Darkness falling. Heralds danger in this city. Walk over through the winding little paths of the park. Have fists clenched, ready to bust the first marauder in the chops who’s at large trying to mug you, get your money, stick a gun in your ribs or a knife in your guts. The skyscrapers looming out of the cold mist along Central Park South. Lights on yellow and warm in the windows. Snow beginning to fall. Sweeps and whorls down out of a leaden sky. To whitely annoint the shoulders of the lonely. Strauss waltz comes through the air from the skating rink. A voice on a loudspeaker announcing to clear the ice. Sylvia said she went there to skate when the rink at Rockefeller Center was closed.
“George the chauffeur, until he fell madly in love with me, would bring me. My figure skating always drew a watching crowd.”
Talk about the privileged rich. With nothing better for the soul to do than to go shopping, get facials, and have their hair done. On the Triumphington’s estate a dozen different designed bathrooms all over the monstrous house. And way out on their miles of lawns, they have a couple of handkerchief trees, specially shipped all the way from China. Blooms like a bunch of snow white handkerchiefs. All just so you could get excited at the full moon, seeing the white fluttering going on during a windy night. And maybe be reminded to blow your nose. Just the value of one of his Arab horses or couple of polo ponies would have been more than enough to see me through to the completion of my first concerto for flute and harpsichord and full orchestra.
O’Kelly’O emerging from the park. Crossing the street to walk under the marquee lights of the hotels. The little groups of strangers in town. From way out west. Texans in ten-gallon hats and cowboy boots. Their wives in fur coats. Waiting for taxis to take them to Broadway musicals. Doorman holding open doors and spinning those revolving. Saluting from the peaks of their caps as they are handed folding-money tips. At least it all looks bonhomie. And Sylvia said why didn’t I go see a very rich lady and noted patron of the arts who lives at the top of the Hampshire House on this Central Park South and is dedicated in her love of music and was known rarely to ever refuse a worthy cause, and might contribute to mine since she knew her. And here I am venturing to the doorway to look into the guarded lobby and have already got cold feet at the intimidation. Because like one of the rats living in their millions in this city I’ve already gone back down into the subway and some son of a bitch is glaring at me until I glare right back and make a goddamn fist in his face. He gets off at the next stop. If he didn’t, I would have killed him. No wonder there is murder, with people not minding their own business. To allow the citizens of this city to have some dignity in public and to otherwise ply their lives in the decent pursuit of peace and contentment, which doesn’t look like the case in a picture in the evening newspaper the guy’s reading across the aisle. A man committing suicide jumping out the window on the twentieth floor of a hotel and landing on top of a passing car, kills the driver and the car, out of control, kills two pedestrians. And just as you might expect as I reach what I now call home in Pell Street, some guy just finished pissing in the doorway invites me to join him in genital stimulation. Shake a fist in another face. And the masturbating desecrator goes mumbling off. Then up in the apartment just as I remove my overcoat and take the rest of the whole goddamn lining out of the sleeve, Sylvia in her leotards, who had worked up a sweat while exercising with her weights, laughs and thinks it is a big goddamn joke that my clothes are coming to pieces. Then when I tell her a little of what happened at her father’s club, it doesn’t take her long to embellish the embarrassment further.
“Well, what did you expect in bringing up a subject like that. You’re lucky he didn’t have you to drink at his other club, where he was going, which is even snootier and would have made you really feel like something the cat dragged in. And where if they let you get that far, someone might jump up from a backgammon table and say your more than slight deshabille was a distraction to their game and want you pretty quick dragged out again.”
“Well, by the way in bringing up subjects, he stopped your allowance.”
As a reminder of all the thousands of lonely miles across America, you could hear louder than usual traffic chugging by on its way to and from the Manhattan Bridge. The next day, Sylvia beat it uptown over to Sutton Place. And as the snow kept falling, the chill days went by getting chillier. To play the piano while composing, I wore gloves with the fingers cut off. Sylvia said that among other confidential reasons I couldn’t come to see her and luxuriate on Sutton Place was that her parents had important guests staying. This news cheered me up a lot. But at least with Sylvia gone, I could do something serious in cutting down on groceries. Walking down the Bowery to buy cheap vegetables and over to South Street, able to get fish from the Fulton Fish Market, whose motto was exactly suited to folk like me.
TO SUPPLY THE COMMON PEOPLE
WITH THE NECESSITIES OF LIFE
AT A REASONABLE PRICE
And until the rent had to be paid, one was surviving, just. Then one suddenly unseasonably sunny, balmy afternoon dawned. I was on my way back to Pell Street, faintly smelling of fish from the market because the Italian grocer where I had just bought a loaf of his delicious bread said he could always tell by the piscatory perfume when someone had been down on Fulton Street. He’d customarily give me a few free olives to taste and sing a few bars of Vincenzo Bellini’s opera Beatrice di Tenda. He had a beautiful voice, which astonished in the setting of vegetables, wine, and salami and always left a broad smile on my face. Which I was still smiling as I came around the corner of Pell Street and the Bowery. And there approaching me was a tall and sinewy lady in a red hat and green coat with a silver fox-fur collar, who came to a full stop directly in front of me. Both stopped in our tracks as we stared at each other. Her skin shone the silkiest shiniest black. I smiled an even bigger smile. And she uttered her first pleasantly unforgettable words.
“Hey, you know, I ain’t never seen such a beautiful smile on anyone’s face before. You, honey, I want to fuck.”
On such a cheerful note and not wanting to appear unfriendly, one naturally invited her for coffee back in the apartment so conveniently close by. Suddenly it was looking better than Sutton Place, and in the hall and up the stairs she had her clothes off the moment she stepped inside the apartment’s front door. As I followed her into the bedroom, I could now think of a thousand more confidential reasons why I wouldn’t be visiting Sutton Place. And glad the telephone wouldn’t ring because it wouldn’t be installed till tomorrow. Her name was Aspasia. She said it meant “welcome.” Out of the Deep South, she’d sung in a gospel choir. Her father was a preacher. She’d studied at the Art Students League up on Fifty-seventh Street, in the Fine Arts Building designed by Hardenbergh. She even knew her architecture. When she found I wrote music, it seemed like we had a lot to talk about, but instead, in a bout of savage fucking we broke the bed and it fell apart on the floor. Teeth marks all over me. And as I realized I had desecrated my marriage, I hear Aspasia’s words.
“Hey, composer man, that was a true honey fuck and you done justified my desire. Nothing good is ever going to come to you by itself. You have to go out and forget that’s what you’re looking for.”