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In the top drawer you discover two empty rectangular packets. Actually, one of them is not quite empty; inside the black paper is a fine dusting of white. You scrape it onto the desk with a credit card, using the edge of the card to rake up two clean lines. You look over at Megan. She’s reading. You could quietly hoover the lines and she’d never know the difference. You extract a bill from your wallet and roll it into a tight cylinder between thumb and forefinger. One apiece isn’t going to do much for either of you. On the other hand, two won’t do much for you, either; one will make you want another, and another will only intitiate a chain reaction of desperate longings. Is this self-knowledge? In any case, you want to do something nice for Megan. For her it might be a treat, something out of the ordinary.
You keep walking, thinking briefly about the Missing Person, the one who’s come and gone for good. Out into the sunlight of Fifth Avenue and the Plaza, a gargantuan white chateau rising in the middle of the island like a New Money dream of the Old World. When you first came to the city you spent a night here with Amanda. You had friends to stay with, but you wanted to spend that first night at the Plaza. Getting out of the taxi next to the famous fountain, you seemed to be arriving at the premiere of the movie which was to be your life. A doorman greeted you at the steps. A string quartet played in the Palm Court. Your tenth-floor room was tiny and overlooked an airshaft; though you could not see the city out the window, you believed that it was spread out at your feet. The limousines around the entrances seemed like carriages, and you felt that someday one would wait for you. Today they put you in mind of carrion birds, and you cannot believe your dreams were so shallow.
You are the stuff of which consumer profiles—American Dream: Educated Middle-Class Model—are made. When you’re staying at the Plaza with your beautiful wife, doesn’t it make sense to order the best Scotch that money can buy before you go to the theater in your private limousine?
love this
From the Met you walk to Tad’s place on Lexington. It’s a little after six. No answer to the buzzer. You decide to go for a drink and come back later. In a few minutes you are in singles’ heaven on First Avenue. You start at Friday’s, where you get a seat at the bar and finally succeed in ordering a drink. Prime time approaches, and the place is packed with eager secretaries and slumming lawyers. Everyone here has the Jordache look—the look you don’t want to know better. Hundreds of dollars’ worth of cosmetics on the women and thousands in gold around the necks of the open-shirted men. Gold crucifixes, Stars of David and coke spoons hang from the chains. Some trust in God to get them laid; others in drugs. Someone should do a survey of success ratios, publish it in New York magazine.
The candor was infectious. It spread back to the beginning of your life. You tried to tell her, as well as you could, what it was like being you. You described the feeling you’d always had of being misplaced, of always standing to one side of yourself, of watching yourself in the world even as you were being in the world, and wondering if this was how everyone felt. That you always believed that other people had a clearer idea of what they were doing, and didn’t worry quite so much about why. You talked about your first day of school. You cried and clutched her leg. You even remembered how her plaid slacks felt, the scratchiness on your cheek. She sent you off to the bus—she interrupted here to say she wasn’t much happier than you were—and you hid in the woods until you saw the bus leave and then went home and told her you had missed it. So Mom drove you to school, and by the time you got there you were an hour late. Everybody watched you come in with your little note, and heard you explain that you missed the bus. When you finally sat down you knew that you would never catch up.
At dinnertime I asked Clee if she wanted to join me for chicken and kale on toast. If she was surprised by toast for dinner, I was going to explain how it’s easier to make than rice or pasta but still counts as a grain. I wouldn’t lay out my whole system at once, just a little tip here, a little tip there. She said she had some food she’d brought with her.
“Do you need a plate?”
“I can eat it out of the thing.”
“A fork?”
“Okay.”
I gave her the fork and turned up the ringer on my phone. “I’m waiting for an important phone call,” I explained. She glanced behind herself, as if looking for the person who might be interested to know this.
lmao
At the Ethiopian restaurant I requested a fork. They explained that I had to use my hands, so I asked for it to go, got a fork at Starbucks, and sat in my car. But my throat wouldn’t accept even this very soft meal. I put it on the curb for a homeless person. An Ethiopian homeless person would be especially delighted. What a heartbreaking thought, encountering your native food in this way.
chuckled at this
But most nights we didn’t do anything. I cooked, took a bath, read in bed; she talked on the phone, watched TV, heated her frozen meals. We ignored each other with a feeling of fullness and ferment. Phillip texted (KIRSTEN WANTS YOUR PERMISSION TO DO ORAL. ???! NO PRESSURE. STANDING BY UNTIL YOUR GO-AHEAD) and I felt no animosity. Oh, Kirsten. Maybe she was our cat for the past one hundred thousand lifetimes, always on the bed, pawing around in the covers, watching us. Congratulations, kitty, you’re the girlfriend this time—but I’m still in charge. I felt limber and generous. Phillip was working through something—that’s how I might put it to a close friend, in confidence. I’d permitted him to have an affair with a younger woman.
dying
But a funny thing happened on the way to the front door.
“Yum, yum, yum,” said a voice from the shadows. She swaggered out and put her hand on the small of my back. She was wearing a backward baseball cap.
“Step away!” I barked, and she hung back for exactly one, two, three seconds before lunging. The next five minutes proved that my neighbors didn’t care if I lived or died.
“Yikes!” she said. “Who’s that terrifying woman screaming on your message machine?! That’s you.” I rehearsed not only the kicks and grabs but all the dialogue and staging. Dana really threw herself into the skits; shock, fear, anger—she demonstrated not just what to do but how to feel. My favorite moments were right before the assault—lounging on the park bench, walking casually to the front door. My hair felt long and heavy on my back; I swung my hips a little, knowing I was being watched, hunted even. It was interesting to be this kind of person, so unself-conscious and exposed, so feminine. Dana could have had a career making videos like this for all occasions—waking up, answering the phone, leaving the house; a woman could follow along and learn what to do when she’s not being attacked, how to feel the rest of the time.
Clee and I had both ordered the Mandarin beef; mine was placed in front of me at an ordinary speed but Clee’s was lowered in slow motion. I looked up at the waiter’s long, red gullet as he swallowed drily. It had been a little while since I’d seen this kind of thing happen in reality and suddenly it didn’t seem like such a fantastic idea for her to hold this man’s stiff member for one to two minutes. Especially since Phillip’s was right there, swelling under the table. I shot the waiter a look to let him know she was spoken for; he hurried off.
Three minutes later he was back to ask how everything was. He used the question to lick Clee’s jugs with his doglike eyes.
“That waiter was way out of line,” I said after he left. This accidentally came out in a low, brusque voice, Phillip’s voice. It was a subtle thing; Carl didn’t notice. But Clee cocked her head, blinking. She shot her hand into the air, signaling the waiter.
this whole scene is amazing