Nomi gets off the desk and pulls the blind down, dumps her empty in the kitchen, walks on for the bathroom. Her apartment may haveits deficiencies, but the bathroom is nice—compact, the inside walls golden with brown trim, a big claw-foot tub squeezed in. She pushes aside the trailing ends of a heartleaf philodendron to run the faucets. While the tub is filling, she strips out of her boots and clothes, avoids looking at the damaged skin of her midriff, wraps a towel around herself. She wanders back to the kitchen to put a Grace Jones album on the turntable, get a glass of water with ice.
Nomi sets the glass and a washcloth and a lit candle in a jar on the bath caddy, along with the other half Valium from Mischa. Her bath candle and the votive candles at Our Lady of Guadalupe seem to strike the same note; she pushes the mental comparison aside. Takes her kit bag out of the mirrored cabinet above the pedestal sink—it’s a small yellow toiletries bag, and she has strict rules around using only the tools from this bag. Opening the zip, she pushes the new arrowhead tool aside and removes a piercing needle, a tiny bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a small stainless steel barbell earring she’s been keeping, wrapped in paper. She arranges everything on a hand towel on the lid of the toilet, balances a shaving mirror on the cistern.
The bathwater is high and steaming. Nomi’s mouth is watering. She sits on the edge of the bathtub, removes the needle from its paper sleeve, swipes her upper left earlobe with the alcohol, swipes the mirror to clear off condensation. Without too much buildup, she clamps her upper earlobe with her fingers and shoves the needle through. The pain is bright and cleansing, and endorphins rush through her like lightning: Nomi lets herself rock in place for a moment, lets herself feel it. Then she removes the needle and slides the barbell in to take its place, screws on the securing ball. She turns off the main bathroom light and drops her towel, sets one bare foot and then the other into the bath, sinks down into liquid heat.
Warmth inside her as well as on her skin. Muscles relaxing. Jaw unclenching. She swallows the Valium, which will help her sleep. The candlelight flickers, hypnotic, as Grace Jones sings. Behind Jones’s voice, there are still faint violins. Nomi’s new piercing throbs, quieting hermind. Last night’s cut near her belly button stings, submerged, but it’s a good sting. She trails the washcloth through the water, wrings it out and wipes her face, lays her head back on the rim of the bath.
Friday night, Saturday night, those are her only ritual nights. It’s allowed—allowable. All her anxiety and tension channeled into a small pierced hole, a small shallow slice. It’s freeing—but she has to exercise control: When she first started at fourteen, she did a lot of damage. Now she has her rituals, her rules, and things are more manageable.
She considers her reaction to the homicide scene today, reflects again on the incongruity: What she does to herself is fine ... What a criminal does to someone else is not. But it’s an issue of consent. Shearrangesthis; she has very specific guidelines around it; she’s made an agreement with herself about it. Ricki Cevolatti sure as hell didn’t agree to anything.
Tomorrow, her next step is to find out what Cevolatti said and who he talked to, hopefully before Lamonte catches up with them. But for now, Nomi pushes aside thoughts of Cevolatti, the horrors inflicted on him before his death.
Instead, she closes her eyes and listens to the violins upstairs while thinking about Simon Noone’s feet: white and naked, long as the rest of him, toes faintly dusted with hair.
Chapter Eight
September 1987, Sunday
Sunday morning, Florent Diner, regret and coffee. “More.”
Jamie looks at Nomi sideways as he pours. “This is your third.”
After a restless attempt to sleep last night, Nomi took another half pill, which was definitely a mistake. Her newly pierced ear is pulsing in time with her heart.
She waves a hand. “More.”
Jamie tops off the cup. “I’m just saying, I’ve got a joint in my purse. You could come out back and share it with me, might help take the edge off.”
“This’ll be fine.” Nomi slumps back, squints behind her sunglasses. The music playing in the diner is some kind of 1940s piano-tinkling tune with a soulful female voice. “Jamie, there’s a little too much chrome and red vinyl in the decor here for this time of the morning.”
“Honey, it’s ten thirty in the a.m.” He rolls his eyes as he walks away with the coffeepot.
She manages to get three cups of black coffee and a bowl of onion soup into her stomach before she has to go to her first appointment. Back on the street, Nomi discovers that the weather is shockingly gorgeous: full sun, sparse wisps of high cloud. But she’s itchy and grumpy and not in the mood to appreciate it.
Her outfit is purposefully out of character: pale acid-washed jeans, a white button-down shirt, a black bolo tie, a houndstooth blazer, a plain tote. She’s pulled her hair into a braid that disguises her side cut, and she’s wearing a short-brimmed black felt hat. The ensemble is designed to make her look unlike herself. Combined with the comedown, she alsofeelsunlike herself, an impostor: a mangy black wolf in sheep’s clothing, walking up Ninth Avenue.
But it’s a suitable facade for visiting St. Bernard’s Church, where Father Anthony Staggs is tidying up hymnals left on the pews after mass. She’s hoping that he’ll be able to help her dig into the question of who was running missionary fieldwork in southern Mexico and Guatemala five years ago.
He scratches his cheek. “’81 to ’83? It was probably us Catholics. Maybe the Baptists. But if you’re talking Central America, more likely us.”
“Would the archdiocese have records?” Nomi flips her notepad closed, clicks her pen, drops them both back into her tote.
“Probably. When do you need the information?”
“I can come by in a couple days. Say Wednesday?”
“Wednesday’s fine. Or I can give you a call if I get something sooner.” Father Tony has walked her to the main exit. “You doing okay? I don’t see you around much anymore.”
“I’m doing good.” Feeling guilty for lying to a priest, she slides on her sunglasses as he opens the door for her. “Yeah, I’m doing fine.”
“Glad to hear it.” He glances out into the street, then back to her, sheepish. “I still sometimes get the urge to call you Officer Pace, you know.”
She tries not to bristle. “It’s been a long time now, Father—I’m out of it for good. Okay, see you in a couple days.”
Walking back along the rows of apartment blocks, Nomi scans the street. But nobody’s out of place; no one is watching her pass. She descends the steps to the subway and catches the C train, braces herself for Irma’s not being at the meeting spot. It happens sometimes: Thevotive candle gets moved or burned, or Irma forgets to check, or she misses evening mass because of work. You roll the dice and take your chances. But she really needs to talk to Irma.
In Hell’s Kitchen, near the beauty school and a giant billboard for Donnie’s Softening Lotion, Nomi turns off West Fiftieth. Kitty-corner is a big vacant lot that kids are using as a basketball court. There are a whole lot of four-story brown row houses with rusting air conditioners half falling out of windows. A bunch of yellow cabs go by, a few delivery vans. She’s still tracking people and movement on the street, because anywhere between Chelsea and Hudson Yards is officially enemy territory, but it’s very mixed trade: men on the stoop reading the newspaper, pedestrians heading for public transport, workers unloading goods out of trucks, women in their church clothes. Lots of Black and brown faces. Some folks are just outside getting some sun. Plenty of loiterers, but nobody setting off Nomi’s alarm bells.
