The Rescuer (5 page)

The men sat at the table, drinking. But they drank red wine as if it were beer, or a soft drink. Leander’s wild dreadlocks tumbled down his narrow muscled back and the Maori tattoo on his face glared whitely against his purplish-dark skin. Tin, flat-faced, small-eyed, vaguely Asian, was so solid-fleshed, the chair he sat in creaked and wobbled. Leander teased, “You fat-ass! Watch you’self you gon break these people’s nice chair.” It was part of Leander’s humor, the chair in which Tin was sitting was secondhand and the vinyl seat soiled and certainly not
nice.

Tin muttered what sounded like
Fuck you
. His flat face darkened with blood.

Harvey seemed dazed by our visitors, whose presence transformed the bleak setting. Leander was swaggering and charismatic as a rap star, Maralena gorgeous as the singer whose name I didn’t know how to pronounce—
Beyoncé
. Even Tin, homely, strangely self-effacing, with a small mouth like a vise, exerted a curious sort of attraction. Beside these
so physical
individuals Harvey and I felt to ourselves like white-skinned wraiths.

And there was Maralena carrying plates of steaming-hot food to the table, slyly nudging her thigh against Harvey’s arm.

Maralena wore gold lamé pants so tight they might have been poured molten onto her shapely buttocks, belly and legs. And, on her shapely torso, a black jersey tank top. When she’d arrived at the door she’d been wearing a
faux-
fox jacket over these clothes and on her head her shoulder-length cornrowed hair quivered like slithery little snakes.

Though I was nervous in the presence of our unexpected guests it was exciting to me to be feeding them. And my brother Harvey, who was my entire family now. Again I felt the happiness of bringing pleasure to others in an immediate and observable way.

Leander, Tin, and Maralena ate hungrily. At the ShopRite I’d bought a loaf of French bread which they broke into large pieces, shoved into the spaghetti sauce, and devoured.

“Real good, Lyd’ja!”

“Re-al good, girl.”

Maralena seemed just slightly surprised, my cooking was so tasty.

They ate, and they drank. In a daze of happiness Harvey filled their tumblers with red wine. Flat-faced Tin never spoke but only grunted, moving his jaws like a masticating insect.

After dinner, Maralena helped me clear away the plates, rinse and wash them by hand. “You a true sister to you’ brother, Lyd’ja. L’nd’r be takin note of that.”

What Maralena meant, I had no idea. Her exotic eyes were fixed on me, I found it difficult to breathe.

And Maralena’s special fragrance, that wafted from her hair and from the dip of her black jersey tank top revealing a shadowy crevice between her breasts.

“Thing is, girl, you’ brother in some deep shit-hole with L’nd’r. Feedin him some nice meal like this is a good thing. L’nd’r got
heart,
no matter what his enemies say of him he be
stone cold killer.
”

Maralena had spoken just loudly enough so that Leander could overhear this remark if he wished. He’d been leaning back in his chair and now let the legs slam against the floor, hard. “Shut you’ mouth, ’Lena, or somebody shut it for you. You read me?”

Maralena giggled, shivering. To me she said, “That boy just talkin. He ain’t gon touch any blood-kin of his, he know what that bring on his head.”

Leander sneered, “You sure of that, girl?”

Boldly Maralena said, “Dint I just say I
was
?”

Now the table was cleared, Leander suggested that they play poker—just him, Tin, and Harvey.

Leander flourished a pack of cards. Showily shuffling them like a professional player.

I saw that Harvey wanted to say
yes
. But that Harvey knew he should say
no.

Harvey tugged at his mutilated ear, which was slow to heal and often itched.

“You, Tin? You in, eh?”

Tin nodded impassively.

“Har-vey, my man?”

Harvey moved his head, numbly. A foolish smile transforming Harvey’s stubbled face.

Maralena said to me, “They be practicin for ’Lantic City, where they gon get their asses kicked at poker.” She giggled, running her fingers through her cousin’s greased plaits in a way that seemed daring to me, provocative. Leander slapped at her hand. Maralena laughed and stepped away from Leander who was glaring at her, not smiling. Just slightly shaken—(I think this was so)—Maralena slid her arm around my waist, tight. “My girlfriend Lyd’ja and me gon hang out in Lyd’ja’s room listenin to some mad cool music. You boys be nice to you’ host now, you hear me?”

Maralena walked me out of the living room and in the direction of the bedroom. It seemed strange to me, Maralena seemed to know her way around my brother’s apartment. Behind us I heard Harvey’s slow voice: “What kind of—stakes? Are we playing for money? The problem is, Leander—I don’t have much cash right on hand, which you might know.”

“Shit man, sure I know. This be some friendly way Tin an me, we gon give you the opportunity to win big, climb up out of you’ deep hole. See?”

Maralena led me forcibly away. Though it didn’t feel
forcible
since I didn’t try to resist.

* * *

Next day, Harvey lay comatose in his bed until noon.

He’d lost—oh Christ!—money to the boys.

How much, I asked.

Too much, Harvey said.

How much, please tell me.

Harvey flung his arm over his face, shivering and shuddering. He seemed about to speak further to me but then I heard his shallow erratic breathing, indicating that he’d fallen back to sleep.

All that I knew was that the three men had been playing poker and drinking and (just possibly) smoking hashish after Maralena had gone home at midnight and I’d lain on my bed partially undressed, and fell asleep to voices laughing and cursing in the other room.

It is family life almost.

They would not hurt family—would they?

* * *

The situation seemed grave to me. Soon, Leander would come by to collect.

More than a finger-stub. More than a part of an ear.

There was thirteen hundred dollars in my bank account. I would write a check for half this amount, to give to Harvey—if Harvey would promise me he wouldn’t spend it on something else but give it to Leander.

“Of course,” Harvey said eagerly.

“But—you promise? You will give it to Leander?”

Harvey insisted, yes.

I didn’t trust Harvey. But I didn’t think that I had any choice in the matter.

* * *

In my bedroom, which was also my study, we’d listened to music from Maralena’s iPhone. Heated dance music it sounded to me, a Latin beat, rap from the islands Maralena said, the DR where she’d been born and from which she’d been brought—by her mother—at the age of five. Much of what Maralena confided in me I didn’t understand, mesmerized by her rich warm musical voice and by her rich warm fragrant skin, the Maralena eyes, the Maralena nose, the Maralena mouth tasting of wine kissing me, lifting her wineglass to my mouth, urging me to drink, red wine that was nutty-sweet, a dark-nutty-sweetness that numbed the interior of my mouth and the interior of my skull as Maralena kissed my forehead, my nose, my mouth and Maralena kissed the ticklish inside of my neck so that I squirmed breathless and helpless and I was lying on the sofa that Harvey and I had dragged into the room which served now as my bed, badly stained and sagging sofa of a kind you’d see abandoned behind a Dumpster, but over this I’d draped a blanket so you couldn’t see the stains and wear and tear of decades and Maralena was sharp-voiced suddenly wanting to keep me from falling asleep, shaking my shoulders and her talon fingernails sinking into my skin—“You, girl! Lyd-ja! Wake up!”—her voice urgent, alarmed; so that I thought
She has fed me something. Some drug
but the thought was a frail straw not nearly substantial enough to jolt me into wakefulness.

And there came, later, maybe only a few minutes later, or in the middle of the night, which is not a true “night” in Trenton but a glowering-dark riddled with light like wormholes, and punctuated with sharp percussive noises like the
snap!
of the soul as it breaks from the writhing body, the boy with the Maori mask-face, the boy with the headdress of greased and pungent-smelling dreadlocks tumbling down his muscled back, and Maralena pushed at him, and he pushed at Maralena,
Noooo
she was pleading, or maybe she was laughing-pleading, for you don’t say
Noooo
to Leander, not a serious
Noooo
and there came a creaking of the sofa springs, and Leander’s rough fingers scrambling down my body like a ravenous rat, and between my legs these fingers were poking, between my helpless legs these hard probing fingers defined themselves grabbing, pinching, squeezing, poking-into; and feebly I tried to detach myself, muttering in my sleep in an extinct language I tried to protest, and Leander grunted swinging his legs onto the sofa, prying my legs apart, and Maralena was faint now at the door or already outside the door calling back over her shoulder
Damn ol’ swine, that girl too white for you—you break her li’l white neck asshole you gon regret it.

In the morning my neck ached—my spine, the small of my back, the insides of my thighs, between my legs which was chafed and ravaged as with the incisors of a devouring rat—but my neck was not broken and my memory dim and retreating and therefore consoling.
You can’t remember, whatever did or did not happen is on the far side of a chasm of memory which you cannot cross.
Soon then seeking out Harvey whose shallow breathing and pallid skin worried me, at first glimpse my brother appeared to be scarcely alive as if flung across his rumpled bed where his poker-friends had left him and I’d managed to wake him out of that stuporous suffocating sleep and he’d cursed me wanting badly to remain in that sleep and lamenting oh Christ!—first memory that came to him, he’d lost more money; and I asked, How much, how much money did you lose to them and he said, Too much. And then he said, Don’t ask, you don’t want to know.

Chapter Seven

H
e’d become shorter. Losing height. In the crook of his arm was a deep gash, slowly healing. He claimed it was from the IV line the ER nurses had put into his arm, that had become infected.

On a battered calendar of Harvey’s I saw a pattern of red
x
’s. Less frequently, blue
x
’s.

I asked him what the red
x
’s meant and Harvey shrugged. None of my concern.

I asked him what the blue
x
’s meant and Harvey said, Rehab.

But the blue
x
’s were only scattered through a month. The red
x
’s were several times a week.

Getting high?—red had to mean an Up Mood.

Blue?—the Down Mood.

I told Harvey, please let me drive you to the rehab clinic. You must have a schedule of treatment there, you can’t afford to miss.

(Was Harvey trying to cure himself of his drug addiction? Or had Harvey some other, medical condition, for which he was being treated? I’d gathered from careless remarks he’d made that he had infusions at the clinic—his white blood count was “low” and he was anemic.)

I knew to urge my brother to drink water. Several glasses of water a day.

“There’s a danger of dehydration. You don’t eat, drink, sleep, take care of yourself properly.”

“ ‘De-hy-dra-tion.’ ”

Harvey contemplated the word as if tasting it on his tongue. But the taste didn’t interest him.

“Harvey, you could die.”

“ ‘Harvey, you could die.’ ” Harvey considered this phrase, dubiously. “It doesn’t scan. It doesn’t fly. Though the vowels exude a kind of dull-anxious concern. A kind of
mock concern
. Not that this fictitious ‘Harvey’ will die but merely
could die
. Which is a fact for all who live—
could die
.”

Harvey seemed to be paying only a peripheral attention to me, absently caressing his mutilated ear that flamed when so touched.

“ ‘How scale walls of Hades’—this came to me last night. In the night. Note the short ‘a’ sound. Vowels are a sort of string upon which words are strung. I think so. I think this is my discovery, but it may perish with me.” Harvey laughed, scratching the flaming ear.

It was late morning. I saw that Harvey would not speak to me in any serious way. Another day lost to us. Unless I worked on the Eweian translation in which, in fact, I had lost faith. Yet working diligently and even obsessively
without faith
did not seem to me a terrible fate, when the alternative was yet more terrible.

In the apartment there were strange languidly wafting odors.

Each day, new odors emerged of faint decay, rot. I’d thought it was the ancient refrigerator but even after I’d cleaned and scrubbed the interior, the smells remained. When I was gone from the apartment, to work in the little library for instance, and returned, the odors were always slightly different, as if the air had been agitated in my absence. Especially if I was away for some time. The apartment might show signs of visitors—rearranged chairs, boxes of books shoved from one place to another. And Harvey sprawled on a small sofa in the living room, notebook on his knee like one who has made a refuge for himself in the midst of great chaos: earthquake, flood.

At Harvey’s nose, a perpetual glisten of moisture.

He is a junkie. You know of course. A junkie has no shame.

In a bemused voice Harvey said, as if thinking aloud: “Montaigne discovered at the age of thirty-eight that death is light and airy—he’d been thrown from his horse, trampled. He experienced no ‘other world’—no God, no Savior. He’d been Catholic of course—everyone was Catholic at that time and in that place, in sixteenth-century France. Montaigne saw that life is the long haul. Dying is the easy way.”

“And how did Montaigne know this?” I asked, exasperated. “Had he died, and returned to write about the experience?”

“He almost died. It was
near
-death. His ‘soul’ slipped from his body, according to his account. For some time, he floated outside his broken body.”

“We all do,” I said. “It’s called dreaming.”

* * *

“Lyd’ja! You gon drive us to ’Lantic City, yes?”

Somehow it was—
yes.

Couldn’t say
no
to Maralena. Basking in Maralena’s hectic warmth and when Maralena spoke of Lyd’ja as
my girlfriend
I felt such happiness, no poetry could begin to express.

With Maralena was her
girlfriend
Salaman. And another
girlfriend
Mercedes.

It was upsetting to me, when Maralena came to our apartment with her cousin Leander. Made me sick with jealousy when Maralena joked with flat-faced Tin.

And sometimes, I had reason to think that Maralena and girlfriends of hers came into the apartment with other men, individuals whose faces were becoming almost familiar to me, though I had no idea of their names or who they were—shadowy figures at the periphery of my brother’s life. It wasn’t clear to me whether Harvey was being exploited by these individuals or whether in some mysterious way Harvey was exploiting them.

Those nights when Harvey hastily shoved me into the back room—“For your own safety, Lydia.”

Somehow it happened, I was to drive Maralena, Salaman, and Mercedes to Atlantic City. Leaving in the early afternoon from Trenton and returning that night late.

Maralena, Salaman, Mercedes—these were dazzling young women with faces of the kind you see on billboards beckoning you to the casinos of Atlantic City.

I felt privileged to be driving them. To be their white-skinned
girlfriend
.

Harvey smiled a pinched smile. Harvey might’ve been jealous.

Saying, meanly, “They will bleed you dry, little sister. Be forewarned.”

I didn’t think so. Maralena was my
girlfriend
.

Hadn’t Maralena given me her cell phone number with the admonition to call her
any time day, night
if I needed help.

Let myself be cajoled into driving Maralena and her friends to Atlantic City and to “lending” them money—most of what remained of what I’d withdrawn from my University account.

Of the Atlantic City casino-hotels—among them Trump Taj Mahal, Bally’s, Harrah’s, Tropicana, Borgata—it was the
faux
-luxurious Borgata my friends preferred; Showboat and Rio they scorned as “low-roller” casinos—“For old folks, that come in buses. And some in wheelchairs, in buses.”

We started off at the slots. Here was low-stakes gambling, a kind of bargain-basement gambling that carried with it nonetheless a certain amount of drama and suspense. At least for those who expected they might win.

Pulling a lever to start into motion cartoon-fruit symbols spinning past my face seemed to me a gesture of such extreme futility, there was a childish abandon to it. Or maybe it was just the nearness of Maralena, Salaman, Mercedes who were dressed like giant tropical birds in tight-fitting sparkly clothes, high heels, dark-lace stockings. Maralena had silver piercings in her ears and left eyebrow; Salaman had dark-red-streaked hair and piercings in her face and elsewhere, she hinted, inside her clothes; Mercedes, the youngest of the three, had both piercings and tattoos, visible and hidden, and the loudest shrieking parrot-laugh. Mercedes teetered in gold-gleaming high-heeled boots to the knee; she had to show her I.D. to get into the casino, a fake I.D. (so I gathered) but the bored security guard, charmed by the girls, didn’t investigate closely.

Within minutes at the slots I’d lost thirty-six dollars’ worth of tokens. Hardly a surprise!

I imagined Professor A. regarding me with stern disgusted eyes.

Lydia?—is that your name?

When someone won at slots—(which was fairly frequent, when the win wasn’t a
big win
)—the machine lighted up giddily and music erupted in mock-hysterical celebration as, like a sudden spasm of vomiting, tokens flooded out of the mouth of the machine to be caught by the lucky winner in a cardboard container.

The idea was to arouse envious attention on the floor. To attract others to play the slots, imagining that they might
win big
.

My festive companions moved from machine to machine trying their luck. No skill was involved—just brainless luck. Of the three, Salaman actually came out eighteen dollars ahead.

“Girl, you gon
win big
tonight. This be a good prem’ition!”

On the drive from Trenton Maralena and her friends had spoken excitedly of a blackjack dealer whom they knew from Trenton, and it was this Jorge whom the girls sought amid the blackjack players. But no one seemed to have heard of Jorge— “Maybe he not workin tonight, that’d be shitty but you got to figure the man have to take some time off, yes?”—so Maralena reasoned. Much of the time Maralena was in the habit of addressing her girlfriends with her back to me, as if she’d forgotten my presence. Their exchanges were high-pitched and bird-like and barely audible to me like exclamations in a foreign language amid the noise of the casino.

Why was I here! Why, with these glamorous young women whose toffee-colored skin glowed in the casino’s delirious lights, drawing strangers’ eyes irresistibly—why
me?

Harvey had smiled pityingly at me when I’d left the apartment in my sole dress-up clothes—black nylon stretch-band slacks, cherry-colored velour top, black ballerina slippers. While I was driving on the Garden State Parkway to Atlantic City Maralena had tried playfully to “tease out” my hair with a comb, a pick, and hair spray, but the result was more of fright than of glamour.

“She real pretty,” the girls said of me, to one another, as if I were not present, or couldn’t be expected to understand their speech—“only the girl got
smile
more, show she
hot.
”

If Professor A. could see me now, with my
girlfriends
in Atlantic City ! I felt a deep flush of shame and incredulity at the thought.

(Professor A. had recently sent me an e-mail, which I had not yet opened, still less answered. The director of the Newcomb Fellowship program had sent me several e-mails, which I had not yet opened. And there was some difficulty with the bank in the University town in which my stipend was supposed to be deposited . . . All of these matters hovered in the distance like casino lights glittering and winking in the stark New Jersey night. Shut your eyes, such lights disappear.)

Gorgeous Maralena, Salaman, Mercedes were part of a small hectic crowd around a blackjack table. Was this a “hot” table? Were players winning here? The dealer wasn’t Jorge it seemed but his dark-gleaming eyes slid onto Maralena, Salaman, Mercedes with a certain zestful recognition. He was a light-skinned Hispanic with a thin mustache, tight stylish clothes and a look of sly bemusement. A robot programmed for blackjack, the mechanical motions of a card game of stunning and lethal simplicity. His hands shuffled cards, his hands doled out cards, his hands swept up and retrieved cards and in the interstices of such motions your fate was determined: win, lose.

The girls were so fervent, so hopeful. Of course, they’d been drinking. Their drinks were festive and tropical as their clothing and hair. Not for their white-skinned
girlfriend
Lyd’ja to warn them
The house always wins. That is the point of casino gambling.

They’d have liked me less, if I spoiled their excitement with such warnings. Maralena would not swoop upon such a dour boring person and wetly kiss the corner of her mouth.

Within minutes, however, the girls had lost money at blackjack. Precious five-dollar tokens, swept away by the Hispanic dealer with the thin mustache. There had been the expectation—(maybe I’d felt this too)—at least, the childish hope—that being exceptionally pretty “sexy” girls with an obvious if unacknowledged rapport with the blackjack dealer, that they would have a better chance of winning than more ordinary players of whom most were middle-aged white men with raddled jowls.

There had to be some special reward in Atlantic City, if not elsewhere, for looking like Maralena, Salaman, Mercedes.

“You play with us, Lyd’ja! C’mon, girl! We got to get back what we lost, can’t go home broke!”—so they plucked at my sleeves.

“I don’t think so,” I said faltering, “blackjack isn’t my—game,” but they laughed at me, not altogether pleasantly I thought but as you’d laugh at an exasperating relative slowing you down by dragging a paralyzed leg, or a blundering blind relative—“We gon pay you back, Lyd-ja—long before we headin home. But you got to
help
.”

So I stood with them at the blackjack table. I was a hesitant player, destined to lose. At least at the slot machine my failure had been less conspicuous. Blackjack was an exhibitionist’s game—you had to expect to win, or your instinct was to stand mute, and withdraw your tokens. To lose a bet
publicly
—this was hard.

But we lost. And we lost again.

“Fuck!”—Maralena’s voice was not so musical now but New Jersey nasal and flat.

When we drifted from the blackjack table at which we’d lost the blackjack dealer didn’t so much as glance after us. Two rowdily inebriated couples pushed in eager to take our places.

Abruptly then we left the classy Borgata, which my companions bad-mouthed as a
stuck-up shitty place.
They’d bypassed craps, roulette, baccarat—these games intimidated them. Even blackjack took too much thinking. My companions thought of gambling as an opportunity to
win.

The remainder of the Friday evening we spent at Trump Taj Mahal on the Boardwalk. Here, amid a sleazier sort of glamour, the girls seemed to feel more comfortable. The crowd was younger, less well dressed, with less money to spend; louder, brasher, more conspicuous drinkers. Despite its prime location on the Boardwalk, the Trump Taj Mahal was visibly run-down. (The famous Boardwalk itself was run-down, too. Homeless men were camping on benches and in doorways trying to shield themselves from the chill wind off the Atlantic Ocean; some of them looking so still, stiff and cold, wound in filthy blankets like mummies, Mercedes was moved to giggle nervously—
Them ain’t corpses are they?
) But inside the garishly lit casino roaming men were attracted to the girls, bought them drinks and “bankrolled” them so that they could continue gambling.