them.”
“What does?”
“They want to be flattered all right,” Groton went on. “Who doesn’t? But in a certain way. They want the pictures to make them look like there’s something to them besides money. They want to believe that. It’s important to them. They want everybody to believe that.” He shrugged. “That’s why they like to hang out with writers and actors and people like that, and you always need to take pictures of them with that type of people, not just sipping champagne with some leather-skinned old boozer who married a shipping tycoon when Napoleon was a corporal.”
It was the sort of tip Corman thought he could use if he ever found himself standing in a fancy ballroom somewhere, staring blankly at a line of giggling debutantes, his camera bag hanging from his shoulder like a ball and chain.
“You eat good on my beat, too,” Groton added after a moment. “You know, always scarfing something from the hors d’oeuvre tray.”
Corman allowed himself a quick laugh.
Groton turned inward suddenly, as if his mind were taking inventory, recalling, year by year, the motion of his days. “All in all, it’s not a bad life,” he said finally, as if in conclusion. Then the conclusion fell apart, and a shadow passed over his face. “But it’s strictly back page.” He belched again, took another sip from the glass. “You live in midtown, don’t you?”
“Yeah. Couple blocks away.”
“High rent?”
“High enough.”
“You’re still lucky to have it,” Groton said. “There aren’t many places left in Manhattan a regular working stiff can afford.”
“Yeah, well, I may not be able to afford it much longer.”
Groton scratched his ear. “How long you been living in New York?”
“Long time.”
“Well, I been here for almost fifty years,” Groton said. “But originally, I was from the wide open spaces. Way out west. My father could remember when they still called it Indian Country.”
“Is that right?”
“God’s truth.”
Corman said nothing.
Groton turned inward again, remained silent for a moment, then suddenly smiled, almost impishly. “Where never is heard a discouraging word,” he crooned lightly. “And the skies are not cloudy all day.”
Night had fallen over the city by the time Corman finally left the bar, nodding quietly to Groton, who seemed hardly to know that he was going.
Near home, the streets were filled with people who only came out after dark, their eyes still dim and puffy with the long day’s idleness. A black woman in a blond wig motioned to a couple of strolling West Point cadets. They eased away from her, laughing nervously. For a time, Corman followed them, taking pictures from behind, concentrating on the proud lift of their shoulders as they made their way down the avenue, carefully glancing away from the windows of porno shops, the mocking eyes of the whores who lined their path. He could feel the tension of their besieged rectitude, but as he continued to photograph them, he felt his sympathy slip away, and with it, his interest, found himself concentrating on other faces, bodies, styles of being, the street’s engulfing randomness, until he turned onto 45th Street and made his way home.
Once in his apartment, he made dinner, sat with Lucy at the small table, and chatted about her day, the usual round of fourth-grade gossip. He listened quietly but found he could hardly remember what she was saying. It was as if she were already disappearing from his life, dissolving into those tiny dots Seurat had used to portray the parks and beaches of his own dissolving age.
“Maybe we should go to a museum again sometime,” he said after a moment.
“Okay,” Lucy said.
“An art museum.”
“I thought you liked pictures better.”
“I like paintings too,” Corman said.
“Okay, we could do that,” Lucy said. She took a large bite from the hot dog Corman had made for her and munched it energetically. “I like paintings.”
Corman wondered if perhaps Lexie would have been more inclined to leave Lucy with him had he been a painter. At least he would have had a little studio somewhere, and she could have gotten the idea that Lucy was being introduced to art, something Lexie would value in a way she could never value the part of life Lucy had come to know by being with him, the streets, the sharp edge of the city, its fierce irony and darkly battered charm.
He thought of the woman, then of the only witness to her fall, the man Lang had interviewed and the lookout had called Simpson. “I have to go out tonight,” he said. “Something I’m working on.”
“Okay,” Lucy replied lightly. “I have lots of homework.”
“I won’t be gone long,” he assured her.
She didn’t seem to hear him. Instead she got up and headed for her room, her fingers already digging for one of the small pencils he was perpetually finding among the tangle of grotesquely knotted clothes he sorted for the wash.
“I’ll try to be back before you go to bed,” he called after her, but she’d already disappeared into her room.
The building had once had a buzzer system, but it had fallen into disrepair. The front door was slightly ajar, and just inside, the tenants had written their names and apartment numbers across the faded plaster walls. Simpson’s name was the third one on the list. His apartment number was 1–C. Before going to it, Corman took a few shots of the names. In a book, the picture would suggest their expendability, tell the world how little they mattered. In the right position, it would add a flavorful detail to the woman’s fall, leave no room for doubt as to just how far it was.
Simpson opened his door unexpectedly wide and nodded crisply. “You’re the photographer?” he asked matter-of-factly.
“Yes.”
“Archie said a photographer was working the neighborhood.”
“I talked to him this afternoon,” Corman said. He kept his eyes on the man in the doorway, noted the sharpness of his features, the predatory glint in his eyes. In a picture he would come off vaguely menacing, a man you wouldn’t want to meet on any terms but your own. “I took some pictures of the store,” he added.
“Yeah, he told me,” Simpson said. “He said you were doing some kind of book. What about?”
“The woman who fell,” Corman said.
“Jumped,” Simpson said.
“Yeah, jumped.”
Simpson folded his arms over his chest and rooted his feet in place. “So, tell me about this book.”
“It’s mostly pictures.”
“You done something like it before?”
“No, this would be my first one,” Corman said, “and I was hoping that …”
Simpson pressed an open hand toward him. “Whoah, now, slow down,” he said. “I got to know a few things.”
“Like what?”
“Well, you saw some money, didn’t you?”
“For the book? No.”
“But you will see some, right?”
“I may.”
Simpson smiled cleverly. “Don’t start fucking with me. I’m not some goddamned streetfreak.”
“I didn’t say …”
“You want a piece of me, I got a right to have a piece of you,” Simpson said firmly. “The action. Know what I
