meet here late at night. A is who we are with. No one asks us
anything. Sometimes he tells us to play something on the
jukebox. He gets us something to eat. It is friendly and not
friendly. It is tense. What are we there for? The men look at
us: make remarks we don’t understand. They play music and
smoke and stare at us. It is ominous. I don’t want to be turned
over to them. It seems possible. There is an edge somewhere.
A sits there polite as ever, our friend. N seems to trust him. He
sits and watches too. The blues vibrate from the machine. The
room is tiny. There are two or three tables against a wall
where we sit. A sits on the outside of the tables, we are blocked
in against the wall, the men stand around. There are a lot of
them, all crowded in, and then spilling over to the sidewalk.
Billie keeps us company while the men stare and do business.
We are quiet.
*
A’s best friend doesn’t say much. He never talks directly to
either of us. N sleeps with both of them by now. She says they
have quite a routine. She says the puncture marks on A’s body
are holes that go right through his skin. Sometimes she does
their laundry or stays with them a few days.
*
63
N meets some of his women. She is not happy. They are real
Times Square whores.
*
He seems to be keeping N separate, apart. He and his best
friend share her.
*
One night he comes to the storefront all soft-spoken, a
friend. He has been thinking about our situation. We are all
standing in the dark dank middle room, near the single mattress. He wants to help us. He has an apartment in Times Square we can move into, both of us. We don’t have to do
anything for him, absolutely nothing. We can just come live
there. N defers to me to say yes or no. I say no. I have been
thinking a lot about pimps. He is unruffled. He is our friend.
If we don’t want to move in with him, it’s OK. He will think of
some other way to help us. He and N go off. I wonder if she is
going to live with him. She does now and then, for a day or
two. He is a friend. I know he adores her: I can see it. I can’t
see him pimping but for a fact he pimps so so much for what I
can see. I like him and she is loyal to him: her loyalty once
given is not breachable: her code is close to absolute, unspoken,
I have never seen it breached: it is his lost hand, the punctures
in his body, his best friend and the routine, his courtesy and
intelligence, and something in him irredeemably outside: she
even does their laundry. I say to her, you know, N, about
pimps. Don’t worry, she says, yeah I know.
I would believe her except for the smack. She doesn’t do it
regular but who knows what it takes, not much. He is besotted
with her but the smack is easy: and he isn’t any fool. I ask N
what his girls on the street are like. She frowns, looks down.
*
He shows me his drawings, pen sketches, elaborate and skillful,
images of horror and death. I show him my poems: the same.
N plays her clarinet. These are family times.
*
He sits in the coffeehouse, in the bar, wherever, as we come
and go: bringing money back: he doesn’t touch it and buys his
own coffee.
*
64
What else can I do? he says solemnly. I can’t dance anymore.
*
I wait for him to mention the apartment again: to seduce, to
convince. Then I will know. He doesn’t. He is either sincere or
no fool. He is no fool but is he also sincere?
Can a pimp be sincere?
Ah, he says, not too often, I wanted to dance.
*
He brings N a silk scarf: and me a book.
*
I am wondering if I should sleep with him: but they are a real
pair, boy and girclass="underline" she waits for him and he comes often. I take
my cues from her. She is not obligated, as far as I can see: she
wants him around: she really likes him, for himself as we say,
a lot. He remains nice. I begin to think I am wrong about the
apartment. Then I remember his girls. Then I think about N
and smack. I keep my distance. She is loyal to me too. She
won’t go without me. I think.
*
He died, my daddy, kind man, in a poverty of loneliness and
disregard. I was not a good daughter. Nothing came to me
when he died. I took a bus to the funeral. The relatives who
raised me on and off were there. I hadn’t dressed right. I was
dirty and hot. I only had pants. Him being dead wasn’t the
main thing for them: it was me, not dressed right. The cemetery
was flat and ugly. There were weeds. I got back on the bus
right away. I got back late at night. I walk into the storefront
and I think fucking pig, what the hell is wrong with her, there
are things thrown everywhere, papers all around all over the
floor and clothes thrown all around and everything is a fucking
mess. She is not there. I know she is out at a bar. I am pissed
like hell. I keep looking around, unable to take the mess in.
Then it registers. There is nothing left. Everything is gone. The
records are gone, the record player, the sax, the clarinet, the
typewriter, almost all our clothes, except that some are thrown
all over, every fucking thing that can be picked up and carried
is gone: I walk through the apartment: the metal has been
lifted off the back door like King Kong had done it: it
must have taken hours to do and had to have been done in
daylight: the neighbors must have enjoyed it: and in the re65
frigerator there had been a bottle of vodka, that’s all, and now
the empty bottle was there on the sink. The fucks had drunk
the fucking vodka. There is nothing left, and at the same time
an indescribable mess of strewn things, like junk, trash, like
garbage.
I go to the bars to find N. She is far east, at a rough place I
have gone to long before I even knew her— I am two years
older and show it— and the bars are littered with my lost late
adolescence— I find her— I have fucked all the bartenders in
this bar and the one she is talking to now is the best— and I
grab her and take her home. She is pissed with me until she
sees. It is impossible to calculate our loss. Everything we own.
They ravaged it. Went through. Decimated it. There hadn’t
been much until it was gone. I barely saw the damage the
first time. Barely saw what was gone. Barely remembered what
had been there. We have nothing left, except some T-shirts.