“What I want to do eventually is make another level. Build loft beds. Increase the floor space down here.”
“How many square feet have you got?”
I walked off without their noticing, deeper into the jungle. Music was coming from the other side. Past one last plant, I found an oasis, a corner of space by the windows. Because what he grew, I remembered, could never be visible from the street. Instead there had to be a show of regular living, a stand-up lamp, a braided rug, an armchair. It was like a stage set, an attempt to make a room where there were no walls. A boom box on the floor was playing classical music. A girl with pigtails was reading a book.
“Are you Eve?” she asked, not looking up.
“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't know anyone else was here.”
“I'm almost finished. Can you wait a minute?”
“Sure.”
She was probably around my size. It was hard to tell, because she was sitting down. She wore glasses—the small rimless kind, granny glasses—had watery brown hair and a serious face. She wasn't dressed up at all. I mean, even I had made some token attempt to look festive. But it was her shoes I really noticed. They were black and squared-off and had laces, the kind you'd wear if you lost your toes in an accident. I almost said, You can't be Iolanthe but just waited until she finished, looked up, and smiled.
“I'm Io,” she said, holding out a hand.
I wondered if I had heard wrong, that time in the playground. Not a dancer but … a math teacher? Or one of those lawyers who defend people who chain themselves to trees? I hadn't consciously thought about it but just assumed she would have enormous dark eyes, be five-ten, and weigh maybe eighty-seven pounds.
“Where's your husband?”
“Harvey? With Mark.”
“I should be out there too.”
“It's a beautiful space.”
She wrinkled her nose.
“It's still such a mess. Mark had all these great plans when we moved in. But he's been busy running around, doing stuff, instead.”
Like going to Coney Island, I thought.
More people were coming now. The elevator doors opened. Voices came through the wall of plants.
“What are you reading?”
“I'm a member of a book group. We get together once a month.”
“That's nice.”
“It's all women.”
Of course, I almost answered.
“Io!” Mark called.
“You should come, if you want. It's fun.”
She got up. I was amazed again at how much she was not a dancer. She was sturdy and kind of plain.
“He talks about you all the time.”
She said it in a neutral way, not angry, just throwing it out there.
The spot we were standing on must have been the heart of the fire. It was more pitted and full of mounds than the rest. I stumbled, trying to follow her, wanting to answer, He talks about you all the time too, but realized that would sound bad, somehow. Not to mention the fact that it wasn't true.
“So how did you guys meet?” I called ahead.
“He was doing some work for my parents.”
They're drug dealers?
I found I was having this totally invisible conversation. Every one of the sentences that came into my head was wrong. Luckily, she didn't seem to mind doing most of the talking.
“They have a townhouse on the East Side. Mark and his crew were redoing the library.”
His crew?
“You mean he really is a contractor?” That one got out, but at the last minute I managed to remove the surprise from my voice.
“He's good. Well, you know.” She held back a branch for me. It was like we were trekking, except she was taking me off to the side, not back to the party itself. The loft was huge. “And I was living at home.”
So you had this half-naked hunky carpenter guy getting a glass of water and sitting down with you in the kitchen, I filled in mentally. And since you were looking for an apartment and he was looking for someone to share the rent with, before you knew it—
“This is going to be my part. When it's done.”
It was where all the clothes were now, a storage area, with half-open suitcases, a pile of laundry, some boxes still sealed with tape. Framed pictures and posters leaned against the wall. The only sign of what she did, if you could even call it that, was a yoga mat unrolled on the floor.
“Where do you know him from?” she asked, taking off her shirt.
I guess she had the right, since I had just put the same question to her. Still, it felt weird. Plus her changing right in front of me.
“Oh, it's funny,” I said, looking away. “I was taking this course, Fashion Illustration, which was about sketching clothes. But for the first week we were supposed to do life studies, draw nude models, just to get an idea of the body underneath. The structure. And Mark was one of the sitters. He was picking up extra money. So when I was going over my portfolio—I hadn't even noticed him at the time, I was concentrating so hard— I saw that I had gotten one of them completely wrong. I mean, it was anatomically impossible, what I had drawn. So I freaked out because we had to turn it in. It was going to be our first grade of the class. And I actually tracked him down, through the office that hired people to pose. Just because I wanted him to sit for me again, so I could do it right. And then—”
I stopped. I hadn't ever told this story to anyone before. It was way too personal. And here I was, blathering it out.
“Could you help me?”
I turned around. She was in a party dress, with a zipper in back. It was nice, more expensive than pretty, but too old for her. Almost anything fancy would be. For the first time I realized she was young. She was still at Mark's stage of arrested development, twenty-three or twenty-four. But of course she would keep on growing, while he stayed the same.
“I know what you mean,” she said, still facing away from me.
Maybe that's why I was telling her, because she did know what I meant. It was our guilty secret, that we were both helpless before a certain kind of male beauty. When I had drawn him the second time, it was even worse. I could still feel the piece of char-coal crumbling in my hand, making the same mistakes, my mind (or whatever was in control of me, then) twisting reality to its own perverted ends, giving shape to self-destructive desires.
“He still has it.”
“Has what?”
“The picture. You gave it to him.”
There was a brush on top of a box. She took the rubber band out of each pigtail and shook her hair, giving it the most cursory type of attention, just one or two punishing strokes on either side.
She's so serious, I thought. And with no sense of humor. I couldn't point to any one thing. It was more her manner. A coldness. What was he doing with her?
We made our way back along the wall while I tried to think of something to say. Something like: I didn't give it to him, it just disappeared one day; he must have taken it. Or: Well, as you know then, he's not really that big; I literally lost perspective. Or: Give me back my drawing, you jealous cunt. But all I did was troop after her. She was still wearing those ridiculous shoes. She had gotten back into them, after changing. They banged on the wooden floor.
While we'd been gone, Mark had put out bowls and platters of food.
“He got it all wrong,” she complained.
“You want me to help?”
“No. I'll do it.”
She had a very determined look, storing up credit for some big fight she could have with him now. My offering to help just got him in deeper trouble.
“I guess you didn't want the guacamole on the table saw, huh?”
“Is that your husband?”
She sounded surprised, maybe because Harvey was this normal guy, holding Ann, who was squirming and red-faced. For me, though, he was such a relief to discover, a pillar of stability And so good-looking, my mind irrelevantly noted.
“Let me introduce you.”
&n
bsp; But she was already gone, clomping off to move the dips.
“Thank God.” He came up and tilted Ann so she rolled into my arms.
“What's wrong?”
“I think she's hungry.”
“Are you having a good time?”
“All right.” He looked around, confirming what he'd been doing. “I talked to some people.”
“Really?”
“I think I'm getting … what do you call it, when you're just around people who are stoned?”
“A contact high.”
“You want a beer?”
“Sure.”
He pushed his way toward the refrigerator.
Who are all these people? I wondered. When I knew Mark before, he had no friends, none he'd let me meet. They were all business-related, would show up unannounced, have whispered conversations at the door, then disappear in back, go to the “curing room,” a locked closet where he hung bunches of leaves upside down so they dried in a certain way. He kept me apart from all that, which angered me at the time, but also made me feel special. Protected. The people in this new loft were young and hip, by which I meant childless, without any hint of scruffy danger to them. They looked very clean. I found a chair and pushed up my blouse.
“So what have you been up to?” I asked Ann. “Did you go for a ride? Did the man with the funny hair turn you into an airplane?”
I tried moving her into a better position. The one good thing about talking to babies was that you always got in the last word.
“That's what he does. That's his specialty. He makes you fly. Upside down, sometimes.”
“I'm in love with your daughter.”
Beeswax. I had been wondering what the smell was. I thought it was the plants, at first, but it wasn't. I'd been smelling it ever since we got out of the elevator. Not smelling, really. Breathing it in: the beeswax from his dreadlocks. That all happened when I knew him. He had gone to a Rasta man who showed him how.
He held out a joint.
“I know you are.”
“Is it that obvious?”
We touched, lightly. It all seemed so natural. That was the thing about Mark, I remembered now, zeroing in on exactly what it was that made him so attractive. His gift, when you were with him, was how you couldn't make a wrong move. Everything you did felt right. I didn't take a hit off the joint. I didn't need to. I just held it. That was enough.
“But why? That's what I can't figure out. Why are you in love with her?”
He bent down and looked, as if her little sucking mouth could provide an answer. One ropy vine of hair bounced against my cheek.
“Because she's beautiful?” he murmured.
“Not much of a reason.”
There was music playing. I couldn't pinpoint the source of everyone's excitement—the old year ending or the new year beginning—just that it was heading toward some kind of peak.
“You met Io.”
“Yeah.”
“Isn't she great?”
“Great,” I echoed.
“She really liked you.”
“You already talked to her?”
He nodded. Checked in with her, that was the impression I got. She was his little boss. Well, maybe that's what he needed. A stern taskmaster. I certainly couldn't have filled that job description.
“Look at her go. It's like she's a pump.”
“All right, Mark.”
I handed the joint back to him. I liked him close to me, part of me did, the part that got me into trouble, but I was too aware of the people around us. Just a second ago, I'd thought some dam was about to break, that all these floodwaters my uptight-ness walled in were going to run free. But the truth was that when it had crumbled, in the past, no magic torrent had been released. I wasn't some free spirit, begging to be liberated, which I knew, but every once in a while forgot and needed to be reminded of.
“I've been meaning to give you this.”
He passed me a slip of paper.
“What is it?”
“My number. In case you need to call.”
“Should I learn it by heart and then swallow it?”
“Why?”
“Never mind.”
He looked around.
“So what do you think of the place?”
“It's big.”
“You should come here sometime.”
“Yeah?” For some reason that made me laugh, the way things you long to hear often do, when they're actually said out loud. “Come here and…?”
“Just hang out.”
I pushed him away. At least that's what I thought I was doing. He always sat too close. A fake clumsiness, I first felt. Then, when I got to know him better, I thought it was a puppylike need for attention. Later still, I decided he was blocking my progress, always right in front of me, in whichever direction I turned. Move! I wanted to scream. And finally, one day, he did. He wasn't there anymore. My wish had come true. He was gone. So this time, when I playfully pushed and my fingers found him, they were shocked. They expected to meet air or, at the most, a shirt. Instead, they reached out and pressed against the muscles of his stomach, which were slippery from sweat. They slid in this delicious slick, losing their intelligence, becoming unthinking conduits of feeling, rolling like individual bathers over that narrow arrow that funneled down to his waist. One arm was still holding Ann and the other was having this private orgasm, and he was doing what he did best, which was absolutely nothing, just holding his ground like stone.
“Go away,” I said.
“I did.” We were having this separate conversation, apart from what was happening. “I am away. Now.”
“You think that makes it different?”
“Well.” He shrugged. His exquisite naked shoulders. If I had to build a man, I would start with shoulders. “It is different. I mean, can't you tell?”
Hand come home, I ordered. For one thing, Ann needed to change sides. She was sucking on empty. It made a strange counterpoint to what I was feeling elsewhere. A pinching, very rhythmically precise, while the other half of me was lost in wet space.
“Mark!”
I blinked. Iolanthe was standing in front of us—
“You put everything out all at once.”
—along with Harvey, who held a beer. I took it, switching, so the hand that had been tracing his abdominal development was safely hidden under Ann's warm back. His sweat soaked into her pink terry cloth.
“I know.”
He'd obviously heard it before. She just had to say it again, in front of us.
“And now I can't take things away because people are already eating them.”
“Well, that's good, isn't it? That they're eating them?”
“You put out the desserts. The desserts are supposed to be for later. They were supposed to be for after twelve, remember?”
“Desserts!”
I made it sound like an outrageous unhoped-for treat, trying to smooth the situation over. No one else seemed nervous, though. This was just the way they talked, a low-level aggression. They bickered.
“Iolanthe's studying to become a therapist,” Harvey said. “I know the program she's in. It's very good.”
“Therapist? I thought you were a—”
“Could you at least help me?”
It wasn't a request. It was a direct command, wife to husband.
Harvey moved aside to let him pass, then sat down. It was one of those moments when life gets too symbolic. Boy Toy replaced by Husband. The past by the present. He settled comfortably into the exact same spot, while Iolanthe led Mark off.
“Therapist?” I said. “I thought she was a dancer.”
“I'm sure she was. Everyone starts out wanting to be something else. Before reality sets in.”
“Really? Did you want to be something else, besides a doctor?”
He thought about it.
“No. I guess I'm the exception that proves the rule.”
“And what about me?”
“You're j
ust the exception.”
I tore my eyes away from Mark's departing back and looked down. The other hand, feeling shortchanged, was trying to get some relief of its own, squeezing the long-necked beer bottle, doing a rippling caress along its glass shaft. I watched, horrified, as if I had no say in my actions.
“When you're ready, I want you to tell me what's bugging you.”
“What if I never am?” I asked, without looking up.
“You will be.”
“Might be awhile.”
He sat back, a fortress. Very secure and self-contained. Which was nice, if you were inside with him. With the drawbridge pulled up. That's what I couldn't figure anymore: if I was in or out.
“I got time,” he said.
• • •
If I couldn't make a pilgrimage back to my past, maybe I could make one to my future, I reasoned. And that meant getting a job. Of course it couldn't be a regular job, the kind where they actually expected you to show up at a certain time, be dressed in good clothes, and not bulldoze everyone out of your way with your overloaded stroller. No, it had to be a magic job, perfectly suited to my state of spiritual need.
“Let's go look for Salvation” was how I put it to Ann.
I skirted the park until I found the black rubbery tubes taped down across the sidewalk. The other ends disappeared into a truck that sat with six or seven trailers, all idling, taking up a blocks worth of parking spaces. I followed the cables past the entrance, over the ring road, then to the top of a gentle slope looking down on the meadow.
The movie people were huddled at the end of the field, surrounded again by yellow tape. I walked closer, hoping someone would notice, even if it was just to yell at me. I needed to be acknowledged. But the atmosphere was different from last time. They were standing around, sullen and depressed. I couldn't find the director. I stood on my tiptoes and squinted.
“They failed to understand,” a voice behind me said.
I turned. He was sitting on a bench, just like a regular person. I must have walked right past him. But he was so small and, like me now, on the outside looking in.
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