The Little Clan

by Iris Martin Cohen

  “When you’re broke, everything is equally expensive.” Ava laughed, but started to chew on a thumbnail, spitting it back out when she realized it was bitter with mahogany stain. “I don’t have a lease on my apartment either.” Ben didn’t say anything, but something about the way he opened a new packet of screws felt very expressive. Ava couldn’t decide if she was indignant at the implied slight on their business acumen, or flattered that it betrayed an interest in her well-being.

  9

  The morning of their big event dawned hot and muggy, and Ava and Stephanie spent most of it haggling at the flower market, where Stephanie convinced an annoyed florist to sell them eighty alabaster Easter lilies for thirty dollars. Ava was impressed as usual by Stephanie’s acquaintance with the vast network of thrift that pulsed just beneath the unaffordable surface of New York, while Ava felt more and more adrift in a world whose rules she didn’t understand. Her knowledge of books had so far proved almost completely inessential to opening a literary club. Somehow they didn’t end up getting in touch with writing programs to find young writers, and they didn’t try and partner with any of the public libraries; no book clubs had been planned or talks with rare books dealers. But they had a liquor sponsorship and a lot of people coming that night, which Ava supposed was maybe more important, and they had been very busy. Once they opened, as Stephanie was always saying, Ava had hope they would get around to it.

  Back at the Lazarus Club, Stephanie, her arms full of flowers, pushed open the heavy front door with her back. “Cab drivers make so much money. They’re all, like, millionaires. I never tip more than a dollar.”

  Ava frowned, knowing her silence would be read as consent, but the brown paper wrapping around the bouquets in her arms crackled sharply as she entered the dim foyer.

  Castor rose from behind the front desk. He was a small man, almost as small as she was, and he carried himself with the quick, careful confidence of a sailor. When he was still, he sat behind his desk, his elbows propped and fingers tented, a pose of stern deliberation that also kept the cuffs of his predecessor’s uniform from dangling over his wrists. He liked Werther’s Original candies, and so did Ava, so she sometimes bought him a pack or he offered her one, and they shared a smile of understanding of the most blistering insignificance.

  “Thanks, Castor.” Stephanie tossed her hair over one shoulder as he took the heavy door.

  “Mr. Wilder is looking for you two.” His many years at the Lazarus Club had smoothed his manner of speaking to a perfectly uniform blandness. Sometimes, Ava felt like she could almost hear the deeper veils of meaning shimmering behind his politeness, but she’d never yet been able to catch him voicing an opinion.

  They paused on the shallow marble steps of the club’s parlor floor and exchanged a nervous glance. Since the specter of rent had passed their transom, Aloysius had been avoiding them while leaving cryptic messages with the Lazarus staff that he “wanted to see them urgently,” a baroque game of hide-and-seek that was making the girls thoroughly paranoid. “Did he say why?”

  Castor shrugged in a way that made Ava want to commiserate about the irrationality of their boss, but just as she was about to say something, he seemed to be very intent on the top corner of the door frame, and she lost her nerve.

  “By the way,” Stephanie spoke from behind a scrim of flowers, “we’re going to have a lot of guests at our event, and they might not all be Lazarus Club types.”

  “Less than a hundred years old,” Ava tried to joke.

  His smile was civil—cold, and fleeting.

  Stephanie did not like being interrupted. “Among other things. This is important. Some of them might not be wearing sport coats. You know, the Lazarus dress code doesn’t really apply for our events.”

  “Oh no.” Spending so much time surrounded by the three-piece suits and panty hose of the elderly bourgeoisie, Ava had forgotten that most normal people wore jeans and sneakers. “What are we going to do about that?”

  “Nothing. I’m not going to get the downtown elite to come to an event and then say they have to change into a disgusting, borrowed club blazer, for god’s sake.”

  “Yeah, but those are the rules.”

  “Well, they’ll just have to get over it, Ava.”

  “Mr. Wilder won’t notice,” Castor said, and Ava almost thought she caught him acknowledging the distracted mania that was Aloysius, but when she searched his face, he looked at her blankly.

  Stephanie was already striding up the stairs. “Thanks, love,” she called over her shoulder without turning around.

  “We really appreciate your help.” Ava gave him a lily from her bouquet, which he accepted, graciously noncommittal, and turned his attention back to the small notebook he was often writing in, and which filled Ava with curiosity.

  In the library, Stephanie threw her bouquet onto their sofa to answer the frantic summons of her cell phone yet again.

  “Flowers don’t get put in water all by themselves, you know.” Ava picked up the bundle, muttering, and brought both to the sink behind the bar. She had installed it herself, and it only drained if she pressed a hip against it to compensate for the slant of the floor, but it was big and silver and looked very professional. She stuffed the flowers into a couple of dented aluminum garden urns that almost looked like grand silver vases and then paused, her palms pressed against the cold metal. She had read somewhere that people who did yoga could change their emotional state by just adjusting the rhythm of their breath. After a few arduously calm inhalations, she gave up. “What if nobody comes tonight?” she said.

  “On the phone.”

  “Or what if Aloysius doesn’t let anyone in because they aren’t dressed right and then we have to explain to Phillip Goldman that he has to read to an empty room?”

  “Still on the phone.”

  She almost put the urns of flowers on top of the bar and then stopped, gingerly pressing on the shiny surface with her fingertips. The varnish was still tacky, and she saw a vision of the event to come: plastic wineglasses all stuck to the bar like a carnival game. The vases clanged back against the bottom of the sink. At least the mural was finished. Thanks to the confluence of Ava’s new enthusiasm for the decorative arts section of the public library and the discovery that Craigslist was filled with talent willing to work on spec, they now had a mural of a giant art deco peacock flashing its tail in black and silver behind the bar.

  Ava walked back into the great room. “The varnish on the bar isn’t dry.” Stephanie, her phone cradled against her ear, was plucking her eyebrows in the mantelpiece mirror. She didn’t respond. “What time are the authors coming?” A stack of paint cans had been forgotten in a corner, and Ava hurried to put them away. “Are we ready? We aren’t ready, are we?” As she tried to stuff the cans into a tiny closet, already filled with drop cloths and a ladder and a cardboard file box that held two months’ worth of mail, loose rolls of wallpaper tumbled around her. She kicked back a roll of duct tape and shut the door. “I hope no one tries to put away their coats. It’s September third. No one will be wearing a coat, right? Did we get enough cups? What about the alcohol, when is that getting delivered? And the ice? We don’t have an ice chest. Will people think we are unhygienic if it’s just in the sink? Could you please get off your phone for one second?”

  “Hold on.” Stephanie pressed her phone against her chest. “George is coming with some volunteers he picked up at school in, like, two hours, and he can use my blow-dryer on the bar before everyone gets here. He can get the ice. Stop worrying. I’m kind of doing something here.” She picked up her phone again. “Oh I know, but he never goes out with her in public.”

  “What about hand soap? Is there enough in the bathroom? Maybe I should refill it.” When she opened the closet door again to get the soap, the paint cans crashed free, banging her ankle and rolling with a lopsided heft until they rested against the wall.

/>   “Ava.”

  “It’s okay, they didn’t spill.”

  “Go home. You are driving me crazy.”

  A wall sconce beside the closet hung dispiritedly on its side, and Ava straightened it. “Yeah, maybe. Okay.”

  “Don’t forget your record player. We don’t have any other music.”

  “Won’t the Lazarus Club be mad if we’re playing music in the library? Do we even need it? I don’t know what I’m wearing. Do you know what you’re wearing?”

  “Goodbye, Ava.”

  “Okay, bye.”

  She started down the twisting corridor that led back to her apartment but saw the back of a head that could have been Aloysius, so she fled in the opposite direction that led her to the main doors. Outside of the club, she immediately felt better. Midmorning sunlight fell through the trees, a dappled spray that trembled on the sidewalks, and she crossed the street grateful for each step that took her away from the Lazarus Club. She ought to remember to leave more often, but those thick limestone walls exerted a strange pressure, a gentle suasion bidding her to stay deep inside the building, a force she didn’t notice until, stepping onto the sidewalk, it vanished and the sensation of the sky above her, even the dense, muggy sky of New York City, made her feel as light as helium. Hands in her pockets, she stepped gingerly on her toes, taking care to avoid the burst ginkgo berries that dotted the sidewalk, pink and pearlescent and smelling like vomit.

  This evening was advancing toward her inexorably and with it the strangers who had paid membership dues to be part of a club that didn’t even exist yet. What if it didn’t work? What if Stephanie was wrong, and everyone came and scented out whatever it was that made Ava such a failure and a weirdo? She was the wrong kind of person, and when she tried to write, she wrote the wrong kind of books, and she liked the wrong kind of clothes, and she knew all of this and tried to stay out of people’s way, and now Stephanie had tricked her into putting herself forward, and it was all going to be a disaster.

  She tried the breathing trick again, trailing her hand against the black railings in front of a brownstone as she walked, in the hope that the childish act would comfort her. It didn’t. After a few steps, she noticed that her fingers were gray with filth. A tree trembled just beyond the iron bars. She thought of the blocks surrounding this neighborhood that had become her life, stretching out and out in geometric precision, limitless. A multitude of people and lives pressed in on her as if she could physically feel the weight of so much accumulated aspiration and desire. And now here she was in the middle of it, as filled with wanting and the possibility of failure as any of them. In a rush, New York was too much with her.

  And then, out of her panic, a familiar sensation came to her rescue, an inner retreat, and she sank into the distance it offered, looking at the streetlamps and letting her eyes glaze over, as she imagined a different city, the stench of the gingko trees and the heat of the afternoon evoking the thick, organic decay of a jungle climate, French Indochina perhaps. Marguerite Duras floated through her mind; she wasn’t a fan, overwrought and overwritten, she thought, but in this moment, that was the ambience of her inner life that spilled over, recasting the ordinary street in vivid colors. What if she were the kind of woman, sensual, impetuous, who slunk into adventures without a moment’s introspection? The hum of traffic and taxis on adjoining streets took on the rounded shine of cars in black-and-white movies. Soon she would enter a bar and drink scotch out of small, bright glasses, and someone across a round marble table would light a cigarette and yearn for her. She bloomed under this look of imaginary desire, glancing flirtatiously at a line of parking meters as she rounded a corner, a creature of seduction. Once this perspective had rearranged around her body to a comfortable weight, she felt she could again move through the world.

  This mask of colonial eroticism and its borrowed courage carried her right up to the green awning of the Lazarus Club, but deflated at the sight of Aloysius, pink and sweaty, and screaming at Castor. She guiltily pressed the back of her hand against the perspiration gathering on her neck, and ascended the stairs, her ankles wobbling in the thick plush of the carpeted runner. Maybe she should think more carefully about some of these old books she loved. But the bonds of affection that held her to the books of the past pushed her to elide some of history’s more unpleasant truths, the way one might, without too much effort, overlook the brutality of a caddish boyfriend who happens to be very nice to you personally. Maybe Stephanie was right, and it was good that Sam Bates was coming to read that night, but Ava was still a little nervous about it. It wasn’t her habit to make waves.

  When she got back to her apartment, she sat down for a minute at her desk. The composition book lay in front of her, and she opened to a new page, rows and rows of faint blue lines of possibility. She took up a quill, smooth and light in her hand and, dipping it gently in a pot of ink, paused for a moment, thinking and then wrote, “So it begins,” in her florid, precise script. She wasn’t sure what to say next, so she stopped again, resting her chin in her hand. To her left, plane trees tossed their wide fluttering leaves beyond the open window. A bird on a nearby branch gave her an alert, worried look. She smiled and sat, unwilling to move lest she dislodge this novel feeling, as bright and weightless as a soap bubble that transfigured the familiar scenery of her apartment, layering the dark, cluttered space with a fresh, shimmering translucence.

  10

  That evening as Ava crossed the landing of the main staircase, Rodney, catching sight of her, waved from the bar. “Big night tonight,” he yelled, earning a frown from an old lady sipping a sherry. Ava’s portable Victrola, squat in its leather suitcase, creaked against the rings of its handle, and she hefted the weight, as she wondered once again if her outfit was too dowdy. She had spent the whole afternoon fretting in her apartment, trying and rejecting clothes, until finally, the time for the event almost upon her, she had landed, impractically, on a favorite blazer. It was definitely too hot for velvet, but the deep blue lapel resting against her blouse made her feel like Oscar Wilde or Baudelaire, and somehow this seemed appropriate.

  The gaudy wallpaper, gold fleurs-de-lis on a field of scarlet that they had found on remainder in the back of the paint store, shone darkly in the dim light of recently installed fifteen-watt bulbs. The many imperfections of its application were swallowed by shadows that grew deeper at the far end of the hallway that led toward their rooms. Locked doors on either side emerged as Ava passed, marking the space between low pools of light and drawing her along toward the hushed darkness, playing with her sense of perspective. Her shoes clapped on the wooden floor. At the end of the passage, a head popped out.

  “Ava, uh, I think we may have some issues here.” George spoke with a contained urgency that dispelled the tranquility of the dark hallway and prompted her to hurry toward him.

  “Take this.” She handed him the Victrola.

  Surprised by the weight of the unassuming little suitcase, it slipped from his fingers and landed on the floor with a bang, followed by a hard rattle. “Oh, geez, sorry.”

  Ava knelt and unlatched the case, propping open the lid to examine the turntable beneath. She plugged in a brass side arm and began to crank. The black disc slowly started to revolve. “It looks okay.”

  “Oh, wow, the very latest in Edison technology.” George knelt beside her and tapped the metal interior of the lid. “This amplifies the sound?”

  “Yeah, it’s for picnics and things, yachting. Wherever you need a fox-trot on the go. There’s a place here for records.” She opened a metal case in the lid and drew out a pile of heavy shards. “Oh.” They looked silently at the black mosaic she spread out on the floor. “Well, it looks like a couple survived intact—‘Down Among the Sheltering Palms,’ the ‘Merry Widow Waltz’ and the overture to Tristan and Isolde. That’s something, I guess.”

  “I feel just terrible.”

  “Don’t worry
about it. We’ll play what we have.” Ava gathered up the broken records, holding on to them for just a moment of memoriam before handing them to him to dispose of. Many hours of solitude had been spent listening to these same twelve recordings. “You look nice. I like your suit.”

  He held out a lapel, examining it as if he had never noticed before. “Thanks, it was my great uncle’s, a somewhat unsavory character. There’s this little burn on one sleeve that I suspect is gunpowder. He didn’t get along with those Murder Incorporated fellows, Ashkenazim, you know,” he added conspiratorially.

  “Yes, George.” She patted his arm. “So what are these issues you were talking about?”

  Instead of answering, George guided her toward the bar. The art deco bird strutted at the moldings, and molted silver feathers gently coasted across the wall. Four undergraduates in thrift-store suits and ties struggled to look at ease. “These are the volunteers I found. They’re all in the poetry department.” George leaned in to whisper, “Probably not the most efficient bunch, but poets seem to be the rare students at Hunter without multiple other jobs, and therefore time on their hands. Also it was the only department I remembered to flyer.”

  A phalanx of poets at her disposal tickled Ava. “Thanks for helping out. You can have all the booze you can drink.”

  “Yeah, that’s one of the issues.” George spoke to the floor. “That liquor sponsor that Stephanie was supposed to have lined up?”

  “The documentary filmmaker or whatever?”

  “Yeah, well, the rest of the time ‘he reps for his dad’s booze business’ was her construction, I believe.”

  “And?”

  “It was never delivered, and he’s not answering the number that Stephanie gave me.”

  “Are you serious?” Ava began circling the room as if she might find the previously overlooked cases of liquor, a pointless activity she couldn’t seem to stop.