High Maintenance

by Jennifer Belle

  I took the gun off his ear. “Timothy, you don’t happen to have a pair of scissors or something, do you? I want to cut off his ear so I can send it to his wife with his wedding ring.” Maybe I would cut the other one off for myself and keep it pinned to black velvet in a glass case like a butterfly. An ear for an ear.

  “I think so,” she said. She transferred the flowers onto Andrew’s lap and started going through her knapsack.

  “I have knife,” Mohammed said. He handed me a Swiss Army knife with a blade pulled out as well as a tiny pair of scissors. Then he tossed a roll of paper towels over the partition. “You make mess with blood and ear, you clean up,” he said.

  I took it from him. “Thank you, Mohammed,” I said. “Andrew, you live around here somewhere, don’t you? Where exactly do you live? Maybe it’s time I got to see your wedding video. I really want to see your apartment.” But then it hit me. I didn’t care about his apartment anymore. I didn’t care where Andrew and his wife lived. “Actually, Mohammed, why don’t you just let him out here.”

  Mohammed pulled over on the highway. Timothy took back her flowers. I figured we were around Ninety-fourth Street, not far from the statue of Joan of Arc. To our left the water looked like fool’s gold. The Circle Line was going by. To our right were the buildings of Riverside Drive with their green copper roofs. The buildings of New York were built on jealousy. Each one wanted to be better and more successful than the one before it. The Ansonia, one of the most beautiful buildings on Broadway, was built for revenge. Its builder didn’t get to move into the dream house he had just finished on the Upper East Side, due to his divorce. So he built the Ansonia and put live seals in a fountain in the lobby. “Get out,” I said.

  Andrew started to speak. “Liv …”

  Suddenly Mohammed turned around and shoved his own gun in Andrew’s face. All three of us jumped in our seats. “You heard the lady,” he shouted. “Get out! I don’t want to hear your mouth!”

  Andrew unbuckled his seat belt and opened his door. He had a strange, infuriating little smile on his face.

  I looked at the meter as Andrew started to get out. “Don’t worry, Andrew, I’ll get this,” I said.

  I wondered if I would ever see Andrew again, or if that was the way I would always remember him. He never even apologized to Mohammed.

  “Short ugly man,” Mohammed said.

  Timothy and I burst into laughter.

  “No, it’s terrible,” Mohammed said. “I know these kind of men. I have daughter.”

  I held Andrew’s ring up and squinted to see the engraving on the inside. The initials J.M. & A.L. were written in tiny letters. I remembered judge Moody introducing me to Andrew. And Andrew lifting me on the balcony. I had been his bachelor party. And then he married Jordan. J.M. Jordan Moody. Jerome’s reader, my predecessor.

  Mohammed drove us back downtown. He dropped us off on Sixth Avenue and Third Street in front of the basketball courts.

  “Do you still want to take Pilates?” Timothy asked.

  “Definitely.”

  “I’m really sorry I left you hanging like that.”

  “I’ll see you next week.”

  “Goodbye, funny girls,” Mohammed said.

  35.

  JOURNAL SQ—MINUTES FROM MNHTN

  Liv has a gun. I found it last night when she was in the shower. A gun. It’s a Glock 9mm Luger. I think it’s what cops carry. It’s loaded. Why would my Liv, my sweet little fuck-buddy, have a gun? Maybe she’s an undercover police officer. No, she probably wanted to commit suicide because she can’t have me all to herself. I’m sure she intended to pull it on me. She probably read somewhere that the best way to get me to leave Jordan was to get a gun.

  Fuck-buddy! I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to call me that. And how dare he snoop through my things? A person couldn’t have any privacy with a man like Andrew snooping everywhere. I turned the page.

  I think I’ll take it. I can’t wait to see the look on her cute little Jewish face when she finds it gone. Maybe I’ll kill someone and the cops will find her prints on it. It has occurred to me that she has read this diary. Liv, if you are reading this I am going to get your gun and I am going to murder someone with it—maybe even YOU. That’s what happens to naughty little nosey parkers—remind me to give you a spanking.

  I crossed Sixth Avenue, reading and sort of hyperventilating, taking dramatic Lamaze-type breaths and weaving drunkenly. I couldn’t wait until I got home to read it. I couldn’t wait another moment.

  Yesterday a woman came into the office. She was interviewing to be Mark’s secretary. I wanted to tear the panty hose right off her. I need a lot of different women. No one person could satisfy all my needs. How can I make Liv understand that you can’t do every position with every girl? You can’t do everything with every girl. She just doesn’t understand. When I shook her hand I leaned into her and she smelled like Liv. She must use the same shampoo, Pantene. I had to jerk off in the men’s room even though I promised myself I wouldn’t do that anymore.

  He was right, I didn’t understand. Why did he make every girl one word like that? It was the strangest thing I had ever seen, and I didn’t use Pantene anymore.

  I went to see the swami in Florida. I told Liv I was spending the weekend with Jordan but I flew to Miami to meet with him. He told a story in Hindi and even though I couldn’t understand it I had an image in my mind of crossing a bridge made out of rope. Afterward he explained in English that the story was about a man crossing a bridge made out of rope. Then he pointed to me and told me to come forward and kneel before him. He placed his hand on the top of my head and I felt heat, like the sensation of a soft-boiled egg breaking and the warm yolk spilling down. The swami said you are involved with a woman with long dark hair. You two have a destiny together, but it is not a happy one. If you go to this woman you will harm her. You might even kill her. But I love her, I told him. I know you do love her, he said. But you are not good for each other. I have to stop seeing Liv.

  I stopped reading and looked around to see where I was. I was still in front of the basketball courts. A fat black woman in a red velvet unitard was playing handball by herself. My heart was beating so hard I had to rest. I didn’t think I would ever be calm again. I stood with my hand on the receiver of a pay phone. I had to call someone and tell them what I had read. I wished I could call the swami himself but I called Violet instead.

  “You’ll never guess what I did,” I said, guiltily.

  “What?” she asked with too much enthusiasm, as if she was hoping that this time I had done something really bad.

  I tried to take a deep breath. “I stole Andrew’s diary.”

  “You’re kidding. What did it say?”

  “A swami told him he was bad for me.”

  “I’ve always thought that, Liv. At first I thought, Okay, Liv and this guy were meant to be teachers for each other—”

  “Violet, what are you talking about?” Suddenly I regretted telling her about the diary.

  “Well, you and Andrew probably have a karmic bond of some sort and you were meant to learn something from him.” Violet made love affairs as insignificant as a thirty-minute sitcom from the fifties, as if they could get all neatly wrapped up with a moral in the end. “But I really have to say I’m agreeing with that swami. I’m feeling really strange about this whole thing.” She always said, “I’m agreeing with,” instead of “I agree with,” or “I’m feeling,” instead of “I feel.” I was definitely not loving this conversation. She expounded on her theory for a while as I read another page.

  Last night, when I left Lip’s rathole, I saw the most beautiful girl I have ever seen and I thought, Oh my God, this is the woman I am meant to spend the rest of my life with. She walked by me on the street and I could feel myself inside her, my fingers, my cock, before I had even said hello. She was stunningly beautiful. For the first time I understood the word flax
en. If I could invent a woman I wouldn’t have dared to make her this beautiful. I said I like your shoes. I said those are really great shoes. Now I know that I can sky dive. Her tits were my parachute. She said thank you and I knew she would let me fuck her. It was just starting to rain and I said your shoes are going to get ruined. She said no they’re not. I said yes, they’re going to get rained on. She said no, they’re not. I said yes they are unless you live right here. We were standing in front of a townhouse on Washington Square North. 19 Washington Square North. She took me up to her bedroom and what a bedroom. Hundreds of peacock feathers! And I didn’t have to endure interminable babble. Just unbelievable wetness and her smell on my face. I am going to rub my face on this page so I will always remember it.

  Slowly, I brought the book up to my nose. It smelled like paper.

  “Promise me you won’t read any more of that diary,” I heard Violet say. “It’s just not right.”

  “What?” I said.

  “You have to respect his privacy. You wouldn’t want him going through your things. It’s bad karma. If you keep reading it and you get upset it’s your own fault,” Violet said.

  “I know. I won’t read it anymore.”

  “How’d you get it from him, anyway?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to tell her the whole story because I knew she would not be approving of it. But I didn’t want to have to lie. So I told her what had happened with Andrew and Timothy. We took a moment to marvel about what it would be like to be a girl named Timothy.

  “You know, that really wasn’t funny,” Violet said.

  “Funny? I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

  “You put yourself and Timothy in danger.”

  “Oh, I did not,” I said. Lorna wouldn’t have minded. She might even have thought it was funny. I made a mental note to call Lorna instead of Violet next time I used my gun.

  “You could have gotten yourself arrested.”

  “Arrested,” I said. “No one in New York gets arrested.”

  “I’m just not understanding you lately, Liv. Lately you’ve been so …” She searched through her blond head for the right word. “Negative.”

  “I don’t think I’ve been negative,” I said. “I think you’re being negative, saying I was going to get arrested.”

  A recorded voice told me to make a twenty-five-cent deposit. I fished in my bag for a quarter.

  “What did you think would happen when you date a married man?”

  Her new boyfriend played Dungeons & Dragons with two other guys every Sunday night. I’d rather date a married psychopath than a man who did that. Violet wasn’t really my friend if she couldn’t take a little gunplay. I was working on a theory that a New Yorker could never truly be friends with a Texan.

  Violet and I had nothing in common. But how did you break up with a girlfriend? One little gun couldn’t help me do it. I would need a cannon. It was the hardest thing in the world, much harder than breaking up with a man. Millions of women were friends with women they couldn’t stand but couldn’t bring themselves to hurt. It was a worldwide epidemic. “I’ll call you if I ever get less negative,” I said.

  I clutched the quarter in my hand until the phone went dead.

  All night phrases from Andrew’s diary ran through my mind.

  How can I tell her that she’s not going to be in my life very much longer?

  I will miss her plump little body.

  Last night I slept in my study and called Liv as soon as I woke up.

  Jordan made vegetarian chili.

  I know Liv is reading this. I’m going to start making entries on the PC. Liv, if I find out you are reading this I’m going to stick your gun up your cunt and kill you.

  Friends, Romans, Liv, lend me your ear.

  Maybe Liv’s adopted. It’s hard to believe she’s Jewish. It’s hard to believe a Jew could be that stupid.

  I stood up and turned on my overhead light. I reread the part about the girl with the parachutes on Washington Square North over and over.

  Even when I finally stopped reading it I was still reading it. Liv, I know you are reading this…. Liv, if you are reading this … If you are reading this … And then it finally hit me. He knew I was reading this. The whole thing was simply a joke. A gag, Andy Kaufman—style. A trick a teenage boy would play on his little sister. He only wrote these things because he knew I was reading them. They didn’t mean anything. They weren’t true.

  Or maybe they were.

  19 Washington Square North didn’t even exist. There wasn’t even any such address. I knew because I had canvassed the entire area. A lot of those buildings were owned by NYU. There was 20 Washington Square North, then a parking garage, then 18 through 14 Washington Square North, which was a postwar building pressed up against the side of Two Fifth Avenue, the home of Mayor Ed Koch. There was no 19. There was a number 9, which was definitely an NYU building, but no 19. And a person couldn’t have sex in a house that wasn’t there. Real estate was necessary for actual sex to take place.

  In the morning I got dressed and put my gun and Andrew’s diary in my bag.

  It was beautiful out so I decided to walk to the office. I walked along MacDougal Street and turned at the corner of the park. There were new birds with strange long yellow beaks. There were black squirrels, scary. And there was a townhouse, right there on Washington Square North, with a big number 19 above the door.

  I stood on the street staring up at the house. There were eleven steps and a landing and then two more. Ever since walking Jerome I always counted steps. I had to think for a minute. The existence of the house didn’t necessarily mean that the diary was true. But it didn’t prove that it was false. I paced back and forth like a lawyer. I stared up at the windows. I half-expected to see a flood of wetness pouring out of them. I decided I couldn’t go to work in this condition. I went to Caffe Reggio and drank a pot of Earl Grey with about three tea leaves in it. I looked through the damn diary.

  Jordan found a kitten and we found out it is dying. I hate this world. I told Liv I couldn’t see her because I had to stay with the kitten, Sammy. She was a cunt about it. I said, you’re being a cunt about this. She said so what are you going to do? I said I am going to hang up the phone.

  “Is that your journal?” a good-looking man sitting at the next table asked.

  “Yes it is,” I said. It was my journal now. I looked to see if he was wearing a wedding ring. He was, but it was on the ring finger of his right hand. That’s where European men wore their wedding rings. He was probably European. “Where are you from?” I asked.

  “Oregon.”

  He wasn’t European, just a nice, normal single man. I congratulated myself on my ability to size a person up so fast.

  We talked for an hour, and I told him Louisa May Alcott’s house was across the street and that Caffe Reggio was famous for having the first cappuccino machine in America. “Once, a claw-foot tub fell through the ceiling,” I said. “Right here where we’re sitting.” I pointed above us to the unpainted patch of tin.

  “No. I don’t believe you,” he said.

  I told him unfortunately I had to get to work.

  “What do you do?” he asked.

  “I’m a real estate agent.”

  “So’s my wife,” he said.

  Wife! I checked his left hand one more time for a ring and noticed that he didn’t have a left hand. He didn’t have a left arm. No wonder he wore his wedding band on his right hand. It was his only hand. How could I spend an hour talking to someone and not notice a thing like that? When would I ever learn to be more careful?

  [Part III]

  Let every eye negotiate for itself

  And trust no agent …

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

  Much Ado About Nothing, II, 1

  36.

  24HR DRMN

  At the meeting on Monday Kim said t
here was a new property coming on the market. She wanted us to make a strong pitch for it. She said the owner seemed difficult and she wanted to pick the broker she thought would best match his personality and then she would accompany that broker personally and assist in the pitch.

  “What do you mean ‘difficult’?” I asked.

  A couple of the agents laughed.

  Kim scowled at me as if only I could pick out the negative detail in all of this. “Not difficult, just a little particular. He’s a real fusspot,” she said.

  She held up a glossy eight-by-ten photo of someone’s living room. The floor was covered with soft sandy carpet and strewn with magnificent kilims. Sun streamed through the twenty-foot-high greenhouse window. I could see part of the curved banister, the ladder from Bali leaning against the bookshelves my husband had built, a stupid gold owl from our wedding, the coffee table I had chosen on Greene Street.

  It was mine, My husband’s. My ex-apartment. A picture of my old life. I had almost forgotten how beautiful it was.

  Kim gave details and rattled off comps. “We can all go there as a group tomorrow morning,” she said. “I added it to the bus tour. It will be our first stop.” A few times a month Kim hired a bus and we all had to travel together to preview six or seven apartments. “We’ll get to it at nine A.M.”

  “We’ll all have to take our shoes off at the front door,” I said.

  “How did you know that?” Kim asked suspiciously.

  “I just know,” I said.

  In the morning I watched a little girl in a pink down jacket walk down the street clutching a Winnie-the-Pooh doll under one arm and talking on a cellular phone. The coat made a shiny down sound when she walked. She had a knit hat that tied under her chin with two pompoms shaped like strawberries. She couldn’t have been more than seven.

  “May I speak to my daddy, please,” she said. I followed after her. “I’m on my cell phone and I’m supposed to talk to him while I’m walking to school,” she said crossly into the phone. She kept marching along. “Hi, Daddy, I can’t stay on too long or my ear gets hot.”