“I could have washed these,” Marlene said as she tossed the clothes (black jeans, red Solidarity T-shirt, underpants, and socks) on the bed where Stupenagel was reclining, now swigging champagne directly from the bottle.
“Oh, God, never! Not a jot will I add to your domestic slavery,” exclaimed Stupenagel in ringing tones, and then, dramatically, “I’d rather wallow in filth.”
“You are,” said Marlene. “Get dressed. You can help me cut stuff up.”
Stupenagel groaned and put her bottle on a night-stand, then stood shakily and dropped her robe. She staggered nude to a full-length mirror, struck a pose with her chest thrown out, and groaned again. “Good Christ! What a great foundation for such tiny edifices!” She turned to stare appraisingly at Marlene, who was trying to slip into her own clothes as quickly and privately as possible. “Jesus, is there no justice? You haven’t sagged an inch, and you’re a mom! Marlene, if you die, can I have your tits?”
“Oh, grow up, Stupe!” snapped Marlene, tucking her blouse into a long denim skirt. “What would Gloria Steinem say if she knew you were still lusting after big knockers?”
“Easy for her to talk! She’s got nice ones.” Stupenagel collapsed on the bed again and reached for the bottle. After a lengthy swallow she said, “So. This is it for you? Cook, clean, read bedtime stories?”
“Are you going to get dressed?”
“I will, I will. Don’t nag me. No, really, tell me.”
Marlene recalled that this was one of her friend’s little oddities. In college she would stride through the dorm hallways stark naked, frightening the freshmen and, on Sundays, annoying those who were entertaining men in their rooms with the door opened the prescribed eighteen inches. Another was also observable now: her ability to carry on a normal conversation while drunk, a quality she considered essential to success as a journalist.
Marlene sat on the bed and turned her real eye on her friend, being careful to keep in view the bedside clock-radio. “Okay, Stupe-here’s the story. The loft in which we now sit is a condo. It’s worth approximately three hundred and fifty thousand dollars and was purchased and sold to me for one dollar by an old Armenian gentleman, in return for services rendered.”
“Jesus! What the hell did you do for him?”
“I stole something back from someone who had stolen it from him. And yes, it’s a great story, and no, I’m not going to tell it to you. The point is that my financial contributions to this family have been very substantial, when you add it all up, probably more than Butch’s. So the fact that I’m not bringing in cash right at this minute has no significance. I bought this time and I’m enjoying it, without guilt, thank you. I like cooking. I like hanging out with Lucy. I like not having to deal with scumbags and assholes all day. It’s improved my disposition considerably. So you can cut out all the ‘dependent’ horseshit.”
“Oooh, she’s wailing now!” hooted Stupenagel. “But admit it! Aren’t you just the teeniest bit bored? Wouldn’t you like to be back at the D.A.?”
Marlene considered this seriously, although she understood that Ariadne was merely baiting her. Did she feel bored?
“Frankly? Yeah, sometimes. I have a brain, it wants to be used the way it was trained. But a couple of things: one, it turns out I’m not that great a D.A. I don’t mean in terms of skill or knowledge or success. All that’s fine. I mean in terms of temperament. I’m too impatient to be really happy in the legal system.” And too vindictive, thought Marlene, without saying it. “And two …” Marlene stumbled on what two was. She really shouldn’t have drunk so much wine. “Oh, right … two, if I went back to the D.A., I’d have to commute, because I can’t work for the New York D.A. anymore.”
“Like Butch,” said Stupenagel, driving to the point of the elaborate manipulation she had been carrying on for the past half hour, the goal of which was to find out why two of the most prominent prosecuting attorneys in the recent history of New York were no longer prosecuting. “And why would that be, Marlene? Why the big career change?”
Marlene laughed in spite of herself, understanding very well what was going on and, in an odd way, admiring it, and Stupenagel’s brazen awfulness. Karp already knew the story, but no one else did, and Marlene in an instant decided to tell it to Ariadne, who, although certainly the world’s least reliable confidante, was at least a woman.
“This happened,” Marlene began, “when Butch was in D.C. I was running the rape bureau. To make a long story short, Bloom essentially asked me for a proposal that would have tripled my staff and made sex crimes a really big deal. He invited me to dinner at his place to discuss the project, filled me with booze, and, I think but can’t prove, slipped a little something extra into the brandy. In any event, I passed out, and when I came to, he had my blouse unbuttoned, my tits out, my panty hose down around my kneecaps and his hand on my pussy.”
“So you fucked him,” said Stupenagel. “Then what?”
“Oh, for crying out loud, Stupe! I certainly did not fuck him.”
“You didn’t?”
“No! He tried to rape me. I mean, I assume you’re familiar with the concept?”
“Don’t be vile, Ciampi. Okay, so what did you do then?”
“I shoved him off me and gave him a couple of good shots to the nose. He ended up in a cheesecake. I pulled myself together, got out, and puked my guts on the sidewalk.”
“I assume this was not a career-enhancing move.”
“No. In the clear light of hindsight, I should have at least tried to nail the bastard for it. But … oh, shit, the embarrassment! The head of the rape bureau charging the D.A. with attempted rape? Attempted, mind you. No pubic hair, no sperm, no proof. He would have smiled and said something like, this bitch came on to me with a ridiculous plan for her own self-aggrandizement and I turned her down and she got drunk and made this absurd accusation. Or he would have said that Butch put me up to it. But it was mostly the shame-I wasn’t thinking legal strategy at the time. I just wanted away. So, a couple of weeks after that I quit and moved down to be with Butch in Washington. Are you going to get dressed?”
Stupenagel ignored this and sucked again on the Moët, a little too vigorously, because the wine foamed and ran up her nose and down her chin. She sputtered and coughed. When she recovered, she said, “So that’s the story. God, Marlene, what a mess! Why the hell didn’t you let him pork you?”
“What!” cried Marlene. Long association with Ariadne had diminished her friend’s ability to shock her, but this last question, delivered in a matter-of-fact tone, made Marlene’s stomach churn. “I told you, the slimeball tried to rape me. Please tell me you’re not giving me that relax and enjoy it horseshit …”
“Oh, hell, Ciampi, we’re not talking about some pervert sweathog climbing through your window with a knife. This was a guy who could do you some good. What the hell does a fuck mean anyway? Lie back and think of England.”
“You would have let him?”
“Of course!”
“I can’t fucking believe this! This is the woman who’s telling me I’m not living up to feminist ideals?”
Stupenagel uttered a dramatic sigh. “Oh, don’t be such a baby, Marlene! What’s feminism? Feminism is about getting ahead. Achieving power. And using sex, using our luscious young bodies for the pathetically few years they remain luscious to climb a little higher up the pole. Like men. You do what you have to. What, you think men don’t? Men suck ass instead of cocks, except for the ones who suck cocks too. They let their egos be ground into powder by their bosses. For years. You think that’s preferable to eight minutes of wiggling your butt and groaning?”
“You’ve done this? This is not just theoretical?”
“Marlene, darling, how do you think we went from a city reporter on an Ohio daily to the Moscow bureau of the Associated Press in four years? Journalistic brilliance? Yeah, that too …” She laughed. “But even journalistic brilliance sometimes requires that we drop our panties. Guys will tell you stuff acr
oss a pillow they’d never let go of across a desk. Besides, I like to fuck. And it clears the air. What you don’t want is some guy with a hard-on following you around, mooning. That’s annoying. It’s a pity so many of the ones who can help you happen to be little short persons.”
“Butch doesn’t,” Marlene blurted out.
“He doesn’t what? Have hard-ons?”
“No, suck ass.”
“No, I’m sure he doesn’t, which is why he doesn’t get to do the one thing he likes doing, and is better than practically anyone else in the city at, and why he’s chasing ambulances for a second-rate tort factory. Whereas I, slut that I am …” She paused, as if performing an instant analysis of her current status. Her nose wrinkled involuntarily. She took a swallow of wine and giggled. “Whereas I … have to take a whiz. Excuse me.”
Stupenagel rose with the stately, over-controlled movements of the experienced lush, threw her kimono around her shoulders, and swayed into the bedroom’s toilet, still holding the champagne.
Marlene bustled into action, irritated at Ariadne and angry at herself for letting the woman get under her skin. Again. Why do I put up with the bitch? she wondered for the ten thousandth time since her freshman year. To which she knew the answer very well, but was not disposed to think about it just then.
She went to the kitchen and began to rattle pots. “Little girls! Little girls! Come and help!” she shouted. Giggles and pounding of feet on the hardwood: Lucy Karp with Janice Chen trailing behind. Marlene took a lump of pasta dough out of the refrigerator and set up the machine. Lucy officiously supervised the process, allowing Janice to crank while she herself arranged the long, pale strands of linguine on the wooden rack. Marlene busied herself with clam sauce, keeping an eye on the children from time to time. Lucy was becoming a little Marlene: bright, pugnacious, with a tendency to boss. She had her mother’s pure bisque skin and curly dark hair; her eyes, yellowy gray and slightly tilted, were out of Odessa and points east by way of Dad.
You wind them up, Marlene thought, and they go off by themselves, and then they start to wind themselves up, which was the stage Lucy was moving into now. She had friends; sleep-overs were starting to become more important than having Oz books read at bedtime and being tucked in. As much as she hated to admit it, with Lucy away in first grade for the full school day, the hours were starting to hang. This thought reminded her of Ariadne, and she called out, but got no answer. She continued her chopping and stirring.
The girls helped her set the table, and then Janice Chen’s mother arrived to take her home. Mrs. Chen smiled a good deal and looked wide-eyed around the loft. People lived in factories in Guandong, where she came from, but not factories like this one. Some remarks were exchanged in primitive English about noodles-a point of cultural intersection-and then the Chens left.
Marlene went to check on her friend, and found her, as she had feared, curled around the toilet, snoring gently, tenderly cradling the empty bottle in her arms. Marlene removed the bottle and shook Stupenagel. No reaction. She cursed, and was considering stronger measures when the sound of the door opening and Lucy’s “Daddy’s home” announced the arrival of Karp.
She left the bathroom and went to greet her husband. The greeting was an unusually warm one, and Karp looked at her closely. “That was a hot kiss,” he said huskily. “Did I do something right for a change?”
“The other possibility is that I want something expensive from you,” said Marlene in the same tone. “Did you make lots of money today, Daddy? Millions?”
“Only thousands.” He sniffed the air. “Not Italian food again!” The family joke. They sat, Karp admired the linguine and heaped praises upon its little manufacturer. Then he glanced around.
“She left?” he asked, his voice hopeful. The visit from Stupenagel, which was supposed to have included dinner, had been announced well in advance. Karp was not one of the journalist’s numerous fans.
“She’s blotto on our bathroom floor,” said Marlene.
“What’s blotto, Mommy?”
“Very sleepy from drinking too much wine, dear,” Marlene answered her daughter, and then to Karp, who had assumed a sour and unpleasant expression, said, “She’s had a rough time, Butch. She can get her load on in my house if she wants.”
“I don’t see why you put up with her, Marlene,” said Karp defensively. “She’s always dumping on you and then passing out.”
“Well, since I see her about once every couple of years, ‘always’ is not the best word. And as far as dumping goes, maybe I occasionally need dumping on.”
“From your friends?”
“Who else? I seem to recall someone else in this family who has friends who are not models of supportive behavior.”
“Who in this family, Mommy? Me?”
“No, not you, sweety. Your father.”
At the word “sweety” a Neapolitan mastiff the size and blackness of a classic R69 BMW twin-cylinder motorcycle padded into the dining room from its rug in the kitchen and stood panting redly at Marlene’s elbow. Lucy laughed.
“Sweety thought you meant him, Mommy.”
“Oh, Sweety, go back to bed. I’ll take you out later,” said Marlene. The dog gave her a heartrending look of disappointment, deposited a dollop of drool on the carpet, and departed.
Karp was glad of the interruption. Marlene’s dart had struck home; he did indeed have several close friends from his days at the D.A., men whose little ways re: support made Ariadne Stupenagel look in comparison like a golden retriever. For this reason he was content to drop the subject entirely, but Marlene seemed determined to press on in the woman’s defense.
“I realize,” she said, “that she’s a pain in the behind on occasion. She’s tricky and unreliable. On the other hand, I’m probably the only old friend she has left-yes, don’t say it, there’s a reason. But she makes me laugh; and if she pees me off … I don’t know, maybe it’s a message. Maybe I’m getting too self-satisfied. She described me as a bourgeois matron-”
“What bullshit! Why do you listen to that crap?”
Marlene raised an eyebrow. They had agreed to lower the level of foul language at the dinner table.
“May I be excused?” asked Lucy wisely.
“Sure, baby. Get ready for bed and you can watch some TV.”
The child took her dish to the kitchen to be pre-cleaned by the mastiff, and trotted off to her room.
“As I was saying,” continued Marlene, “there’s something in what she said.”
“Can I say ‘bullshit’ now?”
“If you choose.”
“Okay, bullshit! You know damn well she only says stuff like that because she’s jealous of you and wants to make you feel bad.”
“Her intentions are not germane, counselor,” replied Marlene coolly. “We’re talking about veracity here. In fact, it’s time for me to make some changes. Lucy’s in first grade and I’m getting antsy.”
Karp thought carefully before replying. The last eighteen months had been very nice for him indeed, and, he supposed, for Marlene and Lucy as well. A nice meal on the table every night; no hassles about leaving work and picking the kid up from school; an unexhausted and unharried mate. And while he knew that this would not be a permanent state, that Marlene was a bright and talented person and would not wish to live the sort of life her mother (or, more to the point, his mother) had lived, the inevitable change had, in his secret heart, been pushed into the indefinite future, almost like death itself. Justice and selfishness therefore waged brief war within him, justice winning but taking heavy casualties.
“What,” he ventured, “do you think you’d like to do?”
“I’m not sure. D.A.-ing is out for now. I don’t want to be tied down to regular hours and court dates. Aside from that …”
“I could talk to Orenstein. They’re always hiring associates.”
Marlene’s wide brow darkened. “No, you will not talk to Orenstein or anyone else. I am never again going to work in
the same place you work.”
“Sorry. Another firm, maybe.”
Marlene shrugged. “I don’t know. It doesn’t exactly make my heart leap. I think what’ll happen is, now that I’m ready for it, something will turn up. Uh-oh, I think our guest is conscious again.”
They could hear the sound of water running, and groaning, and cursing, quite imaginative obscenity in three languages. Five minutes later, Stupenagel appeared in the dining room, dressed, made up and coiffed, only a slight dampness on her neck and hair indicating the velocity with which she had brought herself up from nude stupor.
“Jesus, Marlene, why the hell did you let me drink so much? I got an appointment uptown in an hour. Hi, Butch. Yeah, I could eat something. In fact, I’m starving to death. What is this, linguine and clam sauce? Marlene, you’re such a little guinea! Nobody eats this stuff anymore …” With which, and similar, Stupenagel sat down at the table and ate a mound of cooling pasta approximately half the size of her own head, with the remains of the salad, three chunks of bread, and a pint of medium-good Soave.
In between bites she talked. “… Christ, you see I’m itching? Some kind of parasite I picked up, it’s probably turning my liver into sludge. I wanted to visit this massacre site, the Red Cross guy in Guat City told me about it, also the nuns. There was a teaching order near San Francisco Nenton, where the massacre happened, the Sisters of Perpetual Dysentery, no kidding, that’s what they called themselves. Great bunch-anyway, they took me under their wing, a nice Catholic girl like me, and they introduced me to-”
Marlene interrupted, “Stupe, you’re not Catholic.”
“Sure, Marlene, by the pope I’m not Catholic, but, believe me, in Guatemala they only have the two flavors, communist and Catholic, and they shoot the communists. They shoot the Catholics too, as it turns out, but I didn’t know that until later. Anyway, of course the army wouldn’t let us get anywhere near the place, but the nuns had a school near there, and they let me and the Red Cross guy go up on a supply run, in this jeep that they had converted into like a two-ton truck, and of course it was raining, so we had to practically build the roads as we went along, and by the time we got to where we were going we found the army had closed the convent school down so they could kill more Maya without anybody finding out, so we were stuck there, in this place San Luis some-fucking-thing, for six weeks until the rain stopped, living in the truck, during which time I picked up this damn parasite. Burrowing worms will probably pop out of my eyes on Meet the Press. Meanwhile, I managed to piece together the story from survivors drifting by, or relatives, not that anybody cares, it’s like the classic Earthquake in China eighty thousand Die story, an inch and a half on page seventeen, although, of course, there’s the angle that we put these bastards in there, in sixty-four, and we keep giving them guns and stuff, so maybe I’ll write a book or a searing essay for Harper’s, although between us girls, I’m not much of a book or searing-essay type, more of the you supply the war and I’ll supply the story sort of thing, hard news and all. Meanwhile, do you guys know a cop named Joseph L. Clancy? Sergeant at the Twenty-fifth Precinct?”
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