Being out of control was better, blasted and wasted, telling tales on telltale nights, on the brink of sex with a stranger with intense eyes and a mad laugh. On the brink of losing everything. Heartless, homeless. Some were never there, couldn’t touch the edge, live at the bottom, do some bottom feeding. Nothing adventured, everything lost. Nothing ventured without losing something else. Avoiding failure, even a whiff of failure, they didn’t think about the past. They say they don’t miss anything, didn’t miss anything, have no regrets. They did what they wanted. Elizabeth giggled, then she held herself in check, held back.
People don’t expose their need the way Ernest does. It was confused with being needy. That’s why there was so much impotence, girlfriends complaining about flaccidity. Years ago a man told her, after she’d rejected him, that as he grew older, he was learning to enjoy the luxury of impotence. Impotence and failure are luxuries. Most people can’t afford them.
It was muggy. She didn’t expect to be mugged in weather like this. Too liquid and slow for jumping on someone, except the most desperate, too enervating. Her skin was coated with light sweat. Elizabeth didn’t like to sweat unless she was having sex.
How do you know when the stage is level?
When drool is coming out of both sides of the drummer’s mouth.
Five Catholic schoolboys were tossing a basketball in the school’s parking lot. They were lousy, black, yellow, white, lumbering to the basket, clumsy. A few nuns were watching their charges. Their white hands were crossed over their short habits and rested on full stomachs. The school’s muraclass="underline" “Mary Help of Christian School, Give Me Souls Take Away The Rest.” It was painted blue, covered a wall. A cartoon portrait of Mary and Jesus surrounded by saints and souls. Have mercy. Take away the rest. It was a time without mercy. People who believe in the soul don’t think anyone else has one. Maybe Ernest did. Fear the righteous. They have no pity.
The Metropolitan Funeral Parlor had most of the body-and-soul business in the neighborhood. It wasn’t where Emilia’s wake was held. There were no coffins on the sidewalk this morning, no crowd, no crying, no limos. Elizabeth hated passing by the mean and morose scene when the hearse was waiting for its next coffin, and family and friends were crying, clustered in small groups to console each other, and the hearse drivers were lounging around with cigarettes dangling from their mouths, bored out of their skulls. People were grieving in another world, not theirs.
He didn’t have a funeral. He was cremated in another city. They held a memorial service for him later. It was hard to cry after a while. Elizabeth was toughening up, she was hardening with age, becoming brittle, like her nails. They broke more easily. Didn’t everything. Can’t take everything on. Have to take some of it on. The morons. The shit in the vestibule.
The sad-eyed gray-haired man was settled in his chair at the window of the printing shop. He chewed on a cigar. PREMISES CONTROLLED BY ATTACK DOGS. She’d never seen any. He was a daily enigma. Maybe a concentration camp survivor. She might work for the tragic old man one day. She’d spend hours proofreading, because no one in the shop was good at it, she’d choose typefaces for wedding, birth, and death announcements and listen to the relentless purr, chug, and whir of the printing press. The smell of ink and cigars would linger in the air, they’d all argue about politics, discuss the local news, how terrible the mayor was, how bad it was when the squatters were assaulted, how everyone deserved it or didn’t, whatever they got, in one way or another. Then they’d close up shop at the end of the day. Everyone would gather round.
— Remember Howard Beach?
— Always sounded like a person to me before…
— It’s not like Germany, the old man’d say.
— They chased him across the highway…
— Can’t even live your life, the black printer would say.
— Racist cowards, she’d say.
— Howard Beach…
The printer’s dark arms would be smeared with purple ink.
— And Crown Heights?
— A kid run over…
— It was an accident…
— A car runs a light…
— Mayor Dinkins shoulda…
— The ambulance ignored…
— Dinkins did the right thing…
— But the trial was a mockery, the old man would say.
His voice would wane. He’d wander back to his chair, slump into it. His melancholy was physical. Elizabeth would return to proofreading, the black printer would go back to setting type. The receptionist and designer would settle in too. The next day it would all begin again. She’d become fixed and old in one place, one job.
The public school kids should’ve been in school. The usual characters were hanging out on the corners. The runners weren’t out. Only the hard-core desperadoes with eyes like pins. They disappeared into chaotic rooms and emerged and disappeared again. Their eyes darted everywhere. Crackheads strode ramrod stiff, up and down the block, arms up, out, and down, like Nazi salutes, involuntary movements. They were on patrol. The nod squad arrived later. The crackheads were fueled with synthetic energy. They had nowhere to go, hunters and gatherers prowling in circles.
One lesbian frog says to another, You’re right, we do taste like chicken.
Gisela limped onto A from Twelfth Street. Her dog limped along beside her.
— It is a terrible time, now. Look what happens again!
Gisela’s face was dotted with scars, old wounds. There were a few fresh wounds. She had picked them. Elizabeth stared at the red holes, windows to the soul. Gisela’s skin was clearer than it was the last time she’d seen her.
— A woman is trying to destroy me. See, my dog is sick. She is poisoning my dog. I went away and she was supposed to take care of him and look at him. Look at his rash.
Gisela pointed to a scabby, hairless patch on the dog’s rump. It made Elizabeth sick.
— Why’s the woman poisoning your dog? Elizabeth asked.
— It’s the Swiss government.
— They’re after you again?
— Ach. My mother’s legacy. They thought I knew too much because a lot of very heavy people in the government were involved with my mother. My mother was exploited by them.
— You mean, the heroin dealing she was forced to do?
— They are very liberal with drugs because the government is involved, and that means money for them. My mother was working under a lawyer, in Zurich, who was a good friend with a man from the parliament, who was negotiating with the Syrian extremist groups in Argentina. They have a big colony of Syrian extremists. They were afraid that I knew about it. I didn’t know about it. They were afraid I would talk too much. I didn’t know anything. At that time.
Gisela shifted from one leg to the other. Elizabeth had heard some of the story. Gisela shifted again.
— Your leg hurts?
— They want to operate, and I always say…
— What kind of operation?
— To replace my hip. I always say no, I need first intensive therapy. I’m very weak, I’m falling apart. In Cuba, for the first time I met a doctor who agreed with me. When I say this to a doctor, he doesn’t want to hear of it.
A bicycle messenger zipped past them on the sidewalk.
— I couldn’t sleep last night, Elizabeth said.
— It’s the neighborhood, Gisela said.
— It’s pushing me over the edge.
— Compared to what I went through, it’s paradise. It’s beautiful, Switzerland, but I went through shit there. Those people are not human beings. They’re worse than Nazis. Here, you see, I’m happy. I keep my distance because I cannot tell my story. I get along. They leave me alone. They respect me. I respect them. I have no problem. I have my peace of mind.