Even then, even in the grip of this fear, things might have happened otherwise, for it was a pellucid, not a panicky, fear. But then, in the afternoon (Boa had yet to return), it was announced, as the third item on the tv news, that a plane on its way to Rome had exploded over the Atlantic, and that among the passengers (all of whom had perished) was the daughter of Grandison Whiting and her newlywed husband. There was a picture, from the wedding, of the official kiss. Daniel, in his tux, had his back turned to the camera.
The explosion was said to be the work of unidentified terrorists. No mention was made of the A.C.L.U. but the implication was there.
Daniel was sure that he knew better.
PART THREE
11
Thirty is a bad birthday when you’ve got nothing to show for it. By then the old excuses are wearing pretty thin. A failure at thirty is likely to be a failure the rest of his life, and he knows it. But the worst of it isn’t the embarrassment, which may even do you some good in small dosages; the worst of it is the way it works its way into the cells of your body, like asbestos. You live in the constant stink of your own fear, waiting for the next major catastrophe: pyorrhea, an eviction notice, whatever. It’s as though you’d been bound, face to face, to some maggotty corpse as an object lesson in mortality. Which had happened once to someone in a movie he’d seen, or maybe it was only a book. In any case, the life of Daniel saw laid out before him that morning, the morning of his thirtieth birthday, seemed bad news at almost the same scuzzy level, the only difference being the body he was tied to was his own.
The things he’d hoped to do he hadn’t done. He’d tried to fly, and failed. He was a nothing musician. His education had been a farce. He was broke. And none of these conditions seemed amenable to change. By any system of bookkeeping this had to be accounted failure. He would admit as much, cheerfully or morosely according to his mood and state of sobriety. Indeed, to have admitted to anything else among the people he called his friends would have been a breach of etiquette, for they were failures too. Few, admittedly, had touched rock bottom yet, and one or two were only honorary failures who, though they’d fallen short of their dreams, would never be entirely destitute. Daniel, though, had already been there, though only in the summer, and never for more than a week at a time, so perhaps it hadn’t amounted to more than playacting — dress rehearsals for the worst that was yet to come. For the time being, though, he was too good-looking to have to sleep on the street, except by choice.
Indeed, if blessings were to be counted, then looks would have to top the list, despite this morning’s taste of ashes. There it was in the speckled bathroom mirror, as (with borrowed razor and lather from a sliver of yellow laundry soap) he crisped the borders of his beard: the face that had saved him at so many eleventh hours, the feckless friendly face that seemed his only by the luckiest accident, so little did it ever reveal his own chagrined sense of who he was. Not Daniel Weinreb any more, Dan of the glittering promise, but Ben Bosola, Ben of the dead end.
The name he’d taken to register at First National Flightpaths had been his ever since. Bosola, after the family who’d rented the basement room on Chickasaw Avenue that became his bedroom. Ben, for no particular reason except that it was an Old Testament name. Ben Bosola: schmuck, hustler, lump of shit. Oh, he had a whole litany of maledictions, but somehow, much as he knew he deserved every epithet, he could never quite believe he was really as bad as all that. He liked the face in the mirror, and was always a little surprised, pleasantly, to find it there, smiling away, the same as ever.
Someone tapped on the bathroom door, and he started. He’d been alone in the apartment five minutes ago.
“Jack, is that you?” said a woman’s voice.
“No. It’s Ben.”
“Who?”
“Ben Bosola. I don’t think you know me. Who are you?”
“His wife.”
“Oh. Do you need to use the toilet?”
“Not really. I just heard someone in there, and wondered who. Would you like a cup of coffee? I’m making one for myself.”
“Sure. Whatever.”
He rinsed his face in the toilet bowl, and dabbled the shaven underside of his chin with Jack’s (or would it be his wife’s?) cologne.
“Hi,” he said, emerging from the bathroom with his brightest smile. You’d never have known from those bright incisors the rot that was happening further back in his mouth, where three molars were already gone. How dismayed his father would have been to see his teeth like this.
Jack’s wife nodded, and placed a demitasse of coffee on the white Formica dining ledge. She was a short, tubby woman with red, rheumatic hands and red, rheumy eyes. She wore a muumuu patched together from old toweling, with long harlequin sleeves that seemed anxious to conceal her hands’ misfortunes. A single thick blonde braid issued from a mound of upswept hair and swung, tail-wise, behind her.
“I didn’t know Jack was married,” Daniel said, with amiable incredulity.
“Oh, he isn’t, really. I mean, legally we’re man and wife, of course.” She made a self-deprecating snort, more like a sneeze than a laugh. “But we don’t live together. It’s just an arrangement.”
“Mm.” Daniel sipped the tepid coffee, which was last night’s, heated over.
“He lets me use the place mornings that he goes to work. In return I do his laundry. Et cetera.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m from Miami, you see. So this is really the only way I can qualify as a resident. And I don’t think I could bear to live anywhere else now. New York is so…” She flapped her terrycloth sleeves, at a loss for words.
“You don’t have to explain.”
“I like to explain,” she protested. “Anyhow, you must have wondered who I was, just barging in this way.”
“What I meant was, I’m a temp myself.”
“You are? I would never have thought so. You seem like a native somehow.”
“In face I am. But I’m also a temp. It would take too long to explain.”
“What did you say your name was?”
“Ben.”
“Ben — that’s a lovely name. Mine’s Marcella. Horrible name. You know what you should do, Ben: you should get married. It doesn’t necessarily have to cost a fortune. Certainly not for someone like you.”
“Mm.”
“I’m sorry, it’s none of my business. But it is worth it, in the long run. Marriage, I mean. Of course, for me, at this point, it doesn’t make that much practical difference. I’m still living in a dorm, though they call it a residence hotel. That’s why I like to come here when I can, for the privacy. But I do have a registered job now, waitressing, so in another couple years, when I’ve qualified as a resident in my own right, we’ll get a divorce and I can find my own apartment. There’s still a lot of them, if you’re qualified. Though, realistically, I suppose I’ll have to share. But it will be a damn sight better than a dorm. I hate dorms. Don’t you?”
“I’ve usually managed to avoid them.”
“Really? That’s amazing. I wish I knew your secret.”
He smiled an uncomfortable smile, put down the cup of silty coffee, and stood. “Well, Marcella, you’ll have to guess my secret. ’Cause it’s time I was off.”
“Like that?”
Daniel was wearing rubber sandals and a pair of gym shorts.
“This is how I arrived.”
“You wouldn’t like to fuck, would you?” Marcella asked. “To be blunt.”
“Sorry, no.”
“That’s all right. I didn’t suppose you would.” She smiled wanly. “But that’s the secret, isn’t it — the secret of your success?”
“Sure enough, Marcella. You guessed.”
There was no point in escalating the conflict. In any case, the harm was done, from Marcella’s point of view. Nothing so rankles as a refused invitation. So, meek as a mouse, he said bye-bye and left.