Boys of Life

by Paul Russell

  “I don’t think it happens that way.”

  “I don’t either much anymore,” she admitted. “Now my ambition is—be a waitress the rest of my life. That’s my new career goal.” I liked the way she didn’t take herself all that seriously. It made me feel comfortable with her.

  “So how’s the new career going?” I asked.

  “I got fired last week. But I’m starting this new job on Monday, a place called Veselka.”

  “I know Veselka,” I said. It was where Carlos and I went when he did that interview for American Film.

  “How do you know Veselka?” she asked me. Like it mattered any.

  Suddenly I didn’t know what to say. Not for any reason I can think of even now, I couldn’t bring myself to mention Carlos’s name. I just couldn’t do it. And when that happened, a whole area of my life suddenly closed off and Monica was never going to know about it. At least for a long time.

  All I said was, “Oh, I just know Veselka because it’s in the neighborhood.”

  “Well, that’s where I work now,” Monica said, “so any time you want to find me, I’ll be there. Until I get fired from there too.”

  “Who’d fire you from a place like that?” I asked. Veselka was nothing but a cabbage restaurant.

  “You’d be surprised. All these places, sooner or later they want you to do things. They’ve all got some scam going in the background somewhere. Like this Moroccan guy I was working for—before I knew it, he had me running heroin for him. I said, forget it, and walked out of there. If you don’t watch out for yourself, Tony, you’re in over your head in a minute. As for me, there’re just lots of things I don’t do. I don’t run drugs, for one thing. I got to keep up my self-respect. It’s all I got.” She smiled. “But it’s mine.”

  “I know how that is,” I told her. I sort of liked her, even if I could tell right off we were totally different from each other.

  “Yeah,” she said, “around here, you probably know how it is as much as I do. It’s sickening. Somebody’s got to do something.”

  Suddenly I saw how maybe she was right. What I said earlier—about it not bothering me, what I was doing with those kids at Port Authority—I guess that’s not completely true. It did bother me. It bothered me how Carlos was using those kids and then unloading them, and even though I bought it when he said how it wasn’t hurting them any, still it was a lousy thing to be doing. How was I going to tell somebody like Monica I was into stuff like that? That I was part of the problem? When what I wanted, right now, was to be on the other side of it, where she was.

  I liked sitting there talking to somebody my own age for a change. Somebody normal, who wasn’t into kids jerking off or conjuring or the Lodz ghetto or anything like that. I didn’t want to ruin it by telling her I was a movie pimp.

  We’d finished our Rolling Rocks, and Monica ordered us another round. “Sometimes,” she said, “I wonder why I ever left.” While she talked, she tore the label off the bottle in little shreds. I saw how she’d bitten her fingernails down to nothing. I liked that about her. “I mean home,” she said. “Why I left home. See, I really love my mom and dad.” It could’ve been the bottle she was talking to, but I knew it wasn’t. It was just her way of talking to me. “I just ran out on them,” she said. “They needed me and I just ran out. I couldn’t deal. I couldn’t deal with what they were going through.”

  “I’m not totally following you,” I told her. All the while I was thinking, it figures—sit down with some stranger in New York and before you know it you’ve got an earful of trouble. I thought maybe I should’ve gone on playing pinball without saying a word. Not let any of it touch you—that’d been my motto for a while.

  “I had this brother, Gary,” she said, “and then he died.”

  She didn’t say anything more. She just kept peeling little strips of paper off the Rolling Rock label.

  Everybody I knew seemed to have a dead brother. Carlos had one, if you could believe what he said, and Sammy’d lost both his brothers in the ghetto, and now here was Monica.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I get all upset about this. I don’t talk to people about it. I came away to New York so I could be with people who didn’t know anything about it, and now here I am telling you all about it first thing.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said. “You can talk to me about it.”

  I didn’t totally mean it, but I never know what to say to things like that.

  “He was the greatest brother,” she said. “He was so much fun. I always wanted to be his brother instead of his sister. Does that sound weird? But then we could pal around together. Everywhere. He was a year older. I wanted to travel all over the country with him—that’s what we were planning to do. He’d even bought a motorcycle. We were going to go to New York. Or he was—I never told him how I was planning to come along. I never got a chance to.”

  There was this long pause. Somebody was going to town on my pinball machine, and it was making a racket in the background.

  “What happened?” I asked her. I didn’t know if that’s what I was supposed to ask or not. For some reason all this was making me shake, like I’d got a chill from it.

  She kept tearing at that label with her bitten-down nails. “It was starting to rain,” she said. “He went around a curve too fast, I guess, and he spilled. It tore him all up—they wouldn’t even let us see him, he was so torn up.”

  Nothing terrible like that had ever happened in my life. I didn’t have anything to say. I always felt a little in awe of people like that—it’s what I felt whenever I talked to Sammy, or even that night Carlos told me about his brother, Adrian. I always thought—those people are different from me. They’re better, because terrible things’ve happened to them. I don’t know why I thought that, but I did.

  I looked at Monica. She was studying the little pile the torn-up label had made. She didn’t know I was watching her, or maybe she did know—but the look on her face was terrible. I thought—this is what Carlos is always looking for in his movies, one single instant like this, the look on Monica’s face. And now here it’s happening in some dark little bar on Seventh Street where Carlos’ll never go. It’s happening, and there’s no Seth, there’s no camera—there’s only me. I’m the only person here to see it. To make it somehow count.

  It made me dizzy to think that.

  “I’m sorry about your brother,” I said. I reached out and patted the top of her hand; I let my hand lie on top of hers for a minute.

  “I didn’t mean to bring all that up,” she said. She looked at me, and she was smiling. “You must think I’m a total mope to go talking like that.”

  “I’m glad you thought you could say it to me,” I said. And I was glad. I’d seen deep down inside her, the way Carlos saw things. I’d never done that with somebody before.

  MONICA’D MENTIONED HOW HER BAND WAS playing later in the week, and would I like to go? “I’ll put you on the list,” she told me. “They’ll let you in without a cover.” Which was how I ended up as one of about fifteen people in the audience to hear the band Valve Lash at CBGB’s on a rainy Thursday night.

  It was always something to me, how many different scenes there were in New York. I got around; there was the Adonis, where I’d go with Carlos to see a porn flick or maybe catch some kid’s strip show; there were the West Village bars, where I cruised, and the baths, and the V Bar for pinball. I would’ve said I knew the city pretty well. But I didn’t know the half of it—maybe nobody ever does. I’d never been in a music club in the city before.

  I got to CBGB’s late—I kept waiting for the rain to end, because there wasn’t any umbrella in the apartment, and I didn’t want to show up drenched. But it never did stop, so finally I gave up and walked over to the Bowery in the downpour. Valve Lash was already on stage and revved up when I came in, Monica standing out there in front and these four guys on guitars and drums backing her up. They were all in jeans and white T-shirts—except for Monica, who was wearing this
bright blue cowgirl outfit with fringe, and a white cowboy hat. With her long white-blonde hair it looked pretty dopey. All four of the guys were wearing sunglasses—it was some statement they’d decided to make about something. I could tell they were a little rattled by not having any audience. In between songs they kept lifting up their sunglasses so they could see, and looking out at the empty room. But nobody else came in after me, I guess because of the rain. Or maybe people had heard them before and that’s why they stayed away.

  Valve Lash was this thing to do with car engines, Monica’d told me earlier, but since I didn’t know anything about car engines it didn’t mean much to me. The lead guitarist, Matt, was the one who thought the name up. But it was Monica who did everything else; she wrote all the words and all the music, which sounded just like country music to me, even though she’d told me she hated country music and wanted to be a rock star. I’ve never paid that much attention to music, I can take it or leave it, so I never could tell whether Valve Lash was as terrible as it sounded, or whether it was supposed to be good. Not that I’d have said that to Monica in a million years, even if she asked me to be honest—which, fortunately or not, she never one single time asked me to be.

  There was something that got to me, though, seeing her up there singing her heart out with nobody listening. She was putting everything she had into it. She’d hold the microphone in both hands and sort of croon into it, country-style—it sent chills up your spine, not that that was what she wanted, but that was what happened and it was very effective. You felt, here was this person who was hurting from loneliness and calling out and there was nobody there for her. I could identify with that. I felt that way most of the time—giving everything I had, whether it was Carlos in a movie or somebody I’d just picked up for the night in some bar, and then feeling like nothing ever came back home to me.

  Maybe I was just pissed off at the way the guys in the band were wearing sunglasses. They didn’t care if nothing came back to them. Monica deserved better than that.

  She was really happy to see me—it made me glad I’d gotten completely drenched. She wanted to hug me.

  “Don’t,” I said. “I smell like some dog.”

  “I like dogs,” she said, and threw her arms around me. I could feel her breasts against my chest.

  She introduced me to Matt, who offered me some coke if I wanted any—but I didn’t. “Hey, pretty good, what?” he said, putting his arm around Monica and kissing her hair. I sort of nodded in agreement, since I wasn’t completely sure. I’d applauded as loud as I could, and so had the other fifteen or so people in the room, but we got a little swallowed up in all that empty space. “In this city, nineteen hundred and eighty-three,” Matt told me, “you gotta have some hot chick like this up there. Otherwise you get a bunch of fags. It’s a crying shame. Who wants a bunch of fags?”

  Monica swatted at him playfully.

  “Fags,” I remember saying. “Who needs them?” It was my idea of a joke, sort of. I didn’t like Matt, but for some reason I wanted him to like me. I wanted them all to like me.

  After we’d helped Matt load the equipment in the van, Monica and I went to her apartment. It had stopped raining—it was one of those wonderful nights with slick streets reflecting all the lights, and the air cool. She was starved, she said, singing always made her grow together—which was what she always said when she meant she was hungry.

  “You’re going to think I’m plain crazy,” she said, “but there’s this thing, I do it after every gig. I don’t know why—luck, I guess. See that Chinese restaurant there on the corner?” There was this hole in the wall, WING FAT CHOW said the yellow sign over the door. “I go in here after every gig and get take-out moo shoo pork.” She laughed. “It’s not even very good. In fact, it’s really salty and greasy and you get an MSG high from it. But I guess I always think if I don’t go through this little ritual, then it’ll be the last gig I ever get.”

  “You’re funny,” I told her. “Anyway, that’s fine. I’m growing together too. And I like salt and grease. It’s what I’m made out of.” She was walking along swinging her arms in these big motions, like she was some little girl. I could tell she was really relieved to be through singing for the night, though I could also tell she was pretty disappointed in the audience. But she was being brave, and I liked that.

  “I never told anybody except you. So now you’re part of my good luck.”

  “First time that ever happened,” I told her.

  “Stick with me and it won’t be the last. Anyway, when we get back to the apartment, I have this little present to give you.”

  “But we only just met,” I said.

  “Well, that’s okay. I can still give you a present, can’t I?”

  For a minute I was nervous. Suddenly there was this little whine of sex between us. You could barely hear it, but it was there, and I didn’t quite know what to do about it. It’d been years since I used to follow women around. Whatever it was I’d been looking for in those days faded away from me, and I never thought about women any more.

  Verbena was the only woman I had anything to do with, and I didn’t exactly think of her as a woman. Women just didn’t seem necessary—at least not to fuck.

  But fucking wasn’t what Monica had in mind. She let us into her apartment—there were about ten locks she had to undo to get in, and once we were in, it wasn’t clear to me what she was afraid was going to get stolen. The place was tiny—a mattress and a chair and a beat-up dresser took up most of the room. The window faced right onto a brick wall.

  “Let’s light candles,” she said. “I love candlelight.” I noticed there were candles all over the room—stuck in beer bottles, or big fat ones the size of tin cans. I sat on the bed while she got them lit. Then she started pulling a guitar case out from under the dresser.

  “What’re you gonna do?” I asked her. I figured there’d been enough singing tonight.

  She strummed a few chords, and cleared her throat. “This is for you,” she said. “This is what I saw when I saw you playing pinball in the V Bar.” And she started to play.

  It was this mournful song, like all the middle-of-the-night truckers’ songs I used to hear on the radio in Owen. This is for me, I thought—not sure what to make of that, not sure at all.

  “You wrote it?” I said. “The music and the words and everything?” I have to admit, I was impressed. And also a little alarmed.

  “‘Lone Steel Ball on a Roll,’” she said. “Think it’ll be a hit?”

  “Catchy title,” I said. “I can’t believe you wrote me a song.”

  “I was thinking about you,” she said. “It just sort of came to me.”

  I told her it sounded like country music to me, and I thought she hated country music.

  She sort of pursed her lips. “It’s not country music,” she said. “It has this special edge to it. That’s why I could never get a break in a place like Nashville. They don’t understand my kind of thing there.”

  It sort of broke my heart, the way she said that, because I could see right then and there how she was telling herself these stories so she could keep on going, and deep down she knew she wasn’t ever going to go anywhere with those songs. I’ve never been very good at figuring out what exactly it is I like about people. Most people probably would’ve found Monica pretty plain to look at, and totally out of place in New York, and fairly good at pretending to herself things weren’t really the way she knew they were—but something happened to me, I saw some poor kind of spark that was about to go out in her, and I thought if I could breathe on it, then maybe it’d stay lit a little while longer.

  Or maybe I’m the one who’s fairly good at pretending about the reasons for the things I do.

  In any case, over the next few weeks she wrote me a lot of songs. “You’re my muse,’’ she told me. “Tony my music muse.’’ I didn’t really know what to do—I kept wishing they’d stop coming to her, but I knew it made her happy for them to be coming, and to tell
the truth, I liked somebody to be crooning these sad sappy songs to me. It was always a big deal when she’d finished a new one—she’d invite me over and light the candles and open a bottle of wine. We’d sit cross-legged on her bed, facing each other, both barefoot. She’d cradle her guitar that had a horse and a rose stenciled on it. I’d feel shy and watch her toes, how she’d painted them red, maybe to make up for her fingernails that she bit down to nothing. I always noticed that her second toe was longer than her big toe, and even though I know a lot of people are like that, still I felt weird noticing it, like it was something a little freakish.

  “You’re not going to like this one,” she’d always say, hefting her guitar and picking at some moody chord.

  “Try me,” I’d tell her. She’d clear her throat, and hum a note, and then she’d close her eyes and start in. Only then would I look at her face—that thin high-cheeked boy’s face that could’ve been Cherokee if it wasn’t for the white-blonde hair falling down around it.

  Her songs all sounded pretty much the same to me—country and sad.

  I guess it’s a good thing I have this terrible memory for music. If I didn’t, I’d probably be hearing those songs in my head right now, and then I’d feel even more terrible than I already do. Though there’s this one song I keep hearing here in the Eddy. I’m never sure where it’s coming from, maybe from Earl’s radio down the corridor; I keep meaning to ask him but then I never do. It’s a country music station, and usually I can’t hear it, it’s just this hum in the background—but some days it’s like a door’s been left open somewhere, and I can hear it really clearly. A mixed blessing, I guess you’d call it. It makes me homesick, a little—but homesick for where, I can’t exactly say. Homesick for somewhere I think I should’ve been, but never was.

  The worst is how I keep imagining it’s a song Monica wrote, how she’s gone and recorded a hit and now it’s playing on all the radios in America. It’s not impossible, is it? Some record producer reads a mention in the newspapers about Tony Blair’s wife writing songs, and thinks, Hey, this’ll sell. And I wouldn’t’ve heard about it—they’d have kept it from me—only I recognize something about that song that says Monica loud and clear.