Paradise Man by Jerome Charyn Read Free Book Online

you’re the rudest man around.”
    “I still need my messages.”
    “Then that’s what you’ll get. Carmen Pinzolo wants to kill you, but she can’t.” Carmen was Red Mike’s baby sister. She’d had a crush on Holden for years and years. He’d fed her ice cream on his lap. But he couldn’t keep her there after she was nine or ten. She developed breasts and started to bleed like a woman. Red Mike had to take his sister out of school. Teachers were proposing to her in the hallways. Mike got her a tutor. The tutor proposed. Mike broke the tutor’s mouth and started teaching her himself. But Carmen’s musk drove him crazy. He created a convent for Carmen, sent her to live and learn with an old Italian witch. She stayed in exile until she was seventeen. And then Mike begged Holden to marry her, so at least his little sister would go to a friend and his heartburn wouldn’t be so heavy, but all Holden could think about was Andrushka. Red Mike locked Carmen in the house. She’d escape, look for some man to be with, and Mike would destroy the unlucky bastard. Now, Holden thought, now Carmen can get married.
    “Why can’t she kill me?” Holden asked.
    “Because the girl will never find a gun. The whole family is in the toilet. The Pinzolos can’t touch you.”
    “I’m glad ... Gottlieb says the Bandidos are after me.”
    “Bandidos? I’ll check it out.”
    “Are you sure nothing came through the wire? Gottlieb isn’t a romantic kid. He doesn’t fantasize—”
    “Holden, either fire me or trust what I say. No one’s mentioned any Bandidos. I’ll start calling. Now get out of here and play with the little girl.”
    Holden left Mrs. Howard to her telephone bank and looked for the Marielita. He found her under a table, like the first time, with those big leopard eyes.
    “Dada,” she said.
    “I’m not your dada. I’m Holden. Querida, talk to me.”
    “Dada,” she said.
    “All right, I’ll be your dada. But talk to me.”
    He got nowhere with the girl. She sat under the table, staring out at Holden in her silks. The little harbor lady, queen of Mariel. And Holden had a sudden shiver, like a bag of light in his skull. He was her dada in some way he couldn’t define. Holden had conceived a leopard girl. He’d been born in Avignon, the city of popes, with a stitch under his heart; the stitch grew. He had no mom he could remember, though his dad talked of a woman who sprang out of dark medieval streets. He was supposed to look like that phantom lady. Now a daughter had popped out of his chest.
    “Mademoiselle, what can I bring you from Paris? Perfume? A new doll? A lollipop that looks like a bridge? Or a sable coat from the Swisser’s French collection?”
    “Holden, are you propositioning that little girl?” Mrs. Howard asked, standing in the door. And for a moment, in that trick light of a room masked with metal blinds, Mrs. H. was his father’s mistress again, the longlegged beauty of his boyhood, the woman he desired most.
    “I was being friendly, that’s all,” Holden said. “Christ, will you give her a name? I have to know what to call her.”
    “She’s yours. You name her if you want.”
    “I can’t,” Holden said. “It’s not decent, picking names for a girl who’s already formed.”
    “You can always form her again.”
    “That’s playing with God.”
    “But you were born in God’s home town.”
    He was sensitive about Avignon, where the popes had gone to live hundreds of years ago, seduced by some French king. It felt like a holy place to a boy who never had much religion. Holden Sr. despised God and His papal palace. He was like a prisoner in Avignon until Goldie rescued him.
    “I called every contact we have,” Mrs. Howard said. “There’s nothing on the street about the Mariels. It’s a whisper, Holden. Get Gottlieb to reveal his source, and we’ll know.”
    “I can’t compromise the kid. The Bandidos would roast him alive.”
    “Then you’ll have to suffer the