“Home.”
“Good. Hook up with the roommates of your choice and meet us out later.”
“Who is us, and where is out?”
He rattled off a list of people from our recurring cast of friends, then said, “Cutter’s. Between nine and ten.” When I didn’t answer, he said, “Oh. It’s been so long that I forgot. Maybe Cookie forgot, too.”
Cutter’s was a dive on the Lower East Side. It was owned and operated by a retired Marine named John Cutter. Everybody called him Cookie.
Even though Cutter’s was quite a distance from the Hell’s Kitchen apartment where I’d lived with my uncle, I started going there with my friend Blythe not long after I moved to New York. She’d once lived in the neighborhood, so she knew the bar. Blythe was over twenty-one, and although I was only seventeen at the time, I never drank, so it wasn’t a big deal. When I started drinking, it still wasn’t a big deal. Cookie could barely be bothered to wipe down the bar or keep the toilet working, so he wasn’t exactly conscientious about checking an ID. Since several of my friends were underage like me, it was a good place for us.
Most of Cutter’s patrons were rough around the edges. Vets. Aging policemen. Ironworkers. We didn’t mingle with them, and they didn’t pay attention to us. We weren’t spoiled college kids. We didn’t make a lot of noise. No one got drunk or rowdy. We didn’t act like we were slumming. We were grateful to stay at our long table in the corner and shoot the shit. The working men stuck together at the bar or around the pool tables. We maintained a peaceful coexistence.
Blythe was the only person I knew who moved comfortably between the two groups. Blythe was an artist—an actual working painter whose work got shown and made money for her. She was our bohemian fairy godmother. Sometimes people didn’t take her seriously because she was around five feet tall and probably weighed ninety pounds. That was a mistake. Blythe had a take-no-prisoners disposition, and you crossed her at your own risk.
Something about Blythe endeared her to Cutter’s burly clientele. They looked out for her, but she had a way of looking out for them, too. Like Dennis Fagan, who was part of the reason I’d been kicked out of Cutter’s a few weeks before.
“What does that mean?” Kendra asked later, after I told her about Fred’s invitation. “Are we going, or aren’t we?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’d feel better if Roberto was with us. He’s bigger than me. He commands respect from the blue collars.”
She shrugged and said, “I haven’t seen him today. He’s probably at his mother’s.” She slapped at my hand when I started chewing a hangnail. “What did you do? Get in a fight with this Dennis guy?”
“Um, no,” I said. “Do I look dead?”
“So why’d you get kicked out?”
“It wasn’t my fault.”
“It never is.”
“Some guy was running his mouth about us. He was probably drunk. He made a couple comments that bothered me. I said something back. He called me a name, and Dennis clocked him.”
“Seems like the drunk guy and Dennis should have been the ones kicked out. Not you. I must be missing a lot of details.”
“Yeah, whatever,” I said. “I haven’t been back since. I don’t know if I’m banned for life.”
We stopped talking as Morgan walked through on her way to the kitchen. Roberto and I had gotten tired of our lack of privacy in Chez Snake Pit. While I’d been out, he’d finished installing walls made of sheets. Kendra had left me exposed by pulling back a sheet when she came in.
“Interesting portiere,” Morgan said, looking up at the aluminum poles that were suspended by chains from the ceiling. She fingered the sheets and said, “Not cheap. And not floral, thank the god of your choice. Are these from Drayden’s?”
When we were in school, Roberto’s financial contribution to the Mirones family had come from retail jobs—first at Lord & Taylor, then at Macy’s. His experience had helped him get his most recent job on the Visuals staff at Drayden’s, a newcomer to the department stores on Fifth Avenue.
“We can’t afford sheets from Drayden’s,” I said. “His mother got these from the hotel. And what’s a porter ray?”
“Portiere,” Morgan corrected. “It’s fancy talk for something hanging in a doorway. Roberto’s mother steals sheets from Four Seasons?”
Kendra said, “That sounds like she sells seashells at—”
“Of course she doesn’t,” I said. “They probably let the housekeeping staff buy old sheets or stuff that needs mending. I don’t know. Ask Roberto.”
“You should go out with us tonight,” Kendra said and gave Morgan one of her encouraging smiles. I imagined a force field of evil around Morgan that would deflect Kendra’s goodness and send it shrieking into the night, like a tranny prostitute with VD. “Nick was just telling me the story of steelworker Butch—”
“He’s an ironworker, and his name is Dennis.”
“—Cassidy and the Sunflower Kid,” Kendra finished. The expression on her face rattled me. Sometimes she seemed more passive-aggressive princess than dumb blonde. “C’mon. It’ll be fun!”
“Gosh, I don’t know,” Morgan said with exaggerated enthusiasm. “I’d go, but I don’t have anything to wear!” She pretended to flip back her hair with her hand and a toss of the head. Then she resumed her mask of Satan in human form and went into the kitchen.
“Do you think that means she’s not going?”
I looked at Kendra, trying to figure out if she was kidding. Although it was one of the most social exchanges I’d had with Morgan, there was no mistaking her message.
“Yeah. I think that’s what it means.”
“She can be such a buzz kill sometimes.” Kendra unfolded her legs and dramatically flung herself onto the futon. Then she started talking about her hair.
Even if we missed Roberto, we had to get out of there before Kendra turned my night into a slumber party.
It wasn’t really cold out, but Kendra and I were both dressed in heavier coats than most of the people we passed. I was trying to avoid a relapse, and Kendra said she needed a heavy coat to go with her outfit. Which made no sense. Nobody could see what she was wearing beneath it. And Cutter’s was always warm to the point of tropical, so she’d ditch it as soon as we were inside. Maybe she only had the one coat. Or maybe she felt the need to be buttoned up from head to toe.
“Do you get nervous walking through the barrio?” I asked.
“You make it sound like we live in a Santana video. No, of course I don’t get nervous,” she said with an anxious glance around. “You know it’s longer between buses on Sunday, right? I hate waiting for a bus.”
I decided to make a concession for the sake of her mental health. “If you’re that worried about it, we can take the subway. What’s the problem? Do you think you stand out because you’re so blond? So white? So walking like you’re spastic?”
“It’s the rats,” she said, doing another sidestep, although there wasn’t a rat in sight. “Anything above Ninety-fifth is rats, rats, rats.”
“Rats are everywhere. All you have to do is pay attention and don’t take stupid risks.”
“You’re being naive. We’re in Harlem. There’s gang graffiti—”
“Street art.”
“Trash on the streets—”
“Every street in the city has trash,” I protested.
“To be collected. Not to be blown down the sidewalks. Then again, I understand why people don’t use their trash cans. Yesterday I saw a chicken scratching around ours.”
I laughed and said, “It’s winter. No place in the city looks decent until spring. When Harlem thaws, you’ll change your mind. Roberto tells me there are block parties. Street festivals. Sometimes they close off streets for kids to play—”
“Yeah, that’s another thing,” Kendra said. “You don’t see so many kids anywhere else. The city is a lousy place to have a family. Families should live in Connecticut or Pennsylvania.”
I wanted
to ask if her family was Republican. Or I could have told her that the only time I’d been mugged, I’d been outside an art gallery in the Village, which was probably Kendra’s idea of a safe neighborhood.
“Why are you so quiet? You artistic types are always brooding,” Kendra said.
“Brooding? Who uses that word in real life? I’m thinking.”
“You artistic types are always thinking,” she amended.
“You do know this isn’t a club we’re going to, right? We’re not having some Sex and the City moment. We’re not tweakers or club kids. Or even a bunch of overwrought, emo poets—”
“Disliking rats, free-range chickens who live in trash cans, and drive-bys doesn’t make me a snob,” Kendra said.
I put my arm around her as we walked. Regardless of what Kendra thought, anyone who paid attention to us at all seemed friendly. Older people even smiled, maybe mistaking us for a couple.
“I’m a reverse snob,” I said. “I’d rather walk these streets than walk into a loft in SoHo. Or a shop on Park Avenue. Talk about brutal people.”
“You don’t have to be rich to live where you don’t see homeless people sleeping on stoops,” Kendra said and pointed.
“You get what you pay—does she have clones? The bitch is everywhere.”
“Who?”
Sister Divine was sound asleep, and I couldn’t stop myself from checking out how she looked when she wasn’t screaming about demons. Without the intensity of her waking hours, the creases on her forehead and around her eyes weren’t as visible. She looked like a filthy fallen angel at rest.
As I stared at her, Kendra and the neighborhood around me faded. I remembered how I’d felt when I first moved to New York. The city had seemed magical. The crowded sidewalks, the rumble of the trains beneath the surface, the streets jammed with cars, cabs, and buses going places. I was always outside, always carrying my sketchbook. Even though I rarely left Midtown, there was inevitably something—an iron fence, a hidden garden, a bodega, or building masonry and adornments—with details that I couldn’t wait to get on paper. And the faces. After the sameness of people in the Midwest—or maybe I was just accustomed to them—I couldn’t get enough of the variety.
Sister Divine’s face had a childlike innocence as I looked at her, and I itched to have my sketchbook with me again. I wanted to protect her, even though nothing about her sleep showed fear. That comforted me, and I knew why.
There would always be before and after. I’d been in Manhattan for almost a year before September 11. A year when I immersed myself in every day and thought the adventure would last forever. Then came the nineteen months after.
Seeing Sister Divine asleep made it feel like before again. Like I was cradled by the city the way she seemed to be while lying there.
Kendra pulled impatiently at my sleeve, and the spell was broken.
We were greeted with warm, stale air inside Cutter’s. I held my breath, not knowing if Cookie would let me stay or make me bounce. Cutter’s was the kind of place where your eyes had to adjust once you went inside, no matter what time of day it was. But I spotted the ex-Marine watching us almost as soon as we went through the door. I kept my head low when I walked past the bar, where he was setting a beer in front of a guy with a hard hat hanging from the back of his stool.
“No trouble tonight,” Cookie said.
It was more of a decree than a warning. I got the idea that he didn’t blame me for what had happened the last time I was there. And I was sure he’d supported Dennis in that battle. I did a quick scan of the bar, but Dennis wasn’t with the rest of the blue collars.
I led Kendra to the usual table, where Fred was flanked by Roberto and Melanie. Melanie, who looked like a younger version of Meg Ryan, had been popular at BHSA. I wasn’t sure if she was in school anywhere now. A sculptor of rare talent, she could shape stone, wood, or metal into astonishing beauty and motion. It wasn’t often that she joined our group, but I always liked it when she did. She had a certain upbeat purity to her, a little like Kendra’s sunny disposition. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why the two were different. Sometimes Kendra had a childlike quality that I was pretty sure Melanie hadn’t had since she was about five.
I’d often thought that unusually talented people were robbed of childhood. It showed up in different ways in each of them, whether in their art or their personality. If Dr. Mark had been there, I could have told him that this was where my romantic streak showed itself. I was a fool for anyone gifted with creativity.
“You’re late,” Fred said, smiling at me in a way that I found sexy.
“Since you’re already here, I must be,” I said.
“My own special blend of spiced tea,” Melanie said, reaching to fill two empty cups as Roberto introduced her to Kendra. “Unless you’d rather have a beer?”
“Tea’s fine until I get warmed up,” Kendra said, shaking out of her coat. “My grandmother made her own tea. I was never allowed to have any, though.”
Everybody stared at her until I introduced her to the group; then I said to Fred, “You won’t believe this, but I saw Sister Divine again on the way here.”
“The homeless woman? What was up with that?” Kendra asked. “I thought you were going to kiss her or something.”
While Fred explained about Sister Divine, I sipped my tea, wondering why Cookie put up with us. He couldn’t make any money selling us hot water. I saw Roberto staring at me, but before I could ask him how he’d known to join us, I felt a presence swoop in behind me, and then two strong hands fell on my shoulders. As Blythe loudly pulled out the chair next to me and straddled it, I turned to see who’d taken possession of me.
“Davii! Aren’t you supposed to be on some remote island styling Lillith Allure models?” I asked.
“I needed him,” Blythe said, running a hand over her new spiky haircut. It was colored mostly dark red, with just the tips of the spikes hot pink. “He had to give me good luck hair.”
With one last squeeze of my shoulders, Davii slid into a chair between Melanie and me. More introductions were made for Kendra’s benefit, and Fred and I exchanged a glance. We both thought that Davii was possibly the hottest man we knew. Tall. Slender build. Icy blue eyes that contrasted with his nearly black hair. We competed to be the focus of his good energy, because it was calming and stimulating at the same time. As far as we knew, Davii was single, but Fred had never gotten any farther with him than I had.
“I only repaired what she did to her hair,” Davii was saying. “Then I escorted her to her opening.” He turned to me and added, “The photo shoot was rescheduled. Although I think they should do it here. How could a beach in Puerto Rico be more fabulous than Cutter’s?”
“Opening? Are you a performer?” Kendra asked Blythe.
“She’s the most amazing artist ever,” Melanie said.
“Ever?” Blythe asked and tried to look modest. “That may be stretching it.”
“Pay no attention to her false humility,” Davii said. “When we left, the Rania Gallery had already sold a half dozen of her paintings.”
“It was four,” Blythe said.
“Not that you noticed,” Roberto said, and I could sense the envy under his joking tone.
I understood his frustration. Roberto was happiest when he was consumed by his art. As a little kid, he’d been intrigued by stories about the Quetzal, a rain forest bird that was part of Latin American mythology. He’d gotten in trouble for drawing the bird on the walls of his bedroom. He shared the room with his brothers, so he tried to pin the blame on them. His childhood misbehavior had foreshadowed the times he’d gotten busted for defacing public property as a teenager. But when an artist didn’t have money for materials or a space to work in, tenement walls, dirty buildings, and sidewalks became a canvas for creativity, anger, and beauty.
Although Roberto’s art had become more abstract, I still saw evidence of the quetzal in his paintings. A bit of wise eye. A trace of wing. The colors of tail feathers. T
he bird was his muse, totem, and guide. But because Roberto had to work at Drayden’s to pay rent and to help his family, he wasn’t painting. It wasn’t surprising that he envied Blythe’s ability to support herself with her art.
However, at least he had a job that allowed him to express himself creatively. Drayden’s windows and displays were extremely elaborate and always changing. What kind of creative outlet did I have with my job? Sometimes I wrote my name in the cleanser before I started scrubbing.
Roberto had a unique vision and knew how he wanted to express it. When he did paint again, everything would probably just explode out of him. I envied him the way he envied Blythe. I could sketch anything. I could paint and get good grades in art classes. But everything I did was derivative of someone else’s work, and it bored me. Studying art or being expected to imitate the styles of other artists seemed like a sure way to extinguish whatever creativity I had. No matter what my uncle thought, dropping out of Pratt had been my first step toward self-preservation. I didn’t have a quetzal to inspire me, but there had to be something in the world that would help me develop an original vision.
I only half listened as the others talked about Blythe’s installation. I shifted my focus from Roberto to Melanie. Her sculptures had begun selling when we were still in high school, sometimes even before she finished them. I didn’t think she was making as much money as Blythe, but sooner or later, she probably would be. In the meantime, her parents paid for the Chelsea space where she lived and worked. She had a few neighbors who looked out for her. She was always trying to get Fred or me to hook up with them. A lot of our female friends seemed to share Melanie’s delusion that all single gay men were in desperate need of a boyfriend.
At least Kendra hadn’t tried to be my marriage broker. She was too focused on her own problems, and was struggling financially even more than I was. Even though she worked two jobs, I assumed she was always broke because she was putting herself through college. But Kendra wasn’t an artist. Her goal was to produce television shows, so going through Pratt’s Media Arts program made sense for her. Not only did she need to learn her craft, but she needed to make contacts.
When You Don't See Me Page 4
