After Delores Read online

  In the back of the store, they had three shelves filled with devotional candles covered with drawings of the saints. I bought one for Saint Barbara and lit it right there. The woman didn’t blink. People probably made novenas on the spot every day, next to the cans of Goya beans. On the back of the candle was written

  ¡O Dios! Aparta de mi lado esos malvados.

  O God! Keep the wicked away from me.

  I had to laugh at myself, going to all the trouble of praying and then only asking for less of something. I didn’t want more of anything, no money or love or sex. I was praying to Saint Barbara to take the pain away. When Punkette died, something changed in me. That’s when I decided to have a talk with Charlotte.

  7

  THE NEXT MORNING I tried Priscilla’s one more time. Even though I realized that she was probably crazy as a loon, I had to admire her because she had the courage to live out her fantasy. She wanted to be Priscilla Presley instead of whoever she really was, some word processor named Ann Brown from Cincinnati or the like. So she didn’t let other people’s opinions stand in the way of her pleasure. Pris was as brave as a drag queen, and just as tough. Even though no one was home, I went back happy Pris was in my life. Then I got ready to meet Charlotte.

  I wasn’t sure whether it was gift wrap or disguise but I knew to decorate myself for Punkette’s lover. I powdered and primped, and put on long dangling earrings with silver filigree. It was almost a party mood, light and dancing, grooving all over the apartment. I was hopeful, like riding the open highway on a motorcycle with your hair streaming out behind you in the hottest heat of summer.

  For the last month there hadn’t been any clothes in my life, just five days of the same pants, with or without a waitress apron. But that afternoon in early spring, I searched for something pretty to put on my body. Tucked back in a corner of the closet was one of Delores’s shirts, overlooked in her last-minute packing. Maybe she’d left it for me as a warning, maybe as an excuse to come back in case she needed one. She probably didn’t want it anymore. The material was silky and billowing, the color, a rich teal. In her shirt I looked, all of a sudden, touchable and breezy.

  Charlotte’s block was different in the daylight. I recognized that particular brand of dingy that’s not at all the same as poor. There was a special kind of neglect that felt like sabotage, and a lack of self-love evident everywhere. No mothers yelled to their kids from tenement windows. No music floated down from the lips of thin musicians in crowded apartments. No teenagers cut on the radio to dance and flirt in lots and hallways under the nostalgic eyes of old people in their ancient folding chairs. No. Too many junkies had taken over too much territory. When the sidewalk belongs to the junkies, it lies cracked and bland. When there are people, but no signs of life, the buildings that carry them sag with the loss of expectation.

  The lock had been torn off the front door of her building, a sure sign of rooftop shooting galleries. The stairs were covered with burn scars from men and women nodding out, cigarettes hanging from their mouths, then dropping to the floor with spit. I hadn’t seen any of it with Punkette. The night was too cold and I was too drunk. Two skinny teenagers in oversized jackets passed me on the stairs discussing crack hits, three for ten. A woman in tight pants, holding a large-sized bottle of Pepsi, let herself into an apartment, leaving behind the stench of menthol cigarettes.

  I knocked at Charlotte’s door and waited, then knocked again. The only sign of life came from the neighbor two doors down, who was busily installing a conspicuous contraption onto his front door.

  “Excuse me, do you know Charlotte?” I asked.

  “Hold this, will you?” he said, talking me over to his side of the hall, where I pressed two pieces of metal against the door.

  “Putting in a new lock,” he added, grimier than this job suggested. “They came in through the window the first time so I had to put in bars. Then they walked in through the front door. Try that again, cocksucker. See, all you have to do is tamper with the door and there’s a little shock in store for you.”

  He waved me away without looking in my direction, flicked a switch inside the apartment and I jumped back as a sudden sharp vibration buzzed through the door, followed by an equally sudden silence.

  I knocked at Charlotte’s door with a little more urgency, ready to get away from that guy. Her peephole was blocked with a matchbook cover, taped from the other side. When I looked through it, I could make out the words You too can get a high school equivalency…

  “She’s probably at the theater,” he said in a wasted drawl. This time he turned and faced me, so I had to look at him more closely and saw a wild mustache and bushy old-fashioned sideburns, like an antique image from a sixties album cover. He wore a torn, stained, leather-fringed cowboy jacket, the kind that hadn’t been around for a long time until yuppie stores started carrying them in purple suede for girls. He had these shit kickers that were too heavy for the weather and too redneck for the territory. They were boots that could really kick ass and weren’t good for much else besides attitude. This guy wasn’t a leftover hippie. He was more Hell’s Angels without the colors.

  “Which theater?”

  “Where they work. A few blocks up the avenue, next to Cuchifritos. Want a lift? I’m taking my cab out in a minute.”

  I’ve trained myself to avoid all potentially unpleasant situations with men even though I walk into them constantly with women. Once I realized women could be pretty nasty, I actually considered boys for about five minutes until I remembered that they bored me very quickly, and if someone you love is going to bring tragedy into your life, you should at least be interested in them. So my “No thanks, I’ll walk” was part routine behavior and part deliberate avoidance.

  The theater was a boarded-up storefront on the ground floor of a tenement. It was quite large and long for what it was and had very low ceilings. You could tell it had once been an old-time bakery because the oven marks were still visible, scarring the worn-out brick walls. I came in quietly through the front door, which opened into the back of the audience area. There were soft lights up on the playing space, where two women seemed to be involved in a rehearsal. The one onstage was very tall, especially against the low ceilings. Her skin was the palest white and she was draped in soft black clothing that made her comfortable and classical, like the beautiful woman in a wine commercial stepping out of her lover’s bed in the morning wearing his coziest sweater. It made you want to watch her. Another woman was sitting with her back toward me. All I saw were her curls of brown hair. She was watching too and taking notes as the actress recited her lines.

  “I used to babysit for this family over by where the main road is before they put in the highway. I was babysitting for their son and afterwards, Allen, that was the father, he would drive me home. Sometimes, though, we stopped off at Nick’s for cheeseburgers and played the jukebox. I liked being out with a grown-up man. It made me feel sexy. Anyway, one night, instead of driving me home, I just sat around in the living room and talked with him and his wife Jackie. And then they talked me into bed with them. So that’s how it went. After babysitting, I would go to bed with them. Only I would never let Allen put it in. The thing that used to kill me was when I would make love with Jackie and he would screw her right in front of me. I hated it. I would sulk the whole way home in the car. I started going over there in the day when I knew he would be off working. Jackie was usually reading or in the garden. We’d chat, but nothing happened. Finally one afternoon she said to me, ‘You know, I thik you’re a lesbian. You’d better not come round here anymore.’ They moved soon after that.”

  It was only when she finished that I remembered it wasn’t real. I felt like a spy in a private conversation, and when the conversation was over, I had a stake in it. When the actress dropped her hands and stood quietly onstage, I missed the character that she had become, and felt sad to watch her disappear. So, I let myself stay hidden there in the shadows, waiting to be thrilled again.

&n
bsp; “That was shit,” said the curly-haired woman.

  “Fuck you, that was great,” said the actress.

  “What are you supposed to be thinking about when you tell this nostalgic little story?”

  “You know,” the actress said. “I’m thinking about being a girl again. I’m thinking about the different ways that women have said no to me ever since I was a girl, leading up to my lover who just threw me out.”

  “Well, if the events of the night before, the brutality, are not present in the telling, then this monologue has the sentimentality and saccharine sweetness of a greeting card.”

  “Don’t’ be a cunt. Do you want me to do it again?”

  This provoked the curly-haired woman, who jumped up onto the playing area and yelled, “How did she throw you out?”

  I could tell that she yelled that way to get back in control. She wanted the actress to be responding to her, not the other way around. But the actress didn’t say a word. She was significantly taller than the director and just looked down at her with a deep tenderness that was so insulting because it was obviously put on. That’s when the director reached out with both hands and gave the tall woman a shove.

  “Beatriz, don’t push me.”

  “Let me remind you of what just happened, ten short hours before,” Beatriz said with a distinctly abusive tone, punctuated by a series of shoves and jabs at the actress’s long body. “‘Get out,’” she continued, playing it all her way. “‘Get out, I don’t love anymore.’ That’s what she said to you, isn’t it? ‘Get out. I have been trying for the last six months to get your stinking carcass out of my goddamn life. Now, get out.’”

  The actress put her hands out to defend herself but she never hit back, either because she was afraid she’d hurt the little woman with the big will, or because she was afraid she’d lose. Beatriz kept telling her to get out.

  “‘You’re so ugly, no one will ever love you.’ That’s what she said last night, isn’t it?”

  That’s when the actress started to break down, crying within herself at first, like she was trying to hold back, but the tears came anyway and they were followed by absolutely convincing shaking and heaving shoulders. She sank down to the floor and looked up at Beatriz.

  “Please let me stay. Please let me stay.”

  She said it over and over again, faster and faster.

  “Please let me stay. Please let me stay. Five more minutes. Let me stay five more minutes.”

  “Okay,” Beatriz said, dropping her arms, absolutely normal again immediately. “That’s better. Now, do the scene again.”

  The actress took her original position and began. As soon as she started, the character that had been talking when I first walked in returned, magically, where a minute earlier she was nowhere to be found.

  “‘You know, I think you’re a lesbian. You’re a lesbian. You’d better not come round here anymore.’”

  Then, without missing a beat, she jumped out of her character and out of her light, saying, “I’m so fake, I’m so goddamn fake,” and punched the air with both fists. The second fist was the moment when she saw me, so she turned my way and spoke again.

  “Can I help you?”

  This woman had just transformed three ways in one moment. First she had been in character, then she broke it completely, becoming a temperamental actress stomping across the stage. Then she saw me and stopped on a dime. She turned courteous and charming and looked straight into me.

  “Can I help you?” she repeated.

  That was the first time I saw her eyes.

  “Are you here about the job?”

  “Yes, that’s it.”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about but it was the flash in her eyes that made me want to say yes.

  “Great, I’ll be right with you.”

  She wiped her face with a towel and drank seltzer out of the bottle. Beatriz didn’t even turn around. She was busy writing. The actress came closer and extended her right hand. It was huge and carved with veins.

  “My name is Charlotte. How strong are your secretarial skills?”

  “Fair.”

  I thought she was playing a game, until she looked my way again. Her face was different one more time. She was relaxed and familiar, like my lover, my closest comrade, my dream girl. Then she watched how I reacted. I was getting ready to tell her all about Punkette, that she was my friend and I wanted to find her killer, but before I could figure out how to say it, Charlotte handed me a pencil and the backside of an old flyer.

  “I’d like you to take some dictation. There’s no dictation involved in this job but I just want to see how it goes. Where are you working now?”

  “Herbie’s Coffee Shop. Downtown. Three days a week.”

  She seemed to like me even though I gave her no reason to. Maybe it was Delores’s shirt. I’d never worked clerical before. I always figured that if you went in for typing you’d end up a typist, and I didn’t want to end up that way.

  “I’ll give you some sentences and you take them down.”

  “Okay.”

  “Number one. ‘My last lover’s name was …’ Fill in the blank.”

  I wrote “Delores.”

  She looked over my shoulder, smelling sweaty like a man.

  “Where is Delores now?”

  “She left me for Nelson Rockefeller.”

  “I see.” She was prim and business-like. “Number two. ‘We will all go to heaven for this.’”

  I giggled.

  “Number three. ‘When I laugh like that, I feel …’”

  “Nervous.”

  She took the paper and looked it over very carefully. I wanted to bring up about Punkette but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t disappoint Charlotte. I didn’t want her to think that I had lied about the job. I could get in touch later and explain everything.

  “Thank you very much.”

  She held out that hand again.

  “If you don’t get the job, I hope you will come back and visit.”

  And then she smiled the sweetest smile.

  8

  I DON’T LIKE to admit it but women are the worst tippers. They put their heads together to divide up the bill and actually figure out exactly fifteen percent without taking into consideration how much they made you run around. Men don’t talk about it. Each one peels a dollar off his billfold and quietly leaves it by the side of his plate.

  It was a tough day at Herbie’s because Momma was ragging on all of us. Joe and I were drinking rum, trying to stay out of her way. Some cooks make you feel tired, others are plain annoying, but Joe charmed me somehow into being more feline. With gold chains shining on his brown skin and a toothpick hanging from his lips, every favor he asked was a service, and his smile, approval. The way he’d say, “Got it, babe,” when I called in my order, no matter how busy he was, always reminded me that he was my pal.

  “Rum is good,” he said in his Caribbean accent, “but it can betray you. When you get the shakes, you’ve gone too far. Don’t go that far, you’re still a lovely girl. You’re a sweetheart.”

  Then he looked both ways and poured some more into my coffee cup.

  “But,” he sighed. “What can you do? The world is so full of pain.”

  Then he’d scratch his big stomach and laugh.

  “I’m going home to Brooklyn and smoke some cocaine and turn on the television. Oh, I’m getting fat from all the sugar in the soup.”

  When Joe left, I hung out with Dino, who was on the grill until closing. He was telling his war stories again because there was nothing at all happening on the floor.

  “I was all over the Pacific during the war,” he said. “They sent me to islands I didn’t even know the names of till I was on ’em. Then we got two weeks of R and R in Hawaii. That was nice. Hotel, everything.”

  “Did they have segregated regiments then, Dino?”

  “Yep. And drill sergeants of both colors. All of them ugly as homemade soup. Oh-oh, check out Rambo. Thinks he’
s so sly, that jerk.”

  Rambo was busy being the big man and giving away food for free to a cute Puerto Rican clerk from the hardware store. She was playing coy and hard to get. But Rambo had picked the wrong moment to get off the register, because the place was too empty and Momma was keeping her eye on everything. That’s when I realized that for all his tough-assed talk, Rambo didn’t even know how to steal and get away with it. He was putting on his whole show right out in the open, wildly flagrant without choosing to be.

  “That turkey is so overt,” Dino said.

  Rambo ran rampant all over the kitchen. He whipped up a plate of the rarest roast beef while Dino sat there chuckling and covering his eyes. The slices were so red and bloody that Momma could spot them from a block away.

  “Thief,” she shrieked, with a shrillness that made the orange wallpaper tremble.

  “What’s the matter, bitch?” he said under his breath.

  “Do you have a ticket for that? Where is the ticket? Thief, you steal the food out of my mouth.

  “Fuck you, twat,” he was screaming all of a sudden. He was screaming louder than she was. “Fuck you and your dead meat.”

  “Get out of here,” she yelled. She yelled but she didn’t move, like she had been firing people from that chair for forty years. Taking someone’s job away involved such a natural sequence of events for Momma that it didn’t require any energy anymore. Rambo picked up the roast beef and smashed it against the wall, which broke the greasy mirror. Up until that point it had been pretty interesting, but I didn’t like it at all when the mirror cracked. A curse by Rambo would be hard to shake.