High Maintenance

by Jennifer Belle

  “You’re bleeding,” Andrew said.

  I stood and went into the bathroom. Blood was pouring down my neck and my earlobe was dangling. My small diamond stud was still in place in the dangling portion. I couldn’t feel anything.

  “I have to see a doctor,” I told Andrew. I grabbed a roll of paper towels from the island counter in the kitchen and went around turning off the lights and wiping blood off the floor. “If you did one thing to hurt this loft, I’ll kill you,” I said. There was blood on the comforter. I would have to come back later and try to get it cleaned before the owner saw it.

  I opened the front door.

  Andrew sat on the bed.

  “Let’s go,” I screamed.

  Andrew jumped up, grabbed his bag, and followed me out. I locked the door with the keys I was holding and started to cross the street with Andrew following me.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “You know what?” I said. “You’re an animal.” I finished crossing the street holding my ear onto my head. I couldn’t feel anything there.

  “I didn’t mean to bite you that hard.”

  “Get away from me,” I screamed behind me. “Stop following me. Get away from me, you fucking …” I paused to think of the right word. He was still behind me. “Nutjob!” I screamed.

  I ran one block north on West Broadway and into the SoHo Animal Clinic.

  The waiting room was tiny. I maneuvered myself past a small Asian woman holding the leash of an enormous Great Dane and a shepherd who seemed to be there by himself.

  A young black man wearing round gold glasses sat behind the reception desk. There was a bulletin board behind him with Polaroids of dogs and cats and their names written in Magic Marker. Shakespeare. Hudson. Ladybug. Teddy. Puja.

  “I’ve just been bit,” I said. My voice did not sound brave.

  “Oh God, okay, just take a seat for one second, I’ll get a doctor,” he said. He ran out from behind the desk and up a flight of stairs. I sat next to Andrew.

  “Don’t you think you should go to a doctor for humans?” Andrew said.

  A woman in a white coat came down the stairs and looked at my ear. “What have we got here,” she said. She was young with a brown pony tail.

  “Come with me.” She led me into an examination room on the same floor as the waiting room. Andrew followed us in. “Why don’t you sit in the waiting room,” she told him.

  The doctor helped me up onto the metal examining table and told me to lie on my side. She pulled on latex gloves, covering a diamond ring. She wiped blood gently off the side of my face. She put a blue ice pack on my ear. “Do you know the dog who bit you?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Has it had all its shots?”

  “Yes he has.”

  “Did he bite you for a reason? Did you antagonize him?”

  I nodded.

  “Does he have a history of vicious behavior?”

  “Yes.” I smiled.

  “You must really love dogs if you can still smile after this. Is there any chance he has rabies?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so or you’re sure?”

  “I’m sure,” I said.

  “You’re sure,” she said. “What’s the dog’s name?”

  “Andrew.”

  “Andrew? That’s too cute a name. Maybe they should rename him Tyson.”

  “Maybe they should rename him Marv Albert,” I said.

  The vet laughed. “Do you know Andrew’s owner?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “And what’s the owner’s name?”

  “Her name is Jordan,” I said.

  “Okay, it sounds like you know her. I just have to check to make sure you know the owner well enough to know if her dog might have rabies. If Andrew does this again she might have to put him down. Have you had a tetanus shot recently?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I was pretty sure I hadn’t.

  “I’m going to give you one.”

  I felt like I was going to pass out.

  “Roll over,” she said. I lay on my back.

  “I’m going to stitch you up here,” she said. “It won’t be hard to reattach the lobe but the OR won’t be ready for another ten minutes. This is going to hurt just a little.” She gave me the shot. I yelped a little.

  “All done,” she said. “I’m going to bring you upstairs now. Hold that on your ear.”

  We walked out of the room and I saw Andrew and the Asian girl and the Great Dane. The shepherd was gone. I didn’t say a word to Andrew.

  He stood and started to follow.

  “Stay,” the vet said.

  Andrew stayed.

  We walked up the stairs. I felt like I was floating.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait in here for just a few minutes. I should probably send you to Saint Vincent’s but the ear should really be reattached as soon as possible.”

  She walked me into a room lined with cages. Most were empty but there was a Dalmatian puppy yapping and pushing his face into the metal, one very groggy mutt, and three cats. She brought a folding chair into the room and told me to sit in it.

  I stood up and stuck my fingers in the Dalmatian’s cage. He chewed on them and barked.

  “It’s okay,” I told him. “We’re going to be fine. They’re going to let us go home soon.”

  The vet stitched my ear back on with black thread as if I were a rag doll. She gave me a small cup of orange juice and sent me downstairs with an enormous white bandage taped onto the side of my head and my diamond earring in a plastic baggie like another Clue piece. I wondered what my ear looked like under the bandage. Pointed like a Doberman’s? Droopy like a basset hound’s? Wrinkled like a shar-pei’s? Long like a rabbit’s?

  “Stay away from that bad dog,” she said. I made the man at the front desk give the bill to Andrew, who was still waiting. He wrote out a check.

  The street was empty. I hadn’t realized how late it had gotten. There wasn’t any traffic on Canal Street. I stood trying to get a cab, ignoring Andrew.

  “Come on, Liv, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that, you know that,” he said.

  “You should be put to sleep,” I said. “The vet said if it happened again you would have to be put down.”

  “Let’s go back to your place, and you can put me to sleep.”

  “Andrew, I mean it, it’s over. Get away from me.”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  “Leave me alone, Marv Albert.” There weren’t any cabs. I felt dizzy and walked over to a building so I could lean against it for a minute.

  “The vet told me to make sure you got something to eat. She’s worried about your blood sugar level.”

  I started to walk again and he walked right along beside me with his hand on the back of my neck. He did seem sorry. We walked along MacDougal Street, crossed Houston, and continued until we came to the Olive Tree Café. They were making a movie and the street was flooded with strange white light. Minetta Lane was crawling with crew members. Huge trailers vibrated.

  “Let me buy you a hamburger. All of a sudden I have an immense craving for red meat. The least I can do is buy you dinner.”

  I looked at Andrew standing there in his blue architect’s shirt.

  “Please, Liv.”

  He looked nervous. I felt weak. Maybe a hamburger would give me the strength I needed to finally end it once and for all. I could explain to him that after this it would be impossible for me ever to see him again.

  “We can go to the Olive Tree,” I said. “It’s right here.”

  “So this is the restaurant you always go to, the Olive Tree? What is it, Middle Eastern?”

  I looked up at the stained-glass Jewish star in the window. “I think it’s Israeli.”

  “You’re such a good Jewess.”r />
  Maybe Andrew wasn’t a mensch. “What kind of restaurant did you think it was?” I said

  “I thought you went to that Italian chain. The place with all-you-can-eat fettuccine Alfredo.”

  “That’s the Olive Garden,” I said. I felt insulted that Andrew pictured me eating bottomless bowls of cream sauce every day.

  Andrew ordered us hamburgers. “Liv, I’m sorry,” he said. “I intended for us to have nice gentle sex, I didn’t think it would end up with you getting stitches. If it makes you feel better, I’ll take the loft. You’ll get a commission. We can start over.”

  “I’m not talking to you,” I said. “And this isn’t about a commission.”

  “If you were a judge and you saw how cute your ears are, you would let me off scot-free.”

  When I was a child my father and I used to play a game called “Tell it to the Judge.” I sat on his desk wearing his bathrobe and my mother’s white bathing cap, holding a yellow Fisher-Price mallet. “Today I ate too much ice cream, Your Honor,” my father would say.

  “Tell it to the judge,” I’d answer.

  “But, Your Honor, you are the judge.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I’d say, as if I had forgotten. “Guilty!” I’d scream, laughing.

  “Your Incredible Beautiful Honor, I admit I love my daughter too much.”

  “Tell it to the judge.”

  “But you are the judge, remember?”

  “Yes I am, and you are guilty, guilty, guilty as charged! I’m afraid you will be going to jail now, Daddy.”

  “Your Honor, I’m having a terrible problem. I have to go to Paris for six weeks but I can’t bear to leave my wonderful daughter. Who can I complain to about that?”

  “Tell it to the judge. Hey, wait a minute, I am the judge. Guilty, guilty, guilty as charged!” I’d roar, banging my mallet and laughing.

  “Admit it, Liv, you can hardly blame me,” Andrew said.

  Two comedians sat in the booth behind us talking about how much they wanted to get out of comedy. They were like a couple of gangsters desperate to get out of the mob.

  “Because of comedy I lost my marriage. Went into bankruptcy Every night my kids beg me to promise that tonight I’ll tell my last joke,” the older one of the two said.

  “So what are you going to do if a deal comes along? I mean if they want you to be on Make Me Laugh you’ve gotta take it. You can’t just tell them fuck you,” the younger one said.

  “Why can’t you ever just one time let me eat in peace without harassing me about my life,” the older one said. “I was happy just sitting here for five minutes and now I have to go commit suicide down there, you fuck.”

  Once a waitress at the Comedy Cellar got to work early and hanged herself from a pipe on the ceiling.

  I looked at the Charlie Chaplin movie playing on the screen across from our booth. Charlie Chaplin was trying to cut a giant leather shoe with a knife and fork on a plate in front of him.

  28.

  CHELSEA/SEMINARY BLK— PARLOR FL W/PVT GRDN

  I met Storm Shapiro at Tea & Sympathy, a tiny English restaurant on Greenwich Avenue. I had a splitting headache and the idea of tea and a little sympathy sounded good.

  The restaurant was the size of a garden shed. I got there before Storm and asked the grungy English waitress for the table by the window.

  “You alone?” she asked.

  “I’m meeting someone.”

  “Outside with you then,” she said. “Come back when you’re both here.”

  I stood outside and waited. I tried not to get my hopes up but I was certain that Storm was going to buy the Bank Street loft. I had sent her father all the financials and he faxed me a note saying that if Storm wanted it, it was “okay by him.” And she did seem to want it. I had already called the owner and she had agreed to throw in the multicolored velvet chairs in the asking price. My cut of the commission would be sixteen thousand dollars. I really needed it. I needed the money enough to endure another lunch with Storm.

  A little black girl, about nine or ten, wearing dark glasses, was being taught how to walk down the street with a white cane. She tapped it with a lot of style in her denim mini skirt and her hair tied into a pompom on top of her head. A young woman walked closely behind her, guiding her a little, showing her how to feel for the curb. The little girl walked confidently, jauntily. Tap tap tapping.

  Storm arrived on foot. “Oh, this place is soooo sweet,” she said. She was wearing her same awful striped shirt.

  We went in and I asked for the table by the window.

  “Oh all right,” the waitress said. “Hey, what happened to you?” I hadn’t done a very good job replacing the bandage that morning. It looked all lumpy and mangled.

  “My boyfriend bit my ear off.”

  “Oh, that’s awful,” Storm said. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No, it’s true,” I said.

  “He bit your bloody ear off?” the English waitress said.

  I nodded.

  “You’re missing an ear under there then?” She talked louder, as if I were deaf.

  “No, I got it reattached.”

  “What a prick,” she said, “Ear-biting wanker.”

  “It’s just awful,” Storm said, as if it were the worst thing she had ever heard.

  Storm and I sat at the tiny table.

  “Listen, this is a table for four so if four people come in I’m going to have to move you,” the waitress said.

  “Storm,” I said, “I have great news.”

  “What?” she said, hopefully.

  “The owner has agreed to throw in the beautiful velvet chairs.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful.” She had forgotten all about my ear. “I’m so hungry,” she said, looking at the menu.

  The waitress brought us pots of tea. Mine had a scene from Romeo and Juliet on it and hers was shaped like a monkey.

  “These are so sweet,” Storm said.

  “They are sweet,” I said.

  “So sweet.”

  “Sweet,” I said.

  “Yours is sweeter.”

  “Do you want to switch?” I asked, kidding.

  “Okay,” she said. I gave her my Romeo and Juliet pot and took her monkey.

  Two women walked into the restaurant with a small child. It was obviously a grandmother, mother, and daughter.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to have to move,” the waitress said nastily. “I told you so.”

  I picked up both of our pots and we moved to a table crowded in the middle. My head felt like it was going to split open. My ear was itching under the bandages.

  “Do you have any aspirin?” I asked the waitress.

  “You’re not in hospital, dear, this is a restaurant, isn’t it?” she said.

  “So,” I said to Storm. “What do you think? Do you think you want to live in this loft?” I said it with a certain serious wonderment like a salesgirl at Chanel.

  “You know, Liv, you have the best job. I think I’d like to do what you do.”

  I couldn’t imagine Storm even saying the word “job” let alone having one.

  “Real estate agent,” she said, as if trying it on for size. “I like that.”

  The waitress brought me a shepherd’s pie and Storm a bowl of dairy-free vegetarian soup. She hardly ever ate anything, which is why she always had horrible breath.

  “So do you want your father to make an offer on the loft?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I’ll call him and tell him to make an offer. I really want it.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “I think you’re making a smart decision.” I sat back in my chair, relieved.

  “Can I see one of those little drawings of the loft so I can figure out where I’m going to put everything?”

  “You mean a floor plan? Sure.” I took a xeroxed floor plan out of a folder in my b
ag and handed it to her. She looked at it. I wanted to go back to the office and call her father and start the ball rolling.

  “It’s kind of a funny shape, isn’t it?” she said. I was really starting to despise her.

  “It looks like a normal shape to me,” I said. It just looked like a long rectangle with an angled edge on one side, like the Citicorp building lying on its side.

  “What’s this pointy part?” she asked.

  “That’s the bedroom, remember? Where those great bookshelves are.”

  “Oh,” she said, frowning. “Doesn’t it look a lot like a missile?”

  “A missile?” I said.

  “Isn’t it sort of missile-shaped?”

  I felt like I had a missile shooting through my forehead.

  “That is definitely not missile-shaped,” I said. “It’s the shape of a beautiful loft.”

  “Miss,” Storm called to the waitress. She came over. “Do you think this drawing looks like a missile?”

  “A what?”

  “A missile, you know like from a submarine.”

  “No,” the waitress said.

  “I think it looks like a missile.”

  The waitress stared hard at the floor plan. She turned it so that the angled part was facing upward. “Oh, yeah yeah, I see what you mean now. It does sort of look like a missile there, doesn’t it?”

  A group of four people came into the restaurant and stood near the door. The waitress went over to the two women and the little girl who were eating plates of cakes and finger sandwiches at our old table by the window. “You’re going to have to switch tables,” she told them.

  “What!” the old woman said in disbelief. “We’re in the middle of our meal.”

  “Mom,” the other woman said. “We’ll just move.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” the old woman said. “We’re not going to move in the middle of our meal.”

  “I’m afraid you’re going to have to,” the waitress said. “You’re sitting at a table for four.”