“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. What if Alfredo wanted to see her? Go with Max, pounded the voice inside as she considered that destiny depended on the slightest decision, a hair’s breadth.
“It is a concert of excellent musicians who will play Beethoven and Mozart. Do you know this music?”
“Yes,” said Adrianne. The prospect of listening to the music filled her with joy.
“Then it is not only jazz you like?”
“No.”
“I will get the tickets then,” he said. “You give me hope, meine liebchen.”
“Another boyfriend,” said Irene after she’d hung up. “A new one, huh? Joyce told us to make sure you clean out your desk before you go.”
Trembling with anger as she felt their gaze on her, Adrianne took out her straw handbag from the bottom drawer of her desk. She straightened out the other drawers and defiantly shoved a few pencils and paper clips inside her bag. There was nothing else she wanted to take. She would leave her faded magenta cardboard flower. Let them throw it out.
At the Accounting Office she received her check.
Goodbye, Rose and Irene.
Goodbye, Joyce, with your advice about not letting men get into my pants.
Goodbye, office. Goodbye, everyone.
She walked out of the elevator and onto Sixth Avenue. Although a light rain had begun to fall, she trudged along, not caring that she was getting damp and chilled. How could Alfredo love her if she couldn’t even hold down a job?
Chapter 8
People were settling down in the concert hall and waiting for the music to begin. In the midst of them sat Adrianne and Max. Her face looked very white to him beneath the bright lights, and her cheeks were flushed. The way her low neckline revealed the curves of her breasts, sheathed in a black brassiere, tantalized him. She seemed sad, and her smile seemed forced.
“Is something wrong?” Max asked.
“I lost my job.”
“Poor child.”
He clasped her hand. “You are lovely,” he said. His voice grew emotional. “Let me know if you need help. I have money.”
“That’s very kind of you, Max.”
The musicians were warming up, and at last the concert began.
A Beethoven quartet was first, and Max unconsciously swayed in rhythm. The closeness of Adrianne’s body stirred him. She didn’t say anything about the music, but she was very still for a moment after the first piece finished.
He put his hand on her thigh. She did not move away. Max’s heart felt too large for the space it took in his chest, and he had a sense of foreboding.
Next was a Mozart quartet in D major, serene but full of delicate melancholy.
Memories came back to Adrianne. She was making love with Alfredo all over again, and the intensity of it, the sweetness was overpowering. Then more troubling images arose from the past.
She was lying on an operating table, enveloped in the smell of ether.
“You’ll be all right. Just close your eyes,” said the surgeon, a friend of Gerald.
Afterwards they’d thrown the fetus into a garbage bin.
It would have been a girl, they told her.
During intermission, Max and Adrianne walked outside. It was hot and humid. Max wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “I am so sorry about your job,” he said, trying to bridge the distance between them.
“I don’t know what I’ll do now,” she said. “I just don’t know.”
“Don’t worry, meine liebchen,” he responded, softly caressing her hand. “If you need help, I am here.”
“Oh, you are good!” Perhaps she ought to give more of herself to him. Perhaps he was kinder and more decent than Alfredo.
Suddenly he felt dizzy. “Let’s go back to our seats,” he said. “I need to sit down.”
During the Bloch sonata, sadness wound through him. He was acutely aware of Adrianne’s flesh, while she seemed absorbed in the music. Long ago Mathilde had been a real wife to him, as had Monique. Old age caused him to seek a child-wife for his tired, flaccid body. How he had degenerated. Tears welled up in his eyes.
After the concert ended, they went outside again. People pressed against them. There were smells of sweat, smoke, and perfume, sounds of voices and traffic. They walked a little way up the block. Adrianne sighed. He was aware again, as he had been during the concert when he had stolen glances at her profile, of a radiant warmth about her that made him want to be close to her. Then he would have a reason to go on living. The heavy blackness would evaporate.
She looked nervous.
“You would like to go somewhere for a drink?” he asked.
“Oh Max, that’s kind of you, but I’d better not. I have to meet someone.”
He nodded, raging inside. “Is it the bartender we met the other night?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. That’s my business.” She hugged him. “I’m sorry. I should have told you earlier. Thank you for taking me to the concert. It was wonderful, Max,” she said earnestly. “Goodbye. I’ll see you,” she added in a rush.
“Wait, Adrianne, before you go. Please take this money.” He handed her five ten-dollar bills. As she hesitated, he added, “You will do me a kindness. I cannot take money to the grave. I know you do not have enough, so do me the honor to accept this small gift for a taxi and something nice for yourself.”
With generosity he would overcome his rage. What right had he to possess her, after all? Perhaps by being generous to her, he could atone in some small degree for the past. Poor child, he thought. Perhaps she will not be mine, but I can still love her.
Swiftly she ran off.
He felt pain beneath his breastbone. The space in front of his eyes swam. He was dizzy, as he had been earlier in the evening, and as he walked in the direction she had vanished, fever shot through him. Feeling faint, he clutched at a lamp post for support while people swarmed past. What a fool he was to think she would ever love him!
Chapter 9
Adrianne found another job as a cook in a sleepy little bar in the West Eighties. There she worked from one in the afternoon until nine at night five days a week, grilling hamburgers and french fries, preparing salads and B-B-Q chicken and steaks.
In comparison to her last job, it was restful being in the small, greasy kitchen. The owner had told her that the restaurant was kept open for legal reasons, as only a few customers ordered food.
Two or three nights a week she spent with Alfredo. These were the high points of her life. As she worked in the kitchen or sat on a stool with nothing to do, waiting for orders, she would brood over what she might have said or done wrong the night before, and she would go over their lovemaking in her mind, trying to savor it all over again. When she and Alfredo were physically close, it was like being on fire, but afterwards she felt so isolated.
One night late after work she wandered into a bar on her way home. A bald man sitting next to her bought her two beers and talked in a drunken way about himself. Then he touched the bulge between his thighs, slyly, secretively, yet apparently so that she could see. She was revolted. “I’ve got to go,” she said in a panic. Jumping up, she ran to the door. “Hey, wait a minute!” he shouted.
In the darkness she ran and ran until she was sure she had left him far behind. Her side ached with exertion. Then she slowed down, and her footsteps sounded against the pavement as if they belonged to someone else. She told herself that she should never have gone into that bar. Before she ran off, she had felt a surge of desire for that bald man. Alfredo, with his telepathic vision, would perceive that she was faithless in her thoughts and that she could crumble in an instant.
When she was not with Alfredo, not reassured by the strength of his presence, sometimes she felt as if her body would fly out into tiny pieces like dust and dissolve into the atmosphere. There was no center, nothing to hold her together. When she walked, she sometimes felt as if she were dissolving outwards into the strangers she passed on the streets. Only when she was holding someone close d
id she feel solid.
Her furnished room on 97th Street seemed suffocating, and as much as possible she avoided it, continuing to wander the streets after work. She hated her room, which was filled with the signs of her despair. Her clothing was heaped up in piles on the floor, on the bureau, and on the bed. The week before she had lost her door key and a twenty-dollar bill, which had been wadded up on her bureau for days. It was all she could do to get to her new job and concentrate on her simple tasks there.
If she moved in with Alfredo, she believed it would put an end to the chaos and uncertainty of her life. Then, too, Max would no longer plague her. Max’s desire hung heavily in the air. This bothered her because she did not like to be cruel.
It was night, and the windows in the brightly lit loft were shiny and black like mirrors. To Adrianne, they had a slightly menacing quality. Street noises below mingled with Caribbean music on the radio. Alfredo sketched her while she lay on his old green couch. He was swaying to the music, but then stopped and looked at her intently.
“Why are you so down, baby?” he asked.
“Money,” she murmured. “I never make enough to last the week.”
“You could always try hustling,” Alfredo waved his arms up towards the high ceiling with its ancient gas pipes. “You’d make a lot more than you do now. Hell, you could even support me. Then I could stay home and paint instead of busting my ass at that lousy bar and taking long shots at the track.”
“I didn’t know you bet.” She tried to conceal the shock she felt at his references to hustling and the race track. He had never talked about these things before.
“Occasionally. There’s always the dream—the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”
She smiled uneasily. On the street below she heard men talking, laughing, and cursing. A fog horn sounded in the distance. “Baila, baila, baila la rumba …” a man was singing over the radio, and just now she found this music jarring.
“Don’t look so scared. I was just thinking out loud.” Alfredo put down the charcoal and lit a cigarette.
She rolled over on the couch and drew her knees up against her bare chest, shivering. Smells of paint, stale cigarette smoke, and liquor filled her nostrils.
“I guess prostitutes do make a lot of money,” she said, sitting up. “Hey, don’t break that pose. I’m not finished!” he shot at her. “Of course they do. They’re not hung up with a lot of middle-class shit. Now hold still.” He continued working for a few minutes, then paused, stepped back, and lit another cigarette.
“Do you go to the races a lot?” she asked.
“Once in a while. I’ll take you to Belmont one day.”
She yawned. Strangely, the tension she was experiencing made her sleepy. “Alfredo, I’m so tired.”
“Hold on. I’m almost finished. Hey, baby, have you ever read Gurdjieff?”
“No. Who is he?”
“Gurdjieff was an Armenian mystic. A philosopher and a genius. He spent his life studying human consciousness. Gurdjieff writes somewhere that a person on the spiritual path ought to be able to make a living with his left foot. He meant that an artist shouldn’t have to bust ass paying the rent at the sacrifice of his real work.”
Alfredo added a few more strokes, then told Adrianne she could stand up.
She wrapped herself in a blanket which lay draped over the couch, then walked over to the easel. The floor felt cold beneath her feet. There she was, drawn in charcoal on butcher paper, bloated, with large breasts and buttocks and an anxious look in her eyes. Her nose looked longer and narrower than it was, and her cheekbones stood out.
“That’s me?”
“That’s one version of you. You’ve got a fantastic body and an expressive face.” Alfredo drew her close and kissed her. His shoulder muscles bulged beneath her hands. As the blanket slid, she reached to gather it around her, but he yanked it off.
They went into the bedroom and made love. Burrowing against his shoulder, she savored his scent of sweat and cologne as she fell asleep.
Later he woke her. He had switched on a light. In his hands he held a worn volume of Gurdjieff’s writings, which he had taken from the bookcase. Sleepily she rubbed her eyes. “Read this, Adrianne,” he said, handing her the book. “It will open up your mind. Gurdjieff writes about how most people live their life in a kind of sleep, unless they make an effort to become aware. People don’t question the rules…. How much do you make in a month, Adrianne? Two hundred dollars? You could make that in one night.”
“But what a price to pay!” she said, upset that he had again brought up the subject of hooking.
He punched her lightly. “Some jerk fucks you. He doesn’t have anything of you, he’s only enjoyed your body.”
“Alfredo, let me go back to sleep.”
“Before you do, I’ve got something special for us.” He pulled several books out from a bookshelf and produced a black lacquer box. Inside it was a small quantity of greenish grey tobacco and some thin paper. “Marijuana,” he said. He rolled a joint, inhaled, held the smoke inside his lungs for what seemed a long time, and then exhaled. “Try it,” he said. “Hold the smoke in as long as you can.”
Again she was a bit shocked, as she had no idea that he smoked marijuana. When she inhaled, she coughed. He only laughed, thumping her on the shoulders, and encouraging her to take a few more drags.
“Marijuana gives me a relaxed kind of energy so I can work all night,” he said. He put on his white jockey shorts, paint-stained jeans, and blue work shirt that lay heaped on the floor.
After a while she began to feel some of the effects of the marijuana. As she lay in bed unable to sleep, she saw vivid images in her mind. The Caribbean music was playing again. Rhythms and melodies sounded particularly distinct, as if time had slowed. She could hear him moving around in the studio as she drifted off to sleep.
Early the next morning he showed her the new canvas on his easel: a woman with two heads, four arms, and four legs, like an Eastern deity in brilliant hues of orange, red, purple, green, black, and yellow.
“Adrianne, this is for my show. Did I tell you the Harris Gallery is giving me a one-man show in October? It’s a real break for me. With any luck, I’ll sell enough work to quit my job,” He drew her close. “I might even be able to support two people.”
Her heart pounded as she thought that he must truly care about her. He was haggard; there were hollows under his eyes and lines in his face that she had never before noticed, and she realized for the first time what a strain he must be under. “You need to sleep,” she said. She reached out and stroked the stubble on his gaunt face.
“Make me a cup of that Japanese tea by the stove, will you, preciosa?”
While he slept, she tidied up the loft and swept the floor. Later she washed the dishes in the sink, and she even cleaned what she could of the thick dust and bits of plaster from the ceiling which covered everything. Although she was exhausted, a sense of peace came over her as she worked. Pausing, she looked at Alfredo and watched his regular breathing. His face was peaceful. His lean body was curled up like a child’s. He trusts me, she thought, and this gave her comfort.
Chapter 10
One morning the phone rang at the rooming house while she was still in bed. She heard Max pad down the hall in his slippers and answer. Then he pounded on the door. “It’s for you.”
“Who is it?”
“Someone named Lucille.”
Adrianne stretched, rubbed her eyes, and put on her robe, tying the sash tightly around her. As she passed Max in the hall he brushed against her. Ignoring this, she picked up the phone.
“Adrianne, at last I’ve found you!” cried Lucille at the other end. “Why haven’t you written to me? I finally got your address and phone number from your mother. I’m here in New York, at the Plaza Hotel for two weeks. Can you come and visit me today?”
Adrianne hesitated because Alfredo might call. “I may have to work tonight.”
“Come for lunch then.
”
After she hung up, Max planted himself in front of her. Adrianne could hear the landlady and one of the other roomers, a Chinese student, talking in the kitchen. The landlady’s elderly, matter-of-fact voice contrasted with the sing-song English of the student.
“Adrianne, for days now you avoid me. I must talk with you.” He looked unhappy.
“Max, I just don’t have time right now. I’m sorry.” She felt cruel, speaking to him this way.
As she rode the crosstown bus and then a Fifth Avenue bus downtown, she wondered why Lucille had come to New York. The strangers around her in this midday heat seemed like shadows, except for their sweaty smells and raucous sounds. How different these voices were from the slower ones of south Texas, and from Lucille’s. Across the aisle sat an old black woman in a cotton housedress, shiny with sweat. Adrianne thought the woman seemed to radiate a dull reddish aura of pain. She looked as if she mopped the floors of skyscrapers at night. At the 72nd Street stop, the woman opened her eyes an instant to look sullenly at her before an onrush of passengers blocked her from Adrianne’s view.
Adrianne’s memories of Lucille mingled with those of Gerald. She remembered the night she had first met Lucille. She and Gerald had gone to a party at Lucille and Barney’s house. Lucille’s husband, Barney, was a self-made millionaire, and Adrianne had been impressed with the elegance of the mansion and the guests. Unaccustomed to hard liquor, nevertheless she had three drinks to cover up the disturbance she felt because Gerald had never before ignored her like this, and he was openly flirting with other women at the party. A tall and handsome doctor, with his icy grey eyes and fair hair, Gerald seemed accustomed to being sought out by women. Adrianne had stood awkwardly in a dark corner, a trifle dizzy from the liquor. Suddenly an attractive woman in a white silk dress had swooped upon her.
“Who are you?” Lucille asked. “Honey, you look lost.”
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