Troika

by Adam Pelzman

  Norma studies the moon. “It’s thin, real thin, just a little bit of light on the side. It’s got color, which you don’t see much. Orange, maybe even some red, with streaks going across it.” Norma looks at me and understands that her description, while lovely, leaves me ungratified. “You want me to get you back in the chair?” she asks, nodding in the direction of the wheelchair—a weird vehicle that sickens me with its simplicity, not much more than two engorged bicycle wheels bolted to a beach chair. “What do you think, Mum? Get you close to the window?”

  I eye my wheelchair in the corner of the room. I think about the snugness that I feel in this wingback, the effort that will be required for me to transfer, and I decide that, sadly, my aversion to inconvenience exceeds my desire to witness beauty.

  “No, thanks,” I say. And as I’m thinking about yet another joyous thing that gives me no joy, an intrusive thought emerges without warning or context; I think about Julian making love to another woman, to Perla—his commitment to her orgasm, his strength, his surrender upon release. There’s a surge of jealousy, searing and unexpected, that floods my bloodstream with stress hormones. “Open the window, please,” I say, my body temperature rising. “I’d like some air in here, some fall air.” With only the slightest flick of the wrist, Norma guides the perfectly crafted window upward.

  The wind pours in from the west. It’s cool and crisp and there’s a hint of something sweet that surprises me. It’s not the autumnal sweetness of apple cider or pumpkin pie or a rural leaf burn. No, it’s something vague and alluring. “You smell that, Norma?” I ask.

  As if she is a curious terrier, Norma makes a sniffing motion with her nose. “Smell what?”

  “Something sweet,” I say, reaching to the side table for a brilliant memoir by a poet and musician, a memoir about her love affair with a photographer and their life in New York. By mistake, I knock the book to the carpeted floor. “You don’t smell it?”

  Norma sniffs again, this time with an exaggerated motion that contorts her entire face. “No, Mum, there’s nothing but the air.”

  I reach for the book on the floor, but it is well beyond the tips of my fingers. Norma notices my struggle and crosses the room to pick it up. I close my eyes. I inhale. And there it is—that sweetness, an eclectic sweetness, paradoxical, like clove gum or a charred fig.

  THE RUBICON

  The last time I was in New York was with my father when I was nine years old and it’s one of the few childhood memories that’s just like I remembered, but now they print the calories on the menus, which seems odd, and there’s no smoking in the bars and the taxi driver told me that you can’t even have a cigarette in Times Square or Central Park. Outdoors! Which is something that just cannot be true, can it? In Florida, the government pretty much stays out of your hair, which is something that means a lot to us Cubans, ’cause God knows we had enough people telling us how to live our lives, and down in Florida you can do just about anything you want, carry a gun and strip fully nude and have a big fatty milkshake and probably smoke in the middle of a library if you really want. Cubans, we don’t like having one man with all the money and all the answers making up laws that’s supposed to be in our best interest. My dad used to call that paternalismo. And he used to say Perla, you already have one father, and you don’t need another one telling you what to do.

  I’m standing on Fifth Avenue and Seventy-sixth Street, and there’s a gorgeous old building on the corner. I look at the address on the envelope and sure enough this is where Julian lives, with his paralyzed wife, I guess, and maybe some other people that I don’t even know about yet. I cross the street so I can get a good peek into the lobby. There’s a guy in a uniform standing in front of the door and he looks like a soldier, an officer from one of those World War II movies—not one of the smart officers, but one of the goofy German guys everyone’s always fooling even though he thinks he’s in charge.

  I look again at the envelope to see if there’s an apartment number or a floor, but there’s only the address. I look up at the building and count the stories. It looks like there’s fourteen, maybe fifteen, and I wonder if these people are so rich that they have more than one floor. I start to shake a little and I’m thinking that maybe I’m not too comfortable being away from Florida. Maybe I should just go over to the Doll House, ’cause I know a couple of girls from Miami who work there and I can crash at their place for the night. But I hear they’re getting in trouble lately, dabbling in drugs—meth and X, which is a really strange combination I think—and they’ve always got sketchy boyfriends, tough guys from places like Albania and Serbia who scare the crap out of me.

  On the tenth floor, there’s an open window and it’s the only open window in the building. I can see an arm hanging out, a woman’s arm, dark-skinned and thick. That must be somebody’s maid, I think. But then I get real angry at myself for thinking so racist, ’cause I’m a Cuban girl and I know what it’s like when fools make assumptions about you based on nothing. And why can’t a black girl own a fancy place like that? It’s a possibility, right? I’m watching her arm and it’s so still that I wonder if it’s real or a mannequin. But then her head pops out of the window. She’s wearing a uniform, sort of like a nurse, and I guess that means she works there, ’cause no way a nurse can afford a place like this. Or maybe she just happens to be a really rich black nurse. Or maybe she does live there and her husband’s got a nurse fetish, likes to have his temperature taken from behind.

  My mind’s racing now and coming up with so many crazy ideas, each one canceling out the last, that I’m getting anxious and afraid I’m gonna have one of those dissociating moments again. I think about my comfort zone now and how I’m already so far out of it and so uncomfortable that I don’t think I can take much more. I figure I’ll walk over to the next avenue, which turns out to be Madison, and get a snack and settle myself down.

  Turns out there’s not much going on at night on Madison, but I find a deli a couple blocks down and get a little bite to eat. And when the guy behind the counter tells me how much a soda, an apple and a bag of chips costs, I’m thinking that people up here are totally nuts. ’Cause if an apple, chips and a soda cost almost as much as a lap dance, you got a serious problem on your hands. A serious problem with society. I pay the money, but give the cashier a mean look just to let him know I don’t approve, not that he seems to care one damn bit.

  I walk back toward Julian’s building and stand across the street. I look up again for that open window, but all the windows are closed now and I don’t remember which one it was. The doorman stands in front of the building and he’s leaning against the brass pole under the awning and he’s smoking a cigarette in a way that says he doesn’t want anyone to see that he’s smoking a cigarette. He’s holding it in his cupped hand behind his back, and I laugh ’cause I’ve seen that move before. He looks across the street in my direction, and I try to look away before he sees me, but too late. He nods to me. I just stand there all still, nervous and feeling silly. He squints at me like he’s trying to get a good look at my face. And then he holds up his cigarette, above his head, and yells out want a smoke?

  I’m not a smoker, but I shrug my shoulders and walk across the street toward the man. I walk right up to him all confident, even though I’m not. He says evening, nothing sketchy or sleazy, but real sweet like he’s bored and so happy to have contact with someone that he doesn’t see every day of his life, someone he doesn’t work for. Good evening, I say, and he pulls out a pack of cigarettes and offers them to me. Smoke? he asks. No, thanks. And we both stand there by the side of the awning with the brass poles, just like the ones at the club, but these are shinier and they must get polished all the time. I take a look at him and I’m guessing he’s mid-fifties—a little puffy with a gray moustache and the funny uniform that’s got to make a man feel like he’s being dressed up like a clown for someone else’s amusement.

  He bends back a bit at the
waist, hands on hips, then points to the sky and says cool moon, huh? I look up and there it is, crescent and hanging low to the right. It’s got a reddish look to it, orange, which is something that I’d figure you see in a desert or in the Caribbean, but not right here in the middle of New York City. It is a cool moon, I say. And he smiles a bit and I can tell that he’s happy a young girl is talking to him and seeing the same beauty he sees and that I don’t think he’s just some nostalgic old man. We stand there for a few seconds, just looking up at that funny-colored moon, and I say does Julian live here? Julian Pravdin?

  The doorman stares at me. He takes another drag of his cigarette and flicks it with his middle finger and thumb into the street, a perfect shot so it lands right in the center of a puddle and fizzles into nothing. You Perla? he asks, all matter-of-fact.

  Well, I’m not sure I’ve ever been so shocked in my life, but I try to act real cool and nod yes. He opens the front door for me and tells me come on in, we’ve been expecting you. I enter the lobby, and he points to an elevator at the end of the hall and says tenth floor, Perla, I’ll send you up.

  INNOCENCE

  I get a bit of a chill and ask Norma to close the window. Again, with the tiniest flick of the wrist, she slides the window downward. She approaches me and looks at her watch.

  “Let me take a look at your bag,” she says. She leans over and unties the sash around my silk robe. She opens the robe and looks at my midsection. “Almost full,” she says, removing two rubber gloves from her pocket.

  “How’s the color?” I ask.

  “All good.”

  Norma twists the clasp and removes the bag. One drop of urine, warm and slick, lands on the band above my waist—and I enjoy the sensation. Norma wipes it from my skin and then disappears into the bathroom. She returns five minutes later with a clean, empty bag that she attaches to the tube. Then she lifts the memoir off the armrest and takes a look at the cover, at the black-and-white photo of the author and her lover.

  “I know him,” she says. “Knew him.”

  “You did?”

  Norma pulls the book closer to her face and examines the photograph. “He took a photo of my cousin, you know, in the eighties. He’s passed. Mikey.” She crosses herself. “The same thing that got most of those boys back then, damn shame. They had no idea, no one did. All so innocent, every one of ’em. My aunt still has that photo, black-and-white just like this one.”

  After six years together, Norma continues to reveal herself to me episodically. I guess that I do the same with her. “Really . . . I’d like to see that photo one day.”

  “One day, Mum.”

  “I’m tired,” I say. “Let’s get ready for bed.”

  Norma places the book on the side table, then leans down and places her wrists under my arms. She spreads her strong legs shoulder width apart and prepares to lift me off the wingback and into the wheelchair.

  “A one . . . and a two . . . and a . . .”

  Norma pauses before she gets to three—not a long pause, but an almost undetectable hesitation, as if she’s got a tickle in the back of her throat. And in that hesitation, that briefest moment of suspension, there is a knock at the door.

  HALLWAYS

  I’m standing at the front door for what must be five minutes, so nervous and wondering what the hell I’m doing here. And I’m pacing back and forth and peering into the peephole to see what’s going on inside, but of course that’s ridiculous ’cause they’re designed so you can only see out. Finally, I just think fuck it, I’ve come this far, so I might as well see it all the way through. It can’t be worse than getting fingered in the club.

  I knock on the door. One tap, two taps, three taps. Tap, tap, tap. I straighten up and get as tall as I can. I hear voices on the other side of the door, women sounding sort of surprised and confused. I look around to see if I knocked on the right apartment, looking for another door, but this is the only one on the entire floor, except for one at the end of the hall that says STAFF in real old letters. And then the lock clicks and the door opens, and there’s the dark-skinned woman from the window, looking real protective and tough. She takes a step to the side so she’s not blocking the view, and what’s there before me is the biggest, most beautiful home I’ve ever seen, like a museum in Paris or Rome. There’s high ceilings and antiques and even a fancy old pool table with green felt so smooth and perfect that it looks like a putting green. And sitting right there in a chair in the middle of the room, in a pretty silk robe, is one gorgeous and seriously paralyzed woman.

  SUPPLICANT

  Why the doorman did not announce Perla’s arrival is something that I do not understand, and it’s also something about which I never felt the need to question. Maybe it was at Julian’s prior instruction or a momentary lapse in the doorman’s judgment, or maybe the doorman was so taken by Perla’s beauty that he lost sight of his responsibilities. Whatever the reason, Perla’s knock caught me and Norma off guard. Had I known she was coming, I would have prepared a bit, done my hair, put on a nice dress, some jewelry. I also would have set the place up for her—some food and drinks.

  Perla stands in the doorway, and we stare at each other. “It’s okay, Norma,” I say. “I believe this is Perla?”

  She extends her hand to Norma and then approaches me. She stands before me in tight jeans, cute silver sandals, a pink cotton sweater and a short leather jacket. It’s apparent that the girl is uncomfortable, and who wouldn’t be? I sure as hell am. And so is Norma, who is beyond confused. Perla is in an opulent apartment and, at the risk of sounding like a damn snob, it’s probably unlike anything she’s ever seen before—and people can get awkward in the presence of wealth. People also get awkward in the presence of the disabled. They either treat you like you’re some delicate egg and overcompensate with excessively slow, careful motions and soft voices (I’m paralyzed, not deaf), or they try so hard to show you that they think you’re just like everyone else (which you most certainly are not) that they are casual and brusque to the point of danger. And, of course, people get painfully awkward in the presence of the wives of the men they are screwing. And who knows how awkward people get in the presence of the disabled wives of the men they are screwing? I can only assume that’s worse yet.

  The mind creates mental images of the things it has never seen. I would guess that there is something evolutionary about predictive imagery. One can envision a hunter returning to his small village and warning his fellow tribesmen about the warriors he has just seen amassing over the hill. To assess the threat, the villagers will ask him to describe the threat. How big are these men? How many are there? Do they have bows and arrows? Knives? Spears? Shields? Are they wearing face paint? If so, what color is it? The villagers will process the data, create a mental image of the threat and respond in a manner consistent with the perceived peril. Our ability to create a preceding mental image that comports with the actual image depends upon our own experience, our powers of imagination, our emotional intelligence. Sometimes we get close. Sometimes we are so far off that we wonder what the hell we were even thinking and thus begin to question our own judgment, the effectiveness of our survival instincts.

  As I observe Perla, I am relieved by the accuracy with which I had imagined her. The skin. She has a perfect complexion. I look for something, for some imperfection: a faint birthmark, a mole, a pimple, a broken blood vessel, a tiny hair on the upper lip. But other than what might be a pale sliver of a scar under her chin, I see nothing. Her skin is a shade or two darker than I had anticipated—and she could have as easily been Creole or Indian, which I guess is logical given the heterogeneity of the Caribbean. Her hair, dark chocolate brown but lightened in streaks by the Florida sun, is cut shoulder length and wrapped over her ears. When she turns to the side—a quick glance to break the tension of the moment—I notice that she has a thin white streak of hair in the back.

  Perla removes her jacket. Her pink
sweater clings tightly to her body, revealing both the broadness of her shoulders and the contour of her breasts. Julian is right, she does have B cups and thus does not fit my mental image of a stripper: a thin wisp of a girl sporting hydraulic DDs that threaten to topple her forward. Instead, here’s a girl who is sticking with what God gave her, and something about her resistance to convention humanizes her in my eyes, reveals a stubborn, proud character, a refusal to let go of something important that I do not yet understand.

  Her face. Her face is lovely. Not model stunning or head-turning, but just plain lovely. There are the green eyes that contrast so sharply with her skin that they suggest a penetrating eagerness, as if she is in a constant state of forward, bounding motion. Her mouth is wide, her lips full and glistening in a sweet-smelling gloss that only a girl of her age can wear, her chin smoothly pointed.

  Perla stands before me, and there is a moment during which neither of us know how to behave. And then, as if I am some decrepit but revered queen, she dips her right knee into a deep curtsy. I’m alarmed and touched by her display of deference, and I can only think that her mother—or a nun—must have taught her this gesture when she was a little girl. I hold out my right hand to shake Perla’s. She reaches out but does not shake it as I expect. Instead, she clasps it with her two hands, cups my hand in her palms; she rises closer to me and presses my hand against her cheek. I feel the sensation of my palm, my fingers, against her smooth skin—which is so hot that I’m afraid the girl has a fever.

  Perla’s eyes water. “I’m sorry,” she cries. “I am so sorry.”

  SERENDIPITY

  There’s something about seeing Sophie stuck in that chair and how she struggles to lift her hands—and the fact that here I am screwing her husband, and she’s just about as courteous as a woman can be. And then I bend down like I’m bowing before the nuns at school and why I do that I have no idea. But I bow down and reach out and hold her hand, which you can tell is not as strong as a normal hand, and I press it against my face. It’s cold, her hand, and something about how it feels all cold and stiff, something about that does something to me, brings up some emotions that have no business coming to the surface. Maybe it’s being so close to the woman I betrayed. Not direct, but an indirect betrayal, ’cause I slept with her husband even after I knew she existed and us girls are supposed to look out for each other, not stab each other in the back. And she can’t walk, and that makes me feel even worse, makes me feel real bad for her and for Julian too.