In a morning fog settling over the city, the tops of the skyscrapers disappearing. Trying to stop myself plunging into grief as a misty soft rain drizzled down out of the shadowy whiteness. The atmosphere of the world one now lived in, bleak and black. Wore the same dark suit I wore to our first restaurant meal with Sylvia and her adoptive mother. Put on a black tie. If you’re in mourning people are not supposed to be rude to you or punch you in the face. Each time I enter or return to the apartment, I look behind and watch the shadows ahead for the glint of a knife or lurking figures. Took the Lexington Avenue subway uptown to the Fifty-ninth Street stop. Hungry, I had two hot dogs smothered in mustard, relish, and sauerkraut while wondering how I was going to afford paying for them. Quickly approaching getting broke again after pawning my watch and radio. And now waiting for what one had to presume was one of the richest widows in America. But who after half an hour was not showing up. And just as I was ready to go and sipping the last of my 7UP and reaching in my pocket for coins to pay, she arrived. Black silk scarf at her throat, her tall slenderness covered in a gray mackintosh of the French Resistance sort that Max wore. A black cloche hat pulled tightly down over her hair. And as she stole up to my elbow, looking like an unlikely spy with her sunglasses, it took more than a moment to recognize her. She leaned over, and I could smell her sweet breath as she kissed me on the cheek and my most private part instantly stiffened.
“Sorry I’m late, Stephen.”
“Hi.”
“It’s a very very sad time. I can’t think of anything worse or more dreadful to have happened.”
“Yes.”
A smell of brandy on her always-beautiful breath. She sat on the stool next to me and ordered a coffee and a Danish pastry. I thought, My God, the cup’s not gold and pastry has no diamonds glittering in it. And she’s going to eat and drink like any of the people who have nothing better to do than to be here. Her voice softer and quieter than she’d ever spoken before, speaks.
“But now I’m afraid so many practical things have to come first. You can’t afford to pay for Sylvia’s funeral, can you.”
“I can try. And I will.”
“Please don’t complicate matters, will you. Everything is already being taken care of. Jonathan was an honorable man. And Sylvia a lovely young woman too young to die. And their physical bodies were the most terrible things I have ever had to witness.”
Tears rolling from beneath her sunglasses and down her cheeks. A train pulling in would have drowned out any wounded sob. But stoic she sat, opening her crocodile-skin bag and taking out a handkerchief to dab the tears. And here had now come what had to be the cold calculation that was about to involve our lives. Her assumption that I would be glad to be rid of my responsibilities, even though I was relieved and was too ashamed to admit it.
“Sylvia, as you may know, Stephen, was cut off upon her marriage.”
Then just as abruptly as this information was offered, she quickly caught herself, nearly dropping her crocodile bag as she reached her hand over and placed it on my knee. Put there perhaps for reassurance as she faltered in assuming her schoolmarm persona.
“Stephen, we can’t really talk here. Shall we go. I just want to walk a bit.”
I counted out the coins to pay, like tiny steps down the ladder into impoverishment, pushing them one by one forward on the counter, adding a tip of a little pile of pennies. And we climbed the steps up and out of the subway, away from where the thundering roar of the trains was silencing our conversation. The brim of her cloche hat pulled down, she swayed a couple of times as we walked together along the street. But now in silence passing movie theaters and stores. Maneuvering through the shopping crowd streaming around the big department store entrance on the corner that my own mother, from the redoubt of her kitchen, used to surprisingly say was frequented by people with backgrounds totally without refinement. Then we heard screams and shouts. An elderly lady in a fur coat being robbed. The brigand running zigzag through the pedestrians and then bolting across the street. The squeal of tires of a car trying to stop. A thud. The thief facedown, unconscious in the gutter. A belligerently angry old lady thanking a Good Samaritan handing back her purse. A few seconds of life gone by in this haphazard city. Where the unjust, the corrupt, the criminal and the discourteous can suddenly get their comeuppance from the courteous, the good, the honest and the just. And as we walked on and passed a newsstand, there it was. Publicity rules all. Front page of the Daily News, a headline along with Dru’s photograph. And next to it a picture of the smoking, charred ruin in the woods.
DEATH IN
THE DOLL’S HOUSE
The gray sky turning dark and glowering. I could feel Dru stiffen next to me and her walk become hurried. And in sensing her anguish, it was as if Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings scratched across my brain to express her soul’s terrible pain with violins screaming out their raging notes. As it had come to me on that earlier day of tragic occurrence, when another young girl had died and left a darkened red stain on the bus station floor. And now on this very day with my own publicity a cipher of conspicuous ignominy. Referred to as an “out-of-work composer.” Yet no one can claim more resolve to achieve my purpose nor can feel stronger in the fight I shall fight. With a strength even greater than that power held by the richest woman on earth. Who could hire a crane to lift the Empire State Building right up out of its foundations and put it somewhere else like Max’s Chicago with a live elephant dancing on top. And garbed as Dru was, people looked at us as we passed in case she might be the famed reclusive Hollywood actress rumored to live a bit farther south on this East Side of town.
“Please, Stephen, tell me. Tell me that everything is meaningless. That there are no other worlds out beyond the sky that we will ever be able to take a spaceship to. I don’t want to believe that nothing matters. Even though it doesn’t.”
And as I watched the random faces pass and for the glint of knives, I was trying to think of an answer to everything not being meaningless. Especially having such recent firsthand information on the meaningful. Something to eat and somewhere to sleep. And if you were extra-lucky, a concert grand piano or a more portable violin to play. Then you could go on dreaming to thunderous applause with an orchestra having performed Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major. Shouts for an encore and flowers flooding the stage. And we pass another newsstand and even a vendor calling out, “Read all about it.”
“Oh God Stephen, it’s everywhere. Stacked on the newsstands all over New York.”
And what could be meaningful to all these people going by. Who can for a nickel read about burning death spelled out in the paper. Because there it was. Shouted out to the world. Happening to the rich and privileged. On the heels of the secret quiet death of Max. And to another lovely girl, in the bus station where wrong information was being given out at Princeton. Then Sylvia’s death. To which she calmly walked. Back to her most private little refuge, now to be seen in ruins by everyone including my favorite sister. Then by my whole family which wasn’t invited to the wedding and never met her. My mother who prays with her rosary beads every day, said even Protestants deserve a prayer and will say Hail Marys for the repose of Sylvia’s soul. And philosophize, saying that children brought with them adversity which could wear out the heart with worry. And now I am as if I were a ship, bow-on crashing through a vast ocean’s wild waves. Unleashing broadside salvos over the horizon. Not knowing in my turret if they will sink the enemy. And where you, if it’s you they’re aiming at, crouch low. It will do you no good at all if a shell direct hits. Just creates the dead to slip into the deep. And the victor on the sea swells rides away.
Walking now two of us in sorrow with her hand in mine. A gust of wind and first drops of rain falling. Waiting for the lights to change to cross west on Lexington Avenue. This widow. Who I was certain was now so sad that despite her gentle inebriation, she would never again be merry. But in just less than a minute I was wrong. As we reached Park Avenue on t
he corner where the Ritz Tower rose into the sky, her mood and disposition abruptly changed. Just as it did when she became the rigid schoolmarm, removing her sunglasses and gimlet eyed winking unwelcomingly at me. Now suddenly grabbing my arm, she stopped on the sidewalk. Mascara smeared around her reddened eyes.
“Dru, what’s the matter.”
“The matter is that I suddenly feel so awfully horny and desperately badly in need of a fuck.”
“Holy cow, Dru.”
“Put your arm around me, please. Give me a squeezing hug. And come on. Let’s go. Flag that taxi, sailor.”
Grabbing my arm. Her arm linked tighter around mine. Her fingers closed over my wrist, squeezing hard. As I open up the taxi door and shut it closed. Joining the flow of yellow Checker cabs up Park Avenue. As the rain now belts down and the taxi driver waits to ask, “Where do you want to go, folks,” and then the quiet reflection on this destination of a side street off Sutton Place. And now I was counseling myself. Not to break down and sink in an awful sea of guilt. That the wonderful word sailor sounded comforting to hear. And softened the sound of the words horny and fuck coming from Dru’s lips. Remembering when she said during our first clutching in bed together, “Of course, darling, when you want to be fucked by somebody, then you forget all your worries and all their faults.” Jesus Christ Almighty, whatever you expect from a woman, don’t believe it. Because it is always going to be something else you didn’t expect. And if you were expecting it soon, it would always be later. Or expecting it later, it would always be sooner.
Nearby steps up to a little park overlooking the river, the taxi stopping down this side street off Sutton Place. And some more of what I never expected. Paying the fare, which would now, less two dimes, leave me again flat miserable broke. And the taxi driver scratching his head, delivering two servants to their destination, because that’s where they worked.
“Just follow me, Stephen.”
Dru producing a key, we entered the black steel door and along to the service elevator. She slumped back against the elevator wall, her head bowed as we went up to her floor. And gently smiled as we stepped out on the landing to her pantry door where the delivery boy had masturbated in front of her. Gilbert taken ill and in the hospital with pneumonia. Other staff in the Adirondacks. The apartment empty. Dru casting her coat and hat aside, locking the door behind her, and taking my hand as we entered and went through the kitchen. Past a pile of chopped vegetables on the table. Tempted I was to put hand to and take and chew the healthy end of an unchopped carrot. But instead snatched three grapes from a bunch in a basket. As Dru grabbed a bottle by the neck and briefly put it to her lips.
“Don’t be shocked, Stephen. I often swig from the bottle.”
Chew down my grapes as we pass ormolu-mounted mahogany commodes and go to the end of the longest hall and up the stairs where she led me to a spartan and nunlike bedroom, the windows looking out onto the East River below. And suddenly she retreated.
“Oh no. Not here. Let’s go to the music room. We can listen and have some music.”
Pulled by the hand I followed her back down the stairs and along the hall, over the splendor of rugs and parquet and past the paintings and a Canaletto scene of Venice I’d not seen before. The doors of the music room closing behind us. Out the windows the sky darkening with a storm and the glass streaked with rain. Dru going to her record player.
“I want to dance.”
Bach’s Suite No. 2 in B Minor. Then over by the window, Dru lifting her sweater over her head and undoing her skirt and casting them aside. Now her under-clothing and stockings dropped to the floor, her lithe body twirling around in the middle of this room, in a sinuous dance. And a shiver of recognition of Sylvia. Then as the record ended and I was licking my lips watching her, she crossed to the piano to sit to the keys.
“Stephen, I’ve practiced and played from this whole pile of scores. I wish I could play as beautifully as you do.”
“Ma’am you do, you do.”
“Could you recognize the composer if I play a piece.”
“I believe Ma’am, if I am not already distracted by other more pleasantly urgent matters, that you can play me any successive five or six notes or chords from any composer you like.”
“Okay. Here we go, then.”
“From the exquisiteness which comes when he lets go with his larghetto in his Oboe Concerto in C Major, that’s Vivaldi.”
“Oh, you are clever. Here we go next, maestro.”
“Although great orchestral volume always provides the grandness, those four tinkling notes are from a Beethoven piano concerto.”
“Well, I’ll have to be more obscure. Try this.”
“Ravel, Piano Concerto in G Major, adagio assai.”
“Oh my God, how can one win. And one more.”
“Rachmaninoff. Piano Concerto Number Four in G Minor, opus 40, allegro vivace.”
“Well this one I’m sure you won’t get.”
“Sibelius, the ‘Swan of Tuonela.’”
“My God, you are, aren’t you, really clever. Which I always knew you would be. From the very first moment I clapped eyes on you and you first spoke, if a little bit pedantically.”
“Ma’am, one does not regard this as any feat. It’s just that I praise and love music in all its forms, harmonies, and rhythms.”
“Khachaturian, then. Let me put on the record. While you dear sailor, take off your clothes. To have my need sated, it badly requires that Irish cock of yours stuck deep within me with plenty of percussion fucking to the ‘Sabre Dance.’”
“Ma’am, outside of those motifs reptilian, you sure as hell do have some fine orchestral ideas for accompaniments.”
“Inspired of course by having those arms of yours around me hugging and holding, that one day soon will have conducted some of the great orchestras of the world performing your first, second and third symphonies. And who knows, out of death perhaps the freedom of life doth come.”
Dru pirouetting across the room to the window, turns, staring at me, her arms outstretched and undulating her breasts. Directed to sit on the piano, I sat. Waiting for her to come smiling on tiptoe. Slowly approaching, hips swaying, her winking eye winking.
“I come now to fuck thee, sailor.”
And boy oh boy, who knows, maybe out of death the freedom of life really does come. Kissing me on the lid of each eye as she does. Her tongue burrowing like a corkscrew in each ear. Kissed then on the tip of the nose and at last on the lips. Then spreading her thighs she sits astride me. Haunches heaving to the rhythms of Khachaturian. Requiring astonishing syncopation. Bury my face in her soothing breasts. The bleakness of death to come again tomorrow. And wondering if we will break the goddamn stool which already felt as if it had gone wobbly and weak in one leg. Another’s flesh against mine. Touch the beautiful, shun the ugly. Growing up I was told I was so good-looking that I would be welcome anywhere. And to try it out I walked the streets of Riverdale to see if I could find where there might be a party in progress. When I saw several lights on, I walked up the path to their door and knocked or rang. When the door was answered, I asked in all deep sincerity, “excuse me, kind sir, is there a party going on in there.” I would nearly always be invited in and even was able to test my looks further by beckoning to a couple of friends hiding behind trees out in the road or across the street and asking if they could be invited as well. Only once did I hear a voice say, “Get the fucking hell off this goddamn porch before I fucking well kill you.” And that bastard always flew an American flag on his front lawn.
And now here was Dru. Her hair shrouding her face and her head hung over my shoulder as she milked me, she sang:
“My momma done told me
She didn’t tell me much
But she told me not to do
To do such things like this.”
A mournful hoot of a tugboat on the river and sound of rain spattering windows as Dru released herself from my lap and her voice dropped and seemed to fade a
way. Her beautiful breasts seemed to hang lower.
“Oh God, Stephen, all these things have their repercussions. What have I done. Betrayed a daughter. A husband. Betrayed him.”
“Holy cow, ma’am, you mustn’t think like that.”
“Don’t you damn well tell me how to think. His memory should be sacred and it’s betrayed. And he cares. I know he does. He’s somewhere, I know he is. And is mortified and horrified.”
“Holy cow Dru, take it easy. As people die, they’re no longer there to care.”
“Well, maybe you don’t care.”
“Gee Dru. Give me a break, will you. At least from the new surprises, until I recover from some of the old ones.”
My first nearly angry words spoken in the company of this rich woman. Innocent but carrying all the blame of all the millions dumped on her. And right at the moment I would love to get the sort of spiritual bliss that one can feel listening to vespers as I did once at King’s College Cambridge, sung under the vault of the great chapel ceiling. And I suddenly imagined that in order to shock my Irish Catholic soul Dru might now hold out her hand in front of my face and say, Okay sailor you’ve had yours, pay me. But instead, her voice was plaintive.
“Although he loved Sylvia, I so disappointed him. That I wouldn’t be a mother and he be a father of his own offspring. But I decided that with so many children already in the world, more coming would be too much. And I didn’t want to bring any into the world myself. And still, even if I could, don’t want to be a mother.”
Dressed, we went out of the music room, past where I had pissed all over the powder room floor and up the stairs again to a different and sumptuous bedroom. Dru’s private domain. A television set. Bookcases and books galore. Rugs deep as snowdrifts on the floor. Her diamonds which she usually wore around her wrists and neck, were on her dressing table. Portraits of her own mother and father on the wall. As she now lay on her back on the purple covers on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. A bottle in one hand and the other thrown across my stomach. She said it was time to think. Of Paris and next year’s racing at Longchamp. And perhaps I thought she was even thinking of caressing my Irish cock to new endeavors as she always seemed to ethnically call it. And I was thinking of ole Max’s occasional words of wisdom. “Pal, the world is where you make it, right in the close little space of the world around you. If you want more spiritual room, get back to old Europe, pal. Old Europe. That’s where the solution is. Deep in the bowels of ancient traditions. And if what you’re not doing is what you should be doing, then the solution is to have a roof over your head. Keep chickens. Fresh eggs for breakfast. Be careful of women. Trust none.” And I said to Max, “Isn’t that cynical.” And he said, “You bet, pal, you bet.” And then as she took a drink from her bottle, came Dru’s words.
Wrong Information Is Being Given Out at Princeton Page 22