William Kennedy - Roscoe

Adam Whalen, an assistant DA, cut through the crowd to whisper, “A friend of yours wants to see you, Roscoe. Trish Cooney. She was giving a guy a blowjob through her car window when somebody shot him in the back. They think she set him up. We’re charging her with conspiracy and lewd behavior.”

“Just go for the lewd,” Roscoe said. “She’s not smart enough for conspiracy. Tell Freddie Gold to bail her out and send me the bill.”

Roscoe found Mike Quinlan being third man behind the bar this frantic night. “Great election, Roscoe. Where’s the Mayor?”

“City Hall, where he’s supposed to be. Listen, Mike, I’m just passing through. Got some business uptown that won’t wait. But keep an open bar for an hour tonight on me, and don’t bill the Party. Bill me at the hotel.”

“Hey, you’re a live one, Roscoe.”

“That’s one possibility,” Roscoe said.

He threaded himself back out the door, stood in the cold night looking down State Street, full of parked cars but nobody on the street. He truly believed Elisha killed himself for a purpose. Just because you invent it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Roscoe reflected often on his own suicide, but he wasn’t worth killing. No point to it. That, of course, was Roscoe’s old fallacy that everything has a point, when it could have forty points, thirty-five. A man is never single-mindedly wrong or right in such heavy matters. What was said about the Celt applied to Elisha, who certainly was a Celt somewhere in his soul, by osmosis from Patsy and Roscoe if nothing else. The man said that the Celt was melancholy not out of a definite motive but through something unaccountable, defiant, and titanic. An Englishman said that. Roscoe walked down State Street until he found a cab.

At Tivoli, Roscoe found Veronica sitting alone in the breakfast room, the servants all in bed. Roscoe had to call her name aloud to find her. She was dressed for the victory party, clinging new black sheath, hair that parted in the middle and fell into a large, single yellow curl that surrounded her neck like a lush collar. Her cheekbones seemed more emphatic tonight, nose more aquiline, eyelids the color of rose of Sharon; Christ, what beauty. She sat at the same table, same chair, as on the morning Roscoe brought her Elisha’s final news.

“You’re back early,” she said. “Didn’t you go to the party?”

“I left when I figured out you weren’t coming. I saw Cutie LaRue. He thinks Jay Farley lost because honesty is no substitute for experience.”

“It may be true.”

“There’s no way to be honest. I’ve always said that.”

“But we try to be honest, don’t we?”

“Do we?”

“I do.”

“Good. I had a talk with Alex.”

“I know. He called me.”

“He thought he was being honest, but of course he wasn’t.”

“How wasn’t he?”

“You don’t know?”

“Did he lie? What did he say?”

“Didn’t he tell you what he said?”

“I hated what he told me, but it made perfect sense to him.”

“Perfect sense but not the truth.”

“What’s the truth, Roscoe?”

“I never tell the truth.”

“Tell me, damn it.”

“I can’t talk about it. Don’t you have things you can’t talk about?”

“I suppose I do.”

“There you are. You look glorious. Anything to say to me about tomorrow? Or the next day? Or the next?”

What Veronica said then was supremely logical. How could she abandon Alex and sacred Gilby, her children? Consider her god-awful loss of Rosemary. You, Roscoe, have been responsible for every beautiful thing that happened to us in these past months. You’re so selfless. You love Gilby, Gilby adores you, you are adorable. But what will happen when Alex sees Gilby adoring you, or you moving in with us, or us with you? It would explode the family. Alex believes you’ll be a negative influence on the boy. I know he’s very wrong. It’s perverse to exile you from us after all the wonderful things you’ve done. But if you’d done them differently, would we now have such a hostile climate for love? As it is, Veronica has only one choice. Perhaps it’s the wrong one, but she can’t evade it. Oh, how much she loves who Roscoe is, her longtime love, and she knows his love for her is as great as Elisha’s was. She loves Roscoe every way possible. Didn’t she make total love to him? She withheld nothing from this man she truly wants. Veronica and Roscoe now desire each other so much that it seems they were destined to be together. But one rarely sorts out desire and destiny satisfactorily. And then Alex rises up and says the unthinkable. And nothing to be done. But you and I don’t know what will happen, my dearest Roscoe. And you do have my heart, my only love. I won’t give it to another.

She cried. Her tears would melt steel. She kissed him so many, many times. He cried with her. His tears stained the floor tiles. They kissed and kissed. They fumbled each other. She could not stop crying as they kissed. He raised her clothing to touch her every where. She did the same with him. Then they put everything back in its proper place. She leaned against the door and slapped it softly as she cried. He blew his nose and went upstairs for his brown valise with the fifty thousand in cash in the false bottom, quiet wages. Everything else he left in the room. Goodbye, room. He asked her to call a cab and it came, and when she saw him coming down the stairs she sent it away. They continued to kiss by the door. Love. Oh, love. Such love as this. God help our love. You have my heart, Roscoe. I won’t give it to another. We don’t know how life will change. We never know the future. You take my heart with you. Our hearts, our hearts, oh, our hearts. We never know what will happen to our hearts.

On the Night Boat

From where he stood on the promenade deck, Roscoe could hear the first strains of music from the boat’s orchestra: cellos, then oboes, a Wagner overture, with desire implicit in the music. Just what Roscoe needs. He moved up the deck until he could no longer hear it. As the boat’s motor began to thrum he noticed two lone men on the quay, one prone with eyes closed, arms outstretched, unmoving. Dead? The other standing at the downed man’s feet looking toward the boat, a tableau vivant. The downed man had done something unspeakable; this Roscoe sensed through his kinship with the fallen. Roscoe called out to him to get up and explain himself, but the man was beyond words, as was Roscoe, who can never utter the words that would trigger Alex instantly, and forever, into fear and trembling.

He walked the deck, assessing time by the intensity of the flickering shore lights and contemplating the myriad forms deceit takes, how they intersect and magnify, or cancel each other out. Veronica, the sleeping beauty, will awake to find she is forever wed to a dead man and can never explain why. Does she know why? She may always have known. So much comes down to self-deceit, such as Roscoe shooting that bear. How could he have convinced himself, or anybody, that he shot that bear? Yet Roscoe believes in his creations: his beau geste saved the Party, and won him Veronica’s love. A lie, after all, is only another way of affirming the desirable. A live lie is better than a dead truth, and there is no ultimate wall that the creative individual cannot breach through deceit. To repossess Veronica’s love, Roscoe would lie until he forgot how. Any time he chooses, he can see her stunning in her black sheath, naked in her jacket on the bed, smart in her riding britches and boots, contoured in her black bathing suit, fetching in her slip at the hotel, new at morning in her Chinese dressing gown. He will not lose these visions.

Two chubby nuns walked past him on their way to becoming cherubim and went into one of the boat’s private parlors. Roscoe followed and looked through the parlor window to see nuns and priests sitting at several card tables, silently exchanging holy pictures and tarot cards. This looked new. He entered to find a luxurious gambling establishment: carpets obviously from Brussels, an explosion of finely wrought brass railings, brass light fixtures and cuspidors, mahogany chairs, velvet wallpaper, unique décor for a Night Boat. He moved among the gaming tables, stopped at a corner where five well-dressed gentlemen were playing a dice-and-card game Roscoe could not identify. He studied the blackboards which listed stock prices and odds on ball games, fights, marriages. He moved to the board with the racing entries, noted a familiar name: Cabala 2, and then coming toward him he saw Johnny Mack, Patsy’s bookie, and the elegance here made sense. Owner of racehorses, man of taste and fashion, premier gambler, why wouldn’t John furnish this parlor as handsomely as his White House, Albany’s premier chamber of games?