The Caveman's Valentine by George Dawes Green Read Free Book Online Page B

cave in Inwood Park.” And she said, “Then spend another night there. I can’t do this no more. I love you, but I got a kid to raise and I got to get on with it.”
    So she threw him out.
    And Steve McQueen was on his way back to Manhattan, crossing the Willis Avenue Bridge, when a big limo pulled up. The door opened, he got in. They went to Stuyvesant’s tower. There was a Jacuzzi in the elevator, and Steve McQueen sat beside it on this lovely sofa, and then the elevator door opened and there was Stuyvesant—and a grand piano.
    “Come in. Come in, sit down, and play, my son.”
    Steve McQueen played three selections from
The Sound of
Music
—played them heartfeltly. When he was done he wept, and he told Stuyvesant, “I’ve learned my lesson.”
    Y-rays flashed and crackled everywhere, like Tinkerbell. Stuyvesant gave him the Congressional Medal of Honor and said, “See how sweet reality can be once you accept it as your personal savior?”
    Then Ali MacGraw and the kids came running in for a big embrace. Music up and out.
    Romulus threw the remote control at the screen, but the screen had been made from the fingernails of South African miners, and wouldn’t break. Sirens sang down on Dyckman Street, and on the Henry Hudson Parkway. Stuyvesant’s minions making their rounds. And then when the sirens faded there was nothing for a while but the sound of the drizzle, and of the snow thawing and dripping in front of the cave, and Romulus managed a few rags of sleep.

20
    H e spent a great part of the next day at the Inwood Branch Library.
    He was trying to fathom the hidden meanings in
The Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature,
but it was too damn hot in here to concentrate.
    He took off his topmost coat and hung it on the back of his chair—this insulting school cafeteria plastic scoop-chair. Then ten minutes later he took off another coat.
    But the lining didn’t come off with it, so he had to take
that
off, too, and nothing but battle-flag shreds it was—and all the while that old librarian was giving him this dark eye as though it were
her
battle.
    And then ten minutes later he had to take off the last coat.
    Peeling away—stripping down to a proto-Romulus he hadn’t seen in weeks, and releasing, as he did, ranker and ranker fumes of himself. He was disgusted. What was the matter with him, not bothering to wash? Falling apart at the seams here. The librarian scowled at him. A tableful of junior-high nasties kept bursting out in snorts of derisive laughter. He was having trouble staying awake, and he needed to take a leak. Meanwhile,
The Reader’s Guide
utterly resisted him. He rubbed his head, picked at his beard. He found morsels of the week-old croissant he’d had for breakfast. Picked them off and popped them in his mouth. The junior-high nasties turned blue trying not to laugh and then exploded. He got up and wobbled to the librarian.
    She had set up her face to hurt you. Romulus showed her
The Reader’s Guide.
    “I can’t use this. It’s in Chinese.”
    “Were you sleeping before, sir?”
    “I had my eyes shut. I mean, it’s like an oven in here. What, are you baking us? You making a pie?”
    “You can’t sleep in here.”
    “You got one of these books in English?”
    “What are you looking for?”
    “I’m looking for articles about a certain murderer.”
    “Did you look under ‘Murder’?”
    “Yeah, but nothing about Leppenraub.”
    “Leppenraub. You mean David Leppenraub? He’s a photographer.”
    “You mean photographer-murderers are kept separate from regular murderers?”
    She opened the book, flipped briskly to the
L
s.
    She said, “See there’s plenty of articles about Leppenraub. We don’t have most of these magazines though. We do have
Artforum.
All right, here’s one. September of 1992. You’ll find the
Artforums
up on that shelf.”
    He asked her, “Where’s your furnace?”
    “What?”
    “Don’t get all excited, I just want to check out your furnace. It’s