Kissing in Manhattan (9 page)

“Perhaps you’d like to sit down,” said the man.

“Well . . .” began James.

“Sit down,” said the man.

James sat. He looked at the man, and the man looked at James.

“Barby doesn’t send people. And people don’t just wander in.” The man tapped the table. “So who sent you?”

James stared back at the fire door. Through it he could see a square of normal light, a peek of the stairway. But for some reason he was not afraid to be where he was, in this strange room with this stranger. James liked happening upon odd corners of Manhattan. He liked this cellar the way he liked Flat Michael’s or the Cloisters or the Otis elevator in his apartment building. Plus the white-haired man beside him seemed calm but deeply sure of himself, like a Supreme Court justice.

“I don’t recall having been sent by anybody,” said James honestly. “I was just waiting to eat dinner. I was looking around.” James peered at a trunk full of diamonds. “I guess maybe I sent myself.”

“Good answer,” said the man. “Bravo.”

The fire crackled. The stools had no backs, yet the man opposite James sat with fine posture, his hands on his knees. James waited to see what would happen next. Apparently, he and this stranger were going to sit on these stools beside this furnace.

“Um. My name is James Branch.”

“Yes, I know. It’s a good name.”

“Thank you. Um. How do you know it?”

“Never mind about that.”

James waited to be offered the man’s name, but he wasn’t. He stole glances at the stranger’s white hair and strong jawline. His face had a hard dignity that James seemed to recognize, as if the man were a veteran film star whose picture James was used to.

“Have we met somewhere before?” asked James.

“Hmm,” said the man.

James rubbed his neck. He cast his eyes over the opulence around him, the trunks of gems. He wondered if the man had gathered this treasure to himself in some grand, death-defying manner. Or maybe, James thought, he just forged them out of thin air in his kiln.

“So the sign on your door,” said James. “John Castle’s Nomadic. What’s that supposed to mean?”

The man didn’t smile. “It means I get around.”

“Oh. Are you franchised?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

James decided to try a joke. “And are all your places in sex-shop basements?”

The stranger shrugged. “I am where I am.” He stood and clapped his hands, as if some preliminary negotiations had been settled. He beckoned James toward a chest of gems. “So, what can I interest you in tonight, Mr. Branch?”

James sighed. He’d been happy just sitting. “Well. Thanks, but I don’t know that I need any . . . you know, diamonds or whatnot.”

“You might soon. Perhaps you should have a look?”

“I don’t think I—”

“Have a look,” said the man sternly.

James obeyed. He didn’t know why, but he felt compelled to follow the older man’s lead. So he crossed to the chest and inspected its contents. This particular chest contained gems fashioned into jewelry. Lining the edges of the chest was a string of pearls long as a lasso. Coiled double around any woman’s neck, James decided, these pearls would still droop to her waist. Besides the necklace there were brooches of amethyst, moonstone finger rings, and baubles whose origin or application to the human frame James could not discern. One ankle bracelet was a thick gold chain loaded with chunks of topaz so large that the bracelet might have been a manacle, designed to restrain or delight a queen.

“You may touch them,” said the white-haired man.

Once again James obeyed. His fingertips descended, glided shyly over smooth, cool surfaces.

“That one is heliotrope,” said the man. “These are garnets.”

“But . . . I don’t have a girlfriend,” said James.

“This is onyx.”

James kept his fingers moving. The man in the tuxedo turned the chest toward the kiln, let more light spangle off the stones.

“Beryl,” he said, pointing to what James touched. “Cat’s-eye. Agate.”

James nodded. Quietly, almost without his noticing, his lips began repeating the names of the gems, as if he were sitting in Flat Michael’s, whispering for his dinner.

“Jasper,” prompted the man.

“Jasper,” said James.

“Hyacinth.”

“Hyacinth.”

After a while James became silent and just touched the stones, let their winking in the kiln light wash over him like a spell. He admired coral, turquoise, lapis lazuli. It suddenly seemed correct to James that men had slaved for centuries to mine these precious things from the earth and offer them to women. Whether a shopgirl wore chain-mail brassieres or a bride wore her diamond ring, it struck James as lavishly proper that women should flaunt the strong, sturdy stuff of the universe in a way that men couldn’t.

All at once a great sadness rose in James’s heart. He knew that he couldn’t afford the treasures spread before him, but what struck him now with a pang was the fact that even if he could gather a trove of rubies or sunstones, he had no one to give them to.

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” he said again. The revelation sounded half right, so he tried it once more.

“I don’t have a
woman,
” he affirmed.

“You might soon,” said the white-haired man.

James blinked. Lost in epiphany, he’d forgotten the man.

“What?” asked James.

The man in the tuxedo stood tall behind the chest. “Let’s imagine, James Branch, that a woman was coming into your life sometime soon. If you loved her and you could give her any one of the items in this chest as a gift, which would you choose?”

James bit his lip. He gazed around at the cellar, the furnace, the door.

“How do you know my name?” he asked, for the second time.

“Never mind about that. What one thing in this chest would you give the woman you loved?”

James studied the man’s face. He searched again for some clue as to how he knew this person. He also tried to find any malice in the stranger’s gaze, any sneer to his lip that would reveal whether he was toying with James, testing him merely for sport. But the man seemed earnest.

James lowered his eyes. He felt embarrassed. “I—I couldn’t afford a single thing you have.”

The stranger sighed patiently. “Say you could, though. What would you give her?”

James couldn’t help looking. The gems were lovely. All right, he told himself. All right, what the hell.

“Um,” he said. His eyes browsed the chest. Not the snake of pearls, he thought. Not the topaz anklet. James had seen such accoutrements in Madison Avenue bars, heaped on the necks and limbs of fashion models. He liked it more when a woman wore just one piece of jewelry, something simple and elegant.

“Maybe this,” he said, lifting a small silver bracelet. Strung along the bracelet were tiny jade dolphins.

The white-haired man took the bracelet from James, slipped it into a pocket. “Sorry. This one’s reserved for a different party. Choose another.”

“Um. Weren’t we only speaking hypothetically?”

“Choose another,” ordered the man.

James surveyed the gems. He considered an egg-sized ruby, a pyramid-shaped diamond. They were all too giant, too oppressively wonderful, to suit any woman that might date James. In one corner of the chest, though, stuck between two ripples of velvet, lay a pair of small earrings. The settings were plain gold, and the stones were a polished, muted white. James picked the earrings up.

“What are these?”

“Opals,” said the man.

James turned his palm toward the kiln. When firelight struck the opals, tiny prisms came to life inside them. James got a glimpse in his mind of a woman with warm skin and hair the color of honey. He pictured the opals against her skin.

“I’d give her these,” declared James.

The white-haired man nodded curtly. “Good answer. Bravo.”

James stared at the little white worlds in his hand. “They’re beautiful,” he said.

“They’re yours.”

James looked up. “What’s that?”

“You heard me. Keep them somewhere safe. You’ll know when to give them to her.”

James looked back and forth from the opals to the man. “You—you don’t understand. There is no her.”

Just once the man’s face softened. He smiled like a parent lifting a curfew.

“There will be soon,” he said.

For a moment James loved the conviction in the stranger’s voice. He thought of the women he worked with, of Barby, of the woman who’d just popped into his mind, the one with honey-colored hair. Then he shook his head.

“B-but,” he stammered, “you still d-don’t see. Even if I had somebody, I couldn’t really afford to buy—”

“This transaction is complete.” In a nimble move the stranger kicked shut the trunk of jewelry at his feet, knelt, and locked it. The opals still lay in James’s palm.

“But there hasn’t been any transacting,” complained James. “I haven’t paid you any money. I can’t. You haven’t even told me how much these are.”

The man sighed, his face stern again. “Money, money. Listen, James Branch. If I need something out of you, I’ll ask for it. In the meantime, go eat your Tilapia or Dingo or whatever it is you order up there. There ought to be a table coming free around now. Good-bye and good luck.” The stranger moved back toward the kiln, toward the hammer he’d left on the table.

“Hey. Sir?” James cleared his throat loudly. He glanced at the closed trunk on the floor. He still hadn’t closed his fingers around the opals.

“Um,” he said, “you’re very kind to offer me these, but I’m not entirely comfortable taking them without—”

The white-haired man turned on James. The hammer was back in his hand, and, suddenly, some acute, terrifying purpose flashed in his eyes, as if the work he was resuming was none of James’s business.

“W-whoa,” whispered James. His spine trembled. Without another word, and feeling like a thief, he turned and fled.

All the next day James pondered what had happened. He brought the opals to work with him, took them slyly from his pocket, gazed at them during lunch. But he showed them to nobody and told nobody about them. He suspected that the manner in which the opals had come to him and the man who’d delivered them were powerfully inscrutable. He’d heard a story once about a hiker on some mountain who’d been struck by lightning from the only cloud in an otherwise blue sky. The man survived, having felt only a momentary sizzle in his brain and his toes. James felt like that man. He worried that if he spoke of the opals or showed them around to just anybody, they might vaporize in his hand.

He did stare a bit more boldly that day, though, at the earlobes and haircuts of his female coworkers. He imagined the opals against each woman’s skin, asked himself if she could be the one.

The other slightly bold action he undertook that evening was to return to Barby’s Bondage. Something told him not to push his bravado by entering the basement, but he did approach Barby herself, as she was stocking dildos on the Fucktoys shelf.

“You again.” Barby was dressed like a civilian now, in blue jeans and a cotton sweater, though her teeth still professed her name.

“Hey,” said James.

Barby wore a sour look on her face. James wondered if her sale was going poorly.

“You sure blew out of here fast last night,” sniffed Barby.

“Yes. Um. Sorry about that. Listen. I have a question.” James drew a breath. He knew what she would answer. “Um, is there a jewelry store in the basement of your shop? You know, past the bathroom, behind the black fire door?”

Barby stood and faced James. She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. “What the hell are you talking about?”

James stood his ground. “Is there?”

“No, there’s no jewelry store downstairs. I tell you what is downstairs, though. My personal fucking space. Is that what you were doing last night, poking around in my rooms?”

“And you’ve never heard of a man named John Castle?”

“Who?” Barby crossed her arms on her chest.

James nodded. He didn’t have to check. He knew she was telling the truth.

“Hey. Mr. Questions. How about you buy some Bondage or hit the bricks?”

James took a step backward, pointed toward the street. “I’ll, um—I’ll hit the bricks.”

“Damn straight.”

James headed toward the door.

“Creep,” yelled Barby.

But James Branch was already grinning, moving into the street, fingering the opals safe in his pocket.

Rally McWilliams was profoundly lonely. She wanted to believe that she had a soul mate, a future spouse gestating somewhere in Nepal or the Australian Outback. But in Manhattan, where Rally lived, all she found were guys.

“Guys.” She sighed.

“Yeah,” said Kim. Her voice was dark. “Guys.”

Rally and Kim lived in a SoHo loft. They were both thirty-one. They worked and dated guys. Rally never knew the names of Kim’s guys. There was a Republican, an electrician, and a doctor that Kim called Dr. Charm. Rally, for her part, had slept with a guy named Paul for three years in her early twenties, until he moved to Idaho. Then came Sam, who was sensitive and kind, and who’d once eaten lime-green Jell-O out of the hollows of Rally’s collarbones. Rally had figured that was the start of something extraordinary, but when Sam finished his Jell-O, he only burped and went to sleep.

“My mom,” explained Kim, “says you can’t love a man till you learn to love yourself.”

Rally threw up her hands. “What does that mean? Learning to love yourself?”

Kim shrugged.

Rally was a travel writer. She wrote for
Five Kingdoms
magazine, and she was routinely sent to locales that she classified as exotic or lame. Exotic places that she’d covered included Capri and Dublin. A lame place was Moab, Utah, where Rally met nobody wonderful and almost got bitten by a snake.

“I have to meet at least one wonderful person,” Rally told Kim. “Otherwise, a place isn’t exotic.”

“Isn’t it hit or miss, though?” said Kim. “I mean, what if you’re only in a town for a weekend and all the wonderful locals are away?”

Rally had stunning honey-colored hair that tumbled to her waist and got her free drinks. When she and Kim talked at night, they sat together on their couch, and Kim, who was a salon stylist, fooled with Rally’s hair. Kim never left Manhattan.