Emma Who Saved My Life (44 page)

“You know him?” asked Emma.

“He comes to my gigs,” said Jasmine, numbly sipping her Jack Daniel's. “Does a lot of ludes. He's really into fire and stuff, you know?”

He was standing beside a girl in a checkered, wholesome farmgirl's dress. Her head was shaved to reveal a
FUCK YOU
scalp tattoo.

Wonder what her mother thinks of that, I wonder.

“You
would,
” said Emma. “See what I mean? Traditional values. Playing shuffleboard on your carport with your 2.4 children and their braces and their lead roles in the sunday school Easter pageant—”

You start up again, Emma, and I'll start letting you pay for the drinks.

She smiled. “That really gets to you, doesn't it?”

Crank had meanwhile set himself on fire. The Ukrainian barman then rushed out and picked Crank up by the collar—burning leather is not a pleasant smell—and hurled him through the door (which the bouncer opened) and out into St. Mark's Place: “Don't you know we gotta fire code in the city?” The bald girl with the tattoo sweetly apologized for him and followed soon after.

Like this crowd, do you Emma?

“Sure.”

And after Jasmine had gone to the bathroom, Emma added, “I always feel very SANE in this kind of environment.”

12:25 a.m. The Gates of Kiev Saloon.

Jasmine has stumbled home to Soho, which no public transportation served from the East Village—a long walk. Me and Emma, together again, booze still flowing. It's confession hour.

“I'm sure Betsy's nice,” said Emma. “You shoulda brought her tonight. I'm sure she'd have loved the Holiday.”

I'm sure Betsy wouldn't go in these places.

“Does she like diners? Run-down bars? Old jukeboxes?”

Probably not. She's the kind of woman who orders a salad at a trendy uptown cafe and picks over it and talks about how many calories are in the dressing, she drinks Diet-everything, and I've never seen her drink much of anything alcoholic.

Emma was behaving. “Hmmm. I'm sure though that you have, uh, other things in common. She reads books doesn't she?”

Yes, in publishing, I suppose so.

“No one in America reads books anymore. She gets credit for that.”

How about you?

“What about me?”

Jasmine's crowd is pretty liberated sexually, so to speak. Sex, drugs and rock 'n roll. Guys like you-know, what's his name.

“Who?”

That Cock fellow.

Emma smiled again, enjoying teasing me with this topic. “That's not his real name, of course.”

I didn't think so.

“His real name is Penis. Cock is a common nickname for—”

Very funny.

“Stupidest human being I think I've ever met.”

Yeah. Did you sleep with him?

Emma giggled. “I was gonna…”

But?

“Well, he was living with us for a while—”

Lisa said you and he were together for three weeks. Alone. Together. In Williamsburgh. In the same house.

“You were keeping tabs on me while we were feuding, huh?”

Of course.
You
were with
me,
as well.

“Cock came out of the shower one day and I took a look at him and sized up the situation and I said, uh-uh, no way, that ain't going anywhere near me.” She assumed the demeanor of the Virgin Mary you see in religious-store statues: “My celibacy is intact, five years and counting.”

You don't miss sex at all?

She picked up her glass and clinked mine. “I've never been happier, more in control of my own life.”

2:15 a.m. We're hungry. We walk through the West Village, down Christopher Street, looking at all the dangerous S & M gay clubs, the leathermen at the entrance, the pseudo-bikers, the live shows where you can see … well, you name it, you think of it, you can see it. Then we wound around up to Chelsea, home of a number of chrome, late-'40s, all-American time-capsule diners, open 24 hours. Down one street we saw three guys approach, walking together, exuding menace.

“Oh great,” whispered Emma, “a mugging to cap off the day of my robbery.”

We crossed the street to walk by them on the other side. This attracted their attention.

“Hey Mama,” yelled the tallest of them, “come here! I wanna show you some'n.” We walked quickly on. “Huh? You hear me? Where you walkin' with yo' FAT ASS so fast?”

Emma ignited: “
Fat
ass? I'll show that son of a bitch—”

“Hey you, faggot!” (I think he meant me.) “Where you goin' with that fatass bitch, eh?”

Emma was about to yell back, but I squeezed her arm: NO. Just keep walking. It's obvious they're not going to kill us or beat us up or rob us, they just want to taunt us—so walk on, before anything escalates.

We round the corner. We survived, I said.

“Yeah,” she said, unhappy that our evening had included that note. “Starting Monday, I'm going on a diet. That's all I'm going to say about it.”

3:30 a.m. The Korner Kafe, a long rectangular chrome box of a diner with a long lunch counter with a row of barstools before it. An overweight, overworked but efficient man, Mediterranean-looking, was presiding over the graveyard shift tonight. At the far end of the diner was a garishly dressed, tall black man (well, he was clearly a pimp) and a streetworn-looking woman who was surely his whore. They were exchanging tense remarks of which only a few became audible (“I got other bitches on the street Chantelle who ain't gonna pull short-ass trap money shit on me…”), and it was all unusually civilized considering how violent, abusive and intentionally humiliating most pimp-whore confrontations are. There was an old man in a booth with a
Racing Form
and a coffee. Emma and I sat at the long lunch counter and got breakfast specials, $2 a piece.

“Told you I had a fat ass,” Emma began, when the coffee arrived.

Forget what those streetcrud said. Do you defer to them in all aesthetic judgments?

“Yes,” she said, suppressing a smile. “It was probably one of their homeboys who took my typewriter. Heard there was some bad poetry being written on the block. Nip it in the bud.”

You're looking very pretty tonight. Forget what they said.

“Yessiree,” said the old man, out of the booth, preparing to move his paper and his coffee to the stool beside Emma's, “pretty you are, indeed.” Then he started singing big-band crooner style to Emma, with a sweeping hand gesture: “I won't sit under the apple tree with anyone else but yoooo / Anyone else but yoooo…”

Emma turns to me, arching an eyebrow.

“Ah, my sister Vera—don't ask me about my sister Vera,” says the old man, settling in beside Emma. “Her husband—don't ask me about him!”

I would have acceded to that wish, but Emma was game. “What's wrong with Vera?”

“My sister Vera?” he asked, his lined face a caricature of an addled, nattering old man. “Ah, don't ask!”

He told us soon enough:

“Her husband, Frank—a man without a heart. Throw the bum out he said, throw the bum out. But he's my brother, Vera said, and Frank said, throw the bum out. Now I'm gonna ask you a question little girl, and you … you think about the answer to this question I'm gonna ask you right now. Is blood thicker than water? Hm? Is blood
thicker
…” He paused, having enunciated “thicker.” “… Thicker than water? Huh?”

“Should be,” Emma said, as our breakfast specials were slid in front of us.

“Am I my brother's keeper? You know where that's from? It's from the Bible, little girl. No one reads the Bible anymore. Am I my brother's keeper? That's in, uh, the Gospel according to … it's in the Bible. So is ‘Is blood thicker than water'? You're gonna need a napkin for that,” he added, pointing to the breakfast special.

“I got a napkin, thanks,” said Emma.

“Hey Stavros!” cried the man to the short-order cook and waiter. “Get the little girl a napkin. What kinda place is this? Can't even get a napkin…”

“She's got a napkin, Arnie,” said Stavros.

“I got a napkin,” said Emma.

“She can't even get a napkin around here…” Arnie went on.

Look, I said, here's a dispenser full of napkins, right beside us.

“Used to always get a napkin when you went in places—but that's yesterday, and as Vera says, yesterday's gone, Arnie, yesterday's gone.”

“Vera,” Emma mindlessly repeated.

“Don't ask about Vera—don't even ask,” Arnie said, waving off any attempt.

In the corner the woman with the pimp stood up. She was in tears. The pimp grabbed her arm and tried to pull her back in the seat, but she struggled. Still their voices were lowered—it was an emotional disagreement as opposed to a business disagreement.

Stavros slammed his hand on the counter: “Hey, hey, hey, hey, HEY! None a that in here—you take thata sheet outside, eh?” The pimp let go, raising his hands in indifferent surrender; the woman rushed through the door. Quiet returned to the diner; the pimp stayed there staring out the window, drinking his coffee, thinking. There was a bell-tinkle as another customer came in, a man about forty dressed like a schoolboy, baseball cap, unwashed sweatshirt (New York Yankees, very faded print), something a little strange about him around the eyes. He sat next to me.

“I wanna chuh-Coke. Chuh-Coke, chuh-Coke, chuh-Coke.”

Emma flashed me a look: OH BOY.

“All right Georgie,” said Stavros, “you want your chuh-Coke.”

It must have been the regular's hour.

Stavros went to the soda fountain and poured some cherry syrup into a big glass, then filled the glass with cola, stirred it up, gave it to Georgie who went on saying chuh-Coke chuh-Coke chuh-Coke. As the drink stood in front of him freshly fizzy, he went
Ssssssssss
in imitation of it.

“You're gonna need a napkin for that,” said Arnie.

Emma cleared her throat, getting the cook's attention. “Uh, Stavros. Could you give me a napkin?”

He grunted yes, and handed her a napkin from the dispenser six inches away. “And my name's not Stavros,” he added.

“
Sssssssss,
” said Georgie, still imitating the fizzy drink. “I wanna stroo. Hey hey, I wanna … I wanna stroo.”

Stavros-or-whoever handed him a straw. Georgie began blowing bubbles in his cherry Coke.

Emma and I began eating our two fried eggs, butter-sodden toast, greasy bacon and home fries, curiously done up in red peppers and chili to the side.

“Oh my god,” said Emma. It became obvious to us at roughly the same time: the home fries were bathed in tabasco. We both dived for our water.

“Waa-waa,” said Georgie, giggling.

“God that's hot,” Emma said, beseeching Stavros. “That's the hottest home fries I've ever had…” She began panting.

Stavros shrugged. “That's how we make 'em at home in my house.”

“I didn't think Greek food was hot.”

“I'm not Greek, I'm Puerto Rican. An' my name's not Stavros.”

Georgie counted out 75¢ meticulously, out loud, nickel and penny and dime at a time. “That's good,” said the short-order cook, “that's real good, Georgie. You tell you mama
buenas noches,
eh?” He laughed at his own harmless joke.

“Bye-bye,” said Georgie and everyone said bye-bye to him, even the pimp wearily raised a hand bye-bye.

Emma and I were in pain, sweating now. Of course we could have not eaten it, but there's a distinctly un-macho effect to not eating something spicy brought before you in a New York diner. Whatsa mattuh? You can't take it or some'n?

“I'm gonna die,” said Emma, pulling out two napkins and mopping her brow.

“I told you,” said Arnie, “about the napkins.”

“C'mon Arnie,” said Stavros, “time to pay up, eh?”

“Ehhh, I just got in here—”

“You been here two hours—so let's settle up.”

“Eh, I already paid ya!”

“No you didn't Arnie. We go through this every night. You didn't pay me—”

“I paid you when you brought it out,” said Arnie, all indignation, with a tinge of bad lying, a tinge of senescent guilt.

“Now Arnie, I gonna have to ban you from comin' in here—”

“No, no, Stavros, you can't do that, you can't do that—”

“Arnie,” said Stavros, firmly but with respect for the man's age, “you gotta pay for what you eat.”

And then Arnie made one of those sad down-and-out New York conversions to pathetic old man: “Stavros … I got nothin' this week, I … I pay you tomorrow, or when—here look…” Out came the
Racing Form
: “Here, here see? Arnie's Choice in the fifth at Belmont, that's a sure thing, I got connections, I got an ear at the track, I got … Look, seven to one,
seven
to one, Stavros—”

Stavros, not impressed: “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Emma told me later that she'd noticed the old man's
Racing Form
was a month old, all the circlings and markings, winners and losers, just hot tips in the old man's mind.

“Seven to one … Look, I ain't got it now.” Arnie pulled out his pockets, his lip trembling, his eyes watering, an old routine still keenly felt: “I give you an IOU. You know I'm good—you know me! Seven to one—it can't miss…”

Suddenly the pimp was standing beside me, rapping a big gaudy ring on the Formica counter for Stavros's attention. “Hey, Luis,” he said, “how much is the old man's?”

“$2.35.”

The pimp pulled out a ten and paid for his, his lady's, Arnie's and told Luis to keep the change. “The old guy reminds me of my old man,” said the pimp. “My old man got like that toward the end.” And he turned and walked out into the night. And I thought: