Life Among Giants (27 page)

Momentarily the black cars would pull into our cul de sac, momentarily the FBI guys would pull their guns, momentarily they'd take the old man away.

13

Th
e morning after the arrest, Mom insisted I go to school: we weren't going to let things fall apart. I didn't protest. I'd already skipped enough that week, didn't want to break any more rules, never again. Mr. Davis on the bus asked where Dad was. “Arrested,” I said, and the sweet old fellow laughed: pretty good joke.

School was surreal, the hallways dressed in black streamers and pumpkin cutouts, paper skeletons and ghosts. Mom had played it tough that morning, chain-smoked cigarettes though she'd long since quit, ate nothing. Her day in Danbury would consist of looking for legal representation for Dad and then for us—I noticed that distinction, the implication that we had legal interests separate from his. When the Bridgeport paper thumped on our doorstep she rushed out to get it, but there was nothing in there about Nicholas Hochmeyer: good news of its own kind, even if it was going to be temporary.

When she was done searching the columns she offered me orange juice, asked how late I'd stay over at the High Side that night, all very businesslike, at least until she broke: “Good thing you've got work, darling, whatever it is. Because your
fucking
father didn't leave a
fucking
cent in this
fucking
house, not a
fucking
cent in the
fucking
bank.
Th
ere's only the money in my
fucking
purse. Like eight
fucking
dollars.” Her eyes filled, but she didn't cry.

No one had called Kate, I kept realizing. But Kate couldn't stay shielded for long. I climbed to my room, found my bag of quarters, brought them down to Mom. Businesslike again, she counted me back one dollar: lunch money. I was frightened but oddly giddy, worried about Dad but unaccountably ebullient, terrified for Bar-Bar, way afraid of what Kate would say—I knew I'd have to be the one to break the news—but weirdly thrilled by all of it, our disaster like some elixir I'd drunk.

Emily was missing from the morning crush, nowhere to be found. I scrawled an inane quick note on the back of Sylphide's invitation, wanting to be sure Emily knew who the messenger was, slipped it through the vent in her locker. She wasn't in math class. She didn't seem to be in French, either, big Lizard peering through the narrow window of her classroom door. At the buses Dwight said he'd seen her, all right: her parents had picked her up after lunch in the ambassador's limo. “
Th
ey're on their way to Korea, Liz, just like every fall. It's like Ancestor's Day or whatever it's called.
Th
ey burn money so the dead folks can go out and get a decent meal.”

“She's already gone?”

“She's gone, Liz.”

Not so much as a farewell to the likes of me. As I slogged aboard the bus to go home, Mr. Davis said, “I thought you was kidding,” and slipped me a rolled
New York Post,
afternoon edition, a slow
Th
ursday in Newspaperland, no doubt. Anyway, the cover story was the scandal at Dolus Investments, big studio photos of two executives who'd been found dead in a Times Square hotel, apparent suicides. Another had been found shot in his driveway, familiar name, a guy from accounting my father had always hated, a do-gooder. On the inner pages were a dozen faces in two rows of studio headshots: the bad guys. And hapless Dad was among them.

O
FF THE BUS,
I rushed home, desperate to get back to Sylphide's, loud drums over there, like something carried on African wind. I hurried to eat something, found a terse note from Mom:

Precious. Talked Daddy noontime. Heading for Danbury. Arraignment tomorrow a.m. Will spend the night. You are in charge of yourself. Mrs. Paumgartner next door in case. Please call Kate. You don't have to tell her every little thing. Food in fridge, xo.

I scrawled
High
Side
on the back of an envelope, also
Tried
Katy,
though this was not true. Mr. Kerklin had recently taught us the second law of thermodynamics, and here was proof: things actually
do
fall apart.

A
T
S
YLPHIDE'S THE
cars were back, Cadillacs and Mercedes Benzes and Porsches and Jags. Also a Ferrari 512-S, one of only three hundred ever made, I knew, worth more than my family's house by several times. “We're surprised to see
you,
” Desmond shouted, opening the great doors, loud drums back in the ballroom. And behind him in the foyer, a return to bedlam: carpenters and soundmen, dancers and costumers, a half-dozen young women getting dressed, two of them stark naked right there in the wind of the doorway. Perfect gentleman, I didn't stare.

“Who's we?” I shouted back, sounding like my father.

“We here at the High Side,” Desmond said.

“Show must go on,” I said.

“She says you're needed at home. She offers her support and her sorrow and releases you.”

I said, “
Th
ere's no one at home.”

“I'm to turn you away. Apologies.” He handed me one of the familiar envelopes, gold piping, something in there. I stuffed it in my back pocket.
Th
e next arrivals were at the door, a pair of ladies in perfume and fancy suits, another group of people behind them. Desmond, grandly formal, offered the dancer's warm greetings. Lizard, for the moment forgotten, took the opportunity to slip inside.

In the ballroom, the gut-punching boom of tom-toms came amplified out of stacked speaker towers stenciled
STUDIO INSTRUMENT RENTALS
. Why on earth did the drums need mikes? All but hidden inside a double battlement of tom-toms and snares and bass drums and stainless-steel stands and large brass cymbals was a big man playing them hard, sticks flying, long hair straggling down in reddish curls, an engine of sweat. I edged right up to the platform and it was like the drums were inside me, loudest thing I'd ever felt. “Ginger Baker!” someone shouted. I recognized him then, the drummer from Cream, whoa. His hands were a blur. He'd been friends with Dabney, everyone knew; Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce and Ginger, they'd all been friends with Dabney.

Georges emerged from one of the many doors at the back of the room, clambered up onto the makeshift stage, a guy with talents and fame I couldn't touch, a certain noble carriage, like some minor baron from days gone by. He made his way back to a Hammond B-3 set up high on a double platform, gradually took his place—drums throbbing, cymbals crashing—pulled stops, touched a key or two, struck a tentative chord. When at last I turned I saw that the ballroom had filled with people: designers and seamstresses and techies and maids and photographers, all sorts of assistants and dancers, even a nervous knot of High Side gardeners. Roadies were loading in even more speaker cabinets through big doors swung open like the place was an airplane hangar, the side yard out there. A stiff photographer was setting up reflectors, his assistant looking stressed under the ungainly equipment.
Th
e girls who'd been naked in the foyer came in dressed, did stretches. And then more dancers, men and women, many of them older than Sylphide, it occurred to me. And there was Conrad Pant, wearing an ascot now, and always the beret, chatting up the tweed ladies I'd seen arriving, the three of them pinching champagne flutes.

More people arrived, then more again, serious faces, a lot of nice clothes, a lot of intense discussions, everyone carrying briefcases, duffel bags, someone dragging in a very tall stepladder from god knew where. A lady with gels for the lights climbed up there, turned everything pink, then amber.
Th
e roadies pulled cables, set mikes, taped off a makeshift stage on the floor between the batteries of speakers, all carefully measured by a guy in green overalls who shooed me back out of the way. I found a chair, turned it backwards the way the dancers did, sat with my chin on my hands the way they did. Mr. Baker played all the while, ungodly noise, everyone's feet tapping, heads bopping: you couldn't help yourself. More dancers trotted in, all shirtless in tights, men, women, all half naked, so what? To me, a pillar, desire was but a trifle.
Th
ey made their way back past four guys in suits poring over forms, guys with guitars, ladies with violins, two men rolling their bass fiddles in front of them, a whole chamber orchestra, it looked like: clarinets, oboes, a harp.

Th
e lights went down, came back up unevenly, went down again, a test.
Th
e room hushed anyway. I felt contemptuous—what did all these people think we were waiting for, the Second Coming? Ginger Baker stopped his banging abruptly, middle of a phrase. He blinked and looked out at the room. He noticed Georges, then, and the two laughed to see one another, shouted one another's names. Georges hopped down from his organ; awkwardly the two men hugged over floor toms and clashing cymbals. More people hurried in. Guy with a notebook. Lady with a basket. More dancers, a crowd of them, youngish girls in pink. Someone closed the great doors. Something
was
going to happen. Why had no one told me? Freddy the goon emerged from the back. He and a bigger man—the other goon!—gently cleared everyone off the marked stage. I moved again, found a corner where I wouldn't be blocking anyone's view, stood there grumpily. My father was a fucking asshole, you really had to agree with Mom.

Th
e lights came down to dark.

S
UDDENLY MOVEMENT, AND
then Sylphide, no more vine but some kind of nymph or nixie, racing around from behind the drums, leaping into the clearing, a sudden enchanted forest, gauzy mist of veils and skirts, flat shoes, comedic sweep around the stage, an imp peering out at all of us. Like everyone else in the room, I felt there was a special glance for me. And like everyone else, I felt my troubles fly, felt the dancer's joy as my own, felt great love.

From somewhere among the speaker cabinets Vlad Markusak suddenly appeared, bare-chested, barefoot, racing. Sylphide reached one corner of the stage precisely as Vlad reached the opposite, both of them stopping in expectation as if by coincidence, and exactly then a spotlight opened on Ginger Baker, who tucked into an incantatory roll on those toms, soon graced by a high wail from Georges's loud Hammond, spotlight a little off the mark, his head flung back, arms stretched to reach double keyboards.

Th
e shirtless chorus raced onstage in a black-legged flurry and surrounded Vlad, captured him, carried him toward Sylphide. He seemed simply to float on all that bare skin, writhed in all those bare arms, mayhem.
Th
e drums tumbled, the cymbals rang, rimshots like guns going off, bass kicks, subtle roll of tom-toms, irresistible beat, complex rhythms the dancers caught perfectly, darkly, carrying Vlad, the Hammond growing darker, too. Suddenly, they fell backward—dropping Vlad slam on his belly as Sylphide fell, too—fell backward and landed dramatically on their naked shoulder blades, the music rumbling to quiet. Slowly then, Vlad and Sylphide floated to their feet, danced in tandem in and among the other dancers, leaps and lifts and arabesques. Before long the drums picked up again, the organ, too, soaring notes, the shirtless chorus rolling and rising, sweeping over the stage. At the pinnacle of all the noise and action Sylphide was lofted—unclear how—and stood miraculously on dozens of fingertips, looked bemused, bedazzled.
Th
e dancers shifted under her somehow, and she was gone, just disappeared. Vlad gave a huge, hearty laugh, and as the drums battled on (Mr. Baker leaning into his work), all the other motion came to pieces, individual dancers suddenly visible again, just graceful people making their own movements, people with their own lives separate from the choreography, people with parents, people with lovers, people with problems, movements more and more provisional, the greater piece unfinished.

No one clapped. No one moved.
Th
e silence was weird, just the sound of Vlad shuffling off the stage. Conrad Pant turned to the champagne ladies. Georges stood and stretched. “Mate,” he said to Ginger Baker, who shrugged happily.
Th
e gardeners turned and left looking skeptical.
Th
e maids followed them out. A few of the chorus dancers reappeared. Vlad's deep voice, advice.

Sylphide reappeared, entirely herself, frankly sweating in her leotard, little towel to wipe at her face, accepted kisses on both cheeks from the champagne ladies. She beamed, she glowed, she laughed out loud at whatever they were saying, more than mere compliments, it looked like. Georges and Mr. Baker struggled down off their platforms, joined the little group, Georges immediately engaging them, something serious about the music. Vlad sauntered over to them, dry as a shed snakeskin. Sylphide put her hand on Georges's shoulder, adjusted the toe of a shoe. His hand went absently to her bottom, squeeze-squeeze, even as he made some crucial point with the other.

Th
e rest is blurred in memory—I still feel like it came from me, as if the anger and panic and loneliness of my day suddenly materialized in the form of a stocky fellow in a black suit. He blew in through the big doors from the side yard, a shadow, really, hurrying toward Sylphide and Vlad and Conrad Pant and the foundation ladies as they made their way in a huddle toward the nice breeze streaming in.