Emma Who Saved My Life (38 page)

“What is it now?”

“What possessed you to hire that old drunk? He's going to louse up the play—he's getting worse nightly. And who does he think he is? Olivier? God, his delivery is so arch. And the mintbreath—Brent, that's killing us up here. I'm gonna pass out.”

Smalley joined in: “She's right Malverne. He's not been right for the part from the start; I'm looking for Willy Loman here not Sir Ralph Richardson. My character sold real estate, for god's sake. He's a self-made American businessman—”

Brent was on the defensive: “Didn't you watch
Flip Flop?
He was a line foreman in a flip flop factory. Who would have thought he had so little fire left in him? He did
Death of a Salesman
in regional theater—”

“My goddam Uncle Herbert did goddam
Death of a Salesman
in regional theater,” Bonnie shot back. “Tucker's used up,
through.
He's gonna die the Big Death here next week, believe me.”

“You have to stop undermining him—”

“Brent, honeychild, listen to Bonnie,” Bonnie said, pointing an accusing finger at him. “I have seen them fold before and it happens just like this. I've worked with every drunk in the business. They either get better the more they drink, or they get worse and worse. Have you looked into replacing him with the understudy?”

Brent was sputtering: “But he's … he's a draw, Bonnie. He was a star at one time; people will expect him—”

“A STAR? Tucker Broome, a star? He did shit TV, has had a shit career, was never any good at one thing he ever appeared in.
Flip Flop,
for christ's sake—
Flip Flop!
You cast a man on the basis of goddam
Flip Flop?
”

“I think you fucked up,” said Smalley accusingly.

“Oh now just a minute! Just a minute! We're all tired and we're losing our professionalism…” Brent couldn't defend himself though.

They were right. Tucker was a disaster. He was folding. Bonnie and I were going to die with him. The play would be a flop. The playwright—who needed a hit—would be finished. Brent would go on working at the Chelsea … but with an expensive flop to his credit. He too must have been scared. How did I feel appearing in a disaster? Well, used to it by this time. I'd been backstage or onstage for a number of fiascoes—I was getting pretty fiascoproof at this point. Young people, someone told me … yes, it was Joyce Jennings: Young people can walk away from flops; it's not as easy for the over-forties. The argument raged on. I looked at Bonnie shake her head, light up a cigarette, the language turned bluer, the blame being heaped entirely on Brent's casting decision. The techie crew (and I can
read
the techie crew, I can tell you what they're thinking like a mind-reader) had that look of: Boy, are they EVER in a bomb now. I started laughing. Well, I wanted to live like this, didn't I? Hell, at this point, why not drop my pants? It's all so hilarious—adults getting up to make a fool of themselves in front of people dumb enough to pay to watch.

And it didn't matter anyway because I was having SEX THAT NIGHT.

Betsy met me outside the theater at eleven (even though rehearsals ended this evening at ten and Bonnie and I had finished up at the bar.)

“How'd it go?” Betsy chirped.

It's going to be the worst bomb in a long time for off-Broadway. A spectacular bust, as opposed to ignominious silent disgrace.

“Oh I'm sure it'll be all right. Shall we get a drink?”

Yeah let's have about sixty-five.

We went to a place in the Village where you could get a $3 pitcher. This was a two-pitcher seduction, really. Drunk but not so drunk as to—euphemize, euphemize—hinder performance. You know, this situation was just about perfect: I didn't care how bad the evening went. I didn't care what became of Betsy. That was awful, retract that! No, it's true though—I'm sorry. We all run across dispensable human beings from time to time, let's admit it. Yeah, I said to myself, shoveling peanuts into my mouth, watching her nervously ramble on, twirling her hair compulsively, she is just what we needed on the verge of Theatric Disaster.

“The play's not going well?” she asked, conscious of boring me.

Well all right. Well not really. Well, actually, it will be a disaster and it's too late to replace a major character.

“That's a shame. Well, it'll just make you look better, huh?”

Now she had a point there …

“I've had enough beer. How about you?”

I put another handful of peanuts into my mouth, shrugging. If she didn't want to drink any more that was fine.

“I was thinking about a whiskey actually,” she corrected, half-smiling. “We can hold our booze, you know, in publishing.”

I went up to get two whiskeys.

“I was anorexic for a while,” she said, when I came back. I put the drink in front of her and she greedily took it. “I'm not back to normal yet, digestively.”

Sorry about that.

“It was just the herpes thing,” she said, twirling a new strand of hair. “I had anorexia and bulimia when I was a teenager. I had to be hospitalized one time. They said if I kept throwing up I would strain my heart muscles. I wasn't getting any nutrition. I still couldn't shake the anorexia. It's a control thing, you know.”

Control? Starving yourself?

“Yes. You can get to where you know if you've put on a quarter of a pound.” She pinched her elbows as a demonstration. “I could tell around here, if I'd eaten enough to gain weight. You get such control of your body—it's very seductive.”

Yeah but you may die, and it looks so ugly.

“Yeah, really ugly,” she said, looking into her whiskey glass, contemplating some former self-image. “I have a picture of when I was eighty-seven pounds if you can believe that—”

Oh I didn't need to see that, if she didn't want to show me.

“No, I want to show you.” She went through her purse.

(I really didn't want to see, but …)

She handed me the photo: “It's important I show you that. I look like something out of Dachau, huh? All pale and blue—ulllch. I have to show that so I don't go back that way. I almost did when I came down with herpes.”

Betsy, it's just not such a big damn deal. Inconvenient and life-adjusting yes, but it's not leprosy or cancer or deadly or even harmful and all kinds of reports of all kinds of incurable sexual diseases were starting to surface, so, you know, herpes might be the least of our worries.

“They said they'd have a cure anyway,” she said confidently, “by, probably, next year, 1981 or so. They're right on the edge of finding it. So I read. I read everything I can get my hands on.”

I did too when herpes material came across my path, but I never went out of my way to search for it.

“You know, I'd really like to ask you back to my place,” she began, a nervous laugh, testing my eyes. “But uh my roommate Ginger is there. She's always there. I'd give anything for her not to be there one night.”

Oh. Well. My place isn't too far—

“I'd like to see your place.”

No you wouldn't, I said. Avenue A and Alphabet City—it's very dangerous and by the time we got there and I accompanied you out it would be so late …

A staredown. Who'll blink first? She goes:

“Perhaps, like, I could stay over?”

HOMEWARD BOUND.

As we walked down Avenue A from the crosstown bus stop on 14th Street, the street was packed with gangs and drugpeddlers and streetpeople. One punk I recognized (he hung around Ruiz's store) passed by and sent up a flurry of noises and whistles: “Oooooh mama! Ey, ey, you wanna give me a piece, actorboy? Aiaiaiaiaia…”

Betsy got prim as she walked briskly alongside me: “A lot of scum out on the street tonight. Name me one neighborhood the Puerto Ricans have improved in the United States of America.”

Now now. I live under a very nice Puerto Rican family, I said.

Another catcall from a stoop: “Hey mama, blond mama—ey you wanna present? Ey? I give you some'n to remember me by, ey? Ahaha!”

Betsy: “Macho trash culture—these people are the lowest.”

We got to Ruiz's Caribbean Foodstore.

“You live in a foodstore?” asked Betsy.

I gave the instructions: Betsy, you're my cousin. The s
ẽ
nora's a staunch Catholic and I don't want a lecture, okay? Be nice to the store-people, they're my landlords. I never bring anybody here so it's not clean; the place is a hole but all I can afford, and I like it and don't need to hear about what a pit it is. She nodded without conviction. She was prepared for the worst—I'm virtually positive she'd never been to Alphabet City before. No doubt, I was dispensable too for her. We had come to my place to dispense with each other.

“
Buenas noches,
Heel,” said a tired S
ẽ
nor Ruiz behind the cash register. “Ah!” he brightened, “you have a lovely friend.”

S
ẽ
nor Ruiz, I introduced, this is my cousin Elizabeth.

“Isabela!” He took her hand politely. I went to the beer cabinet to get two quart bottles, some milk for tomorrow, some eggs. I could do omelettes. Nah, maybe not. We'll go out for breakfast—

“She ain't no cousin,” hissed Rickie, loitering in the aisle.

S
ẽ
nor Ruiz heard that: “If Heel say she his cousin, then she his cousin! EY?”

I winked at Rickie who had been silenced. “She still no yo' cousin,” he whispered to me.

Back to My Place.

“What an apartment, what a neighborhood,” she said, shaking her head.

I warned her, didn't I?

“This is all the space you have!” she cried in horror, as I opened the door, kicked underwear into a corner, threw a sheet over some piles of clothes and smelly socks—all in one sweep of the room.

How 'bout some more beer?

She looked as if she needed it. “Sure,” she said.

I checked my phone messages. The first one went: BEEP!
Uhhhh
 … CLICK (the caller hanging up). My god was that Emma? It sounded like her uhhhh. Surely … Naaah, I'm hearing things.

“What is it?” asked Betsy.

I thought it was someone I recognized, I said. Moving on, next message: BEEP!
Gil, damn you, you are not in existence anymore. I'm going to catch up with you, you know, at the opening. Jim and I have tickets virtually on the front row and don't tell her I told you but Emma thinks she'll be there too. You two have to make it up—I mean it. Oh, damn you! Fuck this machine!
CLICK.

“Emma?” asked Betsy, smiling, curious.

(Wonder what Emma would think of Betsy? Probably would be unprintable. Emma's probably playing out her fantasies of rockband groupie with Cock right now, celibacy a distant memory. WHO CARES, Gil—she's past history, remember?) I told Betsy Emma was no one of any importance.

“Was she the one?”

One who what?

“Gave you herpes?”

No. She's the one I can never now sleep with because of the herpes. But it didn't look like it was going that way anyway; and I don't care anymore etc.

Betsy looked down at the bed. My dirty sheet atop a mattress on the floor, all scruffy and fuzzy with lint in a disordered heap. “You need a housekeeper, Gil,” she said laughing.

Gee, I said, acknowledging all, the maid usually comes in on Friday; Betsy
just
hit the wrong day.

Laughter. She drank her beer, I drank mine.

When I first touched her, she melted and was eagerly all over me, hurried sloppy kisses, pained anticipatory sighs—I thought she was going to pull my hair out as she took my head in her hands. Then I put a hand on her thigh intending to move upward and
click,
she froze up as if the power had gone off. She scooted back. I touched her again and she scooted further back, a little grunt as if to say: no, not there. I guess she wanted to keep things above the neckline.

Through kisses, I asked if something was wrong.

“No,” she breathed, “no, no…”

So I touched her again and she seemed to relent—not happy about it, it seemed, but she perhaps conceded that lovemaking was likely to involve anatomy in that general vicinity. She was doing nothing with her hands as I undressed her. In fact as I was trying to undo her dress she didn't help at all. I sort of like a little SUPPORT at this point, you know? I don't want to take someone's clothes off. I mean, there I was pulling on her boots. Lady, give me some help, for christ's sake … I've seen this routine back in college, actually—it's like the girl is saying: I don't participate in this, YOU do all the work and therefore I won't feel guilty in the morning or if something goes wrong it's
your
fault; if I lie still enough and do as little as possible, I might be able to persuade myself we didn't even HAVE sex last night …

She moved her hands chastity belt-like to her waist and I kept tugging on her boot. She laughed a little private laugh. A smile passed across my face, a desire to laugh. That must have been because I suddenly saw myself with this immobile WASP beauty tugging to get her boots off while she went into some trance during which she could allow someone to have sex with her. God I wanted to laugh. What if I left and went to get some beer about here? No, stop thinking like this—you're going to start laughing, I thought. What if I said: gee, I guess NO ORAL SEX FOR ME TONIGHT … cut it out, cut it out—

“Is something wrong, Gil?” she asked.

NO nothing. Just having a little trouble with the boot. She surrendered and helped me take off her boot, then the other boot, then she went back to lying there, her arms tightly guarding her body, hands clasped over her waist, apparently wanting to remain in her sweater and jacket. This must be what morticians go through, I thought, dressing and undressing a corpse. Well, to hell with the skirt. I'm not taking it off alone. I'll work on the jacket and sweater.