The House That Jack Built Read online

  'Susan?' he called.

  Nearly a whole minute went by, and still no reply. Craig was ready to turn and leave when he heard a muffled mewling sound. It sounded like a cat, but not exactly like a cat. More like a girl with a gag around her mouth.

  He blundered into the darkness at the back of the store. 'Susan? Is that you? If you can hear me, kick your heels on the floor! Go ahead, kick!'

  He took another step forward and his right foot became entangled with a heap of wire shelves and display-racks. He shook them free, but then he trod on several sheets of glass, and they split underneath his shoes with a sharp, crackling noise.

  That was why he didn't hear them when they rushed right up to him and hit him in the stomach.

  He had been hit before - in boxing, in racquetball, in athletics - but never like this. He pitched back onto the wire shelving and shattered glass as if he had been knocked down by a speeding taxi. His head hit the wall with a terrible donking sound and he bit right through his bottom lip. He was so winded that he couldn't breathe, and when he clawed at the floor to try to lift himself up, his left hand was pricked and sliced by razor-sharp fragments of glass.

  But somebody seized his lapels and dragged him up onto his feet. Somebody strong and dark; somebody who smelled of rain and cigarettes and alcohol.

  There was somebody else, too. Somebody standing very close beside him. Far too close to be friendly.

  'What you doin' here, pal?' said the somebody who was standing very close beside him. 'Someone invite you in?'

  Craig wheezed and coughed. His stomach felt as if it were blazing. He never knew a punch could hurt so much.

  'Looking for Susan,' he managed to choke out.

  'Ain't no Susan here, pal. Ain't no muff at all. Just he and me.'

  'It's okay, then. I made a mistake. I'm sorry.'

  'Well, we're glad that you sorry. But sorry ain't enough. Sorry don't pay the man. Sorry don't make nobody feel better 'ceptin' the dude who says it.'

  Craig felt appalling. He began to tremble with ice-cold shocks, as if somebody were emptying buckets of cold water over him, one after another. He felt nauseous, but he couldn't bring anything up. His stomach felt as if it wasn't there any more. Why did he feel so cold?

  'What do you want?' he managed to ask them, in a bubbly voice.

  'Your money, pal. Your credit cards. Your jewellery. Whatever you got.'

  He took a deep breath, tried to say something, and then puked up a mouthful of bile and blood and Khryssa's chicken brioche, half-chewed.

  'Hey pal, you disgustin'. You sick.'

  'Take whatever you want,' he told them.

  'Okay, okay. But don't go hurlin' them chunks on me none.'

  'Take it, just take it.' He spat food from his mouth, and a string of sour-tasting saliva swung from his chin.

  'You one disgustin' dude, you know that? I seen dogs better behaved.'

  He waited, quaking, his eyes downcast, his shoulders hunched, while the young man reached into his coat and took out his wallet. Quick, dirty fingers went through his pockets, lifting his pens, his calculator, his loose change.

  'You goin' to be glad you did this, pal. Not everybody gets the chance to make a donation to the Aktuz.'

  Craig raised his eyes. In the darkness of the derelict drugstore, he could make out very little, only the faint gleam of rainy streetlight on a black cheekbone and a black shoulder; and eyes that glittered like blowflies.

  He turned to look at the boy who was standing beside him, and for a split-second this boy moved across the light and Craig caught a glimpse of a tall, cadaverous youth with deep-sunk eyes and a mouth stretched back in a gin-trap disarray of overlapping teeth. What struck him most of all was the youth's hair, which had been gelled up around his head like a gleaming black crown, and the heavy black frock coat that he was wearing. He looked like an extra from a movie about Mozart, except that he wasn't carrying a silver-topped stick or a violin. He was carrying a hammer.

  God, thought Craig, no wonder that goddamned blow to my stomach hurt me so much.

  'Watch and ring, pal,' the youth told him.

  Craig reluctantly took off his Rolex and his wedding-band. He nearly puked for a second time, but he managed to swallow it back. He didn't want to antagonise his attackers any more than they were antagonised already.

  The boy in the frock coat came very close beside him. 'We leavin' now. I know what's happenin' inside of you' haid, you thinkin', shit, they makin a fool out of me now, but you wait till I follow those boys and find out where they at and whistle for the man. Well, here's news for you. You ain't followin' us none.'

  'I wasn't even going to try,' Craig choked.

  'That's what you say.'

  'Why the hell should I follow you? I'm soaking wet, I'm sick. All I want to do is go home.'

  'That's what you say.'

  'For Christ's sake, you've taken all my money. What more do you want?'

  'I want a guarantee, pal.'

  Before Craig could even ask him what kind of a guarantee he wanted, the other youth seized him ferociously from behind and gripped him tight. Craig tried to wrestle and wriggle free, but the youth in the frock coat slapped his face, left and right, not too hard, but just enough to make his ears sing and his cheeks burst into flame.

  Together they slammed him up against the old drugstore counter.

  'What are you doing? What the hell are you doing? For Christ's sake let me go!'

  But while the first youth kept Craig pressed against the dusty mahogany counter, the youth in the frock coat reached around and unbuckled Craig's belt.

  'Get off me! Don't touch me! What are you doing?'

  He felt his buttons pulled off, his fly wrenched apart. Then a long-fingered black hand reaching into his shorts.

  'Don't touch me! Don't touch me! Don't touch me!'

  But the youth in the frock coat roughly scooped his genitals out of his shorts, and laid them on the counter. Craig's penis shrank in fear, and his scrotum tightened so much that the youth could barely take a grip on his testes.

  'Listen, I'll give you anything you want,' Craig babbled at him. 'I have a BMW 7-series, you can have that if you want to, it's red, you never drove anything like it. I have much more money, I'm really wealthy, I can arrange to pay you ten thousand dollars each. Twenty thousand, if you like.'

  The youth in the frock coat sniffed reflectively. 'Amazin', ain't it, how generous a dude can be when you're holdin' his toolbox.'

  Craig was sweating and trembling and utterly revolted by the way the youth was slowly kneading his penis and his testes between his long, dry fingers. He was rubbing him and pulling him almost absent-mindedly, but this gave his manipulations a terrible intimacy, as if he were a wife playing with her husband.

  'Amazin', how much some dudes would pay for a toolbox. What you would pay, pal?'

  'Anything you want. Now just let me go.'

  But the other youth said, 'I bid twenty dollars for the right-hand ball.'

  'Twenty dollars? Do I hear twenty dollars for the right-hand ball?'

  'Let me go!' Craig roared at him, and tried to wrench himself away. But the youth in the frock coat slapped him again, much harder this time, and then he slammed his hammer down on top of the counter, only inches away from Craig's genitals. Craig felt the hard shock of it travel through the counter and bruise his thighs.

  'Is that all that anybody goin' to bid?' the youth asked, in mock astonishment. 'Why, twenty dollars, that's nothin' for a full-growed fully-functional ball.'

  'Thirty,' said Craig. This was the most chilling kind of torture, because he didn't know whether they wanted him to win or lose - or what would happen if he did either. If he won, he was terrified that they would cut off his testicle and give it to him. If he lost - well, God alone knew what they would do. He even began to think about the Bobbitt case, in which a vengeful Laurene Bobbitt had cut off her husband's penis and thrown it out of her car window. He tried to remind himself to look closely
where these two tossed his genitals, if they castrated him, so that he could recover them quickly; and he also had to think of places where he could find some ice, so that he could keep them in good condition while he called for an ambulance.

  He thought he remembered seeing a bar across the street. A bar would have ice. Then he thought: what am I thinking? This is a nightmare.

  'Thirty-five,' the other youth bid.

  'A hundred,' Craig countered, in a much higher voice than he had meant to.

  'Hundert-and-twenny five.'

  'Two hundred.'

  'Five hundert.'

  'A million.'

  A pause. Then, 'A million! Come on, pal, nobody's ball worth a million.'

  'Mine is, to me.'

  The youth in the frock coat came up very close to him, and said, 'You serious?'

  'Sure I'm serious. You let me go, you can have a million dollars, in cash, no questions asked.'

  'Well, hey… now you talkin'.'

  'I mean it. A million, in cash, in used currency, no marked or sequential bills. Delivered anyplace you like, any time you like.'

  'I think you serious, pal. I genuinely think you serious.'

  'I am serious, for Christ's sake. Just tell me where you want the money, and when. Or else I can give you my phone number, and we can arrange it later.'

  'A million,' breathed the youth, and ostentatiously licked his lips. 'What you think about that, bruthah? You think you can bid more than a million?'

  'No way, man. I'm out.'

  'Okay then. For one million dollars, this valuable ball…one of a fine pair… going... going...' Craig lifted his eyes in relief. For the first time since the two youths had jumped on him, he clearly heard the sound of the traffic and the storm outside. On the ceiling, he saw the shadowy ripples of rainwater coursing down the drugstore window, and the flickering long-legged images of passers-by.

  Then the youth in the frock coat lifted his hammer like an auctioneer's gavel, hesitated for a moment, and smashed it down onto Craig's right testicle. The flesh was flattened, almost as thin as a veal patty, and the hammerhead punched a semi-circular hole right through the skin of his scrotum.

  Craig was too shocked even to scream. The youth who was holding him stepped smartly back, both hands whipped up high, so that Craig twisted around and dropped to the floor on his knees, convulsing like an electrocuted ox.

  He had never experienced such agony in his life. He felt as if somebody were directing an oxy-acetylene cutting-torch right between his legs. All he could see was wave after wave of dazzling scarlet, and all he could hear was a grinding, churning noise; which was his blood churning in his ears.

  He didn't even hear the youth in the frock coat when he leaned very close to his ear and said, 'You must take me for some kind of fool, pal. Once I let you loose, you were still goin' to pay me one million dollars - one million dollars - for somethin' that was safely tucked up in your shorts? You the fool, pal, not me.'

  The other youth whooped and cackled; and then the two of them stepped out of the drugstore doorway and into the rain. They didn't hurry. They didn't have to. They knew that Craig wouldn't be following them, and that they had plenty of time before he called the police.

  On the corner of Eighth Avenue, the girl with the curly hair and the puffy white face stepped out of a rubbish-filled doorway, and linked arms with the youth in the frock coat, and the three of them pranced through the storm as if it couldn't touch them, as if nothing could.

  THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 3:11 P.M.

  Effie said, 'The car's outside.'

  Craig continued to stare out of the window. Below him, East 86th Street was striped with sunlight. He was watching two small schoolchildren trying to cross the street, even though there was scarcely any traffic. A bossy elder sister and a little boy, just like him and his sister Rosie used to be, except that these children were obviously wealthy, from the Sutton Place School. Every time the street was clear, the elder sister insisted that they wait at the kerb. Whenever an automobile was approaching, she ventured out, and then they had to scuttle back to the kerb again.

  Craig wondered if they would ever make it; or whether they would still be here in twenty years' time, trying to cross the street, while their mother grew old and their supper turned to dust.

  Effie came up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. Very carefully, because he was still hypersensitive to sudden touches. He still jolted violently during the night, dreaming about that hammer. He still sat up sweating and gasping and trying to say something which nobody could have articulated.

  If only I hadn't said it. If I could cut out my tongue. 'Listen, I don't need some fucking Egyptian to tell me the way around my own city, right?'

  Effie said, 'Come on, Craig, it's time to go. I want to get to Cold Spring by eight.'

  He turned, and awkwardly held her wrist, and nodded. 'Okay, whatever. I was watching those kids, that's all.'

  Effie nearly blurted out, 'You can have kids. You can have kids like any other man.' But she had learned not to raise the subject of potency. It still led to red storms of uncontrollable rage, and endless screaming matches, and then terrible quaking aftershocks of deep remorse, which were worse, in a way, than the arguments. It had been three months now since Craig had been attacked, and she was tired of his tears.

  He had always been so steel-sprung, so positive. Sometimes too positive. But too positive was infinitely preferable to this complete collapse. It was like trying to drag around a shuffling, forgetful parent.

  Effie's best friend Shura Janowska had lost her right breast to cancer; and yet Shura was brave and funny and never believed that she was any less of a woman. Why did Craig seem to think that he wasn't a man any longer?

  Craig picked up his walking-cane and limped after Effie to the door. Jones the porter was waiting outside, ready to lock up for them. Craig took a look around the quiet, high-cellinged apartment. The afternoon sun filled it with buttery light. His huge success at international corporate law had enabled him to furnish it with colonial antiques, gilded mirrors, and elaborate cream-and-yellow curtains. Over the fireplace hung an abstract painting by Max Weber - over three-quarters-of-a-million-dollars' worth of vibrant blues and singing crimsons. The whole four-bed-roomed apartment looked as if it had been furnished for a spread in Architectural Digest, but Craig took no joy in it any longer. He had a premonition that he would never see it again, and he wasn't at all sure that he would be happier if he didn't.

  On one of the sofas, an embroidery cushion was propped, with the handstitched inscription, 'I Fought The Law & The Law Lost'.

  The door closed behind them. 'How long are you planning to stay upstate, Mrs. Bellman?' asked Jones. He was a black man, uniformed, smooth, very smooth. Even when he was carrying their suitcases he walked with a supernatural glide.

  Effie glanced around to make sure that Craig was following. 'We're just going to play it by ear. We're visiting my sister in Albany, and then we may spend some time up at Glens Falls.'

  'Planning on fishing, Mr. Bellman?' asked Jones. 'They say you can't beat Oscawana Lake trout.'

  Craig said, 'Fishing? No. Well, I don't know - I might. It depends if we get that far. Going upstate isn't exactly my idea of time profitably spent.'

  Effie linked arms with him, and smiled, although her smile was strained. 'Any time spent getting your head straight has got to be profitably spent.'

  Craig twisted his arm away. 'I see. Now my head's not straight. Tell me some part of my anatomy which is.'

  Jones looked embarrassed, and remained silent with his gloved hands clasped in front of him as they descended in the elevator to the lobby. He and Effie watched each other in the elevator's mirrored walls, but neither of them gave anything away. Jones was the perfect porter. It wasn't his place to express opinions about any of The Sutton's residents, even when that resident had turned so suddenly irascible.

  Effie thought she looked pale. She was a small, dark brunette, with an oval face that one of
her two previous lovers had always compared to paintings by Bernini - slightly medieval, with a thin, straight nose and very full lips, like angel's bows, and eyes the colour of Stradivarius violins, hazel, amber and the thinnest of honeys, one transparent layer of varnish painted on another, until they shone.

  She wore a plain linen suit in periwinkle blue, which was smart, but a little too city-smart for a drive to the country. She had chosen it because it made her feel calm and controlled, and today she needed calm and control in spades. It also made her feel comfortable. She always believed that she was too large-breasted for her height, but the way this suit was cut made her feel slim. She could date her feelings about her figure right back to the day that Craig had said to her, 'You know something? You remind me of Elizabeth Taylor.' And Effie had never been able to tell him that she hated Elizabeth Taylor, or at least the way that Elizabeth Taylor looked.

  Control, that was what she needed. Calm, and control.

  Only the purplish circles under her eyes betrayed how stressed Craig's accident had made her.

  He insisted on calling it an 'accident', instead of a mugging, and Effie could understand why. It was far too disturbing for him to think that, every year of his life, his destiny had been taking him step by step to the darkened entrance of K-Plus Drugs. How could he have been born and raised with all that love and dedication for no other purpose than to walk into that doorway and come face-to-face with that terrible youth with the hammer and the black frock coat? His parents hadn't sent him to law school for that, had they? Surely he hadn't argued and struggled and battled his way to the top of his profession to have his manhood pulverised by some freak in a derelict building.

  He refused to believe that it was meant to be, because if it was meant to be, God must have marked his card. Surely God couldn't be that sick. Why had God allowed him to be so successful, if only to show him how vulnerable he was? That was why he called it an accident. Accidents are nothing more than bad luck - the cards don't come up, the dice go cold. Destiny is something else altogether. Destiny is something terrifying that's waiting for you round the next corner, except that you don't know it.