Astrid Sees All

by Natalie Standiford

  “Why did you do that?” I asked her. “Why did you rub your knuckles on his chest?”

  “Because it hurts. Sometimes a little shake isn’t enough to wake him up. It hurts but it doesn’t cause any damage, you know what I mean?”

  She checked his pupils, his fingernails, his tongue and lips. She pressed two fingers to the pulse point on his wrist, watching his chest rise and fall and listening to his slow, even breath. “He’s just nodding.” She smoothed his hair, then pulled a towel off a rack over the tub and covered him with it.

  We went to Odessa again and gorged on blintzes and coffee. I studied the listings Carmen had circled. Most of them were sublets—sometimes you could nab one without paying a deposit or signing a lease. “We have to find a place soon,” Carmen said. “Before we get the squat stink on us. How much money do you have?”

  “About seventy-five dollars.”

  “Total?” Carmen frowned.

  “I’ll be getting three hundred dollars on New Year’s Eve—”

  “Yeah, but we need money now. My grandmother sent me some Christmas money. We can use that for the first month.”

  We looked at six apartments in the neighborhood. The first, most promising one was already taken. The second had no windows and a hole in the ceiling, through which we could see the upstairs neighbor’s rug. The third was also already rented, but the landlord had another apartment available for three times what we could afford. The fourth came with a roommate not mentioned in the ad, a leering old man in his seventies. At the fifth apartment we found a dead rat in the closet, along with a nest of screaming rat babies.

  To get to the last place on the list, a basement apartment on Tenth Street, we crossed through the park. I’d seen a little of the neighborhood as we tramped through the cold: Gem Spa, St. Mark’s in-the-Bowery, Love Saves the Day. We drooled over cannolis and cakes like glazed jewels in the window of De Robertis bakery. We stopped at Café Orlin for cappuccinos to warm us up. Now, the sunlight fading, we entered the park near the statue of Samuel Sullivan Cox, “The Letter Carrier’s Friend.” Just beyond the statue some homeless people and hippies had set up camp. A guy with dirty brown dreads beat a bongo and sang out, “Hey girls come here, hey girls come here, hey girls you got a dollar for me? Come play the bongos, a dollar a bongo….”

  “Keep walking.” Carmen led me north past a small stone pavilion with a waterless drinking fountain. On top stood a statue of a goddess offering us a pitcher and a cup, surrounded by the words CHARITY - TEMPERANCE - FAITH - HOPE. People slept on benches or huddled together smoking. We passed another fountain, a lion’s head suspended over an ice-filled basin. Above him, carved in relief on a marble slab, a boy and a girl stared off into a leafy paradise, looking like an illustration from an art deco children’s book.

  “THEY WERE

  EARTH’S

  PUREST

  CHILDREN—

  YOUNG AND

  FAIR”

  A plaque on one side explained:

  IN MEMORY OF

  THOSE WHO LOST

  THEIR LIVES IN THE DISASTER TO

  THE STEAMER GENERAL SLOCUM

  JUNE XV

  MCMIV

  And on the other:

  DEDICATED

  BY

  THE SYMPATHY SOCIETY

  OF GERMAN LADIES

  THE YEAR OF OUR LORD

  MCMVI

  I stopped to rub the dress of the marble girl. “It’s getting dark,” Carmen said. “Come on.”

  The last apartment was perfect, except that a couple of nice girls like us had just rented it that morning.

  * * *

  Back at Atti’s, the boys were up, drinking coffee, eating Froot Loops out of the box, and smoking a joint. “Chicks missed a great time last night,” Dean said. “Gasper stole a bottle of Jack Daniel’s right off the bar at the Blue & Gold. Ukrainian fuck who owns the place tried to snatch it back, Gasper bashes him on the head with it. Then Gasper starts tearing the place up, throwing chairs, throwing glasses—”

  “One of the glasses hit an Angel on the shoulder—”

  “Yeah, that was unfortunate. There were about five Angels in the bar and they started brawling.”

  “I’m so sorry we missed it,” Carmen said.

  “We sneaked out the back,” Atti said.

  “Yeah, we ran over to the Verk and watched from the window. Took four cops to pin Gasper down. Hells Angels ran off like rats to their hidey hole. Cops don’t dare chase them back to Third Street. The Angels is armed to their rotten gold teeth.”

  Carmen explained that Gasper was an English punk friend of theirs.

  “Sadly, Oswald got caught in the sweeparooni,” Dean added.

  Carmen told me that Oswald was the most important man in their lives: their dealer.

  “Gasper just came by and said they sprung him this morning, but Oz is still locked up.” Atti shook his head. “That could be it for old Oz.”

  “He’s got a record as long as John Holmes’s dick.” Dean crossed himself.

  For dinner, we devoured a pizza and washed it down with beer. It started raining, freezing rain that tapped on the windows with tiny icy claws. Atti didn’t want to go out. By then the cold had sunk into our bones, so we went downstairs to bask in the glow of Dean’s electric heater. He played a Joy Division tape while we passed around a bottle of vodka. Atti sat with his knees drawn up, shivering under a blanket. Carmen felt his forehead. “I think you have a fever.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Phoebe, come here. Does he have a fever?”

  His forehead felt damp and hot. “I think so.”

  “I don’t. Leave me alone.”

  “You girls gonna get me into Plutonium on New Year’s?” Dean said.

  “I don’t think we can.” Carmen shot me a look of warning.

  “Eh, you’ll get me in. After all I’m doing for you, letting you stay with me for free, a roof over your heads on a cold rainy night—”

  “We’re staying with Atti, not you,” Carmen said.

  “—stuffing your hungry little faces with the finest pizza the East Village has to offer—”

  “Carmen bought the pizza,” I said.

  “I supplied the vodka, right? And the tunes? And we snagged a few vikes off Oswald before the five-0 set him on a new life path.” He shook a small pill bottle at me. “Phoebe? Vicodin? Takes the edge off.”

  I looked to Carmen for guidance. She shrugged and took a Vicodin, so I took one too, washing it down with vodka. Soon I felt loose and warm, sleepy but not tired. Carmen and I danced and sang, “Love will tear us apart again.” Dean scratched his face and watched us. Atti, legs jiggling, focused on an invisible movie projected on the wall. Carmen wanted something bouncier and put on the B-52s, singing along, “I’ll give you fish, I’ll give you candy.” Dean and I ran through the rain to the liquor store for another bottle of vodka, pointing out the cheapest brand to the clerk behind the bulletproof plexiglass. Back at Dean’s, Carmen was dancing alone to Tom Tom Club. Atti had gone upstairs to his place, she said; we’d go up soon too.

  * * *

  Hours later I woke in the dark, curled up against the cold. A girl outside was screaming, “BILLY! BILLY! Fuck you, Billy, I’m coming to get you… BILLY!…”

  I tried to figure out where I was. What was I doing in this frigid room, on this thin mattress? I rolled over onto Carmen’s arm, and I remembered: Dad died. I quickly shooed that thought away. We were here for Plutonium. The New Year’s Eve party. The money to throw in Ivan’s face. Carmen and I were going to reinvent ourselves.

  Some time went by, I don’t know how much, but I woke again to a gray dawn. I got up to pee, stumbling into the bathroom. Atti was crouched on the floor, vomiting into the tub.

  “Oh, shit.” I ran back to the mattress and jumped under the covers as if I’d seen a monster. Carmen woke up.

  “What? What happened?”

  Retching sounds answered her from the bathroom. “Fuck.” She
sat up and pulled on her favorite army jacket, the one with MITCH stitched over the pocket in pink. Then she hurried to help Atti. From my hiding place under the blanket I heard him throwing up and Carmen saying, “Shhh… sshhhh…”

  I peeked out from under the covers, tilting my head upside down to look through the window. In the sky, low clouds refracted the lights of the city, turning everything sulfur-orange.

  “Shhh,” Carmen murmured. “It’s okay. You’ll feel better soon….”

  I didn’t think Atti would feel better soon. I didn’t know much about junkies, but I knew a sick person when I saw one.

  I tiptoed back to the bathroom. She’d rolled him over to keep him from choking on the vomit. She cleaned him up, wiping his face with a washcloth, and then went through her checklist of pupils, breath, lips, tongue, pulse.

  I hated to see sickness, but I watched because it was her, because I wanted to know about everything she did. Because she was keeping him from dying, and I couldn’t bear another death.

  * * *

  Eventually, we went back to sleep, and I slept until late morning. Carmen snored lightly beside me. I had a headache and longed for a bath, but Atti was passed out on the bathroom floor, and there wasn’t any hot water anyway. I bundled up and walked to Ray’s Candy for some coffees to go. The Underground came out every Wednesday, the latest edition waiting in a fresh stack just inside the door. I picked one up. I didn’t want to stay at Atti’s another night.

  Carmen was just stirring when I returned. I gave her a coffee and opened the paper to the classifieds. “Maybe there’s something new this week.”

  She sipped her coffee and watched me scanning the “For Rent” ads, circling ones that sounded good but that I knew we couldn’t afford. “Wait a minute,” she said. If Oswald was in as much trouble as Dean thought, he’d be going to prison for a long time. And if he was in prison… what would happen to his apartment?

  Dean confirmed that Oswald had been denied bail and was almost certain to be convicted on drug charges and who knew what else and given a long sentence, considering he’d been caught holding and this was his fifth arrest. He had a pretty sweet place, too, on A between Ninth and Tenth. “Park view,” Dean said. “Lap o’ luxury.” The landlord was an old Polish lady who’d probably be thrilled to rent Oswald’s place out from under him to a couple of decent girls.

  “Hurry over there,” Dean said. “Before some parasite gets the same idea.”

  * * *

  Mrs. Lisiewicz scrutinized us in her cabbage-reeking hallway. “You’re friends of Oswald?”

  “No,” Carmen assured her. “We don’t know him. We’ve never met him. We just heard his apartment might be available, from friends.”

  “What friends?”

  I let Carmen do the talking. She hesitated, and I could tell she didn’t think the name Attila Pilkvist would impress Mrs. Lisiewicz, so she said, “Do you know Dean Rutherford?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh. Well, he’s a lawyer, he’s the one who put Oswald in jail! He told us about the apartment.”

  Mrs. Lisiewicz squinted. “A lawyer?”

  “Not the kind who sues landlords,” Carmen said. “He puts hooligans in jail. And criminals. He takes hooligans and criminals off the streets. That’s all he does.”

  “He hates hooligans,” I said.

  “All right.” She disappeared into her apartment, which was on the first floor, and returned with a ring of keys. “Let’s go look.”

  Mrs. Lisiewicz unlocked the door to a third-floor apartment and two Siamese cats flung themselves at her feet. She soothed them in Polish, going to the cupboard for a can of food. “You like cats?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I feed them for Oswald while he’s away. They’re yours now.”

  “You mean we can have the apartment?”

  “If you want it. Four fifty a month.”

  The kitchen opened onto a living room with windows facing Avenue A and the park. Next to the kitchen sink, the bathtub was covered with a board that doubled as a countertop. There was a toilet in a nook the size of a closet, and a bedroom in the back, overlooking a weedy cement yard. Someone must have come to take most of Oswald’s stuff, because there wasn’t much in there besides the furniture: couch, kitchen table and chairs, a double bed, a dresser, and a small black-and-white TV. The dresser was empty except for the bottom drawer, which held a stash of neatly paired men’s gym socks. The kitchen cabinets contained glasses, cups, mismatched dishes, cans of cat food, a bag of rice, and a box of sugar. In the fridge: a rotten lime, a can of Café Bustelo, and a bottle of Gatorade.

  I loved it. Carmen was a genius. She knew how to navigate this world. Thanks to her I’d gotten the job at Plutonium, and now an apartment. I didn’t see how I’d survive without her.

  The cats were devouring their food from a dish on the floor. “What are their names?” I asked.

  “Julio and Diego.”

  I crouched and traced a finger along the charcoal line of Diego’s spine. He cast a sidelong glance at me but kept eating.

  Carmen gestured to me and we conferred in the bedroom. We agreed we’d never find a cheaper place that was livable, and it seemed pretty safe as long as Oswald didn’t get out of jail anytime soon. We told Mrs. L that we’d take it. Carmen gave her a hundred-dollar deposit and she gave us the keys. We could move in immediately.

  I had a place to live. I now felt secure enough to call my mother.

  “Mom?”

  “Honey! Where are you?”

  “I just called to tell you I’m fine—”

  “Where are you???”

  “I’m at a pay phone—”

  “WHERE EXACTLY ARE YOU RIGHT NOW?”

  “Everything is okay. I swear. I just wanted to tell you not to worry.”

  “Phoebe, if you don’t tell me where you are this minute—”

  If she knew where I was, it would only upset her, I reasoned. The crime, the drugs… I kept her in the dark for her own good.

  “Say hi to Laurel for me. I have a nice place to stay and I’m perfectly fine.”

  “PHOEBE!”

  “Please don’t worry.”

  “PHOEBE!”

  “Happy New Year! Love you!” Click.

  I hung up and thought, My new life begins now.

  3 THE TALE OF ATTILA AND CALEDONIA

  I first noticed Carmen one night at the Grad Center Bar. I was drinking beer while my roommate, Tara, played Space Invaders. Tara was obsessed with Space Invaders. It was freshman year, September 1979, first week of classes, and Tara and I knew hardly anyone besides each other.

  A girl walked in, all energy—thick auburn hair cut in a blunt wedge around a triangular face, and knowing, playful gray eyes—trailing an entourage. She must have brought her entire West Quad floor with her. At the sight of her I sat up and sucked in my breath with a whoosh, tiny but noticeable.

  “Do you know her?” Tara asked.

  I didn’t—at least I didn’t think so—and yet I had the feeling of recognizing someone. I felt that I knew her, though that wasn’t possible. She shouted, “Wine for all my friends!” and started ordering people to push the little tables together to make one big one. The next thing I knew, the bartender set down two glasses of wine in front of me and Tara. “I guess we’re her friends,” Tara said.

  We weren’t—not yet. But I wanted to be.

  There were plenty of normal suburban kids hauling books around the Brown campus, but I was too blinded by the glamorous ones to notice them. The daughter of a famous jazz singer buzzed around College Hill in a red Porsche convertible. The niece of the deposed shah of Iran wanted to be a filmmaker. The son of a senator was dating the daughter of a governor. The daughter of a famous writer played guitar in a punk band.

  The biggest distraction was John F. Kennedy Jr., son of Jackie O. and a lionized dead president, famous child mourner, and, as Carmen would say, Zowie. He was so hot, looking at him burned out the retinas of
the entire freshman class. From the first week of school, his presence set a tone of gossipy hysteria. Who would be his friends? Who would he go out with? What would it mean to date him? How would it change your life? Just a few dates could give you a glimpse of a rarefied world. If you were impossibly lucky, you—yes you, intense semiotics geek; you, self-serious modern dancer; you, humorless econ major; or even you, premed grind—could become American royalty.

  He was in my psych class, but I was too shy to talk to him. Once he flashed me a vacant, unseeing smile as we trudged out of a lecture hall, but that was it. He didn’t need new friends; he already had plenty among the preppy hordes matriculating from Andover and St. Paul’s.

  There was a girl in my dorm named Lacey Risch, a Manhattanite who spent warm afternoons skateboarding around the quad in tiny shorts. She was leggy and dark and thin as a model, her wavy hair striped with gold highlights. John asked her out the first week of school, and she said no.

  Rumors flew. People said that a movie star had fallen in love with her over the summer, and she turned him down too. What was going on behind that chiseled, unsmiling face of hers? Did she have something against John-John? Did she hate attention? Was she a lesbian? If she wouldn’t go out with him, who would she go out with?

  No one knew. Lacey Risch was very mysterious. I concluded that growing up in New York had made her so blasé that no one impressed her.

  * * *

  A couple of weeks later I went to an open mike reading at a campus coffeehouse. I brought along a short story I’d written over the summer and, in a rare fit of boldness, signed up to read. I listened to the first two readers, gathering my nerve. Forget it, I thought. I’m not doing this. But the emcee called me to the stage, and I had no dignified way out. With shaking hands and voice I read my story.

  It was about a ninth grader named Annie who has a crush on her French teacher, a film buff. Inspired by her love for the teacher, Annie starts saving all her movie ticket stubs in a shoebox. She’s close to her father, who makes a point of teaching her what he calls “the finer things in life”: little tricks like whistling, eating noodles with chopsticks, slurping oysters, and keeping a box score while watching a baseball game.