I could have figured that much out just from looking at her. She had the pale hair and bright eyes of a llama or other herbivore. So much for getting myself all worked up over our date—really, I couldn't figure out what it was she wanted from me. "Well," I said, "I'm a carnivore. I don't even like to use a knife and fork. If I have a steak or roast beef I'd rather tear it off, bite by bite, with my teeth. There's nothing like the texture of meat, dense and red, the smell, the bloody taste. Of course, I'll admit, I don't want anything to do with killing. I don't want to see any cows bawling, I just want to eat them. Someday I might open a restaurant, 'Where the Elite Meet to Eat Meat.' Someday I'll cook you a roast beef."
"That would be nice," Lacey said.
"I cook roast beef brilliantly."
Next to us was a family I couldn't help but study, not having had much contact with the nuclear American grouping before. A puggy father, who looked like he was about to go out of his mind—he lit one cigarette after the next—and across from him was the mother, the female of the pair. Stuffed between them at the table were the children, a girl and two boys. The older ones kept up a sort of battle cry, "Mommy, Mommy. Mommy," while she tried to talk to her mate. "At work today," she said, "Jim put his finger through the window. There was a lot of blood, he had to go to the hospital for stitches."
The kid sitting across from her, the littlest, about six, had a pinched face and a bird-snout of a nose. There was red all over his chin from some sort of frozen pop he was eating, something pink and dripping. At last he put down the pop and stuck a finger up his nose, pulling out a long string of snot. I put my hamburger down on my plate. Why must I, Marley Mantello, be the one to bear witness to such events?
Yet I knew these tribulations were given me for a reason. To see that family was like getting one of those little things that float sometimes in the corner of your field of vision and look like molecules. Edvard Munch got a permanent one of those things in his eye in the shape of a bird with a long beak—he was sixty-seven at that time and all of a sudden he started painting pictures with these birds with long beaks in them.
Not that the point about vision defects matters when it comes to painters; nor is it of any use in explaining why El Greco painted such elongated figures, even though some people say it was because of myopia or something else wrong with his eyes. But the guy had to be crazy to paint in the first place, and whatever else was wrong with him was only secondary.
"Come on," I said. "Let's get out of here." I jumped up, pushing the stuff on the table away. "Let's walk downtown," I said. "I'm in the mood to walk." For I had to be careful and make sure I didn't indulge too freely in the pleasures of life, such as taxicabs. Like Raphael, who was crazy about women and wasted a lot of time over them, and then died when he was thirty-seven, which was probably what would happen to me. It was something I thought about occasionally, every five or ten minutes.
So I would walk off the evening as penance.
"But do we have to go to your place right this minute, Mar-ley?" Lacey said. "I feel sort of bad about what happened at dinner. I know Sherman is kind of mad. We could go find him at the Three Roses."
"Listen, I have to work," I said. "That's the way I am. But I'd love to have you there while I paint."
So Lacey smiled at me, and we continued down the gray, windy avenue. It was freezing cold; I put my hands in my pockets and took long strides, preoccupied with my thoughts.
Case History #15: Melinda
Melinda was tiny and blond with the luminous dark eyes of a loris or some nocturnal animal. At night she worked in a bar; she had come to New York to be a dancer with an experimental company but had broken her leg in a taxi accident and now hoped to get into choreography or set design.
With the money she collected from the insurance company she was able to buy a small apartment with a backyard near Tompkins Square Park. When she had some extra cash she would go to the ASPCA and buy animals that only had one day to live and take them home with her and try to find them new homes. Almost always she grew attached to the animals and couldn't bring herself to give them away. The animals were a substitute, she thought, for a man and a real relationship, but there were no men interested in her and the animals loved and accepted her in a way that no man ever could.
She lived with eight cats and five dogs: an elderly Schnauzer with no teeth who reminded her of her grandfather; a German shepherd-collie mix that supposedly had been trained as an attack dog but was afraid of everything, including the cats; a pair of schipperkes that liked to howl in unison to the stereo; and a dachshund that had to be strapped into a little pair of wheels as he was partially paralyzed from the midsection down. The animals took up all her time and were spoiled and demanding, but this didn't bother her; in fact, Melinda rather liked playing mother.
Once late at night she saw a tiny baby rat crossing the street very slowly. It was missing a leg and Melinda scared the rat into a paper bag and took it home, where she kept it in an aquarium. A short time after she took the rat home her dogs and cats all came down with a bad case of fleas but Melinda loved the little rat and also sometimes found pigeons that were hurt and other wounded and delicate animals. In the yard was a stack of cages in which she kept rabbits and ferrets she had bought from a run-down pet store on Houston Street.
The bar where she worked was a regular neighborhood kind of bar where a lot of male artists hung out watching the ball games on TV or shooting pool and most of them had tried to date Melinda at one time or another. Quite often Melinda would invite them back to her place for a cup of coffee, but when they saw her tiny crowded apartment (which was full of angry barking dogs that were all busy defending Melinda or trying to rape her guest's leg, and yowling cats and the rat in the cage) they never returned to visit her again.
Most of the men she knew didn't mind their own mess but it was quite a different story in a woman. Melinda didn't care, however; in a way she looked upon the chaos and terrible odor of her apartment as a kind of test. When the right man came along he would be willing to overcome the circumstances in much the same way as the princes in fairy tales were willing to slay the dragon or go off in search of the magic potion in order to win the princess.
One night, in her bar, a pretty, exotic-looking boy came in. He had dyed black hair and was missing one of his front teeth. He looked like a crazed angel. None of the regulars had ever seen him around before.
After he had drunk four beers Melinda suggested he pay his tab as the bar was about to close. The boy broke down and began to cry. He said he was only twenty-three (though he looked younger) and had no money and was out on the street. His name was Chicho, and he hoped to get a job, either work- ing with the elephants at the zoo or studying dolphins in Florida.
Melinda felt sorry for Chicho. She said he could come home with her, and in fact he could stay with her on a temporary basis provided that he help clean and care for the animals. Chicho said that would be fine.
After a few days Melinda realized she was falling in love with Chicho. He was so naive, so gentle and innocent, he reminded her of a little injured puppy. Behind his facade of street toughness was a true child who worshiped Melinda and thought everything about her was wonderful.
He was very good with the dogs and took each one out in turn for its exercise so that Melinda would have more time to work on her dance project ideas. He even cleaned up the yard, which was filled with cat droppings and mud. "It's true I'm educated and you're not," Melinda told him. "And also you're ten years younger than me. I always thought these things would be a problem in a relationship. But now I see the ideal relationship is based on trust and kindness, and the rest is unimportant."