“That’s right,” I said.
“What exactly do you have these young readers do?” Judge Moody asked. “Liv, what is it you do?”
“I’m not really sure,” I said.
“My bidding,” Jerome spit out.
I rolled my eyes. “Congratulations on your retirement,” I said.
“Well, I’m not quite retired yet. I still have one very happy last task to perform. I will be conducting a very special wedding ceremony,” Judge Moody said. “Jerome, are you bringing Liv to the wedding?”
“That would be lovely,” Jerome said. “But I don’t know if a wedding would be Liv’s cup of tea right now, would it?”
“Thank you,” I said, “but I can’t.” I was afraid it might involve somehow dancing with him.
“Well, anyway, Liv, I should introduce you to Andrew Lugar,” Judge Moody said. “He’s standing right over there.”
“Why?” I asked. When you feel like a nursemaid, you don’t expect to be introduced to people.
“Well, you’re in real estate,” Judge Moody said, “and Andrew’s an architect. Today’s a very big day for Andrew.”
I had just told Violet that I thought Asian babies were the cutest kind of baby and she told me that she thought I would marry a Japanese architect. She was always making totally wrong predictions, which annoyed me because I actually thought about them afterward.
Andrew Lugar walked over to us. He wasn’t Japanese but he was short and wore a dark suit. He stood tensely with his weight on one leg. He introduced himself to Jerome and me.
“What were you talking about with those clerks?” Judge Moody asked.
“They were discussing whether they had sex on the first date,” Andrew said. He turned to me. “What about you, do you have sex on the first date?”
Judge Moody wagged his finger. “Andrew, what kind of question—”
“Overruled,” Jerome said. “Liv, you may answer the question.”
“I only have sex on the first date if I really don’t like the guy and I know I don’t want to see him again,” I said.
“Good for you!” Jerome said.
Andrew burst out laughing. I asked Jerome if he wanted any cake. He patted his stomach and said, “No thank you, I really shouldn’t.” His stomach wasn’t really his problem. He should have patted his hips and thighs.
“I’d like some, would you?” Andrew said.
“Okay,” I said, trying to sound like I didn’t care about cake one way or the other. My father always insisted his models eat cake on their birthdays and not throw it up after because he said if you don’t have cake on your birthday you’ll be hungry all year. I extended that to, if you don’t have cake anytime it’s offered you’ll be hungry all year.
Jerome squeezed my elbow and released me. “Go ahead,” he said.
I followed the architect to the cake. It was covered in shredded green icing and little plastic golf flags and a little plastic golfer.
“So, how do you know Judge Moody?” I asked.
He cut me a rectangle of green cake and flipped it onto a paper plate.
“Maybe I should bring a piece to Judge Garrett,” I said.
“He said he didn’t want any,” Andrew said. “Have you been out on the balcony? You should see the view.”
We stepped out on the small curved balcony and leaned on the wrought-iron rail.
“How did you say you know Judge Moody?” I asked.
“He’s my father-in-law.”
My eyes went automatically to Andrew’s left hand. There was no ring. He watched me do this.
“Looking to see if I’m wearing a ring?” he asked.
“What? No,” I said.
I was glad he wasn’t wearing one and that I hadn’t forgotten to look. Violet was an expert left-hand looker, but I always forgot. I once wasted a whole plane ride talking to a man wearing three wedding bands.
“I was wondering if I could call you to discuss real estate.”
“What sort of real estate questions did you have?” I said.
“I’m looking for a loft I can live and work in.”
“A live/work loft,” I said.
“Right. I found one I liked but they wouldn’t allow dogs. I have dogs. Do you have any pets?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, do you think you could help me find a loft?”
There was no reason to try to impress a married guy.
“I’m not really a real estate agent,” I told him.
“Well, I’m not really married,” he said.
“Oh, you’re not?” I said. I could feel my face get hot.
“No, I just live with someone,” he said.
He was totally rude and unattractive with awful brown glasses that made him look like a lesbian. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and handed me a business card. “Call me if you hear of anything.” He grabbed my hand and I pulled away from him. “What would you do if I picked you up and threw you off this balcony?” he said.
“I don’t answer hypothetical questions,” I told him.
“We could have a drink.”
“Is that some sort of a threat?” I said. I felt confused, like I was one beat behind in the conversation.
In one quick movement he grabbed my arm, turned me around, wrapped his arms around me, and lifted me up. I screamed and he laughed. He had me up in the air facing the party. I could see Jerome through the French doors talking to some men who were taller than him.
“Put me down,” I screamed. No one could hear me.
Andrew turned around so I faced the river. He pressed the fronts of my legs against the railing. He held my upper body over the edge of the balcony and laughed. For a moment I thought he really was going to send me over but we just stood like that with my hair blowing in my face. I kept my eyes closed. He shimmied his arms lower on my body and dangled more and more of me over the edge. I got dizzy thinking about my bracelet falling off.
“Well, if you’re not going to do it, I really should be getting back to Judge Garrett,” I said, calmly.
The jerk put me down and I went back inside.
And people say it’s hard to meet a man in New York.
My legs shook as I walked up the stairs to my apartment. I couldn’t get him out of my mind. How could a man just lift a person up like that? How could I just get lifted?
It had felt almost natural being with Jerome at Judge Moody’s retirement party. He had stayed to attend the wedding Judge Moody was performing and it felt strange leaving alone, being out on the street, walking without his hand on my elbow. I had gotten used to Jerome grabbing my elbow like Henry the Eighth grabbing for a turkey wing. I get attached faster than anybody.
As soon as I opened the door, the phone rang and I started to regret answering. It was Violet, and I didn’t want to talk to her because we always spent hours on the phone and lately neither one of us had anything even mildly interesting to say. I was through talking about my ex-husband. I didn’t want to tell her about Andrew Lugar, the lifter.
I didn’t even get a chance to speak. She was rattling on about how she had taken Valium the night before and had sex with a stranger at a roof party. “He was so sexy and European. Such a mensch,” she kept saying.
Violet liked to use words like mensch all the time even though she was a Wasp from Texas and had absolutely no idea what mensch meant.
“Do you think he’ll call?” she asked.
I couldn’t believe she thought there was even a remote chance that he would call. He would never call. “He’ll call,” I said. “He’ll definitely call.” Finally I said, “Well, you’re not going to believe what happened to me. I consider it a new low point.”
“What?” she asked, completely interested in any story that started with that.
“I was lifted,” I said. I told her the whole story and we sat on the phone in silen
ce, shocked that a person could just lift another person like that. This was so much better than our usual conversations.
7.
LIVE/WORK OK
The next day I squeezed in with a million Japanese people and took the elevator up to the top of the Empire State Building. It was raining and visibility was low, but that hadn’t stopped the tourists. I wished visibility were even lower. I loved it when there was zero visibility and you stood up there in a cloud. You knew New York was there but you couldn’t see it.
I walked past the concession stand with its rows of stuffed King Kongs and stood outside in the misty rain. I put fifty cents in a telescope machine. I aimed it toward my old apartment, where I used to live high up with my husband. I swung the machine fast over the broccoli patch of Central Park and over to the East Side. I could travel from the Hudson to the East River with a flick of my wrist.
Then the lenses went blank and I put another fifty cents in. This time I saw nothing but color. I pulled my face away. It was an enormous rainbow. The crowds around me gasped and clapped like it was the Fourth of July. I gasped and clapped, too. I had never seen one before, but looking at it now made me feel like I should never have bothered to look at anything else. I should have always been looking at rainbows. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. God had thrown down a scarf.
I couldn’t imagine New York without it. It would have to stay.
“Why does that happen?” I heard a little boy ask.
I waited for the answer but there wasn’t any.
In minutes it started to fade, getting muddy in the center at the height of its arc. Clouds were interfering with it. I started to get angry.
I put quarter after quarter in and followed the rainbow through the lenses. When it faded completely I found myself staring at a familiar shape. It was the shape the curtains made in the glass doors leading to the balcony in the bedroom of my husband’s apartment. The broker had called it a Juliet balcony. There were the curtains, the doors, and my giant flowerpots. I could see right into my husband’s bedroom.
We had sex on that balcony once. I had been drunk and my knees had wobbled and the city spun. I didn’t know we were being watched by Japanese tourists.
I had stood on that balcony in a white hotel bathrobe when he was at work and waved, pretending to be Marilyn. Now I wondered who had waved back.
Again the lenses went dark. I went to the concession stand to get more change so I could keep watching the balcony. I half-expected to see my husband standing out there. I half-expected to see myself.
The next morning I rushed to the newsstand expecting to see pictures of the rainbow on all the front pages. I bought the Times, the News, and the Post but all I found was a war, and a sports guy who had picked up a prostitute. I turned reluctantly to the weather pages, thinking at least it would be there. But it wasn’t. Yesterday’s rainbow wasn’t news in this world.
I read my horoscope and dumped the papers in the garbage can. Then I tried to remember the horoscope that I had just read but I couldn’t. It had completely evaporated from my mind.
I couldn’t bring myself to go to Jerome’s. The thought of sitting there staring at him all day with him not even able to stare back depressed me. I looked in the mirror. I had to be seen today. By somebody. That wasn’t too much to ask.
I spent the morning walking around looking up at the tops of buildings. New York had a high blue ceiling. I looked up into windows. With all those windows there had to be somewhere I could work. There had to be someplace where I could be of use. In this whole city there had to be a job where the people had vision.
At noon I went to Il Cantinori, an Italian restaurant on Tenth Street that I used to go to with my husband.
The maître d’ recognized me and gave me a great table near the front. The floor-to-ceiling windows were swung completely open and my table was practically on the sidewalk. I was half in and half out Half here and half everywhere else. The noise of the city outside—men working construction on top of scaffolding, car alarms, honking—mixing with the soft music inside and the ringing of cell phones made me feel like nothing was going on or ever had, or would, that I didn’t somehow know about.
Suddenly I was distracted by a woman at the next table making strange sex noises over her soup. “Ummmm, ummmm, ohhhhh,” she moaned.
She was sitting alone. Only now I wasn’t sure that it was a woman. Short fingernails. A plain gold wedding band. Men’s brown oxfords.
“Hi, I’m Dale,” the person said to me. “How aaaaare you?”
“Hi,” I said, going back to the menu.
“This soup is so good.” Dale was wearing big blue jeans with a blue work shirt tucked in like a postman. Dale was fat and even rounder and softer than Jerome, with tight short curly black hair. “This soup brings me right back to Italy,” Dale said.
Fat people always love to talk about Italy.
“Italy is perfect. The food and the wine! Everyone is so elegant. The women wrap themselves in long wool capes. It’s so beautiful.” Dale stopped and raised a finger. “Shhh, you hear that?”
I listened. I could hear everything and nothing. I shook my head. Dale pointed to two businessmen. One was talking about a meeting he was having with a co-op board about an apartment he was trying to buy. “They’re tough,” he said, “and without board approval, there’s no way we can move in there.” The other laughed. “Wear a good suit.” “No,” the first man said, “the problem is Jenny plays the cello.”
“You see that. All anybody talks about in this town is real estate!”
Dale whispered, dipping bread into a plate of oil.
I hated when people called New York a town.
Without my asking, the maître d’ brought over a plate of the pasta I used to get with my husband. It embarrassed me. I felt like an impersonator, pretending to be my old self. I felt like a trespasser, as if I had broken into my husband’s apartment and pulled my chair up to my old place at the dining room table. I didn’t want my husband’s old pasta. I was Miss Havisham afraid of splattering tomato sauce on my gown.
Dale stood up, walked over to the two men, and handed them a business card. “Pardon me, gentlemen, how aaaaare you? I couldn’t help overhearing. I’m sure you won’t have any problem getting board approval but if it doesn’t work out please give me a call.” They looked up in disbelief.
Then Dale put a card down near the edge of my table. “It was very nice to meet you,” Dale said, putting out a chubby hand. I shook it.
Through a gap between the buttons of the blue work shirt I caught a glimpse of a stark white bra. Woman! I thought. Dale looked me straight in the eye. “I’m sure I’ll see you again.” She leaned in closer. “I love having that soup when it’s that time of the month.”
“Grazie,” she said across the restaurant to the waiter, and left.
“What a freak,” the man buying the co-op said.
The card said “Dale Kilpatrick Licensed Real Estate.”
My check was almost fifty dollars. The maître d’ had taken the liberty of charging me for everything he had brought over. I needed a real job.
Hi, how aaaaare you?” Dale said, when I walked into her office. She was sitting behind a desk with a complete set of Tony Robbins motivational tapes on a shelf behind her.
“Great,” I said.
“Grrrreeeaaattt!” she said.
She looked me up and down. I hadn’t worn anything special to meet with her, just jeans and a Chanel No 5 T-shirt I had bought on Canal Street and a long pin-striped jacket. I suddenly wished I was wrapped in a long wool cape. I didn’t know why she was making me feel self-conscious. She was wearing the same blue uniform as the day before. I decided it was just that I wasn’t used to a sighted interview.
“Let me axe you a question,” Dale said. “Why do you want to be a real estate agent?”
“I’m divorced,” I said. “I had t
o move out of my apartment. It was a really beautiful apartment.”
“I think so many women in New York get into real estate for that reason,” Dale said. “We don’t want to end up homeless bag ladies collecting aluminum soder cans.”
The homeopathic doctor I had gone to right before I left my husband told me that my body was filled with aluminum. I was more metallic than anybody she had ever met. “I bet you beep when you go through metal detectors at the airport,” she had said. “Yes I do,” I told her, even though I didn’t. I liked the idea of it.
“Anyway I know how you feel. When I was a kid,” Dale said, “we lived in a walk-up in Queens.”
“Oh, that’s awful,” I said.
“No, that’s not the bad part. My father beat me and then he made me wait out in the hall. The hall was dark and smelled like cat piss and garbage. They wouldn’t let me into the house. I had to wait in the hall for whole days sometimes and into the night. I wasn’t even allowed to have my own house key. That’s why I got into real estate. Look,” she said. She pointed to a Peg-Board on the wall with dozens of keys hanging from tiny hooks.
“When I was a kid,” I said, “we traveled a lot, from hotel to hotel, and I had to stay in my room and sometimes it wasn’t even on the same floor as my parents’ room.” I wished I hadn’t told my own hard-luck story. Dale didn’t look too sorry for me. But I somehow knew how she felt about being in the hall. When I was a child my shrink told me that I was a nomad, which she explained meant turtle without a shell.
“Anyway, that’s why I like to sit here in my beautiful office and surround myself with beautiful things,” Dale said.
I looked around the shabby office. It was one square room with a bathroom. Water dripped in the sink. One wall stuck out to create a partition for no reason and was painted orange with a yellow stripe.
There were five wooden school desks in a row and a bridge table in the middle of the room with a computer on it.
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