High Maintenance

by Jennifer Belle

  He patted a cardboard box on his desk in front of him. It had the Sir Speedy Copy Shop logo printed on it.

  “I have completed a novel,” he said, sighing. “I don’t have my hopes up about it, of course.”

  I remembered being told not to get my hopes up as a child. I would bear down inside myself, pushing like a woman in labor, trying to keep my hopes down in the pit of my stomach, where I thought they were.

  “I was wondering if you would consider reading it. I know it’s a big favor to ask, isn’t it?”

  I wondered if he had written anything about me.

  “I’d be happy to read it,” I said.

  “Remember to be totally honest.”

  I pulled the box toward me and put it on my lap. I opened the lid. The Weight of Truth by Jerome Garrett. I turned to the first page. It just said To.

  “What does this mean?” I asked.

  “What?” Jerome said, leaning forward.

  “The word To.”

  “Oh, I haven’t decided to whom I shall dedicate it yet.”

  “It’s always pathetic when the person dedicates it to his mother and father,” I said, thinking he should dedicate it to me for reading it. “What about your girlfriend?”

  “She hasn’t been the most supportive person when it comes to my writing.” I’m sure, I thought. “And we’re not married, you know.”

  I had overheard a woman in a restaurant once say that the worst thing about not being married was having no one to go to your parents’ funerals with. But having no one to dedicate a book to was up there.

  “Maybe you should just pick some random initials. To L.R. To D.P.W. To C.S.H.”

  “To M.S.—My Self,” Jerome said.

  “To M.E.—Me,” I added.

  “To M.M. and I.—Me, Myself, and I.”

  “To Y.T.—Yours Truly.”

  “To N.O.—Number One.”

  I flipped to the last page. “Four hundred and seventy-six pages!” I said.

  “It’s very kind of you,” Jerome said. “And thank you for the gift.” The crude little Empire State building was prone on his desk.

  “I’ll let you know when I’ve finished it,” I said, tucking the manuscript back into the box.

  Later, in Abingdon Square, I saw an old man walking a black cat on a leash. He walked out of the lobby of one of the two big Bing and Bing buildings that stood catty-corner to each other on the edge of the small park. He walked the cat over to the baby swings, removed its pink leash, and placed the cat in the center swing. I watched as he pushed the cat in the swing for ten minutes, standing beside parents pushing children. Child child cat child child. I thought of Jerome never getting to see a sight like that. What was the point of living in New York, sightless?

  There was so much fog, the Empire State Building loomed, eerily half-invisible, like the Headless Horseman.

  When I got home I took out my disposable daily contact lenses and added them to the pile I kept on the corner of the sink like seashells. They were dried and curled in on themselves. I didn’t know why I was performing this experiment. It felt important, like keeping baby teeth. I just couldn’t bring myself to throw them out, the way I kept old negatives in a drawer somewhere. I felt like I could develop the contact lenses later and see everything again. Feel things I hadn’t been ready to feel the first time I saw them.

  My phone rang and I answered it before I realized it could be Dale.

  “Hey, it’s me, Dale. How aaaaare you?”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “Listen, I’m sorry about the way I acted today. I have my period and I’m all crazed. You know how it is, we’re both women here.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “I know I shouldn’t say this, Liv, but I have certain feelings for you. Certain feelings of love and lust. Now I’ve said it and we can forget it even happened.” She sounded all hyped up like a salesman whose vacuum cleaner had exploded during the presentation. “All right, kiddo, I’ll see you at the office tomorrow.” She hung up before I had a chance to say anything.

  Then the phone rang again.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, how aaaaare you, it’s me again, Dale. I’m calling to axe you not to tell anyone about this if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course I won’t!” I said, a little too quickly. It wasn’t like this was something to brag about. I wasn’t exactly going to hire a pilot to write “Dale Loves Liv” across the sky.

  “Sorry to inconvenience you.” She hung up.

  In the morning I got to work early but Dale was already there. She had a cold sore on her lip. She was interviewing someone who was going to be our new receptionist. A grotesque drag queen sat submissively in the wooden school chair with the attached desk. She had long brown nails with rings on every finger but her ring finger.

  “This is Janet,” Dale said, brightly. “Janet, this is the kid.”

  “The kid?” Janet asked.

  “I’m twenty-six,” I said.

  Janet laughed. “Well, she’s a kid to us,” Dale said.

  “Not to me. I’m twenty-one,” Janet said, clenching his legs together. “I really want to reenter the workforce as a woman.”

  “Well, that’s certainly understandable,” Dale said. “Thank you for coming in, I’ll let you know by next week.”

  Janet struggled to get his long legs out of the desk chair. He looked miserable. You could see his Adam’s apple right through his turtleneck.

  I heard him say the words “Oh God” as he clumped down the stairs in his high heels.

  “I cannot believe myself,” Dale said. “I saw an ad in the Voice—Pre-op Transsexual Gal Friday—and I called. Harri would kill me if I hired her. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it.”

  “What is her job going to be?” I asked.

  “She’ll answer the phone and if anyone comes in she’ll axe them if they want coffee. We’re going to have coffee here now. In fact a lot of things are going to be different around here from now on. What, you don’t think it’s a good idea?”

  “No, I think it’s a good idea,” I said.

  “What are you, crazy? I’m not hiring a drag queen. Do you think I’m completely out of my mind?”

  I made myself look busy at my desk.

  “Where’s Lorna?” Dale said. “Why isn’t Lorna here yet?”

  My phone rang and I picked it up quickly. It was Violet. “Let’s have breakfast, I’m depressed,” she said.

  “Who’s that?” Dale said.

  “Which apartment were you calling about?” I asked her.

  “Huh?” she said. “It’s me, Violet.”

  “Yes, I can show that to you today,” I said. “I can meet you there now, if you like.”

  “Where, at the Waverly?”

  “Yes, it has a working fireplace. What line of work are you in?”

  “Are you being kidnapped?” Violet asked.

  “Oh, so you’re more than qualified.” I felt Dale staring at the back of my head. “Twenty minutes?”

  “I’ll meet you there,” Violet said.

  “Okay,” I said and hung up. “I’ll be back in an hour,” I told Dale.

  “I’ll go with you,” she said and followed me out the door.

  When we got out on the street I said, “I better go back upstairs and make sure I have the right keys.” I figured I could quickly call Violet and tell her I couldn’t meet her and then tell Dale the client had just called and canceled.

  “Okay,” Dale said.

  Dale started to follow me back inside.

  “You can wait here, I’ll get them,” I said.

  “I don’t mind going up.”

  “You don’t have to,” I said. But she came upstairs with me and I rummaged around in my key drawer. I grabbed keys to a loft on Elizabeth Street. I hoped the owner wasn’t there.

  We left the of
fice again. “Dale, it’s silly for you to come with me,” I said.

  “I want to see the kid in action.”

  “I just think it makes me look bad if you come with me on my showings. I think it looks bad to my clients.”

  “They’re my clients,” Dale corrected. “They’re not your clients.”

  We walked silently to Elizabeth between Houston and Bleecker. We stood in front of the building facing a lot where construction was going on. The owner had wanted me to tell the clients, Dale’s clients, that a very tall building wasn’t going up. I was supposed to say that a community garden was going there, but when they dug the foundation and started pouring cement that became impossible.

  “What time are they supposed to be here?” Dale asked.

  “Eleven,” I said. We both looked at our watches. It was eleven.

  Dale pointed down at the sidewalk.

  “You know what those are?” she asked. There were little glass bullet-shaped objects everywhere. “They’re crack vials. You should get rid of those before the client gets here.”

  “This woman will never know what they are,” I said.

  Dale rocked back and forth on her heels clutching her leather legal pad holder and clicking her pen.

  “I don’t want my clients to see a place with crack vials on the street. A true professional would do whatever it takes to make the deal. I think you should sweep them up.” She ran her tongue over the cold sore.

  “I don’t exactly have a broom,” I said.

  “Why don’t you run upstairs and get one?”

  “I don’t think I should use the owner’s personal broom on the street,” I said.

  “Do you expect someone to pay four thousand dollars a month to live in a crack den?” Dale bellowed.

  I bent down and picked up the crack vials one by one and shoved them in my pocketbook.

  Dale looked at her watch. “These people are such time-wasters. They never think our time is valuable. They don’t mind keeping us waiting all day.”

  “She usually isn’t late.” As soon as I said it I knew I had made a mistake. I had asked the “client” on the phone what line of work she was in. Now I had made it sound like I had shown her apartments before. “Well, at least her husband isn’t ever late. I’ve worked with her husband but never with her.”

  I wondered how long Violet would wait for me at the Waverly. She was probably mad.

  “Well, I guess we can give her another five minutes,” Dale said. “About last night.”

  “Dale, don’t worry about it.”

  “It was wrong of me. I shouldn’t have told you that I wanted to sleep with you. It was unprofessional.”

  I noticed a vial I had missed a few feet away. I went to get it.

  “You know what my fantasy is?” Dale said.

  To have sex with me, I thought.

  “You see those buildings?” She pointed to a row of three dilapidated four-story tenement buildings, each with its own “For sale” sign. “I’d love to buy one of those and make it into an artists’ residence. Where artists could create.”

  “You want to build an artists’ colony?” I asked.

  “That’s right. Harri and I could live on the top two floors and have the office on the first floor.”

  That only left one floor for the artists.

  We stood there until eleven thirty. She looked at her big man’s watch one more time.

  I didn’t know why I was going through with this. I didn’t care if I got fired. It was like a contest of wills standing there side by side with Dale on a terrible block waiting for an imaginary client. Like a poor man’s feminist production of Waiting for Godot. Like my marriage. I wasn’t going to give in first.

  “We’ve been here a half hour. You sure you’re meeting her here?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “And what’s her story again?”

  “Her husband’s a Wall Street guy and he wants a place downtown,” I said. “They’re relocating.”

  “And what does she do?”

  “Ballerina,” I said.

  “I don’t think she’s showing up,” Dale said.

  “Maybe I should wait a few more minutes.”

  “Come with me,” Dale said. “I want to show you something.”

  “Where?” I said. She had taken me to a Norma Kamali sample sale before she went to Italy and watched me try on bathing suits in the open dressing area. I wasn’t going to do that again.

  “Just right around the corner,” she said. We walked around the corner. Dozens of claw-foot tubs and antique sinks were for sale on the sidewalk. “Isn’t that beautiful?” Dale asked. “All those old remnants.”

  It was beautiful. Oh no, I thought, Dale and I are thinking alike.

  “It’s like a porcelain garden,” she said.

  We stood there looking at it.

  “Why do you think your client didn’t show up?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m really annoyed. I’m sorry you had to waste your time.”

  “Maybe there was no client,” Dale said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe you were talking to one of your boyfriends and you were making plans to meet him for a little afternoon delight.”

  “What? Dale, you’re crazy. Of course there was a client.”

  “What was her last name again?”

  “Nemchineva.” It was the name of my ballet teacher who taught classes in the Ansonia when I was five.

  “I don’t know why I just don’t trust you anymore.”

  “Dale, this is because of the way you feel about me.”

  “How dare you accuse me of that,” Dale screamed. “Give me your keys to the office. You’re fired. The kid is fired,” Dale announced.

  “Dale, I think you’re going to regret this.”

  “Gimme,” she said.

  I reached into my bag, past the gun, and searched through the crack vials for the keys to the office and gave them to her. She walked off jangling them, taking long strides like Art Carney in Jackie Gleason’s body.

  When I got home I stood in my vestibule on MacDougal Street and read Dale’s postcard from Venice. The picture was of those two famous angels by Raphael, a blonde and a brunette, one with crossed arms and one with her chin in her hand. Dale had written “Lorna” over the blond angel’s head and “Liv” over the brunette’s head.

  I didn’t read the postcard. I didn’t read any of Dale’s postcards that came, one a day, for the next three weeks. And I didn’t return her phone calls. She left messages saying how sorry she was for firing me, that she had meant to fire Lorna, not me, that she had her period, jet lag, low blood sugar, severe depression. The last message said it all. “Hi, Liv, it’s me, Dale. How aaaaare you?” There was a brief silence and then she just hung up.

  [Part II]

  Clown. Sayest thou that house is dark?

  Malvolio. As hell, Sir Topas.

  Clown. Why, it hath bay windows transparent as barricadoes,

  and the clerestories toward the south north are as lustrous

  as ebony; and yet complainest thou of obstruction?

  Malvolio. I am not mad, Sir Topas. I say to you this house is dark.

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

  Twelfth Night, IV, 2

  19.

  BREATHTAKNG VUS OF PRK

  On my way to my first day at the Smoothe Transitions real estate company I saw a black man on the street selling incense and a few books. On the table was a picture of an Indian man in a cardboard frame. He looked like a real swami. The swami was naked from the waist up and sat cross-legged with an orange cloth wrapped around his bottom half.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “You like that?” the man asked, smiling.

  “Yeah,” I said. “How much is it?”

  “You can have that one,” he said.
He handed it to me.

  When I got to my new office on Fifth Avenue and Eighteenth Street, I waited at the front desk while the receptionist, who wasn’t a drag queen, answered and redirected calls. There were framed black-and-white photographs of old New York on the walls. One was of the downtown skyline before the World Trade Center was built. It was like looking in the mirror as a child and finding two teeth missing.

  Finally my new boss, a woman who was shorter than me and looked like she was about twelve, came out from behind a closed door and walked me across the office. It was a huge rectangular loft with desks and people everywhere. Along one wall was a row of windows facing a gray air shaft. The place was painted a disturbing shade of aqua. It looked dingier than I remembered it looking at my interview. My boss showed me to my desk.

  “Here it is,” she said proudly. It was a shelf with a file cabinet under it that I was supposed to share with another woman. There was no clear dividing line on the shelf indicating where her portion stopped and mine started. It was like sitting on the subway next to a stranger, with her shopping bags and rolls of fat spilling onto your tiny seat. On the subway I could choose to stand. It would be hard to stand up every day at work.

  There was one computer in the middle for us to share and the cord from the computer stretched across my half. We were back to back with another shelf. The woman who was going to be my shelf-mate, picked up her phone and started talking into it the minute she saw our boss even though it didn’t ring and she hadn’t dialed any numbers.

  “You’ll probably want to spend the morning getting settled in,” my boss said. I suddenly couldn’t remember her name. My chair was the only one in the whole office without arms. “You don’t look that happy,” she said. That was the problem with having a boss who could see.

  I had thought about trying to get a job with Corcoran but I admired Barbara Corcoran so much I knew it would ruin it if I worked for her. Smoothe Transitions wasn’t as big a firm as Corcoran but it was still really good, and of course it was a million times better than Dale’s. Samantha Smoothe, the president, kept to herself in the uptown office. The closest I might ever come to meeting her was passing by the life-size cardboard cutout of her that leaned against the wall a few feet from my desk.