Motherless Brooklyn

Have you noticed yet that I relate everything to my Tourette’s? Yup, you guessed it, it’s a tic. Counting is a symptom, but counting symptoms is also a symptom, a tic plus ultra. I’ve got meta-Tourette’s. Thinking about ticcing, my mind racing, thoughts reaching to touch every possible symptom. Touching touching. Counting counting. Thinking thinking. Mentioning mentioning Tourette’s. It’s sort of like talking about telephones over the telephone, or mailing letters describing the location of various mailboxes. Or like a tugboater whose favorite anecdote concerns actual tugboats.

There is nothing Tourettic about the New York City subways.

Though at each step I felt the gaze of an army of invisible doormen on my neck, I was nevertheless exultant to be back on the Upper East Side. I hurried down Lexington from the Eighty-sixth Street station, with only ten minutes to spare before five o’clock: zazen. I didn’t want to be late for my first. While I was still on the street, though, I took out the cell phone and called Loomis.

“Yeah, I was just about to call you.” I could hear him chewing a sandwich or a chicken leg, and pictured his open mouth, smacking lips. Hadn’t he been at lunch two hours before? “I got the goods on that building.”

“Let’s have it-quick.”

“This guy in Records, he was going on and on about it. That’s a sweet little building, Lionel. Way outta my class.”

“It’s Park Avenue, Loomis.”

“Well, there’s Park Avenue and then there’s this. You gotta have a hundred million to get on the waiting list for this place, Lionel. This kind of people, their other house is an island.”

I heard Loomis quoting someone smarter than himself. “Right, but what about Fujisaki?”

“Hold your horses, I’m getting there. This sort of place, there’s a whole staff-it’s like a bunch of mansions stacked together. They got secret passages, wine cellars, a laundry service, swimming pool, servants’ quarters, private chef. Whole secret economy. There’s only five or six buildings like this in the city-the place where Bob Dylan got killed, what’s it, the Nova Scotia? That’s a doghouse in comparison. This place is for the old-money people, they’ll turn down Seinfeld, Nixon, doesn’t matter. They don’t even give a shit.”

“Include me in that category,” I said, unable to discern any useful information in the Garbage Cop’s jabber. “I’m looking for names, Loomis.”

“Your Fujisaki’s the management corporation. Whole bunch of other Jap names in there-guess they own half of New York if you started digging. This is a serious money operation, Lionel. Ullman, far as I can tell, he was just Fujisaki’s accountant. So clue me in: Why would Gilbert go after an accountant?”

“Ullman was the last guy Frank was supposed to see,” I said. “He never got to him.”

“Minna was supposed to kill Ullman?”

“I don’t know.”

“Or vice versa?”

“I don’t know.”

“Or did the same guy kill them both?”

“I don’t know, Loomis.”

“So you aren’t learning much besides what I’m digging up for you, huh?”

“Eat me, Loomis.”

“I’m so glad you’re here,” said Kimmery when she opened the door to me. “You’re just in time. Mostly everybody’s sitting already.” She kissed me on the cheek again. “There’s a lot of excitement about the monks.”

“I’m feeling a lot of excitement myself.” In fact, I felt an instant euphoria at Kimmery’s alleviating presence. If this was the prospect of Zen I was ready to begin my training.

“You’ll have to take a cushion right away. Just sit anywhere but up at the front of the line. We’ll work on your posture some other time-for now you can sit and concentrate on your breathing.”

“I’ll do that.” I followed her up the stairs.

“That’s really everything anyway, breathing. You could work on just that for the rest of your life.”

“I’ll probably have to.”

“Take off your shoes.”

Kimmery pointed, and I added my shoes to a neat row in the hallway. It was a bit disconcerting to surrender them and with them my street-readiness, but in fact my aching dogs were grateful for the chance to breathe and stretch.

The second-floor sitting room was gloomy now, overhead track lighting still dark, the fading November daylight insufficient. I spotted the source of the heavy smell this time, a pot of smoldering incense on a high shelf beside a jade Buddha. The walls of the room were covered with undecorated paper screens, the glossy parquet floor with thin cushions. Kimmery led me to a spot near the back of the room and sat beside me, folded her legs and straightened her back, then nodded wide-eyed to suggest I imitate her moves. If only she knew. I sat and worked my big legs into position, grabbing my shins with both hands, only once jostling the sitter ahead of me, who turned and quickly glared, then resumed his posture of grace. The rows of cushions around us were mostly full with Zen practitioners, twenty-two when I counted, some in black robes, others in beatniky street clothes, corduroy or sweatpants and turtlenecks, not one in a suit like me. In the dimness I couldn’t make out any faces.