Happy Baby

by Stephen Elliott

  “All right,” I say.

  I send Ambellina a note that I won’t be able to see her any more, then sign off the kiosk and go to help Valerie behind the counter. I don’t know why I have to end it with Ambellina. Because nothing in my life has ever worked out quite the way I planned. Because I’m selfish. I do it because I’m lonely and when I don’t see her it’s worse and because after three years in San Francisco I don’t know anybody. Because I don’t want to be seen and I don’t want anybody to know. Because she was so human the last time I saw her, unsure of her next move. And I don’t have room for that, for reasons I’m unsure of. My small apartment. This city and all of the cities. No. And the jungles with their animals. People with their problems. The windows. I woke last night and grabbed at the end of my mattress. The windows. No. It’s hard enough.

  Valerie doesn’t want to talk to me. One time Valerie asked me to walk her to the campsite. She said she was afraid to go alone. All of the homeless were there, below the highway, at the base of Bernal Heights. Shopping carts were everywhere and they had strung tarp among them. A large fire was burning from a steel drum and we saw the men and women huddled around it from across Cesar Chavez. I asked Valerie why she wanted to go there though I knew it was to see Philc. But I didn’t understand that she had to go down beneath the highway and the thick traffic, a six-lane-deep river to be crossed. It looked like hell to me, that place she was going to, all the people and stray dogs. Valerie looked at me like she didn’t know what I meant. “I’m not going there,” I told her. Valerie crossed her arms. “You don’t have to go there,” I said. She thought about it but then she stepped into the street, wading through the traffic and I watched for a minute and then followed. We climbed out the other side and nobody seemed to care who we were. We found Philc’s tent near the back, where everybody threw away their trash. Paper and soiled, torn clothing was everywhere, piles stacked against the steel mesh fence before the brickyard. He was standing, throwing a knife into the dirt. There were a couple of men sitting nearby sipping on the last of a glass bottle and wiping their beards. One of the men had a bag of peeled carrots on his lap.

  “Is that your bodyguard?” Philc sneered. Valerie left me and went over to him. “I’ve been doing speed. Watch this.” He pushed Valerie over to a big tree. She seemed to know what to do. She leaned back against it with her arms straight at her sides and closed her eyes. She looked happy. “Are you guys watching?” he asked the two men. One of them nodded and the other grabbed a carrot stub from his bag. Philc picked up his knife. A truck rumbled over the steel girders, sending a shiver through the small plot. Philc threw the knife, striking the tree right next to Valerie’s head. But it didn’t stick. It fell to the ground and landed bent at her feet.

  “That’s dangerous,” I said.

  “Fuck,” Philc said, gathering his knife. Valerie had opened her eyes.

  “Let’s go,” I told her.

  “She’s not going anywhere,” Philc said, looking down at his knife, running his fingers along the blade like he was cleaning it.

  “You go,” Valerie said. “I’ll be okay.”

  “She’s safe with me.” Philc’s dirty face was full of challenge. “There’s room for her in my tent.” He emptied a bottle of water onto a rag. There didn’t seem to be anything for me to do but to go. I wasn’t wanted and it was obvious Valerie wasn’t leaving unless I carried her out, and I wasn’t going to do that. I didn’t want to watch Philc throw knives at her head. I worked my way down the path and lowered myself back into the street.

  It’s game night. The tables are filled with people playing board games. Twenty people, maybe. This group comes here once a week. I don’t know who they are. They show up. They order some coffee. We stay open later than usual. They set up Monopoly, checkers, Parcheesi. Push the pieces. They play for hours.

  “This is our strangest night,” I say to Valerie. But she’s still upset so she doesn’t even answer. “Valerie, look at them,” I say over her shoulder. She’s wearing a Naked Raygun shirt. Last Tour Ever. She’s cutting a bagel for a customer. She ignores me. “I don’t even know what I want. If somebody asked me what I wanted I couldn’t even begin to answer them.”

  “But nobody’s asking, are they?” Valerie says.

  “No,” I say. She’s facing me with the knife. Somebody shouts Yahtzee! Valerie’s lips, at the corners, point down. “Nobody is.”

  I clean up my apartment. It doesn’t take long, it’s such a small place. I knock on my neighbor’s door and ask if I can borrow his broom and I sweep my floors. I fill a bucket with soap and water and wash the walls. I leave my hands in the dark, soapy water for a minute. I stand by the window and watch the action on the street below, the hookers and the police cruisers. If I was in Chicago with my wife, we’d watch television. We’d avoid the obvious questions. We’d make excuses for nothing until we were done and we could finally sleep. Then the phone starts ringing.

  I buy Valerie a five-dollar bar of soap that smells like cucumber. I take out the trash. Lunchtime, Philc is standing across Valencia Street. He has scratches on his cheek and a new tattoo under his eye. I pass him on my way to pick up pizza slices for Valerie and myself. We look at each other but I just keep walking. It’s three in the afternoon and the shop is empty except for the girl with the tattooed face who’s on the nod at the last table in the back. I remember when that girl started coming around the neighborhood, with her Barbie lunchbox, looking to get high. People would say she was pretty, except for the tattoos. It’s like she only had that one thing wrong with her, but that was enough. The blue ink obscures her face entirely. It runs from her ears and eyes and curls under her chin like a beard. She gets in cars and turns tricks down by Folsom Street.

  Valerie has finished her slice and is throwing away the paper plate. She pours herself a soda and dumps three ounces of peach syrup into it. She wipes her mouth with her forearm and then puckers her lips.

  The light is blinking on the machine and all of my windows are open. The workers from the factory are huddled around the white lunch truck.

  You fucking punk bitch. You think you can send me an email saying you don’t want to see me anymore and that’s it? I don’t know what kind of game you are playing. Be as close to a man as you can be and pick up the motherfucking phone or do something that makes me less inclined to rip your fucking thinning hair out by the pale roots. I really don’t have time for your shit. You belong on your back with me suffocating you. Why do you think there is room for you? Don’t you think I have my own problems? I will ambush you somewhere. I will leave permanent marks. I warn you, don’t fuck with me. You can’t run away. I will be there tomorrow and if you are not available your whole neighborhood will know what a sissy punk bitch who likes to be raped you are. Don’t underestimate my cruelty.

  At work I stand near the counter. “C’mon,” Valerie says. I take a breath before wrapping the last bagel of the morning in paper and handing it to the customer who walks out the door. Outside they’re routing traffic around Valencia and the cars, each pointing in a slightly different direction, seem to be trying to climb over one another but none of them are moving. The cars need to get through. There is no way around Valencia. It’s starting to rain. People run past the windows with papers over their hats. Philc and Valerie are in the back with the recycling and the trash, having a cigarette under the porch hang. I open the newspaper; there’s been an invasion. I look up and Philc is standing at the counter in front of me. “Hey,” he says quietly. “We need to come to an understanding, bro.” I fold the newspaper, slide it over by the cookies. “Valerie loves you. Do you know that, man? You’re family. You are. I think we can make this work.” He pulls a toothpick from his pocket and plays with it between his front teeth. “Maybe we can all get a place together. You know what I mean? The three of us. No more bad times.” He speaks calmly and I wonder what kind of pills he’s been taking and if they would do me any good and how long they would last. “Friends for life?” He str
etches his hand across the counter. I take his hand because every small bit of peace is worth having.

  I put the bagels away and wrap the day-old pastries. Valerie comes back to help me. The rain is beating down on the sidewalk and Philc is sitting quietly in the back making origami from napkins.

  That time you were tied up before. You looked so innocent. I wanted to draw blood. But I didn’t. Do you know why? You like to think you’re smart so you think other people can’t understand you. You are so funny! Did you ever think I was reasonable? I mean, I can be a reasonable person but I don’t like being played with. You cannot spend time with me and then send some pathetic excuse to disappear. Is that how you handle things? By running away? It doesn’t work like that little boy. Answer your phone next time I call.

  I tell Ambellina I’m sorry and ask if I can take her to see Casablanca at the Paramount in Oakland. It’s been raining every day and I head to the East Bay. The Paramount is an art deco theater from the Depression that plays classic movies. The theater opens early for cocktails and the Wurlitzer. I’m there first, above the 19th Street station, and after fifteen minutes I start to worry that she isn’t going to show up and then she is standing in front of me. I try to take her hand but she won’t let me. “What do you think you were trying to pull?” she asks. We’re moving with the crowd of people down the street.

  “I …”

  “You what? Do you belong to me or not?” Men are watching her. She’s wearing thigh-high latex yellow boots, fishnets, a leather skirt. Her tight curls are cut close to her scalp and dyed arctic blue. She seems to be looking around, smiling to all of them at once. She also seems to be focused only on me.

  “Yes,” I say quietly.

  “What?”

  “Yes. I belong to you, Mistress.” The guy walking next to me snickers.

  We move through the large doors of the old theater, the velvet floors, columns and statues reaching to a roof that ends in a midnight sky. The theater was built to hold thousands. Ambellina sends me for Coke and popcorn and when I come back the seats around us are filled and the man in the coat and tails at the Wurlitzer is being lowered beneath the stage.

  Bogart’s face fills the screen and out of the corner of my eye Ambellina is rummaging through her purse. I grew up with Humphrey Bogart. We had a television and my father loved the old Bogart films and would make me watch them. Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo. “You’re not big enough to take me down, see.” In his better moods my father would quote Bogart. “Sure, on the one hand maybe I love you and maybe you love me. But you’ll have something on me you can use whenever you want. And since I’ll have something on you who’s to say you’re not going to knock me over like you did the rest of them?” My father was a big man with a loud laugh, four inches taller than I am now. He was a violent man who wouldn’t stand for being looked at crossways by women or children. He pushed my kindergarten teacher down a small flight of stairs. He carried a small gun, a bottle of mace, and brass knuckles inside his coat. He was lazy and his laziness made him a criminal. He was killed with a shotgun just before my eleventh birthday, which is when my hard time began, though it might have already been too late.

  Bogart seems friendly to me, among the roulette wheels and the card tables. His confidence. His big sad eyes. The white linen suits moving casually across the screen while the world is at war all around them. Rick’s, a little Free French outpost on the sand. He does what he has to. He betrays poor Peter Lorre to the Nazis. But the world won’t let him alone. The world is bigger than the castle he has built for himself. This is the lesson of Casablanca.

  Ambellina forces the gag into my mouth and I catch my breath. I let out a tiny moan while the big, round puck forces open my jaw and cheeks, sending a throbbing up the sides of my face.

  “Shhh.”

  The theater is so quiet except for the actors and Ambellina slowly rubbing her thumb and index finger together. There’s a hole in the puck to breathe through and I feel her pulling the straps around the back of my neck and fastening it tight to hold the gag in. I grip onto the seats. The strap catches and pulls my hair. I want to move out of this. To squirm. To wriggle down to the floor. I jerk my head one way, and then back. One quick breath. I push back in my seat, my feet pressing the floor. I try to hold the middle and when I can’t I lean cautiously into Ambellina’s shoulder, and she lets me stay there. Before the plane flies away I’ve grown used to the pressure against the roof of my mouth. When the lights come on I’m resting; I can hardly feel my hair caught in the buckle.

  “C’mon now, Angel,” Ambellina says, unfastening the gag, sliding her fingers inside my cheeks to pull the puck from my mouth. “I’m taking you home.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  ACHTERBURGWAL

  I’M DREAMING OF my wife. I’m remembering her when she was pregnant, and then when she wasn’t pregnant anymore. She was long and thin again after her pregnancy and I could fall asleep with her on top of me. She was so light I could barely feel her.

  I scratch at my shoulder blades as I wake up and hear water boiling over a pot and spilling into a fire. The cotton sheet rides to my knees. I remember that I’m in Amsterdam and I haven’t seen my wife Zahava in years. There’s a woman in front of me at an ironing board wearing socks that don’t reach her ankles, her legs naked until her shirt begins at her thighs. She’s looking down on me. Her white T-shirt is so bright it appears out of focus. I wonder if she is going to hit me with the iron.

  “I don’t know you,” I say.

  “You will,” she says. She stands the iron on its heels. Her calves stretching, she jerks the plug from the wall.

  Her name is Jessie and she’s a friend of my roommate Toine, who has left for work already. Toine and I share a small flat in the Jordan: two rooms with no doors, the shower hanging over the toilet, the kitchen the length and width of a plank.

  There’s a packet of croissants between Jessie and me with the plastic ripped open. We lean against the counters and eat from plates we hold with one hand. She’s taller than me but not as tall as Toine. She’s beautiful, I think, though I didn’t notice it right away. She’s big-boned, like the Dutch, but with black hair, and her skin is the color of sand.

  “Toine and I met in college,” Jessie says. “I don’t suppose he ever mentioned me?”

  “We’ve only lived together for a couple of months,” I say. She watches me eating and I cover my mouth. “He’s moving soon. He never mentioned you.”

  “Of course not. Why would he? You’re just roommates, right?” She lays her plate on the counter, next to the wood block and the knives. “But we were very close. He wanted to marry me, except that we were political. Can you imagine Toine at a protest?”

  “No.” I place my plate in the sink and brush my hands together. “I have to go to work.” I squeeze between Jessie and the fridge to grip the tap, run a stream of water over my plate and pull the pan she cooked eggs in from the stove, wipe it twice with a rag and hang it on the wall. Jessie hasn’t moved; she’s waiting for something and I frown and smile at the same time to show her I’m in a hurry.

  “You don’t have to look at me like that. I have work to do as well. I’m not some crazy person, you know. I’m not a stalker.”

  “I never said you were a stalker.”

  “I’ve just returned from Africa,” she tells me. “Ever been? I was doing very important work there. There’s a report I have to write. Tell Toine I’ll still be here when he gets home.”

  ***

  It’s a damp Dutch day and the bricks in the street are wet. The tourists haven’t woken yet but the laundries are open and some of the hookers have turned on the lights in their windows. Toine is across from the fountain before the theater Casa Rosso, standing in front of the kiosk. He wears his dark blue suit and tie, his toes pointed toward the short rail that borders the canal. He seems to be considering what to do about the water.

  “Up early,” I say, shoving my hands in my pockets and spitting at the
canal.

  “Up Simba,” he says and flips his cigarette into the canal. He looks the way he always looks, happy, disgusted, bored. “I was restless. I thought I’d leave you Jessie.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” I say. “There’s something wrong with her.”

  “She doesn’t know when she isn’t wanted. You would make a nice couple.”

  “She’s beautiful,” I say.

  “I’ll tell you something about beauty. She left Holland years ago to save the world. She thought she would spread a curtain and wrap the hungry children in it and they wouldn’t be hungry anymore. Now she comes back because I have a career. She arrived last night with her bags while you were sleeping. Can you imagine?” He shakes his head. He takes a flat pad of tickets from inside the empty ticket booth and hands them to me, then reaches into his pocket for some coins. “Have you had coffee?”

  “No.”

  “Here’s three gulden. Get two cups from Harry.”

  Where I work it looks like a theater, a smaller version of where Toine stands, but it isn’t. There are pictures from the actual show cased in glass along the outside: Hank and Melinda fucking on a trapeze, Miriam sticking a banana in her pussy, Lucy smoking a cigar with her vagina, the lesbians. The stairs are carpeted and lead to a small landing with a podium where I write my tickets in front of a wall full of mirrors and what looks like a door with a golden handle. But it’s all an illusion. The door opens to a storage closet where costumes are kept. There’s no show here. This is just a rented storefront. The show is down the street, where the windows cost more, where it’s so crowded on the weekends your shoulders get stuck. But some people come in this way.

  “Live sex show,” I call out. “See Mickey’s mouse.” I sell a couple of tickets before noon. I write out a card on the podium and initial my name at the bottom of it next to the price they paid. I make eight percent on each ticket plus the first sixty gulden. I can charge between fifteen and fifty gulden. The customers wait in front of the golden handle to the storage closet for me to open the door for them. “It’s not there,” I say, tucking the ticket pad into my pocket. “Follow me.”