Emma Who Saved My Life (47 page)

“You could do better,” said Emma, after talking to Betsy at the refreshment table, “but you could do worse.”

(I sort of missed Emma savaging my love interests.)

“However,” Emma went on, “if she gets in my way, I'll mount an offensive. At the moment she seems too insignificant to exercise my venom upon.”

The first Emma versus Betsy incident followed the very next week. If you didn't know any better, you'd hear this story and think I was still in love with Emma.

“Let's go up on the roof,” she said. “Now look, you don't have a rehearsal tonight, so look what I've done…” She ran into the kitchen and came back with a tray. What was on the tray was covered by a pile of paper towels (Towelies, courtesy of Lisa). “
Ta-da!
” she said, unveiling two bottles of the world's cheapest beer. “No, don't thank me, its was expensive, yes, but Gil … for you,
anything.
”

Uh, I said I was going to see Betsy tonight.

“POOH on that girl. You don't love her. You want to stay here with me; you want to go up on the roof and look down at St. Mark's and urinate on passersby and…” She trailed off glumly, because I looked resolved to go.

Betsy's making dinner and I haven't seen her this month except once, because of the play and all.

Emma looked genuinely disappointed, instead of her usual affronted. “Oh yuck. I was in the mood to tie one on with you.”

The thing about people who rarely demonstrate any direct affection for you, is when they do get around to making a heartfelt request for your company … well, it's rather touching and you can't refuse them. And I never could refuse Emma much anyway.

I compromised. I called Betsy and said something came up at the theater and I'd be late.

Up the stairs we went to the sixth landing, then up another small flight to the rooftop door. Emma singing ahead of me: “
When this ol' world starts a-gettin' you down / and … blah-blah blah-blah blah, up on the roof.
Why hasn't Motown signed me yet?”

Absolutely no singing talent? Could that be it?

I loved that roof, though you couldn't see a thing (except in the neighboring windows, which could get good) other than the street below when you looked over, taller uglier buildings to our sides, an ever-so-small bit of the Twin Towers sticking up above the building across the street.

“They have to keep the lights on all night, because it's too expensive to turn the buildings off and then on again,” said Emma.

I know. You told me but I can't remember when.

“Sorry. I'll get some new Emma-Facts.” She took a swig of beer and it was musictime again: “
Way on up at the top of the world
—no,
stairs / I got no problems there / Up on the rooooof
 … No that's not right either.”

Way on up on the … The thing about Emma and lyrics is that she massacred them in such a way never to get the real ones back into your head.

“I shoulda been a Platter. Or was that the Drifters?”

Just bring the beer over here, huh?

Emma was hyper tonight; she leaped along a slanted part of the roof, a skylight once perhaps, now tarpapered over. “
I want to leeve in America / Everything's free in America … La la la la in America
—”

You don't know that one either.

“That was a great movie,
West Side Story, Romeo and Juliet
urbanized. Hard to think it was ever slummy on the West Side. Hey, maybe we could do a musical version of
Titus Andronicus.
And we can set it in the East Village.”

Never read
Titus Andronicus.

“Everyone gets cut up and it's very bloody, just like an average night on Avenue A.” Emma sat beside me and we each took a swig of the cheap beer. “I've never read it either,” she added, after a moment.

We sat there and Emma sat unusually close to me and we stared across the street at people about to go to bed or get dressed to go out or about to make out with/make love to their dates—

“My god, we are going to see something,” said Emma, pinching me, whispering (as if they could have heard us). “Three floors down, the orange shade. She is nude.”

She is not nude. She's wearing a flesh-colored sweater.

“Those are breasts, I tell you.”

She's watering her plants and those are not breasts. Where are your contacts?

“And here comes the guy … he's going to kiss her and fondle those breasts. And I bet
he's
naked from the waist down.”

It's a sweater, I'm telling you.

“Maybe she has very fuzzy breasts.”

It was time to go to Betsy's.

“Another half hour won't hurt. Oh come on. They're going to be copulating in the window ANY minute, I promise.”

No, Emma—

“What if I call them up and ask them to?”

I gotta go.

Emma laughing. “Wait, wait—let's, uh, talk about this … Can we negotiate? What'll it take for you to call her and say you can't make it?”

And so we bargained for a while, but only for another half hour. Fifteen minutes later we agreed on the half hour.

“Starting from right now.”

No,
including
the fifteen minutes' bargaining time.

We started bargaining again. Emma said she'd make sandwiches. She would even make a peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich, which repelled, nauseated, violated, reviled and disgusted her, but for me she'd do it. “Better'n what you'd get at Betsy's, I bet,” she said.

Oh poor Betsy. Here we go, readers, Entry 5689 in Gil's Hall of Shame:

Betsy on the phone: “Gil, where
are
you?”

… uh, still at the theater. Everything's taking longer than it's supposed to.

“I thought you had a night off tonight at the theater.”

Well yeah, it was a late night off, I should have been free but we've got to repair some of these sets that are falling apart.

Pause. “Ha, you'll never guess what I bought today, dear.”

What?

“A Slut Doll album,” she said, with a small laugh.

You can record it on the back side of your Barry Manilow and Carole King tape, I said.

“How do people listen to this stuff?”

Some people like it.

“I thought, since I met her at that play and all, I'd go check it out.” She sighed. “And so I got it. I thought you could explain the lyrics to me, since I'm not up on all these trendy things like you.”

Yeah, I'll do that, Betz.

“How 'bout later tonight? When you get off? I mean, you know me, nothing to do. I mean, I'll be up.”

Yeah sure. But if it's too late I may be tired and I may go on home, and we can do it tomorrow.

Pause. “Yeah, I guess. I got some food for you…”

Oh shit Betsy, you didn't go to any trouble did you darling?

Pause. “No. I just … I just ordered out some Chinese stuff. Sit here and pig out myself, I guess. No, it was nothing special, don't worry.”

Yeah well, sorry.

A big sigh, then she brightly says, “Love you.”

Emma is standing at the fridge looking at me complacently. And I say, yeah Betsy, same for me too.

I know: I'm a bastard.

It's easy to do that kind of thing with someone you're having sex with and don't love. Oh, and hell, I could fill
a book
with things she did nasty to me, though. She'd read one-thousandth as much as Emma and was determined to make me feel stupid. She always kept toying with the theory I was gay because “most actors are” and I hung around with Kevin at the theater. And she kept needling me “Why don't you tell Emma, if you two are so close, about your herpes?” And I dressed like shit, too. Didn't do anything with my hair—I'd get more parts if I just shaped up, she'd say, Miss Expert all of a sudden. And as for sex—

“Something the matter, Gil?” Emma asked, dutifully depositing a peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich into my hand. “Look, was this some big date you had going, or just some average get-together thing? I didn't mean to mess up anything. Well I did, but not anything important, I mean.”

Back to the roof.

“Guess what I brought…” Emma nudged me with an elbow.

What?

She considered not telling me, but then did: “A new poem.”

THAT'S GREAT, Emma, you're writing again!

“Oh I'm always writing, but not always writing well. I think it's all right, for a change.” She uncrumpled a piece of paper from her jean jacket.

NOW THAT WE HAVE LOVED

Now that we have loved,

what do you bet death must be a sure thing.

We will destroy ourselves (you, me and Mankind),

and earth will become as barren as the moon

and the sun shall lose its hard-earned colors

and again be that cold unfortunate star

left to argue against the darkness

in this corner of the void.

With smoldering earth as barren as the moon,

the moon forgets her envy and consents to dance,

quarter moon and quarter earth,

lunar white and jagged,

circle each other in an eternal minuet

of ceaseless symphonic silence.

On the other hand,

maybe not.

There may be other nights with you beside me,

and me and the night thinking of endings,

endings grand and final, worlds in flame,

even the judgment of God cut short by a louder bang,

the so many deaths to be had …

But we have loved,

and so I guess I'm going to have to be a big girl

about death etc. and say

it's now all right. Forever.

It's a love poem, I said slowly.

“Yeah.”

It's interesting, I said (and she gave me a copy of it, and that's why I still have it). Is it about anyone?

She laughs to herself, shakes her head, looks at the roof a moment. This would have been a nice time to say my name, Emma.

“No one,” she says. “No, someone, just no one … no one I've met yet. A future love, I think.”

Yeah, I thought, and maybe because I'd been such a jerk to Betsy the moment before I was capable of being better than my usual rotten selfish self, and I thought: Yeah, Emma, I hope one day you do find your future love and I hope it lasts and I hope I like him and I hope it's been worth the wait and, mostly, I hope you're happy.

“I think you're still hung up on Emma,” said Kevin, giving an unsolicited opinion, over at my place on Avenue A for the third time this week. “But I sort of liked Betsy too…”

You go out with her then.

“Too many women, Gil. Too much Drama in your life.”

If I missed Drama, all I had to do was follow the Kevin and Nicholas and Soho Center saga. Kevin told me the whole story. Nicholas had this wife (now ex-wife) and they married when he was in law school and they were twenty-five or so. Nicholas dropped out and opened up the theater with this gay fellow named Michael. Nicholas fell in love with Michael, divorced wife. Wife sued for half the profits of the theater, half Nicholas's income and many other spiteful things, her spite perhaps justified. Michael's ex-boyfriend Randall kept pursuing Nicholas behind Michael's back … This paragraph could finish out the book—hundreds of twists and turns. What it amounted to was Nicholas, this slightly exhausted, suffering presence in his mid-thirties, with a beard and beret, was now living with Kevin, this perpetual teenager who seemed to precipitate a weekly fight. By mid-September it was, according to Kevin, a daily fight. As he began to drift away from Nicholas, he started coming to see me. He was terribly camp and I used to cringe walking down Avenue A with him as he flamed out like a Texas oilfire, being as outrageous as possible. Mostly, he was harmless.

“Gil honey look what I found,” he said, traipsing into my room one time, having worked his way through Ruiz's store. He had picked up a Spanish teenybopper magazine that Manuela must have left lying around.

You are going to give that back, aren't you?

“Nonsense, finders keepers.” He flopped down on my bed. “I love these Puerto Rican boys … look at these Menudo kids.”

They're like thirteen and fourteen, Kevin.

He arched an eyebrow, peering over the magazine: “Well, you gotta break 'em in young these days. Gil, listen, listen—this one is for me…” He read from the magazine: “‘Pablo is fifteen. His favorite color is purple.' Gil,
my
favorite color is purple. We're meant for each other.”

Would you put that down?

“Purple huh? See, he must be a budding little faggot already.” Kevin read on: “‘Pablo loves to play futbol.' Probably loves it when all the other hot little Puerto Rican boys pile up on him in a tackle.”

You're thinking American football, that's soccer, I reminded.

Kevin, still reading: “‘Pablo likes cars. Pablo's favorite group is the Beatles. His favorite food is chicken.' I can DO chicken, Gil—I can give the Colonel a run for his money.”

Finger-lickin' good?

“You are so bitchy, Gil—you'd make such a good queen, you know. I'm making you my project. And there's absolutely nothing—NOTHING, do you hear me?—between me and Colonel Sanders at this time. Don't know how these rumors get started. Of course, if the old boy dropped enough money in my direction…”

Give me a break.

“Hmmm,” Kevin grimaced as he read on, putting down the issue of
MenudoMania.
“Problems in paradise. It asks Pablo who his best friend is and Pablo says: ‘Jesus Christ.' This one is going to take some doing. A LOT of ground work. God knows, though, I have the time.”

Is it really that bad with Nicholas?

“We still do a lot of things together. Like fight, say awful things about each other, complain, bitch, run out of money. Between his ex-wife and Michael poor Nickie isn't the least bit fun anymore. I'm going to become celibate like Emma, that friend of yours.”