Over My Live Body

by Susan Israel

  “I ‘m still going to see if I can take civil action,” I say, holding out my brandy snifter for more. “That’s my only hope unless something else… develops.” I shudder. “But I can’t do anything about it until Monday when the courts are in session. And it’s basically my word against his. I’m a sculptor of slender body and slenderer means who has to pose nude in order to make any extra living money. Ivan works for a fat cat investment firm. Who’s the judge going to believe?”

  “Get a good lawyer.”

  “With what? My looks?”

  “Seems like they’d suffice to me.”

  This is one of those times I damn God for not making Morgan straight. I take another sip of brandy, then another. The paintings on the wall start to look even more abstract to me. If I have one more drink, the room, like my life, will start to spin out of control. And I’ll lose my appetite. I can’t afford to lose my appetite. This is a dinner party. I’m not likely to be able to feed myself this well for months. The aroma radiating from the kitchen is enough to make my stomach growl and make me think about something other than who’s going to be waiting for me when I go home tonight. I owe it to myself not to face potential danger on an empty stomach. I think of how participants in marathons eat platefuls of pasta the night before the run. My circumstances are probably going to require a whole lot more than carbo loading, but it’ll do for now.

  “Tagliatelle en brodo,” Vittorio announces with the beaming pride of a parent delivering his own offspring.

  “Dinner is served,” Morgan interprets cheerfully.

  Morgan seats me to his left. He passes me a soup bowl and fills it to the brim. He passes me a basket filled with loaves of pannetone and focaccia squares, after which he passes the lasagna pan for people to help themselves. Next come the plates of veal piccata. I’m eating so much that I’m afraid I’m going to pass out. I can’t remember what I did with my brandy snifter. Every time Vittorio and Morgan look at each other, they glow brighter than the candles in the centerpiece. I can’t remember the last time anyone made me glow like that.

  Vittorio uncorks the champagne I brought and sighs, “Ecco fatto!” as foam spews over the rim of the bottle like lava from Mount Etna. Morgan holds out long-stemmed glasses, two at a time, to be filled.

  “I’d like to propose a toast.” Gary, one of Morgan’s friends, stands up behind his lover Abel’s chair and puts one hand on his shoulder caressingly.

  He raises his glass of champagne with the other. “To Morgan and Vittorio. May they stay happy and healthy together for a very long time. May they be an inspiration to their friends here, gay and straight.”

  “May no harm touch these two,” another friend says.

  “May I find someone who looks and cooks like Vittorio.”

  I take a sip from my glass. I wonder if I’m going to have room for whatever’s going to be for dessert. I wonder if a diced and sliced me is somebody’s idea of a just dessert. A person I don’t even know. Or somebody I know all too well. The sudden wail of an alarm outside coincides with the ringing of the phone and makes me jump. I feel the champagne bubbles go up my nose. Morgan pats my hand and refills my glass. Vittorio mutters “Scusi” and pulls his chair out with a screech. Morgan stiffens as Vittorio picks up the phone and babbles into it in broken English. He stretches the phone cord to the limit as his voice rises.

  “I wonder who that could be,” Morgan says. “How can they have the nerve to call him here, tonight. What do they expect, him to drop everything and…”

  I put my hand on his wrist. “He’s here with us, not there.”

  The call doesn’t take long. Vittorio waves his hands at Morgan.

  “Mangia, mangia,” he insists. “Is nothing. Bad connection. Wrong number.”

  “He’s bullshitting me to make me feel better.”

  Vittorio blows Morgan a kiss across the table. “Later I make you feel better.”

  11

  It’s a couple of hours later and I’m not feeling better at all.

  “I’m going to call you a cab,” Morgan insists as I hesitate at his door on my way out.

  “Yes, I’m a cab all right, fast and reckless, careening toward trouble.”

  And yellow. Very, very yellow. I kiss his cheek. “Thanks for the dinner. It was great. I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.”

  I’m not sure how long that might be.

  “You’ve had way too much to drink to be able to get home okay. Wait here. Vittorio’s going to wait outside. He’ll buzz to let us know when the cab comes.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Ten after eleven.”

  “I better check my messages.” I turn on my cell phone and encounter a dark screen. I forgot to charge it. “Uh, maybe I don’t want to check my messages. Honest, Morgan, I can walk a couple of blocks and grab an uptown bus. It’s not that late. I’ll be okay.”

  “No,” he protests. “I won’t have you doing that, Delilah. I don’t want anything to happen to you. I feel responsible. You’re bombed. Anyone could tell. Never mind Ivan the Terrible, you could be mugged by some street criminal or worse. You’re an easy hit.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I mumble, “I guess.”

  A staccato buzz behind me makes me jump.

  “Your cab, ma’am,” Morgan pats my hand. “You’ll be okay?”

  I squeeze his hand. “Happy anniversary,” I say for the twentieth time tonight and take the service elevator down to the street level. Vittorio nods and says, “Ciao.” I kiss his cheek too and smile my thanks tentatively, at a loss for what else to say as I crawl into the cab. Vittorio speaks very little English and the only Italian I know is ripped off from memorized menus. Morgan and Vittorio seem to get around the barrier just fine; the thing they have going has a language of its own.

  “Where to,” the cabbie grumbles.

  “Corner of Seventh and Christopher,” I tell him. He thrusts the cab into gear. I think of places where I could use the phone, where I’d be safe, one per each tick of the meter. Sachi lives on Prince Street. I could always backtrack to Prince Street if I absolutely had to.

  Nobody would probably answer the buzzer if I did.

  “Keep the change,” I tell the cabby after he drops me off and I’ve handed him a bill that Morgan slipped to me on my way out of his place.

  The cabby unfurls the bill and blasts the horn at me before I’ve had time to step onto the curb. “Hey, girlie, this ain’t enough.”

  “It’s all I have.”

  “You owe me two more bucks. Plus the tip.” He gestures wildly at the leather pouch slung over my shoulder. “Big bag like that, you gotta have more than booze and condoms in there. You’re not gonna stiff me. Try looking.”

  “What did I give you?” I turn to slam the door. Instead I lean back into the cab, a move he didn’t expect, and I recognize Alexander Hamilton’s face before it disappears into the cabby’s grimy pocket. “Like I said, keep the change. And I hope you do get stiffed before you’re through for the night!” I yell over my shoulder. I most definitely am not as drunk as I thought. The buzz has forced me to be more on guard than ever. I bump into two people in Sheridan Square and mumble, “Excuse me,” then realize they’re statues and back away. I cross over to Christopher Street and head for shelter in a bar I was taken to once by a guy I dated when I first came to the city, before I began to model, before I met Ivan. I’m tipsy and I’m elbowing my way through a Saturday night crowd in a bar, looking for a pay phone. Do they even exist any more? Most of the clients here probably have portables in their pockets, along with their little black books. Most are gay.

  “What will you have?”

  I clear my throat. “A telephone.”

  A guy to the right of me laughs. “That’s a new one on me. How do you make that? Vodka? Vermouth? Tell Chuckie here, he can mix just about anything.”

  I ignore him. “I need to use your phone,” I tell the bartender.

  “You going to order something?”

  “I
’ve already had more than enough.”

  “You can’t just walk off the street smelling of booze you didn’t get here and expect me to hand over the phone to you.”

  I lick my lips. “Please. I think I might be in trouble.”

  “I’ll get you a drink,” the guy to my right says, “not a telephone. No one here knows how to produce that. How about a scotch and soda?” He leans in closer. “Nah, you’re more the sweet liqueur type. I can practically taste it on your lips.”

  The bartender scowls and slams a big black phone on the faux-marble bar. “Keep it short,” he snaps. I start to press buttons but my hand freezes on the fourth digit as I see Ivan walk by outside. Someone who looks a lot like Ivan, anyway. Maybe I am as drunk as I thought. I slam the receiver down and duck, pushing away from the bar. Someone laughs behind my back. “Guess she expected a princess phone.”

  I go outside and look to my left. Then my right. I don’t feel safe using a payphone out here, even if I could find one. I don’t dare go in any other place to try to call home. Better to be home. I see someone in a uniform in a doorway a few feet behind me. A cop. What a relief. Who says they’re not there when you need them? I step off the curb so he can see me, so he can see if anyone steps out of the shadows and grabs me. I head east up Christopher Street, weaving around other pedestrians, mostly males, most of them with other men. I cross West Fourth Street. I’m almost there. Every time I hear footsteps gaining on me, I spin around. No one I know. I don’t even see the cop any more, just every exhaled breath in front of me. It smells like Cointreau. If someone lit a match, I’d probably ignite. I run the last two blocks and grab the railing leading up to where I live. My fingernails knock off a chunk of peeling brown paint, exposing a layer of still darker brown paint and rust. I fumble with the key. Dampness makes the door stick; a really good shove unglues it. The door slams against the backstop, the beveled glass window rattles in its frame.

  As I weave up the stairs, I hear a door open. My next-door neighbor Mrs. Davidoff looms above me in a quilted blue bathrobe and fuzzy scuffs. As I come closer, she takes a tissue out from under her sleeve and dabs at her nose, then stuffs it back out of view. She’s looking me over good and her expression is telling me I haven’t been good at all. Like the times she’s stared me down in the hallway the mornings after Ivan and I had sex. For a woman well into her eighties, she hears everything. And sees and smells pretty efficiently too.

  “I wonder, Miss Price, if you could ask your friends to please refrain from banging on your door…”

  “I’m sorry about last night, Mrs. Davidoff, I’m really terribly sorry…”

  “I’m not talking about last night, dear. I’m talking about tonight,” she sniffs.

  “Tonight?”

  “About nine o’clock. I know it was nine because I was just starting to watch Real Housewives when I heard him.”

  “Him?”

  “Your young man. Well, one of them, anyway, the one you’re usually with. You should maybe tell him if you’re not going to be home, so he doesn’t come here knocking on doors and kicking and yelling. I’m an old woman. It’s not good for me, all this excitement. At first I didn’t know who it was. It went on for so long that it frightened me, I had to call the police.”

  “You called…the police?” I feel like bending down and kissing her.

  “To make whoever it was stop. I looked through the peephole and saw it was him, so I opened the door a crack to tell him he’d better go or he’d probably be arrested for disturbing the peace. Which I didn’t want to see happen because he seems like such a nice young man.”

  “Yes, very nice, Mrs. Davidoff,” I gulp. “And then…”

  “He left. That is, after he asked me if I’d seen you. I said you hadn’t been around all day.”

  “What happened when the police came, Mrs. Davidoff?”

  She shrugs. “I called back and told them not to bother, I had made a mountain out of a molehill, they have enough to deal with in this city without this mishegoss. They came anyway, but by then he was gone.” Mrs. Davidoff sniffs and shakes her head. “Tell your friends that maybe next time I won’t be so considerate and maybe I’ll have something to say to the landlord too, if this continues. It’s no good, disturbances like this. It’s no good.”

  My heart races. It was too good to be true, the thought of Ivan being hauled off in handcuffs for disturbing the peace while I was safely tucked away in Morgan’s TriBeCa loft. It would have solidified my case against him. I could have gotten a protective order that much more easily. My only meager hope is that a warning warbled by an old woman who thinks he’s such a nice young man is going to be enough to deter him from making any more visits in the future. At least I got in the building unscathed. That’s something.

  “Mrs. Davidoff,” I sigh, “I really appreciate you being so concerned.”

  She looks at me warily.

  “When I first moved to the city, I was told nobody looks out for anybody here. That you could be stabbed or shot and nobody would lift a finger to help you. I’m glad I was misinformed.” I grin. “It’s good to know that I have neighbors who worry about my welfare. So much so that they call the police if they think something’s wrong. Just as I would if I thought someone was bothering you.”

  Mrs. Davidoff clutches her robe closed and steps backward toward her open apartment door as I open mine. “Yes, well, I hope there’s no more trouble here.”

  “I hope not too, Mrs. Davidoff.”

  And just before I close the door, I hiccup, an ill-timed hiccup for sure.

  Mrs. Davidoff shakes her head and slams her door behind her. I lean against mine and secure the first of the deadbolts, the middle one, and sigh as I hear the tumbler click, sealing me in for the night. I fasten the rest of the locks from bottom to top. And then I plug in the cell phone charger. The second it gets juice, my phone rings.

  “You’re home,” the male voice says. “It’s about time.”

  It’s not Ivan.

  “Who is this?” I ask, though I have a damn good idea who it is. The number that shows up on my screen is unfamiliar. Probably a prepaid phone.

  I hear voices in the background, the old familiar static. Whoever this nut case is, he should invest in a better model. He probably can’t hear me any more clearly than I can hear him. “Curtis? This is Curtis, isn’t it?”

  I hear muffled breathing. Then I shout so he’ll get the message, “Leave me alone!” and press the end-call key.

  The phone rings again.

  “Talk to me,” he commands.

  I disconnect.

  The phone rings again. “Look, you’ve got to stop calling…”

  “I want you.”

  “And you’ve got to stop leaving me notes and messages…”

  “I didn’t leave messages this time. I’m tired of one-way conversations. I waited until you got home.”

  “What made you think I was out?”

  “I saw you. I knew you were out. Couldn’t have been anything special. You would have had a better time if you were out with me.”

  “What makes you think it wasn’t special?”

  “You weren’t dressed up for anything like that.” He goes on to tell me what I’m wearing and I look up. The shades are still drawn from last night. He’s not learning anything new from looking in here from a nearby building, that’s for sure.

  But he was out there tonight, watching, waiting for me to come home.

  “Oh, but it was special. Very. I didn’t have time to change during the day, that’s all.”

  I hear him breathing on the other end, waiting for me to say more. Are you ready for this? I’m still feeling the effects of all the brandy and champagne I drank. Even after all that food. I unbutton my coverall and step out of it. Too bad you can’t see me now, asshole! “And it didn’t really matter since I wasn’t going to keep my clothes on very long anyhow.”

  Silence.

  “You’re wasting your time on me,” I say, unbuttoning
the cotton Henley jersey. “I’ve already found the somebody I want.”

  “That tight-ass stockbroker…”

  “No, not him. It’s over between me and him. There’s somebody else.”

  “You work fast, don’t you? Why won’t you even give me a chance?”

  “Maybe if you keep looking you’ll find someone who wants you.” I hear his breathing quicken. “You’ve got to stop calling. I’ve already reported this to the police. If you keep calling, they’ll go after you. Do you want that?”

  “I don’t think you want that. And I’ve already told you what I want. You.”

  “And I’m telling you for the last time you can’t have it…uh, me.”

  “We’ll see,” he hisses.

  I hang up and pound the play button for my voice mail. The ensuing chimes keep pace with my frantic heartbeats. Following the last long beep is a string of messages asking if I’m available to work a couple of classes next week. I jot down the phone numbers of the callers so that I can get back to them tomorrow at a reasonable time. My hand is shaking so bad that the numbers look like hieroglyphics.

  That’s it, that’s all the messages.

  So maybe Mrs. Davidoff was a little slow getting around to canceling her complaint; maybe she waited for a commercial break to pick up the phone and say “Maybe you shouldn’t bother coming after all, everything’s quiet here now.” Maybe the police stopped Ivan on the way down the stairs or lurking across the street looking up at my windows. But I know they didn’t because I saw him walking down Christopher Street when I was in that bar using the phone. Too bad. Too bad the cops didn’t come across Curtis too. A New York City marathon eve two-for-one special. Everyone running to my rescue, rounding up the bad guys.

  I leave my clothes in a heap on the floor where they fell as I shed them and plop on the bed face-down. The screeching sirens in the distance are a Manhattan lullaby.

  12

  The ringtone of my phone is a wake-up call. I look at my alarm clock. I haven’t even been asleep two hours yet.

  The voice on the other end just says, “Delilah, it’s me.” I’m groggy and my body is confused. My heartbeat accelerates and I feel warm wetness between my legs. I am so used to this voice waking me in the middle of the night, wanting something. I can practically feel him down there, entering me, and my hand reaches out as if to coax him, guide him.