“Not enough. Initially I took the job out of curiosity, but now I’m hoping it’ll give me the confidence to finish my book.”
He laughed and observed, “You join a band for one reason and stay in for another, and here with this manuscript it’s the same thing.”
“Things start out one way and then turn out being another,” I summed.
“I know exactly what you mean.” He laughed and looked off. “I sure as hell never thought I’d be living the life I’m in now.”
“Amen to that.”
“Tell me about your book?”
“I hate talking about my writing.”
“Did it start out as one thing and turn into another?” He always seemed so totally amazed at me, which I suppose was a key reason that I couldn’t help but love him.
“I told you about it, remember?”
“Oh, this is the group of stories about people working at the mall.”
“Sort of, it’s employees working in different franchises and their relationship to their jobs.”
“You know, I don’t mean to—” He caught himself. “No, forget it.”
“What?”
“Well, when you first told me about this idea, I remember thinking this but not saying anything.”
“Go ahead.”
“What’s so interesting about a bunch of people and their jobs?”
“Until the last twenty years or so people got a sense of pride and even identity out of their jobs. They had careers. My generation, though, consists mainly of people who despise their jobs and have to find other things to look forward to.”
“How big is your book?”
“Small.” I held up a space of about a half an inch between two fingers. “Around a hundred and thirty pages.”
“What franchises do you skewer?”
“I don’t skewer any of them. In fact some of the people love and fight for their franchise. I have a guy who works in one coffee franchise who attacks the managers of a nearby Starbucks and Pasqua’s ’cause they’re doing better than his small chain.”
“Oh, I like that one.”
“Thank you.”
“You might be onto something. People need something to live for, even if it’s just a bet. They make nothing into something.” He took another sip of his coffee, then, pulling his chair up to me like a child, said, “So tell me another story.”
“Well, my first story in the collection is about an African-American girl who works at a McDonald’s, and her life is falling apart.”
“Blacks got it tough.” Real humility.
“Nowadays the preferred phrase is African American.”
“All right, go ahead.”
“When the McDonald’s she works at has a week-long special on Big Macs, she meets a senior citizen who is kind of a homeless person—”
“An old fart who’s a bag man,” he politically incorrected, just to needle.
“Anyway, with just friendship and common sense he helps her get her act together, and of course his name is Mac.”
“I like that,” Joey said suddenly. “The guy is kind of—” He didn’t finish the sentence. “How does it end?”
“After the hamburger sale is over, he vanishes.”
“So the guy is a magical hamburger. Sounds sad. I’d love to read your stories,” he said and took a roll of cash out of his wallet. “Where are you going now?”
“To Odessa’s to finish reading this and then off to practice.”
He walked me up the block, which was buzzing with riffraff and rock-and-rollers. Then, giving me a peck on the cheek, he said good night and told me to call him if any unsavory boyfriends appeared. I ordered a tea in the rear of the overlit diner, where the greasy fumes filtered through my hair.
Back to The Manstrument: Over time, Beatrus, the lonely probate lawyer, keeps returning to the secret mechanical chair, which turns out to give her power-infusing acts of sexual fulfillment. Several chapters go on about her weird, freaky fantasies, and how the manstrument doesn’t merely understand and cater to them but even surpasses them. Although the evolution of her fantasies was interesting, I found it patronizing to read a male’s take on female sexuality. I skipped ahead to see the result of all these bizarre orgasms. Beatrus starts losing weight, her skin clears up, and she begins to shine. As she senses a greater interest from the guys around her, she buys a new wardrobe, gets a hot new makeover, a vogue hairdo, and seems to have a newfound power. Although guys start making overtures to her, she has learned the trick of surviving without them.
One man, however, tickles her fancy. Hendersen, a handsome rogue, is utterly infatuated with her. The only problem is, he is the adversarial attorney, representing a group that is contesting the will of Else Lancet, owner of the manstrument. Skipping ahead, Beatrus decides to take a chance and get down with the lawyer. He in turn snoops about and discovers her autoerotic secret, but in so doing, he inadvertently breaks the sacred seat. The big stupid finale occurs when Hendersen is faced with the awful dilemma: he can make love to Beatrus and manually infuse her with power, or he can deny her love and win his case. He nails her, sacrificing his profession, but they end up living happily ever after together.
At a quarter to ten, I left a buck on the table and dashed out. I walked hastily past the scruffy homeless and unwashed urchins that give Avenue A its vomitous charm. I barely had time to fetch Primo’s trusty rusty bass and dash off to Context Studios. In the same way a bad meal lingers on the palate, the book haunted me with its pointlessness. No chair ever made love to me, not even in my dreams.
I rang the bell at Context Studios, but no one buzzed me in. After five minutes, as someone was leaving, I entered and jumped nervously on the tired freight elevator, which slowly lurched upward. I braced myself as we leveled onto the third floor, expecting Sue Wott to scream about my being late. When the attendant threw open the door, though, a touching sight was awaiting me. Sue Wott was sitting on the fleabitten sofa, gently rocking a beautiful child in her lap, whispering silly things into his ear, stroking his soft fine hair as only a mother could. As I walked up to them and looked for the young boy’s resemblance to Primo, I felt myself melt into a smile. He looked so handsome, and I couldn’t tell if he was well-behaved or just tired. His cute little arms went up as he yawned, and he smacked his little lips together. I watched as his mother gave him a tiny kiss.
Then she looked up at me: “What the fuck are you so happy about? You’re five minutes late,” the bitch said softly, torpedoing my mood. “We’re all in there waiting, paying for your lazy ass—in fact, you’re fined five bucks!”
“I’m broke,” I said tiredly.
“I’ll take it out of your cut,” she retorted.
I threw open the door and entered the space. Everyone quickly readied their instruments as Sue ran down the rehearsal program.
“First we’re going to go over some changes to There’s Slime in My Bucket’—I want to try it with more of a back beat. Then we’re going to do ‘Fuck You ’Cause You Can’t,’ but this time we’re going to do it right—understand, Marilyn?” Poor Marilyn understood.
We began rehearsing and worked our way down the list, replaying the songs and parts of songs over and over. After two insufferable hours of her prima donna-ing, we took a break.
Norma stepped out for air, cigarettes, and other motivational goodies. Without asking permission, I came along. A greengrocer was right downstairs. She silently selected her items and dropped her bill on the counter.
“So, how long you been playing?” I asked politely.
“Since ’seventy-three,” she said without looking at me. Norma had this timeworn defeated quality, as though she taught Throwing in the Towel 101 at the Learning Annex. I could see the subtle signs of drug use on her vanquished face. I decided to cut to the chase. “So you know Primo Schultz?”
“It’s a small, uncomfortable world.” In other words, yes.
“I heard you played his bass too,” I said with a smile.
&
nbsp; “Who told you that?” I saw a spark of life in her Frankenstein cold eyes.
“I promised I wouldn’t tell,” I said earnestly. I didn’t know how close she was to Sue, and didn’t want to jeopardize tiny dancer Lydia’s confidence.
“What did you hear?”
“That you were married to him.”
“Oh that, that was Sue’s bright idea. I had a job back then with health insurance, and she figured if we got married, he could join my plan and get into a good rehab center. He was in it pretty bad back then.” Another scam—it figured.
“So the marriage was bogus?” Like everything else in the man’s fraudulent life.
“It started out as bogus, but—”
“But what?”
“Things got serious.” That figured too. Primo couldn’t even pull off a good scam. “Sue doesn’t know about that.”
“Well, she won’t hear about it from me.”
“You know,” she said, giving her own twist to the Primo phenomenon, “sex for most guys is all about conquest or thrill, but for Primo, I always thought sex was just reassurance that you liked him.”
Inasmuch as I had been cuckolded by the man, I was dying to know if this rationale included even a twinge of guilt for cheating on her best friend, but it didn’t seem fair to reward her candor with guilt.
We headed back into the old building and up the elevator, where we caffeinated, nicotined, glucosed, and resumed our places for the second half of Sue’s instructive abuse. Afterward she mentioned that we had only one more run-through before our big show at Mercury, and because of scheduling conflicts, we all agreed to come to rehearsal early. Staring at me, she said showtime would be at seven-thirty, and we should all make an effort to come on time. Then I watched as she packed up her few things. Norma and Marilyn grabbed all the instruments as Sue lifted her little boy in her arms, and downstairs we all went.
“Do you need any help?” I offered, feeling sorry for the tiny Primo, who was waking up so late from his deep sleep.
“Yeah,” she replied. “I’m getting evicted. If you hear of any available apartments, let me know.”
Marilyn and Sue piled into a cab, and I headed west with Norma.
chapter 12
Sunday I remained in bed, dreaming that my credit card debt was as easy to pay off as my sleep debt. I surrendered the mattress when I was unable to squeeze any more rest out of it, and jumped into my old swivel chair, flipping on the computer. I was eager to finish the reader’s report and get paid. I flipped through The Manstrument and keyboarded out a brief synopsis, then delivered my verdict on Beatrus, the tortured fly stuck in Tech Web’s web:
This bizarre wish fulfillment of female isolation reads like something conceived in the last century without any of the gothic flourishes. Tech Web knows nothing about women. In fact, Tech would have had a far more interesting novel if he completely dropped the stock female victim and just focused on his erotic chair. It would have been amusing if a carousel of lovers sat on this vibrating throne. What if the President of the United States sat in the chair? Or if a gay person sat in it? Or Tech? How would the machine’s fantasies change? Why was this a manstrument? Was there a womanstrument? If we discovered at the end that Hendersen was using one, and they each needed each other, the story might have balanced out. Otherwise the book seems to suggest that all a woman needs is a good screw. This might make an amusing R-rated Twilight Zone episode, but I personally would unplug The Manstrument.
As I was rereading, redrafting, and tightening up the report, the phone rang. When I rose to stretch, the dog jumped around me like it had won the lottery. It desperately wanted to check the new day’s pee stains. I let the phone machine screen.
“Hi Mary, it’s Zoë, you there?” I picked up.
“Listen, Jeff has a really sweet roommate named Psycho. He says when he saw you on that first night at the Mercury Lounge, he thought you were a dream.”
“I don’t recall anyone else that night.”
“He says he remembered you. Says you were wearing cool shoes.”
As best as I could recall, I was wearing the tacky white cowboy boots I almost always wore at night.
“He’s sexy and available, and if you come with us, we can all hang out together.” The idea of spending time with Kinko Kong while not getting paid—let alone getting felt up by some goofy, bootlicking roommate named Psycho—so that Zoë and I could babble between breast and butt squeezes struck me as repulsive.
“I’m going to have to pass,” I said impatiently.
“What’s the matter with you?” She immediately picked up on my disgust.
“Nothing,” I said, reluctant to be the bearer of bad boyfriends.
“Bullshit, something’s bugging you. Just say it.”
“I think you’re moving too fast with this Jeff guy.”
“Things are moving fine. Thank you.”
“And what happens when he gets tired of you?” I asked, committed to telling all. “He’s going to dump you like they all do.”
“Hell with you, Mary. Just ’cause you’re not happy doesn’t mean you got to piss on everyone else.”
“Hey, you told me to tell you two months ago,” I reminded. “You told me to warn you if you ever jump into the sack too quickly with a man, remember?”
“All right, so I’m warned.”
She hung up the phone, and I felt a trace of guilt: she had gone through all the trouble to try to set me up on a date, and I didn’t even have the decency to meet this clown. I called Tattoo Man, eager to see if I could trade my just-completed reader’s report for fifty bucks and another manuscript. He picked up on the first ring.
“Hi,” I commenced, “I finished The Manstrument.”
“How was it?”
“Crapament.”
“You have the report done?”
“It’s in my computer. Did you say you had another novel?”
“That’s the spirit.” Tattoo asked, “Can you meet me in the park in fifteen minutes?”
“Actually, I need a bit more time than that,” I replied. We settled on half an hour. I jumped into the shower, took some of Carolina’s many vitamins, brushed my teeth, and dressed. Then I grabbed doggie and dashed out the door. Downstairs I stopped at the Arabs’, where I got a pack of American Spirits and coffee, and then took Numb to the Tompkins Square dogrun. I sat on the benches, slurped coffee, and smoked myself calm as the dog romped around with his peers. A homeless guy and a teenage girl both bummed cigarettes off of me as I fuzzed out and recollected details of that weird encounter with Alphonso the other night in front of Opaline.
“Hey, gorgeous.” I turned to see Tattoo Man walking around the gates, entering the canine corral. He took a seat next to me.
“You okay?” he asked, picking up on my preoccupation.
“I had this weird situation the other day. I met this guy and we went on a date and he turned into a dangerous ex-convict.”
“Shit, do you need a manly interdiction or something?” he offered timidly.
“Actually, that’s the problem. I already had one. Remember Joe?”
“The gangster.”
“He grabbed the guy and scared him off.”
“Sounds good.” He seemed relieved.
“It was just so smooth and proficient. I mean Joey instantly saw the guy for what he was.”
“Sounds really good,” he repeated.
“It was like something out of a movie. What haunts me is, how the hell did he know so quickly?”
“You think maybe your old neighbor really is a hoodlum?”
“Well, he said he was a corrections officer.”
“So that explains it.”
“But it just made me realize that I really don’t know this guy. I mean he’s been like my best friend for a few years now. He’s had more than enough opportunities to sleep with me, rob me, even kill me. I utterly trust him, yet I just realized that I don’t really know him.”
“Well, I know a lawyer who ha
s a private investigator who works in his office.”
“Are prison records open to the public?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but some things are public record, like birth certificates. Where is he from?”
“He said he was born in Hoboken—that’s where I first met him, anyway.” I handed him the reader’s report along with The Manstrument.
“You know, the publishing industry is notoriously slow in paying its authors,” he said.
“You’re kidding.” I was seriously strapped for cash.
“Tell you what,” he said, taking the money out of his wallet. “I’ll advance you this out of my pocket.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, feigning timidity.
“Sure.” He gave me the cash, then skimmed the reader’s report as I traded a little of my own spirit for another American Spirit.
“Good, that should be fine,” he said, upon completion.
“Who is this guy, Tech Web?” I asked.
“He’s an Asian girl. She lives in the area. Her address is on the envelope.”
“An Asian!”
He smiled at my astonishment. At that moment it occurred to me that while reading the novel yesterday in Alt.café an Asian girl had interrupted me in the middle. When I was rather abrupt toward her, she jumped and ran. Could it have been Tech? If I had known Tech was some mousey little thing writing such a masochistically bold work—candidly discussing her pains, which now in retrospect must have been autobiographical—I would have hugged her and written a glowing report.
“Hold it a second,” I said, grabbing the report.
“What?”
“I didn’t know it was a woman,” I explained.
“What does it matter?”
“It’s different if it’s a woman.”
“All right, it’s a man then, okay.” He pulled the report from me. Then, as if giving me a new doggie toy, he said, “Here, have a field day with this one. It’s written by a tall white man.”
He handed me a slimmer manuscript. I took it out of the envelope. Stark by Elgin Freehold, looked weird from the very font. It had a freaky epigram from Aleister Crowley, a scary guy:
Not thirst in the brain black-bitten
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