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"Listen, Mr. Esmeralda "
"What is it?" Mr. Esmeralda's voice was calm and cold.
Gerard let out a short, testy sigh. "I'll see you at Inca's, at eight. That's
all."
"Goodbye."
Gerard hung up, reached for his towel, and angrily punched open the door of
the sauna. Joseph, the coach, was buffing up the chrome on the barbell when
Gerard came stalking through to the changing room and banged open the door of
his locker.
"You're getting dressed already, Mr. Crowley? Didn't you take a shower? Your
pores are going to be way open, Mr. Crowley, like a Swiss cheese."
"Fuck my pores," snapped Gerard, tugging his shirt on to his damp back. Joseph
glanced up at Mr. Corrit, from Corrit Film Productions, "who was panting into
his eighteenth mile on the Puch exercise cycle, and pulled an utterly
perplexed face. How could anybody who cared anything for modern body-toning
say anything like "fuck my pores"? It was a total denial of the fitness ethic.
Back at his desk on the twenty-seventh floor, Gerard tucked his shirt untidily
into his belt, and called Francis Canu at The Tower. ' 'Francis, I'm sorry.
Your restaurant is beautiful. The best. I'm going to remember the Sunset Room
when I'm in heaven. Well, wherever. But some other time, you know? Yes. Yes, I
know. Well, me too." Then he called Francesca at her studio apartment at
Culver and Elenda. "Francesca? Hi. It's Gerard. Yes. Listen, baby yes, I
know but I have to tell you that tonight's off. No. No, listen, its not Evie.
It's nothing to do with Evie. It's business, you got me? Genuine, legitimate
business. Well, look. (Will you please listen to what I'm telling you? Yes.
I'll come by at eleven o'clock if I'm through by then. I should be, sure. And,
listen " He closed his eyes and listened for almost three minutes to a
staccato rattle of complaint. Now and then he nodded and
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began to say something, but it was only when her anger was completely spent
that he was able to say, "I'm sorry. You got that? You want me to spell it for
you? And I love you, too, regardless. Yes. Well, you can think what you like.
But I'm sorry. And I love you. And if I don't see you later tonight I'll see
you tomorrow. Yes. Yes. Goodbye. Yes. Goodbye."
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He was sweating afresh by the time he put down the phone. He wished almost,
but not really that he had told Francesca just what to do with her fancy
culinary tastes and her wretched language. But the truth was, he did, in his
peculiarly self-destructive way, love her. They were right together, she and
he, Gerard and Francesca. Suicidal, maybe, like the lovers in "Life in the
Fast Lane," by the Eagles, which Gerard played at top volume on his Delco
8-track as he drove to work every morning. He was brutally handsome . . . and
she fwas terminally pretty. . . . But wasn't that where he had always needed
to be; wasn't that where he had been born to be; speeding along in the fast
lane, reckless, crazy, high as a kite? He looked at the color photograph of
Evie and the twins next to his telephone, and suddenly he knew that he could
never go back; security and marriage and Evic's endless attentiveness were
like suffocation and slow death. If he was going to die, then he wanted to die
fast. So fast that he would never know what hit him.
On his way out of the office, he caught sight of himself in the screen of
tinted glass which surrounded his receptionist's desk. He looked not chiseled,
but tired; not brutally handsome, but middle-aged. It had never occurred to
him before, not with such uncompromising clarity, that he might simply be
growing too old for the kind of life he was trying to lead. He started to
light up a cigar in the elevator, but a dignified black cleaning woman pointed
wordlessly to the notice: NO SMOKING UNDER PENALTY OF LAW.
He had to wait in line for nearly ten minutes before they brought his car up
from the underground parking lot, and
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he drove out of Century City with a shriek of tires and a bad-tempered blast
on his horn. He had a stop to make before meeting Mr. Esmeralda.
Outside Nancy Shiranuka's apartment on Alta Loma, he parked his Buick
aggressively between two other cars, colliding bumper-to-bumper with both of
them, and then he got out and slammed the door. Kemo was waiting for him when
he stepped out of the elevator on the fourth floor, impassively holding the
door open. "Welcome, Mr. Crowley, he said. "Miss Shiranuka was not expecting
you."
"Hi, Kemo," said Gerard, and gripped the boy's arm as he entered the hallway,
so that he could balance himself while he slipped off his Bijan loafers. Nancy
was sitting cross-legged on one of the black-and-white silk cushions on the
living room floor, her eyes closed, listening to a tape of koto music. There
was sandlewood smoke in the room, and the fragrance of tea. Kemo said to
Gerard, "You wish for a drink, Mr. Crowley?"
"Scotch," Gerard told him. "And none of that Japanese stuff you gave me the
last time. McKamikaze, or whatever it was called."
"Yes, Mr. Crowley."
Nancy opened her eyes and looked toward Gerard without turning her head. "This
is an unexpected delight," she said blandly.
"I've had another call from Esmeralda," Gerard said, dragging over two or
three cushions and sitting down closer to Nancy than Nancy obviously thought
was comfortable. "I'm supposed to be meeting him at eight at a restaurant
downtown called Inca's."
"Do you know what he wants?" asked Nancy. Her eyes were as dark and as
reflective as pools of oil. You could have drowned in her eyes you could have
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