The Cloisters(37)

“I just think Patrick was willing to overlook so many of these issues because the deck was almost complete. And complete decks are impossible to find. It was going to be such a coup, sharing it at the Morgan. In fact, Patrick wants us to go pick up a few remaining cards down at Stephen’s tomorrow. I guess several had to be acquired from another source.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m surprised he still wants them, considering Aruna’s opinion.”

The sounds coming from Patrick’s office had stopped, and the library returned to stillness, save for the sound of visitors passing along the corridor outside.

“It might be best not to be around Patrick right now anyways,” Rachel whispered.



* * *



The 125th Street platform had little standing room and the subway car even less. Everywhere, people were dressed in pinstripes and Yankee caps: young families, drunk college kids, Japanese tourists, a guy hawking bootleg hats—a sea of bodies, suffocating and idiosyncratic, that moved me around, despite my attempts to stand my ground. I was squeezed in before the doors closed, my face pressed up against the glass, slightly scratched and worn, only to be spit out three stops later when the car emptied at Yankee Stadium; it was fifteen minutes before first pitch. Afterward, the only people left on the train were myself, a man who had inexplicably slept through it all, and a young mother, infant on her lap. That the city swung wildly between these two extremes—joyful chaos and the workaday—made me desperate to experience it all, to feel the polarity of the two.

I met Leo one stop later at the entrance to the subway. I was wearing a short baby doll dress from Rachel’s castoff collection, and was gratified when Leo looked at me and then performed a dramatic double take.

“You look good,” he said, appraisingly. “Come on. We’re going to eat before the gig.”

He didn’t take my hand, but held my upper arm and walked very close to me, the way a hostage taker might lead a victim if he had a gun. It was an unusual way to walk, but I liked how close he was, how intimate it felt.

It was my first trip to the Bronx, and it was vibrant and loud—car stereos and music spilling out of bodegas, people on stoops laughing and playing music of their own, a cacophony or a symphony, I couldn’t decide. And despite the long, leafy streets and low-slung apartment blocks, only four or five stories high, it felt more densely packed than Manhattan, where the view was dominated by skyscrapers. If Leo seemed occasionally brittle and often biting at The Cloisters, here he seemed loose. Even the way he walked was lighter, more off-kilter, like he didn’t have complete control of the way his feet moved or their cadence.

“That’s where I live,” said Leo, pointing to a brick apartment building. “On the third floor, in that corner window.”

I could feel his breath on my neck. The way he inhabited my space was always a little unnerving, taking up too much of it, like it wasn’t mine, but his. And while it should have made me nervous, it only made me excited. It made me want to unlock all the carefully compartmentalized qualities in my life and let them loose.

We kept walking toward the sun until a hot orange twilight spread across the pavement. Neither of us spoke. I was worried that anything I might say could give me away, reveal me as a fraud. But Leo simply led me into a bar, walking quickly through the dark interior until we reemerged on a back patio, where the umbrellas were emblazoned with beer logos and a single rotating fan blew stale, humid air back and forth between makeshift fencing.

Leo threw himself into a plastic chair, then quickly got back to his feet to pull out mine, but the gesture was too late. He only managed to reach the arm and knock it back a bit, but I appreciated the effort.

“Sorry,” he said. “Out of practice.”

“Putting me in cabs, pulling out my chair,” I said. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as chivalrous.”

“Chivalry was very big in the Middle Ages, wasn’t it?” he asked.

We ordered beers that wept condensation and a plate of tacos. I was overdressed.

“Did you get in trouble?” I asked. “The other day?”

“Oh. Officer Palko? He only catches me now and then. Technically you need three fines to be banned. He’s only managed to give me two so far.”

I nodded, and we both fell silent until finally he asked:

“Will this be your first punk show?”

“Yes.”

It was actually my first concert of any kind. But I wasn’t ready to admit that.

“When we go on, you can come backstage.” Leo offered me his pack of cigarettes, but I declined. He pulled one out for himself and lit it. The sulfurous smell from the match found me across the table.

“Is this what you want to do?” I took a sip of my beer, fizzy and filling, grateful to be talking about something else. “Be a musician?”

“You don’t think being a gardener is a career?” He leaned back in his chair and tapped his cigarette on the table; there was no ashtray.

“No. I mean, if you want it to be.”

“What if I told you,” he said, striking a match and lighting it idly, a reflex, a habit. “That I had zero ambition. That I just wanted to plant and trim and weed all day. What then?”

“What do you mean, ‘what then’?”

“Would that be it? Would you be over this?” He drew a line in the air between us. “Are you looking for someone who’s always trying to transform themselves into the next thing? Because that can get exhausting.”