"I don't know," I said, trying to escape. "I was in SoHo the other day and a woman was carrying a large chimpanzee—the chimp was dressed in a suit and little boots. Strange, huh?"
"I saw some of your jewelry featured in Vogue," Ted said.
"Excuse me," I said. I locked myself in the bathroom. When I came out it appeared most of the wine was gone; I was finally able to get rid of my guests. It was a peculiar thing: each of the men seemed to think I had invited him because I was in love with him, when in fact just the opposite was true. Each one kissed me at the door and said not to worry, that he would call me soon. "Did you get to meet my friend Amy?" I said.
Apparently they had all taken her number.
I thought everyone was gone, but Mark and Beauregard and Jan had seated themselves on the couch and were polishing off a two-liter bottle of wine they must have hidden away. Since I could see they weren't going to leave, I lay down on the futon and held out my glass for another refill. "Oh, God," I said, clutching my head. "Remind me never to do this again."
They sat there like the Three Stooges, waiting to see what I would do next.
"This might have been easier on me if I had a boyfriend.'' I said. "Someone to share the responsibility with. I'm starting to think I'll never meet anyone."
"Let me tell you something," Beauregard said in a slurred voice. "You shouldn't act so desperate."
"Let me tell you something," I said. "I was just as desperate when I had a boyfriend. I consider life itself to be an act of desperation." Beauregard looked puzzled.
"She doesn't like to have value judgments placed on her," Jan said.
"Thank you," I said. Nobody said anything for a few minutes. The tape had come to the end and the room was quiet for the first time. "Well," I said again. "Thank God that's over."
"What is it that you had hoped to accomplish, Eleanor?" Mark said.
"It was a party," I said. "Where was Tina tonight?"
"I told her I didn't want her to come," Mark said. He was pretty looped. "I said I needed to go out without her sometimes." I wondered why in that case he was spending so much time with Beauregard. Obviously it wasn't that he wanted to be independent; he just didn't want to be with her.
"I think I miss Stash," I said. "So did I do anything terrible tonight?"
"You didn't do anything wrong," Beauregard said.
"No worse than anybody else," Mark said.
I was drunk, and exhausted. "I know it," I said. "One part of me knows that—but the other part of me berates myself constantly."
"You don't get what you think out of a relationship anyway," Jan said.
"So it's impossible then," I said.
Beauregard fumbled for a cigarette. "Damn, I keep forgetting," he said. "There's no matches. Wait a minute, why don't I just go light the cigarette from the stove?"
"It doesn't work," I said. I remembered how when I was a child my parents gave me instructions in how to use electricity —always hold a plug from the back, never turn on an appliance with wet hands. Surely they left out some essential directions.
"The stove doesn't work?" Beauregard said.
"I have to call Con Ed tomorrow," I said. Mark leaned forward and poured us some more wine.
Kurt and Natasha, a Relationship
Kurt, a handsome blond German artist, could be found almost every night in a different club. Though he always wore the latest fashions—oversized brocade jackets with gold satin lapels, silk bathrobes in tiger prints—he always seemed as if he should be dressed in lederhosen, marching with the Hitler Youth. He was in his late thirties, but with his pale blue eyes, his boyish, Luftwaffe face, many people thought of him as in his early twenties.
He was a fairly successful artist. He exhibited at a small gallery in SoHo—paintings and conceptual pieces about various instruments of torture. One such piece (never actually constructed) showed a copper-lined pool, to be filled with sulfuric acid. The idea was, as people came into the gallery to view the work, they would be forced to walk across narrow planks over the pool.
It was clear Kurt was well on his way to becoming a major art-world figure.
Natasha met Kurt at one of his openings. She was tall— almost as tall as Kurt—with masses of black hair, milky white skin, and green eyes. Though she was dressed conservatively, in a skirt and baggy top, she had a distinct aura about her: that of a Forty-second Street stripper.
Natasha was trying to start a small hair salon in the East Village. However, she was having a bit of trouble getting money. That night, at the art show, she decided she was going to pick up Kurt.
Following the art opening there was a dinner in Kurt's honor, and Natasha managed to get herself invited along. She got to the restaurant early, and stole the nameplate opposite Kurt's seat, where she arranged herself like a cheetah in an Avedon photo, about to dine on some particularly choice chipmunk.
By the time Kurt arrived, she had already consumed two vodka martinis and was at her most charming. Though Kurt, who had grown up in Berlin, was accustomed to dating blond women, he found himself quite infatuated with Natasha; as the guests were leaving, he told his date that he was tired and was going home alone. Then he whispered in Natasha's ear, "Why don't you come back with me to my place? We'll watch TV."
Kurt lived in a drafty loft, filled with plans, drawings, and models of his art. He had several large cages, built of steel and aluminum, in the center of the room. Cans of paint, oily rags, broken plates, newspapers were piled everywhere. The only place to sit was a mattress on the floor. "Sit down," he told Natasha, pushing her to the bed. He poured her a shot of vodka and told her to drink it quickly. As soon as she had put down the glass, Kurt took out a roll of adhesive tape, strapped Natasha's mouth closed, and wrapped her wrists together behind her back. He felt her struggling on the bed; he ripped off her clothes and began to make love to her.
When he had finished, he lay back on the mattress and looked over at Natasha. Then he picked up a cigarette and lit it. Her green Russian eyes, he saw, were wide with fear. Slowly he peeled off the bandage from her mouth.
"When you were a kid," she said, "which program on TV was your favorite? 'The Munsters' or 'The Addams Family'?"
Kurt thought Natasha must really be very drunk; there was every reason for her to have been terrified. He decided to make love to her again, this time without the bandages, but it was not as satisfying to him as the first time had been. "I have to get some sleep," he said, "I'm just exhausted."
He lay back on the bed, but found it was almost impossible to keep his eyes shut; Natasha was wide awake, talking, and cleaning his apartment. She swept the floor, and piled all the junk and garbage neatly into one of the cages.
Around six in the morning he got up and made them both some coffee.
"Don't you ever sleep?" he said.
"No," Natasha said. "It must be something genetic. No one in my family has ever needed to sleep. I remember back in high school—my dates used to drive me home at two in the morning, and the whole block would be dark, except for my house. My date would say, 'Do you think something's wrong?' 'No,' I'd say, 'it's just my family.' My sisters, my mother, my father—all of us were awake all night."
Within a short time Natasha and Kurt were living together. Kurt would make Natasha clean the house while dressed in Frederick's of Hollywood brassieres and thigh-high boots; sometimes he would chain her to the radiator and go out for half the day.
It was Kurt's idea to put on performance pieces in Natasha's hair salon, at night—she performed, and if any members of the audience wanted their hair cut, her two assistants took care of business. Kurt knew everyone in town, and not only got Natasha a lot of clients, but convinced the right crowd to come to her place and hang out.