“There’s this guy. Kelly,” he said.
“Y-es,” I said slowly.
“You know my friend Guy?” he asked. “The photographer?”
“I know of him.”
“A good friend of his just showed up in New York. Needs a job.”
“And?”
“Thought he could tend bar at the restaurant.”
I made an exasperated noise. “Are you kidding? I have staff waiting for years to tend bar.”
“Sorry,” he said blandly. “I thought you were in charge.”
“Yves,” I warned.
“Look,” Yves said casually, “use this guy. Abuse him. I don’t care, lamb. Just pay him.”
We looked at each other for a while. I detected merriment in his eyes.
I licked jam off my knife. “Not like I can say no.”
He signaled for the bill. “Don’t do anything you don’t want to do,” he said.
“Don’t do anything you don’t want to do,” I mimicked.
“You have bad manners,” he said.
“Of course I do, daddy. That’s why you hang out with me.”
I applied red lipstick, twisted to kiss the mirror behind us. While he extracted a credit card from his wallet, I licked my lips and pouted at the waiter.
* * *
—
Yves had given me more than six months’ rent, but it pained me to pay my landlord in advance. At one, the Town Car showed down the block from the restaurant, and we took a tour of the neighborhood. Donald talked the whole time about a little black girl named Jenny he’d shacked up with in Miami recently.
“Magic,” he kept saying. “Sugar and spice.”
I told Donald he was a whore.
“Just the tiniest little body,” he said reverently, “miniature bones, beautiful mouth.” He gave me an extra bump on my way out the door.
Every twenty minutes, I slipped into the ladies’ room. Doing drugs in the workplace was like being naked under a fur coat. The secret was half the pleasure.
* * *
—
I popped my cocaine cherry at a wedding when I was fifteen. I spent the reception in a hotel room with strangers who tried to plug my nosebleed and soak the blood out of my pink pantsuit. But even then, red blooming on my pants, staring past these people into an azalea-hedged parking lot full of limousines, I knew I’d do it again.
Kai lived on blow. Had to carry Neosporin to doctor his nostrils. He believed you did what you needed to succeed, and for him to go to that kitchen every night, he needed help. Hard work, luck, connections, a trust fund, and talent weren’t enough, he used to say, in New York City. You needed to buy an edge here, if you found it for sale.
Drugs turned the cardboard box of an ordinary day into a honeycomb, dripping and blond. Dip into that hour, huddle in this one, buzz away with your wings wet and sweet.
* * *
—
Chico’s bug eyes were always half lidded so he looked high when he wasn’t. I teased him because he’d had his hair cut like a little boy. He wore a plaid button-down and Diesel jeans, and smiled like a saint. Our spirits were braided together by work. We’d shared rough nights, easy nights, after hours. Food, liquor, blood, sweat, tears. Even as prep cooks, we’d been kings, peeling potatoes side by side. Now we comanaged the restaurant, rarely seeing each other since we worked opposite shifts.
We sat at his kitchen table. The Chelsea apartment was tiny, and the walls were lined with shelves like a walk-in cooler. On the makeshift counter: tofu, onions, and kale on a cutting board. We drank ginger beers.
“Is this alcoholic?” I asked after my first potent sip.
“No, Lee,” he said condescendingly. “It’s good for you. Imagine that.”
Chico’s pregnant wife lay in bed in the other room, hair parted around Mickey Mouse ears. When I’d arrived and went to say hello, I put a hand on her belly and was repulsed by the tautness. I started to tell her about a hamster of mine who ate her babies, and Chico put his hands on the back of my shoulders and steered me into the kitchen. He told me I was scaring Audrey.
Across the street, on the window gates at the welfare hotel, hung magenta G-strings and baby clothes. The sun burned a bloody red, and I eventually came to my point.
“But Shannon’s going to throw a fit,” he said. “He’s been banking on shifts behind the bar since April.”
“We’ll work him in, I promise.”
He was swirling the liquid in the bottle. “That’s not too cool, Lee.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“So, what’s the story? Can’t you just say it’s not a good idea, it’s not going to work out?”
“Uh, no?”
He looked at me, arms folded across his chest. Chico, not unlike Yves, played when he wanted but had started working at the age of nine. To get out of Sunset Park, he’d paid a ransom whose terms no one else would ever know. He never put that in my face, which made his conscience all the more formidable. I blew my bangs up and swallowed my drink.
“Don’t look at me like that, for Chrissakes,” I pleaded after a while. “Yves gave me money. That’s why. It’s his friend’s friend. There. Now you know.”
“Lee, that’s fine,” he said immediately. “All you have to do is tell me this kind of thing, and we’ll go from there.”
“I’m going to meet the guy after this,” I said glumly. “At least make sure he’s not a total freak.”
“Like I said. Totally fine.”
“It’s not fine,” I argued.
Chico shook his head, looked at the ceiling. “Oh my God. Whatever.”
* * *
—
On the way to the subway, I lit a smoke. Glanced over at La Nouvelle Justine. A man in leathers, in a contraption like a gladiator’s bathing suit, was paid to squat by the door to the restaurant. He patted his shaved head like a monkey. I dropped my burning match to the sidewalk.
* * *
—
Across from Relish, fifteen or twenty motorcycles stood outside a repair shop, tilted on kickstands. I was early. The girl in the next booth was looking out the window but seeing something that wasn’t there. I wondered if she was a retail girl, junkie, grad student, graphic designer. A temp, maybe: this city was full of kids with red marks where they usually wore nose rings, club stamps from the night before on their hands, cornered into cubicles, answering to corporate masters. I wondered if she was in love with a painter, a skinhead, a girl. I liked the way she held the burger with two hands, like a kid, unafraid of getting greasy.
It was infuriating that I had to do this. I especially hated that Yves, who acted so worldly, would do anything for someone famous. What had Guy done for Yves?
Manhattan lights were shining through the violet buildings on this side of the river. A girl glided by in a white sundress, bony shoulders. She adjusted the bandanna holding her hair, arms glowing in the night. Her dog, unleashed, didn’t stray.
A shout in the street. Two white guys greeting each other. One with mohawk and kilt, the other in overalls, carrying a canvas wrapped in brown paper.
“What’s up, bitch,” one thundered.
They knocked fists. Some of the kids in Williamsburg had watched Basquiat too many times. All the people in the gold-lit diner looked, faces reflected blue in the windows; the reflections were superimposed on the street, the chrome of bikes glinting beyond in the shadows.
* * *
—
I knew him the minute he walked into the place. Enormous shoulders and almond eyes. White sweatshirt cut sleeveless. Blue jeans and boots. Tattoos on the inside of both wrists. Auburn ponytail streaked by the sun. He was a little bit cowboy, a little bit Indian. As he walked to the table, he glanced around as if he’d never been in a restaurant.
“So, what’s up?” I asked, going for the aggressively casual.
He shrugged. “Not too much. How are you?”
I shrugged. “What do you drink?”
�
�Nothing for me, thanks.”
He sat with legs spread, but arms crossed. Head like a boulder, except when he lowered or raised his chin, revealing broad planes and dimensions like the subject of a Cubist portrait. Freckles, as dark as dark chocolate, speckled skin opalescent from too much sun. He stared, waiting for questions.
“You just got here?”
“I did,” he answered. “I came in on a fishing charter. I was first mate.”
“Sounds fancy,” I said.
He smiled. “Actually, I was cutting fish open and taking their guts out.”
“What are you doing in New York?”
This was his only hesitation. At the bar, a girl in a mesh shirt, angel wings of hair in her face, dried glasses with a cloth.
“I’m looking for someone,” he said finally.
“Do you mean,” I started, annoyed at his coyness, “someone you hope exists, or someone real?”
“She’s real.” He enunciated as if speaking to a child.
We discussed the restaurant, his shifts, his pay. He looked at me steadily, didn’t fidget, and spoke when spoken to. I didn’t buy his act. His act was that he had no act.
When we were done, he moved out of the booth and stood, hulking. He was much taller than me, and I’m tall. Reached out to shake my hand. Thanked me for meeting him.
“Just so you know,” I added, “I’m hiring you as a favor to Yves. There are people who’ve waited for this position, who earned it, and they’re going to be pissed when you walk in.”
His face turned scarlet.
“Thanks for letting me know,” he said.
He tucked hair behind ear and held up one hand, fingers spread like star points, a gesture that said good-bye as much as it said don’t follow. Then turned and shoved the hand into his pocket, jangling the wallet chain attached to his belt loop, and walked carefully to the door.
* * *
—
I walked home through hot streets. Old people sat by doorways in beach chairs. Moonbeams made white garage doors creamy, as in an oil painting. I stepped around dog turds, big as soup cans, from the rotties, Dobermans, and collies. Gulls bathed in roof puddles left from a storm, heads visible over gutter pipes.
The sky made more sense here than in Manhattan, the brown dome a sparkling map of constellations. I let my eyes linger on a couple walking toward me, each carrying a bottle of red wine. She in a party dress with a thrift-store purse, he in a lime-green suit, a bleached lock of hair falling over his forehead, the rest of his hair black. Nights like this, after it rained, you’d never seen anything as beautiful as the reflection of a red stoplight on the street, or a white cat darting through the wet indigo alley behind Black Betty.
Near the BQE, garbage fluttered in the trucks’ wind like confetti, except the condoms caught in glass-spangled weed, Roughriders full of custard. In a tinted-out Monte Carlo parked under the highway, the pale shape of a man’s head was tipped back against the headrest, sleeping or cracked out or getting blown. You’d never seen anything so beautiful as that woman in the building across the street from me, blue-black punk hair, a man’s sleeveless undershirt, black leather cuff on her wrist, smoking through the window bars, watching the night.
* * *
—
Fans blew hot air through my four doorless rooms.
The kitchen’s high, antique tin ceiling looked down on the industrial shelves, table, and counters Kai had installed. The bathroom was closet-sized. The shower’s tiles were white, except for an aqua patch that replaced tiles that had fallen when the caulking rotted. No sink; I brushed my teeth in the kitchen, spitting on dirty plates.
The second room was tiny, and since the apartment had no closets, I hung my clothes there on a garment rack. A white sequined skirt glimmering in perpetual darkness. Cardboard boxes of shoes. A full-length mirror. Gold bangles on the dusty floor.
The third room was larger, painted midnight blue. TV and stereo on the floor, orange butterfly chair, books in piles. Corona bottles on the television. Video games, record albums, empty packs of cigarettes scattered so it was hard to walk through the room.
Blue beads hung between that room and the bedroom, painted Chinese red. My sheets smelled of booze, smoke, dreams. A yellow lantern stood on the bedside table, illuminating lipstick and powder and kohl pencils. This way, I could put on makeup, looking into a Hello Kitty hand mirror, before I got out of bed.
* * *
—
For three years, Kai and I gave dinner parties every week.
A Polaroid still nailed to the wall: dark kitchen, candles, Kai’s paella, champagne Jill lifted from the cellar where she worked. Crowded around the table, a motley crew, arms around one another. David’s blond mullet standing up like a rooster tail. Belinda, with a fedora on her white hair, sticking out her tongue. Jack’s muscles cut, tattooed, displayed in cutoff cowboy shirt. Deedee still in chef clothes, straight from work. Jill and Ali in vintage dresses, the floral prints reminiscent of curtains in Midwestern motels.
After he’d left, I sanded the floor. I burned incense. I threw out everything Kai forgot. Sometimes, I still spotted a local crackhead in Kai’s baby-blue tux shirt. I invited friends over one night and made mojitos. It felt strange to be the sole host. We got drunk, ordered food from the Dominican place on the corner, turned up the stereo, and danced. We fell asleep, three of us on the bed, one in the chair, and a pair on the floor, nestled in their coats, as the sun rose milky and pink in my windows. I never had people over again.
In my solitude, then, I did a lot of thinking. I’d been waiting for some oasis to open where there was time for love, art, booze, paychecks, and sleep. Perhaps this was a slightly unrealistic expectation. All my life, first the idea and then the reality of this city had been my fuel. At some point, the tables had turned, and the city was using me for inspiration. Too bad my lifeblood was just a drop in New York’s tanks. So one night, I wrote a plan for change and was loyal to it for a couple months.
The agenda included dragging out my white faux-alligator briefcase in which I kept brushes and paint. At Pearl I bought missing items like turpentine and cadmium yellow. Ate cereal for dinner in the name of health and budget. If I went out, I came home after one drink. If I worked late, at least I gessoed and toned a couple canvases before I got in bed. If work was slow, I sketched preliminary studies on the backs of liquor invoices. My mother started to need me more, and I spent hours on the train, trying not to think, drawing in a black book. I waited for this new lifestyle to stop feeling false and robotic, but that sensation only got worse.
One evening I was jogging, and stopped to pant. A mirrored storefront reflected my red Pumas splattered with paint, my pink terry-cloth shorts, the rope of gold chains I never took off, and the hives on my thighs from exertion. My face was mauve. Trying to be normal, I thought, is turning me into more of a freak.
Now the kitchen was crammed with pizza boxes, vodka bottles. Fruit flies feeding off a peach pit in the sink. Overfull ashtrays in every room. Canvases jammed under the bed. I sat on my floor, looking at my home. And I loathed it. Ironic how I was fighting to stay there.
* * *
—
On Monday, when I got to the restaurant, Kelly was sitting at the bar in the uniform of jeans, white shirt, tie. Outside, it was one of those late-summer days when everything looks as if it were dipped in maple syrup.
Our waitstaff, mainly boys, hustled. They made money by being charming, by seeming eager. They nursed orphanage dreams: rich couple drives up in glossy car, the man supporting the mysteriously bereft woman’s elbow, and they scan the dirty faces until their eyes lock on you.
Ozzie lived on an unheated floor of a sweatshop off the tenth Brooklyn L stop. Martine lived in Chelsea with his grandmother, whom he supported. Josh moved around, brought his backpack to work, brushed his teeth in the men’s room.
Toothaches, manic depression, strep throat. No health insurance: these kids doctored themselves with Aleve and microwav
ed brandy. I once gave Shannon cash because he had crabs. I’m not maternal, but he had tears in his eyes. They were sweet and desperate kids, and I expected them to dislike Kelly.
“Morning,” I said.
“Good morning.” Kelly was eating a mango. Staring. Waiting for me to break down and be nice.
I introduced him to the staff. When everyone dispersed, Kelly hucked the end of the fruit into the garbage, rinsed his hands. Quietly, he asked if I was at least going to give him a chance. I pretended I hadn’t heard.
* * *
—
I called Donald. I jumped from the hot street into the cold car, then back into the hot street.
To me, drugs radiated light, like holy crumbs. All day I wandered the restaurant with coke in my pockets, certain the stuff was glowing through the fabric.
Once, I fumbled and lost a hit of E on the Tunnel dance floor, but a shaft of light shined up at me from between all those shoes. I bent to retrieve the capsule with religious grandeur.
Even my handbag changed when there were drugs inside it. It became heavier and more important, more elegant. All I had to do was look at my dresser, and I knew which drawer to open. When introduced to people, I saw auras, a purple haze of antidepressant, the gold chain mail of Demerol.
I got quiet whenever I met a new medicine cabinet at a party. I looked at my reflection, then opened the door stealthily, as though birds might rush out.
* * *
—
In Yves’s loft, I dropped my purse on the floor. Kicked off heels. I swayed, unsteady, and lit a smoke.
We’d gone to the World Financial Center orchid show, the tall glass building lush with magenta throats, green pods, freckled yellow tongues of petal. Then we had martinis upstairs at the Hudson River Club. Many martinis. Just enough martinis for me to tell him.
I chased olives around with a pick. “I spent it all.”
Here Kitty Kitty Page 4