by Dana Czapnik
I place the book on my chest and look out my window at the roof deck attached to the apartment across the very narrow alley from me. It’s a wonderful little patio with a gigantic Japanese maple. There’s some sort of organic protective coating on the leaves so that even in the rain, the tree looks dry. I love watching raindrops glide off the edges of the plant in plump, iridescent circles. I’ll follow individual drops with my eyes so that they look like they’re falling in slow motion. I’ve admired this little oasis in the city from the window next to my bed for as long as I can remember. For almost eighteen years now, I’ve watched this Japanese maple deflect rainwater. Accumulate snow during the first fall of winter. And for as long as I can remember, I’ve never seen any of my neighbors across the way sit outside and enjoy it. No late-night cigars or rowdy evening dinner parties on the rotting wicker patio furniture. No midafternoon lemonade breaks with an issue of the New Yorker. No morning coffee with a good book. Once every other week, a gardener in dirty jeans and a tan baseball cap comes in to tend to everything for about an hour and then he leaves. Maybe they’re very important Wall Street bankers or corporate lawyers with long hours. Or journalists who are always traveling. Or diplomats who are always at the United Nations. All I know is that if ever I have a tiny, secret garden unto myself—my own patch of earth, even if the earth isn’t in the ground at all but on a piece of sky we’ve managed to colonize—no matter how small, I will make sure to find the time to be alone in it.
We take the subway to prom, which is pretty fucking raw. Screw the rich kids in their limos. We swig minuscule swallows of straight vodka from a flask. Hide it under our skirts between sips. It sears our throats as it goes down. We do pull-up contests in our dresses on the overhead subway bars and collapse, breathless, onto orange and yellow seats. Giggle into each other’s shoulders.
In the windows of the subway car we admire ourselves: Alexis in a stretchy white velvet halter gown and white slingbacks with peek-a-boo toes. Me in a green satin number with spaghetti straps and an empire waist and silver strappy heels. Alexis looks at her reflection and smooths her hair down. Her baby hairs are gelled to each side of her face by her ears. They twist and curl against her skin. Her lips are covered in berry-red Revlon lipstick, the kind that comes in the gold rectangular case and casts off flecks of itself on her teeth when she talks. She takes out of her tiny white handbag a plastic bottle from the Body Shop labeled “Geranium Mist” and sprays herself four times, says to her reflection, “I look goo-ood,” adding an extra syllable in there for good measure. How does she do that? Like herself and admit it out loud?
In the fourth grade, before I knew Alexis, before I knew anything about the coded underworld of femininity, a handwritten note was passed around class. It read, “Are you pretty or ugly? Check one box” at the top. Beneath were two columns, one for “pretty” and one for “ugly,” and to the left of the columns was a list of all the girls in the class, arranged alphabetically by last name so I had to go first. I looked at it and thought, Who would publicly call themselves ugly? I checked the “pretty” box, passed the note on to the next girl, and didn’t think anything of it until lunch, when I walked into the cafeteria and all the girls looked at me and giggled. They giggled because I’d checked the “pretty” box, and they thought I was delusional. Which is a crime. Had they considered me pretty, they wouldn’t have giggled but sneered. Called me stuck-up. Also a crime. Lauren Moon knew this instinctively. She and all her pretty friends checked the “ugly” box, though it was obvious none of them actually thought of themselves that way. The way they wore their hair and the clean lines of their dresses revealed their true feelings.
Alexis is the only girl I know who giggles and sneers in the opposite direction. Being demure is bullshit to her. She knows the location of all the invisible lines and crosses them anyway. It’s enviable.
We get off at Fiftieth Street and walk east. We drop pennies in the fountain of the Time-Life Building and make ironic wishes with our eyes closed and an almost convincing faux earnestness. “I wish . . . for someone to finally notice me.” Plink. “I wish . . . that I get voted prom queen.” Plink. “I wish . . . for world peace.” Plink. We cross Sixth Avenue against the light. We tell each other dirty jokes no one else would get and laugh with a performed abandon. Alexis grabs my hand and we run into the lobby of Radio City Music Hall. We pretend to be tourists, snapping fake photos. We arrange ourselves like the Rockettes, arms around each other’s shoulders, dresses hiked up. We kick our legs intentionally off-beat and sing “New York, New York” at the top of our lungs, but neither of us knows the lyrics or how to carry a tune. Our knees buckle with laughter and we’re on the floor. Everyone stares, but only the security guard smiles. What old guy doesn’t like watching teenage girls in dresses giggle? He tells us we’re cute but we have to leave.
We go out through the rotating doors. Alexis goes first and keeps pushing us around and around to the point where I’m getting dizzy, but also laughing so hard I can barely keep up. Outside, we lean against a phone booth and catch our breath. Alexis picks up the phone, dials the operator, and says, “Yes, Information? If Einstein’s theory of relativity is correct, does that mean there’s never one fixed moment in time and that all the moments of our lives have already happened?” Alexis covers the mouthpiece, whispers to me, “She isn’t sure, she’s looking it up.” I’m dying laughing now. Watching her face. So serious. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” She turns to me. “She said time is a human construct, that it doesn’t objectively exist.” The receiver in the nook of her neck, her eyebrows raised to mid-forehead. “Just kidding, she told me to go fuck myself.” She hangs up, and we move on.
We turn the corner and a blast of wind hits us, kicking up debris into our mouths and eyes. We spit dramatically into the wind and wipe our faces off with the back of our hands. We turn around and walk backward. Arms linked. Belting out every last lyric to “Shoop.” Our dresses flutter around us like we’re goddesses in a tempest above Mount Olympus. A hot dog vendor, wearing a soiled white apron and newsboy cap, waves to us and shouts, “Looking good, ladies!” Alexis yells, “We know!”
At the edge of Rock Center, all lit up and empty, we tourist it out and race down the stairs to the plaza, our heels like tap shoes against the slate, and we spin in circles under the flags and the lights, our faces pointed toward the sky. The plaza’s an ice rink in the winter, and there’s always some older lady in ridiculous spandex and a gauzy ballet skirt in the center spinning and doing single-rotation jumps, trying to recapture some glory. Whenever I go ice-skating here, I keep to the outside of the rink and do my best Bonnie Blair because I like speed more than twirling. But now, in my dress, in the golden light of Prometheus, I finally get its appeal.
Dizzy and reeling, we stop and look up at the sculpture, the fountain, the engraving.
PROMETHEUS, TEACHER IN EVERY ART, BROUGHT THE FIRE THAT HATH PROVED TO MORTALS A MEANS TO MIGHTY ENDS.
“What a pretty city,” Alexis says, all wistful. “Shame it’s so fucked up.”
We bunch up our dresses with one hand and turn them into shorts, take a seat on the ledge of the fountain. Our legs dangle. We slip out of our shoes and let them drop to the ground. Swing our feet back and forth, let the bottoms of our dresses go and allow the breeze in. We pass the flask back and forth in silence as the flags’ metal ropes clang against the poles in the wind. At the bottom of a just-shaken snow globe, full of glitter.
For the moment, we are bulletproof. Bioluminescent. Burning with empire.
* * *
Going to prom without a date at most schools is a total loser thing to do, but at our school it’s common practice. Since we’re so small, our school partners up with a bunch of other Manhattan private schools, so a lot of people go to prom without dates, hoping to meet someone new from another school there. And because Pendleton is all fancy, it’s at the Rainbow Room. Seventy-five bucks a head. When my parents saw the price tag they nearly flipped.
PJ meets u
s in the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Center, and we take the elevator up to the Rainbow Room. In the elevator are some teachers from other schools in sport coats and button-downs and khakis, the standard young male teacher uniform. And there’s an elevator attendant wearing a monkey suit and a pillbox hat. It is deathly quiet. We can hear the rhythm of everyone’s breath. Alexis and I give each other a look, like, Time to sober up and behave respectably.
The theme of prom this year is “Broadway,” so all the tables are named after Broadway musicals. Grease. Cats. Les Mis. Phantom. When the three of us arrive on the sixty-fifth floor, we see we’re stuck all the way in the back, with the rest of Pendleton’s rejects and castaways, at the Little Shop of Horrors table.
We sit down at our table, and this kid Charles Patterson sidles up to me. He’s harbored a not-so-secret crush on me since the fifth grade. Here’s the thing about Charles: The thing about Charles is that he actually might not be a bad-looking kid. I bet in five or six years, when his acne clears up a bit and he finally figures out how to buy pants that fit him and aren’t high-waters, he’ll be a catch. I’d like to meet him then, maybe. As long as he’s stopped going to Civil War reenactments. And I wouldn’t mind being his friend, but he has this way of always touching me at inappropriate moments. Makes my skin crawl. I shoot Alexis a look. She whispers in my ear, “Don’t worry, I got your back.” But that’s a total lie, because the second they start playing Mary J. Blige, she and PJ bolt out onto the dance floor and start grinding against each other like there’s no one around.
They’re not the only ones. People have begun to arrive, and the place is starting to pack up, and the dance floor is jumping with kids from my class at Pendleton and a whole slew of other kids I don’t know from all over the city. Who can resist “Real Love”? Apparently Charles Patterson can. He’s still talking to me about his latest trip to Gettysburg, and he lists all the different kinds of chocolate he tasted at Hershey Park on his way back to New York. And despite the fun I had with Alexis before we arrived, I’m starting to feel pangs of regret for coming to this thing. I didn’t even want to go, but Alexis begged me. She told me I could hang out with her and PJ the whole time if there wasn’t anyone else to talk to. I should have known that was an impossible promise, like, what am I supposed to do? Dance with them? All together? Like we’re in one of those weirdo polyamorous relationships they love making documentaries about for Sex in the 90’s on MTV? No effing way.
So I sit there and listen to Charles drone on for a while, peppering the one-sided conversation with a few “Mmm-hmms” and “Interestings” just so I look like I’m at least partially engaged because the truth is, I’d rather be talking to him than to no one. The truth is, it would be worse if I was sitting entirely alone. As I half listen to Charles while scanning the room like the periscope operator on a submarine deck, looking for someone, anyone else I can talk to, my heart stops. There he is. Percy. Tall and proud in his suit that fits almost perfectly—and hanging on to his arm is Lauren Moon. I grab Charles’s wrist and squeeze it and go, “Holy shit,” because I never in a million years would have ever expected Percy to sink so low as to go to prom, and at the same time, it dawns on me that the reason he’s all fancied up in a suit and making an appearance at a dreaded school function is because of her. Because that’s how much he likes her. Charles says, “What’s the matter, Lucy?” and he kisses my hand. I wipe his lip spit off on my dress, and it leaves a stain. Apparently satin isn’t a forgiving fabric.
I don’t want Percy to see me, and definitely not sitting next to this kid who he might mistake for my date and think, Finally, Lucy found someone on her level so she can stop sweating me. So I crawl under the table and out the other side and squat-run through the swinging doors into the kitchen at the back of the Rainbow Room, which our table is conveniently situated next to, since the unpopular kids never get the good tables, whether in the cafeteria or at prom when we’ve paid seventy-five bucks a head. Though this time, I appreciate my shitty table placement, because it gives me a quick out.
As soon as I step into the kitchen, all the cooks turn to stare at me. Some line cook with huge, tatted-up forearms goes, “Can we help you, little lady?”
“Yeah, is there, like, a back exit to this place in the kitchen somewhere, like in Goodfellas?”
He’s a huge block of man—six feet tall and six feet wide—with a jolly Santa Claus face, and he laughs and goes, “I hated prom too, kid. Just head straight back there,” and points his hand, dripping with egg whites, toward the back of the kitchen.
As I walk down the length of the kitchen he yells out behind me in a big, booming voice, “Clear a path, boys. Let the little fugitive escape,” and everyone makes way for me to pass.
I turn back and wave a thanks. Hands down the most fun fifteen seconds of my life. Makes prom not a total waste.
I take the service elevator down to the back exit of Rockefeller Center and I leave. The air outside is still crisp and warm. There’s a new promise of a better night ahead. The world feels good again. So, naturally, I head west to seek out Violet.
* * *
“Listen, the best you can hope for in life is to land a job with health insurance and a dude who likes the same TV shows and isn’t too into anal.” Violet sucks down a swallow of whatever generic whiskey Shaw poured for her.
“That’s depressing,” I say. I’ve been complaining about Percy, hoping Violet would give me some advice or some solace. A soft punch on the chin and a “You’ll be all right, kid. Grown men appreciate weird, unconventional girls.” Something like that.
“It’s called managing expectations.”
Max pulls a chair up next to us at the bar and hands me a flyer. “Be there,” she says to me and clinks my glass of beer.
I look at the flyer she’s put together, announcing a demonstration. It reads “Art vs. Kmart” at the top. “They’re opening a Kmart at Astor Place?” I can’t help it, I feel a crack in my heart.
“Not if we shut it down first. You always say your generation is missing a cause—well, here’s one for you.”
“No,” I correct her, “what I said is that my generation doesn’t have a movement.”
“Well, every revolution starts with a single small act. This could be yours. Stop the huge corporations from crippling local economies. Stop America from becoming a plutocracy.”
“Isn’t it a little too late for that?” I ask, goading her.
“Not here. It’s not too late here. If Alabama and Pennsylvania won’t fight Kmart and Walmart and Crapmart, that’s their problem. But we will. We won’t allow this in New York. Not in the Village, goddammit.” She pounds her fist on the bar so hard all the glasses jump. “They’ll build a Kmart in the Village over my beautiful, painted carcass.” Max’s face has gotten red. I’m ready to follow her anywhere.
“Sign me up,” I say. “I’m in.” What can I say? I agree with her.
She turns to Violet. “What about you, you delicious candied flower?”
“I guess.” Violet is less enthusiastic. “But I’m not getting naked.”
“That’s a waste. Don’t deny the world your body.”
“You’re very colourful. With a U.”
“You see my true colors. That’s why you love me. You don’t have to bare all if you don’t want. You can paint. We only need a few naked people, one for each word of ‘We Don’t Want Your Sweatshop Clothes.’ Everyone else can just be there supporting the cause.”
“Wait, that’s the protest?” I ask, and I can’t help but sneer a bit.
“That’s the only power we have: our bodies and our art. Everything else has been bought. If our politicians hadn’t sold out, we wouldn’t have to resort to this.”
Does she really think a group of naked people are going to stop a huge national corporation from opening a store, even if it generates a ton of publicity? Is my skepticism a personality defect? Isn’t this the exact thing I feel like I missed out on in the Sixties? But what did those protests
actually accomplish?
Max continues talking to Violet about Kmart. But I’m only half listening. She’s droning on about globalization and uses the phrase “planned obsolescence,” which is something I’ve only recently learned about, and it shook me to know that when old people say things like, “They don’t make ’em like they used to,” they’re not just being annoying, because they really don’t make ’em like they used to, they actually make ’em to break, and she gets off her barstool and starts shouting about how women are America’s most important consumers because “we make all the household purchasing decisions, people” and she starts hyping the crowd up as she passes out more flyers, and a few people start clapping and cheering, and I have this revelatory moment where I see Max maybe a little bit for who she actually is. Max isn’t just an artist. She’s a performer. And being in proximity to someone that energetic and flamboyant, who’s always full of ideas and working on all kinds of projects and collaborations, feels incredible because you are momentarily in the orbit of true cool, and it’s exhilarating to stand in the glow of her atomic radiation. But all it takes is one hiccup, one small little misstep, and then everything is revealed to be . . . show business.
Max sits back down, and Violet rolls her eyes and says, “Recently, I’ve had a sneaking suspicion that money is more important than art. The same way pretty is more important than smart. Selling out is selling out a whole gallery show.” Max looks stunned. Her back straightens, and she looks like she’s about to say something in response. But Violet continues. “You said it yourself: There’s no underground anymore. So, you can’t keep them out—the real-estate developers, the corporations, the bland American chains. The levees are breaking. A few naked people in Astor Place are not going to stop the rush of water. The people who came here on a dollar and a dream figured out they could sell their dreams for a much higher number, and now we’re getting priced out. The only real thing left in this town is this fucking bar.”
