Life Among Giants (30 page)

“
La Sylphide,
we're talking about.”

“Yes.
La Sylphide,
David, what did you think?”

And as the sky pinkened in the east she laid it out for me: Olden Scotland. A young man about to be married. He falls asleep and dreams of a comely sylph, a gorgeous forest setting. She falls for him, crosses over to this world from the dream world, a very dangerous proposition, apparently. Something about a magic blanket, a lot of other sylphs, a suitor for his fiancé, a jealous witch, Emily laying it out in detail. Late in the ballet, our hero ends up in the dream world, the world of the sylph, not good.

C
ARS IN THE
High Side driveway again, if not so many as on the day of the attack.

Desmond unlocked the door when we got there. “Mr. Hochmeyer,” he said.

“
Th
is is my friend Emily,” I said.

“Miss Bright,” Desmond said, already apprised.

Music in the ballroom, just a piano: Georges. I didn't want to share Emily with Sylphide, and I didn't want to share Sylphide with Emily. But it seemed either wittingly or not they'd used me to get to one another. I brooded, some mood—direct counter to Emily's bright nerves. Scenes of our many encounters in the night played in my head, didn't cheer me, not exactly. I wanted to be home again, home in my bed again, making love again, possessing Emily solely, didn't want to see Sylphide, didn't trust my emotions. Emily had been compassionate about the great ballerina and her injury, but there was the glint of ambition in her eye as well: Sylphide was out of the way.

And Kate didn't know a thing about any of it, and no way to ever tell her, another dark spot in my vision. In the ballroom the action had been pared down; still, it was even clearer that the show would go on. Vlad was instructing three male dancers. Sylphide herself, shoulder still wrapped with ice, arm in a blue sling, was talking in the far corner of the ballroom to a guy with a guitar. I tugged Emily over.

“Just in time,” the great dancer said, gave us both kisses on our cheeks, no surprise at all that Emily was along, like the date had long been planned. She didn't introduce us to the guitar guy, a face I recognized but couldn't place. You could see the painkillers in her posture and sleepy eyelids, pain, too, a lot of pain, too much to ignore. Jimmy Page, that's who it was. From Led Zeppelin. He touched Sylphide's good shoulder as they said their good-byes. He walked off pulling a pack of cigs from his shirt pocket, nodded at the two new guards at the huge hangar doors, one of whom accompanied him to his limo, an extended Morris Mini-Minor painted in zebra stripes.

“Emily Bright,” the great dancer said.

“Hi,” said Emily.

“We are going to start class in ten minutes or fifteen. I am keeping you for the day, if okay?
Ja?
We want to see you dance. Lizard, sweet boy, you are going into town to inspect theaters. Be very tough with Conrad. We are wanting the perfect venue, not the first you see, but the perfect. Use your judgment, not his. Tell me what you find.”

Emily stepped further from me, further.

C
ONRAD DROPPED NAMES
like atom bombs, demanded contract concessions that made me sweat, insulted the food and drink we were invariably offered, but no one seemed to mind—they were very, very hungry for Sylphide and
Children of War.
I kept my mouth shut, tagged along. Conrad had warned me not to smile, not to blink, just to look around as if I smelled something rotten no matter how nice the place.
Th
e only theater I liked was the Shoebox. I sniffed and sneered, but no one was paying much attention to me. Conrad seemed to prefer a more traditional stage, hated the Shoebox, what seemed like technicalities to me: stage doors in an alley, center aisle in the orchestra, Greenwich
Village location. In the Bentley between venues I tried to get him to talk about the attack on Sylphide, but it didn't seem to interest him.

I was too young to recognize discretion.

“My parents,” I said, needing to talk, but he waved me off with a hand. He had notes to take, didn't need anyone's problems but his own. I tried to picture Dad in a jail cell. He'd be miserable, cocky, too; he'd try to sell the guards investments. He'd be fine, the more I thought about it. He'd be in his element.

Mom, on the other hand, would be nothing but pissed. Her idea of hell was a motel of any kind. Her idea of hell would be paying for a cheap dinner from a bag of quarters. She wouldn't sleep, she'd find a bar, she'd drink martinis, she'd start smoking again, there'd be a man telephoning some Sunday night soon.

It was ten before Conrad and I got back to the High Side, an expensive but lousy Times Square dinner in our bellies. I was exhausted, though my thoughts had clarified considerably: I couldn't wait to see Emily, Emily was my girl, Emily forever.

Sylphide met Conrad and me in the parlor, let Conrad describe the theaters he liked, a couple of functional large houses in midtown. When he was through with an animated spiel, practicality after practicality, Sylphide turned to me: “What do you think, Lizano?” Her face was pale from a day of pain, her ice pack melted and sagging off her shoulder. She belonged in bed. It was like football, I realized: you weren't supposed to give in to injury.

“Well,” I said.

“Don't say Shoebox,” Conrad said.

“Shoebox,” I said. “In the Village.”

No reaction from Sylphide, nothing. She just moved onto her next subject, a checklist before bed: “Emily is having a great day. She is so very natural, so very human, a lot of tense angles, and that braid flying around.” She settled her arm in its sling, shuddered privately. “Marvelous physique, of course, and comic timing,
ja?
But needing to build her technique. Conrad, we will set her up with Neville. She don't know how to isolate that tall-girl torso.
Doesn't
know. An hour before class each day?”

“So she'll get an audition?” I said.

“She's been hired,” Conrad said.

“Children of War,”
said Sylphide, just business: time for her to go to bed.

It was time for me to repossess my girl, too. I said, “I'd better get Emily home. Across the way, I mean. And back for class tomorrow? Around ten?”

Desmond approached, took Sylphide's good arm, turned her toward the stairs.

She said, “No, Firfisle, no. I'm sorry. But Emily will stay here. Already she sleeps. We work her so very hard today. Not so hard as you work her last night! She need rest. Also some privacy. If she is going to be dancing with us, I mean. She is needing a home, her own. Away from those parents, and away from you, who has his own troubles.”

O
N OUR LAWN
I turned to look back, saw Conrad's little car pull out of the driveway over there, saw Sylphide's light blink out. I watched the darkness that was left, watched a long while in the chilly night. In the morning was Dad's court date, hateful, more time away from my dancers. I'd been thinking of Emily's skin all day, tasting her, living in her kisses, looking forward to more. I'd been thinking of Sylphide's ability to become a vine, to turn me to stone, then water, then wind. I felt something had been taken from me, that both women had used me. I skulked, hoping maybe Emily would make another break. But no.

Late, lonely, I plunged my hands into my pants pockets, found my house key—I was keeping the doors locked, all right—and found the speckled heart, Sylphide's heart, as I slowly realized, smooth as secret skin.

How did she do these things?

15

Th
e BLT I ordered at Restaurant Les Jardins is clearer in memory than anything else from that fateful morning. Oh, and the Bloody Mary.
Th
e combination seemed to disagree with me, or anyway, the taste of bacon and vodka was with me all the rest of the day. I have cared very little for bacon since, less for tomato juice. But there was a delicate serving of coleslaw, too, colored with beet slivers, and I ate the cabbage strand by strand as Kate fulminated, a perfect, impressive uniformity of knife cuts, unexpected herbs, and raisins. Who put raisins in coleslaw? Delicious.

Kate was rough on Mom, nothing new, and Mom was rough on Dad, ditto, but something had changed: there was no irony in any of it. Dad was cavalier, and that was new for him. Jack was perfection, calibrated his role so delicately that I almost forgot he was there. Outside a tall window I spotted trellised tomatoes and pole beans reaching for the sky from the very top of stick teepees, an abundance of beans in a green rainbow of colors, the very beans in our drinks. On the hill a cabbage patch, many heads cut, many to go, like so many medicine balls just waiting for the fitness coach to give a command. I decided Les Jardins was the most wonderful place I'd ever been.
Th
e lobster bisque? First time I was ever moved to use the word
divine.
Th
e BLT, a simple thing, was made like a sculpture, the bread sliced from a yellowy, rich homemade loaf and toasted just crisp.
Th
ey didn't trust themselves with the mayonnaise but put it in porcelain ramekins, tiniest little spreading knife, nothing precious about it, pure function and solicitude.

Jack had a way of reeling Kate in—I imagine Mom noted it as I did, something surely we would have talked about later, if there'd been a later.
Th
e guy knew when to get my sister out of there. Her hug for me was very brief, none for Mom. For Dad, a long embrace and an earful of secrets, enough to make him giggle: what were they up to? He put something in her hand, I thought. I've always thought.

I loved having Mom and Dad alone, then. I didn't much notice the guard, who was inspecting his fingernails closely, standing off by the waitress station, his weapon unused all these years, holster falling a little too far behind his back and under his jacket to be accessible, snap rusted so that one hand would not be enough to open it. Not that I considered that. Dad offered a soliloquy on the subject of the Staples High Wreckers football season, unclear what he was getting at, though he did seem to think they'd be doing a lot better if I were there. I think it was I that ordered the cake, or maybe Dad—Mom wouldn't ever.

“Hochmeyer belongs at the helm down there,” Dad repeated.

Mom clacked her tongue, a noise to put a stop to all nonsense.

Add chocolate to the flavors of the day, the tastes and smells that bring it back. We all split that enormous, moist, all-but-glimmering piece of cake, supposedly reluctant Mom edging out the competition and eating most, three busy forks.

Outside, the beauty of the day.
Th
e solicitous guard opened the restaurant door for Mom, then held it for Dad, too, who was drunk, I realize now, who was staggering.
Th
at piercing, clear October light slantwise, and a car coming down the stately gravel drive, nothing more sinister than that.

M
EMORY RETURNS IN
Mom's kitchen with the image of her stout old Waring blender, glass pitcher on a throne. Also a knock at the door: Mrs. Paumgartner, Mom's great tennis friend and our closest neighbor. She was helpful in that I comforted her while she wailed and wept, and this gave me something to do. Dad was upstairs, I felt deeply, maybe polishing his wingtips. He was always polishing his wingtips because they were old and the leather was cracking and shoes made the man. He disliked Jean-Anne pretty violently. You'd never get him downstairs in a million years when she was over.

Mom was at tennis, was how I felt.

Something I had to do for Dad, something I had to do immediately. I left Mrs. Paum on the living room couch clutching a kitchen towel and pounded up the stairs, sat on Mom's and Dad's bed, dialed Coach Powers. He wouldn't know about my folks; nobody would know, not yet. I offered it as an announcement, not a request: “Coach Powers, I'm going to come back and finish the season with you.”

“Hochmeyer,” he said, noncommittal.

“You guys are four and three on the season, right?” Dad had just told me that at lunch, and the next bit, too, nearly verbatim: “Not so bad. But if you can beat Stamford Catholic, Bridgeport, and New Canaan, last three games, you're on to the state finals.”

“I don't know, Hoch. Quitter like you.” I heard the wavering, a certain greed, his need to win trumping his need to dominate me.

“State finals,” I said, very firm. I wanted that championship for Dad. Dad could not face eternity as a loser.

Powers pretended to think, gave a couple of strangulated coughs, trying to compose a paragraph no doubt, a face-saving paragraph of terms and conditions.

“So I'll see you tomorrow,” I said and hung up, bang.

Mrs. Paum's thready voice calling up the stairs: “David?”

“I'm here.”

“Oh, David, I'm so frightened!”

G
RANDPA ARRIVED EFFICIENTLY
at seven-thirty, limo from LaGuardia Airport, quick flight from Detroit. Mrs. Paum had seen to it that I got into the shower, and had dispatched my clothing to the washing machine, later for the garbage: we'd only slowly realized I was covered in blood, yet another of the unbelievable things of the afternoon Kate had missed. And was still missing.

Mrs. Paum looked like a midget shaking my grandfather's hand, one of those moments when I realized how big I must look to everyone else. Grandpa had an angry air about him, but regardless managed a smile, a muscular handshake. We didn't say anything about the disaster, just sat down at the cramped kitchen table to eat.

I needed to throw a football if I was going to play the next afternoon.
Th
e old duffel bag was still in the garage. I excused myself—fresh air, I said—and dug it out, two dozen well-used pigskins that Dad had somehow procured from the NFL when I was all of eleven and already six feet tall.
Th
e plywood target he'd made was still bolted to the back of the tool shed, and I stood at increasing distances, drilled the bull's eye,
thump, thump, thump.
I hadn't lost any accuracy during my abdication, might have lost a little feel. So I threw on the run, threw falling backwards, gathered the strewn balls, threw diving, threw bombs from the goal line, little shovel passes, bull's-eye every time, my hair streaming in my face, no matter, every shot for Dad.

Grandpa and Mrs. Paum were in the kitchen.
Th
at was their way to deal with traumatic shock: play cards. I heard them laughing, threw the ball harder, put myself through familiar drills.
Th
en I heard Grandpa on the phone, giving people the business. He was trying to find Kate, would find her or be damned.

I'd been out there maybe two hours in the deepening chill and dusk when a car pulled into our cul-de-sac. It was just a regular car, but it made a circle in the dead-end, pulled into the deep shadows under Mrs. Kellogg's overgrown hemlock trees, put its lights out.
Th
en nothing. Maybe Chip Kellogg, college kid, with a girl? I tossed the football a few times, loud booms against the back of the garage, watched the vehicle warily.
Th
e driver's door opened. A guy got out. Freddy. He looked all around.

I bent and picked out the next football, gripped it, threw a sudden hard string, caught him in the neck. He staggered, found me too late as I charged. I put him on the ground before he could even react, yanked his right hand up behind him, pulled his gun out of the back of his pants, tossed it away.

“Nice,” he gasped.

I drew his arm up tighter.

“I'm sorry for your loss,” he said breathing hard. “Desmond saw it on the news. Your folks. We are all very sorry, and upset. Mrs. Stryker-Stewart is beside herself.” He did not sound upset, not even very put out by my grip on him, everything the same to him, just a groan to give away his pain: “She is also concerned for your safety, so I am going to park right over there all night and just keep an eye.”

“Who keeps an eye on you?”

“Mr. Hochmeyer. Lizard. I'm sorry about what happened the other day with your dad.
Th
at was a misunderstanding. By now you know we're friends. Mrs. Stryker-Stewart sent me.
Th
e second we heard the news. I'm here, and I'll be right over there in that car all night.”

“Where are his shoes, Freddy?”

“Your dad was a good guy.”

I let up on my grip. “
Th
e shoes,” I said.

“Better than the shoes,” Freddy said. “I'll find out who did this murder and who provided the cash, and we will take them both out. I'm right over there in my car if you need me. Now you get back to your people and be their strength.”

I felt a rush of gratitude, blurted: “
Th
e guy's name was Kaiser. Who shot them. My dad said his name. It was
Kaiser.
”

“Noted,” said Freddy, definite flicker in his steady gaze.

M
RS.
P
AUMGARTNER WAS
driving Grandpa up to Danbury to view Mom, and no one expected me to go through that again. Not a word about Dad from Grandpa, like it was only Mom up there to be identified. Well, winning the game at Catholic would be for Dad, for Dad alone, his one consolation.
Th
e murders had made the Saturday headlines, all right, large photo of the portico at Restaurant Les Jardins, sketchy article, just a little about the shooting, most of the rest about the Dolus Investments indictments, speculation that there might be some kind of connection, duh. Mrs. Paum came over and made breakfast, platter of eggs, a pound of (yet more) bacon, big men.
Th
e phone rang over and over again. Mrs. Paum answered, like she was our secretary. Mom's friends, mostly. Two reporters I'd never speak to. But no Kate. Freddy's car was there when I looked, and it was there when I looked again, and then it was gone: the police had finally arrived, those same FBI men in the same black cars, asking the same questions Detective Turkle had asked me the day before, then lingering to talk to Grandpa, finally offering to drive him up to the morgue in Danbury so Mrs. Paum could stay with me.

Th
e second they were gone, I told her I was leaving, too, had a game. And though she protested violently I suited up, cleats to helmet. She tried reasoning with me as I squeezed behind the wheel of the Volvo Jack had loaned us, probably kept reasoning as I drove away. Out on Flory Ridge Road a car came racing up behind me, assumed a certain distance behind me, shot of adrenaline, but then I saw that it was Freddy. He followed me all the way to Stamford Catholic, half an hour or so. My mind was dense and blank and very dark. I parked in a remote lot, Freddy right behind me, hurried through the back gate in the formidable fence, hustled through the crowd thronged there, made my way to the visitors bench, not more than a minute before kickoff.

Coach Powers gawked, then sobered, hurried over to me. “I heard the news, Lizard, Jesus.”

“Jesus yourself,” I said.

“Son, you can't play.”

“I have to play, Coach.”

“
Th
ere'll be time for that, Lizard. What'll people think, I put you in? I'm sorry. I'm sorry this has happened. Horrible, awful. You don't belong here.”

“For my dad,” I said. “You put me in.”

He put his
Th
e-Tough-Get-Going face on, hurried away. My teammates followed his lead, left me to myself behind the bench. I said nothing, glowered at anyone who chanced to look at me.

Kickoff.

I lingered, tugging at the hair hanging out of the back of my helmet. Fielding got sacked twice, then fumbled: Catholic touchdown. Next series, he got the team to midfield, where our boy Greenie Stumpatico punted nicely.
Th
en Catholic scored on a long pass. And that's how it went to halftime, a drubbing, Staples High down 42–3.

As the Wreckers took the visitor's locker room I hulked off in my helmet and pads through the spectators milling and sat in the Volvo, Freddy impassive in his car like any old stranger in the next parking space. I didn't want to talk to him, and I certainly didn't want to listen to Coach Powers pontificate. After halftime, I took my place behind the bench as we kicked off: return for Catholic touchdown, extra point, kickoff to our one-yard line, where Jimpie couldn't get a handle on the ball till too late, pig pile, nearly a touchback.

“Lizard,” Coach Powers said.

I stepped up neither fast nor slow.

“
Th
e old plays,” he said. “Twelve, fourteen, three, four.”
Th
en shouted: “Hoch is going in.
Th
e old playbook, everybody.”