Houston Odds of Heaven

1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-0983-9562-9
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 356 Seiten

When Tom Houston came to New York in the late 1960s the city had just begun to explode with new possibilities for gay men and women. An early gay activist, he stood witness to the revolutionary, sexual fervor of the 1970s and its collapse due to AIDS in the 1980s. This is the period during which the action in The Odds Of Heaven takes place. Over decades living in New York, he encountered a constant stream of odd and fantastic people, some famous but most not well known, and has developed a peculiar way of viewing the world that is expressed through the lives and perplexities of a group of characters, each one the victim of a unique personal struggle. In the novel, three women ? a single professional chasing random sex, a childlike hoarder of street trash, and her matronly aunt ? are thrown together with a young gay man nursing a betrayal and a failed, alcoholic poet to make up a loose clan centered in Greenwich Village during the 1970's. Over the next two decades, they live out eccentric, hedonistic lives. But on the periphery, just out of sight, someone becomes intent on inflicting terrible harm to one of them. When he acts, each life is changed in subtle, unexpected ways. The author charts the development of each of his personalities with nuance and humanity. Despite a world in which terrible things can happen at any time, by the end of The Odds of Heaven those who survive the tumult find that something new and solid awaits.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Houston, Tom

Leseproben

CHAPTER I

When Tyler Lacy Whittaker III, or Lace as he was called, left his two-room apartment on MacDougal Street, there was something about the shadows that disturbed his eye. He had just slept off at least a dozen rum drinks from the night before, so he was surprised to find one of those quiet, sunny days, crispy and delightful, for which New York City is justly loved by its residents as they stop to chat with each other: “What good weather we’re having! What a string of beautiful days!”

As he came down the three flights of stairs from his tiny apartment, he whistled a little tune to himself. He had been listening to a recording of Maria Callas’ 1954 performance of Norma at La Scala and a sliver of melody from her aria, Casta Diva, was lodged in his mind, but Lace could not hold a tune, and the sound that came from his throat resembled perhaps some sailor’s ditty, a pastiche of hit parade melodies or maybe even the warble of a bird

MacDougal Street is a comfortable street, lined with mimosa and small pear trees, and it lends itself to pleasant ruminations during an afternoon stroll or an evening walk or even a short jaunt, such as the one on which Lace was now embarking. It is a narrow street that lies north to south, so that on certain days the sun shines steadily, straight down into the cobbled stones and cracked pavements from an angle toward the horizon. Having tried his hand at photography in his youth, Lace was struck at once by the shadows, or the lack of them, for there were none to be seen at all and, having just listened to Norma, the story of that stormy and doomed Druid priestess formed into his consciousness a stage set of stone monoliths and human sacrifice as the sun passed its apogee overhead.

Lace stepped a bit unevenly onto his sidewalk, where he noticed an optical illusion. The walls of those famous Federal and Greek Revival brick buildings bent towards each other, rising mysteriously from their base without seeming to touch the street, an urban Stonehenge measuring time in cycles, with one ray of precious sunlight piercing down an alleyway of stone.

So, lost in a hazy reaction to a street without shadows and in a muddled but sun-struck mood, he ambled unsteadily on sturdy, stout legs out into the world on his way to a late lunch. Lace had put himself together carelessly. He was wearing a tweed pork-pie hat lying just off the center of his head and a camel hair coat of good make and rather old-fashioned design; he was clean-shaven although he had missed a patch just below his chin. The shirt he wore had been plucked from a pile of laundry and there was a small butter stain near the collar. Although people accused Lace of being fat, he was instead big-boned; a large man, standing a little over 6 feet 4 inches, which may be how he got away with a brash, almost bullying personality.

On balmy days, Italian women and young men with tight shirts sat on the uneven stoops of tenements on MacDougal Street, which lies at the heart of a neighborhood that has watched generations of immigrants arrive and pass through. Lace looked one way up and then down the block, looking for neighbors. His rambling, playful mind left behind druidical thoughts and turned instead to Mrs. Finelli whose children, now, were long gone. She was sweeping the sidewalk in front of her building, as she did each mid-day.

“The daughter moved out to New Jersey, what is it now, maybe ten years ago? Has it been that long?” he thought to himself. “Yes, each generation leaves some of its members behind. At least the good ol’ neighborhood hasn’t deteriorated too much. There’s always a sturdy core of people who won’t leave for another life just because it’s the fashion to think that it’s better over there, over the rivers and out into the boroughs and suburbs. Bet they don’t even know their neighbors out there, hah!”

Lace nodded and waved foggily to the left at Mrs. Finelli and then stopped for a moment to chat with Anne Rose, who was sifting through refuse left that morning for the garbage men who would come on Monday.

“Look at this,” she said, holding a ceramic mouse, in perfect shape except for a broken ear.

She looked vaguely down the street and swung her arm out towards a gnat buzzing around her unkempt hair, at the same time absentmindedly taking in the trashcans and piles of garbage through which she sifted every day.

“How can someone throw away something so beautiful?” she asked Lace.

Pausing to admire the nearly complete rodent Lace then moved on, but he turned briefly to watch Anne Rose’s enormous shape make its way down the street. She lived downstairs in Lace’s building and they fought often, but he had known her how long? “Known her since she was little…a long, long time. She is a mess, heaven knows, but we watch out for one another here, don’t we, old boy? Yes indeed.” This old village of a neighborhood forgave him his drunkenness, his leisure, even his awkward poetry and he felt cuddled and coddled, an aging, soft teddy bear.

At last, he headed for a café on the corner called Café Dadilo, a name that described neither a particular place nor was it the name of a person. So far as anyone knew, it was a name wholly invented to sound Italian by an Irishman two generations ago. But whatever its fanciful name, the café was a good spot for lunch. Lace had the unfortunate habit of being thrown out of places where he drank, but lunch at Café Dadilo was safe. Lace wasn’t usually terribly drunk until late at night and the places that no longer extended to him their warm hands of welcome were mostly a string of waterfront bars tucked into little squalid stalls along the Hudson River.

At Café Dadilo, Lace was sure to be welcomed, to drink in the elixir of being wanted and expected, and he was meeting Agnes Pranciple who was going to edit a new book of rather risqué poems authored by Tyler Lacy Whittaker III.

Entering, at last, his destination, Lace squeezed the hands of Alberto, the headwaiter, into both of his, giving him a hearty welcome. There were some new paintings along the wall, done in muted colors. They seemed to be nothing but mottled shapes. “Just shapes! Nothingness! What are things coming to?” he thought sharply to himself and then he paused before a gilt-framed mirror to check his teeth. He picked momentarily at his front incisor and then turned for a moment to let his eyes adjust and while they adapted to the darkness he navigated gingerly between tables towards the back until he arrived at a corner table far into the rear of the establishment.

Agnes Pranciple sat facing the door, buried in shadows but still wearing huge sunglasses in thick tortoise shell frames. Despite, or perhaps because her name suggested a schoolmarm, her general demeanor actually cut a swath somewhere between captain of the artillery and bike rider. She looked up as Lace took off his coat and gave it to Alberto, buttered a roll, and said gruffly, “You’re late. I’ve ordered already.”

“I’m never late,” replied Lace in a stiff, warning voice. He narrowed his eyes and leaned over the table without sitting down. He was, in fact, always prompt and prided himself on it. Agnes Pranciple enjoyed going on the offensive, but she was not going to make any headway with this line of attack and so she sat back, outwardly resigned, and said, “Maybe I wrote it wrong in my diary. Let’s get you a martini, you look like you need one.”

Lace rocked back and forth for a moment. He had become angry for a split second and it took a second more than that for the blood in his neck to subside, but then, as he settled down, he suddenly realized that Alberto had left him holding his porkpie hat and he looked briefly behind him, vainly, to rectify the omission. Unsuccessful, he turned back upon Agnes and abruptly placed the little round hat on the bench beside him as he scuttled onto the banquette, having forgotten his temper.

“My dear, I do need it. Had a late night out…well, not so late, just…just….”

He sought the right word. “Rambunctious!” he said, with a triumphant spark in his eye. “Yes, my dear, rambunctious! I think I insulted someone, I can’t remember for the life of me, but I did insult someone and he insulted me and then someone started something, but then I stood back while someone else got involved and then it started. I think I put money on the fight, but I didn’t have any this morning. I suppose I lost the bet.”

Grinning, he sat back in the banquette looking, entirely satisfied with himself.

Agnes Pranciple shook her finger at Lace, but she was holding a butter knife and so the tip of her finger flashed a little in the light and looked for a second like a magic wand. She placed the knife with a sharp clink on a plate so that it pointed precisely towards Lace and bit off a piece of roll so small that a particle physicist might have been interested in its structure.

“You will get killed one day and someday soon, so you need to work faster on these poems. My dear, you are a nasty piece of business but if your mind wasn’t in some gutter on the waterfront—and those are special gutters to be sure—you wouldn’t be able to write these peculiar poems about the damp recesses of fetal memory and all the sexual memories of motherhood and childhood and…and…”

She searched for a word but settled on “…whatever” and at the same time she waved her hand across the table to punctuate an end to her train of thought.

Agnes Pranciple stirred her Rob Roy for a moment with a dinner knife and gazed at her dinner roll, giving it a more...