“I don’t know, Sweets,” she said when the car was moving in the south-bound flow. “I screwed that up for no reason. I had to give that dumb speech about the cops, and what she wanted was the us girls against the men business, oh, bite my tongue, not girls, of course, and I had to sound off about abortion, but when she said that about those abortion-is-murder nuts, and said well, it is and they’re not all nuts, and she gave me that you can’t be serious look, and I said well, yeah, legal, safe, and available, sure, I’m for that, but you’re also killing babies, you should stand up for that, and be sad, I’d like to see more tears, more anguish, I mean it’s not a haircut and a rinse, is it? And she got chillier and chillier, and then I cracked wise about me participating in a number of post-natal abortions and I didn’t care for those either, and then we went back to talking about doors and bomb barriers. And of course, she’s big in New York feminist circles, and she’s going to spread the word about what a traitor I am to the cause, which will not help with the celebrity jobs either, and Osborne is going to start having second thoughts about bringing me in. I mean, really, Sweets, what is going on here? How can you be more of a feminist than me? Huh?”
Sweety offered a shrug and a sympathetic look.
“Do I put my fucking body on the line? Do I actually protect women from men? I do. And what do I get for it, huh? I’ll tell you what I don’t get. I don’t get no respect. My husband hates what I do. My daughter just hates me whatever I do, poor Marlene, and after today I doubt I’ll be invited to sit on the dais at the NOW meeting, and I bought the most darling little black dress. . Sweety! Talk to me! I need advice.”
In response to this, Sweety dropped his massive head on her lap and dispensed a half cup of saliva directly onto her crotch. Marlene hooted maniacal laughter and made a dramatic turn across two lanes to catch her left onto 14th.
Marlene was about to meet (speaking of her peculiar problems with feminism) a woman who made Ms. Reiss-Kessler look like Nancy Reagan. This person lived and worked in a five-story tenement-plus-storefront on Avenue B in the neighborhood called the East Village, if you were placing real estate ads, and Alphabet City if you were a resident, or a cop. Unlike other poor and crime-plagued sections of New York, most of which had declined from better days, this one had been designed as a slum in the previous century and was a slum still. Marlene parked her car behind a burned sofa across the street, and walked blithely away with the window open and the doors unlocked. A 200-pound dull black, red-eyed, attack-trained Neapolitan mastiff in the front seat is the sort of car alarm that still works in Alphabet City.
The building had a small sign over the door that said east village women’s shelter, and the door itself was a steel industrial model in a steel frame. In the center of this door was a bell button and a small notice:
ring. we are always open.
If you’re looking for shelter,
you are welcome,
and if you’re looking for trouble
we have that, too.
The former shop windows had been replaced by bolted-on galvanized sheets backed by thick plywood. Marlene rang the bell. A whirring noise from above. She looked up and waved to the camera. Buzz. Ke-chunk. The outer door opened, and Marlene walked through and down a short blank entry corridor faced by a windowed door, behind which was a steel desk, behind which was a fullback-sized brown woman with beaded hair. This person ascertained that Marlene was really Marlene and not the spearhead of an invasion, and clicked her through the glass. The EVWC was hard to get into. Its clientele consisted exclusively of women and children under credible threat of death from that small class of men who will not be deterred from expressing their devotion to their loved ones in this unusual way even by the full pressure of the law. Almost all women’s shelters are at secret locations, to prevent the loved ones from coming by and trying to get in. This one was blatantly public, because its proprietor rather hoped the loved ones would try something, and especially that they would engage in the sort of behavior that entitles the invaded party to use lethal force.
“What’s up, Vonda?”
“Besides the murder rate? Not that much. We got a rare one last night. Buck-ass naked and beat.”
“Really? Anyone I know?”
The woman shrugged and shifted the Remington 870 on her lap. “She’ll tell you about it. I just got on.”
Marlene went through another door into the shelter proper and was hit first by the smell-cooking and disinfectant and too many people-and second by a four-year-old on a Big Wheels. A thin woman chasing the child apologized in heavily accented English and dragged the child away to the play area that took up much of the first floor of the building. The children who lived here did not get out much.
The owner was in the kitchen, dressed in her usual black jumpsuit, supervising the preparation of the evening meal, which, like most meals at the EVWS, was highly spiced, hearty, and well balanced, if plain. Marlene often reflected on the medieval aspects of this establishment: noise, squabbling, gouts of steam, the sound of a slap and a wail, hectic activity under the command of a benevolent tyrant. It must have been so in the castle when the knights were away at war. Mattie Duran was a strong, stocky Mexican woman with a fierce indio ax face set off by two thick black braids tied with red wool. She looked up, saw Marlene, nodded, settled the business she had begun, and walked out of the kitchen, Marlene following.
Duran had a tiny office off the dining room fitted with a steel desk, industrial shelving holding what passed for her record system, a swivel chair for her, and a ratty armchair for guests. She drew a couple of cups of black coffee from an urn, sat behind the desk with a grateful sigh, and gave her guest the once-over, focusing on Marlene’s soaked crotch.
“What happened, you piss yourself or are you just glad to see me?”
“The dog.”
Mattie raised an eyebrow. Then they both guffawed. Mattie had a deep, wet laugh, like an old man. Marlene had worked with the EVWS for a couple of years. Their clientele overlapped to some extent, and they more or less agreed on the principle that guys who persisted in trying to kill women should get their lumps. They were both unindicted felons, but Marlene was guilty about it and Mattie was not. Marlene related her recent experiences at the Chelsea clinic. Mattie was not sympathetic.
“That’s what they get for having glass windows. Uptown assholes!”
“I think they were trying to make the place more inviting. Not everybody likes to work in a fort.”
“Let ’em open a goddamn yarn shop, then. Speaking of uptown assholes, your pal Brenda Nero is back with us.”
“How nice for you.”
“You got to help me out, Marlene. The bitch is driving me crazy.”
“Uh-huh. The solution is simple. Walk up to her and say, ‘Sugar, get your young white ass out of my shelter.’ ”
Mattie frowned, taking on even more of the aspect of a Toltec idol than she normally carried. “Marlene, hell, you know I can’t do that.”
Marlene did know. “What’s she done now?”
“Oh, you know. Nothing you can put your finger on, but I got three women threatening to leave if I don’t get rid of her. That’s a laugh, huh?” She laughed dully to illustrate. “They’re threatened with death and dismemberment, and they’d rather skip than hang with Brenda.”
“That’s Brenda,” said Marlene, and looked long at her pal, and observed that she was genuinely suffering under the hard-girl mask. Blaming the victim was one of the three remaining cardinal sins among the liberati of New York, along with littering and smoking in restaurants, and Marlene struggled daily to resist it. That it was always the Man was not, however, an article of faith for her, as it was for Mattie. In many cases it turned out to be an unconscious conspiracy between a man and a woman to continue mutual torture until they were both dead. Thus she could see Brenda as a mere problem and not as a holy cause.