I was smiling, stopped smiling. The bottle was on the step between my feet. I took a swig, set the bottle on the stoop between us, and rolled a cigarette—one for Rose, one for me. Lit his, lit mine.
The Top Forty was over and I’d been listening to Rose so hard I missed what number one was, and the music was sounding like CBGB’s, so I got up and went in and changed the radio station from Power 95 to Harlem WBLS at the end of the dial.
Rose yelled in the window at me: Bring your lovely erect pink penis back with you!
Rose put a rabbit turd of Sho-ko-lat into the erect pink penis, lit the rabbit turd, sucked in, sucked in again, then handed the erect pink penis to me and I sucked in the hashish smoke so much sweeter than marijuana, started coughing right off, and handed the erect pink penis back to Rose, and Rose took two hits—never more than two, Rose said—and then he took two more.
Rose burped big, lifted his leg, and let go a fart. His arms and hands waving in the air in front of him, bracelets clack-clack.
Don’t get me started, Rose said. The whole goddamn Christian story is a load of crap. Christianity never dwells on those awful nasty three days Christ was in darkness. Christianity puts its blinders on like good little sheep and waits for the Hallmark card in the mail on the bright Easter Sunday morning.
Rose handed me the erect pink penis. I handed Rose the bottle. I toked, Rose chugged mescal.
What about our Higher Knowing? I said. Susan Strong says to listen to your Higher Knowing.
The two parallel lines on Rose’s forehead dipped down into the two verticals, the clitoris bump between his eyes. Rose set the bottle down hard on the step, bracelets clack-clack.
This fucking New Age shit drives me mad, Rose said. My Higher Knowing, my black ass. New Age, same old fucking story.
Puritanism, Rose said. Pure Unadulterated All-American. White trash contemplating the mysteries of the universe, Rose said. Steven Spielberg filming an Ivory Soap commercial on location with the Nike of Samothrace.
What about my Higher Unknowing? Rose said. What about darkness?
Rose handed me the bottle. I handed Rose the erect pink penis. The bottle was half empty, half full.
You mean like in The Exorcist? I said.
Rose’s bracelets clack-clack.
No, Rose said, Like in the Garden of Eden.
THE DISTANCE ACROSS Rose’s Sahara Desert palm was the distance from the top of the mescal to the worm.
Darkness is not something out there that we must make rules against, Rose said. Darkness is not something we must reject from our lives. Darkness is part of us.
Without our mantle of darkness, without pretty Jesus, without the feminine, Rose said, bracelets clack-clack, We should perish in an angry God’s light.
The unrelenting fluorescence from above, I said.
Rose’s black eyes looked real close at me. He had the pipe and the bottle, one in one hand, the other in the other.
Rose poured salt on the back of his hand, slugged down a shot, bit on a piece of lime.
In a society, Rose said, Where darkness has no place, the society is a fluorescent madhouse.
It’s not that there’s too much darkness, Rose said, There’s too much light. The dark womb protects us from the unrelenting.
These days, chaos is not unrelenting darkness, Rose said. Chaos is unrelenting light.
After the second rabbit turd, after a salt lick, another slosh of mescal, lime, my head was in my hands and I was Man Thinking thinking.
The Shy Hunter knows underneath it all there is nothing, no thing, Rose said. The thing is a lie, an illusion. The only thing there is is your concept of the thing. That’s Illumination.
The worm was three inches away.
Rose took the bottle, tipped the bottle up, drank and drank and drank.
Then: He was Catholic too, you know, Rose said.
Who? I said.
Ricardo the voodoo super, Rose said. You saw his eyes—Santa Theresa Gone to Heaven.
We haven’t had a super, I said, Since Christmas?
Rose’s black eyes into my eyes. Just now you notice? Rose said.
Rose picked the bottle up, held the bottle up close to his eyes, turning the yellow mescal through the porch light. An inch to the worm.
The Greek hero, Rose said, Is allowed to struggle against the superior power of fate. Not like this submissive Christian shit that turns everyone into a flock of sheep.
Why would somebody fight against their fate, I said, If they knew they were going to lose?
Because we are fools, Rose said. And because the lucid compulsion to act polemically determines the substance of the self. By going against the gods, you become more and more who you are.
I had the bottle.
You know, Rose said, You forget to stutter when you’re drunk.
MY FINGERS WERE way stoned rolling the cigarettes. You know how it is when you’re loaded, you just go off somewhere and watch yourself. I had fingers and was sitting with my big pink Idaho legs sticking out of my khaki shorts on a stoop in New York City, but where I was really, I was a naked marble statue wrestling with a big black snake that was the fate I was struggling against.
It was late and quiet, and for the first time in New York City I felt the way I’d always wanted to feel in New York City—hot in my Guinea T-shirt on a dirty street on the Lower East Side late at night with my friend Rose, drinking mescal, each of us a can of Bud, the erect pink penis, rabbit turds, Mary, Mona, and Jack Flash lying around with their tongues hanging out like wet bologna. The taxis were honking on Third Avenue up and Second Avenue down, sirens swirled around us, the air humid and heavy, and everything sounded the way things do when it’s hot in the summer. The garbage cans stunk to high heaven and hot flies were landing on us and we’d slap them off. The piss smell came up from under the stoop where the men from the men’s shelter on Third Street always pissed. The taxis and the police cars, going by yellow, going by blue, going by all other colors of cars in the mercury-vapor light, and the cars bouncing when they hit the pothole where the city repaired the water lines last winter, mufflers banging against the chassis, heading west because it’s evens east and this street’s odd. My boom box was cranked up on WBLS, coming through my open window over the sound of my oscillating fan. Rose, my friend, and I on the stoop, listening to the clear smooth kind of saxophone jazz that made you listen because the black man playing the song didn’t care if you listened or not, just playing his song how his heart was inside him, the way your heart was inside you too, on fire the way the night was, longing for things that probably weren’t going to come, and sad because you knew they probably weren’t, but still foolish enough to wish, but most of all clear, and smooth, and beautiful.
High enough to think I was New York.
I drank and swallowed the worm.
Smiling. I was smiling.
I swallowed the worm, I said. I conquered my fate.
Then what’s this? Rose said, and lifted the bottle to the mercury-vapor light.
I looked, my eyes up close.
Another worm! I said. Stopped smiling.
The worm, Rose said.
No, I said. I swear, I said, I just swallowed the fucking worm!
There weren’t two worms, Rose said, There was only one.
Rose tipped up the bottle and drank the rest of the mescal and the rest of the worm. Rose set the empty bottle down hard onto the cast-iron step.
L’amour de la bouteille, Rose said. The last drop in the bottle is the love of the bottle.
Rose looked up at the mercury-vapor streetlamp light, put the fingers of both hands together, stetched his arms out, his palms up, and cracked his extra-lovely knuckles.
All right, Rose said, We both get wishes. You go first.
No, I said, You go first.
No no Yoko Ono, Rose said. You ate the worm first, Rose said, So you go first.
I WISHED MY dick wasn’t broken, wished my heart wasn’t broken. Wished Charlie 2Moons would come
walking up. I wished I wasn’t so afraid. Wished to press my body up against Rose.
But it’s not the truth.
I wished Rose wouldn’t make the wish I figured he was about to wish.
OK, I said, I made my wish.
What is it? Rose said.
I’m not telling, I said.
You got to tell, Rose said. We’re splitting the worm, so you got to tell.
I looked around for something, anything. Little squares of smiling people holding beers looked up at me.
Language my second language.
I wish, I said, I could find Charlie 2Moons, I said, Everything would be all right then, I said, If I found him.
Below the prizefighter bump, Rose’s nose came down his face to a point, like the tip of a thumb, and under the point each nostril was big enough to put a thumb in. The nostrils flared out when he talked, a life all their own.
My mouth had a life all its own too.
My mouth would not speak.
Then, finally:
And, I said, What’s, I said, Your wish? I said.
In Rose’s eyes, a Mack truck.
My wish, Rose’s lips said, Is to go out to dinner with you, my treat.
My heart beat. My breath. God, I wanted to kiss Rose right then.
Dinner? I said, smiling, then stopped smiling, That’s all?
Then: Cool, I said.
Rose stood up crooked. When I stood up, down the stoop, the sidewalk was a lot farther than three steps away.
Rose burped big, put his extra-lovely hand around the cast-iron railing, reached his one foot back into his leather-tooled studio flat, then the next foot.
Rose stepped wrong off the step and just like that Rose was head over heels, his eyes rolled back up, his chin up up, his face turned to the sky—waving his arms in circles, bracelets clack-clack. I reached out to grab him, but Rose was already gone. Ass over teakettle, Rose hit the back of his head on the opposite hand railing; then he rolled down the steps, the sound, the unmistakable sound, a bang, a big fucking bang, the dogs yelping and barking and trying to get out of the way, then Rose was lying spread-eagle on the sidewalk, on all those little squares of smiling people holding beers up.
As soon as he hit the cement, Rose was back up standing, crouched down the way cornered animals move. Rose’s eyes were staring ahead at nothing, at everything. Not on the premises.
In nothing flat, I was down the steps and next to Rose. I remember looking over at my hand in the air on the way to Rose’s shoulder, the porch light on my hand, and when my hand touched Rose’s shoulder, Rose ducked down and swung around kung fu. His extra-lovely foot struck me in the stomach, kicked the breath right out of me.
Never touch me.
When I woke up, I was the one spread-eagle on the sidewalk and the squares of little people. My head was in Rose’s lap, and Rose’s extra- lovely arms were cradled around me. My head was bouncing up and down, Rose was crying so hard. I smiled and then stopped smiling and just let myself lie that way for a while, my eyes closed, my head bouncing up and down, in Rose’s arms, in Rose’s lap. Jack Flash was licking my arm.
Then: Why you crying, Rose? I said.
Rose didn’t smell like Polo. Hard ebony-smooth his eyes. Nostrils a life all their own. His lips, the inside color of his lips. Rose went to speak but his lips wouldn’t let him. Rose’s breath in. His breath out.
Fuck! Rose said. Only you would ask a question like that.
Are you all right? I said.
Rose put his bottom lip over his top lip, slid his bottom lip down.
I’m fine, Rose said. Just made a goddamned fool of myself.
Rose put his Sahara Desert palm onto my cheek.
And you? Rose said. How bad does it hurt?
There was a rock in my gut, but I was breathing.
First rule, I said: Never touch me.
One big tear came out Rose’s eye and rolled down over his eight-ball cheekbone, then down the line to the corner of his mouth.
First rule, Rose said.
Up the stoop, to the left, Mrs. Lupino was looking out her window down at Rose and me. Behind Rose’s head, I flipped her the bird.
We lay there like that for for a while, just listening to how quiet New York can get. A gust of wind hit the cherry trees, and the leaves sighed and scratched.
Who knows how long I lay in Rose’s arms that way.
I am still lying in Rose’s arms.
When shall we have dinner? Rose said.
I’m off Mondays and Wednesdays and sometimes Thursdays, I said. Next Thursday? Rose said.
Thursday’s cool, I said. Then: Could we, I said, Could we go somewhere special? I said, I mean if you can afford it?
Name the place, Rose said.
The Waldorf, I said. And not for dinner. Lunch, I said, Lunch at the Waldorf.
Lunch at the Waldorf it is, Rose said.
In the narrow blue hallway, in the unrelenting fluorescence, Rose set the cooler down, handed me the erect pink penis.
Don’t forget this, Rose said.
My hand touched Rose’s hand when I took the pipe.
Without it I am nothing, I said.
YOU’RE GOING ALONG this way and then shit happens and then you’re wounded by a blow of love.
Just like that, Rose put his extra-lovely arms around me.
Mrs. Lupino’s door opened a crack.
Rose kissed me on the mouth. Inside lips against mine. A full lips-to-lips kiss. I didn’t breathe. Mrs. Lupino closed her door.
Rose’s lips at my ear:
Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
There were two ways Mother and I played Lunch at the Waldorf. One way I was Mother’s boyfriend, either Rory Calhoun or Errol Flynn, and I wore my Sunday clothes and shined my shoes, new-shoe stiff, and clipped the clip-on tie to the collar of my white shirt, and wet and parted my hair, and sometimes, when it was Errol Flynn, with her eyebrow pencil we made a mustache on my lip.
The other way I was a girl, Hedy Lamarr or Garbo, and I was her oldest and dearest friend and was visiting her from Hollywood or New York or Paris or Rome or Barcelona.
I remember one Lunch at the Waldorf especially. It was the last time we played. Mother was pregnant and was walking around inside the house, close to the walls. She was crying hard, and I thought for sure she was going to run out into the field.
Instead, in the afternoon Mother took a bath. She stayed in the bathroom a long time, and I could hear her crying in there.
When she got out of the tub, after she set her hair in pin curls, Mother walked in her yellow terry-cloth bathrobe into the front room where I was playing with my Tinkertoys. She sat down on the green couch and put her bare feet together on the flowered carpet.
Lunch at the Waldorf? I said.
Mother’s eyes up, Saint Theresa Gone to Heaven, full of tears.
Who am I? I said.
I WAS HEDY Lamarr that day, because Hedy Lamarr wore the green taffeta dress with the big buttons and the white shoes.
Mother put the cloth tablecloth on the table and put coffee into the percolator and plugged the percolator in. She set the table with the coffee cups with matching saucers, the little spoons, the fancy bowl with the sugar cubes, and the fancy creamer. She made toast in elegant shapes and sandwiches with the toast with watercress or dandelion leaves or mint jelly. Mother wore the violet dress with the orchid all the way down the front, and fluffed her hair and put on her eyebrows and the Orange Exotica lipstick, and a touch of Evening in Paris behind each ear from the tiny deep-blue bottle, her high heels with the holes in the toes, her nylons with the seams.
In the kitchen, at the table, we started with Mother saying, Oh, how I love lunch at the Waldorf!
Then I’d say, Oh, how I love lunch at the Waldorf too.
But this day, because
she was crying, only I said it. I had to say everything that day, do everything.
I poured the coffee, mixed the cream in, and one cube of sugar the way she liked it, had to get out the Herbert Tareytons she hid from Father in the drawer next to the kitchen sink. I gave her a Herbert Tareyton and lit the kitchen match on the stove and watched her pull the flame into the cigarette. Then I went in her bedroom in the second drawer of her nightstand and got the magenta velvet photograph album with the gold edges, and put the photograph album on the table between us, the way she always did, but this day I did it.
First, I rubbed my hand over the velvet of the book, smoothing each comer. Touching the book that way made it there. When you opened the book you could smell the pictures. The sound the book made when you turned the pages was like it was on fire.
On the first page was the first photograph of her. I told the story the same way, the same words she used, like I was her telling me.
This is when I traveled by train alone to visit my cousins in Saskatchewan, I said. I put my finger at the bottom, careful not to touch the photograph, then pointed around to each corner, to the four black corners that held it in the book.
I said: I was eighteen and that old car was a Model A and it’s my Uncle Fritz’s. You can’t see it, but Uncle Fritz is playing the accordion and I started dancing, lifted up my skirt just a little and started dancing. I always loved that hat.
When I turned the page to the second photograph, during the sound of the page, the smell, I looked sideways over to my mother. She was smoking and wasn’t crying.
That’s when I worked at Newberry’s, I said, pointing my finger the way she always pointed hers, first on the page, then at the four black comers. I said, A dollar five an hour. That was just before I married your father. This photograph was taken my last day at work. The night before, I went to a liquor store and bought a pint of whiskey even though I wasn’t twenty-one. I lived in the Dolley Madison Arms, a rooming house for women, and I took the pint of whiskey home in my purse. I had taken some snow and made the snow into ice cubes and set the snow ice cubes on the windowsill outside. I had stolen a glass from Newberry’s—you mustn’t ever tell that your mother was naughty and stole something—the crystal kind you put whiskey in, and I took the snow ice cubes I had made and put them in the crystal whiskey glass. I had my room just the way I liked it with everything clean and just the one light on. Then I opened the closet door with the mirror so I could see myself, and I put on my favorite dress, this one I’m wearing—the violet one with the orchid all the way down the front—and my nylons with seams in them, and my high heels with holes in the toes. The mother-of-pearl earrings. Then I sat and drank the whiskey, looking in the mirror, watching myself sip, listening to KSEI on my radio, the top ten hits, and I danced, I really danced.
In the City of Shy Hunters Page 30