Stars and Bars: A Novel

  “Henderson! Take the train as a last resort. Nobody drives to Washington.” Melissa laughed delightedly at this eccentricity.

  “I do. I mean, you know how I hate flying.” Something in his mind seemed to flail around, like a snake pinioned at the neck.

  “Well, look, OK. So much the better then. You must drive down with Bryant.” Melissa put her hand on Henderson’s thigh. “Think how you’ll be able to get to know each other.” She prattled on. To Henderson’s eyes the room seemed to darken with foreboding. His frail excuses and blocking tactics were swept aside as new plans were made and schedules altered. He began to feel sick and frightened.

  “What time is it?” he asked eventually.

  “Quarter of nine.”

  “Oh, God! I’ve got to go!”

  chapter four

  HENDERSON arrived gasping at The Blue Room just as Irene was leaving.

  “Hey. You are one lucky guy,” she said, pointing a finger at him.

  They walked back inside. Henderson deposited his coat and sabers and followed her to the bar. Stark white, thin, naked trees had been planted here and there, and the tiny blue lights festooned in their boughs gave the place an odd doleful-yet-festive air. The bar was busy. People in New York, Henderson noted, seemed to consume alchohol in vast quantities.

  “Good evening,” another handsome barman said. Where do these guys come from? Henderson asked himself. Where are they made?

  “Same again, please. And a large Scotch.”

  The glasses were plunged in the ice trough; the measures were poured from a height of three feet; a sliver of lemon peel was cut by clean powerful fingers.

  “Oh and, um”—the lemon peel plopped into his whiskey—“no twist.”

  “Sorry, sir?”

  “Cough.” Henderson cleared his throat and thumped his chest. He coughed. “Nothing.”

  He turned to Irene and smiled at her.

  “Here’s how,” he said in weak self-parody and sipped his drink. Then he leaned forward and kissed the muscle that ran from her neck to her shoulder. He noticed she was wearing high heels. It was a bad sign: she wasn’t pleased with him. On high heels she was an inch taller than he. He told himself to relax. Controlled relaxation. He felt the whiskey sluice through his veins, geeing up the corpuscles. Irene looked at him and laughed.

  “I don’t know how you do it, Henderson,” she said. “You make me so fucking mad. Then you show up with your golf clubs and I’ve got to laugh.”

  “My sabers,” he explained. “How are you? Look nice.”

  “I’ve got a cold coming. I need some southern sun.”

  “Ah.”

  He had met Irene a month before at a private viewing in a Madison Avenue gallery. It had been raining and, like this evening, he had arrived late, damp and slightly out of breath. Standing at a wide white desk covered in catalogs and photocopied price sheets had been a dark, well-built girl. Absentmindedly, Henderson handed her his dripping umbrella and raincoat.

  “I’m not the fucking hatcheck, numbnuts,” she had said reasonably, and had turned on her heel, oblivious to his stream of aghast apologies. Later on during the dull party, while he was pouring himself a white wine at the makeshift bar, she approached with an empty glass and asked to be topped up.

  “I’m not the bloody barman,” he said, with a boldness that astonished him (he couldn’t quite bring himself to say “fucking”). She found this very amusing. They started to talk and discovered that they disagreed violently about the paintings on show. Henderson thought they were puerile and derivative; Irene was a friend of the artist—hence her invitation—and greatly admired them.

  Henderson had been initially and immediately attracted to Irene because she bore a considerable resemblance to a girl who worked in a butcher’s shop in Spain, about and around whom he had spun a tingling sexual fantasy that had enlivened an otherwise banal and tedious holiday some years ago. He bought meat from this girl twice, sometimes three times a day, never saying anything more than “jamón,” “chuletas de cerdo,” “es todo,” “gracias.” The girl, unlike her tanned and rubescent clients, was pale, as if she never went out in the sun. She had broad shoulders and strong arms. She cut meat expertly and powerfully. Henderson stood across the bloodied marble from her, finding difficulty in breathing, while she handed him soggy, heavy plastic bags full of chops, steaks, liver, chicken breasts and any other cut of meat he could find in his dictionary. As he was staying in a hotel he had later to throw all this away. He spent a fortune on uneaten meat that holiday.

  The girl came to recognize him, and they would make a long and direct eye contact throughout their transaction. Sometimes, counting out his change, her incarnadined fingernails would scratch his damp palm.

  Irene, like this nameless she-butcher, was strong looking and pale. She had thick black hair that curled onto her neck. Her eyes were brown; her features were emphatic: prominent nose, distinct lips, unplucked eyebrows. And she was tall. That night at the gallery she had been taller than Henderson.

  “You know,” he had interrupted their futile disquisition on the paintings’ merits, “you remind me of someone.”

  “Oh, yes? Who?”

  “A girl who worked in a butcher’s shop in Alicante.”

  Irene had looked around the room. “I suppose that’s some kind of compliment.”

  “God. No, um, what I meant to say”—his left hand had clutched air, seeking straws—“to ask. Is … is if you had any Spanish blood in you. That’s what I … yes.”

  “No. I’m Jewish.”

  “Oh.” Nods. “Aha.”

  “You’re not Jewish,” she had said, a horror-struck expression on her face.

  “Lord, no. I’m English.”

  Irene had laughed so hard, people had stopped talking and looked around.

  Henderson considered her now, perched on a barstool. She was wearing a sleeveless dark-blue dress. Her skin looked almost pure white. White as a fridge. He put his hand on her knee.

  “I can get away. No problem,” she said. “When do we leave?”

  “Ah, yes.” Henderson swallowed hard and removed his hand.

  “Mr. Dores? Your table is ready, sir.”

  By the time they sat down Henderson was covered in a fine sheen of sweat. How was he going to tell Irene that her place in the car had been usurped by Bryant?

  “I’ve been to New Orleans,” Irene said, “but never to the real South. Where exactly are we going?”

  The waiter crept up behind Henderson.

  “Hello there, people,” he said cheerfully. “My name is James—”

  Henderson looked around with a start. “Oh! Hello. My name’s Dores. Henderson Dores.” He rose to his feet. “This is Miss—Ms.—Stein.” Unthinkingly, he held out his hand.

  The waiter flashed a puzzled glance at Irene, before shaking it. “Nice to meet you, sir.” His discomfiture lasted a second only. “As I was saying, my name is James, I’m your waiter for this evening and I’ll be looking after you.” He handed over the menus. “Enjoy,” he beamed, and left.

  Henderson sat down. “Sorry,” he said. “I thought …”

  Irene stared irritatedly at him. “What do you think you’re doing? Are you all right?”

  “Yes, fine. Trying day, what with one thing and another.”

  She shook her head in mock despair. “Are you coming home with me tonight?” she asked, scrutinizing the menu.

  Henderson did likewise, trying to ignore his popping cardiac valves. “Yes, please.” He would have to tell her about the trip later. “Good God,” he said, “what’s happening to menus in this city?”

  Henderson ate sparingly, his fillet of hake in lager and cranberry sauce failing to stimulate his appetite. Irene ate her two roast baby pigeons in fresh grapefruit nests with relish. Conscious of having to prepare the ground somewhat, he asked her if she was really sure it was all right for her to take a few days off work. Irene reassured him once more. She was a codirector—with her brother??
?of a firm that sold personal computers. She was her own boss, she reminded him; she could take a holiday when she wanted. Good, Henderson said, good.

  When they left the restaurant it was after midnight and a light rain was falling.

  “We’ll get a cab on West Broadway,” Henderson said. “This way.”

  Irene had a collapsible umbrella, which she erected. Henderson slung his saber case over his shoulder and linked arms with her. He smelled her hair, a vague fruit fragrance—apples or sultanas—lingering from her shampoo. They made their way leisurely down the street, picking their way through the rubbish and the puddles, from time to time pausing to look into the lighted windows of the boutiques and small galleries that proliferated here. At one of these windows, he kissed her. He shut his eyes and gently fitted his lips to hers, her bottom lip snug in the hollow between his two. He pressed his nose into her cheek, felt his teeth bump and grate against hers as she opened her mouth slightly. He felt suddenly helpless, victim of his rampaging desire.

  They walked on, the rain a little heavier, the streets almost deserted as people took shelter.

  “I thought you said you knew your way,” Irene said.

  “I do. Along here.”

  They turned and walked down a shopless street. High up he could see the lambent plant-filled windows of the lofts. Rain runneled off the fire escapes.

  “Next left, I think.”

  They turned. Someone jogged down the street in a sodden track suit. These madmen really will jog at any time of the day or night, Henderson thought with vague admiration.

  “I think we should go back,” Irene said. “Call a taxi from the restaurant.”

  “It’s not far from here, I’m sure.” Henderson stepped out from the shelter of Irene’s umbrella and looked up and down the street. There was a junction at the top. He looked for a street sign Nothing.

  “Let’s go back,” he said suddenly. He had seen four figures—strolling, unhurrying, masculine figures—turn the far corner. He felt a spontaneous, improbable thirst. Irene was rummaging in her handbag.

  “I’ve got to blow my nose.”

  Henderson looked around again in what he hoped was an unconcerned, natural way. The figures—dark, lithe looking—had crossed to their side of the street with what seemed like more urgency. Henderson clenched a fist. He looked quickly right and left. They were alone. Irene still searched for a tissue.

  Jesus Christ, Henderson thought, they say it happens to everybody sooner or later—like a car crash or a burglary. He felt a surging panic begin to overwhelm him. It’s only when you haven’t got any money that they kill you. Or pour petrol over you and set you alight. Or rape you. Gang-sodomize you. They were only ten yards away.

  “Got it,” said Irene, and honked noisily into a Kleenex.

  “Run!” Henderson screamed, simultaneously flinging away the umbrella and giving Irene a mighty push. He hauled off his sabers and dropped them on the ground. His hand closed around his wallet, fat with credit cards and dollars.

  “You can have it, you bastards!” he yelled at the muggers and with all his strength bowled his wallet in their direction. He saw it fly open and notes and cards shower out, then he turned and ran. At once he tripped over his sabers and barked his knee savagely on the road. Through tears of pain he saw no sign of Irene and assumed she had made her escape. He heard shouts close behind him. Without a rearward glance he got to his feet and started to sprint away up the street, making difficult progress as his belted and buttoned raincoat got in the way of his pounding knees—one of which felt as if it were on fire, the knee bone like some white-hot, abrasive nugget. He thrashed frantically on, though, skidding in a puddle, glancing off a dustbin. He was impelled to even greater efforts by another hoarse shout from behind and by the sound of running footsteps—light, energetic, athletic paces, slapping on the wet tarmac. Oh, God, just don’t let them pour petrol on me, he prayed. Just don’t let them kick all my teeth out. He thought he was going to vomit with the effort. He felt a hand clutch at his elbow. He screamed and thrashed out wildly behind him, somehow forcing himself to keep running. A hand caught his flying coattail.

  “OK,” he bellowed in mingled rage and terror as he was hauled to a stop, “Kill me, kill me! I don’t care!”

  He collapsed gasping against a wall, the end of the street and safety still a dark twenty yards away. Would anyone hear his screams?

  Both his arms were firmly gripped. “Sir,” a quiet voice came. “Relax, please, sir. We have your wallet and your money here.”

  Henderson lay in his bed in his apartment. Alone. He felt like a man awakening from a deep coma, or like an airliner emerging from a dense cloud bank into clearer air. The white clouds were his shame and embarrassment. Occasionally they swirled around to reengulf him, but now, several hours later, they appeared finally to be on the wane.

  The mighty push that he had given Irene, and that was meant to propel her up the street, had in fact been badly askew. She had thudded heavily into a wall and collapsed, wordless and winded, to observe her frenzied screaming lover hurl his wallet at four returning moviegoers and then run frantically away, raincoat cracking, tumbling and falling in desperate panic-stricken flight. Two of the young men had helped her to her feet and pumped air into her lungs while the other two had overtaken the bawling fearful Henderson. He had reconstructed this version of events later. Shame rendered him a docile automaton. Irene had been bundled into a passing taxi (now, they passed) while he, with the assistance of the four young men (they were so helpful) had scrabbled about in search of his scattered damp money and credit cards.

  He looked at his watch. Half past three. The last time he had looked at his watch it had been twenty-seven minutes past three. This was, he reckoned, insomnia’s crudest curse. Time dawdled. Time loitered. Time forgot what it was meant to be doing. Henderson could lie awake and review his entire autobiography in merciless detail—all the false starts, the self-delusions, the errors, the if-onlys—in the time it took for the minute hand on his watch to advance one tiny calibrated square. He turned over. He turned over again. He got hot and thrust a leg out from beneath the quilt. It got cold. He drew it back in. He looked at his watch. Twenty-six minutes to four.

  By rights he should have been in bed with Irene. Those round, flat breasts with their curiously small dark nipples. Her unshaven armpits. Her smells … They had slept together twice before. The first time, as he had hovered uncertainly above her (his first sex in eight months, all technique forgotten, trusting hopefully to instinct), she had reached down, grabbed his cock at the root and virtually—there was no other adequate verb—plugged him in. The second time, as he had humped away with damp-browed, slack-jawed abandon in the dark, she had said in his ear, “Shall we stop, Henderson? Do you really think it’s worth it tonight?” He had stopped at once, his shock at the matter-of-fact reasonableness of her tone detumescing him rapidly. She had said that it all seemed a bit pointless that night—if he’d forgive the expression. She wasn’t in the right mood for all that shoving and pounding. Nothing to do with him, she had added, it was just that at certain times she found the sex act, well, ludicrous and absurd. He had found himself agreeing, to his surprise, but there was a quality about Irene’s scornful logic that, once engaged, brooked no argument. It was like the laser eye of a guided missile: once locked on it couldn’t be evaded, no matter how one jinked, sidetracked or doubled back.

  Tonight, though, until the disastrous arrival of the four “muggers,” had been different, and would have been different, he felt sure. He sank his teeth into his pillow. He enjoyed being with Irene: she could be so odd, so strange. The first time he had gone back to her apartment with her, she had invited him in, then picked up a block of wood and a hammer lying in the hallway, placed the wood against a wall and hammered at it for a couple of minutes—an act she repeated every quarter of an hour. She explained to her baffled guest that her neighbors had been redecorating their apartment for the last month at all hours and, now
that they were finished, she was letting them have a taste of their own medicine. The last Sunday, she confessed, she had drilled and hammered for a good two hours. “I give,” she said, with a tough smile and looking at him directly, “as good as I get.”

  That was true, Henderson had come to realize. And there also, he admitted, was the source of Irene’s potent allure. She was the very antithesis of him. Rather as cannibals are renowned to eat the brains of their enemies to acquire extra intelligence and cunning, so Henderson fancied his association with Irene might allow some of her forthright vigor to strengthen his soul.…

  He sat up and replumped his pillows. Over the years, as he had first located, analyzed and tried to face up to his problem, the suspicion had grown that it in some way wasn’t his own fault, that in some way his country was to blame. Perhaps.

  With a great thrashing heave he turned over.

  He slid his hand into the cool crevice between sheet and pillow. That was what he needed. He thought of his lamentable day. He needed some of that strength. He itched with residual shame. There was no hope in ringing her up, asking if he could come around. No hope … Besides, he didn’t know if he was up to it himself. When he had fallen over his saber bag he had cut and grazed his right knee rather badly, and ruined his suit.

  He looked at his watch. A quarter to four.

  He turned on his side, hunched into his pillow and closed his eyes. But his brain’s life bubbled on, like an indefatigable partygoer. It was something about bed, something about his body’s being in repose that seemed to trigger it into hyperactive motion. He ran through his favorite sexual fantasies, duly got an erection, but then found he was thinking about the problems of replacing his American Express card, which had not been uncovered by the diligent search he and his four new friends had carried out.

  He wondered if he should take a sleeping pill, but decided not to. They left him more tired the following day than his usual undrugged night on the rack. Once, in a fit of frustration, he had taken three of the particular brand he was prescribed. They made him go to sleep, after a fashion; but what was worse was that he stumbled around like a moron for the next day—heavy-lidded, rubber-lipped, senses all but shut down, barely able to string three words together. At times in any given night he did drift off but never, it seemed, for more than half an hour. It was a source of constant wonder to him how his body survived on such meager rations. He had read somewhere that eight hours of sleep per day was a mythical requirement. He was living proof of the fallacy—if such a concept was possible. For a while he played around with the words: can you prove a fallacy, disprove a fallacy … ?