The Soho Press Book of '80s Short Fiction

by Dale Peck

  “You—” she began lovingly, and never finished. Suddenly, she rose up on her knees and stretched her body like a cat. She sank down again and rested her chin on my chest.

  We lay like that for a very long time. I could look past the loops of her hair and see our legs, stacked together like hand­ dipped candles.

  “Know what?” she finally said. There was a bit of flirtation in her voice, and the warm breath with the words tickled my chest.

  “What?”

  “Kind of funny but—”

  “Yes?” I closed my eyes and brushed my hand up and down the solid muscles on either side of her back. I was waiting to be teased or complimented.

  “I think I have a slight crush on your Andrew Carpenter.”

  She spoke too soon to disguise it. And all along I had thought her excitement had been in response to mine, that it had been something I created in her. “Do you mean . . . you’re in love with him?”

  “Noooo. Nothing stupid like that. Do you think I’d tell you if it was something like that?” She hugged me around the waist and giggled, then looked up at me with her lower lip sucked behind her front teeth, grinning while she watched and waited for me to share her amusement.

  My hand drew tiny circles on the cooled mounds of her bottom.

  “No,” she said. She had to shift her eyes away from my face. “No. It’s just a silly crush. All in my head. Nobody could really fall in love with Andy.” There was a tremor in the pupils of her eyes as they looked straight into mine again. “You dope!” she suddenly laughed. “You have nothing to fear,” and she reached up to sweep some hair back from my forehead.

  From Pet Food

  by Jessica Hagedorn

  The sign dangled from the fire escape in front of the shabby building:

  STUDIO APT. FOR RENT

  I entered the lobby of the dimly lit building, one of those Victorian San Francisco dwellings that must’ve been grand in the early 1900s. Times had certainly changed—the neighborhood had quietly deteriorated and the building had decayed right along with it. It still had marvelous dark wood panelings and art nouveau, daffodil-shaped lamps along the walls, but the carpets were stained and faded, and you could smell the grease emanating from the apartments. Another faded sign in the lobby read:

  stanley gendzel—manager—apt. 1

  collector of antiques—parrot man extraordinaire

  I hesitated before knocking on his door. Bells tinkled faintly, and someone came toward me down the dark, dank hallway. I put my suitcase down and whirled around to face the young man who stood there, staring at me. Could this be Stanley Gendzel? I wondered.

  Barefoot, the young man held a large orange cat in his arms. The cat gazed at me with the same dispassionate curiosity.

  The young man and the cat bore a striking similarity—the young man with copper-colored skin, slender and beautiful, with his ominous lion’s mane hair, the color of brown fading into reddish gold, much like the extraordinary cat’s thick fur. After a few moments, the young man put the cat down, and we both watched it scurry away into the darkness.

  “I’m looking for the manager,” I said.

  The young man smiled. “Manager?”

  Oh no, I thought, this couldn’t be Stanley Gendzel!

  “I’m looking for a place to live,” I said, as firmly as I could. Looking for an apartment of my own was one of the momentous decisions of my life, and I was determined to act as adult and businesslike as possible.

  “Oh,” the young man said, still being playful with me. “A place. You need a place.”

  “I certainly do,” I retorted.

  “Then you need to see Stanley,” he said.

  There was a moment of silence, and we looked each other over like two animals sniffing each other out.

  Suddenly he said, “Let me show you my guitar.”

  I shook my head. “No.’’

  “Let me show you my cello.’’

  “No.’’ Where was Stanley Gendzel?

  “Let me show you my saxophone.’’

  “No!”

  “Let me show you my soprano saxophone.’’

  “Hmmmm . . .’’ I was getting curious.

  “Let me show you my bass saxophone.’’

  “Oooh . . .’’

  He was relentless. “Let me show you my bass clarinet.”

  “Oh dear,” I sighed, slowly wearing down.

  My favorite instrument. I looked him dead in the eye. “Upright or electric?”

  He grinned. “Both.”

  It had been a long day. I decided I must be falling in love, and to hell with Stanley Gendzel. “Well,” I said, “maybe . . .”

  His grin widened, and suddenly—like magic—the dank and forbidding hallway seemed less gloomy. “My berimbau? Caxixi? Sansa?”

  He was so enthusiastic and strangely radiant I had to give in.

  “OKAY!” I responded, smiling back at him and taking his hand.

  I followed him up the first flight of stairs, and he pulled out the gleaming gold key and unlocked the door to an apartment. The living room was littered with every kind of musical instrument imaginable, and an orchestra of children was playing. Their faces were painted like ornate African and Balinese masks. Bells hung from the ceiling. We began to dance in slow motion, lost in some kind of trancelike, sensuous waltz.

  My first and only lover so far had been Junior Burgess, who could sing as compellingly as Smokey Robinson, seducing me sweetly with his voice while telling me stories of all my favorite Motown groups. But this young man who held me in his arms was different. He made me so nervous I blurted out “I love you” in the middle of our dance.

  His face was devoid of expression, like the cat who sat purring in the room, so sure of its regal beauty. “I know,” he said, not unkindly.

  “My name is George Sand,” I told him shyly.

  “I know,” the young man said.

  “Your name is Rover,” I said.

  “Exactly,” he replied, twirling me around the room. I don’t know how much time we spent in that room, the children’s orchestra continuously serenading us with their dissonant circus music, the purring orange cat never once taking his amber eyes off our dancing bodies. And I didn’t care.

  I floated out of Rover’s apartment in a daze, starting back down the stairs in my second attempt to locate the mysterious Stanley Gendzel, manager of this illustrious building. I dragged my battered suitcase behind me, unsure of what had just happened. All I remembered was that late afternoon softly changed into darkness, and the children’s orchestra stopped playing, and Rover and I stopped dancing, unwinding slowly like two figures twirling on top of a music box. The big orange cat rubbed against our legs, and Rover picked him up and carried him in his arms, stroking his fur gently. He kissed me on my lips, then once—very tenderly—on each of my eyelids. “I will see you again,” was all he said.

  A darkly beautiful Sephardic Jewish woman came bounding up the stairs as I was on my way back down to Stanley Gendzel’s apartment. She seemed to be in her early twenties, dressed in interesting layers of clothing my friend Boogie would’ve called “flea market glamor.” Crocheted doilies had been sewn together into a lacey shirt worn over red satin pajamas. The pajamas were stuffed into embroidered Nepalese boots. She was carrying a blender in one hand and a large black portfolio in the other.

  “Hey,” she called out, in a friendly way. “You new in the building? Silver Daddy’s new piece of cheese, perhaps?”

  “Uh, no.”

  She peered at me from under the thick fringe of her black eyelashes. “My name is Momma Magenta,” she finally said.

  “Hi. I’m George.”

  She never flinched. “You’re very much his type, you know. Are you Indian or something? Mexican? Italian, somewhat?”

  “No, not any of those,”
I said wryly.

  “What about Japanese? That’s Silver Daddy’s new trip. THE JAPANESE . . . he’s busy editing an anthology of esoteric Japanese poets. ‘O Momma Magenta,’ he’s always telling me, ‘you’ve got all the right ingredients. Long black hair, black eyes, big tits, a small waist, and a big ass . . . but you aren’t JAPANESE!’ I’m always showing him my portfolio, you know,” she chattered confidentially. “After all, Silver Daddy’s one of America’s oldest living legends, with plenty of connections in the art world. But all he ever wants to do around me is talk about pussy.”

  “Oh. You’re an artist?”

  Momma Magenta was obviously pleased that I had asked this question. “Yeah, that’s right. I do rock n’ roll posters. Wanna see my portfolio?”

  “No thanks. I don’t have time. I’m looking for a place to rent.”

  “Well, you’ve come to the right place, sweetie. Silver Daddy owns this building, see. He’s what you might call a bona fide artiste and slum landlord all rolled into one. He lives on the top floor, in his fashionable ghetto penthouse. You’re in luck Silver Daddy just ordered Stanley Gendzel to kick one of the tenants out. He was a poet from New York named Paolo. Trouble was, he was a smack freak, and broke all the time. HEY—wanna buy a used blender?”

  I started down the stairs. “No thanks, really. I think I should go see about renting this apartment,” I said, waving goodbye to her.

  “Good luck with Stanley,’” she waved back. “Don’t let him chew your ears off. And don’t be surprised when Silver Daddy invites you up for one of his famous dinner parties.’’

  Something that resembled a shriveled-up spider with bushy eyebrows for antennae opened the door. “Whadda ya want?” he croaked, looking me up and down.

  “I’m interested in renting the apartment,” I said. “Are you Mr. Gendzel?”

  “Yup. I’m Stanley Gendzel. Come in, come in.” He stepped aside to let me through the door. I pretended not to notice that all he had on were faded, yellow boxer shorts. A large green parrot was perched on his shoulder.

  He ushered me into his grimy kitchen and pulled out a chair for me. For a long while no one said a word. I watched Stanley scratch the bird’s head, cooing softly to the creature. Then he pulled out a box of birdseed and nonchalantly placed some seeds on the tip of his tongue. The parrot pecked the food off the old man’s outstretched tongue while the old man stared at me suspiciously.

  “Are you a college student?” he asked suddenly, when the parrot finished his dinner.

  “No, I’m a poet,” I blurted out, wondering if I’d said the wrong thing.

  Stanley was visibly upset. “A poet! Not another one!”

  It had been such a long, grueling day that between my mother and Auntie Greta’s hysterics and Momma Magenta’s aggressiveness, I decided I just couldn’t accept Stanley’s disapproval. I had to convince this strange man that I had to have the apartment this very evening. Besides, it was getting late and I was hungry.

  “Yes,” I said, as calmly and politely as possible. “I’m a very responsible person, in spite of what you might think. How much is the rent?”

  “Well,” Stanley said, scratching the parrot’s head once again, “it’s one of the worst studios in the building. That heroin addict never cleaned up after himself. Always sipping grape soda and munching Twinkies! It’s a wonder he’s still alive. Left behind reams and reams of paper—some with writing on it, some without. I didn’t have the heart to destroy his work, even though Silver Daddy didn’t think too highly of it. He ordered me to go in there and disinfect everything and burn all the boy’s manuscripts. Imagine! I just couldn’t do it,” Stanley repeated, shaking his head slowly.

  “I’m glad you didn’t. I’m sure Paolo would appreciate it,” I said.

  “Humph!” Stanley snorted. “Paolo didn’t appreciate anything—that’s why he was so self-destructive. Anyway, I haven’t cleaned the place at all, so you can have it for eighty dollars a month, no cleaning deposit necessary. The toilet works, and if you wanna paint it, Silver Daddy will insist on raising the rent, so I wouldn’t advise it. Just leave well enough alone.”

  I got up to go. “Thanks very much, Mr. Gendzel.”

  “What’d you say your name was again?” he asked.

  “I didn’t. My name is George Sand.”

  “Interesting name for a young girl. You look very interesting, by the way. You wouldn’t happen to be Japanese, would you?”

  “No, I’m from the Philippines, actually. My mother brought me here when I was very young,” I replied.

  He seemed totally disinterested. “Oh. The Philippines. All I remember is that big fuss about MacArthur. Well, it doesn’t really matter. I’m sure Silver Daddy will invite you to dinner as soon as you move in. It’s part of the rituals around here, his own way of getting to know each tenant. The only one he never invited was Paolo . . .”

  “Perhaps I’ll show him some of my poems.’’

  Stanley Gendzel arched one of his extravagant eyebrows. “He’d be utterly delighted, I’m sure. That’s the right attitude to take with that old lecher! He’s working on some Japanese translations right now, y’know. Had some Japanese nobility up there helping him out. Flew her all the way from Toyko. Called her Camembert for short. She called him Daddybear.”

  The only thing I had when I moved in was a sorry-ass little suitcase crammed with notebooks and journals, a pair of jeans or two, and a memory of my mother Consuelo’s face when I went out the door of her house. When I finally telephoned to say I was all right, Auntie Greta picked up the phone and answered in a solemn voice, “Good evening . . . the Sand Residence.”

  “Hello? Auntie Greta?” My own voice seemed unusually high to me.

  “My dear George—are you all right?”

  “Yes. I got a place—my own apartment. Is Mom there?”

  “Your mother can’t come to the phone, dear. She’s not feeling well,” Auntie Greta said.

  “You mean she won’t talk to me.’’

  He cleared his throat. “Let’s just say your mother is under sedation—high blood pressure, you know. She couldn’t handle your leaving us too well.”

  “Well, tell her I’m all right. I’m living on Webster Street,’’ I said.

  “Webster Street??? Webster Street and what???”

  “Oh, you know—near the freeway,” I replied. I knew what was coming.

  “Dios mio! You’re living in that part of town?” Even Auntie Greta couldn’t bring himself to say it: the ghetto. Bodies bleeding on the front steps of my building, virile young things with guns as erect as their dicks, leaping in and out of Chinese grocery stores. My mother’s darkest fears.

  I sighed. “Don’t worry, Auntie Greta. There’s a famous person living in this building. His name is Silver Daddy. He’s my landlord.’’

  “I’ve never heard of him,’’ Auntie Greta said.

  “Of course not,’’ I retorted, exasperated. “You don’t read the papers, except for the movie listings. Mom doesn’t read the papers, either. Well, if you did, you might know about his column in the Sunday arts section. He writes on all the new stuff going on in the art world.”

  Auntie Greta was obviously offended. “Well, I don’t know about that, young lady. I do read the paper from time to time! I know you’ve always thought yourself above us.’’

  “Oh Jesus, there you go sounding like my mother,” I said.

  “You know what they say—association makes for assimilation. Listen, George, do you have enough locks on your doors and windows?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll break the news to your mother gently. And please, dear, keep in touch. Are you getting a phone?”

  “No. But there’s a pay phone in the lobby,” I said.

  “A pay phone! In the lobby! OH MY GOD!” Auntie Greta groaned.

  I figured it was better
if I hung up first.

  Welcome to de Ghetto

  From my new apartment window, I watched Silver Daddy stroll down the street. He wore a leather cowboy vest that accentuated the paunchy belly that jutted out as he walked. There was something grand about the way he swaggered, in spite or because of his weight. Like a futuristic Santa Claus so sure of himself he sees nothing, he stopped under my window and called up to me, his icy blue eyes twinkling and his silver moustache gleaming. Ho-ho-ho.

  “Are you the new tenant?”

  “Yes. My name is George Sand.”

  “I know,” Silver Daddy said. “Stanley told me. This is all very interesting. You must come to dinner this evening and meet my family.” I seemed to have no choice in the matter. We arranged a suitable time, and he strolled away, turning around halfway up the block to tell me that my new neighborhood would be a good education for me.

  “Bleeding bodies happen almost every day in America,” Silver Daddy said ominously. “You simply must face up to it, George.”

  Persimmons

  Tinkerbelle, Silver Daddy’s secretary-companion, led me into the dining room of Silver Daddy’s spacious ghetto penthouse. A wooden refectory table was set for four people with earth-toned Japanese bowls and ivory chopsticks. A slender vase filled with white chrysanthemums stood at the center of the table. Chinese masks and cubist paintings by Silver Daddy hung on the walls. Navajo baskets and Nigerian carvings were strewn haphazardly but deliberately around the room.

  Tinkerbelle watched me with curious detachment as I wandered around, politely studying Silver Daddy’s rather bland attempts at painting. Tinkerbelle was in her early thirties, a small-boned woman with shoulder­-length brown hair and horn-rimmed glasses. She was wearing her standard uniform: nondescript plaid skirt, white Ladybug shirt, and a conservative cardigan sweater. Everything about her was mousey, but she emitted a certain nervous energy as she scurried around the room, chain­-smoking Gauloise cigarettes. Bored with the paintings and artifacts, I decided to be friendly and start a conversation.