White Tears

by Hari Kunzru

  When I told him I had accidentally deleted the file, Carter had a tantrum. He threw a pair of headphones at me, then went into the live room and started kicking over the mic stands. I could see him shouting on the other side of the glass, his snarling face in dumbshow. I wondered what he’d taken. The pupils of his eyes were like saucers. I pushed the button on the control room talkback, so I could hear.

  —Do you even know about that record? Paramount thirteen thousand ninety-nine. You asshole! No one has that record! There are no known copies!

  I muted him. The same avaricious expression on his face. The collector asking about Charlie Shaw. The same beseeching hands. He spent a long time in the live room, much of it lying on the floor, one arm flung over his face as if he were exhausted or in physical distress. Later, after he’d calmed down, we started drinking. We took a bottle of vodka out of the freezer and ordered chips and soda from a bodega. It was an old routine, one of the ways we reconnected when things were going wrong. Dogged consumption of alcohol. One of us always said something, eventually. One of us always broke and began to talk.

  —You don’t understand what that record means. If I had that record, people would deal with me. I would count for something. These fuckers are tribal, man. You offer them good money, even ridiculous money, and some of them still won’t sell to you. It’s like you have to deserve the music, some shit like that. They’re all old too, the big ones. Old white dudes. No one who wasn’t already doing it years ago can get a foot in the door. Tell me, what else has the guy got? Did he mention any other names?

  —Bro, come on. He hasn’t got your Willie Brown record. He hasn’t got anything. He’s just an old man who lives on his own in a room that probably smells of piss and cat food. He’s just trying to get you to go see him.

  —Why?

  —How the fuck should I know? Because you’re a baby millionaire and you have money coming out your ass?

  —Don’t talk like that.

  —He’s just trying to get mixed up in your shit.

  —It doesn’t mean he doesn’t have records. You’d be surprised who has records.

  —If it’s not about money, then he wants to hear the great lost Charlie Shaw, who—just as a reminder—doesn’t exist. He already thinks we’re holding out on him. He thinks he heard it before, but obviously he must have heard something else.

  —Here’s how it works. He thinks we’ve got something he wants. That’s leverage. I can at least get in there and hear what he’s got. If he has mint condition thirteen thousand Paramounts he could easily be sitting on other stuff. Did he say Gennett to you? Vocalion? Black Patti?

  —You are obsessed.

  I started getting ready for bed and he went into his room, leaving the door half-open. From the record deck, crackle and hiss. A strident voice singing about That bad man, Stagolee. Later, I saw him counting money on the bed. Thousands of dollars, stacks of twenties and fifties zigzagging across the covers. Willie Brown, he said as I went past in my dressing gown. Thirteen thousand ninety-nine. And he gave me the thumbs-up.

  Willie Brown, Charlie Shaw. What kind of names were those? Ten thousand dollars. Fifty thousand dollars. No-names. Scottish or English or Irish. Common and blank. Names that didn’t match the voices looming up out of Carter’s records, testifying through the static.

  Early the next morning, still mostly asleep, I went to the bathroom. Carter’s door was open. The bed hadn’t been slept in. I didn’t know what time it was. A gray hour just before dawn. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.

  MY PHONE SAYS 4:47 A.M. People have been muttering on the other side of silence, just out of range. Leonie’s name on the screen. It’s hard to make out what she is saying. She’s sobbing, taking great gulps of air. Half-asleep, I find myself drifting, wondering how she got my number, feeling pleased she has it, the thrill of speaking to her overriding what she’s actually saying. That something has happened to Carter. Something very bad.

  —Where did you say he was?

  —The Bronx, the Bronx, why don’t you listen?

  —What was he doing in the Bronx?

  —How the hell should I know? They took him out of his car and beat him up.

  —I don’t understand. He got carjacked?

  —He won’t wake up. He’s unconscious, Seth, I’m not in the city. I’m in Montauk. You’ve got to go there for me.

  She gives me the name of the hospital, or a version of it. I tell her I’m on my way.

  A driver, speaking to some friend or family member in French creole, punching buttons on the radio, hopping from Naija pop to light classics to some ranting religious phone-in show. The streetlights are faint and watery against the lightening sky. I have a terrible feeling that I’ve missed something, that I ought to know more than I do. Distracted by his conversation, the driver leaves the dial between stations, and I ride uptown bathed in static that soon gives birth to all the other things, the whistles and moans and urgent whispering. If Marconi was right and certain phenomena persist through time, then secrets are being told continuously at the edge of perception. All secrets, always being told.

  By the time I get to the hospital, a grim brick slab in the South Bronx, the sun is up. The scene in the ER is chaos, and it’s hard to make myself understood. They keep saying they don’t have Carter as a patient. I insist, until the nurse at the desk tells me that if I keep bothering her she’ll call security. Finally I phone Leonie, who takes a long time to answer. Her voice is slow and thick. I wonder if she’s sedated. They moved him, she tells me. New York Presbyterian. He’s in surgery. You should have called me, I say, making my voice gentle, hiding my anger. She does not apologize. I ask if I should go to New York Presbyterian. Sure, she says. He’d like that. Then she hangs up.

  I have to wait thirty minutes for a car, then some drunk takes me back downtown in a rattling old Crown Victoria that smells of vomit. By the time I get there the sun is over the horizon and when I phone Leonie from the hospital lobby, it goes to voicemail. The receptionist isn’t supposed to give out any information, but I beg and she takes pity on me, pity on the state I’m in. She can’t tell me much. Carter is alive, but in critical condition. I push. What happened? Did the police say what he was doing there? She asks if I’m a journalist. If I’m a journalist, I will have to leave. A representative of the family has told her to be on the lookout for the press. She uses that phrase. Representative of the family.

  —My advice, go home, get some sleep. If they want you here, they’ll let you know.

  —Are they here? Is his sister in the building?

  —His father and brother, I believe.

  I can’t get any more out of her. I keep calling Leonie, but she doesn’t pick up, so I walk to get coffee, then hang around the lobby. The receptionist gives me the evil eye, whispering to her colleague. Finally Corny comes out of the elevator, talking on his phone. He is not happy to see me.

  —What are you doing here?

  —How is Carter? Is he OK?

  —Look, I don’t have time to go into the details of his condition with you, Damien. It’s Damien, right? Just hold yourself available. The police will want to ask you some questions.

  —The police?

  —My brother was taken from his car and attacked. He has severe head injuries. Right now he’s having pieces of his skull removed from his brain. I would say there’s a reason for the police to be involved, wouldn’t you? Now, could you please step aside? I need to take this call.

  —What’s your problem, Cornelius? Can’t you just talk to me for a minute? I’m as worried about him as you are.

  —You seem to have a very high opinion of yourself. Of your importance in the scheme of things.

  He bustles out of the building, ignoring the receptionist, who is jabbing a finger at a large “no cellphones” sign on the wall. I’m left reeling from his hostility, from the disorientating thought of Carter lying under a green cloth with surgeons peering into his skull. I am a participant in this, I want to t
ell him. He’s my best friend. This is my story too. Out on the street, it seems impossible. People are going about their business, shopping, heading to work, while Carter is up there in an operating theater, on the verge of death. This is my story too. I would shout it out loud, but no one would listen.

  HE MUST HAVE STOPPED AT A LIGHT. Maybe someone flagged him down. They pulled him out of his car and beat him unconscious. The police had a witness, a woman. Two, possibly three assailants. She wasn’t sure. They had hammers and a baseball bat. Afterwards they got into his car and drove away, leaving him there, spread-eagled on the ground in the middle of the intersection.

  Unexpectedly, Leonie hugged me. My body went rigid under her touch. Her hair smelled of cigarette smoke and burned plastic. She was swathed in a black shawl, like a Spanish widow. She looked exhausted. We sat down at a filthy Formica table in a sandwich shop near the hospital, jostled by impatient office workers as they stood in line to pay for lunch. I was eye level with some woman’s oversized bag, which grazed my face every time she turned to talk to her friend. Leonie’s skin had broken out round her mouth. She had a raw, uncared-for look.

  —Have you seen him?

  —He’s out of surgery. They have him in the ICU.

  Hunts Point. I’d never even been to Hunts Point. I barely knew where it was. Why would Carter drive all the way out there? Leonie spoke so softly that it was hard to hear her over the soundtrack of the lunchtime rush, top forty radio on little blown-out speakers. I had to strain to catch her voice, though she was only two feet away.

  —She’s a hooker, the witness. The cops think that’s what he was doing, looking for sex.

  —You’re joking.

  —I know you’re, like, his sheltered friend, but you have to see how it looks. Why else would he be in Hunts Point? That’s, like, beyond the hood. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to score on the street up there. You guys have a number, right? A guy who delivers?

  —He was going out to buy records. He had a lot of cash.

  —There’s some twenty-four-hour record store in Hunts Point?

  —From a guy, a collector. But he doesn’t live up there. He’s in the East Village.

  —How much cash?

  —I don’t know. Corny wrote him a check at his party for fifty thousand dollars.

  —Corny did that? You’re sure? As much as that?

  —Carter told him it was an investment in the studio.

  —What was he thinking?

  —I’m not sure I follow.

  —Tell me the truth, Seth. I won’t bite your head off. Believe me, you’d be surprised who uses hookers.

  —What truth?

  —Is this something the two of you do together, drive up to the Point and bang crack whores? Is it, I don’t know, part of Carter’s black thing?

  —His what?

  —You know what I’m talking about.

  —He isn’t some degenerate.

  —Yes he is. Just be honest with me. Do you get up to this ghetto shit with him?

  —Of course not. I swear.

  Leonie, asking me that question. I felt nauseous. I couldn’t hear properly. That was the problem. I couldn’t hear.

  —Can we please go outside?

  She looked up at the people in line, porting their plastic clamshells of salad. A man was calling out his sandwich order over the distortion. Pastrami, he was shouting. On a croissant. Leonie picked up her bag and we left.

  I was relieved to be out on the street.

  —I want to see him.

  —It’s family only, for now, Seth. You understand. I ought to go.

  I still felt sick.

  —Hold on. How do I get news? No one else will tell me what’s going on.

  —You can call me. Or I’ll call you.

  She walked away from me down the street. A ghost in jeans shorts and a black mantilla. Lost in the dirty white light.

  TOXIC 14TH STREET. Gum melted into the sidewalk at the crossings, volatile hydrocarbons lacing the air. I don’t know what else I can do. There’s no other move I can make to help Carter, so I’m shouldering open the door of the bar and stepping down into the darkness, down where the damned sip their drinks and watch cable sports. The air conditioner rattles, an insect buzzing that almost drowns the commentary. Was Carter here last night? Did he sit at the bar or in one of the booths? Did his eyes take time to get accustomed to the low light? I squint to pick up a trace of him, some sign on the worn linoleum floor, reflected in the glazing of the framed fight cards.

  —You must know the guy. I was in here with him. Old guy. He said you mix a good piña colada.

  The bartender looks at me balefully and pours a shot of rum over ice, topping it off with something yellow out of a can. Around me are people from the Reagan era, warehoused in sweat pants and sneakers, wreathed in cigarette smoke, drinking themselves to death. I peer into the darkness. The TV is showing a fight. Hagler’s now shaking those right hands off, Al. He was stunned a little earlier and he’s normally a slow starter. I can’t see the collector anywhere. I decide to wait. It’s what everyone else is doing.

  What will I do if he comes? How can I confront him? What would I even say? I sit through the afternoon, but nothing gets clearer. I keep ordering Lyuba’s piña coladas. After the first couple, they aren’t bad.

  He doesn’t come.

  Back outside on the street it’s dark, but the heat hasn’t gone out of the air. I wait to cross, a little unsteady, staring down at the black lesions baked into the concrete skin.

  MY MIND WAS A JUMBLE. Something bitter and mucoid lay at the back of my throat. The next thing I really remember was being in bed, trying to sleep. My phone was buzzing next to my pillow.

  Leonie sounded jumpy, wired. I’m outside, she said. In a cab. Can I come up?

  I pulled on shorts and a shirt, buzzed her in. I watched in a sort of trance as she threw down her bag and flopped on the sofa. It was—I checked—two in the morning, and Leonie Wallace was in my living room.

  —What have you got to drink?

  —Is vodka OK? I don’t think we have wine or anything.

  —Vodka is perfect. Sorry to get you out of bed.

  —Has something happened?

  —No. No, nothing like that. The surgeon says we just have to wait. I just, you know. I could have taken a pill, but I didn’t feel like taking a pill. Not right now.

  I went to get ice and soda water and we sat, listening to the tiny clink of the cubes in our glasses. She was wearing the same clothes. Though the air-conditioning was making little impact on the humid air in the room, she kept the shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders. My head felt terrible. I noticed that she was spattered with dark gray paint, tiny flecks on her clothes, her face, her bare legs.

  —What have you been painting?

  —The studio floor.

  She saw the look I was giving her.

  —Why not? You have a better fucking idea?

  She lit a cigarette and breathed deeply, her tension producing a perceptible body tremor as she exhaled. Still and in continuous agitated motion.

  —Did you see Carter?

  She didn’t know how to answer that question.

  —Yes.

  —How is he?

  —Not so good.

  I waited for more. She lit another cigarette, topped up her drink. She fished about in her bag for gum, leaving the cigarette burning on the edge of the coffee table. Then she began to cry, wedged into a corner of the sofa, hugging her knees. After a while her strength gave out and she slumped sideways against me. I transferred the cigarette to an ashtray, and awkwardly held her, smelling the smoke in her hair, feeling her back quiver as she cried, uncomfortably aware of her bra strap under my palm.

  After a while she sat up.

  —Can I see his room?

  So we went in to Carter’s room and climbed up onto his bed, leaning our backs against the big iron frame. Sitting like that we could see ourselves in an old full-length mirror Carter h
ad propped against the wall. The silvering had flaked off, and we were hazy, flecked with gray, a daguerreotype of two people on a bed. Leonie Wallace and an orc. What’s all this, she said, indicating Carter’s steampunk music setup, the brass and vacuum tubes, the polished walnut box.

  —He collects blues records. 78’s. You didn’t know?

  —Like fifties, sixties stuff?

  —They were generally releasing 45’s by then. I suppose you could say his focus is on the late twenties and early thirties. More or less stopping at 1934. A few things later than that. You could say 1941, to be definitive. Or perhaps 1942. Pearl Harbor.

  She looked at me as if I’d spoken to her in binary code. I understand that my precision amuses people. I just don’t know how to mitigate it. It takes effort to be vague, to fuzz up your answer so as not to appear threatening or self-absorbed. I was half-asleep. Sometimes you just have to talk how you talk.

  For my pains, another difficult silence. She lay down for a while with her face buried in her brother’s pillow. I wondered if she was crying again, and debated whether it would be appropriate to touch her, perhaps to stroke her back. At last she rolled over and fumbled in her bag for something or other which she couldn’t find. She stared defeatedly at the ceiling.

  —OK, I’ll bite. Why 1934?

  —You don’t need to ask me questions. I won’t be offended.

  —Don’t be like that.

  —If you actually want to know, it’s when the best material was recorded. They introduced electrical recording in the mid-twenties, which made it easier to reproduce quieter sounds. Fingerpicking guitar and so forth. You couldn’t record that very well before, when you had to play into a horn. Then most of the companies doing it got wiped out by the Depression. So there was only a small window, really.