New York is 200-plus miles from Boston. The two rival cities are connected by an interstate. The drive takes about three-and-a-half-hours. Not a long way and I had spent a little time in the city traveling back and forth to buy pot from Fat Eddie. The East Village dealer was a good connection, even if he stole my girlfriend. Sookie convinced him to lose weight and stopped dealing. She had succeeded on one out of two. Since then five years had passed and I could count my visits to New York on one hand.
Boston was my hometown. My rent for a Brookline basement apartment was cheap. Upstairs was a two-family commune. I had gone out with their 16 year-old daughter. Hilde had told me at the Hi-Hat Lounge that she was 18. We had lasted less than three months. Her parents had said that she was too young. They were probably right. I was 23, but they were a little bit wrong too, since her next boyfriend was a 30 year-old car thief.
My best friend AK had left his ex-girlfriend to be with Hilde’s older sister. Terri was almost twenty. She was very sexy as was to be expected of a Combat Zone stripper.
I was working as a substitute teacher at South Boston High School. The school system was torn by busing riots. Poor white kids going to school in poor black neighborhoods and vice versa. No one went to school, unless the TV crews showed up to interview a politician, then the kids went crazy. A riot, police, tear gas. I was getting $85/day. Life wasn’t bad. I wrote poetry. Hilde thought some of it was good.
My upstairs neighbor AK played in a funk band. Jump Street. AK was the only white boy. The group was popular, although gigs in white bars were tough due to the busing conflict. Jump Street got a weekend show at a club in the West Village. AK invited me to join him. His girlfriend was staying behind. He had an old girlfriend in Brooklyn.
An artist.
“She looks like an East European refugee.”
I painted my own portrait from this scanty description. Dark-hair, thin, feminine. I doubted I had a chance with her. AK was on the prowl. I had passed through the city on came to New York with my friend AK. He was playing keyboards for a funk band. The only white boy in Jump Street. They had a gig at a bar on 7th Avenue. AK invited several friends. One was Ro, a young painter, with a tendency not to finish here sentences. AK had hoped to rekindle their dalliance, however his girlfriend showed up unannounced at the show. Terri had smelled a rat. Ex-strippers are tough that way.
“Pretend your friends with Ro.” AK was plotting to meet her later.
His girlfriend was too smart to fall for any subterfuge and I accompanied Ro to a late dinner at David’s Pot Belly on Christopher Street. She worked at the small restaurant as a waitress. We spoke about art. Mostly I listened about her plans to study at the Sorbonne in Paris. .
“Bette Davis’ character wanted to do the same in PETRIFIED FOREST. Lesley Howard has the outlaw shoot him so she can collect his insurance. I thought it was very noble.”
“Anyone ever tell you that____”
“Tell me what?”
“That you like an angel____” She struggled for several seconds with the next words. “______under candlelight.”
No one had ever said anything like that to me and we went to her place in Brooklyn Heights.
55 Remsen Street.
Her apartment was over a Chinese whorehouse. A dragon lady stood at the door. Her chignon was sheer silk. I guessed her to be about 40. The red light over the doorway made her 20.
“You want good time?”
“No.” I had never paid for sex.
“Maybe sometime you not lucky. Come see me.” She hissed the invitation like a snake sliding through dry grass.
“I hate that____.”
“Woman.” Ro couldn't finish off that sentence.
Straight women hated those that aren’t and Ro opened the door to her apartment. She shared the space with a lanky West Virginian. He had a pad of paper in front of him. His hand scribbled numbers. Ro introduced him as Bix. He lifted sallow eyes from the scratching pencil point, but didn’t say a word, as Ro led me into the bedroom. I tried to be quiet, but Ro called out my name with each thrust nearing orgasm. Women were echoing other men’s names from the sex den below.
Every time I exited from the bedroom, Bix was seated at the kitchen table. An unlit cigarette in his hand. An empty beer to the left. Several piles of paper were scattered about the table. Numbers filled them to the edges. An expression of hurt paralyzed his face. Words were lost in his mouth. Finally on Sunday morning he said, “How does it feel to fuck another man’s woman?”
Ro had said nothing about their relationship, but I had guessed that they were more than roommates. Kindness wasn’t in my heart that early in the morning, plus he was holding a steak knife.
“Wait a few minutes and I’ll tell you.”
I locked the door behind me and said to Ro, “Your roommate said____”
“I know what he said. Don’t___” Her hands drew me back into bed to complete her sentence. Her first kiss swallowed my soul. “I love your lips.”
We made love twice more that day and on Sunday Ro escorted me to Penn Station to catch the train to Boston. I had no idea where AK and his girlfriend were. I kissed Ro on the platform and said, “I’ll see you next week.”
“I work on the weekends.”
“I’ll wait until you get out.”
“It will be late.” Hesitation rimmed her reply.
“I can wait.” The train conductor was calling ‘all aboard’. “After all this is the city that never sleeps.”
I started planning my departure from Boston. Its streets were empty after dark. The bars seemed provincial. None of the women shared the beauty of Ro. The next weekend I trained south to Penn Station. Ro waved from inside the restaurant. The cook Michael made me an omelette. Gruyere and mushroom. Afterward I drank at the Riviera Bar with a silver-haired jazz impresario. I recited a poem about hitchhiking. He said that I was almost a genius.
“How do you know?”
“I manage Cecil Taylor and Merce Cunningham.” He smoked a cigarette like Marlene Dietrich. The Riviera was loaded with gays, bi, straight. It was middle ground. James was 100% playing for the other team and proud of his sexuality. “I once made it with James Dean.”
“The movie star?” I had heard that he had been with Sal Mineo.
“He went with anyone. You care for a drink?”
I arrived at David’s Pot Belly at closing. I paid the taxi fare. The dragon lady smiled at my passage.
“You lucky man.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”
Ro slapped my hand. She didn’t want me talking to her downstairs neighbor. Bix was waiting at the table. Unlit cigarette in his hand. The numbers had spread to the walls. None of them were equations. Ro and I retreated to her bedroom. She wasn’t in the mood for sex.
“I’ve had a long day______at work.”
“What’s with Bix and the numbers?” I had been a math major my first two years in university.
“He feels as if he can find the right number maybe he can turn back the hands of time and win back my heart.”
“And do you know the right number?” I had loved the poetry of math until LSD warped my perceptions of dimensions. Then words became my math. Maybe I was as crazy as Bix and didn’t know it yet.
“No, and neither will Bix. He’s crazy and that’s why I______stopped being with him.” She whispered from bed. We kissed under the sheets. She murmured with a cuddle, “I still love your lips. Go to_____sleep.”
“All right.”
I was too drunk to fuck and fell asleep reading TROPIC OF CAPRICORN. The profane writer had spent his childhood in Williamsburg. Brooklyn Heights was more for successful artists such as W. H. Auden, Truman Capote, Hart Crane, Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer, Carson McCullers, Arthur Miller, Walt Whitman, and Mary Tyler Moore. I woke to the screams of a Chinese woman fighting a man. Not everyone was happy in Brooklyn Heights.
The next day we brunched on Montague Street. Ro had to be a work at 4. We made love quickly on her bed. I liked her tongue more than her lips.
“That was better than good.”
Saturday night was a repeat of Friday night. Dinner at the Potbelly and drinking at the Riviera. Ro was off on Sunday. We went dancing at the Limelight on 7th Avenue. James Spicer came along with us. He bought drinks and we shared a taxi back to Brooklyn. His apartment was in Park Slope.
“You ever need a place to stay call me.” James blew me a kiss, as the taxi disappeared into Brooklyn.
“You know what______he wants?”
“Same thing as everyone. A little love.”
I didn’t even notice the dragon lady or Bix or the cries of pleasure from below. Ro and we the only two people in the world. I wrote several poems. Ro wanted me to read them to her. They must have made more sense than Bix’s numbers.
We ate in the city. I went to the train by myself, telling her that I would be back in two weeks. She smiled and said, “I’d like______that.”
That fall and winter I commuted between Boston and New York. The dragon lady’s name was Lee. I’d phone during the week. Ro rarely answered the phone. She was either at art school or work. She told me that Bix never picked up the phone. He was even deeper into his numbers. They infected the hallways.
“I like number. Maybe I find lucky number.” Lee followed the twisting cortex of numbers for a lottery winner. She was looking to get away from her mama-san job. “Open restaurant. Sell food. No pussy.”
I slowly formed a strategy to quit teaching in June and collect unemployment through the summer. I informed Ro about this plan on several occasions. If she said that it wasn’t a good idea, I didn’t care, because I no longer wanted to live in Boston.
My parents were sad to hear about my living. AK my neighbor said I should thank him for introducing Ro. “You owe me.”
I wasn’t sure how to pay him back. The two-family commune stood at the door and waved good-bye.
“You be careful.” Hilde was a teary-eyed 17 year-old high school student. Her car thief boyfriend was glad to see me go. He had arranged for me to drive a gas-guzzler to New York. $300 to ditch the Oldsmobile in New York. The owner couldn’t afford the gas and wanted to collect on the insurance. Once in New York I’d park the car by the Hudson, throw the plates in the river, and what to do. Drive to New York throw the plates into the Hudson and leave the keys in the ignition. Joyriders would steal the gas-guzzler within minutes.
Easy.
I phoned Ro several times that afternoon. No one answered the phone. I drove down the highway at 55. A state trooper might ask too many questions if I was stopped for speeding. The trip from Brookline to the West Side Highway lasted 4 hours. It took five minutes to unscrew the license plates and toss them into the black water flowing past the desolate docks. I walked up Christopher Street to her restaurant. I had $300 plus my savings in my pocket.
A new life awaited me and I entered the restaurant with a smile. Michael S the cook said that Ro had quit on Wednesday.
“See say why?”
“No.”
Brooklyn Heights was a couple of stops away from Christopher Street. I reflected on the unanswered phone and her quitting her job. That one and one didn’t add up to two, but a myriad of possibilities. Too many to count. Numbers and more numbers.
Just like Bix.
I arrived at 55 Remsen at midnight. I buzzed the doorbell a number of times without success. I tried the buzzer for the whorehouse. The door clicked open. I climbed the stairway with my eyes half-shut. This was no my dream world. The dragon lady was waiting under the red light.
“Today I lucky. Find good number.” She pointed to a scrawled number on the wall. “Tomorrow no work. You come back. Have good time. Okay.”
Bix was sitting at the table. A burning cigarette in his hand.
“You know that Hitler was anti-smoking. So was Ro. When Hitler killed himself in the bunker, the first thing the Nazis did was light up a cigarette.” he inhaled deeply and then crumpled up several papers jammed with numbers. “Ro’s gone.”
“Gone.” I hadn’t played that word in my head on the way over here.
“Off to Paris to study at the Sorbonne.”
“She said nothing about that.”
“I know. I was surprised too.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, but I guess you’ll have to go to France to find out what it’s like to see another guy fucking your girlfriend. Not me. I already know.”
It was a shitty thing to say and I probably should have hit him, but I had said the same thing several months earlier, so I figured us even.
“You know she never kissed me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“How was it?”
“Good.” I had no reason to lie.
“I thought so.” Bix took out his pencil and paper. The numbers were his friends. I walked out of the apartment with my bags. The dragon lady looked at me, “Look you not lucky no more.”
“No not lucky.” Fucked was a better word, except that word had only one meaning in Lee’s bordello. I wandered onto the street. A plane flew overhead. I imagined Ro looking down. From that height people were not visible. Somehow I had ceased to exist for her. I couldn’t say why. I went to the corner telephone and called James Spicer. He answered on the first ring. I told him that I needed a place to stay.
“I thought you’d call me one day.” He sounded drunk.
“Why?” I wanted drunk too.
“Because that girl had heartbreak written on her face. More hers than yours. Get in a taxi and I’ll tell you more.”
“Okay.” I glanced back over my shoulder at 55 Remsen. A taxi was coming down Montague. I waved it down. Like Ro I was gone and I wasn’t coming back either. I stopped writing poetry. The words were letters, not magic.
I ran into Bix two months later. He was living on the street. I got him a job as a carpenter. He stayed about two weeks. The police found him dead below Brooklyn Heights. Starved to death. His ragged clothing was stuffed with paper. No numbers on any of them. He had buried that demon in the peace of his death. I exommunciate my demon by writing the same poem to Ro about a hundred times. Each ended as a crumpled paper. James Spicer called the pile of rejects 'the hill of THE END'. I didn't laugh at his joke. After that I stopped writing poetry. The words were simply letters, not magic.
Ro and I ran into each other years later. We had another affair. Very brief. She was working at a fish restaurant. Her paintings were of fish. They were very good. I mentioned Bix. She said that she knew about it. I couldn’t bring myself to ask why she had left me. I had always known the answer. It was in the movie PETRIFIED FOREST. Art was more powerful than poetry and numbers. Only life was stronger, although sadly not for everyone and Bix knew that better than most. I’m only glad not to know the same.
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