“Oh honeybunch, Stephen, fuck me, fuck me into the beyonds of the eons.”
“Doing my best, ma’am.”
“And you are dearest, even doing better than that. As I take, if I do say myself, a singularly selfish interest in screwing.”
The rattler rattles again. Sending a shiver of the sharp fear of death up the old roosel. The black mambas coming alive in the other room. Said to be a snake that with its head held as high as a man’s face, attacks without provocation. Maybe just what this lady who lives here entertains in her imagination and enjoys for a frisson. But that other death. That destroyed face. Her eyes still open, staring as she lay on the bus station floor. Left there nameless and lost in the passing swarm. To whom does one go to get the right information from Princeton. Or to find her grave. To put a flower there. Will my music ever be heard before I die. Brahms with his second piano concerto, was hissed at by the Viennese people. Who so shabbily treated so many of the great composers who lived there struggling in their midst. Shake my fist at them. When Brahms died in Vienna, at least all the ships in the harbor of Hamburg where he was born, lowered their flags to half-mast. Oh my God, Dru. You’re surely the cat’s pajamas. I’m standing on your front porch, my hair washed and combed, my fraternity pin shined, to take you for a Saturday-night soda. I must play for you Brahms’s heroic orchestral sounds. The piano erupting forth to intercede in passages such as does a brook babbling through the silence of a forest. Then the piano notes thundering. Oh fuck me lover boy, Stephen. Kiss my tits. Kiss yours. Give me all that you’ve got. I’ll give you everything that I’ve got to give you. That Max suggested came from the profit of oil, tobacco, soapsuds, coffee, chocolate, soda pop, and renting out electricity. Do I dream her voice can be heard singing. Darling, your music is going to be heard. It’s wonderful. I love it. I’ll buy the goddamn orchestra for you. They’ll be glad to have a job. Get a whole warehouse and fill it up with instruments. And you can conduct. And the dirty bastards who have kept you down will shrink sneakily back into their feeble shells. No one is ever going to be able to ignore you again. Not in this town, they ain’t. And I know you’re wondering. Of what I said was unspeakable. It’s other’s carnal knowledge of corpses. Watch the living fuck the dead. A form of necromancy as you might say which puts one into erotic turmoil. And to hell with all the hubris, Zeitgeist and the ditsy eponymous. Sorry about those nutty words. They make as much sense as saying that it is good to be rich. And your own goddamn parents’ fault if you’re poor. But boy, if you think it over, can anything be more true than that. And that only women with money can afford not to be whores. But can be whores anyway if they want. Call me ma’am again. You gorgeous man. And let me call you angel.
Listening to her whispering voice. Calling me angel. Sweet bliss on this wistfully sad day of unfavorable omen. Like snakes that strike. Demons come from nowhere. And are by the symphonic strains of Boccherini driven away by a rhythm I do believe may be entirely too fast to fuck to. Invited to France to go top-hatted racing. Whereas I am too broke even to go to a hot dog stand for a mustard-encrusted and sauerkraut-smothered frankfurter. But without a bean I am at least crowned with the joy of this woman’s beauty and body, whose husband like ole Max is away shooting and fishing. And then she said as I listened.
“Dear boy angel, there will be one day in your life when you need not worry about the mundane anymore. Even if great wealth from commissions doesn’t devolve upon you or appointments materialize to conduct the great orchestras of the world. And, oh God, I am sated.”
In the candlelight, Stephen O’Kelly’O by the bed, bending to kiss Dru on the brow as she lies, arms outstretched, staring up into the ornate folds of the canopy. Strains of Boccherini’s Cello Concerto in G. Allegro, adagio, allegro. As one navigates around the rattler. And steps into the splendor of this bathroom. Toiletries abound. Bath salts. Emollients for the skin. Caswell-Massey sandalwood lotion. The oldest chemist’s and perfumers in America since 1752, it says on the bottle. But not a sign of any soothing balm for the brain or I’d help myself to some. Glass-enclosed shower. A sunken marble tub. A whole afternoon disappeared into evening and sudden disillusion. A plaything for someone who can afford to play. Dru said she had to rush.
“Oh darling. Would you take a rain check on dinner. I’ve got to get ready to go to Montana. I’ll telephone. Will you be there. Jonathan’s back in the morning. And Sylvia’s gone, as she usually is, God knows where.”
Dru suggesting we leave the house one at a time and send me first. Warning of newspaper columnists who hang about the Stork Club to witness café society idling away their nights and that their prying absence could never be assured. Even though she’d only once gone to the Stork Club. She links her arm in mine as we go down the stairs, kissing me on the forehead as we stand in the middle of the black-and-white-tiled vestibule.
“Lover boy angel, illicit liaisons require meticulous planning, total discretion, and unwavering nerve, cela est selon circonstances.”
“As for me, sûrement va qui n’a rien.”
And I wanted to fuck her again where we stood. But where, backing away to the door I nearly knocked over a bust of Archimedes, whom I at least finally recognized and could remember had once run through the street naked screaming “Eureka” upon his discovery of something to do with the weights of a metal and the volume displacement of water. And plenty about precious metals was on my mind as I was abjectly broke and had no money for a taxi and would walk instead of taking the subway back downtown.
“Lover boy, still waters flow deep.”
“Well, Mrs. Wilmington when can I open the flood-gates again.”
“Now that I look, I have rather a lot of appointments to keep tomorrow. Up early, nine-thirty A.M. pedicure, ten-thirty A.M. hypnotherapy, then my swim at the Colony Club and lunch with the lady who loves her stuffed snakes. After lunch, my current psychic. Then four P.M. to five P.M. the osteopath and massage. After that, I must catch up with some business correspondence. Then I must shower and get ready for a dinner party. Then home to pack to fly to Montana first thing in the morning. But let me telephone you.”
“Ma’am, I believe my telephone has been disconnected.”
“Oh dear. Not, I hope, for nonpayment of a bill. Well I’ll send you a telegram. But you know you have given me an awful lot to think about. And while I’m gone, I’ll think.”
A squeeze together of bodies. Kiss on the lips. Tip of her tongue darting to touch mine. Opening the gleaming black door on its shiny brass hinges. Walk down the four steps outside into the night, aglow in the gonads. The mayor doesn’t live far away. Knock on his door. Inquire if he’d like to commission a special mayorial New York City anthem to be sung at all official happenings. A celebratory cantata for the rich. And a special march with plenty of syncopated drumming to be played for the poor as he goes in the parade up Fifth Avenue on St. Patrick’s Day. But on the mayor’s doorstep, I’d be arrested as a nut. Better to turn left on East End Avenue. Start my long journey along the East River as rain begins to fall. Pass the Welfare Island Ferry Slip. Walk under the roaring traffic over the Queensborough Bridge to Queens. A panhandler ahead.
“Excuse me, sir. Would you have fifteen cents to have a cup of coffee and to get to Queens. To visit my dying mother in the hospital.”
“Here you are, friend.”
“Sir, you are a real gentleman.”
“At least a coin for a beer.”
Farther on now, cut west on Fifty-seventh Street. Get a look at least at all the windows of luxury along this stretch down Fifth Avenue where Dru pops in and out, shopping in these buildings whenever she has time between appointments. And she could give fifteen cents to several million panhandlers. Be called a gentlelady. But at this moment she’s somewhere warm and fed and not on the point of starvation. Arriving wet, sneezing and coughing and cold at a dump of an apartment in Pell Street.
In desperation, I paid a late-night visit to the forbidden family saloon in Hell’s Ki
tchen for a free roast beef sandwich two inches thick and then traveling north to meet her in the distant northern Bronx, borrowed money from my second-favorite sister in order to buy groceries. And on a depressingly gray grim rainy Monday early afternoon, returned to Pell Street laden with lamb’s kidneys, fruit, two cans of beans, bottle of sauerkraut, an eggplant and a small can of olive oil along with a pound of cod from the Fulton Fish Market. And now after days of desperation, learned that Dru had just returned from Montana. Which news came as I was opening the door to the apartment, to hear Fauré’s Requiem. For there seated inside in the living room, attired in her most sedate of finery, a suit of black raw silk, was Sylvia. And it was as if a flash of pain shot across my chest. Seeing her there, sitting back in the broken armchair, listening, with her marvelous legs crossed, black patent-leather low-heeled shoes on her feet. A black cloak lined in purple satin folded across the piano stool. Reminding that her elegance could vie with even the most chic of women in New York. And I waited for the words. Hey, you no good dirty Irish bastard, you went and fucked my adoptive mother behind my back. But her words came matter-of-factly and nearly cheerful.
“Hi, I got the landlord to let me in. You have a new lock.”
“That’s right, someone busted in.”
“Well, you’ve often enough heard me say I want to find my real mother.”
“Yes, I have heard you say that.”
“To know what her face is like when she’s smiling and when her face is sad.”
“Yes. I’ve heard you say that.”
“Well, I found her. I have her address. And I’m really truly sorry for what I did to the piano.”
“Well, someone repaired it. Only needs more tuning now.”
“I know. And it’s all paid for. I don’t know what overcame me. But I shouldn’t have done it. And I do owe you an apology. Which goes beyond the cut piano strings. Your minuet, maybe not brilliant, but I think it’s pretty good. I took a copy of the score and was going to tear it up but instead had it played. But now I’m here to ask you to do me a large favor, which you don’t have to even consider if you don’t want to.”
“What is it.”
“I want you to come with me to see my mother. I don’t want to go alone. She lives in Syracuse. There’s a train today at two o’clock out of Penn Station.”
“How did you know I’d be here.”
“Dru seems to know where you are all the time. At least I can take my dream now, and if it gets finally ripped to shreds, bury it. As for a father, and after what has been vaguely hinted of my mother, once a beauty queen, how can I ever dream that my father was anything much.”
“What does ‘much’ mean.”
“It means more, I guess. More than my mother. And I suppose if you come right down to it and dispose of all the bullshit in most people’s minds, it mostly means money. And since I don’t have much of that at the moment, I don’t guess I’m anything much myself. I exhausted all my girlfriends’ largesse, which wasn’t much, either. And leading them on, I compromised myself with a few ex-boyfriends. But I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you with your Irish Catholic morality, that making a living is no problem for a girl with my figure and looks in this town. But I don’t want you to strain your imagination or jump to conclusions. Dru of course, is back from Montana.”
Ominous news. Thought once when she was supposed to be in Montana that I caught her face looking up at the windows from across the street. Amazing what women will do to you and then present themselves again to apologize if they want you to do something for them. As she says she’ll pay the fare, I try to think of an excuse not to go. To have to sit a few hours on the train. Could fall asleep and say things like I did about wrong information at Princeton and instead say, hey, Dru, what a fantastic delicious fuck you are. But had already vowed that after the girl in the bus station, if it were in my province to do so, I would avoid if ever I could, to disappoint anyone. Even to giving the panhandler lurking under the Queensborough Bridge nearly my last dime which I knew would disappear down his throat in beer. But found another quarter and an Indian head and buffalo nickel in the corner of my dressing table drawer. I always find myself making sure the coin says “Liberty” on it. And on a quarter dollar, that it says “E Pluribus Unum.” An eagle in flight over three stars. And added up, it was thirty cents. And fifty cents was the biggest amount I ever got as a child to go visit the Museum of the American Indian. And now, to forgive this distraught girl her trespass against me. And find her alone in her vulnerable helplessness. My prick suddenly gone rigid. My face flushed with embarrassment. To suddenly have the most appallingly overwhelming desire to fuck Sylvia on the spot.
“Okay, I will go with you.”
“You don’t mind, do you, Stephen, changing your clothes.”
“What’s wrong with my clothes.”
“Nothing, except perhaps not entirely suitable for meeting my mother, whom I’ve never met and who doesn’t even know I’m coming. Would you mind wearing a white shirt and if you have some kind of old sort of striped school tie. That is, if your school ever had one.”
“Holy Christ.”
“Well just in case we were invited to stay to dinner or something. How do I know she doesn’t have someone like Gilbert looking down his nose as he has occasionally dared to do to me wearing something he considers too casual for the room he refers to as the drawing room.”
“What about the holes in the toes of my socks.”
“Well, you’re not taking off your shoes, I hope.”
It was as if all was en fête. Two smartly dressed people getting resentful looks heading around the corner of Pell Street into Mulberry where Sylvia had one of the family’s Pierce Arrows parked, with its special arms that adjusted downwards for elbows and footrests that adjusted upwards for your feet. The Triumphington chauffeur in tow, called Jimmy, and terrified, eyeing the passing pedestrian traffic in case someone tried to open up his locked car door and jump on him. But he was as safe as any of the big Mafia dons, who weren’t that far away, also with their big black limousines parked with their chauffeurs.
“Stephen, I’m scared.”
“Sylvia, it’s all going to be all right.”
Up past Union Square, Madison Square and all the hotels, where in each I wonder who it is who lonely lurks. The Flatiron Building like the prow of a ship sailing north on Broadway. Turn west on Thirty-first Street. St. Francis of Assisi Monastery right in the middle of the block. And arriving safely. The Travelers Aid Society, whose office is in this massive station housing the Pennsylvania, the Long Island, Lehigh Valley, the New York, New Haven, and Hartford railroad lines.
With her cloak aflow and a slender bouquet of red roses and a white-beribboned aqua box from Tiffany’s tucked in her arm, Sylvia bought and paid for parlor-car tickets. The train moving slowly off through the darkness of the tunnel under the Hudson. Stare out into the passing bulbs of light and the snaking wires, pipes, and conduits. Sylvia pulling off her black kidskin gloves. Leafing through her pile of magazines and newspapers. Quickly reading as she turned the pages with her manicured fingernails. A faint trace of lipstick on her lips and a white silk scarf held at her throat with the long gold pin that she wore in her stock while foxhunting. Any second I thought she might turn to me and say, You’re fucking my adoptive mother. Or, That son of a bitch Max friend of yours, who married my best friend for her money and ruined her life. But she leafed again and again through the fashion magazines and even fell asleep for a while between the towns of Poughkeepsie and Albany.
Outside the station at Syracuse, I got increasingly nervous as I somehow sensed that Sylvia’s mother did not have a long driveway up to her mansion and a Gilbert administering her household. And Sylvia’s hand trembled showing the taxi driver an address on a piece of paper, as if she didn’t want to say it out loud. And I could see why by the questionable first reaction of the taxi driver and his further suspiciousness as we progressed through Main Street to what was clearly th
e wrong side and shabby part of town. Stopping on a potholed unpaved road of warehouses, shacks and an engineering works parallel to the railway tracks. Sylvia anxiously leaning forward in her seat, glancing at the slip of paper in her hand.
“Driver, this couldn’t be the place.”
“Ma’am, this is the road you showed me on the paper. And there’s the number forty-eight right there plain as can be seen.”
“Jesus Christ. Well then, wait.”
“You betcha, ma’am. It sure looks like rain.”
Sylvia leaving her cloak behind her, climbing out of the taxi and standing on the roadway in front of the closed garage doors of a car-repair shop. And hesitating at the foot of a flight of ramshackle stairs up the side of a dirty paint-peeling brown clapboard frame building backing onto the railroad tracks. Shades drawn on two windows on the floor above the garage door. A sign. DRINK MISSION BELL SODA. Behind the building, a great monster of puffing steam passing, pulling a freight train. The taxi driver turning to speak over his shoulder.
“That old freight could take its own good time going by on its good way to Chicago via Buffalo and Cleveland.”
The grinding squealing wheels as a pair of hoboes lope alongside the open doors of a big boxcar, hopping on board. One missing and stumbling, the other grabbing him up by the coat and hand. At least loyalty somewhere, friend to friend. Sylvia still waiting on the roadway, her bag on a strap over her shoulder, her white-beribboned aqua box from Tiffany’s couched in the crook of her arm. The wail of the train’s whistle in D Major. Then the elegance of this black figure suddenly climbing up the worn and broken wooden stairs to a landing at the top, and pausing at a rusting screen door. Move to where I can see in case some unknown hostile hand drags Sylvia in. Get out of the car and step up on the broken sidewalk. A passing vagrant stopping. Seems to be one wherever I go, always asking for the same dime. And got to give him something. Who knows, he might have been in the war.