So then he asks Dean, truth or dare.
And Dean says, I think I’ll keep my clothes on, thanks. He picks truth.
No fair, Becca says. We want full frontal male nudity.
Everett says to Dean, am I crazy or did I see Rebecca grab your, uh, you know?
You ain’t crazy, Dean says. He has this stupid smile.
God, Francesca says, I missed that.
Rebecca turns and looks at me. I was just checking his answer when he said he had a hard-on, she explains.
Rebecca the fact chekka, says Francesca.
It’s Dean’s turn, Everett says.
And when Dean says my name, I don’t like the tone of voice. He gives me this really unpleasant look. Truth or dare? he goes.
Truth, I say. I should’ve taken the dare.
And he says, have you slept with Skip recently?
I go, recently?
In the past week, he says.
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to lie so much in my life. But Skip’s right here and he’s not going to let me get by with it.
Didi, smelling blood, starts going, truth, truth, truth!
Everybody else gets real quiet.
Yeah, I say.
I look up at Dean, his eyes are this beautiful soft blue that sometimes looks like a tropical ocean. But now they look so cold.
I want to explain. I’d really like to tell him about it, I think I could make him understand. Not that I’m proud of myself.
Well, well, well, says Rebecca.
There’s a knock on the door, which is great, anything to break this mood, a mass murder would make a nice change in the atmosphere here and Dean says, shit, probably my neighbor bitching about the noise. His voice is a little shaky but he’s probably really glad to have the distraction of something normal to deal with because I can tell he’s really upset and it’s like breaking my heart. I don’t think he expected me to say yes, he was just suspicious.
So Dean gets up to go to the door and Francesca is shaking her head like she hates to see her friend fuck up so bad, then she suddenly looks over toward the door and lets out this shriek and Skip goes, what the fuck! and Rebecca is like, oh Jesus, give me a break, Mannie.
Sure enough, it’s the guy we supposedly rescued Rebecca from up in Morningside Heights last month or whenever it was. Except I think it was the other way around. He’s got his knife out again. I don’t know, it seems kind of harmless at this point, like sort of a gimmick, you know, his schtick. Some guys wear suspenders, Mannie the drug dealer always carries a knife.
He looks all hopped up, except Rebecca said he’d quit doing drugs so he could get a job and make an honest woman out of her, fat chance of that. And he’s wearing a suit and a tie, which seems weird, he doesn’t look like he’s used to it, he basically looks like he dressed up to visit his grandmother’s house or maybe to try and impress the folks down at the immigration office.
He sort of zigzags into the room, crouched down low with the knife out in front of him, the way cops move on TV when they’re expecting gunfire any minute.
Cut the theatrics, Mannie, Becca says.
And Mannie goes, you loved me.
I fucked you, she says. There’s a difference.
Hey, what’s this all about? Everett goes.
I got a job, Mannie says. You were going to live with me.
That was your idea, she says, not mine.
Come back, he sobs. There are actual tears running down his cheeks. He lowers the knife, which he’s been pointing at Didi, lets his arms fall to his side. Please come back, he goes. It’s really pathetic.
It was only one night for Christ’s sake, Becca says.
Two nights, says Mannie. I never will forget.
Rebecca’s like, whatever.
Obviously it didn’t make quite as unforgettable an impression on her.
I guess he rates you a ten, says Didi, who keeps chopping lines like she sees this sort of thing every night.
Wait a minute, I want to know what’s this about, Everett goes. He stands up and says, whoever you are, I think you better leave. Now. He looks at Rebecca for support.
He can do whatever he wants for all I care, she says, watching Didi lay out the lines.
Look buddy, why don’t you give me the knife? Everett says. He’s a pretty big boy, six two or so and built, I mean he probably played lacrosse at Dartmouth and this guy Mannie’s about a foot shorter.
I don’t know what happens next—the prep makes a move and Mannie freaks, suddenly the prep is holding his arm and there’s blood dripping out from between his fingers.
Oh God, Francesca says.
Dean’s been watching this, he’s seen Mannie in action once before so he wasn’t too worried at first, I guess, but now he comes up toward Mannie and says, look, give me the knife, Mannie. You know me, he says, I’m not going to hurt you, and just then Everett goes, I’m going to hurt you, you motherfucking spic, you cut me. And Mannie’s looking like a trapped animal, I really feel sorry for the little guy, he’s just confused.
He backs himself up against the window, pointing the knife at Dean and the prep, his arm whipping back and forth like a dog’s tail. He kind of climbs up onto the windowsill and Dean’s going, Mannie, calm down, okay? Let’s talk about this thing.
And Mannie, he’s breathing like a horse after a race, gasping for air, and he goes, please, Rebecca, I love you. Please.
God, the sound of his voice, this despair, it’s like the saddest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life, practically.
Rebecca leans over the mirror and snorts a line.
I’ll hurt myself, Mannie screams.
Be my guest, says Rebecca.
Come on, Mannie, Dean says, real soothing, there’s this big drama going on but of course I’m thinking about myself, I’m thinking about Dean, what a sweet guy he is, basically. I’m really proud of the way he handles things, unlike Skip, and I’m thinking, shit, maybe I’ve blown it forever, and all this is going through my head in about three seconds.
Then Everett makes another try for the knife.
Mannie screams Rebecca’s name and then I don’t know, suddenly he disappears, he’s just gone, and Dean rushes over to the window and looks out. Oh God, he says, oh Jesus.
Everett is just standing there in a daze, bleeding and saying, he cut me, then Skip looks out, he doesn’t say anything, he runs from the window to the coffee table and grabs Didi’s bag and says, quick, we’ve got to flush this stuff before the police get here and I’m still having trouble catching up with the situation, I’m like—the police?
It takes me a minute to realize we’re on the sixth floor and Mannie’s jumped out the window.
11
Hunters and Jumpers
So when Francesca calls I’m asleep as usual, I can’t seem to wake up anymore. I could sleep forever. But I’m half dreaming and I hear Francesca’s voice on the machine and she was already in the dream but the voice keeps saying pick up pick up and I’m thinking what did I drop, what did I lose, pick what up? Then I wake up enough to figure out it’s the phone.
What? I go.
Alison, I don’t believe it, I’ve been leaving messages on your machine for two days, where have you been? and I go, I’ve been sleeping.
With who? she says and I don’t say anything.
Listen, she goes, you won’t believe it, you will never in a billion years believe where I was Thursday night.
I’m like hanging on, holding my head and rubbing my eyes, and she goes Alison, really impatient, and I realize I’m supposed to act interested so I ask where.
Mick and Jerry’s, she goes. Do you believe it?
I don’t believe it, I say, like I could give a shit. I mean I’m glad she’s happy but right now I have this headache and I’m feeling nauseous and I could give a shit about lifestyles of the rich and infamous. I’m a lot more worried about survival of the fittest, and like whether I’m going to make the cut or join the club for dinosaurs and dodo birds
.
I feel like shit.
Francesca says, it was so great, guess who I sat next to?
I pretend to listen for a while and then I tell her I gotta pee and swallow some aspirin, I’ll call her later and I can tell she’s kind of ticked that I’m not having multiple orgasms about her social coup, but I just don’t care right now, so shoot me.
Maybe because she’s mad at me she says, I saw Dean at Elio’s last night.
I know there’s more coming. Yeah? I go.
She goes, he was with his old girlfriend, Patty.
For some reason this doesn’t surprise me. In fact, as soon as I hear it I feel like I already knew it.
When I don’t say anything, Francesca says, he was a jerk.
Dean’s not a jerk, but I don’t feel like arguing.
Then suddenly I go, Francesca, what’s the third great lie?
She’s like, huh?
What’s the third great lie? I go. The first one is the check’s in the mail. Then, I promise I won’t come in your mouth. What’s the third?
But she doesn’t know either. I tell her I’ll call her back later.
I almost fall back to sleep but instead I get up and lurch to the bathroom, using the walls for support. I suck down three Extra-Strength Tylenols and then I look at my face in the mirror, it’s all puffed out and blotchy, my tan’s shot, my eyes look Chinese. I stand there for a while holding onto the sink feeling like I could puke, but it doesn’t quite come.
The phone’s ringing again, I forgot to turn the machine back on. For some reason I answer and it’s Whitney. Alison, she goes, you’ll never believe it (I’m like, why is everybody so sure I won’t believe them, at this point I’ll believe fucking just about anything), I was working the door last night and who shows up but Skip Pendleton with some thirteen-year-old bimbette on his arm. Well, you remember how he said he was such an expert at Trivial Pursuit and he’d kill me if we ever played? So he’s like standing outside the rope expecting me to sweep him right in and I go, Skip, what’s the year the Beatles first played Hamburg and what’s the name of the club they played? and he’s like, what? And I say, Trivial Pursuit, Skipper, and he says, I don’t know and I say, sorry, then, you can’t come in. He almost died, he’s just standing there and I wouldn’t let him in . . . I didn’t . . .
She goes on and on and I’m thinking she sounds like an idiot. Yada yada yada. God, she sounds just like me. A few weeks ago this story would’ve had me rolling on the floor and slapping my ribs but now I’m hardly listening.
Isn’t that great? she finally says.
I go, just great.
I knew you’d love it, she says.
That story is going to change my fucking life, I say.
Hey, I just thought you’d be interested, Skip and all, she says. No need to be such a bitch.
I tell her I’m sorry, I’m just sitting here desperately waiting for my period, I’ll call her later when I’m feeling human again, though frankly if I never saw Whitney again it wouldn’t bother me for more than a nanosecond.
I don’t know, I don’t seem to want to have anything to do with anybody who was there that night. But then, I don’t seem to want to have anything to do with anybody, period.
It’s been almost two weeks. I’ve only talked to Dean twice since then, once the morning after when he was at the hospital. He called to tell me that Mannie was stable but critical, whatever that means. About a week later I called him back. It was really awkward. We tried to make small talk. He said he’d talked to Phil and that Didi had been clean since the accident and she’s started going to some church group down in Soho and she never wanted to see another line of cocaine in her life. I knew that already, I’ve been hearing about it day and night whenever I’m not crashed out sleeping. She calls me and preaches, which is probably why I’m so sleepy. It’s all she can talk about, how bad she was then and how glad she is now that she’s stopped and how Jesus is the man with the plan. Amazing Grace, how obnoxious the sound. I think I liked her better as a junkie. But I said to Dean, oh yeah? like I didn’t know all this, because I wanted to talk to him and I didn’t want him to hang up and we needed something besides ourselves to talk about. That’s good, I said. Everett got a few stitches in his hand, Dean said. And he told me the police had closed their investigation.
They questioned all of us, and our stories were pretty much the same. At first they were sort of nasty about it, when they clumped in, it was obvious we were all fucked up, but by that time the premises were drug-free. What clinched it was when Mannie regained consciousness, he said it was his own fault. He said he’d meant to scare his girlfriend and that he’d slipped on the windowsill. Could’ve happened to anybody, right? In the meantime there’d been a few million new crimes in the naked city so the cops were happy to drop it. The whole thing was only a paragraph in the Post and the News, about how some nobody fell out of a window on the Upper East Side and lived to tell the tale. Jesus. Skip got twice the column space the last time he threw a party.
Rebecca split town the day after. She tried to leave the apartment before the cops got there but Dean wouldn’t let her. The next day she was gone, I know because Everett called here looking for her. He told me he got five stitches where Mannie had cut him. A couple nights ago there was a crackly message on my machine from Rebecca in Lugano, Switzerland, where she’s staying in this incredible hotel overlooking the lake, drinking champagne and eating radioactive chocolate. She said she’s totally in lust, she’d met a great new guy. Story of her life.
Jeannie’s in South Carolina visiting Frank. They reconciled after Alex called up and said he couldn’t make it for the weekend and that he didn’t think he’d be up the next weekend either. Jeannie’s been working late and checking out china and silver patterns during lunch and I’ve been sleeping most of the time so we haven’t really talked much lately, I’m not sure what’s going on in her mind. It looks like I’m going to have to find a new place soon since her old man thinks I’m irresponsible and that the two of us are a dangerous combination. It’s not really Jeannie’s fault, I guess. She says I can stay as long as I need to find a new place, but Francesca told me I could move in with her and I guess a change is as good as a rest.
A few days ago some friend of Rebecca’s called up, he said he was a jewelry dealer and that he wanted to buy the pearls, so I’m going to take them over tomorrow, I don’t know what else to do.
My father says he’s broke. Which is total bulishit but what can I do? Can you sue your father for nonsupport? He sent me a check for five hundred dollars—like wow, thanks Dad—but that was gone before I’d even cashed it. I owe everybody. The last thing Dean said to me was, do you need money? and like an idiot I said no.
I know, I’ve got to get a job, I guess I’ll have to waitress— God how depressing, but right now I’m having trou ble getting out of bed, I haven’t even been to class in a week. Tomorrow, after I go meet this so-called jewelry dealer I’m going to the doctor. I’d probably feel better about myself if I could go and work on my instrument, but I feel too shitty to bother, it’s a vicious circle. Or is it cycle? Dean used to tell me these things. A few more months with him and I might even have started to feel educated.
Dean said he was buckling down to his work, really getting organized, going to bed early and waking up early, keeping a journal and working on some ideas for plays. I could tell that was kind of directed at me—blaming me for his wildness. There was this big slide in the bond market a few weeks ago and it really freaked him out, he’s like a reformed sinner or something. It suddenly occurred to him they might show him the door before he’d socked away his first million. Not that I’m any expert on employment but maybe jobs are like lovers—one day they’re boring and stupid but suddenly they’re real desirable when you think you’re getting dumped. I don’t know, he’d just broken up with his long-time squeeze when I met him, he was all set to get down and be irresponsible. Now that he’s scratched that little itch deep enough for a while
and he wants to act like a grown-up again he needs somebody to blame for acting like a kid. When we’d stay up late he’d sometimes get in this panic, this big middle-class guilt thing about being a productive citizen even though the night before he’d wanted to be a bohemian, right? Then he’d take it out on me, get real weird in the mornings. I mean, I didn’t tell him to stay up all night, he was right there chopping the lines and pouring the drinks.
Now, after a little run with the bad girls, it’s back to the mature and responsible Patty. Enough of the postmodern girls, now he wants the good old-fashioned kind. Patty’s like a banker or something. I can see her in her sensible shoes with her briefcase, or her Talbot’s clothes on the weekends in the country, doing the crossword puzzle, sipping decaf, buying antiques. Pass The New Yorker, dear. Certainly, muffin.
Dean practically has all of Shakespeare memorized and he can handle millions of dollars a day of other people’s money, he can be smart about other people but he’s like a foreigner to himself. Sometimes I just wanted to stand him in front of the mirror and say, Dean, meet Dean. Sit him down with himself and translate what he says into plain American.
So that’s Dean. Francesca’s wrong, he’s not a jerk. He is, but not really. I fucked up. I did something he couldn’t get over, and you can’t really blame him for that.
I don’t know, he did the same thing to me, screwing Cassie Hane. I suppose that was why I did it. I called up one night a few days before our killer Truth or Dare session and asked him to take me out to dinner and he said he couldn’t, he had to go out with some friends. What really pissed me off is he didn’t give me any explanation. That was that. You know, he could have said who these friends were who were so important and so exclusive that they couldn’t stand my company, but he didn’t. I said fine, really bitchy so even Dean could tell I was pissed, and hung up. Then I waited for him to call me back and the son of a bitch never did. I was furious. I was so furious I called him back after half an hour to tell him. I got his machine. After that I called up Cassie Hane’s boyfriend, Peter. I didn’t say who I was, I just asked if Cassie was there and he said no, she had her own place and I said, you know how she got that Barneys ad? Dean Chasen is real good friends with the guy who owns that agency. And he goes, who is this? and then I go, a friend, I hate to see her make an idiot out of you. Then I hung up. Next I call up Cassie and I do this southern accent I can do perfectly from all the girls we used to show horses with and I go, Cassie, honey, I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings to y’all but I saw you the other night with Dean Chasen and I just thought it might interest you to know that he gave me a nasty little infection. And she goes, who is this? but I’m already gone.