“The clutter is nice, too,” she went on. “It means you’re not one of those uptight people without any real feeling. You’re not a plastic person.” She studied him intently, a smile playing on the lower half of her face.
Jason didn’t respond to this foray either. He was clicking the camera on her. And also on himself as he measured his reactions to her. It wasn’t clear to him what was going on.
“So. Why don’t you tell me what’s happening with you, and what you think I can do to help,” he said.
There was a long pause while she gazed at him some more, as if trying to decide if she could trust him.
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” she said finally. “I need some advice, that’s all. I didn’t want to talk to Charles about this. He’s a client. I’m sure you understand about that.” She shrugged. “You impressed me the other day. I figured I could ask you.”
Jason nodded. “Go ahead.”
“I’m very worried about my sister.” She crossed her legs the other way, and readjusted the handbag at her feet. Once again the blouse fell open.
Jason picked up a new black and white notebook from his desk. “What worries you?”
“Her behavior, her moods. She’s very sick, and I have no one to help me manage her. I’m afraid she’ll hurt herself, or someone else.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Oh, God. She’s out of control. She’s depressed, moody, violent. She’s had a problem with alcohol and drugs for years. When she drinks she’s vicious, screams at people, hits them—why are you taking notes?”
Jason looked up. “Does it bother you?”
Milicia frowned. “It gets in the way.”
Jason closed the notebook. “Is there a special urgency about your sister right now?”
“What do you mean?”
“I get the impression this has been going on for a long time. Why are you seeking professional help now?”
Milicia bristled. “What kind of question is that?”
“Just asking if something special has happened, a crisis?”
“What if something really awful has happened? What do I do?”
Jason glanced at his notebook but didn’t open it. He didn’t have to. He was trained to remember everything he saw and everything he heard. He waited for her to go on. In a second she did.
“Do you know how hard it is on a family when there are two perfect children and then one of them starts going off? It’s like at the Olympics on the balance beam when the first back flip is straight on the mark and the next one a centimeter to the left. After that, a gymnast can’t get it back. She keeps going crooked until she falls off.”
She was silent for a second.
“And then the whole system comes crashing down, and nobody is left whole.”
Jason nodded, touched by the way she said it, by the image of the child gymnast doing it right to a certain point and then faltering, failing to be “normal,” thus destroying the careful facade of the family front.
“I know what that’s like,” he said gently.
He looked at her with his inner eye, searching for the real person under the cloud of flaming red hair and dusky perfume, the perfect makeup and bravado. Who was really in there and what piece of music was being played?
“Tell me,” he said to Milicia, “about falling off the balance beam.”
9
Sometimes on very sunny afternoons spikes of light forced their way through the few clean patches in the cracked basement window. Today the light looked to Camille like white grass growing up through a cracked pavement. The floor was crunchy where fallen plaster from the ceiling and walls got walked on for many months before anybody bothered to sweep up. Bare bricks showed through everywhere, discolored and chipped.
It was very damp down there, even in summer, and the smell of urine was getting worse now that the puppy was older. Bouck said she had to do something about the smell.
Camille sat on the floor with her back pressed into a corner, waiting for the bright light to fade. She could hear Jamal on the other side of the wall, polishing crystal with the sonar machine. There was kind of a whine, or a hum, that she sometimes thought was human. As long as she could hear it, she felt safe.
Jamal wasn’t supposed to come on this side of the wall. The best chandeliers were in here, hanging from the low ceiling. On very bad days Camille stayed here, too, unable even to take the puppy out. The hum stopped, and she tensed.
Bouck told Jamal he would kill him. Bouck had three guns. Camille thought he would do it. He would kill for her. No doubt about it. But Jamal didn’t care about the guns. He wanted to touch her fine hair, that pale, pale reddish gold that was so rare. It was a color and texture Jamal had never seen in Haiti, or Trinidad, or Jamaica, or wherever he came from. Camille didn’t like to talk to him. His hair was all matted and he smelled worse than the dog. Some religious thing. He listened to reggae through a Walkman that Camille knew was the devil singing in his ear.
The light moved just a little bit, and she turned her head. Upstairs in the shop she could hear the phone ring and someone answer. It wasn’t Bouck. Bouck was at an auction. No, no, somebody died. Bouck was looking at a dead person’s estate. Sometimes he went and took things out of dead people’s apartments before the IRS could get there to tax them. Sometimes he bought the whole estate. Bouck had a lot of money. He gave her money all the time and laughed when she forgot where she put it.
“Easy come, easy go,” he said.
A few weeks earlier Bouck shot somebody who was trying to get into the shop. It was Puppy that first heard the noise.
Then Camille heard it. Nights were sometimes good for her and Bouck let her move around. That night she was free.
“Bouck.”
“Huh.” He jerked awake as if lightning had struck him.
She stood outside his door because she didn’t like to go into his room at night no matter what.
“Somebody’s downstairs.”
He was up before the light was on, the .38 already palmed. He was down the two flights of stairs and in the basement within a few seconds, with Camille not far behind.
It turned out to be a kid trying to jimmy the window in the basement. He didn’t even get inside. Before the window was all the way open, Bouck shot him. The bullet knocked him flat even though it didn’t kill him. Bouck would probably have shot him again, but the guy got up.
Together Bouck and Camille ran up the stairs and watched out the window of the shop as the thief staggered down Second Avenue, bleeding all over the place. Bouck told her later the kid must have lived. There was nothing about it in the paper. He had Jamal wash down the sidewalk the next day, but no one ever came to ask any questions. Camille thought about the way Bouck had shot the boy. Even with Jamal around, Bouck always made Camille feel safe. Bouck could make war.
She listened for him.
Today wasn’t such a very bad day. The animal she called anguish was only a tightness in her chest, a weight holding her down, just above the level of hell. Today the animal was an almost manageable pain. She could think a little. By sundown the weight might lift enough to allow her to go upstairs. But then again, it might not lift for days. It all depended.
On good days it got better in the evenings. By six or seven her mind drifted back into focus and she started thinking she might be all right until the next day. Then it would start again with the dawn.
