Taming a Sea Horse

10

April wasn't around. I tried Tiger Lilies Escort Service and they said she was not there. I asked where she was and they said they were sorry but they were not able to give me that information. I said I wanted to speak with the manager and they hung up. I looked her up in the Manhattan directory. There were twenty-seven Kyles but none named April. Perhaps Robert could help me locate her.

I cabbed up to 77th Street and rang his bell at three-thirty. It was after lunchtime and he was probably still in bed. I rang again and heard a voice badly muffled on the intercom. I said, "It's me," into the speaker. In a moment the door buzzed open. I knew he didn't know who "It's me" was any more than I'd recognize his voice. The sound was so distorted that you might be able to distinguish species and gender but no more than that.

I took the elevator to the fifth floor and looked at myself in the mirrored wall of the elevator till we got there. The hall was short. There were maybe four apartments to the floor. Opposite the elevator door was a stairwell, rimmed with a dark oaken railing. Rambeaux's apartment was to the left, in the front of the building. I knocked. I could hear a small rustle behind the door. And the peephole darkened. Then silence. I knocked again. No, answer. I knocked again. The door opened a crack, held narrow by a chain.

"What the fuck you want?" Rambeaux said. I could see just the strip of him that showed through the narrow door.

"Ah, you syrup-tongued dandy," I said. "No wonder you're hell with the ladies."

"Whyn't you get fucking lost, huh?"

"I'm looking for April. She's not at Tiger Lilies and they won't say where she is."

"She's not here. I don't know where she is. Maybe out with a john."

"No," I said, "the way they said it was that she wasn't there. Like she wouldn't be there later, either."

"Maybe she don't want to see you."

"How cruel," I said, "but even if it were true, they didn't know who I was. I could have been a customer." I had leaned my shoulder against the door as I talked. I was wearing the gray Nikes with a charcoal swoosh, and putting my foot in the door didn't seem like the best way to deal with it. It was Nikes' only flaw.

Rambeaux pushed back. "I don't know where she is and I don't want to," he said. "I got nothing to do with her anymore."

"What about tuition?" I said.

"Just get the fuck away from me, man." Rambeaux was pushing harder. "I got a gun." He shifted behind the door and I saw the other side of his face through the opening. His left eye was closed and his cheek was swollen and discolored.

"Somebody beat you up?" I said.

"Nobody done shit," he said. "Please, man. Get the fuck away from me."

I relaxed my lean on the door for a minute and he closed the opening again. Then I pressed my right foot flat against the wall behind me and lunged the door inward. The chain pulled out of the doorjamb, screws and all, and the door flew open. Rambeaux bounced back against the wall, on the other side of the door, and I was in. I pulled the door away from him and closed it. Rambeaux did in fact have a gun. A squat blue shortbarreled S&W .32 that he held in front of him with both hands like they do on the cop shows.

I said, "Robert, if you need to steady that thing two-handed to hit me from eleven inches away you better think about a strength program."

"I'll use it, you bastard."

"I'm sure you would if you needed to," I said. "But you won't need to."

I turned and walked into his apartment. It was one room with a stand-up kitchen and a bathroom. Most of the bed-sitting-room was occupied by an unfolded sofa bed unmade with dark maroon silk sheets and a pale gray puff comforter.

Rambeaux still stood against the wall by the door with the short gun held in front of him. He was in his underwear, stretch bikinis with gray and maroon stripes. He was wiry and looked in shape but he was no bigger than a tall middleweight. In addition to the black eye, his lower lip was swollen. There was a purple blotch on his rib cage on the right side and a reddish welt on his forehead above his right eye.

"What's going on?" I said. Rambeaux shook his head.

"I look for April, she's not around. I come here, you say you don't know where she is and you got nothing more to do with her. Day before yesterday you told me to stay away from your 'lady'-always one of my favorite expressions. Now you don't know where she is, don't want to know where she is, and you look like you were in a hatchet fight and didn't have a hatchet. There are inferences to be drawn."

Rambeaux let the gun drop to his side, holding it in his right hand. He walked into the room and sat on the bed and looked at me, the gun resting on his thigh. He shook his head, and it must have hurt, because he stopped in midshake and began to massage the back of his neck with his free hand.

"Listen, man. Two days ago I was doing fine. I had a nice little connection for myself. Had some ladies working for me. Then you show up and everything is fucked up. You keep hanging around and we both gonna get killed and I done shit to deserve it."

"I try to use this power wisely," I said. "Who's going to kill us?"

Rambeaux shook his head. "I won't tell you nothing," he said. "I don't know where April is. I ain't going to know tomorrow neither. You can keep coming around and fucking with me but I still ain't going to know."

"But if you're seen with me it'll cause trouble?"

Rambeaux looked straight at me. His eyes were dark and shiny. "Stay away from me, man. Honest to God, I don't know nothing about April and you just going to get me killed for nothing."

He had the gun pointed at me again. "Maybe not for nothing," I said.

"Jesus, man, she's just quiff, you know. I go out and in an hour I collect ten more just as good."

"So how come somebody punched your lights out over her and how come you're scared of dying over her, and how come I can't find her?"

"Ain't her, man, it's who…" He shook his head. "No, you get out of here or I swear to God I'll shoot. I will waste you right fucking here."

I stood with my hands in my hip pockets and my back to the windows, with the light from the windows brightening the rumpled silk sheets, on the unfolded bed. Rambeaux had the gun up now in both hands again, pointed at the middle of my stomach. He was shivering.

"Okay," I said. "I'm going to leave you my card, in case you need to talk with me."

I took my wallet out and pulled a card free and left it on the maroon lacquered coffee table that had been pushed against the wall to make room for the bed.

"I don't want no card," Rambeaux said. "I don't want to see you again ever."

"In case," I said. "Maybe even in case you need help."

Rambeaux shook his head and stood, the gun pointed at me now held straight out in front with both hands:

"She alive?" I said.

Rambeaux nodded. "She fine, man, forget her."

I nodded toward my card on the coffee table. "In case you need help," I said, and walked out carefully past him.

I went down to Times Square' then and looked for Ginger Buckey but couldn't find her. I had dinner and went back and looked some more and still couldn't find her, so I went back to the hotel and went to bed. It was my most significant accomplishment of the day.