sharp bill, then bobs on the swells for a few seconds, its head turning and tilting. Is the bird looking up, scanning the sky for predators? Or down into the depths, scanning the waters for prey? By way of answer, the cormorant slides beneath the surface, graceful as an eel, and vanishes. Back to work.
Janie had provided refuge, along with love, kindness and concern. She’d saved her brother, though she couldn’t make him whole. But at least he knew that children didn’t have to be treated like machines, that it wasn’t some kind of rule. That has to count for something, although Carter can’t say exactly what.
Carter unwraps the cardboard box and shoves the plastic wrapping into the pocket of his microsuede jacket. He opens the cover of a white box and discovers another box, this one black. Inside the black box, a clear plastic bag filled with gray powder is held closed at the end by a simple green twist-tie. Carter finds himself wishing for some more elaborate device, but it’s too late. He might have buried Janie in a polished coffin and erected a marble headstone – he has the money – but he couldn’t deal with the thought of his sister lying in a grave that nobody visited. Too much guilt. When Janie first contracted Lou Gehrig’s disease, he was rampaging through West Africa, killing when he might have consoled. By the time he returned to the United States, Janie was bedridden, her movements limited, the end written plain.
So, now what? Carter has no religious beliefs. Beyond the occasional blasphemous epithet, religion plays no part in his life. Though his sister was religious, though he read to her from the Bible whenever he visited, even after Janie was unable to respond, he can’t bring himself to pray, or even to recite the few verses he’s memorized.
‘I guess it’s just goodbye,’ Carter says, the words lost in the mist before he closes his mouth. He removes the twist-tie and leans forward until he’s looking down at the water. As he tilts the bag, as the powdery gray ashes slide into the Hudson, Carter thinks, as he often does, of the boy soldiers, of their drug-fueled courage, their unthinking cruelty, of how easily they were killed. He remembers their scattered bodies in the ruins of an African village, remembers the smell of their blood and an unrelenting sun that beat down on the living and the dead alike. He and his companions, thieves all, had briefly considered burying the children. But there was no time and they’d left the bodies to the vultures circling overhead.
‘Goodbye, sister,’ he whispers.
Carter shakes the bag to release the last flakes of ash. He places the bag inside the black box and the black box inside the white box. Then he sits for a time, until the dark gray water is again marked only by the falling rain, until there’s nothing more to see, until what remains of his sister is gone. Only then does he rise to his feet and vault over the rail to drop on to the pier. A short distance away, a man wearing a yellow raincoat stands with his mouth agape. And not without reason. Carter is thoroughly drenched. His chino pants cling to him like a second skin. Did he emerge from the depths only a moment before, a monster come to feed? Judging from the expression on the man’s face, he’s not sure.
Despite the soaking, Carter’s not uncomfortable. After years of special forces training, after a winter in the mountains of Afghanistan where the cold burrowed into you like an invading virus, May afternoons in New York don’t intimidate him, rain or shine. He turns on his heel and marches off toward the beckoning skyline of Manhattan.
Back to work.
TWO
On one level, Angela Tamanaka, called ‘Angel’ by friend and client alike, is pleased by the steady rain. At least she’s not being hit on by every jerk who passes by. She’s still pissed, though, because the client’s late and she’s been walking up and down Broadway between 108th and 109th Streets for twenty minutes. Huddled under a baby-blue umbrella speckled with pink rosebuds.
Stay positive, she tells herself. Use the time, don’t let the time use you. Angel has culled her rules of success from a dozen websites, and she might have perused thousands more. A Google search for ‘rules of success’ had turned up ninety-seven million hits in 0.22 seconds. On the first three pages, she discovered success rules for the mail order business, the music business, the trucking business and the business of politics. Nothing specific about the business of whoring, though. No good advice for sex workers.
Focus on the outcome, Angel tells herself. Success breeds success. The happier the client, the more jobs Pierre will send your way. At this stage of her working life, Angel’s about the business of accumulating capital. And that’s another maxim: Poverty leads to dependence, which leads to more poverty.
An articulated city bus pulls to the stop at the corner of 108th Street, its accordion pleat flexing and folding as the driver works in close to the curb. The bus rocks on its springs when it finally comes to halt and the front door opens to reveal an elderly woman in a lavender pants suit. The woman comes down the steps slowly, leading with her right leg. Her left hand grips the railing, her right the curved handle of a long black umbrella. Safe on the sidewalk, she presses the umbrella’s release button and it pops open, spraying the man poised on the step behind her with rainwater. He closes his eyes for a moment, too exhausted, apparently, even to become annoyed.
Angel watches the drama unfold, thinking this is what I don’t want, this is my big motivator. Not to come home every single night of my life, utterly spent, with nothing to show for it at the end of the week. But, no, not
Call her a communist, but this is the way Angel sees it. This is a fate she’s determined to avoid. Better to lose everything.
As she rehearses the scenario she’s worked out over the past couple of days, Angel paces up and down, accompanied by the spatter of rain on her umbrella. If the client doesn’t show by the time she finishes, she decides, she’ll call it a night and head back to her apartment. She’ll call her agent, too. She’ll call Pierre to demand payment for time she might otherwise have spent profitably. She knows the client has paid in advance, and with a credit card.
There’s a simple rule of thumb operating here. The client specifies the fantasy, but the provider brings the fantasy to life. In this case, the client, a mob guy named Enrico Benedetti, a real jerk, was predictably vague. A demure young woman, a drudge, visits the office of her therapist, as she has many times before. Only this time she finally divulges the terrible secret she’s been hiding all these years: she was molested by her stepfather. Her therapist listens sympathetically for a while, then informs her that she can escape her pain by reliving the original experience. She’s reluctant at first, but finally agrees, only to discover that her therapist was right. Before morning, she finds herself transformed, from a sexless drudge to a sex-crazed nymphomaniac.
Three other girls turned the job down. Angel said yes. Not because she wasn’t repulsed. Angel was disgusted, too, but she wasn’t about to be distracted by her feelings.
Be the one who’s there for the team when everybody else quits. Be the last woman standing. Be the go-to girl. Tomorrow morning, her agent will direct-deposit $800 into her account at Citibank. She’ll put aside four hundred of those dollars to pay for general living expenses and her taxes. The rest will go into a second account at Chase, her capital accumulation account. Angel has forty grand in that account and she’s proud of every damned penny. Most of her schoolmates at Brooklyn College, even the ones who work part-time, have already accumulated enough debt to keep them broke for the next decade.
Be Prepared – you don’t have to be a boy or a scout to accept that piece of advice. She’s supposed to remain in character from the minute she slides into the car until she’s dropped off tomorrow morning at seven o’clock, three hours before the client’s wife and kids return from a visit with the grandparents. That’s why she’s wearing a brown corduroy dress a size too big, a dress that hangs all the way to mid-calf. That’s why she didn’t put on make- up, why she’s wearing a plain white bra and cotton panties thick enough to pass for a diaper.
So, all right, remember to stare down at the floor when you get into the car. Answer in monosyllables and don’t forget to mumble. You’ve made up your mind. This time you’ll tell Dr Rick the whole truth, which he suspects anyway. You’ll do it, but you’re scared out of your mind and ...
Angel’s thoughts are interrupted by the honking of a horn. She stares for just a moment at the Lincoln Towncar parked in the bus stop while she slips into the part. Then she walks forward, slowly, as if approaching a gallows, to peer through the window. The client is sitting at the wheel. Marked by acne scars on both cheeks, his meaty flesh, the color of ground beef, drapes his jawbones like a shroud. But his little black eyes are on full alert. They’re balls of desire. Most likely, he’s been jerking off all week in anticipation.
