Manhattan Nocturne

by Colin Harrison

Caroline: No. Just a little time with you. I’m curious about you.

  Hobbs: You see, I must ask because a man in my position, people are bloody always asking me for money or a job or something. It was Carol, right?

  Caroline: Caroline.

  Hobbs: Of course. I’m terribly sorry. [She shakes her head and then pulls something out of her hair, making it fall.] Do you want the lights on or off?

  Caroline: Off. There’s a lot of light from the city.

  Hobbs: [He moves to the wall, and the lights go out. They settle on the bed.] Now … [She takes his hand into hers.] Let me tell you something, my Miss Caroline. We gaze at each other across a far gulf. Of course, we know what these things are. [His voice is deep and slow and full of affection.] You are a beautiful young woman, you are an American, you have your whole life ahead of you. And we know all too well what I am … yes. I am a—

  Caroline: Shhhh. [She begins to undress.]

  Hobbs: That’s quite kind. But let me just say this, my Miss Caroline, I want you to know that I know who I am. I know what I look like, to you. This is very important to me. Because it allows me to express my gratitude to you. I am a fat old man. I am a horror, an obscenity. It’s been thirty years since I could touch my toes. I also am incapable of normal sexual function, my Miss Caroline.

  Caroline: Are you sure?

  Hobbs: Quite sure. [He kicks off his shoes.]

  Caroline: Can’t have sex?

  Hobbs: No. But please—

  Caroline: [She resumes her undressing.] Do you mind me asking why? I mean, is it—

  Hobbs: Not you, not at all, of course not. [He drops his pants, unbuttons his shirt.] It’s something that happened—quite a long time ago, I’m afraid.

  Caroline: I want to hear about it.

  Hobbs: [sighing]: It’s an old man’s tale.

  Caroline: I can hear it. I’ve seen a few things.

  Hobbs: Let me get a cigarette. [Disappears into bathroom, his fleshy bulk suddenly illuminated, like a moon, by a light that flicks on, then just as abruptly off.] Now then. Well. If you insist. I haven’t spoken of this for many years, actually. Once upon a time, my dear Caroline, I was twenty years old and my father was the ninth richest man in Australia. My father and I did not get along then, not at all. He wanted me in the newspaper business and I had other ideas. I was rather interested in sailing and the girls, you know. I had quite a bit of money to spend for a boy my age, and I used to go to the brothels in Melbourne, which, I shall say, were marvelous. My father had failed in his attempt to get me off to Oxford or Cambridge and had been forced to settle for the University of Sydney. Quite a disappointment, that. He was worried for my future, he was. I don’t blame him. We had terrible rows. The summer before my last year of university I did the unmentionable—I signed on to work on a freighter.

  Caroline: A boat.

  Hobbs: [lies on bed]: Yes, a freighter is, or was, the ship that hauled everything around the world. Coal, steel, grain, whatever. Now, except for the big container ships and the oil tankers, it’s all jumbo cargo jets. But back in 1956, the freighter was the thing. I loved working on the ship. There was quite a bit of painting. Scraping and painting. We worked our way up the west coast of Africa, then around Gibraltar toward France. I mailed very short letters to my mother and father from each port, knowing that they would arrive in Australia weeks later. In Marseilles, we put in to drop some automobile tires that we had picked up. Marseilles was a tough town, quite a tough town. Our captain had even warned us, but I wasn’t scared. No, not at all. We had a boiler problem, so we were in port for five days, and for much of that time I was free.

  Caroline: There’s a woman in this story, I can feel it.

  Hobbs: There most certainly is.

  Caroline: Was she beautiful?

  Hobbs: As beautiful as you, except that she was dark, like mahogany. She was the most expensive prostitute in Marseilles, that is, if she wanted you. I had quite a bit of money with me that I had kept hidden, and I did the most stupendously stupid thing I could have done.

  Caroline: What?

  Hobbs: I fell in love with her. I kept giving her money to spend time with me, and she obliged.

  Caroline: She was taking advantage of you.

  Hobbs: Which I knew. But I did not care. We spent half the time in the French countryside, drunk. I’d rented a car. She called herself Monique. She was half-Indian, a quarter Zulu, some Chinese, and the rest Boer. Born in Cape Town. Quite a life she had had. Her French was rudimentary. Very tough little cat—just like you, I’d bet. She had been kidnapped and taken to Marseilles by a captain after the war ended. Kidnapped by him, then fell in love with him. You can imagine how thrilling all this was to a twenty-year-old lad lying in the grass in the French countryside, half-drunk. I was quite smitten. The affair was doomed, of course. I knew I was back on the freighter in a few days. These days are as real to me as this morning’s breakfast. I can look out of that window, Caroline, and I know that I am in Manhattan at the Plaza Hotel and that it is June eighteenth or whatever—I never know the date anymore—but I am simultaneously back there, looking into the dark, dark eyes of my Monique. I do not have a photograph of her. I do not have a letter. I have nothing but the memory of her, the last day we saw each other, which was May the twenty-third, 1956, at eleven-fifty-seven P.M. I was due back on the ship at midnight. We were shipping out at two A.M. to catch the tide. [Caroline lights a cigarette.] Her flat was two floors up, four blocks from the docks. I had given her every last franc and pound and dollar I had, willingly and happily. We had been together for almost five straight days. I was broken to pieces at the thought of leaving her, for I knew I would never see her again. But also I was strangely happy, because I knew I had just had quite a little adventure of the heart, you might call it, and soon I would be back on the ship safely steaming across the ocean.

  Caroline: You said good-bye to her?

  Hobbs: Indeed. I said good-bye to her and kissed her and told her I loved her and would never forget her and all the other things one says when one’s heart is full, and then she told me I had to go, it took three minutes to get down to the docks, and I told her I could run it in half that time, and she said, “Well, maybe two minutes,” and I believe we kissed one more time. Then I looked at her, that very last look, that look that you know will have to do you until you are dead, and then I flew down the steps and into the dark streets, and it was maybe a block away that some of the regular Marseilles sailors caught me, even though I was a pretty big lad and put up my best fight, and they beat me badly, and one of them stuck me with a knife about a dozen times around the groin, and they left me there for dead.

  Caroline: God.

  Hobbs: They hated me for having taken Monique, you understand. They knew that I must not really be a sailor if I had paid her for five days and had rented a car and bought a lot of wine. They had been waiting for me. They knew when my ship was off. I was in a very bad way. My boat left without me. They had dragged me off the main street, behind some rubbish. An old woman found me in the morning. I was very bad. The doctor said that he thought I had lost half my blood, that I was saved only by my youth. But the sailors, they had cut up my nerves, they had cut everything down there that you could cut Lucky I still have my balls actually, but after that it was no good. Couldn’t get hard. Wanted to. I’ve wanted to for almost forty years. Nothing. Seen the best doctors in the world. The best. Kept hoping some kind of technique would come along … some drug, but nothing. The nerves are all dead in there. I can feel when I am pissing, sort of, but that’s all. Otherwise, almost nothing. Hot and cold a bit. Erection impossible.

  Caroline: What happened to you after that?

  Hobbs: I stayed in hospital. I was in a bad way. I had no money, I didn’t know much French. Finally I asked a nurse to contact the editor of the newspaper. Instead she came back with a man who used to work for the BBC. Retired. We could talk in English. I gave him my father’s name and address. He contacted him. Three days later my
father arrived. Then a private hospital in Paris. He stayed with me for a month there. Read me the papers. We were very much changed, he and I. He started to explain some of the problems he was having with his newspapers. He was wise enough to make it seem interesting. Every day, hour after hour. Sometimes he would read to me. Had a special phone put in the room so that he could do a bit of business while sitting right there. When I was well we flew back to Australia. He brought me right into the paper. I never would have done it if I hadn’t been attacked, but I needed to have something. He was quite wise, my father. I miss him. [Hobbs is silent.] Three years later he was dead of a coronary and there I was with the whole bloody business. [In the darkened room, she is curled against Hobbs’s great bulk. Minutes pass. His breathing is pressed and often; hers, unstrained, is inaudible. It seems that his hand is moving slowly back and forth on her shoulder and neck. She takes the large hand and lays it on her face, kisses it.] You are not repulsed by me?

  Caroline: I think you’re sweet. [She is taking one finger at a time and putting each one in her mouth, withdrawing it and then doing the next one.]

  Hobbs: There is something else I would like to do, here.

  Caroline: What?

  Hobbs: I think it will be something … it’s quite meaningful to me in its own way.

  Caroline: I don’t—

  Hobbs: Let me just … [The immense bulk of Hobbs moves off the bed and passes by the camera.] Here, if you just, just move down here a bit—[Hobbs is at the end of the bed, kneeling, with some difficulty. She is lying with her legs open. Hobbs lowers his bulk between them.] You see, my Miss Caroline … [Hobbs has put his head between her legs; his words are somewhat muffled.] I have a—perhaps you’ve seen it, my tongue is—I have a rather—why, here, if I may, I’ll just …

  Caroline: Hey, oh.

  Hobbs: [lifting his head]: Yes? I think that’s probably quite—[Lowers his head, drops one meaty palm on each of her thighs.]

  Caroline: Oh. That’s your tongue? I can’t believe—oh! It’s … [Indecipherable sounds. Several minutes pass, Caroline breathing deeply.] Don’t—slow down—a little bit slower … a little—no, now go in with it and side to side … I … [Twisting her head back and forth.] Now come out, now go—uh, in, now, that’s too … I said don’t do it but please do it again—oh, yes, that’s—[The room is silent for a time, but for the wheezed breathing of Hobbs, and the sounds of Caroline as she twists on the bed. A siren passes on the street below. The air has a far buzz and hum. Then she rolls onto her side.] That was—I feel so relaxed.

  Hobbs: [standing slowly]: I’m cheating now, you see, cheating time. [Lies on bed.] When I am here, like this, in the dark, with the feeling of you here next to me, I actually recall the past, Miss Caroline, I go back there, I’m not destroyed by time … I used to spend quite a few hours with the prostitutes in Cairo. I cannot possibly describe to you how pleasurable this was. I cannot possibly tell you how happy I am at this moment; this is all that a man such as I can enjoy anymore. I used to smoke quite a bit back then, sitting on the balconies of the brothels and watching the crowds. After my accident I found that I took very little pleasure in such things. I felt myself to be disfigured and so I set about to disfigure myself more—or, at least, that is how I understand it myself. It confounds me that I am alive, Miss Caroline, and yet I am now quite glad to be alive. Oh, I know what they think of me, and I understand that, but they are sort of a family now to me. I feel a certain pride that I have created jobs for these people, almost nine thousand people around the world, Miss Caroline, and there is something in that, I would hope people might agree … [He is suddenly quiet, perhaps melancholy.] I was flying over what used to be Yugoslavia the other night, and the sky was clear. I could see the rocket fire below, flashes … and here I was on my way to Frankfurt. They were mortaring Sarajevo. It’s … terribly odd, really, I don’t live anywhere, my Caroline. I move about the world, but … I would have to admit … I never had anyone, Caroline, perhaps I should have married, but I never understood the human need for it. I was a fool. It’s too late now. I can’t live anywhere. I don’t live anywhere. I don’t know anybody … All I do is fly and fly and fly. [She takes his arm and rubs it.] I do find solace in interludes such as this. You are young and willing to listen to me … your very strangeness allows me to be intimate with you. I see that you are from somewhere, you have stories, you would not be here … We are beauty and the beast, perhaps. [Laughs.] No, let me amend that thought: beauty and capital. How odd that these two things always seek out each other. I look upon your face and I forget myself, I forget the … the flying, the—[He buries his massive head in her breasts and she strokes it. Half a minute passes. Finally Caroline leans her head down over Hobbs, her hair curtaining the two of them. Perhaps she whispers to him, kisses the back of his head, whispers something more.] Have you always done this to men, turned them into wrecks?

  Caroline: I love men. That’s sort of my problem.

  Hobbs: Men will always wreck themselves for you.

  Caroline: That scares me.

  Hobbs: It should. I will think of you.

  Caroline: You will?

  Hobbs: Yes. I will remember the beautiful young woman who was so patient with the fat old man, who let him ramble on, deluding himself that there was meaning in what he had to say.

  Caroline: You’re too hard on yourself.

  Hobbs: I have nothing, Caroline. I wish you to understand that. I have perhaps a moment like this once every year or so, but that is all I have. Everything else is nothing to me … nothing. [The two figures slowly dress, saying nothing. She is slipping on her dress and he intimates that he will help button the back of it, a task that he concentrates on, his breathing labored as his thick fingers pinch each button through its hole.] Very good. [She turns.] I would like to see you again.

  Caroline: I’m not sure.

  Hobbs: Fair enough. If you do want to, call my office here, ask for Mr. Campbell. [Puts on his jacket] Do you need anything? A car?

  Caroline: I’m fine.

  Hobbs: Let me at least get a car. [Picks up the phone.] Springfield, a car downstairs, please. Yes. All right. [Hangs up.] All set, then?

  Caroline: Yes.

  Hobbs: It’ll just be a quick good-bye.

  Caroline: Where will you be next week?

  Hobbs: Next week? Perhaps Berlin. No, London first and then Berlin. [He picks up the phone again.] I’ll be in the lobby in five minutes. Hmm? Yes. Fax him that. Yes. Tell the pilot we’ll leave at three-thirty. Yes, five minutes or so. [Hangs up.] I’m going to give you my farewell.

  Caroline: Are you flying tonight?

  Hobbs: London, yes.

  Caroline: Have a safe trip.

  Hobbs: Thank you.

  Caroline: Good-bye.

  Hobbs: Call Mr. Campbell if you wish.

  Caroline: I’m not sure.

  Hobbs: Good-bye, then. [A door opens and shuts; his bulk can be seen going through a square of light. Caroline Crowley sits in bed, not moving. A minute or two passes. She looks out of the window and then turns back toward the camera. She walks directly toward it, quickly, her face passing out of view, reaching an arm toward it. The image goes black.]

  At the Royalton, Hobbs was sitting in an immense booth. I noted a black valise at his feet. An assistant sat at another table.

  “Mr. Wren—” Hobbs swept his hand toward my chair. “Please. I hope that this time we may be gentlemen with one another.”

  I felt differently about him now; I understood him to be vulnerable and anxious just like anyone else.

  “I trust you will allow me to buy you a spectacular lunch,” Hobbs said.

  I wasn’t interested in being charmed. “I want the name of the man who shot my son and baby-sitter,” I said.

  Hobbs stared at me. “No.”

  “Deal’s off.” I stood up.

  “Just a minute.” He beckoned his assistant, who brought with him a portable phone.

  “Phone number and address, t
oo.”

  Hobbs and the assistant talked in a low voice for a minute. When he was done, he slid a piece of paper over to me. Phil Biancaniello, Bay Ridge, a Brooklyn phone number.

  “You understand that I have a personal problem with him still.”

  Hobbs opened his hands. “Of course.”

  We ordered, and then I drew the tape out of my coat pocket and handed it across the table.

  Hobbs looked at it. “Appears quite innocuous, wouldn’t you say?”

  Then he signaled to the assistant, who reached into a briefcase and pulled out a piece of equipment about the size of a laptop computer. It had a tiny monitor on top, and Hobbs pushed the videotape into a slot on one side.

  “Where’s the battery?” I said.

  Hobbs was slipping on some half-frame glasses. “Oh, it’s somewhere in there, the size of a pill, no doubt.” He looked at the screen, frowned angrily. “Nothing but fuzz here, sir.”

  Cold fear. But then: “Rewind it.”

  Which he did. The machine hummed companionably, clicked, and then began to play the tape. Hobbs plugged in an earphone, then hunched over the machine intently, so close that no one else could see what he was looking at. Our food came, several steaming vessels of it, and Hobbs did not look up. His expression relaxed, and I saw now a face that I had not seen before, one that seemed weary and contemplative. I ate my food. Hobbs had been right; it was quite good. Around us was the clatter and clink of silverware; it was a room in which almost everyone was rich or well-known in some way, and yet the dense celebrity of the room fostered a strange privacy. I noticed Larry King, William Buckley, and Dan Quayle. Hobbs was oblivious to them. Finally he unplugged his ear set and reached into his bag. He brought out a similar-sized piece of equipment and slipped the tape out of the first machine and into the other. Then he consulted a small readout. He nodded, then looked up at me. He turned the small piece of equipment around so that I could read the display. It said: ORIGINAL, NOT A COPY.

  “Well done, sir.”

  “I was highly motivated.”