The City When It Rains

CHAPTER

TWENTY

“NEED A LIFT to school?”

Corman turned around, reflexively reaching for Lucy’s hand, then tilted the umbrella slightly upward to find a face to go with the voice behind him.

Victor stood in a long black leather coat and shimmering red scarf. “I’m the rider in the rain,” he said grandly, then stretched his arms toward Lucy in a perfect portrait of the outlaw in his pride.

Lucy smiled excitedly. “Hi, Uncle Victor.” She ran to him and leaped into his arms. There was something in Victor’s wildness that had always drawn her to him.

Victor held her tightly in his arms, kissed her softly and whispered something in her ear, then lowered her back to the sidewalk, his eyes drifting up to Corman as he released her. “Hello, brother,” he said.

“Hello, Victor.” Corman stepped toward him, and they shook hands.

“I thought I might give you a ride this morning.” Victor nodded toward a small black sedan. “As you can see, I brought my wheels.”

“Yeah, great,” Lucy said brightly.

Victor opened the door, watched as she scrambled in, then turned to Corman. “Good to see you, David.”

“You too,” Corman said. He walked to the passenger side and slid into the car, the umbrella resting awkwardly between his legs.

Victor pulled away from the curb, sped around the block, then stopped in front of Lucy’s school. “This close enough?” he asked her jokingly. “Or should I drive you to the classroom?”

Lucy leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “ ’Bye, Uncle Victor. Thanks for the ride.”

“Nice kid,” Victor said as he watched her dart up the stairs. He turned to Corman and smiled teasingly. “You don’t deserve her.”

“When did you get back?” Corman asked.

“Early this morning. The red-eye from Las Vegas.” He inched the car back into the traffic, moving down the street toward Ninth Avenue. “It was a pretty good game. Some moderately heavy hitters.”

“How’d you do?”

“A living,” Victor said. He stopped at the light on the corner and drew in a deep breath. “So, how have you been?”

“Okay.”

The light changed, and Victor turned left onto Ninth Avenue, heading downtown. “You going anywhere in particular this morning?” he asked.

Corman shrugged.

“Well, do you have time for breakfast?”

“Yeah.”

“Good for you, David,” Victor said, then smiled the charming, open-faced smile that Corman knew had pierced a thousand unprotected hearts.

They parked near a small diner in Chelsea. It was shaped like a stainless-steel railroad car, long and silver. Coils of neon spun around, throwing pinkish light. Beyond the large windows, the Hudson spread out like a field of gray slate.

“The weather’s better in Las Vegas,” Victor said as he glanced briefly out the window, turned back and motioned for a waiter.

Corman looked toward the river and the 23rd Street pier which stretched over it. The old city had used it as a makeshift morgue for the scores of young women who’d died in the Triangle Fire. Daughters, he thought, so many daughters.

“You’ve never been to Las Vegas, have you?” Victor asked.

Corman shook his head. They’d left the bodies out till dawn, some charred beyond recognition, some merely broken by the fall, their skirts still smelling of the smoke that had driven them to the windows of the building’s upper floors.

“Two coffees,” Victor said when the waiter stepped up to the table. He looked at Corman. “Want anything for breakfast?”

Corman shook his head again, without turning from the river. He imagined night falling over the city, the black, gutted ruin of the Shirtwaist Factory building illuminated by searchlights as the bodies were brought down from the upper floors by block and tackle, small gray bundles swinging slowly in the still smoldering air over Greene Street. The shooters had remained on through the night, wandering wearily among the distraught relatives, or back and forth from the pier, bowed, silent, their boxy black cameras and spindly tripods hung over their shoulders as if they were going through some hallowed shooter’s version of the Stations of the Cross. Far from lilies and lace, incremental falls. Lazar had always thought of it as their finest hour.

“Just two coffees, then,” Victor told the waiter. He glanced back at Corman, waited a moment, then spoke. “How do you like my new car?”

Corman turned toward him, blinking the old city from his mind. “Nice,” he said.

“I got it in Florida. But don’t worry about it. I don’t hustle people who can’t afford to lose.” He looked at Corman pointedly. “I have a few rules. How many people can say that?”

Corman didn’t answer.

Victor watched him a moment, then broke it off with a smile. “We’re a lot alike, David. At least in one respect. We’re both major disappointments to our father.” The smile turned slightly bitter. “He must think God hates him.”

Corman nodded.

“Have you been out to see him lately?” Victor asked.

“Not in a while.”

“He probably misses you.”

“You, too.”

Victor shook his head. “I doubt it.” He grew silent a moment, his eyes concentrating on the plain paper napkin which rested beside his coffee.

“He’s been sick lately,” Corman said.

“Anything serious?”

“The usual complaints.”

Victor’s eyes drifted up from the napkin and settled on Corman. “To play it safe, that’s all he ever wanted us to do.” He smiled ironically. “Edgar is his pride and joy.” He shrugged. “What can I say? People don’t get what they deserve in this world, David, they get what they settle for.”

“He had big plans for all of us,” Corman said.

“Big plans,” Victor said dismissively. “That’s what the average bourgeois always has. Instead of love, honor, conviction. Big plans.”

In his mind, Corman saw his father curled in a beach chair beside the pool, his body wrapped in the bright Connecticut air, a pair of binoculars hanging like a heavy black amulet from his neck. “He’s become a bird watcher,” he said.

Victor laughed. “The last refuge of a bullshitter. What’s his goal in life now, to spot the yellow-throated turkey buzzard?”

“It’s how he spends his time,” Corman said. “Mostly by the pool, when it’s warm enough.”

Victor took out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Corman.

“No, thanks.”

Victor took one for himself then returned the pack to his jacket pocket. “Maybe I’ll get out to see him.” He shrugged. “I still like the trees.”

Corman nodded, remembering them, the great cradling branches of the oak, the deep green tent of the weeping willow by the pond. Lucy had only the metal igloo of the climbing dome in Central Park, the layer of black rubber beneath the slide, only cement, asphalt, granite fissures filled with glass. “It’d be nice to have a summer house,” he said.

Victor thumped the end of the cigarette against the side of the pack. “Summer house?” he croaked. “You’re getting soft.”

“Maybe.”

“How’s the photography coming?”

“I haven’t sold anything lately.”

Victor looked surprised. “Anything? You mean, not anything?”

“Not in a while.”

Victor lit the cigarette and waved out the match. “Why?”

“Most things don’t sell,” Corman told him. “That’s just the way it is.”

“The artistic life,” Victor said. “It’s a tough business. But then, you knew that when you started, right?”

“Yes.”

The waiter brought the coffees then disappeared behind the counter at the far end of the room.

Victor took a sip, his eyes watching Corman thoughtfully from over the rim of the cup. “You giving up, David?” he asked, as he lowered the cup to the table.

“On what?”

“The adventurous life.”

“It’s never been that adventurous.”

Victor took another drag on the cigarette, then crushed it into the ashtray. “Just make sure you keep your edge. That’s all you’ve got. It’s all anybody’s got. People should spend their time sharpening it, instead of flattening it out.”

Corman said nothing.

Victor looked at him solemnly. “I mean it, David. You lose that, and you’re nothing. Just a shutterbug with bills to pay.”

Corman let him go on about it for a few minutes after that, watching his face, the glint in his eyes, the way his fingers moved constantly, first drumming lightly on the table, then ceaselessly massaging the fork, spoon, cube of sugar, anything they settled on. A picture would reduce him to a caricature of the middle-aged hustler, the rogue male on parade, childless, wifeless, the nomadic habitué of countless resort hotels. And yet, as Corman remembered it, he had never been entirely wrong about anything. How many people can say that?

“The edge is all there is,” Victor concluded finally. “It’s the thing you have to nurture.” He waited for Corman to respond.

Corman took a sip of coffee and said nothing.

“So, how’s Edgar?” Victor asked after a moment.

“The same.”

“Frances still the typical neurasthenic?”

“More or less.”

Victor shook his head. “Pure bathos, those two.”

Corman’s eyes drifted toward the table where two sets of initials were carved inside a jagged heart. It struck him that if the world made sense, only the most courageous natures would risk such public declarations. The rest would move about as Victor did, never tying their lives with such exquisite jeopardy to anyone, victimized by nothing but the cowardice of solitude.

“So what do they do, Edgar and Frances?” Victor asked, with a slight laugh.

“They manage,” Corman said.

Victor laughed again. “Manage? Is that the goal? To manage? Christ. The last time I saw Frances, she was boiling. I mean it, a blink away from humping the doorman.”

Corman turned away slightly.

“And she’d be better off if she did, too,” Victor added flatly.

Corman looked back toward him. “Do you ever think about Mississippi?”

Victor stared at him wonderingly. “What?”

“The way you lived in those days,” Corman said.

Victor’s face softened slightly. “Sometimes,” he said quietly. Then he smiled. “In fond remembrance.”

“I remember all your stories.”

Victor looked pleased. “Really?”

“Yes,” Corman said. “I think they made a difference.”

“In the world?”

“In me.”

Victor studied Corman’s face silently, his eyes narrowing very slightly before he spoke. “What’s the matter, David?” he asked solemnly. “I can tell something’s wrong.”

Corman shrugged.

Victor leaned forward and touched his hand. “I’m your brother. What is it?”

Corman drew in a long, slow breath. “Lexie wants me to let Lucy live with her and Jeffrey out in Westchester,” he said.

Victor brought his hands together on the table. “When did she tell you?”

“She told Edgar. He passed it on to me.”

“Is he representing you?”

“If it goes to court.”

“Will it?”

“I don’t know,” Corman said. “That’s up to Lexie.”

“So she’s just asking you, is that it?”

“That’s what Edgar thinks.”

“What are you going to say?”

“I’m not sure I have much to say,” Corman told him. “My work is off. Trang’s going to evict me. Lucy’s school is lousy. I know what they could give her.”

Victor started to speak, drew back, then began again. “I don’t know what to tell you, David. You know how I live. On the lam, more or less. I stay with a woman for a month, two on the outside. Kids are things I see on milk cartons. You know, the Missing.”

Corman nodded.

Victor shook his head slowly. “Mississippi. Why’d you bring that up? Christ, that was another world.” He picked up a fork and raked his index finger across the prongs. “It should have lasted. You could have come down when you got old enough, left the old man, worked with me in the Great Cause.”

Corman smiled. “I dreamed of that.”

Victor drew in a deep, faintly resigned breath. “But it died before we did,” he said, then smiled knowingly. “Most things do, right?” The smile withered. “And nothing stinks like a dead cause, you know?”

Corman nodded. “How long will you be in New York?”

“A few days,” Victor said. “I was thinking of taking Lucy out tonight. Maybe pick her up at school. Dinner and a show, something like that. Any objections?”

“No.”

“Still don’t think I’m a bad influence?”

“No more than most.”

Victor laughed sharply, then grew serious. “I wish you luck on this one, David. I know what she means to you.”

Corman said nothing.

Victor let his eyes linger on him for a few seconds, then he took a final sip of coffee and motioned for the check. “I guess you’d better get to work.”

“Yeah,” Corman said, then quickly drained the last of his coffee, too.

They walked out of the diner together and got into the car.

“Where do you want me to drop you?” Victor asked as he hit the ignition.

For a moment, Corman wasn’t sure himself, then he remembered the picture he’d taken in the basement of Midtown North, the small crumpled receipt. “A blood bank on the Bowery,” he said.

Victor’s eyes shot over to him. “Christ, David, you’re not …”

Corman shook his head. “No, not me,” he said. “Just something I’m working on.”