Skinny Legs and All (21 page)

"You
are an artist. You know that big picture at the museum midtown, that picture by that fellow Rousseau, it is called
The Sleeping Gypsy
?”

“Yeah. Sure. That’s a very famous painting.”

“It ought to be called
The Sleeping Arab
, that picture. An Arab lies in the desert, sleeping under the crazy-faced moon. A lion sniffs at the Arab, the Arab is unafraid. The Arab dreams on. The river in the background, I think the river is the Arab’s dream. Perhaps the lion is also dreamed: you notice it has left no paw prints in the sand. In any case, that picture, my dear, is the definitive portrait of the Arab character. Fierce and free, sleeping fearlessly beneath the wild night stars. But dreaming. Dreaming always of water. Dreaming of danger when real danger is absent, in order to demonstrate bravado. Arabs live in their fantasies. We are not a practical people like the Jews are. The Jew gets things accomplished. The Arab dreams—and converses with the moon.

“But, dear Ellen Cherry, what else is in that beautiful picture by Rousseau? Tell me?”

“What else? What else is in the painting? Let me see. Uh, well, I think there’s a jug of some sort. . . .”

“Yes. Yes. A water jar. What else?”

“Uh . . .”

“A musical instrument. Correct? Kind of a mandolin or what in Greece they call a bouzouki. And that tells you something further about the Arab. Another side of him. We love music. Arabs love the music of the stars. But also the arithmetic of the stars. Both are Arabic inventions. Did you know that? Oh, yes, in the arts and sciences, the Arabs were once masters. Our architecture was original and powerful. We invented astronomy, modern mathematics, map-making, shipbuilding, perfumery. I could go on. We have an ancient literary heritage. In the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries, while Europe wallowed in its Dark Ages, while Europe was ignorant and impoverished and altogether barbarous, there was enlightenment in the Arab lands. The Arab world was cultured then, rich, educated, and, in its fierce, dreamy way, refined. Mathematicians strolled in rose gardens. Poets rode stallions.

“So what happened? Why, my dear, the Crusaders paid us a little visit. The Crusaders came. Christian knights from Europe. And they massacred men, women, and children—Jew as well as Arab, it should be told: all who were non-Christian. The Crusaders destroyed the intellectual and scientific life of western Asia and northern Africa. They burned the largest, most complete library in the world, the great library of Tripoli, and they reduced to rubble
scores
of scientific and artistic centers. Such a tragedy. Such a waste.”

Abu leaned across the table, leaned across the bamboo place mats, bamboo napkins rings, and lotus-patterned linen napkins that had prompted Spike to wonder why the decorator hadn’t supplied the I & I with chopsticks, already; leaned toward Ellen Cherry until his rosy proboscis, the flesh incarnate of Painted Stick, was only millimeters from rubbing against her own dwarfed nose, and as the metronome inside her panties suddenly amplified its tick, marking time, marking estrogen time, marking an insect rhythm of feminine heat, he parted his lips. Ellen Cherry fully expected him to bark or growl or hiss. Instead, he spoke in his customary mild tone.

“Noble Crusaders.
Holy
Crusaders. They pulled the Arab lands down into the muck pit with Europe. And the Arab lands have never recovered. No amount of oil profit can buy back their enlightenment. How different conditions would be today in the Middle East, how much saner and safer the entire earth might be, had those Christians not defiled a civilization too advanced for their arrogant little minds to understand. Did they teach you these things in your Jesus school, pretty Cherry?”

Before Ellen Cherry could respond, one of the protest groups, it was difficult to identify which one, attempted to invade the restaurant, creating a huge commotion as police beat them back at the door. Clubs swung, blood drops flew, cameras flashed, and diners, spilling wine and sputtering lentils, stampeded in the direction of the kitchen. Both her clitoral hum and her champagne static drowned out now by spurting adrenaline, Ellen Cherry made as if to rise, but Abu just sat there. “The Crusaders wanted Jerusalem,” he said placidly. “Jerusalem was their prize. I suppose we cannot fault them for that.”

It was a long, troubled evening, but the I & I survived. The only damage it sustained was wine stains on its ubiquitous bamboo. Moreover, the media exposure had been terrific.

On the way home, alone, in the limo, its backseat so spacious, the city it purred through so threatening and unknowable, Ellen Cherry felt like a small child. She pulled her feet, red spikes and all, up onto the seat and hugged her knees. But that made her feel even smaller. In order to grow big again, she began to think about whom she was going to sleep with.

Obviously, she was going to sleep with somebody soon. It didn’t take Nostradamus to forecast that. But who?

Boomer would have been first on her list. Fat chance. It almost made her laugh. Eighteen months earlier, when they were crossing the country in the honeymoon turkey, she entertained a scenario: in New York, sooner or later, she was bound to fall in love with a fellow artist, a successful painter, probably; a man who really understood her, her work, her creative needs; and she would have to leave Boomer for him, she would have to break ol’ Boomer’s heart. It seemed so inevitable that she went so far as to rehearse her speech, the sincerely weepy one in which she would tell Boomer she wanted a divorce. (They were in Minnesota then, mind you, Minnesota and Wisconsin, stray grains of wedding rice still sparkling here and there on the Airstream carpet.) What a presumption that turned out to be. What a joke.

Boomer had left
her
. And she had yet to meet a New York painter she would allow in her mind
or
her pants. Granted, she hadn’t met very many.

As for other men, the bachelors she had encountered at clubs and bars and parties, well, most appeared to have one thing in common: having been hurt at Point A, they insured themselves against being hurt again at Point C by becoming assholes at Point B. In all fairness, that was true of the single women over thirty, as well.

One-night stands were out, anyway. Fear of AIDS.

Could she sleep with Mr. Hadee or Mr. Cohen? Yes, indeed, she could. Mr. Hadee was so gracious and sweet, Mr. Cohen so dynamic and handsome. It might be nice to take an older lover. Sleeping with one’s boss had obvious advantages, although it always seemed to backfire on the waitresses she had known who’d done it. Alas, Mr. Hadee was happily married. And Mr. Cohen, well, it made her somehow uneasy the way he stared at her feet. What had Mr. Hadee called him? Shoe Wolf.

One older man who definitely was
not
a candidate for her favors was Buddy Winkler, no matter if his voice did carbonate her fluids. Thus far, her daddy had concealed from Buddy that she had gone back to work for the Arab and the Jew. Bud had learned, however, that she and Boomer were estranged, and since he assumed automatically that it was her fault, he’d expressed interest in counseling her. God, she hoped he didn’t drop in on her in her weakened condition! Of course, Buddy would have been happy to call her “Jezebel” as often as she wished. What exactly did go on in bed with a preacher? she wondered. Patsy would know.

At the Ansonia, Raoul met the car. The rain had stopped, and he wore a tight tan uniform with plastic “brass” buttons. Were it not for his porkpie hat, he might have been an officer in a banana republic air force. As he helped her from the limo, he squeezed her wrist. “Didn’t stay long over dare in Jerusalem, Miz Charl.” The thing about Raoul was his availability. She could have him
now
! That was a solid inducement. Her knees turned into chewing gum imagining it. But she resisted. No more Latin lovers: a pledge she would stick to like Scotch tape to a Chihuahua.

Raoul seemed to sense that he had been considered and rejected. However, instead of pouting when Mrs. Charles entered the elevator without glancing back, he scribbled in his notebook:

Muddy Waters he play in the river

Joan Rivers she play in the mud

Swami guru play in a big salad bowl

Counting lettuce and chewing his cud

The day would come, man, when every
blanquita
in New York would want Raoul Ritz, man. Raoul was born to star.

At the bathroom mirror, removing her makeup and wondering in amazement—as she had virtually every day for twenty years—at the epic scope of her hair, Ellen Cherry inquired of her reflection, “You know who I’d like to sleep with? Who I’d really like to sleep with?” She giggled. “I’d like to sleep with the only real artist in New York City. I’m talking ’bout Turn Around Norman.”

She wasn’t referring to Norman Mailer, the novelist who had looked her over—approvingly or disapprovingly, she could not determine—at the I & I party. No, she referred to a certain street performer, who . . . well, never mind. Turn Around Norman’s turn will come. Let’s allow Ellen Cherry to sleep this off.

Knock knock knock!
Something was knocking like the pistons on Satan’s Nash Rambler. Ellen Cherry actually couldn’t tell whether the sound was external or internal, whether it was a visitor rapping at her door or her hangover trying to hang a picture on the wall of her skull. A picture of
The Massacre of the Innocents
painted on black velvet by a hydrocephalic baboon.

She sat up in bed and opened her eyes. She opened her eyes carefully so that they wouldn’t break. Her eyes seemed to be playing the eye game without her. The room was so out of focus she was afraid to breathe until she made absolutely certain she wasn’t underwater. She could hear better with her eyes open, however. Most people could.
Knock knock
! It was the door.

“Who is it?” she called—and instantly winced.

“Me!”

“Who?”

“Me! Open up! I used to live here! Wahoo!”

Why now, dear God? Why now?
She hadn’t seen the fool in more than a month, and he shows up when she was undressed, hung over, and doubtlessly looking like
The Massacre of the Innocents
painted on black velvet by a hydrocephalic baboon. The fact that he’d seen her a hundred times first thing in the morning after a hard night didn’t mean a thing. That was then and this was now. She sprang from bed. “Give me five minutes,” she called, knowing full well that it would take longer than that just to peel the wallpaper off her tongue.

The fact that she didn’t have to brush her hair—what difference would it have made?—cut down on her repair time. In eight minutes, exactly, the mirror showed her only marginally below the summit of her potential. Of course, she hadn’t bathed, but a splash or two of Jungle Desire cologne would take care of that. She splashed, then went to the door.

“Sugar britches.”

“Yeah, Boomer?”

He was wearing one of his old faded Hawaiian shirts and, were she not mistaken, the same steel-toed work shoes he’d been married in, but his leather pants were new and expensive. A beret as red as a mosquito’s belch reduced the amount of scalp revealed by his receding hairline to an area just slightly too small to invite spray-can graffiti. The beret was nothing new, however. He had taken to wearing it the day that he discovered that he was an artist.

She found him a beer in the fridge, a Pabst Blue Ribbon that he’d left behind. There wasn’t a slice of cold pizza on the premises, but he didn’t suffer, having consumed three that morning already.

“I was in the neighborhood . . .”

“Yeah. Right. Well, then, how’re you doing, Boomer?”

“Got my nose to the grindstone.”

“Good.”

“My shoulder to the wheel.”

“Fine.”

“My ear to the cauliflower.”

“Uh-huh.”

“My cheeks to the halibut.”

“You’re certainly flip these days.”

“My lip to the flipper.”

“Is that what she calls it?”

“Be nice.”

“How
is
ol’ Ultima, anyway?”

“Ellen Cherry, I don’t hardly ever see Ultima. I don’t see her that much. She wants to see you, though. I told her I thought you were painting again.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“Whadda ya call
them
?” He nodded, beret and all, toward the twenty or more canvases stacked against the wall.

“Experiments.”

“I don’t see why—”

“No! Don’t you touch those paintings!”

“I thought they weren’t paintings.”

They sat for a time in silence. Boomer gulped his beer. She didn’t offer another. He crushed the empty can in his big welder’s fist, then began twisting the aluminum into some form or other. She wondered if he would include it in his exhibition.

After a while, he asked, “You doing okay?”

“Indisputably. I’m gainfully employed. I’ve got my health. Except I
have
been having psychic problems lately. I keep channeling Janis Joplin.”

“Huh?”

She commenced to sing. “I’m gonna wash that man right outta my hair, I’m gonna wash that man right outta my hair . . .”

“Ellen Cherry.”

“. . . and send him on his way-ay.”

“Ellen Cherry, now.”

“Sorry. I’ve got no control over it. Sometimes she just takes over my body.”

Nervously, Boomer scratched his thick neck. “Yeah, well, that was some kind of Broadway show tune you were singing. Janis Joplin never sung any song like that. She was rock ’n’ roll.”

“She’s dead, Boomer. In death, a singer can expand her repertoire.”

“And I don’t buy that bull about washing a man outta your hair, neither. That hair of yours? Man get caught in there, you could shampoo forever and not set him loose.”

“Well, that sure wouldn’t be any problem for you. Exactly how many hairs do you have left now? Under that corny damn beret?”