Gone (10 page)

You started listening less. Surely one needs to listen more as the mystery of two lives deepens. It's harder to see what is already there. I can remember the month you stopped trying: the weary and contented roll away from me and the snoring. You can only be yourself through your work, you say. Such indulgent twaddle. I was always with you. Never for a moment did my mind stray from you—from us. What do words say, you ask. What do words say. Words are no proof. Actions are proof, you say. So you went into management for us? So you wore those suits for me? So you ate in the Orchid Szechwan every second day for me? So you went to New York for me. Proof is what I do not need, thank you. Proof is an ending. I was looking—I am looking—for a continuum.

Once I knew you; at your beginning; learning you like a petal learning sunshine. My hand on the smooth trembling of your desire. Such tenderness in the intensity of your restraint. You waited for me then. Love was in the containment of your release. Your fingers held the moment of my pleasure. You opened me to the pleasure of myself: my ankle surprised by the kisses of your lips. Finding excitement on the tips of my fingers. Afterwards, your flaccidness resting against me like a tongue. Your hand bringing me to climax. How that hand made me come. An hour later I could feel my uterus tightening and loosening.

You didn't leave me in January. You left me a long time ago. Long before New York. You abandoned me when our minds conceived each other as a single entity. Abandoned: cruel, forlorn word. The tears won't stop. I can't believe I'm this weak. I never liked the way you whispered obscenities in my ear during lovemaking. I should have told you that long ago. I kept too much to myself. Mea culpa. Mea culpa no more. I'm telling people why you deserted. Is deserted too strong? Pick a word. I do think it would be inappropriate for me to be the bearer of your morality. We don't want to shroud our lives in lies. Do we?

The darling wife, Ursula.

Remember. Every time you piss. Every time you put it in someone. Take a look at it and remember your wife.

We are in the downtown Guggenheim to see some modern art. She is educating me although she would deny such a grand claim. We are in front of an Agnes Martin, a blank canvas. The museum is empty save for us and the attendant. Holfy is talking about the artist's life. I try to hide boredom, irritation at this pretentious canvas. I say nothing because my comments seem so ordinary, so commonplace they embarrass me. There is too much of my father in me to be taken in by this kind of art. How many bags of potatoes would that buy, he'd say. Holfy is talking about the artist's spirituality. Her depth and commitment to statement. As I stare at the canvas, thin grey lines emerge. There is a grid system as clear as a map of Manhattan itself. Lines that are painted with the fine wet hair of a brush, the artist's hand working up and down, across the large canvas. Hundreds of lines and each of them perfect—or almost perfect. The edge of the brush occasionally shows itself beyond the line it has formed. I begin to see the mind of Agnes Martin, the heft of years she spent in the desert.

Although this is art stripped of ego, it dawns on me I can see more artistic passion in this painting than anything else I have gawked at. The reclusiveness—what I considered eccentricity—is an armour worn to enable her to peel her skin away. Suddenly Rodin is as vulgar as Dali. The opinion shocks me. It makes me uncertain of all my opinions. As I stare the grid seems to fade, so too the cream texture: I am staring into myself. Art, Pound says, is fundamental accuracy of statement. Truth was found with passion and commitment. The blood runs through my veins and the hair breathes on my skin. She says religion plays no part in her life. I look at Holfy, taking in what she is saying as if she is an apparition. It is as if her voice has been in my head and her presence—my
own
presence—startles me.

We scour New York together: the Met, the Guggenheim, the Frick, the Morgan. We are in the downtown Guggenheim again, looking at the Agnes Martin paintings. They still make no real sense to me—the blankness.
A depth and commitment to statement. She spent years in the desert.

—She's full of herself. All ego.

Holfy looks at me and nods, not agreeing with me. Pride stops me from admitting I'm seeing it, seeing what she sees. All else is nonsense and a chap trick. Truth had to be found with passion and commitment. This was what one did. What was true to the spirit.

—She's all ego and she doesn't believe in religion and she was years in the desert.

—Christ. It's worse than school with you.

She looks offended.

—I've been listening to you. I just don't see it. Let's go to Fanelli's.

We eat and talk about photographs. She talks about Fanelli's. She talks about her next project—photographing boxers. The food is good and she cheers up.

—Photography and boxing are immediate acts. With photography it depends on the way the camera is used. Photography can have an attitude that painting never can. Paint insulates the viewer.

I am tired listening to her. She's going on about Beaton and his snapshots—as she calls them.

—He's morally dishonest. He says he's getting behind glamour. Sure he is.

I am doubting her ethos. I think of her waiting for that moment when one's guard is down and she clicks and captures an ugly corner of the soul. Where is honesty? I have no idea what honesty or truth is. And I see I don't
know
Holfy any more than I know why Agnes Martin trailed lines across canvas. Holfy lives in the grove of uncertainty. That is her fascination.

Photography and boxing: two of her passions, two violent acts. Sixty-five percent of New Yorkers, if asked, would refuse to have their photograph taken, I read somewhere. We go back to Beaton and agree we dislike the photographs for the same reason. He insisted he didn't take fashion shots. His work was beyond fashion. It was art. Morally dishonest shit. The same is true of Inge Morah. She, apparently, searched for the intelligence in her subjects as if this somehow portrayed a profound understanding of humanity. Knickers.

*   *   *

Holfy rings and tells me her cat is not eating. When I come over the cat is asleep, its purr deep as a drunken snore. We take the subway to the clinic on the East Side. The veterinarian holds Kahlo loosely in her coal-black hands and looks her over.

—She's not too good, is she?

—I know that—that's why I'm here.

The veterinarian looks over the rim of her spectacles and takes Holfy in:

—Uh-huh. We can take tests. But she's very sick. You can get some food down her with a syringe but—

—But what?

—She's very sick. She's suffering.

—She's told you that? My cat told you she's suffering?

The veterinarian purses her lips, looks at me, straightens her spectacles and looks back to Holfy.

—That's my opinion.

We leave her in for overnight tests.

Holfy phones the clinic the next day. Kahlo has cancer of the throat. We take the subway over again with Kahlo's carrier box.

The same veterinarian sees us, her pink surgical gown splattered with dried blood:

—What do you want to do?

Holfy waves it all away from herself and walks out.

I wait while the cat gets the injection. She goes slack, her tongue peeping out her mouth playfully.

We take shelter from the rainstorm in the Bloomingdale's foyer. Cars and cabs scream at one another in the traffic jam. We step in from the street noise, dripping and steaming with rain. We dry ourselves as best we can.

—Who put her down?

—The nigger.

—Jesus. Don't say that word.

—The nice vet with the hip orange spectacles wearing the pink gown. Sorry about the N word. Doing what you do, pushing it.

—And you were there?

—Sure was.

She looks at the empty cat carrier in my hand and smiles painfully. When she recovers herself we set off through the labyrinth of perfumes and clothes. She stops an assistant and asks him about the density of a certain fabric. When she looks doubtful, he raises himself fully erect and mentions its durability. They discuss
resistance
and
fall
and
contour,
defining themselves through the way cloth is cut. Holfy presses a jacket against me and tells me to try it on. The assistant crosses some ill-defined social precipice and looks at me with tragic encouragement. He snaps the jacket in the air and holds it open:

—Adolfo Dominguez.

—Pleased to meet you.

He knows the jacket looks silly on me.

—Hey it's nice.

—It certainly is. It balances discipline with vitality. It gives him a rather potent air. I'm on the verge of telling them both to go and shite but I think of Kahlo's body soft with death. I slip the jacket on. It has a price tag of $1,125. I feel like a tramp. My trousers are creased and my shoes need a polish. The store is too hot. Holfy tilts her head and tells me to pirouette.

—It does make a statement, says the assistant, picking at his moustache. With his crisp black suit and neat bow tie he looks like he could be on his way to a wedding if he took the measuring tape off from around his neck. Christmas carols dream of a white Christmas on the in-store music and make me dizzy.

—No, says Holfy finally as if disappointed in some failure of the Bloomingdale's jacket. The assistant leans on his aesthetic temperament, holds the ends of his measuring tape like extravagant lapels and sighs approval at her. Taking the jacket off I see the label is Dominguez and blush.

—I do need lingerie.

—One floor up, he says without blinking.

Holfy looks at me.

—Want to look around here awhile? We can meet up later.

We agree on the diner and she wipes the last streaks of tears from her face. All the stores are too expensive. But I do buy her something. I get her a soft puppet. It's a sheep, Lambchops. I open it and slip my hand inside it and go in search of her.

She is immersed in conversation with the store assistant, a tall elegant woman. They both throw back their heads in laughter. She buys a two-piece. On the way out, she stops and peruses some silver lingerie.

—Open the cat cage.

She drops several sets into the carrier.

—You're stealing?

—Be a detective when you grow up. Stolen lingerie turns me on.

—It's tagged.

She pulls me close with that waggling middle finger and whispers:

—Follow me.

We go through the Lexington Avenue exit and the alarm goes off. Holfy is already halfway down the subway steps.

—Let us go, you and I, and drink some cappuccino.

We face each other in the full subway, the cat carrier jammed between us.

—Will you eat with me tonight? I don't want to be in the apartment without her. Gerry is sick of you anyway.

Stuffed into the swaying subway with the smell of rain off our clothes, I see her as she must have been as a child sitting on the stairs.

—I'd be very happy to eat with you tonight. Let's get some food.

—There's stuff in the fridge.

—But it's not from Zabar's, is it?

—No. It is not from Zabar's.

—Well, let's do it then. We'll get a cab over.

—A cab—you in a cab?

—I get cabs. Sometimes.

The express rattles through station after station, each one a blur of tiles and people. Our eyes avoid each other all the way downtown. From there we get the taxi over to the store and then over to the meat district.

*   *   *

I am here in the apartment in Gansevoort Street, here in my future. I look around its vastness with the same hidden awe I feel in the museums. A dog yelps somewhere and Holfy climbs over her bed and up the steps to a window. A small black and white creature leaps through from outside and lands panting on the floor, nails scurrying on the rough wooden planks.

—What's that?

—
That
is Botero, the love of my life.

—But what is he?

—His breed you mean? He is a full-blooded American Boston terrier. Take a shower.

—I'm fine.

—You smell of rain. I'd hate you to get pneumonia for being a good boy scout.

—I'm fine.

—Irish Catholic, yes? Hah!

—Did anyone ever tell you that you can't pronounce pneumonia?

—As a matter of fact, yes. A little boy who can't pronounce his th's told me.
Tanks for dese avocados and dose pears.
Well, Irishman, I'm washing the filthy Eastside off me. Amuse yourself.

The sound of jazz from the bathroom. Gentle sound of running water. Flatulent gurgles from pipes. Rush of piss gushing unapologetically into the toilet. Her apartment is a cavern of delights. Open shelving everywhere. I wander down to the living room. Bookshelves reaching up to a sagging ceiling. A wooden stepladder to reach the top has become itself, a temporary bookshelf. The books have the look of having been explored years ago, exhausted. Around the corner is her studio. A desk dense with work. An entire wall is a corkboard for photographs, pinned with careful randomness. Dozens of head shots; faces that exist only in New York. A yard-long panoramic shot of the AIDS flag being carried up Fifth Avenue. A series of nudes; shots of men's shoulders; legs; bends of elbows; hands in midgesture; backs. Landscapes of suffering. Each shot is taut with grief. A photograph in the corner of the corkboard—a shot that doesn't fit the others, isolated from the clutter—a close-up of a woman's hand weary with age spots; hairless. The hand rests on the arm of a chair, a cigarette lazy between the fingertips. And beside the hand; a remote control. The shot is motionless except for a trail of indifferent cigarette smoke. It is the only photograph on the board with a title:
Mother.

—Just because there are no doors does not mean it's yours to explore.

I turn around guiltily but she's not standing behind me. I look up, foolishly, half expecting her to be crouched on a shelf near the ceiling. No sign of her anywhere.