Eve in the City

by Thomas Rayfiel

  I even found the courage to tell guys I was waiting for someone, which was actually true, though I could only say it by pretending it was a lie. I raised my hands to rub my aching skull and swear I heard the technician warn, “The electrodes!” like I was still hooked up to the machine.

  “Do you want another?”

  He nodded to my glass.

  “Yes, please.”

  At first he had ordered a Coke, then saw the look on my face and changed his mind, made it a beer. But he didn’t drink it. I watched him take a sip from the bottle and put it down. The level was unchanged.

  “Aren’t you off-duty?”

  He smiled.

  “The line between off-duty and on- isn’t so clear.”

  “I didn’t think you’d still be at work.”

  “I had things to do.”

  “Don’t you have someone to go home to?”

  He stopped smiling.

  “What’s wrong, Eve?”

  I took a deep breath and told him everything. Because I wanted to keep him here. Because I wanted to keep myself here, not go to an empty apartment that would be even more empty when I brought with me the ache that was expanding out of control inside my chest. I told him about making up the picture of the girl I had seen, sending him off on a wild-goose chase, about going to the hunting supply store and buying the switchblade, about telling the lie detector man I had committed a crime and the needle nodding in agreement. I confessed, made him the priest of my private church, and he listened, almost in spite of himself, not taking notes, for a change, raising the bottle to his lips, putting it back down, making that sound when rounded glass breaks its seal with soft lips, that quiet oh! I somehow heard through all the din. And when he ordered a second (but really a third) martini for me, he got himself another beer, too. That’s when I started feeling we were getting closer. We had been calling to each other from opposite mountains and now we were sliding downhill, toward each other.

  “We knew you gave us a fake description, that other time.”

  “You did? But how could you?”

  “Look, why are you telling me all this?” He frowned. “It puts me in an awkward position. Should I try and force you to give us another statement, now that you admit you lied? You don’t want to do that, do you? I mean, clearly you’re trying to run away from whatever it was you saw.”

  “I am. But the more I run away from it, the more it comes forward to meet me. It pops up. Like it did just now with that stupid lie detector test. I could have been a salesgirl at Bloomingdale’s! I could have gotten a 40 percent employee discount! I could have bought that dress I wanted! But instead—”

  “Calm down. What kind of dress was it, anyway?”

  “Never mind,” I muttered.

  Our drinks came. He paid. I saw the bartender look him over, then shoot me this quick, inquisitive glance as if to say, So this is the guy? And I thought, Why not? He was a grownup, which meant I would always be young. He knew right from wrong, which meant I didn’t have to. He had a gun, which beat my knife. And most important of all, he listened. He didn’t treat what I said as if it was just girlish chitchat, like Viktor, or make this big show of listening, but then go off and be totally deaf to my feelings, like Horace. I couldn’t stop telling him things, and he couldn’t stop listening to what I said. Was that the basis of a good relationship? Or was it a meeting of weaknesses? I raised my glass and he held up his beer bottle.

  If I have sex with you, will you protect me forever? I toasted silently, through the icy gin.

  “I have a daughter,” he began. Then he corrected himself. “Had a daughter. She and her mother left. A year ago.”

  I didn’t know what to say. It never occurred to me he had a life. I’d been so concerned with my problems I hadn’t even thought about what he really did go home to. Or didn’t.

  “She’s almost your age.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “Seattle, Washington. I went and saw them last May.”

  “Seattle,” I echoed. “That’s a long way.”

  “Her mother remarried. This man she’d met, he took a job with Boeing.”

  “Oh.”

  We both drank. It seemed to have gotten even louder. Or the noise around us was more harsh, because of what we were discussing.

  “That’s why I’m here. Because when I see someone making the same mistake, I take an interest. More than I would have, before.”

  “Wait. I don’t get it. You think I’m screwing up? Like your daughter? Or like your wife?”

  “Like me.”

  “Like you!”

  “Not accepting what’s right before your very eyes.”

  He drank the rest of his beer, gulp after gulp. I watched his Adam’s apple. He was forcing it past this valve.

  “All right. I give up. What’s right before my very eyes?” I squinted. “All I see is you.”

  “I saw things happening, in my life. I saw them with my eyes, but I didn’t let what I saw travel back into my brain. Not consciously. I was in trouble, but I wouldn’t admit it. So all this anxiety came out in other ways. Made everything around me look strange. Unnatural. Kind of like what you’re describing. In the end, it turned me into a bad person.”

  “Well, I’m not bad.” I was getting angry. I didn’t need to be lectured to. I needed to be comforted. Couldn’t he see that? “I’m good. That’s my problem. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t. All it does is mess things up. And I’m not blind. I’m intensely aware. Too aware. I see all kinds of things that other people don’t, that get me in trouble. So I’m nothing like you at all and I wish you wouldn’t say I was.”

  I got off my stool. It was supposed to be this grand gesture, except the floor was much farther down than when I had climbed up to sit. Some tide had gone out. My feet landed all wrong. He reached out and caught me, not by the hand or forearm, but by that part between your elbow and shoulder that doesn’t have a name, where policemen must be taught to hold you, because it instantly held me captive.

  “I’m concerned about your drinking,” he said.

  “Me too. The martinis here really suck.”

  “Eve—”

  “I have to go to work now.”

  “Work?”

  “Yes, work. Some of us work for a living,” I announced with great dignity, as if I was the one being hassled. Why are you ruining this? another part of me asked. “And if I’m late, my boss will be furious.”

  “You mean that greaseball I caught trying to hump you against the hood of his car?”

  “We were not ‘humping.’ What a word! That was a very tender, intimate moment. He had just proposed. And you didn’t catch us. We weren’t hiding. You’re the one who was lurking in front of my building like, I don’t know what. Like a mugger.”

  Oh God, I thought, seeing this incredible look of hurt flicker over his face. Why did I say that? Why did I even think that? And why was I drinking a third martini?

  “I’d been waiting for you there all morning,” he said softly.

  “But how come? That’s what I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t understand what?”

  “Why you take such an interest.”

  His eyes were red. He was still holding me. People looked at us. My arm was going to have bruises, he was pressing so hard. His fingerprints would be part of my flesh.

  “I still keep her room like it was. I’m hoping she’ll visit.”

  “Couldn’t she have come for summer vacation?”

  “She could have.” We walked a little more. “Like you said, Seattle’s a long way.”

  We were going up the side of the park. Streetlamps lit trees from underneath. The leaves were “peaking,” that’s what everyone said. I didn’t get it at first. I thought they meant peeking out at you, the way they were beginning to get dry, rustling and talking to each other in the wind. I looked at his reddish-brown face in the electric light. Remembering made him come alive. I saw how handsome he must have been, this hungry, fierce,
lean young guy, with his life in front of him.

  “She didn’t approve of my work.”

  “Your wife? What’s wrong with being a policeman?”

  “I’m a detective.”

  “I know, but—”

  “That’s a different thing altogether. Anyone can be a policeman. Detective is much more difficult.”

  The trees made this sweeping, rippling sound, starting behind us and then whooshing past.

  “It’s hard enough to make detective, but almost impossible if you’re black. I had to do things, things I’m not proud of, to get where I am. Which I am proud of. Where I am.” He looked over. “You understand?”

  I nodded. I felt the same way. I was disgusted with what I’d done, how I’d acted. It all felt so less-than-perfect. I was leaving this trail of Error behind me. But I wasn’t ashamed of where I’d gotten to. I was proud to still be here, when so many others had given up at the first sign of trouble, paired off or gone home. Settled for less.

  “And you think that’s why she fell in love with another man? Because she didn’t like what you’d done?”

  “She didn’t like what I’d become. At least that’s what she said. But the point is, I saw nothing. I thought all the sickness in my life was outside, the stuff I dealt with every day, professionally. Not coming from within, from my own home. Within my own self, maybe.”

  “I still don’t see what this has to do with me.”

  He stopped us under a lamp. Leaves floated on thin stems. The light itself was buoying them up. They winked at us, yellow, red, pink, this nighttime heaven sky. One let go and came spinning slowly down. The air was full of spiral passageways.

  “You say you’re a good girl, but you’re not.”

  “I am,” I said stubbornly.

  “How can you be a good girl and do what you do? See what you see? How can you be a good girl and hang out with those people, like that character I caught you with?”

  “I told you, you didn’t catch us together.”

  “How can you be a good girl and be here, now, with me?”

  His eyes just tore into me. I wasn’t ready for whatever it was he had in mind. That’s what went through my head. But then I thought, maybe I was. After all, I had called him. What did I think was going to happen?

  “Look, could we just forget about all that for now?”

  “Then why did you want to see me?”

  “I don’t know. I wanted to talk.”

  “Talk about what?”

  I let my mind go free.

  “Tell me about her room.”

  He opened his mouth to say something else, then stopped.

  “Whose? Vonetta’s?”

  Why not his house? Why not her bed? It’s not like I’m his daughter, and he’s definitely not my father, so why couldn’t we lie and tell the truth at the same time? We could lay the dream to rest. I mean, that’s what you need, isn’t it? Someone whose dreams match your own? My whole body changed, went through this transformation. I made a mental note to tell Viktor, You’re wrong, there is a switch, an off-on to a woman’s sexuality, but you’ll never find it because it’s not a place, it’s not a part of her or a part of you. It’s a thought.

  “There’s a rug,” he said. “It’s the damnedest thing, because you can’t really cross it. It’s matted like a dog’s coat gets if you don’t brush him out. I must have walked through that room fifty times since she left, to open a window or water a plant, and every time I catch my toe, almost go sprawling.”

  “What color is it?”

  “Gray. Off-white, I guess. It’s impossible to keep clean. I vacuum on Sundays. Do some dusting. I told her not to get it.” He shrugged. “You know how kids are.”

  We started walking again. I put my hand in his.

  I could see the future. I could make the future. That’s how it felt. I could control my destiny, or maybe I was just in tune with it, accepting the inevitable and pretending it was my idea. Either way, I saw what was going to happen next. I created his house, this miniaturized suburban two-story box in Queens, with a tiny lawn and a porch and maybe a garage. I heard the screen door whine, saw him fumble with the keys. Her room became real to me as he described it. The thick bedspread. He had left it on all summer, not wanting to change anything, then decided he should, but now it was too late. The nights were getting cold again. Posters on the walls, pop stars he didn’t know, couldn’t even pronounce the names of. She was a mystery to him, his own daughter. He hadn’t been there, the last few years. So now he was there all the time, in his mind. And more, I knew, though he didn’t say. I knew he had slept there, in her bed. His hand told me that, as he held on.

  “What about her clothes? Did she take anything?”

  He shook his head.

  “It’s all just like she left it.”

  So there it was, waiting for me. We weren’t just wandering aimlessly. Had we ever? I felt the tension between us mounting, and wondered, has everything that’s happened to me until now been leading up to this one moment? Is this love, some twisted form of sacrifice where you get rid of your craziness by heading right into it and then emerge as what? A sane person? An adult? With normal longings? I was still waiting for some guy my own age to ask me to the movies. Was that a totally unrealistic fantasy? Was that even really what I wanted, or just what everything and everyone around me told me I wanted? Why did I feel, instead, this delicious scary sexy feeling of being sucked out to sea?

  I had to go. I knew I would either go now or sleep with him that night, and even though part of me, almost all of me, wanted to, that alone was enough of a reason to slow things down. He understood. I think he was relieved. His car was parked back near the precinct, but I wanted to walk. I wanted to be alone so I could live over these very moments that were happening right now. I pressed my legs tight against each other.

  “Well, you can’t walk home.” He read my mind. “It’s late.”

  “I’ll take the bus.”

  It was great to lie again, to get back a little of my self-respect, my defenses. We went to a deserted stop and then he just stood there.

  “You don’t have to stay.”

  He was planted, standing guard. If I made a big deal, he would figure out what I was planning and wait, protecting me. But I really wanted to be alone, so I did something outrageous. I reached up with one hand and touched the side of his face. The way you reach up to a low branch of a tree and feel the leaves tickle against your palm. Even though his head was smooth, there was this stubble on his cheek. I cupped my hand, just slightly, so I was drawing him, almost magnetically, down. I took one tiny step forward and the night closed over me, this utterly perfect, wet, bottomless kiss. He tasted of mint, beer, cinnamon, and this animal taste that wasn’t a taste at all. This essence. It was just one kiss, but when he lifted his head again, I was on tiptoe, not wanting it to end, actually thinking my body would leave the ground to follow, to levitate.

  “I think you should go,” I said.

  He nodded like he understood, which was more than I did. Every cell in my body strained toward him as he turned and headed back downtown.

  I was finally by myself again.

  Well? I demanded.

  For once, all the voices, the choir of suspicion, insult, and fear, were silent. They were so used to saying nasty things, but now they were stunned, overwhelmed by the same feelings as the rest of me.

  Good kisser, one of them finally mumbled.

  I walked.

  Before, I never looked up. That was for tourists. You saw them with their guidebooks, gawking at buildings, standing in dog shit, getting their pockets picked. They were so vulnerable, not just their bodies, but their minds, vulnerable because they were admitting they were in awe of something, admitting that they weren’t in control. I didn’t want to be that way. I couldn’t afford to. I live here, I tried to show, keeping my head down, charging straight ahead. But now I looked for the spot where it all began, the bloody cement, and when I got there, I tilte
d my neck straight back. I was determined to stop seeing it, in my mind, once and for all. Now that I had so much else to think about, it was silly to be obsessed by something that didn’t even have anything to do with me, really. I stood where I stood before, in the middle of the street. In my private Manhattan this was the black hole, the kink where reality rippled and I glimpsed another universe. The building rose up out of where he had fallen, what he had been looking at, his eyes filled with terror, when I walked over. I had knelt down, but hadn’t really seen anything, even though my eyes were staring, because at the same time I was listening to her footsteps. The way her heels met the pavement so cleanly. I remembered being impressed, because I never felt right in heels, I always shuffled, so there was a scrape, like I was dragging my own body. But her feet banged down, precise, and the sounds passed through me. I felt them, registered them in my mind, while I watched the man. I was charting where she went. That was the thing about the city. It could be a graph, too, with its blocks and corners, so laid out. I knew where she was, or thought I did, without looking up, just hearing her heels hammer away and placing them on this invisible map. Then, from one footfall to the next, they stopped. She had taken this turn into another dimension. I swept my gaze around, but of course there was nothing, the same as now. I saw her absence, all around me, what I had been seeing ever since that night, just streets and buildings, the same as before, but different, this place she had dissolved into, leaving no trace, except she had dissolved into me, too.

  “Is like cancer.”

  “Love is like cancer? How?”

  It was a slow night. Viktor had gotten it into his head to make this drink with many layers of liqueur, each a different color. They were supposed to lie on top of each other. A book was propped open on the bar. There was a picture.

  “Each has a different specific gravity.”

  “What’s specific gravity?”

  “I have no idea.”

  He had bought all these bottles, not the kind we usually stocked, and spread them out. He used a spoon to pour. If they mixed, no matter what the colors were, the whole drink turned brown. A few times he had gotten as far as three, but after that it was harder.