Mellow as a bull put out to pasture, nothing upset Danny until one evening in May. I met him at his place for a dinner date at a new Soho restaurant that had received a great review in Zagat. Startled, I found Danny stretched out on the couch groaning in pain. A local underworld-friendly doctor diagnosed Sciatica. Boastful no more, Danny behaved like a child grateful for any attention. From lover I transformed myself into nurse. No longer hitting the “high spots,” we stayed chez Danny. Formerly, Danny had indulged all my whims; now I gave in to his. For example, a one-hour “butt facial” at a ritzy uptown spa. Floating to the Upper East Side in a chauffeur-driven limousine, I puzzled over what had become of the idealist who had burned her bra to proclaim radical feminist convictions and who had marched in protests against the Vietnam War.
Had I sold my integrity for a few pieces of silver and gold jewelry? What had reduced me to a lump of protoplasm? The Topsy Turvy Spa lavished attention, normally devoted to the face, on the buttocks: The two hour treatment included microdermabrasion to exfoliate the skin, a stimulating massage with a tightening gel, and a lifting mask containing collagen, ginseng and vitamin C. The latter was swirled on like cake icing.
Alternate hot and cold applications made my butt temporarily smoother, tighter, brighter, and firmer. That I had agreed to this silly treatment emboldened Danny. Patting my revivified posterior, he pushed on with his normal agenda: “Enough with underwear already. Elastic underpants dimple your behind. Your tusch should be silky,” he’d say. Danny wheedled to no avail. In his weakened condition, Danny had to drop his requests for anal sex. Fervently he swore that the anticipation of plunging into my “glory hole” provided the greatest incentive for him to recover.
I had supposed that Danny’s lethargy was temporary until his weight dropped dramatically. Whenever I mentioned his compromised condition, he changed the subject. Busy with book research projects, I took his word that he was “fine and dandy.” After a few months, Danny collapsed on the bed, a virtual skeleton. His waist had shrunk to a girl’s size, his wrists dangled from his arms like a rag doll. While his skin normally had a pale cast, now it assumed a ghostly pallor akin to a vampire in a horror movie. Milking the system for decades convinced him that a cagey guy would always wind up with the winning hand. Ironically, his own system had broken down, leaving him at the mercy of the medical establishment he distrusted.
While employed, if Danny took a sick day it was for mischief, rarely an illness. Now, instead of sprinting along the street, he took baby steps. The weights in his exercise room gathered dust. Danny’s inability to do the “nasty nasty” depressed him beyond measure. The “power tool” that he powdered, primped over, literally worshipped every centimeter of, lay recumbent in its kit. Meticulous about personal hygiene, Danny now struggled even to bathe.
It took incredible guile plus threats of abandonment to coerce Danny into seeing a doctor more credentialed than the local mob-friendly practitioner. One specialist led to another, down and uptown. Did Danny have AIDS? Finally, after several more extensive tests, the verdict floored us: pancreatic cancer.
All the money in Danny’s refrigerator could not change the inevitable trajectory of his disease. The Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni had the same kind of cancer, lived a few years, then succumbed. Extreme depression gave way to a ferocious optimism on Danny’s part. Vowing to lick “the bastard,” he came out fighting.
Danny’s brother referred him to an uptown oncologist known for experimental treatments. Meanwhile, this doctor to the rich scorned all medical insurance. Danny dug deep into his refrigerator to disgorge piles of money hoarded for a rainy day. Now it poured torrentially with no signs of stopping. Midway in the treatment, Danny collapsed and had to be hospitalized. Too weak to get his bones to a prestigious hospital, he wound up in our neighborhood at a Catholic facility. Ironically, nuns, his bêtes noire since parochial school, went out of their way to make Danny comfortable.
As Danny lay in his hospital bed, toward the end, only half conscious, he mumbled about “green people.” His mutterings brought back a freaky anecdote that had made no sense earlier. Part of Danny’s job involved checking structures on piers in Brooklyn for safety violations. Late at night, after working overtime, he paused on a deserted pier in Red Hook. On this clear night, just a sliver of the moon hung in the sky.
Suddenly, a blinding red flash with vertical lines emanating from it blazed across the sky. Crescent shaped balls of light wavering in intensity flew through the air. Falling down, his hands raised to protect himself, Danny thought he saw a disc-shaped object cruising above. After realizing that a UFO might be sending him signals, he fainted.
In Danny’s dreams, small green bald people with enormous craniums, receded chins, wrap-around eyes, and no ears jabbered messages at him. Paralyzed, he slept on the pier until dawn broke. Awakening, he dashed to his car and scrambled back to the Big Apple. A souvenir of the visitation remained to mark him as an abductee: a hunk of shrapnel buried in his right leg as though he’d been wounded in a war.
A non-veteran, Danny insisted aliens had put stuff from their planet into his leg. Doctors who examined him provided no medical explanation for the bullet-like deposit. Numerous times he made me touch his leg in that spot to verify its presence. A skeptic through and through, Danny had no reason to concoct such a weird fable. Each time he told it, the details never varied.
Delirious, Danny spoke about aliens alighting to abduct him to their other- worldly home a trillion miles away. He could not wait to whirl through space on a free journey with no passport required. He imagined he would put something over on the world. Danny never came home from the hospital. Alas, he lost the battle that snuck up on him from behind. At the end, he became almost blissful. Did he hope to wallow in a heaven of voluptuous butts autographed with his name?
Danny was nearly as remote from his upscale neighborhood as from the extraterrestrials. Perhaps the green people had done him a favor. The Village in which Danny had come of age had disappeared along with old men playing chess in Father Demo Square, shops selling loaves of crisp white bread, and the mom and pop stores where guys spent lazy Saturday afternoons playing pinball machines.
Danny had repeated to me over and over his favorite Mob stories like the one about a stool pigeon who had his thumbs snipped off with a garden hose, and a bakery owner, who had failed to pay protection money, had nearly baked to a crisp like “brotherhood bread” in his own oven. What stories could Danny possibly tell about yuppies working on Wall Street perpetually gabbing on cell phones?
Secreted in the back of Pompeii Church during Danny’s funeral service, I watched a few friends and neighbors commiserating up front with his ancient mother. I yearned to rush forward to hug her and express my heartfelt sympathy. Something restrained me—embarrassment, misplaced guilt, or fear of her reaction. Had it really only been a few months since we sat in her kitchen and she talked about winning the jackpot in Atlantic City with her church club?
Next to Danny’s mother sat his poor aunt from New Jersey whom Danny religiously avoided. Swathed head to toe in black, with only her eyes peering out, she thumped an amulet against her chest to ward off the evil eye. Such behavior embarrassed Danny. His buddy Sal, woefully gazing in my direction, sobbed loudest of all. As the priest droned on about Danny’s virtues, it occurred to me that he would have considered this balderdash a hoot. It’s a shame he missed it.
Late afternoons, on crowded Village streets, I missed sauntering with my companion as he pointed out locations of shops from his boyhood. I even missed his grumbling about the disappearance of Italian joints serving greasy pasta with red sauce drenched in cheese or the lack of women with “meat on their behind.” I had become accustomed to Danny’s hand in mine and his protective presence that formed a shield between me and the world. A tender affection, if not love, had blossomed between us. Upon reflection, my reasons for being with Danny became less obscure. Both of us were outsiders who had formed a dysfunctional family.
With him, I felt less like the sole survivor of an extinct tribe.
The Village of the twenties and thirties—with its flamboyant bohemianism side by side with bootlegging gangsters—seems more real to me than the chain restaurants and boutiques expanding everywhere like earth-devouring mushrooms. When I pass the new Lucca cafe, one of the many casualties of gentrification, my heart sinks as I remember Danny enthroned there. Each time I cross Carmine Street, finally awarded a traffic light after countless accidents, I remember a lover equally lethal and endearing—a true original masquerading as a “big deal.” Perhaps the aliens thrust him into my life then whisked him away to teach me about impermanence.
FIFTEEN: 2007 MARILYN’S APARTMENT JUST BEFORE AUGUST RECESS
The older the fiddle, the better the tune. Anonymous Arab
A milestone: our Confessions Club agreed on the topic “older women and younger men” without armored egos clashing like warriors on a battlefield. During our last meeting even the Maoist monster championed the choice. Today Tiffany wore white cotton gloves that left her fingertips bare, a tight-fitting white suit and a smart black beret. Tiffany favored ensembles with impeccable tailoring fresh from Parisian runways. I wouldn’t have been surprised if one afternoon she stood up and burst into singing the Marseillaise.
“I have some news, folks,” chimed in Candy. “Gabbing about the deal, might hex things. Maybe it’s a pipe dream.”
“Deal?” we echoed.
“This editor wants me to have lunch with her tomorrow. Can you believe it? She’s considering my burlesque book!”
“Wow, how come?” Sarah, oozing envy, stared at Candy as though she’d pole-vaulted over Siberia. “Amazing, you’re almost finished. Every time I try to write about what my father did, I’m blocked. The pain hits me like it happened yesterday.” Something carnivorous seemed to be gnawing at Sarah’s body. Although next to the youngest among this complement of brainy bombshells, Sarah resembled an emaciated grandmother. I noticed that her once abundant grey hair, now lackluster, lay plastered to her head; her eyes resembled a mummy’s.
“I sent a sample chapter months ago,” Candy babbled on. “Yesterday I got a call from the editor. Marilyn, mind if I stay over tonight?”
“Why ask, the invitation’s always open. Remember last time you stayed over? We went to Bistro Jules in the East Village for Brazilian music. A slender young guy with long sideburns named Alejandro chatted me up at the bar.”
“He reminded me of that skunk, Jorge,” scoffed Candy. “The rat’s living with a blonde accountant in Noho. Your guy might be trying to hook up for a green card.”
“Stop being suspicious,” Marilyn grinned. “He’s had a fascinating life mining in Minas Gerais and panning for gold in Alaska. Now he’s a psychiatric nurse practitioner in Perth Amboy. A supervisor! Twenty years younger than me, maybe more. We’re emailing every day.”
“You should have grabbed his behind,” interjected Chloe. “Why dilly dally?”
“I was so dizzy,” sighed Marilyn. “Lucky I didn’t fall off the bar stool.”
Taking Marilyn’s distraction as a cue, irrepressible Tiffany recited a poem that she had been clutching tightly in her hand. She always occupied the same beige chair as though seated on a throne, expecting homage. The rest of our gaggle clustered together around the couch, trading our writings back and forth.
I wondered why Marilyn had put the pusses’ empty feeding bowls underneath Tiffany’s chair. Sniffing at the bowls, they hung around, while Tiffany repeatedly shooed them away. Demeter, the psychic queen cat, red-haired like Tiffany, was determined to make friends. But Tiffany’s aversion to cats was equaled only by her aversion to men without means, except for Leftists.
After the short poem, Tiffany elaborated: “Entre nous that experience happened two years ago. In Paris for the fall fashion collections, I walked along the Rue de Rosiers in the Marais. What a superb lunch I had at Chez Marianne, a quaint bistro named after the female symbol of the French Republic. As I nibbled an artichoke leaf, a boy with the dew of youth on his cheeks winked at me. Gaston swore that I resembled a young Catherine Deneuve.”
A curious Demeter crept over to entreat Tiffany with saucer-shaped, agate eyes. Marilyn, to lure the cat away, waved a shiny blue ball.
“En France, mes amis, the older woman provides her young partner with an education sentimental, an initiation to the finer arts of love,” continued Tiffany, visibly moved. “In France such love is revered, not criticized as in our puritanical country. I heard the other day about a female schoolteacher thrown in jail for teaching her young student about the oldest game on the planet. Darling Gaston wrote me just last week begging for his petite copine to visit him.”
“Let’s drink champagne in honor of Candy’s potential sale. I count it as an auspicious omen.” Marilyn, scurrying to the kitchen, wheeled out a tea cart on top of which was a bottle of Dom Perignon, which she’d tied with a blue ribbon and surrounded by six gold-rimmed flutes.
“We’ve been a great group for years,” exclaimed Candy. “Soon, I’ll be middle-aged with grey hair. It would be wonderful to have a publishing deal.”
“I propose we drink to fifty more years,” said Chloe. “Our Club has encouraged me to be more brave, imaginative, and even whimsical. I resent the corporate grind and headhunters tempting me with ever more lucrative jobs. One day I’m going to chuck everything and travel around the world carrying a backpack.”
“Come, drink up, Sarah. I cooked some delicious dishes today. “ Marilyn popped the champagne cork and poured Sarah a glass.
“Eating and drinking hampers my critical faculties,” carped Sarah, pushing the champagne away. “Too much carrying on. Last time Bella didn’t read. Let’s give her a chance!”
I drank a few sips of champagne to bolster my courage. A poem I wrote about a recent difficult love affair fit the occasion. Sensing my anxiety, Robespierre bounced up on my lap. As I stroked his fur, I found his purring encouraging. Boldly, I shared my poem “Stacked Deck”:
I’ll miss your electric smile
And your caressing hands
child lover
My tongue always will remember
The silky feel of your pliant
mouth
At least I’ll be spared
The cruel scrutiny of morning
light
Dancing across my vulnerable
thighs
Furrowed as a field
During the primordial dance
Tell-tale blonde hairs
Curled menacing as snakes
On your pillow
Plotting revenge, I cursed
the sneak thief
Who stole your kisses
I envied her orgasms
Competed with her
between the sheets
Alas, my age
Was the cheat.
Everyone except Tiffany complimented the work. Two more glasses of champagne floated me into a rosier realm.
“Get ready,” cried Marilyn. “Maybe it’s not Cordon Bleu but we try to please.” Candy finished off two full plates of the delectable banquet Marilyn had prepared before Sarah took her first bite.
“Magnifique!” raved the monster. “Oeufs à la tripe, Rouelles de veau bourgeoisie, Bar poché au champagne...”
I wondered if Tiffany got the names right. But who cared when the food was so divine.
“If we pig out and get drunk our topic will get short shrift,” complained Sarah.
“Demi Moore, Madonna, Susan Sarandon, Cher, and Joan Collins all have younger men. It’s a trend. Right?” chirped Candy.
“Sure, our puritanical, money-driven society awards spoils to vulgar celebrities like the ancient Romans did to victorious gladiators,” complained Tiffany. “But most older women are pushed aside to make room for young ‘trophy wives.’” Gobbling a pastry fritter in apricot sauce, she spoke with less conviction than usual.
“Twice a month our Confessions Club bathes us in the elixir of s
upport and true friendship,” declared Marilyn. The Maoist monster, eating and drinking with relish, shouted: “Vive le Club!” Spontaneously, we hugged each other, except for Tiffany, who remained an eagle on her lonely perch.
“Can I read now?” asked Candy. When we all agreed, Candy charged toward the writer’s chair. Ready to sit down, she clutched her stomach. “Maybe I ate too much or I’m nervous about tomorrow.” Gasping, Candy wobbled toward the bathroom.
“Poor thing, her ulcer kicks up sometimes,” explained Marilyn.
“Personally, I think she’s paralyzed with fear about exposing her burlesque memoir to an authority figure,” clucked Sarah. “It could be that beneath her brash facade she suffers from low self-esteem. Should we see how she’s doing?”
“Let Candy be for now,” said Marilyn. “Anybody else have something on older women and younger men?” I raised my hand. So did Chloe.
“I’ve been too busy to write this down,” confided Chloe. “A couple of years ago, working at HSBC I met a young bank officer. We started to date, then took a trip to Puerto Rico over Easter.”
“Why’d you break up?” asked Sarah.
“Nick met my daughter when she came home for a holiday from Vassar. After graduation she moved in with me. To make a long story short, I came back from a business trip and found them in bed together. Isabelle made a terrible scene accusing me of being a neglectful mother! The upshot is they moved to Forest Hills. Now she won’t answer my calls or emails. She might as well be dead.”
Confessions of a Librarian Page 14