Dark Plums (15 page)

Adrianne smiled at him. “I need twenty-five dollars.”

“No problem, doll.” He flashed a roll of bills.

And so once again she walked up the grey, carpeted stairs she had climbed so many times before in the last few months. He followed close behind and occasionally brushed against her as they ascended. Each discoloration on the wall was familiar to her, as was the smell of Lysol superimposed over grime embedded in the structure of the building.

A few other hookers also rented rooms. Older men and women lived here, too. Adrianne thought that the older people seemed to be permanently in exile. The place was familiar to her now, even comforting, if only because she had created daily rituals. Habit built up such a strange sense of safety. This Eighth Avenue hotel seemed more real to her than the Park Avenue establishment ever had, and it seemed safer because it was less insulated from the world.

The man behind her heaved. His leg brushed her buttocks. Noises of street traffic came faintly through the walls. On the third floor an old woman opened her door and stood in the archway in her pink chenille robe, parchment cheeks flushed with rouge, brassy curls half-concealing her face. The woman gave her a look of disapproval and went inside her room again, perhaps to listen to the sound of Adrianne's activities, her ear pressed against the wall, or to listen to the sounds of the hooker and her trick on the floor above.

The man's hands were on Adrianne's buttocks, and he felt beneath her skirt while she turned the key in the lock. “Impatient
pig,” she thought to herself. Then his hands were between her thighs, caressing and squeezing her bare skin above the stockings.

“Wait!” she cried.

It was getting close to midnight. A feeling of lovelessness choked her. If only Alfredo were with her. Lately he'd been so preoccupied with other things, and he was painting less.

God help her. After each client, she felt more bereft, stripped of another shred of identity. Her life had become like a dream, a delusion. Perhaps one day she herself would disappear. Then only a phantom would glide up the third floor and into her double bed. Bits of her would remain glued to a thousand men.

She switched on the light. Twenty minutes ago she had hastily made up the bed after her last trick. He had been a large man who kept murmuring, “
Querida, querida, mi amor
,” his eyes tightly shut, as if he were trying to envision some sweetheart abandoned long ago.

She carried a knife in her purse as well as a loud whistle, and she let herself be guided by instinct. Alfredo said this kind of life was sharpening her psychic powers. So far she had escaped harm, and she had escaped arrest when the cops came by on foot or in their vans. Still, her nerves were always on edge, like antennae, as she gave instructions to herself. “Not that corner. Stay away from that hooker—stay in your room for thirty more seconds—when the light changes, turn left quickly—don't say yes to that man—walk in the other direction.” Stimulated by terror, she had grown acutely sensitive to people's vibrations and to the slightest suspicious movement around her.

Now she took a good look at the stranger beside her. She wondered whether she had made a mistake in bringing him to her room. On the street, his appearance had been somewhat obscured by darkness. He had a flushed, round, rough-skinned face. Slump-shouldered, with protruding blue eyes, his unusually small mouth aroused in her a faint sensation of fear. She did not trust people with such small mouths.

Just last week, a girl had been bound and stabbed to death in a hotel down the street. Adrianne glanced nervously towards the fire-escape window, which she always kept ajar in case she should need to escape as she had needed to do from the apartment on Park Avenue.

The trick embraced her, pressing against her groin, then planted a wet whiskey-smelling kiss on her mouth while he kneaded her buttocks.

“Wait. Put the money on the dresser first,” she said. Pulling away from him, she watched as he reached into his pocket, then took out three bills from the roll he had displayed on the street. He walked angrily over to the dresser where he slapped them down.

While he undressed, she wet a washcloth with cold water and wrung it out at the sink. He sat down on the edge of the bed in his underwear and began drinking from a Seagram's pint bottle. She knelt before him. Before he had time to protest, she opened his wrinkled boxer shorts and began to wash him off, examining him carefully. In spite of her precautions she'd caught the clap twice. Alfredo no longer made love to her except with a condom, and never went down on her anymore.

“Hey, why are you doin' that?” The trick's face was contorted, and his voice was strained. “I ain't got no disease. Filthy bitch. You got all the diseases of the city right inside you.”

Holding back her rage, she murmured, “I do this with everyone. It's for your safety, too.”

“Safety, hey, hey,” he chortled. “If I wanted to be safe, I wouldn't be with you.”

She pretended she was hearing a sound track from a movie. He was only an actor. She was an actress going through her role. As she washed him lingeringly, he started to stiffen, and his toes wriggled on the carpet. “Mmm,” he said. “That feels good.” Biting her lips, she suppressed a sob.

“Hey, take your clothes off, doll,” he said. “You been washin' me long enough. I wanna see what you look like.” Back from the undergrowth of her own mind to his pinkish skin and wrinkled testicles.

While she undressed, he took off his underwear. His body was nearly hairless. Then he grabbed her and felt her all over, pulling her down on the bed and suckling her tits as he gave her awkward little kisses. He was hard now, and she guided him inside her. For an instant she tried to imagine he was Alfredo, but he smelled different. He was damp with cold sweat. She felt that his sperm inside her could create
a monstrosity. Suppose her diaphragm had even an infinitesimal hole? She always smeared lots of spermicidal cream on it, but just to be sure, she should inject more with the plunger after this creep left. She should have made him wear a condom, too. She thought of women who were raped, impregnated with unwanted fetuses, and tears came to her eyes. To have the child of the man you loved growing inside you seemed the greatest blessing a woman could have. Even if he hated or deserted you, if you had his child growing inside your womb, it would be all right.

Her long-lost baby girl seemed to cry out. Bones discarded, the baby's infant soul floated above discarded cars and refrigerators.

The stranger kept thrusting against her while she held back sobs. She wished she could get pregnant by Alfredo and then leave him and have their baby alone somewhere. But she was not strong or clever enough to do this. Tears scalded her cheeks. She wanted to slice this man's horrible penis off with a knife. Chop it with a cleaver. He breathed harder as he started to come, then heaved and lay still. Sticky fluid trickled out from her onto the sheet.

“You're so heavy,” she said. “Let me get up.”

At the sink, she washed off the semen from between her thighs. Then she sipped a glass of water. As she swallowed, she realized in a sudden dreadful flash that Alfredo's loving her was only a delusion. She was a fool. Yet she was addicted to Alfredo. She needed his presence, his voice, his body pressed against hers, even a few minutes a day. She needed this, even though he was throwing away all the money she brought him on booze and expensive clothes, on the car and the track. Maybe on other girls. What an idiot she was to believe even for an instant in her dreams.

The trick was still lying on his back. He stared at her as she stood by the sink, overcome with her revelation.

“Bring me a glass of water. Come back here. I gotta talk with you.” His face was contorted with pain, and there was anguish in his eyes. “I gotta talk to someone.”

She walked back to the bed and sat beside him. Out of pity, she stroked his shoulders. As she did so, she noticed that his skin was marred by moles and blemishes. His pale body exuded a state of being unloved, just as Alfredo's exhuded a state of being desired by many
women, despite his mother's rejection. She could feel it in the texture of Alfredo's skin and in the aura around him. Now on the contrary, touching this stranger, she was repelled.

Tears glistened on the man's face. He was shaking, and she felt frightened.

“Gimme that bottle.”

She handed him the Seagram's bottle, and he gulped down the whiskey before offering her some. The strong liquor burned her throat. She set it down on the nightstand, and he clasped her, his alcoholic breath surrounding them.

“Don't leave me!” he cried, quivering. “I gotta stay with you. Gotta be close to someone.”

“What happened to you?” she asked. Despite the overly dry warmth of the room, she shivered. Alfredo would be furious at her for staying so long with one trick.

His clammy hands pressed against the small of her back. “I just wanna hold you again. I wanna hold you close. I need to talk to someone.”

“I've
got
to leave,” she said.

“Don't leave me.” He clasped her so tightly she could scarcely breathe. “Don't leave me. My wife threw me out. Understand? She threw me outa my own house. Got a restraining order from a fucking judge so I can't see my own kids. I'd like to blast that jerk's brains out.”

As he reached once more for the bottle, he loosened his grip and she rolled over to the other side of the bed. Then she stroked his forehead, which felt feverish.

“I'm sorry.”

He held the bottle with a trembling hand and looked down at her with his pale, angry eyes. “I don't even know your name.”

“Stephanie,” she said, using her usual alias.

“My name is Eddie. Stephanie, that's a beautiful name. And you're a beautiful doll. Tell me, Stephanie, can I be your man?”

“You don't even know me.”

“I can tell you got a warm heart.” His voice was pleading. He grabbed the fingers of her left hand. “Can I be your man?”

She stroked his chest and his rough, pitted face.

“I have a boyfriend.”

“Yeah? He know you do this for a livin? Hey, say some-thin'. Why are you so quiet? I can tell he knows. I can see it in your face. Probably takes all your money. He don't love you or he wouldn't be lettin' you do this,” the man drummed in her ears. “Come home with me, Stephanie,” he begged, finishing off the bottle, his hands unsteady, eyes rheumy. “Come home with me. I'll treat you good.” Then suddenly, as if startled out of sleep and talking to himself, he added, “But you're a whore. What am I doin', askin' you to come home with me? I gotta be out of my mind. I could stick a knife up your filthy cunt.”

Then he gripped her so hard that she winced with pain. “Forgive me,” he said. “Don't be afraid. I ain't gonna hurt you. I'm askin' you to come home with me. I can tell you got a good heart. You're a good girl. You won't be no whore with me.”

“Stop!” She cried.

“Your boyfriend don't love you. He don't give a shit about you. You're nothin' to him. Just trash.”

The phone rang.

“Hi, precious.”

“Alfredo!”

“Are you okay?”

“Huh?” Her voice trembled.

“Sounds like you're in trouble. I'll be right up, baby.”

How grateful she was for Alfredo's presence. He had a sixth sense. He must love her, she thought desperately.

“My man's on his way up here,” she said.

But Eddie was already getting dressed with jerky, pathetic movements. He stumbled into his trousers, and his hands shook as he tied his shoelaces and tucked in his shirt.

As he stood there before her fully dressed, prepared to leave, he pressed his face into his hands. Adrianne wondered if he realized that at this instant she both pitied and loved him simply because he was aware of his loneliness. Their bodies were two shadow-selves. Underneath the isolation of their bodies and minds, they were all one. Everything in this stinking universe was one. Beneath the surface, Alfredo was as lonely as Eddie. Men exposed to her their hidden secrets and anguishes. Yet they despised her for offering her body, even
though they desired it. At this instant she felt like the mother of all human beings. The world was crazy, just as Alfredo said, and she was helping save men with a few drops of her heart's blood.

Every time the phone rang in the loft, Adrianne was apprehensive, thinking it was the police who were finally catching up with her for working at Dominic's. That establishment remained closed.

Above her, the radiator pipes hissed. Outside, the sky was grey, and it looked as if it might snow. Still in her robe, and shivering with cold, Adrianne sat down on the couch and wrapped herself in an old Army blanket. The loft was barer of paintings than it had been before because so many were in the gallery, either on exhibit or in storage. One of the few that remained was a recent one of ape-like humans groping each other beneath skyscrapers. Another pictured a raw heart circled by a heap of nude, writhing bodies.

Alfredo inhaled on his cigarette and stepped back to survey the canvas he was working on. It consisted of somber masses of color: dark red, brown, shades of grey. He paced back and forth, evidently disturbed.

“Shit!” he said. “I want to leave this fucking city. People here are such phonies. Harris used to tell me how much he believed in my work, but he hasn't promoted it.”

“Really?” she said uneasily. Last Friday, after he had smoked some marijuana, she'd heard him shouting angrily at the art dealer over the phone, and she had wondered with anxiety whether Harris would continue to show Alfredo's work.

“Where could we go?” she asked, lighting a cigarette of her own and putting the match into a jar lid that served as ashtray.

“Somewhere far away, baby. South America. Europe. Maybe Cuba.”