The Fuck Up (30 page)

“Well, what are you doing in a chair now?” she yelled.

“You made me feel uncomfortable sitting on the floor,” I mumbled.

“Sit on the fucking floor if you want,” she barked. And grabbing the back of the wooden chair, she yanked it so that I fell to the ground.

“My knees are fine now.”

“I think you’re a fucking liar about the knees.”

“Why would I lie to you?”

“I don’t know;” she replied. I didn’t say anything, and she walked out of the room. What was she doing in the other rooms? I crept to a doorway and peeked. She was making a bed. I moved silently back into the living room, went over to a bookcase, and surveyed its contents. There were a bunch of pastel-tone romances; the John Jakes historic novel series, named after frontier states and illustrated with covered wagons and cleavage; and glitzy soft-porn best-sellers with embossed red lettering. As my eyes travelled along the colorful, gumdrop-colored paperbacks, I suddenly spotted a dusty hardcover on an out-of-reach shelf: H. Lefebre’s biography
Diderot.
I strained high to pick it off the shelf and, upon opening it, recognized Helmsley’s Ex Libris mark—it was a first American edition printed in the 1930s. I quietly put it back, took my seat on the floor, pulled my knees up, placed my arms on my lap, and let my hands hang between my legs. I wished I thought of sitting on the chair from the start.

“Hey, hey!” I awoke from a deep sleep with her yelling and shaking me.

“Huh?” I jumped up nervously.

“This ain’t a place to sleep, asshole.” It was time to go.

“Okay,” I said nervously and asked if I could use the bathroom.

“I don’t give a shit,” she said. I went to the bathroom and locked the door. I didn’t have to do anything, but I didn’t want to leave until I absolutely had to. I sat on the toilet seat and leaned back on the tank, drifting off.

“What the hell you doing in there?” she screamed while banging on the door.

“Nothing, nothing,” I replied, opening the door.

“I thought you died in the bathtub or something.”

“No, I’m okay,” I replied, but used her idea. “Do you mind if I take a bath?”

“You just took a shower!” she hissed. But then, more gently, “I don’t care, go ahead.” She was about to close the door, but stopped and asked, “What were you doing in here all that time?”

“I guess I drifted off.”

“Well, why don’t you go to sleep?”

“I don’t have anywhere to go,” I confessed.

“Go to bed, asshole, in there.” She led me to a room where she had made the bed earlier. I thanked her, and as soon as she left the room, I tiredly thanked the darkness, which seemed to embody a great presence, God maybe…. Sleep popped me down like a pill, producing a remarkably fulfilling emptiness.

“Are you hungry?” she screamed in at me. I sat up instantly. My mind raced, trying to bridge the gap between deep sleep and what seemed like an interrogation. She repeated, “Are you hungry?”

Instinctively I said no. If I say yes, I thought, she might interpret it as me trying to make her into a maid or expecting a service from her. I was surprised to see morning light streaming in through the windows.

“At least have coffee.”

I got fully dressed, shoes and socks and all, and went into the kitchen, where I sat at a dinette table. She made herself a full breakfast—hash browns, eggs sunny-side up, three strips of perfectly crisp bacon, toast, and coffee. I longed for the smoothness of yolk, for the texture of salty bacon, and lightly done, buttery toasts. She chewed equinely. She might just as well had been chomping on oats and grain. When she had consumed barely a third of the plate, she tossed the meal into the garbage and then walked off into one of those rooms. I raced over to the trash can and scooped out a
large splat of solidified egg white. But then I heard her coming and shoved the egg white deep between my sock and ankle, a cache to eat later.

She walked by the room. My God, she was dressing, probably going off to work, and that meant I’d have to leave at any moment. Angela glanced in.

“What the fuck is the matter with you?” she asked, noticing my peculiar expression as I felt the egg white slither into my instep.

“Nothing.”

She then marched off, cursing. I shoved a catsup bottle down the front of my pants. I took some bread and shoved it into my shirt. I saw a can of string beans on the shelf and shoved it in my pocket. I took a spatula and before Angela returned I frantically bent it so that it slid along the leg of my pants. Angela returned, fully dressed in street garb.

“Here’s the key to the place. Lock up and turn out the lights if you leave,” she instructed and walked out. Just like that.

When she left, I took the egg white out of my sock and found a cellophane bag. I put it in the bag along with other little bits and pieces of food she had thrown out. I wrapped up the scraps of food, went back into the bedroom I’d spent the night in, and hid them under the mattress. I then looked through her cupboards and inspected her other foods. I poured out a half box of spaghetti, which I’d found can be eaten raw if you chew very little bits. I broke up the spaghetti into four peg-size parts, wrapped a rubberband around them, and put them behind the schlock in the bookcase. She had four cans of Del Monte Creamed Corn, so I took one and hid it in one of her winter boots in the hallway closet. I hid flat things like bologna and Swiss cheese under the living room rug. I took other small items, too, not even knowing what they all were. The biggest dilemma was deciding how much food I could take without its absence being noticed.

Something occurred to me. I collected all the hidden articles of food. I
checked the lock on the door and made sure that she hadn’t given me a decoy key—one that would give me confidence but not open the door after it shut. I didn’t want to leave the house, but I had to for my backup plans. So I walked around the neighborhood and soon headed toward Park Slope by walking along President Street. Then I spotted the bushes bordering a little neighborhood park. I dodged into the shrubbery and, digging as furiously as a squirrel with a prized acorn, carefully buried the little packets of food.

I scurried directly back to Angela’s house, this time passing the street Helmsley had lived on. I thought, if she’s back at the house and has changed the lock I won’t be able to get in anyway. I stood outside Helmsley’s old house and looked at his old living room window where new Levolor blinds hung. I entered the building and knocked on his old door. A young guy opened and politely asked, “Can I help you?”

“I was just looking for an old friend.”

“Well, I’m the only resident here.”

“I know,” I said. “My friend died, but he used to live here.”

“Oh, was his name Helmsley?” I nodded.

“I keep getting his junk mail,” the guy continued. “Here,” he said and picked a letter out of a nearby wicker basket. He handed it to me. Its windowed envelope read, “Helmsley Micinski may have already won one million dollars…”

I stared at it a moment and finally said, “He committed suicide, and I’m living with the person that drove him to it.”

“How ’bout that.”

“I just wanted to see what became of his old place, you know, I lived here myself off and on.” The guy didn’t invite me in but he opened his door and let me peek in. It was yupped out—virtually a Conran’s showroom—although the guy seemed nice enough.

“You would’ve liked Helmsley, but he wouldn’t’ve liked you.”

“I’m sorry he died.”

“What I mean is, I’m not sure if he would’ve approved of you. But he always separated issues from individuals. He could disagree with you about something and still like you.”

“Oh?”

“He lived here for years. What do you pay in rent, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“What did Helmsley pay?”

“He paid something like sixty-two-fifty a month or something.”

“Holy shit!” The guy finally woke up. “I pay more than ten times that.”

“You should go to the Rent Stabilization Board. I don’t think they can raise it that much.”

“Thanks, I will,” he said, shutting the door. Fuck him, that fucking yuppie living in Helmsley’s house. I kicked his door with all my might and raced down the stairs and onto the street. I kept running until I reached Angela’s house.

There, I opened the door with relief and disbelief. Clutching the key in my hand, I walked over the threshold, and then I locked the door behind me. Immediately I slipped the key back into my shirt pocket. I was behind a locked door with a key in my pocket. I felt comforted, happy, kingly. Next, I walked very quickly through each of her rooms and made sure the windows were locked and no one else was in the house. And then I returned to the kitchen and inspected the cupboards, making sure that everything was in place so that she wouldn’t suspect I had rifled through them. I spaced cans evenly apart so that telltale gaps weren’t apparent. I even spent some time thinking about topics I could talk about with her to subtly drain away the time. I tried to remember the names of popular television shows, but could only come up with “Starsky & Hutch,” “Macmillan & Wife,” “The Night Stalker,” and other seventies stuff. So I decided that I would talk and try to guide conversation only if she initiated it. And then I sat down and tuned out awhile.

Angela
came home eventually, and we watched TV; there wasn’t much conversation. She made us spaghetti, and then she went out. She came home late that night, loaded. I could hear a muffled sound coming from her room, and then I fell asleep. The next morning, she asked me if I wanted breakfast, and I said yes and ate everything and wondered if she was going to throw me out. Afterward, she asked me if I was thinking about getting a job (my reply was a grunt), and then she left the house.

It felt as if things stopped again when she left. I sat for a while, decided to steal some more food, went on a walk, hid the food in the bushes, and walked
to another place where I thought I might have parked my Mercedes. It wasn’t there. Then I walked a few blocks toward Brooklyn Heights, but I panicked and ran home. I put the police lock—the kind that you can’t open from the outside—on the door. I got a piece of paper and made exact notes of the order of everything as I went through all her drawers. I took out her jeans and T-shirts and some of her underthings. In one drawer I even found a battery-operated massager with different attachments and smelled it. And then, exactly following the instructions I wrote, I put everything back in the correct order.

I moved on to some file cabinets that had records of utility bills and was amazed by how methodical she was. I found a copy of a very well-written letter responding to a phone bill for which she felt she was unjustly overcharged. I put back the files and went into a closet and took some cardboard boxes down from the top shelf. I went through old papers and found something that blew me away: her name written in Latin on a bachelor’s degree from Sacred Heart College, on the bottom of which was written
cum laude.
She had a fucking B.A. in sociology with honors! I put everything back.

I watched TV until she came home that night. She made a dinner and ate it quietly. While she washed the dishes, I watched some TV She came in with a six pack and handed me a beer.

“What you watching?”

“’Dallas.’”

“What do you do here during the day?” she asked out of the blue.

“I’m recuperating.”

“Well, how much longer are you going to be recuperating?”

“I don’t know Why?”

“I think you ought to get a job and a place of your own.” The idea seemed inconceivable and I told her so.

“Why were you like that, anyway?”

“Like what?”

“You were a bag man.”

“Who?” I asked, feigning ignorance.

“How old are you?”

“Why?”

“In your early twenties or something?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Helmsley said he thought you were very intelligent.”

“Yeah, so?”

“He said that you had some kind of fuck-up in life and you had to get back into the swing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He said that something happened back home. Where you from, California or something?”

“Yeah, so?”

“I’m just trying to help. Helmsley and I used to talk about you a lot.”

“You and Helmsley? You and Helmsley! You destroyed the man and you sit there calmly like you were talking with him a couple of hours ago.”

“I was just trying to help you, asshole!”

“Where was all this help the night Helmsley stepped off the Brooklyn Bridge?”

She got up, left the room, and slammed the door behind her. It was only about ten o’clock at night, so I got dressed and went out for a walk.

I walked down Clinton Street to Pierrepont Street, to Glenn’s house. It was a cold walk, but after living on the street I knew that it could never get too cold. Her house was a flicker of lights. Someone walked by the window, and then just as instantly was out of view. I wondered if she had reconciled with that guy, the fellow she caught cheating on her. It seemed like
years had passed. I wondered about her kid, I wondered if she had gotten the Mercedes back. It was okay if she did. It served me right. I felt very sorry for her. And although I didn’t really care for her, I was curious how it all turned out. Soon, when the cold got colder, I walked back to the house.

I locked the door, stripped down, and went to bed. As I lay in bed, I was able to just barely make out the sound of someone crying.

The next morning I awoke before her. Looking at the clock, I realized that it was well after nine, which was when she usually awoke me before going off to work. I thought that maybe to be tactful about using her, I should make her breakfast for a change. I gently knocked on her door. When I got no response, and since the door was slightly open, I pushed it open a bit more. She was sprawled out on the floor in a pool of what looked like blood. When I went over, I saw that it was vomit. There was an empty quartsize bottle of gin. I felt flustered and left the room, closing the door behind me. I quietly made myself some breakfast.

While eating, I thought about what to do. To me she was still the killer of Helmsley, and despite the charity I still didn’t like her. I hated the fact that I needed her, and revenge was something I still desired. Opening a window, I noticed it was unusually warm out. On a shelf in the kitchen cabinet, I found a jar filled with coins. I extracted a bunch of quarters and left.