Chapter seven

On New Year’s Eve I met a girl named Julie. A model of some sort, I never did get it quite straight. She had a great figure, though. And masses of brown curls. She talked a lot but she was always game for something. The weather was bad all that month, and we were thrown together too much indoors. It ended with a hell of a fight.

By then it was mid-February, and everyone on St. Mark’s Place—everyone in the city, I guess—was feeling tired of the winter. We threw parties—lots of parties. It seemed to be the only thing to do. There were a lot of smoky rooms filled with people talking, dancing, impelled toward each other by the threat of the cold beyond the walls. There was a lot of loud music battering at the windows while the rain and snow battered back. There were a lot of close encounters, face to face. In the smoky rooms, the way a woman did her eyes, or the color of her eyes, the color of her lipstick or the way her lips moved as she was talking, the curve of her cheek or her nose, or the lines of her body falling away under the line of my gaze—and sometimes all of it at once—would come to me intensely. I’d be talking about art or politics or MTV and suddenly my mind would be stumbling in a haze of need, suddenly the whole weight of the naked winter would be pressing in around me, and I’d be staring at her, whoever she was, and deducing all the warmth of her from the clues of her attractions, and imagining the desolation of the cold night without her. That was the winter, I remember, when the touch of a woman’s body in the dark had an even rarer pleasure for me than usual, a special power. It rained and snowed so damned much, and the streets were all so gray and dying-like, that it would seem to me as if the breasts of her and the flow of her belly and the warm inside of her were all there was between me and the brink of something barren and unbearable.

I wasn’t at home a whole lot. I hardly saw Charlie or Angela at all. I missed them, but it seemed to me the smart money was on moving fast. McGill was getting ready for his trip to South America, and I was working the street again, finagling my way into the drug scene to get him the names of some suppliers. It was just what I wanted: another world. Crack dens in the dead of night. Everything smoky and dizzy and down. Moving fast, thinking fast, living in the crazy eyes of rocked-out fiends tumbling and tumbling from their nests in the high trees. Home again to the St. Mark’s parties, and the warm bodies in cold apartments, and the sleeplessness and the streets again, and the sense of distance from everyone.

Then, after a while, McGill was gone. He took me out to dinner at Doobie’s the night before his flight. We sat at a little table by the window, looking out on bleakness and Bleecker Street, the drab Village theaters and poster shops in the drab winter rain.

Mostly, I think, he talked about the book. He congratulated me on my research. He outlined his plans. Told me to take it easy for the month he was away. I don’t know what he said. I was hardly listening.

So it seemed to me as if it came out of nowhere:

“Tell me something, North. Did anything happen between you and Susannah?”

I didn’t move. It was the first time he’d mentioned her since Christmas.

“Like what?” I said.

He spread his hands. “I’m not trying to pry, old friend,” he said. “No kidding, I’m not. I just want to know: Did you two get along all right?”

“Sure,” I said. “Sure we did. She’s a grand girl.” He was silent. I couldn’t help but ask: “Why, has she said anything?”

“No, no, no. Nothing like that. I just want to … I mean, there was nothing …?”

I raised my wineglass in front of my mouth. “What do you want to know, Carl?”

He grinned tightly. He hissed through the grin and shook his head.

“I see I’ve fucked this up,” he said. He rubbed his hand over the sharp stubble on his chin. I watched him as he wrestled with something deep down in his narrowed eyes. “There are things I have to tell you,” he said. “Should’ve told you before.” He shook his head again. “Shit.”

“Look—”

He held up his hand.

“There’re things about Susannah. About Susannah, but the thing is, North—”

“Forget it,” I said. I glanced at my watch. “Lookit: it’s late. You’ve got a plane to catch in the morning. Whatever it is has waited till now, it can wait till you get back.”

McGill stared at me a long time. But I didn’t back down; I stared back. Finally he lowered his eyes to the table and when he raised them again, they were clear.

“Sure,” he said. “It’s waited till now, it can wait another month.”

“Sure,” I said.

“I mean, it’s been a nice dinner.”

“That’s right.”

“Sure.”

So he was gone, and I was moving fast again through the dead of winter and the life of lovers, and the cold was at the windows, but I paid it no mind.

Then one day, a Saturday at the beginning of March, it stopped. An oversight on my part: I found myself with nothing to do. Stupid of me. There was plenty of rocking going on all over, and plenty of places I’d’ve been welcome if I’d dropped in. But somehow, by the time I got around to it, it seemed like too much of an effort. I decided to stop in at Ingmar’s, have some dinner, and let it be.

The café was crowded, smoky, noisy. A band was playing jazz at the front of the room. A small, nervous flutter had been rising in my stomach. It died away as I found a seat in the crush.

Peter came to my table. I ordered a scotch before dinner. I sat and listened to the band. I felt good—warm—with the shoulders and the conversation and the music all pressing in around me. Peter came back. I ordered another scotch. I caught the eye of a woman across the room, but then turned away. Tonight, as I say, it seemed too much trouble.

So I sat and I listened to the band and I had another scotch, and I thought of the night on the street through the window behind me and I ordered another. At some point the music began swirling in my brain like finger paints and I grew woozy. Peter leaned over me and whispered in my ear.

“North, you don’t drink that much, remember?”

“Oh yeah,” I said, “I must’ve misplaced my personality. Calls for a drink.”

“North, it’s midnight …”

“What’re you, my watch?”

He shook his head at me. “North …” he said. “What’s happened to you, man?” And he wove away from me between the bodies.

So I had another just to show him who was boss, and then decided I knew when I wasn’t wanted. I lumbered to my feet, struggled into my jacket. I stood still for a moment and took a long look at the dull dark outside. Then I went to the door and pushed my way out.

I started walking. Going home. Watching the pavement. Drunk. Watching my feet moving. Fast, fast, fast they were moving. Oh yes. I was drunk. No doubt about it. Every grain in the concrete of the sidewalk seemed chiseled by the streetlights into the stonework of reality. Every smell—the garbage, and the old rain, and the exhaust of passing taxis—seemed viscous in my nostrils. Every inch of my face seemed alive to the stinging cold. Drunk I was. Drunk. Indubitably.

I stopped. Walking, I mean. I stopped and looked around. I was in the East Village somewhere. I was standing in front of a seedy bar; a green box of a place with black windows. I peered at my feet reproachfully.

“I thought you were going home,” I said to them. There was no reply. They carried me inside.

I heard her voice as I stepped into the yellow darkness of the place. It came to me like a bright idea. It throbbed over the empty tables. Down the sodden line of stubble-headed leather-bellies leaning their elbows against the brass rail of the bar. I was in McCullough’s. Hell, I knew that. It was the dive where Angela sang sometimes. Sure. There she was, up on the stage, under the spotlight, far away at the other end of the room. I stationed myself at the rail. I ordered a beer. I drank and I watched her.

Oh man, that girl could rock. Oh man, she rocked that night. Rocked it all, all out to the staring emptiness. Some willowy splash of beard was trampolining half mad with his guitar behind her. A wild drummer girl, her hair thrashing, was thrashing the drums with machine-gun speed. And Angela rocked on. Her long body waved like a stream of cigarette smoke and that wicked little face of hers was as wet and hazy as it is when she makes love.

I thought about that. I stared in my beer awhile. I thought about it some more and grew melancholy. I looked at my watch. It was nearly two. She was off at two. I waited.

The music stopped suddenly. The set was done. Angela took a long step with her long legs and came down off the stage. She walked to the bar, leaned in next to me and ordered a beer. I stared at her. She put her arm around my shoulders. She put her face close to mine.

“Ooh, you smell good. Like liquor,” she said.

“There’s a perfectly good explanation for that.”

“You come here for the ambience or to listen to me sing?”

“What is ambience, anyway?”

“It’s what they take you away in if you use long words in here.” I laughed. Angela kissed me. “It’s good to see you, North,” she said. “Where the hell have you been?”

We walked back to her place together. We held hands, and when I made her laugh, she leaned against me. I kissed her hair. Her long black hair. It smelled of smoke and shampoo.

She had a studio in a Chelsea brownstone. Two flights up. Sparkling clean and neat. Brick walls and a view of the drunk lying in the gutter below. There was a sofa that folded out into a bed. There were bookcases. There were lots of black and white photos of tree branches and staring faces: I think she got them free at the lab where she worked.

We dropped our jackets on the couch, and I sat down next to them while she went into the kitchen.

“You have a choice,” she called to me. “Coffee or get out.”

“I’ll take it black,” I said.

I turned on the tube while I waited. An old movie was on. Wuthering Heights. I stared at it.

“Why don’t you get cable?” I said.

Angela came in with the coffee. “What? Oh, for Christ’s sake, North, turn that off.”

She put the mugs on the coffee table. She killed the set with a flick of her wrist. She sat down next to me.

“What are you trying to do to yourself?” she said.

“I haven’t decided.”

She didn’t answer. She looked at me. I watched her breathing under her black sweater. She watched me watch her. My eyes ran down to her lap. She watched me.

“Oh hell,” I said. And I reached for her. I took her face in my hands, brought her to me, kissed her for a long time.

“Unfair,” she whispered to me. “Definitely unfair.”

I kissed her. She came into my arms. I kissed her again, my hands moving over her. She felt warm and soft inside that sweater.

“Let me go,” she whispered.

“No.”

I kissed her. She pulled away from me.

“Come back,” I said.

“No.”

We regarded each other across a small wilderness of sofa. Then Angela sighed and turned away. She got to her feet. There was a leather director’s chair against the wall to my right. She wandered over to it and slumped into it, her legs stretched out in front of her.

“Toss me a cigarette,” she said.

I dug the pack out of her coat pocket, took one for myself, and tossed the rest. I smoked and waited.

“I’m not going to do this, North,” she said finally. “Neither are you.”

“Why not?”

“You’re not drunk enough.”

“That’s an insult. I’m plenty drunk.”

“You’re drunk enough about Charlie maybe, but you’re not drunk enough to use me.”

“Give me a chance.”

She snorted. “I mean it, North. I don’t do stand-in work.”

I snorted back at her. I stood up and went to the window, looked down at the drunk. I blew smoke against the pane.

“What is this?” I said. “Is this the scene where you sacrifice your feelings and send me away for my own good?”

“Yes.”

“I saw that in a movie once.”

“Good for you.”

“More than once.”

“Then you ought to have it down pat.”

“You’re funny,” I said.

I heard her shift in the chair behind me. I saw her shadow rise and move toward me on the glass.

“North,” she said. She was standing at my shoulder. “You know I could never tell you to go.”

“I know.”

“So just get out, okay?”

I gazed at her.

“Like, now,” she said.

“What for? You’re not gonna cry, are you?”

“Goddamn it.”

“Okay.” I went to the door. I held up my hand to her.

“Hey, North,” she said. Her voice broke.

“Yo.”

“Just do the whole goddamned lower end of Manhattan a favor, okay? Go get yourself the girl you love.”

Sometime after first light, Charlie came home, pried me from the toilet bowl, and put me to bed. I awoke that afternoon in a philosophical mood. Should I drink a gallon of orange juice, I asked myself, or should I rip my face off with a rake? I couldn’t say. I couldn’t say anything. I could barely move. But I did. I got up. I shaved. I puked. I drank the juice. I showered, took some aspirin, put myself together. Then I went into the front room and woke up Charlie.

“Yo, Charlie,” I said.

The lump under the sheet moved.

I said: “I tried to make your woman last night.”

“Bâtarde,” he muttered. “Though you fly to the ends of the earth, you cannot escape my vengeance.”

The sheet fluttered gently with his snores.

“Yo,” I said. “I’m leaving. I’ll be back tonight. If I’m not back tonight, I’ll be back another night. I may never be back. Take my messages.”

The sheet shifted again. Slowly, Charlie peeked out. He sat up, rubbing his face. He looked around him. “What day is this?” he said.

“Sunday. March sixth.”

He fell back in bed. “Aw, shit,” he said, “I had the fifteenth.”

“What?”

“We had a pool on how long you’d hold out.” He pulled the sheet up, vanished beneath it.