Down Here

that passed for the front yard of a shotgun shack in Mississippi. But a miniature one? In the middle of a New York living room?

I fanned my hand rapidly in front of the branches, listening hard. The tinkle of the glass was so faint I couldn’t be sure I actually heard it.

“Like my tree?”

She was standing behind me, not quite close enough to touch. Wearing a tangerine kimono that came to mid-thigh. Her feet were bare, and her dark hair glistened, as if she had just showered.

“It’s . . . exquisite,” I said.

“I’ll bet I’ve been working on it longer than you have on that car of yours,” she said.

“Working on it? You mean, keeping it—?”

“No. I made it. I bought the bonsai, but you have to prune them to get the exact shape you want. It’s constant work. The bottles . . . I took a course in glass blowing, and I figured out how to do the rest.”

“How did you get them all marked?”

“It’s just a form of miniature,” she said. “Painting, I mean.”

“Another course you took?”

“Actually, it’s something I was always good at it. In school, sometimes I’d draw whole pictures no bigger than my fingernail. With a Rapidograph. For some projects, the most important thing is to use the right tool.”

“Did you want to be an artist? Wait, scratch that. You are an artist. I meant, did you want to make it a career?”

“Oh, never,” she said. “It was always just for me. From the beginning. Once I make something, with my own hands, I can never let go of it. I’ve always been that way. That’s the hardest part of what I do. I make deals, I put together packages, I devise strategies . . . but I can’t keep them. I have to let go of them. Otherwise, they’re worthless.”

“I never thought of it like that,” I said. “I guess because I’m no artist. I know some people write books just to be writing them. Because they need to, I guess. For me, that would be the waste. If nobody ever gets to read it . . .”

“Ah,” she said. “Your book.”

“I was just—”

“You like me, don’t you? Pardon my bluntness, it’s just the way I am. The way I have to be, in my business.”

“Yeah. I do like you.”

“So this is . . . confusing for you, yes? You want information from me. For your book. And, like you said, it’s not professional to, I don’t know what, get involved with a . . . Oh, that’s right, you said I wouldn’t be a source. Whatever you said I was, it wouldn’t be . . .”

I took a step toward her, put my hands on her shoulders. I’m not sure how the kimono came off.

She was slim from the waist up, with small round breasts set far apart, but her hips were heavy enough to be from a different woman. Her thighs touched at their midpoint, and her calves were rounded, without a trace of definition, tapering radically to small ankles and feet.

“You don’t smell like cigarettes,” she said, her face in my neck. “I wish I knew how you did that. No matter how many showers I take, or what perfume I use, I always—”

I parted her thighs. She was more moist than wet, tight when I entered.

The bed was too soft. I stuffed a pillow under her bottom, reached down, and lifted her legs to my shoulders.

“I hope you don’t think—” she said, then cut herself off as she let go, shuddering deep enough to make me come along with her.

^“I do that sometimes,” she said, later. She was lying on her stomach, propped up on her elbows, smoking. “Talk too much. When I’m nervous. It only happens in . . . social situations, I guess you’d call them. When I’m at work, I guard my words like they were my life savings.”

“Everybody has pressure-release valves,” I said. “They’re in different places for different people.”

“Where’s yours?” she said.

I put my thumb at the top of her buttocks, ran it gently all the way down the cleft until I was back in her sweet spot. “Right there,” I said.

“That’s a good place.”

“It’s not a place,” I said. “It’s a person.”

“I thought they all looked alike in the dark,” she said, teasingly.

“Looking isn’t what does it for me,” I said, moving my thumb inside her.

She rolled away from me, then tentatively put one leg over. “Do you mind?”

For an answer, I shifted my weight, so she was straddling me.

She made a little noise in her throat.

“Sit up,” I told her.

She did it. “Oh!” she said, bouncing a little.

^“You’re not going to take a shower, are you?” she said, much later.

“I can use the bathroom in the other—”

“No, I didn’t mean that. I just . . . I just like how you smell. Like you smell now. You can take one before you go, okay?”

“Sure,” I said.

^“Cooking is not one of my hobbies,” she said, later, standing in her ultra-kitchen. “And I never took a course.”

“You still want to go out? There’s a diner on Queens Boulevard that never closes. It’s not the Four Seasons, but it’s got a fifty-page menu—got to have something you’d like.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“I already feel like a guy who expected a Happy Meal and got filet mignon,” I said.

“Uh-huh,” she said, smiling. “And you already figured out we’re not going to get any talking done here, right?”

^“I’ll drive,” she said, electronically unlocking her car as we walked toward the stalls.

“Is there anything under here?” I asked, pointing at the concrete floor.

“Oh, there’s a basement of some kind. For the . . . power plant, I think they called it. The boiler, things like that. The utility people go down there to read the meters—they’re separate for each unit—and the phones lines are all down there, too.”

“I figured they had to be somewhere,” I said. “And running power lines up the side of a building like this wouldn’t be too stylish.”

“Not at all,” she agreed, climbing behind the wheel. She turned the key and flicked the lever into reverse without waiting for the engine to settle down—there was a distinct clunk as the transmission engaged.

She drove out of the garage, piloting the car with more familiarity than skill.

“Queens Boulevard, you said, right? I think I know the one you mean. On the south side?”

“Yep.”

“We’re not urban pioneers, you know,” she said.

“I don’t know what you—”

“Where I live. It’s not like it’s a depressed neighborhood. It’s solid, middle-class. A good, stable population. Low crime rate. Our building may be upscale for the area now, but that won’t be forever. It’s not like those people rehabbing brownstones across a Hundred and Tenth Street, in Manhattan.”

“And you’re not displacing anyone, converting a factory,” I said.

“That’s right. The people around us, they were thrilled when they heard what was going on. Instead of an abandoned building where kids can get into trouble, or that the homeless could turn into a squat, they get something that actually improves their property values. Adds to the tax base, too.”

Why are you telling me this? I thought, but just nodded as if I gave a damn.

She drove the Audi like an amateur, going too fast between lights so that she ended up stopping for all of