Monkey Suits

by Jim Provenzano

  But Paris?

  As Kevin disappeared out the bathroom door, Ritchie popped in, bag packed, coat on and ready to go. “To the train, my man?” he asked.

  “Uh, no. I’m gonna go out with Lee to celebrate his birthday.”

  Ritchie glared knowingly at Brian. “Shall I inform the spouse?”

  “If you so desire,” he snapped.

  “You never quit, do you?”

  “Ed can handle it.”

  “Oh, can he?”

  “Look, we’re not married. Get it? Leave the breeder rules on your side of the fence.”

  Ritchie held up his hands in surrender and backed out. “Later.” The door closed.

  Alone in the rest room, Brian searched through his bag and into the pocket of his tux where he’d kept the evening’s pilfered trinket, this time a silver-plated creamer. He’d add it to the collection of baubles lifted from the tables. He’d never stolen anything of real value before. It was the idea of it that amused him. It was a lot like the thrill he got as a young kid, just barely out of high school, stealing things from campus stores. He developed an intricate system of shoplifting that excited him. He’d never been caught. The trinkets helped him remember one night from another. That had become difficult.

  Brian shoved the creamer deep into his bag, zipped it up, and stood alone in the silent tiled bathroom. He pulled his coat on, glancing back at the mirror, and imagined his face framed in a passport photo.

  16 “You better be storin’ your cash away, baby,” Marcos warned. “The rich don’t party much after New Year’s, so we don’t get that much work.”

  “You’re telling me,” Connor, an attractive husky waiter commented. “I go on unemployment until March.”

  “And it’s a witch’s titty winter till then.”

  While Annette, the Special Events coordinator of the Benefactor’s night at the Guggenheim Museum, had been quite precise about every table setting, bottle of wine and flower arrangement for her big event, she had forgotten, as many do, about where to let the workers change. They had all been called an hour late, and the guests had shown up an hour early. The guests of honor had been flown in from Brussels. Air France was celebrating its first non-stop trip via New York by donating several hundred thousand dollars to the Guggenheim’s new wing. To top it off, the new Jenny Holzer installation was having electrical problems. Strips of LED screens swirling up the circular interior of the museum had failed to light up properly. The installation electrician was called in from Queens.

  The French and Belgian guests were a bit surprised to see waiters scampering to finish setting tables and open wine bottles to keep up with their thirst. Most hadn’t completely changed, and Annette was in a tizzy.

  “Please hurry up,” she scolded to Andrew Spears, the evening’s captain.

  “Certainly, just give us a few minutes.” He could see his breath fog out of his mouth as he spoke. The kitchen, breakdown and changing space for all the workers had been delegated to what, before the museum’s renovations started, had been the loading dock. The area was walled by a skeletal structure of plywood, two by fours and sheets of milky-white plastic that fluttered from the chilling breeze. In thirty-five degree temperatures, the waiters, women included, were swiftly booted from the tiny bathrooms and out into the cement back stoop amongst dumpsters and sawdust.

  “Well, at least I’ll have free food for a week,” Ritchie said, pulling on his pants before his legs grew numb.

  “Are you doing the whole relative scene for Christmas?” Marcos asked, his teeth chattering.

  “Yes, of course.” Connor replied.

  “Leavin’ on a jet plane?” Ritchie asked.

  “Train. Lancaster. Ma and Pa Kettle can’t wait to get their little homo boy home.”

  “I doubt everyone who lives in the white bread Midwest could be described as Ma and Pa Kettle,” Marcos snipped.

  Ritchie zipped up his pants. “No, but it’s close enough.”

  “Are you out to your parents?” Marcos asked Connor.

  “Of course. Aren’t you?” Connor hung his down jacket over his tux hanger.

  “Are you kidding?” Marcos posed. “You’re talking to the offspring of a woman who believes the face of the Virgin Mary appears on taco shells.”

  “Your father, too?” Ritchie asked.

  “They’re divorced,” he lied. “I don’t see him. I love my momma, but she is stuck on one idea, and that is that I am on the road to hell unless I reee-pent and propagate the species. I go home to Philly on Christmas Eve, stay a day, party with the local queens a day or two, then turn right around. That’s the way she likes it, and so do I. Shit, I can’t get my tie on. My fingers are freezing!”

  “I’m goin’ back for a whole week.” Connor said. “Pig out and come back ten pounds heavier, with even more food in shopping bags.”

  “What about you, Ritchie?”

  “Drivin’ home to my Dad’s in Youngstown with a friend that lives near me.”

  “That’s quite a hike.”

  “Ten hours on a good thermos of coffee. He wants to sell my childhood home and move into a trailer park with Jill, his girlfriend. I will either convince him against the idea, or UPS my old high school pottery to sell on the street.”

  “Whew! What are you doing for the holidays?” Marcos asked Andrew, who paced from nervousness and the cold, clutching his clipboard.

  “Uh, I stay in the city with some friends.”

  “You got friends to have dinner with on Christmas?”

  “Marcos,” Andrew sighed, “I’m Jewish. We go to the movies and have Chinese food.”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “That’s okay. It’s on my mother’s side. It’s hard to tell.”

  “I know one way to tell,” Marcos made a playful grab for the lump in Andrew’s baggy black pants.

  “Hey, cut it out,” he giggled. “I’m boss man tonight.”

  “Right,” Marcos smirked. “Hey, I’m sorry I didn’t know.”

  “That’s okay. You’re not the only one. Besides, you’re too many races to be racist. C’mon, hurry up and you can get inside and warm up.” He yelled loudly. “People, anyone who doesn’t have their table number, come to me!” As a flock of confused waiters crowded around him, Marcos, Ritchie and Connor rushed to finish dressing.

  “Ritchie, what are you doing?” Marcos asked. He stared as Ritchie put on one, then two T-shirts before donning his white dress shirt.

  “Just happen to have a clean extra. Tryin’ to keep warm.” He quickly buttoned his shirt while Marcos shook his head.

  “Do you always come so well prepared?”

  “Got a rubber if you need one,” he grinned.

  “Well, hurry up. We have Eurotrash mouths to feed.”

  “They’re all children of God,” Connor said.

  “Yeah, well, some of them oughtta be sent to the principal’s office.”

  The electrician found the fried extension cord. Once the waiters dressed and thawed their fingers well enough to manage wine bottles and hors d’oeuvre trays, the party finally got rolling. Annette, the Special Events coordinator, had retreated to her office to pop two Zanax, and felt much better.

  Before dinner, while he served miniature lobster tartlettes on a tray, Ritchie leaned over the third level balcony, growing momentarily dizzy from the sight of the swirling word passage, which resembled a giant electric commode.

  His extra shirts didn’t protect him from the chilly reception of his table guests. Not one spoke English, and he had a rather difficult time trying to explain to the most effusive man at his table, unsatisfied with the wine, that they only had one label for the evening.

  Between serving the salad of baby lettuce, arugula and endive after dinner, as was the European fashion, Ritchie and a few others stole a few moments to glance above their heads at the swift whirl of red, yellow and green LED letters:

  POVERTY IN THE MIDST OF WEALTH IS INEVITABLE

  PRIVATE PROPERTY CREATED CRIME
>
  YOU ARE A VICTIM OF THE RULES YOU LIVE BY

  “C’est impossible,” he fumed. “Ce ne pas assez sec. Comprendez-vous?”

  “I knew I shoulda studied a language in high school,” he sighed as Marcos passed him.

  Dinner was served without tragedy, albeit several degrees colder than usual. The herb-encrusted rack of lamb served with a Madeira sauce, the roasted new potatoes with rosemary, and the winter vegetable melange were all well received. If the guests complained, most of the waiters couldn’t understand them anyway.

  Witnessing such a massively bold work of art, Ritchie felt simultaneously inspired and hopeless. What was he doing spending his days hunched over a spinning wheel of mud while such grand accomplishments swept the art world into babbling appreciation?

  “We would like more vine, please,” a voice called to him.

  The next night, the aisles of Tower Records on lower Broadway were still packed with frantic holiday shoppers only an hour before their extended closing time. Living Color’s “Which Way to America?” pumped through the store’s speakers. It was one place where Christmas carols were refused entry.

  “I just like to get ’em music ’cause it fits in my bag easy. Don’t have to pack a buncha shit.” Manny Lepore scanned the shelves of the cassette racks with Ritchie, who’d ducked out of the Guggenheim job an hour early. Although they were set to drive Manny’s Dodge Dart to Cleveland in the morning for the holidays, neither had bought a single gift for their relatives.

  “How many do you need?” Ritchie asked.

  “Well, I got my dad, my mom, three sisters and my aunt and uncle, but I can get ’em both one thing, then my buddy Carmine and the neighbors the Buntz’s ...”

  “Jeez, I’d go broke.” Ritchie said as someone shoved past him to get to the CDs.

  “Well, I get stuff too, and sometimes it’s something I can actually use.” Ritchie glanced at the cashier line. About forty people trailed down an aisle. He should have made enough sculptures to give away, but he’d been in such a slump. Too much money work and not enough art work.

  He’d been working hard, spending almost every day traveling to midtown and the Upper East Side for one Christmas party after another. Often the weather was too wet or cold for bike-riding, so he took the train, comforted that his work hours were usually opposite the rush hour crowds.

  Still, the streets were packed with shoppers wrapped in long coats, scarves and hats. The massive snowflake ornament, a holiday standard, hovered high above Fifth Avenue and 57th Street like an alien spacecraft. Parties at Cartier, private town houses and museums, where champagne and eggnog poured endlessly, served to cheer him, especially when he was able to gulp a glassful for himself.

  “I don’t even know if my sister likes any of this stuff,” Ritchie said, staring at the racks of pop music cassettes. “I’m really not into this.”

  “What’s the matter?” Manny asked. “Not in the spirit?”

  “No. See, I met this girl.”

  “Aha.” Manny leered knowingly.

  “No, she’s really different. And I just don’t even think I’ll ever see her again. I even thought about writing her, where I think she lives, or at least her manager’s office is.”

  “Pretty desperate.” Manny said.

  “Yeah, right.” Ritchie put the tapes he’d picked back on the wrong shelf. A stock girl glared at him. “Let’s go look at the classical stuff.” Ritchie said.

  They walked downstairs and strolled absently through the aisles. Manny picked up a CD. “How ’bout a little Vivaldi? That’s good dinner music.”

  Ritchie grinned at Manny. He’d lost track of him since high school and had only bumped into him in New York a year ago. Working in a carpentry shop had made him some good money, but Manny was still the goof he’d known since they were kids.

  “I think my sister needs something a bit less corny,” Ritchie said. He continued up an aisle until a familiar face on a CD cover caught his eye. A violin under her chin, the young cream-colored Asian face beamed.

  “That’s her!” Ritchie shouted. “That’s her!” Several shoppers stared at him.

  “Who?” Manny asked.

  “That’s her! That’s the girl!” He jumped up and hugged his friend.

  “You’re sure you want twelve of these?” The frazzled cashier gazed at the pile of identical CDs Ritchie had plopped onto the counter.

  “Oh yes, I’m sure. Quite sure.”

  Manny shook his head, happy for his buddy, even if he if he was a bit strange.

  17 “Sure I can change for you.” Brian brooded lazily on the bed while Ed matched a pile of socks, still static from the dryer at the corner laundry. “I quit smoking cigarettes.”

  “You quit buying cigarettes,” Ed corrected.

  “Well, that’s a start.”

  “No, it isn’t. You bum from Marcos or anybody else. It’s hard to kiss you most of the time. You taste like an ashtray.”

  “I brush my teeth.”

  “It’s more than that. It’s deeper, inside you. You can’t stop this self-destructive behavior without transferring it to something healthy. I used to drink in school all the time. Parties after swim meets.”

  “I know. You told me.”

  “But I stopped. And you can too, but you can’t do it for me. You have to want to change yourself.”

  “I will, I will.” Brian stood and pulled Ed’s attention from the pile of clothes. “A new year’s resolution. I’ll quit next month.” He hugged Ed, who resisted at first, then brought his hands up to Brian’s bare shoulders. The two swayed back and forth, as if dancing to silent music.

  “Now I’m gonna go brush my teeth and we’re gonna make love and I’m gonna suck the come outta your cock, okay?”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “Maybe?”

  Ed sighed. “You don’t quit, do you?”

  “I usually get what I want.”

  “Be careful what you want,” Ed returned to the socks. “You might be able to afford it. Someday.” He dumped the lumpy folded socks into a dresser drawer and retreated to the kitchen. Brian lay among a pile of clean white T-shirts. Despite his wanderlust, he wondered how he could hold on to Ed, just keep this one good thing in his life from falling apart.

  “Then you’ll come again to the meeting?” Ed called from the kitchen.

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Great. We’re meeting Lee there.”

  “Oh, terrific.”

  “Look, you two can be friends. At least you say as much.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So, in the words of the Maharishi Vindulu Kabet, ‘Get over yourself, girlfriend.’”

  Brian had been with Ed four months before being invited to attend one of Ed’s healing circle sessions. It was a harmless affair, with about fifteen men and women sitting on pillows and sharing brief talks about their bad feelings, followed by a meditation where everyone held hands. Brian enjoyed the feeling of being in a group and thinking about spreading good feelings to friends and strangers with AIDS or “dis-ease,” as the facilitator pronounced it. Sage was burned in a bowl and ritualistically fanned over the group one at a time. Brian enjoyed the Native American flavor of the smoke, and inhaled deeply, imagining it to have marijuana-like hallucinogenic effects, something that seemed more and more distant in his now-pristine life with Ed.

  Brian sat up on the bed and finished putting away their clothes. He had separated them, but sometimes liked to deliberately mix them up. It meant something to him. Usually Ed just made a face.

  Ed invited Brian to a large gathering to hear a woman speak that night.

  “What is she, a guru?” Brian asked as they walked to subway.

  “Not like that, not in the way you think,” Ed explained.

  They took the Number Two train to 72nd Street and walked to a church that faced Central Park West. Lee waved to greet them as he stood with several people gathered outside the entrance, despite
the cold and the light swirls of snow. A modest sign posted near the door listed the woman’s name, the group, and the time of the service, 7:30 to 10:00.

  “Well, am I going to see a miracle?” Lee grinned, his face red.

  “Who knows?” Ed led them in as Brian and Lee exchanged silent glances.

  About two hundred people milled about the pews and folding chairs that faced the altar. The church was a large open cathedral, with gray stone arches and plaster walls in a state of slight disrepair. A large tile mural on the wall above the altar depicted Christ washing the feet of an apostle. Brian couldn’t remember which one it was, but he figured out which one was Judas.

  As the group settled in their seats, Ed introduced Brian and Lee to several young men in their late twenties. Recognizing a few other cater-waiters, Lee was warmed by seeing so many cute guys, as well as a good number of women who seemed like lesbians. It was a pleasant congregation that included a few blacks and Hispanics. An outsider from the Midwest might mistake the group for any churchgoing crowd. Only closer inspection revealed the preponderance of earrings on both genders. It all seemed a marvelous alternative to bars, he realized. He still had a roving eye and warmed up to several men who returned his stare, however their looks were open and peaceful, not at all predatory like in bars. He felt relieved to be in a gay environment without booming dance music and smoke.

  A crackle of sharp piercing feedback alerted his attention to the stage. The microphone was being moved for the beginning of the lecture. Without introduction, a beautiful woman in a red dress began speaking.

  “If you’ll all find a seat, we can begin.” Her voice echoed crisply around the stone walls. Stragglers quickly stepped to their saved seats, their coats laid over chairs and pews. Ed sat with Brian and held his hand warmly. Brian felt a surge of guilt as Lee sat next to him. He was bracketed by boyfriends past and present and still wasn’t sure where to find love.

  The woman began.

  “I want to talk a little about the Source, which is our program for self-healing and is actually what we hope you can all use to deal with the problems that you have, undoubtedly, come here to solve,” she said. “I’m going to go very quickly, so I hope those who are more learned in the workings of the Source can help other newcomers with some of the basic thoughts that we’ve collected after our years of research. A lot of people are using the Source to successfully overcome illness, fear and AIDS. If you’ll look at the letter I’ve had handed out, we can start with a silent meditation on the idea that’s written there.”