The next afternoon, Echo surprised me and called from a cab to tell me that she was two blocks away. She would see me in ten minutes.
Thank God, I was home when she called.
I had ten minutes to swab the kitchen floor and hide a pit bull.
The basement in any great old building is a spooky tomb-like place. It is the bowels of an organism of sorts, an organism made up of bricks and stone and steel but breathing through water pipes and steam vents, and mains evacuating waste into the city surrounding.
Our building is so large it has two basements, one called the sub-basement that was the original foundation of another building long since razed. It was discovered by a gang of workmen installing a new boiler when they fell through a rotten wooden trap which covered an old stone stairway.
The subbasement is like an ancient archeological dig and there are relics of another time still to be found down there. The first discovery was the dried and preserved body of a vagrant that, judging by a newspaper stuffed in his shoe, had lain there since 1903. The structural techniques of the last century created a maze of vaulted, arched catacombs that haven't been entered since the present building was erected in 1928. It is in one of these tomblike recesses that Ramon the head porter has his "office."
"Hey Mr. Murphy, how you doing?" He jumped up out of his seat. "Whoa! What's that?"
"A dog."
"Excuse me, but that is one scary looking son of a bitch."
"He's harmless. Somebody left him with me and I'm trying to find a place for him somewhere but... I don't want to upset Ms. Dalton. Can he stay down here for a day?"
"Aw, gee, Mr. Murphy, I don't know..."
I produced a fresh hundred dollar bill and further explanations were unnecessary. We tied the pit bull's rope to a pipe.
"Should I walk him?"
"You know, Ramon, he's harmless but I wouldn't handle him much. Try to get him to go on the paper."
Ramon grimaced. "Aw, gee, Mr. Murphy..."
I reeled off another hundred and Ramon cheered up. I was spitting out money these days like an ATM.
I handed him a plastic bag with one day's fix in it. "Give him one of these candies if he gets restless. He'll settle right down."
"Geez, Mr. Murphy, you shouldn't give a dog candy. Especially one that looks this sick. What's wrong with him?"
"Trust me this dog needs candy. Bad. It has medicine in it. You think he looks sick?"
Ramon's eyes bugged out for emphasis. "Yeah, he look baaaaad."
"I just thought that was old age and natural ugliness."
"No. There something wrong with this dog."
I didn't think Ramon needed to be burdened with any more information.
*****
I walked in to see Echo sitting on her imported Italian leather sofa with the Dalton Brothers. She was perched like the Empress of China ready to condemn a province to the headsman's ax. Supposedly, Echo had come back to town for a meeting of the Board of Trustees at the Metropolitan Museum. There was big doings at the end of the month, Gala benefit or something. I suspected that her phone encounter with the charming Charley Royce was the real reason. Trying to catch me in the act. Imagine that.
She frowned at my old suit. "Why are you wearing that?"
"No reason," I said, no worries. "Why didn't you tell me you were coming back? Wonderful surprise." Secretly my heart was slam dancing off my ribs. Like a guilty man. I sneaked a peak at my still healing face in a mirror: not too bad, I just have to keep moving until I can get us to dim lights.
Echo was watching me carefully. "I wanted to surprise you, Jack... Especially after talking to your friend, Charley. What - "
"I'm never having anything to do with him again."
Echo tilted her head and studied me calmly.
"Let's go out to dinner tonight," I said.
"Ohh-kaaay," she drawled. She knew something was up. "Wear the bespoke suit. And what is that smell?"
*****
We went to a French place we love on the East Side. It's like a trip to Paris. And nobody gets snotty if your French is bad.
I still had stitches courtesy the Colombian Boxing Team up at the edge of my eyebrow. I tried to cover them but my hair is cut too short. So I just sat oddly and kept my face turned away like some old actor trying to show the best side of his face-lift. It didn't work very well.
Echo didn't mention a thing until the first course arrived.
"Why don't you tell me what happened to your face, Jack?"
"Echo, it's really, uh - amusing. What happened is - "
"Because Mrs. Duke from the co-op board told me about the 'incident'. They were in the apartment?"
"Right. I didn't want to alarm you, so - "
"You're a secretive man, Jack. That's fine. Sharon says that I don't have to take responsibility. You are a friend and that's all. I wish you'd treat me like a friend and be honest and open with me. I think I almost have it in perspective."
"Honey, we're married. You're my wife."
"That is a strictly technical connection at the moment."
"I'm glad to hear it's still a connection." I signaled for another round of martinis. This was going to take some major lubrication.
"Are you, Jack? Are you really?" She said this in a slightly comic tone that told me that good old Grey Goose Vodka was already hard at work. "What do you think of the book?"
"The Woman Inside You by Sereena Daveeta Chakra? It's very interesting."
Echo stopped devouring poor defenseless mussels to stare at me a moment.
"I'm getting a lot out of it," I tried. More staring. "Really," I said. Echo curled her lips back and scraped a mussel off the fork with her teeth, making a horrible little noise that gave me a shiver. Her upper lip, however, curled in the most beautiful way.
"Stay with it," she said, "I think it may be just what you need."
"If I do, can we go back to sleeping together?"
She made a face. "No, Jack, we can't. I can't be involved with you unless you're going to get some help."
"Help?"
"I think that unless you start therapy we can never have a love relationship again," She sighed and a tiny cry crept into her voice, "Not the way we did."
"What about this: we go on with this platonic thing but we'll just fudge a little on the sex? How about that?"
"Don't make fun of me, Jack. It's not easy for me either."
"Tell me one thing, Echo. Think you'll ever want to make love again."
"With you?"
"You're not thinking of giving it up altogether are you? Yes, me."
"No. Not make love... I do want to have sex with you sometimes. But Sharon says the time for that is not right now."
"How so?"
"Because we had that already. It can't be just sex anymore. We know each other."
"I see..."
"I'm not sure that you do."
"Neither am I. You mean that if you didn't know me, you'd have sex with me but since you do, you won't?"
"It's not that simple."
"No."
It went on like this much of the evening. The wine recommendation was extraordinary and I kept it coming until Echo started to cry in her complicated dessert. She wept over a grade school prize in English composition she should have won. She was robbed and she never forgot it. She said it changed her life, her self-esteem. She might have become something great, a writer, a reporter, instead of a modern dancer which nobody really cared about anymore and hadn't since Martha Graham had died and she faced diminishing prospects once her legs were gone.
"Martha Graham? Her legs had been gone for years and years. Long before she died, honey."
"No. My legs, stupid."
"Your legs are beautiful."
"Thank you," she sniffed drunkenly.
In the back seat of the cab I rubbed her back sympathetically and patted her, copping the odd cheap feel whenever I could, Echo gently putting my hands off of the spots that were taboo and onto ones more platonic. It was fun in a way, like going back to high school.
Obviously, Echo's therapy was driving me crazy.
We got out of the cab on the West Side, weaving back to our building arm in arm.
I fumbled the key into the apartment lock and turned the possibilities over in my mind: how would I subtly insinuate myself into Echo's lap in such a way that neither Echo nor I had to take any responsibility? She had had so much to drink, an excuse for her therapist was there for the taking. Actually, I wouldn't mind shouldering the whole burden of guilt myself. And Echo was in the greatest physical condition of her life. She told me so herself, explaining that she should have tried celibacy years before: She would have been a mighty force in the world of dance. All that sex had taken years off her career and the vitality out of her creativity.
When we reached bedroom door she tried to look into my eyes but couldn't decide which of the four to pick. Her lips parted and she dropped to my throat and started sucking gently on my carotid artery. That was an accident, I'm sure, and not vampiric instinct. Echo slowly worked her way up to my lower lip which she clamped softly between her teeth. She hung there swaying gently back and forth, stretching my lip down and to the left and right.
"Uh,...Echo?" I managed to say, woman still dangling from my lip.
"Mmmm?"
"You a'ake?"
She let go of my lip. It snapped back like a window shade.
"I have to sleep now," she said.
"Let's get to bed then," I said, whispering as if it were a post hypnotic suggestion. The dogs were milling about our feet making ingratiating little noises. I loosened my tie suggestively. "That's a good idea. Let's go to bed."
"No-no-no. Uh-uh," she said. She giggled and kissed me. Then she turned and stumbled toward the bed. Dropping her clothes in an astonishing display of drunken grace and dexterity, she was naked by the time she hit the pillow. And unconscious.
Stunned by the pictures she was putting in my mind and exhausted by unused hormones boiling around in my body looking for a way out, I pressed my nose flat against the door while I got over the sexual bends. There was a warm, comfortable feeling expanding in my chest. Maybe Echo was right. Maybe I did need therapy. I felt strangely alive.
This was unnatural, the New Man not withstanding. I might get used to it for one thing, while my peak testosterone years were dwindling away.
The Daltons were setting up a racket and Echo turned over, the silk sheets clinging to her body in a very unfair fashion.
"Jackson, feed the dogs would you? I forgot."
I hurried to her side and sat down on the bed, casually allowing my right hand to fall gently across her belly.
Oh, her belly.
I kissed her shoulder. "What's that, darling?" all the while gently chewing on her shoulder, licking any exposed bit of Echo I could find...
Then Echo snored. It was a delicate rather sexy snore if such a thing could be and it can if you're married. There was, however, no denying it: Echo was passed out cold. There is a down side to the use of martinis and wine as marriage aids.
I got up and went to feed the dogs only to discover we were out of dog food. I went back outside and over to Columbus Avenue to an all-night grocery store to buy some Mighty Dog.
A soft rain had begun to fall and I was soaked by the time I found a store with food the Daltons would eat. I bought twenty cans and a half-gallon jug of orange juice to fight hangover. Then I set off for home turning up the collar of the second expensive suit I'd ruined in a week.
If he hadn't screamed as he came out from behind the shrubs at the corner of our building, he would have cut me in half.
As it happened, the horrible noise in the sleeping neighborhood scared me so badly that I jumped back. The machete was already descending when I jumped. He tried to pull up short and lunge at me but lost his footing on the rain slick pavement, the big knife went between his legs. He fell back and landed at my feet, cracking his head on the concrete. He slowly got to his knees and his free hand slipped in the blood pouring from a long deep self-inflicted gash in his thigh. He was lifting the machete for another cut at me when I swung the shopping bag in a wide circle and hit him under the chin. His head snapped back, the bag burst and it all came down together: man, big knife, a bright spray of Tropicana Country Style, and twenty cans of Mighty Dog Sliced Lamb with Rice and Gravy.
I turned him over when I had the machete in hand. It was Junior, last seen bobbing for apples in the toilet at Tropic Enterprises.
I dragged him around the corner to bleed out of sight of 77 Central Park West's board of directors. All I needed was another complaint to be made. I was reasonably sure Echo still loved me but I didn't want to make her choose between her home and little old me. The home was really good.
The night porter was taking out the garbage from the service bay on the side street and I asked him to call 911. Once we were out of the bright light, I looped my belt around the kid's bleeding leg and cinched it up tight. Of course, it wasn't the cheap piece of crap I'd bought earlier, so this was the second good belt I'd used up on this creep.
I also made a note to slip the night porter fifty bucks.