I tried an hour later. The machine again. “Hey Jem, call me, please. It’s important.”
I waited by the phone, but he didn’t call back. I tried a few more times, hoping he’d pick up. “Ordinary Pain” stuck in my head all day long. Late that night, I left one more message: “Jem, I have trichomoniasis. That means you have it too. You need to go to the doctor and get meds. And tell anyone else you’ve slept with to get checked. This is Phoebe, by the way. ’Bye.” I hoped Esphyr would hear it—if he let her into his apartment. I assumed he did. He’d make an exception for her, to show her his paintings.
I stayed home from work and didn’t go out for three days. I felt lousy. I couldn’t imagine talking to strangers about their lives, pretending to care. I needed rest. And now I had time to work on writing a column for the Underground. Over the course of the summer Wes had asked me if I had anything to show him, but I’d been too busy partying and screwing Jem. I had a new plan: I’d work hard, not party so much, and make a name for myself—or at least, a name for my alter ego—with Astrid Sees All. Astrid would be famous, but disguised. Everyone, and no one, would know who she was.
I sat down at the kitchen table to write. Julio walked back and forth over my notebook. I petted him and he curled up in my lap. Diego meowed. It was nine o’clock in the evening, the hour when I normally started dressing for the club.
I heard Gergo’s door shut and his footsteps trip down the stairs. The downstairs door slammed. Then a cottony silence.
I glanced at the phone. I’d already checked twice to see if the ringer was on. What the hell, it couldn’t hurt to check again.
The ringer was on.
Back at the table, I tapped my pen on the metal spiral spine of the notebook. I wrote:
ASTRID SEES ALL
By Astrid the Star Girl
….
If only Jem would call back, I could have one final talk with him, tie up loose ends, make sure he understood the harm he’d done to me, and then forget about him. When he kept me hanging like this it made me obsess over him more than ever.
My name is Astrid. I’m a fortune-teller.
For inspiration, I pulled three ticket stubs: American Graffiti. The Seduction of Joe Tynan. Smokey and the Bandit.
I stared at them for a long time, trying to find some meaning in them. I shuffled them around. I thought about the actors who’d starred in these movies. Alan Alda. Burt Reynolds. Richard Dreyfuss. What did it all mean? I couldn’t put anything together.
All the drinking and coke I’d done had addled my brain. I definitely had to cut down, especially on the coke. Too expensive anyway.
I closed my eyes and tried to project images of the future onto a screen in my brain, but it remained blank: a cone of colorless light, swimming with dust motes.
I kept my eyes closed. I kept watching the screen. Finally, a figure stepped onto the screen and began to dance. “I’ll give you fish, I’ll give you candy….” She was only a shadow, a silhouette, but I’d have known that angular face anywhere.
There was a knock at the window. I opened my eyes. A knock… at the window. On the third floor. Someone on the fire escape?
I crossed the living room and looked out. No one on the fire escape. Across the street, the park was quiet and still.
Let’s go to the window and see if we see anyone as unhappy as we are.
I returned to the kitchen table. A few minutes later, I was sure I heard another knock on the window. But no one was there. I told myself an insect must be trying to bash its way inside, but I didn’t see any insects big enough to make a knocking sound. Again my eyes were drawn to the park; this time I saw a figure moving slowly through the shadows between the streetlamps.
After an hour, I gave up on the column and switched on the TV. The Yankees were down two-to-one in the third, against Toronto. I picked up my Scooter bat and held it in my pajama-clad lap. It was one of those nights when the Scooter wasn’t paying attention to the game.
“I don’t like this indoor stadium, White. The stale air makes my head shrink. Look, the mike is getting bigger….”
I wrote down, My head is shrinking. The mike is getting bigger.
Around eleven, Zu knocked on the door. “What are you doing in your pajamas? Aren’t you going to work?”
“Did you knock on my window a while ago?”
“On your window?” She looked confused. “I haven’t seen you around, so I thought I’d check on you.”
“I’ve been sick.”
“Poor honey! Toby asked where you were. I’ll tell him. Are you okay?”
“I’ll be okay in a few days.”
“All right. If you need anything, just knock on our door. But not before noon. Unless it’s an emergency, of course.”
* * *
Just before bed, I shook up my shoebox and chanted, “Dear Oracle, give me guidance.” I pulled out one ticket: What’s Up, Doc?
Nineteen seventy-two. Ryan O’Neal and Barbra Streisand. Dad took me to see it, a matinee one Saturday when I was eleven—a rare outing for just the two of us. Mom stayed home with Laurel, who had a cold.
We drove to a mall in Catonsville, in the suburbs, to see the movie. I loved it. Barbra Streisand kept causing trouble for Ryan O’Neal, which somehow made him fall in love with her and leave his uptight fiancée. Afterward Dad asked me if I wanted to get something to eat, and I said yes. We drove to a strange little mill town on a hillside. My memory of the place is blurry, but I remember thinking it looked like something out of Where the Lilies Bloom, a book I’d read about four orphans in Appalachia who try to hide the fact that their father has died so they won’t be separated and put into foster homes.
“This place is supposed to have the best cheesecake in the city,” Dad said. “Even better than Little Italy.” One of his patients had told him about it. We climbed a rickety staircase to a restaurant high on the hill, where we ate spaghetti and cheesecake, which was indeed delicious. Dad and I stood out in our plain afternoon clothes; the other customers were dressed for a Saturday night in flouncy dresses and Western shirts. An old lady played polkas and waltzes on her mighty Wurlitzer and everybody danced. Dad and I danced too. I knew how to dance the polka from ballet class, so I taught Dad how to do it. I didn’t want to go home, back to practical Mom and snuffling Laurel with her cold.
I hadn’t thought of that day in many years. I went to the window to look for Dad. I looked and looked. I waved my sheaf of Scooter notes to entice him.
* * *
That night I descended into a strange state, a kind of delirium. I saw visions, hallucinations. I dreamed of waist-high snow as soft and warm as sand. I saw the Yankees hitting run after run, smacking balls out of the stadium, sending them out into space, while Scooter said, “What a moon, White Beautiful full moon. Unbelievable. Look, you can see Texas!”
I opened my eyes and found myself staring at the Dr. Seuss crack in the ceiling. I blinked once, twice, three times…. Was I awake? I appeared to be. But everything looked strange. Where had that hole in the wall come from? For a few seconds I couldn’t remember who I was or where I was. I felt like a kid who’d stumbled into a time machine and landed in this room, years into the future. Why had the time machine sent me here? Why this room, why this neighborhood, why this summer?
My mind cleared gradually, like a Polaroid developing. I was not a kid. This was not the future, this was now. I was twenty-three, I lived alone in the East Village with two cats, and Carmen was gone. I had to pee badly and eased myself out of bed.
When I came out of the bathroom I noticed a postcard on the kitchen table. The picture on the front was a cartoon of Elmer Fudd. Carmen had found the card in a junk shop and given it to me. On the back was a message in my handwriting.
Dear Mom,
I feel like I’m drifting endlessly through space, past planets and asteroids and moons, but never landing anywhere. I’m full of doubt. Sometimes I’m convinced that I will find love, and a purpose, and I feel strong, sure
that all of my doubts were delusions. But before long I’m convinced that the certainty was a delusion and only the doubt is real.
I’m falling through the universe. I don’t know what’s real and what’s not.
I didn’t remember writing this. But I recognized the spacey, unmoored feeling.
I threw the postcard away.
* * *
The next afternoon, Zu asked me if I’d like to come up to her place for tea. I got dressed and climbed to the fifth floor. Their door was painted raspberry pink. Marie-Claude let me in. Their apartment was beautiful, like a fantasy harem—everything painted pretty colors, gauzy curtains between the rooms and scarves over the lamps to soften the light. Zu and I sat on velvet cushions and drank mint tea while Marie-Claude pinned fabric on a dress dummy. In one corner they’d set up an altar to the goddess Isis, with candles and incense and offerings of jewelry and candy. Nearby, a parakeet fluttered in a cage.
“We let him out to fly around at least once a day,” Zu said. “I’m glad you’re taking care of Oswald’s cats. When’s he getting out?”
“I don’t know. I hope never.”
She looked taken aback.
“Because then I’ll have to move out.”
“Sure.”
“I never met him. Is he nice?”
She shrugged. “He ran with a different crowd.” Perhaps she was thinking of Atti, because she added, “Where’s your roommate been?”
“We had a fight.”
“Oh. That’s terrible. Can you afford the rent by yourself?”
“Not really.”
“Didn’t she work at Lethe?” Marie-Claude said. “You know that girl Taffy? I heard she disappeared. Like those other girls. On the posters?”
“Shit,” I said. “Wes Temple calls them the Amelias. After Amelia Earhart.”
“What about that girl Katinka?” Zu said. “Do you know her? Kind of a weird girl, skinny?”
“Is she missing too?”
“I don’t know. She used to come into the club once in a while, but I haven’t seen her in weeks.”
“Maybe she went back to Germany,” Marie-Claude said.
“I think she was from Sweden,” Zu said. “Or was it Switzerland?”
“What do you think is happening to those girls?” I asked.
“Maybe they’re OD’ing?” Zu said. “I keep hearing about this bad dope.”
“But if that’s true, why hasn’t anyone found their bodies?” Marie-Claude said.
“Maybe someone’s kidnapping them,” Zu said.
“I doubt that,” Marie-Claude said.
“Have you ever seen that guy who walks around with a rooster on his shoulder?” Zu said. “He’s creepy.”
“I saw him a few weeks ago,” I said. “He asked me to buy him some potatoes.”
“Weird,” Marie-Claude said.
“Weirdos have to eat too,” Zu said.
I felt uneasy. All summer with no word from Carmen. Why had I assumed she was okay?
“How’d you hear about Taffy?” I asked.
“Bix told me. He knows everything.”
“I like Bix,” Zu said. “He lets it all out. He has no shame—in a good way.”
“He’s so unhealthy,” Marie-Claude said. “Have you looked at his skin up close? It’s like corrugated cardboard.”
“He’s had a hard life,” Zu said. “Things other people would be ashamed to admit, he comes right out and tells you.”
“Shame is very toxic,” Marie-Claude agreed.
I thought of Carmen, of the way she’d taken care of Atti when he was sick. He exasperated her, he broke her heart, but she wasn’t ashamed of him.
Maybe Bix knew something about Carmen, what had happened to her or where she might be hiding. “I’m coming back to work tonight,” I told Zu.
“Oh good,” Zu said. “Bix misses you.”
24 GOING UPTOWN
As soon as I got to the club I asked for Bix. He was away for the night, shooting a short film in New Jersey.
I had saved $875. I stayed at my Astrid table all night, leaving only for short breaks, determined to get that last $125. When I had no customers I cased the lounges for people standing alone, or couples not speaking to each other. “It’s only five dollars,” I said, taking them by the hand and leading them to my table. “Only five dollars for an answer to your most burning questions.”
By 3:30 a.m., I had earned $130. Enough, at last.
The next day I took my briefcase full of money, a thousand dollars in small bills, and rode the 6 train uptown to Fifty-Ninth and Lex. I rarely ventured uptown anymore and when I did it looked like a planet inhabited by powdered, coiffed aliens with bland faces.
My heart pounding, I walked to the maisonette where Ivan’s office had been, on East Fifty-Sixth Street. I was sure I had remembered the right address, but when I looked for his name beside the door it wasn’t there. I went inside anyway, clutching my briefcase. With a shudder I recognized the waiting room, three doors leading to three different doctors’ offices, guarded by a receptionist’s desk. One patient occupied the waiting area, an old man reading Field & Stream. The receptionist looked up warily.
“May I help you?”
“I’d like to see Dr. Bergen please.”
“Who?”
“Dr. Bergen?”
“He isn’t here.” She had a high forehead, a pinched mouth and a paisley scarf knotted around her goose-like neck.
“Do you know where he is?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
She rested her eyes on the phone as if expecting it to ring. It didn’t. “He won’t be back. He doesn’t keep an office here anymore.”
I looked around in confusion. There was his door, the third door, the one he had come out of with a snifter of brandy in his hand. I pointed to it. “That’s his office right there.”
“It used to be. Now it’s occupied by Dr. Peters.”
I hadn’t anticipated this. He was gone?
“Do you know where he went?”
She shook her head and ostentatiously flipped through an appointment book on her desk. “I’m sorry. No idea. He’s been gone for several months now.”
I felt like grabbing her by the knot of her scarf and shouting, Tell me where he is or I’ll wring your stupid goosey neck! But she didn’t know. I said, “Thank you,” and went outside to light a cigarette and think this over. He’d moved his office, that was all. Surely he was working somewhere else in the city.
I found a phone booth and dialed information, asking for the address of Ivan Bergen, MD. The operator had no listings under that name.
Had I imagined him? My uptown life, the months before my father died, felt distant and hazy. Maybe they hadn’t actually happened. Maybe I’d dreamed them.
But I didn’t believe that. I hadn’t felt all that pain and saved up all this money for nothing. His pied-à-terre was two blocks away. Maybe I could find him there.
I carried my briefcase to Fifty-Eighth Street, reflexively glancing back to see if anyone was following me. The streets were busy now on a weekday afternoon, crowded with shoppers and office workers. So different from the haunted street I remembered.
The doorman stopped me as I entered Ivan’s sleek building. “I’m looking for Ivan Bergen, 27A,” I said.
A shadow crossed his face, as if he were trying to remember something. “Oh—Dr. Bergen. He hasn’t been around for months.”
“Did he move out? Do you know where he went?”
“Sorry, miss. No idea. I don’t think he moved out, he just hasn’t been around.”
I stood on the sidewalk, unsure what to do next. People hurried past me, looking preoccupied. I envied them; they had someplace to go, and they knew where it was. The briefcase felt heavy and ridiculous. I found a Chase Manhattan Bank on Fifth Avenue and went inside. I changed the piles of ones and fives into a slender stack of ten hundred-dollar bills. I folded them into the pocket of my j
acket—the “Mitch” pocket, as I thought of it, the one with pink stitching. I dumped the empty briefcase in a trash can. Then I walked all the way home, three and a half miles, to ease myself off this alien planet and back to the familiar, comforting world of weirdos.
25 AVIVA B.
“Give me another bump.”
Bix was sitting on the lid of the toilet in the stall he called his office, and I perched on his knee. He tapped out a tiny hill of coke onto his fist. I applied my straw and sucked it into my sinuses. My brain thrilled, a dog whose master had finally come home. Carmen was gone, and Jem was gone, and now even Ivan—my dream of revenge, my chance to get rid of the heaviness I still felt deep inside—was gone. Of the three, the only one I wanted back was Carmen.
I asked Bix if he had any idea where Carmen could be, and he said no. “Maybe the park, if she’s using. But you shouldn’t go into the park.”
“But if she’s in there…”
“If she’s in there, what good would it do?” He bounced his meaty thigh. “Get off, my leg’s falling asleep.”
I switched to the other knee, but he said, “No, dollbaby, go dance or something. Don’t you have customers waiting?”
“I can’t go out there.”
“Yes, you can.”
“One more bump.”
“Take a rest, sweetie pie. You know how you get, with your sensitive little schnoz, like that scene in The Shining, you know, with the blood pouring out of the elevator?”
“I’ll pay you. I’ve got money on me somewhere….” I patted my pocket and realized I still had the thousand dollars with me. I pulled out the money and waved it in front of Bix’s nose. “See?”
He followed the money with his eyes. “Put that away.” He stuffed the bills back into my pocket and kicked open the stall door. “Look. They’re waiting for you.”
Six people dawdled around my booth. One of them was Aviva B. A guy with platinum dreads said, “Astrid, I need help.”
Astrid Sees All Page 19
