The Fuck Up (22 page)

“You don’t do that to a person.”

“It’s not like that. I felt close to you from the first.”

“That’s not even the point. You just don’t do that to a person.”

“Well, Sergei says that there’s no better way to be awakened.”

“Well, not me,” I replied and cleaned up, dressed, and left to go to a nearby coffee shop. As I drank coffee at the counter, squeezed next to a couple eating their breakfast, I wondered how I was going to spend the next couple of hours before work.

“Do you smell a water buffalo?” the girl sitting next to me asked her companion, loudly. Her boyfriend, who seemed embarrassed, tried changing the topic, but she persisted. I supposed she was right. Tight places are plentiful in New York and lately while in elevators, subways, and even bars, I had become aware of a recent hostility from strangers. I abandoned my coffee and left to a pharmaceutical discount outlet. There, I purchased generic bottles of mouthwash, underarm deodorant, toothpaste, dental floss, and other hygienic offerings to society. Noticing a box of prelubed Trojans, I thought about Ternevsky’s darling. She was gorgeous.

Crossing Astor Place, the vendors were out in full force. After a quick browse, I bought a baggy old sharkskin suit for five bucks and a new pair of shoes. Then I bought dinner, pizza on Third Avenue, and a sixteen-ounce can of Bud. I feasted on the corner of Saint Mark’s and the Bowery under the Optima cigar sign while watching the punks, whores, addicts, and sightseers
all clogging eastward. By the time a bunch of Jersey kids asked me where McSorley’s Bar was, I had finished the crust and decided to go to the Zeus.

I turned on the night lights and picked up the drops from the box office. As the closing time rolled around, I carefully rolled back the counter, stole the required sum, and waited to go. As I flipped through the
Voice,
I thought about Ternevsky’s chick. I had to go back there, and I wasn’t sure how to deal with her. I went to the bathroom where I utilized my body aids. I brushed my teeth, flossed, used a mousse, combed my hair, sprayed on underarm deodorant, gargled and, taking off my cheesy socks, applied foot deodorant. Then I changed into the sharkskin suit that I had purchased earlier that day. Some young buck that was cruising the lobby kept dipping into the john, leering as I was transforming. I then went back into the office, where I looked at myself in the mirror and tried to rehearse an imaginary dialogue with Janus.

But it was ridiculous. I was jeopardizing my living situation. Enough time had passed to heal the tear between me and Sarah. She would be saddened to hear about Helmsley. She’d known what he meant to me and would want to console me. I decided to dial her. After three rings, the answering machine gave a message. Her voice sounded bouncy and far happier than I had ever made her. I could never make her as happy as she now sounded on the recording so I hung up before the beep. Looking through my shirt pocket, I found some loose change and the wrinkled title to the Mercedes. I picked up the phone and held it awhile. Who could I call? Thoughtlessly I dialled some familiar digits and listened to the recorded announcement, “the number you dialled is out of service at this time, please check the number and…” I had dialled Helmsley.

Soon the film was over and the guys went home. I locked up the theater and made the night drop. As I walked back down Third Avenue, I felt an
increasing pain in my leg, a stabbing from a metal barb. I pulled the contents out of my pocket and found a bunch of loose change and a big ring of keys. Examining the keys, I recognized the two keys to Helmsley’s house and a lump arose in my throat. I had never even noticed them before and now they were all that was left. I let them slip through my open fingers, clinking onto the pavement. The locks they once opened had probably already been replaced. Glenn’s house key was the next key under scrutiny, and as I walked the next block, I relived each punch and kick of the previous night. I held the keys to the Mercedes, her garage, and front door. I threw all three keys into Third Avenue traffic. By tomorrow they would all be irretrievably ironed into the tar. All the six remaining keys were still active, four were for Ternevsky, and two were for the theater. I halted and of course turned back. Waiting until the light turned green, I ran into the street and searched until I found the key to the car. Tiredly I made it back to Ternevsky’s place.

When I entered, Janus was wearing headphones, lying on the director’s circular bed watching his VCR. I quietly went to the most distant part of the place, the reading area. I sat in the great director’s reading chair, which was adjacent to his great custom-made magazine rack filled floor to roof with great periodicals. If we were what we read then Ternevsky was a voyeur, a connoisseur, a bodybuilder, a midget wrestler, a numismatist, a philologist, and there I stopped. Most of the magazines were current, and even though they were broad in scope, most of them were crisply unread.

I glanced at an old copy of the
SoHo Weekly News,
which had gone out of business, and then a copy of the
East Village Eye.
I didn’t want any confrontation with Janus. I just wanted to go to sleep. Finally curiosity conquered and I peeked over at her. Her back was toward me. With headphones on, she watched the large-screen TV When I glimpsed past her to the TV, I realized that she was watching something pornographic. I discreetly
watched it awhile; it was actually some kind of avant-garde film. Something caught my eye in one of the many vanity mirrors. I realized that she was watching, studying me. I looked away, back at the magazine rack.

She rose to her feet and I could hear her walking a bit.

“Want anything?” She was standing over at the bar, pouring herself a drink.

“Thanks no.”

“What you up to?” she asked.

“Just reading the magazines.”

“We just got a copy of
New York Native.
See it there?”

“No, but its all right.”

“Aren’t you gay?”

“Not right now.” I replied, not caring for any tongue-in-cheek crap. Why couldn’t she just leave me alone. I gazed at the lingerie ads in one of the many woman’s fashion magazines.

“What is your problem?” she finally asked.

“You.”

“What’d I do?”

“I feel as if you’re testing me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What the hell was that handjob this morning?”

“You looked as if you could use it.”

“And now you’re watching porno when you’re just watching me, asking me if I want to read the
Native,
all of it.”

“All right,” she finally conceded. “You’re right, and I’ll tell you why, I think you’re a goddamned fraud and the thing that bugs me is that you don’t have to be.”

“If I am a fraud,” I nibbled, “why don’t I have to be?”

“Because,” was all she said for a moment, and then she elaborated. “You kind of remind me of me.” She paused awhile, but I still wasn’t going to show any cards. She had to show more than that.

“If you think that I gave you a handjob just to prove that you’re straight, well, please, I’m not that disgusting. But you are straight.”

“How the fuck can you be so certain. Why can’t I be gay?”

“Well, first of all, I’ve known gays all my life. My father was gay, and you just don’t act gay. Also you behave with this kind of repressed quality; you lurk. You’re afraid that if you let yourself go, I’ll see the truth. And you’re always looking at me in this way. And lastly because I’m really attracted to you.”

“So what now? I mean assuming I am straight. Are you going to tell Ternevsky?”

“If I wanted you out of here, it wouldn’t matter if you were gay or not. All I would have to do is say that I don’t like you.”

“So is that what you’re going to do?”

“No, don’t you understand. I’d like to become friends…”

“Friends? Like how?”

“Well”—she moved alongside me and put her hand on mine—“Ternevsky’s a great accommodator. But he’s greasy, slimy and unromantic and he makes me feel ugly and cheap.”

“All right.” All her cards seemed on the table; if she wanted me out, all she would have to do is tell the maestro that I made a move on her. It would take a whole lot less than a handjob.

“All right?” she replied.

“All right, I’m not gay. Now what?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“I’m tired,” I said nervously, waiting to see whether I had been trapped or not.

“Me too. Why don’t you join me. I’ve rented a pretty good film.”

“That porn film.”

“It’s an art film,” she replied. So I got on the bed and she poured us both a drink and we watched this dirty art film, and slowly we got closer and when I started mimicking the film—kissy, touchy, feely—she didn’t stop me.

When I awoke late the next morning, she was still in my arms, something I had never experienced with Glenn, or for that matter most lovers. I felt hot and sweaty, so I carefully pried myself loose and started a bath. While the water ran, I put on a pot of coffee and got the
New York Times
that had been slid under the locked elevator door. In the bath I aristocratically downed the coffee and English muffins while reading the newspaper. Soon Janus joined me in the massive tub, and we giggled and splashed around like toddlers.

The beginning of a relationship is always the prime cut of the affair. I was in love. That night, post-coitally, I asked Janus, “Do you think we’re taking a risk by sleeping together?”

“No,” Janus continued, “even if he did come unannounced, he’d come in the evening after a daylight flight.”

“How self-assured,” I replied. “You sound like you’ve done this sort of thing before.”

She smiled and kissed me. “You’re jealous already.”

“Well, I’ll overcome that. But I’m still nervous about him coming in and catching us. If he was so damn thorough about having a homosexual in residence, then he’s obviously the jealous type. And it’d be a high price to pay if we got caught.”

She agreed and carefully we established certain safeguards. The next day, we went out and bought our own linen, which Janus would put on the bed each night and replace with the normal circular sheets the next morning. Also she warned that we should never be seen in public, as the eminent
director had a network of opportunists hoping for jobs in his films, doing anything they could to ingratiate themselves to him. Additionally she would distance us by indicating that I was too effeminate for her liking.

One evening, arriving late at work, I opened the office door and found Miguel sitting at his desk with a smile on his face. He didn’t say a word. When I asked him what was up, he took two paper cups from out of the desk drawer and then a small frosted bottle of Cordon Negro from out of the dwarf refrigerator. Popping the cork, he announced, “We got it.”

“Got what?”

“I just got the mortgage on the Jersey place.”

“But it’s nowhere near June.”

“No, but we got enough in our account to get a loan from the bank. I got it away from the loan shark. If we miss a payment, I won’t get killed.”

We toasted and drank, and he explained that we had several more months of embezzling at the standard pace.

“But even then, we’ve got to leave here gracefully or they’ll become suspicious.” We toasted some more and got more enthusiastic. “By the by,” he interrupted himself, “Owensfield called.”

“About his screening?” I remembered that he was supposed to be finished with his film soon.

“Well, he mentioned it, but do you remember that conversation you guys had about Vienna or something?”

“Yeah.”

“Apparently you really did impress him. He asked me to invite you to his contributor’s party celebrating some new issue of his magazine.”

“Why would he invite me?”

“Actually, he invited both of us.”

“When?”

“This Friday.”

“Not this Friday?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I’ll be in Arcadia this Friday with lover boy.” If we went to this
Harrington
party together, Miguel would discover my scam to get published. And although it was no money out of his pocket, I didn’t want him to consider his future business partner so deceitful so soon.

“What is the name of this alleged beloved?”

“Donny,” I selected randomly.

“Like Donny Osmond.”

“More like Adonis.”

“They’re all Adonis,” he replied, and grabbing his jacket he bid me good night and left.

After all the spins of the turnstile and the backward spins of stolen money 1 locked up, made my night drops, and went to Ternevsky’s. I opened the elevator door and stared at the house. It looked like a small tornado had hit. Janus was sitting on the bed. Silently she handed me the postcard that Ternevsky had sent saying that he had concluded all business on the continent and he would be home by the time she got this postcard.

The night was too grim to make love. The next morning we changed the sheets, and waited nervously for Ternevsky’s grand entrance. Although neither of us wanted it, our great love was instantly turned into a protracted one-night stand. Janus even helped me apply some of Ternevsky’s male cosmetics; transforming into a swank gay in season. As evening thickened so did our anxieties. We wandered around the house like strangers. I didn’t have any work that night, so I pointlessly tried to console Janus. But we became increasingly depressed. She commented that we were just property of Ternevsky and finally suggested that it would be wiser if we were apart when Ternevsky arrived. I agreed and left.

I walked around the neighborhood, finally checking out the street vendors on Second Avenue. On the display blanket of one vendor I noticed an old Hamilton wristwatch in fair condition.

“How much?”

“Five bucks,” the seller said. He was a poorly dressed black man in his sixties.

“How about three bucks?” I held out the dollars in front of him.

“Look, them extra two bucks means I eat.”

“Hey, I’m no different than you,” I replied. “It means the same thing for me.”

“Well, I don’t see you selling your shit to stay fed.”

“You want the money or no?”

“Four bucks,” he finally replied. It wasn’t poverty that compelled me to haggle. I just liked the sport of it. Actually, I had this week’s pay on me, two hundred and fifteen bucks. I gave him the three and an extra dollar in change and put the old watch with the elastic band around my wrist. I then proceeded up First Avenue. If Ternevsky was back for good he was probably going to ask me to move. The party was over; he was probably screwing Janus right now.