It’s Monday afternoon and Morris waits for Stefani at Ray’s Pizza, sits at a table out front on the sidewalk, drinking a coffee, watching the crowds slide past. Across the street is the brown stone building of Cooper Union’s Great Hall, where Abraham Lincoln sealed the Republican presidential nomination in 1860. Such history so near the tongue piercing stands of St. Marks Street.
Morris has practiced. “Stefani,” he’ll tell her, “no more.” He isn’t going to Junior Prom. He’s ending it. Cutting it clean.
That morning, the trucks were back out front of the precinct. A clamor and banging and tearing echoed from within the building. Work had finally begun. The Skunks were gone. He and Jetski ensured that. The Bloody Eagles had ensured that.
The day’s damp, overcast. The fake marble table Morris sits at wobbles. He shifts it, rams a folded napkin under the leg to stop it from rocking. Still, it rocks. The traffic pushes north and south along Third Avenue. Taxis stop, blocking the cars and trucks and other taxis behind them. People cross against the light, dancing through the traffic like capeless matadors.
Saint Benedict’s Ukrainian Catholic School lets out.
A group of boys in navy blue slacks, white button-down shirts, and plaid school ties amble by, their faces oily with adolescence and anxiousness. Their laughs are forced and loud, laughs boys laugh when something isn’t all that funny. Then come girls in packs of three or five or silently by themselves. Then the stragglers.
Soon, they’ve all passed. But no Stefani. He waits five minutes, then five minutes more. He waits until twenty after three when finally, one of Stefani’s classmates, a gawky white girl who’s already gone home and changed into a Triple Five Soul tank top, low-riding skirt, and a pair of rattling roller blades that sound like a shopping cart with a wobbly wheel, comes skating up and tells him, “She’s not coming, ’kay?”
“Who?” Morris asks, hoping that Stefani hadn’t told anyone about their appointment. Knowing she probably told everyone.
“Ah, shit,” the girl says, then snorts. Her face is like a pickle sliced lengthwise, long and awkwardly colored. “Yeah, right. ‘Who?’ ” she says, grabbing the edge of Morris’s table for balance. It shakes and his coffee flips to the pavement, spilling. “Shit,” she says. “Like, ‘whoops,’ ’kay? Listen,” she says, still grasping the table and taking small, faltering steps to stay standing, “she isn’t coming. She told me to tell you that, and to tell you to meet her tonight at the Ukrainian Festival, out front of McSorley’s pub. Seven o’clock, ’kay?” She pauses a moment then says, “And she said for you to buy me a pepperoni slice and a large root beer.”
Morris waves her off, tells her no. “I’m not buying you anything,” he tells her, wanting to pry her hands from the table.
She lets go of the table. “Personally,” the girl tells him, unsteadily rolling backward toward the street and the racing traffic, “I think you and her are perfect together.” She catches herself at the last moment, hobbling forward before she slides off the curb and into the path of an approaching ice cream truck. “You’re both really gross,” she yells, wheeling off.
The Ukrainian Festival. Not something Morris wants to attend. He heads home.
Out in front of his building, N.J. is waiting. With a bright orange cashmere scarf loosely looped around his neck, he leans against the bark-stripped tree he used to climb as a kid. Morris’s never seen him in a scarf.
“N.J., hey.”
“Morris, man,” N.J. tells him, “I’ve got news, and news, and more news, man. But first, let me tell you, I just saw your cheese girl.”
“You saw Stefani?” Morris asks. “Where?”
“At Norman’s Sound and Vision. She didn’t look happy.”
“She didn’t look happy? How do you mean?”
“I mean, like not happy, man. But listen, this is important: I’ve found the One,” he says, sounding sincere. His voice vibrates with excitement, like God has whispered a new testament in his ear.
Morris shakes his head, not understanding. “Why wasn’t she happy?” he asks, thinking of heading over to Norman’s to see if she’s there. Then he thinks not. He asks, “So what did you find? And what’s with the orange scarf?” He tugs at it.
“Cashmere, Bergdorf’s,” N.J says, then, “I found the It, man. The woman. My life. The reason to go on.”
A flash of irritation rifles through Morris. He’s heard this before and isn’t in the mood for it again. “Two days ago you were planning to marry. What happened to that woman, that love of your life?”
N.J. waves off the comment. “Listen, man,” N.J. says, “that was yesterday, years ago, but listen. Two things have happened since then, two important things. The first,” he says, holding up his thumb. “No, wait, man, I’m starting wrong. I’m about to ruin this before I’ve even begun. Hold on. Just hold on, man.” N.J. trots down the street with the air and confidence of a winning quarter horse coming off the track. He rounds the corner, toward Mr. Charlies.
Morris stands motionless a couple minutes, then thinks, why am I waiting? Exhausted, he wants to rest. He didn’t sleep all night, spent the time wandering the city, thinking. Keying his front door, he heads into his building, slowly starts up the stairs.
Behind him, there’s a rapping on the door. N.J. with a plastic bag in hand.
“What’s wrong with you, man?” N.J. asks when Morris opens the door for him. “You’re as touchy as Liz Taylor out of Diet Coke. I’m trying to tell you something important and you ditch me, man. What’s that about?” He pulls a forty-ounce bottle of beer from the bag and takes a swig. “At least celebrate with me,” he says, holding the bottle out for Morris. Morris takes a drink.
N.J. takes another drink, wipes his mouth with the scarf. “Lend me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, man,” N.J. says, then, “So, yeah, man, you’re right. The Cyndi thing, a fiasco. Stupid of me. But this is different, man. It’s real.”
“Okay,” Morris says, sitting on the steps. He’s trapped. He’ll listen. “Five minutes,” he tells N.J., “then it’s my turn to tell you something. And I want you to listen, really listen.”
N.J. nods. “Always, man, always. When you speak, my ears are turned on for you. You know that. But listen, man,” he says, “me first. Let me tell you my tale first.”
Morris places his elbows on the stair behind him, leans back in preparation for a long tale.
Ever since eighth grade, N.J.’s progressively increased the pace he moves through the field of women, dating one then another, positive the latest is the perfect match. Each time it ends in damp disappointment.
From his first real girlfriend, Mary Dally, the daughter of a Middle-Eastern snack food deliveryman, to The Cyndi, his near wife, N.J. has become a skilled hand. He claims he craves a functioning, genuine relationship. He truly believes this.
It isn’t what he wants.
He wants the prospect of a functioning, genuine relationship. Yes, he says, yes, man, I want love. But his terms come from a bastardized dictionary. He wants a love that’s continually seething and heady, capricious. He wants non-binding blind promises. He wants to know someone without getting to know her, without having to deal with the idea that there are faults. He wants the form of love that’s corrosive to a long-term, serious relationship.
With each new girlfriend, he’s aflame, alive, heated with a euphoric anxiousness and unquestioning certainty. She is It, he says.
Then she isn’t it.
The next woman absolutely is It.
A week or two passes; she fades like an item left in a blighting sun.
Once a relationship’s over, N.J.’s free to start new. And there have been many, many new ones. There was the artist, who knew everything about art except how to make it; the judicial clerk who’d constantly grill N.J. over any topic; the claustrophobic who, when visiting the Annette Messager exhibit of yarn hung from the ceiling in dense clusters, got tangled in the art work and had a panic attack. Then there was the tattoo
ed barista, who explained the intricate meanings and symbolism of each of her fifteen tattoos. They represented important events in her life, altering moments, metamorphoses that no other person could fully understand. Later, under the influence of four lemon Vodka Twirlers, she confessed that all the important events in her life—all the events she’d gotten tattooed for—actually weren’t, in hindsight, important. “It’s so hard to tell what’s important and what’s not,” she told N.J., running her fingers over her stained skin. “How do you differentiate? They’re nearly the same.”
After the barista, there was the mystic from Staten Island who smelled like she’d doused herself in patchouli then rolled in incense ash; the accountant who chewed her fingers until they were raw and bleeding; the thin-haired hairstylist with an immensely bad dye job; the rabbit farmer from Long Island who smelled fecal and tangy and liked to wear thick, tarnished bangles; the advertising copywriter who spoke in mottos and catchphrases and consumed only peanuts and Coke; the physical therapist who constantly cracked her knuckles; the graphic designer who broke into tears every other day because her computer crashed; the sous chef with the diet pill problem; the broker who carried four cell phones and rang off, “Peace and pray the Dow up ten”; and the dental assistant with inflamed gums and a lifetime supply of Scope. And then there where the others. All the others, all the ones that were It and now aren’t.
Now, it’s happening again. N.J.’s animated.
Morris’s tired of the routine.
“I found her, man. But listen to this,” N.J. says. “The best. I’ve got to tell you the best. Two words, man.” He opens his arms wide and clicks his tongue. “Mister. Charlies,” he says, smiling.
“Mr. Charlies?” Morris asks. He sits up. “What about him?”
“Mister. Charlies,” N.J. says again. “Last night, or, no, man, really, really early this morning, I was in Chelsea—” N.J. breaks off.
“I’m listening,” Morris says, sitting forward. “You were in Chelsea…go on.”
“No, wait, man,” N.J. says. “I’m starting wrong. I’m about to ruin this before I even begin.” He pauses a moment. “Chronology, man,” N.J. says, pointing his beer. “That’s how it’s got to work. Let the story be told the way the story happened, man, in the order of its order.”
He takes a long draw of beer, then sets the bottle down next to Morris. Rubbing his hands together, he begins: “Okay, man, listen. After we hung out Friday night, after you bought me those beers, I started thinking—I mean, really thinking deep—and I got depressed. That whole thing with me getting married, man…” He shakes his head. “I really bent myself to become something I wasn’t, all for The Cyndi.” He leans toward Morris, their heads nearly touching. “I have to tell you something,” he solemnly says. “I think I might be a phony, man.” He holds up his hand, indicating he doesn’t want argument from Morris.
Morris isn’t arguing.
“No, listen, man, I am. I fear I’m a real phony. And I hate it. My driftlistness—”
“Driftlistness?” Morris asks.
“Driftlistness, man. You know, drifting around listlessly. No goals. No real purpose. I hate it.” He takes a swig off the bottle. “Plus, man, it doesn’t help that you’re such a good friend.”
“Now you’re complaining I’m too good a friend?”
“Not complaining, man, stating fact. You’re too good to me. You’re an enabler, man. You enable.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Newton?” Morris asks, angry. “Are you paying me a compliment or insulting me?”
“It’s a compliment, man,” he says. “Just not a good one. I have to be honest; you’re an enabler. All those drinks you bought me Friday night,” he continues, “enabled me to get drunk.” He nips off the bottle.
Morris stands. “You sound like you’re in A.A. or something.”
“I kinda am, man. Or was,” he says. “Come on, Mors, sit down. I’m not finished.”
Morris studies his friend. “Hurry it up,” he tells N.J., sitting back down. “I’ve things to do,” he says, though his afternoon’s open.
“Okay, listen, man, Friday night, after all those beers, and after thinking through The Cyndi mess, I felt I’d lost control of my life.” He looks wounded, sad. “I thought about it all Saturday and it was killing me. Couldn’t sleep at all Saturday night. So yesterday,” N.J. says, “I decided to become a ‘Friend of Bill.’ ”
“Friend of Bill?”
“Yeah.” He tilts the bottle to his lips, then offers Morris a drink. He accepts. “That’s how fellow A.A. members identify each other,” N.J. continues. “They say, ‘Are you a friend of Bill’s?’ It’s like the secret password, asking if you’re a friend of Bill, the founder.”
“N.J., this is—”
“Listen,” he says. “I’m opening up to you here, man. I need you to listen.” He pauses a moment, like he’s recalling lines. “There’s a bunch of A.A. groups in the city,” he continues, “but none that meets down here on Sunday. And anyway, man, I knew what kind of people would show up to the meetings down here in the East Village: down-on-their-luck kinds, man, losers, old hippies, atheists who think cleanliness is next to godliness. Know what I’m saying? I didn’t need that. Always,” he tells Morris, taking the bottle back from him, “surround yourself with people better than you.”
“That’s the reason you hang out with me?”
“So I thought,” he says, ignoring Morris’s question, “what type of alcoholics do I want to associate with? Who do I want support from? People better than me, man. Rich, successful people.”
“Rich, successful alcoholics,” Morris says.
“Exactly,” N.J. answers. “That’s what I’m thinking, man. People who are accomplished and come from good families. So I went to a meeting on the Upper East Side and man, did I hit jackpot. Seventy, eighty percent of them were women, young women, right-out-of-Sarah-Lawrence young. And they’re all good looking. I thought, hey, there’s something to this. And so I get up and do my ‘My name is N.J., I’m an alcoholic,’ and all the girls responded, man, said, ‘Hello, N.J.’ It was beautiful.” N.J. rubs his chin, his smile large and bright.
“So you met some young, rich drunk and now you’re getting married?” Morris asks. “What do you have to tell me about Mr. Charlies?”
“Chronology, man. Order in its order,” N.J. says. He pulls heavily on the bottle, taking two or three large gulps. “So after the meeting, this woman—no, man, this girl, twenty-two, twenty-four years old—comes up to me and she says, ‘Your story was so touching—’ ”
“Which story is this?”
“The story about how I’m in this vicious cycle because my best friend’s an enabler.”
“Jesus, Newton,” Morris says. “Here, let me enable you to stop drinking,” he says, taking the beer. He drains it in four drinks, then hands the bottle back.
“No, man,” N.J. says, looking mournfully at the empty bottle. “All I’m saying is I’m a phony. All I’m saying is that you’re generous and nonjudgmental, man, that, you know…” He stops, lost in the midst of his fumbling compliment. “Listen, man,” he explains, “I threw out your name just as an example—”
“You told them my name?”
“You’re safe, man. I used a code name. I called you Boris, Boris Miss, not Morris Bliss,” he says, then, “So this woman, this girl, and I get to talking, and—”
“She’s the one, the It,” Morris interrupts. He stands. “Well, good,” Morris says, his voice clipped. “Maybe this time it’ll work. And if you get a chance, maybe I can meet her before you get married.”
“No, man, she’s not the one,” he says, settling his hand on Morris. N.J.’s face is filled with hurt, like he’s overheard his mother making fun of him. “I’m telling you something here and you’re not listening.”
N.J.’s a nuisance, but he’s still a friend. Morris’s only long-term friend. He sits down again, feeling bad about being rude. “Go on,” he
says, “I’m listening. You met this girl at A.A. and nothing happened.”
“Well, man,” N.J. says, “something did happen; I spent the night with her, or spent most of the night. I left about two a.m. And, man, she was great—as a person, I mean. And in bed, too, I’m not saying she wasn’t. You should see the place she has,” he says, his voice lighting up. “Huge three bedroom on Fifth Avenue and Sixty-seventh with this view of Central Park. Man, she has some money—”
“So she is the one?” Morris asks, confused.
“No, man, she isn’t,” N.J. says. “At first I thought it was happening, but then I realized it couldn’t happen.”
“Why?”
“She’s got problems,” N.J. says, glancing at the empty bottle he still held.
“Like what?”
“Well, man, for one, she’s an alcoholic,” N.J. says. “And then there are other things. She has no concept of money, its value.” He holds out his scarf. “Two hundred and ninety dollars,” he says. “I know this girl three hours and she buys me this scarf. Listen to this, man,” he says. “After the meeting, we went for a coffee, and after a half an hour or so of talk about our families and problems, she takes my hand in hers and says in this incredibly sad voice, ‘Your face is so beautiful; it should be framed in a halo of flame.’ That’s the way she spoke, man, all educated and weird like that. Almost poetic. But I don’t really know this girl, so I’m thinking, ‘Great, she’s going to torch me with lighter fluid.’ ” He extends his forefinger. “Number one rule I learned in Hostage Negotiation training is—”
“In what?” Morris asks.
“Hostage Negotiation training, man,” he repeats. “Took a two week intensive course last summer, late June, in Nigeria. They got a whole university there, man. It’s both a terrorist and law enforcement training school. You can study anything, man, from stopping a riot to crafting explosives out of toothpaste and ground-up mango pits to making an assassination look like a heart attack. It’s all good stuff to know in my line of work.”
“Late June,” Morris says, “you were visiting your aunt in Yonkers. And what ‘line of work’ are you talking about?”
“I’m a skip tracer, man. A bounty hunter,” he says, insulted. “Why are you so down on me, man?”
“I’m not—” Morris pauses. “I’m uptight. It’s got to do with Stefani,” he says.
“Fifteen-year-old cheese girl you’re dating?”
“Eighteen,” he says, “and we’re not dating. But yeah,” he adds. “Her. And now,” he says, nodding upward, “Andrea Angel.”
“Who?”
“The woman in apartment five,” he says, his voice low. “And on top of all this, I ran into Jetski, Stefani’s dad. Ended up spending the night with him in the police precinct.”
N.J. looks like a carp pulled to land. “His daughter wasn’t enough, man?”
“Not ‘spend the night’ like that. We were—” Morris breaks off. “Just…go on with your story.”
“That Stefani girl’s a nasty rash,” N.J. says, unwrapping then rewrapping his scarf with a flourish. “I’d take care of it quick,” he says. “Before it spreads and gets real ugly.”
“I’m working on it,” he says. “Tonight.”
“Good, man, good,” he says, then launches back into his tale. “My face in a halo of flames, man,” he says. “Pure poetics. That’s what she said she wanted to see. So I played along, keeping calm, keeping the options open. That’s what I learned at the Nigerian Hostage Negotiation school: You’ve got to float like a leaf on a river, man. Just keep going. But be alert. Be ready to kill.” He then recounts the rest of the evening, how they kissed in the cab heading up to Bergdorf’s, how, even though the store was closed for the night, the security guard knew her by name and let them in, how she took him to the men’s section of the store, stripped his clothing, and wrapped the flaming orange scarf around his head. “A face of fire, man,” N.J. says. “She made me leave it on the entire time. She said I was a saint. I felt like one of those saints, man, like an icon made of gold leaf. She promised me everything, anything, as long as I remained her saint. Or maybe she said her martyr,” he says, thinking. “I think she said martyr.” N.J. then lifts his head and intones: “ ‘For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.’ She kept reciting that, man, while we were doing the—”
“Who wrote that?” Morris asks. “That’s T. S. Eliot, isn’t it?” The lines are familiar, like something he was once forced to learn in school or a pop song incessantly played on the radio.
“Prufrock, man,” N.J. says. “A guy named J. Alfred Prufrock. But listen, man,” he says, continuing, “after all that, after the Bergdorf’s, the scarf, the kisses and promises, I was down in Chelsea around three a.m. and guess who I saw.”
“Mr. Charlies,” Morris said, his interest piqued.
N.J. nods, tilts the empty bottle to his lips, hoping for remains.
“Where exactly did you see him?”
“This gay club called the Leather Muskrat. I was going to the bathroom—”
“The Leather Muskrat? What kind of name is that?”
“I don’t know, man, but the place was like an UPS convention,” he says. “Everyone was trying to handle my package.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I just told you, man,” N.J. says. “I was going to the bathroom and in walks Mr. Charlies.”
“But, I mean…” Morris lets it go. “You’re positive it was him?” he says.
“Yeah, man, it was him.”
Two sightings in twenty-four hours. What were the chances? “Did he see you?” Morris asks.
“Oh, man, did he see me.” N.J. shivers, tightens his scarf around his neck. “It was sinister, man, him checking me out like that. Never noticed it before, but his eyes are like a lizard’s, all green, man. And he wouldn’t stop looking at me. Had my pants unzipped but couldn’t go. I got stage fright. He just kept staring, like one of those starving African kids you see in the Sally Struthers’s ads; he was hungry, man.”
Standing, Morris says, “Give me a call tomorrow.” The news is important, Morris just doesn’t know how. His mind’s bustling with thoughts. Half the evil in the world comes from people not knowing what they like.
“Hold up, man,” N.J. says. “You haven’t even asked me who it is.”
“Who what is?” Morris asks.
“It, man. The one,” he says. “The woman. My life. The reason to go on.”
“Who is it?”
“Her,” N.J. says, pointing up the stairs to Apartment 4. Hattie Rockworth’s place. “It’s her,” N.J. says, his voice choked. “Hattie Rockworth. I met her last night, man, out front.” N.J. stares up at the door, like it’s a newly discovered gem mine. “I stopped by to see if you wanted to get a drink before I went to my A.A. meeting. And there she was, man, a vision with a pint of half-and-half in hand. She’s the one, man, the one.”
Chapter 27
The Trouble with Bliss Page 27