The Exquisite Read Free

can. It was sitting open on the table and there was a diagram of the interior of an arm. Vein system. Musculature. Old stuff. From back when surgery meant ugly things for everyone except the rats. Looking at it, I thought first of Manhattan and the deep hole that had been punched in it, then of this movie I’d seen in which a king had his arm operated on. He died. There was a long battle for succession. The country was laid to waste. Years passed. Hope began to glimmer in the east. The people prepared themselves. They set off on long marches and learned new songs. Then hope faded and the rats took over. I was guessing this book was about that old. It was written in Greek and Latin. Lots of significant-looking words. I tried to read one. No luck.
    So what’s his name? I said.
    Anthony.
    Good-looking guy.
    I put my finger on some delicately articulated vein system, ran it down a leg. There were shadows everywhere. It was like I was back at Mr. Kindt’s.
    He was home. I watched him leave, but he was home anyway, Tulip. He was sitting there, naked. He told me to take whatever I wanted.
    He’s a little strange that way.
    He was also hooked up to a heart monitor. He told me to steal something, then he invited me to dinner.
    I know.
    How?
    Because I was there.
    Where? In one of the big jars?
    She laughed.
    What’s going on, Tulip?
    Nothing, I told him about you and he wanted to meet you.
    Why?
    Because I told him he’d like you.
    You set me up.
    If you like.
    How do you know him?
    I just know him. A friend introduced me. She paused. She looked at, I think, something about her fingernails. Sometimes I do things for him, she said.
    Things? I said.
    She didn’t answer.
    I let it go.
    Who is he? I asked.
    An old guy, lonely, from upstate, but he’s been in the city for years. I don’t know. He’s eccentric, he does some business.
    I looked at Tulip. She was not smiling. I was drunk and didn’t feel well. The bar was full of smoke and colored light.
    I barely know you, Tulip, I said.
    That’s true, Henry.
    How did we meet?
    We met at a party.
    Was it a good party?
    We didn’t stay.
    We didn’t go home together either.
    No, we didn’t.
    What does he mean about fish?
    He likes fish. Don’t you like fish?
    I thought about fish. I thought about the book, with its rotten puddle smell and stained pages and cross sections and strange diagrams.
    Mr. Singh? I said.
    She nodded, stood up.
    I stood up. Or thought I did.
    Good-night, Henry, I’m leaving now, she said.

FOUR
    For a time, during this pre–Mr. Kindt period, while I was still presentable, I made inquiries about work. Simple, legitimate jobs. Ones that would have required me to lift or sweep or distribute small multicolored flyers, that would have given me the opportunity, in exchange for miniature paychecks, to don brightly colored clothing and hand food across the counter, or wear a hairnet and wash dishes, or fold freshly laundered clothes, or run a steam press, or wear a billboard advertising Optaline eye salve, but each time I went out my frame of mind quickly soured and I didn’t have any luck.
    One day, my mind already as sour as an old so-called SweetTart, I saw Carine as I was coming out of a hole-in-the-wall Indian deli on Roman Street with a day-old onion cake in my hand. I had meant to inquire about the position advertised in the window. Instead I had handed over fifty cents, scowled a little, and accepted the oily cake. Carine was wearing a handsome vintage gray suit and walking with her arm around a young man dressed in fashionably rumpled beige linen pants and a bright green Cockfighter T-shirt. I bit into the awful cake, chewed once or twice, then let it fall out of my mouth. Carine did not see me and I did not call out to her. She and her young man looked nifty together. I went back into the deli, asked about the job, and was immediately told I was “unsuited for the obligations.” Chewing hard on the insides of my cheeks, I asked for my money back