“I quit Int-Op.”
“Because of the dude Zyron bought out?”
“My mentor exposed him and he’s out. But it’s not that. I realized that I was too trusting. Hanging out with you and Melquarth, I remembered that the only ones I can trust are myself and the people I can see, and touch.”
“Now, that is a fundamental fact. Where you gonna live?”
“New York’s as good as anywhere. I’ll take six months or so figuring out what to do next.”
“And Mel?”
The contemplative silence had no pressure behind it. My question presented a lot to think about but little to say.
“He’s kind of crazy,” she said at last.
“That’s like calling a hurricane a rainstorm.”
She giggled. Giggled. I knew we would be good friends then.
“I don’t usually worry about things like that,” she said. “I’ve been around many crazy people. But your friend is different. I don’t know.”
“Well, whatever it is, it’ll be nice to have you in town for a while. My daughter thinks you walk on water.”
“She’s a wonderful young woman. If I had a sister I would want her to be like Aja.”
My bedroom at Melquarth’s Staten Island shrine was a monastic cell on the third floor. The cot had a hard mattress and if you drew the shade it was black as night in there.
I slept well.
35
Morning at Melquarth Frost’s deconsecrated church was most certainly a religious experience. It honestly felt like being a penitent seeking forgiveness. The twelve stained glass windows that adorned the east and west walls of the nave were constructed in opposing pairs. On the eastern wall were the images of the saints: Matthew offering a few copper coins to a beggar woman in rags trying to care for her wretched children; Augustine sitting upon a humble bench in a green grove talking to a group of pious peasants in a way reminiscent of family; Pelagia, dressed as a nun from some bygone day, kneels down next to a prostrate man burning with fever and distress; Mary of Egypt, bathed in light, is standing in front of a cell, opening the barred door for a prisoner who sees his freedom in her; Olga is physically separating two men brandishing cudgels; and Dismas languishes on the cross, gazing to his left, from which a great radiance arises.
The western wall has: tax collector Matthew wielding a whip upon the back of a man with one hand while relieving the poor wretch of a small sack from which a gold coin falls; Augustine lies in a drunken stupor upon a plush divan being serviced in every way imaginable by prostitutes; Pelagia is a detail made large from the Augustine window, lifting his robe in a licentious manner; Mary of Egypt is urging a small boy to take the purse of a man who has his back turned; sword-wielding Princess Olga rides at the head of a troop of men slaughtering the innocent people of a small village; Dismas is holding a dagger at a child’s throat, demanding that his mother hand over her necklace.
The tableaux and their pairings made up Melquarth’s imagistic sermon. Sainthood, in his estimation, must exist not only in repentance but also in the acceptance of the evil within. Each window was designed by Mel himself and they were constructed by a centuries-old firm in Vatican City.
I never asked my friend about his money but I imagined that he wasn’t interested in wealth and so squirreled away whatever he got from the extortions, heists, ransoms, and contract killings he engaged in before deciding to go, more or less, straight.
Taking the Staten Island train to St. George, I then boarded the ferry to Lower Manhattan. I was relaxed in a way that is related to deep exhaustion.
When I was standing at the back of the ferry staring into the water, someone said, “Hey, brother.”
Turning, I saw a young Black man wearing black and very dark blue clothing. His skin was the color of palm wood, a mixture of light brown and gray. He wasn’t dressed up or down, just modestly — that’s what I thought.
“Hey,” I answered.
“What you thinkin’ ’bout?”
It seemed rude that someone I didn’t know would just walk up and try to get in my head. I didn’t utter this sentiment, but my face made clear these thoughts.
“Hold up, man,” he said. “I saw you lookin’ down in the water, way down, and I wondered if you were okay. That’s all.”
If you’re in deep trouble, lifelines are almost always unexpected.
I’d been leaning against the waist-high wall and so straightened up.
“Um,” I muttered. “I, uh, I been havin’ a hard time, it’s true. But I wasn’t gonna jump or nuthin’.”
“Wanna go sit down?” my new friend asked.
The benches were at the back of the sternward deck of the ferry, farthest away from the edge. I went with the young man because it pleased me that someone I didn’t know showed concern about my well-being.
When we sat I asked, “What’s your name?”
“Tremont Lewis. I live out in Staten Island.”
“Joe Oliver. Brooklyn.”
“So, what’s goin’ on with you, Joe?”
“You some kinda street preacher or somethin’?”
“Naw, man. You know. I had a sister killed herself. She was out in Saint Louis and they didn’t even find her for six days.”
“That’s a mess.”
“You know,” he said, clasping his hands. “I always thought that if I was out there that maybe I could have noticed somethin’ and asked her if I could help.”
“That’s the right thought to have. I mean, a lotta things aren’t our fault, but that doesn’t mean we can’t help out anyway.”
“Yeah,” Tremont Lewis said. He was looking out at the water now. “That’s right.”
For a good two minutes we sat there side by side looking out at the aquatic traffic between the two boroughs. Then the boat’s engine shifted and the ferry lurched a little in the water.
“What you goin’ to Manhattan for, Mr. Lewis?”
“Not gettin’ off. I just take it back and forth a few times every week or so. Out here I seem to remember Melissa better.”
The Obsidian Club is on Sixty-First Street a couple of blocks over on the eastern side of Fifth. There are no signs to tell you where it is. You have to know that it is lodged on the upper floors of a pretty modern office building. The business offices take up the first thirty-five floors or so. Past that, using a special elevator, are the four floors that make up the Obsidian Club.
In order to be offered membership, you have to be wealthy, an insider, and palatable to the membership at large. My grandmother once told me that Roger paid five hundred thousand dollars a year for his due. That included all food and drink.
“May I help you?”
The man standing behind the blue-white Carrara marble standing desk wore an immaculately understated suit. He was older than I but not more than a decade, and he was white like the golden sands of an inland desert.
“I’m a guest of Roger Ferris.”
The maître d’hôtel had a slender face and a torso to go with it. His lip wanted a mustache but the Obsidian Club probably forbade it. The man looked at me for maybe six seconds. In times gone by, he might have told me about the servants’ entrance or asked what my business was with Ferris.
The potential rejection was in his shoulders, but instead he said, “Take the hall behind me to the Promethean Room, about halfway to the Venus de Milo.”
It wasn’t the real Venus de Milo but it might have been. The wealth that inhabited those halls was beyond money. Obsidian’s membership owned or controlled a significant portion of the Earth.
Big Billings and good-humored Ray were sitting on a stone bench across the way from the entrance to the Promethean Room. When they saw me turn toward the door they were a little surprised.