“Can you lend me ten bucks, Charlie?” says Fanfan, coming into the room.
“Where do you think I could get hold of ten bucks?”
“Come on, Charlie, this is serious. I’m caught short. I’ll pay you back first thing next week.”
Charlie gets up and opens a drawer.
“Here. But you absolutely have to pay me back on Monday.”
“Thanks, old pal, you’ve saved my life. . By the way, how did things go last night at the Bellevue Circle?”
“As you suggested, I played the sincerity card, and so far it seems to have worked. . I met that girl, Missie Abel. .”
“Wait, I know that name. . Isn’t she the ambassador’s daughter?”
“His niece.”
“What happened?”
“She was here, just before you walked in.”
“Ah, my friend, you’re playing in the big leagues.”
Fanfan pushes Charlie until he falls back on the bed.
“Listen, Fanfan, you haven’t understood what I’m saying.”
“You’re going to tell me what it’s like to pork a rich girl!” Silence.
“No, Fanfan, she just dropped by to tell me that we’re from two different worlds.”
“In her eyes you’re nothing but a dog.”
“That’s it.”
Longer silence.
“I’ve got to go, my friend. . Don’t worry about your money. I’ll have it here Monday without fail.”
Fanfan misses a step on the stairway.
“Shit! Shit! Shit! And shit!”
TWO DAYS LATER. Two o’clock in the afternoon.
Charlie climbs heavily up the steep stairs to his room. Missie is waiting for him at the top.
“Have you been here long?”
She gives him a beseeching look.
“Did Hansy drop you off?”
“I took a taxi.”
He opens the door and lets her go in first. She enters and sits on the only chair. Charlie remains standing. She sits there without saying a word. Then suddenly she jumps up.
“Goodbye.”
She races down the stairs at the risk of breaking her neck. He listens for a moment, hoping she’ll reach the bottom in one piece. Then he sits in the chair she has vacated, and waits.
He waits.
Two hours go by. She comes back. He hears her feathery tread on the stairs. He tells himself that her feet would do well to get used to climbing those stairs, because they’re going to be climbing it many times a day from now on. A small knock at the door.
“It’s open.”
She comes in. He doesn’t get up.
She stands in the middle of the room. He looks at her tranquilly.
“I can’t do it anymore.”
He keeps looking at her.
“I want. .”
She stops, thunderstruck. A fierce storm appears to be raging in her head. He waits, silently.
“I want. .”
She stops again.
“I want. .”
Her knees buckle slightly.
“The other day you said, you said. .”
“What did I say?”
A moment’s hesitation. But she recovers. He has the feeling she may get away from him. Then she lowers her head.
“You said that you’ll. . make me. . moan. .”
Charlies says nothing.
“I don’t know why,” she goes on, “but since then I’ve been able to think of nothing else. .”
He decides not to have her today. She is suffering, but her pain is her pleasure.
WEDNESDAY MORNING. As usual, he finds the gate open. His mother is peeling potatoes in the kitchen, which is clean and well lit. He sneaks up silently behind her back. She is singing “The Red Roses of Corfu.” Her happiness song. The one she sings when she’s happy.
“Oh, it’s you,” she says without turning around.
“How are things?”
“Very good, my dear.”
“And Papa?”
“Your father is very excited because he planted some birds of paradise; you know how difficult it is to get them to grow. . Well, yesterday he called me out into the garden, where as you know I hate to go because of the anole lizards, to see their magnificent flowers. They really do look like birds. Even the Ambassador was impressed.”
“And Mademoiselle Abel?”
His mother looks at him in astonishment.
“Why are you asking about her?”
“She and Papa weren’t getting along, and, if I remember correctly, you were pretty worried about it.”
“Oh, we hardly ever see her anymore. First she was always underfoot, now she doesn’t even come home for dinner. And when she is here, she shuts herself up in her room.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“No! Things are much better this way. .”
“Okay, Mama, I’ve got to go.”
“Already? Do you need money? I don’t have much, but. .”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure you don’t need anything?”
“I’m sure.”
“Good. Don’t forget to shut the gate behind you.”
“Yes, Mama.”
A Naïve Painting
I tell you it’s springtime by placing
a couple in the centre of the landscape.
MY NAME IS Laura Ingraham. I’m thirty-five years old. Men find me attractive because I am tall, slim and blonde, but they also find me a bit frightening because I’m a New York Jewish intellectual. I was born in New York, and have lived there all my life. I love that city. Especially its hardness. New York doesn’t believe in tears, as does, say, Moscow. My favourite book is Breakfast at Tiffany’s, by Truman Capote. I always keep it in my handbag and take it out whenever I have a spare minute somewhere. For a long time I worshipped Andy Warhol. I collected anything from that era (late sixties, early seventies), the time of The Factory, the Warhol studio. My biggest regret is that I was never at Studio 54 when Jackie Kennedy, Liza Minnelli and Bianca Jagger were there. My favourite type of man: Peter Beard, the photographer/adventurer. My favourite film: Woody Allen’s Manhattan. I’ve seen it more than a dozen times. I also love men’s underwear by Calvin Klein. Do you remember Diane Keaton wearing it in Annie Hall? Well, I wore the same kind for years, right up until the time one of my lovers (a music critic for Rolling Stone) told me that once you’re past adolescence such things are ridiculous. But it wasn’t ridiculous to me.
I HAVE ANOTHER side that no one knows about. My secret garden. It’s a story that goes back to my childhood. I was five. One day my father brought home a small painting (a landscape) and hung it in my bedroom, above my bed. A simple landscape, of the naïve school. Sometimes, at night, when I was afraid, I would spend a long time looking at this painting (nature, benevolent, luminous), until eventually my nerves would settle down. Sometimes I would imagine living in my painting. Being born in such a place instead of in Manhattan. But I need both. My urban landscape and my imaginary one. Manhattan excites me. But the landscape calms me. I believe that this duality is part of my deepest nature. Like most excitable beings, I am capable of remaining calm and quiet for hours on end. My friends are totally unaware of this aspect of my personality. All they know is this woman who is capable of spending two hours in Bloomingdale’s looking for a scarf to wear to a cocktail party that evening, then after the party running out to Queens to visit a some friends before ending the night at some trendy new club on Long Island. No matter what the hour, I never go home without stopping on Park Avenue to pick up some warm bagels. This is the girl, urban down to her fingernails, that my friends know (even my closest friends). However, I can also be this little country girl who gets up at the crack of dawn with the roosters and goes outside in bare feet to gather ripe fruit that has fallen to the ground overnight. Am I schizophrenic, like most of the people who live in this city? When I left my parents’ house and rented a small apartment near Columbia University, the one thing I took with me was that little landscape painting. And the first thing I did was hang it in my bedroom. Whenever I happened to wake up in the middle of the night with a bad case of the sweats (loneliness, combined with fear), that painting (the sole constant in my life) was the only thing that would calm me down.