Life Among Giants

by Bill Roorbach

  More people arrived, then more again, serious faces, a lot of nice clothes, a lot of intense discussions, everyone carrying briefcases, duffel bags, someone dragging in a very tall stepladder from god knew where. A lady with gels for the lights climbed up there, turned everything pink, then amber. The roadies pulled cables, set mikes, taped off a makeshift stage on the floor between the batteries of speakers, all carefully measured by a guy in green overalls who shooed me back out of the way. I found a chair, turned it backwards the way the dancers did, sat with my chin on my hands the way they did. Mr. Baker played all the while, ungodly noise, everyone’s feet tapping, heads bopping: you couldn’t help yourself. More dancers trotted in, all shirtless in tights, men, women, all half naked, so what? To me, a pillar, desire was but a trifle. They made their way back past four guys in suits poring over forms, guys with guitars, ladies with violins, two men rolling their bass fiddles in front of them, a whole chamber orchestra, it looked like: clarinets, oboes, a harp.

  The lights went down, came back up unevenly, went down again, a test. The room hushed anyway. I felt contemptuous—what did all these people think we were waiting for, the Second Coming? Ginger Baker stopped his banging abruptly, middle of a phrase. He blinked and looked out at the room. He noticed Georges, then, and the two laughed to see one another, shouted one another’s names. Georges hopped down from his organ; awkwardly the two men hugged over floor toms and clashing cymbals. More people hurried in. Guy with a notebook. Lady with a basket. More dancers, a crowd of them, youngish girls in pink. Someone closed the great doors. Something was going to happen. Why had no one told me? Freddy the goon emerged from the back. He and a bigger man—the other goon!—gently cleared everyone off the marked stage. I moved again, found a corner where I wouldn’t be blocking anyone’s view, stood there grumpily. My father was a fucking asshole, you really had to agree with Mom.

  The lights came down to dark.

  SUDDENLY MOVEMENT, AND then Sylphide, no more vine but some kind of nymph or nixie, racing around from behind the drums, leaping into the clearing, a sudden enchanted forest, gauzy mist of veils and skirts, flat shoes, comedic sweep around the stage, an imp peering out at all of us. Like everyone else in the room, I felt there was a special glance for me. And like everyone else, I felt my troubles fly, felt the dancer’s joy as my own, felt great love.

  From somewhere among the speaker cabinets Vlad Markusak suddenly appeared, bare-chested, barefoot, racing. Sylphide reached one corner of the stage precisely as Vlad reached the opposite, both of them stopping in expectation as if by coincidence, and exactly then a spotlight opened on Ginger Baker, who tucked into an incantatory roll on those toms, soon graced by a high wail from Georges’s loud Hammond, spotlight a little off the mark, his head flung back, arms stretched to reach double keyboards.

  The shirtless chorus raced onstage in a black-legged flurry and surrounded Vlad, captured him, carried him toward Sylphide. He seemed simply to float on all that bare skin, writhed in all those bare arms, mayhem. The drums tumbled, the cymbals rang, rimshots like guns going off, bass kicks, subtle roll of tom-toms, irresistible beat, complex rhythms the dancers caught perfectly, darkly, carrying Vlad, the Hammond growing darker, too. Suddenly, they fell backward—dropping Vlad slam on his belly as Sylphide fell, too—fell backward and landed dramatically on their naked shoulder blades, the music rumbling to quiet. Slowly then, Vlad and Sylphide floated to their feet, danced in tandem in and among the other dancers, leaps and lifts and arabesques. Before long the drums picked up again, the organ, too, soaring notes, the shirtless chorus rolling and rising, sweeping over the stage. At the pinnacle of all the noise and action Sylphide was lofted—unclear how—and stood miraculously on dozens of fingertips, looked bemused, bedazzled. The dancers shifted under her somehow, and she was gone, just disappeared. Vlad gave a huge, hearty laugh, and as the drums battled on (Mr. Baker leaning into his work), all the other motion came to pieces, individual dancers suddenly visible again, just graceful people making their own movements, people with their own lives separate from the choreography, people with parents, people with lovers, people with problems, movements more and more provisional, the greater piece unfinished.

  No one clapped. No one moved. The silence was weird, just the sound of Vlad shuffling off the stage. Conrad Pant turned to the champagne ladies. Georges stood and stretched. “Mate,” he said to Ginger Baker, who shrugged happily. The gardeners turned and left looking skeptical. The maids followed them out. A few of the chorus dancers reappeared. Vlad’s deep voice, advice.

  Sylphide reappeared, entirely herself, frankly sweating in her leotard, little towel to wipe at her face, accepted kisses on both cheeks from the champagne ladies. She beamed, she glowed, she laughed out loud at whatever they were saying, more than mere compliments, it looked like. Georges and Mr. Baker struggled down off their platforms, joined the little group, Georges immediately engaging them, something serious about the music. Vlad sauntered over to them, dry as a shed snakeskin. Sylphide put her hand on Georges’s shoulder, adjusted the toe of a shoe. His hand went absently to her bottom, squeeze-squeeze, even as he made some crucial point with the other.

  The rest is blurred in memory—I still feel like it came from me, as if the anger and panic and loneliness of my day suddenly materialized in the form of a stocky fellow in a black suit. He blew in through the big doors from the side yard, a shadow, really, hurrying toward Sylphide and Vlad and Conrad Pant and the foundation ladies as they made their way in a huddle toward the nice breeze streaming in.

  The guy didn’t hesitate, pushed into the group, grabbed Sylphide by the arm, jerked it up behind her and cranked. She let out a cry. “Message from a friend,” he said distinctly. He pushed her to the ground, still holding her, put a foot on her back, twisted that arm hard, dragged her several feet pulling on it. Everyone around froze in horror, even backed away. Not me, not this time: I knocked several chairs over, five big steps and I was there, pushed him, caught his little hand, crushed his knuckles with a sound I could feel, jerked his arm up as he had jerked Sylphide’s, broke bones in there, too. I would have finished subduing him very easily if he hadn’t sprayed me with something, sprayed me straight in the face. I bellowed, went blind, and vomited.

  I WOKE PANICKED and all alone in the attic at home, five in the morning. I’d barricaded myself up there, giddiness having given way to fear. My eyes still itched powerfully. Downstairs, I made an elaborate breakfast, couldn’t eat it. I put on the TV, looking for news, found nothing but test patterns and The Modern Farmer, left it on for company. Mom hadn’t come home and hadn’t called; my note was untouched. I bounded up to their room and stared at their empty bed, all I had of them. I tight-tucked the sheets and plumped the pillows and pulled the quilt up nicely, folded it back the way Mom liked. Dad had left dirty socks on the floor, Mom her nightgown on the old rocking chair. I collected it all for the laundry. I was hungry for order. In the pink dawn I went into a full-scale cleaning fit (a kid in shock, I realize now), raced through the house picking up, straightening, washing dishes, vacuuming, dusting, trying to put things right.

  They’d taken Sylphide off in an ambulance. Conrad had called the police, broken Freddy’s golden rule and in the process proved it: the police really weren’t up to the job. Sylphide’s assailant had gotten away clean. Conrad berated Freddy: How the fuck? But Freddy had been sprayed, too. The police came just after the ambulance—several cars of unimpressive men. “Jealous boyfriend?” one of the sergeants asked. The other asked all friendly if there was any marijuana in the house, if they could have permission to search.

  “You’re on the wrong track, fellas,” Freddy told them, pawing at his eyes still.

  I held a wet towel over mine, courtesy of Desmond. The foundation ladies, the real power in the room, tried to give their stories, but the cops weren’t particularly interested. They’d seen worse, was the implication—these weren’t life-threatening injuries. No sympathy at all, mostly just suspicion, like
they’d come upon a hotbed of foreign intrigue. They didn’t lock down the house, didn’t look around outside, nothing. Sylphide cried inconsolably but silently, eerily. It wasn’t her shoulder she wept for, either, but her very life as a dancer, we all knew that. The medics lay her down, checked her pupils, her pulse, strapped her arm. Georges was at her side, held her good hand, patted it. And he and Conrad followed the ambulance to the hospital.

  I hung around, thought I should provide some assistance somehow to someone, even though my eyes were still pouring tears from the mace, or whatever it was. But Desmond just told me to go. At the pond I discovered the rowboat missing, had to cross the brook on foot through cattails. On our side, muddy to my knees, I found the boat pulled up high on the grass. The guy who’d attacked Sylphide must have used it, then run up our lawn. Which meant that whoever it was knew the boat would be there. I sprinted to the house. Our big rotary lawnmower had been thrown through the patio sliders, rested upside down on the kitchen floor in a pile of shattered safety glass, gasoline dripping. I didn’t have a single thought of danger but raced into the mess, my one thought to get the guy. I wouldn’t let go this time—he could pluck my eyes out with his fingers. But the front door stood open, cool air pouring in. I trotted out to our cul-de-sac, then out to the main road, nothing. Tire tracks on the edge of our lawn, inconclusive: lots of people parked right there, our neighbor’s guests and maintenance men, teenagers. Back inside, I turned the lights on to discover that the locked cover on Dad’s old rolltop desk had been pried open, and the deep, deep drawers pried open, too, all of them pulled out and dumped in drifts of paper: old bills, cancelled checks, useless brochures, legal-size documents, dunning notices from every imaginable creditor (including Yale), drawings I’d made when I was five, notes Kate had written, clipped articles, file folders by the score, all methodically emptied out onto the couch and the carpet. No way to know if anything was missing, or what it might be.

  I knew better than to call the police. Instead, I cleaned up, threw the damaged lawn mower back out into the lawn, swept up beads of glass, wiped up the gasoline. Fine with me if the guy returned: if the guy returned, I would kill him with my hands.

  But later, after a half hour sweating it out in bed, I’d dressed again and climbed up to the attic, closed the hatch door, lined up the family bowling balls as weapons, slept fitfully with my baseball bat in hand.

  At dawn, obsessively putting the kitchen right, I heard the Bridgeport News hit the front stoop. I dropped the piece of plywood I’d been inexpertly fitting to the smashed patio door, raced to get the paper. Because of the local angle, they had an involved story about Dolus Investments—four columns of the front page—mostly about the accountant gunned down in his Fairfield yard. But Nicholas Hochmeyer had his place in the paper, too, a three-column photo of him climbing out of the FBI car in Danbury with a coat over his head like any thug. Money laundering, securities fraud, embezzlement, extortion, mail fraud, felony theft, felony currency manipulation, all of them tied up with conspiracy charges as well, including racketeering and accessory to murder, whoa.

  The actual murder indictment was another guy, someone in the Chicago office, Pervis Z. Oliver, 38, no one I’d ever heard of. There was a side article about Dolus’s ties to organized crime, as well: nothing definite. Mr. Perdhomme wasn’t indicted for anything, painted himself as a dupe, but the paper had printed a large photo of him, this gentle-looking bald guy smiling sadly in a suit and striped tie. Caption: VICTIM OR ARCHITECT? I knew how my old man would answer that question.

  The median potential sentence for Dad’s alleged crimes was twenty-five years, which the paper thought likely, given all the evidence.

  I ransacked the rest of the pages, but the attack on Sylphide hadn’t made it in. I tuned the kitchen radio to the all-news station, couldn’t sit still: President Nixon, Cambodia, another moon shot. Nothing about Sylphide, happily, not a word. I called the Bridgeport Hospital. No information could be given over the phone. Not so much as an acknowledgement that she was there. I dressed for school, started for the bus stop. Suddenly I missed my father, missed him terribly, realized standing there at the end of our little street that there was no way I could get on the bus: by now all of Staples High would know everything.

  SITTING ON MY parents’ narrow bed mid-morning, I called Jack Cross’s office again. And after a single ring—unwanted miracle—he answered. “Well, David,” he said warmly enough.

  “I need to find Katy,” I said.

  “She’s got tennis till ten, I think. What’s up? You sound upset.”

  And then I was upset.

  Jack was quiet as I cried, just, “Okay,” and “I’m right here,” very tenderly, the first moment I loved him. When I’d subsided a little, he said, “What’s going on, David?”

  I told him the story, as simply as I could, the Dad story only, looking out the good patio door toward the High Side. My job with Sylphide, the attack on Sylphide, that was too much, of course, too much for Katy. Dad in prison, definitely enough. While I was talking, Jack found the item in the New Haven Register. He read it aloud, quite shocking, all that murder and manipulation.

  “I’ll find a way to tell Kate,” he said. “And then I think you should come up here.”

  No way.

  Suddenly I remembered the envelope from Sylphide. Jack talked logic as I tore it open: the lump in there was the speckled stone, of course. I smoothed it and smoothed it and smoothed it as Jack went on. When he finally hung up I dug once again through all the papers on Dad’s desk. What was missing? New mail in a rubber band. Just more bills, all of them overdue. A notice from Westport Savings and Trust announced that our mortgage had lapsed, three missed payments: we had ten days to come up with two hundred eighty-six dollars, a fairly large figure in my experience, ten more days to pay it again, ten more days for a third payment to catch up and avoid dispossession. Nearly a thousand dollars due in a month, a vast sum.

  I dialed Jack’s office again: busy.

  He was talking to Kate, of course.

  I smoothed the speckled heart, smoothed it, smoothed it.

  MOM CALLED FROM a phone booth at the courthouse in Danbury. Dad would go state’s evidence. She explained what that meant. He was largely innocent, she said. “ ‘Largely,’ ” she repeated, obviously quoting him. She sounded actually kind of upbeat, laid out all the legal maneuvers their lawyer had planned, the public defender. Guy named McBee, fat as a house, she said. There was no money for better. There was no money at all.

  She said, “You remember how Dad said the Blue ’Bu was stolen? Well, it wasn’t stolen. He sold it.”

  “He sold the Blue ’Bu?”

  “Sold it to pay some bills, so he says. There’s a lot he’s going to have to explain. We’re all going to have to be pretty brave, honey. We’re all going to have to be pretty goddamn forgiving.” She did not sound forgiving, she did not sound brave. She’d been staying at a crappy motel, constant meetings with lawyers and judges and jailors, had seen Dad twice for all of fifteen minutes, Dad at his cowed worst.

  I kept meaning to tell her about the smashed window, the lawnmower, the action at Sylphide’s, but the opening never quite came, the information too ambiguous, and maybe not for her. Anyway, suddenly she had to go: the public defender had just appeared, and she only had ten minutes with him, fifteen if she were lucky.

  “Mom, just quick, the mortgage, it’s lapsing.” I pulled out the notice, read it one more time. “What should I do?”

  “No, honey, the mortgage isn’t lapsing. I gave Daddy checks for that.”

  “Lapsing,” I said.

  Silence. Then, “Honey, do you have any money in your savings account?”

  Yes, I did, enough to cover two of the payments, money I’d made shoveling snow and mowing lawns from age twelve, some of it from the mowing at Sylphide’s.

  I thought suddenly of something I’d learned as a quarterback: praise for the team in tough circumstances. “Mom. I just want to say wh
at a good job you’re doing. You sound so calm.”

  She gave a short laugh and said, “That’s how you win at tennis, David.”

  14

  The High Side was in full roar by noon the next day, music and trucks rumbling and occasional shouts clearly audible, Mr. Baker pounding his drums, guitars accompanying, maybe someone singing, the driveway full of cars, also one of those very fancy tour buses, craziness, like no one cared what had happened to the dancer, shades of the days after Dabney’s death, the party going forward. I’d fallen asleep on our living-room floor, only to be awakened by the phone ringing.

  I plunged to answer, but it wasn’t Mom.

  “Mr. Demeter?”

  Our kindly principal cleared his throat, said, “Taking a another day off?”

  “Well, yes. Things are a bit rough here, sir.”

  “Roger that, David. We’ve seen the news items. Just wanted you to know you have our support.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Now David. Anything you want to tell me about your friend Nussbaum? Mark Nussbaum?”

  “No. I mean, not since he didn’t show up to our meeting with you.”

  “Where were you yesterday afternoon, son?”

  “Sir? I was at the High Side. Sylphide’s place? I’m working there part-time.”

  “The High Side. You were there between what hours, exactly?”

  “Exactly, sir? Um, I took the bus home, and then I went right over there, like three o’clock. And I got home late, like maybe ten or eleven. Working, sir.”

  “So you were there at about five, between, say, five and six?”

  “Yes, sir. What’s going on?”

  “And are there people over there that can attest to that?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course sir.”

  “David, wonderful. Imagine my relief. Because Mark Nussbaum was dragged out of his car yesterday behind the science labs, driven out to the beach and severely beaten. This was early evening, after a double detention for the matter to which you just referred. He’s in guarded condition at Norwalk Hospital. They may have fractured his skull. Both hands broken, both arms, teeth broken, bruised spine. It’s very serious.”