She shrugs, takes an amused, indifferent drag on the cigarette. He hopes the amusement is about his bad French.
— Five francs an hour.
That afternoon she came to his tiny room, still damp with the remainders of winter. And so it began. She would be his wife, until the day she died. The portrait of Consuelo did not go on the wall until Gabrielle was gone forever.
He shuffles now into the narrow bathroom, lifts a bottle of Evian from the small fridge, unscrews the cap, then shakes out his pills, places eight of them in his mouth, and washes them down. Camus comes up beside him, his nails clicking on the hardwood floor. The big Lab knows the meaning of all sounds in this closed world. The pills are a prelude. Forrest reaches for the blue leash on its hook behind the door.
— Let’s go, my man.
He pauses to pull on sneakers, laces them, sighs, thinking: All of this is to make death easier, isn’t it? The disappearance of all the people you love. The doctor visits. The pills. The scaly flesh. The faded eyesight. The vanished dick. For every man on earth, it must always start with the dick. Erasing one huge reason to live. He laughs, and says out loud: No wonder some people choose suicide.
And thinks: For me, it’s never been an option.
I want to see how the story turns out.
12:36 a.m. Glorious Burress. The Lots, Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
She shifts, turns in the twisted sheets of the queen-sized bed, always on her back, never finding a position that brings sleep. Her belly is bursting with the child. She wants to rise, to bang on the locked door that holds her as a prisoner. She wants to find Malik in the rainy night, Malik who put the baby in her. To find a hospital with dry sheets and nurses and doctors. Or even a police station. Anyplace where the walls don’t drip. Where water is hot. She wants to find her mother.
Glorious Burress can’t look at this room, its pale bare walls, its flaking paint, the holes ripped away near the splintery floorboards to make gates for rats. With eyes shut, she thinks: Malik got the key. Malik, that locked me in. Malik and his Muslim shit. No surprise, she thinks. He wanted me to change my name, the name that my mother gave me. Wanted me to take some fucking Arab name. He even wanted me to wear a burqa. Imagine: in fucking Brooklyn! Malik wanted me to be a masked marvel, for fuck’s sake! I shoulda run. Shoulda slipped away. Gone to my cousin’s house in Paterson. Instead, I’m here. Hurting bad. On the top floor. No fire escape. Hurting. Oooooooooh…
She feels as if a cannonball is trying to burst out of her belly, ripping everything in its way. She grabs the filthy pillow, bare, no pillowcase, pulls it tight into her face, and screams again in pain. Ooooooooooaaaahhhhhhh! The pain ebbs. She throws the pillow into the darkness. Then reaches down with one hand. The floor is cold. She hears a scratching sound. She shouts: Stop! The rats stop.
The floor is cold as Malik’s black-ass Muslim heart, she thinks. Him and his Allah. Him and his holy Quran. If you exist, Allah, get me the fuck out of here. Unlock the door, Allah. Send me a fucking car service, Allah. Right downstairs, here in the Lots. Get me in the car, Allah, and take me to a fucking hospital.
And tell Malik to come back. He tells me he’s got some stuff to do, and will bring back milk and bread and maybe pizza. Come on, Allah. Find the fucker. Try the mosque. Maybe he’s there praying to you. Telling you how great you are. Maybe he’s with some Muslim wife, putting a baby in her too. Find him, Allah. Maybe he’s in that Gitmo. Down in fucking Cuba. Nice and warm.
Oh, she says out loud. Ooh, that hurt!
Her voice sounds thin and frantic in the darkness.
She feels the cannonball is trying to kill her now. Trying to rip her, to stretch her pussy as wide as her shoulders, to slam out free into the bed. In a river of blood.
Momma, she says out loud, where you at? I’m fifteen, Momma. I’m fifteen and you’re not here. I need you, Momma.
She stares at the place in the dark where the door is. She stares at the glassy window. She hears the scratching of the rats. She listens to the rain on the window glass. She puts one naked foot on the icy floor.
Oooooouh! OoooooUH!
12:40 a.m. Myles Compton. Madison Avenue and 59th Street, Manhattan.
He sits alone in the back of the limousine, gazing idly at the dark windows of the shops they pass. His face looks older than forty-one, his lean body wedged against the door. Under the dark Borsalino fedora, his face is rigid with tension. His overcoat collar is pulled high on his neck, a tweed scarf crossed upon his shoulders. The limo is warm. Compton is cold.
One final stop on the farewell tour, he thinks, and then I’m gone.
Everything is ready. He’s sure of that. Everything except the weather. This goddamned freezing rain. Weather report says no snow until tomorrow night. He has the EU passport and three untraceable credit cards in his new name. He has ten grand in euros and dollars. All the big money has been moved without a trace. The Learjet is waiting near Newburgh, the second in Toledo. Maybe the rain will delay them, but so far they’re flying. Myles Compton feels bad about his guys, his friends, his associates, but now at least they can blame everything on him. For sure, the Bulgarian will blame me. If any Bulgarian can ever admit to being a sucker. His lawyers might tell him to say nothing. No matter. By the time they all meet in the grand jury room at Foley Square at ten o’clock tomorrow — shit, ten o’clock today—I’ll be a citizen of the wind.
— It’s the next corner, he says to the Asian driver.
— Sure thing, sir.
— I’ll be about twenty minutes.
— Yes, sir. I’ll be waiting right here.
— Don’t smoke in the car, okay? I’m allergic.
— Yes, sir, the driver says.
He’s from an outfit called Eagle Limo, which caters to Japanese and Korean businessmen, and it’s the first time Compton has used the service. He has no account with them. He will pay cash. And when he called, for the first time he used his new name. Martin Canfield, he thinks. Martin Canfield. Say it again. Say it a lot. Martin Canfield. The Eagle car was waiting when he came out of the Oriental Garden downtown, after changing his tuxedo for a business suit in the men’s-room stall. That was itself a relief. The jacket and trousers were bad enough, but he hated the bow tie, suspenders, cummerbund, and patent leather shoes. Now they were in the old Gap shopping bag on the floor of the limo, along with the bunched tuxedo. He sat in this costume through the dinner and speeches at Cynthia Harding’s, the tux already stripped of its labels. Trying to look normal. Poking at the food, forcing himself to eat and look interested. Hearing nothing that was said about the library or the noble life of Brooke Astor. Thanking Cynthia as he left. Brushing her warm cheek. Thinking, for one stupid beat: I don’t know how old she is, but I’d like to boff her. While she reads a book.
The driver pulls over at the corner. Compton steps out and hurries through the light rain to the first apartment awning. The night doorman nods in recognition and waves him toward the elevators. He glances back and the doorman has picked up a phone. Even a mistress must be warned. He steps out of the elevator on 17 and Sandra Gordon is standing at the open door. She is wearing the white nightgown he bought her in London, the one that heightens the rich blackness of her skin. She smiles in a tentative way.
— Come in, she says, in a husky voice. He moves past her in silence, and she locks the door behind him.
He slips off the scarf, removes coat and jacket without separating them. He lays them on a chair like an actor playing casual. Sandra stares at him in a pensive way, her arms loosely folded, a thumb tucked under her chin.