Year of the Dragon Page 14

  “We’ve met before,” she said.

  “Yes, we have,” agreed Powers, taking her hand. He shook it briefly and let go. “How have you been? Nice to see you again.”

  Feeling Lurtsema glance quickly from one of them to the other, he said to him, “Is that a bar I see over there?”

  “Indeed it is,” said the anchorman. “What would you like?”

  Powers was wearing a dark business suit much like theirs, and took what they seemed to be drinking, whiskey over ice. Man the chameleon, he reflected, ever eager to blend in. The only man you trust is one who looks like you.

  He had arrived prepared to pose as an expert on Chinatown. He was resolved to project an image as sober as any TV commentator. But he soon perceived that the various Chinatown atrocities, the murders, the relentless extortions, interested these people very little. Lurtsema’s whiskey interested them, and beyond that, since they were important men, they wished to seem interested only in problems of world moment. Were the Red Chinese moving in? How strong was the Taiwan influence?

  He was disappointed to see how eagerly they awaited his answers. Then he realized that TV was not interested in human suffering - on either side of the cameras, apparently - but rather in entertainment, and so he decided instead to entertain them if he could - the alternative being to bore them. There was a funny side to Chinatown, too, if you could keep your sense of humor. He had certainly found much to laugh about there. He would give them that, and he began by describing some of the scams by which illegal aliens entered the United States.

  “One travel agent in Hong Kong advertises worldwide tours to Mexico.” They were amused, and he continued. “Coolies come in on passports that identify them as bank presidents.”

  They were all laughing.

  “Japanese passports work quite well. Japanese businessmen are above suspicion. Some Chinese guy in Hong Kong, as I understand it, owns about fifty Japanese passports. He rents them out. About fifty Chinamen at a time land in San Francisco, show their Japanese passports to immigration, walk right out onto the street. The owner is waiting at the taxi line. He collects his fifty Japanese passports and goes back to Hong Kong and rents them out again. That’s how he makes his living. He’s in the passport rental business.”

  An hour later Powers stood outside on the curb with Carol Cone. It was night and the cars were going by.” You were good up there,” she said. “You were charming. I was proud of you.”

  Proud of him? “Thanks for the flowers, by the way,” he told her.

  “Oh, did you get them?”

  “I meant to call to thank you. But I’ve been so busy.”

  “Well,” she said, after a moment, “I’ve got to be getting home.”

  She began trying to flag down a taxi, but they went by full.

  Powers could not decide whether he wanted to walk away from her or not, and so stalled. “Do you commute by train, or what?”

  “Yes. From Grand Central.” She looked at him.

  Again there was silence and he still couldn’t decide what he wanted to do.

  “And you?” she asked. “Do you have to get home to your wife?”

  All right, she had inserted a key into the door for him. But he would have to turn it himself. Maybe she had. One never got old enough to be sure. One hated to risk rejection, which was as unpleasant now as it had ever been.

  “My wife’s working tonight.”

  “Oh, a career girl, eh?”

  “Not exactly,” he said, thinking: not like you. “Look,” he said, “we could have dinner.”

  She nodded. “Where?”

  He did not want to be seen with her by network people. Or by some cop. “How about the place you mentioned in your town? I have my car. You get a free ride home out of the deal.”

  They were smiling at each other. “Agreed,” said Carol Cone.

  The restaurant was candlelit. To read the menu Powers had to get out his half-glasses. This bothered him, and he did not know why. She knows I’m not twenty-five, he thought. But he felt better when they were folded and back in his pocket.

  The waiter took their order and left. “I’m sorry about the night you came to my house,” said Carol conversationally. “I must have given you the impression that all I wanted was a fuck.”

  More and more women used that word now, Powers knew. But from a woman’s lips it still made him flinch. Any woman’s lips.

  “I can get that any night of the week, no problem,” said Carol conversationally. “If that’s what I want. In this town? Are you kidding? Any woman can. You and I didn’t even know each other. That’s all it would have been, just a quick fuck. I’ve never been much interested in that.”

  Her face was lit by tottering flames, and she seemed to him almost as exotic as the Chinese. Her worlds were show business and big money, worlds he did not understand. If she also spoke a dialect different from his own, that was only to be expected.

  “It wasn’t what I wanted at all,” Carol said.

  “Well, I wish it had been.”

  “Why, for heaven’s sake?”

  “Because I was terrifically attracted to you, for one thing. And because I felt there was something between us.”

  “You would have been disappointed.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said firmly. A strange sort of compliment to give her, he thought.

  She smiled back. Compliment received, and noted.

  This was all so different from the time when he used to date girls. Then one complimented a date on her hairdo, not on how she might comport herself in bed. He was out of his depth. What was he doing here? Where did he think this would lead him? Was he fascinated by Carol, or by himself? He felt like a driver whose tires had caught in tram tracks. Instead of steering free at once he was letting the tracks carry him along, knowing they might sling him out at any time. It was dangerous. He might crash. It was also terrifically exciting.

  During dinner, she brought forth her life for his inspection, course by course, like dishes out of the kitchen - he could sample any one he fancied. Catholic girls’ grade school. Catholic girls’ high school. Catholic girls’ college. Three similar casseroles, all faintly steaming. She had dined on them for years. He was intrigued. “I never went to school with boys in my life,” she said. “I thought I wanted to be a nun. I knew nothing about boys until I married one. What are you grinning about?”

  “I went to Catholic boys’ schools. I never sat a day in class with girls. I wanted to be a priest.”

  She thought about it. “Maybe you did become a priest. A cop is a kind of priest isn’t he? Cops believe in absolutes, just like priests. Good and Evil. The law. Cops decide what’s sinful and what’s not, just like priests. And they can lay on hands like a bishop. They can change a person’s condition just by saying so: You’re under arrest.”

  Powers, who had realized the parallel long ago, was amazed that she had perceived so much. He was very pleased with her.

  “I got married right away,” she said.

  “I got married right away too.”

  “But yours is a good marriage. Or so I gather.”

  “Yes. It’s the best marriage I know anything about. I never had a doubt that I wanted to do it, and I’ve never had a doubt since.”

  “You’re very lucky. Most marriages are not that wonderful. Mine wasn’t. I got pregnant the first night. I found that I didn’t like sex that much, and I didn’t like him that much.” She stared at the tablecloth.

  “Were you a virgin on your wedding night?”

  “Sure. Weren’t you?”

  When Powers did not immediately answer, she said, “Weren’t we all?”

  “Well, I was a virgin until pretty late in our courtship,” he conceded.

  “You mean the two of you were - naughty?”

  It made him smile. “Yes.”

  “I think that’s very nice. Was she a virgin too?”

  “She said she was. It took us about two weeks of poking around to make it, so I think
she probably was.”

  Virginity in a young man of twenty-three had been shameful even then, and he felt his cheeks go hot, as if the candle flame on the table between them was too close to his face. To this day no one knew his shame except his wife, and he wondered what had made him confess it to this woman, whom he barely knew. And why had he put such information into her hands. It was information that, by its nature, she could have got nowhere else - information she could hurt him with if ever she wished to testify against him. He knew better than to do this. Every cop knew better. Information was a cop’s first best weapon. One wielded it like a nightstick. One punished people with it. One clubbed them into submission. One put them in jail. Information to a cop was as valuable as money. It was the currency of the country every cop lived in. Like the trading beads of the Dutch settlers it might have little value in itself, but if you hoarded it for the best time and place, you could often use it to purchase astounding things.

  In any case, you did not squander it. You did not give it away for no reason, as now.

  “When I walked out on my marriage I only took two things with me, my baby and a steam iron. I never took a dime from him. I came to New York to start over. It was so hard, so hard.”

  She had worked as a model. She went to photography sessions carrying her baby with her in a bassinette. Since it was a different studio every day, no one complained too much. When the baby was old enough to go to school she had found work in television commercials. But she didn’t want to be a shill, she wanted to be a newscaster, and so had started over still again. She had struggled and fought and put in the hours and had got where she was today.

  Moved, he slid his palm across the rough-textured tablecloth until the side of his hand touched the side of hers.

  “I don’t regret my kid. I never have a minute. You’ve got to meet her. She’s a great kid.”

  He felt admiration for her courage and compassion for her suffering - emotions akin to love - and he hooked his small finger inside hers, interlocking like a golf grip.

  “It’s nice to hold hands,” she said.” Yes.”

  Holding hands was like twisting electric wires together. With the connection made current could flow. Powers could feel it flowing now, or thought he could. He thought Carol could feel it too.

  “What’s your wife like?”

  “She looks much like you.”

  “Is she dark?”

  “She has blue eyes like you. Her hair is streaked blond like yours.”

  “And you’re crazy about her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Most men at a time like this would tell me their wife was a bitch. Thank you for being honest with me.”

  “Carol-”

  “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

  What was he to say to this? Was she being theatrical? Was she so lonely that it was perhaps true? Was she experiencing the equivalent of a teenage crush, and was she so unstable a woman that she would indulge herself, and call it love? His reaction was intellectual rather than physical because he was too old to accept such declarations at face value. He felt none of the hot and cold flashes, no headlong rush of emotion as in the past. Love he knew to be as unruly as a mob, as unpredictable as a riot. Love to his regret, he knew too much about. It was very expensive. It raised a lot of questions.

  He didn’t know her well enough to answer any of them but when he looked at her across the candle flame her eyes appeared to be moist, her lips were parted, she seemed to totally vulnerable, and he was perplexed.

  Their bill was presented and paid. While they waited for change neither spoke. The change would change nothing.

  It came, “What do you want to do now?” asked Carol with false brightness.

  If the principal intimacy of lovers was their display to each other of naked pleasure, the next greatest intimacy was a display of naked pain, for pleasure and pain are so closely related it is sometimes impossible to tell them apart. Carol had shown him her pain, holding back almost nothing. The intimacy between them at this moment was certainly very great. It was almost as if they were lovers already.

  He pocketed his money. If she wanted to play the role of teenager, then so did he, for it would be amusing. It also seemed safer than any other. “Let’s go out to the car and neck,” he suggested.

  “Yes, let’s.” Smirking at each other like adolescents planning deviltry, they pushed back from the table.

  His car was the last one left in the parking lot. They slid in on either side and kept sliding until their arms were around each other. Their knees knocked together, and then their teeth. Powers was unused to kissing in cars. So was she, he supposed. But it brought back nice memories. He had always enjoyed kissing girls, and he enjoyed it now. The next move, as he remembered, was to begin stroking her sweater, and then to get her skirt hiked up, but under present circumstances these notions were repugnant.

  The chaste kiss ended, and Powers did not know what to do next, so he started another.

  “Let’s drive to Ardsley and look at the moonlight on the Hudson,” said Carol. “I know a terrific place.”

  So he drove there, steering at her direction into a small park and nosing his car up to the low fence that overlooked the view. The moon was a little past full. Below them, wearing the lights of the great bridge like a necklace at its throat, flowed the dark river. It was a mile wide here, wider than most people’s worlds, wider than ten Chinatowns. On its moon-dappled surface millions of silver dollars floated downstream.

  It was a sight to stir blood that was already stirring.

  “See,” said Carol.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “You’re beautiful.”

  He embraced her, but this kiss was doomed to be interrupted, for a police cruiser was rolling silently into the park behind them. Without warning the cop turned his floodlight on. The beam landed hard as a blow. It struck Powers in the back of the head, glanced off and turned Carol’s face ashen. It turned white everything it touched, dashboard, steering wheel, seat. It bled out all color instantly, and all intimacy, security, emotion.

  In candlepower it matched an explosion, and was therefore as shocking. But it made no noise and so the shock did not last.

  Powers and Carol turned blinking toward the light’s source, and the cop, seeing he had surprised two adult taxpayers, hurriedly shut it off.

  “He’s now as shaken as we were,” noted Powers. “He thought we’d be eighteen years old. Now he’s worried. For all he knows I’m the mayor of this town, and you’re my secretary. He may be in bad trouble.” Powers began to laugh. “Shall I get out and reprimand him?”

  Carol was laughing too.

  “This park is closed after dark,” boomed the loudspeaker on the cop’s roof. He was certainly not coming over. He did not want to know who they were.

  Powers started the engine. As he drove out of the park, he gave the cop a wave. The cop merely looked sullen; he gave no wave back.

  “Did you ever sneak up on lovers in cars when you were a young cop?” asked Carol, snuggling against his arm as he drove.

  “No. I had too much respect for lovers to do that.”

  “Are we going to be lovers?”

  He looked at her, but did not reply.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I’m driving you home,” he said, which did not answer her question. The answer to her question was that he did not know.

  When he had rolled into her driveway, had doused lights and ignition, he kissed her again. Her big house loomed over them both, one of two looming presences he was trying to cope with. His marriage was the other.

  He followed her into the house and up the dark staircase. In her bedroom they undressed separately. Beside her bed he found himself behaving exactly as if beside his own; not having undressed his wife in many years, why undress this other woman now? He didn’t even look at her as she took her clothes off, though he did watch her a moment later when, naked in the moon
light that came in the windows, she threw back the covers. Then he was in bed with her, making love to her, and then she was weeping. It astonished him more than anything so far. She had screamed with pleasure - louder by far than Eleanor ever had - and a moment later she was sobbing just as loudly.

  Jesus, he thought.

  All he said was: “You’re crying.”

  “Because I’m so happy,” she sobbed.

  Not knowing what to do or say, he stroked her arm, her shoulder, her face until she was quiet.

  “You’re beautiful, you know that?” she told him. The tears had stopped. “I love your neck. I love the way the hair is on your chest. And you’re a very good lover.”

  He lay beside her. “How many lovers have you had?” The eternal male question. He was ashamed to have asked it, and he saw she did not intend to give a figure anyway. “Hey, I withdraw that. It makes no difference, and it’s none of my business.”

  There were many mysteries to women, but this was one of the central ones, the one most of them would preserve at all costs.

  “Not many,” she said, moving across him. “And no one like you.”

  She lay on him, kissing him, and he found he wanted her again already. She kissed his eyes, his nose. “I’m crazy about you,” she said, beginning to move. “And you’re married, and you love your wife. What am I going to do?” Sweat glistened on her upper lip, and between her swaying breasts. She punctuated her efforts with more words. “Oh, I’m so hung up on you.”

  “Not just figuratively,” he muttered. “Literally as well.” Her breath came in gasps.

  “Promise you won’t just drop me. Promise I’ll see you again. These next weeks are going to be agony for me. Promise you’ll call me every day. At least until I get over you a little. At least give me a chance to get over you. If you have to drop me, promise you’ll let me down easy.”

  He felt as virile as a boy.

  “I love you,” she said. “I love, love you, love you.”

  He was exultant. It was true he loved his wife, but he loved Carol too, somehow, at least at that moment. Because she loved him, and because-

  “Promise me,” she pleaded. “Promise, promise.” She was handing him a bill that would have to be paid regularly, a bill as recurrent as mortgage payments. But she was gorgeous in this light and totally open to him, body and soul, and his heart was near bursting that a night like this, a honeymoon night, could have happened to him again at his age.