The Caveman's Valentine (9 page)

Arnold kept wanting to find out about Romulus’s life in California. Romulus kept chuckling. Slipped a veil of lame jokiness over his life story, eluded every trap, and kept Arnold talking.

Said Arnold, “Rom, tell me about the vineyards out there.”

“Uh-huh. Well, there are some
splendid
ones. Hey, Arnold, you know I saw a movie the other night, all about Juilliard.”

“Yeah?”

“Prodigy.”

“How was it?”

“What a bomb. Heh heh.”

They passed from the Henry Hudson to the Saw Mill Parkway to the Taconic. Eventually the malls and developments thinned out. They entered a country of winter meadows and stands of hemlock.

Romulus saw two pale-white early butterflies.

Said Arnold, “Hey Rom? Tell me something?”

“Sure.”

“Why’d you leave Juilliard?”

“Oh. Well, I got Sheila knocked up. Right? She wanted the kid, I married her. And our parents got sore at us, and tossed us out on our asses, and . . . so that was it.”

“That’s what you told us at the time. But I kept thinking if you’d really wanted to, you could have figured out some way to stay in school.”

“You think? Hmm. Maybe so. Heh heh.”

“You know, at the time one of your brothers came around to the school to talk to me.”

“Yes? This I never knew. Which of my brothers?”

“August?”

“Augustus.”

“Augustus, yeah. He thought maybe there was something wrong with you.”

“Such as?”

“He wasn’t sure. Just . . . you seemed scared of something.”

“Scared? No, that I don’t recall. I remember I did not care for recitals. Heh.”

Terror. Naked terror. That time when they all came to hear him perform—his parents, his brothers, his great-uncles, all of them—and he didn’t show, he wandered the streets and he was walking up Lexington Avenue and he felt like his head was full of swirling feathers—and he looked up and saw the steeple of the Chrysler Building swaddled in mist, blurred by his tears, and he thought he could
feel
the terror pouring out of those jagged-eye windows, and he came to the harrowing surmise that perhaps
there
was the source of all this confusion—and much later that night he called Sheila from a pay phone and he could hardly speak and she said, “You’ve just got to get ahold of that fear, baby. Just get ahold of it, and
wrestle
it down, you can do that, you’re strong, baby, just keep working at it, I
believe
in you.”

Now Romulus chuckled for Arnold, and said, “I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you. It was just a tough time for me. Before I got everything
together,
you know what I mean?”

The Taconic Parkway wound up into the hills, and in Putnam County Romulus woke from a doze and looked across a long vale of virgin forest to a slope of red oak. The trees were still clutching handfuls of last year’s leaves (useless old ticket stubs), but they were already dreaming powerfully of the coming spring. Blushing red with the same fever that was eating at Romulus.

And as he studied this hillside he discovered—small victory!—that he could detect
no stain of Y-rays
there. Not the least taint or residue of them. None.

“My . . . Lord.”

Said Arnold, “Hmm?”

“Oh, it’s just—you know, I haven’t seen woods in almost . . . twenty years.”

“What? Wait a minute—there are no . . . ?”

“No I don’t mean . . . that California . . . scrub-shit. I don’t mean park woods, either. I mean
woods.
Lord.”

They came into dairy and horse farm country. They left the Taconic and wound endlessly on a two-lane blacktop.

And slid at last through the toy village of Gideon Manor. Church, jail, band shell. Up on the left, the Gideon Manor Playhouse—a huge Dutch gable elephant on a hill.

Another mile, and they turned off onto a simple dirt drive that cut through a dense spinney of trees. No name on the mailbox. Might be a double-wide trailer back here for all you could see from the road.

But in a moment they emerged from the trees into the flung-open sky of the Leppenraub Farm.

Meadows, brooks, orchards, bramble patches. The tarnished-gold fields falling away, all the way down to the Hudson, where that speck of white must have been a sail.

More sunlight than Romulus had ever seen at one time.

And up on the hill, in the shade of sugar maples, the perfect farmhouse. In robin’s-egg blue, with wraparound veranda, from which the Siberian husky came down to greet them with a few wary woofs.

They came to a stop.

Then Romulus saw the car.

The murderer’s getaway car, the sporty sedan. Parked in front of the house. Turned out it wasn’t white, as he had thought, but as scarlet as its sins.

Still, he knew it was the one. And the Moth-Seraphs knew it, too—they raged, they surged against the barricades he’d built in his skull. Romulus shut his eyes and his jaw sagged, and he rubbed his head with his knuckles.

Go to sleep for a while, he told the Seraphs. Justice will be done, but not this minute.

Arnold, who had already stepped out and was patting the dog, heard Romulus muttering to himself, and he looked back in.

“You OK?”

“Heh heh. Of course.”
You’re strong, baby, I believe in you.
“I’m fine. No question about it, everything’s just splendid. Right?”

A
woman was pushing a wheelbarrow by the side of the house, a wheelbarrow full of leaves and dirt and flakes of barnacle moss. She set down her load and smiled at the visitors.

She was the woman from the
Artforum
photo. Windfall of deep brown hair, with one demonic corkscrew of white mixed in. When she smiled, the first thing to flash out was her sharp, lovely canines. She was lovely all over. It seemed to Romulus that one of her eyes was slightly lower than the other, but this only added. Threw her a little wildly out of whack, made her a kind of cubist Venus.

Someone in the window above her spoke to her, and she looked up and said, “Of
course
I’m bringing it to the studio.”

Then a man’s voice. Crisp, slightly nasal.

“Moira, you’ve got to spray that goddamn stuff for bugs before you drag it all into the coach house.”

“Oh, that’s stupid.”

“No. It’s
not
stupid, kiddo. I want you to tell Vlad to fumigate that stuff. My God, you want roaches running wild in the coach house?”

“Yes,” she shot back huskily. “I’m training them, David. Roach commandos. They’re
coming
for you.”

She wiggled her fingers, lifted them toward him. A quick, sketchy gesture, but expressive. You could see the roach hordes swarming toward that window. She laughed, and Romulus got another glimpse of those astonishing canines.

The voice at the window and coldly, “Tell Vlad to spray the stuff. Why is Lao-tse barking?”

“Our guests.”

And then she came over. What a loving panpipe laugh she had! She took Arnold’s head in her hands, and smushed his cheeks, and gave him a fat buss. Then she turned to Romulus.

“I’m Moira Leppenraub. Mr. Ledbetter?”

“Romulus. Or Rom’s OK.”

“Rom. Arnold’s told us a lot about you. He says you’re a genius.”

“At what?”

“Your music, of course.”

Romulus smiled and said, “That’s all?”

“There’s more?”

“I can hold a match in my teeth with the flame inside my mouth, and in a dark room I light up like a jack-o’-lantern. He didn’t tell you that? The man does not
promote
me right.”

Grins all round. But the dog Lao-tse came over and sniffed at Romulus’s shoes. Taking in a long history of fabulous lowlife aromas. Then it made a quick snuff at the suit, sat back on its haunches and said calmly with its eyes,
The suit and the shoes don’t match. You’re
not the suit—you’re the shoes. You’re running a con, aren’t you?

Moira said, “Shall we go in?”

Said Arnold, “We don’t want to take you from your work.”

“Oh, it’s just some leaves and things for my sculpture. Vlad or Elon will take it to the studio. Me, I’m ready to party. Caterers will be here in an hour, and I’ve got nothing to do. I’m at your disposal, gentlemen.”

She was wearing Levi’s cutoffs and old boots and a checkered linen shirt, and she fairly bounced up the steps before them. And it troubled Romulus that he found himself inclined to imagine—after so many years of disinterest in such affairs—all the pastures and sweeping hills and bramble patches that lay under these innocent clothes. Now what is
this
all about? he wondered. Where the hell does a feeling like
this
come from?

A feeling like this was not going to make his work any easier.

Moira held open the screen door, and he and Arnold stepped into the front hallway.

David Leppenraub came down the stairs.

The first glimpse Romulus had of him was his hand on the banister. The delicate lattice of his veins. The color of his skin, standing out against the brown wood, was the same crushed-seashell color as the skin of Scotty Gates, the morning Romulus had found the body.

Leppenraub descended slowly. He kept his back straight, but one was aware of the man’s pain.

“Arnold,” he said. “Good to see you. And this is your friend.”

He didn’t extend his hand to either of them. Concession to the layman’s terror of AIDS? But when Romulus put out his own hand, Leppenraub grasped it firmly. Arnold introduced them.

Said Leppenraub, “Romulus, I hear you have kind things to say about my work.”

“Well, I like it very much.”

The man’s gaze was sharp, unwavering. He asked, “Why?”

“Excuse me?”

“
Why
do you like my work?”

“Well. It’s . . . um—”

“Come.”

He led them all into the parlor. The furnishings were spare and simple, but in every corner and niche there was art. Quirky sculptures, paintings—but mostly photographs. Leppenraub gestured toward a piece by the piano. Black-and-white of a vacant lot. Looked like some place in the Bronx. One leafless sapling, struggling to survive. A blurred black kid on his bike.

And in a far corner of the lot, there was a strange twisted lump of something, with a flesh tint. The only color in the shot.

Maybe entangled lovers. Maybe a couple of cadavers.

Said Leppenraub, “Ever seen this one?”

Romulus stroked his chin. “Well, I believe I
have,
uh-huh, I—”

“Of course you have. It’s one of my most popular pieces. So, tell me, what do you think of it?”

Romulus glanced to Arnold for help. But Arnold was staying out of this.

And Leppenraub, though he leaned against the baby grand for support, didn’t ease up on his stare at all. As though he had seen through Romulus’s masquerade from the get-go, and now he was going to let the fool expose himself, just stand there and watch the fun.

For a moment Romulus was nervous the way he’d been in fifth grade when he hadn’t studied and teacher was calling on him. Wanting to hide, to disappear. Wishing he’d never left the city. But they were all watching and there was no time for regrets, and no choice but to take up the man’s challenge and brazen it out. He said, “What do I think of it? Nothing.”

Leppenraub smiled a thin smile. His eyes flashed. “Nothing?”

“Hey, I mean, it’s like one of those millions of scenes you look at every day, right? When you’re walking, or on the train, or whatever. You look, your eyes fill up, but a minute later it’s gone. This time there’s a smidgen of . . .
passion
there, right?—that heap of love or death back there. But the rest, it’s still
nothing.
I mean this scene has so much nothing it hurts the eyes to look at it. I mean the kind of
burned-over nothing
you get when Stuyvesant’s
done
with a place. Right?
Finished fucking it over,
am I right?
Finished
—”

“Stuyvesant?”

Leppenraub was staring at him. They were all staring.

Oh shit.

“I just meant—I meant . . .”

Leppenraub shook his head. “So much nothing it hurts?”

Then the corners of his mouth turned up. He started to chuckle. “Now that I
like,
amigo! It hurts, it
hurts
the eyes!”

His chuckle turned into a laugh. Partly the wide-open laugh of a child and partly the jaded laugh of the man of power—and edged all around with the laugh of a man who’s dying, and dying in pain. He finished it with a dry cough.

He cried, “Arnold, who the hell is this guy? This guy made my day. Jesus.
It hurts the eyes!
”

T
hen he took them all out to sit on the long veranda.

Drinks were served by Vlad.

Leppenraub reminded Vlad that he had asked for
two
onions in his martini. Vlad shrugged and went back inside and fetched the onion jar. He was a muscular man in his mid-twenties. He wore a tight black T-shirt to show off his torso, and his every move was something of a swagger. He pulled an onion out of the jar between two fingers, and dropped it with an insolent little splash in Leppenraub’s drink.

He served Romulus a glass of white wine. He said, “Sorry we have no Night Train. You know Night Train, hah? Now
that
is a wine!”

He glossed for the others: “What they drink in the American ghetto.” Then, again to Romulus: “But these people know
nothing
of the ghetto, you know what? Americans never go to Harlem. I’m Czech,
I
go to Harlem.”

Moira laughed scornfully. She asked Romulus, “Have you met Vlad? Vlad’s our resident Eurotrash authority on American small-mindedness.”

Vlad scowled. “And you’re my most excellent example! Exactly, yes, try to teach an American
anything,
they call you Eurotrash.”

Moira kept smiling. Her smile seemed to infuriate Vlad. He asked her, “You think you’re American
hipster?”

“No Vlad. I don’t think I’m American hipster.”

“The black man is
born
with soul. You white Americans, you all think you can
make
soul. You do the witch thing, you think it makes you—”

Said Moira, “Muga brzah-gahbena—”

“And what is that stupidness?”

“A spell to protect me from Transylvanian vampires.”

“
Romania!
Transylvania is in
Romania,
you stupid, stupid—”

“Enough,” Leppenraub said quietly. He took a hefty swallow of his drink. “Bring Arnold his martini, Vlad. And leave my little sister alone.”

Said Moira then, “I can defend myself, David.” Something sharp and retaliatory in her tone, some old habit of resentment.

David said again, “Enough.”

And his voice, soft as it was, held sway. She lowered her eyes. Romulus thought, There is a divide between these two. Which perhaps he could work to his advantage. If he could get her alone. . . .

Vlad brought the drink. Then he swaggered over to a big wicker divan, and sprawled on it. Leafed aggressively through an
Art
News.

Leppenraub turned to Romulus. “Arnold says you work with a museum in San Francisco?”

“Near there.”

“Which one?”

“It’s . . . it’s called the New Bay Museum.”

“Oh, yes, I think I’ve heard of it, uh-huh. Who’s on your board?”

“Just . . . they’re just names. You know.”

“I know lots of people, Romulus. Try me.”

Names, the man wants names. OK, give him some names. Any name will do, right? Piece of cake. Romulus knew
thousands
of names.

But at this moment he could not think of a single one.

He peered into his brain and saw nothing but the glowing eyes of the Seraphs, staring out from their prison.

“Matthew!” he said suddenly. “Matthew . . . Cornelius! That’s one. That’s a name. And, uh . . . Lulu Gould?”

“Oh,
Lulu,
yes.”

Oh,
Lulu,
yes. Lies were no sweat to Leppenraub. He lied with a poker face. Held his head at an angle, so you’d get the full bitter majesty of his nose, and looked at you with his white skin and sharp little eyes, and bullshitted freely. He smiled at Romulus again, and murmured, “
Hurts your eyes . . .
oh, I do like that. Let me take you to the barn later. I’ll show you a new thing of mine you might appreciate. Oh, yeah—I think so. Ought to hurt like hell.
Ha!”

He polished off his martini.

Said Romulus, “You know I’ve been trying to figure it out. And I just did. What made me think of him.”

“Think of whom?”

“Stuyvesant.”

“Oh yes? Who’s Stuyvesant?”

“Heh heh. First mayor of New York. They’ve got a big portrait of him in Grand Central or somewhere. And my Lord, I believe you’re the spitting
image
of that man.”

He looked to see the effect of this on Leppenraub. But Leppenraub was smooth. He only offered, “I do have Dutch ancestry.”

“Patrician! Heh heh. The grand pa-
troon.
My . . . Lord. Yes sir.”

A
fter this Romulus shut up.

He let Leppenraub and Arnold talk. They talked about something called “Neo-Geo”—some grand art movement that had been born and become the rage and had burned itself out to ashes while Romulus had been living in a cave.

Moira seemed restless. She took no part in the discussion. She stretched one leg out before her. Lifted it, set her ankle on the porch railing, and pointed her toes like a dancer. Then she did the same with the other leg. Then she folded her arms and looked at her brother. She was trying to pay attention to the tricky chatter, but could not. Nor could Romulus. He simply watched her. Gazed at that shimmering skin.

When he raised his eyes, they lit upon Vlad, and he saw that Vlad was watching her, too. And he saw Moira glance back at Vlad. And Leppenraub—as he babbled on—Leppenraub was watching Romulus noticing Moira giving back Vlad’s glancing.

Moira, with a scowl, broke the chain. She rose. She said, “It’s a damn miracle day. We ought to walk.”

Said her brother, “Go right ahead.”

She asked Romulus, “Like to see the farm?”

“You should, Rom,” Arnold encouraged. “Beautiful place. You’ll love it.”

Romulus shrugged and stood.

Said Vlad, “I think I’ll come, too.”

“No,” said Moira, “I think you won’t. Walking’s bad for the upper-body muscles, Vlad. You stay here. Guard the little onions.”

But she did whistle up Lao-tse the husky.

T
hey came to a chicken coop that had been made into a handsome little house. A man was sitting on the little stoop, on a rocking chair. He was wearing overalls, and he was holding a chicken in his arms, stroking it. He stared into space.

Moira called to him.

“Elon?”

The man looked up. He started to shiver. His lips twisted into two or three trial shapes and finally came up with a smile. He said, “Hello. Hello, Moira.”

“The
wheelbarrow,
Elon.”

She pointed.

“You see the
wheelbarrow?
”

He nodded.

“Take the
wheelbarrow
to the
coach house.
To
my house,
OK? Leave it outside my
studio.
OK? Don’t bring it
inside,
or David will kill us. OK?”

Elon tucked his lower lip under his teeth. His shivering got worse. For a while he considered the strategy for this chore. When he had it all sorted out, he nodded again.