Slaves of New York (22 page)

I pushed his arm off my shoulders and let him try to balance on one leg. "Oh, look, I don't mean to turn on you," Sherman said. "It's just that whenever you start talking, I think about Lacey. I know I wasn't easy to get along with, I have this tendency to sulk and stuff, but I mean if it wasn't for all those ideas you put into her head I know we'd still be together. Can't you give her a job and tell her good things about me this time?"

All of a sudden I could smell something peculiar emanating

from the stove. It had taken me awhile to notice it; that cat

shit was an effective block to all other odors. "Aw, fuck, the pancakes!" I said, running to the stove and leaving Sherm in the middle of the room.

While I was juggling with the burning pancakes on the stove, the telephone rang. "Could you get that!" I yelled to Sherman.

"I can't!" Sherman said. "The doctor said I'm not allowed to put any pressure on this leg, it was a serious break." He bent over on his hands and knees and started to crawl to the couch.

I turned off the burner, but the pancakes were still sizzling away. I tried to pick up the frying pan, but the handle was burning hot to the touch. "Yeah, who is it?" I snarled into the receiver.

"Hello, Marley," a girl's voice said. "What are you doing? I'm right on the corner. I'm coming over. I thought I'd try to seduce you."

Before I could figure out who it was, she had hung up. But to me there was only one person it could have been: and that was Lacey.

It's Daria's thirtieth birthday party. There are fifteen or twenty people in the room; I don't know most of them. Stash and I sit on the couch and watch her open her presents: the gift from us of a Godzilla lighter (flames shoot out of Godzilla's mouth); a record of Maria Callas singing
Norma;
a silk survival map of the Arctic Circle; a glue gun; a cassette tape of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks; a large black plastic object with a pink pyramid-shaped cover (possibly made by the Memphis Design Collective) which might be a breadbox or an ice bucket; a ten-pound bag of Eukanuba health food for dogs; a book about wrestling; and a Statue of Liberty hat—a spiky helmet of flexible foam. Daria puts it on.

I know that this assortment of gifts means something specific and symbolic about people my age who live in New York and are involved in the arts. A list of gifts received by a flapper in the Jazz Age could tell you things about the period, and this stuff has significance as well. But what the gifts actually represent, I have no idea.

Daria's dog, Textron, half-collie and half-greyhound, is in bad shape: he's very elderly, and ten years ago he was injured in some sort of accident. Now his back legs are partially paralyzed, and frequently give out from under him, some of the fur is missing from his tail, and he has a drooling problem. On the other hand, he's a happy animal; at the party, he lies on the rug wagging his tail and grinning. He has a long snout and

tartar-stained teeth. Daria must have some positive character traits, since she's kept Textron alive and happy in the city; it can't be easy to walk him.

After Daria opens the presents, I make a point of finding a seat on the opposite side of the room from Stash: at parties, he likes me to be independent. As soon as I get up, Daria comes over and sits down next to Stash. He looks very animated; I watch him lean forward, almost touching Daria's legs with his own.

I start to plan his funeral. This is something I do rarely, when the mistral—or some kind of violent wind—blows in from Long Island. At times like this everyone in New York behaves bizarrely, as if a bunch of sparrows have pecked up a spill of rye bread infected with ergot fungus.

Of course, I'll be devastated when the phone call comes, informing me of his abrupt demise—taxi accident—yet eventually I'll make the adjustment. I think how upsetting it must have been for Lee Krasner to have been told of Jackson Pollack's death in a car crash (especially since he was with two women at the time). It will probably take me at least a year to get over the trauma, though of course during that time everyone will be extremely kind to me, inviting me out to dinner parties, et cetera, and I'll be very busy managing his estate.

Stash and Daria would make a cute couple. They are both so blond and beefy. Daria is attractive, in her tight-fitting dress with the holes cut out in the back and stomach. But her art is nothing to look at. I get up and walk around the room to examine its contents: a sort of candelabra thing made from bent, pink metal and ornamented with cherubs; a piece of wire twisted into a Picasso-head silhouette; a rococo door studded with plaster figures of satyrs made from molds, like some summer-camp crafts project. I'm mildly horrified. The stuff reminds me of the decoration to be found in some Italian restaurants in Brooklyn. Yet Daria obviously intends no irony. I can hear Stash—he's a painter, much more well-known than Daria—telling her how much he likes her work.

I go over to the table: there's a display of various cakes,

each with a little sign to indicate the type: Grand Marnier; a mocha butter cream; an apple tart; and a homemade coconut cake, shaped like a hat and fringed with white shreds and flecked with brown dots. It's wonderful to see so many cakes all lined up like that. Sometimes, for recreational purposes, I sit and read an old cookbook: it belonged to my grandmother, and is falling apart, but it's filled with fascinating recipes for cakes that require twelve eggs and a pound of butter and cups of nuts ground to a fine paste, and which have names like Miirb Teig, Lady Baltimore Cake, Lalla Rookh, and Lebkuchen.

Daria's mother, Georgette, comes up alongside. "This is the one I made," she says, pointing to the coconut cake.

"Then I must try it," I say. I eat a forkful. What a disappointment! The cake is illusory, I mean, it looks like a gooey, fluffy coconut cake, but some basic ingredient such as sugar or coconut has been left out. "Delicious," I say.

I go back over to Stash. "Stash, I think we should go pretty soon," I say. I notice his legs are now pressed up against Daria's.

He looks annoyed. "In a while, Eleanor," he says.

I'm worrying about whether I should sit down next to him and join in the conversation, when Georgette leads me off by the arm.

"I lent her my car for six months," she says, sitting me in an uncomfortable butterfly chair, "and when I came into the city to pick it up, I found that the whole right side was smashed in. Now what can you do with a girl like that?"

The record on the stereo is so loud I can barely hear what she's saying. "I don't know," I say.

"How do you like her dress?" Georgette says. "Stephen Sprouse. Believe it or not, it's made out of cotton, but the label says to dry clean only. I said, 'Daria, forget the dry cleaning, you'll throw it in the sink.' A three hundred dollar cotton dress."

"She looks good in it," I say. The chorus of the song on the record is a girl singing, "It's all my fault." Daria's mother's hips wiggle from side to side to the music. Her date, Mr. Ar-

nazian, watches with admiration. He's a short man, seven-tyish, with thick glasses and suntanned skin. He hands me a glass of champagne and I sip it quickly. It's like drinking freeze-dried headache. Georgette starts dancing with Mr. Arnazian.

I see a girl I know; she has a heavy Iron Curtain accent and owns a hair salon, a trendy place with barbershop chairs and paintings that incorporate hair clippings of famous customers.

"I always meant to ask you—where are you from?" I say. "Originally."

"Where am I from?" she says. "Where am I from? What kind of question is that?"

Is my question in terrible taste, or is she crazy? It's hard for me to figure out how to be a social being: I'm alone all day with Andrew, our Dalmatian, either working on my jewelry designs, or at the East Village newspaper where I have a part-time job doing copy editing in a closet.

I do get to have one real conversation: Daria's boyfriend, Simon, talks to me about the tickets he has to a private screening of a remake of a zombie movie. Simon's cousin played a zombie in the original film. I tell Simon how, generally speaking, I'm not a moviegoer. It makes me uneasy to sit in a chair in the dark. I can't say this to Stash, because it would have made him mad to think of how many movies he has taken me to.

As Stash and I leave, Daria says, "Good night, Stash. I'll call you tomorrow about going to meet Victor."

"What was that about?" I say in the elevator.

"I'm going to try and help Daria get a gallery," Stash says. "Her stuff is good, don't you think?" I don't answer.

When we get down to the lobby I feel a little queasy. "Hold on a second," I say. I totter over to a vinyl loveseat. "Let me sit down." I figure I'm probably the first person in forty years to make use of the lobby. I see the source of Daria's influences: the lobby has Plexiglas chandeliers, and a grimy fountain without water.

"What's wrong?" Stash says.

"For a second there, I felt a little dizzy," I say. "Fine now. Let's go." I stand up. On the street I only manage about a block before the smell gets to me. There's an awful lot of garbage on the street; some bags have broken open, and chicken bones clutter the sidewalk. Around the edges of my vision things are starting to go dusty and curl up. "I'm not too good," I say. "Let's just lean against the car over there."

"How much champagne did you drink?"

"One glass," I say. I'm in a cold sweat. "I just can't continue," I tell him, ripping off my raincoat.

"Well, if you don't feel good, let's at least go home," he says.

"I can't move," I say, and sit down on the sidewalk. "If I stand up, I'm going to faint." I know Stash must be getting miffed: I stand up and stumble a few feet farther down the block. "I believe I'll just sit on these steps for a few minutes," I say. To my surprise I lie down across the bottom step. There are times when the body just takes control. Certainly its actions have nothing to do with me.

"What are you doing?" Stash says. "You can't stay there."

"I can't move," I say. "I can't walk. You're going to have to get a taxi."

Stash flags one down. He has to help me up and into the cab. "We'd like to go two blocks away," he tells the driver.

I lie straight across the back seat, utterly blitzed; the symptoms are faintness, weakness, perspiration, and general malaise. I once knew a girl who married three times and fainted at every single wedding. But I can tell my problem isn't psychological: although my body has intrigued against me, my mind is as clear as Waterford crystal.

Stash pays the driver and half carries me into the building. I have to lie on the floor while we wait for the elevator. "You better go see my doctor," Stash says. "If I hadn't been there with you, and you were alone, lying across the sidewalk, you could have been in big trouble. Are you going to go to my doctor tomorrow?"

I stretch out on the bed. It's as if I've been hypnotized, or

fallen into a trance. "Uh," I say. "Something's wrong with me. I don't think I'm the same person anymore."

"Why don't you listen to me? That does it. We're going to go to the emergency room right now."

"No, no," I say. "I'll go to a doctor tomorrow. I will. I promise. I'm feeling much better now. But will you please walk the dog tonight? I don't think I can make it."

"How many pieces of cake did you eat anyway?" "Three or four. But I'm telling you, they weren't big pieces." Although I feel fine the next morning, I make an appointment at the clinic I belong to. Stash is displeased when I tell him I won't be able to see a doctor until next Tuesday. It's a real effort for him to keep his mouth shut, but I'm proud of him. The minor strains of living with another person are almost unbearable. That much I understand.

It's fun standing on line for the special screening of the zombie movie, up near Forty-second Street: I recognize lots of people from nightclubs. Daria and Simon are already waiting. Daria seems so perfect, in her Nehru jacket, unwrinkled, a dab of gold gloss on her lips, her large Op Art earrings dangling from clean ears. By comparison—though it's true I'm much skinnier—I feel sooty, a Dickensian waif with hunched shoulders and a greasy sweatshirt. Maybe I'm exaggerating. Of course, probably if we could have switched brains for a minute, I probably would find that she feels like a big galoot next to delicate me. Well, once again I am silently rambling on. I have to reel myself back in like a fish.

"You look very handsome," I tell Simon. He's wearing a tremendous suit jacket—it must be ten or fifteen sizes too large for him—made of some shiny blue material like wallpaper, with a raised velvet paisley design.

"Thanks," he says. "I'm in shock. I was arrested for littering this afternoon."

"Really?" I say. "What happened?"

"I was walking on Wall Street and I dropped my apple core in a flower bed. I swear, I don't know what's going on in this

city—it's like some kind of voodoo. The next thing I knew, a person dressed like a meter maid was giving me a ticket. I tried to explain that an apple core was biodegradable, and would provide fertilizer for the flowers, but she wouldn't have any part of it."

As we go into the theater there's a mass scramble for seats, but we finally find four in a row. While we wait for the movie to begin, I nudge Stash. "Don't you think I'm different now?" I say.

Stash rolls his eyes.