The Fuck Up (31 page)

I went to the F train and lingered awhile looking at the posted subway map. When a Manhattan-bound train came into the station, I opened the gate, crossed the platform and boarded. The token clerk deliberately looked away; none of them cared anymore. I got off at the Second Avenue stop and walked northward. I reached Saint Mark’s Place just as the police were arresting a group of street vendors. I saw Flowers, my old friend, standing
across the street, looking sadly at his compatriots being ushered into police-cars.

“What happened?” I asked him. “I never saw them arresting anyone before.”

“I just got away in time,” he said.

“You’re lucky.”

“Lucky, hell, they got my stuff,” he said. “Four hundred dollars in leather jackets and clothing.” I stood with him awhile and watched as they collected all the merchandise into plastic bags and loaded them into the trunk of their cars.

Looking up the block, I noticed something much sadder. On the marquee of the Saint Mark’s Cinema black letters spelled out, “Closed for Renovation.” Whoever Pepe was trying to fool, he didn’t fool me. I remembered what Angel had said about the yuppie mall.

I walked up Second and stopped in at the Second Avenue Deli. I got a coffee and a homemade knish with sauerkraut and mustard to go. I paid for it in quarters. I walked over to Third Avenue and sat in front of Hudson’s Army Surplus store, across the street from the Zeus, and ate my food. I watched the theater, hoping to see either Miguel or Ox, but neither appeared.

When I finished eating, I wondered what else to do. I considered going to the Strand Bookstore. I walked over to the Strand and looked at books until someone yelled out the name Kevin. I looked up and saw Kevin, an old friend of Helmsleys. I couldn’t socialize. I snuck out so he wouldn’t see me. Heading down Broadway, I walked slowly back toward Brooklyn. When I got to the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, I had to walk over some scaffolding; the bridge was undergoing a renovation. Stairs were being removed and the wooden slats were being replaced with a concrete walkway. The Statue of Liberty, too, was still under scaffolding. I lingered for a while on the bridge
and wondered from which part Helmsley had taken his last step. I started feeling bad, so I jogged over the bridge, down Clinton Street, through the Heights, into Cobble Hill, finally reaching Angela’s place.

I knocked first to give her warning. The door whipped open. Some middleaged guy—a stocky, short, and close-to-the-earth type—looked me over. He wore a filthy white tank top T-shirt with suspenders pressing into his furry, fleshy shoulders.

“Who the hell are you?” said he.

“I’m a house guest of Angela’s.”

“She don’t have no house guest. She’s sick. Come back another day.” He slammed the door on me. My heart was slammed in that door; it started palpitating wildly. I walked around a bit to calm down. The sound of change rattling around in my pocket offered some comfort. But the more I thought about living out on the street… sleeping in the subway… eating food out of garbage cans, I became aware that my reprieve was over. Maybe I could kill myself. After walking an hour or so, I thought for no good reason that maybe the gorilla had left her house. I finally became shackled to a reckless decision: a raid on her house in an attempt to salvage some supplies suddenly made sense. I returned to her door.

I pulled out my key and quietly slipped it into the cylinder. Softly I opened the door; I wanted at least to get some more of Helmsley’s clothes. Maybe I could also steal some money. At least, I’d had the foresight to bury the food. I stepped into the living room and scanned for anything small of value. I spotted some knickknacks—a polished stone egg standing upright in a holder, a small oriental style vase, a miniature glass bell—which I slipped into my pockets. Good folks love trinkets, I told myself, and slowly moved deeper into the house. I could hear them talking in her bedroom.

“Come on,” I heard him say.

“No, I’m sick.”

“What’s it gonna hurt?”

“No,” she said weakly.

I dropped a broom to the floor.

“Who the fuck is that?” she said, and the guy charged out at me. He threw me on the ground, pinning my arms down with his knees. I didn’t resist.

“It’s that guy who was here earlier,” he yelled out to her in the next room, and then grabbing my throat between his thumb and forefinger he bellowed, “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

I didn’t say anything. Then she was there, wrapped in a sheet, looking sweaty and white. She held the sheet in one hand and the wall in the other.

“Get off of him,” she whispered hoarsely.

Punctuating each word with his hand on my face, the guy answered, “I”—slap—“told”—slap—“this”—slap—“guy”—slap—“earlier”—slap—“that…”

With mustered force, she kicked the guy hard in the ribs. He didn’t budge. He looked up at her.

“Are you insane or what?” she croaked.

“Fuck you!” he roared. He got up and smacked her hard across the mouth. Her eyes squinted and rolled; he held her face tightly. I jumped on his shaggy back. He effortlessly tossed me off and was about to punch me in the face when she shrieked.

“For Chrissake, just leave the house! Please Dana!”

“You called me,” he heaved. He stomped into the other room and emerged, heading toward the front door with his hat and coat. All the while he was talking at her, mimicking her voice, “I’m sick, Dana. I think I’m dying, please help. I rush right over, shower your own vomit offa you, get you chicken soup. And you treat me like this. Well, next time, have this
clown come to your rescue. You fuckin’ drunk.” He slammed the door with a vibrating force. I was alone with her.

She collapsed into an upholstered chair and spoke in her hoarse whisper, “I got alcohol poisoning.”

“1 thought you just get drunk.”

“No, you can poison yourself,” she said. “I yelled for you for hours. Where the fuck did you go?”

“Just for a walk.”

“Didn’t you find it weird that I wasn’t up?”

“I didn’t think about it.”

“Taking care of number one, is that it?” I didn’t know what to say. I kept silently chanting, she killed Helmsley right? But the hatred that was once hard and tangible was getting harder and harder to hold on to; it was melting in my hands. She rose and went to her bed. Not knowing what else to do, I followed her in.

“I need help,” she said quite matter-of-factly. “Are you going to help me or do I have to find someone else?”

“I guess I’ll help you,” I replied.

“You guess?” she asked, and through squinted eyes she looked at me. “You ungrateful bastard. Just get your things and get out of here—I’ll call back Dana.”

“Fuck that!” I broke. I couldn’t hold it anymore. “Helmsley killed himself because you dumped him. And you couldn’t give two shits. Of course, I hate you!” She rolled over and looked up at me in surprise.

“That shouldn’t come as a shock,” I babbled. “I always hated you. And I’m not vain enough to believe that you love me, so what gives here? What the hell am I here for?”

In a very low, distant tone, and in a very slow cadence, she tried to
explain: “I loved him. I really loved that man.” Then she sobbed, “What the fuck did he see in me? Did he ever tell you what he saw in me?”

“Beats the shit out of me,” I said sincerely; I certainly had never seen anything in her.

“Beats the shit out of me, too,” she responded absently.

“You should have had more faith,” I said to her.

“More faith!” she responded. “I remembered when I first met you, imitating the way I was talking, making fun of how stupid I was. I could only imagine what he must’ve thought.”

That ensuing blank of silence filled me with self-disgust.

“I could love slobs and bastards,” she continued. “I’ve had cripples and creeps in the sack, and I’ve bent over backwards for them. But for the first time, I meet a guy who really had it all. Good looking, brainy. The whole time I couldn’t help thinking, What’s the matter with this guy? When’s he gonna dump me? He’s not gonna keep a pig like me around, no way. I felt fucking anxious as hell, like he’s going to get under my skin and bang, drop me from heaven. Well, I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I told him I never wanted to see him again. He wouldn’t leave it at that, so I damaged him and finally went off with another guy. The next day, when I heard he offed himself, I realized that he wasn’t fucking around with me, that he really loved me.” She started crying in a painful and frightening way.

“You know, you might have played a part in his suicide, but I don’t think you were the total reason,” I finally said. “He wasn’t writing anymore. I think he was coming to terms with the fact that he couldn’t be what he wanted to be.”

“What was that?”

“Some kind of great towering thinker.”

While she thought about this, her face seemed to brighten, like a dimmer
inside was slowly turning up. The pores and lines seemed to vanish. I got up and buttoned the collar of my shirt, which I suppose she misunderstood as some gesture toward departing, because she said, “You don’t have to leave. I owe you one.”

“You owed him one. You don’t owe me shit.”

“Well, maybe not, but he used to talk about you. He used to say he wanted to help you.”

“How?”

“He said that New York was your way of fluctuating yourself. No wait, he said you were flatualating yourself.”

“Flatualating myself?”

“You know, when you hit yourself.” She rolled her eyes. “And when I saw you sitting there in that doorway all zonked out, it was like Helmsley was right there saying, Help him.”

“Did he mention why I was flagellating myself?”

“No.”

I nodded and made a thank you expression. After a while, she asked for a glass of water. I got her a glass, which she drank slowly. Then she closed her eyes and lay back down. I sat on a chair near the bed and watched her sleeping. I was still shocked over how she felt about Helmsley. I had grazed along the surface of her actions and made deep judgments. Rejecting someone because you couldn’t understand their love, that was a new one. The more I thought about it the longer the shadow of doubt stretched over all my conclusions. More often than not, things were as they seemed. But as I stared at her, she wasn’t as bad looking as I had once thought. I realized how all this time I had seen her the wrong way, and how one’s character affects one’s appearance. Although she wasn’t my type she was attractive. As I thought about her—the vulnerable intelligence, the violent honesty, and the fact that
in the entire city she was the only one who took me in and fed me—she became more and more irresistible. Baited by an obscure beauty, trapped by an intense sorrow—all prior definitions had been overruled: this was love.

I must have fallen asleep because at one point I was aware of her stirring me. I climbed into bed with her, fully dressed. And she quickly fell back to sleep in my arms.

I’ve been living with her now for some years. I found a job in a chain bookstore and eventually became the manager. I’ve settled in, acquired new friends, people to console and to be consoled by. In Brooklyn I am content, the closest we can come to a sustained happiness.

ARTHUR NERSESIAN

is the author of a second novel,
Manhattan Loverboy.
He was the managing editor of the literary magazine,
The Portable Lower East Side,
and has been teaching English at Eugenio Maria de Hostos Community College in the South Bronx since 1990.