An American Love Story (7 page)

And yet, today, without obliterating herself, she understood everything Gabe was saying and felt as he did: the unwarranted great sadness, and the isolation in the midst of merriment she had first responded to that reminded her of herself.

He sat on the floor, so she did too. “My work is the only thing that makes me really happy,” Gabe said. “I look at it and I think: I’m not so bad. I’m pretty good. When it comes down to it your creative work is the only thing that means anything; don’t you feel that way?”

“Sometimes, yes,” Susan said. “When I’ve finished writing something that was really hard for me, and I think ‘I actually did it!’ I feel so relieved, as if I’ve exonerated myself. I don’t know of what.”

“Of the demands you’ve put on yourself,” Gabe said. “But doesn’t it feel great after you’ve done it?”

“Yes,” Susan said. She smiled. “Sometimes for about half an hour I don’t feel as if I need anybody but myself.”

“I know,” he said. “I look for love, sex, appreciation, friendship, but nothing comes near the satisfaction of knowing I’ve created something out of my own soul. I think I should marry myself.”

She laughed. “Marry yourself?”

He toyed with the words, trying them out, listening to them. “Marry
yourself.
Marry yourself. Why not? It’s the only person I understand … and sometimes I’m not sure I do … just pieces.”

They were lying on her living room rug. “Would you like a drink or something?” she asked.

“No thanks.”

She wondered if she should ask him about the drugs, but this wasn’t the time. He would let it out sooner or later.

His voice was getting dreamier. “Have you interviewed a lot of comics?”

“No.”

“They try out jokes on you,” he said. “He’ll come out with a great line, you laugh, you think how clever, but it’s something he’s been working on at home for weeks.”

“Do you?”

“Sure. Not with you, though. You’ll write what I said and I’ll look like some putz who uses his nightclub act to impress girls.”

“Do you?”

He smiled. “Why don’t you tell me something about you.”

“Me.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I know enough about myself to tell you anything more than I have,” Susan said.

“Yeah,” he said thoughtfully. “I can dig that.”

They lay there quietly for a while. It was late afternoon, starting to get dark. She thought how she was still a bit in awe of him, and waited to see what he would do next. What he did was totally unexpected. Slowly and dreamily he lifted her skirt, pulled down her underpants, and went down on her.

It was as if she were the tree he was looking at through the paperweight, with fascination, pleasure, and curiosity. He tasted her, and looked at what he was about to eat, and then set to work, demanding nothing, apparently hoping that she approve. She let herself slip into waves of pleasure, and came gently for a long time. Then he got up and went to look out the window.

It was obvious he didn’t want or expect her to continue what he had started, or to do anything to him in return. This was not foreplay, it was all he had wanted to do. They had not even touched. She wondered if he was impotent, and if it was from the drugs; if he had gone down on her to establish some sort of connection, or because he found her sexually attractive. She certainly wasn’t going to ask him any of these questions.

He turned. “Do you want to go out to dinner? Let’s find a terrific Puerto Rican restaurant.”

He took her to the upper West Side to a neighborhood that scared her to death. It was dark out now, and sinister-looking young men eyed her handbag. “This is making me very nervous,” Susan whispered.

“You’re safe with me.”

“Why? The collar?”

“No,” Gabe said, “they like me. I’m invincible. If you believe no one can hurt you no one will.”

He sounded so sure of himself that she found herself believing him. “Hi,” he kept saying to these unfriendly potential muggers; “Hi, man,” smiling and waving. And to Susan’s relief they all smiled and nodded back.

“That restaurant looks right,” Gabe said, heading for a small seedy place that looked no different from any of the others. There was none too clean oilcloth on the tables, but the food was very good. He insisted on paying, and she felt as if she were out on a date.

“Do you want to see where I live?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He was staying at a very depressing transient hotel downtown, which looked better suited for prostitutes and alcoholics than a famous comedian. There was no lobby, just a desk. The walls in
the public halls and in his room were all painted institutional gray, and the paint around the windows was peeling off. Furniture was minimal and ancient. Gabe had a room with a double bed, a bathroom, and a small pullman kitchen with some unused pots on the stove. He excused himself and went into the bathroom, and Susan looked around.

There were large piles of unused disposable hypodermic needles in their paper wrappers on the dresser; and scattered all around the room, as if he wanted to be sure no one would miss them in a raid, were mimeographed letters from a doctor.
To the arresting officer: My patient, Gabriel Gideon, suffers from narcolepsy, and needs these prescribed amphetamines to stay awake so he can pursue a normal life.
Well, who’s that going to fool? Susan thought.

He came out of the bathroom and didn’t look in the least nervous about her knowing about the drugs. He seemed to take the whole thing for granted. “Do you want a drink?” he asked. “I have a bottle of whiskey here.”

“I will if you will,” Susan said, although she didn’t like the taste of whiskey. He poured it into two water glasses and they lay on the bed.

“Usually I don’t sleep for three days,” Gabe said, “and then I crash and sleep for twenty-four hours. I think the day after tomorrow is when I’ll sleep.”

“That must be awful,” Susan said.

“I’m used to it. I son of like it by now.”

“What about when you’re performing?”

“Then it’s difficult. But I work it out.”

She thought about his trips off stage.

“Would you stay here tonight?” he asked. “Just to keep me company?”

“Okay.”

He took off his clothes and lay there in his Jockey shorts. Susan tried not to gasp. He looked like a human pincushion, his pale body covered with black and blue needle marks. Lying on the rough hotel sheets that appeared as if they were hardly ever changed, his tortured body with its self-inflicted signs of even
deeper damage, the still innocent face of a still young man who should have lived differently and now never would, was an image Susan knew she would never forget. He gave her a clean T-shirt to sleep in, but they didn’t sleep, they talked, and finally, about six in the morning, she fell asleep from exhaustion, holding him in her arms like a child.

They spent part of the next day together, and then he went to see Seltzer and Susan went home to take notes. The next day was the one when Gabe would crash. They arranged to meet at his hotel the day after that. When Susan got home there were three messages on her service from Dana.

“Seltzer wants to be my new agent,” Dana said when Susan called. “I don’t know what to do. Will I have to keep going out with him? I cringe at the disgusting thought.”

“You like him,” Susan said. “He fascinates you.”

“I’m using him.”

“You’re ashamed to admit you have feelings. I know you.”

“Sure I have feelings,” Dana said. “Hate, revulsion, anger, and a need to gag.”

“I think that’s what I like about you,” Susan said, laughing. “You’re always so cheerful.”

“So where were you? Are you having an affair with the big G?”

“I’m interviewing him,” Susan said. She told Dana what had been happening.

“What are you going to call the article?” Dana asked. “A Blow Job from a Junkie?”

“What I also like about you is your impeccable literary taste.”

“I’m an actress.”

“Do you realize our icons are killing themselves, or already have?” Susan said. “We’re supposed to be so free, so happy having whatever we want, but people are getting so self-destructive. It’s like they’re all really miserable. The drugs make sex with strangers bearable. I hated the way it was before, but I don’t like this much either.”

“The only thing that makes me miserable is not getting a good
job,” Dana said. “Those people turning their brains into mush are self-indulgent cretins. Not your friend—I liked him. Do you think I should sign with The Nazi, or what?”

“Sign with him,” Susan said. “He’s powerful.”

“That’s what he says,” Dana sighed.

When Susan went back to see Gabe the man at the desk said she should go right up, the door was open. When she walked into his room the first thing she noticed was that all evidence of drugs had been hidden away. Then she saw the little towheaded girl from the photo, standing on a chair to enable her to reach the stove, stirring something in a pot. Gabe was on the battered couch reading the newspapers. He smiled when he saw her.

“Susan, this is my daughter, Maisie.”

“Hi, Maisie. What are you cooking?”

“Oatmeal.”

“I get her until the end of the week,” Gabe said. He looked both happy and sad.

“That’s great!” Susan looked into the kitchen cabinet and the refrigerator. There was nothing but a box of oatmeal and a canon of milk.

“Seltzer wouldn’t give me an advance.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that after bribing my wife to get my daughter here I can’t feed her anything but cereal for three days.”

“But a little kid has to eat real food.”

“Oatmeal’s real food,” Maisie said.

“I can’t believe Seltzer would be that cruel,” Susan said, but she already knew what Seltzer must have been thinking. Too much money had gone into drugs and he didn’t trust Gabe anymore. “He should have sent you something.”

“Sure, a gourmet basket from that place near his office.”

“What are you going to do?”

Gabe shrugged. “We’ll survive. We have before.”

“I’ll be back,” Susan said. “Don’t go anywhere.”

She went to the A&P a couple of blocks away, feeling like a
social worker. She bought fruit, salad things, diet dressing, bread, orange juice, more milk, peanut butter, grape jelly, sliced fake turkey breast, coffee, sugar, detergent and paper towels. There was enough for a three-day siege. When she brought the food back and put it away Gabe looked grateful but embarrassed.

“Hey,” he said, “you didn’t have to do that.”

“You bought me dinner,” Susan said.

She spent parts of the next three days with Gabe and his daughter, going home so they could be alone, coming back. He slept on the couch, Maisie slept in the double bed looking like a tiny doll, and Susan slept in her own apartment. He was good with children, telling his daughter fanciful stories, really listening to her when she talked. She was a quiet child and didn’t talk very often, and smiled even less. The three of them went to the zoo and the park, but Gabe’s major idea of how to entertain an almost four-year-old child was to take her walking around the streets, showing her New York. Maisie seemed to enjoy it.

“Are you going to write about all this?” he asked.

“Some.”

“Not about buying me the food. I don’t want people to think I can’t feed my own kid.”

“It’s not your fault,” Susan said.

He looked at her wisely. “Sure it is,” he said. “You know it is.”

Silence. Why lie? “Yes,” Susan said. “I know.”

“Just say how much I love her,” Gabe said. “Will you? Nobody’s ever seen her but you; I never let anybody get that close to me. I trust you. Will you be sure to say how much I love her?”

Susan felt a lump in her throat. “I promise,” she said.

At the end of the week Maisie went home to her mother in the Midwest, Gabe crashed and then went off to his new gig in another city, and Susan went home and wrote the piece. She was pretty sure she had detailed and intimate material no other writer had, but she also felt she and Gabe were friends, and that made it more difficult to do the article because she wanted to be objective. Caring about him made it unexpectedly complicated.

Just write what happened, she told herself. Except, of course,
for the sex. To the public he’s a person
and
a symbol. Make him real. Do it as a kind of diary; his, not yours. You are the anonymous fly on the wall to whom he speaks. Start with the club, the act, then go to the man.…