Manhattan Is My Beat (17 page)

“How did you get off work?” Richard asked her.

It was Sunday and she’d told him that she’d been scheduled to work.

“Eddie covered for me. I called him last night. That’s a first for me—doing something responsible.”

He laughed. But there wasn’t a lot of humor in his voice.

Richard removed his hand and gripped the wheel. He turned southwest. The fields—flat, like huge brown lawns—were on either side of the highway. Beyond were marshes and factories and tall metal scaffolding and towers. Lots filled with trailers from semi trucks, all stacked up and stretching for hundreds of yards.

“It’s like a battlefield,” Rune said. “Like those things—what do you suppose they are, refineries or something?—are spaceships from Alpha Centauri.”

Richard looked in the rearview mirror. He didn’t say anything. He accelerated and passed a chunky garbage truck. Rune pulled an imaginary air horn and the driver gave her two blasts on his real one.

“Tell me about yourself,” she said. “I don’t know all the details.”

He shrugged. “Not much to tell.”

Ugh. Did he have to be such a
man?

She tried a cheerful “Tell me anyway!”

“Okay.” He grew slightly animated; the hipster from the other night had partially returned. “He was born in Scarsdale, the son of pleasant suburban parents, and raised to become a doctor, lawyer, or other member of the elite destined to grind down the working class. He had an uneventful boyhood, distinguished by chess club, Latin club, and a complete inability to do any kind of sport. Rock and roll saved his ass, though, and he grew to maturity in the Mudd Club and Studio 54.”

“Cool! I loved them!”

“Then, for some unknown reason, Fordham decided to give him a degree in philosophy after four years of driving the good fathers there to distraction with his contrarian
ways. After that he took the opportunity to see the world.”

Rune said, “So you
did
go to Paris. I’ve always wanted to see it. Rick and Ilsa …
Casablanca
. And that hunchback guy in the big church. I felt so sorry for him. I—”

“Didn’t exactly get to France,” Richard admitted. Then slipped back into his third-person narrative. “What he did was get as far as England and found out that working your way around the world was a lot different from
vacationing
around the world. Being a punch press operator in London—if you can get to be a punch press operator at all—isn’t any better than being one in Trenton, New Jersey. So, the young adventurer came back to New York to be a chic unemployed philosopher, going to clubs, playing with getting his M.A. and Ph.D., going to clubs, picking up blondes without names and brunettes with pseudonyms, going to clubs, working day jobs, getting tired of clubs, waiting to reach a moment of intersubjectivity with a woman. Working away.”

“On his novel.”

“Right. On his novel.”

So far he seemed to be pretty much on her wavelength—despite the car and the moods. She was into fairy stories and he was into philosophy. Which
seemed
different but, when she thought about it, Rune decided they were both really the same—two fields that could stimulate your mind and that were totally useless in the real world.

Somebody like Richard—maybe him, maybe not— but somebody like him was the only sort of person she could be truly in love with, Rune believed.

“I know what’s the matter,” she said.

“Why do you think something’s the matter?”

“I just do.”

“Well,” he said, “what? Tell me.”

“Remember that story I told you?”

“Which one? You’ve told me a lot of stories.”

“About Diarmuid? I feel like we’re a fairy king and queen who’ve left the Side—you know, the magic land.” She turned around. Gasped. “Oh, you’ve got to look at it! Turn around, Richard,
look
!”

“I’m driving.”

“Don’t worry—I’ll describe it. There’re a hundred towers and battlements and they’re all made out of silver. The sun is falling on the spires. Glowing and stealing all that energy from the sun—how much energy do you think the sun has? Well, it’s all going right into the Magic Kingdom through the tops of the battlements …” She had a sudden feeling of dread, as if she’d caught his mood. A premonition or something. After a moment she said, “I don’t know, I don’t think I should be doing this. I shouldn’t’ve crossed the moat, shouldn’t’ve left the Side. I feel funny. I almost feel like we shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Leaving the Side,” he repeated absently. “Maybe that’s it.” And looked in the rearview mirror again.

He might have meant it, might have been sarcastic. She couldn’t tell.

Rune turned around, hooked her seat belt again. Then they swept around a long curve in the expressway and the country arrived. Hills, forests, fields. A panoramic view west. She was about to point out a large cloud, shaped like a perfect white chalice, a towering Holy Grail, but Rune decided she’d better keep quiet. The car accelerated and they drove the rest of the way to Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, in silence.

“He hasn’t had a visitor for a month,” the nurse was saying to Rune.

They stood on a grassy hill beside the administration
building of the nursing home. Richard was in the cafeteria. He’d brought a book with him.

“That’s too bad. I know it’s good for the guests,” the nurse continued. “People coming to see them.”

“How is he?”

“Some days he’s almost normal, some days he’s not so good. Today, he’s in fair shape.”

“Who was the visitor last month?” Rune asked.

She said, “An Irish name, I think. An older gentleman.”

“Kelly, maybe?”

“Could have been. Yes, I think so.”

Rune’s heart beat a bit faster.

Had he come to ask about a million dollars? she wondered.

Rune held up a rose in a clear cellophane tube. “I brought this. Is it okay if I give it to him?”

“He’ll probably forget you gave it to him right away. But, yes, of course you can. I’ll go get him. You wait here.”

“They don’t come to see me much. Last time was, let me see, let me see, let me see … No, they don’t come. We have this party on Sundays, I think it is. And what they do is, it’s real nice, what they do is put, when the weather’s nice, put a tablecloth on the picnic benches, and we eat eggs and olives and Ritz crackers.” He asked Rune, “It’s almost fall now, isn’t it?”

The nurse said, in a voice aimed at a three-year-old, “You know it’s spring, Mr. Elliott.”

Rune looked at the old man’s face and arms. It seemed like he’d lost weight recently and the gray flesh hung on his arms and neck like thick cloth. She handed him the flower. He looked at it curiously, then set it on his lap. He asked, “You’re …”

“Rune.”

He smiled in a way that was so sincere it almost hurt. He said, “I know. Of course I know your name.” To the nurse: “Where’s Bips? Where’d that dog get to?”

Rune started to look around but the nurse shook her head and Rune understood that Bips had been in puppy heaven for years.

“He’s just playing, Mr. Elliott,” the nurse said. “He’ll be back soon. He’s safe, don’t you worry.” They were on a small rise of grass underneath a huge oak tree. The nurse set the brakes on his wheelchair and walked away, saying, “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

Rune nodded.

Raoul Elliott reached up and took her hand. His was soft and very dry. He squeezed it once, then again. Then released it like a boy testing the waters with a girl at a dance. He said, “Bips. You couldn’t believe what they do to him, these boys and girls. They poke at him with sticks if he gets too close to the fence. You’d think they’d be brought up better than that. What day is it?”

“Sunday,” Rune answered.

“I know that. I mean the date.”

“June fifteenth.”

“I know that.” Elliott nodded. He fixed a gaze on an elderly couple strolling down the path.

The grounds were trimmed and clean. Couples, elderly and mostly of the same sex, walked slowly up the paved paths. There were no stairs, curbs, steps, low plants; nothing to trip up old feet.

“I saw one of your movies, Mr. Elliott.”

Flies buzzed in, then shot away on the warm breeze. Big thick white clouds sent their sharp-edged shadows across the grass. Elliott said, “My movies.”

“I thought it was wonderful.
Manhattan Is My Beat
.”

His eyes crinkled with recognition. “I worked on that with … Ah, this memory of mine. Sometimes I think
I’m going loony. There were a couple of the boys…. Who were they? We’d have a ball. I ever tell you about Randy? No? Well, Randy was my age. A year or two older maybe. We were all from New York. Some’d been newspapermen, some were writing for the
Atlantic
or editing for Scribner’s or Condé Nast. But we were all from New York. Oh, it was a different town in those days, a very different town. The studio liked that, they liked men from New York. Like Frank O’Hara. We were friends, Frank and I. We used to go to this bar near Rockefeller Center. It was called … Well, there were a lot we went to. In Hollywood too. We’d hang out in Hollywood.”

“You worked on a newspaper?”

“Sure I did.”

“Which one?”

There was a pause and his eyes darted. “Well, there were the usual ones, you know. It’s all changed.”

“Mr. Elliott, do you remember writing
Manhattan Is My Beat
?”

“Sure I do. That was a few years ago. Charlie gave it a good review. Frank said he liked it. He was a good boy. Henry too. They were all good boys. We said we didn’t like reviews. We said, what we said was reviewers were so low, you shouldn’t even ignore them.” He laughed at that. Then his face grew somber. “But we did care, oh, yes, ma’am. But your father can tell you that. Where is he, is he around here?” The old head with its wave of dry hair swiveled.

“My father?”

“Isn’t Bobby Kelly your father?”

Rune saw no point in breaking the news about Mr. Kelly’s death to the old man. She said, “No. He’s a friend.”

“Well, where is he? He was just here.”

“He stepped away for a few minutes.”

“Where’s Bips?”

“He’s off playing.”

“I worry about the traffic with him. He gets too excited when there’s cars about. And these boys. They poke sticks at him. Girls too.” He was aware of the flower again and touched it. “Did I thank you for this?”

She said, “You bet you did.” Rune sat down on the grass beside the wheelchair, cross-legged. “Mr. Elliott, did you do your own research for the movie? For
Manhattan Is My Beat?
“

“Research? We had people do our research. The studio paid for it. Pretty girls. Pretty like you.”

“And they researched the story that the movie was based on? The cop who stole the money from Union Bank?”

“They aren’t there anymore, I’ll bet you. They went on to Time-Life a lot of them. Or
Newsweek
. The studio paid better but it was a wild sort of life some of them didn’t want. Is Hal doing okay now? And how’s Dana? Handsome man he was.”

“Fine, they’re both fine. Did you find out anything about the cop who stole the money? The cop in real life, I mean?”

“Sure I did.”

“What?”

Elliott was looking at his wrist, where his watch probably should have been. “I’ve lost it again. Do you know when we’ll be leaving? It’ll be good to get home again. Between you and I, I mean, between you and
me
, I don’t like to travel. I can’t say anything to them though. You understand. Do you know when we’re leaving?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Elliott. I sure don’t … So what did you find out about the cop who stole the money?”

“Cop?”

“In
Manhattan Is My Beat?
“

“I wrote the story. I tried to write a good story.
There’s nothing like that, you know. Isn’t that the best thing in the world? A good story.”

“It was a wonderful story, Mr. Elliott.” She got up on her knees. “I especially liked the part where Roy hid the money. He was digging like a madman, remember? In the movie it was hidden in a cemetery. In real life did you ever have any idea where the cop who stole the money hid it?”

“The money?” He looked at her for a second with eyes that seemed to click with understanding. “All that money.”