Emma Who Saved My Life (39 page)

“Yes,” she said simply as I slipped off her jacket. As I went for the sweater, she resisted. “Could … could I—it's cold in here a bit … could I keep it on for a while?”

It's eighty degrees in my room, for god's sake. Okay, okay, shyness is a rare commodity these days—charming in its way. Not VERY charming, but as I said: we are not expecting perfection in the post-herpes phase of living.

Hmmm, some more foreplay, I guess. If we have some more foreplay perhaps she'll tear her clothes off, become a creature of passion. Yeah, and I've got some swamp land in Florida I bought sometime after I purchased the Brooklyn Bridge. C'mon Gil, a positive attitude. Tactic Two: I lie beside her, holding her warmly, a fond embrace, not sexual but close, tender, the sensitive male, supportive, intimate …

“Something wrong?” she asked meekly in a mid-sex whisper.

No, I said. What? This wasn't doing anything for her? Well, we were doing all right with the kissing portion of our program, so back to that we went. She was ALIVE again, kissing kissing and more kissing. All right, another go at the big game; my hand slips down her side to her waist and the belt of her skirt. ICE STATION ZEBRA again … all motion stops. Well now. We seem to be darting from yes to no here. How about something in between, Betz, we got a wide range to land in.

Oh hell. Undo the woman's skirt. Some resistance but at least it's not France in 1946 like a minute ago. I decided to guide her hand to my jeans. Any interest? Perhaps she'll keep her hand there … She moved her hand back after a dimension check to its official position, clasped with the other hand above the pelvis. All right, no interest in that particular part of my anatomy, I see. Not a big draw lately. I got an idea. I'll take off MY clothes and maybe you'll feel left out. Here we go … shirt is off, girl. Guess what's next? My jeans. Unbutton them … no slow down, don't rush, let her think about it. Jeans to the floor. We'll keep on the underpants, a fresh clean pair brought out for this occasion. And now I slip beside her under the covers. HEEEEEEEERE's Gil.

“Gil,” she said.

Yes?

“Don't you want to make love to me?”

Well yes darling, but it seemed you were resisting me.

“I'm just a little shy with someone new, that's all.”

No need to be shy with me, I said. (I should have added: because we'll likely never see each other again so what the hell? But I did not add that, bad bad boy …)

She started fumbling with her skirt. Great, we're on our little way now … Her skirt hit the floor. We both lay there. I guess it's up to me to start things off here. We were on safe ground with the kissing, as I recall. This time we'll see where the wandering hands gets us.

Now what does our audience at home think? This lovemaking experience ends with what comment from Betsy (multiple choice):

a) “Gee, that was the best sex I ever had, Gil. You're a master, a craftsman, I was a block of marble, you were the sculptor.”

b) “I never really knew until this moment what it was to be a woman … I'll never be frigid and neurotic and withholding again after this night…”

c) “God, wait till I tell all my friends! They'll be wanting some of this too! You
stud
you!”

d) “Gil can you get me a taxi, do you think? And uh … well, like, next time I promise to be more into it okay? I'm just, you know, not back to normal yet. It'll be more fun next time, I promise.”

Some people might have gotten depressed. But not me. I got to have SEX WITH SOMEONE, post-herpes, got it out of my system for a while, solved the moral qualms, and didn't get emotionally involved with a woman who wouldn't take her sweater off. A kiss on the cheek, put her in the taxi and BUENAS NOCHES, s
ẽ
norita. And then—I
love
this feeling—back to one's own private bedroom, no lump of flesh staying over, heating up your bed, stealing covers, taking space, seeing you look like crap the next morning … alone again! Post-coital aloneness—
can't beat it.
I walked into my room and saw I had forgotten to put the milk and eggs away in my icebox. I thought: more eggs for me tomorrow this way. A four-egg omelette and not a two-egg omelette; more Cocoa Krispies for me, a second bowl …

Now okay. It's obvious Betsy and I aren't meant for each other. But she sort of got under my skin, that woman. No, can't say she ever became important to me (or me to her), and I can't say it was all because of the good sex (because we had—look this up in the almanac, too—the world's consistently worst sex). Betsy was like a Big Mac. You're not always in the mood for gourmet food, sometimes you want something easy and convenient and happily trivial. I'm not defending myself very well. All I know is that I wasn't alone for two years with herpes in New York. Some people end up alone, I didn't.

Besides, as Emma once said: In sex, it's the thought that counts. Someone wanted to have it with me and that was more important than the end result, the final byproduct, etc. After a while, even Betsy got a kick out of coming down to Alphabet City. I could visualize her going on at the office about this bohemian on Avenue A. My god, her yuppie master's-in-English friends would shriek, not there! It's so dangerous! Ah the adventure of romance, what those durn fool crazy lovers won't do … She even got to like fried plantains and black beans on rice which I'd cook on my hotplate, following recipes that were on the cans. The more I think about living with the Ruizes, the more memories keep flooding back, and the more I miss them:

I see S
ẽ
nor Ruiz watching soccer games on the Spanish station on his little black-and-white TV behind the counter, ignoring the customers, making incorrect change half-distracted. On Thursday nights, invariably, Iris Chacon's show came on (lots of rumba, lots of salsa, lots of tongue-rolling
rrrrrrrrrrrs
and
yeeeeha!
noises and Iris in the tightest clothes imaginable, shaking and gyrating). I remember coming in to find Señora Ruiz all perfumed, dolled in a tight black frock, a flower in her hair (for some reason, some occasion—an anniversary?) dancing with Señor Ruiz behind the counter, both of them too big to salsa up and down the aisles without bumping things to the floor. He'd take her and spin her about nonetheless and this girlish years-younger laughter would just spill out of her. She tried to fight him off as I came in the door—“No, no, es Heel, Heel…”—but he was not to be put off, hugging her, tickling her a bit, making her squeal and giggle, kissing her neck. On Fridays it was some teenybopper Latin American show that reduced Manuela to screaming frenzies, ridiculed by her brothers who had no interest in the newest teen-idol group of sweet androgynous Puerto Rican boys. They would taunt her, pulling out the plug in the middle of the show and running, leaving her in hysterics while the set took another five minutes to warm up.

I came in another evening to find S
ẽ
nor Ruiz listening to the news. I went to get my usual can of pork 'n beans. When you live in a store you have to be careful about your shopping. Once I got a can of pork 'n beans from another store and S
ẽ
nor Ruiz was the incarnation of despair: “Why you go there? We got beans here, Heel—see?” No, I said, those were red beans and white beans and South American black beans but not pork 'n beans. S
ẽ
nor Ruiz took my can and examined it and said he'd get some pork 'n beans in too. The next week there were three cans of pork 'n beans and I bought one. The next week six, then nine … apparently, he thought I was good for three cans a week. There's only so much pork 'n beans I want to eat, but because he ordered them and they were piling up I kept buying them. To this day I can't eat another bite of pork 'n beans. ANYWAY, I was getting my weekly two cans of pork 'n beans and S
ẽ
nor Ruiz was watching the news.

“Hmm, mmmm, mmmm,” he said, shaking his head. “This ees a bad bad theeng for our country, Heel.”

What is?

“The Communists all over the place in Central America. We know what happened in Cuba with Castro. The communists are trouble,
trouble.
I am not a Communist, Heel.”

No, S
ẽ
nor Ruiz.

“Thees man, thees Carter—no ees a good president.”

The TV was showing pictures of the Sandinistas celebrating their victory of the deposed tyrant Somoza. I pointed out to S
ẽ
nor Ruiz that Somoza was a worse man, a bad man, a dictator.

“Bah,” he waved me aside, “you still no want the Communists down there. They no give up until they in the United States. I am not a Communist, Heel. I am an American.”

I NEVER like to hear someone rag on and on about how left-wing and lazy the Hispanic people are in America. Yeah, okay, some are but there is a sizable percentage of Latin American macho voters for whom a Ronald Reagan is still short of the mark. Somewhere mixed up with gratitude for being in America (and always the lowest parts of it too—the love S
ẽ
nor Ruiz felt for Alphabet City!) is a sense that Americans don't do enough to look out for themselves, don't play tough enough. You'd expect socialism to rise from the filthy streets of Manhattan but it never has and I don't think it ever will. They don't have any interest in changing the game plan; they want to play the capitalist game, have been looking forward to the fruits of it, and having come prepared to scrape out an existence they are not going to subsidize anybody they don't have to. Slum-dwelling right-wingers are a phenomenon NO ONE writes about in America; people are absolutely convinced they don't exist. But
you
go live in a slum and ask around, you may see this too.

I was in the store when Rickie got five dollars from his father. This was something to do with a good report card.

“Now you go give half to your mama, right now—go,” he urged Rickie with a mild push. Rickie went up and did as he was told.

As I was there, looking on, S
ẽ
nor Ruiz spoke to me next, explaining the division of spoils: “When I give them money, when they get money from work, when their
abuela
send them money I say go, go give some of it to your mama. She save it for you one day. I don't care what they give, as long as they give something. One dollar is not much but you give 20¢, 30¢ to your mother. You do this out of respect. You never too good to give some of it to your mother, yes? They always do, they always give. If I find they get money and no give some to their mother, they know I keel them so they always do.”

Nice idea, I said.

“I do it too, to my mother. I pay the rent, I pay the beels, I do all the work…” I repressed a smile because S
ẽ
nora Ruiz worked round the clock, on hands and knees, cleaning, cooking, fretting, fussing while all S
ẽ
nor Ruiz did was sit behind the cash register. “… but I not so beeg in the world, I not so rich, I not got so bad a memory that I cannot give some of my money to
my
mother, back in San Juan. When you get too beeg to give to your mother—when you think you so so beeg—then you nothin'. You nothin'. I tell my kids always respect to your mother. You got no respect to your mother then you got no respect for nothin'.”

Perhaps that's so.

“You have parents, Heel?”

The question caught me off guard.

“You have a mother living, a papa esomewhere? I never hear you talk about them. They musta be proud of you in the city, no?”

Yes, I said. (I didn't think of myself as having parents anymore really; maybe at Christmas and Thanksgiving …)

“You have brothers, eseesters?”

Two brothers, one older, one younger.

“You must mees them everyday, yes?”

Yes I miss them, I said. (To myself: Yes, I miss them once or twice a year, Christmas and Thanskgiving.)

“They come to see you sometime?”

Yeah, maybe soon, I said.

I could not explain to S
ẽ
nor Ruiz how unimportant we all were to each other. Oh yeah we loved each other (for want of anything else to call it) and all that, but we didn't hang on each other, invest much hope or any of our dreams in each other. We were a family, an average American family. How could I explain our independence without saddening S
ẽ
nor Ruiz—I could hear him going on … “No Heel, you must go back to Illinois and be with your family; the family is everything. You got nothin' if you don't have your family.” Well. I have nothing to say on the subject of my family. Let's move on.

Opening Night. The bright lights, the neon glow, the limos and wonderfully dressed people … (all that was uptown on Broadway, actually—down in Chelsea we did well to have patrons spend the money on a taxi).

“Good god almighty,” screamed Brent, running around backstage like a madman, shrill and out of control, “thirty minutes! I'm not going to survive this—I'm not! Bonnie—you're beautiful, you're beautiful, you're going to be great tonight!”

“Yeah I know, get outa my face while I put on my makeup willya?”

“Gil, Gil, Gil,” Brent flitted over to me, rambling, “I feel it, I sense a great night—a night to remember!”

If Tucker doesn't show up, I said, it WILL be a night to remember.

“He'll be here, I'm sure. Tucker, dependable Tucker—he's a drunk, yes, but he wouldn't not show up, would he? He's a professional…” Brent kept talking hoping someone would agree with him.

“He's an asshole,” said Smalley, nervously pacing back and forth like the caged cats at the Bronx Zoo. “He's out getting tanked, preparing to ruin my career.” He turned to Brent. “After he drags my career into the sewer, I'm taking you with me Malverne.”

Twenty minutes to showtime … no Tucker K. Broome.

“I'm getting worried now, if I do say so,” said Bonnie who wouldn't have sounded the alarm unless necessary. “What about Don? Can we use the understudy?”