The next day Tasha's mother was sitting in the Palm Court of the Plaza Hotel having drinks with a friend when she noticed that everyone was staring at her. She turned and there was Felix, holding a sign above her. It said: "Baby beater." After a dozen incidents-at the theater, on the sidewalk, during (and this was truly embarrassing) a runway show presenting Givenchy's fall line-she called Charley and said all right, let's talk.
3
She forced herself to read the paragraph one more time.
Rox Van Ander and Susie Schwartz are especially fine as a pair of postmodern Brenda Fraziers whose biggest problem in life seems to be where their next gram of cocaine is coming from. The third member of the trio, Natasha Becker, is another matter. Half the time she seems faintly embarrassed by her lines, the other half she spends playing emotional catch-up. You're left wondering if she isn't a member of the technical crew who had wandered down off the catwalk to give acting a try. It's not that she phoned in her part. She faxed it.
She'd gone out early to buy the paper, opened it at the newsstand and burst into tears in front of the Pakistani vendor, who figured someone must have died. She came back and undressed and poured about a half pint of high-viscosity sandalwood bath gel into the tub and stayed there submerged in an amniotic sac of hot suds for nearly two hours. She wrapped herself in the oversize terry and was sitting in the kitchen with her knees drawn up protectively against her chest, hair slicked back, sipping cambric tea.
The stuff about the catwalk should have done it, but no, he had to go back for another bon mot, the tweedy, hyphenated little dwarf. She fantasized him in old age, alone and miserable, all his friends driven away by bon mots, poor, living in an SRO hotel with no medical insurance and itching all over from a chronic skin condition for which there was no-
Tranquilo. Forget it. Forgive your enemies, like Pops says: makes them madder than hell. Next time she ran into E. Fremont-Carter she'd smile like a lady, tell him how much she enjoyed his work and then knee him right in the balls the way Felix taught her.
It dawned on her she hadn't read past the paragraph. He had good things to say about Tim's direction, a few obligatory jabs at Podesta. Nothing more about her fax instrument, thank God, no need to waste mots on a corpse, right? What a disaster. At least there was no show tonight. So what shall we do tonight, Tash? Suicide? Nah. Two things of Stouffer's macaroni and cheese and a quart of A amp; W root beer and get into bed with P. J. O'Rourke, or his new book, anyway. So why hadn't Tim called?
She jogged all the way down to the Battery and back, better than twice her usual daily distance. Tim still hadn't phoned when she got back. Felix called from Virginia. He'd just heard about it. He said he was coming up to New York and locate this E. Fremont-Carter and tear him a new asshole, and the way he said it she knew he would. He got her laughing. Ten minutes later her grandfather called, alerted by Felix. He wanted her to come down today, now, this minute, he'd have the chopper pick her up at the East River heliport. She'd be there in time for supper. Pops. What a piece of work. His solution to everything was-send in the helicopters; America in Vietnam. She cried, not because of what the tweedy dwarf had written, but because she wanted nothing more than to get into a helicopter and fly to the farm and be taken care of, but it would be giving in. "I can't, Pops," she said. "Got to get back on the horse." Her grandfather said he was proud of her and not to pay any mind to the press, they never got it right. She said she'd call tomorrow. She put down the phone, feeling better, and rang Tim.
He said he'd been out to brunch with the new head of Williamstown, who was talking to him about being the Boris Sagal Fellow this summer. "That's great," she said. "That's fantastic." He said it wasn't real money, but Williamstown was Williamstown. He went on about it until there was a pause in the conversation the size of the skating rink at Rockefeller Center and she said, "You want to talk about the weather now?"
That got a little laugh out of him and he said, "Why don't I come over." There was something weird in his voice.
"Yeah," she said, "why don't you."
She de-cocooned out of the terry and put on white stretch pants like thick leotards and a loose black cashmere sweater and her grandmother's pearls, brushed the shine back into her hair and Visine'd the red out of her eyes. She suspected some puffiness remained. So Tim would know she'd been crying. Hell with it. What was he expecting after a review like that-the Ivory soap girl?
There was no buzzer to let people into the building, so the drill was to call from the corner phone booth-assuming the crackheads hadn't jacked it-and she'd toss down the keys. She'd moved into this apartment in a huff and a hurry after finding out her grandfather had bought the last one-and there were certain drawbacks, such as the no-buzzer situation, the radiator situation and the fire-escape situation, since presumably fire escapes weren't supposed to quiver when you put potted plants on them. But she liked the idea of tossing keys down onto the street. It was a very ethnic thing to do, tossing your keys down to a lover in the street. Hard to imagine that on a Streetcar named Sutton Place.
Muffee!
Stanley! What are you doing in that revolting T-shirt?
She waited and waited and when the phone finally rang she was… indisposed. She had the answering machine set to kick in after two rings. She could hear Tim saying, "Natasha? Hello? I'm here. Are you there? Natasha?"-puzzlement turning to impatience turning to click. Oh God. Not the best time for this to happen. He hung up just before she picked up. She went to the window and yelled. She was about to run out after him when it rang again, a reprieve. She tossed the keys. It was four floors down and the key chain was heavy, since it had to hold all the keys necessary to open a New York apartment. Tim did a cool matador's sidestep and let them smash onto the pavement. Tim, so cool. He let himself in, came up the stairs and walked in. He gave her a kiss, but it was perfunctory, somehow.
She asked if he wanted something to drink. The way he said no was all business. He had his leather briefcase with him. Snap, snap. He took out the paper, prefolded to the review, and laid it on the coffee table. Wonderful. You want me to recite it from memory? Then he reached into his pocket and took out a small vial full of white powder, which he set on the table next to the review.
"What," she said, "is that?" though she knew exactly what it was.
"This," he said, "is your authenticity."
It had come up a few times during rehearsals, always to one side so as not to embarrass her in front of Rox and Susie, who, to judge from their authenticity, had hoovered half the Peruvian gross national product up their nostrils. Their authenticity was so for-real it wouldn't get past a dope-sniffing dog.
"Tim," she pleaded. He picked up the review and read the paragraph out loud, as though he agreed with it. Her eyes welled.
"It's complicated for me," she said. She hadn't told him about her alcoholic father or her alcoholic mother. She started to, once, but it sounded stupid and self-pitying. Why not just say she'd tried it once and was allergic. Everyone understood allergies; allergies are so much easier to justify than abstinence.
He read the paragraph out loud again. "Timmy," she said. "Please."
"Natasha, if the role called for you to play the piano, you'd take piano lessons. You don't have to become Alicia de Larrocha, but you'd want to know where your fingers went."
"Uh-huh, and to do Whose Life Is It Anyway? you'd want me to go sever my spinal cord?"
"That's reductionist. We're talking about locating a precise emotion. As it stands, you're improvising." He held up the review. "And it shows."
"Will you stop waving that thing."
"Actor's choice, Natasha. That's what it's about."
"Funny," she said. "I thought it was about whether or not I do snort cocaine."
"Louis Malle once told me, he said, 'You put an extra next to an actor and nine times out of ten the actor ends up looking like an actor and the extra looks like the real thing. Why?' You know how Louis talks-"
"No, Tim. I haven't met
Louis Malle."
"You'd like him. And I think he'd like you." Tim did Louis Malle's accent: "'Because the actor is an actor. He isn't real.'"
"Great. So I should aspire to be as good as an extra, is this the moral?"
"I'm not into morals, Natasha." Tim stood up and went to the window. It was just for effect. "I spoke with Bernie and Karen this morning."
"Yes," she said, trying to sound casual, but he'd gotten her attention.
"I think I made it all right."
"Just tell me, Tim."
"They're not happy."
"They were happy Thursday night."
"Time flies. What's happened is they had a call from the Schumpelmann Organization."
"Oh," said Tasha. The show might move uptown? Tim was giving her this look: And you may not be coming.
"Thanks, Tim."
"Don't shoot the messenger." He sat down beside her and stroked her hair. "I just want it to work for you. I think we can get to where Bernie and Karen will be happy again. It's not over till the fat lady sings." The fat lady was Tim's code for the New York Times theater critic. "If we get to where we need to be before she sings I think we're all going to be happy, me, you, Bernie and Karen."
Actor's choice: her life had suddenly boiled down to making Bernie and Karen happy by snorting cocaine. In its own shabby way it was like Noel Coward having to sleep with a rich woman to get backing. What will you do, Noel? Hold my nose and think of England. So how do you hold your nose and snort coke? "All right," she said heavily.
"Do you have a mirror or something?"
Tim chopped it up into three-inch-long lines, perfect replicas of the lines of milk powder they used onstage. He rolled up a fifty-dollar bill, the same they used in the play, a preview-night gift from Bernie and Karen-maybe they'll have it bronzed if the show goes uptown-and handed it to her. Her fingers were shaking.
"It's all right," he said.
"Will you do it with me?"
"I don't do cocaine."
"Jesus, Timmy. I'm nervous."
"You'll be fine. And don't sneeze. This cost a hundred and a quarter."
"Where did you get it?"
"One of the ushers."
"Which one?"
"Whichever. I'm not sure I even know his name."
She stared at the cocaine. "Is it-"
"It's good," he said, "the best. Authenticity, right?"
She did one line, then another. It did not burn, which Tim said was a sign of good cocaine. Her gums went numb until she could tap her front teeth and they felt like pieces of tile. She felt enormous energy and confidence and segued right into her coke soliloquies, Tim nodding, making notes, even smiling here and there, something he never, ever did during rehearsals. She felt happy, as happy as she could ever remember. It was like freeze-dried happiness crystals, just add nose and boom. After a while it didn't even feel chemical. No question about it, Tim was right, authenticity was everything, she couldn't wait to get back up onstage-too bad no show tonight, she was ready, instrument tight as catgut-and mix it up with old Rox and Susie. Tim was chopping up more lines. She did the "coke whore" bit where she pretends to be fascinated, enthralled, mesmerized by the guy doling out the coke. She went into an ad-lib riff about how much she admired Tim's work and how she'd been following his career for so long. It was so authentic it actually seemed to annoy him.
Then came a point where no matter how long the lines were they didn't seem to work as well and suddenly the room began to feel very warm. She went to open the window and Tim said, "Are you kidding? It's freezing in here. Don't you have heat?" He went over and started inspecting the radiator the way men do when they pretend to have mechanical knowledge, getting down on his knees and saying in that male way: No wonder, there's no thromboggletoggle on this thing and I haven't got my tools with me. She would have been amused by this and maybe even incorporated it into the soliloquy she was doing, except she wasn't feeling well, she was feeling hot and it was getting hard to breathe. She felt her forehead. It was like ice. Her hand, she noticed, was shaking almost violently. Was this-was this normal? "Tim?"
The way he looked at her scared her. "Tim?"
"You okay? Tasha?"
She was on the floor now, looking up at the ceiling, which the super had been promising to have painted for the last five months-yeah, right. Someone was piling cinder blocks on her chest, making it very hard to breathe.
"Timmy?" It hurt to speak. Her throat was like a kiln. Tim was holding her forehead and her hand.
"Pops?" she said. "Felix?"
***
He pulled up her sweater and put his ear to the round of her bosom and listened. There was no sound, only the pounding in his own chest.
Fuck fuck fuck. Shit shit shit. Fuck fuck fuck.
He put his hand to her throat the way he'd seen in the Vietnam movies. Nothing, just his own pulse. His hand was shaking now. Jesus, what was this, transference?
Still on his knees beside her, he thought: Dial 911. He went for the phone and he had the phone in his hand when he thought: Hold on, hold on a second. What is the point of dialing 911 now? There was no emergency. She was dead. Sweet Jesus, this couldn't be happening. Please. Rewind the tape. We're going to shoot this scene over. Rewind, goddamnit, I am not happy with this scene.
The clock on the bookshelf said ten after six. Just move the big hand back five minutes, that's all. Five minutes. Okay, ready? Okay, let's take it from the middle of page 17: "She needs to go on a low-semen diet." There's no "rewind" on the machine, only "play."
You're panicking. Stop it. Think. Breathe. In, out-slow, in, out-slow. Okay. Call 911. All right. All right. All right. I'm going to. Just a moment here. What do I say? Do I say: There's been a little problem with cocaine here and… Jesus, this is not a "little problem" here, this is a major fucking disaster. The mirror, the coke, the razor, Bernie and Karen's fifty. Great. Wonderful. Is this your cocaine? No, Officer. Well, whose is it? You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney… What the hell happened? Is this what happened to the Kennedy kid, to that black basketball player? No. Those two were doing, like, massive quantities. There's still half a gram left here. Jesus, Ramirez, what kind of coke is this? So good you drop dead? You Puerto Rican piece of shit, Ramirez. Well, you're in it same as me, pal, up to your fucking-
Stop. Breathe from the diaphragm. Okay, flush the coke down the toilet. Wait a minute. They'll do an autopsy, they'll find the coke one way or the other. They'll find the coke and then I'm dead too. Might as well be. Probably end up envying her for Chrissake.
Look, make a choice. Call 911 or get out of here. It's not like you're going free. My God, this is going to be with you for the rest of your life. The rest of your life. Jesus, it's like Frank Capra in reverse, It's a Horrible Life. Rikers Island. Great. If you're lucky you'll get for a roommate the guy who killed John Lennon, or Joel Steinberg. Joel can keep me up all night explaining to me how he didn't really kill Lisa. It was really Hedda. Great, fucking great, Tasha. Is that what you want? Me and Joel fucking Steinberg in the same cell. Me and, and, and Mark David Chapman in the same cell? Mark can read to me from The Catcher in the Rye, tell me which of Lennon's songs he liked best, "Day in the Life" or "Imagine." Can you see me in there, Tasha? Doing Chekhov at Rikers Island with Black Muslims? The Three Sisters? Can you see it? After the show, instead of a cast party they sodomize the director. Maybe I'll get AIDS and they'll let me out early on humanitarian grounds. Tasha, for Christ's sake, get UP, please get up off the floor.
He was in the bathroom now, splashing water on his face. His heart was beating. He put his hand over his chest to try to slow it down.
He found a handkerchief in her bedroom and used it to wipe his fingerprints off the glass vial and the mirror. He wiped every surface he thought he might have touched. The fifty-better take that too. Knowing fucking Bernie, he wrote down the serial number.
Let's see. The review. The page was folded over to show the review. It was lying t
here right next to the coke. Move it a bit closer to the coke? Or is that too obvious? Yes, that's too obvious. Leave something for the audience to put together on its own. The review is fine where it is. Wait, is a cop going to notice something like a review? Should the paragraph be circled in red or yellow-highlighted? No, that's too much. But it needs something else.
He held the vial with the handkerchief and knelt and put Tasha's still-warm thumb and index finger on it-was she right-handed? yes, she was right-handed-and pressed them there. Then he held the vial up to the light and saw what looked like a print.
Okay, let's get this scene on its feet. Let's block the scene. The cops walk in the door, the first thing they see is the body. Then they see the coke on the table. Are they going to see the review? They'll come back to the review. The first cop leans over you and the second cop goes to the coke and puts his finger in it and tastes it and, like, nods. Good shit. Thanks to you, you rat bastard, Ramirez. Okay, then he sees the review, and he picks it up and reads it. And the second cop says: So why weren't all the locks on the door locked-
Keys. Good, the door needs to be locked from the outside so it looks like she locked it from the inside.
Wet Work Page 3