God Hates Us All (6 page)

“It’s red, asshole,” she says.

“We’ll see about that,” he replies, guiding her head back between his legs. “What I’m offering you, buddy, isn’t an option. It’s an opportunity. An opportunity to double your weekly salary.” He gestures toward a row of bottles on a built-in shelf. “Fix yourself a drink while I talk.” I pour a whiskey named after a Scottish glen I’ve never heard of. The taste makes me think I’ve never really had scotch before, that up until now I’ve been drinking piss water.

“Like I said at the office, the quarters, or what you guys pass off as quarters, they’re fine for the week. But on the weekend, I entertain. Place in Bridgehampton, another in Miami. You’ll see for yourself. But then, there, I need pounds.”

“I’ve got to be honest with you. I think you’ve got me mistaken for someone who has some juice. I just deliver the stuff.”

“I’m not asking you to grow it for me.”

“No, I mean, I don’t control the flow. They give me one bag, one customer.”

“You ever heard of the expression ‘thinking outside the box’?”

My gaze is drawn involuntarily back toward the bobbing head. “Uh, no.”

“Business school bullshit. But it’s actually a useful idea.
Don’t let your perceptions of your circumstances limit your possibilities.”

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“If the only way to secure more product is to sell to more customers, then sell to more customers.”

“Aha,” I say. “You mean you could call in more than once a day.”

“Me? No. Too busy. But you could.” The car pulls to a stop. “Take five,” he says to the head. “We’re at the hotel.” I smile at her as she smooths off her dress, both because she’s lovely and because I don’t want to catch a wayward glimpse of Danny’s exposed package.

“This is where we get out,” Danny says as a valet opens the door. The lady exits the car. “Where do you need to go?”

“The train,” I reply. “Grand Central.”

“No, I mean, where do you need to go?”

“Levittown?”

“Mel!” he says to the driver. “Take this man to Levittown.”

“Yes, sir,” the driver responds.

Danny hands me ten hundred-dollar bills. “Get me five extra bags before this weekend. The rest is yours to keep.” He jumps out of the cab. “I know I can count on you, buddy!”

The car pulls away from the hotel. I settle back into the seat, careful to avoid any residue Danny and his “date” may have left behind. There’s a copy of the
New York Post
stuck in the back of the seat. A kid in the Bronx, seventeen, shot dead during a high school argument. Two cops, accused of kicking and beating a protester in Tompkins Square Park, found innocent
and acquitted of all charges. A composite sketch that could have been any black man with a mustache, this one in particular wanted for breaking up a subway mugging, as he’d stabbed one of the muggers to death in the process. The stories reinforce Uncle Marvin’s view of New York City, a fucked-up place to be sure. But they don’t describe the city I’m seeing from the back of the limo. I feel like a king in a carriage, the rain and the lights and the constant motion all a private performance for my benefit.

One hour and three Glen-whatevers later, the car pulls up in front of my parents’ three-bed, two-bath Cape Cod, one of dozens like it mass-produced after World War II. I slink quietly up to my room and remove the cash from my pocket. I jam it into a wooden box, some ornate thing an exgirlfriend brought me back from India, that I keep on my dresser.

“That’s a lot of scratch,” says my father.

He’s sitting on my bed, suit rumpled as the sheets, his eyes a shade of light red I recognize as the short sabbatical between the night’s second and third scotch. In other words, he’s keeping roughly the same pace as me. “They keeping you late at the office?” he asks.

“Grabbed a beer with a friend of mine.”

“Your friend’s got a nice car.”

“Belongs to the company. I had to work late. Is there a reason why you’re in my room?”

“Your room.” He pounds his chest. “My house.”

“Whatever.” I flip on the TV. “I’ll be out of here soon.”

“You lied, you know. To your mother.”

“About what?”

“About your job,” he says, nodding at the box on the dresser. “Or do temp agencies pay in cash?”

I’m about to make up an excuse, who knows what, when he continues. “I’m not going to say anything. Don’t worry. But you’d be doing your old man a solid if you spotted him a hundred bucks.”

“You want to borrow a hundred dollars from me?”

“You mind, kid? I’m a little stuck this month.”

“Stuck?”

“You know what I mean.”

I do, in fact, know what he means. Even I’ve noticed Dad’s recent attention to his appearance. More frequent haircuts. More fashionable shoes. Mysterious tubes of Binaca breath spray springing up around the house. I’ve also seen Mom paying extra attention to the bank and credit card statements, putting a serious crimp in Dad’s ability to finance an extramarital affair. My guess is that the hundred-dollar “loan” would pay for lunch
pour deux
at Beefsteak Charlie’s, with enough left over for an hour at the conveniently close-but-not-tooclose Starlight Inn.

“Sure, Dad,” I say. “You’ve done so much for me.”

I retrieve a bill from the box and hand it to him. He rises to his feet and claps me on the shoulder. “That’s my boy. So where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“The restaurant where you’re working.”

I almost cry out with relief—he knows exactly nothing. “Must not be too shabby,” he adds, stumbling off toward
his
third scotch of the night. “Like I said, that’s a lot of scratch.”

IF YOU’RE ANYTHING LIKE ME, THE IDEA OF being surrounded by supermodels might be something you’ve dreamed about. If you’re the kind of person who likes your dreams intact—i.e., free of puncture holes—you probably don’t want to read what’s next: The experience is overrated.

I’m not saying the models are overrated. Anything but. You might wonder if up close they’re just regular gals with decent bone structure and expert hair and makeup artists. They aren’t. They’re perfect, or close enough.

And it’s not that they’re stupid, or insecure, or vain, even though some of them are. Maybe most of them. But beauty forgives intellectual shortcomings.

No, what’s overrated is the experience of meeting a supermodel. Because deep down, you’re hoping that you and she will fall in love. Or lust. Or just find something to talk about
for more than thirty seconds. But you won’t. Supermodels are like professional athletes or violin prodigies: brilliant but limited in worldview. Maybe you’re the kind of guy who knows a lot about strappy shoes or applying foundation. But if you’re dreaming about bedding supermodels, you’re probably not that guy.

You tell yourself that you can overlook this lack of connection. And you’re right. You can. But
she
can’t. Women are all about connection. Or connections. And unless you can bring at least one of those to the table, you might as well be speaking Martian.

At least that’s been my experience tonight. Every conversation has petered out once it’s been established that I’m not famous, I don’t work for an agency, and I don’t know anything about strappy shoes.

I can’t say the same for my wingman, Ray. He is a black belt in the art of the flirtatious insult, which seems to be exactly the right jujitsu to snare these lovelies. As in three telephone numbers so far. His real talent lies in his ability to identify the microscopic flaw, invisible to most, which causes the poor supermodel to spend anguished hours in front of the mirror. The spot where a wrinkle will one day appear. A millimeter of sag in the ass. A calf muscle slightly out of proportion to the thigh.

“I can’t believe they let you go out in that,” I hear him tell a seemingly flawless specimen. A few minutes later, she’s writing her phone number on his hand.

He rubs the ink off as soon as she leaves. “The game gets
old, doesn’t it?” He yawns, holding up three fingers. “Three yawns. I only give a place ten. Nothing good ever happens after ten yawns.”

I met Ray the day I moved into the Chelsea, when he introduced himself to Tana.

Even with the extra cash from my arrangement with Danny Carr, it still takes me three weeks to save enough for the room. Tana, home again after taking her winter finals, offers to help me move. Which turns out to be code for bitching about her latest problems with Glenn and gifting me with a tiny cactus from the Duane Reade around the corner. It’s on me to wrestle my overstuffed duffel bag (everything worthwhile from my closet) and milk crate (an IBM Selectric II and a few books from Freshman Lit I hoped might sell me as a poet) up the stairs and down the narrow hallway to Room 242.

Somewhere along the way two things happen: Tana turns into a man with a rapid-fire Southern accent that effectively ends any Yankee stereotypes about
drawls
; and my bag gets wedged in the hallway, rendering me unable to move. I tug with a level of force that’s quickly becoming embarrassing. I wonder which is going to break first, the strap or my shoulder. Then, suddenly, the weight of the duffel is gone.

I slide out from underneath the bag. My savior turns out to be a muscled gym rat with a long black ponytail and a wispy attempt at a goatee. He strikes a pose like Atlas, my bag as his globe, and extends his free hand. “Ray Mondavi,” he says.

He’s the same Ray Mondavi who took K.’s photos and jump-started her career. The Southern accent is a residue from his native Richmond, Virginia, the expresstrain delivery a by-product of the five years he’d spent in Miami, lugging equipment for a fashion photographer whose name Tana recognizes. While I hang my wardrobe from an exposed pipe—Room 242 turns out to be sans closet (or bathroom)—Ray keeps Tana in stitches with a “models are as dumb as you think they are” story from a recent shoot in Turks and Caicos. His eyes drill into hers except when he’s checking out her body, seeming not so much sleazy as professionally detached, like a tailor eyeing a guy for a suit. He breaks concentration from his internal calculus only twice: the first time to look at me to let me know that he knows that I know he’s checking her out, the second to see if it’s bothering me. I give Ray my blessing with the slightest of nods. Despite our reputation for insensitivity and emotional retardation, we men have a surprisingly rich nonverbal vocabulary. Especially when there’s a lady present.

“You should let me take your picture,” Ray tells Tana.

“Yeah, right,” she says, giggling.

“I’m serious. Not for the runway—you don’t have the stilts for that—but print…. You’re a classic Ellen von Unwerth girl. Sensual, like Claudia or Carré.”

Tana is blushing. “I’ll think about it,” she says.

“I hope you will,” Ray replies, backing out of the room. “Welcome to the Chelsea.”

I’m grateful to see him leave, not because I don’t like listening
to his game—it’s already clear that this man might be able to teach my inner dog a few tricks—but because the room isn’t big enough for three people. The double bed takes up most of the space; the sink beneath a cracked mirror accounts for the rest—anything requiring more elaborate plumbing will have to take place in the communal bathroom down the hall. I’d hoped for a balcony, like in
Sid and Nancy
, but will have to settle for a fire escape with a view of the neighboring brick wall.

“At least you’ve got a patio,” Tana says as she climbs back inside through the window, having placed the cactus in a cold, sunless corner where a week later it will die. She sits on the edge of the bed, testing its bounce. “So when are you going to break this bad boy in?” she asks.

This turns out to be an Excellent Question.

During my first week at the Chelsea, I’m a ghost, invisible to the other residents, whom I glimpse occasionally behind closing doors. I walk by Nate and K.’s suite often enough to seem like a stalker, and a few more times after that. I press my ear against the door, failing each time to hear any hint of the promised nonstop party.

A coy smile from an Amazonian stunner in the fabled elevator briefly arouses my hopes. Until “she” responds to my overeager introduction: Mika has a voice three octaves lower than mine and, by my best guess, a functioning penis. The only predictable human interaction comes from Herman, a more or less permanent presence at the front desk, who asks after my poetry every time he sees me. Given his skills as a
bullshit detector, I do my best to keep these conversations short.

For the first time in forever, I am lonely. I ring Tana almost every night from the pay phone in the Mexican restaurant. She welcomes my calls, having finally broken things off with Glenn, but the steady background marimba and the charges exacted by New York Telephone keep us from rambling. I even call my mother once, but her maternal curiosity about my job forces me into increasingly elaborate lies, and her questions about my social life leave me even more depressed.

In a couple of weeks I might have enough saved up for a social life. But for now it’s hot dogs and slices and nights spent alone. The drafty old hotel turns out to have a tough time holding on to heat, with the notable exception of my miniature room and its exposed hot-water plumbing. Nighttime temperatures often reach the nineties. I learn to use my window like a tub faucet in reverse, replenishing the room as needed with below-freezing air. It gives me something to do while I lie awake at night trying to remember why I thought living in this place would be better than home.

During the day, I mine my interactions with the customers for whatever fleeting nuggets of warmth I can find. The Upper East Side jogger gives up her name (“Liz”) after I compliment her eyes, then tears off like a woman with more important things to do. Charlie, a kid about my age who works nights sweeping up an underground card game, is usually good for fifteen minutes of conversation before he dozes off
into stoned slumber on whichever park bench in Union Square promises the most sun.

And Danny Carr.

Most people smoke pot to mellow out. Danny is not one of those people. The man is what my parents might call a “dynamo,” and the weed only stokes those fires. I’m more inclined to use the word “asshole,” but he’s more than doubling my take-home pay each week for the equivalent of a few prank phone calls, so I go along to get along.