“You didn’t turn him in did you?” she asked me.
“Of course not.”
“Then why didn’t they fire you?”
“They’re probably going to soon. I think they just want me to break in the new managers.”
“Why then did you have to ask me what happened to Miguel?”
“I wasn’t here yesterday—you were. I just said that they asked me to break this new guy in.”
“It’s all a damned shame. See what happens when you don’t have a union to protect you? By the way, be sure to fill them in on the union contract and my rights in dealing with them.”
“It’s already done. Listen, I’m a little busy right now and I’ve got a lot to do.”
“Like what?”
“They’re waiting for a report on the condition of the roof.”
“Oh, they’ve finally got around to wanting to fix that, and you’re probably going to take all the credit.”
“What credit?”
“I was the one that told you that roof was leaking. That’s what credit.”
“Calm down. I mentioned you in my preliminary report.” As I started climbing up the metal ladder, she kept hollering things up to me. While I undid the binding ropes and pushed the hatch free, I heard her nagging about the new manager looking like a repressed homophobe. What the hell did she want me to do, convert him? Despite my pains, I scrambled up and got beyond hearing distance. I wasn’t sure if eccentric people became projectionists or if the job made them that way. I supposed long hours in closed quarters would effect anybody. Looking out the front of the theater, under the flapping “Zeus” flag, I saw a cop car double parked. Next to it, another car pulled up and a fat little guy plopped out. It was Ox. Then the passenger door opened and a slim young male figure got out. He looked just like Miguel. Both of them quickly went into the theater. What the fuck was Miguel doing down there? He was supposed to be in jail.
Quickly I limped around old tar cans and other debris toward the back of the building. I slowly worked my way down the rusty, rickety fire escape. It ended in the pitch blackness of some alley. I tossed down my cane. It took too long to hit bottom; I estimated a drop of about eight feet. Stretching myself from the bottom rung, I released and hit the ground on all fours. I painfully started to move. The fall awakened pains that had been napping. I picked up my cane and slapped it against the ground like a blind man. Following the alley to a large cyclone fence, I realized that the street was over this wiry hindrance.
I tossed my cane over the fence and then started up painfully. The wire dug deep into my skin and when I got to the top I felt a tiny stab. The top was meshed with barbed wire.
Slowly working my way through the darkness, I went as far as I could go before having to commit blood. Grabbing onto barbed wire and cutting yourself wasn’t easy. It was one of those things that you simply couldn’t order yourself to do, like trying to hold your breath unto death. So I just hung there and made a bunch of false starts, until I heard those walkie talkies in the distance. That meant that the cops had combed through the theater and finally bumped into the obnoxious projectionist, who probably demanded to know, “What the hell is going on? This goes against all union rules.” And finally someone filled her in and she explained that the culprit was on the roof. In two minutes they would be here on this cyclone fence.
Pain upon pain, gash into scars into bruise through cloth and flesh. And then came the hope and then the chance and with strength, will, fear, anger—all I could muster—despite the barbs hooking into just-sealed scabs, I shoved everything into that puncture of a chance. I heard the sound of feet scampering down the fire escape so I dropped hard over the fence to the street. I grabbed my cane lying next to me and started limp/hop/running over to Fourth Avenue where I hailed a God-sent cab and was delivered.
FIFTEEN
“Where to?” the cabbie asked after I sat silently as he drove for a couple blocks.
“Just away,” I replied quietly.
“But where?” the cabbie asked. The cab whizzed up Fourth Avenue until it turned into Park Avenue South.
“Thirty-eighth and Broadway.” I randomly picked the coordinates so at least the cab had somewhere to go. But where was I going to go? What was left? When I realized that three dollars and fourteen cents were left, I had the cabbie stop when the red digits on the meter came to two eighty-five and gave him all my money. I got off at Thirty-first and Madison.
All I had was a cane and a worthless piece of paper declaring that I owned one third of a theater in Hoboken. My entire life was one ridiculous mirage after another, and after all these surefire plans of success sitting on the back burner, all I could do was rip that fucking paper to tiny bits. I limped along those streets, cold and depressed, my clothes shredded, with paranoia setting in like rigor mortis. Did Miguel get out of the car with the Ox? If so, why?
While backtracking to remember how I happened to remember to call Miguel, I realized it was due to the Harrington party. By elimination, it was the last place to go. So I limped over to a public phone and called information and got the locale. The office was on Twenty-third and Third Avenue.
By the time I limped over there it was ten o’clock, early for a Friday night party. I felt increasingly depressed with each limp. What was I going to do after the party? Where was I going to go? The offices were located in a renovated brownstone across from the School of Visual Arts and they must have been banking on some big bucks, because they hired an adorable little door/valet girl who for a single instant let me forget all my woes. She had an adolescent face and a body in full bloom, a unique distortion of perfection. She sat on a fold-out chair reading Lolita with a bored expression, just waiting to be devoured. My heart swelled to its bloody capacity as I got closer. But when filthy and broken old me finally hobbled up she scowled. Still holding the book she asked, “What do you want?”
“I’m a contributor.”
“Bullshit.”
I held my cane hard. There was only love at first sight, beyond that disillusion, pain, and death. I told her my name and she looked on the list, but couldn’t find it. Then I told her Miguel’s name, since Owensfield gave him the invitation, and apparently she located it.
“One second,” she said and addressing the intercom had Owensfield paged. In a tux and with a longstem goblet of sparkling apple cider, Owensfield eventually arrived.
“What the hell happened to you?” He sounded so paternal.
“Well, Pop, I crashed the car on the way to the prom. I hope you don’t mind driving Mom’s car awhile.”
He led me in past the bored beauty. I could hear the music upstairs. It sounded like a live salsa band, but he led me to a side room downstairs. Flipping on a light switch, a bathroom was revealed.
“There’s a razor and a lot of nice-smelling things in the medicine chest. And also take a shower. If you need anything else …”
“Actually, if you can spare a shirt …”
He said he’d be back in a minute. Taking my coat off was like wrestling a cougar from my back. It was too painful to undress, and since my shirt was already shredded up, it was easier to tear it off. The shower curtains had an I Love New York motif, the temperature of water obeyed the commands of the knobs, and there were no sailors scrubbing their uniforms. But all the old pains were still in effect, and there was the same runoff of blood and filth. Owensfield knocked at the door and swiftly put some clothes on a hook. He told me to try them on after I was well cleaned.
“I’ll come down and check on you in a while.”
I thanked him and made use of all the hospitalities. A half hour later I was ready, but no matter how hard I washed I couldn’t wash away bruises. I was still stuck in the same battered body. I sat on the toilet seat and tried to control the pain until Owensfield appeared and looked me over. He applied some medication and some cosmetics and when he could do no more he said, “Okay, let’s go.”
He led me upstairs to a large open area, which was an off
ice space during the day. It was filled with cavorting, money-heavy people who didn’t limp, and had a place to go afterwards, people who had never been wanted by the police and always had a destination when they got into a cab.
I felt immensely self-conscious, a beetle in a beehive, only these drones had no stingers so I just kept to myself. To combat all the nervousness and irritations, I quickly located the bar. The bartender, some little preppie trying to make points in the real world, gave me one measured shot of vodka. When I asked him for a second, he gave me a nasty look. When I asked for a third, he took his time about it, and when I swallowed that and asked for a fourth, he said no.
I went behind the bar and poured myself a generous glass of vodka. He tried grabbing the bottle out of my hand, but I yanked it away.
“You are not permitted behind the bar,” he declared. In reply I downed the glass and opened a virgin bottle of Glenlivet. “You’re not permitted here. What are you, stupid?”
I was in one of those shit-faced moods that drunks get into when they suddenly see everyone equal in the eyes of God, and they realize that they were sent to distribute His wealth. I decided that the only way I was leaving from behind the bar was by being physically removed. Considering the condition that I was in, that wouldn’t have taken much. The novice bartender, though, approached Owensfield, who, in the middle of a conversation, swatted him away I stayed put, and soon the kid realized that there was no one else to appeal to. He returned, pissed and silent. I started drinking more heavily just to spite him.
After about twenty minutes, I could no longer keep balance, so with the use of the cane I tried balancing myself. But a cane is only as sober as its master. I flopped down on some people sitting on the couch. One lady got indignant and threw her booze on me. As I hobbled away a young lady with a beautiful face mumbled to me, “Good for you, serves the bitch right.” I nodded in agreement, but I didn’t want to talk to anybody.
“What’s your name anyway?” she asked.
“Je ne parle pas anglais.”
“Je parle français.”
“Je ne parle anything.”
“Fuck you, too,” the beautiful face said. Now she could link up with the first bitch, and they could both discuss what a bastard I was. I drank more alcohol. The figurative seems to become the literal when drunk. My sails swelled, my keel rose and dipped, the winds blew, and the waves pounded over my decks. A drunken vertigo spun me, the booze was a typhoon, a whirlpool, and ultimately a tidal wave. Drinking more and more and more, I vomited in an ice bucket behind the bar and drank more. I could batten my hatches no longer and tried to go to the bathroom. I stumbled through the party to a smaller room in the back, which seemed to have a haystack of coats. Upon them I collapsed, forgot about the toilet and dug a foxhole in the cloth and furs and fell deep asleep.
“Where’s my coat? Where’s my wrap? Where’s my jacket?” Questions bombarded my little sleep, but the drunkenness provided extra cover. Slowly people plucked at the haystack of clothes. Gradually I got cold and began to shiver.
“Where the hell is my boa?” I heard some whiny Queens accent screaming. “Where’s my boa … where’s my coat … where’s my …”
“Fuck your where!” I mumbled.
“Who is that!” she hollered. “Irving, there’s a human being under that stole.”
Someone removed the thing above me and my face was exposed. Through squinty eyes I saw a blurry Helmsley. “Helmsley? Is that really you?”
“You know this guy?” Helmsley asked Owensfield.
“Helmsley?” Owensfield asked. “You mean Helmsley Micinski? I heard he committed suicide.”
“You know Helmsley?”
“I knew of him. We published some translations of his. He was a good translator.”
“Why didn’t you publish any of his poetry?”
“Get off the lady’s wrap,” the guy who looked like Helmsley said. Helmsley was dead.
“Please get off the lady’s wrap,” Owensfield corrected the fellow.
“Why didn’t you publish any of his poetry?” I asked Owensfield.
“What poetry?”
“Get the hell off the coat,” the Helmsley look-alike said. This time he grabbed me by my shoulder and wheeled me around onto my feet.
“Helmsley was constantly sending out poetry. He had a file full of form rejections from the Harrington.”
“I never saw one poem from Helmsley Micinski.”
“He wrote more than anyone I knew.”
“Well, he never sent me a thing. I heard he wrote some decent poems back in the sixties, when he was just a kid in his teens. Word was that he was finished. Now please, the party’s winding down, try sobering up a bit.”
I slowly made my way over to the bathroom and peed my guts out while wondering whether Helmsley had lied to me. Maybe lie is a harsh word since he was his own victim. Writing was everything to him and maybe he couldn’t write. He was always preparing, making notes, making tedious outlines, doing subtle character studies, forever sharpening the knife that, if he never truly used, he would one day have to turn on himself. To come to terms with the fact that he was burnt out at thirty would be devastating. As I drunkenly thought this, the squawking lady’s words were still echoing in my ears, Where’s this, where’s that? I sat on the toilet seat and murmured, “Where?” The word seemed to be a philosophy unto itself, and all the implications right down to the homonyms seemed to embrace Helmsley:
When your ware
wear
where
from there?
I then pulled my pants up and did the buckle and belt and rejoined the party. Lying on the bar was a pen and napkin. I scribbled down the little poem and stuck it in my pocket. Retreating back to the couch, I reclined in a pain-minimizing posture and napped a bit until I started feeling the earth rumbling. I awoke to a bunch of people hauling the couch I was on. They were clearing the room to dance. I rolled off the moving couch and landed on the floor: pain. Owensfield came over and after he helped me to my feet, I asked him, “When is my poem being published?”
“In this issue.”
“When is that making its debut.”
“What do you think this party is all about?”
“It’s out?”
“Eureka!” From thin air he seemed to produce a copy. I grabbed it and thumbed to the table of contents, no name. I skimmed the magazine, but I couldn’t find my name anywhere. Snatching it back, he quickly turned to the poem and handed it to me. I recited it proudly and drunkenly. Then I noticed the byline and started worrying, “Thi … who? Who is that?”
“That’s you, remember.”
“Like hell it is.” It was a bizarre name—Thi Doc Sun. It was as approximate to my name as Cassius Clay was to Muhammad Ali. He took the magazine, pronounced the name aloud and asked, “Isn’t that you?”
“No, but maybe I should change my name to that.” Thi? I drunkenly recalled the name from somewhere, and then I remembered; it was the Cambodian night porter.
“God, I’m sorry. I promise you, I’ll print an errata in the next issue.”
“It doesn’t even matter,” I laughed. “The only reason I wanted to do it in the first place was to impress Helmsley.” But it did matter. I thought for a minute about Janus and Glenn, I proudly told them both about my getting published. Now, if they bothered to check, they’d find out I was a fraud. Poetic justice.
Owensfield brought me over to the bar and secured a very expensive bottle of booze, which he uncorked and poured into shot glasses, “This is my favorite.”
He poured more drinks and we talked awhile. Finally he mentioned that he had heard several people compliment my poem. He summed it up, saying, “For thirty-four words it offers a raw glimpse into gutter-level East Village.”
“Glad you liked it. You know, I’ve just completed another poem. It’s only a couple of words really.” I took out the napkin and gave it to him. He mumbled it aloud.
“When your ware wear, where fro
m there.” He thought about it a moment and said, “There’s not a word here about East Village.”
“I have a broad sweep.”
“When we want a broad sweep we get a broom.” He handed me the napkin back. He was bored with me and he walked away, mingling with others. I chuckled drunkenly, considering that I had been fired from the theater and there was no way Owensfield would ever get his film presented. I remained loyal to the bar. The preppie bartender apparently had abandoned it and people were helping themselves. I was so drunk that I was somebody else, but that person was still conscious, so there was still something left to liquidate. A blur of bottles and glasses, somebody was reading poetry, but all I could recall was a couple lines of white dust.
SIXTEEN
I’ve never been able to recollect going to sleep, but I’ll never forget waking up the next morning. I had had my unrestrained go at the drugs and alcohol, and now they had their go at me. I don’t know the clinical terms, but the result was some kind of partial amnesia which lasted for the next couple of weeks. My memory of those weeks to come remains choppy. I vividly remember waking that pivotal morning because of several foreboding images and sensations which I made into dreams. The first “dream” was being back in a hospital, perhaps Roosevelt Hospital, and sitting very still next to someone, perhaps that poor Yuppie, because he was coughing and hacking uncontrollably. I just heard the constant groaning sounds, but I never saw a doctor or a nurse. Perhaps we were all just put in some kind of quarantine ward. The next dream was the earthquake, a long snake-like torso that kept sinking downward. Then I dreamt that I was in Ternevsky’s hot tub, and then I got very cold and itchy.
When I reached down through the haze to scratch, I realized that I was drenched. Slowly I slithered out from under that colossal mudslide of sleep. I kicked down that wet sheet, pried my body out of the bed, and rotated to a sitting position. Instinctively I groped for my cane, but it was nowhere bedside. The drunken dome of my skull was feverish, and my eyes were hot gel. Although I had a basic control, simple logic, and partial recall, I had not yet detoxified. The gravitational pull was never stronger, inertia never more tempting, but slowly I assembled a whole picture. Old men on double decker cots were regimented tightly around the room so that it held a maximum capacity I had peed in the underside of one such cot, I was naked and wet; slowly all these details dripped onto the sizzling hot frying pan of my brain. On my hands and knees, I felt for my clothes, but I found nothing. I was sure of only the floor. This I pursued to a wall and got to my feet and fumbled around the double beds, only able to open my eyes for long blinks. I was cold but it didn’t matter. Hand over hand, I moved along the rough wall toward a distant door frame of light from which I heard a groaning sound.
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