Strawberry Tattoo

by Lauren Henderson

  “There are lots of things I haven’t tried yet,” I said evasively. Then I wondered if that were still true. “I’ll put it on the list, right under wheat-grass shots and operating on myself without anaesthetic.” I looked up at the menu again. Once I came to terms with the lack of my favourite ingredient, I had to admit that many of the concoctions didn’t sound so bad. Avoiding anything that would have been improved by the addition of vodka, so that I didn’t get wistful, I finally went for a Blue Apple (blueberries, apple juice, non-fat yoghurt and banana), which was perfectly nice. Kim, alas, had her regular, which was wheatgrass and carrot with bee pollen and ginseng. I tried, for the sake of old friendship, not to say aloud what this concoction looked like but when she offered me some I jumped back, jibbering and shaking my head like Quasimodo on an off day.

  I was missing the old Kim with a powerful sense of loss, as I had never done before meeting her again. I had always known she was out there; I even had the painting she had given me on permanent display in my kitchen, reminding me of her. With my usual laziness I had assumed that we would meet up again one day and things would be just as they were, only we would be ten years older and maybe even able to afford the things we had shoplifted before. And probably we would have moved on from drinking lager and black; we’d catch up over vodka and tonics, get blasted together and do some speed in the loos for old times’ sake before cruising out to harass boys and lig our way into a club where we would pretend to dance around our handbags and drive DJs crazy by asking them if they had any Abba. Small pleasures, but our own. The Kim I had before me now probably eschewed dairy products, let alone tabs of acid.

  I looked at her again, familiarising myself with the bone structure that had been hidden beneath the chubby cheeks and rounded contours of her teenage years.

  “Kim,” I said, it having just occurred to me, “how come you got to stay here? I mean, isn’t it really difficult to get a green card?”

  “Oh, I married this guy,” she said blithely. “He was gay and wanted to go live in England, so it worked out great. Well, for me anyway. We lived together for a couple of years and then the irony was he got this great job offer in LA and ended up moving there instead. So much for wanting to go to London. He was always a bit of a flake.”

  “Did you stay with your dad when you got here?”

  “Not for long.” Kim’s jaw tightened. “That bitch Barbara made it pretty clear she didn’t want me around. I mean, I didn’t know anyone, it was all new to me, I was just finding my feet, and after I’d been there barely a week, you know what she says to me? With a nice smile, like she’s pretending she doesn’t know what she’s doing?”

  I shook my head.

  “‘You know, Kim, my family’s always had this old saying,’” Kim repeated, mimicking Barbara’s wispy little voice. “‘Guests are like fish, they start to smell after three days.’”

  “My God.”

  “Right. I’m seventeen, I don’t know anyone, it’s a pretty scary city, and she’s basically telling me to get out of her house and go fend for myself. Of course Dad wasn’t around when she said it, but you know what? Even if he had been, he wouldn’t have heard it. I mean, he wouldn’t have, like, processed it. He’s so blind to how jealous she is of me. Any time he sees me, she’s got to come too. And then it’s not about him and me anymore, it’s about her. As soon as she’s there, she dominates everything. Plus he’s not real when he’s with her. I mean, he’s not my dad anymore, he’s her husband. No way she’ll let him be both at once. If she could wipe me off the face of the earth, she’d have done it the moment I showed up here.”

  If I hadn’t been a recipient of one of Barbara Bilder’s powerful warning -off stares, or seen the way Jon had tiptoed round her back to give me Kim’s phone number, I would have thought Kim was verging on paranoia. As it was, none of this surprised me. There was a bitterness in Kim’s rant for which I couldn’t blame her. Though she sounded resigned as well. This wasn’t a fresh complaint.

  “I’ve pretty much come to terms with it,” she said, echoing my thoughts. “Though it was really hard at first. I felt so rejected. You know how close we all were at home. I felt he owed me for breaking that up, and he just wasn’t accepting his responsibility. Of course I’ve got beyond that now.”

  She sipped some more green muck. Some of it had stuck on her teeth, but it didn’t seem the time to tell her.

  “That’s why I never wrote back to you,” she said. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Look, I don’t remember sending you loads of information about my life either,” I said, wanting to make her feel better. “Knowing me, it couldn’t have been more than a couple of postcards.”

  “They were funny, though. It made me really happy to get them, but then I got so sad. I couldn’t write back and tell you how unhappy I was. I had to be strong, focused, you know? Or I’d just have fallen to pieces. Anyway, I got lucky. I answered this ad in the Voice, this guy looking for an English wife, and we really hit it off. I moved into his apartment right away, and he sorta looked after me. Him and his boyfriend took me under their wing. I was so fucking lucky,” she said thankfully. “Everyone’s got their coming-to-New-York story and mine’s always the happiest.” A couple of people, leaving the bar, squeezed her shoulder in greeting as they went past. She waved back at them.

  “See that girl who just left? When she first moved here, she went to stay with a guy who picked her up on the subway, an older guy, right, and he gave her her own room and everything, so she thought he was OK, and the first night she wakes up early and he’s got all these lights set up around her and he’s photographing her while she’s asleep. The next morning she wakes up feeling something itching her, and he’s got a cotton swab with Sea Breeze on it and he’s cleaning her face. He says he can’t understand why she gets upset, because all he was doing was cleansing her because her face was a little oily. Then she finds a notebook with all the good and bad things about her written down, he’s been observing all her movements around the apartment and he says at the end that on balance she only gets five out of ten as a substitute daughter.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah, she got out of there. Went to stay in a women’s hotel and then couch-surfed for a while. Still.”

  Kim pulled a face at me. I tapped at my front tooth and, understanding automatically, she wiped at her own, removing the grass. “All gone? There are some real crazies out there,” she went on. “I could tell you some stuff….”

  She was flashing a smile at me, about to embark on an even stranger anecdote. But her casual remark had made me remember Kate, who was dead, strangled only last night by a crazy person. I couldn’t grin back at Kim.

  She picked up on my change of mood at once.

  “Sam? What is it?”

  I looked at her, realising that Jon couldn’t have rung her yet. Though she was Barbara’s stepdaughter, Kim still knew nothing about what had happened at the gallery. I had the feeling that I was diving in and out of different people’s lives in a series of scratchy cuts on a speeded-up film. My head was spinning, and not because of the multivitamins in my Blue Apple. I took a deep breath, feeling a wave of post-exercise-class, travel-induced tiredness sweeping over me, intensified by the bad news I was about to relate.

  “Look, Kim, there’s some stuff I have to tell you.”

  Briefly I filled her in on the events that had happened earlier that day. Kim’s eyes became wider and wider as I ran through them. I finished with the story of Detective Frank thinking that the graffiti on Barbara’s paintings was some kind of installation, knowing that would amuse her. It did, but not for long.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said when I was done. “And Kate. Strangled. I especially can’t believe that.”

  “You knew her?”

  “She lived around here,” Kim said casually. “Everyone knows everyone else, at least by sight. It’s a village. Literally. But she broke up with this guy she used to be dating and since then I haven’t s
een her in the usual places. I guess she needed a change.”

  “Do you mean Leo? The guy she was dating?

  “You know him? How come?” There was an edge to Kim’s voice that made me curious.

  “I just heard about him from Laurence and Suzanne. And Java. Do you know them? They all work at the gallery.”

  “Java? Really pretty half-Korean girl?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ve seen her around. I remember the name, anyway.” She let out her breath on a long sigh, and glanced at her watch. “I gotta go to work,” she said.

  “I don’t even know where you work,” I said.

  “This bar called Hookah. You’d like it. Want to come along?”

  I shook my head, pleading tiredness. Also I was starving. Too many sensations were flooding in on me. Kim and I had ten years to catch up on, and the weight of all that pressed down on my shoulders as if I were fathoms deep. She looked as if she were feeling the same way. Talking to me about her father and Barbara had probably opened wounds she had thought safely scarred over long ago. We walked out onto the street in silence, hugging each other goodbye. I gave her my phone number and she promised to ring me the next day before she disappeared up the street. I found a café and got a huge sandwich to go before hailing a cab. Already my building felt like home. I greeted the doorman with such enthusiasm he looked taken aback.

  My limbs ached and my stomach felt as if Xena, Warrior Princess had been using it as a punchball. I crawled into bed and turned on the TV. Nancy had cable, and I found something called the Comedy Channel: I ate my sandwich and washed it down with a beer I had found in the fridge to the accompaniment of The Daily Show, a spoof news programme. Its presenter, besides being very easy on the eye, was blessed with a sly sense of humour, and his catchphrase was “Too much information!,” which he used to great effect.

  I knew exactly how he felt.

  Hugo woke me up at four in the morning. I had fallen asleep at ten, which is the crack of dawn for me. So when the phone rang I was in the Twilight Zone of semi-consciousness, body and brain deeply confused.

  “Who? What? Where?” I croaked, bewildered, into the receiver.

  “What’s the time?” Hugo was asking in a pointed way.

  I located the clock. “Four,” I said automatically. “Oh, right. Ha ha.”

  “You’re not pissed off with me for waking you up.” Hugo was immediately suspicious. “Why aren’t you pissed off? What have you been doing? Is there someone there with you?”

  I was so hazy I actually lifted the covers next to me to check there wasn’t a sleeping body under them.

  “Apparently not,” I reported. “Unless he’s deflated in the night. What time is it over there?” I said, trying to make my brain work. It was like starting a reluctant car on a frosty morning; it kept making turning-over noises and then giving up the struggle. I watched it from a distant perspective, as if I were having an out-of-body experience, floating up to sit on a cloud and looking down on myself through the mists of vapour. I was often like this when untimely ripped from sleep.

  “Nine,” Hugo said reluctantly.

  This did the trick. I howled with laughter. “You got up at nine in the morning to ring me! You sad bastard!”

  To Hugo and me, nine in the morning was much, much worse than four. Four might at least mean that you’d been up all night being decadent and corrupt, while nine was undeniably, teeth-flossingly respectable.

  “I had an early call,” Hugo said coldly. “I was up anyway.”

  “Liar liar pants on fire,” I retorted.

  “Try to restrain your acid wit, my love,” Hugo said in even colder tones. “You know how piercing it can be. I have to go now. I have to take my clothes off and rape a teenage prostitute.”

  “Will you manage to fit that in before going to rehearsal?”

  “Not funny.” He sounded more bitter than angostura. “Doing Pinter is nothing to this. You should see the foulness of the boy. He has poorly bleached hair and no projection. Thank God we’re doing it in the studio. The director only cast him because he wanted to get into his pantyhose.”

  “And has he?”

  “Oh, the first day. The first minute. The young thing makes Jack Nicholson look like a blushing violet. Much, much faster than shagging one of those boys from the arcade at Cambridge Circus. That’s always preceded by about thirty seconds of financial negotiations. This little tart just drops to his knees before you’ve said hello. Probably is his way of saying hello.”

  “Poor Hugo,” I said sympathetically, reading between the lines. “Director completely ignoring you?”

  Hugo sighed assent. “Not that it matters. The play is so nonexistent anyway that discussion of my character would be laughable. It’s just a series of increasingly Goya-esque tableaux with spatterings of fake blood from a different orifice each time.”

  “Ick.”

  “At least I’m not getting the worst of it,” Hugo said, cheering up a little. “That poor cow who plays the girl is completely persona non grata. I may be too old for our esteemed director’s tastes, but I’m still male, and I wear tight trousers to please him. She’s getting the silent treatment. Thank God she’s on Prozac already, it’s the only thing holding her together. Every time she has to take her clothes off he just gives her this look of contempt for having a vulva. I can’t describe how awful it must be.”

  “Does she take her clothes off a lot?” I found myself asking with rather more emphasis than I liked.

  “Sweetie,” Hugo reassured me, “I like my women to look like women. If I want a boy I’ve already got one in an hour and a half. We’re doing the frottage scene.”

  He sighed again. It was a deeply poignant moment.

  “How’s everything else going?”

  “Ooh, very, very well,” Hugo said with instant complacency. “A riot. I’m plumbing new depths of evil with Ferdinand. It’s terribly easy, I just pretend that the Duchess is being played by that shocking little tart and I come over all fiendish without even having to work myself up. And my costume’s too pervy for words.”

  That was actors all over; the same attention paid to their outfits as to the role. Hugo always said when challenged that the clothes made the man.

  I yawned again, the kind of long slow yawn that feels as if it’s turning your tonsils inside out.

  “Go back to sleep,” Hugo said, sounding guilty. “I shouldn’t have revenged myself this way. Doing Jacobean tragedy has warped my moral values.”

  “Oh, it’s OK. …” I mumbled.

  “Go back to sleep,” he said with increasing emphasis. “You’re not yourself. Ring me when you are.”

  “OK. Good luck with the frottage.”

  “Thank you so much, darling.”

  The yawn had been well timed. I had sensed that he was about to ask me how things were here, and I didn’t want to inform him that someone had been killed the evening of my arrival. Although he would never dream of telling me as much, I knew he’d start fretting about me, which wouldn’t do either of us any good. I had learned the hard way that men need plenty of protection from the harsh realities of life.

  Don rang me at eleven. Because of his accent I thought he was Hugo again, this time putting on a silly voice, and we had to battle through this initial misunderstanding before he could inform me that my sculptures had just arrived.

  “Shippers don’t seem to have fucked ‘em up any,” he said. “Which is pretty good goin’, I can tell you. Carol wants to know when you’re comin’ down to look ‘em over.”

  “How’s this afternoon?”

  “Fine by me. Any time’s fine by me. Be a nice change from cleanin’ the floor.” His drawl gave “floor” at least three syllables.

  “How’s things there?” I asked.

  “I’ve seen better. Still, the restorer lady thinks she can get thet paint offa Ms. Bilder’s masterpieces. So we’re all as happy as sandboys.”

  Did no one like Barbara Bilder? I wondered as I put
down the phone. Or was it simply sour grapes on Don’s part? Working in a gallery was the worst job for an aspirant artist. It would embitter even a Buddhist on their last life before nirvana.

  “Hey!” the doorman said as I emerged from the lift. He was the one who had been on duty when I had arrived, a tall, well set-up Hispanic guy, whose nice-looking face was unfortunately marred by the tiny pocks of old acne scars. They gave his skin the texture of an obscure and expensive kind of leather that, made into a handbag, would cost a fortune on Fifth Avenue. As human face covering it was distinctly less valuable. Context is all.

  “You’re Ms. Jones, right?” he was saying. “They find your camera?”

  Merciful providence ensured that, just in time, I remembered Detective Frank’s cover story.

  “Not yet,” I said. “They haven’t let me know, anyway.”

  He grimaced. “I wouldn’t hold out much hope. You leave something in a taxi here—well, forget the next passenger. Driver’ll boost anything that’s not tied down.”

  “You think that’s what happened?”

  He shrugged. “More than likely. They track down the driver?”

  Under this well-intentioned barrage of questions, I decided that my best course was to imitate Manuel in Fawlty Towers.

  “I know nothing,” I said regretfully, restraining myself by a hair’s breadth from doing the accent too. He might think I was taking the piss out of his.

  “Shame. Your first night in New York and something like this happens.”

  “Well, it was insured,” I said airily. “Look on the bright side, eh? Oh, I wanted to ask you something. How do I get to Strawberry Fields?” I was half-expecting him to say: “Second star on the right and straight on till morning.”

  “Oh, that’s easy!” he said cheerfully. “Just turn right on 72nd Street and keep going till you hit the park. It’s straight in front of you, you can’t miss it.”

  He looked at me more closely. “Might want to give it a few days, though,” he advised. “You hear what happened there? Girl got killed. Real nasty. Strangled, they say. It was on the news. Pretty girl, too. They showed a photograph. Oh, and we had a hold-up on 71st two nights ago. Couple kids with handguns. You might not want to walk down there at night.”