Before Daddy could find out about my marriage and divorce and take the car back from me (and have me locked up again? But there are no convents for Jewish girls), I had driven north to New York, sold the car for $2,000, found an apartment, and bought some new clothes. I landed a job in an internship program at a major advertising agency, even though I didn't have a college degree...Once more Daddy spoke to me on the telephone; Mother and Mopsy even came up for a visit...
I might never have found my vocation if I hadn't been evicted from my apartment, and after finding a new place in the East Village, met Bruno (ah, Bruno, that Aryan German, pinched, brittle in his leather trenchcoat, rigid as a crustacean —even a saint has her failures), who offered me the job of script girl on the film he was making in Venezuela, which in the end didn't work out at all.
But one thing leads to the next (doesn't it always?) and it was through Bruno I met Bob, and now at night, cruising the great long avenues of the city, dust and grit tossed feverishly in the massive canyons between the skyscrapers, it often occurs to me that I am no more and no less, a thought that I hadn't realized until my days as a prostitute began. (True, I have my bad days, when I cannot rise from bed, but who can claim he does not? Who?) I could have written a book about my experiences out on the street, but all my thoughts are handed over to Bob, who lies on the bed dreamily eating whatever I bring him—a hamburger from McDonald's, crab soufflé from a French restaurant in the theater district, a platter of rumaki with hot peanut sauce in an easy carry-out container from an Indonesian restaurant open until 1:00 a.m., plates of macaroni tender and creamy as the sauce that oozes out from between the legs of my clientele.
As in the convent, life is not easy ...crouched in dark alleys, giggling in hotel rooms or the back seat of limousines, I have to be a constant actress, on my guard and yet fitting into every situation. Always the wedge of moon above, reminding me of my destiny and holy water.
The Slaves in New York
There was a joke that my cousin told my brother Roland when he was five years old. The joke went, "Fat and Fat Fat and Pinch Me were in a boat. Fat and Fat Fat fell out. Who was left?" And my brother said, "Pinch Me," and my cousin pinched him. So when my brother got home he told my mother he was going to tell her a joke, and he said, "Fat and Fat Fat were in a boat. Fat and Fat Fat fell out. Who was left?" My mother said, "Nobody." My brother repeated the joke, and when my mother said "Nobody" a second time, my brother kicked her.
Twenty years went by ... I was always older than my brother, and my mother still talks about my brother's fury at her incorrect response. All he wanted was to do to her what had been done to him. So now I'm living in New York, the city, and what it is, it's the apartment situation. I had a little apartment in an old brownstone on the Upper West Side, but it was too expensive, and there were absolutely no inexpensive apartments to be found. Besides, things weren't going all that smoothly for me. I mean, I wasn't exactly earning any money. I thought I'd just move to New York and sell my jewelry—I worked in rubber, shellacked sea horses, plastic James Bond-doll earrings—but it turned out a lot of other girls had already beaten me to it. So it was during this period that I gave up and told Stashua I was going home to live with my mother. Stash and I had been dating for six months. That was when Stash said we could try living together.
We've been living together in his place in the Village about a year now. One room, it's big, but he has a lot of stuff here— boxes, closets full of papers. Well, he's been here for ten years, and after his divorce he hadn't lived with anyone in six years or so.
I'm getting used to it. In the morning I clean up some, I walk his Dalmatian, Andrew, then I come back and cook Stash two poached eggs, raisin tea biscuits, coffee with three spoons sugar. Usually around this time of day, the doorman buzzes on the intercom and I have to go down to pick up a package, or run to the store for some more cigarettes, whatever. Then Stash goes off to work. He's an artist, he works for himself, so he doesn't have to go in until late, except recently he's been out of the house by ten, since he's nervous about getting ready for his show coming up soon at his gallery on Fifty-seventh Street.
I watch a few soap operas and have a second cup. Then usually I start to plan the evening dinner. I'll make, let's say, Cornish game hen with orange glaze, curried rice, asparagus, or it could be fettuccine Alfredo with garlic bread and arugula salad. Nothing too fancy. I take Andrew to the Key Food and tie him up outside, return the empty bottles. Stash likes Coca-Cola, Cracker Jacks, eats marshmallows out of the bag.
Well, I'm getting used to it. He still complains a lot if I leave makeup on the back of the toilet. He kept saying, "Eleanor, look at this sin," until I pointed out to him he was regressing to his Catholic childhood. I forget what else bugs him. If I do the dishes and there's, let's say, a little spot of grease on the floor from where I carried the roasting pan over to the garbage pail—this just drives him crazy. Clothes—if I leave any clothes out, or if after I wash them I put them away where he can't find them. If I buy the wrong kind of deodorant—why, he has to take fifteen minutes to explain to me why he only uses deodorant and not antiperspirant. Antiperspirant clogs up the pores and prevents you from perspiring, it's unhealthy, whereas deodorant just masks the odor. Well, it's his apartment, and if we have a fight or something I sometimes get this panicky feeling: Where the hell am I going to go?
I have a couple of girlfriends in the city. One is renting out her second bedroom for $650 a month. The other has a three-year-old baby, and I'm sure she'd be glad if I slept on her couch in the living room in return for day-care services or whatever, but would I be better off? Anyway, I'm trying to learn how to get along with a man.
So what happens is, I went out to this party without Stash. He wasn't feeling too well, and once in a while I really make an attempt to go out without him. It's one of the most difficult things in the world for me to do. I'd much rather go out with him, and when he's saying hello to all his friends I can kind of lurk behind him and smile every once in a while, but I don't actually have to come up with anything to say. For instance, at a nightclub some guy comes over—well, he isn't talking to me, he's talking to Stash, about business or the softball team they both play on. What do I have to say? I don't have anything to say.
Anyway, this party was a housewarming for this couple, Mona and Phil. I didn't know them too well. They had just found a new apartment on Fourteenth Street, $1,500 a month —Mona had some money from her parents—a real find, a sixth-floor walk-up. Phil was a carpenter, and so he could install the toilet and fixtures himself. Most of their boxes and stuff hadn't yet been unpacked. For a while I sat on the couch drinking a margarita that had been mixed up in a blender and listening to Mona's mother and father talk about their trip to China. They had deluxe accommodations at some hotel in Peking, and there was a lottery among the members of their tour group, and Mona's mother and father won and got to stay in the Grand Suite, which had a fully stocked liquor bar.
When I finished listening to them, I turned around and there was a totally stunning man sitting on a chair next to me eating some Kentucky Fried Chicken. Mona and her husband, Phil, had made their own dipping sauce, but since they were in the middle of moving they went out and got the chicken at Kentucky and arranged it in a linen-covered basket. I wasn't eating anything. I had already made dinner for myself and Stash, and because he wasn't feeling well I kept the meal simple and just served homemade black-bean soup with macaroni and cheese and a small salad. I felt sort of annoyed at first when I saw this guy eating fried chicken and staring at me, because it occurred to me that (a) he was far too gorgeous, with his green eyes and curly black hair, and (b) he was probably an actor, because he seemed to be reenacting the dinner scene from Tom Jones, that old movie with Albert Finney. Stash always tells me I have "buggy-whip" arms, and it made me uncomfortable the way this guy was eating a scrawny chicken wing and looking at me. You know, I just wanted to tell him to knock it off and be a person.