Manhattan Is My Beat

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

She'd wrapped it up, the bracelet.

But then walking up to Third Avenue-past the discount clothing stores, the Hallmark shop, the delis- she'd decided the wrapping paper was too feminine. It had a viney pattern that wasn't anything sissier than you'd see in the old Arabian Nights illustrations. But Richard might think they were flowers.

So halfway to his apartment she slipped her hand, with its newly polished nails-pink, not green or blue, for a change-into her bag and tore off the paper and ribbon.

Then, waiting for the light on Twenty-third Street, Rune started to worry about the box. Giving him something in a box, something supposed to be, what was the word?, spontaneous, seemed too formal. Men got scared, you gave them something that was too premeditated.

Goddamn men.

The nails went to work again and opened the box, which joined the crumpled Arabian paper in the bottom of the leopard-skin purse. She held the bracelet up in the light.

Wait. Was it too feminine?

Did it matter? He was a philosopher knight, remember, not the kind killing peasants with a broadsword. Anyway there definitely was something androgynous about him-like Hermaphroditus. And now that she thought about it, Rune decided that was one of the reasons they were so compatible. The male-female, yin-yang was in flux for both of them.

She put the bracelet in her pocket.

See, what it is, I was buying one for me-remember I told you I love bracelets, so what I did was I saw this one, and it looked too masculine for me and I thought, well, it just occurred to me you might…

Rune stopped for the light. She was in front of an Indian store, sitar music and the smell of incense flooded out into the street. The light changed.

See, I got this special deal at a jewelry store I go to. Two for one. Yeah, no shit. Amazing. And I thought: who do 1 know who'd like a bracelet? And, guess what? You won…

Crossing the street.

Then she saw his apartment building a block ahead. She tried to be objective. But was still disappointed. It was a boxish high-rise, squatting in a nest of boxish high-rises, a little bit of suburbia in Manhattan. She couldn't picture her black-clad knight living among tiny widows and salesmen and nurses and med students from NYU.

Oh, well… She continued along the sidewalk and stopped outside his building.

Hey, Richard, would you like a bracelet? If not, no big deal, I could give it to my mother, sister, roommate… But if you'd like it… It's a pretty radical design, don'tcha think?-take a look at it.

Rune stepped away from the building and looked at her reflection in the window.

Oh, a bracelet? Rune, it's fantastic! Put it on me. I'll never take it off.

She polished the silver on her sleeve then dropped it into her pocket again.

Oh, a bracelet. Well, the thing is, I never wear them…

Well, the thing is my girlfriend gave me a bracelet just like this the day she killed herself…

Well, the thing is I'm allergic to silver…

Goddamn men.

Seeing him, with that dark hair and the long French face, that crazy electricity hit her again. She knew her voice was going to shake, and she thought, goddammit, get this under control.

What's best? Flirty, surprised? Seductive? She opted for a neutral "Hi." She stood in his doorway. Neither of them moved.

He gave her one of those scary we're-just-friends looks. He almost seemed surprised to see her. "Rune, hey, how you doing?"

"Great, good… You?"

Hey, how you doing?

"Okay." He nodded and she saw he was definitely uncomfortable. Though he kept the smile on his face. There were major explosions in her. Wanting to vaporize away, wanting to ease her arms around him and never leave. Mostly she wondered what the hell was wrong.

Silence, as an elderly lady with a jutting, sour mouth walked her cairn terrier past, glancing disdainfully at them. Richard said, "So how's the video business?" He looked her up and down. Didn't say a word about the new outfit. Glanced at the earrings. Didn't say anything about them either.

"Good. Okay."

"Well, why don't you come on in."

She followed him inside.

Wait, she thought, looking him over. What's going on? He was wearing a baby-blue button-down shirt, tan chino slacks, and Top-Siders. Ohmygod, Top-Siders! Nothing black, nothing chic. He looked like a yuppie from the Upper East Side.

Then she glanced around his apartment. She couldn't figure it-that somebody who wore black leather and tapped the tops of his beer cans with such elegant fingers could live in a place with white Conran furniture, rock and roll posters on the wall, and a metal sea gull statue.

A copper sea gull?

"Just let me check on something."

He disappeared into the kitchen. Whatever he was cooking smelled great. None of her girlfriends could get that kind of smell out of a kitchen. Lord knew, she never had.

She was examining his bookshelves. Mostly technical books about things she didn't understand. College paperbacks. Stacks of the New York Times and the Atlantic Monthly.

He came back into the room. Stood with his arms crossed. "So." Skittish now.

"Uh-huh. So." She couldn't think of anything to say for a moment. Then she blurted out, "I thought, maybe, after dinner, you might want to go for a ride. I found a great place. It's in Queens, a junkyard. I know the owner. He lets me in. It's really radical, like a huge dinosaur graveyard. You can sit up on some of the wrecks-it's not gross dirty, you know, like garbage-and watch the sunset over the city. It's really wild. It's your mega junkyard… Okay, Richard, come on. Tell me what I did to fuck up tonight."

"The thing is-"

"Hi," came the woman's voice from the door.

Rune turned to see a tall woman with long, blond hair walk through the open door. The woman was wearing a gray pin-striped suit and black pumps. She gave Rune a friendly glance, then walked up to Richard and hugged him.

"Rune, this is Karen."

"Uhm, hi," Rune said. Then to Richard, "Your message? About dinner?"

Karen lifted a perfect eyebrow knowingly, took a bottle of wine out of a paper bag, and disappeared tactfully into the kitchen.

"Actually," Richard said delicately, "that was supposed to be Thursday."

"Wait. The message said tomorrow. And the date on it was yesterday."

He shrugged. "I told the guy I talked to-Frankie somebody-I told him Thursday."

She nodded. "And he thought today was Thursday. Goddamn heavy metal. It's destroyed his brain cells… Shit, shit, shit."

Yo, Fairy Godmother! Yo! Wave your magic wand and get me the hell out of here.

"Listen, you want to stay? Have some wine?"

That'd be a pretty picture, she thought. The three of us sipping wine while he's waiting for me to leave so he can put the Tantra moves on too-tall Karen.

"No, think I'll go."

"Sure. I'll walk you to the elevator."

Oh, don't argue too hard now.

Richard continued. "Oh, wait, let me get you what I have for you."

"My surprise?"

"Right. I think you'll like it."

"So, Rune, how do you know Richard?" Karen was calling from the kitchen.

Yeah. He picked me up the other night and's been trying to fuck me ever since.

"Met in a video store. We talk about movies some."

"I love movies," Karen called. "Maybe we could all go sometime.

"Maybe."

Richard appeared from his bedroom. He was carrying a white envelope.

That's my present?

"Be right back," he said to Karen.

"This sauce is so good," she called from the kitchen. She stuck her pert head into the doorway.

"Nice meeting you. Oh, love the earrings!"

As they walked to the elevator Richard said, "Karen's a friend. We work together."

Rune wondered: How does somebody work with you when you write novels?

They got four doors down the corridor before he said, "This's a little awkward but she and I really are just friends."

"We are going out, aren't we? You and me, I mean."

"Sure, we're going out. I mean, we aren't going out all the time though, right? We can have other friends."

"Sure. That's the way it has to work."

"Right."

I am absolutely going to murder Frankie Greek…

He pushed the down button.

Aren't we in a hurry.

"Oh, here." He thrust the envelope at her.

She opened it. Inside was an application to the New School, over on Fifth Avenue.

A joke. It had to be a joke.

"I've got a buddy works for admissions," Richard explained. "He told me they're starting this new program. Retail management. You don't even need to get a degree. You get a certificate."

She felt sick. "Wait. You're giving me career counseling?"

"Rune, you're so smart, you've got so much energy, you're so creative… I'm worried about you wasting your life."

She stared, numb, at the paper in her hand.

Richard said, "You could work your way up in the video store business. Become a manager. Then maybe you could buy a store. Or even a chain. You could really be on a hell of a vertical track."

She laughed bitterly. "But… that's not me, Richard. I'm not a vertical-track kind of person. Look, I've worked in that diner I told you about, in a bike repair shop, a deli, a shoe store. I've sold jewelry on the street, done paste-ups and mechanicals for a magazine, sold men's colognes at Macy's, and worked in a film lab. And that's just in the couple years I've been here. Before I die I'm going to do a lot more than that. I'm not going to devote my life to being manager of a video store. Or any other one thing."

"Don't you want a career?"

She felt utterly betrayed. More so than if she'd found Karen and Richard in bed, an event that was probably only minutes away.

When she didn't answer he said, "You should think about it."

Rune said, "Sometimes I get this idea I should go to school. Get a degree. Law school, maybe business school like my sister. Something. But then, you know what happens? I have this image. Of myself in ten years at a cocktail party. And somebody asks me what I do. And-this is the scary part-I have an answer for them." She smiled at him.

"Which is…?"

He didn't get it. "That's the point. It doesn't matter; the scary part is that I have an answer. I say, 'I'm a lawyer, an accountant, a hoosey-whatsis maker.' Bang, there I am. Denned in one or two words. That scares the hell out of me."

"Why're you so afraid of reality?"

"My life is real. It's just not, apparently, your kind of reality."

He said harshly, "No, it's not real. Look at this game of yours…"

"What game?"

"Find-the-hidden-treasure."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Do you understand that a man. was killed? Did it ever occur to you that it wasn't a game to Robert Kelly? That you could get hurt? Or a friend of yours could get hurt? That ever occur to you?"

"It'll work out. You just need to believe…"

She gasped as he took her angrily by the shoulders and led her to a window at the end of the hallway. Pointed outside. Beneath them was a mass of highways and rail sidings and rusting equipment-huge turbines and metal parts. Beyond that was a small factory, surrounded by standing yellowish water. Mud. Filth.

"What's that?" he asked.

She shook her head. Not understanding.

"What is it?" His voice rose.

"What do you mean?" Her voice crackled.

"It's a factory, Rune. There's shit and pollution. It makes a living for people and they pay taxes and give money to charity and buy sneakers for their children. Who grow up to be lawyers or teachers or musicians or people who work in other factories. It's nothing more than that. It's not a spaceship, it's not a castle, it's not an entrance to the underworld. It's a factory."

She was completely still.

"I like you a lot, Rune. But going with you is like living in some movie."

She wiped her nose. The cars below whined past. "What's wrong with movies? I love movies."

"Nothing. As long as you remember they aren't real. You're going to find out I'm not a knight and that, okay, maybe there was some bank robbery money-which I think is the craziest frigging thing I've ever heard-but that it's spent or stolen or lost somewhere years ago and you'll never find it. And here you are pissing your life away in a video store, jumping from fantasy to fantasy, waiting for something you don't even know what it is."

"If that's your reality you can keep it," she snapped, wiping her nose.

"Fairy stories aren't going to get you by in life."

"I told you they don't all have happy endings!"

"But even if they don't, Rune, you close the book, you put it on your shelf and you go on with your life. They. Aren't. Real. And if you live your life like you're in one you're going to get hurt. Or somebody around you's going to get hurt."

"So why're you the expert on reality? You write novels."

He sighed, looked away from her. "I don't write novels. I was trying to impress you. I don't even read novels. I write audiovisual scripts for companies. 'Hello, I'm John Jones, your CEO, welcome to Sales-Fest '88…' It's not weird. It's not fun. But it pays the bills."

"But you… you're just like me. The clubs, the dancing, the magic… we like the same things."

"It's an act, Rune. Just like it is for everybody who lives that way. Except for you. Nobody can sustain your kind of weirdness. When you're frivolous, when you're irresponsible, you miss trains and buses and dinner dates. You-"

"But," she interrupted, "there'll always be a next train." She wiped her eyes and saw the mascara had run. Shit. She must look pathetic. She said softly, "You lied to me."

The elevator arrived. She pulled away from him and stepped into the car.

"Rune…"

They stood three feet away, she inside, he out. It seemed to take forever before the doors started to close. As they slowly did she thought that Diarmuid, or any knight, wouldn't let her get away like this. He'd push in after her, shove the doors aside, hold her.

Tell her they could work out these differences.

But Richard just turned and walked down the corridor.

"There'll always be another train," she whispered as the doors closed.

" 'Your stepsisters keep you in tatters like this? No, no, no, dear, that will never do. How can you be the fairest one at the ball in these rags? Now, let me see what I can do. Yes, oh, my, that should be just right…'

"And closing her eyes, she waved her magic wand three times. There appeared as if from thin air a gown of silk and lace, stitched with golden and silver thread. And for her feet…"

Rune recited this from memory as she walked along University Place. She paused, crumpled up the New School application, and three-pointed it into a trash basket.

She glanced at herself in a mirror hanging in a wig shop. The lipstick was fine and the blusher on the cheekbones was fun to do and easy. Thank you, Stephanie. The eyes had been okay-at least before the tears'd turned her into a raccoon.

Rune took another sip of Miller-from her third can-wrapped in a paper bag. She'd bought a six-pack at a deli up the street but had somehow managed to drop three cans within the past two blocks.

A couple holding hands walked past.

Rune couldn't help staring at them. They didn't notice. They were in love.

" 'Oh, dear,' Cinderella's fairy godmother said, 'coachmen. What's the good of turning a pumpkin into a coach if you have no coachmen to drive you? Ah-ha, mice…'"

Rune turned back to the mirror, teased her hair with her fingers, and stepped back to look at the results.

She thought: I don't look like Cinderella at all. I look like a short whore.

Her shoulders sagged and she dug into her bag. Found a Kleenex and scrubbed the rest of the makeup off her face, combed her hair back into place.

She pulled off the orange earrings, which Karen the girls' basketball champ had loved so much, and dropped them into her purse.

What was wrong? Why was it so hard to get men interested in her?

She considered everything.

I'm not tall and blond, true.

I'm not beautiful. But I'm not dog-ugly either.

Maybe she was a lesbian.

Rune considered this.

It seemed possible. And it explained a lot. Like why she got hit on by men but never proposed to-they could sense her orientation probably. (Not that she wanted to get married necessarily-but she did want the chance to say, "Lemme think about it.")

No, she just wasn't the sort men went for. That was probably all part of it, maybe the way the Gods made you the way you were. They might make you short and cute, a little like Audrey Hepburn, but not enough to make men-real men, chivalrous men, Gary Grant men, knights errant-fall for you. The Gods are just letting you down easy. Saying: if they'd meant you to have somebody like Richard, they'd have made you four inches taller and a thirty-six C, or B at least, and given you blond hair.

But being gay… this was something to think about. Could she deal with it? It'd be hard to own up to but maybe she'd have to admit it. Some things you can't run from.

Admitting it, she felt relief flood through her. It explained why she was reluctant to sleep with a man right away-she probably didn't really like sex with men. And if Richard turned her on like an electric current it was probably just because of what she'd realized before-that there was something feminine about him. Sure, that made sense.

Telling Mother would be hard.

Maybe she should get a crew cut.

Maybe she should become a nun.

Maybe she should kill herself.

At the corner of Eighth Street, rather than turn toward the subway to get a train to the loft, she turned the other way, to return to the video store.

She knew what she wanted to do.

Get a movie. Maybe It Happened One Night As long as I'm going to cry anyway, why not get a movie to go along with it? Ice cream, beer, and a movie. Can't lose with that combination.

How about Gone With the Wind?

How about Lesbos Lovers?

Ten minutes later she pushed inside Washington Square Video. Frankie Greek was behind the counter and he was looking totally sheepish.

Well, he damn well ought to. Fucking up when he took that message from Richard… She was going to give him hell. But, as she looked at him playing nervously with the VCR remote, it seemed there was something else on his mind. He was nervous but it wasn't because of her.

"Hello, Rune."

"What is it, Frankie? Your sister okay?"

"Yes, she's fine," he recited. "She had a baby."

"I know. You told us. What's the matter?"

"How are you tonight? Doing okay, I hope. Doing good." A wanna-be rock musician talking like Mister Rogers? Something was really wrong here. "What's with you?"

"Nothing, Rune. I heard it was kind of cold out there tonight." It was like he was in a bad skit on Saturday Night Live.

"Cold. What the hell are you-"

"Rune?" a man's deep voice asked.

She turned. Oh, it was that U.S. marshal. Dixon, she remembered.

"Hi," he said.

"Hey, Marshal Dixon."

He laughed. "You make it sound like a sheriff in a bad western. Call me Phillip."

She looked at Frankie, paler than Mick Jagger in February. "I saw his badge," Frankie said.

"He arrests people who screw up phone messages," Rune muttered.

"Huh?"

"Never mind."

"How you doing?" Dixon asked, smiling. Then he frowned, looked at her face. "There's a little…"

He pointed at her cheek.

She grabbed a paper towel and scrubbed away at a bit of eye makeup.

"That's got it," Dixon said. "Hey, love the outfit."

"Really?"

His eyes swept over it-and, sure enough, she felt a bit of that electric sizzle again. Not as high-voltage as with Richard, but still…

"I never do drugs," Frankie Greek said.

Dixon looked at him curiously.

"Some musicians do. I mean, you hear about it. But I never have. Some of my songs are about drugs. But that's, like, just something to write songs about. I stay away from them."

"Well, good for you."

Rune gave him an exasperated look then said to the marshal, "Anything more on the case?"

"Naw." Then he seemed to think he shouldn't be talking quite so blue-collar and added, "No. No evidence in the Edelman death." He shrugged. "No prints at the scene. No witnesses. You haven't seen anything odd lately? Been followed?"

"No."

Dixon nodded. Looked at some videos. Picked one up. Put it down.

"So," he said.

Two "so's" from two different men in one night. Rune wondered what this one meant.

"Could I talk to you?" he asked, motioning her to the front of the store.

"Sure."

They stood by the window, next to a distracting cardboard cutout of Michael J. Fox.

"Just thought you'd like to know. I checked out that case you told me about. The Union Bank heist?"

"You did?"

He shook his head. "I didn't find anything. Technically, it's still open but nobody's been on the case since the fifties. They only keep murder cases open indefinitely. I tried to find the file but it looks like it was pitched out ten, twenty years ago."

"I thought maybe you were investigating it."

"The robbery? Me?" Dixon laughed again. He had a nice smile. Richard, she was thinking, had that mysteri-ousness about him. Something going on under the surface-you couldn't quite believe his smile. Dixon's seemed totally genuine.

He took off his baseball cap, rubbed his hair in a boyish way, put the hat back on.

She said, "I mean, it was kind of a coincidence you were asking about Mr. Kelly and everything."

"Bank robbery'd be the FBI, not the Marshals. I'm involved only 'cause the killer used the kind of bullets a lot of hit men use. We check stuff like that out."

"Teflon," Rune said.

"Oh, you know about that?"

"The police told me. But if you don't care about the robbery then why'd you look up the case?"

He shrugged, looked away. "I dunno. Seemed important to you."

A little tingle. Nothing as high-voltage as with Richard. But it was something. Besides, Richard, who she thought she was in love with, had just been giving her crap about her life, while this guy, almost a stranger, had gone to the trouble to help her with her quest.

Little red hen…

She gave him a coy look, a Scarlett O'Hara look. "That's the only reason you came all the way down here? To tell me about a fifty-year-old case?"

He shrugged, avoided her eyes. "I stopped by your place and you weren't there and I called here and they said sometimes you just hang out and talk about movies with people." He said this as if he'd practiced it. Like a shy boy rehearsing his lines to ask a girl out on a date. Embarrassed. He crossed his arms.

"So you took the chance I'd be here?"

"Right." After a moment he said, "And I'll bet you want to know why."

"Yeah," she said. "I do."

"Well." He swallowed. How could somebody with such a big gun be so nervous? He continued. "I guess I wanted to ask you out. I mean, if you don't want to, forget it, but-"

"Rune," Frankie called, "phone!"

"Wait right there," Rune told Dixon, then added emphatically, "Don't go away."

"Sure. Sure. I won't go anywhere."

She picked up the phone. It was Amanda LeClerc. "Rune, I thought you want to know," the woman said quickly, her accent more pronounced because of her excitement. "Victor Symington's daughter, she over here. I mean, right now. You want to see her?"

Rune glanced at Dixon, who was looking at video boxes. He glanced at the X-rated section, blushed, and looked away quickly.

Rune, debating furious-what should she do?

A man who wanted to ask her out versus the quest.

This was totally unfair.

"Rune?" Amanda said. "I don't think she going to stay too long."

Eyes on Dixon.

Eyes on the Brooklyn Yellow Pages.

Oh, shit.

Into the phone she blurted out, "I'll be right over."