Helplessly, her eyes slid sideways to the cabinet. Tell M the money must be returned, she remembered. “I’m not sure. I don’t think so,” she said, frowning in genuine confusion, her eyes back on his hands.
He was using the pen to work out something on the pad, a kind of doodling habitual with him when he was thinking through a problem.
“You must give the money back!” she blurted out suddenly; then, more softly, as if shocked by her own vehemence: “You must.”
“Do you really think so?” he said, his voice dangerously low. His eye glittered as he stared at her, and a cold clump of anxiety began to gather in her stomach.
“Just—give back the money. And that, that too.” She nodded at the wallet. All restored as was. Then she lowered her eyes to her work.
He doodled some more, slipped the small white card from his pocket, looked at it. After a moment he rose and, adjusting his eye patch, started for the door.
“Where are you going? It’s late.”
“Out,” he replied, irritation in his voice.
He went, taking his black coat with him. As an afterthought he came back and took the wallet as well. When she heard him going down the stairs she laid aside her work, removed her glasses, and pressed the heels of her palms against her eyelids; saw the pinpoints of light, wavering sightless illumination; took her hands away, calmer now, saw the blurred face of the clock. Eight minutes before eleven. She went to the table, looked at the page he had drawn on, undecipherable black symbols that only he understood. She gathered the pages and tore them in half, then in quarters, and dropped them in the basket. At the cabinet again, she opened the door and took out the silver cup. The metal seemed to have taken on the heat of the day. She turned it in her hands, thinking, felt it become cool under her touch. She returned it to its place, blew at a bit of lint that had collected, closed the door. The cabinet needed dusting. Touching her fingers to her temple where it had struck the table, she went to the window, leaned on the sill, and saw Max going up the street toward the subway. Then she dialed the number for the correct time and reset the clock on the mantel.
CHAPTER FIVE
Up on the Roof
MICHAEL LAY IN A bathtub filled with hot, soapy water, feeling miserable and counting the ways. Two hours ago a bright, hot summer afternoon, enlivened by the performance of a bit of street theater, a little harmless magic cleverly conceived and professionally executed, had been transformed into a glimpse of a bottomless pit. His knees and thighs ached from excessive froggery; his stomach, though certainly empty, was still lurching about queasily; his head was vibrating slowly, like a gong struck not too long ago. Overshadowing these physical discomforts, there were of course the greater, deeper griefs: loss of money, loss of confidence, loss of balance, loss of, well, identity. And apparently no possibility of making any satisfactory sense out of this cataclysm, no matter how compulsively his brain orbited around it. He flicked his toes, rippling the water, and sank disconsolately into the suds, so deep that when Emily knocked on the door all he could manage in reply was a splutter.
“Are you playing submarine?” she asked, having opened the door and looked around it. “Shall I get you the rubber duck?”
“I’ve had enough fun with the duck today, thanks,” was his gloomy reply.
She knelt beside the tub, touched his brow tenderly, tried to meet his eyes, but they were too furtive for her. Dipping her hand into the water, she began to make a lazy, circular movement, producing a small whirlpool centered around his groin. “Ah,” she said, “the hidden treasures of the deep.”
He flexed a knee, stopping her hand. “Emily…” he began, then hesitated.
“I know,” she said, reaching for a towel, “you don’t have to tell me. Not in the mood. But I think it’s a bad idea to lie around driving yourself crazy. Get dressed and we’ll go over to Dazz’s. Aren’t you hungry? Dazz said there was a party, and the parties Dazz knows about always have mounds of food.” At last he looked at her, and she smiled affectionately. “Come on, Mr. Wizard. Don’t be antisocial. Let’s go have some fun.”
Michael pressed his hands against the wet hair above his temples. Maybe she was right. What he really wanted to do was to crawl alone into a small dark space and brood until he fell asleep, but he had to admit that Emily’s recommendation sounded healthier. “Why not?” he murmured, half to himself; then he grabbed the sides of the bathtub and rose from the water before her approving eyes.
Jack Dazzario’s studio was located up the block from Michael’s apartment, on the opposite side of Seventy-second Street between Columbus and Amsterdam. In marked contrast to Michael’s tiny living quarters, Dazz’s place occupied the whole fifth floor of his building and even included what could pass for a roof garden, a walled-in, tiled terrace under a wooden water tower, with a copious crop of plants in tubs and pots, and chairs sawed from olive barrels. Dazz was Michael’s best friend, had been since he’d got to New York. An excellent painter of the photorealistic school, Dazz had been enjoying a gratifying degree of success for several years now; quite a few of his works graced prominent private collections around the country, and one of them hung in the Whitney Museum. He was small, wiry, and intense, with a dark mustache under a brawl-smashed nose, and bright ferret eyes that compelled attention.
“The sorcerer and his orchestra,” Dazz intoned, greeting Michael and Emily with hugs. “Come in, come in. Wine is being served on the terrace.” Dazz presented quite a spectacle as he led the way through his studio. Inordinately given to fanciful and romantic outfits, tonight he looked positively piratical, dressed like Errol Flynn in Captain Blood, complete with a colorful bandanna tied like a sweatband around his forehead. All he lacked to complete the effect was a cutlass protruding from his sash.
They sat outside in the thick air, sipping some of Dazz’s cold, delicious Italian wine while he recounted the major news event of the day: the “Saskia in Tears” episode at the Metropolitan Museum. “I can’t believe you haven't heard about it—it was the lead story on all the local news programs.” According to Dazz, speculation was rife in the TV newsrooms, and the Post had even deemed it worthy of a rare “special edition.”
Some were calling the crying portrait the product of mass hysteria caused by the excessive temperatures, while others said the phenomenon was due to the psychological fervor of art lovers, seduced by the pensive expression of Rembrandt’s sitter into believing they saw tears, much as the devoutly religious sometimes believe they have seen statues bleeding or visions of the Virgin: the wish fulfilled. Museum officials and the scientists they’d consulted invoked an inexplicable differentiation between the normal, controlled temperature of the room and the heat generated by the bodies of the spectators, causing a condensation on the varnished surface of the canvas. There was total agreement on only one point: all of the museumgoers who had been in the room—slightly over a hundred, though by tomorrow their numbers were bound to swell—were swearing they had seen real tears.
“What a load of crap,” Michael growled. “They must be out of their minds.”
“Who must be?”
“The so-called witnesses.”
“A hundred people saw it happen.”
“A hundred retards, probably all from the same bus. How can people be so dumb? You may as well bring a flock of sheep into the museum. They’d get as much from it.”
“My, but aren’t we in a lousy but superior mood tonight,” Dazz said, as Michael settled back, chuckling with pleasure at the image he had just evoked, a vision of dozens of milling sheep, unimpressed by the Impressionists, bleating approval before The Peaceable Kingdom.
Then his eyes fell on one of Dazz’s garden ornaments, a big cement frog, squatting staunchly between two potted trees. His mirth stopped short, his face changed. He looked involuntarily at Emily and felt strangely breathless, disoriented. He continued to stare at her, glad that she was there, reassured; he kept seeing her in different lights—just now she seemed particularly lovely. ??
?Hey, Lotus Blossom,” he said, grinning uncertainly.
To cover his confusion, he picked up the running garden hose and began soaking some of the plants.
Dazz, sensing that the subject needed to be changed, said blandly, “Speaking of art lovers, you two sure had a big crowd today when I went by. I hope they showed their appreciation of genius at work?”
“We didn’t even pass the hat,” Emily said, ignoring Michael’s warning look.
Dazz’s face expressed horror and pity. “Art for art’s sake, my least favorite kind. You gave a free show?”
Michael said bitterly, “Not just free, a total giveaway. I lost thirteen hundred bucks.”
“Christ, how?”
“Well, it was in my wallet, the wallet was in my coat, and then the wallet was gone.”
“Where was your coat?”
“In the plaza fountain, if you can believe it.”
“What? What happened?” Although Michael bowed his head and shook it slowly, Dazz pressed him, undeterred. “Looks serious. Let’s hear it. You must want to talk about it.”
Michael paused. Dazz was right: he did want to talk about it, yet at the same time, he didn’t. He got up, stretched, stared moodily up at the dark shape of the water tower looming overhead. If he talked it out, maybe the missing piece would fall into place, that one niggling thing he couldn’t remember, the one word that would make sense of all the rest. Amid the dripping plants, candles glimmered limpidly, little glamorous flames in clear glass cups set about amid the foliage. On the wall near the doorway a Mexican earthenware olla dripped onto the tile flooring. Leaning against the parapet, he turned, gazing out at the city view and began reciting the facts. As he described what had happened, his voice gradually assumed an intensity that made Dazz lean forward with fuller attention. “It wasn’t the heat, I know it,” he concluded, “it was something else, something really scary, but I can’t…”
“Exactly what did it feel like? What were your sensations?”
Dazz was completely focused, coiled like a spring on the edge of his chair.
“I don’t know for sure.” Not strictly true; the words lay on his tongue, too heavy for him to speak them. Overmastered. Subjugated, Enslaved. He shook his head again. “It really was incredible, Dazz, honest to God, but I don’t know how to say it. It was just—complete compulsion.”
“As though you were under a spell?” Dazz’s voice was deadly earnest.
“Yeah,” Michael said slowly, “a spell.” He thought a moment, holding his breath. “Imagine…” His voice trailed off and he was back on the street by the fountain again, reliving the experience of the frog, recalling the still, soundless moment, the constriction of mind, the cessation of bodily coordination.
“Imagine what?” Emily said in a wary voice.
“What it must be like to be able to do that—whatever it was. Imagine having that power over people. Imagine what it would be like to be so in control of yourself that you could control others. Jesus, wouldn’t that be something?” He was beginning to feel elated, he could hear his voice rising in the stifling air, and the street noises below seemed very far away.
“Well, yes indeed, that certainly would be something,” Emily said sarcastically, getting up and moving the hose to a plant near the parapet. “A noble ambition if there ever was one. Join the Thought-Control Pantheon. Just think, your name right up there in lights along with Hitler, Charlie Manson, the Kool-Aid preacher, and my mother. Don’t be so easily seduced, Michael. This man must be stopped before it’s too late.”
“Jesus, Em.” Michael, surprised and a little annoyed by her anger, tried to make a joke of it. “I’m not in the same league with those people.”
“I wouldn’t have thought so, but you seem to have some of the same interests.”
“I can’t deny that I’m interested in that sort of thing—hypnosis, illusion, all of that. I’m a magician, for Christ’s sake.”
“I just wish you’d forget this particular illusion, that’s all.”
“No.” The negative came out stronger than Michael meant it to. He looked at Emily, then Dazz. “You don’t forget about things like that so easily. I’m going to find that guy.”
“So you find him, then what?” Dazz asked.
Michael lolled his head back, easing his neck muscles, staring up at the tower again. Dazz was right. Then what? “I don't know. But I’d like to talk to him. He’s got something, and I want to know what it is.”
“Don’t.” Emily had dropped the hose, was looking out over the parapet at the view. “Don’t do it.”
“Why not?”
Emily was silent, narrow shoulders hunched, thinking. Once again, Michael felt irritation at her; how could she oppose her will to his? “Come on, why not?”
“I don’t know. There was something about that man, something…”
“Creepy?” Dazz suggested, his voice hushed. “Sinister?”
“More than that,” Emily said. “Dark, dangerous, evil. He looks like a bird of prey, like some sort of raptor. Some people just have a look or a posture or a way of—I can’t explain it, but he made my flesh crawl.” She turned from the parapet and faced Dazz. “You didn’t see him, and Michael hasn’t really told you the whole thing. It was terrifying. I hated watching it, and there was nothing I could do about it. If you didn’t know Michael you’d have thought it was part of the act, but I know him, and I could see that what was happening to him was terrible.” Her eyes were moist. “He was suffering, and I couldn’t help him—I could barely even move myself. It was terrible and terrifying and I want to put it out of my mind”—her voice broke a little now—“and I wish you would too, Michael.” She looked for a long moment at him, at Dazz, then turned back to the view.
Dazz decided to do some mediating. After all, he was supposed to be going to a party with these people. “I think Emily’s right, Mike, you ought to chalk it up to the mysteries of metropolitan life. How are you going to find the guy, anyway? I don’t care how strange he looks, everybody looks strange in New York, especially during a heat wave.”
Michael wasn’t listening, but he knew what he was supposed to say, so he grunted something like “I guess you’re right,” thinking still that there was one little thing he couldn’t remember—red, something red against the black, on the jacket, a button in the lapel; letters on the button, who’s got the button, find the button, find the man, find the money…And in one instant of certainty he realized that the Queer Duck had pickpocketed him. While Michael had been pulling tricks on him, those long fingers had been performing their own tricks, inside his grenadier’s jacket, pulling out his wallet. More reason than ever to find him. The Bloomingdale’s bag was a clue. Maybe he was a regular shopper there. He could stake out the store, prowl it, maybe come up with something, maybe find out what he wanted to know.
“…but I never saw her again,” Dazz was saying when Michael surfaced. By way of getting his bearings, he glanced through the doorway to the clock on the studio coffee table. It had no numbers, only illuminated circles that turned and colored lights that changed. Surreptitiously he checked it against his watch: eight-fifty, in perfect agreement. He was starting to feel a little hungry, and no wonder. He slid a look at Emily, discovered to his surprise that she was staring at him. Dazz said, “Almost nine o’clock. The festivities should be under way by nine, so we’ll go soon. I know you’re going to be impressed.”
“Whose party is it, Dazz?” Emily asked.
“It’s being thrown by my newly devoted friend and patron of the arts, Samir Abdel-Noor, at his notorious townhouse off Sutton Place.”
“Was he the fat guy in the limousine?”
“Daddy Warbucks himself, and yes, the rocks on his fingers were for real.”
“How about the redhead?”
“I’m not sure that she’s for real. She’ll probably be at the party, so we can try to find out then. But let me tell you about our boy Sami.”
“He seemed a bit strange in that littl
e glance I got of him,” Michael said, resolved to make up for lost time in this conversation.
“He’s nutty as a fruitcake or vice versa, take your pick. Whatever, he’s loaded. His family gave him a ton of money to disappear from Egypt. Some bad local scandal in Cairo. So here he is, rich as the proverbial Croesus, looking for creative people to help him spend his money. He gives parties twice a week, and I mean parties! Great food, great drinks, the works. Everybody goes, and Sami doesn’t know half his guests, but he hosts bravely on.”
When it came to his taste in art, however, Dazz spoke in more admiring terms of his new sponsor, from whom he had received a handsome commission to execute a full-length portrait. “This job’s going to take me forever. Sami’s more than willing to sit, but he never shuts up, and while I’m working he brings in the fat lady, and she hangs around talking about the astral plane.” The fat lady, he went on to explain, was an American friend of Sami’s, a Southerner who gets billing as a medium. There were séances and attempts to contact spirits. “She’s putting him in touch with his sister,” Dazz concluded with a shrug.
Emily looked skeptical. “Where is she, Schenectady?”
“She’s dead, Em, she’s on the Other Side.”
“Oh, God,” Emily cried aloud, “I’d like to get on an astral plane and fly someplace where everybody’s rational.”
At that moment the phone rang. As Dazz answered it, Michael and Emily smiled shyly at one another, and he blew her a kiss. “We can’t, Otto,” they heard Dazz saying, “we’re just leaving for a party. Some other time. Thanks.” He hung up and walked back out to the terrace. “That was Trashy Otto downstairs. Otto’s your kinda guy, Emily—not all that interested in the spiritual aspect of our nature. He’s showing X-rated movies and wanted us to join him and his guests.”
Emily laughed. “If my only two choices are parapsychology and pornography,” she said, leaning again on the parapet, “I’ll take pornography. But I thought we were going to a party.”