The Boy Who Could Draw Tomorrow (13 page)

"Five more minutes at the most! We'll get a drink! Eat some hors d'oeuvres! Five lousy minutes, for crying out loud!"

The woman seated herself on the leather settee as the elevator lifted slowly toward the east-wing apartment on the eighth floor. It pleased the operator that the woman sat—because he remembered from this afternoon how overwhelming her height was at close quarters.

He faced forward as the floors glided by, thinking it was bad enough to have had one look at her, no reason to go out of your way to get a second. But she was quality, all right—you could see that. Class, definitely class. So what the hell was she doing with the new tenants in 8C? Nice enough folks, sure; but farmers. Not real city people, whatever kind of hotshot jobs they had. New money, and from the look of them, probably not much of it either.

When the doors wheezed open, the woman did not get to her feet at first. It was as if she had entirely forgotten the errand she'd come on.

"Ma'am?" the elevator operator said, not turning around.

"Oh, yes," the woman said, her nose puckering, as if now she had caught the scent of the vapors peculiar to this region.

She stood up—and when she did, the elevator operator leaned away from her, pressing himself tighter into the corner where his control panel was.

She stepped off the elevator, and the doors closed quickly behind her. She waited a moment, her head turning, and then she swiftly drew the pencil from her knob of gleaming hair. With the end that wore a little cap of rubber, she jabbed the ivory button situated under the nameplate that said
H.C. Cooper
—one sharp thrust, the length of yellow wood held exactly parallel to the floor. Next, she raised the pencil high over her shoulder, her eyes still fastened on the door, and then drove it as you would a spear back through the ball of hair, piercing the bun dead-center, like a poker spitting an overripe apple and striking it precisely through the core.

After a time she heard a small commotion behind the door. The door opened slightly and was instantly pushed closed; then she heard a child's voice, whispering.

"No, Granddad, you're supposed to look through the peephole first, to make sure it's not robbers or something."

She heard a man's voice, also hushed, an older man, a notably hill-country sound—West Virginia, perhaps Kentucky. No, West Virginia, surely.

"Hell, son, I
did,
and it ain't nobody but your teacher."

The woman smiled. The door opened wide.

***

A row of limousines stood waiting at the curb on Fifty-second Street, the drivers lounging against the first vehicle in line. To Peggy, they looked like a rescue team sent out to race her away from Hell. She held on to Hal's arm as if without his support she might stagger and fall and be left behind. But he pulled himself free of her to speak to one of the drivers, who listened studiously, then touched the bill of his cap, and spoke to the other men.

As the drivers went to their stations—some getting in behind the wheel, other flinging open doors to receive passengers—Hal turned to the knot of people that had begun collecting on the sidewalk, shouting and gesturing as he assigned them to their cars. When the sidewalk had cleared and some of the vehicles were already pulling away, he came to Peggy, put his hand on her back, and moved her toward the curb.

"They'll never miss us," he said, his voice strangely husky.

"What?" she said, not sure she'd heard him right.

She saw him look at her as if she was unimaginably stupid.

"You get in this one," he said, shifting his grip to her arm and urging her toward one of the two limos still standing at the curb.

"Aren't we riding together?"

"Pegs," he said, and his face showed his anger, "will you quit asking me these dumb questions?"

"But I don't understand," she said. "Aren't we all going to Regine's? I'm starved. And I've had enough of all this anyway." She fingered the cameo on her chest.

"They're
going to Regine's. Everybody in these two cars is going to Plato's Retreat. Now, will you come
on,
Pegs?"

Again he coaxed her toward the opened door.

"Where?"

"Will you get
in,
for God's sake? I'll explain later."

She was winding the gold chain around her finger, tightening the slack around her neck.

"Hal," she said, turning away from the opened door so that the people waiting wouldn't hear. "Honey, you can't send your bosses off like that and then disappear."

He yanked her by the arm and stuck his face up close to hers.

"Will you just shut up?" he said, his eyes so narrowed the freckles at their corners seemed to turn black. "It's where The Six want to go, and I don't have to give one good goddamn fuck what my bosses think. Now get the hell in, Pegs—I'm asking you to get the hell
in."

"No," she said. "Give me enough money for a cab and I'll go home."

"Like hell you will!"

He took her violently and half-lifted her from her feet. The green-haired man sitting nearest the door, an emaciated man no bigger than a boy, screeched as if he'd touched a millipede, and then, giggling hysterically, he shoved over to make room as Hal pushed her down onto the seat and slammed the door closed.

She heard him rap his knuckles on the roof and then call through the window to the driver.

"You know where to go!"

***

"Mr. Potter!" the woman exclaimed when the man with the patch over his eye stood facing her across the threshold. "How good to see you again! And Sam, still up at this hour? Good evening to you, young man. Is your mother home?"

"She's out," the boy said, craning back his head to see up to the ball of hair at the nape of her neck.

The woman flattened her fingers against her lips in a gesture of disappointment and dismay.

"And your father, is he out, too?"

The boy stepped back as if he'd seen what he wanted and lowered his eyes to look at the woman's hands.

"The kids have taken off for some kind of party," the man said. "Be home real late, I understand."

"Oh, yes," the woman said. "Of course. I remember. Peggy did say she was planning an evening out. Well, no matter, no matter—I've only come to retrieve my briefcase."

The woman stepped across the threshold and put her hand on the back of the door as if to help the man get it closed.

"I believe," she said as she turned around, "that I must have left it in
your
room, Samuel. Will you be a good boy and show me the way?"

"That's right," the boy said as he set out down the hallway with the woman just behind him, her shadow so wide in the light from the foyer that her shoulders seemed to brush the walls. "Mom found it, but you'd already gone. She said we'd bring it over in the morning."

The man shouted down the hallway after them. "If you need me, I'll be in the kitchen cleaning up! And hey, Sammy boy, you best scoot now! I promised your ma I'd have you in the sack no later than nine o'clock!"

"I'm walking as fast as I can!" the boy yelled back as he preceded the woman into his room.

"Ah,
there
it is!" the woman cried, swooping down and gathering the dark satchel to her chest all in one startling, powerful motion. She stood gazing at the boy, her lips smiling, her nose testing the texture of the air.

"We would've brought it," the boy said, because he felt some pressure to keep talking and he didn't know what else to say.

"Yes, of
course
," the woman confirmed, peering down at him from her great height. "I know I can always count on you and your mother to do what's required."

"Sure," the boy said uncertainly, not flinching from the force of her terrible eyes.

"Well then," the woman said, tightening her grasp on the briefcase, "I shall be off. Time you were snug in your bed." But she made no motion toward the door.

"It's okay," the boy said. He hiked up the trousers of his pyjamas. "Me and Val were playing Go Fish. I mean, me and Granddad," the boy said, his eyes still locked within the violence of the woman's paralyzing stare.

"Granddad and
I
," the woman corrected, nodding her head pleasantly.

There was a long silence while their eyes fought out some unseen struggle across the churning space between them.

"Well then," the woman said again, her smile never more glorious.

She started for the door—but then she turned abruptly as if recollecting some item of good manners that had been carelessly overlooked.

"Your mother's art closet—show it to me, please."

"Why?" the boy said, his tone making no secret of the challenge he intended.

The woman's eyes seemed to color with a molten yellow light, their frosted surfaces liquefying under fever of some sudden animal heat.

"Because I want you to draw me a picture," the woman said, her voice so mild and gentle she might have been bidding the boy good night.

The limo cut across midtown and then headed uptown along the Avenue of the Americas toward Central Park West with Peggy sitting next to the window and the skinny, green-haired boy jammed up so close to her that she could feel his hipbone stabbing into her buttock. As the car angled through Columbus Circle, the boy fell against her, tittered, and then flipped open the heart-shaped locket that hung from the platinum chain around his neck.

"A little lift, love?" he said, displaying the contents of the locket, a white powder flecked with tiny, clear crystals.

"No, thank you," Peggy said.

"No charge," the boy said, tittering again, almost tipping the contents of the locket as he conveyed it closer to her nose.

"I don't do it," Peggy said, turning her face away. "Thanks."

"Don't you, now?" the boy giggled. "You with one of the Manhattan Records blokes?"

"Cooper," Peggy said. "I'm Harold Cooper's wife."

"Ah, now," the boy said, his tone turning grave, "H.C.'s missus, are you?" He hunched forward and looked back up at her. "Already sporting the odd trinket, I see."

"What?" Peggy said.

"That bauble there," the boy said, flicking the cameo with a dirty fingernail. "It was me that give it to the lad."

"This?" Peggy said, feeling for the cameo.

"Cut into me kip about ten yards, it did," the boy said, giggling again.

"A thousand dollars?" Peggy said.

"Would you like to see the blood?" the boy said.

Peggy turned in her seat to get a better look at him.

"Why in the world would you give my husband such an expensive gift?"

"Him?" the boy looked astonished. "H.C.? You think I'm some bloody fool? That one there's going to be the bleeding toff, he is. H.C.? You want to stay on the good side of that one, you bloody do."

"Hal? What makes you think Hal Cooper's going to head Manhattan?"

Again the boy's voice turned grave.
"Manhattan?"
he said. And then he giggled hysterically. "The bloody lad's got it wired, missus—your bloke's got it wired the whole bleeding trip!"

"How?" Peggy said. "How has Hal got things wired?"

The boy slapped his thigh with furious force, giggling as if he'd just performed the world's funniest stunt.

"How?
How the bleeding hell should
I
know how! Perhaps the fellow signed a bit of a pact with the Devil!"

At this the boy fell into a fit of laughter, slapping his own thigh and then Peggy's, then with both hands beating a light rhythm on the seat between his knees.

"I'm the drummer, you know," he announced, his voice very solemn again.

Peggy opened her purse and checked her wallet—three subway tokens and eighty-six cents in change.

"Look," she said to the boy, "do you think you could give me about five dollars? My husband'll give it back to you when we get where we're going."

The boy kept whipping at the seat in a fast, syncopated rhythm.

"Not a filthy sou on me," he smiled. "It's all plastic, you know. H.C. keeping you down, is he, love?"

"Please,"
Peggy begged. "Don't you have anything at all?"

"You can have this," the boy said, interrupting his dramming to pull his watch from his wrist and drop it into her lap. "He'll fetch a sight more than
she
will," the boy said, using his dirty fingernail to tap the cameo again.

She faced forward while the boy went back to his thumping. The limo turned left at Seventy-third Street and slowed to a standstill behind a thicket of cars jammed farther up the block. The boy went on beating at the seat, muttering to himself, apparently oblivious to everything save the subject that concerned him now.

"My arse, The Six! Call it Instant This when I get bleeding Jakey out of me bloody face. Instant This, by Gulliver! There's a proper name. Or S-I-C-K-S, by Gulliver! Bloody bleeding right! None of this bleeding S-I-X fishcakes, not on your bloody life! Get into more ska, we will—the whole bleeding power-pop trip. Like the bleeding Specials and the Cars, by Gulliver.
'Naked man, naked woman, where did you get that nice suntan?'
Bloody right! Instant bloody This!"

The boy left off his drumming and touched Peggy's arm.