“This guy is a woman beater!” I announced to the gang of customers and fellow employees.
One of the female customers said, “That sucks.” Another walked out.
“She screwed some guy in my apartment! In my bed!” he screamed. “And I’m sure you encouraged it.” He stormed off, but still hadn’t fired me. He was content just to keep me there, suspended in his abuse.
I grabbed my jacket, along with several reams of blank paper that I could use for writing, and headed home. I called Zoë at work and explained what had just transpired. She swore that she’d never cheated on him. He walked in on her at the bar on Third and A while she was talking to Bobby Sox, the doorman at the Mercury Lounge. In front of everyone Jeff became livid, accusing her of all sorts of things.
“Were you guys kissing or something?” I asked her.
“We kissed once about six months ago. I had too much to drink, big deal.” Instantly, in a tone of fright signifying the appearance of a supervisor, Zoë concluded, “Got to go. Later!”
That day it didn’t really rain; the sky just sort of dripped, as if the gray ceiling of clouds had a thousand little leaks. I took Numb to the run, and tried to smoke and coffee my worries away, but they lingered. I went back home and tried to write some more of my fledgling novel, but the magic was gone. Anxiety was seated in its place. One needed to be in a good head to write. Dead-eyed, I watched TV in a paralyzing panic that kept me from getting a job.
For the unemployed, daytime TV viewer, the real teaser to watching all those freaky talk-show hosts or unofficial courts run by “people’s” judges, or hammy soap actors is that they all seem so amateurish: you can’t help feeling that with a little moxie you too could moderate a sex fight, or arbitrate a dispute between idiots, or act through a script filled with unlikely cliff-hangers.
That night around eight o’clock, feeling telebotomized, I stumbled out to Brownies, where I paid, got my wrist stamped, and anesthetized myself with a drink. Zoë showed up about half an hour later. We both tried to pretend that everything was Aokay.
Emily’s band, Crapped Out Cowgirls, was first in the lineup. Zoë bought me a couple of beers while Emily droned a kazoo to their first number, “You Don’t Need a Trailer to Be Trailer Trash.” Thank God she only did that for one song. The differences between my band and Emily’s band were Apes and Orangutans—they were rockabilly, while we were punk. Musician for musician, we were about the same. In the end, despite the redundancy of melody and rhythm, Sue’s songs were a notch better than Crapped Out’s. And as far as appearance, although we had to wear tight, tacky, slinky outfits, at least we didn’t have to coordinate cowboy hats and boots like they did. One of the girls in her group played a fiddle, which was nice.
Their set lasted about an hour. As they packed up, the next band, Three Mile Island, set up. The place was a snowglobe of East Village flakes; they were mainly self-deluded “youths” whose actual youth had melted away long ago. Zoë bought us a couple more drinks, and though I could see her assessing the males in the mist, she was on a guy moratorium. Amid the swirl and mix, I told her that I’d been fired from Kinko’s.
“You should apply for unemployment insurance,” she said automatically.
“I wasn’t even there a month.” I replied and asked her if she knew of any additional temp jobs where she worked.
“I wish I did,” she said politely. “I hate my own.”
Three Mile Island’s music had the toxic effects of a radiation leak. They were so loud that the only way we could continue any kind of discussion was by screaming at the top of our lungs into each other’s ears, supplemented with broad gestures. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted the young peroxide-haired community servant; presumably her Tompkins Square sentence had been served. I watched as she talked to some older man who bought her a drink. I couldn’t help but wonder how she was able to distinguish vocational from recreational sex—when to charge and when not to charge.
“Hey!” Someone yelled after one nuclear song. It was Emily. Her band had packed all their equipment downstairs, and she was now available for hanging out.
“Hey yourself,” Zoë yelled back.
“I can’t believe this one was holding out on me,” she retorted, third-personing me.
“What are you talking about?” Zoë shot back. I held my breath and realized that I still hadn’t told her about my bandification.
“She’s in a band,” Emily gushed.
“WHAT!!” Zoë exploded, rolling sound waves around her. I looked and acted defunct.
“She is in the Crazy and the Beautiful,” Emily transposed the title. “And they played at Mercury Lounge a few days ago.”
“You didn’t!” Zoë blasted.
“How dare you!” Emily added, “You called me up grilling me about Sue Wott, and the whole time you were playing with her.”
“How do I know that name?” Zoë asked suspiciously.
“She’s the crazy Chinese chick” Emily replied.
“She’s Cambodian,” I corrected.
“Oh no, wait a second.” Zoë added one plus one. “Don’t tell me this is Primo’s famous prima donna.”
“Yeah.” I came clean. “I meant to tell you.”
“Are you fucking nuts?” Zoë asked soberly.
“This is embarrassing.” At that moment the music seemed too loud and the place too dark. I headed for the door.
“You’re showcasing with my band and Purple Hooded Yogurt Squirter at CBGBs, do you realize that?” Emily asked gleefully.
“Your band is a lot better than us,” I insincerely deflected.
“I know we are,” she replied immodestly. “Want to see why?” She pointed across the room. Sitting at a table, or rather passed out with her head on a table, was a tall limp string bean of a woman. I pushed my way through the crowded darkness until I made out large heady blotches of black and blond. Norma was conked out, facedown. Emily explained to Zoë that the zonked one was the drummer in my band.
“She’s only that way because when she’s awake, she gives her all to the drums,” I elaborated.
“Are you going to claim her?” Zoë inquired.
“I know this sounds rather heartless, but I’d rather leave her and respect her than wheelbarrow her home and hate her forever.”
“You’re just going to leave her there?” Emily asked, twisting my conscience like a Twizzler. I sighed and turned to see Sue standing right behind me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her in shock.
“I came with Norma.” She pointed to the collapsed drummer. “What are you doing here?” Sue asked, stepping into the little coven, which included Zoë and Emily.
“Emily’s a friend of mine. She played tonight.” Sue shook her hand.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Zoë said eagerly, taking her hand as well.
“What did you hear?” asked the slightly paranoid one. I darted a look over to Zoë.
“Nothing.” She picked up my concern. “Just that you were Primo’s ex and all.”
“Primo?” Her silent alarm went off. “What does he have to do with anything?”
Although Zoë instantly realized that she had accidentally placed my foot down on a land mine, she had the good sense to freeze. It was Emily who triggered the bomb by stating, “Mary was Primo’s last girlfriend.”
“What?!” Only with the subtle hint of Sue exploding like a terrorist bomb did Emily realize she messed up big-time.
“What the fuck is this!” Sue followed up.
“What?” I asked.
Emily and Zoë both started backing up, either realizing they had done enough damage or not wanting to get wounded by Sue Wott’s shrapnel blast.
“You did this deliberately.” She put lock in key. “You’re some kind of sick fuck who deliberately did this to find out about me!”
“Primo died.” I laid it out for her. “He had a heart attack in my apartment a few weeks ago.”
“So what the hell do you want f
rom me?”
“He loved you. He loved you more than any of his other girlfriends.”
“So you joined my band?” It did sound insane.
“I went to the audition just to talk to you. Remember? I kept trying to talk to you, and you just kept blowing me off.”
“You didn’t have an appointment,” she remembered with widened eyes, as if she were looking at a ghost.
“All I wanted was to tell you he died and talk to you! But you’re so goddamned arrogant and egotistical that you shoved a bass in my hand and roped me into the audition, so I played it and was hired.”
“If you had something to say, you could have just said it.”
“I guess I was curious about why he loved you so fucking much, but—”
“Ah-ha!”
“But I was really only there for your kid,” I added, and paused, unable to explain that when I was a child it was a while before I learned about my father’s death.
“My kid is none of your fucking business, so stay the fuck away from me!” she yelled back. Dashing over to Norma, Sue grabbed her limp drummer around the waist and dragged her out of Brownies.
I stood there awhile before Emily came over to apologize. Zoë did likewise, but it was all my fault. I apologized for not telling them. The last band, Three Mile Island, was finishing up. The van was double-parked out front, and Emily had to help pack up and move the remainder of her band’s instruments into it.
“Are you okay?” Zoë asked me tenderly, seeing that I was emotionally dismembered.
“I’m sorry,” was all I could say to her.
“Let’s get out of here.” She led me out by the hand.
Since Zoë’s TV set had more inches than mine, we went to her place. As we headed to the Korean greengrocer, she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me you were in a band?”
“The truth is” I explained, “I felt embarrassed. I feel too old, and I’ve lived in this neighborhood far too long to have any hopes like this.”
“Amazing.” Zoë smiled back. “I go out night after night praying to find Mr. Right, but hard old Mary Bellanova can’t have any hopes.”
We bought a fat-free pint of Ben & Jerry’s Vanilla Fudge and split it watching a montage of her blockbuster video library: the last sinking half an hour of Titanic, the first destructive twenty minutes of Independence Day, and the opening forty-five minutes of girl-cliquey Heathers. That was when I said I had to watch one movie from beginning to end. She picked sex, lies, and videotape, but after the opening scene in which one sister cheats on the other with her husband, Zoë was out like a light. I felt sleepy, but decided that I didn’t want to wake up there. I headed home at four in the morning, only to find poor Numb frantic. He had to go, but he also knew that I was exhausted so as soon as I took him downstairs, he relieved himself on the pavement. I finally got to bed just as the sun was returning late from its own wild drunken night.
chapter 17
Every day is dyed its own hair color. The next day a depressing blue was cast. While lying in bed that morning, lamenting the loss of my job and band, I was yanked up by an annoyingly polite series of knocks upon my door. After two months the brand-new roommate wanted out. Caroline’s rice was cooked.
“Dorn and I found a place together in Park Slope,” she cheered.
Aside from learning that Dorn was gay, she was also going to find out that most people are lovable at a distance, up close it’s a whole ’nother story.
“Even though I was supposed to give you a month’s notice, I’m moving out today, but I’ll still pay you.”
The idea of living alone for the remainder of the month was nice, but the bleakness prevailed.
“Are you okay? You look really depressed.” She seemed concerned, which was similar to kindness.
“I just lost my job,” I replied tiredly.
“Someone told me they’re hiring people over at the Strand.”
The Strand was not just a bookstore, but a local workfare program for unemployed white slackers. They’d sit hidden in the narrow aisles on crates of books, until some bitter, rectal manager behind the inner desk yelled, “Books to go down.”
Needless to say, I couldn’t sink that low. I thanked her for her crappy advice. It was time to get back to my permanent career of temping, but not today.
The blues spread over the strands of the week and darkened as I accepted my fate and waited for my savings to run out. Perhaps as a supreme act of self-denial, I started writing again. If I could control working-class people and moderate fictitious suffering, everything seemed okay. As coffee cups littered my house and turned into ashtrays, I turned all the women in my novel into divorcees, widows, or never-marrieds. Like my own mother, though, they were all single parents.
Details breathed out of my fingers. Plots sprouted subplots. The major characters engendered minor characters. For the first time in what seemed like forever, I felt the joy of writing and stopped feeling unemployed.
Compared to playing in a band, writing was lonely business. Numb curled around my feet, and whenever I stopped typing, he’d look up at me lovingly and yawn. That week, I also had a remarkably guiltless conversation with my mother about nothing in particular, since I refused to divulge any details that she might use against me. Sako called and asked if we could meet again. Even in John Hughes’s world of teenage love, no one sucked a foot or danced around in naked ecstasy. I had to think about it. Scotty called to give his condolences about my getting fired.
“I’m sorry that Jeff is such a mega-idiot, but he’s really going through hell about his breakup with Zoë,” he concluded.
Norma called me and said when she finally sobered up, she had heard about what had happened at Brownies—about my being ousted—and she was sorry. No longer beautiful or crazy. I was now ugly and sane. She told me Sue had canceled the show at CBGBs and two other dates she hadn’t even told anyone about.
“You don’t think there’s any chance of her forgiving me, do you?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“She doesn’t even allow us to mention you,” Norma said. “She is starting auditions for a new bass player tomorrow, and this time she swears that anyone who even knows Primo will be tossed down the stairs.”
After she hung up, I thought, Primo could be selfish and petty, but he wasn’t malevolent. Whatever harm he did to Sue, he did out of weakness and sloth. Like a mutt you picked up at the pound without knowing its history, Primo was a rescue boyfriend. Any woman who was hurt by him only had herself to blame. And that slipped right into Sue Wott’s greatest frailty—her reluctance to accept blame.
Toward the end of the week, when I felt supremely entitled to some good news, Howard finally broke his silence and called me. “Can you meet me in ten minutes? I’ve got something to tell you.”
Eight minutes later at the dogrun while I waited, I figured he was going to tell me my stories had been rejected. After all, if I had been accepted, he would have told me on the phone. When he showed up, he let his dog loose and walked up to me with sad dog eyes.
“Don’t apologize,” I rushed right in. “I took a stab. No big loss. Art is about rejection.”
“Did anyone notify you?”
“No.”
“Well, no one told me you’ve been rejected either,” he said.
“My book hasn’t been rejected?”
“Not to my knowledge. All I know is, the editor called to ask where the manuscript came from and why I hadn’t done the reader’s report. I told him that it was in the stack of works he gave me, and I overlooked it. Then he gave the manuscript to another reader. About a week ago I heard that it got a good report.”
“Why didn’t you tell me a week ago?” I asked, always dying for any positive tidbits.
“I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”
“So why are you telling me now?”
“Because you’re asking,” he explained. “But this isn’t the reason I called you here.”
“Oh.”
“Do yo
u remember some time ago when you told me about that friend of yours, Joey Lucas?”
“No.”
“Remember you said you didn’t know anything about him and I mentioned running a superficial background check?”
“Frankly, no,” I replied honestly. I’m sure it all happened, but my memory was heading right down the toilet.
“I told you I had a friend who was a private investigator.”
“Oh, yeah.” The light flicked on in my brain.
“Do you know how old your neighbor is?”
“Around fifty. Why?”
“And he was born in Hoboken, right?”
“I think so.”
“Do you know if Joey is his given name or if he had a name change?”
“WHY?” I demanded.
Howard handed me a page from a small spiral notepad with three names scrawled on it:
Joseph Lucachevski, 1025 Washington Ave., born 9/11/45, died 7/20/77
Joey Lukas, 123 Clinton St., born 2/7/28,
Joe Lugars, 218 Eighth St., born 11/29/58.
“Holy shit,” I uttered.
I wasn’t a hundred percent sure if he was born in Hoboken or what year he was born, but 1025 Washington Street was the address where I had spent the first ten years of my life. He lived right above us. It would have been too much of a coincidence if there was another Joey Lucas or ethnic name that it had been derived from. According to the record in my hand, Joey had died twenty-two years ago. So who the hell was this man who over the last few years had become one of my closest friends and most trusted confidants?
“There must be some mistake,” I uttered, nodding my head.
“You want to go on a date?” Howard asked, as I wondered who had intercepted me on the Internet—that cyber-funhouse of false identities and pedophiles.
“There’s a good movie at the Angelika” he added, vividly underscoring male insensitivity.
“Fine,” I said thoughtlessly. He imparted time and place coordinates, and I walked disjointedly home, where I felt my mental floor collapse under me.
I called Joe’s number and carefully listened to his greeting: “This is me, leave a message.” A long beep signified a full tape of unheard messages, and I hung up before leaving one. There had to be some simple explanation for this. Howard and I met for a pizza at Two Boots and headed to the Angelika Film Center.
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