Eve in the City

by Thomas Rayfiel

  “But you’re getting married,” she reminded me.

  “I thought maybe he could be my best man.”

  “Women don’t have a best man.”

  That’s what you think. My mind was on fire. I pretended I had forgotten something and went back down. Viktor was fitting the big padlock in place. I wanted to know how the passport was coming along, the one his friend was supposed to make me. He acted surprised I remembered.

  “You did ask him, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. But he needs a photograph.”

  “That’s no problem,” I said recklessly.

  “I thought perhaps it might, considering your religious convictions.”

  “A passport picture? I’ll have it for you by tomorrow.”

  I was clipping away bits of my specialness, but only the unimportant stuff. I dug into my pocket and got out the tiny envelope with the photos inside. I hadn’t looked at them yet. It was hard enough finding a place open early, then being sat on a stool against a blank wall. “Here,” the man had said, pointing to a piece of black tape stuck on the camera. So that’s what everyone’s staring at, I thought, in all the pictures you see, with those dulled expressions. Black tape. “Just stay still and try not to blink.” I panicked. He was taking something away from me. Caviar gets ripped from the pregnant fish’s belly, then they throw her back in the water to die, I remembered reading. Reading where? Or was I making it up? I’d got rid of all my books but they were still in my head. Now I couldn’t even check to see if what I knew was true or false. The flash went off. Was memory itself a creative act? Twice more. I didn’t feel any different. That was the scariest part. Maybe I had already given in, long before, to everything, without even realizing, and this was just a long overdue confirmation.

  How can you lose your soul? a voice asked. Anything you lose so easily was never part of you to begin with. You can’t lose your soul. You wouldn’t be you, anymore, if you did.

  Maybe I’m not me. After all, take a look. Who is she?

  There were six, altogether. I eased the sheet out a little, keeping it in the envelope so I could slide it back quickly if anyone came by, as if it was shameful.

  She is the future Eve Kholmov, I answered. Graduate of the Des Moines Institute of Fashion, a school that does not exist. After her marriage to a native of Mingrelia, wherever that is, the bride will be honeymooning in Tuscany, with another man, an artist, who reminds her of a giant belt buckle.

  A girl fell off a mushroom and began to cry. Her baby-sitter got up to hold her. I couldn’t decide who to be, watching, the hurt or the comforter. I was halfway between. The rest of the nannies were all talking in island accents, laughing, cackling sometimes. It took me a while to get used to the rhythm of their speech. It was English, but my understanding kept shying at the last minute, like when you’re trying to jump a rope two girls are holding, how it slaps flat against the ground, and you wait and wait and then suddenly—

  “I said, Are you married? And he said, You mean am I married now? You mean am I married presently?”

  More laughter. Another was unwrapping a sandwich. It was mashed down so hard, the bread was so soft, that the filling had soaked through. She tore off a chunk with her fingers and put it in her mouth. I had never seen anyone eat a sandwich like that before. Did that make it not-a-sandwich? The city, in all its strangeness and all its even stranger familiarity, rose around me like that mist that comes up with the dew. Did I really want to leave? I mean, I just got here. But going was the only way to hold things, to capture them in your memory, the way I was finally getting some distance on my childhood now, realizing there was a past, where there had not been, before. A past I could push off from, that I could use to get somewhere else. But where? Here? Or away? I looked at the photos again and thought of Horace. Could I go away to some romantic landscape where I wandered over the man himself? My lover? But did that mean saying good-bye to all this? I stretched my arms out along the back of the bench, trying to hug tight the magic circle.

  Now, as for Europe, I told him, very businesslike. Don’t worry. You won’t have to pay. Not financially. Yes, you’ll pay emotionally. Yes, I’m difficult. But there’s nothing wrong with that. You don’t want one of those easy girls, like Brandy. Believe me, they turn out to be the craziest of all, once you get to know them.

  And what are you? I made him ask.

  I guess what I want to be is life-changing. I want that to be my appeal. That I am someone. Some one. Not one of many. To you.

  But how will I pay for it? I wondered. I couldn’t let him support me. I had savings, but not that much. Wait, will there be wedding presents? No, it was probably frowned on, selling wedding presents to go honeymooning with another guy. It was probably against some obscure rule of etiquette. And I hadn’t even told Viktor yes, yet. He didn’t even seem so interested anymore. That was another minor problem, actually living my life. But it was the least interesting part. What I liked best was this, snuggling down into this bench with my eyes closed and my ears full of kid sounds, bird sounds, traffic sounds, fantasizing so hard that the life I imagined was real, real-in-my-head.

  Still, the semipractical part of me insisted, if you want to have any say in your so-called future, any power, if you want to do something, anything, besides sit on a park bench and dream, you need money. Serious money. And where are you going to get that?

  Yes, Eve, I attacked myself some more. Where?

  Drinks cost ten dollars at the bar. I didn’t even make that much an hour. I depended on tips and what I could keep by sipping water and calling it vodka. Why did men pay so much? Because of how we looked? No, it was because of how we dressed. When you thought about it, it wasn’t so much different from prostitution, except in degree. They paid their money and then they felt they had the right to stare at us, to talk to us in a certain way. Plenty of them would reach out and touch you as you went by. And the weird thing was how we thought it was OK, how we regarded it as natural. I had been trained since birth. Getting a pat on the ass for giving some friend of Mother’s a smile, being bought a free meal in return for a kiss, having a job, a whole existence, based on parading around in front of total strangers. My God, tonight I had even talked to my ass, like it was a separate thing, apart from me, the way hookers must see their entire bodies. My whole life here, wandering the streets at five A.M., the bizarre relationships I already had with men, was it all a subconscious rehearsal? I mean, if I ever decided to become a prostitute, I wouldn’t even need to buy a new outfit!

  Don’t be silly, I told myself. You could never be a whore. You can’t make change.

  It was true. I was really bad with cash. Especially when customers tried to help out by giving some odd total, like thirty-four dollars and seventeen cents. I had to take it to Viktor and have him figure it out on the adding machine. Still, it was disturbing that I even thought about it, that for a minute I couldn’t see the difference between selling drinks and selling myself.

  I blinked, stopped my mind from going there, tried bringing things back into focus. There was still a blur, though, no matter how much I yawned and rubbed my eyes.

  And then it all disappeared.

  A week later, when I got to work, there was a sticker on the door: CLOSED BY ORDER OF THE OFFICE OF THE SHERIFF, CITY OF NEW YORK. It was half on the door itself, half on the frame, gluing the entrance shut more than any lock. I buzzed. No one answered. I tried the knob. I still didn’t understand what the sticker meant, even though it was pretty clear. I banged on the glass. There was a deep silence. I went back up the steps and tried to look around, tried to see into the hidden garden of upended concrete chunks, the weeds that had flowered, unexpected and big, turning into pods that burst with feathery seeds that blew around the confined space, balling in corners, getting stuck on screens, a few managing to rise all the way up and out, beyond the building. Where would they go then that was any better? I saw it all so intensely, now that I couldn’t get there anymore. I had always meant to go out
, to ask Viktor for the key to the back door. I was on the street now, pawing at the front, where it became the next building. You could barely tell. There was no break. Viktor? I asked quietly, in my mind. Why hadn’t he called? Suddenly I was nowhere, with no job. I looked around. I should wait for one of the girls to come. Maybe they knew something. But my feet kept carrying me. Mechanically, I wiped my hands, got rid of the mortar that held the bricks together, as if to say, well, at least that’s done.

  But now what? a voice asked.

  I was already wearing the outfit. I had stopped bringing my own clothes a long time ago. I let my feet learn this new rhythm, block after block, the sudden drop off the curb, the strange, pillowy feel to the pavement, then the steep climb back up, crumbling asphalt pulling away from white curb like a section of diseased gum. Where was I going? The city doesn’t give up its secrets so easily. That’s what I had spent this past year discovering. You have to bargain with it, offer something in return. Through all the emptiness, I sensed what to do. I was walking not just downtown but downhill. A force was pulling me toward my fate. My steps had that halting motion, digging in. My vision jolted. I went faster, arms swinging, flapping like wings, gaining speed to take off. But take off where? Where was I going? Across the river?

  Then I saw it, a break in the traffic. All the cars on the highway had stopped, revealing an invisible path. I went closer, straining to keep my eyes steady, stumbling but not slowing, and managed to see, just as it disappeared, how a small row of lights, stretching from lane to lane, let in a side street. It wasn’t for pedestrians, there was no crosswalk, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t use it. On the other side, beyond a fence that had been pried up at one corner, instead of shore, a tip of land touched the edge and angled away, getting higher and wider. Once it was a little farther out, it began to be its own place, with pavement and people and life, not an island but a peninsula, a promenade. That vision of paradise I had, this is it, I recognized. Society with all its phoniness peeled away. It had looked so liberating, that night, from Horace’s studio. Now that I was closer, now that I saw a way in, I wasn’t so sure. A cold gust of air blew in off the river. There were all these women dressed just like me. I watched them walking up and down, moving with the grace of animals, all external, with nothing hidden, no complex emotions or histories, and a slow, druggy haze to it all, a distance, because of the cars whizzing by, so everything appeared in gaps you pieced together. The poisonous exhaust did something to the light, put a thickness between us and them. “Us,” because there were others now, waiting at this signal that only turned green once every century.

  What are you doing, Eve?

  I am turning in the direction of the skid. See, that’s the difference, when you know you’re not a child anymore. When you recognize what you’re up to. You see yourself repeating the same old mistakes. You see that it’s not some accident, what happens, that lovers and friends may change, but they’re all the same types, playing the same roles, in the same situation. You admit you’re lost, wandering in the woods, fitting your feet into old footsteps. So instead of asking Where am I going? you ask Why? Why this shape to my life and not another? And that gives you the chance to stop being lost, realizing that there is a shape to it, the disasters you always find yourself in, that it’s just habit, and a habit is something you can break.

  The cars, the constant roar of the universe they made, slowed, then stopped. The sea parted. I started off, a little behind the others, so I could follow them, do what they did, whatever that might be. The road was hot from tires.

  You’re talking like a crazy woman.

  Well, I’d rather talk like a crazy woman than go through my life without really seeing it, like some “normal” girl.

  Oh, so you’re a woman now?

  Yes, I decided. Why not? Of course I’m a woman. You got a problem with that?

  Then a car hit me.

  I had never been hit. I was so terrified of it when I first got here. It seemed inevitable. The way they came at you, accelerating as you stepped off the curb. I couldn’t believe how people nonchalantly walked into traffic just because the light had changed and faced down a city bus or a taxi that came careening around the corner, how they believed the WALK sign gave them some kind of moral authority. “I have the light!” I once heard somebody yell, as if they were one of the Chosen. Gradually, I must have become the same, because I didn’t even notice anymore. I don’t know how I managed to feel invincible, but it was like we were made of different matter. There was no way a car could touch me or I could touch a car. The laws of physics wouldn’t allow it. So when this fender I hadn’t even seen gently poked my hip my reaction was just, Hey! Like I’d been nudged, except I went flying. My feet left the ground. I saw my reflection in the chrome as I did a slow glide. It was herding me, bumping me. I was floating on my side. I relaxed. The quiet that lay between all noises expanded and blanketed my brain. It was almost pleasant, this airborne feeling. Gravity took a vacation.

  Of course, being a woman doesn’t necessarily mean getting run over by a car, I calmly continued the conversation in my head. But at the same time, I can’t say I’m surprised.

  Then it was over. Everything speeded up again and I had to make up for lost time, that stretched-out moment. I slammed into the pavement. The sounds that had been blocked out came back, too, all at once, the screech of tires trying to stop, the thud. All the air came out of me. My whole body grunted. I reached to bring in more, to refill my lungs, and for a long minute it didn’t happen. My muscles were frozen. I lay there, gasping, or trying to gasp, my eyes getting bigger and bigger.

  I heard a door slam and shoes scraping on pavement.

  Oh God! my brain panted, bringing up the rear, late, as usual. I just got hit by a car!

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I chirped.

  I was, too. I felt great. Was I alive? Maybe I was dead. Maybe this was the afterlife, that little glow of awareness you have when the heat from your brain keeps everything functioning a split second after you cease to be.

  Strong arms lifted me up. My heart was pounding. My eyes were emitting this light, these twin laser beams. It’s adrenaline, I realized. My body was on high alert.

  “What the hell were you doing?”

  Whoever was carrying me did this little curtsy, dipping down to free one hand and open the passenger side door.

  “Can you sit up?” he asked.

  “Of course I can. I’m fine, really.”

  I saw the others, fading figures now, crouching to get under the fence. They were going on to Paradise, but I was left behind.

  “I don’t have any change,” I warned. “I mean, I have a couple of twenties, but—”

  “Stop talking, Eve. Just get in the car.”

  I looked at the man who was arranging me in the seat. It was Detective Jourdain.

  “Oh,” I said. “You go to prostitutes? That is so disgusting.”

  “Just sit in the goddamned car.”

  “There’s no need to swear.”

  The seat had crumbs and cellophane wrappers on it. He slammed the door and went around to the other side.

  “I do not go to prostitutes,” he announced, very huffy, like he really did, but how could I possibly know? Like it was a lucky guess, so it didn’t count. “What were you doing back there? You practically dove into my fender.”

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “Didn’t look like you were seeing much of anything. Like you were in trance.”

  “I just wanted to see what was on the other side of the road. What about you? What were you doing down here?” I answered my own question, staring at him while he gripped the wheel. “Were you following me? Were you rescuing me? That is so romantic!”

  “Put this on.” He reached in back and grabbed something, without taking his eyes off the road.

  “What is it?”

  “Just put it on.”

  It was a heavy-knit wool sweater with a p
icture of a chipmunk.

  “I hope you didn’t buy this.”

  “It’s Vonetta’s.”

  “It’s for a fourteen-year-old.”

  “I found it in her drawer.”

  “No wonder she left.”

  “It’s cold,” he said simply. “You were shivering.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Hospital. I’m getting you checked out.”

  “No,” I said. “I’m not going to a hospital. I’m fine.”

  “Eve—”

  “I am not going to the hospital!”

  He sighed and shook his head.

  “All right, then.”

  He speeded up. He was taking me somewhere else. He had made some decision. I could see it in the way his jaw was set. I didn’t ask him where we were going. I didn’t want to know. I was still getting used to the idea that he had done something for me, something so wild, and, the word came again, making me feel dumb for feeling thrilled, so romantic. Even the way he was pretending to be furious. I smiled. We were barreling up the side of Manhattan. Vonetta’s room. I held the sweater in my lap. That’s where we were going. What else would I find in those drawers? Knee socks? Culottes?

  “You think you know things,” he complained, “but you get everything wrong. You get everything so one hundred percent wrong that you almost get it right. By accident. You know what I mean?”

  “You don’t have to explain. I’m not mad at you.”

  “Mad?”

  “For following me. I understand.”

  “You don’t understand nothing. I have been trying to protect you this whole time. I have been putting myself between you and the powers that be. But I can’t do that. Not anymore.”

  He started signaling. We got off at Seventy-ninth Street. The car turned and I fell against him, not entirely on purpose, but when he picked me up I had felt something, and I wanted to confirm it. My hand touched his side. He was hard. Like stone. He must have worked out constantly because it was unnatural, the muscles he had. You could get bruised just by bumping into him. I was surprised I hadn’t noticed. I mean I guess I knew he was powerfully built, but this was different. Under his jacket and shirt and tie he was like some Mr. World.