People in Trouble

by Sarah Schulman

  Kate leaned back against the kitchen doorframe and inhaled her cigarette. It tasted great. When was the last time she had smoked? Probably the early seventies. Fifteen years? Was it possible not to have smoked a cigarette for fifteen years? Peter had smoked then too. He smoked Kents. They came in little gray packages that reminded her of the white shirts businessmen wore with suits. The cigarette packs were designed to peek out of the pockets of those kinds of shirts. What was the difference between love and habit? After a while one evolved into the other but how long ago had that happened? It was not a negative thing necessarily. You know how to act, he knows how to act. As long as neither of you changes everything is fine.

  What had Peter looked like? She couldn’t remember. He had been charming and skinny with a full head of hair. How long ago was that? What would happen if he found a kind of music she didn’t like or gave her a book she didn’t want to read? What if she went someplace on her own he’d never been before? What then? He never said what he wanted, he just looked unhappy and moped. Then she had to take care of him. There was nothing wrong with that, he would take care of her if she were in his shoes. He did the shopping sometimes when she told him what to get. He never cheated.

  Then a graceful woman came slowly into the kitchen.

  ‘Hi, I’m Becky. I just wanted to get some water.’

  ‘Hello,’ Kate said. ‘No problem, I’m finished in here.’

  She went back into the main room to sit with the two women for a while.

  Becky and Pearl were quite lovely together, Kate had to admit, even though she disliked Pearl. Actually, she despised her. Pearl was in a ghetto. She was a man-hater. Still, Kate could aesthetically appreciate such luxurious hair and their glowing objective loveliness. Kate was universal and so she could enjoy and appreciate all forms of beauty and did so until they excused themselves to rush off to bed. From her chair Kate could hear them giggle and whisper and moan slightly. She missed Molly. She missed talking to her. She missed touching her. She heard the two women making love and thought about when she and Molly made love and could not accept that it was the same thing.

  No matter how much I think about it or hear about it, no matter how much pain it causes me or how exciting it can be, it has not become acceptable for me. It is not regular.

  The next morning she got up very early filled with energy and didn’t know what to do with it. She went out and came back to sounds of Pearl and Becky making love again. She waited, static, until Pearl woke, dressed, ate and was ready to go to work.

  They went out in back behind the work shed, where Pearl was storing the frames under large tarps. After hauling each one out and positioning it, Pearl began putting hinges on each piece and worked steadily while Kate spread out a sheet and sat on the grass. The woman Kate was watching at work had been an intoxicated lover the night before. But now Pearl was acting as though nothing had happened. Why wasn’t she howling and dancing? That made Kate think how grown-up Pearl must be. Right then Kate established a definition of an adult as someone capable of making love and then going on, as though their writhing, wanting self belonged to a different life. At just that moment Pearl looked up from her thick legs and her utility belt. She looked right at Kate who could see and imagine Pearl’s eyes at the same time. There was a clear flicker of laughter in the background of her iris, vaguely reminiscent of her hands dripping in saliva, cum and blood. There was scent lingering on her fingers that revived her like a quick dip in a waterfall, as she casually passed her hand over her upper lip. How could Pearl be working so seriously? Kate was curious, imagining each woman’s secret behind her most presentable self. But maybe it was just the light.

  41

  MOLLY

  There was no way that Molly could possibly sleep. The night was vibrating for her like a personalized set of Magic Fingers in a desolate hotel somewhere outside of Reno. She had been living in a box of closed possibilities and then it occurred to her quite suddenly that she did deserve love after all.

  She put on her shoes, straightened out her place, made the bed, washed the glasses. She took out the garbage and stuffed it in the gray steel cans sitting on the street. But first Molly sorted out the bottles into separate bags and carefully laid them on the hood of a parked car so some homeless person could cash them in. That would make a nice after-midnight surprise for someone out of luck. Just when they were too tired to look through one more garbage bag there’d be enough bottles suddenly for a beer and two cigarettes. Most people throw their bottles out with the rest of the trash so bag pickers have to put their hands in rotting repulsive refuse for the five-cent deposit.

  It was very late but not too hot. Many bodies were on the street and most of them were murmuring. The night rumbled like a human subway. People were sleeping everywhere and because it was warm, their corpses lay with outstretched bare limbs making small sounds, head protected by a newspaper or hand. She started walking among them in and out of yellow streetlights around the same old blocks. She talked to herself. She felt desire. She wanted to be close to a woman’s body. Then she remembered something fantastic. She remembered that Sam was not Kate. She could call Sam anytime. She could just stop by her place. There was no guy keeping her from Sam’s love. She walked straight and quickly talking herself all the way to Sam’s door. There was no answer. There was no sound. So she went looking to find this woman in the purple night and take her home.

  Molly checked out a few bars around the neighborhood and peeked into the bodegas. Then she walked Sam’s area, systematically trying out streets she had never tried before at any time of day. It wasn’t that she felt alone. It was that she was alone. It was that reality which reinforced her determination, being out there in the middle of the night and no one knew.

  Only two things happened. There was a weird conversation with an old black man on a corner somewhere and then this flickering fluorescent light from Lillian’s Coffee Shop on Second Street. It was a greasy light, like a dirty bathroom with no sink. Inside was a sign for homemade pie and a cowgirl who couldn’t sleep, and so sat back instead bobbing drowsily over coffee and a slice of it. Her cigarette was burning in the metal ashtray and her eyes hung very low. Sam could have been downtown off any highway living out that 1950s beat reality in the middle of the last coffee shop in New York City that served their last piece of pie.

  ‘I can’t catch up,’ Sam said as Molly brought her back to her room. ‘There’s nothing in modern life that grabs me.’

  They had both been drowning earlier that evening and doing it privately.

  There is relief, Molly realized, smelling sweaty fruity scent at the base of Sam’s neck. Thank God.

  When Sam ate her she tasted every shape. She wasn’t just moving her tongue up and down. The more excited Molly became and the larger her clitoris swelled, the lighter was Sam’s tongue, pulling back, always, to the surface, which gave Molly a chance for real feeling, not just pressure and quickness. Women’s cunts are so different from each other, Molly knew each had to be felt thoroughly to find out about the person surrounding it. Sam knew about the little things, like pulling up Molly’s stomach every now and then so her clit would stretch flat and then letting it slide back again. Sam knew how to make love so that by the end of it there were sore cunts and assholes and nipples and lips dripping. There was no deep need still lingering, only tenderness and then a crazy serenity.

  ‘Talked to Daisy about your girlfriend,’ Sam said, looking right then like a very beautiful quiet woman with soft breasts. ‘She said you’ve been suffering.’

  ‘I don’t want to go into that too much right now,’ Molly said. ‘Because I’m happy to be with you. You feel so good to me.’

  Sam didn’t talk a lot. She wasn’t that way. The feelings came through sometimes without too many words and they were often unknown.

  ‘It’s all right to be upset,’ Sam said.

  ‘I am upset.’ Molly started to shake. She felt so comfortable. ‘I’m very upset.’ She was trembling and th
en cold. Her muscles were twitching. She didn’t know how to make them stop until Sam opened up her body.

  ‘Take my heat,’ she said.

  Her voice gave Molly permission to relax into her and let Sam’s warmth penetrate her deeply.

  It feels good to be safe, she thought. I feel so happy to be safe. When I’m intimate with another person I always learn something. If it’s with someone I can grow to love, the things I learn are so beautiful they lift me. Being close smells cool and sweet. It feels great, feels so warm.

  Molly took hold of the scruff of Sam’s neck.

  This is just what I need, she thought. And then she said so out loud.

  42

  MOLLY

  ‘I don’t have to go to work until eleven,’ Sam said. ‘Let’s do something great. Let’s get stoned and go to Central Park.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Molly said, rolling over Sam’s flesh to get to her clothes. ‘It’s credit card day.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s Justice. Justice strikes today. How come you never come to meetings? Doesn’t Trudy tell you what’s going on?’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Thousands of people are dropping dead and no one cares. People won’t do anything until it affects them. That’s what’s going on, Sam.’

  ‘It’s ugly,’ Sam said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Molly said. ‘But it’s real.’

  Molly looked at Sam’s green eyes, the way they twinkled. She looked at iron muscles and little pieces of flesh.

  ‘We’re so lucky, Sam. We’re so lucky we don’t have to watch each other die.’

  Sam got dressed then, slowly. She put on her bolo tie and followed Molly out onto the street, locking all the locks behind them.

  ‘We’ve been planning this for a long time,’ Molly said. ‘I don’t know if I can honestly say “we” because I didn’t do the most. I just do a little bit every now and then. But that makes me part of it.’

  ‘You think a little bit now and then is okay?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Molly said. ‘But only because there are a lot of people in Justice, so a lot of little bits is a lot. If there were only a few, then even doing it all the time wouldn’t be enough.’

  They got down quickly to the big twenty-four-register Pathmark sitting in a parking lot by the waterfront on Cherry Street near the projects. There were a lot of homeless people hanging out in front. They were the kind of people who were usually hanging out but not in that exact spot. And it wasn’t in their exact way either. They weren’t passing time and they weren’t scrounging. They were, instead, expecting. They weren’t loitering. They appeared to be gathering.

  Molly ran up to Fabian, deep in negotiation at the front of the crowd.

  ‘How did this happen?’

  ‘Molly, good, Bob needs you to help by the poultry counter.’

  Fabian was fully decked out in leather cutouts, chaps, boots with spurs and a series of bandannas in a variety of colors.

  ‘How did all these people get here?’

  ‘Mario and Roger went out last night leafleting the welfare hotels and the Third Street men’s shelter. People were lining up hours before we got here, just wanting to see what would happen. It’s scary when you put out the call and the people actually show up. If we don’t deliver, this crowd is going to be real pissed off.’

  ‘So …?’

  ‘So, go help out Bob. He’s got chicken cutlets coming out of his ears.’

  Sam went around to check out the back and Molly made her way through the men. It was mostly men. Young men. There were some women and they had kids with them but most of the men came alone. Some smelled so badly she retched. She almost threw up from the smell. Someone asked her for money, she said no. Some people were all right, but some people stank of urine.

  Bob had his hands full with papers and a disoriented Pathmark staff. He was easy to spot, being so tall and silver in a Stetson and a red and white checked shirt with silver-rimmed pearl snaps.

  ‘Molly, this is Mario. This is Don. They are our Chinese- and Spanish-language interpreters. We’re expecting a whole Chinatown contingent any minute and we have extra take-home wagons available for families who have to walk long distances.’

  They all shook hands.

  ‘I’m afraid we’re in a slight state of chaos here. So, Molly, figure out a way to get people to line up so they can get in touch with the appropriate translator.’

  The three of them went back into the crowd and Molly tried yelling, ‘Line up, line up,’ but that didn’t work.

  ‘That’s not going to work,’ Mario said.

  Right then the Chinese contingent arrived, mostly older women with stacks of empty shopping bags.

  Don yelled something out in Chinese.

  ‘What did you say?’ Molly asked.

  ‘I said, “Line up, line up.” ’

  ‘Didn’t work,’ Mario said.

  Finally Bob stood up on the back of a delivery truck and yelled through a bullhorn.

  ‘If you want free food be quiet now!’

  That worked.

  ‘Okay,’ Bob said. ‘The following food is available for free: meat, fish, chicken, all protein, cheese, eggs, dairy, beans, flour, rice, fresh fruit, vegetables, good bread, real juice, nuts, peanut butter, spice, oils and other whole foods. Also vitamins. And remember this supermarket sweepstakes is brought to you by none other than the friendly faggots and dykes of Justice.’

  Then Mario and Don did quick translations.

  The crowd became unexpectedly attentive and well behaved, although there was a definite undercurrent of ‘wait and see’ about all of it. Molly remembered Sam and then found out she was right there beside her.

  ‘The closest thing I’ve ever seen to this before,’ Sam said, ‘was waiting on line for five hours in the cold to get ten pounds of that goddamn cheese the government was giving away. Remember? It wasn’t even good cheese. It was that orange waxy kind.’

  ‘When you get to the checkout counter,’ Bob continued, ‘and the hardworking woman at the machine asks you how you intend to pay, just tell her “Charge it.” Repeat after me: “Charge it!”’

  And everybody did.

  ‘There we go, a little more group spirit can never hurt. Then, I’ll put your bill on these American Express cards. The actual owners of these cards are unable to be with us today because they are in the hospital. But they send their love and authorization to all of you. Okay, easy does it. Now, let’s go.’

  Fortunately Mario, Molly, Don, Sam, Bob and Fabian all had the same thought at the same moment, which was to get the hell out of the way, because the men and women came bursting through the front doors with such fury that the shatterproof plate-glass windows shuddered in their frames.

  The Justice boys and girls took turn running like crazy up and down the checkout lines shuffling plastic back and forth.

  ‘Don’t leave home without it,’ Fabian said, every time their paths crossed.

  People went straight for the meat, of course. But once they had it in their baskets they allowed themselves some long-ago-forgotten pleasures like peaches. Or ice cream. There is food that fills you up and then there is food that tastes so good in the mouth it makes a person feel human again. It brings back memories. It reminds a guy of other things.

  After half an hour, Bob came panting over to where the girls were handing out credit slips.

  ‘We’re almost all out of everything of nutritional value,’ he gasped. ‘All that’s left is junk.’

  ‘There are still people coming in the door,’ Sam called over her shoulder.

  ‘Well, we can’t be unduly moralistic,’ Don said. ‘Let people take whatever they want, even if it is Fritos and Diet Coke. I mean, when you need to eat, you need to eat.’

  So Don and Mario and Bob got back on the megaphone and that set off another rush, only this time for frozen pizza, Spam, hot dogs and Cool Whip.

  ‘Now what?’ Molly asked when Fabian ran up with a worried ex
pression.

  ‘People who only got fresh meat and good vegetables are complaining,’ he said. ‘Because they really wanted Twinkies.’

  After an emergency consultation the crew decided they had no right to tell people what to eat. They could only make suggestions and immediate happiness was not a negligible goal, so they let the first-timers go through again for their sugar fix. Bob couldn’t let go completely though, so he sat by the freezer section yelling out ‘Häagen-Dazs, Häagen-Dazs!’ hoping to have some influence.

  ‘This is an issue we have to seriously consider in the future,’ Mario said. ‘This cannot be denied.’

  When the last bottle of Thousand Island dressing was taken and the last can of pork and beans and the last jar of Fluff was packed into a carrier bag, Bob handed over one of the well-worn credit cards to a guy who had only gotten a six-pack of Good ‘N Plenty.

  ‘Do something truly inspired with this card,’ Bob said, totally exhausted. ‘Do something fabulous.’

  When the last person left and the Pathmark staff had crashed on each of the checkout-line conveyor belts, the men and women of Justice stood, together, silently holding on to one another and looking over the empty white cavern, watching the fluorescent lights ricochet off the empty shelves.

  ‘It kind of looks like a monstrous, empty refrigerator,’ Fabian said.

  ‘We’re doing something real important,’ Don said. ‘We’re making a difference today and it’s not as hard as I thought it would be.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ Mario said. ‘It seems like a big deal right now but tomorrow it will be over. I’ve been in politics a long time and little actions like this only work if they inspire people on to bigger ones.’

  On the way to the subway Don and Molly started to chat it up a bit because this was Don’s first political experience and he was excited no matter what Mario said. Besides, they had seen each other at lots of meetings but had never gotten a chance to talk before.

  ‘So, do you have a boyfriend?’ Molly asked.