But the sleep I finally fell into left me groggy. It went on too long. I kept struggling with nightmares, trying to untangle myself, sinking deeper, until finally I sank so deep I came out the other side, fell out the bottom of a hole, and was sitting, shivering, on a mattress, on the floor of a bare studio, in Manhattan, in the dark.
I lay back down. It was a relief to know everything that had gone before wasn’t real. I felt it fade, and waited to make out what really was, the facts that didn’t disappear with the dream, dim outlines at first, that got stronger and more distinct, that kept growing. Facts like Horace. His smile, his smell. The way his long endless body had fallen so slowly. Where was he? It occurred to me he wasn’t here, where he should be, next to me. In the bathroom? I waited, strained my ears, but heard nothing. I got up and walked around. It was two in the morning. On the counter, next to the little refrigerator, was a note. I didn’t want to turn on a light, so I held it up to the windows, which were lit by the highway. It said he had to go out, to an Opening. I squinted, looking for another sentence, one that told me to wait, that he’d be back. My eyes went down to that space between the last word and his name, looking where he should have written “love,” but hadn’t.
He was gone.
I couldn’t believe it. It seemed like the most basic etiquette to stay, to work, or read, or eat dinner while I was lying there passed out, but not to let me wake up alone, feeling for his beautiful warmth, having my hand reach farther and farther, still not finding him, until I was caressing hopefully, pathetically, the cold paint of the floor. Well, I could wait him out. What did he think, that I was just going to disappear? He had turned his painting to the wall so I wouldn’t see. Like I cared. I cared about him, not what he did. I was infatuated. I could still feel him, feel his absence. It was like those drug ads, warning you’d be hooked “after just one puff.” And he hadn’t even bothered to stay with me, to wake me up, to kiss me good-bye.
My attention strayed past the window, to the night. It was strange to see so far. The two places I spent time in, the bar and my apartment, didn’t have real windows. Not the kind you could look out of. They showed a brick wall or travel posters. Here, there were cars. It never stopped, the buzz saw of traffic. Past a fence topped with barbed wire, in the river itself, people walked on water. I squinted, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, and looked again. People. Walking on water. A crowd. A Scene, at 2 A.M.If I turned on the light, they would vanish. Everything out there would turn black. It’s what I was going to do, turn on the lights and wait for Horace. How much longer could he be? He was probably on his way right now. Then I realized his coming back scared me more than his being away. What if he didn’t want me here? What if he had left because he was hoping I would go? Of course! He thought I was still working. He assumed I was at the bar by now. The certainty I felt a few hours before flipped over into doubt.
No, I thought. He loves me. Maybe he doesn’t know he loves me, yet, but once I explain it to him . . .
Who were these figures moving, dancing it looked like, in space, their feet not touching the ground? It was only because I was letting the night seep in this way that my consciousness was getting swept back out with it. It’s just leftover dream, I told myself, and kept waiting for it to fade, catch up with its fellow hallucinations and disappear, but instead what I saw overtook plain depressing reality until I couldn’t look at anything else. It was a spit of paved-over landfill in the middle of the Hudson River. People walked hand in hand, stopping to socialize, to chat, then moving on. Others rode bicycles; one, a unicycle. This gorgeously dressed woman stood perfectly still. I saw a man pause, exchange a few words with her, then the two turned and disappeared down the steep bank, past a crumbling layer of blacktop to what must have been the rubbly shore, out of sight. I stared after them for a moment, then watched another woman dance. She writhed, arms up, feet stamping. In appreciation? Celebration? Or the desperate urge to escape? People walked by, unnoticing. She was as much a feature of the landscape as a tree, except there were no trees. This spot, this one stretched-out block, existed beyond some urban timberline. It was pure community, with no buildings or cars, no landscape other than the city dwellers themselves. Nature had been banished and this was what remained: a man, stripped to the waist, wearing tiny shorts, gleaming even in the weak light. Muscles had taken him over, popping twisting ropes, mounds like tumors. They walked him in a clumsy, roly-poly stroll, pressing limbs that had lost any will of their own. A bodybuilder. I was so repulsed I wondered if I was secretly attracted. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Couldn’t, that is, until I saw a beautiful girl go by on Roller Blades. She sped past everyone, winking in and out of the crowd, this ripple on the surface, people stepping back to where they had been, closing in behind. She was in a white tank top, heading uptown, pushing against the ground, digging to go even faster. I followed her until my head knocked against the window frame.
I want to go down there, I realized. I wanted to be there.
I wheeled around and with this burst of energy looked for my clothes. But they were pathetic. The hot pants and the leotard and the stockings. They were so high school. I couldn’t believe I actually wore them in broad daylight. No wonder Horace took them off. It wasn’t that he was attracted to me, he was just offended by my incredibly poor fashion sense. Undressing me was really this criticism. What could I wear instead? I wasn’t home, and even if I was, what I had there wasn’t much better. Something led me to the bottom drawer of his dresser. I don’t know if it was instinct or if I saw stuff peeking out. It didn’t want to open at first, but that just made me try harder.
“Come on, give up your secrets,” I grunted, while another part of me said, Eve, you’re talking to furniture. With a final yank, I fell back and saw piles of clothes spring up.
Marron’s clothes, I confirmed, touching the material. This was her special drawer. I could barely make out, in the dark, what they looked like, but I knew they were expensive. I reached deeper. She had underwear and socks. Everything. I put on slacks and a silk blouse. There were even shoes and, amazingly, they fit. I ran across the floor, still not knowing what I was doing, not consciously, then stopped at the door. My knife. I went back, squatted on the floor, feeling with both hands, and found it. I found the button, too. The one I’d ripped off his shirt. The pants were crushed velvet.
Why didn’t I buy comfortable shoes? I asked myself, walking, clicking smartly along. Why didn’t I buy clothes like this? Why did I always go to thrift shops or take what was handed down to me like that’s what I deserved? Why didn’t I have tastes of my own? They had tastes, the people on the river. Maybe not ones I shared, but they had tastes and a style and they were alive in a way I wanted to be, in the way I pictured myself being when I came here. Instead, I had gotten sidetracked, gotten involved with these types who weren’t worth my attention. I was quaking with excitement. I had to get across. To that magical place. It was the answer to my search, the distilled essence of city life.
From Horace’s windows it looked so close, but down on the street the very shape of things curved me from my goal again and again. I kept walking. There had to be a way. I wanted to be cool, for once. I wanted to promenade up and down this narrow strip, an island off an island, live a weightless, frictionless life. The eagerness stayed with me long after the impossibility began to sink in. My momentum was carrying me past where it could possibly be. I should go back, but back to what? Horace’s empty studio? Press my nose against the glass again? I couldn’t. I was locked out. Try crossing the highway and get run over, flattened by some drunken clubgoer on his way back to New Jersey? Plunge into the polluted water of the Hudson and die of some horrible disease?
Where are you? I felt like shouting.
I had seen Paradise, but there was no way to get there, no bridge, no tunnel, no magic carpet. I kept walking. It’s all I was good at. I was always walking and never getting anywhere. I could feel the sadness and terror of my daily existence itching to return. If
only I could marry Viktor and go on the honeymoon with Horace. Yes! That was perfect. It answered each of my problems with the other. It made it clear that, even though we were getting married, I wasn’t going to be Viktor’s wife, and it was a way of reassuring Horace that whatever we did wasn’t serious, wouldn’t lead to anything, because I was already taken, spoken for, in the eyes of the world. So it made me safe, not a threat. I could get a husband and a lover and still stay me, not lose myself in either one of them. If I couldn’t get to Paradise, I would make my own Paradise, right here, with what I had.
All I needed to do now was come up with a plan. To think. I walked faster.
“Male sexuality is binary. It is either on or off. Mostly on. A switch. Women operate along a spectrum, like the tuner on a radio. So for you, love is different. It is perhaps harder to determine. Like finding an obscure transmission. Searching along the dial.”
“How do you know? Have you ever been in love?”
“I have loved every woman I ever sleeped with.”
“So it doesn’t mean much, your love.”
“It means everything, at the time. But as I said, it is on, then off.”
He made a gesture in the air. Flicking a switch.
“That’s not love, Viktor.”
“Who are you to tell me what I feel is not love? When I feel it, it is the most intense sensation known. Maybe stronger, more pure, than what you feel.”
I was lying in his lap, looking up while he drove.
“Then, if you’ll pardon me for asking, how come we’ve never done it? I mean, if supposedly you’ve wanted to so much?”
“ ‘Done it,’ ” he mocked. “ ‘Make love.’ ‘Have sex.’ American is a child’s language. You are like primitive peoples, not wanting to say out loud the name of your deity.”
“How do you say it? Where you come from?”
“We don’t. We do not talk about such matters. We are beyond such sentimentality.”
I waited. I was beginning to learn that the best argument against bullshit is just to let it sit there and start to stink.
“Maybe because I was afraid,” he admitted.
“Afraid of what?”
“Of the switch”—he made the same gesture—“going off. I was perhaps afraid of not loving you. After.”
“Why would you be afraid of not loving me?”
“Because that would be a fate worse than death.”
We went over a pothole, both bounced, then fell back against each other, even more united.
I didn’t understand men at all. And somehow I sensed it wasn’t going to get any better. I bet the more you knew them, the less you understood. I had called the bar as soon as I got home. They would just be closing up. I figured I could leave a message and wait for him to call me back. Instead he came to the phone right away, which he had never done for anyone, in all my time there.
“Where have you been?”
“Nowhere. Walking.”
“I have been trying you for hours.”
“Why?”
“I was concerned. You said there might be people watching.”
“And you said I was paranoid.”
“Yes, well, just because you are paranoid does not mean a bad thing could not happen. It is many nights since you came to work. We are all worried sick for you here. Are you all right, Eve?”
I took a deep breath.
“Actually, there is something on my mind. Maybe you could come over and we could talk.”
He didn’t understand, at first. There was this sound. He was changing the phone from one ear to the other. I could hear voices in the background.
“Viktor?”
“Yes, why not? But I don’t like your stairs. Wait outside and I will pick you up.”
“And go where?”
“A place I know.”
It wasn’t part of my plan, but I did have to get Viktor to do something for me. Maybe this was the best way. I hesitated.
“Be down in twenty minutes.”
“Wait,” I said. “This doesn’t mean I’m going to—”
He hung up without saying good-bye, like the time he drove off while I was still talking. He left me standing there, holding the phone.
And now I was in his clutches, where I’d been heading all along. Was that good or bad?
“Where are we going?”
“You will see.”
As soon as I got in the car, he had taken my head and pressed it down. Did I need to hide? I wondered. Were people really after me? I blinked through the top of the windshield. Bits of building and sky were chopped up as we spurted ahead, then screeched, turned. There were all these poles and wires, connecting things. I was seeing the city from underneath, the back of an embroidery. The stitching.
“How’s that birth certificate coming? The one your friend is making for me?”
“I only just called him. These things take time. There is a huge demand.”
“I was wondering, do you think he could make me a passport, too?”
“A passport!”
“Well, if I’m going to become a person, I might as well go all the way. You know what I mean? Maybe I’ll want to go abroad someday.”
We drove in silence.
“So you are just oozing me,” he concluded.
I lay back and felt guilty, for about one half second.
“You’re oozing me, too,” I remembered. “You’re just doing all this because you want to be a U.S. citizen.”
“It is true. At times I confuse you with Lady Liberty.”
“I mean, you’re not even attracted to me.”
“Attraction is a disaster. It contains the seeds of its own destruction. When I am attracted to a woman, part of me resents her.”
“Why?”
“Because it is always for some superficial reason. Her hair. Her eyes. Her ass.”
“Hips,” I corrected.
“No, in this case you say ass. And the attraction is based on what? An extra layer of fat. The way dead cells are extruded from her scalp. I resent myself, too, for being such a slave to illogic. It makes sex an act of exorcism. Laying the dream to rest.”
“So it’s true?” I hadn’t really meant it. I was expecting him to say, No, of course he was attracted to me. “You don’t even want me?”
“I am not attracted to you at all,” he said proudly, as if it was this great compliment. “And you, I think, feel the same. It is why we make such a perfect couple.”
He hit the brakes and grabbed me, to stop me from rolling forward, off his lap. His hand held my breast. I don’t think it was intentional. He was very concentrated on his driving. This chill, this prickliness, spread out from his fingers. It was this instant skin rash. And then, whether it was an accident or not, he didn’t let go.
“So what about the passport?”
“OK, OK. Why not?”
“Thanks, Viktor.”
“I can refuse you nothing.”
His hand controlled me. Not with force, but pressure. He’d found the wavelength of my nervous system. I watched his face as it searched for a parking space. We were going slow, circling. Where was this? From the sky and buildingtops I couldn’t tell. A block like any other. His hideaway, in the middle of the city. I was glad it wasn’t on some desolate stretch of outer borough. He was so foreign, with his mustache and his hairy chest and his ferocious eyes. Sex to him is like the English language, I thought. Something that’s not natural, that’s learned, so he uses it differently, like it’s not part of him. Something he uses to get what he wants. But maybe I was the same way. Maybe we all were, and he just recognized it, faced the truth. I got that sense again that he had something to teach me, about how to live, although it all got mixed up now with something to teach me in bed, because I realized he’d been taking his hand off, every few seconds, to shift, then putting it back, casually, like I was this place to rest, and the more he did it, the more my breast ached for his return, even though each time his fingers did come back my spine a
rched, like in the dentist’s chair when the drill starts up.
“Why can’t I look up? You think there really might be people following me?”
“Girls your age always imagine they are watched by strange men. And more often than not they are correct. Enjoy it while you can.”
“You don’t understand. After the break-in, and what that detective said, I got scared. But I didn’t expect you to take it seriously. I thought you’d tell me I was crazy. Then everything would be back to normal.”
“As I said, it is not uncommon. You put out some sort of scent. Not a perfume, but a secretion, from a gland. In insects it is pheromones. I do not know what in humans it is called.”
“Viktor, I’m worried about people thinking I’m mixed up in a murder, not asking me out on dates!”
“But it is the same thing, really. You choose to look at it a certain way, that is all. You would rather imagine you are the object of insidious designs than romantic intentions.”
“Why would I want to think that?”
“Because it scares you.”
“Being attacked?”
“Being loved.”
“Will you take your hand off me?”
He pressed down even harder, like a bolt. I squirmed, then thrashed, trying to get out from under him. The car stopped.
“And here we are,” he announced.
I went limp. What had I been thinking, saying I would go home with him? This was just what I had feared. But it’s not like I had any other place to go. If there really were people after me, if I had seen something I wasn’t supposed to see, then my best chance was to disappear, to go down Viktor’s little rabbit hole and hide out. At least until the wedding, the wedding to my husband and the honeymoon with my lover.
Eve in the City Page 12
