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GOTHAM TRAGIC
A Novel
By Kurt Wenzel Little, Brown
Copyright © 2004 Kurt Wenzel
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-316-09400-5
Chapter One
THE GREAT KURBAN All Muslims are mad, of course. Not mad in the sense of angry, though they are certainly that, but daffy mad, glazed-eyed-crazy-stare mad, ipso facto mad....
Slunk down in the back of the cab, rain rapping its knuckles on the roof, Kyle Clayton heard these lines turning over in his head. This was the opening to the novel he was working on, and since he was prone to fits of anxiety over new work, he often found the words brimming at the surface of his subconscious.
Plus, he was fond of them. They had just the snap, crackle, and pop that he liked. The culture had turned into a bum's rush, he'd decided. You had to catch the reader early, kick 'em in the shins, or else they were gone, off to a new thrill. As the downpour beaded the window, he allowed himself a smile as he repeated the words once more, marveling at their reckless audacity, the sheer stupid nerve of them.
All Muslims are mad, of course.
Ridiculous, those words. Mere literary provocation.
Hurrying from the taxi to the shield of the restaurant's canopy, Kyle was greeted by a large man in a long gray coat, shoulders clad in royal epaulets. As Kyle hopped the sluicing moat that ran along the curb, the doorman lowered his umbrella and mutely clapped his gloved hands.
"Mr. Kurban," he bellowed, half surprised. "The Great Kurban!" Syeed Salaam was the doorman's name, and he did not refer to Kyle Clayton as the Great Kurban because he thought the young man anything special - only Allah was truly great - but rather because there are few things in this world more glorious to a Muslim than the presence of a willing convert, and however unlikely, Kyle Clayton was now one such proselyte. This conversion was the cause of no little humor among his friends, since of everyone they knew, no one was quite so Western, so quintessentially American, as Kyle Clayton. Kurban (chosen primarily for alliterative purposes, they'd learned) translated roughly to mean "sacrifice." Funny, they thought, since the Kurban they knew had never engaged in sacrifice of any sort and, conversely, seemed wholly dedicated to the execution of extreme and reckless pleasure. In fact, Kyle Clayton was publicly notorious for being the very opposite of Kurban, and had achieved a modest fame by singularly embodying everything that sacrifice was not.
But Syeed Salaam, who was more popularly known as Rick, did not care for contemporary literary history and its various profligates.
One of the regulars at the restaurant where he worked had embraced the Religion of Truth, and it was a thing to rejoice.
"Assalamu 'alaykum," Rick intoned, kissing Kyle on both cheeks and squeezing him with his powerful arms.
"Wa'alaykum assalam," Kyle answered without a hitch, thereby exhausting his entire catalog of Arabic. Although there was no way for Rick to know it, the conversion of Kurban was not everything he might have hoped for.
"You pray today, brother?" "Twice this morning," Kyle remarked, hating himself for the fib. To the left of the entrance was a shallow doorway used for deliveries.
Rick reached in and removed the clean cardboard sheet he used as a prayer mat. In order to pray five times a day, as was his duty to Allah, he had to get in at least two prayers at work. During the lulls after the lunch and dinner rushes, Rick would run to the alley on the other side of street to fulfill this obligation.
Now, though, he held up the mat as an offering to Kurban.
Kyle shook him off, gesturing to the restaurant. "I'll catch up later. Business, you know."
"The business of living is Allah." "Yes," said Kurban, smiling, "but I understand Allah has a rent-stabilized apartment. I'm not as lucky."
The ridges of Rick's brow contorted. "Mr. Kurban," he scolded, sternly shaking his head.
Please, Kyle thought, Allah was all-powerful but couldn't withstand a bit of ribbing? If Syeed and his Muslim brothers hadn't yet figured out that God didn't always take Himself so seriously, that He in fact had a roaring, knee-slapping sense of humor, what kind of real future could there be for Kyle and his new religion?
After a moment, perhaps remembering that the man was a paying customer, Rick switched his face back to the tepid grin he reserved for ordinary patrons and opened the thick entrance door. Inside boiled a cauldron of activity and appetites.
"Enjoy, brother," said Rick, throwing his arm out across the threshold. Kyle thought he detected a mocking tone to the gesture, as if nothing that lay behind that door should be of interest to the likes of the Great Kurban.
Kyle moved quickly past.
The unprecedented, overwhelming success of City had been a sort of accident, the kind of dumb luck that keeps New York restaurateurs up late at night, giggling to themselves at their extravagant good fortune. Somewhat inexplicably, the confluences of Wall Street, professional athletics, high-stakes publishing, and Hollywood's eastern contingent had all decided that City was the place, the restaurant of the century's end. The causes for such an occurrence might be easily cataloged: a high-profile billionaire owner who courted scandal and curiosity; a clubby masculine decor that went against the grain of effete feminine trends of interior restaurant design (therefore a place where the world's big shots could feel like big shots); a convenient Midtown location. But then one could mention twenty other restaurants with nearly the same virtues, nineteen of which, on this particular afternoon, were barely half-full. City, meanwhile, was bursting at the seams.
Kyle, who was tall and wore his dark hair thicker and wavier than was the current style, used his sinewy build to move through the crowded lobby, easily sidling his way up to the host stand. There he waited while a squat, pinstripe-suited man accosted the hostess in a shouting whisper that was apparently his idea of tact.
"Do you know who you've sat me next to in there?" He jabbed his stubby fingers toward the dining room of burnished rosewood and gold-inlay mirrors. "The CEO of DLJ! I don't want to hear his conversation any more than I want him to hear mine. Don't you understand anything about business?"
The hostess stood stoic in a black dress that fit her like a wet suit. This was her defense, her armor against the squat, pinstripe-suited men of this world.
You'd never have me, you ugly little monster. And you know it.
Ever polite, she asked if he would like to see another table. "What? And have all my guests get up and move? I'd look like an asshole."
The hostess smiled an absolutely winning full-lipped grin that managed to be obsequious and mocking at the same time. As for looking like an asshole, her smile intimated, the matter had been settled long ago.
"What, sir, would you like me to do?" she asked. "I'm trying to find out why this happened, since I come here at least four times a week and ... Do you even know who I am?"
Kyle stood nearby, twitching nervously. He wondered if he should lend a hand. In the old days this would've been just his sort of gig. Like some debauched urban Robin Hood, he might have come over and stood above the little man for a moment, Kyle being comfortably over six feet, kindly urging him to put his dick away already and return quietly to his table. Please, sir. Thank you. Setting this in motion, he would then immediately parlay this good deed into an intimacy with the hostess (having already broken down the expansive barrier between customer and employee), and barring an engagement ring, or an anomalous sexual preference, be - more oftentimes than not - in like Flynn.
Instead, he decided to hold his tongue and admire the hostess from afar. Had marriage mellowed him? Certainly. Who escaped its mollifying effects? But even if he were making smarter choices now, the driving motivation for Kyle Clayton - what got his rocks off, literarily speaking - was the same as it had ever been: to be scorned.
To be declared persona non grata. If possible, to be despised. In New York, be it in business or in the creative arts, it seemed essential. If you were not hated, then you had not challenged the competitive rhythms of the city. You had not inflamed the jealousies of the successful; you had not highlighted the failures of the left-behind. Here, in Manhattan, this could only mean one thing: you had accomplished nothing.
In being hated, Kyle was almost wholly successful.
He had also earned a grudging respect. If photos of him seemed to project an irritating self-satisfaction; if his work was inconsistent, and public interest in it had grown scattershot; if he had raised public hell, indulged in outlandish and not entirely benign mischief, seemingly in the name of nothing, well, then, he had also written what was arguably the novel of his generation, Charmed Life. Published in the late 1980s, the book was a watershed, a pop novel that was somehow more than pop. Even literary veterans setting out to destroy this obvious new threat found themselves under its spell, forced to agitated silence. It was success both high and low, and so Fame had come calling, followed quickly by its bullyboys Envy, Resentment, and Spite. Almost immediately the media had set about tearing up Kyle Clayton in a way he could have never anticipated; he was shocked and wounded as only great romantics can be and so finally came to a place where he'd found scorn both delicious and irresistible. For as long as anyone could remember (ten years as it turned out), Kyle Clayton had gorged himself on a particular type of New York contempt, had made a meal out of it, and was still, as of this late date, unsated.
He was America's last great Literary Fool, and not a little proud of it.
But to the surprise of almost everyone, he had suddenly got married, to a Turkish woman of enticing red hair, and now here came another flood of bile, another shower of laughter and scorn. Page Six had had a field day. A Muslim? Kyle Clayton? The sneers and taunts were even more cutting, more mean-spirited, than before, though underneath one detected a desperation. Were the dispensers of public ridicule worried that their whipping boy, their great fool, might be tempered by marriage, by faith? Were they getting in their last licks? Yes, Kyle had mellowed. He'd decided he owed his wife a semblance of calm - thought he might even do with a little himself - and so had been truly flying under the radar these days. Not that the conflicts would be completely abandoned, of course; they were too much his sustenance for that. It was just that now they would have to be chosen with greater discernment.
This rude, lumpy moneyman, for example, was something he'd have to overlook. Too easy a target. Utterly forgettable.
The hostess, on the other hand, Catwoman and her slinky walk, would be driven from his mind with somewhat greater difficulty.
She escorted him to his table, a banquette of plush cushions the color formerly known as beige, here called camel, the booths of rosewood halved so all the guests could face the dining room. Unfortunately, the table was also empty. Patience Birquet was late.
He checked his watch: 1:45. In fitting with the new Middle Eastern themes in his life, Kyle amused himself by re-imagining the brightly lit room as a splendorous feast in an ancient Pharaonic temple. The tableau was ripe for such comparisons, he thought. The male customers he cast as the royal court, silk-clad soldiers with tanned, regal foreheads, gazes still intense from the morning's battles. The few women in the room seemed to him like concubines, their often mummified complexions stretched like parchment paper, their necks adorned with gold-leaf collars, feet shod with gilt sandals. Then there were the enslaved servants, smaller, slightly hunched with toil, and, as always, darker. A Nigerian in a Nehru jacket strode by, cutting board held aloft, charred carcass gently smoldering on top: whole leg of lamb with cumin and curry. Kyle swooned as it passed.
And the pharaoh himself? That would be Lonny Tumin, audacious billionaire and owner of City. Word was that he'd bought the place as a lark. He could never find a restaurant to precisely satisfy all his appetites, so he built his own. You would often see him here striding through the dining room, the pockmarked arrogance of his face striking you cold. The Egyptians believed acne was the manifestation of the sins of past lives, though with Tumin it was assumed the sins were more recent - his ethical reputation being dubious, to say the least. Indeed, he carried about him the air of organized crime and had even played up this part of his personality, sporting it as a sort of glamour. He liked to intimidate his diners, Kyle had observed; meeting your gaze, he seemed to take your presence as an affront. Who the hell are you? demanded his eyes. And just where do you get the balls to eat in my restaurant? As if dining at City were a contact sport - though, on reflection, it often was.
Suddenly Patience arrived, wispy thin and not quite five feet tall in her padded shoes. The Puissant Pixie, as the agent had been christened in a famous profile, though others in the business had been known to speak her name with less laudatory adjectives.
Patience shuffled in like a blur, arms stuffed with galley proofs, muttering something about Algerian audio.
"No, I'm not kidding. Seventy-five hundred. Right, what the fuck? That's what I said."
Kyle assumed she was talking to him - naturally, since she was looking right at him - and though he'd never before heard of Algerian audio, doubted that such a thing even existed. He also didn't care (that being Algeria's problem) and so in his mind already had the seventy-five hundred deposited, withdrawn, and spent.
Then he noticed the microthin headset that jettisoned her cheek, and his heart dropped. Now he felt foolish as well as mercenary. It was what you saw everywhere now, on all the streets, especially in places like City - fervent, ambitious types muttering to themselves, barking orders into nearly invisible bars of compound graphite. Madness, Kyle thought suddenly. Madness because Algerian audio existed and was not his.
Patience plopped into the banquette, her pile of books knocking over an empty stem glass with a harmless ping. She removed the headset like a teenager unhooking a retainer.
"You get a load of that hostess?" she asked admiringly. "Boy, I'd like to spread her on a cracker ... Oh, but that's right, you're married now. Blind to all temptation." The agent was just another of the throngs who saw the Clayton marriage, not to mention his new faith, as distinctly implausible. "So how goes the life of sacrifice, Kurban?"
"Successful, I'm afraid," Kyle answered. "I'm nearly broke." "Unfortunate. There's not much I can do for you till the new book is finished."
"How about Algerian audio?" "That's another client," Patience said, then giggled to herself.
Continues...
Excerpted from GOTHAM TRAGIC by Kurt Wenzel Copyright © 2004 by Kurt Wenzel. Excerpted by permission.
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