Sirens, p.55
Sirens, page 55
stopped abruptly, biting her lip.
drew Daina closer to her. ' it awful, darling? You tell me. Please." o,'
Daina lied. ' wasn't so bad.' 480 481 Monika's eyes seemed to clear and
she smiled again. ''s good,' she whispered. ' makes me feel much better.
I was afraid -' She looked into her daughter's eyes.
"But then Fria afraid all the time now.' Daina leaned over, kissed her
mother on the lips. ' told me, once, how much he loved you." Monika's
eyes opened wide. ' did? When?' So Daina told her the story of their
fishing trip on Long Pond, of the weather, the sights and sounds and the
smells, of the tension in the line, the feel of the rod jerking as the
fish took the bait, the excitement of the tug of war.
"And what did he say?' Monika wanted to know. Daina told her. ' said,
"You know I love your mother very much."' Monika seemed to be sleeping.
"Mother Mother?' She rang for the nurse. It rang and rang and rang.
Daina jerked upward in bed, her heart pounding. She wiped the sweat from
her forehead. She turned her head. Rubens lay beside her, asleep. The
telephone continued to ring. She glanced at the bedside clock. The
luminous digital numerals were just clicking over to 4.12. In the
morning? Automatically, she grabbed for the phone. ' uh uh uh ..."
dwhat?) ', Dain ... F She rubbed at her eyes. '?' ' uh uh ..." "Chris is
that you?' ', Dain, Daina ...' The voice was thick, slurred. ' where the
hell are you?' ' ...' ' for Christ's sake 1' '... ew York ...' '? I
couldn't - Did you say New York? Are you here? Chrisp ' yah yah.' '
should've come to the party ...' An intuition. ' you here ...' ' ak ak
It almost sounded like laughter. Almost. ain. All'lone.' the hell are
you doing here? Chris, are you okay?' , Dain. I'm here incog ...' He
could not seem to rest out. She could hear his breathing now, shallow
and , just tell me where you are.' uhuh ...' V Rubens rolled over,
stirred towards waking, and up off the bed, walked as far away from him
as the would allow. She turned away from the bed, cupped her over the
mouthpiece. ' tell me where you are. I'll right over.' A cold kind of
dread had begun to infuse her, ostly fingers stroking her spine. She
shivered involun- otel ... h hotelf Each moment now increased her fear.
What g on? ', which one? The Carlyle? The Pierre?' med his favourite
haunts. ak ak ...' That sound again, so similar to laughter yet rly
chilling. He gave her a name: The Rensselaer. tf She almost yelled. '
don't know where -' But he gone like a puff of smoke, exhaled and
useless. e did not bother to call his name, went instead back across
room, replaced the receiver in its cradle. She pulled on a of jeans,
stuffed them into high leather boots, slipped a eck sweater over her
head. Then she knelt beside the table, pulled out the Manhattan
directory. Got '', er fingers down the columns, one' by one, until she
found id, '. my God' under her breath. The hotel was on Street, off
Broadway. Any closer to a flophouse and he'd the Bowery. There was no
reason for Chris to pass by a ce like that, let alone be staying there.
That was her thought e picked up her shoulder bag and quietly slipped
out the 4.20 in the morning, the avenues of New York seemed as e as the
boulevards of Madrid, the city so quiet she could ost hear the neon
billboards blinking on and off. Deep oat and The Devil in Miss. Jones
were still the double bill 482 483 to beat at the Frisco Theater on
Broadway. Across the street a new twin movie house had sprung up,
showing Spanishlanguage films exclusively. Tonight it was El Brujo
Maldito and ique Vergfienza! The taxi swayed and dipped as it raced
downtown over the pitted asphalt. Great plumes of grey-white steam
hissed fron, manhole vents, luminous as they picked up and reflected
back the street and theatre lights. Each time they passed through a
cloud it was like passing through a curtain and she, still half asleep,
perhaps expected to see the structures of another wor d just beyond. But
it was not until she stepped out of the cab on to the sidewalk at 44th
Street that she understood what it was she had been searching for. It
was the grey glitter, the oh-so-kinetic grime, the jungle line of her
outlaw youth. She wanted, desperately now, to know that it was still
here, had not been ploughed under, boarded- and graffitied-up like the
gargoyled apartment building up in Harlem, whose beautiful shell would
soon feel the humiliating crunch of the wrecker's ball. Yet it was not
her youth for which she longed. That was a time, in fact, to which she
was happy never to return. She wanted to witness no victory over this
outlaw world. Its inviolate existence was a reassurance to her; the
ultimate proof that what she had learned here was valid. For here lay
her power and it was stronger than that of the Red Brigades or the Black
September or the Baader-Meinhof. She took a look at the Hotel
Rensselaer. It had a dark, dingy front of soot-blackened metal and
wire-reinforced glass, giving it more the air of an ancient police
precinct. It was bounded on the west by an iron-gated and padlocked
stamp store with display window full of sun-bleached cracked plastic
folders sandwiching one stamp here and one there, and on the east by a
porno theatre that had but recently given up the ghost. Affixed to its
slight marquee were two lines of black type. The first read: ''; the
second: ' CROSSED BUNS'. Over the revolving door of the Rensselaer hung
an old and ponderous sign that every so often creaked on its iron limb
as if about to make the final ignominious plunge on to the sidewalk
below. the left was an iron grate in the pavement through am heaved,
reeking with the sulphurous odour of New sewer network. A man lay. atop
this spot of sidewalk h, ha%-inlg first spread out an open leaf of
crumpled per. Ile wore a pair of trousers far too short for him, n place
by a length of twine. He wore no socks and his - or at least at one time
they had been shoes - were full es. He was fast asleep in the vapours,
his back against imy brickwork of the hotel's frontage, one hand tight d
the neck of an empty pint bottle of Irish Rose. night wind rattled his
newspaper bedding, making it as if he were riding a magic carpet. No
princess for him, thought, when he wakes up. leaned back into the open
driver's window, handed .-three bills. Ile had his radio on. On a talk
show, someone berating the mayor for underpaying the police. A spate of
.calls were coming in. u want I should wait, Miss. Whitney?' the driver
said. as a sallow-skinned young man with a full beard and red ' is lousy
right now. I got a book. I don't mind.' smiled thinly, walking away. ''s
all right,' she said. n't know how long I'll be.' turned off the engine.
''t make no difference. Better an someone else, huh?' He rolled up his
window almost e way, began to pore over a dog-eared paperback copy of
ter Ludi. hat've I got to worry about? she thought as she went gh the
creaking revolving door to the hotel. Nothing ever ges.
side, the lobby looked like a heavyweight punk who had gone the distance
with the champ. Everything was broken and seedy. Dust hung in the air as
if it were being from place to place instead of disposed of. e walked
quickly across to the reception desk. No one was d. There was no book
but a small plywood box within sat a sheaf of three-by-five index cards.
e went through them without finding a ''. Then she mbered the name he
used on tour - all the band members pseudonyms for security reasons.
And there it was: 484 485 Graham Greene. It used to amuse Chris no end.
Room 454. Replacing the card, Daina hurried across the lobby. It smelled
like stale sweatsocks. A shuddering elevator eventually @deposited her
on the fourth floor. She took a hurried look around, almost ran down the
hall. Room 454 was at the end - one of two comer rooms. he did not even
think to knock - or even that she might need a key - but reached down
and turned the knob. The door swung open. She went in, closed the door
behind her. It was pitch dark in the room but even so she could sense
that she was in the foyer of a two-room suite. She had not known that
hotels such as this one had suites. She moved cautiously forward, one
hand outstretched, sliding along the papered wall. She could feel its
scratched and shredded surface, as pocked as the skin of the moon.
Somewhere along here, she reasoned, there must be a light switch. She
found it just at the end of the narrow foyer and flicked it up. Nothing.
Silence. She stopped still, her heart thudding. She was about to call
out his name when she noticed that the air was heavy with scents. She
sniffed like an animal on point, could define the sweet musk of weed,
the sharp pungency of incense - patchouli - and the acrid odour of
sweat. She caught her breath. It was not the smell one builds up after a
hard day's work or the heady tang of aftersex relaxation - rather it had
about it the stink of sickness and fear. She moved into the first room,
trying to pierce the blackness with her eyes. And she became aware of
the guitar, strumming plangently - acoustic not electric - and she
thought, He's all right. Then she heard the bass, synthesizer, and drums
come in, knew she was listening to a recording. She went quickly across
the room and, at the threshold to the bedroom, heard his rich tenor
begin to sing: I'm tired of the lieslthe thighslthat unwind at
nightllike sailsldark clouds billowinglbewitching the endless blue
skies. Melody welling, the beat hypnotic. '?' I'm tired of the sighslthe
squeals of animal delightlinvading my mind1I findii'm no longer
willinglto fightlfor what I want. Moved easily into the chorus: I'm on a
linela bluebird 486 @ Waiting for the soundlof a gun to shoot me downl ,
linellust paralysedlwaiting for the sound of a gun me down ... was a
short instrumental bridge, an electric guitar d then the chorus repeated
itself until the music died dark, synthesized wings. s?" she said again.
She went into the bedroom and immediately tripped over a pile of
dishevelled clothing. '!' and picked herself up. The tall shape by the e
of the bed turned out to be a lamp and she turned it Chris ...' s a mean
room that flared up at her, long and narrow; that seemed old even when
it was new. Now it was d redemption. The cassette machine was atop a
scarred bureau, half hiding the flaking oval mirror behind it. e other
side of the room one lone window fitted with . gaped out on an alleyway
too narrow for a man to in sideways. The blank brick rear end of another
building this so that it might have been midnight for all ' the that
could seep downward even in mid-aftemoon. bed, which dominated the room,
was one of those heavy airs, bolted to the floor so that it could not be
budged. read and top sheet were thrown back in a tangle of slips orls,
cascading down over the end on to the throw rug had, at some time long
passed, grown threadbare. It was ssible to tell what colour it had
originally been. e rattling of ancient plumbing cairie from the
half-open to the bathroom along the wall next to the window. There d to
be tiny movements in the comers where the lanipcould not reach. is,' she
breathed. lay naked on the bed, soaked in sweat. His long hair was d and
wet; he had a growth of beard and perhaps this was made his face seem so
terribly thinned out. That or the id harsh lamplight crawling across his
face like the advent eclipse. His eyes seemed enormous, almost
exophthalmic, layers of blue-black around the sockets as if he were made
r some macabre stage play. 487 The planes of his face were streaked
with dirt and dried sweat, and the skin of his body seemed so white he
might have been just unearthed. I ', Chris ...' Her heart breaking, she
climbed on to the bed, smelled before she saw the dried vomit that had '
the undersheet on the left side of the bed to plaster. She took his
slippery head in her lap, stroked the hair out of his eves.. For one
unbearably long, terrifying minute she thought he was so far gone that
he could not recognize her but it was only that he was having difficulty
focusing.
His muscles were corded. knotted as if from some long and titanic
struggle; there seerned to be not one ounce of fat on all his body, only
muscle and bone. His lips tried to' work but they were cracked, as rough
as leather. She got up and ran into the bathroom to get bii a glass of
water. Towels were strewn all over the place, damp and smelly, and along
the narrow glass shelf over the wom sink, its white porcelain green and
mottled brown from years of runnin. water, were lines of men's and
women's cosmetics, jumbled like a toy army in the confused aftermath of
war. There was one filthy glass resting precariously on the edge of the
sink, which she washed out and filled with cold water. She turned
around, heard a crunch under her boot sole. She kicked away a towel, saw
the syringe and the tom comer of a glassine bag. No one had to tell her
what the bag had contained, yet she bent down, put the bag into her
pocket. He had trouble drinking at first but there was no doubt that he
was monstrously dehydrated. Holding his sweating head, watching the
convulsive movements of his throat, she wondered how this could have
happened to him in such a short time. What was he doing here? Hidin' out
Dain. She could hear his words to her over the phone. I'm here incog ...
Incognito. But why? ' ...' She opened her eyes, not having realized that
she had closed them for any time. ''m here, Chris.' ' came." His voice
was a reedy whisper and it was difficult for him to speak even short
sentences. t his body tense, his eyes open wide and she let go just in
time. He arched up abruptly, sitting, turning 1-7. from her, and vomited
all the fluid out of him. For a t his entire frame was wracked by
convulsions then the seemed to subside and he was able to relax enough
she Could help him back down on to the bed. reached for the phone. ''m
going to call a doctor.' But er got as far as lifting the receiver from
its cradle. he said furrily. His fingers were around her wrist, still
rprising strength. ' o' that.' cone ill the band then.
Didn't Silka come with you?' n't,' he said, ' anyone.' is, what's
happened to you?' eyes looked at her dully. '.' took his shoulders,
fairly shook him. ', goddamnit, 1' She took out the glassine bag, held
it in front of his ' kind of shit is this?' turned his head away from
her. His bony chest heaved film of sweat was breaking out all over him
again. He led something. hat? What did you say?' She shouted so loudly
that he d in spite of himself. ow what it is,' he rasped. '.
Must be some bad shit.' muscles knotted and she thought he was going to
retch ' bad shit. Don't know. Never happened t'me His hands were fists,
white and straining, the nails ing into the flesh of his palms.
She thought she could see uttering of his heart beneath the pallid skin
of his chest. ta do somethin', man ...' His eyes crossed with the pain.
ythin's shuttin' down ...' hat are you -' e arched off the bed, his lips
pulled back from his clenched in a terrifying rictus. It was like
watching a skeleton e to hideous life. ' me. Beat me, Dain,' he managed
out. ' - you gotta.' collapsed then and immediately she put her ear to
his Nothing. Not a beat. rist!' she said and got up on the bed,
straddling him. 488 489 She lifted her right arm, closed her hand into
a fist, brought it down as hard as she could on the spot directly over
his failing heart. She counted five beats, did it again, grunting with
the effort. Wait. A third time. It was like hitting dead meat. She
leaned on him, listening. Nothing. ' on, damnit! Don't die on me now!'
She reared up, hit him again and again over his heart, the beat like a
great tympan in her ears. Sweat rolled off her, stinging her eyes,
dripping dolefully into his pale flesh. The bed creaked rhythmically,
violently just as if they were making love. ' on, come on, come on ...
Chris ... don't do it . come on, come on, come on I ..
.' Her voice defined itself as a litany: a plea to him but also a goad
to herself not to give up, not to stop until there was no hope left at
all. But as the seconds stretched out into minutes and those minutes
