The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [51]
“Maybe, let’s say fifty guilders?”
Phoebe was too stoned for arithmetic. It seemed like a lot. She opened her purse and took out her wallet. Only seventy guilders remained of the money she’d changed at the station that morning. “Here,” she said, handing Nico two twenty-five-guilder notes. Through the sleepy flow of her thoughts certain piercing worries were beginning to penetrate—time, banks, paying for the hostel—like the prickling of a numbed limb regaining sensation. But more painful still was her injury over Karl’s betrayal, his willingness to abandon her to this parasite.
Money in hand, the whimpering Nico became a man of action. He sprang to a shelf obscured by wandering Jew and opened the lid of a black lacquered box. There was a sudden pressure in the room. Phoebe felt it bodily, a ripple of sickness, a faulty quiver in her heartbeat. But she was afraid to move, to call attention to herself in the smallest way, for fear of causing an explosion.
Nico returned to the cushions holding a syringe. Of course, Phoebe thought. Of course. She stared at the rug, hearing the babble of Karl’s sewing machine. Here was the underground world, here it was; after a lifetime of stolen glimpses, she was right in its midst. A sense of deep inevitability bore down on her. Nico sat on the cushions near her, holding a teaspoon to which he added liquid from an eyedropper. He flicked a plastic cigarette lighter and held its flame beneath the spoon. A faint, sweet burning filled the air.
Karl left his sewing machine and knelt beside Nico. He filled the syringe with the liquid from the spoon, then yanked the yarn belt from his Turkish pants and knotted it tightly around the boy’s arm, just above the elbow. He took Nico’s forearm in his hands and held it, touching the tiny eruptions of scabs with the gentleness of a doctor. Phoebe turned away, her amazement eclipsed by horror, but as the seconds passed, she felt compelled to look again. She whirled back around. Gently, almost lovingly, Karl pushed the needle into Nico’s flesh.
Karl eased the plunger down. Nico’s eyes fluttered shut and he sighed. When Karl withdrew the syringe, there was blood at the bottom. He set it on a windowsill. Nico gazed at Phoebe, his face so peacefully settled that for the first time all day he looked his real age. “Cheers, okay?” he said softly. His eyes kept falling shut, despite his valiant efforts to keep them open. Again and again they closed, Nico rocking slowly forward, then catching himself, jerking back, drooping to one side and jerking straight again. He looked like a jack-in-the-box.
Karl moved close to Phoebe. She noticed his forearms were scarless, full of long rivery veins. He touched Phoebe’s shoulder in the same gentle way he’d touched Nico’s arm. No, Phoebe thought, no, but she was so tired, the drug had sapped all the energy from her body, and now a part of her longed, like Nico, to shut her eyes and hand herself over. Karl pushed her backward onto the cushions, stroking her hair, glancing toward the open window, where a church bell rang faintly. Then, in a swift, effortless motion he flattened himself on top of her. Phoebe lay still, not paralyzed so much as dulled. Someone was calling out instructions; she strained to catch them. Nico continued bobbing from side to side, teetering between sleep and wakefulness. Phoebe wished she could lay him down flat. Karl began to kiss her, pushing his tongue deep inside Phoebe’s mouth, pressing himself to her leg. From below the windows she heard children. She wanted Karl to stop, but the fierce efficiency of his desires seemed to muffle her own. In a single, fluid gesture, he lifted her skirt and eased aside her underpants. She felt his bare hand.
Phoebe shrieked, and the hand withdrew. Nico’s eyes blinked open. He stared at Phoebe, seeming about to speak, then was