up. She is dirty and her eyes have deep circles set in fragile,
high cheekbones. She spreads her arms out over the breadth
of the jukebox and spreads her legs with her knees slightly
bent outward and she moves back and forth, a slow, excruciating fuck. Jim Morrison and the Doors. Otis Redding.
Janis. Hey mister, she says in her deepest mumble, you gotta
cigarette. She gets courtly: I seem to be out, she says to him,
eyelids drooping. She smiles: I guess I must of left them somewhere. She hustles change for the jukebox. She hustles change for coffee. These are long, leisurely, air-conditioned nights. She
disappears. I disappear. She returns, orders cappuccino, it means
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money, something easy with a boy. I return: we have sandwiches. She returns: with some grass. I return: we have dessert, chocolate cake, leisurely, cheesecake, passing it around. She
returns: drinks for tomorrow night. I return: speed for tomorrow. We are bankers, saving up, past our immediate needs.
She returns: some money toward the rent. She walks around
the room, her hips very, very tough. The cigarette dangles.
The music plays. Friends drop in and visit. She gets a glint in
her eye: disappears: comes back to buy a round of coffees,
some cake, some sandwiches.
Outside it is crowded, dark, hot, the sticky wet of the city
air. The streets are overrun with tourists. The tourist joints are
flowing over. They come to see this life.
Too hot to hang out on a stoop: so we go to the West
Village to a bright pink coffeehouse, especially on weekends,
rich tourists, rich hippie types, and then, at the end, when only
the scum is left hovering in doorways, just plain punks who
wanna fuck.
N returns: she orders a milkshake, sodas, buys cigarettes.
Poor R is going to join us for a cup of coffee: and someone
N has met on the street, A. He is not tall, not short, thin but
not noticeably, nice face but nothing special, intense big brown
eyes, Brazilian. He is street stuff, not the idle rich, but with
manners. There is polite conversation all around. Poor R considers this a formal date with N. A is there to meet me, to win my approval, because he is N ’s new friend, picked up on the
street but she likes him or I wouldn’t be meeting him now.
The walls are pink and dirty. The air conditioning is not
doing so good. The place is crowded. There is only money for
coffee: we have coffee: and coffee: and coffee. N and poor R
disappear, round the corner a block away to R ’s apartment: a
date. A and I talk. It is working out. He has a lot to say. I
don’t mind listening. It is a sad story. Something about how he
was a dancer and in love with a beautiful virgin in Brazil but
her parents oppose their marriage and so he goes on tour and
is in an accident and loses his hand and has punctures all over
his body. He only has one hand. Then about his months in the
hospital and how he couldn’t work anymore as a dancer and
how the girl left him because he was maimed and how he was
arrested for something he didn’t do and ran away from the
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country altogether and became a fugitive because he couldn’t
make anyone believe him, it was a murder he was wanted for.
He was an artful storyteller because this story took nearly
four hours to tell. I cried. His accent was thick. He spoke
softly and deliberately. He didn’t live around here. He lived
around Times Square. Yeah he had some women out working
for him: old girlfriends but no one he was living with now: but
with N it was different. She comes back without poor R but
loaded with money: poor R got two-timed again: and we drink
coffee and eat and have more coffee and we talk there in the
pink coffeehouse, the jukebox gone quiet. Outside the streets
are emptying, it is nearly dawn. I go to the storefront alone,
thinking about pimps, nervous.*
A sits in the coffeehouse wearing a coat, as if cold. He hides
his arm. It is shrivelled at the elbow. He has tremendous poli-
tesse and dignity. He is not handsome and not not handsome.
He has some gentleness. He smokes like N, like me, cigarettes
one after another, but he holds them longer in his one hand.
He does things slowly: sits very stilclass="underline" slightly stooped: black
hair straight and framing his face in a kind of modified pageboy for boys. His lips are thick but not particularly sensual.
He has watery eyes. His skin is an ochre color. He wears dark
colors. He is intelligent, well-spoken: soft-spoken. When N
and poor R leave he doesn’t blink or flinch or react: he is
harmonious with how we do things: he imposes nothing: he
has a sense of courtesy not unlike N ’s: he seems removed from
physical violence but he can’t be. I watch every muscle move,
trying to figure it out. He can’t be. N comes back and orders
food for us. Poor R manages a stunning ignorance: she has
gone on a date with her lover, just like other girls on a Friday
night. N had left her some hours before, I could see by the
volume of food and the new packs of cigarettes and the new
rounds of coffee. Actual loose dollars are taken out in a
rumpled pile. N gives me some money and some grass and
some cigarettes before she goes off with A. I walk home alone
in the dawn, the streets nearly empty now, the heat beginning
to build for the new day: thinking about pimps: a bit disturbed.
*
6z
N and A are now officially friends and lovers. This means it
isn’t for money. This means he visits us both and talks. This
means we listen to music together. This means he and N go off
alone for whole nights.
He is concerned about us, down in this violent neighborhood. He is concerned about us, so poor, and for what? We should be making real money after all, not small change for
drinks and pukey drugs. We should have enough to finish our
film. He is quiet, gentle, concerned. He is worried for us. He
doesn’t think we are quite safe down here.
He seems to adore N. He is nice to me. He is a good friend.
He brings presents now and then, something nice, a bottle of
wine, like a person.
At night we roam together sometimes: meet his friends at
some late-night joint: the jukebox plays Billie, and we sit while
he talks to his friends, sometimes about us, we can’t understand, especially to one of his friends, a Latino, dark-haired, big moustache, long hair, machismo. They buy us food. We