No Lease on Life

by Lynne Tillman

  The boss was right. Elizabeth didn’t want a weekend warrior on crack lunging at her from a doorway. Jeanine’s mother was threatening to throw her out again.

  —It’s your mother’s dementia…

  —The AIDS, and she’s crazy to begin with. She gets high, and either she blames me—number one—for what’s going on her in life, or she sits and feels sorry for what she’s done to my life. She sits there and cries…

  Jeanine glanced behind her nervously.

  —I gotta do something besides sell drugs. I keep going to jail.

  Jeanine’s gray-green eyes were lit by a thousand points of artificial light. She’d straightened her hair again. She couldn’t stop moving. Her gelled hair lay still as a grave on her head as she treaded sidewalk. Jeanine fast-talked Elizabeth. Fatboy strained on his leash.

  —I don’t have my children, I don’t have anything. So when my mother dies—not that I have really anything, but when she dies I’ll have nothing. My sister and I are on and off the lease whenever her dementia sets in. I have to do something with my life, I have to go back to school. I gotta do something besides sell drugs…

  Jeanine might sell drugs until she dropped. They both knew that. They talked about change. It was a version of the conversation she had with friends. Elizabeth was going to quit her job, stop doing something, love and work were everything, nothing, there were no men, no jobs, there was no sex, nothing to live or die for, and if there wasn’t anything, anyone, to want or support you, why bother, because it was hard to change, and most change was small change.

  I might not make it back to this corner, Elizabeth thought as she left it.

  Two African-American men fly to Africa for a vacation. They get off the plane and hear drumming. The drumming goes on night and day. They ask people, Why is there drumming all the time? People say, Drum stop, very bad, very bad. The drums continue, all the time, night and day. Then, one day, suddenly, the drums stop. The men ask everyone, What’s going on? What’s happening? Everyone says, It’s very bad, very bad. They keep asking, But why’s it bad? What’s so bad? Finally an old man says, Drums stop, bass solo.

  The Dallas BBQ restaurant was Friday-night alive and air-conditioned to death. Video wall screens were a distraction when you had nothing to say. The room was loud, filled with echoes, like a public swimming pool, with people shouting for help from waiters, sound bouncing off the walls, an acoustical nightmare. Black and white people ate together and at separate tables. Barbecue and soul food integrated New York, nothing else, not clubs, not schools, not music.

  —A whole chicken, one piece of corn bread, cole slaw, two baked potatoes.

  —Is that all?

  —Yeah.

  —You got it.

  The BBQ eaters, oblivious of other tables, of Elizabeth, were gulping beer from frosted mugs. Her eyes traveled from table to table of people out for a good time, the pursuit of a good time was pathetic. BBQ was a cheap good time.

  People were weird eating, weird with their noses and mouths and dead cells jutting from ends of frantic fingers grasping at straws and chicken body parts, weird whether they chewed with their mouths open or shut.

  Her eyes nearly finished circling the room, then she saw Vomithead, Vomithead’s son and daughter, and Vomithead’s mother.

  They’re alive, she thought.

  Elizabeth collided with herself, with an obstacle lodged in her. She fell back against the stiff chair. The quartet appeared not to see her. She waited for her number to be called. The floor could cave in and they could drop through a hole and never be found. A bomb could be planted by a white supremacist. It could explode right after Elizabeth left, blithely carrying away her whole chicken and cole slaw.

  Vomithead’s betrayal couldn’t be undone or forgotten.

  Elizabeth prepared her speech, rehearsed. She’d walk over, ignore the mother, who was beneath contempt, and the son and daughter, who were products of an otherwise unproductive woman, and glare at, but not into, her ex-friend’s familiar deceptive eyes and ask: Why aren’t you dead?

  That wasn’t sufficient.

  A priest, a pastor, and a rabbi play golf every week. One weekend they’re behind a golfing party that’s very slow. It’s holding up their game and they’re not having any fun. They go to the groundskeeper and say, What’s going on? The groundskeeper tells them it’s a party of blind golfers. The priest says, I’m so ashamed of myself, it’s part of the Church’s teaching to have patience. The pastor says, And I too preach tolerance every Sunday. The rabbi says, yes, I do too, but why can’t they play at night?

  Her order arrived, her number was called. Maybe it wasn’t Vomithead. Elizabeth wouldn’t be able to recognize her anyway. She hadn’t recognized her when she knew her. Vomithead could’ve shifted into another set of chickenshit body parts. Elizabeth didn’t glance her way again.

  If she thought about someone enough, that person appeared on the next block, like a horror movie.

  BBQ was tainted now. Another place was spoiled. Miscreants from yesterday slimed into today. Spoilers were everywhere, thriving on their own misery, making other people miserable. Some of them, like Vomithead, had children to make miserable.

  The older you grew, if you grew older, the more people you didn’t say hello to, the more people you avoided. The living dead cluttered the route. Men she’d fucked years ago walked into crummy coffee shops and sat down next to her. Friends she’d once trusted were specters who entered bitterly into neutral corridors and destroyed the spirit in them. It wasn’t hard to make friends, it was easy. Friends don’t sign contracts. It’s why friendships weren’t taken seriously and marriage was. Life is littered with broken friendships.

  Elizabeth took the long way home and avoided the corner. An elderly white man was behind her, muttering to himself.

  —Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them.

  Elizabeth slowed down. He came closer.

  —Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them, Hitler was right.

  The elderly white man was shabby and unshaved. He wheeled around in circles and searched the street for evidence of his enemies.

  —Fuck them, fuck them, Hitler was right.

  Elizabeth slowed down even more. She was next to him. He stopped talking out loud. He’d violated her mental space, she mentally engaged him in conversation.

  Why don’t you join a militia so you can go kill some blacks and Jews and take over the government?

  He probably believed in God.

  You really think Hitler would save you?

  Militias were worse than the junkies in her vestibule. Junkies weren’t sanctimonious. They knew they were worthless assholes.

  Elizabeth guarded her life. She frowned and set her mouth into an angry trap, then kept her trap shut.

  In Memoriam. Life’s stupid and the same as when you left. Tell me what death’s like. Light and tunnel? Bridge and tunnel here. Miss you.

  What’s the difference between meat and chicken?

  If you beat your chicken, it dies.

  Hector wasn’t in front of the building. Gone. probably setting a fire in the basement.

  On the stairs near her apartment, she was blocked by a drunk hulk. Probably one of the people who camped at Ernest’s door.

  …sad-looking woman descending with her bedding late last night…strange man outside my door coughing…feel like I’m a denizen of Devil’s Island.

  Elizabeth gripped her keys. Her fingers were white and red around them. She always took her keys out a block ahead of home. She had four of them on a chain and placed one between each finger. Then she made a fist. The keys jutted out from her fist. If she was attacked, she’d rip the man’s skin with the keys’ sharp edges, rip his face to shreds. She had her keys splayed, ready.

  The hulk had inflamed skin, enlarged pores. He stank. Maybe he had TB. She didn’t want to breathe his air. He was probably the guy Roy checked out on the stairs last night, the guy refusing to give an inch. Why should he.

  Now she could barely
squeeze past him. Their bodies touched regrettably. He was fierce and silent. He didn’t bother to look up at her. He was probably the one taking dumps on the roof.

  What are the three reasons we know Jesus was Jewish?

  Because he lived at home until he was thirty-three.

  Because he thought his mother was a virgin.

  Because his mother thought he was God.

  Roy was home. If she was alone, about to be a prisoner in her apartment, she called the cops. She used to give creeps the benefit of the doubt. They were menacing, she ignored them. They squatted at her door, she played live-and-let-live, and paced back and forth in her apartment until they left.

  The last time the cops arrived, the man had vanished. He’d left his greasy gear. The cops put on rubber gloves, bagged it and threw it on the street.

  One of the cops was sexy. He looked into her apartment when she opened the door. Roy warned, never let cops inside. She wanted him to come in. She’d never been attracted to a cop before, except on TV. It was inevitable she’d fall in love with one for a minute. She was thrown into contact with them. She’d even had a police escort, because of a murder across the street.

  It was balmy that night. The rookie cop lifted the yellow tape for her to walk under. Her building was technically in the crime scene.

  —Where’s Dennis Franz? Where’s Detective Sipowicz? Elizabeth asked the cop.

  Without missing a beat, the cop motioned across the street to the drug store where the dealer had been murdered.

  —That’s our Sipowicz, he said.

  The guy he pointed to didn’t look anything like the TV character. It didn’t matter. Thousands of movies, TV shows, and commercials were shot in the neighborhood, it was an inner-city set. NYPD Blue was special, because it used the facade of the local station house. Sipowicz, or Dennis Franz, was a cop with a pockmarked human face. He was the plain face of TV.

  Sipowicz once told his fiance, a DA, about a grisly murder, when a dog ate a baby murdered by its mother. Sipowicz had to cut open the dog’s stomach, so he was the one who discovered the baby in pieces. Sipowicz’s pain is in the pauses. He tells his fiance that the priest who’s going to marry them “asked me if I lost my faith.” Long, soulful pause. Then he says, quietly, “I got faith in you.” It doesn’t count that on Hill Street Blues Dennis Franz played a creep. All that’s in the past.

  The night of the murder across the street, the yellow tape marking off the perimeter of the crime scene waved in the breeze for hours. Uniforms and detectives hung out drinking coffee until it was light. Elizabeth didn’t leave her window until they tore down the tape and drove away. It was like TV except she couldn’t hear the dialogue.

  Everyone was a hostage to something.

  She was thrown together with cops. It was inevitable that she’d fall in love with one, that she’d want a cop to invade her space, be her private dick, her space invader, for one New York minute.

  Birds do it,

  bees do it,

  even people with Tourette’s

  FUCK

  do it

  Now Elizabeth set the BBQ chicken down on the stack table near the TV, with plates and forks, and opened the hot aluminum-lined bags. She threw away the plasticware, which could break into pieces as you chewed. Shards of plastic could lodge in your throat. She had a strategy for choking alone. She’d hurl herself against a hardbacked chair and perform a self-Heimlich maneuver.

  Roy was watching The Simpsons.

  —There’s a man in the hallway, she said.

  —Yeah?

  —He stinks.

  —Who doesn’t.

  Elizabeth forgot about Vomithead and Hector. After a while, she forgot about the drunk hulk in the hallway. She knew he could hear every sound in their apartment. He was probably leaning against their wall, listening to the Knicks game.

  A ventriloquist’s act is going nowhere. He’s competing with TV and movies, he’s lost his audience. His agent comes to him and says, Listen, I can’t represent you anymore. No one’s booking you. You’re going to have to find a new line of work. So the ventriloquist opens a store. It’s called speak to Your Dead Relatives. The first day a woman comes in and says, I’d like to speak to my dead husband. The ventriloquist says, That’ll be one hundred dollars. Then she says, And I’d like him to speak to me. The ventriloquist says, That’ll be two hundred dollars. And, he adds, if he speaks to you while I’m swallowing a glass of water, that’ll be three hundred dollars.

  During a commercial Elizabeth poured a beer and went to the window. A lot of people had the game on. Small windows glowed inside big windows. she looked down. The street was empty.

  —Come here, look at this, Roy said.

  A white car on a highway crossed the screen. The Knicks game was interrupted by a newsman’s voice. A white car was driving alone on a six-lane highway.

  —Weird, Roy said.

  The game was being interrupted. Elizabeth knew interruptions were life. Nine black-and-white police cars were following a white car, a Bronco, and they were in formation, keeping their distance. O.J. Simpson’s inside, an announcer said. His ex-wife, Nicole, and her male friend, Ron Goldman, were murdered last week. O.J.’s under arrest for the murders. He’s got a gun to his head. His best friend, A.C. Cowlings, is driving, speaking to the cops on a car phone. O.J.’s going to kill himself.

  Roy and Elizabeth watched the game and the car. The Knicks were beating the Rockets. O.J. couldn’t turn himself over to the cops. He wanted to see his mother. Patrick Ewing was sweating, drenched. A.C. kept talking to the cops on the car phone. O.J. wanted to go to his mother, to his home or to the cemetery, to Nicole’s grave. Starks missed a basket. Elizabeth started to cry.

  —What’s the matter? Roy asked. The Knicks are winning.

  If he did it, anyone could do it. No one was safe from each other or from themselves. He wants to go home to his mother.

  —I just saw him in Naked Gun 33½. He was funny, she said.

  —The first Naked Gun was funnier.

  Elizabeth walked to the window. The white car was traveling on the highway across most of the green screens.

  Helen phoned.

  —They’re waving to him, she said.

  —The cars are parked on the highway…

  —I love live TV.

  —Me too.

  Helen walked fast and didn’t stand and talk in doorways, which drove Elizabeth crazy. Helen got to the point and didn’t turn life’s puny moments into rites of passage. She didn’t make cruel and unusual demands. Elizabeth hoped it would last. Helen drove a school bus for a private school. Her psychiatrist parents felt they’d raised a failure. Helen told them it was better than dancing naked on top of a bar.

  —What’re you going to do? Helen asked.

  —Nothing. Are you going anywhere?

  —Nowhere fast.

  They always said that.

  The car turned into O.J.’s driveway. Cowlings parked it at the front door. Cowlings got out, O.J. was hidden, there was confusion, Cowlings talked with some police, finally O.J. emerged. He surrendered.

  How do you know when a cop is dead?

  The doughnut falls out of his hand.

  The Knicks won by seven points. Heavenly screams of basketball joy rang down the block. Some morons had congregated on the church steps. The news kept showing clips of another friend of O.J.’s reading O.J.’s suicide letter. Elizabeth had another beer. She studied the morons. They looked like the ones from last night. Some of the Pick Me Up crusties were with them.

  —Get away from the window, Roy said.

  —No.

  —You’re going to get killed.

  —So what.

  Elizabeth thought about murder, about dying, throat slashed, blood gushing.

  —When you’re old, and your friends start dying all around you, don’t you think that’ll be hard?

  —It depends on whether they owe me money or not, Roy said.

  If O.J. could do it, any
one could do it. Husbands murder their wives, ex-wives all the time. They murder them in courtroom hearings about protection orders against them.

  All the TVs across the street showed the white Bronco and the cop cars in formation, reruns of his run from the cops.

  She didn’t want to do time for doing a moron. Murdering someone you loved made more sense. In a flaming instant of furious, senseless passion, she could stab Roy in his heart. Then he’d be dead. It was too final. All she wanted was to hurt him, teach him a lesson. If she could imagine it, it didn’t mean she could do it, it was just within reach, in the realm of possibility, which was important, because as you got older, you felt more limited.

  There was a sharp knock at the door.

  Roy was in cyberspace.

  It was Ernest.

  —Hector’s been fired, he said.

  —What’d he do? Why was he in disgrace?

  —I don’t know. But it must have been really bad, because we have no super.

  Ernest came in, and they sat down at the rectangular kitchen table. Elizabeth opened some beers. She wasn’t in love with him anymore. They had a lot in common.

  —We have no super. What if something happens? she asked.

  —We’ll call the landlord’s office.

  —At night?

  —I don’t know.

  —Are they going to hire a new super?

  —They’ll try to rent Hector’s apartment for big bucks.

  —They’ll have to get his stuff out.

  —That could take a year.

  They emptied their glasses. Elizabeth sighed and opened more bottles.

  —What if the electricity goes out at midnight? she asked.

  —I don’t know.

  —What if the boiler explodes at 3 A.M.?

  —We’re dead.

  —Hector was better than nothing.

  —We’ll have to contact the City.

  —In the middle of the night?

  —If it’s an emergency, we’ll call the fire department or the cops. What else can we do?

  I don’t want to be sorry to lose a super like Hector. I want to be free of Hector and the cops, she thought.