At least she’d stopped running out into the field.
In the summer, you could open the window in the kitchen alcove and right outside was the cottonwood tree, and in the morning the sun came in the window, making a square of gold on the table, and you could sit in the square with the window open and hear the cottonwood and the wind and smell the smells in the wind, of grass—especially after the grass was mowed—and the smell of the cottonwood, and the geraniums Charlie got from Viv.
Viv was Charlie’s mother, and Viv’s Double Wide House of Beauty always had lots of customers, mostly Indian women. Some white women went to Viv too because Viv was so good with hair, but Mother never did because Mother never left the house. Besides, even if Mother did want her hair done by Viv, Father would never have allowed it.
Father hated Indians.
Ne’er-do-wells.
Especially Charlie.
THAT FIRST NIGHT in the Residency, Father slept on the screened-in porch. Then, later in the night, I heard him down in Bobbie’s room, in Bobbie’s Marilyn Monroe light with Bobbie.
Before sunrise, out my window, I watched his matching swimming-pool-blue Dodge pickup and trailer and horse trailer drive down the lane in between the cottonwoods to Highway 30 and turn left toward Pocatello. I watched Father’s pickup until I couldn’t see it anymore.
The next morning, our second day at the Residency, Charlie 2Moons came riding up on his horse, ayaHuaska.
I was out back behind the barn, when up the lane, the cottonwoods touching chandelabras across, I saw a boy on a horse.
The boy’s hair was long and thick and almost to his shoulders; his skin was cinnamon brown. When he got close enough for me to see his eyes, that was it.
I was wounded by a blow of love.
Charlie pulled on the reins and ayaHuaska rared up a little. Charlie was big, an Indian; his long black hair was wavy. He was riding bare-back and on the bridle was beadwork.
Charlie got off his horse.
Step over the fence! Charlie said. Come meet me! he said.
I knew because Bobbie’d told me that the fence was an electric fence, so I didn’t step over, didn’t say anything.
What’s the matter, Charlie said, Cat got your tongue?
Even back then, the cat got my tongue.
So then Charlie 2Moons called me a fucking queer and threw a handful of gravel at me, and a piece of gravel got me hard next to my eye and I ran crying to Bobbie.
By the time Bobbie and I got back to behind the barn, Charlie 2Moons had disappeared. But Bobbie said, Just wait, he’ll be back. So Bobbie and I waited and she was right, and pretty soon Charlie came galloping up the lane, and when he got to us, he pulled on the reins and his horse rared up a little.
Step over the fence! Charlie said. Come meet me! he said.
Eat shit and die, Geronimo, Bobbie said, and flipped Charlie the bird.
Charlie got off his horse and started dancing around making war whoops. He called Bobbie and me fucking tybos, called us fucking ugly greedy pink pig people, told us to get off Indian land, and then yelled at us that the place was haunted, the whole area was haunted because of all the Indian children who had died there, and we’d better get our old roses out of there quick or Tsoavich Big Foot would murder us and eat us alive, starting with the toes and fingers.
Come over here and say that to my face! Bobbie yelled. Come over here and I’ll tell you a thing or two! So Charlie came over because Charlie was bigger than both Bobbie and me, and Charlie thought since Bobbie was a girl this would be a piece of cake. Charlie jumped over the electric fence, an antelope leaping, and came right at us.
Bobbie socked Charlie once hard in the face and then kicked him in the balls, and all at once Charlie was kneeling on the ground, holding himself and crying.
Bobbie took Charlie’s long wavy black hair in a grip and pulled his head back. Charlie looking up, head twisted that way, made me all of a sudden sad, his dark eyes rolled back, tears making tracks down his dusty face. Bobbie open-handed Charlie a slap across his face and then again, Bobbie spit in his face—not a lunger, just a spray—and while she held his head back, Bobbie told Charlie 2Moons never to fuck with her or fuck with her little brother ever again and made Charlie promise.
Say it! Bobbie said.
I promise I won’t fuck with you or fuck with your little brother ever again, Charlie said.
Then Bobbie said, I ought to make you pee on that electric fence, you goddamn bully.
But Bobbie didn’t make Charlie pee on the electric fence, and after that day Bobbie and Charlie and I were best friends. Even though my father hated Charlie, Charlie and Bobbie and I were still the best friends that could ever be.
But it’s not the truth.
Bobbie and I were brother and sister.
Charlie and I were the best friends that could ever be.
CHAPTER
THREE
The gods know what’s important, what’s wrong about you. They know everything. If you go out searching for the Holy Grail, they won’t let you find it. So that’s why, when I went out into Manhattan, what I did was not-search for Charlie. I’d crossed over the river of shit and I was in a world of hurt, and I was in Manhattan, in Wolf Swamp, and I just let the fuck-you city fuck me.
It’s like the killdeer bird Charlie’s Grandfather Alessandro pointed out. The killdeer plays a broken-wing trick on you, so you’ll follow her as she moves away from her nest. She leads you away from what you really want. Then, after she’s betrayed you, the killdeer bird leaves you alone in the middle of the desert in the twilight, she abandons you to what you’ve been looking for all your life. Yourself.
But there’s no fooling the gods. The whole time the gods knew. My only intent, the only thing on my mind, the only reason I moved to New York City, was to find Charlie 2Moons. I looked in every face I came across for the liar’s space between his teeth, Charlie’s deep-set eyes, his wavy black hair, the scar. In the subways, in elevators, on the bus, on the bar stool next to me, at the café counter, in the toilets, I smelled for him.
Then at the end, when the shit was hitting the fan, after I hadn’t eaten or slept for days and everybody in Wolf Swamp was either in the hospital or the loony bin or dead, there was a moment, just before the Dog Shit Park War, there was a moment I ended up forgetting about Charlie 2Moons.
It was only then, just like True Shot said, that I found him. Not the way I thought I’d find him, but I found him.
I mean, he found me.
* * *
NO ONE CAN tell this story the way I know it but me. It’s the responsibility of the survivor to tell the story.
The first thing I did at 205 East Fifth Street, I-A, was to open all the windows and turn the oscillating fan on high. I was down to boxer shorts and crotch rash, praying for a breeze. Alone and counting every penny.
I was creating a center with sweat equity: my home, the ex-cat palace. Cat-shit carpet, cat-sprayed walls, cat-litter bathroom, piss kitchen. Elbow grease, a new broom and mop, roach motels, Pine-Sol, and a box of Brillo. I was on my hands and knees.
Ruby was right: August and September in New York, everybody but the criminals are in Connecticut.
August and September, the way things go when you get home from a job interview with your suit pants stuck up your ass.
I was two hours standing in line at Con Ed. No Charlie 2Moons. Two hours standing in line at NYT&T. No Charlie 2Moons. One-hundred-dollar deposit for a red touch-tone phone. I was digging deep down in my pockets and my pockets weren’t deep.
Sabrett sausages with sauerkraut and onions and mustard and ketchup. I stole cans of tuna fish from the A&P.
My résumé of northwest restaurants I’d worked in made me look like I knew what I was doing.
But it’s not the truth.
I was from from Idaho and I was New York City fucking roadkill.
The Wine Bar was my first try. I chose the Wine Bar because of Vin et Vous, the correspondence course on fine win
es I took in Jackson Hole.
I wore my gray sharkskin suit, a thin black tie, and a white shirt with a tab collar you snap under the tie. Polished my high-top grandpa shoes. Slicked my hair back—went through three whole tubes of mousse before I finally got a job—dumped my socks and underwear out of the old suitcase with the travel stickers on it, and put the red plastic see-through folder with my résumé of restaurants in the suitcase. On the corner of Second Avenue and St. Mark’s Place, I bought a New York City map at Gem Spa, a store that sold a drink called Egg Cream that had nothing to do with eggs or cream.
SoHo. South of Houston.
The Wine Bar was busy. The maître d’hôtel, a beautiful man with black hair and olive skin, wearing a coke-bottle-green silk shirt, pleated black pants, and shoes with leather the color of Kraft caramels, asked me how many in my party.
I’m lunching alone, I said, and wondered if lunching was a word.
The beautiful maître d’hôtel looked down at my suitcase with the travel stickers on it and sat me in the corner.
No Charlie 2Moons, but I wasn’t looking.
The busboy brought the French bread and I cleared my palate with the French bread. Ordered a glass of Zinfandel because the Zinfandel was fifty cents cheaper than the Merlot, went through the Vin et Vous ritual of swirling and gurgling the wine. Ordered a glass of Côtes-du Rhone, cleared my palate with the French bread, went through the Vin et Vous ritual of swirling and gurgling the wine. Ordered a glass of the Merlot—at that point the $6.50 wasn’t that bad. Cleared my palate with the French bread, went through the ritual of swirling and gurgling.
Then the Beaujolais and the Oregon Pinot Noir, each time, the palate clearing, the swirling, the gurgling.
And the drinking.
Never did get it up to ask for a job.
The only thing on the Wine Bar menu in English was THE WINE BAR RESERVES THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE.
My spray-starched tabbed white shirt was red polka dot with thousands of tiny spills of red wine on it.
Overexuberance with the swirling and the gurgling.
Vin et Moi.
L’addition: Thirty-eight dollars and fifty-six cents.
Mon Dieu.
Twenty percent tip, twice the tax, too drunk to figure.
I left the whole fifty-dollar bill, left the Wine Bar. Me and my suitcase with the travel stickers on it postured our disregard right out of there. Didn’t knock anything important over, just an empty glass.
On my way home, no Charlie 2Moons. I looked at everybody as if they were already dead and I was dead too.
A ROLLS-ROYCE with the license plate DR LNDLRD was double-parked outside Ellen’s Uncle David’s office on Seventh Street betweeen First and Avenue A. There was a small waiting room with bad paneling and orange chairs and a vase on an end table with plastic red roses in it. Bullet-proof Plexiglas between me and a woman. When I asked to see Ellen Zigman Clavelle’s Uncle David, the woman—bright red frizzy hair, a lime-green skirt and blouse, and half-glasses that hung around her neck by a strand of pearls—started at my feet and looked up, looked back down again, both times stopping her eyes just below my middle.
Speak up, honey, she said. Can’t hear you.
Ellen Zigman Clavelle’s Uncle David! I yelled through the Plexiglas. I’m subletting her apartment!
You got some ID? the woman asked.
I pulled out my wallet, took out my driver’s license, and handed it to her. The woman took the driver’s license and put it under the light on her desk. Lime-green espadrilles. She put her glasses on the end of her nose.
Idaho! she yelled, and threw her head back. Her glasses fell off her nose.
What is this license, she said, To ride a horse?
The woman had to sit down, she was laughing so hard.
Can I see him? I asked. Ellen said he’s expecting me.
Who? the woman said.
Ellen’s Uncle David, I said.
No, the woman said, You can’t see him.
Isn’t that his car outside? I said.
What car? the woman said.
The Rolls-Royce, I said. DOCTOR LANDLORD.
Dear Landlord, the woman said. You know the song, Bob Dylan. Yes, that’s Mr. Zigman’s car. But he’s not here.
When can I see him? I asked.
Mr. Zigman is a busy man. I can take care of your business, she said, her eyes going up and down on me again.
She put her glasses back on her nose and pushed an envelope through the slot under the Plexiglas.
Sign where there’s X’s, she said.
I thought I was going to get Ellen’s apartment, I said.
Speak louder, the woman said. Spit it out!
My mother’s nerves.
I didn’t get Ellen’s apartment, I yelled. I got twenty years of cat hair.
Ellen didn’t have any cats, the woman said.
Mrs. Lupino does, I said, And I got Mrs. Lupino’s apartment I-A. Not Ellen’s I-C.
The woman went back to her desk, adjusted the glasses on her nose, and looked through another envelope with papers.
Not according to my files, she said.
But Mrs. Lupino said—
Who? the woman said. Speak up!
Mrs. Lupino! I yelled.
Who’s she? the woman asked.
The person in Ellen’s apartment, I said.
Ellen’s apartment is empty, the woman said.
I mean the person in I-C, I said, Mrs. Lupino.
Oh, her? the woman said. The woman that had all the cats. Don’t listen to her. She’s verüchte. Thinks there’re devil worshipers in the empty storefront below her.
Then: First and last month comes to thirteen hundred dollars, she said. I don’t take cash.
The apartment was covered with cat hair, I said.
Ellen didn’t have cats, the woman said. No pets allowed in any apartment.
The refrigerator is filthy, I said. Only one burner works on the stove.
Cupboards are new, the woman said. Kitchen sink is new. New linoleum put down just last year. Sign where there’s X’s.
I signed where there’s X’s. Signed the cashier’s check.
Rent’s due by the fifth of the month, the woman said.
Then: Hey, cowboy? Can you do that roll-up thing with the cigarette?
I don’t smoke in the morning, I said.
Her eyes started at my feet and looked up, looked back down again, stopping her eyes just below my belt buckle.
And what else don’t you do? the woman said.
Bulletproof. The Plexiglas was bulletproof.
A TALL WOMAN in a white silk dress with long auburn hair got in the passenger side of the DR LNDLRD Rolls-Royce, and the Rolls-Royce started driving off. I ran up to the Rolls, jogged alongside. All I could see was me running and smiling and waving in the window.
The window rolled down. Uncle David Dear Landlord was a man about my age, maybe a few years older. White shirt, paisley tie.
With a small silver revolver. Pointed right at me.
He was already dead. I was dead too.
THE APARTMENT BUZZER sounded like locusts. Took me awhile to get my pants on. Took me awhile with the buzzer. Took me awhile to unlock all the locks on the door.
Package for William of Heaven, UPS guy said. You William of Heaven?
Huh? I said and then: Yeah, that’s me.
Nice name, man, UPS guy said, and handed me his clipboard with the paper to sign.
Mrs. Lupino’s door opened a crack.
When I was writing the of Heaven part, the UPS guy—who was dark and chest high to me—said, Nice nips, man.
The gasp was not mine, it was from across the hall. Mrs. Lupino closed her door.
THE UPS DELIVERY was an answering machine. A red answering machine.
The note:
Your telephone is lonely, so am I. NYT&T’s got you by the calls. You got me by the balls.
Love, Ruby.
Ruby Prestigiacomo, how’d you
know my phone was red?
Ruby Prestigiacomo, what am I going to do with you?
When I plugged the red telephone into the red answering machine, and the red answering machine into the wall socket, the speaker message clicked on. It was Ruby.
It is this way: To admit ignorance is the highest knowledge. It is the necessary condition for all learning. Leave a message at the tone. Beep.
IN 205 EAST Fifth Street, I-A, breathing wasn’t possible so I ripped up the beige carpet and the foam pad. Felt like my hands had been varnished in cat piss. The cat-hair air between me and the light coming in the windows was shiny like scratches on Plexiglas.
I cut the carpet and the foam pads into sections. One time, I had to stop and sneeze, and got to sneezing so hard and so much I had to go outside. I stood in the rectangle of earth where I’d plant the cherry tree.
Finally I just said to hell with it and started throwing the carpet sections and padding out the window, the sections landing in the part lower than the sidewalk with the iron fence around it next to the cast-iron steps.
Carpet and foam pads hung over the cast-iron fence all across the sidewalk. I stacked them into two big piles next to the garbage cans, so there was enough space to walk.
That’s when Mrs. Lupino opened her window.
You can’t do that, Mrs. Lupino said.
Do what? I said.
Put household articles out in bulk like that, she said.
What am I, I said, Supposed to do with it?
Ask Ricardo, she said.
Who’s Ricardo? I said.
The super, she said.
Super? I said. What’s that?
What’s a super? Mrs. Lupino said.
Shit from New York Shinola.
The custodian, she said. You know, the superintendent. The guy who takes care of the building.
Where is he? I asked.
Who knows? she said.
How can I get hold of him? I asked.
You can’t, Mrs. Lupino said, Unless you catch him in the building for some reason. But he’s never in the building.
But, I said, He takes care of the building.
You got that right, she said.
Then: There’s a kid who sets the garbage cans back on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, Mrs. Lupino said. Ricardo’s kid, I guess. But it won’t do you any good talking to the kid, unless you speak Spanish. Even if you do, it won’t help.
In the City of Shy Hunters Page 6