"Is it better when it's hot?" I asked, thinking that iced coffee might be less horrible.
The pizza girl breathed like an expiring animal. "Yes," she said, her eyes going slightly out of focus.
"I want it now," I said slowly and deliberately. "Let's do it."
"Oh!" she said. She came around the counter, rushed for the door, locked it, and turned the sign so that to the outside world it said CLOSED. "Let's go in the back. On the flour sacks."
"Right here is fine," I told her.
"The window," she said, motioning with her eyes to the glass store front. "People will see."
"You're right," I agreed. "I don't want people to see. Let's go in the back."
She led the way, and I said, "What about the coffee?"
"Coffee?"
"I'm going to drink a cup of coffee."
"You're not hot enough?" she asked, pushing her hair behind her neck and holding it, with both hands, like a rope. "I'll give you lots of hot coffee," she said as she led the way to the back.
They kept sacks of flour in a small room that had no windows but only a fluorescent light and a ventilating fan above the door. I saw no coffee there, and turned to look at the percolator behind me. When I looked in again toward the sacks of flour, the pizza girl was half kneeling, half sitting upon them, disrobing musically, rhythmically, swaying as she untied the white strings of her apron.
As evening fell, after having been forced to betray Constance for the first time in our marriage, I walked aimlessly into the deepest Bronx. It was still light, and people were eating dinner or mowing their lawns. The remarkable thing about the climate of the Bronx is that in January you can put a thick steak on your porch and it will be frozen in two minutes, and in August you can place it on a grill in the very same place, without a fire, and it will cook all by itself. And though spring lasts for only ten days, fall is a paradise that seems never to end.
Walking put me in mind of my youth, and I stayed hungry. I am almost sure that I did not, in two or three hours, pass a single investment banker or a single holder of a single seat on a single stock exchange. No Yale pennants, Duesenbergs, Jaguars, plaid pants, or perfect teeth. I did notice, however, that people seemed hostile. I took this to be the kind of resentment that I, as a graduate of Harvard, a partner at Stillman and Chase, and, now, a billionaire, would engender no matter what my real character, no matter that I was still the beleaguered runner from the branch office, no matter that I, like everyone else, had been fully set into my "class"—that is, my emotional home—before the age of ten, and we had been rather poor.
I imagined that it was the way I dressed, or perhaps my haircut, or perhaps, God help me, my bearing and expression. When you are a member of the moneyed elite, you get used to a certain low-level hostility. But what I did not know was that children ran indoors as I passed, and women looked at me in fear, because my back, from heel to crown, was covered in flour, as were my hair, my face, and my neck. I looked like a mime, or the ghost of Christmas past.
As I was walking, I came up with a scheme. By luck and revulsion, I had never had a cup of coffee, and my recent efforts to accommodate to Constance, to surrender to what she referred to as normal life but which I feel is a serious addiction that wildly distorts the personality, had failed. Not only had I been unable to drink coffee, I had not been able to get within ten feet of it.
The only way for me to accomplish my normalization would be through force. Force is a remarkable instrument, and when it threatens survival it awakens capacities that have slept in the soul like giants. My idea was simple: I would bribe the police to force me to drink a cup of coffee. After all, they had guns and it was well known that they would do virtually anything for the right amount of money. The office manager at Stillman and Chase made monthly trips to see the captain at the precinct, and she always brought him several thousand dollars for the "fund."
"Why?" I asked her, and was told that it was to keep our runners safe and our operations smooth. The custom was for her to pay the captain a courtesy call, and give two hundred dollars to the benevolent fund. He would thank her, and leave the room to put the money in the precinct safe. Left alone at a little table with a single drawer, the office manager would stuff in thousands in tens and twenties, and slam it shut. At that sound, the captain would reappear, thank her for the contribution he had just put in the safe, and shake her hand. That he kept on finding huge amounts of money in the drawer was something he explained as a kind of Miracle of the Loaves.
In New York, when a, wealthy person dies with no relatives to take care of his affairs, the police seal the house, but only after they loot it. Sometimes they come back at night and break the seal to get something they forgot. They don't like to talk about things like this, though, because they feel that it is an insult to their dignity.
To my great surprise, a radio car came up even with me as I walked, and held itself to my pace.
"Are you going to get in the car, or do we have to chase you with a net?" I was asked from inside.
"I beg your pardon? Would you say that again?"
"Do you want the net and the straitjacket, or are you going to cooperate?"
"You read my mind," I said. "What I was thinking was so powerful that it brought you to me, but, before we've made the arrangement, don't get on your high horse. And, besides, I don't want to deal with anyone below the rank of captain."
I jumped into the car and laughed all the way to the precinct. There, as they handcuffed me, I asked that they leave my hands in front so I could drink the cup of coffee.
"The cup of coffee?"
"Yes."
"What do you mean, 'drink the cup of coffee?' Are you American?"
"Of course. Don't I look it?"
"No."
"What nationality do you take me for?"
The desk sergeant looked me over. "The moon," he said.
I was in trouble. They would not honor my request, and after I was booked for disturbing the peace they threw me into a holding cell. Its one other occupant was a bearded ancient with a pink stump where his right hand should have been. He looked very much like Santa Claus, but his eyes were filled with terror. You could tell that he never stopped being afraid, that somehow the fear switch in his brain had been permanently welded shut, and that this simple problem had been the cause of his downfall.
"Are you afraid of elephants?" I asked.
He nodded, fearfully.
"Are you afraid of meteorites?"
He nodded again.
"Paper boxes?"
He shuddered with fear.
"You're afraid of me, aren't you?"
He shook his head purposefully, vehemently.
"It doesn't matter that I won't hurt you, does it. You're afraid of me because I'm here. You're afraid of everything. As long as you're awake, you fear."
He made no assent. Then I understood. "You don't sleep, do you?"
"No," he whispered. He was too afraid to sleep. He was like a fish. Perhaps fish do sleep, but he didn't.
"But why are you afraid of me?" I asked.
He threw himself back against the cage, which was as good an answer as any.
At four o'clock the next morning I was taken to a different floor, where, in the middle of a group of wooden desks, a detective sat near a pool of light.
"Don't people like you normally wear a dress?" he asked.
"What?"
"Where's your dress?"
Perhaps he was insane. "Why would I wear a dress?"
"Why would you make up?"
"Why would I make up?" I repeated.
"Yeah."
I held out my hands in the posture of universal puzzlement. "I wouldn't."
"You live downtown," he said, "not here."
"That's right."
"So what are you doing here? There are no transvestite bars here."
"Transvestite bars!"
"Did somebody steal your dress? Did they hurt you? What?" I thought he was entirely mad, but
what did that matter? He was a policeman. I leaned over and spoke like a conspirator. "Look," I said, "I'll pay you to shoot me if I don't drink the cup of coffee. Money is no object."
He was not exactly comprehending, but I had mentioned money. "The cup of coffee."
"The cup."
"What cup?"
"The first cup."
"What about the second cup?"
"Don't get greedy. If I drink the first cup I'll be able to handle the second cup on my own."
"Do you have a private doctor?"
"Yes."
"What's his name?"
"Dr. Gruffy."
"In Manhattan?"
"Of course."
"Is he a shrink?"
"No. He's an internist."
"Who's your shrink?"
"I don't have one. Why would I have one?"
"Oh, I don't know."
"I think Freud overdid it," I said, "in that virtually everything he maintained was either patently obvious or patently ridiculous."
At this moment Constance swept into the room flanked by several extremely expensive lawyers. I knew that I was saved, but I didn't know from what. The detective stood almost at attention when he saw these people, figuring that I was either a billionaire, Truman's mad twin, or a space alien who had escaped from an Air Force interrogation center.
"How did you get like that?" Constance asked, embarrassed to see me, made up like a New Guinea headhunter, in the presence of the senior partner of Happy, Tricky, Devious, and Rich.
"Like what?"
"Look at yourself."
I looked at my hands, my feet, my legs: they seemed totally Brooks Brothers.
She pulled a compact from her purse and snapped it open the way you snap open the barrel of a revolver if you have to reload to save your life. She shoved the mirror toward my face. "Like that."
"Oh," I said when I saw my face. Then I looked at each person in the room, shifting my eyes in silence.
"What happened to you?" she screamed. An aristocrat, an activist by nature, she was never content to let anything pass without intervention or explanation.
"This is flour," I announced in a tone of surprised self-satisfaction.
"Flour?"
"Baking flour."
"How did it get on you?"
"I had a pizza."
"That must have been some pizza," the detective said.
"It was the best pizza," I answered, with fanatic intensity, "that I ever had, in all my life."
I have never been divorced from anyone other than Constance, so I do not know if all divorces feel the same, but, when someone you love wants to leave you, God gives you no quarter. It's like ending a chess game with just a king facing your opponent's two queens, two rooks, and rogue judo-esque knight.
Whenever I slept I dreamed that the whole world had come to resemble Gary, Indiana, at night, but instead of producing steel and rubber, the great mills and factories were roasting, grinding, and brewing. Flour-covered women dressed by the tailors of the Third Reich inhabited this nightmare, drinking five and six cups of coffee a day. It completely crowded out my dream of the surf. Worst of all, it had as its background the totally insane, wild, caffeinated pounding of the harpsichord, an instrument that would have driven the world out of its mind had it not been for the invention—with not a moment to spare—of the piano.
I would wake in terror, dripping with sweat, and turn to Constance, who, even in sleep, would turn away. It was finished. Then I would telephone Holmes to tell them to turn off the alarms, and I would go downstairs to the music room to play the piano.
The music room was sixty feet long by thirty feet wide, with a twenty-foot ceiling and special acoustical flooring of Mozambique Jerko wood. Eight sets of French doors opened onto a marble terrace that gave out to the lawn. Over the tops of trees blackened by night you could see skyscrapers shining through the moist summer air. I would open the doors and let the breeze make ballerinas and swans of the white curtains while I played Mozart and Beethoven until morning—perfectly balanced pieces that were as beautiful and hopeful as a mother singing to her child. They put everything in perspective, even if sadly, and it is because of them that I was able to go on.
I had eventually begged Constance not to leave me, but only after I had long held my emotions in check, hoping that an appearance of imperturbability would create in her enough desire and respect to raise a doubt. But she had no doubts, for the naturally shady and cool places of her temperament were kept always light and hot by her regular imbibition of coffee, which she took from a cart wheeled-in the first thing in the morning, in the middle of the morning, at lunch, at 'tea,' and after dinner. Five cups a day.... She was gone. There was no way I could reach her.
It made her hard, cruel, and ambitious. She thought ruthlessly; she shone like metal. She would go out dancing with other coffee drinkers and for hours they would move in a trance. "What's it like?" I asked later, like a mouse.
"It's like riding a bicycle on the beach road in East Hampton on a sun-filled day, without the appearance of a single car, picking up speed until you feel that your lungs, heart, and muscles are a perfect machine and you can breathe the air like a jet engine. The best thing is the sense that you can dance forever, that you don't weaken, that the more you exert yourself, the stronger you get. Why don't you come with us?" she asked with the cordiality of a stainless steel scalpel.
"I don't think I should," I said. "I'm only your husband."
"You won't be for long," she told me. "I don't understand you at all. You're a stronger and better dancer than any of the guys I go with."
"I couldn't drink the cup of coffee," I said.
"I know, but maybe it would work without coffee. Who knows. We could dance all night, and afterward...."
"Constance?"
"Yes?"
"Do you sleep with those coffee-drinking guys you go dancing with?"
"Do you think I drink decaf?"
This broke my heart.
When I was a child I went with my uncle to the exposition of power machinery in Baltimore, where I saw a steam engine that ran magically and rhythmically, never failing of enchantment. Its colorful rods and polished arms danced through the day in hypnotic ecstasy. Bright lights shone upon the perfectly timed steps, rotations, and exhalations. Kept in water and coal, the engine could go on forever with nothing but a shot of oil now and then. It ran all day, and it ran all night. Its power never slackened, and though it was bolted down and seemed not to go anywhere, I felt that it was churning a path through the stars.
Constance had metamorphosed into such a machine. I respected her power, but I shied from it, for she had traded her womanhood for a gambit that was sure to fail. After we separated, though I missed her at times with a great longing of the heart, I began to think of her as a kind of locomotive, and I no longer envied the coffee-drinking guys with whom she danced.
The divorce itself was not simple, involving as it did several hundred companies, shell corporations in the Alps, and scores of lawyers who dressed a lot better than I did. When we had married, Constance, in a gesture of faith, tied me to all her great wealth. Now, unable to resist the panic of her legal advisers, she girded her loins to get it back.
For the divorce she put aside Happy, Tricky and turned to a firm that had started as Wagstaff, Leper, and Balloon, and had evolved into Leper, Colony, and Fike, known in the trade as Leper, Colony. Even this was not as bad as Crooked, Bienstock, Midring, and Swine, referred to as Crooked, Swine: as in "My lawyers are Crooked, Swine." The human dental drills of Leper, Colony offered me five hundred million in settlement. They were so frightened that I would accept, thereby depriving them of untold billable hours of litigation, that they almost had heart attacks as I sat mulling it over.
"No," I said.
You could hear lawyerly hearts springing ahead like a pack of greyhounds. As I looked into their eyes I saw new clay tennis courts, summer houses in Nova Scotia, Maseratis.
They had
prepared their fallback positions as carefully as the defenses of Iwo Jima, and they asked me for my bid. They certainly weren't about to counteroffer before they heard my demands.
"What I want," I said, "is for Constance to love me."
"Oh Christ!" they said, to a man. I knew it sounded rather weak. The senior partner took the lead.
"You're an investment banker?" he asked incredulously. "We're talking about two billion dollars here, man. Get serious. Don't think that you can smokescreen us with this hearts-and-flowers crap. We've been through a thousand of these, and we know exactly how people think."
"But it's true," I insisted. "All I want is for Constance to love me."
I suppose she had had a cup (or more) of coffee. She was unmoved. Her eyes were no more wet or glistening than a piece, of sandstone in the Sonoran Desert.
"What's your counter?"
"I don't have a counter. I don't want any money, or any thing."
"We'll offer you two hundred million, then, if we can close the matter right away."
"I don't want two hundred million."
"A hundred million?"
"I don't want money. I want my books and my clothes, the desk in my study, the Raphael that Constance gave me for my birthday, and a guarantee—in writing—that no one will ever kill Brownie."
"Who's Brownie?" Senior Partner asked.
"His pet pig," Constance told him, "in the country."
"Really?" said Senior Partner. "Is that all you want?"
I nodded.
"Why don't you take a hundred million just so I know that you can buy groceries?" Constance offered.
"I have a job, Constance."
"Jobs are nothing. You can lose them. Then what? You starve."