by Tom Larsen
Then he’s sitting up, blinking into the television light.
***
“You okay, pal?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
Bartender leans in. “You want me to call you a cab?”
“‘At’s okay, what do I owe you?”
Harry settles up and stumbles outside. Jesus, look at this, would you? 1 a.m. and the streets are packed, clubs still swinging, bars and cafés all a-buzz. Night-wired and hopelessly hip, a crowd no one could ever stand out in. Maybe he’ll stop somewhere for a nightcap, but Harry’s feet are a problem, slapping the pavement even when he concentrates. Fucking feet.
“Coke, reefer–”
“So how do we do this?”
“Step over here, my man,” black guy leads him under a stairway.
***
He fashions a pipe from the cardboard core of a toilet paper roll, a hippy trick from way back when. The first hit nearly kills him, scorched tracheal recoil, slobber spew, bits of lung. Smoke cloud billows to the corner while he thrashes into the cushions. Smoke spreads and catches on currents, cast in television colors as he writhes in aftershock.
Then he’s up and at the windows, clawing at the locks and yanking them open. Grabs a towel from the bathroom and fans the air. Christ, like a bomb went off in here, cold air washes over him as he kills the lights, the volume. Harry huddles at the door. No Smoking signs plastered everywhere, one right here on the fucking door, lettered in red and trailing exclamation points. What the fuck?
***
Lena works the remote. She slept until the jets woke her, now she’s just lying there wondering how she could sleep with Billy out there. Now that she’s convinced herself Billy’s crazy and not just a blowhard, like Harry always said. And he is crazy, pulling something like that, even if he wasn’t going to kill her. She’s never heard of Billy killing anyone, but she knew about the rough stuff. Not personally, but through the grapevine, his thing with the handcuffs. Never murder, though there’s always the first time.
By now he knows she’s gone into hiding. A smart guy might check the airport hotels, but Billy’s a cretin when you get passed the blather. Still it chills her. He was going to hurt her, though she won’t dwell on that. Not right now. She’s earned the right to pass that over.
More likely the bastard can’t even walk. Lena got him good. She could smell it. Billy tried to dodge her, but there was nowhere to turn and a lot of him to go for. By the time he tumbled outside she’d branded him forever. He must have known she could just drive off, but he just kept rolling around, screaming and grabbing at his leg.
Oh yeah, he’s pissed.
Test pattern, snow, snow, snow, cute guys running off a football field, a car crashing through a plate glass window, a woman in need of a vaginal deodorant, snow, cartoons, a commercial for Arkansas, pharmaceuticals and more pharmaceuticals, a few minutes with Larry King, now this: Animals of the Serengeti.
“The gazelle is a master of escape, usually tiring his pursuer with his broken field acrobatics. But midway through the chase this gazelle will panic, foolishly abandoning his evasive maneuvers he will try to outrun the leopard.”
Lena’s finger hovers over the button.
***
Harry springs from the bed. “Run dammit!”
The camera zooms in, the gazelle, insanely frightened now, a blur against the brush. Behind it, nothing. Then something, gaining, the single swipe of a big cat paw, then two. Then four as the camera pulls back and the stride lengthens, rear legs actually cycling over, ripping up chunks of earth as it closes the distance. My God, he’s beautiful, locked in a pure, mad contortion of speed.
“With all the diversity and complexity of life in the Serengeti; the evolutionary leap-frogging of predator and prey, one fact will always hold true. No animal on earth can outrun a leopard.”
Harry jabs the remote.
***
“When it’s over, the leopard settles in for lunch with a wary eye out for thieves and interlopers.”
Lena winces as the big cat tears off big bloody hunks, tossing his head playfully then bearing down, ugh. And it’s still alive! Rolling over in surrender, offering up, aw, for–! Lena turns but not quite out of peripheral range. Ripped open and now, spilling out, bloody sacs and what th– sausage links or some–
“But here in the last great refuge of nature, death is never the end. For the creatures in the lower links, the gazelle’s misfortune is only the beginning.”
In the background at a gallop, something awful through a shimmer of heat.
“Enter the jackal, first in a long line of scavengers and opportunists who will dispose of the evidence and consign the gazelle to the realm of non-existence.”
Lena sits through the whole thing. The jackals and the buzzards to maggots and flies! All of it, down to things microscopic, until there’s nothing left but a clump of fur and a wide swath of crimson. Watches till daybreak, one after another. A PBS marathon she can’t break out of, even with the valium, even with the vodka chasers. Watches bears chomp salmon and wolves mangle a baby moose. No escape from the carnage, nothing to do but bear witness to it. Snakes swallowing, spiders poisoning, sharks tearing up anything that moves. The more she sees the less it affects her, until she’s anxious for it, doesn’t care about the mating crap and the babies, though they’re cute as all get out. Wants only to see how it’ll end, what it looks like, real violence.
When the sun comes up she pulls the drapes and watches some more. Always hated the eating-things-alive documentaries. Always wanted to scream at the camera crew to help, for God’s sake! Just to stand there and film it? What kind of heartless shit is that? But something about this is different. Maybe it’s the buzz, or stress, or the thousand variations on ripping and mauling, but she feels a change come over her, something that will help, if she can fit into it. The natural law where everyone is a victim and there’s always someone after you.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Lena calls Sally and the other women on the block, tells them she’s at a nursing convention and will be home in a few days. She tells Alice she’s staying with her mother, tells her mother she’s going out of town with Alice. As she’s packing to leave she sees something on the television, a photo just left of the anchorman’s ear, the little girl, Lilly. Lena paws through the blankets and finds the remote.
“Doctors are unsure what is causing this reaction, but a spokesman for Children’s Hospital described a rare infection that appears to be serious.”
“Oh no, please, no!”
“The spokesman stressed that the condition may be treatable with a new strain of antibiotics.” But she can detect a note of resignation in the reporter’s voice.
On the way to the market Lena prays he hasn’t seen it. That sweet little face, Harry just couldn’t take it. She thanks God it’s telephone day and she won’t have to wonder. The real issue, what Harry might do and what it means to her. Makes her nuts and she’s driving too fast, trying to make the Washington intersection, whizzing past a westbound cop car! Lena turns on the tears but they write her up anyway and though she doesn’t know how, she knows it’s an omen. Forces herself to park and walk then wait for the Chinese kid screaming into the payphone, Jesus!
“Harry?”
“Lena.”
“Oh Harry, I miss you so much. Where are you? I’m coming up.”
“You’ll love this. I’m in Manhattan.”
“What?”
“Yes, and I want to see you, too.”
He hasn’t heard, she can tell. And she can get to him soon, an hour if she puts her foot down.
***
Harry sends down for more coffee and picks through yesterday’s paper, sees a small headline, boxed off with other small headlines. Man Questioned over Thruway Killing, homeless hitchhiker, Christ, who hitchhikes these days? Only a paragraph, but it doesn’t sit right and Harry starts pacing. He’s still got Frank to worry about and it scares
him. Blind luck that no one saw him with Frank. So wound up now he goes for a walk, across Avenue of the Americas, stampeding cabs, Washington Square shaking off Saturday night. Harry takes the path to an empty bench, waits for the parade of dog walkers to pass and slips the cardboard pipe from his pocket.
Fucking ripped, like you only get in the morning, just like Harry to overdo it. Now he can’t move and his eyes are glassy slits, too stoned and Lena coming, Christ. He gets to his feet, fires his last smoke and tosses the pack in the trash bin, Lilly Winslow smiling up from the front page Post.
***
“Harry no, this is no good,” Lena takes the bottle from his hand and steers him over to the sofa. “Sit down, we have to talk.”
“What happened to you?”
“I hit a pole,” she feels for the Band-Aid on her forehead. “It’s nothing.”
“She’s going to die.”
Lena pulls a chair around to face him. “You don’t know that. Look at me.”
Harry stares at the Band-Aid.
“This is the way it is. I don’t like it any more than you do, okay? I’d give it all up and go back to our old lives in a minute, but we can’t! This is the way it is now and we just have to live with it.”
“You live with it,” Harry slips another bottle from between the cushions. “I need to lose myself for a while.”
Lena slaps the bottle away and they watch it roll across the carpet.
“I thought I knew you, Harry. I would have bet my life on it.”
“Yeah, well, this isn’t my A-game.”
“So what happens to me, huh? See, the rest I can understand, the poor little kid, it’s wrong what we’ve done to her. But this, Harry . . . You’ve got to care what happens to me! You fucking owe me that!”
Harry hangs his head. “I need you with me, Lena.”
“Fine, no problem, I’m here.”
“We have to get to Paris.”
“Forget Paris!” Lena pounds his knee. “You have to pull yourself together and I’m going to help you. This drinking, it’s not you. Oh you like to think it is, but it’s ugly on you. You know that, right?”
“I do now.”
Lena fetches the bottle. “And if you’re going to drink, you’re going to blow it, so I’m telling you Harry,” she sets it on the table, “you might as well just kill me now.”
Harry groans.
“I mean it! I’d rather you kill me than for me to have to hurt you.”
He leans forward, his face pinched in confusion. “Hurt me?”
“I did everything,” Lena’s voice cracks. “You said it yourself. The dirty work, the lying and cheating, I did it for you and I’m up to my neck! You quit on me and I’m totally fucked.”
“Oh . . . that way.”
“That way damn right!” Lena revs up. “So from now on it’s my way Harry, or you know what?”
He just looks at her.
“I take the money and disappear.”
Her words fade to a ringing silence. Harry looks like she’s never seen him, frightened and impossibly old.
“Okay,” is all he says.
She takes the bottle to the sink, pops the cork and pours out the contents, pausing more than once for a snoot full.
“You can hate me Harry, but all this has to stop. We’re still in the clear and I intend to keep it that way.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Now get changed and I’ll take you to lunch.”
Harry heads to the bathroom but Lena cuts him off halfway, hugs him to her without tapping him on the back.
“Hold me.” She feels him squeeze. “You know I love you more than anything.”
“You look like someone slapped you around.”
“Did you hear me? I love you.”
“I know that,” Harry holds her at arm’s length. “Just stay with me.”
“I will.”
They eat outside in a corner patch of sun and it’s almost as if nothing’s happened. Sunday in New York, late lunch and the train ride home, like a dozen times before. So long since they’ve done anything together and it feels good and instead of worrying Lena lets it go. Yeah, she threatened him, but if Harry comes around it can only be a good thing. She’s glad she said what she said, even if she couldn’t really do it. Leave Harry in a bind like that.
“Any damage to the car?”
“Hmmm?”
“When you hit the pole?”
“Oh, just a ding. I must have bounced off the mirror. I was lighting a cigarette,” she shows him the bandage on her wrist, so many lies, so much to remember.
“Looks like I beat you up.”
“Yes, I know.”
Harry turns to the ring of crowded tables, young people of the latest wave. “This is what I needed Lena, civilization.”
“They’re young enough to be our grandchildren.”
“I was looking through the Village Voice, the ads in the back for live music? There was a time when I knew all the bands. The ads looked the same, some of the old clubs still cranking, but who the hell are these guys?”
“If you knew you’d probably have an earring and a little gray ponytail.”
“Still, it’s a blow.”
“Look on the bright side. You missed the tattoo fad.”
Harry scans the crowd. “Those two by the register, look at ‘em. Can’t wait to get home and have at each other. How does that work anymore?”
“I haven’t the slightest.”
He watches as they wrestle each other out the door. “Either you go for it and hope for the best, like always, or you compare your test results and medical records, frequency and number of partners, their test results and histories, or you break out the condoms and hazmat gear and spend the next two weeks crippled with remorse.”
Lena shrugs. “Isn’t love grand?”
Harry laughs. “Makes you wonder.”
A gaggle of drag queens sashay through, showering handbills and tubes of lovey-lube.
“See, you just don’t get this in the Catskills.”
“Funny what you miss,” Lena drops a tube in her purse. “I can’t go to bed at night anymore unless I know the ball scores.”
Harry shakes his head. “I must have been out of my mind getting you in this mess.”
“Lucky for you I don’t have the sense I was born with.”
“Can you ever forgive me, Lena?”
Her smile is small, all-purpose. “You don’t need forgiveness, Harry. You need to relax and set your mind on something. Like I said, we’re in the clear.”
“You’re right,” he signals for the check. “Get me a life.”
“What about your music?”
Harry stifles a groan. “Not a pretty picture.”
“But why not? Get a little singer/songwriter thing going.”
“Earring, ponytail.”
They pay up and walk the streets for a while. Lena makes him hold her hand and pretends she can charge him like a battery. Maybe it’s true. Harry seems more like Harry than he has in a long time. So far anyway.
“I know a little inn on the Delaware River, an hour from the city. I’ll book a room for tomorrow and we’ll start looking for a place for you to live, a real place, not a hotel. It’s nice there, you remember. Far enough away but close enough to get to.”
“Pretty isolated.”
“It’s the country, not the boondocks. Rich people live there.”
“I still think Paris–”
“When my passport comes we’ll talk about it then.”
It’s a nice day so they take the ferry. Harry fills her in on his Catskill fiasco, leaving out significant details. It’s pretty wacky in the telling and he loosens up, the Meryl Streep stuff, pretty funny.
“Did I tell you I went to Cooperstown?”
“Cooperstown?”
“The Hall of Fame? I drove all the way in a blizzard and the damn thing was closed. Can you be
at that? Lena? Hey, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m just . . . surprised.”
“You look pale.”
“I feel a little woozy. Must be the wine.”
They find an empty bench and Harry wraps his arms around her as the wind picks up. And she’s thankful for the warmth but she wishes he wouldn’t. Not with her head spinning and the statue of Liberty drifting by, hollowed out, just like Lena.
***
In the morning Harry turns in the Caddy and they hit the tunnel for points west, upriver to the Center Bridge Inn, as Bucks County as it gets with the fieldstone and the walk-in fireplace. Lena sends Harry off for the classifieds then goes through his stuff while he’s gone. Finds the reefer and the gun and it’s like there’s a soundtrack playing, hysterical violins or the brass section crashing down. But something’s not right about it. The news said the guy was clubbed to death. Lena picks up the gun and runs a finger down the barrel. Whatever else this means it means Harry wouldn’t need a club.
When he returns he’s just like he always is, so she acts like she always acts. They circle some rentals and make some calls and a pair of appointments for that very afternoon. And she feels herself absorbing the shock, the name Cooperstown. Turning it over in her head until it loses impact and pretty soon she’s able to forget about all of it for minutes at a time. And as they turn up River Road and into the trees, Lena pulls the plug on her heart and something hard fills the space inside her.
“The thing about the Catskills is they’re untamed,” Harry tells her. “I like my countryside tamed.”
“Tamed.”
“Yeah, like this. Green and pretty but not, you know, dangerous.”
“This is nice, huh?”
“Yeah,” Harry smacks his lips. “Maybe I’ll write a song about it.”
“This place is on the river, one bedroom with a barn, furnished. They said they’d do a month to month lease.”
