"Playing hooky from what?" I said. The man seemed chagrined. But we started talking. He was a furniture designer, he liked the furniture of Frank Lloyd Wright, though not his buildings, and the work of somebody whose name I didn't know but pretended to anyway. The man—his name was Jan —said he was playing hooky from work to ride his bike around. He had a red motorcycle—BMW 800—parked in the lot at the end of the pier.
I said I was depressed; I had gone out the night before with a girlfriend and drunk too much and now I was suffering the consequences: (1) physical symptoms such as headache, fatigue, and vitamin C and B complex depletion, and (2) anxiety. "I don't mind the physical business as much as I do the anxiety," I said. "I just keep worrying about this party I'm giving later on."
Jan sat down next to me. It was a hot, grayish day, the air smelled of turpentine. Jan said that he was Hungarian—anyway, his parents came from there, and he was an excellent cook of such dishes as goulash and paprikash—and he had grown up in a small Hungarian community in New Jersey. He spoke a few words in Hungarian: I guess he was trying to prove his honesty to me. He wanted to know how old I was. and when I told him "twenty-eight," he peered anxiously into mv eyes. It was a weird thing but these days everywhere I went people seemed to be asking each other their age. It was like an epidemic, everyone trying to pin each other down by their age as if they were insect collectors. "How old are you?" I said.
"Thirty-four."
"That's old, honey," I said.
"Should I leave?" Jan said.
"No, no," I said, "I'm just kidding you." Then I told him a story: An elderly man (seventy-two) who was a friend of the family's, called up to take me out to lunch. After the meal (arroz con polio) he said that he would like to come back to my apartment and make love to me. Even though I said it was better that we remain friends, and reminded him that he was happily married, he still made a grab for me at the door. As I fled, his parting words were a compliment about a portion of my body. "Isn't that awful?" I said.
"Why do you seem so shocked?" Jan said. "You must be used to stuff like that."
"Seventy-two years old?" I said. "The animal." I tried to explain that the men I knew who were my age never laid a finger on me. "When you take someone out," I said, "if you decide to go to bed, it's pretty much mutual, isn't it? I mean, you don't attack her at the door or anything."
Jan said that this was true and he agreed. Someone was playing the trumpet, very badly, one pier over, and the sound carried across the water. The musical background gave the general atmosphere of a scene from a movie; anyway, I felt as if I were in one. I explained to Jan that I was sick of men placing value judgments on me. "Most of the men I go out with come up with these adjectives," I said. "But you can tell any man or woman that he or she is deeply upset and it will be true at least fifty percent of the time." Jan didn't seem to understand.
"You don't seem upset to me," he said.
"I'm not," I said. "Well, maybe just a little, but that's because I'm nervous about giving a party. And I'm not strange or weird, either. Everybody's strange or weird around here, but I'm not. I know the difference."
"Um," Jan said. He offered me a ride on his motorcycle. I decided to accept, even though the last time I had ridden on a motorcycle Max, my father, bumped into me on some back road—he recognized Ricky, the juvenile delinquent I was riding shotgun with, and then he recognized me. He made Ricky stop, made me get off, and forbade me to ride on a motorcycle ever again.
I figured that by now Max's statute of limitations had run out, but I did feel a little nervous. Max hadn't been entirely wrong; I knew I was doing something dangerous, possibly even pathological, but I figured on the city streets how fast could Jan drive his machine? He gave me an extra helmet, which he apparently kept locked to a front wheel, and I tried to shove my hair—it was long and red—up into the helmet. It felt like a vise clamping down. "Don't touch this," Jan said, pointing to some lump on the side of the motorcycle. "You could get burned."
Then he kicked up some kind of kick stand, started up the engine, and we took off. Driving in heavy traffic, careening between taxis and onto the sidewalk, I felt as if my knees might be shorn off at any moment. I shouted in Jan's ear to make a right down my old boyfriend's block. For a moment I pictured myself, glamorous, waving to Stash as Jan and I screamed through a green light on his bike; I could see Stash, first bewildered, then running madly through the streets after us. Of course Stash wasn't there, but it was pleasant to indulge in momentary fantasies.
Jan took me on a whirlwind tour of lower Manhattan and finally dropped me off near my apartment. I started to say goodbye, but then I had a thought. He was handsome and affable, and I figured even if I had no use for him maybe one of my girlfriends would. I considered myself to be a reasonable judge of character, and Jan had gone to West Point and dropped out to attend Bard College. So I gave him my address and invited him to my party that night. He said he would be delighted.
Even though I had burned up quite a bit of adrenaline on the motorcycle, I still couldn't face my apartment and the impending party. I thought I'd go and get some lunch, and I walked up my street. Agnes, the psychic on my block, was sitting on the stoop and she stopped me as I went by; she pointed out her husband. He was standing in the gutter with a weary dog who resembled some old stuffed Steiff toy. "We've been married thirty years," Agnes said. "We're very compatible: he hates people, I love them and talk to everyone. He can't see very well, but he has good legs. My legs are bad, but my vision is fine. Also, we have separate apartments."
I nodded. "See you later," I said. "I'm going to get something to eat; then I have to buy wine. I'm having a party." As I turned the corner along Bleecker Street I caught a whiff of beef. Garlic, packaged onion soup mix—not bad. I had the sensation of having experienced this before. It was nearly three in the afternoon.
Then I saw two men I knew; each of them was wheeling a stroller with a baby. "Hi, Eleanor," Mark said to me. I crossed the street to walk alongside them. "Our wives went to a baby shower," Mark said. "We're taking care of the babies. You know Beauregard, don't you?"
"Yeah," I said. I looked down at the baby Beauregard was wheeling. It was exceptionally homely.
"It's not mine," Beauregard said. "It's my niece."
"How are you, Eleanor?" Mark said. He gave me a pitying look. I hadn't seen him since before I broke up with Stash.
"Great, excellent," I said. "My career's going well, got a cute apartment—"
Mark looked nervous. "That's nice," he said. "We went to see 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears.'
"Did you enjoy it?" Beauregard asked his niece. The infant had a fat face and a sour expression; I thought she might be around one and a half.
"It was fine, thank you," she said.
The two men seemed very glum. "And how did you guys like 'Goldilocks'?" I said. Nobody answered. "There was a street fair yesterday on the next block," I said. "Maybe it's still there today. You could look." I pointed to my studded leather wrist band. "I purchased this there for a mere two dollars. I wish I had bought more. Some had spikes. Frankly, I'd like to have wrist bands up to my neck. Nobody would mess with me, then."
Beauregard suddenly perked up. "Where did you move to, Eleanor?" he said. "You look wonderful."
"Yeah, Eleanor," Mark said.
So I ended up inviting them to my party.
Then I went into a diner and selected a hamburger and French fries. I needed something to restore myself. The food seemed almost deliberately bad; this fascinated me. Ice-cold French fries, nearly uncooked; watery ketchup; a thin piece of meat between two cold slices of bread. Spiteful. I was giving off nervous vibrations—I kept looking at my watch as the hour drew late—and at this time of the day the only people in the place were precarious. I knew my atmosphere was having an influence. A bearded hippie type was harassing the waiter. "What's the matter?" he kept saying. The waiter didn't seem to speak any English, he was dark and surly. "Why are you in a bad mood?" the bearded man said. "Come here and I'll straighten you out. Where are you from?" The waiter didn't answer. "I think you're great," the hippie said. "You're sweet, but you're great."