only interested in one line of Trooper Stahl’s dialogue, for which he’d had some input. A minor suggestion. But he was quite paternal about it. Brian Stahl, which was unfortunately also the actor’s real name, was known to change his lines at will.
Stahl’s hatred of his self-named character, and the show itself, was a carefully held secret. He detested its simpleminded plots and the pabulum that passed for dialogue. He hated everything about his situation. Using his real name for his character, an early marketing decision, had pigeon-holed him, spoiling any chance for other roles. His brand could only be sold from a very narrow shelf.
Thomka hated this stupid TV show, but he would sit through it to appease Murthy. No matter how boiler-plate perilous Trooper Stahl’s predicament, he was never going to die. There was absolutely no suspense to this hollow drama. But Valhalla Alley filled the void with fantasy and glamour enough to make it bearable. While they waited, he and Thomka drank from a vodka menu with a Nordic theme and nibbled from a large platter of smoked fish.
“This designer, what’s his name?” said Murthy.
“Who knows?”
“He’s a genius. Who would have thought there were so many variations on the simple bathrobe? I’m astonished.”
Thomka stared blankly into Murthy’s shallowness, then announced calmly, “My egg-heads have packed up and moved off-island.”
Murthy stopped him dead. “Please, can’t we have just one moment of pleasure?”
“Is there anything other than your pleasure that interests you?”
“No. No there isn’t. What’s wrong with that? I can afford these little dalliances. And I have an enormous appreciation for all the effort that’s gone into these gorgeous tableaus. The manufacture of rapturous beauty and exhilaration. The innovation. The sounds. The smells. The mystique. Everything is here that any normal human could want. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I was just . . .”
“No, no, no! You were just droning on and on, sad, sad, sad. Look where you are, damn it. Look where you are. This is the height of human existence. It doesn’t get any better than this. Everything that has come before leads here. To the fashion show. The display of human beauty and endless renewal. The soul of creation itself.” A TV blasted the theme music for Trooper Brian Stahl, NPF. “Here it is,” said Murthy. “If you’ve come here for more than the spectacle, maybe it’s your assumptions that are out of place.”
Thomka smiled at the revelation; civilization had devolved into a fashion show? “You know this whole bit is a scam.”
Murthy winced. “What ‘whole bit’?
“This Trooper Brian Stahl thing. Privatizing the NPF.”
The look of pity on Murthy’s face was insufferable.
Thomka made a last-ditch attempt. “It’s classic Petey. He’s trying to divert us with this ridiculous NPF thing. It’s absolutely ridiculous. But we’re doing what we’re told while he’s up to no good with the Central Bank.”
“Al, my good friend. You’ve come undone. You need a nap? If you could hear yourself, you’d realize who’s being ridiculous.”
Thomka began to say something . . .
“Put a cork in it, Al. Just for tonight. OK?”
Trooper Brian Stahl was on the horns of yet another life and death dilemma, the details of which Murthy was unconcerned about. He was waiting to hear his line. Trooper Brian Stahl’s brutally handsome face was covered in blood as he dragged himself from yet another burning building. He crawled into a closeup, and said, “It’s all coming down. Free us from the corporate state.”
What? thought Murthy. That wasn’t in the script. What the hell!
Trooper Brian Stahl fell to one knee, then crumpled onto one elbow. He turned directly to the camera and said, “Only the NPF can save us.” The camera pushed into the perfect framing of the perfect face complete with Brian’s patented near-death look, but to a nation’s astonishment, he made a clownish smile — and winked.
40
With fewer than three hours of intensive Peregrine flight training, Max executed a perfect landing on the roof of the Brewery, where its old water tower once stood. The realization of what he’d just accomplished left him gazing at the city with a bewildered grin. MacIan gave him an approving glance and popped the dome. The kid was a natural. This was exactly what he’d hoped for, but the roof evoked the oily taste of bitter soot and Mendelssohn’s cigars.
They went quickly to their cozy rooms and settled in. MacIan was looking forward to a good night’s sleep, but there was an annoying clatter coming from the other end of the atrium. He was not amused.
Max sat motionless on the edge of his bed, his ears aimed at the music and surges of howling laugher. What was she doing? Was she having fun — without him? The emotion he’d just poured into the Peregrine left him feeling a little empty. He was dying to share his story with her. But now, that was just another thing he’d done alone. He had been alone for as long as he could remember. There was Fred, but Fred didn’t count, not like that. What was she doing?
MacIan wandered into Max’s room and ran into a wall of blue funk. “Go down there.”
Max convulsed.
“Look, you go down there, and she ignores you — you’re right where you are now. You break even. Or, you go down there, and everything goes your way. You win. See? You win, or you break even. You always take the win-break-even deal. You just take it.”
Max wobbled to his feet and backed away, shaking his head and waving his hands erratically. MacIan grabbed him by the shoulders, spun him round, and shoved him toward the noise. The powerful shove threw Max out of his pity party and into the atrium. He kept moving, but he wasn’t sure how. It was like walking through Jell-O.
MacIan took a few steps toward the aggravating noise, panning his ears, and whispered loudly, “Go! Just go.”
Max flushed with embarrassment and plodded on, if only to keep MacIan quiet. He had to show MacIan he could do this. There would be no walking away from a punk-out of this magnitude. He stopped at the end of the wall and peeked around the L-shaped corner, then snapped back. Too creepy. He listened intently, but couldn’t make out much. He’d never heard anything like this before, and the music was so loud. He looked back into the vast atrium, searching for MacIan but hoping not to find him.
From somewhere in the dark, MacIan’s voiced rattled into the vast space. “Go!”
Max leapt around the bend and knocked on the brick wall, which didn’t make a sound and left him looking foolish. “Hello.”
There were seven or eight girls scattered about Lily’s gigantic room sorting through a mountain of hand-me-downs, talking, whispering, dancing . . . but no Lily. They all stopped. The music seemed to get louder. Max froze.
A pretty Asian girl with a pair of scissors and a startling hairdo was fanning through the hair of a girl sitting in an office chair with her back to him. She spun round and flashed a bug-eyed, open-mouth, glad-to-see you smile. He didn’t recognize her — she was even more beautiful than he’d remembered.
“Max Max Max Max Max,” she yelped, tripping over piles of jeans and sweaters as she rushed toward him. The girls started sizing him up. They’d heard about him.
Lily grabbed his hand, dragged him to a corner of the bed, removed a stack of bras she did not need, and sat him down. She stepped back and looked sincerely happy to see him. He’d seen beautiful women in magazines, but none were ever glad to see him. He was on his best behavior, but found himself curiously aware of a gentle power in her touch. The power to bestow gifts unseen but on display. He gasped.
Her hair was far finer than the na
tty snarl he remembered. It seemed free and weightless. The natural color had returned to her skin, but not entirely on its own. The faint scent of lipstick twitched his nose. She kept touching his hands and shoulders while introducing him all around. He didn’t catch a single name. He couldn’t tell if they approved of him or not, but there was a buzz in the room. Something moving between him and the all-girl jury. A glint in their eyes acknowledging Lily’s claim? Maybe. Or were they here to protect the gift? Probably. He didn’t really know, nor care. Lily was a volcano dropped into a room full of cats. He liked cats, but . . .
She wore a long gauzy white blouse with embroidered trim around the collar and down the placket. It nearly covered a pleated leather skirt that flared, but didn’t reach her knees. She couldn’t stop rising up on her toes, stretching the thin yellow stripes of her gray tights, and deflating into a sigh.
Max wondered why he had feared this moment. Everything was going better than he’d ever imagined. “Where’s Molly?” he asked, and immediately wondered why.
The full retinue groaned. “She’s busy. She’s always busy.”
“I spent some time with her . . .”
“That kind of time is what she calls ‘taking a break’.” They laughed as though that were funny, and he wasn’t there.
Lily purred, “I heard you drove the Peregrine. I’ve never even seen one.”
“Yeah. I’m just learning.” Word spread here as quickly as it did in his little village. But this wasn’t his nice little village, and the female tableau was entirely foreign. Maybe he’d interrupted some girl thing he didn’t understand. An uncomfortable silence confirmed this fear. He should go. A discreet exit might actually increase his currency. “I just came down to see how you were.”
“I’m fine. I’m great,” she said with a showy swirl that revealed thin but powerful thighs.
“OK. I’m going back.” He made a gesture respectful of her friends and privacy, stammering, “To my room. If you need anything . . . Up there. I’ll ah, ah, see you later. OK?”
Lily took his hand and walked him around the corner. Once out of sight of the others, she rose up and kissed him fervently on the lips. He hadn’t expected that. The soft warmth of it filled his every pore with satiny sparks.
“Thank you, Max. Really. Thank you so much.” She tip-toed away, twirling several times.
He stood paralyzed in the promise that now linked them.
Then she was gone.
A far more rowdy party was full-on, up at the Wall. The Driver and his crew were holding court at Club Shillelagh, a dive-bar well off the high-street. He liked the fancy clubs and even fancier women up on New Hibernia Boulevard, but the tourists and hoity-toity regulars were a buzz kill.
Club Shillelagh was his second home. What little family he had were still back in Ireland, survivors of a clan who’d double-crossed the Brits a few centuries ago and had been persecuted ever since. But the Driver had redeemed his kith and kin, as a founding member of New Hibernia. He and Efryn Boyne. Doing favors for their betters. The Caflers whose money and influence kept it all going in their direction. New Hibernia prospered because Boyne had a pragmatic view of servitude. Steal for them, while stealing from them. This unholy alliance with the Caflers was key to the establishment of New Hibernia. Doing these things, which everyone knew to be wrong, would allow them time to root their families — inextricably. That end, the only end that really mattered, would justify any means.
Efryn Boyne never joined these boisterous outings at Club Shillelagh; he was too old for their energetic brand of recreation. His absence was not suspect, but the Driver couldn’t shake an uneasy feeling. He decided to dance it away. He was a two-beer hoofer with more persistence than talent. A pleasingly plump woman in a floral dress with a plunging neckline had been stealing glances at him all night. She returned his tip o’ the hat with a lascivious grin. Old money on the comfortable fringe of middle age, he guessed. The kind of woman who could afford to leave her reputation back where she’d come from.
“You dancin’?” he said.
“You askin’?”
“I’m askin’.”
“I’m dancin’.”
He led her onto the floor as the bartender cued the Driver’s playlist of depression-era, lazy-swing tunes. He’d heard them in a video game as a young boy and fell in love with them. “Blue Drag.” “Brother Can You Spare a Dime.” “Seven Come Eleven.” And a slow one to top off the set — “Ten Cents a Dance.”
She didn’t know the steps, at first. But he led so well and she was so amenable that they quickly fell into a groove. They twirled into a breathless embrace just as “Ten Cents a Dance” couldn’t get any sadder, and he whispered, “When all is gone but not forgot; our sweetest songs are of saddest thought.”
She swooned in sweat-soaked ecstasy, pushed him away, looked him up and down, then pulled him closer by his belt buckle. “I’ll be right back.” She sashayed toward the ladies’ room to compose herself.
He thought he might cool down by going back to check on the transporter. If his dancing partner’s crimson face was any indication, she’d be a while. He stepped into a chill far beyond expectation and broke into a slight jog. By the time he got to New Hibernia Boulevard, he’d cooled down plenty and his sweaty shirt didn’t help. He could see the transporter, six blocks down and well-lit in the administration lot. Leaving his coat back at the club was a big mistake, but he’d tough it out. He wrapped his arms around his chest and ran.
The first block was easy; he was still a little tipsy. The second, not so much. By the time he arrived at the third he was sober enough to realize he would have to return and was not yet halfway there.
Hmm.
The transporter was where he’d left it, with the addition of the usual stray dogs sniffing about, and it looked just fine. If he didn’t turn back now, he’d regret it.
He ran back to the club, having done what he could. But it didn’t feel right.
Representative Al Thomka felt utterly alone here in a different but equally ridiculous fashion bar they’d gone to after the Trooper Brian Stahl was over. The cacophony of catwalk music, bellowing sycophants, clinking glasses, blaring TVs . . . it was too much. But Murthy’s new outfit was the kicker: a subtle grayish-orange, crushed-velvet, mildly retro-colonial man-suit. The uniform of everything that divided him from his friend, a divide widening in proportion to Murthy’s mindless extravagance.
Murthy whirled from table to table, hands in the air, from clique to clique, clique to claque, so very pleased with himself. Trooper Brian Stahl, that beautiful, belligerent beast, had eventually said the line he’d suggested, as written: “You don’t care if you think I’m stupid, neither do I.” It sounded ridiculous, on paper, but actually worked in the scene. Brian Stahl was that good.
Thomka caught Murthy’s eye from across the bar, tipped his head at the men’s room, then slipped out the front door. It was dark and cold, but not bitterly so. He waved away his Towne Car and set off in the opposite direction — no destination, no plan other than getting away. There was a huge fuzzy spot in his new perspective on himself and he needed to bring that into focus. Unlike Murthy, he was a self-made man with humble roots. He could remake himself, into what he didn’t know, but it would be better than whatever he was now. What exactly was that?
Charlatan?
Hypocrite?
Villain?
Stooge?
Asshole?
All of the above.
Hell yes! But he wasn’t stupid.
He walked. He thought. His Towne Car eventually found him and followed at a distance, which bugged the hell out of him. How could he ever extricate himself from this life? He crossed the street and doubled back, causing his car to circle the block, but by then he’d cut down between two buildings and turned again down and through the plaza at Exchange Place, just north of Wall Street. The tip of Manhattan is not part of the grid. These winding streets were built for horse-drawn carts, long before the grid. He was l
ooking for a narrow street that led to a little square, but he couldn’t remember its name.
There were lots of people out. It was Friday night and it seemed warmer. Then he spotted it: Hanover St. That was it. It led to Hanover Square, a little green space with the statue of some guy whose name he’d forgotten, the Governor when the Dutch ruled here, when it was New Amsterdam. He started laughing uncontrollably. The statue, as he remembered, was dressed in the same silly get-up as his fashion-crazy contemporaries, except for the three-cornered hat with a fluffy plume.
He turned down Hanover Street, where the rising waters were licking at the sidewalk only a half a block away. That statue had a Dutch name. What was it? He was severely agitated by not being able to remember who that statue was. He’d cut through Hanover Square every day, back when he first came to New York, and had been on a first-name basis with that statue. He’d confided some very personal things to him. What was his name?
This troubling nostalgia for his bronze friend in the original colonial man-suit quickly became an unbearable obsession. He had to see him. To confess his sins to him. To tell him of his newfound commitment to . . . ? He wasn’t sure. He just didn’t want to be evil anymore.
There was a small stack-up of people at the iron gate that opened onto tiny Hanover Square, which was nestled between a dozen Wall Street skyscrapers. He drifted into the tide and let it steer him along and into the square. It was just as he remembered, but a horrific sense of loss seized him as he realized the statue was gone, and the square had become a food court. He’d never meet him again . . . what was his name!? It was driving him insane.
He stumbled into the center of the square, jostled by the hungry crowd. Four small benches were clustered around the old marble plinth, now absent of — what’s his name!? God help me, I can’t remember his name.
He rubbed his hand over the marble plinth, as though he’d found the threshold to his new existence. He couldn’t tell if he were half-mad or half-dead. He climbed over the benches and onto the plinth with a deranged glare that scared everyone away. Then he saw it. A tarnished bronze plaque.
