When I awoke the next morning, I found myself alone again; I had been awakened by the front door buzzing. I wrapped myself in a sheet and grabbed a note that Glenn had left for me. I read it as I headed for the front door:
Sorry about last night. This is obviously a very unstable time for me. I’m not like this at all. I really don’t even know you and I feel disgusting dragging you through this. I’m willing to make an effort though.
Yours,
Glenn
When I finally went downstairs, I hesitated at the door. Suppose it was Adolphe wanting to scorch the earth. Peeking through the Venetian blinds, I checked out a youth standing on the front stoop with a knapsack that said, Rolling Stone Magazine. I watched him waving good-bye to a passing group of kids and then he rang the doorbell again. I figured that he was peddling subscriptions.
“We don’t want any,” I yelled though the door.
“Neither do I,” he yelled back. Opening the front door, he quickly marched in. He was in his early teens, wearing a Sid Vicious T-shirt, tight black pants, and combat boots. He didn’t seem surprised by my improvised toga.
“What are you selling?” I asked.
“I was about to ask you the same thing. I’m Tom, where’s Adolphe?”
“Glenn isn’t getting along with him just now,” I informed him.
“She’s getting along with you, isn’t she? My mom must have warned you about me.”
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“Glenn. Who do you think?”
“You’re lying,” 1 replied. There was no way that Glenn could have engendered this kid.
He dropped his bag to the floor, still retaining the straps in his fingers, “My mother is a young cutie named Glenda, she had me when she was just a teenybopper.”
“I never… she never even…”
“That Glenn’s quite a card, ain’t she?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” I asked with a slight parental condescension.
“I was about to ask you the same question,” he replied. Then he tugged the bag back up to his shoulder and mounted the stairs, three steps at a time.
1 couldn’t deal with this, so 1 quickly got dressed and left. On the subway 1 realized that I had completely overlooked the purpose of the day: dump the books, the car, and the relationship.
ELEVEN
By the time I got back to Manhattan, I had calmed down. While looking for the key standing outside Ternevsky’s loft, I heard a high voice speaking against a musical beat. Looking toward the large bay window, I could see Janus exercising intensely before the TV, she was wearing a very scanty bathing suit. Her tanned body was glistening with sweat as she bent and stretched, unaware of my presence. Quietly I backed out the door into the hall and reentered making a deliberate ruckus. This time when I entered the living room, she was aware of my presence, but she didn’t break her pace. Bending in different directions, she exposed the most intimate parts of that wonderful body only made more seductive by the scanty bathing suit. Finally she paused and calmly said, “I had to finish my ‘Jane Fonda Workout.’”
“Oh,” I replied while staring at the Napoleon bust to avoid staring at hers. The general’s eyes were chiselled permanently forward.
“I’m a wreck if I don’t do it at least once a day,” she said as she turned off the VCR, and then she stretched out on the sofa. Sunlight flooded over her and she made no effort to save herself from it. I retreated to the bathroom where I drew a bath. While the tub filled up I hunted up a towel, and I tried to keep to myself, but, whenever permissible, I looked hungrily at her. Since the house had virtually no walls, I saw a lot of her. Finally, just when I found one of those monogrammed towels, she spoke: “You probably think I’m odd trying to get a tan in the winter and all, but I’m always back in Nice when I feel the rays on my body.” She then peeked open one eye and glanced at me.
“I empathize completely,” I replied, not trying to make her feel at all threatened by me. The magnet was slow but powerful. I could only get closer, not further away. When she squeezed a dab of Aloe Vera Sunscreen into her palm, my unblinking eyes helped her hands rub it in. I was so excited that I couldn’t even get a hard-on. I tried to remind myself that I was being tested, a Job to her “Jehovess.” Closing my eyes, I concentrated: move away from the kryptonite, Superman.
With eyes still fastened shut, I pointed to the bathroom and declared, “My bath is ready.” I sat in the deep tub. With the hose attachment I ran icy cold water over my head and felt myself shrink. Then, opening my eyes, I saw her through a series of remarkably angled mirrors. She stood before the hall mirror, apparently unaware that she was in my line of vision. I started growing again. She was doing some kind of aerobic stretch. I ran the water over my head again.
My hands were trembling as I watched her under that freezing rain water.
Temptation was a spreading malignancy; schemes and deceptions were blistering out from the inventive half of my brain. Pulling the plug out of the drain hole, I arose and dressed. I pulled my pants and stretched my shirt over wet skin. Towelling myself off required too much patience. Socklessly I yanked on my shoes and marched past her without a word and right out the door.
Even though it was a clear and sunny day, it was chilly outside. I still had seven hours to kill before work. I walked up to the Loeb Student Center on Fourth and there I rested on one of those long sofas in the student lounge. I squeezed my jacket into a pillow and felt warm and secure and watched the lowlife huddling together outside in Washington Square Park. No sooner did I shut my eyes than did I hear, “Hey buddy boy.”
I opened my eyes to a large guard’s uniform with a visor for a face. “Break out the ID,” the security guard bullied.
“It’s at the dorm.”
“Then sleep at the dorm, son.”
“Come on, I pay your salary. I don’t tell on you guys when you sleep on the job.”
“Out,” he pointed with his club. I went out and crossed the street to the big NYU library that looks like a prison block. There, I fixed the collar of my filthy shirt and pinched my cheeks for some color; I tried to acquire that guarded NYU look. Slapping some student newspaper under my arm, I filed in closely behind a bunch of coeds.
“Can I help you?” a guard individualized me.
“No,” I replied, trying to continue, but he blocked my way through the little turnstile with his damned club.
I left and with nowhere else to go I joined the lowlife across the street, at Washington Square Park. Taking an empty bench, I curled up like a cat against the cold and tried to sleep, but the chill was too much. When I got to my feet, fifteen minutes later, my body was numb. Walking down Fourth, I made a left up Lafayette and turned on Astor Place. Looking about as I crossed that empty parking lot, I saw that the peddlers were out with their shit trying to get what they could for it. A bunch of assholes from Jersey were trying to spin the black rotating cube, a revolving sculpture located in the middle of Astor Square. I quickly checked out the vendors. While inspecting some antique lighters spread out on a blanket, the vendor suddenly rolled the whole operation before my eyes. A police car had pulled up and cops were impounding the merchandise. I walked over to Cooper Union and tried to enter, but they were even more thorough than NYU. So I went back to Astor Place. It was only a couple minutes later, but apparently the cops had left because just like pigeons after a loud noise, all the vendors had returned and were selling.