The Children of Hamelin

by Norman Spinrad

  At the corner of St. Mark’s and Second, I felt almost like a human being again. South, the lights of Ratner’s and the appetizing stores frequented by a weird mixture of ethnic old ladies and epicurean heads. To the east was home, and to the west the St. Mark’s MacDougal Street East: head shops, funky little greasy spoons, marginal bookstores, button-and-poster shops, the Electric Circus, a flux of borderline discotheques and coffee houses, and a rash of tourist-trap boutiques. And quite a street scene on better nights than this.

  I could go home, grab something at Rappaport’s, see if Roy Ellem and that crowd of his were at the Dom, make the rounds, or even make it further east to the hard-core ethnic head scene and maybe cop some pot from Tash or something like that. But all those scenes, I suddenly realized, had been bringing me down for the past couple of months; my mind had started to drift through those crowds like a ghost, or vice versa. Still, I did sometimes make them and probably would again, so when I crossed Second Avenue and decided to call it a night, I had at least the illusion of free choice—which seemed to be my hang-up at the moment.

  Ah, but all this is illusion, for on the other side of Second Avenue, standing in the doorway of a closed drugstore (somehow prophetic) I met The Girl in the Rain.

  A set-piece, like something out of a Hollywood fake of a New Wave film: a slim chick in an old peacoat ten sizes too big and black plastic zippered boots. A patina of dew on her pale skin, overflow from her long, wild, rain-soaked black hair. No more than nineteen. No make-up. Huge, dark doe-eyes. And a smile that would’ve melted an Eighth Street fag turned on me like a spotlight, telling me in no uncertain terms that I was in her stage-center.

  “Hello,” she said, in a sweet little dirty-girl voice. “Don’t you know who I am?”

  Awkward pause; then she laughed, cooling my embarrassment, just so.

  “Haven’t you ever met a girl in the rain before?” she said.

  I wanted to cry; I wanted so much to be wherever she was at but I couldn’t find the words to cut in. It didn’t seem to matter; her smile never wavered.

  “That’s who I am,” she said. “Your Girl in the Rain.” And she executed an incredible little bow.

  But I mean, she made me believe. A number like that from a chick like that with even a hint of sarcasm for my paranoia to wedge into, and I would’ve been off into the galloping nasties. But whatever else this girl was, she radiated sincerity; she was offering herself and she made me believe it. And it was like slow pot suddenly hitting—I found myself going with the moment and to hell with the unreality. She made me believe I was a groovy cat who deserved to be sent a Girl in the Rain.

  So I took her hand and instead of snuggling up to me or something else slightly off, she just took my other hand and we drank up each other’s eyes at double arm’s length. Every move was... just so. She had eyes you wanted to dive into and float around in forever. Magic! Yeah, magic on a bummer November night in the rain....

  I smiled like a kid on Christmas morning, finally managed to say: “What have I done to deserve this?”

  “No one gets a Girl in the Rain because he deserves one,” she said with a weird fragile solemnity. “A Girl in the Rain happens because you need her to happen.”

  “And how did you know I needed you?”

  “I saw it in your eyes. Trust me. I trust you. Haven’t you been waiting for a Girl in the Rain to happen to you?”

  “I suppose I have,” I said. “And you’ve been standing here all night just waiting for me?”

  “No. I’ve been waiting here for the right someone to happen to. I just feel like happening to someone tonight. I’m the Girl in the Rain and you’re my Man in the Rain, and if you ask any more questions, I’ll turn back into a pumpkin.”

  I just smiled. “Tom,” I said.

  “Robin.”

  Unwillingly, I found myself remembering something Ted had once said: “Robin is a name girls give themselves.” Retro me, satanis!

  “Is there someplace we can go? Rain is beautiful for meeting, but not for making love.”

  “Two blocks down.”

  Suddenly she was ten years old. She bounced up and down. “Let’s run!” she bubbled, and she yanked me forward into an all-out sprint. And we ran down St. Mark’s, two kids laughing and panting hand in hand through the falling rain.

  Although my apartment was on the fifth floor, it was still the best pad I had ever had, and I must admit I was kind of sneakily houseproud. The bathtub was in the bathroom and even had a shower; bedroom, living room and kitchen all had neat paint jobs and the furnishings were Salvation-Army-class.

  So I gave thanks to the $100 a week I was knocking down at the good old Dirk Robinson Literary Agency as I raced Robin up the stairs, grateful that the magic of this moment was not about to be exorcised by the kind of seedy mess I used to inhabit in the Bad Old Days.

  Panting, soaking and giggling, we reached the fifth floor landing. The pangs in my lungs, the wet clinging of my clothes to my body, the soggy tangle of hair over my forehead—as I led her to the door to my apartment, they made me hyper-aware of my flesh: the grace of my muscles under my skin, the blood moving down my thighs, the water dribbling down over my face. For the first time in many moons, I really noticed that my body was alive.

  As we stood hand in hand at the threshold, I felt some conventional gesture was required. I started to draw her to me, but with the slightest widening of her eyes, a playful tensing of her palm in mine, a hint of irony in that overwhelming smile, she told me no, this was her show, and my timing was a little off, and just let it happen, baby.

  So I unlocked the doorlock and the police-lock, swung the door open and the police-lock bar aside, and led her into the kitchen. The table and its clutter and the mess of dishes in the sink were barely visible in the light from the living room windows filtering past the bead curtain hanging in the doorway between kitchen and living room. Robin took one quick look around, seemed to grimace slightly, then wisely steered me through the bead curtain and into my own darkened living room.

  I hit the wall switch and the orange-and-red-painted frosted globe I had put up over the bare ceiling fixture flooded the room with a fair imitation of firelight. I felt pretty smug about this room, having achieved true East Village Class here with a little of this and a little of that. The bamboo-matted floor and the plain white walls made the room look Japanese instead of just bare. Panels of colored cellophane glued to the windows hid the vista of fire escapes behind a stained-glass effect. Two old cots met at right angles in the corner furthest from the bedroom door and they were both covered with the same huge piece of black velvet I had copped somewhere, giving the effect of a giant sectional. In the center of the room and dominating it was a huge round red table (a Con Edison cable spool I had liberated and painted) with a pole-lamp growing up from the center hole like a brass tree. The stereo rig and record racks against the wall next to the bedroom door were the only things in the room that were as expensive as they looked. The shelves of books beside them looked very intellectual, but were in fact mostly old science fiction paperbacks. And the warm orange light softened all the edges and hid the New York dust.

  She took it all in without showing any surprise, which did little for my ego. But then she turned that smile on me, said simply: “Yes,” took off my coat, tossed it to the floor with a grand gesture, gently pushed me to the section of couch by the windows, held finger to her lips, and with her peacoat still on, began rummaging through my records.

  Let it happen, baby.

  She finally came up with an early Ravi Shankar album, which seemed to fit the mood of the moment, and while I winced in agony for a minute, she put the record on the turntable, diddled with the controls, and sitar music set at very low volume barely textured the air.

  She ruffled her soaked hair, then came across the room to me, moving with the music. Standing over me, she said, “Let’s get comfortable,” and unbuttoned the top button of her peacoat. She paused, seemed to change her mind a
bout something.

  And leaned over to me and unbuttoned my shirt. Then, putting her arms around my neck, she eased my arms out of the sleeves, and as she dropped the shirt to the floor, the tip of her tongue touched my ear briefly. Moving in a slow-motion dream, I started to take my undershirt off, but she shook her head, pulled my hands away, and kissed me very lightly on the lips as she took the undershirt off herself. And I finally got the strange, delicious message: she was going to undress me.

  Let it happen, baby.

  As she slid her hands down my naked chest, I felt turned on in a slow trance-like way I had never experienced before. I didn’t have to make this chick, sell her anything, convince her to do anything, and there was nothing I had to prove. She wasn’t going to let me have what I wanted; she was making me want what she wanted me to want, and then she would give it to me as a very special gift. And all I had to do was let it happen.

  Took off my shoes. Socks. Tickled the soles of my bare feet. I could taste what was going to come but I had no reason to be in a hurry—a special sweetness I had never felt before.

  Now she stood away from me and took off her boots; her legs were slim and naked beneath that silly peacoat she still had on. She undid the second button on the peacoat.

  “Stand up,” she said.

  I stood up.

  She undid my belt, slid my pants over my ankles, and I stood poised before her in underpants stretched taut before me like a sail before a full following wind. The moment hung... and once again, she did the perfect, delicious unexpected:

  She sank to her knees. She toyed with the elastic of my shorts. And again the unexpected, more beautiful than even my best anticipating fantasy could be; instead of taking them off, her voice went through me like the touch of flesh: “Please, make yourself naked for me.”

  God! Her kneeling before me like that, eating me up with those eyes, and asking me to take off my pants for her as if it were a most special favor I could do for her... I never felt more wanted in my life.

  Diving into her eyes, I took off the underpants. Her eyes never left mine as she ran her tongue slowly up my cock from root to tip like a little girl who had just unwrapped a Christmas lollypop; I felt man enough and big enough to fuck the universe!

  But just that once—then, like a cat, she was on her feet, whirled around, leapt to the top of the table, and stood there, her hands on her hips, smiling down on me she began to unbutton the peacoat; beneath it was nothing but pale skin. Under the coat, she was completely naked. Where was I? Not in my own pad... This was a thing out of dreams.

  She threw the coat to the floor and stood proudly nude before me—pale bruisable skin, wild black hair, small upright breasts with tiny nipples jauntily erect. I stood locked in stasis, afraid to shatter the magic of the dream.

  Suddenly, incredibly, she leapt from the table like an uncoiling jungle cat and knocked me to the floor beneath her. At once tender and savage, she sunk tiny feral teeth into my shoulder and began caressing the insides of my thighs with a child’s gentle hands.

  I was gone: the thinking machine behind my eyes shorted out and my consciousness existed only at the interface where skin met skin.

  Rolling and touching and biting, flesh melting into flesh, the taste of her, the taste of me, we seemed to merge in a tangled fusing of nerve-endings and moans...

  And my cock was thrust and sucked down a long warm tunnel of total pleasure that seemed to plunge on down forever into the secret roots of the universe...

  Motion enveloped me, mine and hers melding, we became the motion, cosmic motion of creation, slow-rolling breakers of an immense roiling sea....

  A wave of pure sensation devoured me, I was the wave beginning its rise at the soles of my feet, sweeping upward majestically, all the time in the world, building and building and building...

  And the cresting was a flash into timeless being, a merging with something infinite and oceanic, a thing beyond pleasure—for that flicker of eternity I think I really ceased to be.

  And afterward, we went into the bedroom and cuddled together like innocent children. There was no need for marathons or fantastic feats. We had tasted an instant of perfection; the night was complete. And there was nothing that had to be proved.

  3 - “Do Me Like You Did the Night Before...”

  Waking up on a cold New York morning is a massive bummer—because of the heat. Steam heat. If you turn the radiator off at night, you wake up in Siberia; if you leave it on, it’s the Sahara: a choking, steam-seared stuffiness that glues your eyelids shut and fills your nose and throat with sawdust. Since I hate the cold worse than the heat, the first memory I have of Saturday morning is the feeling of being smothered in burning camel fur.

  Pry one eyelid open. The other. A kind of green reptilian light leaking into the bedroom around the edges of the dark green shade pulled down over the single window. Lying on my back, my head on the pillow... a weight on my chest...? A girl’s head...?

  Click! Awake! Robin’s body was half on top of me, her head face down on my chest so that all I could see was tangled black hair. She was breathing rhythmically, deep asleep. Warm, heavy, relaxed. I remembered the night before—but not the way you usually remember the night before: with the memory somehow becoming more important than the thing itself. The memory had no details (though there was no blank); I remembered that something beautiful had happened to me, remembered what it had been, but the reality of it was fuzzy, the way your memory of what you did when you were really stoned is somehow unconvincing.

  But the weight of her against me, the warmth of her breath on my chest, that was convincing. There was a girl named Robin in bed with me. There had been something magic between us; certainly not love, but for the first time since Anne a place that had been dead inside of me was now alive. The place that believes in the core of the possible unfolding. Robin was an unknown, but an unknown filled with the infinite possible. And I was hungry to explore the limits of whatever was there.

  But at the moment, all I was was a human pillow. That was okay while I was asleep, but at the moment it was a big drag. I wanted to meet her again. What to do? Wait it out till she woke up? What a drag! Wake her up? Gauche. Selfish. Would probably piss her off—if she woke up first and did it to me, I would not be amused.

  Clearly, the situation demanded unfair, Machiavellian tactics. So:

  I closed my eyes, skewed by head at a crazy angle, began moaning gently in my “sleep.” Then I abruptly rolled half over, tossing her head off my chest and onto the bed. I waited till I heard her mutter, sensed that she was awake.

  Then I opened my eyes like an innocent babe. Her head was propped up on one hand. She was looking at me somewhat fuzzily, but not in anger. Mission accomplished.

  “Hello,” I said sexily.

  “Uh...” she grunted. “Hi... uh... Tom?”

  “Right... Robin. We do remember each other’s names.”

  “Uh huh.”

  I stroked her hair. No effect. Her eyes were just a big as they had been the night before, but now they were just eyes. Something was missing.

  She looked around the room, orienting herself, I guess. Just the bed, an old dresser, a closet and a night-table with a phone, a clock and some odds and ends on it. She didn’t seem terribly impressed.

  I moved to cup her face in my hands, but she kind of pulled away. She kissed my left nipple—a dry, mechanical gesture—then kicked off the covers, rolled away from me.

  “I’m hungry, love,” she said. “Haven’t eaten since... whenever....”

  And she bolted out of bed, just like that, stood in the clear space at the foot of the bed, obviously looking for something. The same naked body—nice, slim legs, flat belly, sweet ass and all—but somehow it just didn’t seem to add up to what it had the night before. Like something was gone.

  “Uh... where are my clothes?” she asked. “In the other room?”

  “All you had on was a coat and boots.”

  A blank look for a moment. The
n an awful, flat “Oh WoW” that suddenly made her seem for an instant like a forty-year-old broad in a young girl’s body.

  I was really out of it. This just wasn’t the same chick. I had so much to ask her and no way to begin.

  So when she left the bedroom, I just got dressed in a bummer kind of daze and made for the bathroom, which was off the kitchen. She was standing there, between the plastic-topped metal table and the refrigerator, peering unhappily inside, still naked. She turned to me, and now she seemed like a pathetically shrewd sixteen-year-old war-waif.

  “Nothing in here but frozen food and a little milk and some jelly and uh... one egg...” she said in a small voice. “And I’m so damn hungry—”

  “Yeah, well we’ll go get some breakfast at Rappaport’s.”

  “Uh... I don’t have any bread right now... could you... er...?” In an awful kind of panhandling voice.

  My turn to say “Oh WoW.” I knew chivalry was dead, but this was too much!

  “What the hell do you think I am?” I said. “Don’t worry, I’ll stuff you silly. Lox and eggs and—”

  “Hey, you are a groovy cat!” she cried, throwing her arms around me, squeezing me briefly, then suddenly flitting past me into the bathroom, leaving me confused and touched and mildly pissed off all at once.

  Rappaport’s is a little kosher dairy restaurant half a flight below street-level; only a block further up Second Avenue is Ratner’s, a bigger, fancier place that serves exactly the same incomprehensible food. (Diary is supposed to mean no meat, but you can get fish, which I suppose they consider a vegetable or something.) So for decades, Rappaport’s has had to survive on Ratner’s drop-outs, and they’ve ended up as kind of the Viet Cong of the bagels and lox set. Once I went in there with three other dreadful-looking junkies to buy some pastries from the counter they have at the front of the place, and the old bird who waited on us refused to let us pay for them. As we left nibbling brownies, he was humming the Internationale. He thought we were the Downtrodden Proletariat, dig?