Agnes Among the Gargoyles

by Patrick Flynn

  Luis takes back the article. He looks at it admiringly, even though he must have the thing memorized. He folds it carefully. "Four movie theaters. And a ho tel with a sky lobby. Things are really going to change around here. You better believe it."

  A scene from his recent binge returns to Bezel: the Frenchman warming himself over a trash barrel fire, looking like the devil as the flames cast crazy shadows on him. He was saying something that made no sense: that in Einstein's universe, there is no such thing as quiescence; motion, if not forward, is retrograde. What? What? thought Bezel, but now he thinks he may have a glimmer of what the Frenchman was talking about.

  Bezel looks at Luis and laughs. It is a great cleansing torrent of laughter. It tumbles forth like siphoned gasoline.

  Luis smiles uncertainly. "What is so funny, my friend?"

  "Nothing at all, my friend," says Bezel, clapping Luis on the back. "Nothing at all. I'm delighted at your good fortune. I'm thinking of all the money you'll make. Mucho Dinero. I would expand the business immediately. Four movie theaters? A hotel? Why, business at Greenpoint Avenue Pawn & Loan will boom, my friend. Profits will soar. Your pawnshop will complement the condominiums perfectly. Have those three balls shined up, my friend. You'll make a fortune from the convention business alone...."

  Chapter Thirty

  Madelaine Wegeman's suite at the Plaza is filled with state-of-the-art German exercise equipment that defies figuring out how one would insert one's body into any of it. Madelaine lies on a slantboard, covered from the neck down with dark brown mud. She shields her eyes with two felt pads. Rolf starts to trowel mud onto her face, then stops. He throws the trowel into the empty bucket.

  "More mud," he explains, and leaves the suite with the bucket.

  "Did Chris Prawl call you?" Madelaine asks Sarah casually.

  "Yes. Somehow he got Agnes's number."

  "I'm in the book," says Agnes.

  "I'm sure he didn't have to go to all that trouble," says Sarah sharply.

  "I gave it to him, of course," says Madelaine. "So what happened when he called?"

  "I told him he had the wrong number."

  "Seriously, now. He told me he wanted to ask you for a date."

  "A date!" says Sarah contemptuously. She flops down into a leather armchair. "I guess that's what he was doing."

  Madelaine is growing impatient. "What do you mean?"

  "He never actually got around to it. He told me all about his fascinating life, and he got so wrapped up in it I think he forgot why he called."

  Madelaine shifts position on the slantboard and groans. "He graduated tenth in his class at Harvard Law."

  "A complete mediocrity," is Sarah's verdict.

  "Maybe I should have answered the phone," says Agnes. "Tenth?"

  Sarah is horrified. "Oh, no. He's such an asshole. And he's an alcoholic."

  "I like self-destruction in a rich man," says Agnes. "A fat insurance settlement would get me through the trauma of widowhood."

  "At twenty-four, every man worth knowing is an alcoholic," Madelaine pronounces.

  "And many still are at thirty," says Sarah. She tells Agnes, "My mother wants to set me up with every moneyed nonentity who comes strolling down the fairway."

  "Chris Prawl is very nice."

  "Mommy, why don't you just write my telephone number on the J. Press bathroom wall?"

  "I suggest that you strike while the iron is hot," says Madelaine, weary of her daughter's stubborn attitude. "Before you know it, your looks will be history, and you'll be like your poor broken-down old mother, encasing yourself in a sarcophagus of Louisiana Bayou Clay at seventy-five dollars a pound."

  Rolf returns, empty-handed.

  "No more mud," he says.

  "What do you mean, no more mud?"

  Rolf thinks it over. "There's no more mud."

  "We just had some delivered," says Madelaine.

  "You use a lot," says Rolf.

  "I do not," says Madelaine coldly. "It's downstairs in the kitchen."

  Rolf is reluctant. "All the way down there?"

  "You do an hour on the Stairmaster every morning," Madelaine observes, "but you're unwilling to get on an elevator to do your job."

  "How is Ron doing?" says Agnes. To be so familiar with the Great Man affords her a private, bitter sort of amusement.

  "He's still in the wheelchair, I'm afraid," says Madelaine. "I think he's losing the will to walk."

  "Don't say that," says Sarah.

  "It's true. He can't seem to focus anymore. He has no attention span. That's why I've taken over the Times Square project."

  "Daddy'll be back, just watch," says Sarah. She pouts. "Why do you want to pair me off with dweebs like Young Master Prawl? God. It's not like your choice for a husband was conventional."

  "A man like your father comes around once in a lifetime," says Madelaine with the utmost sincerity. "I fear you won't be so lucky."

  Chapter Thirty-One

  "For too long now," says Madelaine, addressing a crowd of reporters and local dignitaries, surrounded by the directors of the Times Square Redevelopment Corporation along with the mayor, Clark Ho, and Father Matthew Clarence, "Forty-second Street, one of the world's great thoroughfares, has been a gash running across our city. Until now, that is."

  Behind the podium, someone unfurls the banner of the TSRC. The very downtown logo was designed by an artist who has recently died of AIDS. The Great Man would never have bothered with such a contemporary detail.

  In her red dress with its plunging neckline, Madelaine seems dwarfed by her surroundings. The press conference is taking place in the atrium of the Wegeman Scheherazade Hotel. The atrium is large enough to house a California Redwood; it is what Clark Ho calls an "exploded space." The Scheherazade, off Times Square, was the structure that first crystallized Agnes's loathing of the Wegeman ethos. He had built ugly office towers that looked very much like the Scheherazade—architecture as frozen muzak—but confined them to places like Sixth Avenue, the Ugly Office Tower District. The height and bulk of the Scheherazade seemed out of place in low-slung Times Square. The hotel had been dropped on Broadway like Dorothy's house on Oz, and with about as much regard for the surrounding area.

  Madelaine removes the cover from Ho's scale model of the project.

  She insisted that the plan be revamped after the assassination attempt. She was frightened. In the new version, Times Square will be preserved as much as possible. She doesn't want anyone angry at the Wegemans.

  Clark Ho's model looks to have been assembled in a hurry. There are sloppy joints and windows out of plumb, and messy gobs of dried rubber cement. Ho is not happy. The new plan involves too much restoration.

  "Normally, I don't clean up other people's messes," he says.

  In the new conception there are but four squat office towers—Citadels I, II, III and IV. Six movie houses in the area will once again be used for live theater. Madelaine credits Father Clarence with the idea of a city of theater. "All priests are actors, you know," she says before speaking about repertory companies, showcases, plays-in-progress, low ticket prices, the classics, theater in the air and in the bars and in the restaurants, theatrical passions and rivalries and, perhaps, even an old-fashioned theatrical duel or two. "Forget about that calcified stuff on Broadway," she says, dismissing the special-interest revivals currently packing them in, the all-Japanese Pajama Game ("Kimono see us!") and the gay Guys and Dolls. She announces that the St. Basil rectory will be turned into a pensionstyle hotel for traveling theatrical companies.

  In an inconspicuous corner, Wegeman observes all this in gloomy silence with Sarah and Agnes. He feeds candy peanuts to Duck the monkey. He wears a slouch hat. He has grown a scraggly beard. He is still in a wheelchair.

  "Theater in the air—you must like that, Travertine," he says.

  "What makes you say that?"

  "People like you are always going on about theater."

  "What do you mean people like me?"


  "Cornice-watchers," says the Great Man. "Gargoyle-spotters. The sort of people who worry too much about what's happening five stories off the ground."

  Madelaine's remarks begin to ramble. She appears distracted by the chinquapin trees ringing the lobby. "They're incredibly beautiful. We're brought the outside world indoors, haven't we? And a city is just the inside world brought outside...."

  A reporter waves his hand at Madelaine. She stops speaking to stare at it.

  "She's seeing trails," says Sarah.

  Agnes looks to Sarah for an explanation.

  "My mom takes acid to counteract the aging process."

  "Oh my," says Agnes.

  "Tell her about the clay," growls the Great Man.

  "She knows, Daddy."

  Bob Syker joins them. He carries a bottle of wine and some Perrier and some sandwiches. He pours a Perrier for himself and into it drops two Alka-Seltzer tablets.

  "It's bad today," he says, grimacing. "Lots of churning."

  "You should eat more yogurt," Sarah suggests.

  Syker shakes his head. "It's not that. It's all psychological. I hate my life."

  Wegeman sighs. "Syker, what you need to do is stop complaining."

  "From you I don't take advice, boss. What kind of man lives in a wheelchair when he doesn't have to?"

  "I'm paralyzed, thank you," says the Great Man.

  Syker's face distends with revulsion. "Don't say that. You're not paralyzed. It's too weird."

  Sarah's face is creased with displeasure. "If my father says he can't walk...."

  "You're right," says Syker. "Boss, to each his own."

  "How did I get so surrounded by Wegemans?" says Agnes.

  There is a commotion at the press conference. Surrounded by his select corps of nurses, the Rollicking Reverend, Lenten Gunn, sweeps into the atrium followed by a small army of his supporters.

  "Do not be afraid," says the Reverend. "We only wish to add our input."

  Wegeman sits forward in his wheelchair. He chews on his fist. "When you have time, Mr. Syker, I want you to find out who's on duty in the security chief's office."

  "You want him fired?"

  "I want him taken out to Jersey and shot."

  "Your husband would lead us into temptation!" cries the Reverend. "He would shackle us to the gaming tables!"

  "We're not forcing anyone to gamble," says Madelaine.

  "Shame on you! Do you hold a steak before a hungry man and expect him not to eat? Easy wealth is sorely tempting to a people in economic bondage."

  Madelaine is immediately ready to concede. "We'll give you money. We'll give everyone in the community a stipend. No one has to lose anything, ever."

  The Reverend ignores her. "There are no casinos in Scarsdale!"

  Madelaine shuffles her papers. "Reverend, we plan to employ, let's see...."

  "Save it. Those jobs aren't worth talking about," says Reverend Gunn. "I will not condone the chump change handed out to salve a screaming conscience."

  Security leads Madelaine away. Father Clarence steps to the microphone and says, "I think you're insulting your own people, Reverend. They may be poor, but they're not stupid."

  "I don't expect such talk from a clergyman," the Reverend answers.

  "Get me the fuck out of here," says Wegeman.

  "What about Mommy?" says Sarah.

  The Great Man shrugs. "Did you hear her talking about handing out stipends? If Lenten Gunn and his thugs don't get her, I will."

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Agnes parts company with the Wegemans and pays a visit to Hippodrome Lanes.

  She has been catching glimpses of the evil place all day long. The neon devil with the rolling eyes, pitchfork in one hand and bowling ball in the other, looks down at her mockingly. The Pinboy's Celtic mutterings won't leave her head.

  To reach the entrance, she must pass through an arcade brimming with the homeless. A half-dozen sleep in a pile on the ground, like hamsters in the corner of a cage. She hears coughing and hacking, the sounds of tuberculosis. The air is thick with spirochetes. She sees the sores of AIDS.

  Hiccupy Talking Heads music gets louder as Agnes climbs the stairs. Hippodrome Lanes is on the second floor. It has been a bowling alley since the Fifties. Before that, it was a rehearsal studio—the sight of a notorious theatrical tragedy. In 1926, during a run-through of The Perils of Priscilla, the floor collapsed, and six chorus girls were killed when they fell into the fortune teller's parlor below. Si Prentiss, the producer, was full of remorse. He was also a practical man. He wouldn't make the same mistake twice. When rehearsals resumed, again on an upper floor, the chorus line had a new look: not zaftig but emaciated. "These girls couldn't break through flypaper," boasted Prentiss, and the rage for rail-thin chorenes had begun.

  Hippodrome Lanes is nearly empty. A waitress outfitted like a carhop hustles a tray of longnecked Buds out of the Sputnik Lounge. Most of the alleys are dark. There is one family bowling: mom and dad and the kids. Dad wears a handpainted tie. They look like the perfect 1950s nuclear family, a living prop to complement the bubbling Wurlitzer jukebox. Only this isn't the 1950s. The pinboys are lethal, and the lead in the pipes finds its way into the little boy's Orangeade, and how could they have trooped their kids through that scene of human decay downstairs?

  "Pinboys!" cried Whitey Walker after another day of fruitless searching. "Didn't we get rid of them years ago?"

  The bass line of a Madonna remix slugs Agnes in the chest. She hurries downstairs.

  A religious fanatic preaches to the homeless over a portable p.a. system. When Agnes speaks to him he closes his bible and covers the microphone with one hand, as though anyone is actually listening. Agnes makes a donation to his screwball church and takes over the mike.

  She tells them about Barbara's murder. She tells them about the Pinboy. She holds up the police sketch.

  "One of you may have seen him," she says. "Please try to remember."

  She knows in her heart that she is being foolish, but she feels she should be doing something more for Barbara than mooning over detectives. Agnes brings the sketch from person to person. The response is not encouraging. It is not even coherent. Agnes faces senseless jabbering and hostile requests for money and murmured threats. One woman pulls with both hands at Agnes's coat, leaving two greasy smudges.

  "You won't get much help, I'm afraid."

  Agnes looks down. The voice belongs to a homeless man curled up in one of the doorways of the arcade. With his finger he holds his place in a book.

  "It's very discouraging," says Agnes.

  "They're all mad," he comments.

  He returns to his book. There is an air of donnish detachment about him. He has a large head with a great sweeping cranium, and a pencil moustache. He looks forty-five or so.

  Agnes holds up the sketch. "How about you? Did you see him?"

  He closes the book again and studies the picture. "No. I'd remember him."

  Across the arcade, an argument starts, apparently over ownership of some old magazines. The man at Agnes's feet sighs.

  "They're all very excitable," he says. "I suspect a lot of it is nutritional."

  One of the combatants takes out his penis and pees on the other, who bursts into tears.

  "If it's the pageantry of life you crave," says the man, "then 44th Street never gets old. Do you think you could spare a little money for food?"

  Agnes sleeps well that night. She dreams. In her dream, the Great Man Wegeman is dead, but appalling skyscrapers fashioned from his bones have sprouted all over the city. In her dream, Agnes is fighting for the preservation of a neoclassical office tower made from the bones of Stanford White. The Doric columns flanking the entrance have been made from his tibiae. As Agnes stands poised to make a speech, the wrecking ball draws near. In swings in a low arc, hitting Agnes and sending her tumbling. She doesn't feel hurt. Just before she wakes up, Jack the Pinboy resets her.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Agnes an
d Margaret Eden, the new editor of Infertility, spend a lot of time together. She does little more than sit in Margaret's office, watching her hand out assignments to others. What could be nicer? Agnes fills Margaret in on the history of Infertility, the way things have been done in the past, but Margaret never gives her the responsibility of completing a project. This seems out of character for Margaret: her management style is that of the stern parent; she interprets her writers' cries for help on stories as whining, and tells them to go think of a way to solve their problems, and most of the time she is right and they do. But Agnes gets deferential treatment. Agnes decides she is fulfilling some sort of psychological function for the new editor. She decides to take it easy and enjoy it while it lasts.