Manhattan Is My Beat, Page 5

  Rune looked into his eyes. Brown, swimming, paisley. She said, "Maybe. Where?"

  "Your place, darling," he said.

  Oh, that again.

  But he caught the expression on her face and, suddenly sounding much more down to earth, said, "All of us, I mean. A party. Wine and Cheez-Its. Innocent. Swear."

  Rune looked at Frankie. He shook his shaggy head. "My sister's gonna have her baby anytime. I gotta get home."

  "Please?" Downtown Man asked.

  Why not? Rune thought. Recalling that her last date had been when there was snow piled up in the gutters.

  "One minute," the man said. "Our time is almost depleted." He was back in the ozone and was speaking to the blonde. She looked at the orange-haired friend and said, "We need a movie. Pick one."

  "Me?" the Woodpecker asked.

  "Hurry," the blonde whispered.

  The man: "We have less than a minute until the floods mount, the earth will tremble...."

  "Do you always talk that way?" Rune asked.

  He smiled.

  The Woodpecker grabbed a movie from the shelf. "How about this one?"

  "I can live with it," the blonde answered grudgingly.

  Frankie checked them out.

  The man said, "Poof. Time's up. Let's go."

  CHAPTER SIX

  "This is an example of Stanford White's finest work," Rune told them.

  Riding up in a freight elevator. A metallic grinding sound, chains clinking. The smell was of grease and mold and wet concrete. Floors under construction, floors dark and abandoned, fell slowly past them. The sound of dripping water. It was a building in the TriBeCa neighborhood--the triangle below Canal Street--dating back to the nineteenth century.

  "Stanford White?" the blonde asked.

  "The architect," Rune said.

  The mysterious man said, "He died for love."

  He knew that? Rune thought. Impressed. She added, "Murdered by a jealous lover on the top floor of the original Madison Square Garden."

  The blonde shrugged as if love were never worth dying for.

  The Woodpecker said, "Is this legal, living here?"

  "But what, of course, is legal?" the man mused. "I mean whose sets of laws apply? There are layers upon layers of laws we have to contend with. Some valid, some not."

  "What are you talking about?" Rune asked him.

  He grinned and raised his eyebrows with ambiguous significance.

  His name had turned out to be Richard, which disappointed Rune. Somebody this truly renegade should have been named Jean-Paul or Vladmir.

  At the top floor the car stopped and they stepped out into a small room filled with boxes stenciled with block Korean letters, suitcases, a broken TV set, an olive-drab drum of civil defense drinking water. A dozen stacks of old beauty magazines. The Woodpecker strolled over to them and studied the covers. "Historical," she said. The only door was labeled "Toilet" in blotchy black ink.

  "No windows, how can you stand it?" Richard asked. But Rune didn't answer and disappeared behind a wall of cartons. She climbed an ornate metal stairway, which was in the middle of the room. From the floor above she gave a shrill whistle. "Yo, follow me.... Hey, you imagine the trouble I have getting groceries up here? As if I buy groceries."

  The trio stopped cold when they reached the next floor. They stood in a glass turret: a huge gazebo on top of the building, its sides rising like a crown. Ten stories below, the city spread around them. The Empire State Building, distant but massive, stern like an indifferent giant out of a Maxfield Parrish illustration. Beyond it, the elegant Chrysler Building. Southward, the city swept away toward the white pillars of the Trade towers. To the east, the frilly Woolworth Building, City Hall. Farther east was a blanket of lights--Brooklyn and Queens. Opposite, the soft darkness of Jersey. Through the glass of the domed ceiling they could see low clouds, glowing pinkish from the city lights.

  "She's out--my roommate," Rune explained, looking around. "She's playing Russian roulette in a singles bar. If I don't find her back by this time, eating ice cream from the carton and watching sitcoms, that means she got lucky. Well, that's how she describes it."

  Rune pulled off her jacket; it went on a hanger, which she hooked onto the armature of a bulbless floor lamp that held an ostrich-feather boa and a fake-zebra-skin sport coat. She unlaced her boots and set them on the floor next to two battered American Touristers. She opened one, looking over shirts and underwear, which she smoothed, adjusting away creases, refolding some of the wild-colored clothes, then took off her socks and put them into the other suitcase.

  To Richard she said, "Dresser and dirty clothes hamper." Nodding at the suitcases.

  "You rent this?" the Woodpecker asked.

  "I just live here. I don't pay any rent."

  "Why not?"

  "Nobody's asked me to yet."

  Richard asked, "How did you get it?"

  Rune shrugged. "I found it. I moved in. Nobody else was here."

  He said, "It becomes you."

  "Being and becoming ...," Rune said, recalling something she'd overheard a couple of guys talking about in the video store a week or so ago.

  He lifted his eyebrows. "Hey, you know Hegel?"

  "Oh, sure," Rune said. "I love movies."

  The circle of the floor was divided by a cinder-block wall, which she'd painted sky blue and dabbed with white for clouds. On Rune's side of the loft were four old trunks, a TV, a VCR, three futons piled on top of one another, a dozen pillows in the corner. Two bookcases, completely filled with books, mostly old ones. A half-size refrigerator.

  "Where do you cook?" asked the Woodpecker.

  "What does it mean, cook?" Rune replied in a thick Hungarian accent.

  Richard said, "I feel something epiphanic about this place. Very watershed, you know." He looked in the refrigerator. A bag of half-melted ice cubes, two six-packs of beer, a shriveled apple. "It's not turned on."

  "It doesn't work."

  "What about utilities?"

  Rune pointed to an orange extension cord snaking down the stairs. "Some of the construction guys working downstairs, they let me have electricity. Isn't that nice of them?"

  The Woodpecker asked, "What if the owner finds out, couldn't he kick you out?"

  "I'd find someplace else."

  "You're a very existential person," Richard said.

  And the blonde: "I want to start our party."

  Rune shut the lights out, lit a dozen candles.

  She heard the rasp of another match. The flare reflected in a dozen angled windows. The ripe raw smell of hash flowed through the room. The joint was passed around. Beer too.

  The blonde said to the Woodpecker, "Play the movie, the one you picked out."

  Rune and Richard sat back on the pillows, watched the blonde take the cassette from the Woodpecker and open the plastic container. Rune whispered to him, "Are you two like an entity or something?" Nodding at the blonde. Then she thought about it. "Or are you three an entity?"

  Richard's paisley eyes followed the blonde as she crouched and turned on the VCR and television. He said, "I don't know the redhead. But the other one--I met her last year at the Sorbonne, I was writing a thesis on semiotic interpretations of textile designs."

  Is this a joke?

  "I was sitting outdoors on the Boulevard St. Germain, and saw her get out of a limousine. I was filled with an intense sense of pre-ordination."

  "Like Calvinism," Rune said, remembering something she'd heard her mother, a good Presbyterian, say once. His head turned to her. Frowning, falling out of character, suddenly analytical. He said, "Oh, predestination? Well, that isn't really ..." He nodded, as he considered something. Then smiled. "Oh, you mean, sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't.... That's pretty good. That's perceptive."

  "I get off a good one once in a while." What the hell is going on? she wondered. Didn't matter, she supposed. He seemed impressed. Appearances count. Though she realized she still didn't have a clue about
his relationship with the sullen blonde.

  Rune was about to say something cool and giddy about Casablanca--about Rick and Ilsa in Paris--when Richard leaned over and kissed her on the mouth.

  Whoa ...

  Rune backed off, eyeing the blonde, wondering if she was going to get into a catfight here. But the woman didn't notice--or didn't care. She was stepping back, handing the joint to the Woodpecker, who was adjusting the TV.

  Is this crazy? Letting three strangers into my loft.

  Sure, it is.

  Then, on impulse, she kissed Richard back. Didn't back away until she felt the pressure of his hand on her breast. Then she sat back. "Let's just take it a little easy, okay? I've only known you for a half hour."

  "But time is relative."

  She kissed his cheek, an innocent peck. Destined never to be a tall, sultry lover, Rune had flirtatious down cold.

  "I'm feeling deprived," he pouted.

  She started to give him another Oh, please glance but he meant the joint the Woodpecker was holding. "Hey, darling, to each according to his need." The woman inhaled long and gave it to him. He took a drag then passed it to Rune.

  He said, "What we'll do is assume a Tantra yoga position."

  Rune said, "Tantra yoga?"

  "Isn't that the sex one?" the Woodpecker asked.

  Rune gave Richard an exasperated grimace.

  He said, "People think sex is the thing with Tantra yoga. Wrong. It's breathing. It teaches you how to breathe the right way."

  Rune said, "I know how to breathe. I'm good at it. I've been doing it all my life."

  "Shall we assume the position?"

  She was about to hit him with a pillow, when he slipped into an awkward sitting position, three feet away from her, and started to breathe deeply. "Fully clothed," he said. "I meant to add that."

  Rune said, "You look like you hurt yourself in a bad fall."

  The TV screen flickered, the copyright notice came on.

  "Sit next to me," he said. She hesitated. Then did. Their knees touched. She felt a spark of electricity but didn't move any closer.

  "What do we do now?"

  "Breathe deep and watch the show."

  "Yeah," Rune called to the Woodpecker, "what's the movie you picked?"

  The credits for Lesbos Lovers came on the screen. The blonde pulled the Woodpecker groggily toward her and covered her mouth with her own. Their arms wound around each other and their fingers began undoing buttons.

  Rune whispered to Richard, "Oh, you meant that show?"

  Richard shrugged. "Either one."

  In the morning, when Rune woke up, Richard was making coffee on her hot plate.

  She asked, "Where're your friends?" She was looking intently for something under the cushions. She surfaced with her Colgate and toothbrush.

  He looked around. "Dunno."

  "You find the john?"

  "Downstairs. I liked the plastic dinosaurs. You did the decorating yourself, I assume."

  Rune was examining him. Now he seemed out of place, wearing the black outfit--night clothes--in the bright, open-air loft.

  He said, "What's your real name? It's not really Rune, is it?"

  "Everybody asks me about my name."

  "What do you tell them?" he asked. "The truth?"

  "But what's the truth?" Rune smiled at him ambiguously.

  Richard laughed. "But the fact you've got a fake name is very interesting. Philosophically, I mean. You know what Walker Percy says about naming? He doesn't mean like first names or family names but humans giving names to things. He says that naming is different from everything else in the universe. A wholly unique act. Think about that."

  She did, for a moment, then said, "A year ago, I worked in a diner over on Ninth Avenue. I was Doris then. I think I only took the job to get the name tag they gave us. It said, 'Chelsea Diner. Hi! I'm Doris.' "

  He nodded uncertainly. "Doris."

  She said, "So, what do you do, Richard?"

  "Stuff."

  "Oh. I see," she said dubiously.

  "Okay. I'm working on a novel." She knew he was a writer or artist. "What's it about?"

  "I don't really talk about it much. I'm at a tricky part right now."

  This was even better. A mystery man writing a mysterious novel. In the throes of creative angst.

  "I write," she said.

  "You do?"

  "A diary." Rune pulled a thick, water-and ink-stained booklet off the shelf. A picture of a knight--cut from a magazine--was pasted on the cover. "My mother's kept a diary every day of her life. I've only been doing it for a few years. But I write down everything that's major in my life." She nodded at a dozen other booklets on the shelf.

  "Everything?" he asked.

  "Nearly."

  "You going to write anything about me?" Richard asked. He was looking at the notebooks as if he wanted a peek.

  "Maybe," Rune said, combing her hair out with her fingers.

  He said, "And you ... You want to be an actress, right?"

  "Guess again. You're thinking of what's-her-name: Woody Woodpecker."

  "Who?"

  "Your friend last night. With the orange hair. The one who ran off with your girlfriend?"

  "Whoa, not my girlfriend. She's not even close to bi. I made a pass at her once--"

  "You?" Rune asked sarcastically.

  "I met her last week at a party. We give good image."

  "You--?"

  He explained. "We look good together, being chic and making entrances. That's it. Not a meaningful relationship. I don't even know her name."

  "Hard to introduce her to your parents in that case."

  "That's not in the offing." He carried the coffee to her, set it on the floor next to the futon.

  "What about the Sorbonne?" Rune asked.

  "Pas de Sorbonne."

  "I thought so."

  "But I've been to France."

  "Jean-Pierre" would be a good name for him too. Or "Francois." Yeah, he definitely looked like a "Francois."

  "Richard" had to go.

  Rune glanced out the window, dug under a futon, and found some sunglasses. She put them on.

  "Feeling like a celebrity?" Richard asked, nodding at the fake Ray-Bans.

  Suddenly the sun came over the building to the east and the entire room filled with intense raw sunlight.

  "Ouch," he said, blinded.

  "I maybe'll get curtains. But I can't afford them and my roommate won't help pay."

  "You're not paying rent, why have a roommate?"

  "Well, she pays me something. Anyway, having a roommate's like trial by fire. It toughens you is what it does."

  "You don't seem tough to me."

  "That's part of being tough--not looking tough. Anyway, I'll have to be out in a few months. The owner sold the building and I'm only staying here 'cause I told the contractor that I'm the mistress of the old owner and he dumped me so they're letting me stay until they start renovating this floor. So you going to ask me out on a date?"

  "A date? I haven't heard that word for a long time. It sounds, I don't know, like Swahili. I'm not used to it."

  True, she supposed. Really chic people don't ask other chic people out on dates. They just go places together. Still, there was a certain commitment involved in the concept. So she said, "Date, date, date. There. Now you're used to it. So you can ask me out."

  "We just spent the night together--"

  "On separate futons," she pointed out.

  "--and you want a date?"

  "I want a date."

  "How about dinner?" he asked.

  "That's good."

  "Okay. I asked you on a date. We'll go out. You happy?"

  "It's not a date yet. You have to tell me when. And I mean exactly. Not a month, not a week."

  "I'll call you."

  "Oh, that? Are you kidding? Are men genetically programmed to say those three little words? Gimme a break."

  He looked around helplessly. "I don'
t have my Daytimer here."

  He'd call her and he had a Daytimer. This was scary. Richard was rapidly losing his appeal.

  "Never mind," she said cheerfully.

  "Okay, how about tomorrow?" he asked. "I know I'm not doing anything tomorrow."

  Not too eager now--watch it. "I guess."

  "Where do you want to go?" he asked.

  "You can come here. I'll cook."

  "I thought you didn't cook."

  She said, "I don't cook well. But I do cook. We'll save the Four Seasons for a special occasion." She looked at her wrist. She wore two watches. They'd both stopped working. "What time do you have?"

  "Eight."

  "Shit, I have to go," Rune said, slipping off her T-shirt.

  She could sense Richard watching her thin body, eyes sweeping up and down. She turned to him, wearing only her Bugs Bunny panties. "So, what are you staring at?" Put her hands on her hips.

  And got him to blush.

  Yes! Score one for me.

  "Glad you don't shop at Frederick's of Hollywood," he said.

  A good recovery. This boy had potential.

  As she dressed, Richard asked, "What's the hurry? I didn't think your store opened until noon."

  "Oh, I'm not going to work," she said. "I'm going to the police."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  "Miss Rune," Detective Manelli said, "we are investigating the case."

  She looked at his organized desk. Here--not standing in front of a corpse--he seemed like an insurance agent. The close-together eyes weren't so noticeable; they moved quickly, surveying her, and she decided he might be smarter than she'd thought. His first name was Virgil. She looked at the nameplate twice to make sure she'd read it right.

  She nodded at the file open on his desk, the one he'd been reading. "But that's not his case. Mr. Kelly's, I mean."

  He took a breath, let it out. "No, it's not."

  "Which one is his?" she asked stridently. "How far down is it?" She gestured at the stack of folders.

  The captain--the one she'd met in Mr. Kelly's apartment--breezed in. He glanced down with a splinter of recognition but didn't say anything to her.

  "They want to hear today," he told Manelli. "About the tourist killing."

  "They'll hear today," Manelli said wearily.

  "You got anything?"

  "No."

  "The mayor. You know. The Post. The Daily News."

  "I know."

  The captain looked at Rune once again. He left the office.

  "We're doing everything according to procedures," Manelli told her.

  "Who's the tourist?"

  "Somebody from Iowa. Knifed in Times Square. Don't start with me on that."