“Finish that tomorrow too?” Lucy asked. “Wow. So would that be the last of it? Are you almost done?”
“No way, but it might be the last scene I need those two old guys for. There’s quite a bit left to do but I think we’ve nailed the heart of it, Luce.”
“So when do I get to see an edit, or at least a decent piece of…what do we call it now, since it ain’t film? Digitage?”
“It’s still footage to me, honey. And you’ll see it soon,” he said, then lowered his voice. “I promise. Soon as I get my ticket to Rio.”
“You’re still thinking that?”
“Grace is driving me completely insane, and now since I won’t go to that fucking creepy club with her she’s like…I’m going by myself, you take care of the kid, I’ll see you later, blah blah blah, yak yak yak, kvetch kvetch kvetch.”
“And you have the money so why not, eh?”
“Two-fifty back to the Schmuckworths, thanks to Carole’s kind heart, fifty to Grace, fifty to Carole, fifty to finish—I can do it for thirty-five, probably—leaves me a hundred—less the other ten you get for handling all this so well, Lucy.”
“I’d turn you down out of all modesty since this has been an interesting and not too difficult project, but since you’re talking about abandoning ship with a hundred grand in your pocket I’ll say hand it over instead.”
“Next week most likely. Just gotta do one more budget, count out some cash for the boys and girls upstairs, and we are good to go.”
“You’re an asshole to cut out like this, Paul. You know that, right?”
“Maybe, but you don’t know this woman, Lucy. If I don’t leave I’m going to have to kill her.” He gave Lucy a look which said one simple thing: that he was hardly kidding.
“So that’s the way it is, huh,” Lucy said. “I’m tempted to say why the fuck did you marry her then, but that would be in bad taste, right?” she said. He didn’t answer. Instead he gave her his patented—she’d seen it a hundred times over the years—soulfully long-suffering look. She headed off on foot, homeward bound. “See you tomorrow, Paulie. Take care.”
“I’ll try Lucy,” he said. “And thanks for all the good work.”
“My pleasure, amigo.” She strolled into Tompkins Square, remembering one night she’d come through years ago when several hundred homeless people, at least half of them half-mad and the rest just pissed off as hell, had moved in here, set up camps and a soup kitchen and all—and how one crazy homeless guy, another lost face in a crowd of them, had disappeared. It turned out he’d been killed and cut up and cooked in the communal soup pot. According to everyone she talked to about it, it was not urban legend but horrible truth. Cannibalism in the East Village. Lucy remembered fearing for her life, walking through a neighborhood park.
Now there were babies in the sand boxes, kids on the swings, moms and nannies with their armored strollers sipping five dollar coffees, while the squirrels raced about and the fountains spurted clean, clear water into the clean, clear air as Lucy drifted through, murmuring—she never sang out loud except in the shower—one of David Byrne’s Talking Heads’ ditties from the 1980s. Was it time to stop making sense?
CHAPTER TWELVE
SEX AND DEATH
Rising up above the earth, that is, walking up to her front door, Lucy lost track of the 92 steps as she recalled an argument from years ago. An arrogant, opinionated music writer she’d known back in the days before he went home to San Francisco and became a car salesman had loudly insisted that David Byrne and the Talking Heads were presumptuous stinking honkies for even daring to cover Al Green’s Take Me to the River. Lucy on the other hand happened to LOVE David Byrne’s yelping, white boy version of the song. He was such a quirky character all those years ago, emerging out of art school to conquer the pop world, become a successful neurotic rock star, art star, film maker, and eventually transform himself into an eminence grise, blogging his cool way through the cool world. Why this in her head, just now? Because one of the first times she’d had sex with Harry, in a hotel room in Negril, Jamaica, she’d played early Talking Heads, another one of Byrne’s charming little ditties, and so it floated into her head with Harry. Que que que qu’est que c’est, psycho killer, she murmured, unlocking her many locks, pushing open the door, calling out for Claud, entering the room to spot, surprisingly, on her desk a sweaty white wine bottle icing in a silver bucket next to a bouquet of tall white irises with pale blue and yellow markings in a cylindrical black vase, and Claud lounging on the floor looking pleased with himself, and then, emerging from the kitchen, this guy she once knew so well it hurt. “Harry!” she screamed in delight. “You sly dog, you did it again!”
“Did what, doll?” he asked in his droll fashion, swooping across the room to sweep her off her feet.
“Surprise attack. What else? How did you get in here?”
“You know I have my ways, Lucita,” he said.
She pushed loose and scrutinized him for a second. “Marriage doesn’t agree with you, does it, Harry?”
“Didn’t. At least not that one.” He gave her a look. “It’s over. But honestly, do I look that bad?”
She stroked his cheek gently. “Yeah. I mean no, but…you’re tired.”
“Haiti didn’t agree with me either. At least some of the people I got acquainted with down there. But forget that, Lucy,” he said, wine bottle in hand. “Let’s celebrate.”
“Sure, Harry,” she said. And then a pall of melancholy came over her. This would never work, they’d already tried and failed. “But what or why are we celebrating this time, Harry?”
“Hey, take your pick. My soon-to-be-finalized divorce, the awesomely evil person I just busted in Haiti, your movie deal…or, even better,” he dropped his tone, and gave her a look, “The impossibly good time we are going to have in the next hour or two.”
She looked at his weary, lined face, then shook off her doubts as he smiled at her, lighting her up. She joined him as he poured the wine. His was the face of love that she knew. “Hey, that looks like some fancy stuff you got there, H-man.”
“It is I was assured the best sixteen-dollar and ninety-five cent Sauvignon Blanc I could buy,” he said, handing her a glass. “Well, cheers, Luce.” They raised their glasses. “Here’s to old friends.”
“Good friends, Harry. Good friends. We don’t say old friends any more. Haven’t you learned that yet, you impending geezer.”
“Hey, fuck off, fifty is the new thirty so I’m twenty-nine.”
“And I’m thirteen, which makes you a…”
“Dirty old man. Cool.” He put down his wine glass. She put down her wine glass, and they embraced, and soon their lips met in a kiss, and shortly thereafter they peeled each others clothes off, and in no time at all, with little foreplay deemed necessary, they made love, hard and fast, throwing off sweat onto her lowdown, sweet and soft loft bed.
Ten minutes later they were done for the moment, and with cold, brimming-full wine glasses again in hand they sat together, naked on the bed. “God, it feels perfect to be here now with you, Lucy,” he said, still panting, face glistening with sweat.
“Yes, Harry, it does. It’s been almost a year since you got your stupid self married and I was sure that was that, so long sucker.”
“Well, I did ask you first, Luce,” he reminded her.
“Yes you did, and I said no, so to punish me you married the third most beautiful woman in New York. That’s when I thought goodbye Harry forever, who could ever walk away from a woman like Katya, but instead, now you’re done with her, for reasons I don’t need to know right now. But you do realize, Harry, that if you asked me again I’d still say no.” She knew she was babbling but that was OK, it was afterglow, it was energy, it was happiness, pure and simple!
“Because that’s who you are,” he said. “And who you are is why I’m here.”
“That doesn’t mean,” she said softly, sexily, reaching down to tease him where it pleased the most. “I don’t want
some more of this, as soon as possible.”
“That would be in about…” he looked at his watch. “Half an hour? That is, if you don’t mind if I obtain a little assistance.”
“Assistance? What are you talking about?”
“This,” he said, holding up a little beige pill.
“What is that?” Lucy asked, though she knew. “Viagra? You’re using…”
“Cialis. Viagra’s a blue diamond. You know that. But no matter—a different drug, same result. What can I say, I’m almost fifty, the shit helps.”
“Harry if it helps you make love to me better do I want you to take it? Hell yes.”
“Maybe not better—hey, how could I possibly be better?” He grinned. “But definitely for longer, and most likely starting sooner.”
“Chow down, Harry.” He did. He ate his little pill and washed it down with wine, and then, for half an hour, while they relaxed until his eyes reddened and his skin flushed, signals that the stuff had done its work, Lucy filled Harry in on the Wittgenstein-Wadsworth caper.
The second time they made love for half an hour, until Lucy, who hadn’t exactly been burning up the sheets of late, got too sore to go on in spite of Harry’s well-intentioned, highly satisfying maneuvers and assistance from a bottle of sweet greasy stuff to ease the way; and so they stopped, unfinished, with lubricious promises for later. “But first,” Harry said, “I want more details because from what you told me there are a few interesting strings dangling from this package and I’d like to see if I can help you unravel them, or knit them up, or whatever we need to do to, you know, get closure.”
“I hate that word, Harry,” Lucy called, en route to the kitchen to gather sustenance. “When it’s used abstractly. Closure. The only thing that you get closure from is a door, as far as I’m concerned. But no matter.” She busied herself. “God, have I missed you,” she said as she arrived back at bedside a moment later, delivering a plate of pate and cheese and crackers and sliced pears and the rest of the bottle of seventeen dollar wine. “You don’t have sex for a while you forget how much fun it can be.”
“Does that mean you’ll marry me now and give me closure on my heartbreak?” he said with a smirk.
“I love you, Harold Ipswich, some of the time. Most of the time,” she corrected herself. “Be happy with that. Even if I won’t marry you this year. Maybe next year I will.” She drank wine. “So what’s your next assignment? When can I look forward to not seeing you for three more months?” That reality of Harry’s, waiting in the wings. Those really long “business” trips that he couldn’t talk about.
“Maybe we should steal that hundred grand from Paul, run off to Rio ourselves.”
“Good plan, Harry. Maybe we’ll track down Maria Verde, capture her and sell her to some exiled Somali slave traders specializing in white women who’ve had extensive plastic surgery.” Lucy fell silent for a moment. “Seriously, H, are you around for a while?”
“Yeah, I think so. At least that’s what my people told me. I’m good for a month.”
“Cool,” said Lucy. “So you can help me wrap up my work on this movie.”
“And the weird Wadsworth business.”
“Right. I tend to forget that is a different issue. The movie and the Wadsworth business are all the same in my mind these days, since Wadsworth was the producer, and the people I’ve been working with—you know, Paul and his crew, especially Paul and his lead actors—are all caught up in the Wadsworth story too. So it’s all of a piece.”
“A case of life imitating art, eh?”
“I guess. Having a bunch of actors involved makes it harder, I will say. But you know how it is with me and actors anyway.”
“They are not your favorite people.”
“What could be worse that an oversized, yet impossibly fragile ego?” she asked rhetorically. “But you know, the truth is these particular actors are OK for the most part, maybe because I’m the writer and they depend on me to give them their dialogue. They don’t exist without me. So they’ve all been pretty nice.” She shrugged. “I guess my usual clichéd generality about actors being a pain in the butt by definition doesn’t always work—at least not in this case.”
“Speaking of butts,” Harry said quietly, “Turn around.”
“God Harry…already?” she said, voice dropping to a murmur as she obeyed.
“Your rear end never fails to make me absolutely crazy with lust, Lucy,” he said, touching her, stroking her with gentle fingers. “You know that. Plus I told you that stuff worked for like two days, didn’t I?”
“You’re going to have to go real easy, Harry,” Lucy said. “I’m kinda hurting down there.” He dropped to his knees, and pulled her towards him.
“How about you just have a seat right here,” he said, patting the edge of the bed, “and put that leg there, yes, there, and that one there, and just lay back and reeee-lax, baby.”
She did, until relaxing was not possible, for she felt compelled to writhe and cry out, reacting to the impossibly precise application of Harry’s tongue to her hottest spots, the places in her body only he knew how to find. This went on for a perfect little while, and then Harry jumped her bones, and took it slow and easy, rubbing the soreness right out of her, and then slipping and sliding away the worry and the pain; and for a time, everything else—well, almost everything, since she suddenly had flash through her head the thought that she still hadn’t called her mom to find out about this eBay movie-selling business with Manny Carapini—and then that worthless thought went away too in the warm white light of afternoon love.
Then she took an afternoon nap, spooned with Harry, her head on his arm and her butt in his lap, and felt content like she hadn’t since the last time she’d slept with him.
With Harry there to distract her, Lucy decided to ignore The Movie for a few days, if Paul would let her. She thought he would. He knew Harry was around, and if Lucy didn’t show up at the set he’d figure out why. Between messing around in bed, and talking while walking the dog all over downtown, getting reacquainted, she and Harry went to a couple of dinners at their old haunts. Odeon still carried on with style, but La Gamelle, once Lucy’s most cherished downtown haunt, definitely showed signs of wear and tear. Once upon a time, she told Harry, never having told him this before, in La Gamelle’s tiny, gender-neutral bathrooms, Lucy and assorted good friends and evil acquaintances on several occasions had snorted enough cocaine to kill a goat. Or themselves. Once upon a time that had been fun, having money to burn and drugs to burn it. That was before she met Harry. Harry was not particularly impressed with Lucy’s small-time sordid tale, having had a bad boy run of several years himself. His misbehavior included multiple overdoses of myriad drugs, and lost weekends too numerous to count. And a grand finale, watching his brother die in the middle of one such weekend, but that went unsaid since he’d already told that tale. Lucy resisted nostalgia and sentimentality as a matter of course, but heading into the old places with Harry definitely brought it all back home, that ancient history of the late 1990s.
Harry absolutely refused to go to Zola after one look in the window at the crowd, all half his age and twice as cool, or so they thought, looking out the window at 49-year old Harry, gray hair going every which way, funky horn-rimmed glasses, his general appearance more like that of an European revolutionary circa 1957 than an undercover DEA agent, former dope abuser, and topnotch freelance writer.
She almost talked herself into thinking that if Harry asked her again, she might say yes. But she would never ask him to ask, that would be changing the karma of the deal. Instead, she threw aside those worries about what next with Harry and just enjoyed herself, free of actual personal contact with the Manny/Conrad, Carole/Delia, Jack/Morris axis. The axis that also included dead Christopher Wadsworth and live Paul Wittgenstein.
Actually, during the quiet two days, without the actors in her face, between love bouts with Harry, who had meetings with a divorce lawyer, his DEA liaison, his accountant,
and three magazine editors, Lucy was able to write the fight scene. She wrote it as the last scene and declared it the denouement, give or take a few possible loose threads to tie up with an epilogue of some sort.
Then Paul emailed. “Showtime, Luce. I know Harry’s here and you needed a break and I hope you’re having fun—hey, I know you’re having fun—and say hey to da man for me. But I’ve finished the secondary shooting and even some editing. We need to get to THE END so send me pages baby please baby please baby baby baby please. Love P.”
“They are done, amigo. Here they are.” She attached the file and sent the email.
Twenty minutes later she got mailback. “I love you, Lucy. Good work. Tomorrow late afternoon—fivish—at Second and Second, bring your sharpest pencil in case we need rewrite. (But I don’t think we will). Let’s get this airplane landed. P”
Lucy had serious issues with some of the pages and notes she’d sent Paul, but when she had Harry read it all the next day, Harry said, “Fuck it, he says he likes it. Since I don’t know the story quite like you do I can hardly critique a couple of pages of dialogue but the only thing I have to say is you seem a little unsure at the very end. What’s up with that?”
“Good question, Harry. And you’re right, I am. But I can’t get into why right now.” She looked at her watch. “If we’re going to get lunch en route we should go. Can you manage Monsieur Claud if I have to stick around there and rewrite, or whatever Paul needs? He’s really pushing to finish.”
“No problem, Luce. Claud and I are the best of friends, as you know,” he said, as the poodle, hearing his name, strolled over for a head scratch. “Hey pup, maybe Lucy can write a part for a large white poodle, what do you think?”
Sex and Death: The Movie: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 6) Page 18
