Streets of Gold (59 page)

“I mean
under
the shift.”

“None of your business,” she said.

“Is it what you were wearing when I came into the bedroom?”

“I was putting on my face when you came in.”

“Yes, but what were you wearing?”

“Hey, Ike... cut it out, huh?”

“Do I smell lilac?”

“What? Oh, yes, I have some in a vase.”

“I thought you might be wearing lilac under your shift My Aunt Bianca used to wear lilac all the time. She ran a corset shop. They called her the Corset Lady. She made corsets, girdles, bras, everything. I used to handle a lot of bras in her shop. You wouldn’t by chance be wearing a bra under your shift, would you?”

“Yes, I would by chance be wearing a bra.”

“And panties?”

“Panties, too.”

“Pity. Is that what you were wearing when I knocked on the bedroom door? Bra and panties?”

“Yes. Are we finished with my underwear?”

“Who’d you think it was?”

“I don’t follow.”

“When I knocked on the door.”

“Well, I knew it wasn’t Seth because he called and said he wouldn’t be home till six or a little after. And my boyfriend only comes on Wednesdays,” she said, and laughed lightly. “So it had to be you.”

“Lousy tune,” I said. “Why wouldn’t you let me stay?”

“In the bedroom? Are you kidding?”

“Can’t see a fucking thing, you know. Blind, you know.”

“Poor little blind bastard,” Davina said. “Listen, I’d better get going. You sure you don’t want me to put on some records?”

“Have you got The Man I Love’?”

“Yes, shall I...?”

“Dwight Jamison’s version?”

“What else?”

“Hate it,” I said.

Davina laughed.

“Don’t you believe me?”

“I never know when to believe you,” she said. “I never know when you’re serious.”

“You can believe me when I say I hate ‘The Man I Love.’ You can absolutely believe I’m serious when I say that.”

“I believe you already,” Davina said. “Is there anything else you’d like to hear?”

“No. Thank you.”

“Okay. I’ll be back in a little while.”

“Did I tell you about Michelle?”

“No. Michelle? Who’s Michelle?”

“A Beatles tune. Too many unpredictable chord changes in it. Goddamn tune isn’t even logical. Probably the best thing they ever wrote, but useless to a jazz musician.”

“I’m always fascinated by what you do with a song,” Davina said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“I really am. I think it’s amazing.”

“Thank you. It’s a shame nobody
else
is fascinated these days, but thank you, anyway, Davina. I appreciate your fascination.”

“I’d better get going,” she said. “Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

“Listen,” I said, “why don’t you forget the club soda? We’re just beginning to talk.”

“Well... Seth likes club soda.”

“You can go for it later. He won’t be home till six, isn’t that right?”

“That’s right.”

“Isn’t that what you said? Six or a little after?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“So?”

“So?”

“So here we are. Alone at last.”

Davina was silent for a moment. She walked to the bar. I heard her pouring herself a drink.

“Booze and the piano go together, did you know that?” I said.

“No, I didn’t know that,” she answered. “What is this, Ike? A pass?”

“Davina, I’m sure you would recognize a pass if...”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“Are you drunk?”

“Sober as a judge.”

“Then cut it out, okay? You’re making me nervous.”

“I notice, however, that you still haven’t left the apartment.”

“Well, I’m flattered, of course ”

“And interested?”

“No.”

“Curious?”

“No. Cheers,” she said.

“Cheers.”

“Do you do this often, Ike?”

“Never,” I said.

“That’s a lie. I know at least four women you’ve had affairs with.”

“Would you like to be number five?”

“Nope.”

“Time is running out, Davina. Time is tick-tocking along. Before you know it, the whole
mishpocheh
will be here, and then what? A beautiful afternoon wasted.”

“You’re really something,” she said.

“Why don’t you take off your dress?” I said.

“Who’s Michelle?” she said.

“Did you hear me?”

“I heard you. Who’s Michelle? One of the women on your list?”

“I have no women, I have no list. Davina,” I said, “I really would appreciate it if you took off your dress.”

“Why?”

“Because I would like to go to bed with you.”

“Well, that’s putting it on the table, all right,” she said. I heard the ice clinking in her glass, she was silent for a moment, I assumed she was sipping the drink. Then she said, “I have to admit I’ve thought about it.”

“So have I
.
I thought about it just a few minutes ago. And I asked you to take off your dress, but I don’t see anything happening yet.”

“Is that why you came up here?”

“I came up here because I thought I saw a ghost. But now that I’m here, I’d like to go to bed with you.”

“So it shouldn’t be a total loss, right?”

“What do you say, Davina?”

“No, Ike. Of
course
no.”

“Okay,” I said. “Nice seeing you.” I stood up and banged my shin against the coffee table again. “You ought to move that coffee table,” I said. “Blind people have a lot of trouble with it. I think I’ll run down and take a look at Lincoln Center. Never
have
seen Lincoln Center; might as well take a look at it now. I’ll be back around five-thirty.”

“Sit down,” she said.

“No,” I said. “You’ve hurt my feelings.”

Davina began laughing. “Sit down, you nut,” she said. “Sit down and be a good boy.”

“My mother told me I should always be a good boy. Like my Uncle Luke. My Uncle Luke was always a good boy. But now he’s a drunk sitting on the curb squashing bugs.” I sat. “May I have another drink, please?” I said.

“Uh-uh. If Becky comes here and finds you drunk...”

“You know what she used to call my Uncle Luke? Mr. Rumples! Met him once or twice, and right away decided he was too...
shabby
for her. Too...
shabby
for the goddamn Jewish Princess!”

“Why do you want me, Ike? Because I’m Becky’s sister?”

“
Want
you? Now that is a very quaint way of putting it, Davina. I don’t believe I’ve heard it put so quaintly since my mother told me about her flapper days.”

“How would you put it?”

“I want to fuck you.”

“Say it again.”

“I want to fuck you, Davina.”

“Why?”

“Because of your
mind
. I want to fuck your
mind
, Davina. I want to fuck you out of your mind.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s what
you’ve
wanted ever since we shook hands on Mosholu Parkway in the year...”

“Oh, boy!” Davina said, and began laughing again.

“That’s the truth,” I said. “And if it isn’t, who cares? Everything’s a lie, anyway, what difference does it make? Do you want to, or don’t you.”

“I want to.”

“Good.”

“But I won’t.”

“You’ll be missing a marvelous opportunity,” I said. “I’ve been told I have a very nice
shlahng
for a blind man. I was told that by experts in the recording, hotel, and jukebox industries — not to mention the photography profession.”

“I’m sure it’s gorgeous.”

“And I’m also a very tactile fellow. You wouldn’t believe the things I can do with my hands.”

“I’m sure your hands are heavenly.”

“Then come here,” I said.

“No. You come here.”

“Gladly. Take off your dress.”

“You take it off for me.”

I found her, I pulled her into my arms and slid both hands up under the short white dress, she was dressed for a wedding, why was she dressed in white, didn’t she know we were attending a funeral? “Easy, you’ll rip them,” she said, and I found her mouth, and placed upon her lips with donnish solemnity the kiss of death, my death, Rebecca’s, the death of everything we had known. Davina pulled away breathlessly and said, as though reading my mind, “What about Becky?” and I answered, “What about her?” having already forgotten her, having already relegated her to a tattered mythic past of roller skate keys and Tim Mix shooters. I thrust my tongue into Davina’s mouth, and again she twisted away, and tossed her head and laughed and said, “She’s your wife,” and I thought
Was
my wife,
was
, we are burying her today, and said only, “She’s your sister,” and kissed her fiercely. We sank together, sank locked in felonious arms to the floor, and Davina said, “Not on the rug, for Christ’s sake,” ever the Jewish housewife, were there newspapers on the kitchen floor on this bloody afternoon of
shabbes
? “Wait,” she said, and, “Wait,” again, and then said in false and foolish defense, “I’ll tell her, you know.” I answered curtly, “Tell her,” and entered her, the
coup de grâce
of a marriage and a lifetime. Jaggedly we coupled on the thick pile rug, the rhythms of our murderous intent raggedly forcing a contrapuntal rhythm from between her clenched teeth, “
Tell
her you forced me,
tell
her you raped me,
tell
her you,
tell
her you,
tell
her you,” a litany strangled when she came on a moan. I stopped, I withdrew immediately, I held back juices already climbing that homicidal shaft, as if even then it was not too late, even then I had not committed myself finally to what was irrevocable. “You won’t tell her,” I said, and Davina whispered, “I won’t have to.”

I
was the one who told Rebecca, though that was not what Davina had meant. Lying spent and sweating beneath me, Davina had meant only that Rebecca would
sense
what had taken place, there would be no need for
anyone
to tell her she’d been slain on a living room rug. I told her at the end of August. She had suggested, apparently on the spur of the moment, that we drive up to the Catskills. When I asked her why, she said she just felt like taking a drive up there. I should have known there was a reason for the trip. (“Smart, smart, smart — but
stupid
,” Rebecca used to say.)

She drove me up to the little town in which her Tante Raizel had rented the
kochalayn
summer after summer when Rebecca was a child. She took me down to the river where she and Davina used to swim while her mother sat watching them from the bank, her shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She took me to the drugstore, where the proprietor still recognized her, took me to the luncheonette, where she ordered a celery tonic and a hot pastrami on rye, the way she used to when she was a kid. And then we walked up into the hills.

This was August, the end of summer was almost upon us. Rebecca said she had been doing a lot of thinking about us and the family and the lives we were leading. She said she knew how important the family was to me — the kids thought of the family as a dynasty, that was a very good thing I had done for the kids, instilling in them such a strong sense of family. But now, she said, the kids are all grown up, Andrew is off in India someplace, he’s almost twenty-one, Ike, I guess he’ll find himself one of these days, I
hope
he finds himself one of these days, and Michael’s at Columbia, he’s got his own apartment in the city, I’m sure he’ll be all right, though I know the city is terrible right now — would you like to sit, Ike?

We sat. The woods were still except for the incessant buzz of flying insects.

“I guess we could take David with us,” she said. “There are good schools over there. He’s seventeen, he can finish high school someplace over there, it won’t hurt him. High school is a bunch of crap, anyway. He won’t really be learning anything till he goes to college, if he decides that’s what he wants to do.”

“When you say ‘over there,’ what do you mean? Europe?”

“Yes.”

“You want to go to Europe?”

“Yes. Maybe Italy. Maybe we could sell the house in Saint Croix and find a little villa in Italy.”

“Well,” I said.

“It’s just that I think it’s time we devoted a little thought to ourselves,” Rebecca said. “You’re not tied down with such a grueling schedule anymore...”

“You mean I’m unemployed these days,” I said.

“Well, whatever you want to call it. We’re well off, Ike. We won’t ever have to worry about money, thank God. So maybe it’s time... well, we never had much time to ourselves. There was always the band and the children.” She hesitated. “I’m forty-two years old,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes,” she repeated, “and I’ve noticed how bored you are lately....”

“Bored?”

“Yes, and I don’t want to find
myself
becoming bored, too. I think... well... there are a lot of bored people, bored women, in Talmadge. I... guess you know there are bored women there.”

“Well,” I said.

“Well, Ike, let’s be honest with each other, okay? Let’s for maybe the first time in our lives be honest with each other.”

“I’ve always been honest with you, Rebecca.”

“Sure,” she said. “Ike, I know there are other women. When you were on the road all the time, I could ignore what you were doing because you were far away, and...”

“Rebecca, I’ve never...”

“Ike, please. There were women then, and there are women now, but now they’re very close to home, and I’m getting tired of looking the other way. I don’t know how much longer I can go on looking the other way. I’m not blind, Ike... forgive me, I didn’t mean to say that.” She paused. I reached out to touch her face, certain she was crying. She shook her head, telling me she was not. “I want to start again,” she said. “It’ll be easier this time. We’ve got money, we’re still healthy, thank God, we can go anyplace we want to, anyplace in the world. We can go to Greece, if you like, I
did
enjoy Greece, Ike, even though the fucking colonels are running it. Or we can spend part of the year in Europe and part of it in the Caribbean; it’s entirely up to ourselves, don’t you see? We’re free agents.” She hesitated again. “Ike,” she said, “I want to start all over again. Before it’s too late.”