Have Love (Have a Life #2)

by Maddy Wells

  I hung around downstairs, sucking down all the wine I could and snorting some guy’s coke, informing the stragglers that I was the artist’s sister.

  A man wearing a beret and black turtleneck, claiming to be a painter handed me a scrap of paper with his phone number and his alleged name: a symbol of a star.

  “Call me,” Star said. He pointed to my face and I wasn’t sure which intrigued him, my acne or black eye. “We’ll get that down on paper.”

  The party moved to somebody’s nearby loft and I went home.

  Instead of visiting Alex the next day, I tried to peek through the curtain of Star’s front door as I rang his doorbell. He answered in a silk smoking jacket, the kind men wear in old movies, and no pants.

  “I met you last night,” I started to say in case he’d forgotten who I was.

  He held up his hand to silence me and led me up to the third floor where he left me standing by a little table, which held a bell, a crystal decanter of whiskey and one glass, while he disappeared behind a thick black Chinese curtain. The room was lined with worn Chinese carpets and smelled of feet. I noticed that Star had taken off his shoes before vanishing, so I did the same.

  I didn’t hear any noise from behind the curtain, so I sat down and poured myself a whiskey. The glass itself was heavy and got weightier with each of the subsequent refills to which I helped myself. After I had poured myself a fourth and was starting to get bored with both the alcohol and foot odor, I decided to ring the bell which was apparently what he was waiting for. He appeared at the curtain, motioning for me to proceed into the studio, which was lined with portraits that were smudgy and hastily done. The only word that came to mind was “gibberish.” Star was busy with something behind the easel, and I looked around for my seat, and seeing none, finally just lay down on the thickly carpeted floor.

  “Is this right?” I asked self-consciously, turning around so he could get a better look at my butt, thinking he might want to paint my beautiful side.

  Star shrugged. I spun around on one foot like a ballerina. “How about that?”

  He didn’t answer, so I danced some more, trying to get a reaction from him. I took off some of my clothes, but it didn’t affect his wild gestures at the canvas. Finally, I removed all my clothing and closed my eyes and danced. After an hour or so of squirting paint and lurching forward with his palette knife, he sat down heavily on the rug, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger and gestured blindly with the other that I should leave.

  I tried to sneak around him to get a glimpse of the canvas he had been painting on, but his body was like a barricade. His smoking jacket had fallen open to reveal that Star wore nothing underneath and that his talents were authentically gigantic in at least one area. He had one of the biggest reputations in New York my brother told me later. I paused, charmed by the sight, and his penis, like a child acting up for attention, proceeded to grow and dance towards me. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it, thinking, “I did that.”

  “That’s great,” I whispered and Star opened one eye.

  “Do you want to see?” He wrapped the smoking jacket tightly around himself and got up to turn the easel so I could see the painting.

  My reward was a look at the canvas which was “only a beginning” he begged when I freaked out, and “you can’t make any sense of it at this stage.” The painting showed none of the physical wounds I was scared of having revealed to the world. But all of the emotional ones. It was as if I were skinned alive and the hollowness inside revealed. How could he see all that?

  I have since learned that the one unforgivable sin is for someone to lend you the glasses through which they view you. Unless they are in love with you, the view is never as flattering or as interestingly evil as you imagine and the most you can hope for is that you don’t look like an ass. It took loud persuading for me even to consider returning for the completion of my portrait. His wife, Sally, a Philadelphian Main Line matron who had sold the family china and jewelry to support Star’s career, came out of nowhere (Jesus, was she watching me from behind one of these creepy hanging carpets?) to cajole me with the promise that my fame as Star’s model would be as great as his if I just stuck it out. I left for the button store with a big “maay-bee” and the promise of fame swirling through my greedy soul.

  That afternoon, Rick came by. It was the first time I had seen him since he’d left with Alex. He wore Alex’s presence. She made everyone she was connected with appear more than they were. Even Rick seemed less scurvy rock musician and more romantic figure now that he was imbued with Alex’s aura.

  “You’re looking well,” I told him busying myself with the bric-a-brac display for Back-to-School. There is bric-a-brac to celebrate every event in the human condition. For Back-to-School, it’s mostly plaid ribbons.

  “You look like shit,” he said. He grabbed me by the shoulder and made me turn around. “What the hell is that sicko doing to you?”

  I looked him fully in the face, letting him get a good look. It amused me to think that he thought I was being taken advantage of, when the truth was that most of the time I was the one who started things. “What’s it to you?” I asked.

  It obviously didn’t mean much because he quickly remembered what he came for and looked nervously at the curtain that separated us from Shel. “I need to talk to you,” he said.

  I folded my arms over my chest. “So talk.”

  “I mean, is he cool?” he jerked his head towards the back room.

  “Well, he’s not deaf, if that’s what you mean, but I doubt if he gives a damn about anything you have to say.”

  “It’s about Alex.”

  I felt my neck stiffen, but forced my breath to go in and out regularly.

  When he saw I wasn’t responding, he said, “We want to make it legal.”

  “You mean get married?” I almost shouted, looking over my shoulder to see if Shel was standing in the doorway.

  Rick smiled. “Yeah. Sis.” He punched me playfully on the arm. I winced and not just because he hit on a particularly sore patch of welts.

  “You can’t do that. She’s not ready. She’s too young. We’re just starting out. We haven’t even begun to live. She can’t be tied down to you.” I was rambling, trying to stall, to give him as well as me a good reason why this marriage couldn’t happen.

  He looked less sure of himself. “She loves me,” he said, unsteadily.

  “No, she doesn’t.”

  He shrugged. “We’re going to London. I got some gigs lined up.”

  He continued on but I’d stopped listening. It wasn’t true, I wanted to scream. I knew, of course, that Alex was infatuated with this boy. But I also knew that the infatuation would die, probably as quickly as it was born. She couldn’t ever really love such an ordinary creature. Because, if she could, what did that make her?

  What did that make me?

  I caught a few words of his monologue. “So you see how it is,” he was saying. “Do you have any ideas?”

  “About what?”

  “To square it away with the draft board. I can’t get a passport with this thing hanging over my head. Alex says you’re the smartest person she knows. She says you would know what to do.”

  He looked so miserable and innocent that for a moment I almost forgot that we were rivals. I felt benevolent because Alex had called me the smartest person she knew. Besides, I had no quarrel with American boys who didn’t want to travel 10,000 miles to blow Vietnamese boys to smithereens. So on one level I really wanted to help him. But mostly I didn’t.

  “Did you ever even register?” I asked.

  “Haven’t been near a post office in six years,” he said smugly then he looked sad.

  “Lots of boys slip across the border to Canada.” Of course, Canada wasn’t where it was at for a musician. I envisioned Rick, with his dirty mane and skinny legs trying to outmaneuver British immigration who would laugh him right back across the ocean. They had their own supply of recalcitrant rockers. The
y didn’t need to import more.

  “It wouldn’t be right to involve Alex in something like that. She deserves better than just being on the run.”

  He was right. She did deserve better than to slink through borders and give up a career in modeling to skulk around avoiding F.B.I. agents. Slipping into dark alleys, registering under phony names, wasting youth in fungous cellars. That was nothing at all like the life I had envisioned for us. I had to save her.

  I patted Rick’s arm in a sisterly way and told him I had some contacts and that maybe it wasn’t as hopeless as it seemed, all the while thinking that this was the opportunity I had been waiting for. I finally had a plan. I would nail him. Pretend to help him, but lay a trap of government flunkies who would do the dirty work for me. It would be an easy win for them, a long-haired draft evader with a gee-tar. All they had to do was wave their guns around and bring the boy down, and out of our lives. It was simple. All I had to fill in were details. Alex would be mine again.

  Rick, of course, couldn’t know what I was thinking. He thanked me. I thought he was going to cry. I wondered that I had ever been lonely enough to go to bed with this person, because all I felt for him now was repulsion for his weakness. And pity for what I was about to do to him. He would have to be sacrificed to save Alex.

  “You’re going up to Woodstock, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Woodstock? What’s that?”

  “Alex said she gave the tickets to you.” He seemed hurt that I had forgotten his gift. He was playing back-up for some group.

  “Oh yeah. The three days of music and art thing.” It was more a statement than a question. I had no intention of going. I couldn’t ask Lance and there was nobody else I knew, so small had my world become. I was in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the world and my orbit consisted of two, maybe three (if you counted my brother) people. To tell the truth, I had become so addicted to playing with Lance, as he called it, I couldn’t stand to be away from it for three days of music, art, or anything else.

  “I went to a lot of trouble to get those,” he said. He then kissed my hand and left the store. I promised to call him that very evening.

  I attacked the rest of the afternoon with renewed vigor. Suddenly, the button store didn’t seem depressing. Or sordid, as Alex had pronounced it. It was a place of hope, of new beginnings. Wasn’t Shel trying to make a new beginning with a veritable button renaissance? Weren’t these teachers who were buying this crap for their classrooms merely trying to celebrate life and the passing of the seasons by festooning themselves and everyone around them in crepe paper and bric-a-brac? How could I have ever cynically dismissed them?

  I copied the phone number of FBI headquarters from the yellow pages and slipped the paper into my pocket along with some onyx buttons I’d been admiring. I greeted all the customers with a politeness that was probably ordinary, but new for me. The customers looked surprised and wary, most had already been recipients of my sullen service, but soon they capitulated to my new self and smiled. Even Shel responded to the new vibe I’d introduced to the store by coming out from behind his curtain and rubbing his hands in delight.

  With so little effort, I saw that I could make anyone happy. I’m ashamed to admit it had never occurred to me that I could use being nice for any sort of good. I only saw it as a colossal opportunity to help me get my own way.

  I smiled and dispensed goodwill. Everyone my golden beams touched was happy. Everyone. Soon it would be me.

  Chapter Seven

  Later I learned we weren’t the only ticket holders who didn’t make it to Max Yasgur’s farm in upstate New York. A whole platoon of festival-goers got diverted on the way, seduced by easier, more sensuous parties. And now, seeing the video and movies of that festival, the mud and mayhem, I am glad that Lance and I only made it as far as West Chester.

  Of course, if I had made it to Woodstock, I may have found myself diverted from Lance, which in retrospect would have been a good thing. But we didn’t. We stopped at White Plains and despite what happened there, we remained stuck together.

  Lance laughed, as I knew he would, when I suggested that it would be nice to leave the city for a while. Breathe some wholesome air, eat some regular food. We had gotten caught in the spring roll, egg drop soup, coffee routine, when we remembered to eat at all, both of us looking the worse for it. I don’t think we had any vitamins left in our bodies. It’s funny to think of that now: vitamins. We had so much juice in our bodies I didn’t believe we would ever dry up. No young person ever does. Alex, when she noticed me at all, did comment that I was looking older, which I took to mean that I was finally looking mature. She didn’t seem alarmed, and she never mentioned the bruises that ringed my face like smudged charcoal, so I thought no more about it.

  I have a photograph Lance took of me at that time. I was thin, which made me happy. The longed-for cheekbones had emerged from their jelly doughnut padding. My hair was turning wiry, unruly spikes stuck up from my normally straight dark hair when I remembered to comb it. My eyes had purple rings under them, diminishing somewhat the acne that raged despite lack of fuel. Lance had decided that I needed some cocaine to rev up my energy. Apparently, I was slowing down. I wasn’t giving an acceptable amount of response, as Rick would put it.

  Rick. I would deal with him when we returned from Woodstock, but he and Alex were never far from my mind.

  Finally, Lance agreed we should go, and even said he knew some guys we could catch a ride with. I thought for a moment that maybe the company of other people would make us an official couple. Whatever that was. The only thing we had in common was our obsession with Alex, but we’d been together long enough that our perverse entanglement was forming a life of its own.

  That Thursday night we headed out of the city in a Volkswagen bus with Lance’s friends. They picked us up in front of our building, not honking because it would have gotten lost in the noise of the city, and not bothering to come to the door to tell us they were there because they were having fun smoking dope.

  The bus was green and white. The back seats had been removed and replaced with a dilapidated love seat. For the first time in a week I felt my old optimism returning. We were going somewhere. On the road. Forward momentum.

  The three guys who picked us up nodded at us with glazed passive eyes when we stood looking in through the windshield. I waved my ticket at the driver, a tall curly-haired guy named Teddy. He must have been at least 6’5” because his blond afro touched the ceiling of the bus. He had a cotton kerchief tied around his Harpo hair like an Indian headband. He didn’t wear a shirt in order to better show off his slim, muscular build. His face was like a rodent’s, with two rat-teeth getting caught on his lower lip, eyes gleaming orange where they should have been white. But I couldn’t take my eyes off his body. Lance hustled me into the love seat, snorting.

  “Don’t be an asshole,” he said, throwing my bag behind the seat.

  “What asshole?”

  “He’s not your type.”

  I smiled at the guy anyway, showing him my ticket again as if I needed to prove I was legitimate. He nodded, bobbing to the Jethro Tull blaring from the radio. The guy in the passenger’s seat was just as tall, but much better looking. He had dark hair and broad features that seemed almost American Indian, but he wasn’t. He was Hungarian and his name was Arpad. His gleaming hair was cut straight across in bangs, accentuating a wide brow, cut cheekbones. His eyes were black. He laughed when he heard our exchange then kept on laughing at some stoned diversion.

  “Everybody ready?” Teddy asked, looking at me in the rearview mirror, putting the bus in gear. His eyes didn’t seem orange when they were focused on me.

  “Onward,” I said. God, I was so happy to be going someplace else. I tapped Teddy on his bare shoulder. “Could you turn that up?” I asked him, making a twisting motion with my fingers.

  He nodded and turned the radio louder. “You got it, Mama.”

  Lance covered his ears then though
t better of it and gave Teddy directions on getting out of the parking space.

  “Too loud for you, Dad?” I asked.

  Lance ignored me and continued bossing Teddy. “Cut it, cut the wheel now!”

  A small guy was sitting on the floor in back with the bags. He was smoking a regular cigarette. He had a brown beard and a hillbilly hat. I smiled at him as an introduction and he offered me a Camel.

  “Thanks.”

  Suddenly, there was a thud on the side of the vehicle, as if we had hit something. A familiar face pressed against the bus’ window. His mouth was squashed flat, revealing everything you wanted to know about his dental history. Not a filling in his beautiful white teeth. He knocked on the window, forcing Teddy to stop, stalling the engine.

  “Whaddafuck!” he said. He yanked on the emergency brake and turned the engine over, tying to escape the lunatic.

  Lance however, opened the side door and let the Guru tumble in.

  “Thanks, man,” the Guru said, pulling up his filthy robes to climb over me and onto the love seat.

  “Sonofabitch,” he said, noticing me. “The whole family’s here.” He plucked the blue eye out of its socket, put it in his pocket, pulled his robes around him and began snoring. He had a pungent smell, like he’d foraged his dinner from a dumpster, and as he settled into a deep sleep, the odors that clung like a protective shield around his body were released to choke us.

  The ride, despite complete incompetence with the road map and basic driving skills, was not unpleasant. The dope had made everyone mellow. Even Lance told a joke, the point of which I can’t for the life of me remember now, but it was funny and he smiled at me for approval, and I have to admit, I smiled back. It may have been the only innocent thing we ever shared.

  We had to make another stop, to “pick up a chick” somewhere in West Chester, and after getting lost for two hours before we even made it out of Manhattan, everyone decided to park it there for the night. We were having fun anyway.