After Delores (6 page)

“What are you supposed to be thinking about when you tell this nostalgic little story?”

“You know,” the actress said. “I'm thinking about being a girl again. I'm thinking about the different ways that women have said no to me ever since I was a girl, leading up to my lover who just threw me out.”

“Well, if the events of the night before, the brutality, are not present in the telling, then this monologue has the sentimentality and saccharine sweetness of a greeting card.”

“Don't' be a cunt. Do you want me to do it again?”

This provoked the curly-haired woman, who jumped up onto the playing area and yelled, “How did she throw you out?”

I could tell that she yelled that way to get back in control. She wanted the actress to be responding to her, not the other way around. But the actress didn't say a word. She was significantly taller than the director and just looked down at her with a deep tenderness that was so insulting because it was obviously put on. That's when the director reached out with both hands and gave the tall woman a shove.

“Beatriz, don't push me.”

“Let me remind you of what just happened, ten short hours before,” Beatriz said with a distinctly abusive tone, punctuated by a series of shoves and jabs at the actress's long body. “‘Get out,'” she continued, playing it all her way. “‘Get out, I don't love anymore.' That's what she said to you, isn't it? ‘Get out. I have been trying for the last six months to get your stinking carcass out of my goddamn life. Now, get out.'”

The actress put her hands out to defend herself but she never hit back, either because she was afraid she'd hurt the little woman with the big will, or because she was afraid she'd lose. Beatriz kept telling her to get out.

“‘You're so ugly, no one will ever love you.' That's what she said last night, isn't it?”

That's when the actress started to break down, crying within herself at first, like she was trying to hold back, but the tears came anyway and they were followed by absolutely convincing shaking and heaving shoulders. She sank down to the floor and looked up at Beatriz.

“Please let me stay. Please let me stay.”

She said it over and over again, faster and faster.

“Please let me stay. Please let me stay. Five more minutes. Let me stay five more minutes.”

“Okay,” Beatriz said, dropping her arms, absolutely normal again immediately. “That's better. Now, do the scene again.”

The actress took her original position and began. As soon as she started, the character that had been talking when I first walked in returned, magically, where a minute earlier she was nowhere to be found.

“‘You know, I think you're a lesbian. You're a lesbian. You'd better not come round here anymore.'”

Then, without missing a beat, she jumped out of her character and out of her light, saying, “I'm so fake, I'm so goddamn fake,” and punched the air with both fists. The second fist was the moment when she saw me, so she turned my way and spoke again.

“Can I help you?”

This woman had just transformed three ways in one moment. First she had been in character, then she broke it completely, becoming a temperamental actress stomping across the stage. Then she saw me and stopped on a dime. She turned courteous and charming and looked straight into me.

“Can I help you?” she repeated.

That was the first time I saw her eyes.

“Are you here about the job?”

“Yes, that's it.”

I didn't know what she was talking about but it was the flash in her eyes that made me want to say yes.

“Great, I'll be right with you.”

She wiped her face with a towel and drank seltzer out of the bottle. Beatriz didn't even turn around. She was busy writing. The actress came closer and extended her right hand. It was huge and carved with veins.

“My name is Charlotte. How strong are your secretarial skills?”

“Fair.”

I thought she was playing a game, until she looked my way again. Her face was different one more time. She was relaxed and familiar, like my lover, my closest comrade, my dream girl. Then she watched how I reacted. I was getting ready to tell her all about Punkette, that she was my friend and I wanted to find her killer, but before I could figure out how to say it, Charlotte handed me a pencil and the backside of an old flyer.

“I'd like you to take some dictation. There's no dictation involved in this job but I just want to see how it goes. Where are you working now?”

“Herbie's Coffee Shop. Downtown. Three days a week.”

She seemed to like me even though I gave her no reason to. Maybe it was Delores's shirt. I'd never worked clerical before. I always figured that if you went in for typing you'd end up a typist, and I didn't want to end up that way.

“I'll give you some sentences and you take them down.”

“Okay.”

“Number one. ‘My last lover's name was …' Fill in the blank.”

I wrote “Delores.”

She looked over my shoulder, smelling sweaty like a man.

“Where is Delores now?”

“She left me for Nelson Rockefeller.”

“I see.” She was prim and business-like. “Number two. ‘We will all go to heaven for this.'”

I giggled.

“Number three. ‘When I laugh like that, I feel …'”

“Nervous.”

She took the paper and looked it over very carefully. I wanted to bring up about Punkette but I just couldn't. I couldn't disappoint Charlotte. I didn't want her to think that I had lied about the job. I could get in touch later and explain everything.

“Thank you very much.”

She held out that hand again.

“If you don't get the job, I hope you will come back and visit.”

And then she smiled the sweetest smile.

8

I DON'T LIKE
to admit it but women are the worst tippers. They put their heads together to divide up the bill and actually figure out exactly fifteen percent without taking into consideration how much they made you run around. Men don't talk about it. Each one peels a dollar off his billfold and quietly leaves it by the side of his plate.

It was a tough day at Herbie's because Momma was ragging on all of us. Joe and I were drinking rum, trying to stay out of her way. Some cooks make you feel tired, others are plain annoying, but Joe charmed me somehow into being more feline. With gold chains shining on his brown skin and a toothpick hanging from his lips, every favor he asked was a service, and his smile, approval. The way he'd say, “Got it, babe,” when I called in my order, no matter how busy he was, always reminded me that he was my pal.

“Rum is good,” he said in his Caribbean accent, “but it can betray you. When you get the shakes, you've gone too far. Don't go that far, you're still a lovely girl. You're a sweetheart.”

Then he looked both ways and poured some more into my coffee cup.

“But,” he sighed. “What can you do? The world is so full of pain.”

Then he'd scratch his big stomach and laugh.

“I'm going home to Brooklyn and smoke some cocaine and turn on the television. Oh, I'm getting fat from all the sugar in the soup.”

When Joe left, I hung out with Dino, who was on the grill until closing. He was telling his war stories again because there was nothing at all happening on the floor.

“I was all over the Pacific during the war,” he said. “They sent me to islands I didn't even know the names of till I was on 'em. Then we got two weeks of R and R in Hawaii. That was nice. Hotel, everything.”

“Did they have segregated regiments then, Dino?”

“Yep. And drill sergeants of both colors. All of them ugly as homemade soup. Oh-oh, check out Rambo. Thinks he's so sly, that jerk.”

Rambo was busy being the big man and giving away food for free to a cute Puerto Rican clerk from the hardware store. She was playing coy and hard to get. But Rambo had picked the wrong moment to get off the register, because the place was too empty and Momma was keeping her eye on everything. That's when I realized that for all his tough-assed talk, Rambo didn't even know how to steal and get away with it. He was putting on his whole show right out in the open, wildly flagrant without choosing to be.

“That turkey is so overt,” Dino said.

Rambo ran rampant all over the kitchen. He whipped up a plate of the rarest roast beef while Dino sat there chuckling and covering his eyes. The slices were so red and bloody that Momma could spot them from a block away.

“Thief,” she shrieked, with a shrillness that made the orange wallpaper tremble.

“What's the matter, bitch?” he said under his breath.

“Do you have a ticket for that? Where is the ticket? Thief, you steal the food out of my mouth.

“Fuck you, twat,” he was screaming all of a sudden. He was screaming louder than she was. “Fuck you and your dead meat.”

“Get out of here,” she yelled. She yelled but she didn't move, like she had been firing people from that chair for forty years. Taking someone's job away involved such a natural sequence of events for Momma that it didn't require any energy anymore. Rambo picked up the roast beef and smashed it against the wall, which broke the greasy mirror. Up until that point it had been pretty interesting, but I didn't like it at all when the mirror cracked. A curse by Rambo would be hard to shake.

“I'm gonna kill you, you bitch. Watch your ass. I'm gonna kill you.”

But he didn't kill her. He just walked right out the front door. The clerk from the hardware store kept sipping her 7-Up as though she didn't care about anything one bit. Me and Dino stood there without making a move. I did not want to touch that meat, lying in the crud on the restaurant floor, but I knew it would be me.

“Come on,” Dino said. “I'll help you.”

He started picking up the pieces of plate and beef and putting them in the garbage. Momma walked over, real slowly, watching us like we had been the ones who broke it.

“Dino,” Momma said. “Those garbage bags cost thirty-five cents each. Don't use so many. Smash the garbage down with your feet. Don't be lazy. Be strong.”

“I'm not lazy,” Dino said calmly.

“And you,” she said, pointing to me. “Find a doctor with a good practice and everything will be under control.”

“That woman loves money,” Dino said after she waddled away.

“She called you lazy.”

“Don't pay her no mind. She loves money too much.”

He picked out a penny from the garbage.

“I'll give this to Momma. Then she'll be happy.” And he smiled at me. “Don't let it get to you, there are beautiful things in life.”

But for some reason, I just started crying and crying.

“You got to get a grip on that drinking,” Dino said.

9

HERBIE'S COFFEE SHOP
was in the same neighborhood as Sunshine's loft. That's how I knew so much about her. She used to come in for breakfast with various models she'd picked up on shoots. They had to eat at Herbie's because all those Yup-Mex, blue-margarita places don't open until lunch. Sunshine was one of those customers who never thought their waitress was real, never recognized her, never learned her name. She'd leave the coffee sitting there while she made witty conversation and then called me over to complain that it was cold. Some afternoons I could see her and Delores whiz by on Sunshine's motorcycle. They were so cool, I could throw up. TriBeCa was exactly where they belonged. There were a lot of offensive people living in TriBeCa, which was, in general, an offensive neighborhood. And in relation to those kinds of people, I was their servant.

There were still a couple of artists living around that area, but only the rich ones. There was one in particular who was very famous. His picture was once in
People
magazine. He used to come in and talk about money for five to six hours at a time. He was always surrounded by people who said yes to everything he said, and he talked so loudly you could hear him in any corner of the restaurant. One day he was talking loudly again, as usual.

“I've just returned from my Eastern European tour where I developed great insights into the difference between communism and capitalism.”

Just then Charlotte walked into the restaurant and took the table right behind the artist.

“Under capitalism, a family living in Harlem will never see Paris. Under communism, a family living in Budapest will never see Paris. But the family in Harlem
might
one day see Paris. And that is the difference.”

I was embarrassed that Charlotte should see me wait on someone so stupid, but when I went over to her, she leaned across the table like a co-conspirator.

“You want to know the difference between communism and capitalism?” she asked.