Lush Life

by Richard Price

  The firemen started to move into position, sauntering over to the smoldering pyre.

  “Folks.” The Community Affairs officer dipping into clusters of people now, gently touching shoulders here and there, as if to tell the guests that dinner was being served.

  And as the crowd continued to linger, to ignore the cops, the firemen, to ignore the city itself hammering its horns on the choked side streets, the Community Affairs officer resorted to a PA speaker: “People, all due respect. It’s time to take this somewheres else.”

  The firemen allowed some water to pulse through their hose, splash noisily at their feet.

  Slipping their work gloves on, the garbagemen began lurching upright from the side of the truck.

  But still, hardly anyone left.

  As the last of the cameras were being stowed back into the satellite trucks and as the water pressure in the firehouse increased, Boulware, a little wild-eyed now, began to corner his friends and make hasty plans to reconvene at a bar, then announced it out loud, “Going to Cry!” and Eric, watching it all from a stoop, at last felt something akin to compassion for the guy. Over the next few months it would probably be easier for him to get laid around here, he’d take a few more drinks on the house, maybe land a new not-very-good agent, but nothing of consequence would really change and he would spend year after year chasing that flaming straw as it took off into the blue with all his big plans. Basically, what Boulware could look forward to, Eric knew, was a long-term bout of depression and a steadily mounting sense of loss, not for his dead friend here but for this afternoon, the last best day of his life.

  “That kid,” Minette said, shaking her head.

  “Which.”

  “Ike’s friend, the, the master of ceremonies? I mean, Ike wasn’t exactly humble himself, but . . .”

  They were still on the steps of the Langenshield, waiting for Nina.

  “There’s this thing we do on a job sometimes,” he said, staring at her hands. “When we’re interviewing somebody who claims to be a witness but we think was maybe a little more . . . involved than that? It’s called an I test. You sit them down and take their statement, written, dictated, whatever, and when you’re finished, you count up and divide the pronouns. If a girl gets shot and the boyfriend’s story consists of sixteen Is and mys, but only three hers and shes?—he just flunked.”

  Minette tracked his gaze to her wedding ring, then slipped that hand beneath her thigh.

  “What are you saying, you think he was involved?”

  “No, not at all.” Matty blushed. “I’m just observing—”

  “Let me ask you,” she cut him off. “That first day I was down at the hotel trying to find Billy . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “Were you ever in that room?”

  “Yeah, briefly.”

  “Was Elena there?”

  “I believe so.”

  “What were they like up there, him and Elena.”

  “How do you mean?”

  She just looked at him.

  “They were in pretty bad shape.”

  She continued to stare at him, but no way would he admit to reading her mind.

  Then she seemed to understand that, let it go.

  “How can you top that,” she said more to herself, Matty about to say something in return when she abruptly turned towards him and leaned forward, Matty thinking, to kiss him, but it was the sight of her daughter, coming up from behind.

  “You all right?” Minette’s voice peppy with anxiety.

  “I used the credit card,” the kid said.

  “For . . .”

  “This.” Showing them the small, yellowing campaign button: i like ike. “It was thirty dollars but the guy gave me another one for free. He said it was a variation on a theme.”

  Then she showed them the second: bigger and whiter, also saying i like ike, but with a portrait of Tina Turner beneath.

  Tristan was still down the street from the Langenshield when the arm-bandaged girl came back and met up with her mother and a cop. Everybody talked for a minute, the cop went into his jacket to give them both his card, then walked off by himself, the two others walking off together in the opposite direction a minute later.

  He half rose from his crouch beneath the pizzeria window to adjust the .22 digging into the small of his back, then dropped into his squat again and took a last look at what he’d written that afternoon, liking it pretty much. He started to get up again, this time to go home, then had a last-minute burst, whispering it to himself as he wrote.

  Sometime I regret,

  but you can bet

  im a vet,

  and I aint

  buckled yet

  Matty watched Minette and her daughter, deep in conversation, walk north towards Houston. From behind, in their nearly identical slim black dresses, they could pass for sisters, both women tall with longbow shoulders like competitive swimmers. He stared after them until they were swallowed by the traffic, then turned south and headed back towards the Eighth.

  “Hello,” into his cell.

  “So how’d it go?” Yolonda asked.

  “How’d what go.”

  “You fuck her yet?”

  Matty hung up.

  A block later he walked by Billy sitting on a stoop so motionlessly that Matty was three tenements past the guy before his presence registered.

  “What are you doing here,” Matty said.

  Billy slowly raised his eyes, then got to his feet. He moved in so close that Matty had to step back.

  “Look,” he said quietly, his fingertips delicately dancing on Matty’s lapels. “How can I help.” His mouth started to crumple. “All I want, all I need, is to help.”

  A squad car came towards them on the narrow side street. A moment later Matty found himself looking into the stony faces of Upshaw and Langolier in the backseat as it almost came to a stop, then, point made, picked up speed.

  Matty turned back to Billy, to his searching eyes. “You want to help?”

  Waiting until the squad car turned the corner, he went into his wallet for Mayer Beck’s card, Damned if I don’t . . .

  “You call this guy. And here’s what I want you to say . . .”

  The same thing happened that night: Eric spelled one of the other managers in order to not be alone with his thoughts, then, as soon as the evening crush began, promptly retreated to the cellar. But as he came down the last of the stairs to the beaten-earth floor, he first heard then saw Bree, the Irish-eyed waitress, standing with her back to him dead center in the low-ceilinged room, her head lowered almost chin to chest as if praying. Then, still with her back to him, she sniffed mightily, her shoulders rising with the effort, so, not praying . . .

  He didn’t want to scare her, but this place was his and he needed it.

  He scuffed the stairs, coughed, making her wheel startle-eyed, the coke now clutched in her carefully closed palm.

  “Hi,” she breathed.

  “You sound a little stuffy, you OK?”

  “I get this sinusitis.”

  “You have sinusitis so you come down to a damp cellar?”

  “It’s a funny kind of sinusitis.”

  “Oh yeah? Funny how?”

  She looked miserable.

  “You know, I come all the way down here, it’s bad enough I catch one of my staff blowing up, but then she doesn’t even offer me a bump?”

  “Oh!” she almost shouted, opening her hand and shoving the whole thing towards his face.

  The cellar was so low-ceilinged that they nearly had to walk hunched over, all four corners of the woozy room lost to darkness.

  “Watch your step.” Eric led the way with one of the extension-corded floodlights lying about the floor.

  “What do you keep down here, bodies?” Her voice loose and burbly off the blow.

  “Mushrooms.” He trained the light on the northeast corner of the room, the beam briefly reflecting off the eye of something racing out of there.

&nbs
p; “Eeek, a mouse,” she said.

  “Check it out.” Stepping closer to the corner, he high-beamed one of the ancient fireplaces.

  “Looks like a barbecue pit.”

  “It’s a hearth. Every corner of the room down here has one, which means people were living down here, huddling around these things. I’m guessing 1880s, ’90s.”

  “For real?” She offered him another line.

  “But this one right here”—Eric bowed his head to the coated white paper in her palm, putting his hand beneath hers as if to steady it—“is famous. There’s a Jacob Riis photo of a man in a coal cellar seated in front of one of these things, a hunk of bread in his lap, the guy is looking at the camera, and between the beard and the dirt all you can make out are his eyes, guys living one step up from an animal.” Eric’s jaw was juddering and he tasted the acrid drip down the back of his throat. “But I’m looking, and I know this photo well, so I’m like, hey, this is just like that Riis picture, and then I see this.”

  He put the light to a thick, blackened beam inches above their heads.

  “Look.” He ran his fingers over the writing scratched into the wood, two words, read them out loud for her. “Gedenken mir. ‘Remember me.’ ”

  “Is that Dutch?”

  “Yiddish.”

  “How do you know Yiddish?”

  “I googled it. Anyways, so, just to scratch the itch? I went home and booted up the Riis photos on the Eighty-eight Forsyth House website. And it’s got, you can see that this writing here is in the shot, but you can’t make out what it says, but it’s this. And this is the spot, right here. And now I know what that squiggle, that hand, was trying to tell us. It’s like, from that whole, millions coming over, here’s this one infinitesimal voice that says, ‘I am, I was,’ says, ‘Remember me,’ and it just makes me want to cry.”

  And then he did, a little.

  “Oh.” She almost touched his cheek. “Well, don’t feel too bad. The guy’s in a famous photo, right? So he got something out of it, you know? I mean, it could’ve been worse.”

  “There’s that,” he conceded, wiping his eyes. “So . . .” Wanting just a tiny bump more, he nodded to the coke. “How’s it going?”

  “You mean this?” She blushed. “No, no, I’m not, this is just to get me through the double. This is situational.”

  “No, I meant how’s it going up there, the job.”

  “That? That’s situational too.”

  Eric helped himself to a gum rub to get through the next question. “OK. So. What do you do. Really.” Then, “Wait, no. Let me guess. A Riverdancer.”

  She looked crushed.

  “What? No.”

  “I told you, right? Or were you being sarcastic.”

  “Oh, Jesus, no. I’m, oh, Christ, what an asshole.”

  But then she broke character, snorted at his flushed face. “I’m at NYU.”

  “Oh, thank God.” Hands crossed over his heart.

  “I knew you weren’t listening.” Helping herself now.

  “I had, have, a lot on my mind.”

  “I heard.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “You were there when it happened?”

  “Oh yeah?” Bracing for more shit.

  “I saw you at the memorial earlier,” she said. “Why weren’t you sitting with everybody else?”

  “Why?” Eric stalled then, saw Ike’s father running towards his flaming son. He jerked as if poked in the ribs.

  “It’s complicated,” he said, then, “You knew him?”

  “The guy? No. But the bandleader? In the white tux? Is a friend from school.”

  “A friend?” He couldn’t be balder.

  “Yeah.” Smiling at him.

  “What kind of friend?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  He just wanted to kiss her. Maybe one more bump, close his eyes . . .

  But then Billy Marcus was coming again, coming like a train, and Eric started babbling.

  “I had this thought at the service today, like there’s one thing, for all their differences, that the audience, and the guys who did the killing, have in common . . . And, it’s narcissism. The difference being, and I’m making an assumption here I realize, that the shooters are narcissistic? But their self-centeredness has no real center. They’re probably pretty much numb to themselves and everybody else, you know, except for their gut needs and, like, impulse reactions to certain situations. But the, the, others? Us? Also narcissistic, but there’s a center to our self-centeredness, a little too much center and not particularly attractive in most cases but . . .” Pirouetting with tension. “I wish I could tell that to somebody.”

  “You just did,” she said.

  “What.”

  “What.” Aping him, Eric laughing; so weird.

  And then he just cupped her face in his hands and she let him, she let him.

  • • •

  “OK,” Billy said, slapping his pockets for his statement. “OK.”

  Mayer Beck, steno pad in hand, waited.

  Marcus had called him thirty minutes ago, pulling him out of bed with his girlfriend, who was going back to Ghana in three hours for her sister’s wedding. There was a good chance she might not be able to get her student visa renewed, that he’d never see her again, but what could you do.

  “OK,” Billy said, having found his notes. “The police in this city, from what I understand, are as good as the job gets.” He spoke with his eyes closed, from memory. “But they got turned around on this one with some bad but plausible eyewitness testimony, and time was of the essence.”

  “OK.” Beck scribbling.

  “This individual, this guy Eric Cash, I understand he’s been through an awful ordeal, but my son . . .” Billy paused. Beck looked up.

  “It’s like, did Eric Cash have a rough day? No doubt. No doubt . . .”

  “I hear you,” Beck murmured.

  “Do you now,” Billy snapped. Beck could hear the porcelain squeak of his clenched teeth.

  “I wasn’t being insincere,” Beck said calmly.

  Behind them, on East Broadway, a van with Ohio plates pulled up, and a heavily tattooed Irish thrash-metal band began carting their equipment into the bar standing next to the old Jewish Daily Forward building. Beck knew the band, Potéen, knew the bar; would have offered to talk in there so he could loosen this guy up with a shot of something, but even the jukebox was deafening.

  “It’s like . . .” Billy closed his eyes again. “Like, OK, Eric, take a moment to smooth your feathers, then . . .”

  Beck started writing again, Billy watching him work.

  “Then . . .” Mayer prodded carefully.

  “I mean, this motherfucking . . .”

  Billy abruptly stalked off a few feet and began muttering, his balled fists like bloodless clubs.

  At first Beck strained to pick up the specifics of the rant but quickly gave up. He knew what was happening: Matty Clark had sent this guy over as his media beard, no doubt, and now the poor bastard was torn between the carefully worded script he’d been spoon-fed and the explosive bile that kept bubbling to the surface.

  Well, he could either help Matty here or he could secure page three.

  Fucking his girlfriend for the last time in this life was no longer an option.

  “Mr. Marcus,” Beck said, “just speak your heart.”

  As the last rays of day dropped down below the bridges, Matty, standing on his terrace, finally got it up to make the call.

  “So how’d it go,” he asked, “they split them up?”

  “Yeah,” his ex said. “I spent all day bouncing from court to court like a pinball.”

  “And?”

  “Eddie was ROR’d to me in Family, Matty Junior’s still locked up.”

  “Charged with?”

  “CPM?”

  “CPM what degree?”

  “First. Man, that judge really ripped him a new one too. Talking about disgracing his badge, betraying public
trust, despicable this, reprehensible that.”

  “Good. Glad to hear it. What’s his bail?”

  “Fifty thousand.”

  “Fifty?”

  “I’m trying to raise the ten percent now, put up the house as security.”

  “Why are you raising it? Where’s his money, big fucking kingpin.”

  “I don’t imagine you’d consider throwing a little into the pot, would you?”

  “You got to be high.”

  “Just asking.”

  “Just answering.”

  “All right then.”

  Matty was about to hang up, then hung up. Called back right away.

  “Hey, it’s me.”

  “What.”

  “Is the Other One there?”

  “In his room.”

  “Could I talk to him please?”

  Matty stood there rehearsing his lines, hearing the footsteps coming to the phone.

  “Hullo?”

  “Hey, how you doing.”

  “OK.”

  “Let me ask, when do you turn sixteen?”

  “When’s my birthday?”

  “Just . . . I’m trying to help you here.”

  “How do you not know my birthday?”

  “Eddie, I’ve been humping for twenty-four hours straight on something,” Matty scrambled. “I can’t think straight, OK?”

  “December twenty-eighth, Jesus.”

  “And you’ll be sixteen then?”

  “Yeah, Dad,” Eddie honking like a goose. “I’ll be sixteen.”

  “OK. Did you get a visitor today?”

  “A what?”

  “One of your brother’s friends, somebody from the job.”

  “Cyril came by.”

  “All right, this Cyril, what did he say. What did he tell you to do.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did he tell you to say that the weed was yours and your brother didn’t even know it was in the car? Did he tell you that if the DA knows up front that that’s what you’ll say in front of a grand jury, there’s no way he’s going to waste his time trying to prosecute your brother?”