Losers Live Longer

'Timing.'

Whatever she made of that, she didn't say. We walked to the center of the park to a white flagpole with a bleached-out stars and stripes clinging to the top as if it were afraid to fall. The sky was soft black velvet. Starless to the city. A breeze shook the leafy heads of the high trees with an innocuous sound like waves stroking a pebbled shore.

She said, 'I can't believe any of this is happening. It's like living a nightmare.'

I asked if she knew what leads the police were working on.

'They're looking for this girl, too, but she couldn't have killed Charles. I mean, he wasn't strong, but...She looked so starved.'

'According to the papers, your uncle was a leading expert in his field. Was he working on anything special?'

Her face was shadowed, but a glint of teeth appeared. 'The police asked me not to say anything but yes, he was. A lost fragment by Keats, in Keats' own hand, an abandoned poem entitled 'Cupid.' It was taken in the robbery.'

'Not the kind of thing your average thief would grab. How'd your uncle come by it?'

'He never said. The police are questioning collectors he dealt with regularly.' We rounded the statue of Edwin Booth. She asked, 'How will you look for this girl?'

'Trade secret,' I said. I had no idea.

'Maybe I could help. I've seen her. And maybe as a woman...'

I spent a moment pleasantly filling in that blank. The offer was tempting for more than one reason.

'I don't think so,' I said. 'I'd feel responsible for you.'

'That's sweet.'

We walked along the remainder of the path in silence to the gate at Irving Place. As we reached it, she turned toward me and looked into my eyes.

I leaned in and our lips formed a perfect seal, her mouth moist and sweet. We parted an inch and rested forehead to forehead, breathing each other's hot breath.

'Thanks,' she said softly.

'For what?'

She shook her head and turned away from me, out of my arms.

I watched her for a moment against the backdrop of million-dollar homes. She looked very alone. It was time for me to go.

I handed her one of my cards. 'In case the police call about the girl,' I said, but it wasn't what I was thinking.

It was just after 10 P.M., a busy time, shows getting out, dinners ending, people rushing to get home. I had to wait five minutes for a vacant cab on Third, and then they came three in a row. I rode straight down to the Village.

By the lights of passing neon signs, I looked over Missy's picture again. I couldn't see her involved in any of this. I tried picturing her with green hair and a pierced lip, but it wouldn't take. It gave me an idea though. I told the driver to drop me a St. Marks Place.

For the three blocks between Third Avenue and Avenue A, 8th Street in the Village became St. Marks Place, a major passage through this historic neighborhood. Its string of T-shirt stands, CD stores, and bars attracted the college crowd from NYU and tourists from around the world, who in turn attracted the homeless and the criminal to peddle sob stories or drugs. It was a sultry night for early September and people on all sides were taking advantage of it.

I stepped from the cab into a fog of sandalwood incense snaking from a cardtable set up on the corner. A pack of kids in baggy clothes ground by on skateboards, and jumped the curb, almost hitting a man wearing a black wig, high heels, and a flower-print dress crossing the street. He/she shook his/her parasol at them. Two severe- looking women with close-cropped black hair, walking hand-in-hand, noticed the man, glanced at each other, and broke into giggles like schoolchildren.

Rounding the corner, I saw a young guy sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk. He was dressed in grimy fatigues and a torn T-shirt that said 'The Dukes of Biohazard' in cracked white letters. As I got closer, he sang out, 'Hey, buddy, spare change for beer and drugs?'

I had to laugh. I looked down at him. His flesh was pale, almost translucent. A front tooth was missing from his grin and there was a brass ring pierced through his nose like a bull.

I placed the change from my cab ride into his waxy hand and offered him a cigarette.

'Awesome, man.'

I gave him three.

'Nice ring,' I said. 'You get it done at that shop around here?'

'Naw, did this one myself. Ugly, huh?'

'Oh, very.' I admired it. 'But there is a body-piercing place around here, right?'

'Sure. My man Lyle's place over there.' He jerked his head, not taking his eyes off me. 'If you're thinking about getting plugged, it's the place to go. Tell Lyle 'Poker' sent you.'

'Poker. Right.'

It was a second-floor walk-up over a used-CD store, past a bar spilling over-amped heavy metal and the yeasty stench of stale beer. The front sidewalk was crowded with young people passing a paper bag, smoking, laughing, singing. Sometimes you get lucky; I looked them over carefully and they met my scrutiny with stonefaced tolerance. None of them was Missy.

Posted on the shop's door was an anatomy chart pinpointing the thirty-odd places (some odder than others) where a human being could conceivably be pierced. One, called a 'Prince Albert,' hurt me deeply just to look at. Inside, a dull buzzer announced my entrance.

'We're closed,' a gravelly voice bellowed from behind a red velvet curtain at the rear.

Along one wall of the store was a glass display case filled with an array of exotic body jewelry: studs, rings, ear clamps, miniature chains, and collars. What caught my attention, though, was the wall by the cash register, covered from baseboard to tin-paneled ceiling with hundreds of Polaroid snapshots. A visual record of satisfied customers.

I gravitated toward them, but the velvet curtain parted and the gravelly voice stopped me.

'Yeah, whadaya want?'

He was fireplug stocky with a hard Buddha belly. His head was bald but not entirely hairless, a black Kentucky-colonel beard sprouting from his chin. He tugged it, assessing me with his leaden eyes.

I told him Poker sent me.

'Poker? What's a poker?' He crossed his arms, his manner as pedantic as a professor emeritus.

I tried another tack. 'My editor at the Voice. He said he'd call ahead.'

'The Village Voice?'

'Yeah, I'm putting the finishing touches on this article that was started by this other guy who o.d.-ed last week and now's in rehab till October, and we're going to press in two days.'

'Article on what?'

'A season round-up on the newest innovations in your craft. You know, design, equipment, method.'

The leaden eyes melted a little.'That's a great idea,' he said. 'You know, you came to the right place. I've trained with some of the masters like—'

From behind the velvet curtain a man's voice screeched, 'Lyle, I'm bleeding here. What the hell are you doin'?'

'Oh, shut it!' Lyle yelled over his shoulder, then said to me, 'Look, I've gotta finish up with this dork. Can you hang?'

'Sure, no problem. I'll just check out some of your work.' I motioned to the wall of photos.

He grinned, slapped my back, and went back behind the curtain.

Studying the snapshots was like screening applicants for the Coney Island freak show. There were men and women, young and old, some with rows of tight rings threading their eyebrows or studded silver balls cleaved straight through the center of their tongues. Some photos were only body shots of elaborately impaled nipples and bellybuttons. I almost missed what I'd been scanning for—a tight row of barbed-wire rings on a girl's bottom lip—