by Amy Gray
“Dude!” he burst forth, “I was just thinking that. This totally reminds me of this Gene Loves Jezebel Song.” Then he started singing. “Nah, nah, nah, Take it over the bow, Window-dressing sow.” Or something like that. Not that I knew the words or the song. This was probably the fifth time he'd spontaneously broken into song since we had our first Brooklyn Lagers five hours earlier.
“Hey,” I snapped, “my name is not ‘dude’.” Don't be mean, a little voice inside me warned. But at the same time, another voice countered the whisper with a scream: Be mean! I struggled against the urge to lash out. But he was so … annoying.
Dan looked surprised. “Sorry.”
“It's fine. Just don't call me ‘dude.’ ” He looked sullen. We walked silently. Dan sent an empty Red Bull can traversing across the street.
Mr. Indier-Than-Thou was a pristine example of a hobby become an obsession. There are many of these in New York, it seems. New York is not about being well rounded. It's all sharp edges. Like a bumbling Kafkaesque examiner, he was bogged down by the volume of facts, but the crime perpetually evaded him. He would be a terrible investigator, and I, on the other hand, didn't want to be with someone I could sum up in a two-page report.
He invited me back to his place. It was a couple blocks away and I thought, at the very least, I might avoid the long haul back to Brooklyn. Plus I really wanted to be kissed.
At the fifth floor of his walkup, I plopped down in front of his door.
“How … can … you do this…. every day?” I panted. “It's hell.”
“Actually, I'm one more floor up.”
His apartment door opened onto a long, skinny hallway off of which was a tiny kitchen upholstered in yellow linoleum, then his roommate Zac's room. Then there was his other roommate Oliver's room, then a living room that fit a small couch, a TV set, and about 2,000 records and 4,000 CDs, and finally his room. It was a classic railroad tenement. The place smelled like fish and chips.
His bedroom had guitars slung around and the walls were plastered with Devo posters. The Devo thing was part of a back-to-your-rock-roots movement, targeting bands that were previously seen to have little or no intrinsic musical talent. Now they were “fucking geniuses,” in Dan's words. I sat on his bed and he kept jumping up to play music for me. “You've gotta hear this!” and the music was really beautiful. He made us rice and beans—he was designing for a dot-com, after all, not running one—and we drank beers and the music was enchanting. He came back into the room after putting on the Palace Brothers, and instead of giving me the liner notes, he touched my hand. His index finger, which was smooth and callused from playing guitar, slid over my hand. I closed my eyes, smiling, and then I felt him reach over my wrist, my arm, my shoulder. And then the next thing I knew, I felt the warmth of his face near mine, his nose near my neck, and he whispered, “No more talking.” And then there was silence.
Taking the Fall
On Monday morning, not only weren't there any seats on the F, but I had to wait for two trains to pass me by before I could even get on, never mind actually sitting.
Clinging to the overhead bar, I held my daily fix of the Post. I usually skip to Page Six and leave it on the train for the next weary traveler. A headline on page three caught my attention: EURO PORN BRASS FALLS TO DEATH. I gasped audibly. “The heir to the Norrsken publishing fortune plunged to his death yesterday in what is believed to be a suicide. His death comes just a week after revelations that several division managers in his family empire had been misappropriating pension funds to offset losses. It is believed that Norrsken was soon to be indicted for his alleged role masterminding the fraud.” I looked up. Two older women sitting in front of me must have seen me look strange or heard a couple of muted yelps, because they offered me their seats. It wasn't until I got off the train and started walking to work that I realized that the tears falling from my face had turned most of the page into a damp smudge.
I imagined Nars Norrsken, sitting shirtless in his gilded suite in the Grand Hotel in Stockholm, feeling crushed by the knowledge of his exposure. A stifling, stiffening dread overtakes him, as numbers and data in the wake of his crimes sickeningly converged, like snowflakes mounting into suffocating drifts. I imagined him, in the final moments, like Newt Ebersol in his snowy sepulchre, relinquishing calmly to the chaos with stillness, falling into the cool open air.
Sol was already in the office, and I walked straight to his desk, dropped the article, and said, “Read it.” He did. “Holy shit” was the only thing that escaped his mouth for a while, and then he stood up and hugged me. “This is not your fault,” he said. “This is not your fault.” Not much was said after, either. He told me to take the morning off, but I didn't want to go all the way back to Brooklyn, so I took a nap on the yellow threadbare brocade couch in the conference room. Sol put a note on the door that said, “If you enter this room and wake Gray up, you're fired.—The Management.”
When I woke up and got back to work, I started to think about Dan more. Our best times together were when he wasn't talking. Or singing. Or dancing.
Thinking about him all last week, I'd felt dreamy. Now I was homicidal. Dan was of a breed, actually. This breed particularly likes to assemble in New York, where there's a plethora of highly specialized record stores catering to the said overeducated audiophiles, as well as The Onion distributed free, and plenty of dot-com jobs to get hired for and then fired from, so they could collect unemployment and spend more time going to rock shows. I like this kind of guy. Still, I was a little miffed that Dan had said he would call me on Sunday, but he didn't, and now it was Monday and there was no sign of him.
I went out for a cigarette and found Renora and Linus in our usual spot out in front.
“Hey, Amy.” Renora seemed a little uncomfortable, as did Linus. I wondered if they didn't know how to talk to me about my subject throwing himself out of a fifteen-story building to his death. I shuddered.
“Not my best day,” I confessed.
“Yeah, I'm off Atkins.”
“Really, why?”
“Because I was so sick of meat and cheese and fat I didn't want to eat anymore, and I was drinking just straight vodka because it's low in sugar and has no carbs, like beer. All of these factors led to a sort of alcoholic haze over the last forty-eight hours.”
“I'm sorry,” I said.
“So, what's going on with your rocker boyfriend?” she asked.
“Oh, I don't know, I think he's a little too one-note for me.”
“That's funny. He's too one-note. Good comedy,” Linus offered, slapping me on the back. I whacked his hand.
“He was supposed to call me last night, but he didn't, which I guess I was sort of glad about, although now I'm a bit annoyed. He spends every Sunday at O'Connor's.” O'Connor's was a shabby locals’ bar in lower Park Slope that had been co-opted by younger hipsters thanks to its cheap beer and ass-kicking jukebox.
“I was at O'Connor's last night, actually,” Renora said, excited.
“Really?” I said. “Do you remember a blondish-haired guy tall, maybe six foot three …”
“Honestly, as I was saying, my memory isn't so good now, but—”
“He probably would have been wearing skating sneakers, and his friend Jeb would have been there, too.”
Renora paused. “Jeb. Jeb sounds familiar. I think I spoke to a guy named Jeb who had a friend.” She seemed embarrassed as she recalled being there with her friend Beth and having two guys start talking to them about their band.
I blanched.
“But it might have been Jeb more than Dan doing it,” Renora added hopefully.
“Ha!” Linus cackled, bending over from the strain of his own busting gut. “Wouldn't it be funny if Amy didn't hear from her boyfriend this weekend because he was off hitting on Renora? Ha-ha-ha.” I wanted to get out of there. Fast.
“Here—” Renora was fishing in her pocket for something—a flyer for their show they'd given her. When she handed it to me, I wanted to drop i
t and run. But I knew it was the one. How many red flyers cut out to look like an old train boarding pass were circulating Brooklyn? I saw the flash of red in her shaking hand and I heard her saying, “Is that it?” as I turned back into the hallway.
“I—I'm not sure. I'm not sure what the band is called.” I ran down the hall, down the stairs past the elegy for “broke-ass bitches,” and around the block to Twenty-first Street, just to calm down. Everything was falling apart.
Dan e-mailed me later that day. I didn't write him back. He asked if I was angry with him. I didn't respond to that, either. Nor did I respond to several phone messages. I busted him for hitting on Renora, on a night when we were supposed to see each other.
Plus he annoyed me anyway. At least I had my Cake party to look forward to and distract me from the daily front-page articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and yes, even the Post and the Daily News about the Norrsken death. Every time I thought about it, my heart skipped a beat.
Take It Off
Before meeting Jeremy, I went back to Brooklyn to change. There was a message from Dan. “Amy, is everything okay? I feel like you're blowing me off. Sad. Dan.” I felt a momentary pull of guilt. Then I got religion and deleted it.
Sometimes I would have to wait for the car while my driver prayed. “He is praying,” Mussah would tell me. “Just wait one minute.” At the back of the tiny storefront was a door leading out to the rear with four strips of cloth partly covering the door. I could see Moez and some other drivers, side-by-side, kneeling, their heads touching the ground, only to raise them and bring them back down to the ground again. Their lips moved quickly.
Afterward, on the car ride, I talked to Moez. I had my standard questions. “So, where are you from?”
“Tunisia. Casablanca.”
“Wow. Like A Night in Tunisia.”
“I don't understand.”
“You know, Miles Davis.”
“Meles Davees? ”
“Oh, it was a stupid thing I said. So, what's it like there?”
“It is beautiful. It is a peaceful way of life. I live very well there. My family live very well. We have many property, you know, one on the sea. I go to the beach every day, with my friend, you know. We have a house in the country. It is a beautiful country, not like New York. New York is great in some way, you know, but it is not easy way of life. My country is beautiful.” He told me he was born to a French mother and an Italian father. His parents were artists and wanted to raise their children somewhere remote and magical.
The first five minutes in the car were usually awkward. Then I'd ask him questions and he'd talk the rest of the way: about how his mother wanted him to move back home, how his sister was getting married and wanted him to come for the wedding but he didn't know if he could afford it. Clinton Fresh Food, my destination, was appositely on Clinton Street, a former bastion of heroin-dealing that was now a trendy refuge. He pulled a Polaroid out of the glove compartment and handed it to me. “It is new,” he said. “I bought today. Automatic, you know.”
“Cool. Take my picture,” I said, handing him back the camera and squishing myself back into the corner of the car, smiling. He fumbled with it. The flash detonated, making me wince. Then he held the picture and I leaned over the front seat and we watched. The gray rectangle turned into an oozy orange and yellow-gray A humanlike form emerged, and finally there appeared a picture of me, leaning back awkwardly, something akin to a Mona Lisa smile across my face. Moez was grinning, too, as he handed me the snapshot.
“You can keep it,” I said, getting my money out to pay him.
“No, no,” he said, pushing my money away. He looked at me intently and insisted, “No money. This picture is enough.” There was an awkward moment when I handed him the photo back. My thumb was still on the picture when he put his finger over the far corner. I briefly imagined his scruffy cheek brushing mine. Then, seeing Jeremy waiting for me out the window, I turned away, opening the door. “Bye, Moez. See you soon.”
After dinner (I told Jeremy I needed to get something out of the deal), we got to the Cake party around eleven. It was at Spy.
The place was teeming. It was like the nerd version of the Playboy Mansion. Boys looked overwrought and scrawny. The girls, in their requisite tube tops and the occasional bustier, still had the emaciated A-cup New York look. Crowded into a sunken bar space facing the entrance, hundreds of people were watching the stage, where we could see unclad figures moving in front of a silvery scrim hung around the back of the stage. A woman in a pink-and-white French maid's outfit and a purple wig danced around with a sign that read, SEE THE ANNUAL CAKE STRIPTEASEATHON.
Jeremy seemed entranced. “Let's go check this out.” He grabbed my hand and guided me through bumping and grinding girls and ogling boys to the front of the stage, where I was practically kissing the toes of a heavyset Asian girl swinging her bra over her head to the tune of “I Shook You All Night Long.”
“She's got balls,” I whispered to Jeremy.
“Maybe that's why she's still wearing the rest of her outfit,” he retorted. “Take it all off!” he screamed at the stage, cupping his hands around his mouth for an extra-blunt effect. Soon the whole crowd was chanting, “Take it off! Take it off!” The girl pulled off her skirt to reveal huge white underpants, which she threw into the crowd. After she got offstage, other nervous amateurs took turns pseudo-pole-dancing and taking off their shirts and the occasional bra. Nobody else took took it all off, despite Jeremy's not-so-subtle entreaties. After half an hour, Jeremy, bored with the exposure level, went to get us scotch-and-sodas, and the emcee came out to announce that it was time to let the boys have their turn. The lights onstage went out and a black light showed a fluorescent blue male figure in a white suit with no shirt and no shoes. Girls were whistling and catcalling like construction workers. “Yeah, baby, take that shit awfff!” “You know it! Show us what you got!” Under the white suit he was wearing a zebra-striped G-string. Even still, I was sort of enjoying this segment of the show. The white stripes expanded and shrunk as the mystery guy squatted and swung his butt around in front of the crowd. Just when the soundtrack, Journey's “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’,” kicked into the raucous guitar riff, he turned around and the stagelights sprung on him.
“Holy shit!” I screamed, just as I felt Jeremy squeezing my elbow. It was Evan, looking pleased with himself and snapping the banana hammock like it was way too close to coming off. “Let's get out of here,” I commanded Jeremy, grabbing my scotch and downing it in seconds.
When we got outside, I gulped the fresh air, hoping it would clear my mind of the memory.
“Are you sure it was him?” Jeremy asked.
“I see the guy every day. Believe me, I would rather not have recognized him.” I would have done anything, anything to erase the memory of Evan in his zebra schlong sling from my mind.
TWENTY
To spy, to watch, to scrutinize oneself and others, to be nothing but a big, slightly vitreous, somewhat bloodshot, unblinking eye.
—VLADIMIR NABOKOV, THE EYE
The Opposite of Fun
On a windy day in late September, I walked out of the office to get my lunch with Wendy at the early hour of eleven. She and I had been getting hungry earlier and earlier. “Sometimes I think, to myself, fuck lunch by noon, I want to start dinner by then and just keep on eating,” she confessed.
“I know,” I said, nodding in sympathy. But when we got to the Twenty-One deli, there were a dozen people who apparently had the same idea, along with unforgiving stomachs and sharp elbows.
“Fuck this,” Wendy said. “I can't wait this long.” She left to get a gyro from a food cart on the corner of Twenty-fourth, and I waited. And waited. And waited. The construction crews in the area were going into our deli and ordering meals for their whole crews. They read out scribbled shorthand clutched in meaty black fists. “Dat's two eggs sandwich, one with lettuce, one without, an everything bagel with ham, turkey, Mue
nster, pickles, onions …” The other people in line groaned, spat, and yelled at the deli guys, “Ey! Let's move!” Then they stepped up and read their laundry lists. I pulled a bag of Funyuns off the rack and ate them while I was waiting. I read the Post. I took a Mr. Goodbar for dessert. I was blinded by hunger, shoplifting snacks with a low-blood-sugar-induced lack of inhibition. Just when I was about to give up on my hot pastrami with caramelized onions, Russian dressing, tomatoes, cheddar, and hot peppers, it was my turn. In between the deli counter and the cash register I inhaled my whole sandwich.
I didn't want to go back to the office yet, so I walked around to the Flatiron Building and sat in the park where Broadway and Fifth Avenue intersect. My paychecks, $1,000 every two weeks— veritable riches compared to my publishing salary—seemed to vanish just as quickly every month. I now spent an entire paycheck just on rent, versus the $500 I had shelled out on monthly living with my druggie ex, Ben. Utilities, plus food, plus the newly introduced supposedly money-saving Metrocard, plus day after day of Starbucks indulgences mysteriously sucked another $600 monthly. That left me a mere $400 a month for “entertainment.” Buying bottled water on the corner all summer, no matter how healthy, had added up. So did five-dollar drinks, and those were the cheap ones. Cass and I tried to spend more time at Niagara. In the interest of free liquor, we suffered unwanted attempted pickups from loser boys and craved, fruitlessly, a successful and attractive suitor to take us off Stuart's dole. Still, I had been abstinent—unkissed— since Dan.
The single beacon of free will in the hamster wheel of my life was fulfilled by one thing—my discovery of Napster. After a shallow early-learning curve, I'd downloaded more than five hundred songs onto my computer. Unlike my financial status, love life, and profession, Napster represented wish-fulfillment in its most extreme form. I could satisfy my every musical desire; I could decide I wanted to hear Cyndi Lauper's theme to Goonies and, minutes later, I was transported into memories of fifth-grade crushes and eighties kitsch. The recipe was simple—identify a craving, no matter how oblique (a live “Wire” cover by My Bloody Valentine) and, moments later, boom. I was rocking out motionlessly at my desk.