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Authors: Thomas H. Cook

Flesh and Blood (7 page)

BOOK: Flesh and Blood
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“May I help you, sir?” the maitre d' asked quietly.

“I'm meeting somebody.”

“Who might that be?”

“Karen Devereaux.”

The maitre d' looked at him unbelievingly. “She's expecting you?”

“Yeah.”

“This way, please.”

Karen was sitting at a table in the far right corner of the room. She was dressed in a dark blue silk blouse and a long black velvet skirt, and as he moved toward her, Frank realized that he would never know a more beautiful woman, that she had fallen into his life as miraculously as a flaming meteor, and that it would never happen again.

She smiled brightly as he sat down. “Hi,” she said.

Frank dropped his hat in the chair beside him. “Nice place.”

“You like it?”

He smiled. “It's fine.”

She leaned toward him. “You look tired.”

“It's been a busy day.”

“A new case?”

“Yeah.”

“Want to talk about it?”

Frank allowed himself to laugh softly as he shook his head. He knew that soon he would be alone again, but he did not know when, or how, or why, but only that while he remained with Karen, he wanted her to love him.

She laughed lightly. “You never want to talk about them. Were you that way with Sheila?”

“Sheila never asked.”

“Did you like that better?”

He shrugged indifferently, the smile fading despite his best efforts to hold on to it. “It doesn't matter.”

Karen's face grew somber. “The way you say that sometimes, Frank,” she said, “the look in your eyes when you say it, it's as if you mean that nothing matters, nothing at all.”

Frank picked up the menu and opened it. “What's good?”

“Have whatever you like,” Karen said dully.

Frank lowered the menu. “I don't want to start it off like this.”

“Why not? It's become our usual routine.”

“That's what I don't like.”

“It takes two to make a conversation,” Karen said curtly. Her eyes darted away from him. “Or anything else, for that matter.”

She meant kids, and he knew it. She wanted a child. Perhaps she wanted his child, but he suspected that the exact identity of the father mattered least of all in her immediate calculations. She wanted the experience of child-bearing, of parenthood. She wanted to be a mother, but he knew that he would never be a father to anyone again, never know that exquisite joy, or expose himself to the dark brutal emptiness that had followed in its wake.

He folded the menu. “Order for me, Karen,” he said. “I don't know what these things are.”

She stared at him resentfully. “Are you proud of that?”

“No,” Frank said. “It's just a fact. I don't have any particular feeling about it. Why? Does it embarrass you?”

“You know better than that,” Karen snapped. “Don't try to make me out to be some New York snob, Frank. It won't work.”

Frank said nothing.

“Is that what you did with Sheila?” Karen asked accusingly. “Did you try to put her in some little square, nail her down, so you could go your own way?”

Frank glanced away, and drew in a long, slow breath.

The waiter stepped up almost immediately, and Karen ordered herself a Black Russian and him a shot of Bushmills.

“So,” she said crisply, “I ordered for you.”

Frank nodded slowly.

For a long time, the two of them sat in silence. Then suddenly, Karen leaned forward and thrust out her arm. “Feel this, Frank,” she said brightly, trying to start the dinner over again. “Feel this material.”

Frank felt the cuff of her blouse. The material was soft as liquid, and for a moment he half-expected it to dissolve at his touch.

“And look at the color,” Karen added enthusiastically. “Doesn't it look like it has a glow of some kind?”

“It's very beautiful,” Frank said.

“You met the designer,” Karen told him. “She was at the party last night.”

Frank said nothing.

“Imalia Covallo,” Karen added. “Very tall. She sat near you for a while. Do you remember her?”

“Yes,” Frank said.

“I bought this in her shop this morning,” Karen said. She sat back and lifted her arms gracefully. “It's called the ‘Imalia Covallo Look.'”

“She has a shop?”

“Oh yes, very exclusive.”

“Where is it?”

“Where else, Fifth Avenue,” Karen said. “You have to have an appointment to get in.” She laughed. “It's all very haute couture and all that.” She lifted her nose to the air in a broad, mocking gesture. “So precious, dahling.”

“You made an appointment?” Frank asked, almost unbelievingly.

“Yes, at the party,” Karen said. “She's really very nice.” She ran her fingers up the sleeves of her blouse. “And the clothes, Frank. You should see the clothes.”

Frank let his eyes move over the shimmering blouse, its intricately woven fabric and radiant sheen. “It's very nice,” he said again.

She smiled sweetly. “Think we can begin again, Frank?” she asked.

For a moment, he didn't speak. Then, as last, he lied.

“Maybe,” he said.

It was almost ten by the time they got back to the apartment, and for a while, the two of them sat on the terrace and watched the lights of the city. There was a distinct chill in the air, but the view was worth it. It swept in toward them from up and down the long glittering canyon of Park Avenue, and as he sat in the white wicker chair and listened to the distant traffic down below, Frank remembered his tiny porch on Waldo Street in Atlanta, the metal lawn chair he'd kept there, and the wall of city lights which he'd watched night after night. He could feel his old discontent rising again, reaching into his voice, his eyes, making itself visible to those who were around him.

“What are you thinking, Frank?” Karen asked suddenly.

He turned toward her. She was sitting across the small glass table which rested between them. She was wrapped in a thick sweater, her long, slender fingers tucked beneath its ample sleeves. “Nothing,” he said.

“I don't believe that.”

“Nothing important,” he added.

“I don't believe that, either,” Karen said. She drew her arms around her sides, hugging herself tightly. “A cold night,” she added. Then she smiled. “We could warm it up a little.” She drew out one of her hands and offered it to him. “Want to?”

He took her hand and followed her into the bedroom, and for the next few minutes, they moved into each other with the sort of wordless, sweeping tenderness that had once touched him inexpressibly, which had altered the atmosphere around him, softened the hard corners of the world, made life for one electrifying instant worth every dime you paid.

She was sleeping soundly, as she always did, by the time the last small waves of his contentment had ebbed away. He got up silently, his feet pressing into the lush carpet, as he dressed quickly and went out.

It was a little past four in the morning by the time he got to Tenth Avenue. He made his way up to the second floor and knocked on the door. A large man with beefy red hands opened it immediately, recognized Frank, and stepped aside.

“Delivery fucked up today,” he said. “Got nothing but some rotgut shit from over to Killarney.”

“That'll do,” Frank told him as he walked into the room.

The room was nearly empty, but Frank knew it would begin to fill up steadily as people made their way from the legal bars to the after-hours ones. Some people would go home, of course, take the closing of the bars as a signal to call it a night. But the serious souls would wander on, up this street, up these stairs, or others like them, and sit down behind their small square tables and order a few more rounds. It was not a place for Tequila Sunrises, of course, or Banana Daiquiris, or anything with a little pink umbrella stuck in it. But for a stiff jolt, it was as good a place as any.

Frank took a small table near the back of the room and ordered a shot of Irish. He took it down quickly to rub off the chill of the walk, then ordered another and sipped it more slowly, carefully controlling his own strange uncontrol.

The standing bar was to the left, and the owner was behind it. She looked Puerto Rican, but Frank had heard she was from Ecuador. She was close to sixty, and her hair fell over her shoulders in a ragged silver tangle. She spoke in quick, broken sentences. Everybody called her Toby, but no one knew why. It was said that the gin mill had put her two sons through college, and that one of them now worked downtown in the district attorney's office, but that was the sort of ironic tosspot fantasy that Frank had often heard in such places but had never once believed. During all the months he'd sat at his table, she had never said a single word to him, but from time to time he would catch her eyes as they shifted toward him with a distant, odd affection, as if, through long experience, her heart had learned to trust the lonesome drinker best.

Frank took a long pull on the glass, then tapped it lightly on the table and called for another. A tall thin man in dark glasses accommodated him immediately, and Frank leaned back in his chair and let his eyes wander from table to table. They wandered for a long time, as the minutes stretched one by one into the early morning hours, and the people came and went, singly or in couples, the tone of the bar changing by small, almost imperceptible degrees with each arrival and departure.

It was nearly seven in the morning when the last of them had left, and the first grayish light seemed sadly stranded outside the front windows. At last, it seemed to sweep in suddenly, like something pushed through a door, and short black shadows thrust their way toward him from across the room.

The bar was entirely empty now, except for Toby, who was wiping the last of the glasses, and a large man who sat near the front window, his hat on his lap, a single glass still poised in his hand. For a time, Frank watched him silently, then suddenly the man turned directly toward him, his large black eyes staring straight into Frank's.

“You are leaving soon?” he asked.

Frank nodded.

“Good,” the man said. “I like to be the last.”

He had some sort of accent, faintly English, with its soft
a
's. He had pronounced last “lahst,” but he did not look English. Even in the gray light, Frank could make out the darkness of his skin, the thick black eyebrows and full purplish lips. He sat very erect, his head held up so that his chin remained parallel to the surface of the table. He wore a large double-breasted suit which he had carefully buttoned over an even larger stomach. “The last to leave this place,” he added, by way of explanation. Then he eased himself from his seat and walked ponderously over to Frank's table, his immense frame shifting left and right like an old tanker.

“My name is Farouk,” he said as he stopped beside the table. He smiled tentatively, but he did not put out his hand.

“Frank Clemons.”

“You come here often,” Farouk said. It was a statement of fact, not a question, although there was something quizzical about it, a distant curiosity. It was as if he had been studying Frank for some time, as he no doubt studied other regulars at the bar. “I have seen you here,” he said. “In such a place, it is good to be observant.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. He nodded toward the empty chair at the opposite side of the table. “Care to sit down?”

Farouk nodded heavily, his great bald head like a smooth dark orb in the still shadowy light. “I have seen you here many times,” he said as he sat down, his speech still determinedly formal, as if learned from rules rather than from listening to the usage of the street. “You're often the last to leave.”

“I don't sleep very well,” Frank explained.

Farouk's dark eyes studied his face solemnly for a moment, then a small, thin smile broke over his lips. “Sleep is not worth much. It is dull.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Better to be out and on your feet,” Farouk said with a slight, dismissive shrug. “You have a job?”

“Yes.”

“And a bed?”

“That, too.”

“With a woman in it?”

“Sometimes.”

“And children?”

Frank shook his head. “No.”

Once again Farouk nodded silently. “What is your work?”

Frank hesitated instinctively. “You ask a lot of questions,” he said.

“I am a curious person,” Farouk told him. “But so, I think, are you.”

Frank stared at him silently.

“That is my guess, that you are a curious person,” Farouk added. “Shall I tell you why?”

“Go ahead.”

“It is a matter of color,” Farouk said. “You are often here. Which means not simply that you cannot sleep, but that you prefer the night.”

Frank nodded.

“The night is dark, full of shadow,” Farouk went on. “Those who prefer it, they are in love with the mysteries of the world.” He smiled cunningly. “It is the obvious which they cannot stand. They hate what is clear, what is too easily revealed.” He sat back, eyeing Frank proudly. “I am right, yes?” he asked as he folded his large arms over his chest.

“Yeah,” Frank said. “Yeah, you're right.”

Farouk leaned forward slightly. “So, now I ask again. What is your work?”

“I'm a private investigator,” Frank told him.

Farouk nodded, as if confirming something, but did not seem impressed. He took out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Frank.

“No, thanks,” Frank said. Instead, he lit one of his own and sat back slightly. “What do you do?”

Farouk placed a cigarette in an ivory cigarette holder, then lit it. “I put myself at the service of others,” he said as he blew a column of smoke across the table. “I lend assistance in difficult matters.”

“For a fee?”

“One does not live on air.”

BOOK: Flesh and Blood
8.66Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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