Astrid Sees All

by Natalie Standiford

  “Here darlin’, let me give you a demonstration.” Bix shambled behind the counter to show Taffy how to brew a pot of coffee. I glanced at Wes’s stack of papers. A headline blared SPIKE IN OVERDOSES AS DANGEROUS STRAIN OF HEROIN HITS STREETS.

  “I’ve been thinking….” Wes tapped the Post with his pen. “The Underground needs some new features, something fun that brings readers back week after week. A horoscope column or something like that. Only hip, not corny.”

  “Or so corny it’s hip?” I said.

  “You are getting known around town, ‘Astrid.’ In certain circles, anyway. We could take advantage of that. Would you have any interest in writing a column for me?”

  One night in Jem’s company was already paying off.

  “I don’t know how to do horoscopes,” I said. “But I could write an advice column. People could send in their questions and problems, and I could use my movie ticket oracle to find the answers. It’s basically what I do at the club.”

  He closed his eyes, picturing it. “We’ll call it Astrid Predicts Your Future. Or Astrid Sees All.”

  “I’d like to try it.”

  “Can you write?”

  “Sure I can write.” Fake it, fake it.

  “Great. Whip up five hundred words or so and we’ll talk.”

  I finished my coffee and went for a walk, too jumpy and excited to sit still. I had a bit of news and I wanted to share it with someone. I headed down A to Houston, crossed over and skipped east to Clinton. Jem lived somewhere on Clinton, but I didn’t know the address. I looked up at the buildings, searching for clues, a window like the one in his painting Secret Sanctuary. Maybe I’d get lucky and catch him leaving his apartment. It was quieter down here below Houston, and dirtier, and scarier. I made it as far as Rivington before I turned around to go back.

  * * *

  Javier sat on our front steps, reading the mail. He handed me an electric bill addressed to Carmen. I climbed the stairs, half expecting to find her at the kitchen table drinking coffee. I’d pour myself a cup and say, “Guess what! Wes offered me a column!”

  Diego and Julio meowed when I walked in, begging for food. They paced like expectant fathers while I opened a can of 9Lives and spooned it into two bowls.

  I turned on the TV to pass the time before I had to leave for work, watching cartoons until the game came on. I heard a bumping sound in the hall and ran to the door, thinking Carmen had come back. I peeked through the peephole. The old lady with the clock was shuffling by in her slippers. I stayed still and quiet and didn’t open the door.

  I told myself Bix was right: we’d had a fight, so what. She’d be back soon.

  * * *

  Jem showed up at the club around two in the morning. I was getting ready to go home, calling it an early night.

  “Where’s Carmen this fine evening?”

  I wanted to ask him where he’d been the night before, but I bit my tongue.

  “I don’t know. We had a fight, and she left.”

  “What did you fight about?”

  I looked away. Did he really not know?

  “You girls. Always fighting.”

  “We never had a fight before.”

  “Before what?”

  He was being stubborn, refusing to admit he’d played any role in our troubles.

  “Are you going home? Why don’t I come with you?” he said. “Make sure you get there safely.”

  “What if Carmen is back?”

  “What if she is?”

  I shook my shoebox and pulled out a stub. The Big Chill.

  “Let’s go.”

  I was quiet and tense on the walk to our place. I wanted the escort, and I wanted to be with Jem, but I also wanted Carmen to be waiting when I got there. And if I walked in with Jem, she might really leave for good.

  At the door to my building, I thanked Jem for seeing me home but said I was tired and wanted to go to sleep.

  “What? Come on.”

  “Really, I’m tired.”

  “Okay.” He sauntered off. “See you when I see you.”

  Once inside the apartment I wished I hadn’t sent him away. Carmen wasn’t home. I could feel her absence in the very walls.

  * * *

  The next day I called her parents. Len answered. I got scared and hung up. I called again half an hour later and asked for her. “She doesn’t live here,” Betsy said. “Who is this?” When I went silent she said, “Phoebe? Is this Phoebe?” and I hung up again.

  I could taste the guilt in the back of my throat. I drank a glass of milk to get rid of it.

  Don’t worry, I told myself. She’s a city girl. She knew how to take care of herself. And anyway, she left me.

  I found Mitch on the floor, where she’d left it. I picked it up and put it on. It felt good and heavy, like armor.

  If she wanted me, she knew where to find me.

  21 A SACK OF POTATOES

  In the mornings, which were really the afternoons, Jem liked to trace messages on my back with the tip of his finger.

  I

  C

  U

  *

  U

  R

  A

  Q-T

  *

  I

  H-8

  2

  GO

  But he did go.

  It was a hot June. The heat was narcotic. At night I listened to people’s wishes and dreams and problems and fears and guessed what would happen to them in the future. Jem met me at the club around 2 a.m., hung out for a drink or two, and walked me home, where we stayed up until dawn, making love until daylight framed the window shades and we were finally ready to sleep. Jem sang to me in the blue morning light, songs he made up. “Tasty Phoebe yummy Phoebe Slurp you up like Dairy Queenie You give me the Phoebe-jeebies la la la la la…” The words changed from morning to morning, but it always ended with him licking my cheek instead of kissing me.

  We slept all day, getting up for breakfast at around two in the afternoon. After that he went home to work. He was painting a lot, using scavenged supermarket posters as canvases, hoping to score a solo show in the fall. A month of this routine, and I still hadn’t seen the inside of his apartment.

  I spent most evenings alone until ten or so, when I left for the club. On hot nights I went to the supermarket or the movies before work, to bask in the air-conditioning and to add to my ticket collection. I stroked the cats’ fur with ice cubes wrapped in a washcloth. I played children’s songs on my toy accordion. I watched the Yankees religiously, soothed by the Scooter’s voice.

  “What a nice-looking young lady,” he said as the camera caught a young woman in the stands. “She reminds me of that old song, ‘A Pretty Girl Is Like a Memory.’ ”

  Bill White: “Scooter, I think that’s ‘Melody.’ ”

  Scooter: “How do you know her name is Melody?”

  I wrote down the exchange. Maybe if I collected enough good Scooter quotes Dad would come back to hear them.

  * * *

  Every day, I asked the oracle, “Where is Carmen?”

  Silkwood. Smithereens. Heaven Can Wait.

  One afternoon I pulled Diner. I left the apartment immediately, checking every diner in the neighborhood—Veselka, Odessa, Kiev, Little Poland, Second Avenue Deli. No Carmen.

  Nashville. Mean Streets. Last Tango in Paris.

  Carnal Knowledge. The Last Picture Show. Midnight Cowboy.

  * * *

  On Mondays, Plutonium was closed, so Jem took that night off too. We biked to Chinatown one muggy evening, the hazy sun setting over SoHo. I loved to see him riding his bike down the street, long legs angled like a grasshopper’s. I sat behind him on the banana seat; he pedaled standing up while I clung to his waist. He rode recklessly, darting in and out of traffic, cutting off cars, running red lights. I wasn’t afraid. Let a truck smash into us, I thought, let us die in a festival of blood and glass… I felt reckless too. I didn’t care if I died, and at the same time, I was sure nothing could
hurt me.

  We didn’t crash; we didn’t die. We made it to Grand Street in one piece, two people fused onto a bike. We bought a pound of shrimp at an outdoor fish market, and some potatoes and vegetables at the stand across the street. We stopped at a liquor store for wine, then rode home through the Lower East Side, gray and grimy and beautiful in the dusk. From my precarious seat on the back of the bike I scanned every face we passed, people strolling down the street, people sitting on steps, people dancing in the stream of a fire hydrant, but none of them was her.

  I sat on the lid of the tub while Jem sautéed the broccoli and potatoes, singing and rapping out beats on my thighs with a spatula and a spoon. The shrimp sizzled and pinked in the pan. I hopped off the tub from time to time to change the record. When supper was ready, I lit candles and opened a second bottle of cheap cold white wine. We ate until our chins shone with oil, until our bellies popped, storing nutrients for the coked-up club nights ahead. We had cherry Popsicles for dessert, licking the red juice as it melted in tiny rivulets down our knuckles. Then he tugged on my wrist and we drifted into the bedroom, leaving the dirty dishes for later.

  I tried to keep my eyes open while he rode me, stay open… open… open… but always a wave crashed over my head and forced my eyes to close. With the wave came a blinding light that flashed like an oncoming headache, or like those blissful moments when sleep overtakes you and you’re powerless to stop it… like that, only sharper and sweeter. Then I got up and stood in front of the fan, letting it dry the sweat on my chest. Other nights I fell helplessly asleep, drugged by pleasure and guilt. It was too hot. I wished the summer would never end.

  On nights when Jem wasn’t with me, I walked. I walked alone for hours, taking the long way to work. No matter how hot it was, I would throw Carmen’s Mitch jacket over whatever I was wearing and walk. One night in late June I stopped to look at a new flyer—a new Amelia, this one named Yolanda Fermin, eighteen, a runaway. A few weeks later, Yolanda’s flyer had faded, but a fresh flyer appeared just below: Linda Suggs, twenty-one. A junkie, I thought, studying her scarred and hollow cheeks. The flyers scared me, but not enough to stop me from walking alone, night after night, looking for trouble, tempting fate. I felt that something bad was coming, but all I could do was say, Come and get me. I had my armor. Mitch would protect me. I only regretted that Carmen didn’t have Mitch to protect her, wherever she was.

  * * *

  One Wednesday night in July, at around eleven, I stepped outside the club for a breath of air and a chat with Zu. Arrayed below me, down three steps and flooding into the street, the bizarrely dressed mob clamored for Zu’s attention, chanting “Zu!” and “Looie!” in an endless loop that, after a while, sounded like people booing or cows mooing.

  Zu clutched her clipboard and sighed. “It gets old, you know?” Over her leather pants she wore a T-shirt on which she’d stenciled DIE YUPPIE SCUM.

  I lit a cigarette. Aviva B. and her entourage rolled up in a baby-blue Cadillac convertible. “Here comes the It Girl.”

  Zu sneered. “Trust-fund phony.” But the crowd parted, the chants of “Zu!” and “Looie!” changing briefly to “Aviva B.!” Several people attached themselves to her train, claiming they were with her, but it was obvious who belonged and who didn’t. Zu unhooked the velvet rope for Aviva and Jacky and their friends while Looie banished the hangers-on to purgatory.

  “Zuuuuu!”

  “Loooooie!”

  “Hi, Zu honey.” Aviva and Jacky kissed Zu on both cheeks. Aviva shot me a quick, dismissive look—daggers. Then they tramped away through the lobby.

  “What did I do?”

  Zu shrugged. “She’s usually so sweet. Fakey, insipid… but sweet.”

  A siren wailed. A police car zoomed by, on its way to an emergency somewhere else. I stamped out my cig with my combat boot. “I better go back in and earn my five bucks.”

  Inside, the display windows illustrated July’s theme, Martyrdom. In the second window, a model played St. Sebastian: tied to a tree, naked except for a loincloth, his torso punctured with arrows. Andy and Bianca were tapping on the window, trying to make him laugh. Andy borrowed Bianca’s lipstick and wrote on the glass—backward, so St. Sebastian could read it—DON’T STAND STILL LIKE THAT FOR SO LONG IT’S NOT GOOD FOR YOU.

  “You know,” Andy said, “Sebastian is the patron saint of athletes.”

  In the ladies’ lounge, Bix was holding court on the couch in the corner. Five people were lined up near my table, waiting for my services. I greeted them, sat down, and did some readings. I took another cigarette break, and Bix crooked a finger at me. “C’mere, dollbaby. I need you.”

  On Wednesday nights Bix hosted a talent contest called “Devil’s Bell.” People volunteered to perform in front of a panel of judges. A large bell dominated the stage; when an act was so abominable the judges could tolerate no more, they rang the bell; they’d ripped off the idea from The Gong Show. Bix and a drag queen named Miss Rhea Quaint were two of the judges. The third judge, a DJ named Ilmar, hadn’t shown up.

  “You want me to be a judge? I’m not a…” I groped for a word that described what Bix and Miss Rhea Quaint were. Not stars, exactly. “…personality.”

  “Sure y’are. You’re a famous fortune-teller. I saw your picture in the paper once. Come on, honeypie, I’ll make it worth your time.”

  People booed when Bix introduced me—“World-famous fortune-teller Astrid the Star Girl!” But then, that crowd enjoyed booing.

  The first contestants called themselves Jesus and the Singing Nun. The nun was a man in a black habit who sang “Is That All There Is?” while a guy dressed as Jesus on the cross—to go with the martyrdom theme, I guess—danced around him. Having his hands tied to a cross made Jesus’s dance moves kind of awkward. I gave them a three out of five because I like that song. Bix and Miss Rhea both scored them a two. At least they didn’t get the bell.

  The next act was called Bonky Roulette Costarring Binky. Two girls wearing tutus, Binky and Bonky, lined up ten squirt guns on a table. Nine of the guns were filled with water, they informed us, but one was filled with ketchup, and they didn’t know which one. Binky chose a gun at random, pointed it at her temple, and squeezed the trigger. Water. Bonky took her turn: water again. They continued until the seventh gun sprayed ketchup all over Binky’s face.

  The crowd loved this act. Miss Rhea gave them a four and Bix a five. “Binky and Bonky are boring,” I declared, in an attempt to be controversial, and gave them a one. The crowd booed me again.

  Next, a guy dressed as a baby—“Baby Gary”—recited an obscene monologue about his mother while jerking off in his giant diaper. This was my limit. I stood. The crowd screamed. I took a step toward the bell. They screamed louder. Baby Gary groaned. I ran to the bell and pulled the clapper: BONG.

  Baby Gary was escorted from the stage by a guy in a devil costume. The crowd jeered Baby Gary, they jeered me for stopping him, they jeered Bix for not stopping me. Bix, wearing a powder-blue tux, announced the winners: Binky and Bonky. Their prize: a strip of drink tickets. Show over.

  Bix paid me for my judicial services in coke. “Bix,” I protested, “coke is great but I need money.”

  “What do you need money for? You’d only spend it on coke anyway.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. I’m saving up.”

  “What are you saving up for?”

  “Long story.”

  Ilmar suddenly showed up and demanded his payment. “Fight it out between the two of you,” Bix said.

  “You can have it all for a hundred dollars,” I told Ilmar.

  “Forget it,” Ilmar said. “I don’t have that kind of scratch.”

  By then it was two thirty. I did a sweep through the club; no sign of Jem yet. Ilmar and I went to the bathroom and did some of the coke off a toilet-paper dispenser. He was the third Ilmar I’d met that summer. Strange how everybody seemed to be named Ilmar lately. I bought a pack of cigarettes from Ruby. I forgot about selling the c
oke. Ilmar and I went to the bar to get drinks. I asked the bartender if he’d seen Jem; he hadn’t. Ilmar asked me if I wanted to dance, so we hopped up and down on the dance floor for a while. Still no Jem. Three twenty-five—he was never this late. Ilmar and I plopped down in the Gold Lounge and did more coke. We went to the hall to look at the window displays. In one of them, the Singing Nun was giving Jesus a blow job. I asked Ilmar if he thought that was a real blow job and he said yes he believed it was. I got tired of looking at that and moved on to the next window, where a blonde in a corset and stockings was smoking a cigarette and reading a Casper comic book. “How is that ‘martyrdom’?” I said.

  “It must be getting late,” Ilmar said. “Let’s do more coke.”

  We returned to the bathroom and finished the coke, and then I saw a red drop splatter on the floor and another one on my dress, and then my nose started flowing with blood. “Tilt your head back,” Ruby instructed, grabbing a roll of toilet paper. People made way for me and cleared the couch so I could lie down, but my nose would not stop bleeding. I ran through a whole roll of toilet paper in a few minutes and started feeling dizzy. “Does someone have a dime?” Miss Rhea Quaint shouted, and I thought she was going to call an ambulance or something but she needed it for the tampon dispenser. She unwrapped a junior tampon and stuffed the tip into my bloody nostril.

  Plutonium was getting ready to close for the night. People drifted out on their way to an after-hours club in Tribeca. I couldn’t sit up without spurting blood everywhere, so Bix stayed with me, my head resting on his lap.

  “I knew something bad was going to happen,” I said.

  “You’re going to be all right,” Bix said.

  “Not this.” I meant Jem. I’d let myself be vulnerable. Stupid, stupid. I’d learned this lesson in college. Why did I have to keep relearning it?

  “You ever shoot up?” Bix asked me.