IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA - Chapter 9 By Peter Nolan Smith

Autumn came and leaves fell from the trees. I saw friends, drank at bars, and told stories about Paris. Their laughter proved that time transformed tragedies into comedies.

The night before Halloween I was sitting on my Triumph before Madame Rosa's Bar near the Holland Tunnel. The rest of the 6th Street bikers were scattered around the alley. The walls were tattooed with graffiti and piles of trash cluttered the gutter.

A yellow taxi rattled down the cobblestones and braked a foot from my bike. A blonde in a black leather cuirass and steel-strapped girdle emerged from the Checker. The Devil would have been proud how this sadistic apparition paralyzed every man on St John's Lane. Her unworldly eyes trawled for prey and settled on me.

For a second I thought the sadistic mirage was Lisa, but the blonde rearranged the wig and I said, "“Elana.”

“I’m happy you have not forgotten me.” She threw a leg over my bike. “Let’s go. Anywhere.”

I kickstarted the bike and my heart thumped through five gears. Within minutes we were on 10th Street. Twenty seconds after my apartment slammed shut, we were naked. It was like our first night. Neither of us held anything in reserve and the pleasure became a pain, which I quelled with a shuttered ejaculation.

As I strained to regain my breath, Elana explained, “You throw me out. These punks from the park live in a squat. We live as animals and are animals with each other. Not washing and eating food we find in the trash, fucking like savages. Soon the men only want me. The other women hate me. One day I meet this woman. She and I perform dominatrix shows for businessmen. They love us. We are the best. This girl and I start a business. I have a loft and a beautiful girlfriend. I thank you for throwing me out.”

“You didn’t come to tell me that.”

“No, the old senorita told me she had placed a curse on you and the only way for it to come off was for me to make love to you.”

“Thank you.”

"You fucked with me, but didn't deserve that."

“Why the stories? About Danny? About the man in Madrid. About everything? Did you really love Danny?”

“Yes, and you too. You both only wanted me for sex and I gave myself freely, but not anymore. Men pay me $500 for an hour. There is no way even a thousand free orgasms can add up to an hour, but life is way too long not to fall in love and I have that with this woman. The sex is good. Everything else is so much better. Maybe you helped me to understand that. Maybe you didn’t, but I’m almost happy now. Happy to be me and not a fairy tale for someone else like your stupid movie THE APARTMENT. Your friend Sherri told me to watch it, but it was just a movie. Nothing else and you’re not either man in the movie. You’re not bad and you’re not good. You’re just you and no one else.” She attached the leather and buckles and clips with the care of a samurai suiting for battle and slowly counted out $400.

“I owe you that.”

“Where are you going?” I felt more like me than I had in a long time.

“Uptown. A priest needs a succubus to a ritual crucifixion.” She offered a full view of her body, as her gloved hand reached for the door. “Do I look like a goddess ready to die for her sins?”

“You’ll have a million worshippers.” I was one of them. Saying I love her might change everything. I said nothing instead. She already had someone to love.

“I’ll be seeing you.” She went to the door.

“I hope so.” This was a good an ending as I could hope for the both of us, although for weeks afterward I searched the Daily News’ police reports without ever reading about the discovery of a crucified woman matching her description. Elana was still out there, but none of us saw her again. Not me. Not Danny. Not the old lady across the hallway. At least the chicken bones vanished from my doorstep and this said Elana was fine.

I started looking for a woman. I had been a fool to love a woman who didn’t love me. A greater fool to not love someone who loved me. Six years was a long time to learn this lesson, but I was happy to know in the future I would be a fool again. Any sinner will be as long as they’re willing forget the past, forgive the present, and live for the future.

IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA - Chapter 8 By Peter Nolan Smith

The spring rains washed the dirt from the streets. Thunder echoed across the city and lightning slashed jagged bolts through the sky like a celestial film crew was remaking THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. Every song was written about Elana and I was tossed out of several bars for punching out the jukebox.

Other women had lips too thin and their eyes dead from too many boyfriends. I begged the old Puerto Rican lady to exorcise Elana from my soul.

“You tell her stay?” she asked in broken English.

“No, she wanted to go, so she went.”

“Stupido, you no say no go, she go. You say stay, she stay.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I am a witch.” The old lady slammed her door. “Not your mother.”

May plowed relentlessly into June. Couples strolled hand in hand and I woke day after day alone in my bed. Summer promised much more of the same, then one morning someone jiggled my front door. The East Village was overrun by thieves. I grabbed my baseball bat and ripped open the door.

”Don’t hit me.” Elana cringed in the hallway.

“I won’t hit you.” It took a couple of seconds to lower the bat.

“You mad?” She leaned against the door.

“No, surprised, that’s all.” She had a black eye and wore a thin cotton shift. Everything else was in a paper bag. “And Danny?”

Heart-rending sobs racked her body and the old senora leaned out her door, her left eye armed for a hex. Elana rattled off an explanation in English and added, “He’s not bad man.”

“You take care of her or else.” The wizened witch warned with a wavering finger.

“I will.” As a superstitious Irish-American I feared her ‘or else’ worse than any hell promised by the nuns and priests.

Elana was sitting on my living room couch. I joined her and she laid her head on my lap. Her tears dried on my jeans and she regained her breath. The window was open and music played from the dance studio. It was Issac Hayes' version of BY THE TIME I GET TO PHOENIX.

“I get to Gloucester and Danny is very happy." Elana wiped her nose with the back of her hand and then continued, "We move to an old boat in the harbor and make love for many days. After two months I ask him to marry me.” Her confession chipped at my heart. “Danny goes crazy. He throws me out of the boat. He beats me, telling me I am trying to steal his freedom. I stay on his boat and cry myself to sleep. I wake up, Danny is gone to sea. I wait one week. He stays at sea. He love the sea more than me. Where can I go? Not home. I come here. You are my only friend. Can I stay with you?”

“As long as you want.” Maybe forever.

“It has been so long.” She stripped off her clothes to reveal the fading belt marks and bruises, but she sighed, “They will leave. I will not.”

The door remained shut for days. She was my slave and I hers. Somehow the sex was different and I put my finger on this change one afternoon, as we lay naked on my bed.

Elana’s lips were moving in what I thought was a slattern incantation, but then I deciphered two syllables. With her eyes closed I was Danny. This substituted identity sobered my lust and I rolled off her.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m tired.” Like that the end began.

Each time she tried to seduce me with her hands or mouth or body, I said I wasn’t in the mood. Frustrated she would storm off to the old senora. I quelled my discontent with drink and drugs, a deadly combination on a motorcycle. One night I fell through the door in a near-stupor.

“You should not drive in that condition.” Elana helped me to bed.

“Why not?”

“I was waiting for you.”

“Why? Couldn’t you find one of your little dancers or another version of Danny?”

Her face went white and she ran into the bedroom.

Comforting her was a small price to pay. Perhaps one day she might have called my name. My pride argued I didn’t need her. It didn’t take long to discover the penalty of my self-deceit.

When I crawled into bed around dawn, ready to repent, she showed her back. That afternoon I told her, “Elana, my sister is coming to the city.”

“I have to leave?” Her feet slowed across the floor.

“Do you have anyplace to go?”

“Yes, I will stay with friends.” She stood without mentioning who those friends might be and I left before I regretted my lie.

When I returned, she was gone. A quick check revealed that she had stolen a couple hundred dollars. It seemed a small price to pay for her leaving, only I was hiding the real cost.

The old lady across the hall asked about Elana.

“No se.”

Wicked Spanish hissed from her lips and I fled inside my apartment too late. Chicken bones were scattered on my door step and her cackling filled the hallway. Her curse sentenced me to another desert.

Some women sought to be friends and others thought I was gay. Mrs. Adorno seemed to shrink every week of this penance. I searched the streets of the East Village for Elana. No one would say where she was, even though I could tell they knew.

Sherri flew into town for a dance session at Show World. She patiently listened to my story and then said, “I used to think that sex was the answer, but I’ve learned that the sex is sex. Nothing more and people make too much of it. To sell movies. To sell TV time. To sell cars. It’s not about the sex. It’s about the way you feel when you have sex with someone you love. Everything else you can get from jerking off.”

“Everything?” I had my doubts.

“Well, only if you don’t think masturbation is a sin.”

“I was brought up Catholic.”

“Then you’re doomed to damnation.”

“And wouldn’t have it any other way.” Sherri and I were destined to survive our tribulations if only to tell people about them, since most of what we would have to say was unbelievable. We weren’t the only people with stories.

In early autumn I ran into Danny at a gallery opening for his friend, Jean-Michel. His face was weathered by the sea. I lunged at him and people had to hold us apart, but finally I calmed down and he asked, “What did Elana say to you?”

“That you had beaten her.”

“I never touched her.” Danny grabbed at a passing glass of wine. I took another. Like me he wasn’t a woman-beater. “I wasn’t pissed at you for taking care of Elana. When she came up to Gloucester I could tell it was different between us. We only had sex that first night and the rest of the time she would look out the window at the harbor.”

“You lived in a house?”

“On a wharf really.”

I knew Gloucester and bet the wharf was on Rocky Neck. “She lied about that?”

“She tell you a story about her mother abandoning her?” Danny’s eyes went sad. “I met her mother and father in Madrid. Had a dance school. Nice people. The other story was what you needed to hear. What men wanted to hear, because she thought she wasn’t enough to be who she wanted to be?”

“I didn’t see her that way.”

”Neither did I, but she did.”

“So now what?”

“Let’s get drunk.” We drank whiskey at the Odeon. He slept over my apartment and in the morning left for Gloucester. I wished him luck. No one did the same for me, then again what else could expect from New York.

Amnesia was the best I could expect from a city of sleeplessness.

IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA - Chapter 7 By Peter Nolan Smith

I returned to Manhattan committed to finding solace as a bachelor. Life was comfortable. My job at a nightclub paid my rent and more. Friends were fun. No highs or lows. The sameness of the days could last forever in most of America, but not New York.

In late April I was driving the Triumph down 3rd Avenue. The asphalt was slick. It had just rained and was promising more. Not many people were on the streets; a trio of addicts on 14th Street, two junkie whores working the car traffic of 13th Street, and at 12th Street a raven-haired girl in a long leather trench coat struggling with a bald man in denim.

When he slapped her, I jammed on the brakes and the bike skidded on the wet pavement to halt a foot from the couple. Her assailant unbuttoned his jacket. A gun was tucked into his waistband. Any sane man would have roared away like an A-4 jet slingshot off an aircraft carrier deck, instead I warned, “Don’t touch the girl again.”

“You want a piece?” He wrenched apart her coat. She wasn’t wearing any clothes underneath. A vee of pubic hair fluffed below the pouting belly. The pimp forced her forward by a shank of hair.

“Sometimes we have force them into what they like?”

The streetlight hit the face.

“Elana.”

“You’ve met before?” The bald man relaxed slightly.

In Paris."

"You really do get around."

"Fuck you." Elana dug a high heel into his foot and she jumped on my bike. “Go, go, go.”

We burned a red light at St. Mark’s and she snuggled against my spine.

“You happy to see me?”

“Yeah.”

"Take me someplace."

I drove to a bar far from 3rd Avenue. The three old drunks on the stools straightened their postures for Elana. I ordered two beers from the bartender and led her into a dark corner. Lifting the tail of her coat, Elana sat on my lap and her rounded ass settled into my crotch.

“I liked your lips in Paris.”

“I haven’t forgotten yours.”

“We weren’t so lucky that night.”

“Where’s Danny?” I had to ask. He was a friend.

“Danny and me go to Brest. His boat comes in. He says to meet him in two months. I wave good-bye and cry. I work in a dance bar in Amsterdam.” The intonation on ‘dance bar’ meant a strip club. “I make money. You like my dancing?”

“Who can I forget?” Her dance at the Reve was acid-etched in my retinas.

“Never I hope.” Elana wriggled sinuously, as her reptile tongue slithered into my mouth and I fell without any safety ropes to haul me from the chasm. Finally she released her hold. “Many men love me in Amsterdam. I meet this bald man and he buys me a ticket to New York, so I can find Danny. We arrive this afternoon and this night two friends visit his place. They want a ménage a quatre. I refuse and he beats me.”

Elana pressed my fingers to the raised welts on her belly. The story was simple and they always are, if the worst parts are left out. My muscles tensed into knots. She opened my fingers and guided my hand underneath her coat to her vagina. The lips were wet.

“That doesn’t matter any more. I need you. You tell me where first.”

No man can retain his sanity after hearing such a confession, but I only had time to lose half my mind, for the bald man shouted from three feet away, “You bitch.”

How he found us was unimportant and I shoved Elana at him. She scratched his face. Her attack opened his defenses for a hard-swung beer bottle. Blood spurted from a gash in his forehead and he fell to his knees, pistol in hand. One kick to the skull and he flopped to the floor. The bald man had paid more for the sins of others as well as his own.

Elana deftly rifled the man’s pockets. The bartender shouted he was calling the police. Brandishing a wallet and keys, she jumped to her feet and grabbed my hand. We ran to my Triumph.

The bike started with a backfire and we roared away from the bar. My temples pounded faster than the pistons of the 650cc engine and I wondered if the entire episode had been a cheap thrill. A glimpse over my shoulder revealed the bald man wasn’t a joke.

“We go to his place, get my clothes, and then you can have me any way you desire.” Elana directed me to a decrepit three-story building in Chinatown. The streets were empty and she slipped off the bike.

"I’ll be a minute.”

The door slammed shut and my hand revved the gas. When she emerged with one bag she smiled, "I half-expected you to be gone."

"I'm not going anywhere this time."

"So this is a raincheck?"

"Yes."

"Good.” Her arms curled around my chest and she nipped at my ear. “Let’s go to your place. Fast.”

We reached East 10th Street in less than two minutes and climbed three flights to my apartment in thirty seconds. I opened the door and she scampered into the unlit bedroom. Shucking her leather coat she fell on the mattress to become a carbon-black shadow on the white sheets.

“Come to me.”

I knelt between her legs and she locked her ankles around my hips to guide me deep inside her, saying, “Oh, yeah.”

With each orgasm Elana shape-shifted from vivid temple whore to virginal lover to hardened streetwalker to an aging courtesan, and finally an old lover telling a dirty bedtime story. There was no bald man, no Danny, no New York, no Paris, no anything. When I tried to roll off, she held on. “Stay in me longer.”

She aroused me once more with a stroke of my thigh. Her fingernails feathered the tight flesh behind my testicles and her teeth scrapped my foreskin. She hadn’t learned this technique at dance school.

“You bitch.” I grabbed a length of hair.

“I’m whoever you want me to be.” Her hands peeled her ass cheeks and I followed her darkest wish, this time for an hour and the next time to dawn and sleep.

I woke in bed alone, but Elana was no Cinderella. The water was running in the bathroom. Elana rested under a steaming surface with her black hair fanned on the curved edge, so she resembled a fairy-tale princess in slumber. With closed eyes Elana asked, “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“It matter, if I did?”

“Not this time.” She lolled her head and I pressed my thumbs into the taut muscles of her neck. Her sibilant moan verified if I didn’t have a girlfriend, I did now and she stood up in the bath.

“Are you scared?” Elana was five foot-four and weighed a hundred pounds.

“I can deal with you.” I wrapped her in a towel.

“You know that story I tell you about that man. I go look for him everywhere last year. In the end I find is you.” She let the towel fall to the floor. “I will kiss your skin and kiss your heart. I will kiss your body.”

I could have asked why. There had to be more than one reason. Maybe more than two, instead I let her fulfill this promise during the next three days in bed. The number of times we spoke could be counted on one hand. Truthfully words would have rotted the bonds of flesh. On the fourth evening Elana dressed in a black plastic dress and a matching coat.

“We’re going for a ride. I’ll tell you where, when we get there.”

The night air was warm and the trees were budding bright green leaves. My bike sped us downtown to under the Brooklyn Bridge. Elana tapped my shoulder and pointed to the concrete bumper encircling the Manhattan support tower. Upon reaching the concrete causeway to the bridge tower, she ordered me to stop.

“I have a special place to show you. It was in this movie WOLFEN.

“WOLFEN had a scene on top of the bridge.” I had seen the urban tale of werewolves several times. “There’s nothing here.”

“Only you and me.” She crawled through a breach in the chain link fence and walked out on the corroding concrete bumper. A tug hauling a barge blew its horn and its wake lapped at the pier. Traffic hummed overhead on the bridge’s steel gratings.

“I saw this pier in the background of the movie.” Elana placed her hands against the tower’s base. “You can feel the power of the city in the stones. Vibrating with a hum. Feel it through me now.”

“Here?” No one was in sight.

“Now.” Now had one meaning and afterwards she said breathlessly, “I have some more places to visit too.”

Elana was wild and I had no intention of taming her.

Out on a fire-twisted Hudson pier we coupled with total rejection of self-preservation. Inside an elevator stopped between floors with the alarm blaring I brought her to orgasm with my tongue. During a downpour we fucked against a post office wall, her skirt pushed above her hips and shirt opened to the waist. Neither of us noticed the passers-by. Once we were joined together, nothing and nobody was pulling us part. After a handful of such episodes I understood that Elana’s insatiability was destined to break me and I was beyond caring whether the wreckage was my body or soul.

The word ‘love’ was forming on my lips and other people loved Elana too. The homeless people on Avenue A called out her name. She always had a spare change. The police cars whooped in passing. She flashed her ass. The kids in the park loved to see her dance. She befriended the old Puerto Rican lady across the hall. They would sit in her kitchen and laugh at the Latin DJ’s jokes. Whenever I asked what was so funny, they laughed harder.

Sherri met Elana and the exchange of sordid tales was almost painful, except they were both so funny.

“You were made for the movies.” Sherri begged for Elana to come to LA.

“I’m happy right here.” Elana tore herself away from my cousin to sit on my lap.

“You got a good thing happening.” Sherri wore envy in her eyes, And don’t fuck it up by thinking of your ghost."

Ghost?" asked Elana.

Old story."

About the blonde girl."

You know about her?"

Everyone here tell me about Lisa.

You're not the same."

"No, I better." Elana wrapped her arms around me as if they were made for my shoulders.

“I’m her prisoner.” And a happy one too.

Elana attended the dance classes at the community center opposite my apartment. From my fire escape I watched her lewd spinning around a pole. This move offended the modernists, until a lascivious gesture dissipated their resistance and they gathered around the heretic like moths in a maelstrom for a reward of raw abandonment to which I was no stranger.

Elana returned from these classes to perform Salome to the music from the movie, VAMPYROS LESBOS, an earth nymph to Joni Mitchell or a jazzy angel to John Coltrane. Sapped of her reserves, she would collapse on the sofa and softly beckoned to take her.

One night as we lazed in the sexual afterglow, she said, “You not love me for me.”

“It’s not that I don’t love you.”

You are scared I can hurt you.”

“Sorry.”

“Not be sorry. You wanting my body is fine. I want you the same way. One girl in the dance class has seen you spying us. I told her you were my boyfriend. She wants to meet you. Can you handle two women at one time?”

“I can satisfy you, can’t I?” I dragged her into the bedroom and my heart nearly burst through my ribcage to prove my ardor.

She was ready for more and said, “I win.”

The proposition was forgotten, although I remembered her questioning my involvement. I wanted more from her. Walks in the rain and fireside chats were becoming more appealing than sex.

I returned to the apartment with flowers and found Elana was underneath a heavy-bodied female. She reached out with a rehearsed lethargy.

Powerless I dropped the flowers on the floor and days elapsed with the decreasing need for what she was more than willing to give without my telling her that I wanted something else. We were locked in the language of sex. My fingers entered secret passages, my tongue explored caves, and my penis was swallowed to the root, then the phone rang at dawn.

It continued throughout her free-fall of orgasms and I tried to knock the phone off the hook. She blocked my hand and held the receiver to her ear. Hearing the voice on the other end she squealed with an unbridled joy. “I’ll come to you.”

The caller was Danny and I smiled to hide my heart turning to dust.

“Where is he?”

“Gloucester.” She stroked my side. “Is it far?”

“Far enough? When are you leaving?”

“Today, if you give me the money for a bus.”

I swallowed hard. “Not tomorrow?”

“No, I have to leave today.”

“Get packed and I’ll drive you to the Bus Terminal.”

She collected her few belongings and informed my neighbor about her departure. The old bruja kissed her forehead. “Buena Suerta.”

Driving to Port Authority I contemplated leaving her on the street, except too many women had vanished from the bus station and I bought a round-trip ticket to Gloucester, thinking one day she might use the return half. At the gate for Boston, she said, “You knew one day he will call.”

“But not this soon.” I got no explanation how Danny knew she was at my place.

“I had fun.” Elana motioned for the driver to wait a second.

“Laughs too.” I was deaf to my heart begging her to stay. “You better hurry.”

She kissed my cheek and boarded the bus. It pulled away in a choking cloud of exhaust. I panicked and ran to my bike. The bus route was straight up 8th Avenue. I arrived outside to find a Midtown cop writing a parking ticket and he wasn’t buying any love story. Back on East 10th Street I purged my apartment of scent-saturated sheets, soiled panties, stray stockings, lipstick tubes, make-up, nail polish remover, combs, brushes, and hairpins.

Within two hours my place was as devoid of female accouterments as a Trappist monk’s cell. Not the way I liked it, simply the way it was. For now and a long time to come.