After Delores Read online

  “Come on,” Coco said. “It’s time for the Hard Core matinee.”

  And still smiling, I followed her to the club.

  20

  SOME GUY WITH an Iron Maiden tattoo vomited in our direction as Coco led me past all the new condominiums and few remaining flophouses left on the Bowery. We passed the shelter for homeless men, the lobster place with singing waitresses, putrid Phebe’s, and walked through the grimy doorway of CBGB’s, the punk palace. The people inside were loud and overwhelmingly ugly. Each one had processed their hair into such an advanced state of artificiality that they deprived everyone else close to them of touching it soft or smelling it sweet. It was teased up, stiffed into spikes, shaved, extended, and always dyed, in a procedure utterly boring and out of date. Didn’t they know that Sid Vicious was the stuff of Hollywood movies and they too would soon be petrified in their hard-core status if they didn’t get hip to a new thing real soon?

  Everywhere there were kids and the kids were making deals, or imitating what they saw as the rough-and-tumble world of deal-making. Deals for bands, for gigs, for dope and sex. Deals that were nothing but big talk and small return. Deals because there was nothing else to talk about and the music was usually too loud to discuss anything substantial.

  Also too many boys. Dirty boys trying to look mean, in training not to give a shit. Lots of boys in black boots, not a single one was pretty. The girls who hung onto them disappeared, but the girls who came in with each other were cute, chubby fourteen-year-olds with fake IDs, one shock of dyed black hair hanging over one eye. They were young enough to still be giggling from behind one cupped hand. Just like I used to do.

  “See that girl?” said the sceevy boy standing next to his greasy friend. “She’s an awesome fuck.”

  Then the band blasted again.

  CBGB’s walls were covered with remnants of torn-off posters. Thousands of little corners still Scotch-taped to the wall, and then some larger scraps advertising the Nihilistics, False Prophets, and the Spineless Yesmen. The air-conditioning worked.

  Napalm was the band that afternoon. They all had the same haircut, shaved frontal lobes with backside shags that made them look like moles coming up through Astroturf. Their other common denominator was big, dirty fingernails that no woman should ever let near her body. Three of them had old underwear sticking out of the backs of their pants, which had been bought at a fancy Saint Mark’s Place boutique years earlier when they were still NYU students. Now, though, the asses sagged, the colors faded, and their entire wardrobes were stained from Stromboli’s pizza and puking. Phone numbers scribbled on torn Marlboro packs, learning how to smoke and drink, not enough love, just rock-and-roll bands with no personality, filled that room that afternoon. Two rums for me and then an oblivion of noise.

  Coco and I stumbled out of there both drunk, since Coco was susceptible to influence and my influence was a bad one.

  “Hey Coke, do you mind if I call you Coke?”

  “Only if you let me call you asshole.”

  “Listen, Coco, there’s Daniel, Beatriz’s son.”

  “Who?” “My friend’s son Daniel.”

  He was leaning against a car, looking as cool as a sweating teenager can look at four in the afternoon, deep in conversation with some white guy with dyed black hair.

  “That’s no Daniel,” Coco said, leaning on my arm a little bit. It was one thing to be drunk in the air-conditioning, but out there in the sun it really took its toll.

  “That’s Juan Colon. Last year he was Juan Colon, at any rate. This year he changed his name to Johnny. He’s from PR.”

  “That’s no Juan Colon, I’m telling you.” I really wanted a cigarette and started feeling up all my pockets and casing the crowd for a good person to grub from. “His name is Daniel Piazzola. He’s from Argentina.”

  “No, man.” Coco was looking for cigarettes too and pulled out two crumpled Virginia Slims from the bottom of her bag. “I know him. He’s from PR.”

  Now we had to find matches.

  “Excuse me, do you have a light?” I asked some gross shithead.

  “Coco, talk to him in Spanish and listen to his accent. Then you’ll know where he’s from.”

  “What? Are you crazy? I don’t speak Spanish. One, two, three cocksucker. That’s all I know. Let’s go to your house and smoke some herb.”

  But I had to talk to him. Johnny Colon, what a liar. Well, he came by it honestly, that’s for sure. Charlotte and Beatriz created a legacy of lies and deception combined with certain elements of beauty that couldn’t easily be discounted. But the closer I got to this gawky boy leaning against a car, the more clearly I could see the packages of neatly folded aluminum foil, wrapped in a rubber band. I saw how gracefully he hid them in the palm of one hand, making change with the other and always watching out.

  “Daniel?”

  “What do you want, C or D?”

  “Remember me? I listened to your ‘tumor’ record. I’ve been in your house.”

  “Yeah? What for?”

  It was really hot now, the car-hood metal was sizzling but I sat on it anyway because the pain kept me awake and kept my eyes glued to Daniel’s.

  “I knew Marianne too,” I said, suddenly remembering the words of Urgie’s sick bartender. “Her spic boyfriend. She said you used to watch out for her once in a while, even going to New Jersey some late nights.”

  I was very still while he made small movements with great agility and grace, the kind that can be used for baseball or sex or selling drugs on the hot cement.

  “I liked her, you know, but she was a baby. She couldn’t keep her opinions to herself and got mixed up in everybody’s business.”

  “Someone told me she was a junkie,” I said. “But I didn’t think so.”

  “Who said that? Bullshit. Bullshit. Marianne never used except on holidays. But that’s like everybody. Even the president does that.”

  “So what did she need big money for then?”

  “She liked to eat in restaurants. She liked to buy new shoes at Manic Panic and get her hair done at Hair Space. She always bought the most expensive shampoo. She got messed up in too many deep things because she was a kid and never figured out who to say no to. Okay? Now leave me the hell alone.”

  I had to act quickly because my time was running out on Daniel’s meter. He started to shrug his shoulders a little too much, like he really was tough and tough guys don’t have time for too many questions.

  “Charlotte said she was a junkie. It was Charlotte who told me that. I figured she should know.”

  Suddenly everything changed. Daniel stopped talking out of the corner of his mouth. He stopped making change swiftly with his right hand. He stopped acting like a man when he was only a boy.

  “That’s bullshit, man. You can’t believe a word that bitch says. Let me tell you something. If anyone’s a dope fiend around here, it’s Charlotte. When this whole thing happened, the first thing I thought of was that Charlotte got Marianne more high than she could handle and ended up dumping her in the water because she was too stoned to think of what else to do. That Charlotte is a real cunt. Don’t believe anything she tells you. Okay, okay, you happy now?”

  He jumped off the car with a jerk, as though I had upset him so thoroughly he couldn’t stand to be in a place where I had just been. He started walking, troubled and slow, around the parking meter, easing back into doing business. Every now and then he twitched, eventually loping over to a third car, where he hitched his little ass up on the hood again and made change.

  Of course it was Charlotte. How could I have been so blind? But never would Charlotte be part of something so sloppy and accidental as Daniel’s scenario. I remembered those giant hands that would fit so perfectly around Punkette’s neck. Those hands were the size of taxicabs. First they would stroke Punkette’s hair, one hand covering her entire skull. Then they would caress her little breasts and slide between her legs, sloshing around in her wetness. And in that quiet, out-of-breath
moment, right after she came, Punkette would look up, flushed and grateful, to see Charlotte’s hands, with the same ease, crawl up her neck and break it without any effort at all. Without a thought.

  21

  “WHAT’S THE MATTER, you don’t eat anymore?” Coco asked as I cracked open a fifth of Bacardi that I kept stored back in the apartment. “This place is a mess,” she said.

  I hadn’t said a word all the way back from CBGB’s. I wasn’t thinking about anything either, except how to get drunk as quickly as possible. I really was too tired to think about Charlotte killing anyone. I didn’t have the energy to strategize or negotiate or imagine. I was just beat.

  “Still no stereo?”

  “There’s a radio.”

  She plopped herself down on the couch, putting her dirty feet all over my dirty sleeping bag.

  “Any more books?”

  “No, Coco, I still have one book. It’s over there behind the candles. Buy me another one if it bothers you so much.”

  She stepped over a new wave of burning novenas.

  “Think you have a future in mortuary science?”

  “Don’t be a drag, Coco. Look at the book.”

  She dug out the battered copy of Patti Smith’s poems which I’d kept over since she was hot, and now that there are people who have never heard of her, that book is becoming harder to find. But thank God it is still available if you really need it.

  “Show me the good ones,” Coco said, throwing the book in my lap. “Show me the really great ones.”

  That was easy. The book just fell open to them.

  “It’s all about Judith. A woman Patti loved called Judith.”

  “But she’s not gay,” Coco said, completely relaxed. “She’s married with a baby and living in Michigan.”

  “So what, she still loved Judith. Listen.”

  And carefully, I read aloud, knowing it would fill Coco with inspiration and happiness.

  When all else failed: bird, magician, desert mirage, the prospect of gold and riches beyond the cloak and sleeve of marco polo, I attached all to a woman.

  “More,” Coco said.

  Blushing monument: pink sphinx, sizzling squirrel. fallen pharaoh. the exhaustion of the mind which attempts to penetrate the mystery of her.

  “More,” Coco said.

  I love her like the jews love the land. I love her like judas loved jesus.

  “Yes,” Coco said. “Yes, how beautiful. How wonderful. What joy in words. It’s making my heart work overtime. It’s setting my heart on fire.”

  “I know,” I said. “I love Patti Smith.”

  We both sat there for a minute. Then I said, “Coco, tell me a story about a woman, a happy story.”

  “Okay,” she said, flipping through the long-ago back pages of her notebook, looking at her messages and talking them together into a story right then and there. A story that never happened but would always sound true.

  “The story is called ‘This and That,’” Coco said.

  And I repeated, “‘This and That.’”

  “And it’s also about Judith. The same Judith that Patti loved, but years later. She came to my house. It was three o’clock. I left the door open and was cutting strawberries over the sink, listening to her climb the stairs.

  “‘Hello, gorgeous,’ I said before she stepped in.

  “‘How do you know I’m gorgeous today? You haven’t even seen me yet.’

  “That sentence started out in the hall and continued through the threshold of the apartment as she took off her sunglasses and laid them on the counter with a bouquet of orange tiger lilies. All for me.

  “‘I love how they jiggle,’ she would say later, fingering them, ‘like breasts.’

  “But at that moment she was still nervous, having come from the bed of her other lover.

  “‘I just knew,’ I said, kissing her, being very quiet because inside I was thrilled. I was so happy that she had come to me.

  “After some tabletop talk over tea and a joint, I could embrace her from behind, naturally, because I love her so easily.

  “‘Relax, darlin’, you can relax.’

  “And for that moment, I felt her love me. For the rest of the day, though, I was never sure.

  “We talked about this and that. It was interesting but what’s more important, I was watching her. Then she said, ‘Let’s go,’ and stripped to the waist like a sumo wrestler. We kissed, almost dancing, naked, feeling each other and the sun. It was so sunny and bright. Then we went to bed doing this and that.

  “‘When I was making love with you,’ she said, ‘I was thinking about Sappho and how her fragments are just what it’s like. Everything wet for a moment and then something different like a rising passion and then something else.’

  “She was lying in my favorite position on her back with both hands under her head, like a guy, really. It’s the masculine things about her that I’m most attracted to: her gravel voice, her wiry arms, her thick black wristwatch. When she lies on her back like that and talks, I could say a prayer on her chest.

  “Also, she’s always thinking. Sometimes too much, but that’s where I come in because sometimes I can be girly and help her relax. I can make her laugh. I know how to make her feel better. This is the Judith who is the woman who loves me in the afternoon.”

  “That’s a nice story,” I said. “But I’m really worried, Coco, because I think that Charlotte Punkette and I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Coco said.

  “Daniel said that Charlotte is a dope fiend.”

  “Well, at least she’s not a junkie.”

  “Why do you find everything so fucking acceptable? You know, Coco, some things are just too outrageous to let them go by.”

  “Like what?” She had on that insolent attitude where she could focus in and out of sincerity. I think she learned it from Useless Phlegm.

  “Like fucking Delores,” I said, really loud. “Like when fucking Delores said she loved me but she was really looking for a place to live. Do you think that’s something I should take lying down?”

  “Do you have a choice?”

  “Fuck you, Coco Flores.”

  “Well, fuck you. Did you ever even ask her why she does what she does so you can drop it already?”

  I saw that Coco couldn’t decide whether or not to give in and let me say what I needed to say.

  “Yeah, I asked her. I asked her why she said she was my friend and then didn’t act like one.”

  “So what was her answer?”

  Coco looked around for something to do and ended up lighting a cigarette and flicking the ashes on the floor.

  “She said, ‘I changed my mind.’”

  As soon as I said that, I remembered the whole scene, like it was playing again on the video screen that sat somewhere between my mind and the back of my eyes. I remembered the day Delores said, ‘I changed my mind.’ She was sitting in the living room with a plastic bowl and a disposable razor, shaving her legs. I sat opposite her wishing she would cut herself. She was wearing green sequined hot pants and her legs were so white. I wished she would slit them open so I could watch the blood run all over everything like spilled paint. Her face was blank. It was the ugliest thing I had ever seen.

  She left the bowl lying there, where Coco was now smoking. It was filled with little hairs. Then she put on some perfume and went over to her new girlfriend’s house. I was stuck here with my nostrils full of Chanel. It hung in the air all around me and I had to sit and stare at that tiny bottle on the dresser, waiting for the scent to settle in my gut. I wanted to smash it.

  “I don’t understand you,” Coco said. “You think normal people are running around killing each other and then you blame everything on Delores. You’re just drunk.”

  Right then I got so angry I wanted to punch everyone. I was one of those people who talks to themselves and punches the air.

  “Delores was a cunt,” I said. “Sex with her made me
sick. She always did the same thing. Whenever she wanted it, she’d pull her shirt up and bounce around, shoving her tits in my face.”

  “I don’t care about you and Delores,” Coco said, putting out the cigarette with her heel like we were on some street corner. “I used to but it got to be too much. You’re sick. You need counseling. Here, let’s talk about something else. Look at this fluorescent paint I bought. Hot pink.”

  I picked up the little jar.

  “Let’s paint my house,” I said and smashed the jar against the wall so there was pink glass all over the place. “Let’s slam-paint my house.”

  “You’re too weird. It’s not eccentric anymore. I’m going home.”

  “I’m going to cut Sunshine’s face open with a can opener.”

  “Look,” Coco said. “Your feelings are too large for the moment, okay?”

  “Why?”

  “Because everything in life is temporary so you have to live only for the moment and this is not the moment for which you should be living like this.”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, ‘No’?” Coco said, exasperated. “Yes! If you would believe in and be satisfied by what I just said, you would be a much happier person.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s just too much. I’ll never give in like that. My anger is justified, therefore I need to maintain it until I get justice.”

  “Then keep on crying,” Coco said, as if it was nothing.

  I picked a little jar of green paint out of Coco’s purse and threw that against the other wall so there was green glass too.