MANHATTAN 5

 

According to Betty, Coffin Ed had once killed a man just for farting in front of her; and Grave had shot out both eyes of a man who had accidentally pointed a loaded automatic at him. These stories were circulating around Harlem, according to Betty, and everyone there was talking about how they were both ready to shoot a dead man if the coffin so much as moved. In the movies, professional killers always use silenced .22 pistols. However, when Ed said that from now on I would have to use a gun because of the amount of their drugs I was carrying around, using a .22 seemed stupid. I told the nerd at the Nassau Coliseum Gun Show that I wanted two .45 automatic pistols. Two days later, I was driving down the Adirondacks with Barbara all afternoon, until the land took on a more nurtured feel, and in the early evening, we entered Saratoga Springs and passed a street that had the insolence to call itself Broadway. In retrospect, the place looked like old New York, with distinctive shops with New York names, and striped awnings shading the windows from the sun. The people strolling down the street had nothing to do with Onandaga; there wasn't a single farmer among them; there were a lot of fancy cars in the traffic, some with uniformed drivers, and people who clearly belonged to the wealthy classes sat on hotel balconies, opening laptops and tablets. Barbara and I checked into the Grand Union, the most expensive of all, with the longest and widest overhanging balcony. A young man carried our bags, and another took her car to park. From a local newspaper at the reception desk, I learned about the races the next day, to guide the bettors. There was no news in the paper except about horses: in January, in Saratoga, no one was interested in anything but horses, and so even the town press adapted: horse news, horse horoscopes, and even the weather forecast during the races, as if the world were inhabited solely by horses. In the room, I asked Barbara again if it was a good idea to approach someone to offer my merchandise, and she said, "For God's sake, no, K." She said she would introduce me to potential buyers herself. "I wish you'd think a little less about it, my dear. I'm very rich, remember?" she said. "But I'm not." The night was cold, and I stretched out on my back on the porch floor, gazing at the stars above. Fortunately, I know how to stay with a woman without having certain thoughts detected. To this day, I've never scared one away, thanks to this talent. What's more, the suite Barbara had booked was perfect, completely open, like a large, wallless apartment or a furnished living room, with a columned balcony at the top, reached by a spiral staircase. I smoked a cigarette there and then sat on our bed, listening intently to her movements before showering. When I heard her footsteps on the bathroom floor, time stopped. "The idea of trying to capture anything with the colors of the mind compels me, fascinates me, frightens me!" I said, thinking aloud, as I leafed through my old notebook. I passed her wrapped in a towel and sat down on a chair. At a certain point, I immersed myself so deeply in Barbara's figure that, suddenly, she disappeared from my sight: fragile yet formidable in her sex, a landscape from thigh to breast, from belly to slitted lip, and then she appeared again in my field of vision: this time I found her bent over, naked, rummaging through the bottom of a suitcase on the bed. I studied her profile for half a minute: her face was lively, happy, and her nose seemed more intelligent than her eyes, if that makes any sense. However, I must be careful when assessing the intelligence of a woman's eyes when I am in an altered state of consciousness (that is, always), because a person's gaze changes radically from one moment to the next, and it is possible that I was catching her in a moment of unattractive inattention. Barbara kept the corners of her her lips pressed tightly together as she searched for something in her suitcase; I couldn't see what her hands were trying to find among those folded sweaters and leggings. She was delighted with my reaction to such luxury, especially when I got up from the chair and tested the bed with a sideways jump, and she dropped the towel and jumped on top of me, and we rolled from one side to the other, wrestling playfully but truly pitting our physical strength against each other. She was no pushover: "I've done karate," she said, but I quickly had her arms pinned down, and she had to plead: "Oh, no, not now, let me take a shower first." In fact, she had a slightly bigger plan for that night than I did: "I want you to come down with me and see the Saratoga Circus," and she ran to the shower.