“Sylvia, as you may know, Stephen, was cut off upon her marriage.”
Then just as abruptly as this information was offered, she quickly caught herself, nearly dropping her crocodile bag as she reached her hand over and placed it on my knee. Put there perhaps for reassurance as she faltered in assuming her schoolmarm persona.
“Stephen, we can’t really talk here. Shall we go. I just want to walk a bit.”
I counted out the coins to pay, like tiny steps down the ladder into impoverishment, pushing them one by one forward on the counter, adding a tip of a little pile of pennies. And we climbed the steps up and out of the subway, away from where the thundering roar of the trains was silencing our conversation. The brim of her cloche hat pulled down, she swayed a couple of times as we walked together along the street. But now in silence passing movie theaters and stores. Maneuvering through the shopping crowd streaming around the big department store entrance on the corner that my own mother, from the redoubt of her kitchen, used to surprisingly say was frequented by people with backgrounds totally without refinement. Then we heard screams and shouts. An elderly lady in a fur coat being robbed. The brigand running zigzag through the pedestrians and then bolting across the street. The squeal of tires of a car trying to stop. A thud. The thief facedown, unconscious in the gutter. A belligerently angry old lady thanking a Good Samaritan handing back her purse. A few seconds of life gone by in this haphazard city. Where the unjust, the corrupt, the criminal and the discourteous can suddenly get their comeuppance from the courteous, the good, the honest and the just. And as we walked on and passed a newsstand, there it was. Publicity rules all. Front page of the Daily News, a headline along with Dru’s photograph. And next to it a picture of the smoking, charred ruin in the woods.
DEATH IN
THE DOLL’S HOUSE
The gray sky turning dark and glowering. I could feel Dru stiffen next to me and her walk become hurried. And in sensing her anguish, it was as if Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings scratched across my brain to express her soul’s terrible pain with violins screaming out their raging notes. As it had come to me on that earlier day of tragic occurrence, when another young girl had died and left a darkened red stain on the bus station floor. And now on this very day with my own publicity a cipher of conspicuous ignominy. Referred to as an “out-of-work composer.” Yet no one can claim more resolve to achieve my purpose nor can feel stronger in the fight I shall fight. With a strength even greater than that power held by the richest woman on earth. Who could hire a crane to lift the Empire State Building right up out of its foundations and put it somewhere else like Max’s Chicago with a live elephant dancing on top. And garbed as Dru was, people looked at us as we passed in case she might be the famed reclusive Hollywood actress rumored to live a bit farther south on this East Side of town.
“Please, Stephen, tell me. Tell me that everything is meaningless. That there are no other worlds out beyond the sky that we will ever be able to take a spaceship to. I don’t want to believe that nothing matters. Even though it doesn’t.”
And as I watched the random faces pass and for the glint of knives, I was trying to think of an answer to everything not being meaningless. Especially having such recent firsthand information on the meaningful. Something to eat and somewhere to sleep. And if you were extra-lucky, a concert grand piano or a more portable violin to play. Then you could go on dreaming to thunderous applause with an orchestra having performed Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major. Shouts for an encore and flowers flooding the stage. And we pass another newsstand and even a vendor calling out, “Read all about it.”
“Oh God Stephen, it’s everywhere. Stacked on the newsstands all over New York.”
And what could be meaningful to all these people going by. Who can for a nickel read about burning death spelled out in the paper. Because there it was. Shouted out to the world. Happening to the rich and privileged. On the heels of the secret quiet death of Max. And to another lovely girl, in the bus station where wrong information was being given out at Princeton. Then Sylvia’s death. To which she calmly walked. Back to her most private little refuge, now to be seen in ruins by everyone including my favorite sister. Then by my whole family which wasn’t invited to the wedding and never met her. My mother who prays with her rosary beads every day, said even Protestants deserve a prayer and will say Hail Marys for the repose of Sylvia’s soul. And philosophize, saying that children brought with them adversity which could wear out the heart with worry. And now I am as if I were a ship, bow-on crashing through a vast ocean’s wild waves. Unleashing broadside salvos over the horizon. Not knowing in my turret if they will sink the enemy. And where you, if it’s you they’re aiming at, crouch low. It will do you no good at all if a shell direct hits. Just creates the dead to slip into the deep. And the victor on the sea swells rides away.
Walking now two of us in sorrow with her hand in mine. A gust of wind and first drops of rain falling. Waiting for the lights to change to cross west on Lexington Avenue. This widow. Who I was certain was now so sad that despite her gentle inebriation, she would never again be merry. But in just less than a minute I was wrong. As we reached Park Avenue on the corner where the Ritz Tower rose into the sky, her mood and disposition abruptly changed. Just as it did when she became the rigid schoolmarm, removing her sunglasses and gimlet eyed winking unwelcomingly at me. Now suddenly grabbing my arm, she stopped on the sidewalk. Mascara smeared around her reddened eyes.
“Dru, what’s the matter.”
“The matter is that I suddenly feel so awfully horny and desperately badly in need of a fuck.”
“Holy cow, Dru.”
“Put your arm around me, please. Give me a squeezing hug. And come on. Let’s go. Flag that taxi, sailor.”
Grabbing my arm. Her arm linked tighter around mine. Her fingers closed over my wrist, squeezing hard. As I open up the taxi door and shut it closed. Joining the flow of yellow Checker cabs up Park Avenue. As the rain now belts down and the taxi driver waits to ask, “Where do you want to go, folks,” and then the quiet reflection on this destination of a side street off Sutton Place. And now I was counseling myself. Not to break down and sink in an awful sea of guilt. That the wonderful word sailor sounded comforting to hear. And softened the sound of the words horny and fuck coming from Dru’s lips. Remembering when she said during our first clutching in bed together, “Of course, darling, when you want to be fucked by somebody, then you forget all your worries and all their faults.” Jesus Christ Almighty, whatever you expect from a woman, don’t believe it. Because it is always going to be something else you didn’t expect. And if you were expecting it soon, it would always be later. Or expecting it later, it would always be sooner.
Nearby steps up to a little park overlooking the river, the taxi stopping down this side street off Sutton Place. And some more of what I never expected. Paying the fare, which would now, less two dimes, leave me again flat miserable broke. And the taxi driver scratching his head, delivering two servants to their destination, because that’s where they worked.
“Just follow me, Stephen.”
Dru producing a key, we entered the black steel door and along to the service elevator. She slumped back against the elevator wall, her head bowed as we went up to her floor. And gently smiled as we stepped out on the landing to her pantry door where the delivery boy had masturbated in front of her. Gilbert taken ill and in the hospital with pneumonia. Other staff in the Adirondacks. The apartment empty. Dru casting her coat and hat aside, locking the door behind her, and taking my hand as we entered and went through the kitchen. Past a pile of chopped vegetables on the table. Tempted I was to put hand to and take and chew the healthy end of an unchopped carrot. But instead snatched three grapes from a bunch in a basket. As Dru grabbed a bottle by the neck and briefly put it to her lips.