Henry of Atlantic City (2 page)

Helena used to take Henry out to the beach. She was eighteen and had light brown hair and blue eyes that gave her a faraway look. She was pretty and whenever people told her so she got mad. It happened all the time on the beach. One day she brought a book with her called
Huckleberry Finn
that starts like this:
You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth
.

The priest sat up in his chair. “That’s very good, Henry. Did you memorize that all by yourself?”

Henry nodded.

“Well, now, I have a suggestion. Instead of talking about gnosticism and things you’re too young to understand, how about telling the story of Huckleberry Finn? The sisters might not mind that.”

Henry said yes, they would mind, because when Sister Helene heard him on the playground she was all smiles at first but when he got to the part where it went,
After supper
she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers and I was in a sweat to find out all about him but by-and-by she let out out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time so then I didn’t care no more about him because I don’t take no stock in dead people
—when that happened she made him stop.

“I see,” said the priest and touched the tips of his folded hands to his lips like he was going to say prayers.

Reading was easy. Helena showed Henry how to do it right out there under the umbrella on the beach. Pretty soon he could do it without moving his lips. Helena said he was smart because he learned without her even having to teach him. They got to be real good friends and pretty soon Henry read to her when they were on the beach and even when they weren’t on the beach they did stuff together. Like one day when they dumped a glass of milk out a window right on a man Helena hated because he was hanging around her mother. They ran down the back stairs and all the way to Sy’s place. That was how Henry learned about plague sowing.

Father Crowley shook his head. “You’re going too fast, Henry. Slow down.”

Henry talked about Chryssomallo, who used to be a dancer and a lion tamer and who wrestled with other women gladiators in the Forum but quit and became a bodybuilder, a fortune-teller, and a healer. People went to her to ask for help all the time. She was a friend of the Whore of Jersey City from the old days and Helena said they were in some movies together. You could go to her
and for twenty-five dollars she would stand in front of you for ten minutes and flex her muscles. People went to her for healing. Next to Theodora, Henry figured she was one of the busiest women in Byzantium.

“Byzantium?”

Henry nodded and explained that it was the capital of the eastern empire and that there were Trojans in the Palace because of
AIDS
. Not people from Troy—
rubbers
.

Father Crowley looked like he was going to get mad but he didn’t. Henry explained that there were machines in all the bathrooms. Trojans made good plague sowers and Henry dropped them off the roof of the Palace for fun. He pretended that each Trojan was filled with plague germs and when it hit the ground, whoever got splashed would get the plague.

There was another way of plague sowing that was even more fun. Helena taught him. You took a Trojan and put some half-and-half coffee creamer into it. Then when nobody was looking you left it someplace—like in a corridor or on a chair in the lobby. Henry did a lot of plague sowing around the Palace until Theodora made the Palace guards do extra shifts walking the corridors and checking the chairs in the lobby and the staircases. That was just before the Nike riots happened and they had to go to Sy’s sister’s house in Philadelphia.

“Nike riots?”

Henry explained that he meant the Greek goddess of victory, not the running shoes. Procopius said that Cappadocian
John was responsible and the riots started after a Blue and a Green were hung for treason and the rope broke. A miracle of God had saved the two men but the emperor refused to pardon them and so the factions burned and looted and killed. Byzantium was nearly destroyed.

“That’s all very interesting, Henry,” the priest cut in. “Let’s see. Why don’t you tell me about Theodora?”

Henry didn’t want to talk about Theodora. He was scared of her. His father told him to stay out of her way and not to do anything that made her mad or unhappy. “She could put us out on the street in a minute,” he told Henry. There were other things he said too, but they mostly had to do with his job as chief of security or his work with Sy, which had to do with siphoning or skimming, Henry wasn’t sure which. All Henry knew for sure was that his father hated Theodora. One time he heard him talking to Sy: “She’s squeezing me to
death
. Doesn’t come out and say it. Just drops hints here and there. And those fucking
looks
! I’m tired of it. Tired of fucking tiptoeing. She wants me to think I owe her big time.” Sy said, “You do.” Henry’s father got mad and started yelling, “I don’t owe nobody
nothin
’! Understand? I do what I want. Nobody owns me, mister! No smart-ass
MBA
bitch.
Nobody
!”

Theodora swam every morning in the Palace’s Olympic swimming pool. Sometimes Henry would hide and watch. She was tall and thin and her hair was short and very dark and her skin was very white. She would come out of the women’s shower room and hang her towel
on the back of a chair. She always wore a purple bathing suit that had a black stripe up the side that made her legs look very long. She put on a small purple cap and tucked her hair up into it as she walked to the edge of the pool. She always bent down once or twice to touch her toes. Then she would dive in. She swam very slowly—on her stomach, on her back, on her side, and underwater. Her arms would come out of the water lazily and slide back in and she kicked her feet without splashing. She moved through the water quickly and quietly and left a little bubbly wake behind her. When she reached the end of the pool she flipped, rolled, and resurfaced. She would blow a fine spray of mist into the air, then disappear again into the deep. Procopius said that when Justinian was emperor, a whale lived in the straits of the Bosphorus. People called it Porphyrius because it looked like it was made of the same purple stone as the great column in the Forum of Constantine. The whale lived in the waters around the city for a long, long time and sailors said they saw her as far away as the Black Sea. Theodora was a very good swimmer, and she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

“I’m waiting,” the priest said. “What can you tell me about Theodora?”

Henry said Theodora was the wife of the Emperor Justinian. Procopius called Justinian and Theodora demons in human form.

“Okay,” Father Crowley said. “What about Sy? Who is Sy?”

Sy’s real name was Simon. He was a Jew from Babylon, the one on Long Island, not the capital of Babylonia. Everybody called him Sy. He came to the Palace one summer, found a job, and never left. That happened to lots of people. Sy lived in a noisy alley not far from the Forum of Constantine. He dealt blackjack and baccarat at the Palace and worked for Henry’s father on the side because everybody said he was a genius and had a head for numbers. He wore granny glasses and read books and said things like, “I didn’t choose this life, so I might as well make the worst of it.” He was one of the nicest people Henry knew.

Henry’s father made fun of Sy all the time. He called him a scrawny little nerd, which meant that he liked him and thought he was smart. Sy didn’t just have a head for numbers; he was great with cards too and could do lots of different tricks. When they first met, Sy said he was putting together a floor show and looking for a manager, but Henry’s father said, “Forget managers; you and me are gonna make a killing some day, and it won’t be doing magic shows.” Henry’s father became good friends with Sy. So did the Whore of Jersey City, but nobody knew they were in trouble—or that Sy and Helena’s mother were in love—until they all ran away together.

“Wait a minute,” Father Crowley said. “Who ran away?”

Henry said we all did. Running away is what brought us together.

“I don’t understand,” the priest said and squinched up his face. Then he waved his hand. “But never mind. Go on.”

Sy took Henry to the Hippodrome to watch the races all the time. He also taught him to read and write Greek and Latin and Hebrew and Aramaic and Coptic. Henry studied until late every night because he wanted to be an intellectual. Sy said intellectuals had to read and go to school for a long time. He said there weren’t many of them around anymore and it was hard to become one because you had to spend years doing nothing and the cost of living had gotten out of hand. One time Sy took Henry to church. Not the Hagia Sophia but a church just like it in Pleasantville. He told Henry that going to church was sort of like finding a center in the universe. He knelt down and pulled Henry down next to him and took off his granny glasses and put his hands over his eyes and stayed that way for a long time. Henry got up and walked around the empty church and played with the candles until Sy was finished. “I don’t want you telling anybody where we were,” Sy said on the way back to the Palace.

Henry asked why.

“Because I don’t want anybody to know, that’s why.”

Henry asked why not.

“Because I just don’t. It’s nobody’s business.”

Henry asked why not.

“Because I said so.”

Henry asked why again.

“Let’s just say I’m a catholic Jew.”

Henry asked what that meant.

“It means I’m the opposite of a skeptic.” He patted Henry on the knee and drove a little longer. “It means I believe in
everything
. And that means I can’t belong to any one group.”

Henry asked why not.

“Because that’s the way it is.”

Henry asked why it was that way.

“Because, by definition, all groups are exclusive. If you buy into one, it means you have to rule certain things out. I’d hate to rule something out and then find out later that I was
wrong
. Wouldn’t you?”

Father Crowley leaned forward. His face was so close that Henry could smell his breath. It smelled bad—like the floor of the ice cream store. “Sy said all this to you?”

Henry nodded and the priest shook his head.

When they got back to the Palace, Sy took Henry to a place on the boardwalk to play pinball. “You have to keep the things you take seriously to yourself, Henry. That’s the most important thing.” They were playing a pinball game called Ace in the Hole. “It’s important to keep a low profile. Even if you are certain about everything you know and are dying to shout it from the rooftops—you can’t. Not unless you are willing to pay the price.”

Henry asked what the price was.

“Well, for starters, most people will think you’re an idiot. But even if you can get past that, the price is too
steep. There’s no way anyone can pay it and stay alive. Jesus Christ had to die on the cross in order to pay up! He was a catholic Jew too, and said he was the son of God.”

Father Crowley sat on the sofa and pinched his eyes with his fingers while Henry talked and took books from the shelf and put them back. He looked at Henry for a long time. “Has anyone besides this Sy ever talked to you about God?”

Henry said God was only a name.

“You watch what you’re saying, young man. Blasphemy is a very serious sin. I don’t want any more of that talk. Do you understand?”

Henry asked to be taken back to the O’Briens’.

“We’ll leave when I’m good and ready,” the priest said.

Henry sat down. His sneakers had come untied.

“Tell me more about this Nike business,” the priest said.

During the Nike riots Byzantium was almost completely destroyed by the Blues and the Greens.
Nike
means
victory
in Greek but that day when they went out on the beach, Henry’s father didn’t seem victorious. He was worried. Henry knew when his father was worried because he talked on the telephone a lot—not on his cell phone or the one in the suite or even one of the pay phones in the lobby. When Henry’s father was worried he left the Palace to make his phone calls. Sometimes he went next door to Balley’s Wild West and sometimes he walked way down the boardwalk and used one of the outside telephones. You couldn’t
be too careful. The emperor’s agents and Theodora’s spies were everywhere. Henry’s father didn’t want to take any chances. That’s why he sent Henry and Helena and the Whore of Jersey City out of the city with Sy.

“We’ll go back one day and it’ll be like nothing happened,” Sy said as they drove away in the car.

“You better be right,” Helena’s mother said. She twisted the rearview mirror so she could look into it and put on some lipstick.

“Things’ll fall into place,” Sy said.

“They goddamn well better,” Helena’s mother grumbled.

“Anyway, no point worrying about it now,” Sy said. “What’s done is done.”

They went to Sy’s sister’s house in Philadelphia—not the Greek city but the one on the Delaware River. Henry’s father came to Philadelphia the next day. He was driving the Maserati Quattroporte. It was the first time Henry ever saw the car. It was all black and had soft leather seats. Henry asked where he got it. “I won it,” his father said. They went out for pizza, but Henry wasn’t hungry.

“How come you aren’t eating?” his father asked.

Henry said he didn’t like anchovies.

“You don’t like anchovies? Pizza without anchovies is like a dog without legs, kid.” His father picked them off and piled them on his plate.

Henry wanted to know how long he would have to stay in Philadelphia.

His father called the waiter and asked for fresh-squeezed orange juice. “You want anything else to drink, Henry?”

Henry said no.

When the waiter came back his father looked into the glass. “What the hell is this? I asked for fresh-squeezed orange juice.” The waiter took it back. “I’ve found a good school for you, kid. And a nice family to put you up too. Their name is O’Brien.”