“And where is she, Wash, or is that a military secret?”
“She’s at the Brig, where else? But I promised her you’d leave her alone.”
“You promised?”
“Ah, let her breathe, Parky. Give the girl a chance.”
Parky hung up on the general. He wanted to rush down to the Brig and bring Carla back, but he understood the consequences. Kansas City had parked itself near the Hudson River. And no one was safe with Jupiter around.
He asked the Grave Digger for some orange juice. But he couldn’t seem to enjoy it without Carla. ‘Oblomov,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Lady Oblomov.’
5.
SHE SAW THE SIX BABY gangsters from her window at Marie’s. Jupe had stationed them in the street, outside the Brig. He had all the courtesy of a Kansas City boy. He wouldn’t ransack a cathouse. He’d grown up among whores, admired them. Whorehouses were much, much holier than a church. But Carla couldn’t relax with Jupe in the neighborhood, couldn’t get into the soothing battleground of a book. The words wouldn’t fall into place; whole paragraphs started to swim. Thank God she didn’t have to deliver sex. No customers called on her at the Brig. But her bedroom was no comfort. She couldn’t seem to fill time or space.
There was a knock on her door, and Carla thought Marie had come with a cup of cocoa. But it wasn’t Marie. It was the social butterfly, Tatiana Klein, wearing a cape to hide her identity and distinguish herself from all the whores. Carla wanted to scratch her eyes out.
“May I come in?” Tatiana asked, quiet as a bird.
“You’re already in, little sister. If you’re worried about the application fee, I’ll pay it. Do you like your men fat or thin?”
“Is this where Parky met you?”
“Yes,” Carla said. “In this very room. And it was love at first sight, only it took me a while to realize that your fiancée was the man for me.”
“I’m glad,” Tatiana said.
“What are you glad about? Are you stupid? I stole him from you.”
“I want to marry Lord Byron.”
“Sis, he’s a married man.”
“He’ll divorce. But on one condition. That I’m free.”
“Are you crackers?” Carla asked. “You’re white, rich, and single.”
“But Byron has this thing. He says I’ve been promised to another man.”
“I’m going back to Kansas City.”
“You can’t,” Tatiana said, suddenly alarmed. “You mustn’t. If Jupiter gets you, I’m finished. Byron will never marry me.”
“Then what am I supposed to do, little sister?”
“Renounce Jupiter Drake.”
“I ain’t into public ceremonies,” Carla said. “That’s between Jupe and me.”
“Then I’ll never …”
The phone rang. Lord Byron was on the line. “Miz Carla, are you alone?”
Tatiana signaled to her like a monkey.
“I’m alone,” Carla said.
“And I’m in a jam. You husband had no business being in Manhattan. He says he’ll leave when you leave. But I’d like to know. Do you consider yourself the concubine of my attorney, Mr. Edward Parkchester?”
“I do.”
“And does this concubinage take precedence over your marriage, in your eyes and in the eyes of God?”
“I think so,” Carla said. It was legal gobbledygook. Her counselor never talked like that.
“Then I can’t return you to Jupe. I don’t have the moral right. Good-bye, Miz Carla.”
Tatiana started to kiss her soon as Lord Byron hung up the phone. “Get out of here,” Carla said. “And don’t come back unless you want to work for Marie.”
She knew what Lord Byron’s palaver was all about. He was going to break his bond with the young king. She ran downstairs, didn’t even bother with a coat.
“Where is he?” she growled to one of the baby gangsters.
“At the restaurant.”
“Which restaurant?”
“The Greek dive, down the block. That’s where Jupe always eats when he’s away from home. A Greek cafeteria.”
Carla noticed a little coffee shop, a luncheonette. She ran toward it while the six baby gangsters laughed. They’d never seen the boss’s bride move so fast.
Jupe sat in the far corner of the coffee shop, with a salmon steak and an ice cream soda. His eating habits had been formed at various children’s jails. He didn’t like to have his meals with strangers. He would eat with comrades, or eat alone.
Carla sat down next to the young king.
“Jupe,” she said. “I’ve outgrown Kansas City.”
“That’s a laugh. I took you to Berlin, Seville, Rome, and you never left your window.”
“But I can breathe in a place without leaving a room.”
“’Cause you’re a witch,” Jupe said.
“I’m not right for you, sweetheart. I could never be political. I couldn’t help your career. You’ll be a senator one day, or a congressman.”
“A congressman who can’t spell… . Edwina, you shouldn’t have left me.”
“It was a sensational marriage. I would have occupied every hospital bed in Kansas City.”
“You like beds. You love to live in them. I’m gonna kill that black man. I’m gonna eat up Sugar Hill.”
“Jupe,” she said, “darling, you have to get out of Manhattan.”
“I’m gonna break your face.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“I’m gonna scar you, sugar. I’m gonna empty the blood out of your tits.”
She kissed Jupe on the mouth and started to cry.
“I’m gonna stitch up your ass.”
She left him with his ice cream soda and his salmon steak, a king in the corner of a Greek coffee shop. She couldn’t stop crying. The bad die young, the bad die young, she recited to herself, like a nursery rhyme. The six baby gangsters were already gone when Carla got back to the Brig.
* * *
She wondered if Jupe ever got to finish his salmon steak. He didn’t leave the coffee shop alive. His body was never found, and Jupe remained a perennial missing person. There wasn’t even a funeral. His money sat in a Kansas City bank. The savings bonds he’d put in her name began to mature, but she wouldn’t collect the cash; she donated it to the orphans of Kansas City. She could have saved Jupe, gone back to the Missouri River with him, and she didn’t. She was Tatiana Klein’s little accomplice. But how could she look at Jupe and lie? Dearest, we’ll start all over again.
She received a wedding invitation. Lord Byron had dumped his wife. He was marrying Tatiana Klein at Temple Emmanuel. She tore up the invitation, wouldn’t move out of Marie’s.
The general paid all her bills. He’d sit with her once a week, hold her hand.
“Honey,” she said, “I just can’t sleep with a man.”
“It’s Parky,” the general said. “Keeps calling, and you won’t take his calls.”
“I can’t.”
She was in love with the counselor, but it was like an accordion in her brain that linked him and Lord Byron and Jupe’s missing body. The counselor hadn’t murdered Jupe, but she still couldn’t see him. If she hadn’t sat herself down in Parky’s bed …
The young king would crawl into her bed at night, ravage her bones, and she’d wake up with unbelievable bites and sores. She’d climb down to the Greek coffee shop, sit there all night, drinking tepid coffee that couldn’t rouse her blood. “Our little nun,” the owners began to call her. They knew she lived at the “convent” near the corner that collected black billionaires. They didn’t disturb her. A man came in, one of the billionaires, they imagined. He wore a velvet coat. His shoes were made of Spanish leather. His tie was pure silk. He was bearing a strange gift, bars of chocolate with a lion on the cover. Bitter chocolate, they imagined.
“You weren’t supposed to pester me,” she said.
“I kept my word. The general said the Brig was off-limits. But this is a coffee
shop, open to the public.”
“Fool,” she said. “Jupe was killed in here. He never left this place.”
“And you’re on a pilgrimage.”
“No. It’s punishment I want, a reminder of who I am.”
“A girl who likes bitter chocolate, the best.”
“No. A whore who eats up husbands.”
“You’re thin,” he said. “Have a bite.” And he offered her one of the lions.
“Jupe wasn’t wrong. I’m a witch. I’ll only get you slaughtered.”
She bit into her lion, and the whole coffee shop seemed to light up for her, and she knew that the young king couldn’t crawl into her bed anymore. “Edward dear, take me home to Sugar Hill.”
And without that dark look on her face, the owners recognized her. This was no nun. It was the dragon lady who sat down with the Kansas City kid a half hour before men with the words Pest Control printed on their backs entered the coffee shop and paid the Greek owners to shut their eyes… .
* * *
No one bothered the Oblomovs.
Parky ran his law firm from bed. He coached Harris Teitelbaum, taught him how to play a particular panel of jurors. But all his industry was gone, his desire to strut like a well-dressed bulldog in court. He asked the superintendent to reopen dumbwaiters that had been clogged for half a century. He had books wheeled up to him on the dumbwaiter, Mexican dinners, pizza pies, whole boxes of black chocolate from Bloomingdale’s. The dumbwaiter was near Oblomov’s bed. He didn’t have to answer doorbells or shout for Giles or the Grave Digger and Coffin Ed, who blocked all intruders in the lobby and worked the dumbwaiter.
Lord Byron depended more and more on Harris Teitelbaum and the counsel of his wife. Sasha Klein continued to deal, and he always presented Parky with a fair percentage of the profits. The counselor was content. He had Carla’s library, the proximity of her platinum hair. He didn’t think about stock market crashes or stolen nuclear warheads. He would only allow one visitor inside the Oblomov bedroom: Washington Starke. He’d met Carla through the brigadier, considered him part of the family.
“It’s awful lonely at the Brig,” the general said. “I don’t have much temptation without Carla.”
He’d climb into bed with the Oblomovs, and Carla would hug him like a baby. “Ah, that’s kind, that’s nice.” And the general would go back to the Pentagon with his spirit soothed.
“Edward dear,” Carla would say, “do you think they’ll find us in fifty years, with our clothes and our bodies turned to dust?”
And Parky wouldn’t answer. He had his bitter chocolate and Oblomova. And then the dumbwaiter would start to rattle. Parky opened the door. It was a pie from one of the black pizza parlors on the Hill.
“Does it have anchovies?” Carla asked. “I hate anchovies.”
Parky had to scream down the dumbwaiter shaft. “Grave Digger, bring it back. The countess says no anchovies.”
“The Grave Digger ain’t your servant. I’ll eat that awful pie.”
What did she care about anchovies? She had her man. Parky wasn’t a politician who would shake her out of bed. And she couldn’t mourn Jupe the rest of her life. She’d start to mope if she remembered why he’d come to Manhattan and how he had to die. Anchovies. She wasn’t the kind of girl who’d let anchovies win. If she shut her eyes hard enough, she could wish them all away. She was much more passionate than a pizza pie.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 2013 by Jerome Charyn
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
978-1-4804-1097-8
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