Читать книгу Checker and the Derailleurs - Lionel Shriver - Страница 12

People had always talked to Checker, they never knew why. Even for chronic truancy, his high-school teachers preferred asking Check to stay after school to turning him in. They’d get feverish toward the end of sixth period, rushing the lesson, anxiously shredding spare mimeos after the bell, afraid he wouldn’t come. But usually, in his own sweet time, Checker would appear at the door, humming, and glide to the desk, a small secret smile pointed at the floor; he’d glance up shyly, down again, back, down, then suddenly, when they least expected it, whoom, he’d carve straight into their pupils, coring their eyes like apples. It was terrifying. Have a seat, please. Sure. The pads of his fingers on the desk rippling. His leg jittering up and down so the floor trembled. In trouble, and perfectly happy. No matter how severely the teachers began, his eerie blue irises flashed like heat lightning, his smile, a joke, would trigger an aside, and before they knew it they were talking about their children, their wives or husbands or lovers, the problems of teaching bored people, then all about what boredom was exactly, whose fault it was, until pretty soon Checker’s feet would be up on the desk and his chair tilted back on two legs; the teachers, too, would be leaning back and playing with their pencils and jabbing excitedly with the eraser to make a point. Checker would finally remind them that it was six or seven and dark, so the two of them would stroll out and stand another half hour in the parking lot, an hour if it was spring; only out of a reluctant sense of duty and decorum would the teachers pull into their dumpy cars and away from this—this—student. Sometimes they gave him a ride home.

Checker was not precisely rebellious; he simply had his own agenda, and if that happened to coincide with the school’s, good enough; but if it diverged, he didn’t let it “rattle his cage,” as Check would say. He cooperated with authority but didn’t recognize it; he was no more or less conciliatory with a principal than with the boy at the next desk. He was pleasant and attentive when called in, unless another matter took precedence, like a science exhibit on refraction at the IBM Building, or a variety of orchid in the Botanical Garden peaking that afternoon, in which case he might pencil a neat and polite note declining the invitation to the principal’s office, ending with the genuine hope that they could reschedule sometime soon. Dazed, the principal would read it over three or four times: Looking forward to our talk. Until our next mutual convenience, Checker Secretti. With even more incredulity, the man would find himself courteously negotiating with Checker over the phone, trying to find an afternoon he was “free.” By the time Check showed up, the principal would feel grateful and offer the boy the big armchair and a cup of tea.

After all, appealing to his mother was hopeless. Lena Secretti was illiterate; Check had been signing her name to permission slips and even money orders to Con Ed since the age of six. His mother had borne children much the way she scrounged junk from trash piles—she carted them from the hospital and placed them in the apartment and sometimes, at moments, would remember having brought something interesting home once and look around for what had happened to it. After picking up the roll of bubble wrap, checking behind the broken adding machine, and moving the big box of paint-sample strips, nubby crayons, and plastic surgical gloves, she would dig up a dirty, hungry, but contented son playing Olympics with roaches. Now, Lena Secretti was not exactly insane, and no one ever died or got permanently misplaced in her care, but she was not the kind of woman you sent curt notes about truancy.

In his obliviousness of rules and even of law, Check had been accused of being “unrealistic,” but in fact his world was profoundly concrete. He understood tangibles, like, there is an agent who wants to ship your sax player back to Iraq, so you take your friend away from the man. Checker tried to explain.

“But we’ll get him eventually, and you could get prosecuted yourself, bucko,” said the agent the next day at Plato’s. The club was closed for The Derailleurs’ rehearsal on Sunday afternoons, which the man had interrupted with his enthusiastic investigation. “Aiding and abetting, harboring fugitives. We’re arresting Catholics for that shit lately, for Christ’s sake. Think we’d bat an eye at a black rock drummer?” But somehow the agent, Gary Kaypro, didn’t sound very threatening. Like all the high-school teachers before him, he was leaning back with Checker Secretti, waving his cigarette, trying desperately to entertain.

“Gary,” said Check affectionately, “we have a gig next weekend. I can’t find another sax player in five days.”

“Play here, man, your buddy won’t be around for the encore.” Gary Kaypro said “man” a lot. He’d shed the pink bandanna from the night before, but still propped heavy leather boots on the table. He’d managed to emphasize early how very much guitar and saxophone he’d played in high school. The agent was vaguely middle-aged, for from the vantage point of nineteen anything between thirty and sixty is simply not young; after sixty you are old. Kaypro himself knew this, and though he kept trying to intrude the fact that he was only thirty-six, he guessed correctly that they didn’t care.

“Well, say we toe the line,” Check proposed. “How can I get my sax man legit? You must know immigration law—how does it work?”

Kaypro shrugged with casual expertise. “There’s the political-asylum gambit. Say they’re going to flay the kid with a potato peeler if he sets foot in Iraq.”

“They would,” said Check. “He’s a draft evader.”

“Still a bad bet,” said Kaypro. “None of that shit is flying lately, see. With the Cubans, the Haitians, and now the Salvadorans, we’re burned out on the but-they’ll-shoot-me routine. Pretty much the U.S. says, So what? Unless you’re Eastern European or Soviet. And you ever read the newspaper?”

“Only the little articles on the inside pages.”

“Well, the big articles are full of Middle Eastern maniacs blowing up Americans and shoving them out of planes. Imagine how overjoyed the INS gets when they apply for asylum. We figure most of them belong in one.”

“So what’s another angle?”

“He could disappear. Get out of New York, or at least never show up here, or at his room on Grand.”

“No good. What else?”

“He could marry an American.”

“No kidding.”

“Sure. Even gets you citizenship eventually. But—only if it’s for real.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’re on to that scam, see. We do interviews now, in intimate detail. Ask the couple the colors of their underwear? Any moles? Form of birth control? The works. Sometimes split them up, compare their stories. I’ve done it. A scream, really. Catch these guys, picked up a wife for three thousand dollars, can’t even remember her first name. Man, they’re on the plane by sundown, bingo.”

“But if Hijack got married this week, you couldn’t arrest him?”

“I could. He’s still illegal until he goes through channels.”

“But would you?”

“What are you trying to pull here, bucko?”

“I’m shooting straight, Kaypro. If he gets married, will you leave him alone and let him go ‘through channels’?”

“You have a lady in mind?”

“I might.”

“Depends,” said the agent, clicking his eyeteeth together. “You know the INS is famous for corruption, don’t you?” He smiled.

“We don’t have any money, Kaypro.”

“No, no. What I want I can’t buy. I—” He seemed flustered. “I’d like to play with you guys!”

“What?” said the band.

“Just a set once in a while. I used to get in my licks, see? And—you’re half decent, Secretti. Three-quarters, even.”

Checker laughed. “Deal’s on.”

“But the kid has to do the whole bit,” the agent added. “Someone turned him in; I have to report. And if the marriage is a fraud, they’ll skewer him and the girl both. Likewise, you don’t get wedding bells to chime before I find him, the ax is gonna fall. I’ll look the other way if he’s got a solid claim to living in this country, but as of now he’s moist, through and through. I’d like to beat out a few oldies with you kids, but I’m not a sleazebag—I do my job.” With that moment of officiousness, he left the club.

“Well, that’s the ticket,” Check announced.

“Ticket’s on the family plan,” said J.K. “What about La Señorita, Jack?”

“Well …” Check drawled, moving to his Leedys to tune the heads for their upcoming rehearsal. “That’s the one tiny hole in an otherwise flawless scheme, isn’t it? Rache, why don’t you run down and tell Hijack we’ll get him out of that steam bath before the week’s out.”

“Tell him he has Super Check on his side. Mild-mannered rock drummer by day, wild-man immigration lawyer in a phone booth.”

Checker turned to the door, unable to decipher Eaton’s tone. Eaton kept a straight face. So many of Eaton’s compliments would have this quality—balanced perfectly between admiration and mockery. Never quite sardonic, never quite sincere. “Right,” said Check uncertainly. “Guys, I thought Strike should rehearse with you instead of me today, learn our tunes.”

“When I talked to you last, you were all in a tizzy,” said Eaton, languishing in a chair. “Now you’ve solved everything?”

“We just have to find him a wife.”

“The Sheik doesn’t have a sweetheart, does he?” asked Caldwell.

“Who needs a sweetheart,” said Eaton, “when your band leader has such a pretty smile?”

Checker looked at Eaton with anthropological curiosity.

“Surely, Secretti,” Eaton proceeded, “with those big broad shoulders and wide blue eyes and that impressive set of drums there, you must have quite a harem. Just point. Marry your friend? Sure. Anything for you, Checker. Whatever you say.”

“Now that,” said Check, ratcheting his keys, “is a laugh.”

“Check don’t have no harem,” said J.K. “He got a death squad.”

“Remember Janice?” said Checker, pointing to four faint white scars scraped parallel down his arm.

Checker remembered Janice. Sure. Last summer, right here. More than once that wiry little creature waited all night for some joker to finish his beer, methodically splintering the edge of The Derailleurs’ regular table with her nail file. The way she dug into that wood and twisted as it got so damn late and the son of a bitch ordered another one. But she liked it on the table, hard and half off the edge. She said she sat here during sets and kneaded the varnish, watching Checker drum. She said she liked knowing what they did there and no one understanding why she was smiling. So she’d chip away until the waitress packed out; Checker had a key.

It was the last time he remembered, best and worst. Before, he’d always figured her a hellion, a vicious little animal survivor, with long, stringy muscles and wary eyes. He didn’t worry about her. Janice was thin, but more flexible than fragile, like Rachel. That afternoon she’d been to the beach; sand still stuck to her skin. Stubble had risen on the sides of her pelvis, where she shaved for her bikini, leaving only a little black tuft in the middle, like a Mohawk. Checker needed a shave, too, so between them the grind of their bodies had a satisfying grit, a resistance. She never liked it too smooth, too perfectly, simply good. And she wouldn’t let him roll her onto her back. The positions she preferred were more contorted, and she’d wrestle to stay on top. There was nail in her caress, bite to her kiss.

Sand imbedded in his pores. She was bony, without cushions; their hipbones jarred. At last she bit too deep, and reflexively he pulled her off him by her ragged wet mop, surprised to find that with the strands pulled taut he could feel her heart beating in her hair. That was when he noticed the frantic pulsing everywhere, the way her arteries exploded on the sides of her neck, at her throat, her armpits, in the shaved cups of her hips—it was amazing, this girl stripped so thin she was like a Compton transparency of the circulatory system. He stared at her veins, their rapid beat and alarming syncopation.

“Musicians,” she’d whispered over him; he moaned a half step lower each inch her hand descended from his shoulder. She meant it was not all cacophonous grappling, that he understood distinctions, different notes: here not there, and no longer—sustain, cut; press, lift. She would extend her hand and then delay; she played like funk, behind the beat, the little stop, the little reluctance. Checker smiled and thought, Give this girl sticks, but she was more keyboard really, resting her hand light and relaxed like a good pianist—Checker could have balanced pennies on her wrists. Her chords down his side grew increasingly deft, his pecs, nipple, under the ribs, off, to the hip socket, off, less and less, only tickling over the hairs now, right by his balls, but refusing, because it was too obvious, to touch the genitals themselves, like lyricists who leave a line at a rhyme so inevitable that they don’t sing the word at all.

Only at the end did he shrink back, from the long, scrappy fingers with the tight-in, pointed nails, black—an urchin’s. The urgency went too far. She clutched his collarbone like a ledge; he could see her hanging. His hands slid from her sides, and she slipped down his thighs. Checker’s prick sucked out, bent down, and sprang free of her like a perch that wouldn’t bear her weight. Her knees hit the table. She fell only three inches between his legs, but far enough for Janice to see he wouldn’t hold her up. She had wanted him, but getting him didn’t solve anything. She would need to find later there was nothing to solve, but he refused to teach her that much. He was a man and enjoyed this. He loved her childlike clambering, her skinny athletic daring, the way she climbed and swung and gripped at his limbs like at the rungs of a jungle gym. But he was not her father or brother or rescuer, and her wide brown eyes saw that in horror and went wild, then flat. She rolled completely off him onto her back, her palms to the wood, breathing at the quick, inconceivable pace of a hamster, the tiny rib cage filling up and down, her nostrils quivering, her short black hair frayed and chopped-looking, stricken. She would look only at the ceiling. He stroked her forehead, but would not comfort her too much, because he wouldn’t take back what she’d discovered.

They all thought they needed saving. They all got a surprise. And sooner or later, the nails came scraping over his arms, eyes clawing at his face. They screamed. Janice was the worst, since of course some of them were calm, pretend-cold, but he could always see the fingers opening and closing at their sides, the muscles springing in their jaws, hear the air grating through their teeth. Checker would spread his hands. He thought he’d given them what they wanted. Instead, he’d come too close—he gave them more than the others and stopped. He let them touch what they could not own. So many Alices, longing for the tiny garden, who couldn’t reach the key. For the girls it must have been worse than nothing. All his memories of that table had an edge in them, like Halloween apples filled with razor blades.

Little wonder none of these lovelies sprang to mind as Rahim’s bride-to-be. The last favor Janice did him was slashing her initials in the head of his snare, and Checker had known her well enough to see that the gesture cost her some restraint.

“What about your vocalist here?” Eaton proposed.

“You mean Rache?” asked Caldwell, no one looking straight at her.

Rachel immediately began to unravel her sweater, from a moth hole, with such concentration it was like knitting in reverse.

“Rache do enough for the band, man, I don’t know you want to involve—”

“Checker,” Rachel interrupted J.K. softly, “would you want me to?” She looked up at the drummer. “Would you like me to marry Hijack?”

Rachel’s hair was loose today, and washed; it wafted out from her head, and her face was lost inside it. Looking into her eyes was like staring into a dark ball of fur which, with the slightest puff of air from the stage, would tumble away. Checker found himself actually holding his breath. He said absolutely nothing.

That was enough. A moment later the ball of fur blew out the door, caught on the breeze of its own shudder.

“You should have said no right away, man,” said Caldwell.

“I know,” said Checker. “I was thinking of Hijack. Back soon as I can.” They all think they need saving. Checker pulled on his jacket and jogged out of the club.

“Are they …?” asked Eaton.

“No!” the band answered at once.

“It’s just, that wasn’t a great suggestion, Strike,” said Caldwell.

“Rachel—” Howard hesitated. “Rachel is a romantic.”

“How the hell did I offend her?”

“Rache and Check—” Caldwell began.

“Sweets!” said Howard.

“Everybody know, Howard,” said J.K.

“Everybody knows if you tell everybody,” said Howard.

“Okay, okay.”

They sat in silence.

“I’ve never figured out how she stands it,” Caldwell remarked.

“It’s very delicate,” said Howard, his delight in analysis getting the better of his loyalty. “Like photosynthesis. A perfectly balanced chemical process that by all rights shouldn’t work—”

“Where you get that?” asked J.K.

“The point is”—Howard glared—“if plants can turn air to branches, anything is possible.”

“Howard’s right, Big J.,” said Caldwell. “There’s something real incredible about those two. Like, it’s a miracle little Jackless hasn’t killed herself.”

“Where is Checker Secretti?”

A shadow cut the length of the club.

“What you want with Check?” braved J.K., whose voice sounded strangely high for a 210-pound bass player.

“His ass in my glassworks.”

She stepped into the light and the whole band subtly recoiled. Even Eaton wasn’t inclined to say anything smart and private-school. Once more the woman was in her apron and earthy, ancient, unwashed clothes. She hadn’t bothered with a coat, nor had she taken off her dark glasses. Her hair, askew as usual, glittered with sleet. She appeared like the Wicked Witch of the West and Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother all wrapped into one enthralling but appalling creature. You did not know whose side she was on.

“He got business,” said J.K.

“He has business with me,” Syria boomed. “You tell him he’s late. You tell him I don’t have time to chase him down in his little clubhouse. You tell him he shows or I throw him in with the next load of cullet. Got that?”

“Cullet,” Caldwell repeated softly.

“What?”

“Check taught us the word yesterday,” he explained meekly. “Broken glass.”

“My, my,” said Syria. “A for the day, rock star.” She stopped and looked down at him. “You’re cute.”

“Thank you,” said Caldwell formally.

“You tell your drummer friend, one more hour, he’s fired.”

Bang. She vanished.

“The Towering Inferno!” exclaimed Caldwell.

They marveled over the apparition until Checker returned.

When told of his employer’s visit, Checker seemed pleased. Before he hurried out again, Check assured the band that Rachel was all right now—once more, air had been turned to branches.

Sorry I’m late,” Checker panted. “I had a problem.”

“What do you know about problems?”

“Plenty.”

She took off her glasses, sifting Checker up and down through a queer mesh; her eyes were green. She seemed to see him differently from other people. Checker felt exposed, and pulled his jacket closed, raising its collar around his neck.

“Sweep.” She handed him a broom.

“When do I get to work with the glass?” Check shouted. All their conversation was loud. It had to be. The roar of the furnace was voracious.

She didn’t answer, and from then on, apart from giving him orders, she ignored him completely. Once again she was at her own work, which soon sufficiently absorbed her that she didn’t notice he’d run out of things to do. Checker settled quietly behind her to watch.

Syria gathered a lump of molten glass, then swung the pipe like a pendulum until the glob elongated; it cooled and darkened, and she returned it to the top of the furnace, propping the pipe on a stand and rolling it in quick, regular circles until the shaft was warm again. She repeated this process until the glass stretched into a rod with a knob on its end; she hung it glass down and made another form like it on a separate pipe. After reheating the first, she plunged the two shafts together, filed into the glass on one pipe, and cracked it off clean with a rap on the metal. Though working with a huge amount of material that must have been heavy, she manipulated the now three-foot-long piece like balsa wood, swinging it with grace and, he could see, pleasure, feeling its momentum, finding the fulcrum point on the pipe. All her motions were rapid and sure, without excess; they reminded him of good basketball. They reminded him of good drumming. They reminded him of anything he had ever done right.

Syria hefted the pipe over to a chair with flat arms and rolled it in front of her with her left palm, all the while shaping the middle knot with a wet wooden cup. Steam rose from the glass, hissing at her touch, a whisper of pain—cold water and hot glass don’t mix, but Syria would marry them, anyway. Checker remembered how she tended his cut: this will hurt but it will heal you. She was a person who would do something terrible for your own good.

It was only when she’d cracked the shaft into the annealer that Check realized that while he’d been waiting for her to blow a vase, a bowl, she wasn’t making a vessel. She was making a bone.

At last Checker noticed a dark corner room, and ducked inside to turn on the light. There they were. All over the walls, stacked shelf after shelf: glass bones. Clear, glistening femurs. Ice-blue rib cages, fragile, almost breathing. Strange assemblages of knuckles and kneecaps, like remnants of a mass grave turned mysteriously to crystal—deep sad greens and buried ambers. Some of the longer bones were distorted, curved, as if they were melting.

Checker felt dizzy. It was like walking into a glass morgue, shuddering and deadly, but beautiful, too, shimmering in the glow of the low-wattage bulb. The walls hurt to look at. Nothing should be that disturbing and that attractive. As his intestines began to gather, he closed the door tightly behind him, like shutting the top of Pandora’s box.

Checker felt woozy and weaved to a nearby bench.

“So what was so funny?”

“What?”

“When I was working. You laughed.”

“The way you moved,” he remembered. “I played a song in my head and you danced to it.”

She smiled. “Which one?”

“‘Burning Down the House.’”

“Three-hun-dred-six-ty-five-de-grees. It’s hotter than that.”

“You know the Heads!”

“What do you think I grew up on, Frank Sinatra?”

“Sorry.” Checker took a deep breath.

“You don’t look well.”

“Give me a second.” The sensation was receding, but not quickly enough, as if he’d woken a sleeping dragon—even if it only yawned and went back to sleep, the ground rumbled.

“So you went into the crypt.”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“I don’t know.”

“What a critic.”

“That room is dangerous!” he burst out.

“Sure,” she said casually. “Being alive is dangerous.”

“The red ones.”

“Yes?”

“The red ones,” Check repeated, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”

Somehow she seemed pleased with his reaction, though Check had said nothing nice.

“You sell those things?”

“Not very hard. Nobody understands them. But once they’re cooled they don’t matter. I like hot glass.” Her eyes glittered like the sleet that afternoon.

Checker returned the next night, on time. Rahim was on his mind, for earlier he’d visited the Iraqi in the basement, where it was hot and dank and boring, and they couldn’t think of any girls. Yet it had been impossible to stay moody, with the rise coming up through his All-Stars all the way to his throat. In the park the car radios had played the right songs, marathon; at six o’clock the sky was purple; the pavement was still icy from Sunday’s sleet, radiant with orange streetlights. The river swept the skyline into dizzy, turgid swirls.

The broom swished around the concrete, curling dust like whirlpools under Hell Gate, glass tinkling in its wake like the shores of the East River; Checker could feel every individual hair of the brush stroke the floor. Unloading the annealer, he loved all the student pieces. Lurching off center, bubbled and drooped, each vase and goblet charmed him, each bowl would hold ripe fruit.

All the while he could feel Syria as heat source move from room to room. He liked it best when he was perfectly between the two of them, the woman and the furnace; the sweat would pour evenly down his body. Each drop traced his spine like the tip of a finger.

Later, the cleanup done, she showed him how to work the furnace; Check felt on friendlier terms with the animal once he could control it. Finally she let him thread one of those sturdy pipes into the mass itself, and wear his own pair of glasses. The heat stung; he wondered how she got used to it. His face stiffened and his knuckles sung. Sweat showered down his chest. Even with the dark glasses he couldn’t focus on the glass itself—it shifted uneasily before him, rippling like flesh. He could tell when the pipe hit the glass only from a tugging, a nagging when he pulled it back. Awkwardly he withdrew a drizzling glob, like Little Jack Horner pulling a plum from a pie.

She showed him how to blow the first bubble, putting her mouth around the pipe. Checker stared.

“Don’t just stand there. This is your piece.”

When he pressed his lips to the metal he was surprised how hard it was to blow; nothing happened. The sharp taste of steel mingled with something musty. Syria.

“It’s too cold now. Heat it up.”

When he was finished, Check had made a tiny cup he knew was ridiculous, though that didn’t keep him from being enormously proud. It was thick, with a lip that curled accidentally inward, but smooth and round, later to rest perfectly in his hand, like a small breast.

It was three in the morning; only the glow of the furnace lit the shop. Checker lay on one of the benches, exhausted, having perspired away about five pounds. Syria turned down the gas, so the furnace settled to a steady purr; it was easier to talk. She leaned up against a post and studied her new assistant. Syria herself seemed a little tired, softer; her hair had relaxed.

“So what’s your story?” she asked.

Checker laughed. “I drum.” His voice vibrated the bench. “I love—things.”

She waited.

“I love this,” he explained. “Glass and color. Heat. Work. Shapes. And shit, the sky tonight—”

“Fuchsia.”

“You saw!”

“You own the sky?”

“Yes.”

She was so jagged, he was surprised by the roundness of her laughter. “Well, so do I.”

“I own every color,” Check went on. “I own this neighborhood. Most of all I own the Triborough.”

“I’ve wondered whose that was.”

“Mine. Shore to shore. We’re in love.”

“I’m jealous.”

Checker’s whole body was humming; the furnace and the rhythm of their voices were both trembling in the wooden bench now, as if a good song was playing loud. He closed his eyes. “My bicycle is jealous, too. Sure, Zefal’s pretty, thin, tight. But there’s something about a frame so big. Like a tall woman.” Hmm. At that point Checker decided to open his eyes and shut his mouth. Syria had edged away to turn down the annealer.

“And what’s your story?”

“When you’re twenty-nine, there isn’t one anymore, there are hundreds. And I don’t feel like telling any of them tonight.”

“Don’t,” Checker chided.

“Maybe later,” she said more kindly. “You said you had a problem tonight. What is it?”

Checker explained about Rahim. “So,” he finished, “I need a woman.”

“Common complaint. Where will you get yours?”

Lying on the bench, Checker felt a wave of nausea ripple from his feet to his throat, just as the elation had risen earlier that evening. He swallowed, the taste of his own saliva sour. He waited for the sickness to pass, and used the silence to make his next question seem to be changing the subject.

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“By the time most men reach thirty they’re picking out their headstones already. All that’s left is to fill in the dates. I’m not interested.”

“Do you ever want to get married?”

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Go ahead.”

Check said nothing.

“I said, go ahead.”

Maybe something flew into the furnace, something live. A strange smell passed over the two of them, like singed hair. His saliva was viscous from dehydration. “Syria,” he said thickly, “will you marry Rahim?”

“That’s better,” said Syria. “Now we’re there.” She sat down on the bench at his feet. “Now, you explain to me why I should do such a thing.” She patted his ankles.

“To do me a favor.”

“Oh?” She seemed amused. “You really think I’d be doing you a favor?”

“Both Hijack’s brothers were murdered in Iraq. If they send him back he’ll be axed right off the plane. Even if they don’t bother, he’ll be drafted. And Hijack says—he says it’s not a nice war.”

“What’s a nice war?” she asked mildly, not paying much attention. She held the toe of his tennis shoe.

Checker turned on his side away from her, resting his cheek against the warm wood of the bench as if it were a pillow. He felt like a small boy wishing he could clutch a ragged one-eyed bear. Instead, he reached down and stroked the leg of the bench, conscious of how hard it was. Checker almost never felt sorry for himself; it was a funny curled sensation, shaped like a sickle with a point on the end or like a very sharp question mark. “He’s my friend and he’s in trouble.”

“Why should I care?” She pulled her hand away and leaned back. “I met you ten days ago spying on my shop and making a mess of my alley. You’re a total stranger.”

It would be different if she was really trying to give him a reason why the whole idea was ridiculous. But no, she was forcing him instead to make a good case. “I’m not a stranger,” he said muddily, his cheek against the wood. “We’re alike.”

“That’s arrogant.” Yet she didn’t seem offended, and expected him to go on.

He couldn’t. He felt as if soon he’d have to go deeply and dreamlessly to sleep.

“Don’t women usually get paid for this sort of thing?”

“About three thousand dollars.”

“And how much money do you have?”

“Forty.”

“Thousand?”

“Dollars.” Checker sat up and pulled a scrumple of bills from his pocket. “Forty-three. But it’s not all mine, it’s the band’s. My share would be six … fourteen. Plus Hijack’s … $12.28, then.”

“Well. That’s at least six beers. Two apiece. A party.”

“How’s that?”

“For the three of us. You, me, and my husband.” She let him hear the sound of it. Checker winced. “How are you going to pay off any woman with $12.28?”

“And a lifetime’s admission to Plato’s?”

“Well, what’s the cover?”

“Two dollars.”

Syria did a quick calculation. “So, if I went every weekend, I’d start to break even after twenty-seven years.”

“Want to watch me drum that long?”

“Maybe.” Checker kept waiting for this to be a joke.

They both sat facing each other, leaning against opposite posts, their feet on the bench. Sensing they’d reached an impasse, Checker began to cheer up.

“You know, I’ve never much wanted a husband …” said Syria thoughtfully. “But I wouldn’t mind a wife.”

“What?”

“I teach all day, do bones at night. I get tired of carrots and bad Astoria pizza. My apartment looks like glacial slag. At the end of the month my clothes have gotten so filthy that I have to throw them away. I’ve lived this way for years. But it might be refreshing to clean up my act. Only, though, if someone else did the cleaning.”

“Are you serious?”

“What else could I possibly get out of this?”

Checker tapped the bench. “What all would you want him to do?”

“Cooking, shopping, picking up. Laundry, phone bills. I would like to see out my windows again, maybe even find the floor. Fresh flowers. I have a little money, can you believe it? The stuff accumulates from neglect, like dust. I wouldn’t mind having someone to spend it, which is only work to me. And once in a while he could have the afternoon off to go to the hairdresser’s or the garden club or to buy a new hat.” She laughed.

“There’s just one person won’t find this funny,” said Check uneasily.

“He’s Muslim, isn’t he?”

“Very.”

“This could be quite an education, then.”

“Maybe,” Checker warned, “for both of you.”

“You are talking about that lean, bright-eyed, dark thing at your heels last Friday, with the pretty teeth? A puppy dog. Needs housetraining.”

“If Hijack is a puppy, he bites. I don’t think he does windows.”

“He could learn.”

“I’m trying to tell you—Hijack has some ideas about women—”

“That can be changed.”

“I’ve never met anyone who was actually more optimistic than I was.”

“Do you think he’d rather clean up the mess his head would make rolling on the runway or my living room?”

“Good point.” Checker was confused. It was lucky for this to work out, wasn’t it? Then why did he feel so depressed? “There’s another thing,” he added. “The INS is getting tougher. You’d have an interview—”

“Sounds entertaining.”

“And you’d have to live together, for a while, anyway.”

“How else would he fix me breakfast?”

Syria, Check was all too aware, didn’t know what she was getting into. He tried to imagine Rahim rising cheerfully in the morning to stand at the stove in a little white apron, making sure to put in the toast so that it would pop up just when the eggs were still loose; maybe in the other room Syria would be ordering more oxides, to stride into the kitchen immediately angry if the coffee wasn’t already dripped. He tried to see the Iraqi cringing and apologizing, slipping a spoon between the cone and the filter to make the coffee drip faster, a little trick he’d picked up from the neighbor next door—

No way.

“Your Iraqi friend, does he have a lover?”

“Only me.”

“Oh?”

“Not like that. But Hijack is—around.”

“He adores you.”

“We’re friends.”

“That must mean a lot to you, then.”

“I tried to explain before. Everything means a lot to me. Bridges. Water. So you can figure how I might feel about human beings.”

“What about yourself?”

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind.”

“So we have a deal?”

“He’d have to work. I’m not the Statue of Liberty.”

Checker went to get his coat, feeling chilly, though even with the gas low it must have been ninety degrees.

They stood side by side before the furnace, staring at the eclipse around the door.

“Now, Checko,” she said softly, right by his ear. “Now you may get out of it.”

Checker leaned down and picked up a long glass drip he’d failed to sweep up, and held it up to the light of the fire. The bead at its end was crimson, frozen at the end of a thread of glass like a crystal tear. Sheckair! A wet napkin smoothed over his forehead; r’s rolled over his ears. “No,” said Check with a sigh. “I’m in.”

It was over. So many dramas are decided in minutes, though the consequences may loiter in for decades, as leisurely as they are inexorable. Don’t worry. Sit back. Watch the show. It’s like after the polls have closed and there’s nothing to do but follow the returns, staring at the screen with Scotch as the numbers change, digit by digit. Once the votes are cast, it’s almost relaxing.

They shuffled on their wraps with a curious embarrassment; the evening, especially the first of it—what is your story, long and easy on the bench—would not return. You are my good friend’s fiancée. I am the matchmaker, the go-between. The employee, too; a business relationship. Checker felt almost formal. “I’ll be in at nine tomorrow night.”

“Just hold on there.”

“What?”

“How about my twelve dollars?”

Checker laughed and fished out the tattered bills, counting them fondly one by one into her beautiful hands, so full of scars and hard work and twenty-nine years of stories.

“Uhn-uhn.” She stopped him as he started to leave. “Twelve twenty-eight.”

The last thirteen cents of Syria’s bride price were in pennies.