Jonathan Lethem: Motherless Brooklyn

“Frank,” came a voice over the wire.

“I came,” said Minna wearily. “But I shouldn’t have to. You should clear up crap on your end.”

“I appreciate that,” went the other voice. “But things have gotten complicated.”

“They know about the contract for the building,” said Minna.

“No, I don’t think so.” The voice was weirdly calm, placating. Did I recognize it? Perhaps not that so much as the rhythm of Minna’s replies-this was someone he knew well, but who?

“Come inside, let’s talk,” said the voice.

“What about?” said Minna. “What do we have to talk about?”

“Listen to yourself, Frank.”

“I came here to listen to myself? I can do that at home.”

“But do you, in fact?” I could hear a smile in the voice. “Not as often, or as deeply as you might, I suspect.”

“Where’s Ullman?” said Minna. “You got him here?” “Ullman’s downtown. You’ll go to him.”

“Fuck.”

“Patience.”

“You say patience, I say fuck.”

“Characteristic, I suppose.”

“Yeah. So let’s call the whole thing off.”

More muffled footsteps, a door closing. A clunk, possibly a bottle and glass, a poured drink. Wine. I wouldn’t have minded a beverage myself. I chewed on a Castle instead and gazed out the windshield, brain going Characteristic autistic mystic my tic dipstick dickweek and then I thought to take another note, flipped open the notebook and under WOMAN, HAIR, GLASSES wrote ULLMAN DOWNTOWN, thought Dull Man Out of Town. When I swallowed the burger, my jaw and throat tightened, and I braced for an unavoidable copralalic tic-out loud, though no one was there to hear it. “Eat shit, Bailey!”

Bailey was a name embedded in my Tourette’s brain, though I couldn’t say why. I’d never known a Bailey. Maybe Bailey was everyman, like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life . My imaginary listener, he had to bear the brunt of a majority of my solitary swearing-some part of me required a target, apparently. If a Touretter curses in the woods and there’s nobody to hear does he make a sound? Bailey seemed to be my solution to that conundrum.

“Your face betrays you, Frank. You’d like to murder someone.”

“You’d do fine for a start.”

“You shouldn’t blame me, Frank, if you’ve lost control of her.”

“It’s your fault if she misses her Rama-lama-ding-dong .

You’re the one who filled her head with that crap.”

“Here, try this.” (Offering a drink?)

“Not on an empty stomach.”

“Alas. I forget how you suffer, Frank.”

“Aw, go fuck yourself.”

“Eat shit, Bailey!” The tics were always worst when I was nervous, stress kindling my Tourette’s. And something in this scenario was making me nervous. The conversation I overheard was too knowing, the references all polished and opaque, as though years of dealings lay underneath every word.

Also, where was the short-dark-haired girl? In the room with Minna and his supercilious conversational partner, silent? Or somewhere else entirely? My inability to visualize the interior space of One-oh-nine was agitating. Was the girl the “she” they were discussing? It seemed unlikely.

And what was her Rama-lama-ding-dong ? I didn’t have the luxury of worrying about it. I pushed away a host of tics and tried not to dwell on things I didn’t understand.

I glanced at the door. Presumably Coney was still behind it. I wanted to hear not if my life depended on it so we could rush the stairs.

I was startled by a knock on the driver’s window. It was the doorman who’d been watching. He gestured for me to roll down the window. I shook my head, he nodded his. Finally I complied, pulling the headphones off one ear so I could listen.

“What?” I said, triply distracted-the power window had seduced my magpie mind and now demanded purposeless raising and lowering. I tried to keep it subtle.

“Your friend, he wants you,” said the doorman, gesturing back toward his building.

“What?” This was thoroughly confusing. I craned my neck to see past him, but there was nobody visible in the doorway of his building. Meanwhile, Minna was saying something over the wire. But not bathroom or depended on it .

“Your friend,” the doorman repeated in his clumsy Eastern European accent, maybe Polish or Czech. “He asks for you.” He grinned, enjoying my bewilderment. I felt myself knitting my brow exaggeratedly, a tic, and wanted to tell him to wipe the grin off his face: Everything he was seeing was not to his credit.

“What friend?” I said. Minna and Coney were both inside-I would have noticed if the Zendo door had budged

“He said if you’re waiting, he’s ready,” said the doorman, nodding, gesturing again. “Wants to talk.”

Now Minna was saying something about “… make a mess on the marble floor…”

“I think you’ve got the wrong guy,” I said to the doorman. “Dickweed!” I winced, waved him off, tried to focus on the voices coming over the headphones.

“Hey, hey,” the doorman said. He held up his hands. “I’m just bringing you a message, friend.”

I zipped down the power window again, finally pried my fingers away. “No problem,” I said, and suppressed another dickweed into a high, chihuahuaesque barking sound, something like yipke! “But I can’t leave the car. Tell my friend if he wants to talk to come out and talk to me here. Okay, friend?” It seemed to me I had too many friends all of a sudden, and I didn’t know any of their names. I repeated my impulsive flapping motion with my hand, an expedient tic-and-gesture combo, trying to nudge this buffoon back to his doorway.

“No, no. He said come in.”

“… break an arm…” I thought I heard Minna say.

“Get his name, then,” I said, desperate. “Come back and tell me his name.”

“He wants to talk to you.”

“Okay, eatmedoorman , tell him I’ll be right there.” I powered up the window in his face. He tapped again, and I ignored him.

“… first let me use your toilet…”

I opened the car door and pushed the doorman out of the way, went to the Zendo door and knocked, six times, hard. “Coney,” I hissed. “Get out here.”

Over the headset I heard Minna shut the bathroom door behind him, begin running water. “Hope you heard that, Freakshow,” he whispered into his microphone, addressing me directly. “We’re getting in a car. Don’t lose us. Play it cool.”

Coney popped out of the door.

“He’s coming out,” I said, pulling the headphones down around my neck.

“Okay,” said Coney, eyes wide. We were in the thick of the action, for once.

“You drive,” I said, touching my fingertip to his nose. He flinched me away like a fly. We hustled into the car, and Coney revved the engine. I threw the bag of cooling Castles and paper wreckage into the backseat. The idiot doorman had vanished into his building. I put him out of my mind for the moment.

We sat facing forward, our car shrouded in its own sam, waiting, vibrating. My brain went Follow that car! Hollywood star! When you wish upon a cigar! My jaw worked, chewing the words back down, keeping silent. Gilbert’s hands gripped the wheel, mine drummed quietly in my lap, tiny hummingbird motions.

This was what passed for playing it cool around here.