Man Gone Down (5 page)

I take the money and go out. I have a twenty in my pocket, too, but I don't want to break it—not on coffee. Breaking it begins its slow decline to nothing.

I've forgotten that people go out, even on weeknights. Smith Street, which used to be made up of bodegas and check-cashing stores, looks more like SoHo. It's lined with bars and bar hoppers, restaurants and diners. Many of them are the same age I was when I got sober. There was a time when people spoke Farsi and Spanish on the streets and in the shops, but now there's white people mostly, all speaking English, tipsy and emboldened with magazine-like style. They peer into the windows of the closed knickknack emporiums that have replaced the religious artifact stores and social clubs.

It's hot but not muggy. I walk north with the traffic, trying to stay curbside so as to avoid getting trapped by meandering groups and hand-holding couples. I hop the curb and walk in the gutter to get around the outpouring from a shop. There's a party going on or breaking up. Inside there are paintings hanging on the wasabi green walls. There are small halogen track lights on the ceiling. Their beams wash out the paintings. Nobody's looking at the work.

“Hey!”

I can tell whoever is calling is calling for me. It's a woman's voice—full of wine and cigarettes. A bus approaches. I have to step up on the sidewalk toward the voice. She's standing in front of me.

“Hey,” she says again in a cutesy, little girl way. Her hair's in pigtails. Her face is as hot as the lights. “I know you.”

Her name is Judy or Janet or something close to that. Her daughter was once in a tumbling class with X.

“Hello,” I answer. I'm a foot taller than she is. I can't help but look down at her. She looks up at me, still smiling.

“Jeez, I never realized you were so tall. Now I know where that boy of yours gets it.”

“Actually,” I say, looking over her into the crowd of partygoers—I don't recognize anyone—“I was a small kid. I grew after high school.” She's still smiling, but her face has lost some of the heat it held. She doesn't seem to care about the info.

“Whose show?”

She looks surprised. She touches her chest lightly with both hands. The bus rolls behind me, hot with diesel funk. My first job in New York was as a bike messenger. I once watched a guy skid on an oil slick and go down on Madison Avenue in front of the M1. It ran over his head—popped it open. Everyone watching threw up. She leans against the bus stop sign, flattening a breast against it.

“It's mine,” she says.

I look over her into the glare of the makeshift gallery. It looks as if a flashbulb got stuck in midshot. I think it will hurt my head if I go into all that light.

“Come on. I'll give you a personal tour.” She turns, expecting me to follow, which I do. She doesn't seem at all concerned with the light. Perhaps I have nothing to worry about, or perhaps she's become inured over time. The crowd parts for her, some smile and check me out. Now I recognize some of them, from the gym, from the coffee shop. They range in age from twenty-five to forty. Most of them appear to be single or dating. I can tell they're all childless; they're too wrapped up in what it is they believe Jane or Judy and I appear to be doing. I'm sure some of them will query her as to
what is going on
as soon as I leave.

Claire was still a dancer when we started dating. She'd had a show at the Joyce and a party afterward at her apartment. When I arrived, she was busy introducing Edith to her friends. The loft was full of admirers—new and old. There were prep school and college mates, other dancers, East Village divas both male and female. I watched Claire take Edith around. Her mother, as always, was unruffled by the chaos of new faces and personalities—gay boys and bi-girls and art freaks and the loud pumping disco on the stereo. Cigarettes and
magnums of cheap Chilean wine. Edith was in full support of her daughter. Then she saw me. Perhaps Claire had described me to her mother and Edith was trying to determine if I was me. She looked at me too long. Claire noticed her mother's attention had shifted and looked to where she was looking. She smiled and made sure that Edith saw it. The dancers she'd been talking to looked as well. There was a nudge, a whisper, then Claire led Edith by the waist over to me. I met them in the middle of the room. Claire took each of us by the forearm and placed her mother's hand in mine. She made it clear to everyone there that she was mine and that our budding romance was mine to fuck up.

Judy or Jane offers me a glass of wine, then a bottle of beer, and seems somewhat taken aback when I refuse, as though the drinks are inextricably linked to the paintings, and by extension to her. They're all headless nudes of women except one, which has her face and an enormous erect white penis. She's slumping, sexily, I suppose, in a Louis XIV chaise.

“What do you think?”

“Do you like Freud?”

“Freud.” She laughs sharply, perhaps to hide her offense. She looks up at me, raises an eyebrow, and shakes her head. “Freud?”

“Lucien.”

“I know.”

“I'm sorry. I like them.” She looks deeply into the representation of her face. The nose is crooked and one eye socket is smaller than the other, which on her real face is true, but not to the extent that she's depicted it. In the painting, she's made a slight asymmetry much more pronounced, as though her defect is an expression, as though winking would make the bone rather than the flesh atop it contort. She's made a mess of her skin tone, which is medium to dark brown. But she's shaded her painting with peach and pink and gray—layer upon layer of paint, like theory upon theory to solve a problem. What is
the problem? She's a sloppy theorist who can't paint? The penis is perfect.

“I'm ignorant,” I say. “I'm not very good at articulating my responses to art.”

“Bullshit. You don't like them. It's cool.” She smiles a fake smile and squints her eyes. I wait for her skull to morph. It doesn't.

“Show's over. Let's get wasted.”

We walk south, deeper into the neighborhood. She sets the pace, walking easily through the crowds. People smile at her. She smiles back. They smile at us, as if there is an us. Sometimes people smile when I'm with Claire. I wonder if liberal white people smile at each other, pass out happy approval of each other's mates—
I approve. You may pass.

She stops outside of what I remember to have been a sheet-metal fabricator's place. It's now a bar. In place of the steel roll-down door is a glass-paneled one. It's halfway up—as though it got stuck when they opened for the day.

“I've never been here before, but I hear it's kind of cute.”

She gestures for me to go in first, but I extend my arm as if to say, “No, after you.” She shakes her head. “You're funny.” The music is loud—some girl band. There's a round bar in the center and large Eames-like common tables throughout the room. Along the walls are banquettes with bullet-shaped tables. All the surfaces are clad in periwinkle Formica. Except for the bartender, waiter, and ten or so scattered patrons it's empty.

There are large television monitors up in each corner and four more above the bar. All of them are playing videos. On one a troop of astronaut dancing girls are in outer space. It takes a moment for me to realize that they're all the same out-of-sync video and a bit more time to figure out that the music booming out of the many speakers is linked with only one of the monitors, the one above the bar, facing the door. There's about a second delay between each
monitor. They must have spent about three weeks' take on this A/V system. They're not going to make it. Somewhere an old tin-knocker is laughing. The cat-suited astro-girls do a kick-ball-change in the intense gravity and poisonous atmosphere of Saturn. It's amazing that they haven't suffered any casualties on this unique mission to the stars.

She chooses a banquette. It's blue-painted plywood with orange vinyl cushions. The back isn't sloped, so it's uncomfortable to sit in unless I slouch. The waiter comes over, bored stupid by the lack of business. He's skinny and young and his posture is terrible.

“Stoli martini—dirty.”

“May I please have a Coke? Thank you.”

He calculates his potential tip from us and decides it's not worth straightening up or smiling. She looks at me.

“That's all you want?”

“Yes, thanks.”

“I'm buying.”

“That's fine, thank you.” He trudges back to the bar, far too heavily for his slight build.

“Do you not drink?”

“I do not drink.”

She slouches and squeezes her pigtails. She's quite lovely, but she's tiny, as though she's another species. She can't weigh much more than a hundred pounds. One martini will probably stupefy her.

“How's Claire?”

“She's well. Thanks.”

She shakes her head, closing her eyes as she does. “You're so—formal?” She laughs and drums the table. I can see why she's prone to smiling. Her teeth are straight and white and beautiful against her dark lips.

“Where is she?”

“She's at her mother's.” She stares at me, toothy and amused. Perhaps I'm still too formal.

“Oh.” She closes her eyes. “At the beach for the summer.”

“Where are your people?”

“Upstate. Greg took Toby up to see Nana and Grandpa.”

“Are they coming to see your show?”

“Oh, no,” She scoffs, losing the teeth. The waiter comes with the drinks. The astro-kids are doing backflips. He sets them on the table.

“Should I start a tab?” He asks rhetorically.

“Yes,” she says, surprising both the waiter and me. She starts on her martini, then stops. She raises her glass.

“Sorry. Here's to family.”

I hold mine up as well. “Cheers.” We drink. I can feel the cool tingle of her vodka on my lips, the warmth on the roof of my mouth, the olive's dull fruitiness, the point of the spirits on my tongue, and the incongruity of the heat and ice in my throat.

“I got this show—whatever—on a total lark. Someone else backed out.” She looks at me as though I should say something, about either the show or her family. I don't. I wonder if the waiter's spiked my drink.

“So how's that crazy boy of yours? What's he calling himself now?”

“X.”

She spits out her drink. “I'm sorry.” She dabs at the spittle with her napkin. “That's hilarious.” She sighs and gives me her teeth again. “What does Claire think of that?”

“She calls him X.”

“What's that about?” She doesn't wait for an answer. I imagine she already has one. I first saw her on the street, pregnant, one hand resting on her tummy, with her man, waiting for the light to change. I was alone and she was anxious and he kept his head down, the way many white men do when they're with a black woman and they encounter a black man—as though I cared. I would see them later, walking around with their stroller. She would smile at me when she was alone. She brought her girl to the same kiddie gym classes and the same kiddie art classes that Claire brought X to, although she never talked to Claire, never even acknowledged her until I showed up one day. And then there were inquiries and invitations—she let Claire pass on my ticket.

She looks off dreamily to the monitor above my head. She smiles. A few seconds later I see why: One of the astro-girls has grown to enormous size. She throws a spinning crescent kick to the side of a space monster's head, which sends him into orbit—all while singing. She bends down and rips the top off a space cage, where I assume the space monster has incarcerated her pals.

“School starts soon?”

“Yes.”

“How do they like it?”

“Cecil loves it. I suppose his brother will, too.”

“Is it worth it?”

“What do you mean?”

“The tuition. The homogeny?”

A new video has started. Three brown women of varying shades and hair texture are in leather thong bikinis dancing on what looks to be a panzer tank. They're out of step because they're moving to the beat of the previous song. Finally, their beat kicks in. They're still out of sync, but it's a little better. They start shaking it.

“Even if we could afford it, I don't know if I would do it—you know?”

“X likes to be naked.” I look down from the video. “They'll let him be naked. All day.”

She shakes her head. “What about your other son?”

“He's doing fine.”

She's ready for another drink and signals the waiter. Her arm is unusually long for her body, but she extends it gracefully—the dark skin complemented by her sleeveless pink top. Her shoulders are the same size as her breasts. She senses me looking at her. I look back up at the monitor. A college-age white kid with heavy sideburns and a Brooklyn Dodgers cap gestures spastically at the camera. In the background the girls are still shaking it. The video cuts to a close-up of one of them. She's stunning. My butt gets warm. I look down. Judy or Jane has had prior knowledge of the flesh parade and has been
watching me watch. She's smiling again, extra toothy, as though she's discovered some great secret about me: I'm a man.

“She's pretty hot, huh?”

I shrug my shoulders. She's not entirely right, anyway. I'm a man, yes, but my thoughts shift from her and the dancing ladies to junior high English—Ms. Rizzo's class. She's only twenty-four. She calls me to the board, rolling the chalk in one hand, her other on her jutted-out hip. I'm in my seat, stiff and immovable in my wide-wale corduroys. Ms. Rizzo has just said “diphthong” and let her tongue peek out through her perfect teeth and stay there. I know she has peppermint breath and her perfume smells like citrus water. The other boys are in heaven. I'm in hell. I try to think of ugly girls and bland literature.
“It nods and curtsies and recovers
. . .” The heat from my ass moves its way up my body and settles in my neck and cheeks.