Richard walked around the corner. "Fantastic."
The junkyard was off Seventieth, in commercial Queens. But it was oddly quiet. They looked west, at the huge slash of orange brilliance behind Manhattan, as the sun eased through strips of dark cloud.
"You come here much?" he asked.
"Only for the sunsets."
The light hit the twisted metal and seemed to make the different shades of rust vibrate. A thousand oil drums became beautiful. Spindles of twisted iron became filaments of light and coils of BX cable were glowing snakes. Rune said, "Come on up!"
She was wearing the Spanish outfit once more. Richard climbed up next to her and they walked along the armature to a platform.
They had a magnificent view of the city.
On the platform was an old picnic basket. A bottle of champagne too.
"Warm," Rune apologized, cradling the bottle. "But it looks classy."
When they'd snuck through the fence a half hour ago, Richard had gazed at the Dobermans uneasily and stood paralyzed when one sniffed his crotch. But Rune knew them well and scratched their smooth heads. They wagged their stubby tails, sniffing at the cold macaroni-and-cheese sandwiches Rune had packed in the basket before prancing away on their springy legs.
Rune and Richard ate until dusk. Then she lit a kerosene lantern. She lay back, using the picnic basket as a pillow.
"1 got another application to the New School," she told him. "I kind of threw out the one you gave me."
"You going to apply? For real?"
After a moment she asked, "I guess I'd have to take classes, wouldn't I?"
"It's an important part of going to school."
"That's what I figured. I'm not sure I'm going to do it though. I have to tell you." She snuck a furtive glimpse at his face. "See, this guy at the video store, Frankie Greek, remember him? Anyway, his sister just had a baby and she was a window designer and it turns out I can take her job while she's on leave. Only have to work half-days. Leave me free to do other stuff."
"What kind of stuff?"
"You know, stuff stuff."
"Rune."
"Oh, it'd be a radical job. Very artistic. In SoHo. Discounts for clothes. Slinky dresses. Lingerie."
"You're hopeless, you know that."
"Well, to be totally honest, I already took the job and threw out the other application too." She stared at the two or three stars whose light was bright enough to penetrate the city haze. "I had to do it, Richard. I had to. I was worried that if I got a degree or anything I'd get to be, like, too literal."
"We couldn't have that, could we?"
Then the stars were blocked out completely, as Richard leaned over her, bringing his mouth down slowly on hers. She lifted her head to meet him. They kissed for a long while, Rune astonished that she could be aroused by someone wearing a button-down shirt and Brooks Brothers slacks.
Very slow, it was all very slow.
Though not like slow motion in a film. More like vignettes, frame by frame, the way you'd hit a VCR pause button over and over again to watch a favorite scene.
The way she'd watched Manhattan Is My Beat.
Freeze-frame: The cloth of his collar. His smooth neck. His paisley eyes. The white bandage on her hand.
Freeze-frame: His mouth.
"We going to be safe?" he whispered.
"Sure," Rune whispered. She reached into the pocket of her skirt and handed him the small, crinkly square of plastic.
"Actually," he said, "I meant because we're twenty feet in the air."
"Don't worry," Rune whispered. "I'll hold you real tight. I won't let you fall."
Freeze-frame: She wrapped her arms around him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
"I don't howl."
In the loft Sandra was putting explosive red polish on her toenails. She continued sourly. "That was the deal. Remember? I don't howl when I'm in bed with a guy and you clean up after yourself."
She nodded at the mess Rune had made when she was frantically packing. "I have somebody over, I'm quiet as a mouse. He howls, there's nothing I can do about it. But me, I ask you, am I quiet, or what?"
"You're quiet." Rune bent over and picked up clothes, swept up the broken glass.
"Do I howl?"
"You don't howl."
"So where were you last night?" Sandra asked.
"We went to a junkyard."
"Brother, that boy's got a way to go." Sandra glanced up from her artistic nails, examined Rune critically. "You look happy. Got lucky, huh?"
"Didn't your mother teach you not to pry?"
"No, my mother's the one who taught me how to pry. So, you get lucky?"
Rune ignored her and repacked her clothes, put the books back on the shelf.
She paused. On the floor beside the bookcase was the shattered cassette of Manhattan Is My Beat. Rune picked it up. The loops of opaque tape hung out of the broken plastic reels. She looked at it for a moment. She was thinking of Robert Kelly. Of the movie. About the million dollars of bank loot that was never really there-never there for her to find anyway.
She tossed the cassette into the trash bin. Then glanced at Sandra's side of the loft. She picked up the good-bye note she'd written to her roommate. It was unopened. "Don't you read your mail?" she asked.
The woman glanced at it. "Whatsit? A love note?"
"From me."
"What's it say?"
"Nothing." Rune threw it out too. Then she flopped down on her pillows, staring into the blue-and-white sky. She remembered the clouds in New Jersey floating over the trimmed grounds of the nursing home as she crouched next to Raoul Elliott's wheelchair. They'd seemed like dragons and giants then, the clouds. She stared at them for a long time now. After the horror of the last few days she expected them to look merely like clouds. But, no, they still seemed like dragons and giants.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
An expression of her father's.
She thought about the old screenwriter, Raoul Elliott. Next week she'd go out and visit him again. Bring him another flower. And maybe a book. She could read to him. Stories are the best, he'd said. Rune agreed with him there.
Five minutes later Sandra said, "Shit. I forget. Some geek from that place you work, or used to work, the video store? Looked like a heavy-metal wanna-be."
"Frankie?"
"1 don't know. Maybe. He came by with a couple of messages." She read a slip of paper. "One was from this Amanda LeClerc. He said he couldn't understand her too good. She's, like, foreign and he was saying if they come to this country why don't they learn to speak-a the language."
"The point, Sandra?"
"So this Amanda person, she called and said she'd heard from this priest or minister or somebody in Brooklyn…" Sandra, juggling the nail polish, smoothed the wrinkled note.
Rune sat up.
A minister?
Sandra was struggling to read. "Like, I'm really not programmed to be a message center, you know. Yeah, okay. I got it. She said she talked to this minister and he's got this suitcase. It was somebody's named Robert Kelly's."
A suitcase?
"And he doesn't know what to do with it, the minister. But he said it's, like, very important."
Rune screamed, "Yes!" She rolled on her back, and her legs, straight up in the air, kicked back and forth.
"Whoa, take a pill or something." Sandra handed her the message.
She read it. St. Xavier's Church on Atlantic Avenue. Brooklyn.
"Oh, and here's the other one." She found another slip in her purse.
It was from Stephanie. She was out of the hospital and feeling a lot better. She'd stop by later.
"All right!" Rune cried.
"I'm glad somebody's happy." Sandra added, "I'm depressed. Not that anybody cares." She continued to paint her nails carefully.
"I've got to call Richard. We're taking a trip."
"Where?"
"Brooklyn!"
"Old folks homes, junkyards… Why am I not surprised? Hey, don't hug me! Watch the polish!"