Wherever There Is Light (18 page)

“
Io sono
—I a Mr. Ciccolini. You come.”

The ground-floor apartment was walled off from a carpeted staircase, and on the second-floor landing, Mr. Ciccolini unlocked a door and switched on a frosted glass chandelier. It was one enormous, high-ceilinged room with a knotty pine floor, pastel-blue walls with brass-and-crystal sconces, and a marbled mantelpiece around the fireplace. As Mr. Ciccolini showed her the kitchenette, the bathroom, and, pointing through the row of tall windows, the garden in back, Kendall prepared herself to hear that she was expected to be his maid or to fuck him once a week. But all Mr. Ciccolini said was “My a grandson here for college. Now he go to the Albany Law School, and I got nobody. My wife, she gone, and I like a somebody up here again.
L'appartamento
, it is very nice,
sì
?”

“Very nice,” Kendall said.

When Julian arrived, the Minetta Tavern was noisy with the laughter of the customers at the gleaming oak bar. He slipped the maître d' ten bucks, then followed him across the sawdust floor to a table against the wall where he could watch for Kendall and the Brighams. Before the waiter had a chance to take a drink order, Kendall entered alone. As always, Julian was struck by her beauty, and so were some of the men at the bar, who admired Kendall as the maître d' brought her to the table. She smiled as Julian stood, helped her off with her coat, and held the chair for her.

The waiter came. “A vodka martini, please,” Kendall said. “Straight up with olives.”

Julian ordered the same—his usual drink. Kendall generally preferred wine. “A martini? That mean a good day or a bad day?”

“Good, but the Brighams couldn't make it.”

“Too bad.”

Kendall laughed. “Because you won't get to see their chain?”

“Guilty as charged.”

Kendall spread her napkin on her lap. “I rented an apartment.” She studied his face for any change in expression.

“Congratulations.”

“You're not mad at me?”

“I'll miss you, but that was the plan, right?”

Kendall, the irritation plain in her voice, said, “I asked if you were mad.”

“You wanna have a fight? To make it easier for you to go?”

Kendall relished that Julian knew these things—another reason she loved him—and yet, for no reason she could name, it frightened her.

Julian said, “If people don't get what they want, they're unhappy, and so are the people who love them. I don't want to be unhappy. Tell me about the place.”

“The rent's just fifty dollars a month; I could've afforded more. It has lots of light, a fireplace, a backyard, and it's around the corner from here. We can go see it after we eat.”

The waiter brought the martinis. They clinked glasses and drank.

“You want to hear one of the best things about the apartment?” Kendall asked, her hand going into her satchel hanging from the chair.

“I do.”

Kendall plunked something down on the table and, drawing back her hand, said, “It comes with two keys.”

K
endall's move from South Orange to Greenwich Village was less traumatic than either she or Julian had anticipated. Kendall was pleased to be there, and Julian spent a couple of nights a week and every weekend with her. And the move itself had its lighter moments. Julian offered to buy Kendall some furniture, but no, this was a solo project. She trolled the secondhand stores, digging up a dresser, an oak refectory table, a brass bed, two mismatched Morris chairs, and a cherrywood drop-front desk that had been left at the curb for the junk wagon. Kendall granted Julian and Eddie the privilege of toting her finds around the apartment, and on the third try with a pinkish-white damask sofa, an oak-winged Victorian that seemed as heavy as a battleship, Julian said to Kendall, “I thought you wanted to do this by yourself?”

She laughed, explaining that carrying furniture was man's work, and when Julian started to object, Fiona said, “Do your job. It's almost dinnertime, and I made reservations.”

Julian finally circumvented the no-gift edict one afternoon as they wandered over to Warren Street. Kendall was gazing longingly in the windows of Haber & Fink's, a camera shop, and Julian said, “That second pantry off your kitchen, with the sink in it. Wouldn't that be good for a darkroom?”

“That doesn't mean you're supposed to buy—”

“Your birthday's on Tuesday.”

“For your birthday I only bought you—”

“A diaphragm.”

“That was for me.”

Julian grinned. “It was?”

Kendall gave him a playful nudge. “I don't deserve so many presents.”

“Don't you know how happy you make me?”

“But I don't do anything.”

They settled on Julian's buying her an enlarger, while Kendall bought herself a safelight, developing tank, hard rubber trays, enamel jugs of chemicals, and other accessories. Kendall sometimes shot and developed photographs but mainly she concentrated on her painting. With a black-and-gold Chinese screen, Kendall divided a portion of her walk-up into a studio. Her goal was to capture the quirky Greenwich Village she adored, and Kendall labored at it sixty hours a week. Julian loved to watch her work. He couldn't draw a squiggle and marveled at people who could, especially if, like Kendall, they could produce an oil painting as detailed as a photograph.

On the weeknights that he slept over, Kendall cooked, and on weekends Julian took her out. They rarely ventured above Fourteenth Street, not simply because the classier nightclubs and restaurants in midtown were as segregated as a Klan rally, but because New Yorkers tended to stick to their neighborhoods. Kendall and Julian were regulars at the Minetta Tavern and Peter's Backyard over on West Tenth, the juiciest steak downtown. For a taste of Paris, they crossed Washington Square Park and ordered coq au vin in the basement café of the Brevoort Hotel, alive with debate, gossip, and well-fortified denizens reading the latest headlines—mostly about the war in Europe—from the news ticker.

What they loved most was listening to music and dancing at Café Society. Billie Holiday, Hazel Scott, and Josh White sang there, and Julian's favorite, Big Joe Turner, who with that rockslide laugh of his could make a bad day a whole lot better. The owner, Barney Josephson, was a Jewish guy from Jersey, and Barney described his joint as “the right place for the wrong people.” And most of New York City agreed, because in Barney's smoky, rambunctious dungeon on Sheridan Square, white and colored made music together, drank together, and danced together, and if that twisted your knickers in a knot, tough shit.

Just how tough it could get became apparent on that Saturday night when Otis, up on semester break, joined Julian, Kendall, Eddie, and Fiona. Big Joe's piano player had a cough and a half, and Eddie assured Big Joe that Otis would spin his head sideways. Otis got behind the piano and broke out a boogie-woogie, and Big Joe shouted and moaned about this shy little gal who worked Big Joe till he was dry as July cotton.

Otis got a big hand, and he returned to the table as Barney was seating a young white couple. The man, with a shocked glance at Otis and Kendall sitting with Julian, Eddie, and Fiona, said, “We'll sit somewhere else.” A white woman at the next table, ancient enough to recall when the redcoats occupied the Village, rose with the help of her cane and said, “Go fuck yourself,” and before the young man could react, she brought her cane down on his head, and Barney had a bouncer hustle the couple out the door, while everyone else in the place gave the lady a standing ovation.

Julian was surprised by how much he liked Greenwich Village. The curl of Minetta Street and the sun striking the Japanese maple in Kendall's backyard. Relaxing in a Morris chair in her apartment and reading before a fire in the cozy gloom of a rainy afternoon. Holding Kendall's hand and walking the curious twists and turns of the old streets. Seeing the beauty of the brownstones and townhouses with their wrought-iron railings, and the grand churches, hidden alleyways and courtyards. Reveling in the quiet during their early-morning strolls through Washington Square Park, with the white marble arch and the sculptures of George Washington reflected in the glassy surface of the fountain.

On one of these mornings, Kendall stopped and turned to Julian, resting her hands on his shoulders. “I feel like I dreamt this. Being here with you.”

“That's the nicest thing anyone ever said to me,” he replied, and they stood under an elm, alone in the park, streaked with the scarlet and gold of sunrise.

Julian only had one complaint about New York: Kendall insisting that he accompany her to Chumley's, a former speakeasy that was now a watering hole for the arty crowd, including Brig and Christina, who lived down the block. Julian didn't object to picking up the tab for everyone in his orbit, or mind that Brig droned on about his lofty stature among modern painters, or that he felt lost in the chatter about unfamiliar novels, poems, and paintings, or even that some people recognized him from the newspapers or his days as a regular in the city's speakeasies.

Actually, that aspect could be amusing: most of those who approached him were young women, and they stood close enough to him at the bar to catch Kendall's attention. Once, while Julian was at the tail end of his fourth martini, a curvy redhead in a sheer white peasant dress pressed one of her legs against him and said that she admired gangsters because they were the high priests of the unconventional. Yeah, Julian replied, mobsters were real artists, especially when it came to rubbing out the competition, and Kendall, observing the scene and overhearing his remark, glared at him before returning to her conversation with Christina.

Her friendship with Christina was why Kendall dragged him to Chumley's. Julian didn't care much for her or her egomaniacal husband. He wondered if he was being childish, resenting that Christina and Kendall whispered to each other like schoolgirls. But it rankled him that frequently, after an evening with Christina, Kendall would embark on a Let's Improve Julian campaign, beginning with his encouragement of boozy hussies and ending with his indifference to discussing the latest trends in art.

“You could talk to some of the men next time,” she said.

“But I got to listen to them. How else am I gonna find out how important everybody is?”

“Be serious.”

“Fine. I'll read
The Communist Manifesto
so I'll know what to say.”

Kendall went southern on him: “Keep on joshing, boy, I like to snatch the taste out your mouth.”

“Hey, I gotta read my Marx to understand why I should always pick up the check.”

Despite the kidding around, Julian sensed that Christina hated him, as if he were out to destroy Kendall, but it wasn't until Christmas Eve that he ever had to deal with her hatred.

That evening, there was a party at Chumley's, though neither Julian nor Kendall was in a festive mood. Tomorrow they were flying to Florida, where Julian would bunk with his parents for a night, then go to Miami Beach to check up on his hotel, and Kendall would spend a week with Garland.

Chumley's was covered from wall to wall with rackety aesthetes. Fruitcakes shaped like Santa and his reindeer were arrayed on the bar, along with punch bowls of eggnog. To stay awake, Julian drank coffee dosed with Frangelico, and at one point there was a break in the boredom: Christmas caroling. Julian got to hear Kendall go solo on “Silent Night,” and her voice was so stirring that he forgot he was at Chumley's until afterward, when he was standing with Kendall, and Christina sidled over.

She put her arm around Kendall. “We're going to Saint Paul's on Broadway to hear midnight Mass. You'll come with us, won't you?”

Kendall turned to Julian. “We have an early flight, but maybe we could go?”

With an impatient edge to her voice, Christina said to Julian, “Is it okay?”

“Doesn't matter to me. I'm Jewish.”