Crumbtown Page 13

  “Rita I have to do something right now, with Tim and Tom, and as soon as I’m done I will come back here and I thought maybe we could have another dance. And then I could buy you dinner too, just us, like a date, and the hell with everything else.”

  “What do you have to do?” She held herself back from touching his nose.

  “We just have to make a plan for tomorrow, and I need to make sure you have those three guns I left here yesterday. That’s all. You remember? The ones you put in the box.”

  “I remember.”

  “And then I think we could go get something really nice to eat, even though it might have to be takeout, since I’m wanted by the police.”

  “Come with me,” she said, “right now. We go to this Russian place where police are not allowed. They have music. I can explain about last night.”

  His pocket started to ring. He took out the phone and threw it on the bar. “I don’t care about last night. Nothing happened.”

  “Nothing happened with me,” she said. “It was a mistake.” She pulled on his hand.

  “I can’t,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

  “Okay then.” She went behind the bar and took out the box that was under a box, and carried it to the front, turning back, “Then I come with you.” She walked out of the bar.

  53

  Tim opened the car door, waving Rita in, taking the box from her hands as she sat in the back. “Thank God you brought some drinks, Rita. Don made us stay in the car.” He pulled his rusted pistol out of the box. “These aren’t drinks.”

  Tom sat in the driver’s seat, his collar turned backward. “We’re going to rob the TV show, Rita.”

  “That’s right, they stole our lives,” said Tim.

  “The rights to our lives,” Tom said. He looked down at the orange vest he still wore, pulled it off, and threw it out the window.

  Don opened the back door and sat beside her, lowering his head to her shoulder, his knees bent up near Tim’s neck, his elbow almost touching her hand. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Tom watched them in the mirror. “Is Rita in this?”

  “No,” said Don.

  “Yes,” said Rita, their legs in the middle of the car, “I am in.” Then his hip pressed hers, or she thought it did, and she had to open the window, her leg into his as she did so, and with a slap his hand fell on her knee, like a soda coming out of a machine. They both faced front. He took away his hand and she pressed again, and again it fell, and that’s how it was done.

  “Now,” Don said to Tom. “Double-quick.”

  They drove through the alley to Van Brunt, a left on Louie, a right on Ralph, all the way to East Crumbtown. Rita looked out the window, the buildings sailing by. Things were going too fast; she had to slow down, stop and look at what was happening, but she didn’t want to stop. She wanted to go faster. It didn’t matter what happened after. She felt his hand behind her neck, past her ears and into her hair, her lips taken to his. Not a kiss, exactly, not moving, just breathing, the first time.

  She opened her eyes. “How can I like you this much?”

  “It’s in the script,” he said, and kissed her again.

  54

  Crazy Louie let them into his apartment and gave everyone a small seat. He took Don into the back bedroom and closed the door, “Nobody knows you’re here, right?” Don shook his head and Louie went to his closet and pulled out three suits, throwing them on the bed. “First of all, I can’t talk to you with what you’re wearing.” Louie was from Brooklyn and worked wardrobe for several years before moving to catering. He picked up the navy wool and held it up to Don, “Try that.” Don put on the jacket. “Better,” Louie said, and told him how and when the money was coming in, how the director planned to shoot the scene. An armored car from the mayor’s office was going to be there, but Louie heard they were using actors to play the guards, to save money. Don asked him if he wanted a part. Louie said he’d take ten percent to watch, and five hundred for the suit and he’d throw in the shoes.

  A crowd of twenty or more was waiting in the living room, old friends and neighbors, and when Don came in everyone threw something. Uncle Billy, whom Don wasn’t related to, was the first one to punch him. He said he heard Don had died and he cried so violently it took three people to pull him away. Iron Heinz danced through the door with a case of beer on his head, and Father Sunshine walked in and wrestled with his hair. Don saw Rita sitting on the couch and had almost reached her when Mrs. Lasagna cut him off, “What’s my name?” she yelled, shoving a plate of pasta into his ribs, asking him three times until he told her. Sal Melanie showed up with Dave and Mary Lynn, filling him in on the last ten years, the floods and the layoffs, their record-setting bad luck, one number from winning it all. Then everyone moved to the table, Don sitting next to Rita, her knee under the red cloth, corned beef and blintzes and veal scallopine.

  55

  When it was over, Tim and Tom left to hide the car and get the masks Tom had kept all this time in a bowling bag in his mother’s house. Crazy Louie led Don and Rita to the door, handing him the key. “You can stay upstairs in 5B, Ms. Lee’s place. She’s at the hospital now. Her sister went in with the kidneys and so Ms. Lee went in with the gallstones; they always go together. I’m supposed to be taking care of that fat dog of theirs.”

  Louie shut the door and Don put his arm around Rita and kissed her as she turned, her ear to her cheek, the side of her mouth. When their lips finally met it was like one of the guns went off. Don dropped the box and shot both hands to her back, as far as he could without leaving her face, her hands making him tighter, pushing his hips together, down his shoulders.

  There were a million things to plan out, whether to rob Little Eddy in the bank or get him coming out, and Tim and Tom to worry about, and Hammamann, and having enough bullets. But he couldn’t think about any of that, only the way her mouth opened to him, giving him air, like he’d been holding his breath for forty years. He broke from her lips and picked up the box and grabbed her hand and ran to the first landing, Rita taking his to lead him to the second. They took turns like that, the last flight to the top, Rita pulling on the rail like she was climbing from a pool.

  He turned the key. The apartment framed in paisley. An old dog limping up, sneezing twice. Rita said hello while Don ran to the pile of records in the corner. He didn’t know Duke Ellington, but the title sounded right, Indigos. Everything else that he could see was Tony Bennett or Jerry Vale, and they were for different girls. He took the 45 off the turntable and set the Ellington up and clicked START. By the time the needle hit he was pulling Rita to the floor. They rolled over each other, the dog licking their arms.

  Rita ended up on top, her lips bumping off, “The music,” she gasped, “something is wrong.”

  She was right. He’d made a terrible choice. Who knew Duke Ellington was insane? The notes weren’t indigo, but fast and sick, like the piano player was being hit with a hammer. “Don’t worry.” Don said. “It gets better later.” He wanted to change the record but his shirt had just come off and her shirt was coming off too. A matter of one last button, which had turned out to be different from the others, in ways he didn’t understand yet. He was trying so hard to figure out this button.

  “Stop it,” she said, but Don was almost there. “Stop the music.” She stood, bringing the last button to eye level, where he realized it wasn’t a button at all but some kind of hook, and why would anyone put a hook there. He freed it, and she was gone, the empty cloth falling over his arm, her back to him at the record player, holding up the album cover. “The song is ‘Solitude,’ ” she said. She wore a black bra that appeared relatively uncomplicated to undo. “I think the speed is too up, but I don’t see switch.” She crouched down in front of the machine, white legs rising up her skirt, to show the black lace frontier of his dreams, the ten years they’d taken away. “I can’t breathe,” he said, and ran to her, his hand driving down.

  She didn’t have a lot of practice going to
bed with men she’d just met. The few times before were more drunkenness than desire, a left turn instead of a right. It was very different being sober, and knowing exactly where you were going, and wanting to get there and get there fast. She’d been six months without a lover. It felt like ten years. What did ten years feel like? She knew what it looked like. The way he looked at her, like she was the reason he went to prison. And then they both tried to walk but had to run, racing up the stairs, kissing him at the top. She’d never felt a mouth so hot, not even her boyfriend Victor, who talked to Jesus in his fevers. He turned the key in the door and she thought she’d never wanted someone so much, on the floor, the table, it didn’t matter, pulling off his shirt, his shoes, the sooner the better.

  Then the music started, and there was something terribly wrong with it, and suddenly so many things she wasn’t sure about, like was he ever going to get her shirt unbuttoned, and if he did, what would he think about her breasts, which were not exactly the same size, and when was the last time she had brushed her teeth, and nothing was going to happen between them as long as that noise was playing.

  Her shirt came off when she stood, and for a moment she was afraid the woman who lived there was going to come home from the hospital and have a heart attack at the door. It was no wonder that woman got sick, listening to this music. Rita crouched in front of the record player, finally finding the switch, from 45 to 33. The record gave one last cry and surrendered. There was the piano, a simple melody, the trumpet coming in, Don kissing her again. He started with the hard kisses and then got softer, which was the opposite of every guy she knew.

  The notes grew further apart, and stopped. Her skirt fell off. Don was looking at something in her hair, like he was trying to remember the name of it, his eyes drifting away even while his hands were going places that would be hard to come back from. She wondered what other women he’d known, if that’s what he was thinking of. It occurred to her that ten years in prison was a very long time. She pulled his hand to her waist and inhaled deeply, and said, “Condoms.”

  “My God,” he said, like she’d just told him of her death. “Rita, it’s okay. I think it’s okay.” He took two steps back, one forward. He found the lame right arm of the couch and sat down.

  “I’m sorry. But I do not want to get pregnant, and too I do not know—”

  “I’ve been in prison,” Don said. “That’s what you mean.” He pulled out a cigarette and tried to light the filter.

  “No. I had a boyfriend in Russia. He was sick.”

  “Okay. Okay,” stepping toward her as if to kiss her, she wanted him to kiss her. He picked up his shirt. “I’ll get condoms.”

  “Stay here,” she said, too low for him to know. She was going to say it louder, but by then he was out the window, climbing down the fire escape. She turned up the music, and sat on the floor, and covered her chest with her arms, thinking it was the saddest song she’d ever heard.

  56

  Don ran down through the jagged twilight of East Crumbtown, through the long shadows of empty stores and shuttered stores and stores that had never been open. He ran with his head in his chin, like an escaped convict, jumping around the puddles of streetlight until he got to Lemmings and stopped, looking up and down for cops. He turned south, past the glue-eyed teens circling the corner, the old men hunkered in front of stalled buses. It was a dangerous place for him to walk, but the stores were open here, and two blocks up a Sunhome Drugs sign fizzled. He broke into another run and found the doors locked, the windows empty, boxes of broken ceiling tiles, stacks of old pictures and dusty canvas, a TV pharmacy.

  He turned into a side street, running out of breath, about half a block, into a little store for some cigarettes. The Chinese guy behind the counter was watching TV, and there, hanging over his head, racks and racks of prophylactics. Don ran to the cooler and pulled out a six-pack and put it on the counter with the cigarettes, and while the man counted it up Don said, “Oh yeah, and some condoms too.”

  “What kind you want?”

  “You know, the usual kind.”

  “You want lubrication?”

  “Yes.”

  “You want flavor?”

  “Flavor?”

  “Cherry, mint, assorted?”

  “No flavor.”

  “Okay. You want pleasure or no pleasure?”

  “Pleasure.”

  “Pleasure for him, or for her?”

  “Can I get pleasure for both?”

  “No.”

  Don thought for a minute. “Okay. For her.”

  The man put a purple box across the counter. Don picked it up and read the instructions, an uncertain deflation setting in. In his limited experience with condoms, Don had come to believe they didn’t work for him, or Don didn’t work for them. Every time he put one on it was like a death in the family. He took a beer out of the bag and twisted the cap. He looked over at the man behind the counter. “You want a beer?”

  “Okay,” the man said.

  Don opened the cigarettes and offered one. They smoked. He opened the box of condoms and offered one to the man, who laughed a long time. “You very funny. I am married man. Very funny.”

  “I never liked these things myself,” Don said.

  “No problem,” the old man disappeared under the counter and pulled up a briefcase stuffed with cheaply jeweled daggers and tiny brown boxes covered with Chinese letters. He pushed one of the boxes into Don’s hand. “For you, for the pinga,” curling and uncurling his finger for dramatic effect. “All night. Never fail.”

  Don pulled out the oval vial. “I’m supposed to pour this?”

  “You very funny. No, you drink. Always effective.”

  He opened the stop, the smell of heavy industry, downing it with the last of his beer.

  “Now go. Quickly.”

  Don waved to him from outside the window. Only then did he realize it was the same store he’d been in the day before, that he’d run into when he was running from the cops, the police captain tied up in the back, the man with the turban who’d pulled out the assault rifle. A TV store in the day, a condom store at night.

  57

  Rita was sitting on the steps of the building across the street, and when she saw Don turn the far corner, she leaned her shoulders further into the shadows, wiping her eyes with her sweater. She pushed her cheek under the railing as he passed, watching his long strides, a grocery bag bouncing off his knee. He never glanced over to where she was sitting, and even if he had, she knew he wouldn’t have seen her, because she was supposed to be upstairs, waiting for him, and his eyes were already in the building, climbing, and she didn’t know why she left, only that she wanted to go back, and still she stayed there on the steps, watching the door close behind him.

  She had been sitting on the floor, looking around the sick lady’s room, just listening to the music, waiting for him to come back, when suddenly she started to cry, and then she couldn’t stop, the tears coming out of her like pieces of metal. She hadn’t cried in a long time, not since she first came to Brooklyn two years before, not through all her troubles with Misha, and the sadness of the cities, the loneliness she’d found there. If Don saw her like this he’d want to know why she was crying, and she didn’t know why, and she tried everything to make it go away. Then she was putting on her skirt. She was walking out the door.

  She saw the light go on on the top floor, his shirt passing through. Then another light, a different room—Where is she? She saw him come back to the window, his face pressed in the glass, one eye, then the other. The light went off, one, two, three. How could she leave? She grabbed her hair and pulled it down her face. He might get arrested tomorrow; tonight might be all they’d have, and it was happening so fast, and tomorrow would only be faster, and the thought of that made her start crying again, that damn song. She had to go; it was getting cold, the wind picking it up off the water, cold steps through her skirt. She’d left her sweater up there, and where was she going. He was the fir
st man she’d met in years, the way he looked at things, like he was giving them new names, the way he looked at her. She wanted to lie next to him, to feel him moving inside, his heart banging against her.

  The door at the top of the stairs was open. She pushed in and turned on the light. He wasn’t there. She picked up her sweater and put it on, walking into the little hall where she found his shoes. She followed them to his pants to his shirt, to the other room where he lay facedown in the bed. She leaned over, watching him sleep, and with her finger she began to trace his body on the sheets, starting with his foot, the outline of his leg, his hip to his chest, his shoulder, the long scar running up to his neck. She touched him there, shivery where the skin had been opened, and he groaned and she felt him shake.

  She pulled the blanket up over him and he groaned again, rolled to his back, and started to snore, the blanket going up and down over his chest, and going up further down, below his stomach, rising over that space between his legs, up and up until the blanket was higher than his chest, higher than the top of her skirt, and she pushed down on it and it came right back. She walked to the door and turned around to look at him once more, before going into the other room and turning off the light and folding herself into the old couch.

  ACT IV

  Eleven

  SCENE 58

  Dyan Swaine sat in her trailer and looked for the last time upon Captain Palmer, her final day on the set of Ten Thirteen. She adjusted her bulletproof vest, carefully wiped clean her collar pins, then straightened the gold bars; fixed her hat. The knocking on the door increased, the girl calling her name, trying the latch, Gary joining in, the third AD, banging hard now, “Let’s go, Dyan, today please.” The son of a bitch couldn’t give her two minutes.