The Caveman's Valentine (12 page)

He’s going to kill you. To kill you. Kill. You’re going to die, Romulus,
you came up here to be killed. Do you understand?

“What are you doing there?”

He wheeled. It was Moira, standing below him.

She said, “You get lost?”

She was backlit by light from the kitchen. Sweet Moira, in your snake sheath, give me another smile. Give me a smile to stop me from shaking, to get me down these stairs.
Please.

She did. He came down. He told her:

“Lost, yes. Lost. I . . . I wanted to see the view. Then I was watching your friend Elon.”

“Elon loves this time of day.”

“Oh, it’s a
wonderful
time of day. It’s the time when killers plan their kills and victims prepare to die. Right?”

She considered this. She said, “You’re kind of nuts, don’t you think?” Then she laughed. “But that’s OK—I love crazy men. They’re the only ones I understand.”

She laughed again. She said, “You’re right, it is kind of spooky out there. I think it’s the mist. I think it’s going to rain. Look at that color! God, I wish I could capture that color, I’d use it in my sculpture. Anyway. Bathroom’s there.”

She pointed. He made no response. Simply stared at her.

She said, “You still want to freshen up?”

“Oh, yes. Freshen up. Prepare, absolutely.
That
door, you say?”

“That door.”

I
n his time, Romulus had tasted of the most exquisite food that Gotham had to offer. But he seldom had known the name of any of these delicacies. Their provenance was a Dumpster or surly cook at a bistro’s back door. They were never fresh, these tidbits, never hot, and Romulus liked to mix them up, in a plastic shopping bag, with old luncheon meat and popcorn and smears of mayonnaise and sometimes bits of stale bread or M&Ms. So he wasn’t sure if he had truly fathomed the full piquancies and subtleties of these dishes.

The point for him had never been to seek that inspired moment when tang and aroma and ambience all conspire to transport us to the Realm of Gastronomic Bliss. The point had always been to lick his hunger.

Tonight though, everything was fresh and steaming hot and served with elegance and pomp.

And yet he tasted none of it.

Leppenraub was scheming to kill him.

He opened his hatch, he put the food in. This was his last meal, he thought, really he ought to pay attention. But he couldn’t.

They started with a soup called
zuppa di farro.
He knew it was
zuppa di farro
because Moira told him so. She told him it was made from wheatberries and sage, and garnished with a flash of virgin olive oil.

She asked him, “What do you think?”

“Sticks to the ribs.”

Next they had
funghi en tegame.
Moira commented on the cunning touch of mint in the sauce. The mushrooms, she said, were portobellos and wonderful porcinis.

And the music? The music Romulus knew. Ravel’s
Le Tombeau
de Couperin.

Arnold was sitting a few places down from him, and he was drunk. He called up: “Romulus! Listen up! You’re supposed to
like
Ravel!”

I can stand Ravel just as much as the next guy. Only, for God’s sake,
please don’t play anything that hurts.

The Moth-Seraphs in his head were full of vengeance, and they were muttering oaths and plotting to break out, and Romulus knew that any stretch right now of, say, Ives’s
Holidays,
would rally them like an anthem.

Said Moira, “You like it?”

“What?”

“The
funghi en tegame.”

“Oh. Mmm-
mmm.
When I lived in that cave I once tried to grow mushrooms but nothing came of it.”

Leppenraub was going to kill him. There was no way out of it. The only question was how. How would he do it?

Was it already under way, his murder? Was Leppenraub poisoning him with
funghi en tegame?

He looked up at the assassin presiding at the head of the table. The man was being gently witty and endearingly infirm. His guests, all these brilliancies gathered before him, were in awe of him. Even voluble Moira was silent (sullen?) in her brother’s presence. David Leppenraub was a certified genius, he was incandescently charming, he had tons of money. He was a man who had stepped to the verge of the chasm of death, and then stepped back from it—and yet he seemed relaxed, content, he seemed utterly in possession of his life.

Look at him.
He had tortured Scotty Gates and killed him without the ghost of a qualm, and he’d been commended by Stuyvesant for the deed. The two of them had laughed together, they’d stood in Stuyvesant’s tower in the chill light of Y-rays and brayed at all the fools below. And Leppenraub would kill another man before the night was over and yet
look
at him!—he sat there making benign wisecracks, swirling the wine in his glass—look! He was more evil than Stuyvesant even—precisely because his evil was less consequent, carried less weight. The smallness, the no-accountness of his evil gave it its force.
Look at him!

Then it dawned on Romulus, slowly, that the woman to his left was waiting for him to answer some question she had put.

He glanced at her. She was in profile. She had a geyser hairdo, and she was the profile on some ancient worthless penny.

“Um . . . excuse me?”

“I say
I
voted for him last year.”

“Well, heh, heh, sure you did. He was the man for the job, right?”

“I went to the awards and
prayed
for him. But of course Spike
never
wins. He ought to
sweep,
don’t you think?”

Try,
Romulus. Try to listen.

“Who are we talking about again?”

“Spike Lee.”

“Wait a minute. Did you say director? You mean movie director?”

“Without equal.”

“A black man? You’re saying they’ve got a black man directing movies?”

“You never . . .
heard
. . . of Spike Lee?”

Romulus squinted at her. Was she telling the truth? She apparently thought she was. He pursed his lips. He said, “No, of course I’ve never heard of him. But I tell you what you do. You carry around a little bottle of turpentine, see?—and a white handkerchief. And next time you run into this fellow, you pour some of the turpentine onto the handkerchief. Like this.” He demonstrated, using his napkin and the water from his goblet. “Then you rub the handkerchief against the fellow’s face. Like this.” He swiped at her cheek. She flinched. “Then check the handkerchief. What color is it?”

“What?”

“What color?”

“White?”

“Not anymore. Some of the black polish has come off.”

“You’re saying
Spike Lee
is an Oreo cookie?”

“I’m saying Stuyvesant doesn’t let black men direct his movies.” He leaned close to her. “I’m saying cut the shit before you get the Seraphs all hopped up in my skull and they come busting for daylight. You know what I mean?”

She was gaping at him.

And he turned and let her slip away, slip back into the ocean of table chat, and he wondered again: So how would they do it? How would they kill him?

This way:

When the other guests leave, Arnold will be too drunk to drive back to Manhattan, and their gracious host will put the two of them up for the night. Then he’ll come into my room in the middle of the night and dispatch me the same way he dispatched Scotty, whatever way
that
was. And he and Vlad will put me in the trunk of the scarlet Diamante—and Romulus could see the trunk hood closing over him, a great vault of darkness. . . .

Something swimming with worms was placed before him. Moira identified it as
pappardelle con sugo d’anatra.

“That’s a nice name,” said Romulus.

He held down the worms with his knife and cut them with his fork. He was addressed by a full round face across the table, a milk-fed moon-woman.

“Where exactly do you live in San Francisco, Mr. Ledbetter?”

Why don’t they leave me alone?

He muttered something, but the great round face didn’t hear his answer.

She said, “Excuse me?”

“I said, I live
near the water.”

David Leppenraub heard that, and seemed to think it funny. He laughed his laugh.

Anger gathered.

“But where?” the woman pressed.

“What difference does it make? I won’t be living there anymore.”

“You’re moving?”

“I’m dying.”

Leppenraub laughed again. Leppenraub loved this.

In desperation Romulus turned to Moira. Moira was going to have to save his ass.

He gazed into her eyes and said in a voice loud enough for Leppenraub to hear, “You know, you are one magical woman.”

“A what? Magical?”

Her eyes shone. She was flattered. And out of the corner of his eye Romulus could see that Leppenraub was burning. Oh, he did not like this rude nosy Negro oozing up to his little sister.

It was the effect Romulus had been looking for.

Making Leppenraub burn—it steadied him some. Enough to be able to hobble through the rest of the meal without pitching a fit.

He let the clangor of repartee wash over him, and leaned back into a cloud so no one could see him, and he waited. And when he leaned forward again he found that the dessert and the Ravel were behind him, and everyone was repairing to the parlor and he with them, and then he managed to slip out onto the porch, alone. He walked all the way around the porch to the back, and stepped into the backyard and drew a breath of fresh air. His head was rumbling, smoking. He shuffled across the lawn to the dirt drive, to Elon’s mud castle. He stood over it, hanging his head and listening to a far-off owl. The lights were on in Elon’s cottage, and faintly he heard a radio going. Behind him, in the kitchen of the big house, he heard the clatter of the caterers as they cleaned.

A fat raindrop bounced off his skull.

He missed his saucepan hat.

Without question, the best idea was to run like hell.

But before he could even think of taking a step, he heard a growl, and looked over and there was Lao-tse, right beside him. Watching him, her blue eyes gone black in the dark, and growling low in the throat.
No,
Lao-tse was telling him.
Running is not the best
idea. Try it, and I’ll show you why not.

They appraised each other. Also Romulus appraised the huge dark spreading before him. Then he turned and looked back at the house—and saw someone waiting for him.

A dark figure standing on the back porch. Romulus heard a chuckle, and the figure came toward him.

Tuxedo. Vampire-slick hair. Vlad.

“Hey, I have been looking for you. Hurry, come with me, man.”

R
omulus didn’t budge. “Come where?”

“Just come. Surprise.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“What’s the matter? You scared?”

“Well . . .”

“Well, you should be. I’m going to cut your fugging ears off.”

Vlad grinned. Thousands of tiny teeth, glimmering in the dark. Then he said, “My
horn,
man. That’s all. I want to show you how I wail with the horn. You like John Coltrane?”

“Coltrane? Sure.”

“You like Miles?”

“Sure.”

“Come on, I live under the barn, we go there. I play for you. I cut your fugging ears off.”

Said Romulus, “David tell you to come take care of me out here?”

“David don’t know I’m gone. I tell Moira.”

“I see. You don’t ask her. You just
tell
her.”

“Sure. You want I be a crybaby?
Oh Mommy, please
?”

“Are you fucking Moira?”

It did occur to Romulus that this was a dumb question. Certainly dangerous, and probably pointless. But it was the first thing that had popped into his head, and he no longer had the strength to keep these pop-ups down.

Suddenly Vlad’s face was in Romulus’s face. “That’s very rude to ask, my friend.”

“Yes. I know that. I’m in a rude mood.”

“I hear you ask a lot of fugging rude questions.”

“Bad habit.”

“Fugging bad habit.”

A small snapping sound. Romulus glanced down. There was a switchblade in Vlad’s hand. The blade was open. It glimmered in the faint yard light.

“Are you going to kill me
here,
Vlad? This close to the house?”

Vlad grinned again. “Nah. This was just so you know we got the same language, you know what? No fugging wimp shit.”

Vlad made a spitting sound in disgust. He snapped the blade shut. He said, “Look, you’re a
man.
I’m a
man.
OK? Just so you know. And what’s in there is
wimps.
”

Cocking his thumb toward the house lights, the party gabble.

Romulus said, “Right.”

“I got ghetto balls. You know what?”

“What?”

“No, I’m saying, I got ghetto balls.”

“Right,” said Romulus. “But you still haven’t answered my question.”

“What question?”

“You fucking Moira?”

Vlad laughed. “American women, they want a wild man. Hah hah hah hah hah hah!”

The rain started to come down in earnest.

Said Romulus, “Maybe I’ll take a rain check on the concert, OK?”

“Yeah yeah, you got to go in and play for the white American wimps. Too bad. Later we go to my room, and do the jam.”

“Right,” said Romulus. “We’ll cut their fugging ears off.”

Sudden sheets of rain. They broke for cover. Clattered up the wood steps onto the porch.

Lao-tse did a dog-shake.

And then another question popped into Romulus’s head, and he set it at liberty right away.

“Hey, Vlad. What was Scotty Gates like?”

“What? Why you ask?”

“Being nosy again.”

“Yah. Well, he was pretty. Pretty pretty pretty. Fugging wimp.”

“Did David Leppenraub ever torture him?”

Silence for a moment. They were standing on the porch by a tall window, and inside, in the strong yellow light, the partygoers milled about and gossiped and laughed.