In the City of Shy Hunters (10 page)

I changed my five-dollar bill into dollars and my dollars into quarters, and on the last dollar the change machine ripped me off for seventy-five cents.

It was noisy in the Laundromat, plus the woman attendant didn't speak English, so I was shit out of luck.

A couple of times, when a washing machine went into the last cycle, I grabbed my duffel bag and started toward the machine, but—twice this happened—just as I got there somebody stepped in front of me.

Finally I got to a machine in time. I turned around, leaned against the washing machine, held my arms out in front of it.

In all the world, I am standing in front of a beige washing machine in a robin's-egg-blue room that's too hot, unrelenting fluorescence from above, sun through the dirty front windows squint-bright, Tide, Era, Downy Fabric Softener, cigarette smoke, sweaty bodies, orange curvy plastic chairs, flies buzzing.

Two men and two women—four people—just trying to get their wash done like me, were standing right there, ready to pounce on the washing machine I held my hands in front of. Four people staring at me, white people, nice, probably good educations—a philosophy major, maybe, physical therapist, movie extra, office temp—staring at my washing machine, ready with their laundry bags and detergents and fabric softeners, waiting for me to make my move.

The problem was, at the washing machine next to the one I was guarding, the guy was taking his wash out—so now there were
two
washing machines available that I was putting my body in front of, stretching my arms out over.

The problem was, I was pressed against the washing machines and my duffel bag was over on the orange curvy plastic chair, too far away to stretch to.

Hell of a fix. Up Shit Creek. In a world of hurt.

These are
my
beige washing machines and you can't have them, I said.

It's been over an hour, I said.

It was no use. I was the baby rabbit. They were the wolves.

My voice was loud and each word that came out of my mouth was a complete word, an uttered word, not stuttered.

You better watch your asses, I said, I'm a Crossover, I said, And whatever happens to me, happens because I'm afraid of it happening.

Then: To admit ignorance is the highest form of knowledge, I said. It is the necessary condition for all learning.

Then: Tony Orlando and Dawn, I said.

The two men went down first, back to their orange curvy plastic chairs. The women didn't advance but they didn't retreat either. The one woman looked over to the other woman.

Fools rush in where wise men never go, I said.

My mother never loved any of her children, I said.

Then: Famous potatoes, I said.

The two women went back to their orange plastic curvy chairs, sat down.

New York drop-dead fuck-you.

One step, two steps, three steps over to my duffel bag, dragged my duffel bag over to my washing machines.

No Charlie 2Moons in the Laundromat, but Rose was there. I hadn't met him yet. But I remember his black hole in the fluorescence. Rose was sitting at the end of the line of plastic curvy chairs, staring at me over his rhinestoned cat's-eyes reading spectacles. His hair was a blond shag. Baggy colorful Bermudas. Long huge black feet, perfect toenails. Thongs. He was smoking a cigarette, fatter than American cigarettes, no filter. French. His one leg crossed over the other, the leg bouncing. He was reading a magazine,
The Atlantic
, his T-shirt swimming-pool blue with red letters. The T-shirt said
FUCK APARTHEID
.

LIFE CAFÉ IS
called Life Café because all the walls are covered with
Life
magazine covers: Dwight Eisenhower, Vivien Leigh, Susan Hayward, Dag Hammarskjöld, Adlai Stevenson, Elizabeth Taylor, the Atom Bomb.

The people at Life Café—hair the way I had mine in the sixties. All of them in black, every once in a while a flannel checkered shirt. Vegans: beans and rice, carrot juice, bottled water.

No Charlie 2Moons in Life Café.

Ruby wouldn't stop calling, so I figured if I went out, had lunch with Ruby, talked sense to him, that Ruby would leave me alone.

If wishes were horses then beggars would ride.

Ruby and I sat at the table in the alcove that was the smoking section of the restaurant. Right above Ruby's head was Lana Turner the way she looked in
Imitation of Life
. Lana Turner was staring at me. Ruby ordered coffee and a cinnamon roll and I ordered a carrot muffin and cappuccino.

Ruby was dressed the same as last time—all in red, shiny red secondhand polyester, a shirt collar airplane wings flying out from under his chin. Red polyester pants with lumpy knees, brown boots with a gold ring on the side, worn-down heels. In daylight, Ruby looked older and even more beat up. But underneath the beat-up, ever-beautiful, according to Duke Ellington. It was like Ruby was an actor playing a role, street and drugs makeup put on him so he looked tired and gray, but really he was Paul Newman or Matt Dillon or somebody healthy and handsome like that.

How's your buddy True Shot? I said. Doesn't he have lunch socially?

Ruby leaned closer, put his hand on my wrist.

Sweet mouthwash, fresh gum.

Something you got to know about Life Café, man, Ruby said. It's a café all right, and it's actually physically here on Tenth and B, but really what Life Café is is an attitude. Life Café is a way of looking at the world. It's a lifestyle. Life Café lifestyle—so Eighties, you know, so predictable according to Noam Chomsky: Disco is out and Café Society is in, Ruby said.

Yeah, Ruby said, It's like when you travel you put yourself in travel mode, right? You just go with what's going to happen next—the rental car, the next restaurant, where you'll stop to pee—you just let things come as they come. So why wait for travel to go into travel mode? Why not just live your life in travel mode? Life happens that way anyway, man.
You
might as well.

Travel mode is the key, Ruby said.

Ruby had white frosting on his soul patch under his chin. His Duke Ellington smile.

Do you think True Shot would ever tell me the secret of Wolf Swamp? I said.

So when people want me to make plans, Ruby said, Want me to make cosmos out of chaos, when people ask me if or when we should meet or where, I just say, See you at Life Café, man. And you know, it always works out.

Then Ruby, just like that, got up off his chair, then stepped up onto his chair and started dancing like he was à go go.

Party at Life Café, Ruby said. So Noam Chomsky, Ruby said. Don't these people know that disco is back in?

The waitress with green hair and ears full of earrings brought us the check. Back behind the cash register and the counter, men who worked in the kitchen, brown men in white, big brown men in white, were at attention, wiping their hands on their aprons, staring at me and Ruby.

I put a twenty down on the check, and the waitress with green hair picked up the twenty and walked quick to the cash register.

Ruby stopped dancing and put his arms up in the air: Evita.

Everybody in the restaurant acting like they were already dead and wished Ruby was dead too.

In Wolf Swamp, Ruby said loud, You'll find a concentration of two types of people: pharisees and fools, Ruby said.

Hey, Ruby, I said, Travel mode is the key, I said, Let's travel on out of here.

Ruby looked down at me from his lofty height on the chair.

Pharisees, he said, Are directed by laws, rites, and ceremonies, are logical and consistent, are focused on values and in love with the power of adding zeros to existing values—are moral, sexually defined, are breast-beaters, squares, promote conformation and exchange, and, if you ask them how they're feeling, will tell you what they're thinking.

The waitress kept her body far away from Ruby when she brought back the change.

Twice the tax, about two dollars.

Let's go, Ruby, I said. Come on, let's go.

But Ruby wouldn't budge.

Fools are directed by spirit and original impulses of the heart, Ruby said, Are illogical and inconsistent, are focused on zero and in love with the power of fixing a center in nothing—are amoral, sexually ambivalent, are tail-eaters, run around in circles, promote transformation and change, and are, if you ask them how they're feeling, scared and lonely.

I grabbed Ruby by the arm and pulled him down off the chair and Ruby walked alongside me, but he wasn't really alongside, he was somewhere else. Not on the premises. The whole time I walked out with Ruby, through the tables and the
Life
magazines, Ruby talking talking.

Fools create, Ruby said, Pharisees assess.

You find pharisees in a center like New York because getting rich, getting laid, and getting success is what the pharisee is about—and commerce, religion, sex, and power are the very nature of the center.

An old guy with a long gray beard, barefoot, just with a pair of pants tied on with string, walked by. I smelled him before I saw him. He and his seven big black Labradors that followed him.

Now, don't get me wrong, Ruby said. Even fools want to get rich, get laid, and get success, but that's not what the fool is about. The main reason you find so many fools in a center like New York is because it's the perfect place to hide.

All fools are fools because they weren't invited to the party, Ruby said. The fool moves to New York because New York is the party. The fool takes up residence in the party so he won't ever have to feel he isn't invited.

Ruby, I said, Is that Dog Shit Park?

That's when I saw Ruby's arms, I mean really saw them. Bright sunlight on the deep blue tracks and purple berries on Ruby's beautiful forearms.

Now Harlequin is a fool with consciousness, Ruby said, A fool who puts on a costume. The difference between a fool and Harlequin is Harlequin knows he is hiding.

Ruby took me by the shoulders and shook my shoulders.

Deep blue tracks, purple berries, on Ruby's beautiful forearms.

Harlequin
knows
he's hiding, Ruby said.

That's the crossover, Ruby said. If you understand that Harlequin is a costume—that the costume is the fool's concept of zero, and that the difference between the fool and Harlequin is Harlequin knows he's hiding—then you will know what's important about New York, about why you've come to New York.

I took Ruby's hands off my shoulders. I wasn't gentle.

Ruby's smile.

So, my dear William of Heaven, Ruby said, Why don't you roll me up one of your cigarettes?

I rolled a cigarette for Ruby and one for me and lit them both.

Ruby inhaled.

A fool can't go around looking like a fool, Ruby said, Or he'll end up New York fucking roadkill.

So put your costume on, honey! Ruby said. Set Harlequin free! That party monster of yours is screaming to come out. Let the monster out!

Ruby, I said, What's that shit on your arms?

What makes a monster scary, Ruby said, Is that he knows everything about you. What makes a monster scary is his gift.

Manhattan is a monster, Ruby said. A dragon. And the thing about Manhattan Dragon is he knows everything about you—what's important, what's wrong, why you stay the way you are. And the secret the Dragon reveals, Ruby said, Is the truth you'd rather run from, rather fall apart than face.

On Tenth and B, in front of the Life Café, the bright sun through the leaves of the English elms, the English elms of Dog Shit Park talking to me.

That afternoon on the northwest corner is where I left Ruby Prestigiacomo.

Ruby yelling at me: William of Heaven! William of Heaven! I love you! I love you! William of Heaven, what am I going to do with you?

I BOUGHT A LAMP
the shape of a wagon wheel with cowboys and Indians riding on horses on the lampshade.

I bought a Sony Walkman and a tape with the sounds of a babbling brook on it and wind in the trees.

I bought a boom box.

Ruby kept calling calling.

I went to pick up but didn't pick up.

After a while, Ruby's messages changed. He didn't speak. He left long messages of street noise. Sometimes of Ruby coughing.

On one message, a car alarm went off.

Car alarm—every time you hear a car alarm, Ruby said, Another New Yorker has gone to hell.

TAKE THE R
uptown to 42nd Street, then switch to the number
I
uptown and get off at a 116th Street.

It sounds easy enough, but the first time in New York City's subways, crowded into an underground boxcar, clutching the subway map in one hand, a chrome pole in the other, your breath in and out, in and out, trying to look like you know what you're doing, going from the R to the number 1, wandering around beneath Times Square, following the signs—half the time there ain't no signs—the loud metal screech and wail, wall-to-wall people looking like they're dead and wishing you were dead too, everybody in such a hurry, makes you wish for a bareback horse and for riding free through a clear Idaho day, the June grass fancy with wind, the wind lips at your ear, the wind in the leaves of the cottonwoods' sigh and scratch.

Dodge Hall is just on your left as you go through the gates from Broadway. Second story, turn right at the end of the hallway: the Columbia Writing Program. Young men and women, all collegiate-looking New England types, like they just got off the
Mayflower
, all of them, each one looking like they knew what they were doing, savoir faire.

The secretary's name was Janet and she had short dark-red hair, freckles on her skin. She wore a purple-blue dress. I sat down in a big wood chair, smiled big, and told her the name.

Charlie? Janet said. I remember Charlie. He dropped out of the program after Sebastian Cooke went on sabbatical. Last winter, Janet said.

Can you tell me where Charlie lives? I said.

Janet had that business smile that's polite when you've gone too far.