The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up (12 page)

“What kind of name is Cassandra?” asked Gladys.

“It’s Trojan,” answered Arnold.

The transvestite plugged the name into the machine. “It’s a gorgeous name. I thought it might be from the Caribbean.”

“It means, she who entangles men,” said Arnold.

Gladys stopped typing. “Well, it looks like she does her entangling in Brooklyn.” She printed the address on a post-it note. “I’ll admit you’ve peaked my curiosity, Mr.
Brinkman. I thought you were already spoken for.”

“Purely business,” Arnold answered—too defensively. “But please don’t tell anyone I asked you. Not even Father Stan.”

“I can’t keep a secret from Anabelle.”

“Of course not. But nobody else,” said Arnold.

“Discretion is one of my two virtues,” Gladys assured him. “My other virtue is indiscretion.”

“I owe you,” he answered.

Arnold examined the address, penned in the daintiest script. He was about to ask the old transvestite for a map—
the girl lived in Brooklyn, for Chrissake!
—when he heard the first wail of sirens. They were at a distance, but approaching. In a matter of minutes, they’d have the nursery encircled. If Arnold started running now, he could easily avoid that particular vice—but how to get to Brooklyn without being recognized? Every toddler old enough to speak could pick the Tongue Terrorist out of a line-up. Mickey Mouse’s face was less familiar. Which meant he’d have to travel by night, possibly through underground sewers, or——. That’s when he stumbled upon his plan B.

“Say, Gladys,” he said. “I think I’d like to buy a mask.”

“You’re better off waiting until the autumn stock comes in. There’s a much wider selection and the rubber will be fresher.”

Arnold scanned the walls. “I need something now. As quickly as possible.”

“Well, let’s see. First, I’ll have to measure your head.”

“I don’t have time for that. How about one of those pirate masks?”

“It will only take a moment,” said Gladys. She shuffled over to a cabinet and returned with a tape measure. “All of our costumes are custom fit.”

“Don’t you have anything one-size-fits-all?”

“Heavens, no!” retorted Gladys. “My ‘sister’ would sooner die.”

She wrapped the measuring tape around Arnold’s skull and whistled. “Twenty-six inches!”

“Is that good or bad?” asked Arnold.

He’d never given much thought to the size of his cranium.

“That’s enormous. It’s the equivalent of a size nine hat.” She returned the tape measure to its drawer. “I don’t know if we have much in that size.”

“Please, Gladys. Before the cops get here.”

The old transvestite ducked into a walk-in closet. She reappeared several minutes later with two masks. “I’m afraid your options are limited. It’s either going to be Mr. Nixon or Mr. Reagan—but Mr. Reagan is only a size twenty five and seven-eighths. He may chafe a bit around the ears.”

“You really don’t have anything else?”

“You’re lucky we have these, Mr. Brinkman. We generally don’t stock anything over a size twenty-four.”

“Okay. I guess you have what you have. Which do you think is less conspicuous?”

Gladys held one palm skyward in a half shrug. “We sell ten times as many Nixons. Even when he was President, we didn’t sell many Reagans.”

Arnold held each mask in one hand. He suspected he’d get a harder time for wandering around Greenwich Village disguised as the cowboy. People still despised Reagan in downtown New York.
He despised Reagan
. Nixon’s offences had been so long in this past, so much part of a different era that he now seemed more like some lovable but bigoted uncle you tolerated at Christmas and Thanksgiving.

He drew the rubber mask over his head. It was tight-fitting and very warm. Arnold’s nostrils filled with a pungent, synthetic aroma that had to be carcinogenic—and with his luck, he feared he might develop an acute-onset carcinoma of the nose. But his choices, it appeared, were either rubberized air or iron shackles.

“So tonight, to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans,” Arnold said in his best Nixonian voice. “I ask for your support.” He held up his fingers on both hands in a pair of victory signs.

Gladys sighed. Outside, the sirens rose in intensity.

“That bad?” he asked.

“You look fine. It’s me that needs the help. I honestly can’t remember whether or not Reagan and Nixon ran
against each other.”

Arnold passed the morning rambling about the city. He left the Village quickly, afraid his acquaintances might recognize his gait, and squandered a good deal of time sampling mushrooms on the Great Lawn of Central Park. In the afternoon, he rode the subway up to the Bronx and strolled about the Botanical Gardens. The poppies and yarrow were just starting to bloom—and when he was certain nobody was looking, he snacked on a bouquet of dogbane. Although he was wearing his Nixon mask, nobody paid him very much attention. That was one of the great pleasures of New York City;; he could have wandered around the streets in his bathrobe and slippers, like one of those mob bosses feigning insanity, and most people wouldn’t have batted an eye. It wasn’t the “live and let live” spirit you might find in Alaska or the Mountain West. He’d learned that the hard way at the baseball game. It was more of a collective immunity to the unusual, an acceptance that in a city of eight million people, many of them refugees from various forms of orthodoxy and tradition, one was bound to run across one’s share of nutcases. Passers-by relegated Arnold into that category—and thought of him no further. Only in an Italian section of the Bronx, where he’d gone for a cup of espresso, did his costume draw anything other than amusement. A retired Sicilian shoemaker buttonholed the botanist outside a café and explained why he’d voted
for Nixon: in ’60, ’68, ’72, and as a write-in candidate in ’76. “You stand up for what you believe in these days and everybody comes down on you,” complained the pudgy, red-faced man. “They gave Nixon a raw deal. Just like Mussolini.”

He finally set out for Brooklyn in the early evening. There was no point in showing up at the girl’s place any sooner—she’d still be at work, churning up propaganda for the neo-Trotskyites, and he might appear suspicious if he spent too much time hanging around outside her building. On the way, he ducked into an appliance shop and watched the network news on the floor-model televisions. The war was still the lead story, but his disappearance was a solid number two. A Deputy Attorney General stood at a podium in Washington and outlined a series of charges that Arnold would face, noting soberly that none of these offenses made the botanist eligible for the death penalty. The Justice Department was offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to Arnold’s capture; Spotty Spitford’s organization had sweetened the pot with $25,000 of its own. The bank of televisions showed footage of Gilbert Card, standing on the steps of Arnold’s townhouse, pledging his friend a vigorous defence if he turned himself in. Even the mayor weighed in with a somewhat diplomatic statement about the importance of maintaining public order. Yet Arnold learned the most crucial information from the network’s terrorism consultant, a retired Air Force colonel, who
speculated on the ways in which the FBI was conducting its search. “They’re probably tracing his electronic footprints,” said the gravelly-voice officer. “Credit cards, calling cards, ATMs. When he runs out of money, he’ll turn to plastic. Then it’s just a matter of time.” Up until that moment, it hadn’t even crossed Arnold’s mind that he could be traced through his bank cards. He checked his billfold. Less than eighty dollars. Eighty dollars wouldn’t go very far in New York City—not even in the outer boroughs. That meant another long subway ride over the East River. Cab fare was out of the question.

He arrived in Brooklyn after dark. The girl lived in a converted warehouse several blocks from the waterfront in what had once been a Polish-Ukrainian neighbourhood. According to an exhibit on the subway platform, these early inhabitants still maintained a foothold through nearly a dozen churches—half-Catholic, half-Orthodox—including one that offered Latin masses and the old liturgy. There were also diners serving up blintzes and kielbasa, a
twenty-four
hour “borscht bar” internationally renowned for its cabbage rolls, a pan-Slavic credit union, and a handful of merchants who advertised in Cyrillic script. But the area had turned over three times since the initial influx of Eastern Europeans—first Dominicans arrived in the ’80s, then Bangladeshis and Egyptians in the ’90s, and now recent graduates poured in from the liberal arts colleges of New England. The panels in the exhibit generously
referred to these underemployed twenty-somethings as “up-and-coming writers and artists.” Cassandra’s building showcased the community’s ethnic mix. The ground floor housed an Iranian furniture wholesaler, a Ghanaian
hair-braider
and a Moroccan butcher shop, but out front a team of Hispanic men were examining the engine of a battered Pontiac, and across the street a portly Black woman was hanging laundry on a clothesline. Arnold was relieved that the girl’s name was the only one on her mailbox. No roommate. No live-in boyfriend. Yet he felt genuinely nervous, as jittery as a teenager anticipating a date, as he pushed the girl’s buzzer.

“Come on up,” called the voice through the intercom. The door unlatched electronically and Arnold entered. He found himself in a small vestibule that smelled pungently of urine and cleanser. A cracked mirror hung opposite a teapoy stacked with unwanted advertising circulars. The staircase was narrow and highly uneven, its wooden steps and canvas-draped railing practically screaming “Fire Trap!” Arnold wondered which was preferable: Life behind bars or death by burning? The botanist knocked on the girl’s door. It opened instantly and the girl’s eyes appeared through the crack.

“What do you want?” she asked sharply. A dog snarled behind her.

That was when Arnold realized he was still wearing his mask. “Give me a second here,” he said. He pulled the
disguise over his head—letting his face breathe for the first time in hours.

“Oh, it’s you,” said Cassandra. “The intercom’s gone haywire. I can speak out, but I can’t hear anything at this end. Some good that does. I thought you might be some sort of push-in rapist with a Watergate fetish.”

“I’m not nearly that imaginative.”

She closed the door to unlatch the chain and then opened it again all the way. “You’ve really become something of a celebrity since last time I saw you.”

“Lucky me. Can I come in before somebody sees me?”

The girl looked him over. She was wearing a
button-down
men’s shirt and loose-fitting jeans. “Okay, you can come in,” she agreed. “But just for a minute.”

She stepped aside and Arnold found himself in a studio apartment that reminded him of a college dormitory room. Cardboard bookshelves lined two of the walls, while a pink dresser and a futon ran along the third. One window sill supported a jar of seashells and a stunted hedgehog cactus; a snug kitchenette separated from the main room by a waist-high plaster divider. Above the futon hung a reproduction of Wyeth’s “Christina’s World”—that haunting image of the crippled farm girl dragging her broken body across a field. This was
more-or
-less how Arnold had felt since his encounter with Spotty Spitford. On the futon, its head cocked alert, sat a massive
German shepherd.

Arnold smiled at the dog. The animal growled back. “It’s alright, honey,” soothed Cassandra. “It’s just an old friend of mine.” The girl shut the door behind her. She settled onto the mattress and scratched the beast behind her ears. “Son of a President’s not used to visitors, are you girl?” she explained.

“Son of a President?” asked Arnold.

“Because in America, even the son of a President can grow up to be President. And if we can elect this guy, why not a German shepherd?” Cassandra kissed the dog on the top of its wet nose. “But you’ll have to forgive her. She’s a bit overprotective.”

“That’s good to know,” said Arnold. “If I ever open a prisoner-of-war camp, I’ll be sure to call you.”

The girl scrunched up her face at him and stuck out her tongue. She retrieved a beer from the table, but didn’t offer Arnold anything to drink. “So what have I done to deserve such an honour?” she asked. “You know it’s not every day I get a visit from a notorious criminal.”

Arnold looked around the room. There were no chairs. He didn’t dare sit on the futon without permission. Instead, he walked to the window and gazed down at the stone courtyard. Ailanthus trees poked through the cracks in the pavement. On the fire escape sat a long, low trough full of compost in various stages of decay. It let off an earthy, but not unpleasant scent. He reflected that if he were
ever to cheat on Judith—which, of course, he wouldn’t—it would have to be with a woman who composted her biodegradable waste.

“I need a place to stay,” he said. “Just for a few days.”

“Until you figure out how to flee the country?”

Arnold nodded. “Something like that.”

“I was just discussing you with my boss,” said Cassandra. “I was saying how ironic it is that it’s easy for terrorists to get into the country, but it’s a million times harder for them to get out.”

“I’m
not
a terrorist. Spitford provoked me.”

“
I know that
,” retorted Cassandra. “I’m on your side, remember.”

“So you’ll let me stay?”

The girl smiled at him sympathetically. “Let me see….” she said. “No.”

“No?”

“You screwed me over completely. It was totally humiliating to tell my boss that you’d backed out on our interview. And then you didn’t answer my phone calls for, like, three days. And now you want to crash at my place?”

She’d folded her arms across her chest. Arnold couldn’t tell if she was bluffing.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call you back. It can be a bit distracting when you’re being harassed by Black Nazis.”

“Whatever. I’m not risking prison for harbouring a terrorism suspect. I’m an idiot even to let you be here. If
I had any common sense, I’d turn you in for the reward money.”