Eve in the City

by Thomas Rayfiel

  “Eve!”

  “I’m going upstairs.”

  “But you haven’t said no yet.”

  “Oh, so you knew I was going to say no the whole time.” That got me mad. “Then why did you even bother to ask?”

  “I assumed you would say no, at first.”

  “At first. And then what were you going to do?”

  He kissed me.

  I burned myself once. On a stove. It had electric coils. I was used to gas. I leaned back and put my hand down and, instead of jerking away, the way it would from a flame, my flesh just sank in. That’s what this reminded me of, how he took my wrists, pulled them behind my back, and burned himself into me. Before I had a chance to know what was happening.

  “Mingrelia,” he pronounced wetly, in my ear.

  “What?”

  “I am from Mingrelia. On the Euxine Sea.”

  I was pinned against the front of his car. His hands were all over me, but they couldn’t get in, which was his own fault. He had picked the outfit. I sighed and thought, we better go upstairs or I’m going to bend his precious hood ornament and then he’ll be furious. It’s funny, but I actually would have slept with him, right then and there, based on not damaging a little chrome statuette, if someone hadn’t cleared his throat. Loud. We tried ignoring it, but whoever it was did it again. Right next to us. To make us stop.

  An angry-looking man in a suit and tie was standing in front of my building. He was black, with a shaved head. I hadn’t noticed him when we parked.

  “Miss America?” he said.

  “What?”

  “You are,” he accused, looking right at me, “Miss America.”

  Oh, great. A lunatic.

  I pushed Viktor away. I’d had it. Hearing voices? No problem. Admiring giant photographs of a vagina? I could handle it. Marry a man I found physically and morally repulsive? Why not? All those things were kind of normal, when you thought about it. Part of growing up. But being called Miss America: for some reason, that was going too far.

  Even stranger than this crazy person standing there was Viktor’s reaction. Instead of going over and punching him, which is what I was afraid he would do, or maybe what I was hoping he would do, he just stood, shifting from one foot to the other.

  “It’s OK, it’s OK,” he said nervously.

  “No it isn’t. Did you hear what he just called me?”

  “Eve—”

  “I am not Miss America.”

  “Shh, Eve. Of course you are.”

  He put his arm around me. I knocked it off. Kissing was allowed. Gross pawing, even, was allowed. Hand-on-the-shoulder was not. Why?

  “It is politsiya,” he explained.

  “It’s who?”

  “I’m Detective Jourdain,” the man said. “New York Police Department. You reported witnessing a robbery last week?”

  Viktor was actually sweating. I had never seen anything like it before.

  “Oh. That was a mistake. I didn’t really see anything.”

  “We’ve been trying to get in touch with you, Miss America.”

  “I haven’t been answering my phone.”

  “Which is why I came in person. Couldn’t find you on the buzzer, either. So when I heard your friend here say ‘Eve,’ I took a chance that you were—”

  “It’s not ‘Eve America.’ I told that policeman I was ‘Native American.’ ”

  He looked at me.

  “Not that I am, really. That’s just what I told him. Of course, I guess we’re Native American. In a way.”

  He took out a pad.

  “. . . except him.”

  I nodded at Viktor, who was trying to slip back into his car.

  “Bye,” I called. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “Yah,” he said.

  He was playacting. He gave this stiff, phony wave. I leaned in the open window. He was having trouble with the key.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Think about what?”

  “You know.”

  “Oh. Right.” He’d forgotten. “Good luck.”

  Good luck?

  He drove off extra slow, like he didn’t want to get a ticket.

  The building had thick cement steps. Usually there were kids hanging out, but it was too early. This man—I still didn’t believe he was a detective—unbuttoned his jacket, sat, and started writing. I breathed in the warm air. Rotting garbage. That was the other smell of summer in the city. Coffee, butter, and the trash, before it was picked up, cooking in its cans.

  “These aren’t my clothes.”

  I looked down at my barmaid outfit. The one time I hadn’t changed.

  He kept writing.

  “I work nights. I just got off. That was my boss. He was giving me a ride home.”

  I waited. What was he writing?

  “You shouldn’t have come. That’s why I haven’t been answering my phone. I didn’t want to talk about it. I realized later I didn’t really see what I saw.”

  “. . . which was a man and a woman, and he was assaulting her?”

  “Well, no. I mean it wasn’t clear.”

  He went back to writing.

  In a minute I was going to start to giggle. I could feel this hysteria coming. Which was usually terrifying, but somehow, after what just happened with Viktor, hysteria seemed entirely appropriate. Plus, there was the fact that I was standing here, in gold hot pants, watching this guy scratch notes in a little pad, asking about a dream I had.

  “Excuse me, but are you a policeman or a psychiatrist?”

  “What did you see, Miss America?”

  “Stop calling me that!”

  “I apologize. America is a common name, in Spanish.”

  “It is?”

  “I didn’t mean to offend.”

  I felt this tightness in my chest. Now he was going to ask for my real name and it would start all over. The lies. The refusals. But he didn’t. He just looked up from the steps. His head seemed extra big because he had no hair. His eyes were bloodshot and his nose was bent to one side, like he’d been punched, long ago, and not healed right.

  “Tell me what you saw.”

  “Nothing, really. I had a dream.”

  “A dream?”

  “Kind of a waking dream. And then . . .”

  I thought about it.

  “I’m a crank!” I suddenly realized. It was exciting, this great discovery. It answered so many questions I’d been having about myself. “I’m one of those people who go to the police and report things that never happened. I’m sorry. And I got you out here so early, too, just to talk. I suppose that’s why we do it, because we’re lonely. We cranks.”

  “Just tell me what happened.”

  “How can I? When nothing did?”

  He looked at me.

  I was used to being stared at. Not because I was good-looking. The opposite. Because I was dressed like I was supposed to be good-looking, so there was this gap. Guys either tried making me into more than I was, tried pasting some face or body on top of mine, and then had this sad, disappointed look when it didn’t work, when I couldn’t support the weight of their fantasies, or, more often, they tried to make me as ugly as possible, magnifying my flaws until I was nothing but a big, red, seething mass of pimples, so they could feel superior to me, I guess. So they could say, She’s nothing special. At least that’s what I imagined they were thinking, if they were thinking anything at all. But this policeman looked at me in a completely different way.

  “Guess what? I just received a proposal of marriage.”

  “I heard.”

  “So what do you think? Should I say yes?”

  He closed the book and spread his palms on his knees, ready to get up.

  “I feel like I’m coming loose,” I added hurriedly. “Like the rest of the world is this carved panel in a church, and somehow I’ve broken off. Like I don’t have the wall behind me anymore.”

  He stopped. I was holding him there. Which I realized was my aim. B
ut I didn’t know what to do. I never did. I never knew why I wanted what I did, and when I got it, by accident, I never knew what to do next. Why I didn’t want him to go, for example. All I knew was that suddenly, desperately, I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted him to look at me that way again.

  “Maybe it’s because I’ve been staying up at night and sleeping in the daytime. So I don’t have this shared experience of an eight-hour sleep to lean back against. To connect me with everyone else. Instead I feel like I’m becoming a sculpture. Freestanding. Not just a bump in someone else’s view of things. You know what I mean?”

  I wanted him to say, Yes, he understood. Which was more than I did. But why him? He was nobody. Just this glaring man whose time I was wasting.

  “What did you say your name was again?”

  “Detective Jourdain.” He got up and dusted off the seat of his pants. I’d lost him. “I’m giving you my card. In case you remember.”

  “Remember what?”

  “Well, only you can say what it is you remember. Isn’t that right?”

  “I guess.”

  I watched him walk up to Broadway. I liked it that he wore a suit. It was unusual. The kind of men I met didn’t wear suits. I kept waiting for him to turn, to look back at me. Even after he was gone.

  “Waiter? There’s a roach in my martini.”

  You have got to stop drinking, I told myself. Especially before the date.

  I watched the bug struggle through freezing currents of gin, ribbony Gulf Streams of vermouth, toward the Isle of Lemon Peel, those yellow cliffs, always receding.

  “Something wrong, miss?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  A mark of authenticity, I decided. Tequila had its worm, a New York drink its roach. I bent low and felt tiny legs kick frantically against my lip.

  This was all wrong, from getting to the restaurant on time, going in and asking for him, to letting them seat me, pull out a table, have me balance on one of those uncomfortable cushioned benches. Then they walled me back in so I couldn’t move, so I had to wait. What was I doing here? I had wanted to borrow clothes, but none of the girls at work fit me. I wanted it to be someone else’s taste, I was so unsure of my own. Finally, I found a thrift shop that was open in the morning. It had dresses downstairs, hundreds of them, all black, and one light cotton jumpsuit, in red. I tried it on and knew. It wasn’t so much how it looked but how I felt. Like some kind of superhero. Which was what I needed now, a magic Shield of Confidence. I sat as the minutes passed, watching the flowers in the crystal vase, on the thick white tablecloth, wilt.

  He had come to the bar. I didn’t even recognize him at first. I just thought, There’s a guy who’s in the wrong place. But when Brandy went to lead him in, he didn’t follow. Instead he talked to her. She came over.

  “He says he’s a friend of yours.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  I thought she was joking. Then I saw. It was Horace.

  He didn’t sit. He didn’t make any small talk. He didn’t seem capable, or maybe he just sensed I couldn’t handle it. Standing there, at the foot of the stairs, he asked me if I wanted to have dinner some night. In front of everyone. I didn’t even say yes, just wrote down the name and address of the place where we were supposed to meet, totally flustered, like it was a drink order. He didn’t seem interested in the bar or what I was wearing, thank God. Not that I could tell. Mostly what I was aware of was this scarlet flush starting at my neck and going all the way up to the tips of my ears. And everyone’s eyes on me. When I finished writing, he smiled, said goodbye, and went back up the stairs. I watched his ass, which was a switch. His Air of Mystery. Except he really had one. The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than two minutes.

  That had definitely been the best part. That would definitely be the best part. Especially since it looked like he had kept right on going, up the stairs, and then back to SoHo or Paris or wherever hip New York City artists went when they wanted to stand a girl up on what technically might be considered her first and last date, ever.

  You could leave, a voice told me. How much does this drink cost? You could leave a twenty and get up. You’re still thin enough to squeeze out that passageway before the next table. You haven’t eaten anything yet. If you wait until you’ve eaten, then you’ll be trapped, forever.

  And where will she go? another voice asked.

  Well, I got the jumpsuit, I chimed in. That’s the most important part of this adventure. I could just go be in the jumpsuit. It doesn’t matter where. Someplace where I’m not the only person alone in the whole room.

  But you’re always the only person alone in the whole room. No matter where you are or who you’re with. So why is it bothering you now? Maybe because you’re scared you won’t be alone much longer, if you stay.

  If she stays much longer she’s going to fall asleep, which will be a really great way to spend her night off, passed out in the middle of a fancy restaurant with a fork up her nose.

  “You’re such an idiot,” I snarled.

  “Sorry I’m late.”

  “Oh. Hi.”

  I tried to stand. The table shoved me back down, making a really deep bruise across my thighs. Silverware clinked. The vase wobbled. I reached out and saw my glass was empty. Which is worse, went through my mind, to hallucinate a nonexistent cockroach or to swallow a real one? It seemed like a very key question, at the time.

  “I was working,” he said.

  There was this silence. I looked around for a conversational opening. Something witty that would explain who I was, that would hint at my hopes, my dreams.

  “I’ve been getting drunk.”

  “Good.”

  “Not really. It’s three o’clock in the morning for me. I’m totally disoriented. I mean, I was even before. I mean I would be anyway, being here, no matter when. With you.”

  He was dressed the same as before, slacks, shirt, a jacket. I know that sounds like nothing, but that’s the point. His casual was formal. Even though he couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, he was a grownup and I was in a red jumpsuit that, I suddenly noticed with horror, was see-through. He was a person and I was something else. That’s what was wrong. For starters. He was also way too handsome. His face was lean, like his body, but not dry or pinched. And when he looked at me, it was just too intense. He made me uncomfortable.

  “So your day off really begins later. Past midnight. And early tomorrow morning.”

  “I guess.”

  “So you never go out.”

  “Of course I go out.”

  “But not with people.”

  “Not with people,” I repeated. I hadn’t thought of it that way. But then what was this?

  “I’m honored.”

  “Just don’t expect me to be interesting.”

  He didn’t smile when I said things. He got them, he understood, but didn’t feel this need to react. He took them in, nodded, like it was another piece of the puzzle. He was serious.

  “It was the same for me, too. When I finally found where you worked.”

  “You said you asked someone.”

  “I asked about twenty people. All you said was an after-hours place near Times Square. That wasn’t the first night I tried to find you. When I got there I was wiped out. It was past 2 A.M.Just like it is for you, here. I could barely keep my eyes open.”

  He could now. I felt them working their magic. It was nicer this way, a slow softening instead of being paralyzed in the gallery, or frantic and embarrassed when he had come to the bar. Were those the only two times I had ever seen him? No, that was impossible. But when else could we have met? Oh, right. In a past life. I began to see what Crystal meant.

  “But why? Why were you looking for me?”

  “You left the Opening so fast.”

  “I had to. I was late.”

  “We didn’t get a chance to talk. You ran away.”

  “I did not. I’m just on a different schedule, that’s all. I’ll always be on a
different schedule.”

  He thought about that.

  “So we’ll never see each other at our best.”

  We were staring. It was really nice. I know “nice” sounds like such a silly word but that’s exactly how it felt. The more we agreed there were these reasons not to like each other, the more amazing it was that we did. When the waiter came over and asked what he wanted, he looked at my empty glass and said, “I’m drinking what she’s drinking.”

  Three children, I thought, spaced two years apart. Girl, boy, girl. No. Girl, girl, boy. That way the girls can help me take care of the boy. Because boys are harder.

  We walked back to his place. I was deliberately not noticing where we were going. It was such a relief not to have to think about that. Instead, part of me was high up, watching the two of us go down the street, this short person in a red jumpsuit trying to keep up with a tall guy’s long legs. The other part of me was intensely physical, blindly registering every time we brushed against each other and then flew apart. There was no in between. No day-to-day me.

  “He was raping her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was she a prostitute?”

  “It was just a dream. It didn’t really happen.”

  “A dream you had on the street. Walking. That you reported to the police.”

  “The dream police. This guy came with a book and wrote everything down.”

  “Maybe growing up in that place you were telling me about, that . . . Christian community, makes it hard for you to tell what you actually see, out here in the world.”

  “Or maybe I see things as they really are,” I said. “Because I haven’t been fed lies from the moment of my birth.”

  Maybe that’s what you like about me, I wanted to add.

  The city fell away. There were no more corner stores, no subway stations or one-block parks or Chinese restaurants. Trucks sat backed up to loading docks, idling, filling the air with exhaust. We came through the other side and I saw what I had never seen here before: a DEAD END sign. The road actually stopped. It had been so long since I’d gotten to the end of anything. There was a boarded-up building, smaller than the ones we had passed. It had two cast-iron domes on either side of a locked garage, to absorb the impact of a runaway truck. Or maybe a runaway horse cart, it looked so old. It was a heap of brick dust, held together by habit, cemented in decay. He led me up a tilting staircase to a hallway on the second floor, then into a room with windows all along one wall. There were fluorescent lights hanging overhead on thin chains. They took a while to turn on. When they finally did, with that metallic ping, I gasped.