Slaves of New York (2 page)

and I had been dating for six months. That was when Stash said we could try living together.

We've been living together in his place in the Village about a year now. One room, it's big, but he has a lot of stuff here— boxes, closets full of papers. Well, he's been here for ten years, and after his divorce he hadn't lived with anyone in six years or so.

I'm getting used to it. In the morning I clean up some, I walk his Dalmatian, Andrew, then I come back and cook Stash two poached eggs, raisin tea biscuits, coffee with three spoons sugar. Usually around this time of day, the doorman buzzes on the intercom and I have to go down to pick up a package, or run to the store for some more cigarettes, whatever. Then Stash goes off to work. He's an artist, he works for himself, so he doesn't have to go in until late, except recently he's been out of the house by ten, since he's nervous about getting ready for his show coming up soon at his gallery on Fifty-seventh Street.

I watch a few soap operas and have a second cup. Then usually I start to plan the evening dinner. I'll make, let's say, Cornish game hen with orange glaze, curried rice, asparagus, or it could be fettuccine Alfredo with garlic bread and arugula salad. Nothing too fancy. I take Andrew to the Key Food and tie him up outside, return the empty bottles. Stash likes Coca-Cola, Cracker Jacks, eats marshmallows out of the bag.

Well, I'm getting used to it. He still complains a lot if I leave makeup on the back of the toilet. He kept saying, "Eleanor, look at this sin," until I pointed out to him he was regressing to his Catholic childhood. I forget what else bugs him. If I do the dishes and there's, let's say, a little spot of grease on the floor from where I carried the roasting pan over to the garbage pail—this just drives him crazy. Clothes—if I leave any clothes out, or if after I wash them I put them away where he can't find them. If I buy the wrong kind of deodorant—why, he has to take fifteen minutes to explain to me why he only uses deodorant and not antiperspirant. Antiperspirant clogs up the pores and prevents you from perspiring, it's unhealthy,

whereas deodorant just masks the odor. Well, it's his apartment, and if we have a fight or something I sometimes get this panicky feeling: Where the hell am I going to go?

I have a couple of girlfriends in the city. One is renting out her second bedroom for $650 a month. The other has a three-year-old baby, and I'm sure she'd be glad if I slept on her couch in the living room in return for day-care services or whatever, but would I be better off? Anyway, I'm trying to learn how to get along with a man.

So what happens is, I went out to this party without Stash. He wasn't feeling too well, and once in a while I really make an attempt to go out without him. It's one of the most difficult things in the world for me to do. I'd much rather go out with him, and when he's saying hello to all his friends I can kind of lurk behind him and smile every once in a while, but I don't actually have to come up with anything to
say.
For instance, at a nightclub some guy comes over—well, he isn't talking to me, he's talking to Stash, about business or the softball team they both play on. What do I have to say? I don't have anything to say.

Anyway, this party was a housewarming for this couple, Mona and Phil. I didn't know them too well. They had just found a new apartment on Fourteenth Street, $1,500 a month —Mona had some money from her parents—a real find, a sixth-floor walk-up. Phil was a carpenter, and so he could install the toilet and fixtures himself. Most of their boxes and stuff hadn't yet been unpacked. For a while I sat on the couch drinking a margarita that had been mixed up in a blender and listening to Mona's mother and father talk about their trip to China. They had deluxe accommodations at some hotel in Peking, and there was a lottery among the members of their tour group, and Mona's mother and father won and got to stay in the Grand Suite, which had a fully stocked liquor bar.

When I finished listening to them, I turned around and there was a totally stunning man sitting on a chair next to me eating some Kentucky Fried Chicken. Mona and her husband, Phil, had made their own dipping sauce, but since they were in the

middle of moving they went out and got the chicken at Kentucky and arranged it in a linen-covered basket. I wasn't eating anything. I had already made dinner for myself and Stash, and because he wasn't feeling well I kept the meal simple and just served homemade black-bean soup with macaroni and cheese and a small salad. I felt sort of annoyed at first when I saw this guy eating fried chicken and staring at me, because it occurred to me that (a) he was far too gorgeous, with his green eyes and curly black hair, and (b) he was probably an actor, because he seemed to be reenacting the dinner scene from
Tom Jones,
that old movie with Albert Finney. Stash always tells me I have "buggy-whip" arms, and it made me uncomfortable the way this guy was eating a scrawny chicken wing and looking at me. You know, I just wanted to tell him to knock it off and be a person.

He introduced himself and we started talking. It was the first time in ages I had talked to a man, other than Stash. Stash is half-Polish and half-Italian, so conversation between the sexes doesn't go over so good with him.

This guy's name was Mikell and he was from South Africa and wrote novels, political-type novels, so he had been thrown out of the country some time back. They didn't actually throw him out, they just confiscated a work-in-progress. I asked him if he knew Jimmy Gwynne, who is from Cape Town, and naturally Mikell knew Jimmy—in fact, he had shared a flat with him in London about six years ago. He had come to the party with Millie, who I had always wanted to meet—Millie was one of the few successful woman painters in New York. So I said hello to Millie, and it turned out we had gone to the same college but at different times and she had graduated some eight years before me. I never thought Mikell and Millie were actually together, I thought they just came to the party at the same time. Whatever. Millie excused herself, and Mikell went back to talk to me.

As it happened, I gave Mikell my address and phone number without bothering to mention that I lived with someone. Let me tell you, at this point there was nothing devious going on in

my head. Stash was always encouraging me to develop a life of my own. This Mikell had eyes that were truly sickening— green pools like you never see and never want to see: when he looked at you, it made you weak in the knees, which in actual fact made me mad. So I didn't respond—I mean, come on already, I didn't let my knees get weak, I just talked to Mikell like he was one of my girlfriends. Come to think of it, that was the only way I knew how to talk to anyone anymore.

A few days later, after Stash had gone off to work, Mikell called, and I agreed to meet him for a cup of coffee. It turned out he lived only a few blocks away. I sat in the back corner of the White Horse Tavern, hoping no one would be able to see me if they walked past the window and report me to Stash or anything.

Mikell showed up. Such white teeth, like you wouldn't believe (they must have something in the water over there in South Africa), and those eyes—brilliant green (maybe he wore contact lenses). I couldn't even believe it. He had a copy of his novel for me. It had been published in England and he was looking for an American publisher. It was called
Registered Alien.
After a while, I had to explain that I lived with a person, and Mikell asked me how it was going. I said okay, but that my dream was that someday I would get some bucks and then maybe I could move out. I said I got along all right with Stash, but that he never wanted to have anyone over, we had no couch, just a bed, all his stuff was all over the place, it hadn't been painted in ten years, and my dream was to have a real apartment, maybe with a little terrace, geraniums, and then I'd have dinner parties for eight or ten every once in a while.

Well, it turned out that Mikell lived with Millie. They had met in L.A. Millie went out there for a show and Mikell was living there reading screenplays for a production company. So Mikell invited Millie to South Africa, she met his mother, and they got along really well. Mikell took Millie to meet some Zulus and she danced with them; they stayed up all night drinking some local concoction, and Millie had a great time. When Millie went back to New York, she invited Mikell to

move in with her—New York was where the publishing was. Mikell said yes, they got along great, there was only one problem, which was that they fought all the time.

What the situation was, Millie owned her own co-op, and her former boyfriend, during the time they were engaged to be married, had purchased the co-op next to hers, and they had torn down the walls between the two apartments. So now Millie's former boyfriend rented out his half of the space to Mikell at a very, very tiny rent, a rent so small that even though Mikell was absolutely broke he was able to afford living in New York, which was where he wanted to be. The reason the former boyfriend rented out his half of the co-op to Mikell at such a reduced rate was that it would have cost a fortune to rebuild the walls between the two apartments, and Millie absolutely refused to live with a complete stranger. But it was lucky for Mikell that Millie didn't consider him a complete stranger, otherwise he would have had to go back to Los Angeles and his job, when that was something he had nothing for but contempt.

We both just sat there. Mikell put his hand over mine. It wasn't a sexual thing, not really, it was just the two of us sitting there at a wooden table in the White Horse Tavern, looking at each other and sitting there. We were both in the same position. Things might have been different if one of us had our own apartment. It wasn't that Mikell wasn't very fond of Millie— he was. But they had a lot of fights, and he wasn't allowed to go out by himself at night, and Millie didn't feel like going out all that often, and Mikell would have liked to be able to see some of the New York scene now that he was finally here.

When we got up to leave, I let Mikell pay for my coffee. He said he would call me in a couple of days. I asked him to call only between the hours of eleven and one, when I could be certain that Stash would be out. I asked him to sign his novel. He wrote, "To Eleanor by the River, with love from Mikell." So I said, "Listen, why don't you write down your number, in case I have to give you a call?"

It was all totally out in the open. I just wanted to keep him like a girlfriend, and that was why I told Stash about meeting Mikell. I figured that things would never work out between me and Mikell because we were both in the same position, but maybe as a foursome I could be friends with Millie and Stash could go shoot some pool with Mikell. It was important to bring new people into a relationship, to make new friends, and if you're part of a couple, well, then it's easier to have new friends who are also a couple.

Stash almost had a nervous breakdown. For two days he wouldn't speak to me, then he started screaming. He told me to go move out so I could start sleeping with this guy, and said how dare I bring home little love notes from some cretin.

I said, "Well, Stash, I wouldn't have told you about it if there was anything going on. All I did was tell Mikell about you and how great you are, and he talked about Millie."

Stash said, "Don't give me that, that's how it begins—you go out and talk to each other about your relationships and then jump into bed with each other. Maybe we should just end this," he said. "You're beginning to bore me."

This went on all day. I started crying. I said, "If you want me to leave, then I won't stay here any longer. You know how much I love you, and I can't understand your reaction." I said, "I thought you'd really like this guy—he's interested in seeing your paintings, and I thought I could be friends with her."

"Who?" Stash said.

"The girlfriend," I said.

Stash said, "You want me to call her up and go out with her? Is that what you want? Fine. You're doing this out of insecurity. What is it about you I hate the most?"

"My messiness?" I said.

"No."

"My personality?"

"No," he said. "Your insecurity. That's what I hate about you the most. You are so damn insecure. Why don't you stop?"

I couldn't figure it out. I mean, I'm insecure, but I couldn't see how this related. My having coffee with a man didn't seem

to illustrate this character defect. I cried all day Sunday, and Stash went out with his friends and played softball.

Mikell called at twelve-thirty. I tried to sound happy and bright. He really was intelligent, and it was beyond me how Millie could ever think of anything to argue with him about. I wanted to see him for coffee, except my eyes were all swollen up. I just broke down and told him how things had been hell around here for three days, how Stash went insane because I told him I had gone out for coffee with a man.

Mikell said, "Actually, that's what's been going on around here. She's gone totally out of her mind."

There was a silence. I said, "Well, let's meet for coffee tomorrow."

He said, "I can't. How about Wednesday?"

I said, "Let me call you in the morning, since I'm not sure if I can make it."

There was a silence. He said it would be better if I didn't call him.

We did get to meet one other time. It was really sad. After that, I bumped into him once at the bank. He was with Millie, and she gave me a strange smile. I had no makeup on, and I was wearing my glasses, which were pointy and had little rhinestones at the corners, and maybe she only half recognized me. I mean, at the party, the one other time she had seen me, I had been wearing my contact lenses and had on a lot of my original jewelry, things like my James Bond/Oddjob necklace and earring set. When Millie went to use the cash machine, Mikell came over to me and asked if I was going home after the bank.