Karl’s father was dying from pancreatic cancer, he told the staff in a meeting, and he was going back to Utah to be with his family. Nicole burst into tears. No! someone shouted.
Let’s quit, I wrote on a corner of a notebook page, and slipped it to Rose.
Rose wrote on the back of that scrap and slipped it to me. I don’t know, it said.
That Sunday, because Rose was still not sure we—or she—should quit and go freelance, I suggested that we take that day to walk around the city, starting at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, to talk and come to a final decision. We started at seven in the morning because we wanted the city to ourselves. Wanted the quiet. It was August and the sun was already making us sweat.
We walked through Chinatown, stopping here and there to admire the oranges at all the fruit and vegetable stands.
I never want to eat them, I said. I just want to hold them and sniff them.
Me too, she said. I guess we’ll get scurvy one day.
From there we walked into Little Italy, and on to Mott Street, where Rose’s grandmother was born, in a tenement building, Rose said as we walked, whose street number Rose’s grandmother always claimed to have forgotten.
My people would kill me if they knew I was quitting a perfectly good job to try to write, Rose said.
So would my people, I said. My father in particular. Which is why I’m not telling him.
Rose’s look: dubious. And in fact, I had just decided that on the spot, partly to convince Rose, and partly to convince myself.
Who do we think we are, walking away from perfectly good money, I said, is the question we’re asking ourselves, in the voices of our ancestors.
Is the money that good? she said. But yes. As your people and mine might say: Who do we think we are?
The hired help? I said. Because sometimes—often—I felt deluded to want what I wanted.
Rose laughed. Yeah. When is that going to end? With the daughters we’ll never have, or with the daughters they’ll never have, or what?
Who did we think we were?
When we were girls, we thought we were Ella of All-of-a-Kind Family and Laura Ingalls of Walnut Grove and Francie Nolan of Williamsburg. Despite being made well aware of the history that had conspired to make us very comfortable as we read in our twin beds, we felt very little distance between our suburban lives and the lives of these girls. We were just as delighted by what delighted them—new dresses, school pageants, music lessons, trees, boys—and had intense curiosity for what we ourselves had not experienced. As we walked, Rose and I talked of the way those scenes, those homes, those streets, still lingered in our minds. Talked, too, of Caddie Woodlawn and Laura Ingalls and Anne Shirley, and of the romance of making something out of nothing—it was necessity, it was poverty, we knew, that conjured hard candy out of maple syrup poured on cast-iron pans full of snow, but we were fascinated by that magic and those books made us long to live in a dugout by the banks of Plum Creek.
Why had we loved those immigrant and pioneer stories so much? Did we already want to escape cars and supermarkets and malls and highways? Did we already know we wouldn’t want much—that is to say, wouldn’t want much in the way of material goods? Were we made too happy by the commemoration of small earth-bound pleasures to want to see what might live in outer space and inside dragon-guarded castles? Were our own immigrant ancestors too much with us?
Yes, said Rose.
At noon, the sun high and white in the sky, we drifted toward Washington Square Park and wended our way through guitars, trumpets, keyboards, pigeons, sleepers, readers, lovers, chess-players, cops. Large and tranquil dogs sleeping like lions on the blacktop and toddlers popping like corn all over the grass.
We can live on beans, I said, as we walked through the arch.
How much do you like beans?
Rose told me about a TA she’d had in college whom she once overheard talking about having found a quarter in the couch that day, a Thursday, which meant the TA could get a Snickers from the vending machine, a Snickers, with peanuts, because that was protein, which meant she could tide herself over until Friday at noon when she got paid.
I think about that all the time, she said. I don’t ever want to claw through a couch looking for money. I don’t ever want to be that broke if I can help it. And I can help it. By not quitting.
I didn’t want to be broke, either. I lived in fear of being broke, and that story Rose told about the Snickers and the quarter made my blood run cold. But my desire to see how seriously I could take myself without the scaffolding of school in place—how seriously I could take myself before I caved—was stronger.
What’s scaring you? I said.
The number of times my mother made us scrambled eggs for dinner. Having to use baking soda to brush my teeth because my mother didn’t think we should splurge on toothpaste that week. Shoplifting a dress from J. C. Penney for a seventh grade dance and not getting caught.
You can’t argue with someone’s childhood. But I tried.
You’re forgetting about the money we made from the bar. We each have about three months’ rent saved up.
The equivalent of a quarter in the couch, she said.
We could work at the bar again. Or waitress.
I didn’t go to college so I could do something you only need a tattoo to qualify for.
Rose. Because I could not say what I felt myself about to say, which was: You sound like your mother.
Why aren’t you scared? she said.
I am scared, I said. But I’m also tired of watching other people get what I want.
Me too, said Rose.
The night before Karl left, Tracy threw him a party at a bar located just inside the entrance to the 1/9 at the Fiftieth Street station, in a space that had been formerly occupied by a shoeshine stand. It was less a bar than a cave of an unfinished basement whose concrete floors and walls were painted fire-engine red. It had no name—it did not need one—but we all called it Radio City because the red matched the shade on the walls closing in on the naked light bulb in the William Eggleston photo on the cover of the Big Star record. The jukebox and old wooden bar top had been imported from an Irish hole-in-the-wall a few blocks deeper into Hell’s Kitchen that had been trying to turn itself into a sports bar and wanted to hide its petticoats. Open bar, said the invitation, from 9:00 p.m. to first light, and that night Rose heard Tracy—who was drunk in a way we’d never seen, which is to say that we could tell she was drunk because she was talking a lot—telling another girl that she’d paid for the open bar without actually really paying for the open bar, because she and the owner, who used to be a lighting tech for Megadeth, went to high school in Forest Hills together, and the two of them had unfinished business Tracy thought she could trade on, but now Tracy felt guilty because he was so fucking sweet and all she’d wanted was free booze for Karl, which really wasn’t much of a gift, free booze, what the fuck did that matter, some fucking open bar, when Karl had—and then some couple started a fight right next to Rose and she couldn’t hear the rest of it. Karl’s face in the dark, floating and darting about like the aftereffects of a flash gone off, looked happier than I thought I’d ever seen it, younger than I thought I’d ever seen it, so free of worry and reserve that I almost ran up to Tracy to tell her not to worry, it was worth it.
The place got so crowded and loud so quickly that at midnight the owner shut off all the lights, pulled the plug on the jukebox, and shooed everyone out of the bar with a folding chair. He had to carry at least one person up the stairs and back onto Fiftieth Street, where the sidewalk had filled up with shouting and meandering. Everyone was drunk, sweaty, and borderline belligerent in their joy.
Out on the street Rose lit a cigarette and Nicole asked if she could try one. Rose was in the middle of handing one over to her when Karl appeared beside us. He said nothing, just put one arm around me and one arm around Rose, and held us tight.
What’s gotten into you? I said to him.
Yeah. What gives? Rose said. You’re groping us in front of the children.
I have had a lot to drink, he said. He touched his nose to my cheek, rubbed it up and down, slowly. I became instantly wet.
Take advantage of him, said Rose. He’s a mess.
He is a mess, I said to Rose. Stalling. I searched her face. I saw no animosity, no anger, no irony. He moved his mouth over to my ear and whispered Somebody needs to put me in a cab.
Wow, said Nicole, who had just tuned in to the conversation. She stared at Karl, who now had his head buried into Rose’s neck. This is amazing.
Are you testing me? I said to Rose. Because I was a little drunk, too. Is this some kind of loyalty test?
You’re crazy! she said. Her eyes were full of delight at the mess we were all making out on the street, at the mess she was now queen over. Get out of here! Go! Take him home! If you don’t I’ll be pissed.
I wanted him so badly I took her at her word.
There are no Roses in Utah, said Karl.
Just mountains and cactuses, said Rose.
I’m serious, he said, and untangled himself from the two of us.
We don’t want you to go either, Karl, said Rose. She kissed him on his cheek.
Do you have a condom? Nicole said to me. Make sure you have a condom.
Rose laughed.
In the back seat of the cab I’d hailed he curled up on his side and put his head in my lap.
Will you do something for me? he said.
I would do anything for you, I said, keeping my voice bright and ironic so that even if he remembered the words he would always wonder whether they had been a joke.
Don’t be jealous of Rose, he said.
A few minutes later he fell asleep, despite the 1010 WINS playing at top volume, and his head sunk into my thighs. I brushed the tops of his bristles with my fingers, felt his skin under the hair, drew stars with my fingers on his skull the way I used to draw them on fogged-up car windows. He did not stir. When the cab pulled up in front of his building in Cobble Hill, I tapped his elbow with my middle finger three times—pressing E on the keys of a piano, testing the depth of its tones. He sat up, slowly, took a breath, and pushed it out through puffed cheeks. I got out of the cab and handed three twenties to the driver.
You don’t have to do that, he said, staring at me across the hood of the car.
Too late, I said.
I think I’m almost sober again but I want to sit here until I know for sure, he said, once we entered the brownstone. He sat down on the heavy wood stairs in the vestibule. A green carpet, tough as Astroturf, stained, its fibers fraying, covered the floor, and the humidity of the night mingled with the years of stale cigarette smoke trapped in the white stucco walls—smoke that might have already been stale the year we were born. I took a seat three steps below him, and turned my body so that I could curl up and rest my head on his lap. All I could see were his knees, his Doc Martens, and the carpet, and because his face was hidden from mine it made me bold.
Tell me what you think of me, I said.
He laughed. I think you know.
I could tell you what I think about you, I said, and did.
I think you idealize people, he said, when I finished. But he sounded a little unsure of his own interpretation, and I had felt him listening, absorbing the sound, sitting quietly, as if listening to a fire or waves.
I think you spend too much time trying to protect yourself, I said.
Well, he said. Then: You don’t miss a thing, so I have to believe you.
I don’t want to go home, I said, made even bolder by his compliment.
I don’t want to hurt you.
How would you hurt me?
I’ll never come back here, and you’ll never leave.
Someone on the floor above opened a door. Neither of us moved or spoke. Karl turned his head toward the top of the stairs. The person listened for a second and shut the door, quietly. Now we whispered.
And I don’t think you really want to be involved with anyone, he said.
He might have been right—I might have only wanted to be involved with him—but I would not admit it. I said:
Well, now you’ve hurt me, so you might as well sleep with me.
He laughed again. I break it, I buy it?
Something like that.
Don’t be hurt, Charlotte. His voice, my name. It turned the word into a kiss. I didn’t mean it as an insult.
A passing siren forced a pause.
I don’t want to go home, I said.
You can come up, but I—
That’s fine, I said, and it was, because I would do anything for him.
He led me up the stairs to his apartment—hot, stuffy, unsurprisingly neat, sparsely furnished—and then up to the doorway of his bedroom, which was just big enough for a full-size bed and a sliver of a wooden nightstand. He took off all his clothes. I felt him watching as I took off mine.
You don’t get to watch, I said.
It’s too bad we’ll never get to the part where you boss me around and I like it, he said, still watching.
Yes, especially because we’ve already gotten to the part where you boss me around and I like it.
Very funny, as usual, he said, and climbed on top of the bed.
I followed. We shifted to face each other. His pale skin, the moon turning his long body longer. Eyes searching and alert. Then he faced the wall, brought my left arm around his waist, and said Now don’t let go. The last thing I remember: nestling up close to him, as close as I could get, the front of my knees locked into the back of his, burying my face in his shoulder blades, thinking that his skin smelled like skies heavy with rain.
In the morning, I dressed in the living room then walked around his apartment committing everything to memory. All the scavenged and borrowed furniture seemed to hang together despite having been scavenged and borrowed—even the table in the kitchen, round, pebbled-glass top, white metal rim, white wrought iron legs, that had clearly been designed for a concrete patio. An empty French press sat on top. Of course a French press: an affectation, but one that helped him avoid waste of both materials and electricity. Although that kind of prudence was its own affectation, too. The couch and the pot holders and the dish towels were all navy blue, just like his bedspread and his sheets. As if any departure from that color, anywhere, would make too loud a noise in the forest of his enemy. Examined the pictures of his sisters and his brothers and his mother that sat on the mantel of the marble ghost of a fireplace. Everyone looked like they could take a joke, which made me wonder, for a split second, whether Karl had been adopted. Walked back and forth in front of the bookshelves to see if they would tell me something I didn’t already know. They didn’t. I pulled a book down from the shelf to see what his marginalia would say.
SMUG PRICK, he’d written in his usual small caps on a page of a volume of Lacan’s seminars: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge. Karl. I put it in my bag. I needed a souvenir and I’d been meaning to read it for years. Then I left. To stay would be to beg.
On the walk home I crossed over the Union Street bridge and stopped to look out at the algaed surface of the canal, at the tarped-up boats that appeared to be operational houseboats or might be floating coffins, the low brick buildings, the water towers, the clouds. I could never not stop and look whenever I crossed over that bridge. It was a poisoned body of water, but a body of water all the same, its conversation with the sky forcing stillness on all the speed around us. This view and its bricked-up silences sufficed for beautiful, for me, and if this was how I felt about the city’s neglected corners and its wastelands, Karl might be right: I would never leave.
Back in my apartment, just as I opened the door, the phone rang. I picked it up.
So did he propose to you or what? said Rose.
I burst into tears.
You really did love him more than I did, she said, as I cried.
So she had been testing me. So she had loved him, too. Or did she mean something else? Rose kept talking. She told me to meet her at our usual place in an hour so we could, she said, go over every bit of what happened between when I left her and when I picked up the phone, and on the walk over I talked myself out of any suspicion or anger. The person I really could not live without was Rose, I thought, so I would pretend that I had not heard her, as she was pretending she had not hidden true feelings from me. I needed to believe that we were indeed not just anybody, and that one of the ways we were indeed not just anybody was that we wanted to be happy for each other rather than jealous of each other. Men would come and go. They were not the point. They were not the point.
Karl sent an email later that night—three lines that did not require a reply.
Very unsentimental exit, that. I approve.
Your fan,
K