The Fuck Up (18 page)

“And then you beat him up to amuse yourself further.”

“He was playing with me! Using me!”

“And you got even, didn’t you?”

“I got hold of an ashtray and knocked the shit out of him till he dragged himself the fuck out…then I heard on the TV that he did himself in.”

“Wonderful.”

“Listen,” Angela said, “I just want you to know that I let you talk like this because I respect you. I was drunk and you straightened me out. But I also want you to know that I ain’t scared of you.”

“Does it make any difference to you,” I asked Angela, “that a person killed himself because he loved you?”

“Look, one night I was horny so I went to a bar and picked up a guy for a quick fuck, capisce? I never adopted him.”

“But couldn’t you…”

“Look pal,” she interrupted, “you’re talkin’ to someone who was dropped more than a yo-yo, and got more final disconnection notices than anyone else alive.” With that she returned to her racing forms and then the betting window. Guilt only affects the larger upright animals. I returned to the car and watched her for a moment from behind the dash. She watched the monitor and then went to a cash window.

I started the ignition and drove down Court, but I had nowhere to go. I didn’t care to return to Glenn’s home, so I just drove around. Driving in New
York was like a big game of bumper cars, people were cutting people off, stopping fast, accelerating just as fast. Until the day before, I had never driven in the city, and I didn’t even have a valid license. I was tired and remembered that my new abode, Sergei’s place, was now mine. I parked near the local F train stop and locked all the windows and doors. I realized that the value of all those books in the car exceeded fifty thousand dollars and possibly a hundred thousand dollars. The Mercedes already had its radio missing, but this was obscured by the boxes of books. Locating a piece of paper, I wrote: “RADIO ALREADY STOLEN, NOTHING OF VALUE IN CAR.” I framed the note in the window track. Locking the door, I went to the subway and paid for a token.

While Waiting
for the subway, I scrutinized Helmsley’s tragedy; unintentionally I had reduced Angela’s guilt. She was brought up to see love as a weakness, whereas all Helmsley’s books and needs had revealed love to him as a strength. Perhaps Helmsley’s view was nobler, but in the end her vantage certainly proved more endurable. I got off the F train at Broadway and Lafayette, where all the beggars were congregated. One guy a little older than me asked for a quarter. I told him to get a job and kept going.

When I reached West Broadway, a bombshell struck; I suddenly realized that I was missing—had missed—Helmsley’s burial. I kicked the ground and
yanked my hair. He was being buried unaccompanied. The dead were so helpless, and being buried seemed like such a humiliating act. I could picture the grave diggers spitting as they shovelled the dirt into the hole.

With each step, the synonyms of his death whirled by: he’s gone, he’s cold, he’s still…. It really wouldn’t have mattered if I pursued the box into the earth. On West Broadway, I turned left, retracing those same streets that I had walked on my fraudulent gay date. By daylight, the area seemed quite different, large ponderous buildings with fancy storefronts, warehouse chic. I located my new apartment. A security system realistically evaluated the menace of Manhattan; locks were everywhere. First, a front door lock, then a key-operated elevator, two locks to the floor, and finally a lock to shut off the burglar alarm. Inside, it was one spacious industrial room, constructed for machines. Modern apartments pressed people into small, enclosed cubicles. In Sergei’s place the machines had long since vanished. Along the two walls bordering the width of the place were laminated posters of Ternevsky’s film experiments. Between these walls were juggled objects of technology and antiquity, much like Glenn’s. Apparently the rich either go for the very new or the very old. To imagine this stage as a one-time sweat shop cast with anemic seamstresses speaking in Yiddish was now nearly inconceivable.

As I sat on a large circular water bed in the middle of the floor, I heard a metallic clinking sound. Leather straps were fastened to both the heads and tails of the bed frame; they must have been part of Sergei’s insecurity. Spending most of his life in an Iron Curtain country must have given him a totalitarian sex drive. As the tide rippled across the mattress, I floated toward the quaint night table, where I found a rustic remote control switch. I turned on the TV. I flipped the TV back off and got off the bed. Persian rugs and Empire-style furniture juxtaposed with Dutch Nouveau. A state-of-the-art sound system was hidden below a long antique chest of drawers. There was
also a panel of dimmers and rheostats that could more subtly vary the lights and shadows than Rembrandt himself.

A note written on a large empty bulletin board announced: “The cabinet by Napoleon is yours.” Sure enough, across the room on an old ionic pedestal was a marble bust of the great French general. Next to it, below an original Warhol silk-screen, was a beautiful rosewood chest of drawers. On the top shelf sat my Unique bag containing my single-sleeved shirt and single-legged pants. The few clothes that I had taken from Sarah’s and stashed at Helmsleys had apparently been snatched up with the rest of his things by his grab bag relatives. Now my entire wardrobe consisted only of the suit that Glenn had given me. I carefully folded the suit jacket and placed it in the top drawer of my cabinet, I folded my suit pants in another drawer, and the shirt took up residence in the bottom drawer. I resumed my tour of the apartment in my underpants.

Bathrooms are where a truly rich mentality distinguishes itself. Sergeis bathroom had no door. Tiny terra-cotta mosaics lined the room from floor to ceiling. Under the dimmer switch were two knobs—one was a thermostat that modified the water temperature, and the other dial heated up the tiles on the ceiling. On a glass shelf above the sink were many soaps, clay packs, lotions, and other miracle cures, aimed at restoring skin to the sacred state of youthfulness. Claiming over half the bathroom floor was the deeply sunken bathtub. In it was a white stone bench chiselled with reliefs. A huge porcelain faucet shaped like a small fire hydrant was fixed over the tub, urban architecture that Ternevsky probably found droll. I opened the hydrant all the way and set the water thermostat at a hundred degrees. While it filled up I took a dump and only afterwards did I realize that there was no toilet paper. I was contemplating despoiling one of the monogrammed hand towels when I noticed a small foot pedal. I hit down on the accelerator and a jet stream of
hot water bull’s-eyed my butt. I’d heard about bidets but that was the first time I was ever abused by one. Turning off the faucet-hydrant, I eased myself onto a kind of shelf alongside the submerged stone bench. The water was bliss. I paddled about a bit and soon relaxed, drifting into that state of deliverance. A carrot simmering in a large stew. Between shades of wakefulness and waves of unconsciousness. Slowly a gentle noise signaled from above. My eyes opened, but I was still asleep. Before me—behold! stood a bath nymph; an angel had escaped from the myths of my dreams. I watched as the divine guide rummaged through my underwear, which I had casually tossed on the toilet seat. Although I knew at once she was real I took my time before addressing her.

“May I help you?” I whispered graciously. She emitted a penetrating scream as she backed away.

“What’s the matter!” I jumped out of the tub, concealing my drippy genitals with a monogrammed washcloth. I followed her out to the living room.

“Who the fuck are you?” Her vocal cords were high-strung and fearful. She lamely offered a vase as a weapon.

“Sergei Ternevsky sublet this place to me. You must be the girlfriend.” With little else to offer, I extended a hand.

“Well, he told me nothing of it,” she replied. Even while threatened she stood captivating and captive, a vital beauty in the blonde Harlow/Monroe tradition.

“I wouldn’t break into the place just to take a bath. Call Terne vsky and ask him!”

“He’s out of town. If you subletted this place, you would know that.”

“Call Marty” I was shivering cold and dripping a puddle in the center of his lacquered, polished floor.

“Marty, right!” She went over to the phone and while she dialed I dried
off and put on my underpants. While getting my pants from the rosewood cabinet, I heard her appealing, “Christ, Marty, why would he do this to me? What did I do? What haven’t I done?”

When she turned around and saw me standing there listening, her voice dropped to a whisper and she walked away. The extra long telephone wire uncurled until I could only grasp segments, “How am I suppose to … so what the fuck am I …” I started getting terrified; losing one’s residency meant losing everything. I went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet seat, waiting in suspense for some kind of verdict.

Finally I heard her exclaim, “He is! You’re sure?!” After a while longer, she walked back into the living room with the phone. Then I heard her put the phone on the hook and waited for her to make a move. After a couple minutes, she approached the bathroom door frame, said, “Knock, knock.”

“I hope everything’s been straightened out,” I said. She only looked at me with a smile, and I quickly realized that Marty had informed her that I was gay. I half resented it, but in compliance with my agreement, I offered a stereotypically slackened posture.

“Sorry for being so rude,” she said.

“Its okay.”

“You must understand, I was quite terrified by your being here. No one told me a thing about it.”

“Me neither,” I replied and took a seat. I folded my right knee over my left and bent my head up slightly. I wasn’t sure how long I could maintain this position. “No one explained to me that someone else was living here.”

“Well I had been living here, mainly as a favor to Ternevsky. I guess he now sees fit to replace me,” she said.

“I could never replace you,” I complimented with a smile. “Sergei told me
that he just wanted me to watch over things because of the burglaries. He was probably worried about you being alone here.”

“Knowing Sergei, he was probably worried that I was stealing his stuff.”

“That’s absurd,” I laughed with a flair.

With no prompting at all she divulged her entire Sergei file: They first met at an uptown gallery opening. He announced up front that she had sexually stimulated him and would very much like to besmirch her. In gratitude for this, he added—she imitated his accent a bit—“Janus dear, I must confess, I have little time for commitment, but I could compensate for this by granting you full use of my place and within reason I might be able to assist you by extending some of my connections in the trade.” She was a hopeful artist.

“We don’t have sex that much, he’s a rotten lover.” I commented on the straps at the four corners of the circular bed. She claimed they were just for show.

She went on to say that at times she felt ashamed. “It’s the closest I’ve ever come to prostitution.”

“If you feel that way, why did you do it?”

“He had me at a disadvantage.” She then started to elaborate. She had arrived in New York after graduating from an all-girl’s school. It was a small college town where the bulk of her colleagues were farmer’s daughters. Her actual education began in New York and after studying the present state of art she put down the brush, folded up the easel, sent the model home, and adopted the conceptual philosophy. But a female artist from out of town trying to break into the SoHo art scene was farcical. It seemed only those who were artists could be artists, no new ones were permitted. Until she met Sergei.

“What did he do for you?”

“He got one of my works accepted to a group exhibit.”

“Oh really, is it here?” I asked surveying all the expensive junk in the large room.

“No,” she laughed, “the curator threw it out.”

“Threw it out! It must have crushed you.”

“No, thank God he did; it was a disposable installation.”

“What?”

“It was a rotting mess.” She then went on to describe the piece: a human torso made from the organs and muscles of dead animals that had been sewn together.

“My God! Where did you get dead animals, what were they?”

“Oh, the kind of stuff you’d find in any old meat department; pork, beef, chicken, fish, all the cheapest cuts.”

“Cooked?”

“No raw, but cooking it could be a future reinterprelation.” She rambled on further about her life, expectations, and personal affairs.

“Tell me about you, now,” she said upon conclusion.

After touching on the sketchy details that I had fabricated for Ternevsky, I mimicked the master trying to suggest a talent and modesty that I completely lacked. I told her, among other things, that I had dropped out of medical school after three years to write poetry.

“Oh really.” She bit the bait. “Have you ever published?”

“As a matter of fact, I just got something accepted in the upcoming issue of the
Harrington.”
If she had any doubts as to my vast sea of lies, she could refer to this one drop of truth.

“Really. I get a subscription to the
Harrington,
I mean Sergei does.”

“Good, then we’ll read it together when it arrives.”

“Oh,” she said, suddenly looking at her watch. “My Swatch says five. Gotta run.” She explained while grabbing her coat that she had a class at
Parsons. I too had to run; work was waiting. Putting on the rest of my suit, I locked the locks and left. The sun was setting early as I walked through the rush of homebound people. As I walked, I realized that today was the first time that I had a stable address in a while. I also realized that today was the first day that Helmsley would be facing an infinity of decay. Glenn was probably home alone now, perhaps wishing I was more accessible. Angela, who by now had probably lost more money than she had started out with at the OTB, was probably semi-drunk at that American Legion Post bar, looking for a new victim.

These were the songs playing on the Sony Walkman of my mind, tunes suddenly halted when I stepped into the lobby. Miguel was standing there awaiting me, dragging indifferently on an herbal cigarette and looking at me expressionlessly as I entered.