2
The square beside the boulevard was indeed crowded with statues. A man of iron, holding an umbrella, rested on the edge of an iron bathtub, and this statue waved and became Martin. Lyle crossed the square. He was relieved Martin hadn’t seen his mom drop him off on her way to work, earplugs tied to the size adjuster of her ball cap. He asked her for a ride home later, but she wasn’t getting off until two in the morning.
An iron boy and girl sat in the tub. In the lights of the passing cars their wet bodies seemed to shiver. Martin thumbed an empty cigarette pack into the drain, pressing it until it made a plug, and led them out of downtown, away from the sounds of laughter coming from the bars and restaurants. As they crossed a windy bridge, Martin’s tiny umbrella flapped and rattled above his head, then snapped inside out behind him. He cursed and threw it flapping over the bridge, then leaned over the railing. “Fall to your death!” he shouted at it. They continued along the bridge. Martin caught Lyle’s eye and smiled to show he was only having a laugh.
Lyle turned to him and galloped along sideways for a moment, grinning. He wished he hadn’t made plans with Rosa. They were meeting at ten. He would have to cut his time with Martin short.
Across the bridge were long blocks of industrial buildings—a neighborhood he’d never seen. As they turned onto the second street, the rain and wind lessened and the air blackened. He saw only the edges of things. Martin loped to the end of a loading dock and stepped onto a deep window ledge. Lyle collapsed his umbrella and followed him, feeling the ledge with his foot to make sure there was a place for him. They stood resting their backs against the bricked-over window, the ground below them falling into black space. Lyle’s sight came to him in pieces. A dumpster yawned out of the void below, a rancid smell rising from it—urine, mildewed fabric. A mattress lay on top of the other garbage inside of it. Buildings across the street shone dimly in patches of wet brick.
From his bag Martin lifted the bottle of Schnapps.
“I have you to confirm that I shot out the lights. Instead of going to Devon’s with everybody else, I rode these streets with my gun. Must have put out eighty lights. Bad idea, I’ll admit it. I was a bit messed up in the head. Maybe you noticed.” Martin tipped the bottle, keeping a wide eye on him, then spat in the dumpster. “A certain dark gypsy, named Monique, fucked Devon in his bed while she was going out with me.”
“Did you love her?”
“Liked. But not enough to shoot out all the lights. Half of them, maybe. It’s never good to shoot out all the lights.”
“I like to run around at night too.”
“Not sure who I hate more, Levi or Devon. I swear to God they’re a father-son Mafia. Levi has done some bad things.”
“Maybe he’ll let you back. If you tell him you won’t drink.”
“I’m glad it happened, all of it. It’s actually fun. All the really moral people are kicked out and burned alive. Look at Joan of Arc.”
A spotlight tilted into the sky and vanished, then appeared again. While Lyle drank some of the bottle, Martin groaned and cursed and laughed out loud, as though his thoughts harassed and entertained him at once. He sailed through an episode of cackling. He shook his head, whispering to himself mysteriously. It was clear that this was the moment Lyle was supposed to say, “what, what, tell me,” and promise never to breathe a word to a soul, and he did so.
“If you did tell,” Martin said, “we’d both get in a lot of trouble. Are you sure you want to be involved?”
“Yes.”
Martin was a gray shape beside him.
“Last night a memory kind of exploded in my head. Something bad, and great. Oh, God!” he breathed wetly and sniggered again. He drew fiercely on his cigarette. “Did I mention that my mom and Levi are friends? They used to be community activists—bleh. Ladies in my church actually help poor people; my mom and Levi held signs downtown. Well, Levi’s daughter … Devon’s sister …” He dropped to a squat and laughed hard. He rolled his forehead back and forth on his knees. He stood, breathed. “It’s just nerves. I’m trying to remain … okay, Levi’s daughter is buried in a mausoleum in the campus cemetery, which, if you don’t know, is a problem. Levi’s a Jew. Mausoleum burial goes against Jewish law. Levi’s hippy wife left him five years ago—she left when he went back to being a Jew, after their daughter died—and for a while there he wanted to rebury her. He talked to my mom about it. I remember him being miserable at our kitchen table after the divorce. I listened from my bedroom, sometimes from the hall. They talked a lot about it for, like, weeks. He kept saying that his wife wouldn’t let him move her body, but that God’s law was greater. But he was pissed. I was only twelve, but I knew even then that it had nothing to do with God’s law and everything to do with fighting with this bitch he hated. He just wanted to mess with his wife. Want proof? After she moved back east the issue went away.
“As far as I know, the blizzard girl is still in that mausoleum, feeling pretty unkosher, I bet. Levi is shunning pork and going to temple while his daughter rots up there outside of God’s law. And he’s dictating rules to me? He kicks me out of my club for breaking one fucking rule, while he’s breaking the rite of burial. That’s crazy. It’s insane! By the way, as a Catholic I admire Judaism a lot. I have so much respect for it, in fact, that I think somebody ought to save that girl from her family.”
Martin took too much into his mouth then, his cheeks ballooning. He bent over and spilled some onto the mattress, liquor dripping from his chin.
“I’m going to save her,” he said. “I’m going to rescue her from that place, because it’s the right thing to do. I should have done it a long time ago.”
The wind lashed whorls of rain against them. His words swept through Lyle’s head like a storm of crows. As though somebody nearby were listening, he whispered, “So, you’d steal the kid’s bones?”
“No. I’m not stealing anything. I’m not in this for personal gain. I’m doing this out of morality.”
“You’d bury them in a Jewish graveyard or something? You’d touch them, with your hands?”
“It’s only Americans who can’t deal with bones. Monks in France used to collect each other’s skulls. And Cézanne—ever seen pictures of his studio? Skulls all over the place. Also, Michelangelo. He dug up bodies and dissected them. I think he was the one.” He raised his chin. “Did I tell you I’m an artist? A painter.”
He was serious. He wanted to rob a grave.
“You don’t think she’s at peace?” Lyle’s voice was shaky and nasal. He coughed hard twice, to make his voice right. “Was she Jewish when she died, when she was put in the mausoleum?”
“Levi was her father.”
“But she wasn’t Jewish when she was buried, right?”
“You can’t stop being a Jew. No—this girl was born a Jew, and she died a Jew.”
“But Levi seems like a nice guy.”
“Yes, he seems very nice, very gentlemanly. But who’s the guy behind that? A man who used his daughter as a pawn against his wife, then abandoned her to hell when she wasn’t useful anymore. This isn’t a Jewish town—Levi can hide here. You know what would happen to him
