My mother and the Jahanbanis, who were among the few people at the party capable of stating with any authority that they were not blasted on pills, had retreated to Bo’s office to talk art. So when it came to telling the cops what they knew about the incident in question, they could only frown and shake their heads. All the same, the court didn’t take kindly to the idea that I’d been left to fend for myself, and when I finished my testimony, the judge ordered my mother and father to stand up so that he could take a look at the loving parents who’d abandoned their daughter in the court of Caligula.
And Vik? Vik had met Bo, who was rummaging in the kitchen pantry for a package of Nilla Wafers, while searching for the elusive someone—anyone—who could give him a straight answer about where Mr. Caldwell lived. Bo, stoned but far from mentally incapacitated, inquired as to how this Indian kid, still wearing his overcoat, pockets bulging, came to be the minder of the old crank, and Vik, being Vik, explained what he’d been doing out in the snow, where he’d come across Mr. Caldwell, and why he’d felt motivated to help: Because it seemed like the right thing to do. Vik actually said that. It seemed like the right thing to do.
Okay, Bo said. We’ll take him downstairs together. But first I want to know is, is that a gun sticking out of your pocket?
Oh no! Vik said, shocked at the suggestion.
Later, when a guest drifted into the kitchen and casually mentioned to Bo that people were tossing his patio furniture onto West End, Bo indicated only that they were to stay the hell away from his Finnish smoker.
He and Vik were busy scooping snow off the windowsill and ferrying it to the refrigerator, which they’d disemboweled, racks and all, in the name of science, and where Vik had arranged the Tami and the black velvet on the vegetable crisper. And that’s where they were, peering at snowflakes, when Albert went over the railing.
34.
One last stroll through the apartment, the sharp cedar/pine of floor polish, the aura of wool in the living room, of heating oil by the vents, mildew on the kitchen sponge, the curry and cumin in the cabinet, the vegetal aroma beneath the sink, ozone and tea in my father’s old office, the rank humanity of the laundry bag, the scent of impending snow in the bedroom I shared with Vik.
A place you spend your whole life becomes a memory vault, its walls hung with images encased in ice. At the front door I loop a finger around a coat hook and give it a tug. It’s seated as firmly as ever, as indestructible as the Apelles itself, for it is the Apelles itself, just as the faucets and floorboards are, each fixture as eternal as stone, each one laden with the past, and I feel as though I’m pulling them all along behind me, every last scrap of wallpaper, every sink and window. I wonder, as I have so many times, if Lazlo Brunn, time traveler in the great beyond, has ever spent one of his thousand-year seconds here, brushing his fingers over the coat hooks, passing through the door of his old apartment to sit with Turk, however briefly, a life being such a brief thing, quicker than a thought to the old doctor. Or would he have been wiser than that, too aware of the dangers of a place so freighted with the past, the near impossibility of escape?
The familiar heft of the front door, the solid whoosh-click of oak and steel, the sonic death of the carpeted hall to the elevator, the cool, almost imperceptible resistance of the call button. The elevator arrives empty and I press , and for old times’ sake I release a bloody scream into my balled-up cardigan from around 12 to 2. In the lobby I nod to Peter and divert past the brassy grid of the mailboxes to the service elevator, press, board, and down I go. Past the storage cages, into the boiler room, unlock steel door, close and lock steel door, down the stairs, ever downward, more steel opening, slamming shut behind me. No one waxes poetic about a basement. Beyond the cellar door lies the realm of rot and fear. If you’re lucky, the domicile of your enemies. A pit, home to mold and decay, host to sewer, worm, and root.
Another short flight of stairs, another steel door, the handle cold, two locks and a keypad. It opens directly into my office. No diploma on the wall, but two of my mother’s canvases keep watch over each other from opposite sides of the room. There’s nothing here you wouldn’t expect to find on the C-suite wing at any moderately sized producer of exportable plastic componentry. No windows, of course, but tuned lighting does a passable imitation of Central Park on a clear fall day.
The Nutcracker soldier I lifted from the Vornados’ house all those years ago occupies a position of honor on my desk, a four-drawer fiddleback number that belonged to Turk. Beneath the paintings, which are unobtrusive color studies, interesting but not distracting, there are marble-top work surfaces. A pair of sofas face each other in the middle of the room, White House style, for client meetings. When I bought out Turk and became the sole proprietor, I only made one upgrade: the floor. I had the oak planks ripped up and the concrete jackhammered, which dropped the surface six inches. One industrial iron step, diamond plate, brings you down from the main office.
In 2001, there were two earthquakes in Manhattan, one in January, one in October, and though initially I assigned them no meaning, over the years I began to think of them as bookends to that day in September, a pair of memorial shrugs of the mantel, neither of which moved the needles at
