“I need you?” Her eyes were blades. “You arrogant son of a bitch! I need you like I need a heel in my throat! I’m so goddamn sick of you, your contempt! Your… your anger!”
I couldn’t hear her- words, just the sound like the steam rising from water poured on sauna rocks. I ran my eyes up and down the quiet brownstone row. A movement caught my eye overhead—her sister standing in a window. My armpits were soaked.
“Ssh, keep it down.” I couldn’t think.
“Keep it down? You bastard, you…”
“Me! Me!” I hit my chest, lurching my head forward in amazement ”Fuck me!” I didn’t even know what the hell I was saying. If I had been driving right then, we both would have died. “I stayed home for you! I…”
“Who the hell asked you to?”
Someone walked down the street, slow and elderly, and we both looked away.
She paced the top step like a lion. I stared at a plaster-smeared crevice by my shoe. I couldn’t collect my brains. What was happening?
“Who the hell asked you to?” A hot whisper. She crouched forward as though she were going to leap on me. “I didn’t need you stomping around, sulking about my snatch. You don’t give a damn about my singing, about me! Anything I do that takes me out of your bed you hate! You think I’m helpless! You think I can’t sing!”
“Naw.” My underwear was damp. I moved up a step, then down a step.
“Well, I can sing, but it’s hard, Kenny! It’s hard. But you make it worse. You’re breathing down my neck, thinking I suck, you smother me, Kenny!”
“Naw.” Again, a bleat.
“I know what happened Monday. It was a clown show, and Sunday’s showcase is gonna be another clown show. Maybe I got a hundred clown shows after that. But I was good Monday night! And Sunday I’ll be better! And I’ll be better and better and soon those assholes are gonna stop laughing!”
“I know,” I said weakly.
“I don’t ever want you to see me sing again, ‘cause you don’t want me to make it! You don’t believe in me, you don’t care about me, you don’t love me.”
“I do.” A squeak. I felt myself starting to cry, not sad tears but the panicky stop-stop-please-stop tears that my rageball mother used to reduce me to when I was six. I began squirming.
“All you care about is my cunt! And you can’t figure out why I don’t wanna fuck with you anymore? Well, then you’re the helpless one! You’re the stupid one. You’re the goddamn Bluecastle House man!” She started bawling, doubling over in a half-crouch as if she had stomach cramps. “I’m gonna make it! I’m gonna make it!”
My face melted down like a Greek tragedy mask. I stood six steps below her in my own weeps.
“I’m gonna make it too,” I said halfheartedly. Nightmare of sadness. I slowly backed down a step, hoping I would slip and smash the back of my head. “I think you’re a good singer,” I whispered weakly, lamely.
She turned, went inside and slammed the door.
“I’m gonna make it too, La Donna.”
I stood there like Dondi. At some point I turned and started walking down Eighty-eighth Street lost in thought, dragging my feet like I had had a stroke. Behind me came a sharp wooden whack. I ducked. La Donna shouted “Kenny!” When I wheeled around she was flying down the street to me.
“Yah!” I shouted. The brownstone door was swinging back and forth on its hinges. Before I could raise my arms she grabbed me around the ehest and bear-hugged, her chin drilling into my collarbone.
“Oh, Kenny, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. That was horrible to say to you what I said. I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so crazy. Everything’s got me so scared.”
“It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.” I laughed with joy. I didn’t want to waste time hugging her. I wanted to break free, snag a cab and take her home. I saw a Checker and tried to hail it, but La Donna wouldn’t let go.
“No, Kenny, no.” Like we were in bed.
“What?” . “No, not yet, Kenny.”
“It’s cold, baby.” I laughed uneasily.
“I’m not going back yet, Kenny. Please, the other stuff I said is real. I need time, Kenny. I need some time. I really do, I really do…” Her chin was still nailed to my chest, her eyes angled upward at me, wet and desperate. She started talking fast and crazy as if I was an executioner who could sometimes be bribed.
“I want this so bad. I can’t with us… We’re not… We’re like… We’re not happening, we’re fighting, and I can’t da both. I need to concentrate. We’re not helping each other. You need time, too, Kenny. You got to figure things out, too.”
What time. What. No good. No goddamn good. “What… How much time?” Twisting my face, blurting the question like a six-year-old’s “AmIgonnagettaneedle?” Three empty cabs and two buses floated downtown past us.
“I don’t know!” She released me and her hands fluttered and swooped like trapped birds in front of my chest, I grabbed them. Her palms were spongy with sweat. She wasn’t wearing a coat It was freezing,
“Oh please, Kenny. I know you love me. You just don’t… Hove you too, I do, but can’t you ’see, we’re not, can’t you see. Every day is like—look,, I’m not doing us justice now. I need this space. I’ll come back. I swear it, Kenny. Please? Please?” Begging. She made me feel as if I was doing something horrible to her. I backed away as if to deny responsibility. I’m no monster. Don’t make me into a monster.
“Sure, sure.” I shrugged, backpedaling. “I understand. Sure.”
She calmed down and caught her breath. Rubbed her arms across her chest. “Kenny, I just need to be selfish now. I don’t have enough in me for you- and what I want to do. Let me just get something going. Then we can…”
“Just tell me how long.” Splotchy islands of perspiration sprouted on my stomach and chest. I felt like barking and scratching myself behind my ear with my foot “A day, a week, three months, what… ? Gimme something to hang it oh, okay? Gimme some mother-fucking perspective, okay? Because…”
“I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know!” she whisper-whined, crouching and jumping up and down like a little girl having to pee.
“Okay. Okay. Okay.” I moved forward, then backward, hand up. “Relax, sweetie, it’s okay.” My mind was going a mile a minute. I didn’t want her to leave. I didn’t want to go home alone. “Can I just tell you something?”
“What?” She didn’t hear me. Her eyes were all over the place. She started walking back and forth, her face slashed with her imprisonment to my presence.
“Can I just tell you something?” I repeated halfheartedly.
“What!” She danced in place. She wouldn’t have heard a word I said. Shit Shit shit shit. “Never mind. It’s okay.” Defeated, I extended my arms for a paternal bon voyage hug.
She grabbed me again, her chin finding the same spot, squeezed until she trembled. I could smell sweat “I love you, Kenny. Thank you, my loves,” She sprang away from me and trotted back to the brownstone.
I stared at my shoes as they chewed up the pavement, one after the other. Thank you, my love. Thank you, my love. When I finally looked up I had hoofed it to Seventy-ninth and Broadway. What the hell did I ever do that was so goddamn bad she had to do Prisoner of Zenda takes on me? You want to fly? Take off. Don’t lay it on me. Damn, I’m more lay back than death. Don’t lay it on me.
It’s just as well I didn’t tell her what I wanted to. I wanted to share a memory with her. It would have been inappropriate. If it clicked with her it would have been dirty pool, and if she didn’t respond I would have folded like a chaise longue right on the street corner. I wanted to remind her of the first time we said “I love you” to each other. It was our first night back in New York after LA. She was staying over at my place. We were in bed, heavy and cozy after a slow-motion ball. I was lying on my back. She was on her side curled into me, her nose nuzzling and burrowing into my armpit to find a comfortable spot for sleep. The covers were up at her neck and my chest. I had never felt so safe and c
apable of protecting someone. I said, “I love you.” She said, “I love you.” And there it was, as natural and as un-self-conscious as baby breath. It was so simple, the timing so perfect, neither of us remembered saying it for days afterward.
Her “I love you, Kenny. Thank you, my love” was a pile of bullshit. She could have squeezed me till my ribs cracked, stuck her tongue down my throat until she tasted my dinner. It was bullshit—it was a hug of relief; she was getting away from me. “Thank you, my love.” She never said “My love” like that, like a ham actress. Okay. So I’m Kenny Solo for a while again. I can handle it. Until she gets straight. Until she gets straight. Dig me.
FRIDAY
And who the hell did she think she was? I’m gonna make it, I’m gonna make it. You’re the goddamn Bluecastle House man. Fuck you, bitch. If it wasn’t for me, if I wasn’t paying for Bossanova, if, what ungrateful… She didn’t have to worry about me wanting her to fail—that attitude of hers would bomb her out soon enough. I hoped she made it. G’head, make it, bitch. I’ll die of vitamin deficiency sitting front row center your opening night at the Winter Garden, with a big goddamn sign on my chest. “I would’ve eaten but I had to pay for singing lessons.” No goddamn joke. Don’t yell at me. You want to talk to me then you talk, but don’t goddamn yell at me like everything’s black and white. Screwy bitch, that’s not right. Maybe I did think she shouldn’t go on with her singing but that was for her own goddamn good.
It was my delivery day, which meant I had to go out to Long Island City to the warehouse to pick up the orders I took that week and spend all day backtracking my sales, delivering goods and collecting money. I rented a neighbor’s car every Friday for ten bucks, the only time I needed my own wheels. Otherwise I was a staunch believer in what my old man used to say: “If you can’t get there with five dollars’ worth of cab, then it ain’t worth goin’.”
I hated Long Island City. It was the ugliest place north of hell—factories, warehouses, grit, shit and cars. I usually went there early because if I showed up at eight-thirty-like most of the salesmen I would never get Bluecastle House then I ran into the better the day would be.
But as much as I hated Long Island City, I loved getting there. Since I so rarely drove a car, I always got a rush revving up my neighbor’s Mustang, pulling out into early morning Manhattan and cruising as bad as I could be over the Queensboro Bridge. That Friday I could have just kept going, done a wheelie on the bridge like Roy Rogers goosing Trigger, whipped around and headed west I could’ve hooked up with some roadside diner waitress in New Mexico, lived with her for two weeks, then moved on, hooking up with some young museum tour guide in Tucson. After her two weeks were up I would drive north to Seattle and do’ two weeks with a young antique store owner. And then I would just keep going, two weeks affairs, two a month, twenty-four a year. Yessireebob. Just like some big fucking gerbil.
All the way to Long Island City I daydreamed about my roadside diner waitress in New Mexico. Had to be a divorcee, too.
I sat in the diner with the boys. The Mustang was triple-locked up the ass, double-parked in front, so I could watch it from the booth. It had $500 worth of merchandise piled in the trunk and the back seat.
I stayed put as Maurice, Jerry and Al filed out the door.
“You want some more coffee, Kenny?”
“Please.”
Charlene poured me a cup, then sat across from me yawning into her hand. “Oh God, I didn’t sleep at all last night.” Her gypsy hoops gleamed in the sunlight She could have been anywhere from forty to sixty. “One a my kids got the flu. I was up all night.” She massaged her neck.
“How old?”
“Huh?” Her chin was touching her chest.
“How old’s the kid?”
“It’s the little one, he’s eleven.”
“What’s your husband do, Charlene?”
“Packy? Packy was a mover. He worked for a moving van company.”
“What do you mean ‘was,’ you mean he retired?” Be cool.
“Packy? Oh no. I mean ‘was’ meaning we’re divorced.” Tilt.
“Huh.” I sipped my coffee while she thumbed through the breakfast orders on her pad.
“You live in the Village?”
“Oh ho.” She laughed, not looking up. “Don’t I wish it. I live with the poor people out in Queens.”
“Whereabouts?”
“You know Whitestone?”
“That’s quite a schlep, huh?”
She raised an eyebrow and. shrugged, still looking down at her orders.
“You know, ah, I’ve got a car today. If you want, I can drive you home.”
“Oh, thank you, dear, I get a ride with George.” Still not looking up.
I glanced over at the grill. Cheeseburger George leaned over the counter reading the News, hairy forearms and light-reflecting bald dome. He sang something Greek into his hand as he flipped the pages. The diner was relatively deserted.
“Charlene, you wanna go out, have a drink some evening?” Evening sounded less dirty than night, as if there was still some Daylight Savings Time in it. I was braced for the big no.
“Kenny, I told you.” She looked up and not unkindly. “I get a ride with George.”
Charlene got up to take an order. I rubbed my face in my palms. I remembered one time when La Donna was deliriously sick—she had 105. degrees, sweating, freezing, a heavy-duty flu was going around—I crawled into bed with her and held her. She fell asleep in my arms and I lay there furious because she didn’t acknowledge my sacrifice, the comforting strength of my goddamn presence. I had wanted her to say “Thank you” or “I don’t know what I’d do without you” or “Oh, Kenny” or something, but she just slept, and I was sulking while she was crackling with fever next to me. I started thinking she didn’t need me, she didn’t need me, you don’t need me, bitch? I’ll show you! So I got up, noisy enough to wake her up, and she freaked and said, “Kenny, don’t leave me.” Just what the doctor ordered—for me. So I got back into bed and held her for hours.
I felt like taking a goddam fork and jabbing it in my face. A real nowhere man.
She wasn’t asking for anything that unreasonable. Time, that’s all. We all need time. Time to think, time to grow, time to work,’ time to die on the vine. My mind kept doing uncontrollable flip-flops—within minutes I’d go through a rainbow of changes: don’t leave me, who needs you, I understand, you’re killing me. All very exhausting.
I went to the old German lady’s house to deliver her Car-Vac and assorted goods. She invited me in for coffee. We sat and talked and I tried to ignore the cats, which seemed more dense than roaches on a 3:00 a.m. kitchen floor.
“How can you valk out dere?” She shivered in her chair and clutched the neck of her dress like a shawl.
“Ah, it’s not so bad today. It was colder yesterday.”
“Oh,” she said, as if I’d just broken down the Rosetta Stone for her.
I pretended this lady was my grandmother. I loved my grandmother. On Saturdays she would take me to the roller derby, to monster movies and to wrestling matches. In the evenings we used to watch more monster movies on her old Stromberg-Carlson. She hated spies, niggers, other Jews, Germans, my mother’s in-laws, other old people, the neighborhood, her arthritis, her gross heaviness, and any kind of animal. She was a Hatpin Mary at the wrestling matches, a rage queen par excellence. But she loved me ferociously, and it was me and her against the world.
This old German broad didn’t even remotely remind me of my grandmother, except that she was old; that and the fact that I was sure if we had been related she would have loved me.
“This is good coffee.” I winked.
“Ah!” She waved me away. “Why don’t you get indoor job! You get pneumonia!”
“Well, I don’t do this all the time.” I set my cup on the rug and three cats drank the rest. “I go to school. I only do this part tone.” I was raising my voice as if talking to a deaf person.
“You g
o to school!” She nodded in approval. I guess I still had that need in me from childhood to glow and perform in front of older people, adults.
“Yeah, I go to college! I’m gonna be a teacher!” was almost shouting. Why not medical school, schmuck? Go the whole route.
“That’s good. To teach people.” She nodded. I felt insane.
“Yeah, people need teaching. I got a year left, then I graduate.” I waved in dismissal at her order in a shop-ping bag at her feet. “I’m quitting this soon, this is only to pay for tuition.”
“You a smart boy.” She squinted in appreciation of my craftiness.
“Yeah, I’m almost finished.”
When I left she was beaming as if she was proud of me. I walked out, dizzy and totally out of touch with my body. I felt high but more a high of anarchy than of pleasure.
I almost never lied like that.
Ever since I woke up I had been walking around as if La Donna was some goddamn star, as if she had already made the big time and I was a nobody. It wasn’t something conscious; it felt more like a physical pain, a crick in the neck.
I passed Gordon’s apartment house. I felt like I wanted to lay off a load something fierce. But not with her. Not there.
“Bluecastle Housewares, Mrs. Macready.”
I stood in the doorway of one of my coffee klatchers holding her order in a bag next to my heart, my elbow sticking out at a stiff angle like a Victorian suitor, with a box of candy.
Macready opened the door. She was a short juicy chuck of a lady in tan slacks and brown rayon pullover which showed off the concentric stitching of. her bra. She was about forty with Prince Valiant bangs and a sharp nose.
“Well, it’s the Bluecastle House man!” She had gut fawed the loudest of the four when I was riffing with them on Tuesday. She was the most hopeful prospect.
I extended her goods. She stuck her nose in the bag. “What’s the damages?”
“Eight-o-nine. Let’s call it eight even.” I paused significantly. “Plus a cup of coffee.”
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