Slaves of New York (30 page)

A week later that canned ham was still there on the shelf, on the side of the room that was his. I said, "Jeff, when are you going to get to that canned ham, it's going to spoil if you leave it up there."

"Yeah, yeah," he said. "I'll get to it."

Another week went by.

"Refrigerate that ham," I said. "It's going to explode otherwise and I don't want to be here when it happens." Every day I said, "Jeff, will you do something about that ham?"

But weeks passed. One night we were both in the room—I was painting and he was duplicating fruit labels. Listening to music and working. All of a sudden there was an explosion. Splattering all over the room—on his side—was the ham. The stench was so bad it was unimaginable. Rotting ham that went off like a bomb. The ironic and funny thing was that nothing on my side of the room was touched. His ham was situated at

such an angle that only his side of the room was covered with rotten particles of ham. But the air was so full of fumes I literally had to run out of there so as to save myself from vomiting.

Inside of ten minutes the entire dorm was empty. No one could stay in the building. Jeff went back into the room, his face covered with a wet towel, and threw the remains he could collect into a garbage can. They had to burn the contents of the pail. The entire dorm smelled for a week.

Lacey and I each had a quick drink in the Korean joint across the street. The specialty of the house, a ginseng cocktail, was made with shaved ginseng, so it had an extrapowerful kick. "Maybe I shouldn't drink this stuff," I told Lacey. "My stomach—very sensitive." But I left her there and went back across the street to the gallery to find out what was keeping Sherman and Willow.

Willow was a sorry elf. How she made her living I don't know. She wasn't poor, she lived in a big, whitewashed loft, with built-in couches covered with dirty white cushions vaguely reminding me of straitjackets. I used to like to go over to her place, with Sherman or alone, because she had a huge color television, the largest kind made before movie-screen size. It was the same kind I planned to buy as soon as I got rich. She was another of Borah's artists—but she couldn't possibly have survived on what she made through Borah's gallery, because Borah didn't make money for anyone except himself.

Willow's sculptures were made from Plexiglas, some kind of polyurethane substance, ethereal and resembling large turds made of spun sugar.

Well, I was very fond of Willow: I liked her. She reminded me, as I say, of a sort of fatigued-looking elf, a Peter Pan who had aged perceptibly but refused to accept it. Her pale red hair was wispy and stuck out from her head like duckling down. It may be that she resembled my sister; there was some connection there, the very vagueness of them.

Anyway, Sherman and Willow came back out to the Korean

place for a drink before we went to meet Borali and his assistant in a Japanese restaurant, Willow already a little unsteady on her feet. From what I had seen she lived on a diet of champagne cocktails and diet cigarettes. She, like Sherman, could be found in the farthest recess of any seedy bar; the Three Roses on Canal Street, Stanley's down near the World Trade Center, the Gulag Archipelago . . . crammed into the back of a bar, drinking alone or with friends, her ghostly white face with childish circles under the eyes and a perky snout of a nose that turned up just a trifle too much at the tip. The nose seemed to say, "I'm a jaunty, easygoing sort of person." When in reality she was superior in her attitude and at the most innocuous of comments from anyone would jump to a fight. Which amused me greatly, for when we sat down at the bar next to Lacey I started to complain about deodorant commercials. "What the hell does anybody need deodorant for?" I said. "You know, I never wear the stuff—I never smell, and I think it's all a hoax thought up by big corporations to get the American public to shell out money."

"Yeah, you're right," said Sherman. "I don't smell, either. What a rip-off the whole idea of deodorant is."

But Willow was very indignant. "Well, I do smell," she said. "Deodorant prevents me from smelling. Just because you guys don't use the stuff there's no reason that the rest of us shouldn't be allowed to use it."

Just speaking absently I had put her on the defensive.

"What do you think, Lacey?" I said.

"It's not a question of what anyone thinks," Willow said. "You guys think of yourselves as so superior that the world should be changed according to your beliefs."

"I smell," Lacey said, trying to placate Willow.

"You can say that again," Sherman said.

"Then you should use deodorant," I said. "Your show was great, Sherman. You should feel great. I bet you get reviewed this time."

But Sherman was morose and slurped up his ginseng cocktail rapidly. I helped myself from a dish of maraschino cherries

that were behind the bar. Being a tall guy, my arms were long enough to reach. Before I knew it, the Korean bartender came back and moved the whole bowl away. Willow was drinking her champagne cocktail. She had that poise to her; an attitude of being above and beyond those around her, though she was dressed in a shabby deranged raincoat of pink psychedelic plastic, and old platform-heeled boots. I asked her what she was doing these days—I hadn't seen her in some time.

"A bunch of us are collaborating to make an animated film of my work—with the music from my old rock-and-roll group." For she had been the lead singer in a defunct band, not a bad band, but lacking in talent.

"You know," I said. "I have a great idea for a collaboration. I'd get John Lennon together with Shakespeare, Puccini, and Jimi Hendrix to write an opera."

"A good idea," Lacey said, her face all shiny from the ginseng whoop-de-do. "Weird, but a good idea."

"You couldn't do it," Willow said. What a little piccolo voice she had, like a living character from a Walt Disney cartoon. "I mean, it's possible you could get Shakespeare to collaborate with Puccini, and Hendrix with Lennon, but I don't see what Shakespeare and Lennon would have to say to each other."

She put a damper on my evening, she really did. "I think you're wrong," I said.

But she was already talking to Sherman about the fact that Borali had said he would take Sherman out to eat at a Japanese diner after his opening. "That guy is really getting off easy, Sherman. He knows how to save himself money. I tell you, he really is cheap. You've only invited a few people. At least he could take us someplace expensive."

"I thought it would be nicer with just a few people," Sherman said. "I can't face very many people right now." He glared at Lacey. "And I like Jap food." It was curious to think that Willow was so interested in money, when she pretended otherwise; wearing a sort of shabby shirt beneath her raincoat she had made herself, of some dingy metallic substance, which looked out of date and was not elegant. While Lacey was mut-

tering, "Oh, I love Japanese food. And I hope you don't mind my coming along, Sherman; I know we're adult enough to be friends, Marley did ask me to come along."

"Well, I mind," Sherman said, and this was his attempt to be funny, a humor that I understood but one which left Lacey with a jarred expression. "But Marley doesn't go out with girls too often, and you're pleasant enough to look at."

We went over to the restaurant. Borah was sitting there with his assistant. His head was a bit too large for his body, and his hair was most peculiar, a sort of little bowl-shaped haircut that made him resemble a monkey. I examined his legs protruding from the end of the table; oddly spindled legs, as if he never used them. Even the knees were visible behind the gray flannel of his suit. His assistant was an older woman who at first glance appeared normal. But then I noticed that everything on her face was askew. Her eyes were set at different heights and one was slightly closed while the other was open. Even her mouth turned up on one side and down on the other. And while she was older than Stephen Borali, she was much the meeker, and barely acknowledged my existence while being introduced. I felt bereft with sadness. Still, I didn't know what to say to her; she was jammed in the corner, morose, with that half-shut eye. So I ignored her.

But Borali was like a bowl of Jell-O; he popped up in his slim, elegant suit, begging us to sit down, have a drink. "There you are, there you are," he said. How cheerful he was, he and Willow were like two pixies, and Sherman, too, was small and ratlike, physically he was another hairless type. I felt a little embarrassed to be there with Lacey—the two of us with so much hair and much taller than those around us.

It made sense for Borali to have artists so alike in type; their work was quite similar as well—immensely tropical, ephemeral balloons of pink and topaz taffy, or like flamingos with bashed-open heads and twisted legs.

While I was thinking all this, I didn't know what to order; I got a plate of sushi, the same as the others. A tiny geisha of a

waitress brought out a pile of labial raw fish on huge ashtrays. I took one look at it and ordered a vodka.

"You're not going to eat anything, Marley?" Borali said in a little chipmunk voice.

"Don't worry about it," I said, jabbing at a lump of tuna with my chopstick. "I have to be careful of my stomach. It never occurred to me a restaurant would serve their fish raw. If it doesn't agree with me I'll be in big trouble. But I can always get a bite to eat later on at McDonald's."

"God, you're suave, Marley," Sherman said violently. But the others all laughed, though I was quite serious.

Nobody had much to say. Borali looked at us with his bright eyes. Sherman appeared to have fallen into some lower depths; well, he had been drinking for weeks before his opening, now he had to sink even further. Willow, the fairy elf with two front teeth that protruded far beyond the realm of human probability, was wolfing down the fish. Lacey had ordered tempura. She was crunching away at it; she wasn't a talkative type.

"Have you thought about having some work done on yourself, Willow?" Borali said.

"How much does it cost?" Willow said.

"My surgeon is willing to trade work for paintings."

"In that case," Willow said, "I'd like to have my whole self redone. But not my hair."

"It was very interesting how he did my hair transplant," Borali said. "First a number of artificial hair plugs were implanted in my head, as well as the remaining hair on the side of my head, which was spread thinner. The whole thing was covered with a thin layer of skin grafted from my thighs. When the true hair grew out, the artificial plugs were removed. My father said, 'Stephen, I don't know why you're doing this, you look perfectly all right bald.' But you know, I'm only going to be alive this once, and I wanted to look good during that time."

"You're a lot more outgoing since you got your hair," Willow said. Sherman let out a sharp snort.

"Maybe you'll want to have the lines under your eyes done, Willow," Borali said.

I wasn't really listening to the conversation but watched Lacey—an angelic mouth; she caught my eye and smiled. Sherman let out another of his curious noises.

"By the way," I said to the assembled, "what's the most disgusting meal you've ever eaten?"

"Ah, that's a very good question," Borah said. Eagerly he picked at his pickerel. Anyway, it was some sort of greenish fish, perhaps a porgy or plum fish. This gave me thought for the food I was going to paint in my "Feast of the Gods." I'd do a sort of bacchanalia, with all different food crouched around the bottom of the painting: small green and white cakes, large colorful fish of pearly-white and gold lamé, mysterious fruits, some resembling the human head, others like chestnuts and bits of amber. Even the insects from the insect world would be there, huge flies with gaily striped wings ... in the background I'd have a swamp, with creeping things hanging from the vines and stunted trees resembling artichokes. Also a kind of sickly flower plant, with murky leaves.

And I'd do the women up in all different sorts of hairdos, some with tangled manes, bluish-silver, decorated with weeds and flowers; and there in the middle would be Poseidon, a kind of flabby guy in a fish suit, mucking about at the edge of the water and looking something like Borali, only more substantive. Maybe even an old geezer in the corner: Zeus in his old age with bits of corn and other foodstuff in his coppery beard —kind of Howard Hughes-ish. I looked at Sherman, scowling away on the other side of the table. These people I was with now—they were nothing more than furious elves and fairies, in twentieth-century disguise. But this is what has happened to gods and pixies in the twentieth century. They have forgotten their true selves and are out trying to make a buck and win influential friends. Still, in my picture most of the people would be having a good time, drinking out of goblets of red glass, yawning and carousing. The whole thing maybe twenty feet long.

Meanwhile, Borali had taken my question about meals and was flying along with it. "That's a good question, Marley," he

said. "There's one meal I've eaten that was so disgusting I don't know if I can tell it at dinner."

"You can't," his assistant said bluntly. This was the first thing she'd said since our arrival; I was surprised she could speak at all.

"But there's another meal," he said, "which is also pretty disgusting." He leaned forward across the table; I noticed his tie was about to fall into the mustard sauce. "You know, when I was in Singapore I was in a restaurant with a number of businessmen, all Asian except myself. I was eating something called rice birds. Actually, I was feeling quite proud of myself for being able to eat them. Rice birds are tiny birds caught in the wild and deep fried. They come on a plate beneath a silver cover, and you eat each bird whole."