I looked out the windows to the backyard; it had been paved over with bricks, and small trees were stuck into redwood planters. It was too cold to go outside, but Ray said I should sit down for a minute. He pointed to a gray sofa. "I'm in the middle of working on a project," he said. "For my parents. They bought a house upstate and hired me to renovate."
I said I was about to go and give a deposit on an apartment uptown.
"We're just subletting a place right now," Ray said. "As soon as this place is finished, in a couple of weeks, then we can move in."
"Who's we?" I said.
"I got married last month," Ray said. He looked at me with a wry expression. I thought he was waiting for me to burst into tears. "My father got us this place as a wedding present."
"Oh, how great," I said. "Congratulations! Who is she?"
My voice sounded artificial, not because I was upset over this news but because I just didn't care. "Someone I know?" I said.
"No, no," Ray said. "She's a secretary at my firm; she just started work there a few months ago."
"You didn't know her before?"
"No," Ray said. "It was just one of those things that happen fast."
"Great," I said. His small, worried eyes looked at me with a combination of rage and love.
"I have to get back to work now," Ray said. "I'm glad you stopped by. I had hoped we wouldn't lose touch. Listen, would you like to have dinner with me? Just the two of us?"
"When?" I said.
"I don't know," Ray said. "Tonight."
"Um," I said. "Well, I have a bunch of things to do. Why don't I call you later this afternoon?"
"Okay," Ray said. "And if you can't make it tonight, maybe we could have lunch next week. Do you still have all the furniture I gave you?"
"Oh, yes."
"I'll also give you my number at work."
I took his phone number, written on the back of a card. Out on the street I went to a nearby phone booth and called my mother, who was having lunch with friends in the city. We met on Thirty-fourth Street to go shopping for shoes. My mother bought me two pairs: gray pumps, with a medium heel, and a pair of purple sandals, which resembled, at least as far as I was concerned, those worn by French prostitutes. They weren't practical, but I liked them.
A while later I saw Ray's father on television—a morning talk show—kicking a mattress to demonstrate construction. He was a vigorous man, and he chuckled to the host as he ripped open the ticking and pulled out the stuffing.
You and the Boss
First, you must dispose of his wife. You disguise yourself as a chambermaid and get a job at a hotel where Bruce is staying with his wife on the tour. You know you are doing the right thing. Bruce will be happier with you. Does Bruce really need a wife with chipmunk cheeks, who probably talks baby talk in bed? You are educated, you have studied anthropology. You can help Bruce with his music, give him ideas about American culture. You are a real woman.
You go into Bruce's room. His wife is lying on the bed, wearing a T-shirt that says "Number 1 Groupie" and staring straight up at the ceiling. You tell Bruce's wife that Bruce has arranged for you to give her a facial and a massage: it's a surprise. "Isn't he sweet?" she says with a giggle.
You whip out an ice pick, hidden under your clothes, and quickly give her a lobotomy: you've watched this technique in the Frances Farmer story on TV. Bruce's wife doesn't even flinch.
After the operation, you present her with a bottle of Valium and an airplane ticket to Hollywood; the taxi's waiting outside. To your amazement, she does exactly as you tell her.
You're a bit worried about how Bruce will adjust to her absence, and your presence, but when he returns to the room, at three in the morning, he doesn't even seem to notice the difference. You're dressed in her nightie, lying in bed, looking up at the ceiling. Bruce strips down to his Jockey shorts and gets into bed with you. "Good night, honeybunch," he says.
In the morning he still doesn't seem to realize there's been a change in personnel. In real life, Bruce is larger than life. Though he appears small on television and on record covers, when you stand next to him for the first time you understand that Bruce is the size of a monster. His hands are as large as your head, his body might take up an entire billboard. This is why, you now know, he must have guitars made specially for him.
At breakfast Bruce puts away a dozen eggs, meatballs, spaghetti, and pizza. He sings while he eats, American songs about food. He has plans, projects, he discusses it all with his business manager: the Bruce Springsteen Amusement Park, the Bruce Springsteen Las Vegas Casino, a chain of Bruce Springsteen bowling alleys.
Bruce decides that today you will buy a new home.
You are very excited about this prospect: you imagine something along the lines of Graceland, or an elegant Victorian mansion. "I'm surprised at you," Bruce says. "We agreed not to let my success go to your head."
He selects a small ranchhouse on a suburban street of an industrial New Jersey town. "You go rehearse, darling," you say. "I'll pick out the furnishings."
But Bruce wants to help with the decoration. He insists on ordering everything from Sears: a plaid couch, brown and white, trimmed with wood; a vinyl La-Z-Boy recliner; orange wall-to-wall carpeting. The bedroom, Bruce decides, will have mirrors on the ceiling, a water bed with purple satin sheets, white shag carpeting, and two pinball machines. Everything he has chosen, he tells you, was made in the U.S.A.
In the afternoon, Bruce has a barbecue in the backyard. "Everybody's got to have a hobby, babe," he tells you. He wears a chef's hat and has his own special barbecue sauce— bottled Kraft's, which he doctors with ketchup and mustard. Though he only knows how to make one thing—dried-out chicken—everyone tells him it is the best they've ever had.
You think it's a little strange that no one seems to notice his wife is gone and you are there instead; but perhaps it's just that everyone is so busy telling Bruce how talented he is that they don't have time.
Soon you have made the adjustment to life with Bruce.
The only time Bruce ever feels like making love is when the four of you—you, Bruce, and his two bodyguards—are driving in his Mustang. He likes to park at various garbage dump sites outside of Newark and, while the bodyguards wait outside, Bruce insists that you get in the back seat. He finds the atmosphere—rats, broken refrigerators, old mattresses, soup cans —very stimulating. He prefers that you don't remove your clothes; he likes you to pretend to fight him off. The sun, descending through the heavy pollution, sinks slowly, a brilliant red ball changing slowly into violet and then night.
When Bruce isn't on tour, rehearsing with his band, recording a record or writing new songs, his favorite pastime is visiting old age homes and hospitals, where he sings to senior citizens until they beg him to stop. His explanation for why he likes this is that he finds it refreshing to be with real Americans, those who do not worship him, those who do not try to touch the edges of his clothing. But even the sick old people discover, after a short time, that when Bruce plays to them they are cured.
The terminally ill recover after licking up just one drop of Bruce's sweat. Soon Bruce is in such demand at the nursing homes that he is forced to give it up. There is nothing Bruce can do that doesn't turn to gold.
One day Bruce has a surprise for you. "I'm going to take you on a vacation, babe," he says. "You know, we were born to run." You are thrilled. At last you will get that trip to Europe; you will be pampered, you will visit the couture houses and select a fabulous wardrobe, you will go to Bulgari and select a handful of jewels, you will go to Fendi and pick out a sable coat. You will be deferred to, everyone will want to be your friend in the hope of somehow getting close to Bruce.