Queens Noir (3 page)

I didn't need him. But he'd ring the bell and I'd let him
in, and, even if I was wearing my dead father's filthy bathrobe
and I hadn't showered in five days, he'd tell me, You look fantastic, Alice. I knew he actually meant it, that he saw something fantastic in my limp brown hair and puffy face and the zits I'd started getting suddenly at age thirty-six. It was embarrassing. The zits, the fact that I was letting this big oaf come
over to nuzzle at my unbathed flesh, the little dog who'd sit at
the edge of the bed watching as me and Clayton, the big oaf,
went at it.

My life was a shambles. So I vowed to end it with Clayton. I vowed it on a Tuesday at 7 a.m. after waking up with an
unusual sense of clarity. I opened my eyes to find thin winter
sunlight sifting in the windows of the house my dead father
left me. Candy, the trailer trash dog, was sitting at the edge
of the bed, politely waiting for me to wake up because that's
the thing with strays, they're so grateful to have been taken in
that they defer to your schedule and needs. So, Candy was at
the edge of the bed and sun was coming in the windows of my
dead father's place on 47th Road in the borough of Queens
in New York City. And I felt clear-headed. Who knows why.
I just did. And I felt I needed to get my act together. Shower
more frequently. Stop smoking so much. Get back to yoga and
kickboxing. Stop burning through my modest profits as a modest gambler. Revitalize myself. And the first order of business
was to get rid of the big oaf, Clayton. Who ever heard of a guy
named Clayton who isn't ninety-seven years old, anyway?

I got into the shower and scrubbed myself raw, then shampooed my disgusting oily head. I took clean clothes out of the
closet instead of foraging through the huge pile in the hamper
the way I'd been doing for weeks. I put on black jeans and a
fuzzy green sweater. I glanced at myself in the mirror. My semidry hair looked okay and my facial puffiness had gone down.
Even my zits weren't so visible. I looked vaguely alive.

I took my coat off the hook, put Candy's leash on, and
headed out for a walk along the East River, near the condo
high-rises that look over into Manhattan. My dead father loved Long Island City. He moved here in the 1980s, when it
was almost entirely industrial, to shack up with some drunken
harlot, right after my mom kicked him out. Long after the
harlot had dumped my father-all women dumped him all the
time-he'd stayed on in the neighborhood, eventually buying
a tiny two-story wood frame house that he left to me, his lone
child, when the cancer got him last year at age fifty-nine. I
like the neighborhood fine. It's quiet and there are places to
buy tacos.

"Looking good, mami," said some Spanish guy as Candy
and I walked past the gas station.

I never understand that mami thing. It sounds like they're
saying mommy. I know they mean hot mama and, in their
minds, it's a compliment, but it still strikes me as repulsive.

I ignored the guy.

As Candy sniffed and pissed and tried to eat garbage off
the pavement, I smoked a few Marlboros and stared across at
midtown Manhattan. It looked graceful from this distance.

The air was so cold it almost seemed clean and I started
thinking on how I would rid myself of Clayton. I'd tried so
many times. Had gotten him to agree not to call me anymore.
But then, not two days would go by and he'd ring the bell.
And I'd let him in. He'd look at me with those huge stupid
brown eyes and tell me how great I looked. Alice, you're fantastic, he'd told me so many times I started thinking of myself as Alice Fantastic, only there really wouldn't be anything
fantastic about me until I got rid of Clayton. When he would
finally shut up about my fantasticness, I'd start in on the This
isn't going to work for me anymore, Clayton refrain I had been
trotting out for seventeen weeks. Then he'd look wounded
and his arms would hang so long at his sides that I'd have to
touch him, and once I touched him, we'd make a beeline for the bed, and the sex was pretty good, the way it can be with
someone you are physically attracted to in spite of or because
of a lack of anything at all in common. And the sex being
good would make me entertain the idea of instating him on
some sort of permanent basis, and I guess that was my mistake. He'd see that little idea in my eye and latch onto it and
have feelings, and his feelings would make him a prodigious
lover, and I'd become so strung out on sex chemicals I would
dopily say Sure when he'd ask to spend the night, and then
again dopily say Sure the next morning when he'd ask if he
could call me later.

But enough is enough. I don't want Clayton convincing
himself we're going to be an everlasting item growing old
together.

Right now Clayton lives in a parking lot. In his van. This I
discovered when, that first night, after I picked him up in the
taco place and strolled with him near the water, enjoying his
simplicity and his long, loping gait, I brought him home and
sucked his cock in the entrance hall and asked him to fuck me
from behind in the kitchen, and then led him to the bedroom
where we lay quiet for a little while until he was hard again, at
which point I put on a pair of tights and asked him to rip out
the crotch and fuck me through the hole. After all that, just
when I was thinking up a polite way of asking him to leave, he
propped himself up on his elbow and told me how much he
liked me. "I really like you. I mean, I really like you," looking
at me with those eyes big as moons, and even though I just
wanted to read a book and go to sleep, I didn't have the heart
to kick him out.

All that night, he babbled at me, telling me his woes, how
his mother has Alzheimer's and his father is in prison for forgery and his wife left him for a plumber and he's been fired from his job at a cabinet-making shop and is living in his van in a
parking lot and showering at the Y.

"I've got to get out of Queens soon," he said.

"And go where?"

"Florida. I don't like the cold much. Gets in my bones."

"Yeah. Florida," I said. I'd been there. To Gulfstream Park,
Calder Race Course, and Tampa Bay Downs. I didn't tell him
that though. I just said, Yeah, Florida, like I wasn't opposed to
Florida, though why I would let him think I have any fondness
for Florida, this leading him to possibly speculate that I'd want
to go live there with him, I don't know. I guess I wanted to be
kind to him.

"Just a trailer is fine. I like trailers," Clayton said.

"Right," I said. And then I feigned sleep.

That was seventeen weeks ago. And I still haven't gotten
rid of him.

Candy and I walked for the better part of an hour and
then headed home, passing back by the gas station where the
moron felt the need to repeat, Looking good, mommy, and I actually stopped walking and stared at him and tried to think of
words to explain exactly how repulsive it is to be called mommy
and how it makes me picture him fucking his own mother,
who is doubtless a matronly Dominican woman with endless
folds of ancient flesh, but I couldn't find the words and the guy
was starting to grin, possibly thinking I was actually turned on
by him, so I kept walking.

Once back inside my place, I gave Candy the leftovers
from my previous night's dinner and sat down at the kitchen
table with my computer, my Daily Racing Form, and my notebooks. I got to work on the next day's entries at Aqueduct. No
matter how much I planned to change my life in the coming
weeks, I still had to work. It wasn't much of a card, even for a Wednesday in February, so I figured I wouldn't be pushing
a lot of money through the windows. But I would watch. I
would take notes. I would listen. I would enjoy my work. I
always do.

Several hours passed and I felt stirrings of hunger and
glanced inside my fridge. Some lifeless lettuce, a few ounces
of orange juice, and one egg. I considered boiling the egg, as
there are days when there's nothing I love more than a hardboiled egg, but I decided this wasn't one of those days. I would
have to go to the taco place for take-out. I attached Candy's
leash to her collar and threw my coat on and was heading to
the door when the phone rang. I picked it up.

"Hi, Alice," came Clayton's low voice.

I groaned.

"What's the matter? You in pain?"

"Sort of."

"What do you mean? What hurts? I'll be right there."

"No, no, Clayton, don't. My pain is that you won't take
No for an answer."

"No about what?"

"No about our continuing on like this."

There was dead silence.

"Where are you?" I asked.

"In the parking lot."

"Clayton," I said, "I know you think you're a nice guy, but
there's nothing nice about coming around when I've repeatedly asked you not to. It's borderline stalking."

More silence.

"I need my peace and quiet."

After several moments: "You don't like the way I touch
you anymore?"

"There's more to life than touching."

"Uh," said Clayton. "I wouldn't know since you won't ever
let me do anything with you other than come over and fuck
you.

Clayton had never said fuck before. Clayton had been
raised in some sort of religious household. He wasn't religious
himself, but he was reserved about cursing.

"My life is nothing. Clayton, I go to the racetrack. I make
my bets and take my notes. I talk to some of the other horseplayers. I go home and cook dinner or I go to the taco place.
I walk my dog. That's it. There's nothing to my life, Clayton,
nothing to see."

"So let me come with you."

"Come with me where?"

"To the racetrack."

"I'm asking you to never call me again and get out of my
life. Why would I want to take you to the racetrack?"

"Just let me see a little piece of your life. I deserve it. Think
of it as alimony."

I couldn't see why I should do anything for him. But I
agreed anyway. At least it got him off the phone.

I took the dog out to the taco place. Came home and ate
my dinner, giving half to the dog.

I'd told Clayton to meet me the next morning at 11:00 and
we'd take the subway. He offered to drive but I didn't trust
that monstrous van of his not to break down en route. He
rang the bell and I came downstairs to find him looking full of
hope. Like seeing each other in daylight hours meant marriage
and babies were imminent. Not that he'd asked for anything
like that but he was that kind of guy, the kind of guy I seem to
attract all too often, the want-to-snuggle-up-and-breed kind
of guy. There are allegedly millions of women out there look ing for these guys so I'm not sure why they all come knocking
on my door. I guess they like a challenge. That's why they're
men.

"Hi, Alice," he beamed, "you look fantastic."

"Thanks," I said. I had pulled myself together, was wearing
a tight black knee-length skirt and a soft black sweater that
showed some shoulder-if I ever took my coat off, which I
wasn't planning to do as I figured any glimpsing of my flesh
might give Clayton ideas.

"I'm just doing this 'cause you asked," I said as we started
walking to the G train, "but you have to realize this is my job
and you can't interfere or ask a lot of questions." I was staring
straight ahead so I didn't have to see any indications of hurt in
his eyes, because this was one of his ruses, the hurt look, the
kicked puppy look, and I was damn well sick of it.

"Right," said Clayton.

We went down into the station and waited forever, as one
invariably does for the G train, and all the while Clayton stared
at me so hard I was pretty sure he would turn me to stone.

Eventually, the train came and got us to the Hoyt-
Schermerhorn stop in Brooklyn where we switched to the
far more efficient A train. I felt relief at being on my way to
Aqueduct. Not many people truly love Aqueduct, but I do.
Belmont is gorgeous and spacious and Saratoga is grand if
you can stand the crowds, but I love Aqueduct. Aqueduct
is down-on-their-luck trainers slumping in the benches, degenerates, droolcases, and drunks swapping tips, and a few
seasoned pro gamblers quietly going about their business. My
kind of place.

Thirty minutes later, the train sighed into the stop at Aqueduct and we got off, us and a bunch of hunched middleaged white men, a few slightly younger Rasta guys, and one well-dressed suit-type guy who was an owner or wanted to
pretend to be one.

"Oh, it's nice," Clayton lied as we emerged from the little
tunnel under the train tracks.

The structure looks like the set for a 1970s zombie movie,
with its faded grim colors and the airplanes headed for JFK
flying so low you're sure they're going to land on a horse.

"We'll go up to the restaurant, have some omelettes,"
I told him once we were inside the clubhouse. "The coffee
sucks but the omelettes are fine."

"Okay," said Clayton.

We rode the escalator to the top, and at the big glass doors
to the Equestris Restaurant, Manny, the maitre d', greeted me
and gave its a table with a great view of the finish line.

Then Clayton started in with the questions. He'd never
been a big question guy, wasn't a very verbal guy period, but
suddenly he wanted to know the history of Aqueduct and my
history with Aqueduct and what else I'd ever done for a living and what my family thought of my being a professional
gambler, etc., etc.

"I told you, I have to work. No twenty questions. Here's
a Racing Form," I said, handing him the extra copy I'd printed
out. "Now study that and let me think."

The poor guy stared at the Form but obviously had no
idea how to read it. Sometimes I forget that people don't
know these things. Seems like I always knew, what with
coming here when I was a kid when Cousin Jeremy still lived
in Queens and baby-sat me on days when my father was off
on a construction job. I'd been betting since the age of nine
and had been reasonably crafty about money-management
and risk-taking since day one. I had turned a profit that first
time when Jeremy had placed bets for me, and though I'd had plenty of painful losing days since, for the most part I
scraped by. I'd briefly had a job as a substitute teacher after
graduating from Hunter College, but I hated it. So I gambled
and supplemented my modest profits with income from the
garden apartment in my house. Not many people last more
than a few years gambling for a living but, for whatever reason, I have. Mostly because I can't stand the thought of doing anything else.