The Metropolis Case Read online

  “Even after the vaunted ‘crash’?” said Jay—returning the quotations sign. He could afford to be glib, given that his grandfather had left him enough to make finances a negligible concern. Martin nodded as Jay continued. “So job aside—what else? How’s the rest of your year been?”

  “I can’t complain.” Martin shrugged.

  Jay laughed. “You can to me!”

  Martin reconsidered the question. “Okay, how about a few nagging problems on the health front I could live without?”

  Jay grimaced. “Hello, life after forty.”

  “Indeed,” Martin acknowledged before outlining a list of symptoms with which he had been bothered in the past year, including episodes of numbness in his hands and feet, maddeningly itchy armpits, an arthritic knee, and problems sleeping as a result of an unrelenting need to piss on some nights, particularly—and here he paused to signal the bartender for a second round—after drinking. “Sorry if that’s too much information before dinner.”

  Jay brushed off the apology. “Christ, Vallence, we’re forty-one, not fourteen! Physical decline should be expected and embraced at our age, except by those of your jockish ilk, who try to perpetuate youth with tricks and mirrors.”

  This was not exactly fair. Though Martin had started all four years in goal as a hockey player at Cornell—and had long enjoyed his athleticism and accompanying good health, a few extra pounds and his HIV-positive status notwithstanding—it was also true that, in keeping with a tradition of goalies, he had largely avoided the weight room and most forms of cardiovascular exercise, with the possible exception of having sex, which—as much as he tried not to think of it in such clinical terms—was probably the best thing he did for his heart with any regularity. Because Jay was more or less acquainted with all of this—except the more salacious details of his romantic escapades—Martin felt no need to defend himself on such terms.

  Jay waited for the bartender to replace his tumbler. “So what does your doctor say?”

  Martin shrugged. “No idea about the hands and feet—and as for the other stuff, about the best he could come up with was prostatitis.”

  “Oh, that’s a good one,” Jay said, shaking his head. “Completely vague and incurable.”

  “You have it, too?”

  “Try not to sound so cheerful,” Jay remarked. “I was born with it—weak bladder, stabbing pains in your balls, insomnia—these things come and go.”

  They were led to their table, where they considered the menu for a few minutes before Jay picked up the thread of the conversation. “Well, if health is the issue—and even if it’s not,” he said after they ordered, “my recommendation is to retire, as soon as possible.”

  “At forty-one!”

  “Yeah, why not—you’ve been raking it in, right? How much do you really need?”

  Martin pondered this idea. “Okay—as a man of letters, describe for me a typical day in the life of Jay Wellings.”

  “Let’s see,” Jay mused. “Get up between nine thirty and ten, read the Observer, the Times, and—since I trust you—the Post. Drink coffee, do the crossword puzzle—in the newspaper, incidentally, and not on the Internet—read some more, maybe even thumb through The Economist so I can pretend to be interested in politics or foreign policy, meet someone for lunch—this could be you in the future—go to an exhibit or the theater. Watch Oprah or some other junk food once in a while. At night go to a show or the opera. Or more television. Or maybe one of those dinner parties Linda drags me to where I’m expected to make brash, unpredictable comments to the squeamish delight of the other guests.”

  Martin smiled slyly. “You don’t sound too happy about it.”

  “What’s happiness got to do with it?” Jay again barked. “You have to assume that existential malaise—which is not quite the same as boredom, incidentally—is a constant of modern life, and live accordingly.”

  WHEN A FEW minutes later Jay left for the men’s room, Martin observed his friend’s slouching gait and was reminded of the day they met in boarding school, where they had been roommates beginning in tenth grade. He remembered the first time he had seen Jay, slumped on his bed against the wall, effectively two-dimensional as he sat reading a small yellow book, his hair short and parted on the side but still messy, like he hadn’t combed it in weeks. After an introduction limited to an exchange of first names and a handshake flimsy enough to make Martin feel relieved that his father—who would definitely have broken Jay’s fingers and made a joke about it—had already left, Martin stood stiffly, trying to think of the best way to proceed. He spotted a postcard-size photograph of what appeared to be a rock band taped to the wall. “Who’s that?”

  “The Velvet Underground,” Jay muttered as he stood up and took a step toward his desk, on which sat an impressive stack of stereo components. When Martin didn’t immediately respond, he added: “You know—Lou Reed, ‘Walk on the Wild Side’?”

  Martin nodded. He liked the song but wasn’t familiar with the Velvet Underground. “So who else do you like?”

  “The Ramones,” Jay answered in what to Martin seemed like a needlessly abrasive tone. He knew that Jay was from New York, which made him wonder if everyone there spoke like this, or if he had done something beyond revealing his ignorance of the Velvet Underground to offend his new roommate. Jay picked up a record from a pile scattered on the floor, shook the LP out of the sleeve, and placed it on the turntable, where after dusting it off he set down the needle with a finesse and a sure-handed authority that Martin could not help but admire. Jay turned to Martin. “You’re probably into disco.”

  “Uh, no,” Martin said as he brushed a mass of black curls away from his eyes.

  “Well, good for you.” Jay again seemed to sneer but then, to Martin’s pleasant surprise, in the next few seconds managed—after pulling out a small wooden box from his desk drawer—to produce and light a joint, which he offered to Martin with a friendly and almost apologetic shrug. As happy as Martin was to accept this apparent peace offering, as the Ramones kicked in, he was repulsed by the obnoxious simplicity of the music; the drummer could barely hold a beat, the bass and guitar players played the same two or three chords over and over, and worst of all, the singer didn’t so much as sing as half-croon and half-yelp his clipped lyrics. After returning the joint to Jay, Martin picked up the cover and stared at the four “freaks”—the term for “burnouts” in Pittsburgh, or at least in Cedar Village, the town where he had grown up—in ripped jeans, black-leather jackets, and bowl haircuts, wearing expressions ranging from completely vacant to somewhat defiant as they stood in front of a graffiti-covered concrete and brick wall. While Jay sat on his bed reading and smoking, Martin listened more carefully to the music as he reexamined the cover, and now—whether because he was a bit high or because he had gotten used to the sound—he noticed that one of the Ramones had his middle finger pushed out of his pants pocket as if giving him—i.e., the viewer—the finger, which made him laugh, and if the songs—e.g, “I Don’t Wanna Go Down to the Basement,” “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue”—were idiotic, they were pretty fucking funny in a way that his parents, for starters, never would have understood.

  “So?” Jay asked after side two ended, less than thirty minutes after side one began. “Crap or not crap?”

  Martin observed Jay’s wiry arms, which like those of any geek looked as if they would have been taxed holding anything heavier than a pair of dice, except there was something ungeekish about Jay that fascinated Martin. It was not only the music he liked and his obvious facility at getting high but also his thick, expensive-looking chinos—even though they were beyond wrinkled and had one ripped knee—and button-down oxford-cloth shirt, which unlike Martin’s was frayed around the collar and tucked into his pants in a few random spots. “I can’t decide if it’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” Martin managed with an almost bashful smile, “but right now let’s say it’s the best.”

  SOME TWENTY-FIVE YEARS later at Demoiselles, as Martin
watched the elongated flecks of chandelier in the curving silver handle of his butter knife, he tried to decide why the memory—as much as he would always love Jay and the Ramones—left him uneasy. He considered his vague if incessant dissatisfaction with work and thought about whether—questions of finances aside—he could ever really “retire,” as Jay had recommended. Cutting back on his hours would be one thing, but—as much as he understood the impulse—it seemed like an option better left in the realm of the hypothetical, at least without a more concrete reason. Health problems aside, he could see himself shrugging off the same idea a year from now and, to be fair, wasn’t horrified. As he saw Jay walking back to the table, he remembered something else from high school, which left him with none of the melancholy of the earlier memory. Again he heard music, although it was nothing he could place beyond an ethereal dissonance—a wash of distortion—and a slow, hypnotic beat that perfectly matched that of his pulse. He knew he was drunk but didn’t care; he felt limber and relaxed as he peered through the smudges on his wineglass and welcomed the forgotten scene. This time, it was a few days later and they were at the window of their third-floor dorm room, flinging Martin’s Led Zeppelin LPs against the Dumpster outside, where each of the broken shards reflected a different fragment of the bright September sun.

  4

  Il n’existe pas deux genres de poésies; il n’en est qu’une

  NEW YORK CITY, 1960. It was almost noon when Anna heard a knock at her bedroom door. Her domestic entered carrying a silver platter covered with telegrams from friends and colleagues both old and new, offering congratulations and making requests to consider this or that role or to talk to so-and-so, while at least five claimed to know that critics from the Times and—even better—This Is Our Music planned to write rave reviews. With her head buzzing, she went to the kitchen and ate two soft-boiled eggs and a roll, along with drinking some very strong coffee—Viennese by birth and temperament, she was not partial to tea—before making a round of phone calls. As exciting as it was to consider what she had done, to rehash the details left her jittery and anxious in the solitude of the afternoon, and as she contemplated the prospect of singing in London, Paris, Milan, perhaps even Vienna, she could not escape a premonition of what the days after these spectacular nights might offer. To this point her out-of-town commitments had been relatively light, nothing like what she expected going forward, and even if she surrounded herself with people—the staff from opera houses and hotels, her fellow cast members, perhaps even a personal assistant—she worried about loneliness; it was such a common lament among top singers, after all, though one she had never liked to consider with too much seriousness for fear of being presumptuous.

  Still, she wondered if her Isolde performance was only the first in a line of life-altering dominoes about to topple. She smiled at the memory of swooning over her ex-husband—an industrial tycoon fifteen years older than she was—in the early days of their relationship. While that hadn’t worked out—as she acknowledged with a familiar mix of relief and disappointment—she hadn’t given up; in the decade since their divorce, she had dated others, including a doctor (boring), a lawyer (argumentative), and even a dentist (fussy), all pleasant enough but none of whom had ultimately left her wanting to rip out her heart and offer it up with his to the endless night.

  She returned to her bedroom and flipped through a stack of cards she had collected the previous night at the after-party—per the Met custom, held at Demoiselles—with a thought to find one that had been given to her by the friend of a donor; both men were seated at her table. Over dinner, she could not shake the sense that the friend was watching her with a pleasant (though not invasive) intensity as she greeted a steady stream of well-wishers like a bride in a receiving line. Several times she glanced in his direction, and meeting his gaze made her feel almost giddy, like they were sharing a joke about this performance after the performance, before he returned to the endless plates of escargots and bottles of champagne that appeared in front of them. They managed to exchange a few words across the table, enough for her to learn that he, too, was from Europe and that French was his native language, although he was also fluent in German. When she stood up to leave—after being distracted by still more patrons who wished to convey their admiration—she felt a pang of disappointment to find him already gone; that he was a big man, with a wide chest and broad shoulders, made his absence seem that much keener. She slowly turned toward the entrance of the restaurant and, as though she had conjured him up, spotted him walking toward her. He shook her hand—his grip neither too strong nor too flimsy—offered his congratulations, and gave her his card along with an entreaty to visit his shop—he was, she had learned, an antiques dealer—n’importe quand.

  Anna considered the card’s pleasant weightlessness as she flipped it over to read his name—Lawrence Malcolm—and the address and phone number of his business in Greenwich Village. While she was not so naïve as to think he would be the love of her life, she was not about to abandon the idea, either, especially after the threat of loneliness that had so recently frightened her. She also loved old things as a rule (notably Boulle furniture, French landscape paintings, and first editions of Musset and Bergotte) and collected with the same level of financial impunity reflected in the apartment itself, a sprawling duplex with views of Central Park. She dialed his number and was pleased when he answered on the second ring, as if he had been expecting her. “Mr. Malcolm?” she began. “It’s Anna Prus—”

  “Yes, yes—what a nice surprise, Mrs. Prus. How are you today?”

  The enthusiasm of his response—unfeigned to her ear—seemed to affirm that the attraction she had felt the night before was not imaginary or the result of too much champagne. “Fine, thank you—I wasn’t sure if you were going to be in this afternoon, but I thought I might take you up on your offer—”

  “Avec plaisir,” he said. “I’ll be here until at least six o’clock.”

  “Perfect—I’ll see you soon.” Anna put down the phone, and as her hand passed through a beam of sunlight, she realized that the emerald stone of her ring was the same color as his lovely eyes.

  AN HOUR OR SO later, after being dropped in front of a storefront on Vanadium Street, Anna stepped out of the taxi and admired the curving row houses and cobblestones of the block, reminiscent of old Europe but somehow—and she recalled something to this effect that Lawrence had said the night before—less melancholy. After checking the address, she ascended a stoop and pushed open the front door; a silver bell echoed across the dusty shop and the bright winter sun filtered in through the naked trees outside. She spotted Lawrence behind a desk, partially obscured by a filing cabinet.

  “Anna Prus,” he said with a nod and closed his ledger, into which he had been entering figures—as she noted with appreciation—with a feather quill. “You’re by far the most accomplished singer I’ve had the pleasure to welcome here.” He took her fingers in his own and lightly kissed her cheeks, in the European manner, close enough for her to feel the soft scratch of his short beard.

  “I’ll bet you say that to all of your clients,” she replied as she opened her overcoat and took in the contents of the room. There were armchairs, dining chairs, desks, secretaries, and other pieces, which radiated with a glow of iron and dark mahogany. The walls were lined with paintings and etchings, several of which resonated with an azure tone that reminded her of the sky outside. She smiled at him. “Your collection appears to match the graciousness of your words.”

  “You’re very kind.” Lawrence made a slight bow and after taking her coat invited her to sit. “Could I offer you a drink? A whiskey or perhaps some cognac?”

  Anna opted for the former, and Lawrence soon returned carrying a tray with two glasses, a crystal flask, and a bottle of water. She received the glass with both hands, almost cupping them, which allowed her right palm to caress the back of his left hand, a gesture that seemed neither to surprise nor to displease him as he sat down across from her. “An Iri
sh whiskey for an Irish princess,” he toasted before nodding at her. “So—how do you feel after the big debut?”

  She savored the ambient heat of the alcohol. “It’s a bit unreal,” she confessed. “I have to keep pinching myself, especially when I think about doing it again.”

  He nodded. “I haven’t been to the opera in years, but you made me think it was worth the wait.”

  “I thought I overheard you say that,” she remarked, catching his eye as if they were still flirting in a crowd of people, “which surprised me.”

  “It seems unconscionable, doesn’t it?” He laughed and explained: “When I was younger, I was beyond idealistic—not just about opera, as you can probably imagine—but when things in the rest of my life didn’t work out exactly as I hoped, I gave it up—I didn’t want to be reminded.” He looked up at her. “If that makes sense.”

  “It does,” she emphasized and—prompted by his questions—described moving to New York City from Vienna with her parents, followed by high school in Washington Heights and conservatory at the Manhattan School of Music. Minutes vanished as they talked, and not once did his expression develop that maddeningly distant quality she associated with men who were merely indulging her, as if they couldn’t quite imagine that singing was as important to her as their art (or more frequently, business affairs) was to them, nor—like certain opera fanatics she had met over the years—did he seem to want to exploit her experience to become more of an insider, to be regaled with backstage stories involving singers more famous than she was. She was struck by the certainty of having already met him at some forgotten point, which—though he had denied this the previous night—heightened the pleasure of talking to him alone for the first time. “So yes, I was idealistic, too—painfully so,” she said, circling back to his original point. “I used to kill myself preparing for roles. I read philosophy and psychology, I studied the Eddic myths—I spent hours in the library—I wanted to be an ‘intellectual’ singer.”