“I have quite a few concerns,” Lexie added without a pause. Then she ticked them off. “Lucy’s school, her neighborhood.” She stopped, as if deciding whether to release another volley, then went ahead and released it. “And there’s the apartment, too, your work. Especially at night. Really, it’s more or less everything, David. The whole situation she finds herself in.”
It was the last three words that caught him, snagged his mind like a hook, jerked him from the rising waters. “Finds herself in?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“What do you mean, ‘finds herself in’?”
“The way she has to live.”
“You make it sound like a swamp,” Corman said. “Or a hole. Like I’ve thrown her in a hole.”
“Not a hole, David,” Lexie said. “Just your life, the way she lives it with you.”
“My life?” Corman asked. “What about my life, Lexie?”
She looked faintly surprised by the question, but wary of it, too, as if she’d heard the hard, alarming sound of a pistol being cocked behind the seamless curtain of his face.
“Well, I mean the situation,” Lexie said. “It’s not her fault that she doesn’t have certain advantages, things that would make hei more comfortable, things that I could give her.”
Corman could feel something growing steadily more luminous in his mind, shoring up walls he thought had crumbled, restoring the shattered battlements of a city under siege, yet still unready to surrender. “There are other things,” he said. “Besides the things yot can give her. Things that matter.” As he spoke, he could see Lazar alone in his room, pressing yet another picture down into his olc suitcase. “Things that matter, Lexie.”
Lexie shifted uncomfortably. “David, I think you’ve …”
He raised his hand to stop her. “We’re all sailing, Lexie,” he began, still struggling for the words. “Sailing through this … life.”
Lexie stared at him. “Sailing?”
“And so, you have to …” He stopped, wrestled mightily to gather it all in. He could feel his mind focus slowly, like a grea camera, bringing everything into view, and after a moment he understood, very clearly and with the full force of his conviction, precisely why Lucy should stay with him.
“She doesn’t need to be protected,” he said explosively. “It would take something from her, Lexie, something that matters.”
Lexie sat back slightly, but said nothing.
“Her neighborhood, her school,” Corman said. “The way she walks the streets. Lexie, if you could see it. The way she moves toward any little craziness around her, the way she’s drawn towarc things that aren’t safe.”
Lexie watched him silently, her eyes immobile, as if fixed or something she could not quite bring into view. “I can provide a nice life for her,” she said finally. “A very nice life.”
Corman looked at her stonily. “She has the life that’s best for her.”
Lexie drew her napkin from her lap and began fiddling nervously with its lacy edges. “I’m talking about a good life, David. Opportunities.”
Corman shook his head. “No.”
Lexie’s eyes deepened slightly, but she said nothing.
Corman leaned toward her and felt the high rapture of a well-delivered blow. “Do you know why she should stay with me, Lexie? Because I trust her, and you don’t.”
Lexie glanced down, then up again, her eyes glistening suddenly.
“You never trusted yourself,” Corman added determinedly. “And now you don’t trust her.”
Lexie labored to recover then sat up stiffly. “That’s all very well, David, but there are also some practical matters, you know, such as …”
Corman knew what was coming, but also that he could face, even surmount it, because suddenly he realized that fatherhood created a life whose downward pull was always toward the deeper regions, a place where heroism took the form of washing dishes, doing clothes, holding down a job, where compromise miraculously reversed its course, and shot you to the stars.
“I’ve been offered a job at the paper,” he said, interrupting her. “A steady job. Good pay. I’m going to take it.”
Lexie stared at him, amazed. “But, David, I thought you …”
He lifted his hand to silence her. “But I won’t give up the night,” he added determinedly. “I won’t give that up, ever. But as often as I can, as often as it’s right, I’ll take Lucy with me, show her what I think she needs to see.”
Lexie continued to stare at him but said nothing.
“My eyes,” Corman said. “I have a right to them. And so does she.”
Lexie studied him intently for a moment, then started to speak.
Corman put up his hand again. “That’s the bottom line,” Corman told her. “What happens now is up to you.” He added nothing else, but merely rested in the silence that drifted down upon them, felt the air around him, the whole dark envelope of the city, and waited for a blow that never came.
Lucy had already packed for the weekend by the time they got back to the apartment, and within a few minutes the three of them were standing beneath the Broadway’s battered awning, waiting for a cab. Lucy stood under Corman’s arm, nuzzling him gently while she talked to Lexie about the time she’d spent with Mrs. Donaldson. Lexie smiled, nodded, gave her every encouragement, but something in her looked ravaged.
“I’ll bring Lucy back tomorrow night,” she said to Corman after Lucy had finished her story.
“Fine.”
“Any particular time?”
“I’ll make sure I’m home before seven.”
Lucy stepped from under Corman’s arm, walked over to Lexie, and took up the same position, as if trying to balance things with absolute precision.
The cab arrived. Corman opened the door, watched as the two of them slid inside, then handed Lucy her small blue traveling case, closed the door and bent down beside the window.
It was streaked with rain, and a small layer of water formed a watery edge as Lucy rolled down the glass.
“ ’Bye, Papa,” she said.
Corman pressed nearer and kissed her lightly. “Have fun,” he said.
The cab pulled away a few seconds later. Corman returned to his apartment and dialed Pike immediately, afraid that Groton’s job had already been given to someone else.
“I’ve changed my mind, Hugo,” he said when Pike answered. “Groton’s beat. Is it still open?”
“Yeah,” Pike said. “By the skin of its teeth.”
“I’ve decided to take it.”
“Oh yeah?” Pike asked. “What brought on the change?”
“Just things.”
“Wolf at the door, am I right?”
“Close enough,” Corman said. “I’ll be there Monday morning.”
“Nine sharp,” Pike told him.
“Nine sharp,” Corman repeated, then hung up.
For a time he curled up on the sofa and tried to take a short nap. But the intensity of the last hours still lingered like a faint electrical charge in the air around him, and so, after only a few minutes, he returned to the streets, heading south, crossing the avenues at random, simply moving forward with no direction in mind. He passed down Broadway, through the swarming neon of Times Square, then down Seventh Avenue. It was nearly deserted until he reached the plant and flower district in Chelsea. The trucks were unloading everything from common ferns to the most exotic tropical flowers, and for a long time, Corman watched the whole striking process from the front booth of a small diner on 26th Street.
Before he left, an idea struck him, a series of photographs that would show how the city reprovisioned itself during the night. He would record the flower district, the meat, fish and vegetable markets, the unloading of trucks, freight cars, planes, boats, barges, how the city was fed by tubes of streets, bridges, waterways, airlanes. He would take Lucy with him, teach her the mystery of replenishment.