The Lover From An Icy Sea Page 42

  With that, Kit walked out the door; turned left; walked the hundred feet to Park Avenue; crossed it; continued on down towards Lexington; descended into the subway; pulled out his last two dollars and bought a Metrocard. The days of dallying for brass tokens, he knew, were done. He didn’t need to pretend otherwise—not to himself and not for anybody else.

  * * *

  He struggled through the turnstile with his bags, then turned left on the platform and walked to the end. He decided at this hour and carrying two pieces of luggage that he’d just as soon do most of his walking underground. No need to tempt the natives of the East Village with thoughts about what he might have stashed inside.

  The Number Six local arrived just as he got to the end of the platform. He boarded the last car—empty—and put his bags down in front of the seat reserved for the elderly and disabled. He was feeling neither, but the competition for space was not particularly keen at that hour. He then opted to stand and look out the rear window of the car as the train released its brakes and began to move out of the station. Within seconds, they were at Eighty-sixth—the Hunter College stop. Her ninety-sixth street exit already looked like something on a distant and fast-deteriorating canvas. He wondered—as the doors opened, then closed, and the train again undertook its southerly journey towards Brooklyn—whether he’d ever again have a reason to travel up to this part of the island.

  As his train pulled into the Astor Place station, Fourteenth Street/Union Square was as far north as he could see. Ninety-sixth street was already as good as gone.

  He got out, walked to the exit and climbed the stairs to street-level. If there was still noise and activity about, Kit was unmindful of it. He walked south and east to his apartment building, climbed the stairs to the front door and opened it. He then climbed another five sets of stairs to his apartment, opened the door, entered and turned on a light. It was exactly as he’d left it—including the prints of Daneka still hanging from the clothesline.

  He dropped his bags on the floor, went to the refrigerator and took out a beer, pulled a chair up in front of the clothesline and sat down. Over the course of the next few hours and until sunrise, he made occasional trips either to the refrigerator to replace an empty bottle with a full one, or to the bathroom to replace a full bladder with an empty one. Otherwise, he simply let his eyes roam back and forth along the clothesline.

  * * *

  When Daneka awakened, it was neither to an alarm clock nor to sun’s rays streaming in through the window. She awakened spontaneously, on her back, and stared at the ceiling. When the church bells began to ring, she counted them with her fingers in the air: “en … to … tre … fire … fem … seks … syv … otte. Eight o’clock,” she said out loud. She dropped her arms to her sides. Only then did she turn her head to see whether Kit’s was still present on the neighboring pillow. It wasn’t.

  She promptly got out of bed; showered; brushed her teeth; dressed; made herself a cup of coffee; picked up the telephone and dialed a number she knew by heart. After a couple of rings, someone at the other end picked up. “I’ve been away. I’m coming down.” She didn’t identify herself. She didn’t need to.

  * * *

  Kit stood up as he heard the bells outside his window begin to chime. He counted to eight in his head as he slowly, deliberately, began to take down the photos of Daneka and put them all in a pile on his work desk. When he arrived at the last—the one he’d taken of her at the Boathouse just as she’d pushed her dress off her shoulder and was rubbing what appeared to be a bruise—he decided to study it more carefully. He hadn’t, until now, looked at it closely—thinking at the time that the bruise was probably some injury she’d received from falling luggage. With what he’d recently learned and now suspected, however, he had reason to doubt his original supposition.

  He left the photo hanging and resolved to have the negative cropped and enlarged. He wanted to take a closer look at this bruise, and there was only one shop he knew of that could do it the way he needed it to be done.

  Chapter 71

  Kit arrived at Duggal’s on Twentieth Street and Fifth Avenue just as the doors were opening for business and after he’d stopped at a local ATM. His account was running on fumes or less, well into overdraft territory, and Kit knew he needed to get back to work. Fast. This might be an extravagant expenditure, but it was one he required—at whatever cost.

  “Morning, Yoon,” he said even before he’d reached the counter just inside the front door.

  “Morning, Kit” said the woman behind the counter over the rim of her coffee cup. She took a sip and then asked. “What can I do for you today, my prince?” She paused momentarily over the coffee cup and studied Kit’s face more carefully. “Or should I say my ‘knight of the mournful countenance'? What’s up, Kit? You look dreadful.”

  The two knew each other well. The first time they’d met and Kit had learned her name, he’d announced: “You are my morning, Yoon and night!” From that point on, he’d been treated to a flat twenty-five percent off rate-card. From that point on, he’d also stopped shopping elsewhere.

  Kit didn’t bother to address her last remark, and Yoon knew better than to persist. “Crop this to just below the tit and then feed it to the enlarger, will you? Make me a poster.”

  “Which tit, Kit?”

  “The one just below the black and blue road sign.”

  “You took this shot for some rough trade rag?”

  “Rough trade, yeah. But no rag.”

  “What’s a sweetie like you doing out in the rough stuff, Kit?”

  “Just playing on through, Yoon. Just putting to the moon.”

  “They don’t get any better than you, Kit, when it comes to putting.”

  “They do, Yoon. But they gotta be Tigers.”

  “Tigers—check that. By when do you need it?”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “It’s a rush job then?”

  “Rush? Like Christmas, Yoon.”

  “Not like you, Kit.”

  “I’m not myself, Yoon.”

  “Check. Give us thirty?”

  “Thirty’s good. I’ll go grab a bagel. ‘Want one?”

  “You’re a doll. That’s more like the Kit I know. Sure. Poppy seed with a schmear of cheese and chives. Twice toasted.”

  “Check. ‘See you in a couple or five.” He walked out the door and across the street to a deli where he ordered coffee and a couple of bagels—two of a kind, to go. He was out of the deli in three minutes with a pair of toasted, then back through the door at Duggal’s. He was home now—and once again in his element—and so it was time to pick up the pace. High time. Paris and Portugal were already light-years away; Italy, an illusion; Denmark, a dreary dream.

  Yoon greeted him with a smile as he handed her the bagel.

  “How’s the work coming along?” he asked.

  “Fine. Just a few more minutes now. Nice lighting on that one. You do it?”

  “All natural, Yoon. Camera did the shoot. Nature did the lighting. I just pushed the button.”

  “I know better, Kit. I see some shit in here from time to time. Your stuff? ‘Never stinks.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Pretty lady, by the way. That is, till we cut most of her out. Older model?”

  “Not a model at all. More like a mannequin. She’s a great hanger, but she’s got no soul.”

  “Too bad. ‘Lady like that oughta have a soul.”

  “Check.”

  Their banter had gone on just long enough to let the technicians do their job. One of them brought the poster-sized enlargement of Daneka’s shoulder out to the front counter and placed it down in front of Kit and Yoon.

  “Whoa!” Yoon said. “Ouch! Nasty little bugger. She an asphalt boarder?”

  “Surfer,” Kit said. “Likes a rough sea and big waves. Likes to ride ‘em right into the jetties where she parks her board by moonlight.” Kit looked at Daneka’s injury. It was decidedly not luggage-inflicted. He could even
see four little gouge marks where someone had spared her only a thumb.

  “Nice work, guys. How much do I owe?”

  Yoon took out her calculator, added eight and three-quarter percent for Mayor Mike, then subtracted thirty because Kit was Kit and not Hizzoner. “Twenty-eight even,” she said. Kit was relieved he’d been left with lunch money. He gave her thirty; she gave him back two and a second smile.

  “Thanks, as always, for the great work.”

  “Mon plaisir, Monsieur Addison IV,” she said with an exaggerated American accent.

  “They may tell you you're French, Yoon, but you're really just crazy. Toodles,” Kit said.

  “Ta,” Yoon answered.

  Kit was out the door, up to Fifth, where he turned right, turned right again at Nineteenth where he found the front door to his studio. He glanced at the elevator and then bounded up the steps. Rachel met his smile with one of her own.

  “Howdy, stranger!” Long time, no see. How was Europa? Still old?”

  “Old and dreary,” Kit answered.

  “Hmmm. So tell me, M. Bon Vivant. when are you coming back to work? Or are you?”

  “Today,” Kit answered. “If there’s any work, that is.”

  “You’re in luck! Clown #1 just called in complaining of some kind of a bug. He sounded hungover to me, but you know how it is with #1. The shoot’s in half an hour. Fashion princess for Vogue. Wanna take it?”

  “Perfect! Thanks, darl—. Thanks, Rachel.” Kit made a mental note to excise ‘the D-word’ from his vocabulary. “I owe ya.”

  “Pizza’s always a plus.”

  “With pepperonis?”

  “You know, Kit, for an old guy, you still got a pretty decent memory.”

  “For an old guy, Rachel, I still got lots of decent parts! You’ll just have to take my word for it.”

  “Check that, Kit. But let’s not go there.”

  “Didn’t intend to, Rachel, but you left the door wide open.”

  “Hah! I know you’re itchin’ to get inside my bobby socks, Mr. Addison, but this chick doesn’t roll ‘em down for old guys.”

  “‘Not my lucky day, I guess. Oh, well. Maybe on my birthday.”

  “Yikes! By then, you’ll be a year older!”

  They both laughed. Kit liked Rachel and Rachel liked Kit. But that was as far as it went for either of them. “What time did you say the Vogue gig starts?” he asked just as the elevator door opened and a ravishing blonde stepped into the room.

  “Goot morning,” she said with an accent that sounded like a street urchin she’d adopted only for the day. “I’m named Eva. I haf a shoot scheduled for eleven o’clock.” She gave ‘scheduled’ an Oxbridge pronunciation. Kit and Rachel both delighted in the irony.

  “Yes, Eva. We were expecting you. And this is Kit, your photographer.”

  “I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Kip,” she said.

  “And I to make yours, Eva. Whenever you’re ready, we are, too.”

  “Oh, just gif me a pair of minutes, please.” She turned to Rachel. “And the green room? It would be where?”

  “It would be there,” Rachel said, pointing down the hall.

  “Sank you.”

  “No, sank you!” Rachel said. She winked at Kit as the blonde walked off. “Good luck with that one!” she whispered.

  “Not a Dane, I hope.”

  Rachel pulled the girl’s headshot from the file and looked at her bio on the back. Running her finger down past a long list of credits, she found what she was looking for. “Swede,” she said. “Same thing, I guess.”

  “No, quite different,” Kit answered, now with some actual authority. “Okay. I’m off to get prepped. Please give me a call when the ice princess is ready.”

  Kit walked back to his cubicle and found it exactly as he’d left it—including the framed portrait of Daneka looking back at him as unabashed as the day he’d taken the shot—though now with considerably more backstory. He put the poster away. He might or might not look at it again. In any case, it wouldn’t really be necessary, as the image was burned into his brain.

  Ten minutes later, Rachel called. Eva was ready—as was the set. He walked back to the studio and greeted his crew. After an absence of some length, handshakes to the guys and kisses to the girls’ cheeks weren’t at all inappropriate, and he distributed them freely. As he was doling the last of them out, she walked in wearing sky-blue—and very little of it. Blue, Kit thought, must be the color of the week.

  As he pulled out his light meter and went to work, Kit wondered whether a word for ‘modesty’ even existed in the Swedish language. From what he’d seen—and was seeing again now—he didn’t think so. Must be a fun country, he thought.

  * * *

  Towards evening, Daneka returned home to find her bags still unpacked and Kit’s still gone. Apparently—she thought to herself—he wasn’t planning to return anytime soon. Funny. He was a hard one to predict. I wonder if it was something I said, she mused.

  As she thought about it, her eyes started to blink and her arm to itch. She scratched it—kept on scratching it as if it might contain the answer. She kicked off her heels and sat down on the sofa. She didn’t really want to unpack—not now. She had a whole evening in front of her for that. And so, she sat … and scratched. But I really have to do something about these eyes, she thought. She got up and went into her bathroom to look in the medicine closet. With one hand, she turned bottles and little plastic containers around in order to read the labels; with the other, she scratched. It shouldn’t have been difficult to turn, read and scratch at the same time, but her eyes kept blinking. She couldn’t quite focus. She couldn’t think clearly. Goddamn it! she thought—and then she said it out loud. Her arm had started bleeding again. She put her mouth to her wrist at the spot where it was bleeding, sucked up the blood and spat it into the sink—but it was coming out too fast. She’d simply scratched too deep. Drops of blood started to splatter on the floor.

  “Goddamn it!” she screamed. Okay. Get a grip, girl. Bandage first. The floor later. She reached again into the medicine cabinet, unthinking, with the bleeding arm. The blood ran down and into the sink. She started to knock containers out of her way as she looked for the sterile gauze. Some of them fell into the sink; others, to the floor—where they broke and spilled their contents. The floor was now a mess of blood, broken glass and pills—as was the sink.

  She forced herself to think clearly. She opened the door beneath the sink—there it was, still in its original wrapping. She used her teeth to bite through the thin plastic; spat the bits into the sink; used her teeth and one unbloodied hand to unwind the gauze; laid it across the open wound and began to wrap her arm. This seemed to work. She rinsed the blood off her arm and hands, then looked around for a towel. There was one hanging from the rack on the far wall, but she couldn’t risk walking across the floor with all of the broken glass.

  With the cleaning sponge that Estrella—Where the fuck is Estrella, anyway?—had left at the end of the bathtub, and which Daneka was just able to reach without having to step out onto the floor, she was able to clear a path among the blood, glass and pills. She could now once again maneuver.

  In short order, she had the floor cleaned up.

  The activity restored a sense of self-control, but she was exhausted and wanted to take a shower. First, however, there was the matter of a call to Annemette—that much she could manage.

  She picked up her cordless phone and dialed the number. As the phone rang at the other end, she wandered from her bedroom, down the corridor and into the living room. She heard a voice at the other end, then spoke up.

  “Annamette, it’s Mama.”

  Coming back to her through the receiver was a voice both happy and sad—slow and with a great deal of effort, as if it were difficult for the speaker to string simple words together in a sentence.

  The involuntary blinking had long since stopped. Now, however, another involuntary action occurred—and in reactio
n to the voice: tears. She put her hand over the receiver so that her daughter would hear none of it, but the tears flowed in a torrent. And then, she abruptly realized she’d just been asked a question—and that the question awaited an answer. As she struggled to regain her composure, her eyes strayed over the coffee table and settled on the lichen.

  “Oh, it was great. I loved every minute of it.”

  * * *

  Kit had finished his shoot. It had been a long day. Eva had been good—even if a tad temperamental—and her occasional peevishness had made it difficult to get the job done as efficiently as he might’ve liked.

  He was, however, grateful for the work. Work meant income. In a city like New York, if there wasn’t cash flowing in, it was rushing out. In New York, there was no such thing as stasis where money was concerned. At the same time, the job had kept his mind off Daneka—and that distraction was what he most needed right now.

  The job was finished, however, and his mind had no place else to wander. He walked back to his cubicle; saw her picture; picked up and unraveled the poster; studied it. Fuck this! he thought.

  He stopped off to hit Rachel up for an advance out of the petty cash box. It was empty, she told him, but then reached into her own purse with hesitation. “Will a twenty get you where you need to go?” she asked.

  “A twenty gets you pizza with pepperonis for life,” Kit answered with a look of genuine gratitude. “Thanks a mill’.” He grabbed the bill, then ran out of the building and down the stairs. A cab stood curbside as a passenger was just paying her fare and getting out.

  “You free?” he asked the driver.

  “Yeah.” Kit got in. “Where to?”

  “East Ninety-sixth Street, between Park and Madison. I’ll tell you where to stop when we get to the block.”