“Bet you have a pimp,” said a round-faced woman with glasses who sat on Adrianne’s left.
Adrianne flushed and swallowed.
“Bet you give him just about every cent you make.”
“What does it matter,” said Adrianne.
“You’re a sucker for him, I can tell.”
“Don’t let her get to you,” said Tina.
Adrianne ordered another glass of wine and was silent as she listened to the women talking and laughing around her. Gradually, they forgot about her. Then in an alcoholic daze she once again felt Tina’s soft hands, a little warmer now. “Come home with me,” whispered Tina. “Maybe you can help me out a little, if you can spare any change.”
Alfredo would be furious if she not only didn’t come home, but walked in tomorrow morning without any money. Let him be furious, she thought. She was growing tired of giving. She was a sucker. Let him wait. Again, she pushed down the panic that was growing inside her.
“Come on,” pleaded Tina. Her eyes were dark velvet. There was something soft and honest about her to which Adrianne responded
As they walked out of the bar, Adrianne glanced at their reflections in the mirror behind the counter. There she was, a big, strong girl, yet thinner than she used to be, even though lately she’d gained back some weight. Her bleached hair had grown down to her shoulders. She wore her silver-fox coat and her burgundy leather boots. Although she looked physically strong, inside she felt very fragile and at this moment almost without will. There was Tina leading her by the hand in her huge man’s jacket, olive trousers, almost hipless. Tina’s delicate mouth tightened into a thin line of tension.
Outside, it was colder than before. As they shivered along MacDougal Street, vague questions about the nature of love ran through Adrianne’s brain.
They took a taxi to Brooklyn. In the taxi, Tina kissed her. The girl’s tongue tasted of peppermint from a lozenge she had been sucking, but underneath the peppermint was a smell of tobacco and flesh.
When they got out, it was dark and streetlights were on. Three elderly black men were warming their hands in front of a fire in a trash can. Their belongings were heaped on an abandoned sofa with partially torn-out stuffing which stood a bit back from the sidewalk.
“Got a quarter, got a dollar?” cried one of the old men. Adrianne fingered the clasp on her purse.
“Come on,” hissed Tina. “Speed it up or the rest of them will be on you like a pack of animals. A whole lot of them live right in front of my building.”
Tina’s building was half-abandoned. Some of the windows were boarded up, but Adrianne noticed a mailbox which had mail sticking out of it at the entry. They climbed several flights of stairs to the apartment where Tina lived. Adrianne tripped over something before Tina lit a match. Through dark, narrow hallways they walked amidst an overwhelming stench of urine and garbage. Adrianne could scarcely breathe. She would have turned around to run back, but she knew she would not be safe on the streets outside. And so she huddled inside her coat with its scent of Chanel Number Five.
In the apartment, the wooden floor was littered with old newspapers. There were smells of rotting food, no electricity, and only a candle for light. A stained mattress was piled with clothing.
They took off their clothes and huddled on the smelly, clothes-heaped mattress beneath Adrianne’s fur coat. Tina’s skinny body wound around hers. She had small breasts, and her bones protruded.
Making love to Tina was like making love to a frightened, tender, and yet lustful child. Tina’s cold feet and boyish body pressed against her as Adrianne heard rats scampering through the walls. Tina’s peppermint-smelling tongue wove aggressively into Adrianne’s mouth. Her small childish hands excited Adrianne along her inner thighs, then moved to Adrianne’s genitals. In spite of her youth, she had a woman’s sensitivity as to what would stimulate or soothe. Gradually, Adrianne forgot the surroundings and the stench of everything. She immersed herself in the lovemaking.
As the two of them held each other, some of the men Adrianne had lain with or sucked off or satisfied in various perverse ways during the last few months flashed through her mind. Each had wounded her. Even Alfredo wounded her in the way he made love to her, which lately was brusque and unfulfilling. If only she could press against Tina long enough and hard enough, perhaps she would somehow be healed. She bit Tina’s tongue so hard that Tina gasped with pain. “Hey!” she cried. Then Adrianne soothed her with gentle strokes, and eventually each of them found release.
Later, in her sleep Tina cried out, and Adrianne clutched her closer.
Adrianne dreamed that Alfredo and Michelle were fucking right next to her. She tried to throw herself between them, and Tina mingled with the two. Their limbs interwove like tree branches. One of the branches stuck down her throat and was choking her. She sat up, struggling for breath.
When Adrianne woke up the next morning, wind was blowing through a jagged, broken window above her.
Tina was not there.
Adrianne huddled deeper inside her covering of clothes, but she couldn’t get warm. “Tina,” she yelled. No answer.
On the wall was a poster of a naked girl on a beach. The girl was blonde, sprite-like, with pointed breasts, a sea nymph who leapt and danced with arms raised high in front of the ocean waves.
She heard a toilet flush. Tina came back into the room with a man’s black overcoat over her shoulders carrying a tin can, a syringe, and a roll of gauze. Again Adrianne called out, but Tina did not seem to be aware of her presence as she walked over to the window and poured something from the tin can into the syringe. Then she sat down crosslegged on the floor and injected the needle into her arm. A beatific expression came over her face. At that moment she looked beautiful.
Adrianne stumbled around naked, shivering as she looked for her clothing. Tina had slumped back against the wall and breathed heavily through her mouth. Her eyes were shut. The needle and syringe lay next to her on the floor.
After Adrianne had dressed, she knelt down and kissed Tina’s forehead. The girl’s skin felt feverish, but her breathing seemed to have returned to normal. Hurriedly, Adrianne left the building, sighing with relief when she felt the cold fresh air outside.
As she was walking along the street, a man on crutches called out to her for spare change. He wore a large cardboard sign around his neck with letters in black crayon that read “ACCEPT JESUS AS YOUR SAVIOR OR DIE FOR YOUR SINS.” Adrianne put a few coins into his tin cup while he wheezed something at her that she didn’t understand.
The smells of rotting garbage and incinerator fires prevailed, although the air was so cold. A layer of powdery snow had fallen which softened everything.
She could take a taxi to the airport and fly. Where? Home to her mother? No. Then she would be even more alone. Elena was so cold and so self-absorbed.
What if she were to take her earnings tonight and get a room in the city far away from Alfredo, where he couldn’t find her? Perhaps she could get a straight job as a cook or a clerk typist. If she lived alone, would she again experience the walls of her room threatening to suffocate her? Would she again suffer unbearably in the way she had before she met Alfredo?
Suddenly she thought she could hear Max’s soft voice whisper, “Meine liebchen. Poor child.”
Max would despise her if he knew what she did for a living. She thought of other people who had crossed her path.
Slave mentality, jeered Alfredo in her mind.
Give me my fix, said Tina.
You’re a damned fool not to leave him, Lucille would say.
Adrianne had called Lucille in Houston a few days earlier only to learn from the maid that Lucille was back in the hospital.
Lucille, I want to be with you, and now you are dying, Adrianne thought as she continued walking through the cold.
Chapter 26
More often now, Alfredo didn’t come home until dawn. Half-awakened by his entrance, Adrianne would hear him undress and take off his shoes w
ith a thud. She would hear bathroom noises. The mattress would creak, and he would touch her thigh or her breast, as if simply to make sure she was there. Then he would roll over and go to sleep. She wanted to cry out with pain because she wanted him to caress her and whisper words of love.
When she got home this morning the sheets had been torn off the bed and stuffed into a pillow case, ready to be taken to the laundry. Adrianne could smell coffee and bacon. Alfredo’s breakfast dishes were piled in the sink, and he was standing in the middle of the studio, dressed to go out.
“Did a rich trick keep you up all night, baby?”
“No. I slept with a girl. I was so tired, and I felt so sick of men. I went to a lesbian bar. Alfredo, don’t be mad.”
As he stood there in his suede jacket, wearing a muffler and grey flannel trousers, he looked distinguished and a trifle older. Morning sun streamed down through the skylight, illuminating the lines in his face. On the wall there was a new painting, half-finished of black, purple, and ivory abstract swirling forms.
“I ought to beat some sense into you.” As he moved towards her, his look frightened her.
Adrianne laughed nervously.
Suddenly Alfredo’s fist shot into her face. In seconds, she was on the floor and he was kicking her.
“Stop!” she screamed. He kicked her ribs. She curled up in a ball. All her muscles tensed as she waited for the next blow. Then she heard his footsteps recede. Sobbing, she held her hands against her face.
After a while, she limped to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Her face was bruised, with a purplish swelling under her right eye. Her ribs ached where he had kicked her. Had he broken any?
When she heard his footsteps again, she trembled.
“Don’t be afraid!” He came up from behind and slipped his arms around her waist. “Come on, baby, let’s take a look at you.” His face was somber. “Let’s get some ice.”
He led her into the kitchen where he wrapped a lump of ice in a dish towel and had her hold it beneath her eye. Then he led her to bed where he undressed her tenderly. After a while, overwhelmed with shock and pain and confusion, she fell asleep beneath the soothing power of his hands.
When she woke up it was late afternoon, and she realized that the apartment was empty. Wrapping the quilt around her, she got up and went into the bathroom to pee.
In the kitchen, she fixed herself tea and toast. Her stomach felt queasy. She returned to bed and turned the radio to some classical music, which soothed her. Then she dozed off again until Alfredo awakened her by gently shaking her shoulders.
“What is it?”
“Don’t cry, Adrianne. I love you.”
“How can you treat me this way?”
“I do it because I love you,” he said. “You need a firm hand.”
“No, no, no,” she sobbed, afraid to speak freely. How unfair he was. She would leave him, yes, she would when she got well, but for now she would say nothing about it.
“I’ve got something for you.” He took a small white box out of his jacket pocket. “Open it.”
The box had a Tiffany label. Inside were two perfect pearls wreathed with tiny diamonds. “For the woman I love,” he said.
She fingered the earrings. “They’re beautiful.”
“Let’s see how they look.” He helped her put them through her ears, then he put his maroon robe around her and led her to the bathroom so she could see herself. The bruise beneath her eye had darkened, but the earrings gleamed. He stood behind her in the mirror, half-a-head taller. There was something scornful in his expression.
“You stay out all night. Why can’t I?”
“That’s how it is,” he said, fixing her with his eyes. “We’ll put some makeup on over those bruises so you can work tonight.”
“I can’t go out like this. My ribs hurt. Maybe you broke them.”
He felt her body. “Nothing’s broken,” he said. “Tonight you work.”
“I hate hustling.”
“It’s only for a short time, so be patient. You and I are going on to better things, but we need to save up some money first.”
He lit a cigarette, offered her one, then blew out the smoke and took a deep breath. “I don’t want you getting upset about what I’m going to say. Preciosa, you know I love you. You’re my woman, verdad?”
“Yes.”
“We’re in a tight spot just now. Michelle is moving in. She can help us out with expenses.”
“What?”
“Now don’t get excited.” He put his arm around her. “She’s just moving in temporarily. She has to move out of her apartment by the end of the month.”
“I’ll move out!” She stubbed out her cigarette, clutched the robe tighter around her waist, and walked over to a window where she looked down at the moving cars and people. She could throw herself out onto the street below. She could leave him tonight. She could go back to stay with Tina.
She would pack her suitcase and get out of here. But then what? She had visions of standing alone on Times Square with frozen icicle tears on her cheeks, feeling as if she were flying apart. He was like a slippery eel, like the god Proteus in an ancient legend she’d read about in high school. You had to hang onto him to keep him from changing shapes. She had to hang onto him or she would drown. If she only hung on long enough, something good would come of it.
“What happens to all the money I bring in? Where’s it all going?”
“We’ve got the Cadillac. The hi-fi. Your fox coat,” he uttered his usual excuses. “Your black rabbit. Those earrings set me back three-hundred dollars.”
“How much have you lost at Belmont?”
His eyes clouded with anger and he tilted her chin up. “If you don’t trust me, you can pack right now and leave!”
“I don’t want Michelle to move in. It hurts me that you want her here!”
“We need the money.”
“Bullshit!” she cried out in a burst of bravery. “It’s bullshit that we need the money. You want to screw her.”
“Watch your mouth, bitch!”
Furious, she swallowed her anger and went into the kitchen. He followed her.
“I love you,” he said softly. “I want you to be all that you can be. Just remember that whatever happens, I love you.” He began caressing her beneath the robe. “You’re a slave,” he murmured as he stroked her. She put her hand out to steady herself against the stove. He caressed her breasts, her belly, her buttocks. “You’ve got a beautiful ass. You’ll keep right on being a slave, baby, until you understand what it’s all about.”
“Then what?”
“Then you’ll be dynamite. I love you, and I’m going to make you into a dynamite woman.”
“So you make me suffer because you love me?”
“Yes.”
“That’s crazy.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. Letting her go, he reached for a half-empty bottle of rum on the kitchen counter and drank from it. Then he walked out of the kitchen.
She would leave him. Yes, she would leave, she decided.
She stood motionless, staring as if in a trance at the stove, then at the bottles and jars crowded on the counter.
A few minutes later she walked back into the bedroom. He was smoking a joint and he passed it to her. “This will take away your pain,” he said. “It will make it easier to work tonight.” He put some Miles Davis on the hi-fi. Then they lay down and smoked. The marijuana relaxed her. He opened the maroon silk robe and tenderly kissed her breasts, her ear-lobes, her neck, and finally her mouth. “Soon we’ll leave the country. We’ll get married in Havana.”
If only she could believe him.
She inhaled, held the smoke, let it out. Let out all the doubts. Let her mind go black. Higher. Get higher. But he was wrong about the grass. It wasn’t easier to work after you’d smoked. It was a lot harder when you came down again.
He made love to her slowly, with the music playing in the background, and afterwards she lay quietly an
d felt as if the molecules in her body were subtly changing. A new kind of power was surging through her, even though her ribs still ached. In her altered state, things seemed easy. Easy as pie. By and by she would lay all those men until she reached the sky and touched them with her gigantic fingers. She and Alfredo were floating on top of the world.
At the edge of her consciousness Miles Davis’ trumpet sounded. The music sounded so beautiful when she was high. The intervals were longer between the notes. Time was expanding. She could forgive Alfredo because she, too, was expanding.
However, when she looked closely at his face, she saw that it was tinged with a brutality that had not been there when they first met. “He is growing weak through his brutality to me, and I am growing strong. When the time comes, I will leave. Then I will be the strong one,” Adrianne said to herself. The balance between them was shifting. Maybe the beating this morning, horrible though it was, awakened something in her that had been paralyzed.
After a while Alfredo got out of bed. He went into the kitchen and brought Adrianne a plate with cold steak, salsa, potato chips, and a mug of coffee. “It’s late,” he said. “Come on. I’ll drive you uptown.”
An hour later she was back at the Flamingo Bar on Eighth Avenue, sipping Courvoisier for her throat, which felt a little sore. A middle-aged man with a goatee who was sitting three bar stools away said, “Have one on me.”
“Thanks.”
The man moved closer.
She smiled at the bartender and slipped him a bill for his part of the take.
Chapter 27
Michelle moved in. In order to squeeze out some closet space for her belongings, Alfredo packed some of his own clothes into a duffel bag. Adrianne experienced the other girl’s presence as a slow-motion nightmare. Sometimes it was all she could do to keep herself from attacking them both with her fists and screaming.
A few days later, Michelle started working the upper East-side hotels and bars. “Why don’t you come with me, Adrianne?” she suggested.
Adrianne refused.
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