Page 8 of Playworld

At this, Glenda winced. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hurt, but we do ask youmaintain at least a hundred-dollar balance. Otherwise you have to pay a penalty.”

“Four thousand, then,” my father said. He smiled wearily. “Keep the change.”

Salvatore had demanded Shel pay him a kickback to get the insurance money, and really, my father thought, what recourse did he have? Without it he’d be wiped out, ruined. He’d agreed to meet the agent at the edge of Chinatown, on Canal and Bowery, the district’s easternmost corner, to make the exchange. It was a madhouse. Aproned street vendors stood before their carts, loudly negotiating with customers. In the restaurants’ windows hung rows of glazed piglets and ducks, their hooked bodies shiny and brown. From barrels, the fishmongers tonged chains of blue crabs into paper bags. Here, pedestrian traffic changed, its density fivefold that of midtown. All the micro-allowances to right-of-way were outright ignored, the lack of concessions to flow creating crowded eddies so slow-moving Shel was forced to sometimes walk turned sideways or, at the worst bottlenecks, stand completely still. Salvatore had said he’d be in his car, that he would park in front of the Citizens Savings Bank, and this seemed appropriate to my father, for in the shadow of its limestone dome it was as if a robbery were about to take place—because what else was this bribe he was about to pay?—the insurance agent playing both thief and getaway driver. And then there was his car:

It was a black Lincoln Continental Mark III, not so different in design from the model Anthony Quinn had driven in Europe. Its hood was similarly long and formidable, its front-to-rear fenders tall and pronounced. Seeing it, my father was suddenly seized by a memory: he and Lily were driving behind Quinn in a van. It had struggled to climb hills, but loaded with the movie star’s painting supplies and knee-jerk rug and furniture purchases, my father wondered if it had the horsepower to make any major ascents. Would he and Lily simply roll backward? They had trailed Quinn all over Italy and France in this vehicle: from Naples to Rome to Perugia to Venice; from Milan to Biarritz and back; from Genoa along the Ligurian coast to Imperia. But now, most harrowingly, on their journey’s final northward push through the Alps to Paris, they drove along the mountainous Col de Turini, its hairpins so sharp it was like a carnival ride, Quinn’s Lincoln disappeared behind walls of rockrising into their path, only to reappear far ahead, almost out of view, as if he were flaunting its handling and speed.I am not this man’s voice coach,my father realized.I am his Sherpa.He imagined this trip would end with them losing their brakes on one of the dangerous descents and rocketing through the guardrail to plunge into the valley, dying on this fool’s errand called their honeymoon.

“What took you?” Salvatore said when Shel got in the car. The insurance agent was eating noodles from a take-out carton, exhibiting impressive facility with his chopsticks. When my father didn’t answer, Salvatore tilted the box top toward him. “Want some?” he asked. “It’s lo mein.”

My father shook his head. Out the windshield, Shel could see the Manhattan Bridge’s triumphal arch and colonnade. From where they were parked, its span wasn’t visible, nor Brooklyn’s low-slung buildings: just sky. In New York, a rare view. Like a gate to nowhere. The structure was reminiscent, in its pillared horseshoe design, of Saint Peter’s; and overwhelmed by memory yet again, Shel recalled Quinn and his mistress, Jolanda, standing beneath the Sistine Chapel’s pietà, the priest pouring holy water over their bastard child, Francesco. Lily, who stood next to Shel, had leaned toward him to whisper, “This is the most profane, ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen.”

Salvatore put down the carton. “We gonna do this?” he said.

From his breast pocket, my father removed the bank envelope. Salvatore produced the check and held it in the air between his fingers. It was a larger slip than most, as if its additional surface area were necessary to accommodate such a figure, the amount typed in capitals:Ten Thousand Dollars and Zero Cents.

“I don’t understand,” my father said.

“What?”

“The math.”

“You lost me.”

“Ofthis,” Shel continued. “This transaction.”

Salvatore smiled. “You wearing a mic or something?”

“I give you four thousand so that you’ll give me ten—”

“Okay,” Salvatore said, “if this is how you’re gonna play it—”

“You give me ten thousand, but it’s really onlysix.”

“Out,” said the agent, reaching across to pull the door’s latch.

“If it’s only six,” Dad said, and knocked his arm away, “why not make it that to start?”

“Don’t fucking touch me.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” my father said.

“Get out of my car!”

“It doesn’t make sense!”

The two men grabbed each other’s coat collars, but the stiff-armed fashion in which they clasped made it appear closer to a pose, the pair deadlocked, like those crabs my father had seen in the barrel. Still the parting finally did come, albeit suddenly and more violently than Shel was prepared, for he was ejected from the car, tumbling backward while Salvatore peeled off in a great screech. The check was wadded in my father’s palm, the slip crumpled but intact, and his money gone. For the briefest moment, it seemed the people around him paused, giving him space and time to stand and dust himself off; and then their hectic rush and crush resumed. Salvatore merged into the traffic’s stream and disappeared, over the bridge, into the thin blue air.

—

Mom had found us a place uptown, on Eighty-Eighth and West End, the new apartment so much larger than its predecessor that Oren and I no longer needed to share a room. It was in a building that would prove so expensive we’d be forced to move back to Lincoln Towers within a couple of years—a different sort of trauma altogether. What I recall then, however, was the excitement, the sense of hope. We were meagerly packed and ready to move from Al and Neal’s by the following Sunday. But when my father appeared at their door, I somehow knew he’d come for mealone.I ran, terrified, into the room Neal used for storage, the one where Oren and I slept, and hid beneath a bed. My father dragged me by my wrist from its safety. I vividly remember backpedaling with all the strength I had, grabbing a doorknob, a sculpture, a table’s leg—I was as willing to pull my arm from its socket as a lizard is to detach from its pinned tail. But it was no use. My father gathered me into his arms and carried me down the length of the hallway to our decimated apartment. I remember my feeling of utter surrender during that seemingly endless walk. The sensation of flying—of being held aloft—with the hallway floor far below. Of dried tears staining my cheeks. The girth ofmy father’s neck, which I clutched now. And the strangest sense that the smallest space—not even a unit of measure I could name—had opened up between my thoughts and my face; and the conviction that, so long as I hid behind this mask, I’d be safe.

Our door’s lock had been punched out by the firemen. A thick tuft of pink insulation, flecked with soot, was stuffed in its bolt hole. My father touched the door, and it swung inward, easily, revealing that the floor was still covered with a layer of water. This standing slick was black, debris-flecked and dotted with ash. I was afraid that its inked surface hid falloffs, sharp objects. That he might deposit me in it and abandon me there. Instead, my father walked me through every room. Past the galley kitchen’s blistered cabinets, the stovetop powdered white, as if with flour. The dining table and chairs only a piled outline. My parents’ mattress nothing but springs. The room Oren and I shared, our ceiling’s paint hanging in tattered flaps. My favorite book,World Atlas of Marine Fishes,whose charred cover now readAtlas of Mar.My father pointed out the charcoal streaks where flames had licked the walls, the melted fixtures, our blackened clothes. Though most terrifying by far was the stench—this cold mustiness—like the carcass of a drowned dragon. Having finally returned to the front door, my father stopped so that I might take a last look. When he was satisfied the image was indelible, he broke his silence:

“Never again,” he said.

Within a year, I made my first television appearance.

The October Surprise

---