Slaves of New York (6 page)

First, you must dispose of his wife. You disguise yourself as a chambermaid and get a job at a hotel where Bruce is staying with his wife on the tour. You know you are doing the right thing. Bruce will be happier with you. Does Bruce really need a wife with chipmunk cheeks, who probably talks baby talk in bed? You are educated, you have studied anthropology. You can help Bruce with his music, give him ideas about American culture. You are a real woman.

You go into Bruce's room. His wife is lying on the bed, wearing a T-shirt that says "Number 1 Groupie" and staring straight up at the ceiling. You tell Bruce's wife that Bruce has arranged for you to give her a facial and a massage: it's a surprise. "Isn't he sweet?" she says with a giggle.

You whip out an ice pick, hidden under your clothes, and quickly give her a lobotomy: you've watched this technique in the Frances Farmer story on TV. Bruce's wife doesn't even flinch.

After the operation, you present her with a bottle of Valium and an airplane ticket to Hollywood; the taxi's waiting outside. To your amazement, she does exactly as you tell her.

You're a bit worried about how Bruce will adjust to her absence, and your presence, but when he returns to the room, at three in the morning, he doesn't even seem to notice the difference. You're dressed in her nightie, lying in bed, looking

up at the ceiling. Bruce strips down to his Jockey shorts and gets into bed with you. "Good night, honeybunch," he says.

In the morning he still doesn't seem to realize there's been a change in personnel. In real life, Bruce is larger than life. Though he appears small on television and on record covers, when you stand next to him for the first time you understand that Bruce is the size of a monster. His hands are as large as your head, his body might take up an entire billboard. This is why, you now know, he must have guitars made specially for him.

At breakfast Bruce puts away a dozen eggs, meatballs, spaghetti, and pizza. He sings while he eats, American songs about food. He has plans, projects, he discusses it all with his business manager: the Bruce Springsteen Amusement Park, the Bruce Springsteen Las Vegas Casino, a chain of Bruce Springsteen bowling alleys.

Bruce decides that today you will buy a new home.

You are very excited about this prospect: you imagine something along the lines of Graceland, or an elegant Victorian mansion. "I'm surprised at you," Bruce says. "We agreed not to let my success go to your head."

He selects a small ranchhouse on a suburban street of an industrial New Jersey town. "You go rehearse, darling," you say. "I'll pick out the furnishings."

But Bruce wants to help with the decoration. He insists on ordering everything from Sears: a plaid couch, brown and white, trimmed with wood; a vinyl La-Z-Boy recliner; orange wall-to-wall carpeting. The bedroom, Bruce decides, will have mirrors on the ceiling, a water bed with purple satin sheets, white shag carpeting, and two pinball machines. Everything he has chosen, he tells you, was made in the U.S.A.

In the afternoon, Bruce has a barbecue in the backyard. "Everybody's got to have a hobby, babe," he tells you. He wears a chef's hat and has his own special barbecue sauce— bottled Kraft's, which he doctors with ketchup and mustard. Though he only knows how to make one thing—dried-out chicken—everyone tells him it is the best they've ever had.

You think it's a little strange that no one seems to notice his wife is gone and you are there instead; but perhaps it's just that everyone is so busy telling Bruce how talented he is that they don't have time.

Soon you have made the adjustment to life with Bruce.

The only time Bruce ever feels like making love is when the four of you—you, Bruce, and his two bodyguards—are driving in his Mustang. He likes to park at various garbage dump sites outside of Newark and, while the bodyguards wait outside, Bruce insists that you get in the back seat. He finds the atmosphere—rats, broken refrigerators, old mattresses, soup cans —very stimulating. He prefers that you don't remove your clothes; he likes you to pretend to fight him off. The sun, descending through the heavy pollution, sinks slowly, a brilliant red ball changing slowly into violet and then night.

When Bruce isn't on tour, rehearsing with his band, recording a record or writing new songs, his favorite pastime is visiting old age homes and hospitals, where he sings to senior citizens until they beg him to stop. His explanation for why he likes this is that he finds it refreshing to be with real Americans, those who do not worship him, those who do not try to touch the edges of his clothing. But even the sick old people discover, after a short time, that when Bruce plays to them they are cured.

The terminally ill recover after licking up just one drop of Bruce's sweat. Soon Bruce is in such demand at the nursing homes that he is forced to give it up. There is nothing Bruce can do that doesn't turn to gold.

One day Bruce has a surprise for you. "I'm going to take you on a vacation, babe," he says. "You know, we were born to run." You are thrilled. At last you will get that trip to Europe; you will be pampered, you will visit the couture houses and select a fabulous wardrobe, you will go to Bulgari and select a handful of jewels, you will go to Fendi and pick out a sable coat. You will be deferred to, everyone will want to be your friend in the hope of somehow getting close to Bruce.

"Oh, Bruce, this is wonderful," you say. "Where will we go?"

"I bought a camper," Bruce says. "I thought we'd drive around, maybe even leave New Jersey."

You have always hated camping, but Bruce has yet another surprise—he's stocked the camper with food. Dehydrated scrambled eggs, pancake mix, beef jerky. "No more fast food for us," he says.

You travel all day; Bruce has decided he wants to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame. While Bruce drives he plays tapes of his music and sings along. You tell him you're impressed with the fact he's memorized all the words. "So what do you think?" he says. "You like the music?"

Though your feet hurt—Bruce has bought you a pair of hiking boots, a size too small—you tell him you think the music is wonderful. Never has a greater genius walked the face of the earth.

Unfortunately, Bruce is irritated by this. The two of you have your first fight. "You're just saying that," Bruce says. "You're just the same as all the rest. I thought you were different, but you're just trying to get on my good side by telling me I'm brilliant."

"What do you want from me?" you say.

Bruce starts to cry. "I'm not really any good," he says.

"That's not true, Bruce," you say. "You mustn't feel discouraged. Your fans love you. You cured a small boy of cancer just because he saw you on TV. You're up there with the greats: the Beatles, Christ, Gandhi, Lee Iacocca. You've totally restored New Jersey to its former glory: once again it's a proud state."

"It's not enough," Bruce says. "I was happier in the old days, when I was just Bruce, playing in my garage."

You're beginning to find that you're unhappy in your life with Bruce. Since Bruce spends so much time rehearsing, there is little for you to do but shop. Armed with credit cards and six bodyguards (to protect you from Bruce's angry women fans), you search the stores for some gift for Bruce that might please

him. You buy foam coolers to hold beer, Smurf dolls, candy-flavored underwear, a television set he can wear on his wrist, a pure-bred Arabian colt. You hire three women to wrestle on his bed covered in mud.

Bruce thanks you politely but tells you, "There's only one thing I'm interested in."

"Me?" you say.

Bruce looks startled. "My music," he says.

To your surprise you learn you are pregnant, though you can't figure out how this could have happened. You think about what to name the baby. "How about Benjamin Springsteen?" you say.

"Too Jewish immigrant," Bruce says. "This kid is going to be an American, not some leftist from Paterson."

"How about Sunny Von?" you say.

"Sunny von Springsteen?" Bruce says. "I don't get it. No, there's only one name for a kid of mine."

"What?" you say, trying to consider the possibilities. Bruce is sitting on the couch, stroking his guitar. The three phones are ringing nonstop, the press is banging on the door. You haven't been out of the house in three days. The floor is littered with boxes from Roy Rogers, cartons of White Castle burgers, empty cans of Coke. You wonder how you're going to fill up the rest of the day; you've already filed your nails, studied the Sears, Roebuck catalog, made a long-distance call to your mother.

At last Bruce speaks. "I'm going to call the kid Elvis," he says.

"What if it's a girl?" you say.

"Elvis," Bruce says. "Elvis, either way."

You fly to Hollywood to try to find his real wife. Finally you track her down. She's working as a tour guide at the wax museum. "Admission to the museum is five dollars," she says at the door. "The museum will be closing in fifteen minutes."

"Don't you remember me?" you say. "I'm the person who gave you a lobotomy, who shipped you off to Hollywood."

"If you say so," Brace's wife says. "Thank you."

"I made a mistake," you say. "I did wrong. I have your ticket here; you'll go back to Bruce."

His wife is willing, though she claims not to know what you're talking about. "But what about my job here?" she says. "I can't just leave."

You tell her you'll take over for her. Quickly you rush her to the airport, push her onto the plane. You tell her to look after Bruce. "He can't live without you, you know," you say.

You wait to make sure her plane takes off on time. A sense of relief comes over you. You have nowhere to go, nothing to do; you decide to return to the wax museum and make sure it's properly locked up for the night.

You have the keys to the door; the place is empty, the lights are off. Now you wander through the main hall. Here are Michael Jackson, Jack the Ripper, President Reagan, Sylvester Stallone, Muhammad Ali, Adolf Hitler. You are alone with all these men, waxy-faced, unmoving, each one a superstar.

Something violent starts to kick, then turns, in your stomach.

life in the pre-cambrian era

I forgot that my mother planned to pay me a visit that day. Or I would have cleaned up. Maybe. Now I, Marley Mantello, hesitate to speak too highly of myself. But even as a toddler, reenacting imaginary scenes of death on the roof of my mother's run-down house, garbed in a matador's tweedley-dee, it was obvious—to myself, to my mother—that I was a boy genius.

Example: my Hollywood-inspired paintings of the Crusaders fighting the Moslems, and in the sky, emblazoned in black letters, the word "GOD." And beneath this word a black cross. Not bad for a kid of eight. But what good does any of this genius do me? There are times when I think that to leave my mark upon the world is simply to curse it with another smear. . . .

After art school I became a starving artist. I starved with a vengeance. My mother approved. All this was for my art. Still, in another sense, it didn't matter one way or the other: I knew I wasn't going to live very long, I expected to keel over at any minute. Every day I had to think carefully: Was I well enough to get up today? Did my stomach hurt? Was an unhealed cut on my finger a sign of cancer? What should I eat for breakfast? And none of these things would have been enough to get me out of bed except for the fact that I had to go paint a picture.

But as much as I wanted to paint, often it took me most of the day to prepare myself for it. First of all, I had to go to the

bank to take out another dollar or two. I am a fast walker, but my bank is very far away. It was one of those big banks on Wall Street, an unusually gloomy place, built in a neofascist-religious style. It should have had one of those big organs at the back, or at least a baptismal font. If my bank had had any sense, it would have commissioned me to turn the interior into a chapel. It would have been a real investment for them. It gave me great pleasure to walk down there, even though it generally took me about an hour. I liked the fact that my bank was far away, this way I wasn't tempted to spend money as quickly.

On the streets crowds of people were staggering this way and that, newly released from their office tombs. Grim faces, worn down like cobblestones, never to make anything of their lives. These were the worker bees and drones, who had been imprisoned in American thought-patterns since birth, with no hope for escape but the weekly million-dollar lottery. Walking at a slow speed, which drove me crazy. But what would have motivated them to move more quickly?

I stood out. With my long, lanky stride, my scuffed Italian loafers, and my beat-up, faggoty Italian jacket. It had deep pockets on both sides, ripped because I kept a lot of variables and disregards in the pockets—and the shoulders had a little padding in them, by now somewhat lopsided.

It didn't bother me, the looks and stares I got. People were angry with me, and why? Because I was some sort of freak, an artist. They were trapped, and I wasn't. So I felt smug, even though I was starving.

But when I got to my big mausoleum, I found I only had $10 in my savings account: I took out nine. Ginger, my dealer, owed me money. I had at least two grand coming to me, which was going to have to go for the rent. I hadn't paid the rent in months, in protest. The crummy landlord, Vardig, hadn't turned on the heat. So even if Ginger paid up, I would still be broke after Vardig got what he was owed.