In the Night Café (13 page)

18

H
OWARD STRICKER HAD
told us not to pay attention to housing inspectors, but one of them discovered us. He knocked on our door one morning—luckily, I'd already gone to work. Right away he told Tom he didn't approve of our setup. “Do you live here?” he asked, casting his eyes up to our platform bed. “No one should live here.”

Tom said, “Why would I live in a place like this?” He told the inspector we lived in Queens with my mother.

“So what about the bed?”

The bed was just for taking naps, Tom said. Some nights he'd work very hard and want to lie down for a while.

“With girls, maybe?” the inspector said with a leer.

He kept turning up after that. The late morning was his favorite time, just when Tom was painting. “Have to check out the conditions here,” the inspector would say. He'd give the walls a few raps and squat down to examine the plumbing. Taking a chair in the studio, he'd jot things down on his clipboard. “Hey, you got any coffee?” Tom said the inspector felt free to indulge in art criticism. “I don't know about this one,” he'd say, walking up to a painting and shaking his head. “Guys like you get good money for this stuff?”

Leon said he'd heard about this inspector from other artists he knew. “Bribe the bastard,” he advised us. “He's just coming around with his hand out.”

When Tom offered him a hundred dollars, the inspector acted deeply offended. “Not me. I don't take bribes.”

“A
gift,” Tom said, and made it a hundred and fifty, which was about all we could have raised since there hadn't been any carpentry work for a while.

“What do you think I am?” said the inspector. “I see you still got the bed. That looks very bad. You're asking for it with that bed, in my opinion.”

For a day or so, we thought about getting rid of the bed. The mattress was new—a gift from my mother. Where would we sleep, though? I went to a camping goods store and brought home a foam rubber mat, so thin it could be rolled up and hidden. “Fuck that,” Tom said. “We live here. We're not a couple of gypsies.” He stayed up all night and constructed an ingeniously hinged rack that went around the bed. He said he'd just shove some canvases up there every morning. On weekends we wouldn't have to worry because the inspector would be off duty.

On his next visit, the inspector took note of the rack. “Busy, busy, making improvements around here,” he commented. Then he condemned our stove, our refrigerator and our hot-water heater. “Too old,” he said. “These are fire hazards. You're just working here, so what do you need them for?”

Tom showed up at my office that day as I was about to go out for lunch. “Surprise,” he said. But he wasn't smiling. “Come on, kiddo. I'll treat you to a sandwich and some iced tea.” When we were in the elevator, he put his arm around me.

He told me the news in the Greek coffeeshop around the corner. He said he'd called Leon again for advice. Leon thought the guy might settle for three hundred, but just to be on the safe side we'd better get rid of the appliances and buy new ones.

I ate at that coffeeshop every day, and all the waitresses knew me. The one who brought us our order glared at Tom. I'd burst into tears and she probably had the impression I was being jilted. Tom said he'd never thought a refrigerator and a stove would break my heart. But it was more than that—more than the money we didn't have and couldn't get. If we couldn't stay in the loft, where would we live? If we had to move to a small apartment, Tom couldn't paint. If he couldn't paint, I'd lose him. I saw very clearly what all this was going to lead to. So I sat there sobbing, “I'm sorry. I'm sorry for doing this,” as Tom kept ripping paper napkins from the holder and handing them to me. But I couldn't tell him the true cause of my grief.

We decided not to do anything. There really wasn't a thing we could do. We just kept stacking paintings around the bed in the mornings. We continued to wash in our illegal hot water and cook on our illegal stove. We waited to see what would happen the next time the inspector came. Weeks went by with no sign of him. At first we thought he was on vacation; then we began to hope he'd been transferred to a new district. Even so, we never really felt rid of him. The inspector remained with us. He was like a force we couldn't keep out. It was as if the world had decided people like us were somehow in the wrong. We had to be hounded supposedly for our own good, saved from the very conditions that made our existence possible.

One evening after work that summer, I ran into Arnie Raff on the main floor of Bloomingdale's. There he was, just a few feet away, all dressed up in a white suit with a little striped bow tie. His moustache was gone—instead there was a strange bluish space between his nose and upper lip. I checked myself for evidence of emotional disturbance and found none, so I walked up to him and said, “Hello, Mr. Raff.”

He looked stricken either by panic or guilt, but then he seemed to realize I meant him no harm. “Well, hello there,” he said, and we carried on one of those catching-up conversations in which no one really listens to the other person's news. We could have been two former classmates who'd known each other slightly in high school.

“What are you doing in Bloomingdale's?” I asked, since it was a place Arnie's principles wouldn't have allowed him to be caught dead in when we lived together on Seventh Street.

He said he'd come there to buy perfume, perfume for someone's birthday.

I said, “Oh, are you getting it for your wife?”

He conceded that he was. “I'm surprising her.” But he didn't know what kind to get. “What do I know about perfume?” he said, imitating the rough, sullen air of the old Arnie.

I actually ended up accompanying him to various perfume counters. I was sure he'd never tell his wife who had smelled her present.

We kept opening bottles and passing them to each other for sniffs and spraying the contents on each other's wrists. I acted as if I really cared how different kinds would smell to her. He seemed to be in awe of his wife, who he said had spent her summers in the south of France when she wasn't in East Hampton; he was also proud of the fact that she collected valuable wines—she didn't
drink
her collection, he explained; she just liked owning the old bottles with their labels. And now she's collected
you
,
Arnie, I almost said. Finally he settled on a tiny hundred-dollar bottle of the stuff I assured him smelled the best. “Probably she'll hate it,” he said gloomily.

“Arnie, do you remember that frying pan you gave me?” I asked. “I still use it.”

Arnie frowned. “What frying pan? I don't know what frying pan you mean.”

I couldn't believe he had forgotten something of such symbolic importance. “Red,” I said. “My twenty-fourth birthday.”

“Okay,” he said. “I admit I made a few mistakes.”

“Water under the bridge, Arnie,” I said, with a wave of my hand.

He told me I was looking good, but that was because he wasn't looking at me. “Things have worked out for you, haven't they?”

“Yes they have. I'm terribly, terribly happy,” I told him.

Happiness that had terror in it. I still remember that choice of words.

And what was I doing that evening so far uptown? It must have been one of those black periods when I'd come home to Chrystie Street knowing I wouldn't find you there, knowing you wouldn't even necessarily be at the Cedar if I called. You were just out—caught in some barroom time machine where the numbers on the clock never shifted until suddenly the bartender served the last round, and even then it was as if you'd just come in.

It was very hot on Chrystie Street those summer evenings. But the air in the stores I used to visit after work was perfectly chilled. I'd pull things off racks, carry them into dressing rooms. It was quite exhausting trying on so many outfits. Sometimes I'd be looking at myself in a three-way mirror and my eyes would fill. Before I came out, I'd have to put on a lot of mascara.

“Why are you always going shopping?” you asked me, puzzled because I never made any purchases.

“These are the best times we'll ever have.”

I remember you saying that in a sad voice, and I didn't know what you meant, because the better times seemed like a brightly lit station so infinitely far away we wouldn't see it till we were almost there; meanwhile the black tunnel we'd entered went on and on.

I was learning to be very good at waiting. Great at it, in fact. It was like learning to ride on the buddy seat—one of my main accomplishments. Waiting things out. That was how I was going to save you.

I developed techniques, I could dispose of whole hours, though I never became a crossword fan like Caroline. I learned to work a sewing machine—everyone was still wearing shifts, which took very little work and material. The sewing would wear me out, and I'd lie down on the couch and pretend to sleep, setting the clock next to me. The numbers would glow greener and greener as the summer light faded from the room. It was like being a child again, put to bed too early. Glass would break in the park, kids would go by on roller skates. Around midnight the iron gate over the garage would come down with a crash.

When I'd hear you come in, I'd sit up, a little dazed. “Tom? Want something to eat?” But you hardly ever did.

“Well, it's there if you want it.”

Well, I'm there if you want me.

Sometimes it was easiest to just stay very late at the office, outlasting the old woman who came to empty all the waste baskets. One of those nights, on its way downtown, my bus stopped at Tenth Street and you got on, very smashed. To find you on your way home so unexpectedly seemed almost a miracle. You stood next to the driver, fumbling for change. You pulled your pockets inside out. Pennies and nickels rolled all over the floor. You were laughing and saying, “Oh shit, oh shit,” because you didn't have the balance to pick any of it up.

There was a big Chinese family on the bus traveling down to Mott Street. The kids were pointing at you and giggling. I knew they were saying “drunk” in Chinese, and I hated them for it. I got up from my seat and walked down the aisle to the front of the bus and paid your fare. “Oh,” you announced to all the passengers, to the world, “let me introduce my wife. This gorgeous, generous woman is my wife.”

Despite everything, I knew you meant it. You had the most beautiful smile on your face. I put my arms around you and kissed you in front of all those Chinese strangers. I bent down and started to pick up the change you'd dropped, but you wouldn't let me. “Leave it there,” you said. “Leave it for the poor.”

You told me it wasn't women. “It isn't women, if that's what's worrying you. I'm not off somewhere picking up broads. I always come home, don't I? I mean, here I
am
,
baby, whatever that means. Whatever good that does you.”

“What is it then?” I asked you. “Tell me. Why can't you be here?”

“Tomorrow I'll stay home. I won't go out, won't drink. Just leave me food—no money. You can call and check up on me all you want.” Then you gripped my arms so hard the red marks were still there the next day. “Listen,” you said in a threatening voice, “I'll only leave you once.”

In the morning you were contrite when I told you what you'd said. The sheets were as drenched as if you'd had a fever. You asked for some coffee and I brought it to you. I sat myself on the edge of the bed, but you pulled me down and lay on top of me, looking into my eyes.

There was always another chance in the mornings.

Our worst battles took place in cabs with the driver's contempt in the mirror.

“Make the light!” No matter how drunk you were, you'd yell that out when we got to Grand Street, bitter that you'd had to be retrieved, reeled in by me.

Billy kept track of you. We'd conspire to get you home. The phone would ring on Chrystie Street—“Maybe you'd better come up here, Joanna. I'll try to keep him from leaving.” Somehow he'd steal your key ring from your pocket, so you wouldn't be able to start the bike. Then he'd lure you out to the curb, where the cab would be waiting. When I opened the door, he'd wrestle you onto the backseat. “Give me the fucking keys, Billy!” You seemed to be dying of thirst, like a man who'd come in from the desert too late—all the beer, all the wine in the world wouldn't have been enough.

“It doesn't make any sense.” I used to keep pointing that out to you. None of it made sense. I was still trying to keep you alive—that was really what we fought about. I was simply going to keep coming for you and waiting for you until you'd see there was nothing you could do that would shake me loose. I didn't have any other plan. I thought we had time—maybe not forever, but years. I wonder how many years I would have stuck it out.

“I'll only leave you once.” I never questioned that. You'd lost too many people by the time you got to me. I could only leave you if I meant it to be for good—you'd never try to get me back. Maybe I'd get one call, long-distance, the way you called Caroline once in the middle of the night months after the divorce. Maybe you'd ask me the same thing in that same low, deadly voice. If I knew what I'd done. “Did you
know
? I want to know how cold you were when you worked it out.”

I couldn't imagine being cold to you. Hating you, but not being cold.

I hit you one night. Maybe it was hate. One of those nights I'd dragged you home from somewhere in a cab. We were standing out on Chrystie Street and you wouldn't come upstairs. You were insisting I look at the moon. Of all things, the moon. But I wasn't about to grant you that. “I'm going to stay out here until God strikes me down,” you said, and I hit you right below the eye and ran down the block. I got to the corner, but there was nothing there. Just the hot, still air, the useless burned-out globe in the sky, the bums snoring under the bridal-shop windows. I didn't know what I was running to. That was why I came back.