by Adam Pelzman
Well, Perla looks at me and at Norma, and we both chuckle. And that’s all Perla needs to break the tension—a good laugh—and she throws her arms around Julian and kicks her feet in the air like a little girl, and she rests her face in that little nook between his neck and his shoulder. And while I can’t see Julian’s face from this angle, I can see a part of hers. I see tears of relief, as if she has reached a fortified sanctuary after a long, difficult journey. I know this sanctuary, too, for that is where I am with Julian, where I have always been with Julian. And that’s where Roger is, too. And Petrov and Volokh. And where Julian’s mother was for too brief a time. I know how it feels when someone will kill for you.
Julian guides his right hand up Perla’s back. He tugs gently on her ponytail, pulls her head away from him. He wipes the tears from her face, careful not to scrape her flawless skin. I turn to Norma, and she makes a pitter-patter motion on her chest—which has the effect of irritating me, evoking in me not only a jealousy of Julian’s affection for Perla but of Norma’s affection for them. I turn back to Julian and Perla. He guides her to the chair, pulls it back a foot so she can sit down and, once she is settled, slides it forward.
After removing the metal cover from Perla’s plate, Julian returns to his seat and reaches for my hand. I offer it without resistance, without bitterness. Norma returns to the kitchen while Julian, Perla and I eat in silence, verbal silence; there are the taps of sterling on china, the sipping of coffee, linen folded and unfolded, but no words. Unlike the austere, repressed meals of my youth, however, this silence is not uncomfortable. Rather, it is akin to the silence of the elderly couple sitting across the table from each other, enjoying—each in their own minds—the ambiance of the restaurant, the clatter of plates, the fusion of a hundred voices, the past, the shared memories, wondering how long they will both live, who gets the short straw and must outlive the other; it’s the silence of the elderly couple that chooses not to speak because they’ve either said it before, or if they haven’t already said it then there’s a damn good reason to keep it quiet.
I am at peace. I look to my right, to my left. And I know there’s only one way this whole thing can go, maybe two.
(MIS)FORTUNE
The gods smile upon me today.
After several minutes of peaceful quiet, I ask Perla about her life—careful not to touch upon those subjects, like stripping, that might cause her some discomfort.
“Julian tells me that you’re from Cuba?”
Perla folds her napkin in half, then in half again, and places it on the table. “That’s right. My family is from Matanzas, a town on the coast that’s east of Havana. We lived there for a hundred years. Not me and my parents for a hundred years, of course, but all of us, our ancestors, generation after generation.”
“Do you still have family there?” I ask with genuine interest.
Perla pushes the plate a few inches away so she has more room for her arms, more room to talk with her hands. “I do. My uncle lives there, my father’s brother. He’s a fisherman and has a little shop that sells what he catches. So it’s my uncle and also a couple of cousins I haven’t seen in forever.” Julian listens, and the calm look on his face suggests that he has heard all of this before—and his deep knowledge of Perla’s life reveals an intimacy between them that is greater than I had realized.
“And your parents?”
“My parents? Me and my mom, we live together in Miami and we got a cute little place in Little Havana, which is filled with Cubans.” Perla smiles bashfully and hits her forehead with the palm of her hand as if to say stupid me. “Obviously, or why else would they call it Little Havana? It’s not like it’s filled with Swedes.” Julian and I both laugh and turn to each other; Julian’s wink says I told you so. “But she’s got a serious boyfriend now, Felipe, and he’s not half bad compared to the losers she usually dates. So I don’t see her as much, which is pretty crappy.” When the word crappy escapes, Perla reflexively covers her mouth. “Sorry,” she says, “that’s not too ladylike. Sometimes I forget where I am and I get a little dis-so . . . sometimes things just come out of my mouth, and sure enough . . .” Perla trails off, surrenders the rest of the sentence.
“Don’t worry about being ladylike around here, Perla. We can get pretty crude, right, Norma?” Norma pokes her head out of the kitchen, gives me the middle finger, and then returns to her work. “And your father?” I ask, forgetting for a moment that Julian told me he died and remembering only when it is too late, when my regret is sealed.
Perla looks down and crosses herself. Then she sits straight up, as if she is sitting on a church pew, and looks at me. “My father died when I was fourteen. He was a great man, humble and poor but real smart and filled with lots of love. And gratitude. He had lots of that, too. But he didn’t have much money or success in his job,” she says, and looks around the apartment, at the grand space, the artwork, the furniture. “But he had lots of faith in God, faith that we’d be taken care of, me and him and my mother, and faith that I’d turn out good, too.”
I can see that Perla is getting emotional, shaky. “Well, then,” I say, “it looks to me like his faith has been rewarded.”
Perla shakes her head as if I have proposed something that is too painful to accept. “You think?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Maybe.”
I look over to Julian, who in turn looks at this watch and taps the glass face, indicating that he must leave soon for the airport. There are a few more moments of silence, but this time it is not so comfortable. “So, Perla, what would you like to do today?” I ask.
“Me? What would I like to do?” she responds, surprised, and turns to Julian for guidance—which is not forthcoming.
“Julian’s off to D.C. now, back tomorrow morning. He’s useless to us, at least for the time being. So what do you say?”
“I don’t . . . I don’t really know, to be honest, and I’m not sure what I’m doing here or what you want from me.” She eyes her bags on the floor. “Or what made me come up here in the first place, which is something I’m still trying to figure out. I’m just real uncomfortable, and that’s obvious, I guess.” Perla pulls her shirt away from her skin, now damp with perspiration, and then crosses her arms over her chest. “I got a return ticket that takes me back tonight, so maybe the best thing is for me to get my bags right here and go meet my girlfriends, they work downtown at the . . .” Perla catches herself, for she has realized that to continue would reveal something that causes her shame. “Just go meet my girlfriends and thank you, thank you for . . .” Flustered, she straightens the knife by her plate. “And just be on my way.”
I am disappointed, as I am beginning to experience a bit of affection for Perla. “How about you stay for a couple of hours?” I ask. “Just a couple of hours. We can go for a quick walk in the park. It’s beautiful outside.” I slap the sides of my wheelchair. “Come on, you can walk and I can roll.”
Perla again eyes her bags. There is a flare of the nostrils, a scrape of the lower lip that reveals her conflict.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe just a couple of hours. Get some fresh air and then I can head back tonight.”
Gleeful, I turn to Julian. “Honey, Perla and I are spending the day together. So I will see you back here in the morning.” I use my arms to rotate the wheels of my chair in such a way that I move back away from the table and then around to Julian’s side. I drape my arms around his neck and give him a kiss. After a quick, self-conscious glance in Perla’s direction, Julian hugs me tight and kisses me. He whispers I love you—and I know that he does.
But for Norma, whom I shall exile shortly, I’ve got Perla just where I want her—alone, on my turf, away from her support system.
ANGEL OF THE WATERS
If you asked me to make a list of my most favorite things about New York—and it’s a very long list—there’s a sublime stre
tch in Central Park that is at the very top. I cannot even think of a close second. Maybe the Frick or the Guggenheim or the pool room at the Four Seasons.
On this warm autumn day, Perla and I cross Fifth Avenue and walk south along the park’s edge. Unlike the paved sidewalk on the east side of Fifth, the sidewalk that runs along the park is made of bumpy, hexagonal stones and is thus, despite the determination with which I work the wheels, difficult for me to traverse. Perla notices my struggle. She steps behind me, grabs the handles in back and pushes.
Just north of Seventy-second Street, my front wheels dip into a depression caused by a couple of missing stones, and the chair comes to an abrupt halt that causes my upper body to lunge forward. The seat belt cuts into my waist, and although I cannot feel it poke at my skin, I do feel its impact on the band above my waist, pulling it downward, stretching it.
“I got it,” Perla says.
I can’t see what Perla does now, but I understand the physics and can thus imagine her movements. Perla squeezes the handles and pushes down on the rear wheels, taking pressure off the front of the chair. She then extends her right leg backward and braces it on the ground. She leans forward and pushes hard. When the chair does not budge, she leans even lower so that now her chest, her breasts brush the back of my head. Perla’s body is upon me, if even for just a split, fully clothed second.
“One, two, three,” she calls out. And then the wheels release, up and out of the hole—and we are on our way. At Seventy-second Street, we make a right into the park, and then another quick right, where we descend downward to Conservatory Water. The path down to the pond is steep, and there is no way I alone can control the chair on the descent.
I look back at Perla as we both peer down the sloping path. “You got this?” I ask.
“Got it.”
Again, I cannot see what Perla is doing, but the physics dictate that she is now leaning backward, her left foot forward and just under the edge of the chair, her shoulders turned a bit to the right so she is generating a bit of torque that allows her to lower the chair slowly down the path. About halfway down, her left foot gives way on a patch of gravel, and we—me, her and the chair—accelerate at a scary rate. Perla stomps her left foot on the pavement. Her foot bounces a few times before she can plant securely and assert the necessary counterforce.
We continue our deliberate journey downward with Perla controlling the pace. I now comprehend the physical strength of this girl. I picture her on the pole, suspending herself, her muscles twitching. I imagine her making love to Julian, the strength of her arms, the arch of her back. I imagine her on top of Julian, using her strength to fuck him. These thoughts are bittersweet for me. There is, of course, great pain, but there is also some pleasure.
We stop in front of Conservatory Water, a small, man-made pond that accommodates not real boats, but rather radio-operated toy boats with crisp white sails that cut gracefully through the still water. Along the edge of the shallow pond, children hold the controls, protruding antennae directing the boats. The occasional duck glides by, glances at the boats with bemusement and moves on, careful not to come into contact with the lifeless creatures.
Perla and I do not speak. We watch the boats, the faces of the children, their wonderment that the mere flick of a finger can move an object. Right, left, forward—but never backward. The only way they can go back to where they started is to make a series of rights or a series of lefts. They have power, these kids.
“Let’s go this way,” I say, pointing west. “There’s another pond, a lake really, with real boats.”
We move north along the edge of the toy boat pond. On this flat, paved walkway, I work the wheels with ease. We pass the Alice in Wonderland statue on our right and go under a stone arch, stopping when we reach the park drive. A peloton of recreational cyclists flies by in a blurry whoosh. Noting the danger of crossing the busy road, Perla steps behind me. She looks both ways, then again. And she runs me across the drive with a powerful burst.
The next body of water, the lake, always reminds me of a Seurat painting: couples in row boats, the men working the oars, turning their heads to avoid a collision, the women sitting on the opposite bench with a full view of what is to come, wincing when a stray boat comes too close. On this day, the lake is algae-rich and has an emerald hue. There are many ducks and two swans, a couple I assume. A huge turtle swims past us, slow and unconcerned, just below the surface of the lake’s water. Perla and I settle by the southern edge of the lake, a few feet away from the glorious Bethesda Fountain, the Angel of the Waters. Across the plaza, a gospel singer—off-key—sings “Oh Happy Day.” On the ground before him is a hat with just a couple of coins in it.
There are a few minutes of stillness, a few minutes during which Perla and I try to process every detail of this stunning, encircling tableau—one in which I guess we both participate. The singer finishes the song, and Perla and I move in his direction. Perla takes a twenty out of her purse and drops it in the hat. She then turns to me. “The best way to show a person you value their talent,” she says, “is to pay for it.” She smiles, and I believe this is her elegant way of acknowledging an obvious but unspoken fact: that I know she’s a stripper.
“Agreed,” I say, admiring both her generosity and her subtle candor.
Perla looks around the plaza. “Where now?” she asks.
I spin my wheelchair around and point south, toward the forty or so steps on both sides of the arcade. We cannot scale so many, so I point to the path on the far left, a good forty-five-degree incline that leads up to the band shell. As I look at the daunting hill, I consider that this is my fifth test of Perla. So far, she has passed the previous four. To start, there was the invitation to see us in New York, the invitation that I strategically encouraged Roger to deliver on my and Julian’s behalf; the second was the invitation to sleep over; the third was the offer to take a walk in the park; the fourth, the decline to the pond with the toy boats; and now the incline above the Bethesda Terrace.
We stop at the base of the hill and consider our strategy. “I think we gotta get some speed going before we hit the hill,” she says. Perla stands behind the chair and reverses about twenty feet. “Hold on.” And like a sprinter taking off from the blocks, Perla runs. Within about ten yards, we’ve got speed galore. And by the time we hit the incline, Perla has generated enough energy to keep us going at an admirable clip until we get three-quarters up the hill, where we reach a set of steps. Perla stops a few feet away. “You buckled up?” she asks.
I check my belt and tighten it. “All set.”
Perla slowly spins me around so that I am now facing north toward the lake. As I grip the armrests, she pulls me backward until the wheels bump against the first riser. Then step by step—all nine of them—she pulls me up to the crest of the hill, and there we stop. Exhausted, Perla pants and bends over at the waist, hands on her knees. I turn to her. And when her breathing soon regulates, she stands up and looks at me. Her sheer shirt is now wet with perspiration and clings tightly. But unlike earlier in the apartment, she is no longer self-conscious. She glances at her breasts, and rather than cross her arms over her chest, she smiles, spins and elevates to get a look at the fountain, the lake, the people below.
I now take the lead as we continue south, and Perla walks closely by my side. To our left is the empty band shell; before us, the grand American elms, haunted, twisted and gnarled. We cross a small patch of gravel, and the crunch of the stones under Perla’s feet reminds me of strolling through the Tuileries with Julian. Perla and I make our way south through the bench-lined corridor between the elms, and then we make a left, turning east for the final few hundred yards of this transcendent stretch.
We pass under the Willowdell Arch, a short stretch of musty darkness that smells of urine, and then emerge back into the sunlight. We stand before the brass statue of Balto, a sled dog from Alaska—heroic and lauded—whose back ha
s been buffed and shined by the seats of thousands of children who have jumped on top for a photo. Then we move down a short, rock-lined path to the Delacorte Clock and arrive just in time, half past the hour, to watch the animals—a monkey, penguin, hippo, bear, elephant, goat, kangaroo—dance and make music. Tourists gather around the clock, taking photos, little kids dancing along with the animals. Children, too, are bittersweet for me. In light of my situation, I have mixed feelings about them. I experience a subtle change in mood in the presence of these children, these families, these symbols of my loss. I go from this moment, which was until now a great moment, to someplace in the past—a place where I was ambulatory and fertile.
Perla observes me; I can feel her gaze upon me. I can feel that she has detected my shift in mood. “You ready to go home?” she asks. Perla has passed her next test—one that I had not planned, one that has arisen by chance.
Relieved, I look back to her. “All ready,” I say.
CLOUD ON A STICK
Well, it’s a perfect day to take a walk through the park, sort of warm even though it’s fall. I don’t think I could have a better tour guide than Sophie, ’cause she knows just about everything there is to know about the park—the toy boat pond, a beautiful fountain—Angel of the Waters, it’s called—the band shell, these crazy-looking elms, even why the back of a brass dog is all shiny and bright. After the walk, I looked up this Balto dog and it turns out he brought medicine, antitoxin they say, and saved lots of people in Alaska a long time ago. And now the real Balto is stuffed and in some museum in Ohio, which is sort of weird. It’s weird that he’s stuffed and it’s even weirder that he’s stuffed in Cleveland.
