Myron and Ali parked in a lot off the West Side Highway. They passed a twenty-four-hour porn shop called King David’s Slut Palace. The windows were soaped up. There was a big sign on the door that read now under new management.
“Whew.” Myron pointed to the sign. “It’s about time, don’t you think?”
Ali nodded. “The place had been so mismanaged before.”
When they ducked inside Leather and Lust, Ali walked around as though she were at the Louvre, squinting at the photos on the wall, checking out the devices, the costumes, the bondage material. She shook her head. “I am hopelessly naïve.”
“Not hopelessly,” Myron said.
Ali pointed at something black and long that resembled human intestines.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Dang if I know.”
“Are you, uh, into…?”
“Oh no.”
“Too bad,” Ali said. Then: “Kidding. So very much kidding.”
Their romance was progressing, but the reality of dating someone with young kids had set in. They hadn’t spent another full night together since that first. Myron had only offered up brief hellos to Erin and Jack since that party. They weren’t sure how fast or slow they should go in their own relationship, but Ali was pretty adamant that they should go slow where it concerned the kids.
Ali had to leave early. Jack had a school project she’d promised to help him with. Myron walked her out, deciding to stay in the city for the night.
“How long will you be in Miami?” Ali asked.
“Just a night or two.”
“Would it make you retch violently if I say I’ll miss you?”
“Not violently, no.”
She kissed him gently. Myron watched her drive off, his heart soaring, and then he headed back to the party.
Since he planned on sleeping in anyway, Myron started drinking. He was not what one would call a great drinker — he held his liquor about as well as a fourteen-year-old girl — but tonight, at this wonderful albeit bizarre celebration, he felt in the mood to imbibe. So did Win, though it took far more to get him buzzed. Cognac was mother’s milk to Win. He rarely showed the effects, at least on the outside.
Tonight it didn’t matter. Win’s stretch limo was already waiting. It would take them back uptown.
Win’s apartment in the Dakota was worth about a billion dollars and had a décor that reminded one of Versailles. When they arrived, Win carefully poured himself an obscenely priced vintage port, Quinta do Noval Nacional 1963. The bottle had been decanted several hours ago because, as Win explained, you must give vintage port time to breathe before consumption. Myron normally drank a chocolate Yoo-hoo, but his stomach was not in the mood. Plus the chocolate wouldn’t have time to breathe.
Win snapped on the TV, and they watched Antiques Roadshow. A snooty woman with a lazy drawl had brought in a hideous bronze bust. She started telling the appraiser a story about how Dean Martin in 1950 offered her father ten thousand dollars for this wretched hunk of metal, but her daddy, she said with an insistent finger-point and matching smirk, was too wily for that. He knew that it must be worth a fortune. The appraiser nodded patiently, waited for the woman to finish, and then he lowered the boom:
“It’s worth about twenty dollars.”
Myron and Win shared a quiet high five.
“Enjoying other people’s misery,” Win said.
“We are pitiful,” Myron said.
“It’s not us.”
“No?”
“It’s this show,” Win said. “It illuminates so much that is wrong with our society.”
“How so?”
“People aren’t satisfied just to have their trinket be worth a fortune. No, it is better, far better, if they bought it on the cheap from some unsuspecting rube. No one considers the feelings of the unsuspecting yard salesman who was cheated, who lost out.”
“Good point.”
“Ah, but there’s more.”
Myron smiled, sat back, waited.
“Forget greed for the moment,” Win went on. “What really upsets us is that everybody but everybody lies on Antiques Roadshow.”
Myron nodded. “You mean when the appraiser asks, ‘Do you have any idea what it’s worth?’ ”
“Precisely. He asks that same question every time.”
“I know.”
“And Mr. or Mrs. Gee-Whiz act like the question caught them totally off guard — as if they’d never seen the show before.”
“It’s annoying,” Myron agreed.
“And then they say something like, ‘Gasp-oh-gasp, I never thought of that. I have no idea what it might be worth.’ ” Win frowned. “I mean, please. You dragged your two-ton granite armoire to some impersonal convention center and waited in line for twelve hours — but you never, ever, not in your wildest dreams wondered what it might be worth?”
“A lie,” Myron agreed, feeling the buzz. “It’s up there with ‘Your call is very important to us.’ ”
“And that,” Win said, “is why we love when a woman like that gets slammed. The lies. The greed. The same reason why we love the boob on Wheel of Fortune who knows the solution but always goes for the extra spin and hits Bankrupt.”
“It’s like life,” Myron pronounced, feeling the booze.
“Do tell.”
But then the door’s intercom buzzed.
Myron felt his stomach drop. He checked his watch. It was one-thirty in the morning. Myron just looked over at Win. Win looked back, his face a placid pool. Win was still handsome, too handsome, but the years, the abuse, the late nights of either violence or, as with tonight, sex, were starting to show just a little.
Myron closed his eyes. “Is that a…?”
“Yes.”
He sighed, rose. “I wish you’d told me.”
“Why?”
They’d been down that road before. There was no answer to that one.
“She’s from a new place on the Upper West Side,” Win said.
“Yeah, how convenient.”
Without another word Myron headed down the corridor toward his bedroom. Win answered the door. As much as it depressed him, Myron took a peek. The girl was young and pretty. She said, “Hi!” with a forced lilt in her voice. Win did not reply. He beckoned her to follow him. She did, teetering on too-high heels. They vanished down the corridor.
As Esperanza had noted, some things refuse to change — no matter how much you’d like them to.
Myron closed the door and collapsed onto the bed. His head swam from drink. The ceiling spun. He let it. He wondered if he was going to get sick. He didn’t think so. He pushed thoughts of the girl out of his head. She left him easier than the girls used to, a change in him that was definitely not for the better. He didn’t hear any noises — the room Win used (not his bedroom, of course) was soundproof — and eventually Myron closed his eyes.
The call came in on his cell phone.
Myron had it set on vibrate-ring. It rattled against his night table. He woke from his half-sleep and reached for it. He rolled over, and his head screamed. That was when he saw the bedside digital clock.
2:17 a.m.
He did not check the caller ID before he put the phone to his ear.
“Hello?” he croaked.
He heard the sob first.
“Hello?” he said again.
“Myron? It’s Aimee.”
“Aimee.” Myron sat up. “What’s wrong? Where are you?”
“You said I could call.” There was another sob. “Anytime, right?”
“Right. Where are you, Aimee?”
“I need help.”
“Okay, no problem. Just tell me where you are.”