ALURA STRACZYNSKI’S ARM clasped firmly in mine, she led me along the city streets, chatting gaily all the while. She was, I had to admit, engaging company. She pointed out passersby she found to be amusing, she window-shopped, asking my advice about that outfit, that painting, that vase, she responded to my occasional quip with a gratifying trill of soft laughter. There was an excitement about her, an electric current that seemed to transfer from her arm to mine. She exuded a sort of joy, as if this walk with me through the city streets, this day of hers, this very life was all she could ever have wanted.
“I have a secret to tell you,” she said, leaning her head close to mine as we walked.
“Go ahead.”
“I think I’m being followed.”
I jerked around to see what I could see and spied nothing.
“Don’t look, you silly. You’ll tip him off. But I’ve noticed him. A greasy little man in a hat.”
“Maybe your husband is worried about your going off to have drinks with strange men.”
“Why would he be worried about that?”
“That’s the way men are.”
“Some men, I suppose.”
We ended up at the bar of a little steak house I had never noticed before. It was one of those places that seemed to have slipped through time unscathed and walking into it was like walking into a different decade. Dark walls, leather booths, thick slabs of beef, ashtrays on every table. The man behind the bar in a red plaid vest had the open, sad face of an old-time baseball player.
“Mrs. S.,” he said in a thick nasally voice when we sat on the red-leather stools. “Terrific as always to see you.”
“Rocco, this is Victor,” she said. “Victor and I are in desperate need of a drink. I’ll have the usual. What will it be for you, Victor?”
“Do you make a sea breeze?” I said.
Rocco looked at me like I had spit on the bar.
I got the message. This was a serious place for serious drinking, a leftover from an era when the cocktail hour was a sacred thing, when a man was defined by his drink and no man wanted to be defined by something as sweet and inconsequential as a sea breeze. Kids in short pants with ball gloves sticking out of their pockets drank soda pop, men drank like men.
“What’s she having?” I said, nodding at my companion.
“A manhattan.”
“What’s that?”
“Whiskey, bitters, sweet vermouth.”
“And a cherry,” said Alura Straczynski. “Mustn’t forget the cherry.”
“No, Mrs. S.,” said Rocco. “I wouldn’t forget your cherry.”
I tried to think of a blue-blooded drinking drink that would satisfy Rocco’s demanding standards. Martini? Too unoriginal. A Brazilian sidecar? Nah. Grasshopper? Rocco would throw me out of the place.
“I’ll have an old-fashioned,” I said.
“Very good,” said Rocco, bowing slightly before sliding off to make our drinks.
“Nice choice,” she said.
“I don’t even know what’s in it.”
“Alcohol,” she said. “And some other stuff. But Rocco makes his old-fashioned the old-fashioned way with only enough water to dissolve the sugar, and one slice of orange. No cherry for you, poor dear. Cigarette?”
“Don’t smoke.”
“Of course you don’t.” She pulled a cigarette from a silver case, tapped it on the metal, lit it. The smoke came out slowly from her mouth, rising like a soft veil. Behind the screen of smoke her features softened and she seemed suddenly younger. “You want to know why I like this place? Because when I light a cigarette here I don’t get stared at like I am a leper. The only drawback is that whenever I enter I get the uncontrollable urge to buy myself a mink stole.”
“I must have passed this place a hundred times without ever going inside.”
“Exactly. I have a studio nearby, a place where I can work without interruption. A room of my own, as Virginia Woolf would have it. I’ve seen your office, you must come up and visit mine sometime.”
“Where is it?”
“Oh, a smart cracker like you will have no trouble finding it if you decide you want to visit.” She stared at me for a moment, her mouth twisting as if appraising a horse. I was almost expecting her to pinch up my lip and check my teeth. “Tell me about your life, Victor Carl. Is it perfect and exciting?”
“Hardly.”
“What is it missing?”
“Perfection and excitement. Isn’t this a little personal?”
“I hope so. We need to get to know each other.”
“Need?”
“Yes. Isn’t that what life should be, Victor? A series of desperate urgencies where everything seems to hang in the balance. Isn’t anything less just a tepid excuse for not doing enough?”
“When I have a desperate urgency, I try to find the men’s room.”
Just then Rocco returned with our drinks. My old-fashioned sat in front of me, squat and bright. I took a sip. Wowza. Stronger than my usual. Rocco winked at me and ambled off to the end of the bar.
“What do you want out of life, Victor?”
“Isn’t this way too personal?”
“Do you want to, instead, talk about the weather?” She roughed up her voice and gave it a cornpone accent. “Oh, it’s a hot one today. Yes it is.”
“People talk about the weather precisely to avoid talking about their lives.”
“That’s my point. Come now, Victor. Don’t disappoint me. I could tell you were different from the first moment I spied you. What do you want out of life?”
“Nice day today, isn’t it?”
“I’ll tell if you’ll tell.”
I squinted and thought about it and grew curious myself. “Go ahead.”
“I’ve known what I wanted from the dawning of my adolescence. I was a peculiar little girl, running home after school to spend my afternoons alone in my room, dancing by myself, or reading and writing, waiting for something better, something pure to take over my life. Can you see me there, Victor, in my room, pining? And slowly that something I was waiting for came and saved me, a decision that would guide every step of my life.”
“To become a meteorologist?”
“Listen closely, Victor. This is important. I decided I would become an artist, I would become Matisse, a fantastic colorist, but with a great difference. Instead of splattering my art on a rough piece of canvas, I would live it. My life is my art, Victor. And I insist that it shimmer like a dream, that every moment be filled with glorious color. I never wanted to merely see beauty in a painting or read of it in a book, I wanted to drink it, breathe it, become it.”
“How’s that working out for you?”
“Surprisingly well. Rocco, darling, another round, please.”
I looked at my drink, still half remaining. I narrowed my eyes and took a gulp. There was something strange in what she had just told me. This wasn’t offhand, none of this was offhand, the meeting, the drinks, the questions about life.
“And this is all related to Tommy Greeley how?”
“Ah, the blunt simplicity of a simple man.”
The drinks came. I snatched down the rest of my first drink, felt my head wiggle just a bit, started on the second. It didn’t seem quite as strong, which was the first sign that it was way too strong for me. Alura Straczynski lit herself another cigarette, inhaled.
“My husband was very agitated after your meeting,” she said.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“No you’re not. It is what you wanted, to upset him. And you succeeded. My husband had a very complicated relationship with Tommy. They were like estranged brothers. There was love, there were secrets, there was deep-seated rivalry. But in the end it was the drugs that separated them. My husband couldn’t abide them.”
“How about you? Could you abide them?”
“Drugs? Oh, Victor, haven’t you listened? Drugs were never a part of my life, or my husband’s after we met. That isn’t shimmering brilliance, that is stupidity. Any idiot can paint his life in Technicolor with drugs, at least for a short time. A few ounces of that, a few tabs of this. But where is the art in that?”
“So Tommy wasn’t your dealer?”
“No. Really now, Victor. How did you ever get that idea?”
“Something in the way your husband looked at you. Like he wanted to protect you from the past.”
“Ah, yes. See, I was right about you. My husband, Victor, is more than a mere spectator to my life. He is a collaborator. When we first met we were like two shy flowers, waiting for the sun to open our blooms. We found our sun in what we created together. We would spend nights writing in our journals, not saying a word and yet so totally connected. He would read what he had written and I would read what I had written and it would be the same. Not the words, Victor, but the emotion, the intensity, the yearning. We were everything, one to the other. We still are, but it is different now. We are no longer so connected. He finds his art in the law, his little theories that so excite the men in suits, and that allows me the freedom to search for my own.”
“Was Tommy part of that search?”
“Tommy Greeley was a worm. Pure and simple. Now worms have their uses, don’t they? They aerate the soil. They help us catch fish.” She thought for a moment, she bit the corner of her lip. “But still they are worms.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Oh, Victor. What is there to understand? I’ve heard you described as a worm too. And yet I find there’s something about you. A spark I’d like to explore.”
I tapped my stomach with the side of my fist. “Just a touch of gas.”
Her light line of laughter. “Maybe that is it.”
“So who is it that described me as a worm? Your husband?”
“That would be tattling. But you can tell me something. Who is it who is so interested in our worm Tommy Greeley?”
“Me.”
“Yes, you, for whatever reasons. Probably because you are paid. That is what I’ve heard about you, Victor. Money, money, money. But if that were true there would be Rockefeller on your wall and not Grant. But someone else cares too, yes?” Her eyes brightened as if she was eager to gain a salacious piece of gossip. “Who is so interested in our friend Tommy? Who?”
I took a sip of my drink.
“You refuse to tell me?” she said.
“I am nothing if not circumspect.”
“Of course you are, you’re Jewish.”
“That’s actually almost funny.”
“Tell me about the girl. Kimberly, was it?”
“That’s right. Kimberly Blue.”
“Such a pretty girl. She works for you?”
“No.”
“She sleeps with you?”
“Stop.”
“Oh, I can see the answer in your eyes. Pity for you. So, then, she works for or sleeps with the man who is interested in Tommy, yes? Victor?”
“Did your husband send you to ask me all these questions?”
“My husband doesn’t send me.”
“Too bad.”
“Don’t be clever, Victor. Clever is like a sports car with a leaking gasket. It only takes you so far and then, well. But you” – she cupped her hand and placed it on my cheek and my jaw tingled – “you could go so far, if only you wanted. I’d like you to do me a favor, Victor. Do you think you could?”
“It depends on what it is.”
“It always does. This is small. I am looking for some notebooks. Four to be exact. They have been missing for a long time and it is as if, without them, I am missing a limb. I am in the midst of a great endeavor, the endeavor of my life, really, and to complete my task I need those notebooks.”
“Why would I be in a position to find them?”
“I sense things, it is my gift, and I sense you will. In your travels. And I’d like you to return them to me. Will you? Please?”
“Sure, if I find them.”
“And only to me.”
“Ahh, you mean not leave them for you at your husband’s office.”
“Who could ever imagine you were such a quick study? Good, that is settled. Now, Victor, it is your turn.”
“My turn?”
“We had a deal. I’d tell if you tell. So tell me, Victor, what is it that you really want from life?”
I thought about it for a moment. It was a hard question, harder still when you weren’t sure why it was being asked. I drained the rest of my drink and snapped my head at the burn of it and tried to come up with an answer and failed and realized that was what I wanted after all.
“Answers,” I said after a long hesitation.
She leaned toward me. “To what questions?”
“It varies from day to day. Some days I want to know the purpose of existence. Some days I want to know why it seems everyone else is happier than am I. Some days I wonder why God doesn’t seem to go very far out of his way to help those who need it. And some days, most days, I simply want to know why my laundry place keeps using starch on my boxer shorts.
“Victor.”
“Every week I say, ‘No starch, no starch,’ and the lady, she nods yes, yes like she understands, but she doesn’t understand. Why doesn’t she understand? It’s a mystery all right.”
“So what’s today’s great philosophical question, Victor? What is the answer you are looking for today?”
“Today’s question? Today I want to know what the hell happened to Tommy Greeley and why.”
She turned her bright green eyes away from me and bowed her head. There was a puddle of condensation on the bar. She moved her finger across it, her bright red nail leaving a strange trail, up, down, swooping around like a pen on a page. Her expression took on the same serious cast it had taken when she was writing at my desk. I moved my gaze away from her face toward those strange squiggles she was leaving in the damp. I tried to follow the movements of her finger, tried to decipher the strange glyphs she was forming, as if they had great meaning, as if maybe all the answers I had said I was searching for could be found right there.
And as we both stared down at the bar the edges of our foreheads touched.
“I get the feeling, Victor,” said Alura Straczynski, her voice soft, her breath warm, “that you are going to be fatal.”