After Delores Read online

  “She’s not a yuppie, she’s a lesbian.”

  “Okay, a preppie with a twist.”

  If I looked straight ahead, my face would have been between her breasts. She was wearing her black bra. I could tell.

  “If you don’t give me that shirt right now, I’m going to tear it off you.”

  I was thinking how, if she tore it, she wouldn’t be able to wear it, but instead I said, “Look, Delores, why don’t you call me later and we’ll talk about it. Let’s talk about it later.”

  One of the underlying reasons I said, “Let’s talk about later,” was that Delores had never called me since the day she left, not to give me her new phone number, not to pay the phone bill, nothing.

  I got up to go to the bathroom and she kind of grabbed at the shirt, but let go before it ripped. When I got back, she was still standing there.

  “If you don’t give it to me right now, I’m going to make such a scene that they’ll never let you back in this place.”

  Then I got scared. It wasn’t losing the bar so much, it was the reality of the situation, of how Delores was angry that I was alive and she intended to obliterate me.

  She yelled so loud, everything in that place stopped except the video games’ repeating jingle.

  “Give it to me now or I’m going to make a scene.”

  What could I do? I looked down at my table at The Blue and the Gold and slowly undid all the buttons. I handed her the wilted green shirt and sat there in my bra. You would think she’d at least leave at that point, but she took it back to her seat and sipped her drink. It was a while before Sal, the bartender, came over and told me to put on my jacket. That’s when my head split open. It wasn’t a headache. It was my skull. It cracked from the inside and nothing was keeping my brains together. I couldn’t even cry. I couldn’t do nothing.

  14

  ALL THAT NIGHT I lay awake in a dream of my own invention starring Delores as the phantom devil because no mortal being could have such impeccable timing. I dreamed I was wearing a white corset and it started to fill with blood. No matter how much I tensed my muscles, I couldn’t keep it from seeping out. Finally the thing was soaked through and dripping red onto the carpet. I was in a fancy house with thick rugs and overstuffed sofas on wooden legs. I saw Delores coming and tried to hide the corset under the chair, but no matter how much I shoved it back with my feet, it kept poking out from behind the upholstery.

  My insides were sweating as the sun woke me up. Rivulets of salty liquid ran and dripped under my skin.

  “You’ll be sorry,” I told her to myself, twitching like a rough cut in an experimental movie. “I should just kill you right now.”

  Where the fuck was she? I called her old job but the receptionist said she quit. Then I took Sunshine’s number out of the phonebook but got that fucking answering machine. I’m sure Delores was sitting there watching the color TV and screening her calls, that bitch.

  “Bitch,” I yelled, after the beep.

  It was one of those days—cold on the outside but too hot under any jacket. I walked along the avenues realizing that all this time and after many incidents, Delores continued to ignore the state of my emotional life. The time had come to put a stop to this, to let her know how I really felt. On a whim, really, I bought a postcard of the Statue of Liberty and scrawled angrily on the back:

  I hate you Delores. I walk down the street dreaming of smashing your face with a hammer, but when your face was right in front of me, I had no hammer. What have you done that someone who once loved and cared for you could be made to feel this way?

  And I mailed it.

  By the end of that week my living room was filled with thirty novena candles. They were all on their fourth day of a seven-day flame. That way, when I would lie on the couch, there was a warm glow, sometimes feeling like a funeral, with me stretched out, open casket.

  The walls were ghost dances from the inside and from the street, gyrating disco-heaven. If I crashed on the couch with fire all around me, it was more peaceful. I had something to look at instead of nothing and something moving beside me instead of no one. I was lying in state when the phone rang.

  “Delores?”

  “No. This is Charlotte.”

  I didn’t make a sound.

  “Beatriz and I just had a big fight about Marianne and I need to be with someone who cared about her. Do you mind if I come over?”

  I looked around the apartment. It was a mausoleum. What’s worse, Charlotte’s answering machine was sitting on the floor right next to Priscilla’s gun. I’d decided that morning that the two went together quite well.

  “I’ll meet you on the street,” I said.

  Since I slept in my clothes every night, I didn’t need to get dressed. I just paced back and forth across the room, thrilled to the teeth. I wanted to see Charlotte in my house. The possibility of her being there made living somehow easier. I wanted to watch her crossing her legs on my couch, thumbing through my belongings with her big hands, tough and bony like the Wild West under a big sky. I wanted to see her engrossed, thinking something over and coming to an important conclusion. So I threw a bunch of towels over the machine and put the gun in the refrigerator, just in case.

  I was waiting so hard that I almost forgot to breathe, and so got transported into a series of distant thoughts. By the time the buzzer sounded, I was in a dream in which I had become something frilly and lilting, like a Southern belle waiting for her gentleman caller. I descended the staircase of my imagination feeling like Scarlett O’Hara at Tara, but probably looking more like Norma Desmond. Or maybe I was one of those blonde creatures, a debutante at the cotillion drinking Brandy Alexanders, unconsciously garish in green eyeshadow. The drink left a frothy brown mustache that set off my wardrobe of various unnatural colors like beige or powder blue.

  “Charlotte!”

  She was sullen under the streetlight, her white skin luminescent in the night. My hero.

  “When was the last time you changed your clothes?” she said. “You look terrible.”

  I watched myself grimy and wrinkled. Oh no, there were restaurant grease stains everywhere, baggy pants and the worst, light green socks with a pink shirt. How could I be wearing light green socks at a moment like this when Charlotte was just about to fall in love with me?

  “Come on, let’s walk.”

  She started off with a quick pace, leaping over the broken sidewalk with those huge legs. She was talking, but I couldn’t hear the words. I was in my private movie and Charlotte was the star. In this scene, she slumped into her gait, in a hurried dissatisfaction, like the Irishman she was in cap and stooped shoulders, glum over his dinner. The grouse, though, was all appearance, for she was easily content. She could happily watch television every night and drink her beer quietly in a corner while the other men played darts. Underneath the coal dust, she was really a champion, a resistance fighter, a king.

  “We’ve been at it all week. It’s about secrets. I can’t tell her about Marianne because she wouldn’t understand. If she knew I’d had another lover, it would hurt her and yet, it’s on my mind all the time, of course. So you must never say a word to her about any of it.”

  She passed her thumb back and forth across her mouth exactly like Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless.

  “You see, Beatriz knows intuitively that something is awry. But she can’t put her finger on exactly what. I mean, realizing that your lover had a sixteen-year-old mistress who had just been murdered is not necessarily the first conclusion one jumps to when there’s mysterious discord at home. She doesn’t know anything for sure, and I want to keep it that way.”

  She grabbed my wrist and turned it until my whole arm turned with it.

  “Do you understand?”

  “Charlotte, what are you talking about?”

  I loved the feeling of pain that was taking over my arm. But as soon as she saw the pleasure in my face, she let go, and was sweet again.

  “Beatriz is Latin. They have a s
ense of pride that is different than yours or mine.”

  She was lying. But she was lying so well, it drew you in. She had that expression on her face that some people use when they want you to know that they realize what’s coming out of their mouths is rubbish, but they need you to play along so you do. Then it becomes your lie too.

  “She would leave me in a second if she knew that I had been cheating on her. So if you ever have more than a cursory conversation with my lover, I hope you will be discreet about what you know.”

  There was some information I had that Charlotte didn’t want me to disclose. But I didn’t know what it was. One thing was clear, though; I had proximity to one of Charlotte’s secrets and that’s why she needed to keep me in her life. The longer I held onto it, the closer we would be.

  “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Charlotte, I understand perfectly.”

  A long time ago, I learned that being alive meant playing by certain rules. Everyone knows that the specific choice of rules is an arbitrary one, but we agree on them to give ourselves something to focus on. One of the rules is that certain basic things—feelings, other people, and responsibilities—are real. When they slip away, the walls cave in and there’s nothing left but anger at what you gave up along the way just to play along. Charlotte was the last thing I knew of that I wanted to believe in, because she had power, enough power to love and be loved and still be in control. So I loved her too, and let her have her way, even though I did know that she was lying.

  “What did you like best about Punkette? I mean Marianne?”

  “Don’t deceive yourself. I did that out of pure vanity.”

  “But Charlotte, there must have been something about her individually that made you choose her. I know she was sexy and cute in a real touching way, without much passion. Was that it?”

  Charlotte laughed, impatient at having to explain what was already so completely obvious.

  “What did I see in her? The lack of pain. You can taste that on someone’s skin. I like hope under my fingernails. You can smell it all day long like the insides of grapefruit rind. It’s fresh and you think it can last forever.”

  I jammed my hands into my pockets. “But it’s not forever,” I said.

  “Obviously, but who looks at a young woman and thinks of murder? I don’t. Even if she was a junkie. A young junkie.”

  I only had to consider that thought for one moment. “No, I don’t believe that. Punkette wasn’t shooting junk.”

  If there was one thing I knew about, it was junkies. They’re all over the place and you get used to them. They scratch their arms. They have nervous tics. They leave the water running and the fire burning. There’s something very stupid in the way they glance around all the time. No, Punkette’s eyes had no junk in them.

  “Believe me, I was fooled too,” Charlotte said. “But she started stealing things from my house and selling them. She took the television, the phone machine …”

  Right then Charlotte did the strangest thing. She grabbed my head with both hands, like she was going to kiss my forehead, but instead, she slid her palm over my eyes and held them real tight. Her hand took up half my face. Then she talked to me in a high, faggy voice.

  “Can you see?”

  “Of course not, Charlotte, you’re covering my eyes.”

  It was quiet for a minute as I waited without struggling, until she started laughing and laughing and dropped her long arms, letting one swing a full arc.

  “That’s what my brothers used to do to me all the time … ” she said, normal again and seemingly happy, still swinging that arm.

  There was something so brutal in her smile. She was a very dangerous woman. She could really hurt me. And I realized that I wanted her fingers inside me right then. They were long and rough. If I was honest, I would have put my arms around that thick neck of hers and climbed right on top of her fingers.

  15

  I FOLLOWED CHARLOTTE into the theater. We were the only shadows passing under the streetlights. The whole block seemed deserted and black.

  She stumbled past the chairs and threw a few switches on the lighting board. Then the stage had two eyes, one rose, the other, pale blue. She pulled me by the hand until we each sat in our own spotlight.

  “Wait a minute,” Charlotte said, bringing up a soft backlight so I wasn’t alone anymore. There was enough light for each of us and between us too. I looked up into the heart of the stage light and started crying real tears. Then I knew that was how they did it.

  “Are you okay?” Charlotte said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Great.”

  She clapped her hands and jumped up. That was the first time I saw how tight her ass was. She looked like a pressed flower lying in a book.

  “Quick, this is our scene together, coming up. Sit at an angle so it looks natural to the audience. Okay: places, lights.”

  The lights were as cool as they could be, like the docks at night in a black-and-white movie. Charlotte was in character now, looking dangerous and interested. I was respectfully quiet, waiting for her to happen.

  “What do you learn from examining me the way you do?”

  She asked that question with a slightly British accent, as though we were guests at a turn-of-the-century garden party where the emotional dramas of the upper classes were carried out in the calmest and most naturally inquisitive manner. I could see Charlotte, parasol in hand, strolling the rolling green estate in a white afternoon frock and large hat.

  “I like looking at you, Charlotte,” I said. “Because you’re beautiful and you change all the time. I like watching the changes, they make me happy.”

  I said that in my usual voice and usual New York accent. It was almost magic, like I was talking to a picture show and still being myself. I could be my own character.

  She waited for a minute, tightening her jaw and stooping over slightly so her chin dropped and her face got longer. It stretched as her eyes died a little bit.

  “Jesus,” she said, slowly bending over an immigrant woman in Brooklyn somewhere in the days before the Big War. “Jesus, I’ve been beautiful my whole life,” she said, wringing out the clothes and hanging them on the line between her fire escape and the O’Briens’ across the alley. “I’m sick of it. People tell me I’m beautiful when they say they want something from me or they have nothing else to say.” She brushed a wilted strand of hair off her sweaty face. “Beautiful.” She was mocking now. “Beautiful as a spring flower.”

  “Not a flower, Charlotte,” I said. “You’re beautiful like a building with red brick and cornerstones. It took hundreds of men to build you and now you’re solid and contain everything.”

  “Stop,” she said. Then she screamed it. “Stop.”

  She screamed “stop” the way you yell at someone when they’re just about to hurt you, so that when they do, your scream is embedded in their memory.

  “Stop staring at me all the time, it’s boring as hell.”

  For one minute I thought she might be serious and I felt so bad I wanted to say “shit” but instead I said, “Charlotte.”

  “You want to look at me?” she said. “All right, all right, goddamn it, I’ll let you look. Look!” And she sat down next to me and waited.

  I could smell her. She was almost rotten. I could hear her breathing and watch her chest puff up and down. I saw dirt in her ears. I saw a neck like a mountain and hands that were dangerous. They were murder weapons. Charlotte could kill me easily. It wouldn’t take a thing.

  “Let me see your legs,” I said, and she lifted up her skirt. They were chimneys.

  “Finished?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m finished.”

  So she became Charlotte again and turned up the house lights.

  “There’s that strange moment in rehearsal,” she said, “where a good actor tries something new and it looks silly. Then all her moments seem suddenly transparent as though she’s just a fake, not an artist. I love when that
happens to me because then I have to start all over again.”

  Fuck you, Charlotte, I thought. This is no goddamn rehearsal. This is true. But I didn’t tell her the truth. I hid it in a statement designed to contain both undying loyalty and bratty insolence.

  “Beatriz knows all about you and Marianne. I didn’t tell her.”

  “What did Marianne say about me?”

  She watched me very carefully.

  “Marianne told me that she loved you, and she really wanted things to work out. She felt lonely when she couldn’t be with you. She told me some things that you like to say.”

  “Like what?”

  “She told me that you said there was a palm at the end of the mind and it’s on fire.”

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “It’s burning. And there’s a bird. Its fire-fangled feathers dangle down.”

  “What?”

  “Its fire-fangled feathers dangle down.”

  “Do you know Coco Flores?”

  “Who?”

  “She said that same thing to me just the other day.”

  “It’s a famous poem by Wallace Stevens. A lot of people know it. What else did Marianne tell you?”

  “She didn’t tell me anything else. Charlotte, I don’t think I know what you think I know. I just don’t think so.”

  She was sitting on her knees with her hands folded in her lap, looking like a middle-aged nun. She had knees like the man in the moon. When she knelt before me, they were as large as my face. I could lick them for an hour and still not cross all the mountains. Here’s how I would make love with Charlotte. I would dress her up in feathers and have her hold me by the ass, carrying me around the room. I’d squeeze her waist tight with my legs and bury my face into the stone of her neck.

  “Beatriz does know about Marianne,” Charlotte said. “I just don’t want her to know that Marianne was on junk. That’s something Beatriz is not capable of understanding. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I knew Marianne was not on junk.

  “Can I trust you?” Charlotte asked, turning her head so fast her hair flew. “No, I don’t think so.”