Spanish brandy, the courtyard didn’t light up, the red rose didn’t turn to flame. Left alone, Willie sat at a window smeared and blurred with suntan oil, looking down at the abandoned rides, the rows of steel-shuttered sideshows. Thinking of Abel Bonder, and of Abel Bonder’s knives, the knives that should have been his. Till his Aunt Rosario came to fetch him, and Coney Island ended.
He’d hardly been back since. Just driven past on his way to Brighton Beach, hurtling through the war zones. But this night he parked, and burrowed into the few alleys that were still active. Murals of Madonna and Snoop Doggy Dogg were surrounded by boarded windows, the scrunch of broken glass underfoot, and the sign on the chained door of Stein’s Amazements read TWO-HEADED MAN CLOSED FOR RENOVATION .
Mr. Stein himself sat drinking peppermint schnapps in the bar next door, still dressed as Buffalo Bill except for the cavalry boots. His feet, grotesquely swollen, were now housed in bedroom slippers with the toes cut out, and stray drops of schnapps clung to the goatee, the waxed moustaches.
The view down the bar onto the Boardwalk was framed like an oversize TV screen. As Willie watched, an unending stream of musclemen in bodysuits drifted past, and old shuffling Jews with
yarmulkes
, and girls in their summer skins, Italian men in Bermuda shorts and socks, Russian women in tents, KateRoot in white tights and corsets, Ivana dyke-naked, duck hunters with green eyepatches.
Mr. Stein kept his shades turned towards the light, his mouth half-open in a leering blind man’s smile, but at the sound of money, twin twenties slapped on the bar behind him, he swivelled his head. “Who goes there?” he asked, startled, when Willie came close. One long tress of silver hair had worked lose from under his Stetson, dangled across his cheek like an unravelled vine. “Don’t hurt me,” cried Mr. Stein.
T he din, this unending bedlam, how was she supposed to function? Between the birds racketing in the Zoo, and
Little Brown Jug
booming overhead, Ferdousine’s feet numb-fumbling on the hardwood floor, and that moron in the street with his megaphone announcing the Last Days,
And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth
, how could she keep her mind on Billie and Bo?
Worse, the TV was on the blink. A 14-inch Zenith, black-and-white, she’d had it forever, and now it was letting her down. Every time that Billie raised her voice, she turned to snow. And she was raising her voice a lot. Which was only human; her whole future was on the line. Considering all she’d been through, the incest and the drug addiction and the porn films, not to mention getting arrested for Curtis’ murder, it was inspiring how far she’d come already. But were her troubles really done? Would Bo ever get over Hope? Or would there always be this shadow?
Finding him lounging in Hope’s bra and panties was not a good sign, you couldn’t pretend it was. “Hand the scumbag his hat,” Kate said, and that boy with the shiny red car walked in.
He came half-strutting, half-gliding, in soot-black, torero pants by Yohji Yamamoto and a shot-silk amethyst shirt, carryinga leather case that he set on the counter next to Pearl where she perched staring at the blizzard on the screen.
“I heard you know knives,” he said.
“Anna Crow,” said Kate. “I’ll slaughter that slut.”
Without the camouflage of his car, the boyfriend looked exactly that, a boy, a sneaking schoolboy. Wilfredo Diliberto, he said his name was, but she could call him Wilfred. His voice, which was soft, almost whispery, lagged a hint behind the beat. This gave it a slyness, a slither of insinuation, as if everything he said concealed a subtext and most of his words meant their opposites. “I never was around knives before, they always seemed so dangerous,” he said. “But maybe you could teach me.
He’d hardly been back since. Just driven past on his way to Brighton Beach, hurtling through the war zones. But this night he parked, and burrowed into the few alleys that were still active. Murals of Madonna and Snoop Doggy Dogg were surrounded by boarded windows, the scrunch of broken glass underfoot, and the sign on the chained door of Stein’s Amazements read TWO-HEADED MAN CLOSED FOR RENOVATION .
Mr. Stein himself sat drinking peppermint schnapps in the bar next door, still dressed as Buffalo Bill except for the cavalry boots. His feet, grotesquely swollen, were now housed in bedroom slippers with the toes cut out, and stray drops of schnapps clung to the goatee, the waxed moustaches.
The view down the bar onto the Boardwalk was framed like an oversize TV screen. As Willie watched, an unending stream of musclemen in bodysuits drifted past, and old shuffling Jews with
yarmulkes
, and girls in their summer skins, Italian men in Bermuda shorts and socks, Russian women in tents, KateRoot in white tights and corsets, Ivana dyke-naked, duck hunters with green eyepatches.
Mr. Stein kept his shades turned towards the light, his mouth half-open in a leering blind man’s smile, but at the sound of money, twin twenties slapped on the bar behind him, he swivelled his head. “Who goes there?” he asked, startled, when Willie came close. One long tress of silver hair had worked lose from under his Stetson, dangled across his cheek like an unravelled vine. “Don’t hurt me,” cried Mr. Stein.
T he din, this unending bedlam, how was she supposed to function? Between the birds racketing in the Zoo, and
Little Brown Jug
booming overhead, Ferdousine’s feet numb-fumbling on the hardwood floor, and that moron in the street with his megaphone announcing the Last Days,
And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels, Go your ways, and pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth
, how could she keep her mind on Billie and Bo?
Worse, the TV was on the blink. A 14-inch Zenith, black-and-white, she’d had it forever, and now it was letting her down. Every time that Billie raised her voice, she turned to snow. And she was raising her voice a lot. Which was only human; her whole future was on the line. Considering all she’d been through, the incest and the drug addiction and the porn films, not to mention getting arrested for Curtis’ murder, it was inspiring how far she’d come already. But were her troubles really done? Would Bo ever get over Hope? Or would there always be this shadow?
Finding him lounging in Hope’s bra and panties was not a good sign, you couldn’t pretend it was. “Hand the scumbag his hat,” Kate said, and that boy with the shiny red car walked in.
He came half-strutting, half-gliding, in soot-black, torero pants by Yohji Yamamoto and a shot-silk amethyst shirt, carryinga leather case that he set on the counter next to Pearl where she perched staring at the blizzard on the screen.
“I heard you know knives,” he said.
“Anna Crow,” said Kate. “I’ll slaughter that slut.”
Without the camouflage of his car, the boyfriend looked exactly that, a boy, a sneaking schoolboy. Wilfredo Diliberto, he said his name was, but she could call him Wilfred. His voice, which was soft, almost whispery, lagged a hint behind the beat. This gave it a slyness, a slither of insinuation, as if everything he said concealed a subtext and most of his words meant their opposites. “I never was around knives before, they always seemed so dangerous,” he said. “But maybe you could teach me.
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