Manhattan Loverboy (20 page)
As I heard them storming down the stairs, I rose and went into her half of the house, where I flushed the blood out of my nose and held a compress up to my eyes. They were still recovering from yesterday’s operation, and my sight was blurry as I inspected her half of the apartment. It was designed in a classical Grecian manner, like a temple yet to be despoiled. There was a sunken waterway set in faux marble.
When I got to her bedroom I found the true riches of her place. She had an entire room devoted to television. It was loaded with different cable boxes and three thirty-inch sets, side by side, positioned before a non-impact treadmill. Flipping through the different channels I realized that besides MTV and VH1, she had the Comedy Channel, and to top it all off, the Playboy Channel. She had four different movie channels!
FOUR!
I tallied the score. On the down side, I had lost my great love, my adversarial pole. On the plus side, though, I had a half-renovated palace. I had a half-renovated set of looks—my true “ugliness,” as Amy pointed out, was still intact, and I’d only be able to fool chicks until they got a full taste of my character. Most importantly, I had nearly half-a-million bucks. Not a bad jump on life.
Slowly, over the next couple of hours, as I regained the full power of sight, I realized my new purpose in life. I’d spend the rest of my days preparing, cultivating, and hopefully winning the other half of everything.
I sat down and started watching the multiple TV sets simultaneously. It was wonderful, all these scantily clothed, bouncy chicks. I went to her fridge and found a plate of tasty-looking hors d’oeuvres, which I brought over to the TV room. The Robert Palmer video was on, the one with all those leggy, look-a-like chicks in black miniskirts. I watched the legs and wolfed down the delicious little foods and fell asleep. But it wasn’t working. All the girls in Robert Palmer’s video were Amy. The food was Amy. The hi-tech comforts were all Amy. I fell asleep dreaming about Amy.
When I awoke, it was a couple hours later. One of my many viruses was with me, the dull fever. That fever was Amy. Hoping to displace my obsessive love for Amy with money, I took some cash and went out into the street. With money, it was a new and different street. I had to buy something. I was weak and hungry, so I went to the nearest restaurant.
I visited Graceland once, and in the same way that Elvis Presley had all the best of the worst objects, I went to a Mc-Donald’s and ordered everything on the menu. Everything, sparing nothing. I ordered it all to go, in every size—small, medium, and large—and in all varieties: salads, fries, burgers, cheese burgers, Big Macs, Quarter Pounders, hot fruit pies—everything in bags. One of the girls was wearing a belt with a neat “M” insignia on it. For some feverish reason, I knew Amy would like it.
“Can I buy that from you?” I asked the cashier, pointing to her waist.
“Screw you.”
“No, the belt.”
“My belt?”
“Yeah, I’ll give you ten bucks for it. It’s for Amy.”
“No thanks.”
I pulled out twenty bucks.
“All right.” She gave me her belt. As she turned around to pull the belt off discreetly, I noticed the golden arches insignia on the back of her pants. Amy would want this to go with her new belt.
“Do you want to sell me your pants?”
“For a hundred bucks I will.”
I didn’t want them that much, which meant Amy would probably want them, since her tastes were the opposite of mine. I gave the cashier a hundred dollar bill, took her belt and all the food I could carry, and got back some change.
At first I gorged myself, but I heard it. I whipped around, looking for her, and munched again. Again I heard it: Amy was saying, “Take mouth-size bites. Chew slowly. Let the food digest.”
Finally though, I realized Amy would not appreciate this purchase. I looked down at the tightly packaged food that hollered, EAT ME! I pushed the bundled food away, but became aware that people were looking at me, giving me that people-are-starving look. I spent awhile on a french fry. But I could taste the sugar laced throughout it; it was like eating poison. I started sweating profusely and getting itchy. EAT ME! commanded the food. Someone leaving held the door open a moment. Hopping to my feet, I dashed out and to the corner. Fearing I was being chased like at
YUK!
, I dashed down into a subway hole, over the turnstile, and into an awaiting subway train. As the doors closed I realized that although no one was behind me, Amy was the fever in my head. My eyes were seeing double Amy in baby blue.
I consulted silently with her for a moment. We were rich! It was like we were chosen to live! We could do anything we wanted. We could have people killed if they forced us to eat fast food. We could do serious crimes and get off easily in country clubs. We danced on the subway and felt lightheaded. Life felt heavenly, like a wonderful interpretation of death. Indeed, for the first time I didn’t hunger for death.
A bunch of people were sitting quietly in their seats behaving themselves. As far as a bunch of people went, they seemed docile. They appeared hardworking. They were a fair slice of New York. All races, sexes, and ages were well represented. They were what we loved about New York, and we felt sorry for their plight, having to take the subways every day. As New Yorkers, they had suffered so that the rest of the country could delude itself into believing it was healthier, happier, and safer. They deserved something for this punishment.
We got up in the center of the car and announced, “Excuse us, ladies and gentleman. We don’t mean to be a pain but we’re a well-educated white man and his well-educated white girlfriend. We didn’t go to Vietnam and we have all our limbs and we don’t have any ailments and we live together in a large, comfy Upper East Side apartment and have a lot to be thankful for. If anybody needs any spare change, please just tell us how much, and we’ll try to oblige you. Remember, any idiot can become rich. Thank you.”
One guy laughed insanely. The other commuters completely ignored us. But as we neared the end of the subway car, one fashionable young man with a hook in his face asked me if we could spare a five for a flick. We informed him that it cost more than that but gave it to him anyway. Then we gave him six bucks more for popcorn.
“Hey, you got a hundred bucks?” someone said next. Amy said to give him only twenty, so we gave a twenty.
“Do you have fifty?” a lady asked. Amy gave her a five.
“Hey! Give me a dollar,” some old lady screamed from across the train. She came over and I gave it to her.
“Amy and I hope you live a happy life,” I said for both of us.
“What are you, crazy?” she said as she seized the bill out of our hands. “You’re all alone.”
And so, in
The Epic of Gilgamesh
it is written, “What you seek you will never find.” Happiness was a mere delusion of having both Amy and money. The old lady’s comment twisted through my sternum like a rusty corkscrew and tugged out my greasy heart. I stood there alone, Amyless.
The entire car-full of people were moving toward me like an army of zombies, no longer the noble people of New York. They were pushy at rush hour, intervening when something was a bargain, neglectful when someone needed help. As the door opened at the next stop, I dashed out and up.
I had lost track of the subway track and was up in Harlem. I walked among the locals looking for alternate transportation. On one corner, I noticed a well-behaved line of people buying drugs. Police spotters were on each end of the street, and there was a dealer in the middle of the block. I got at the end of the jittery-yet-mannered cue. When my turn came, I asked for a nickel bag.
“A nickel what? Who are you? Fuck off!”
“Look, you have to sell it to me!”
“Fuck away! Get out of here whiteboy before I blow you away!”
As a visual aide, he took out a cheap handgun and pointed it in my face.
“Shoot, go ahead. Life is worth nothing without my her. I’m Aimless without Amy.” Her life was probably joyful without me—Joey.
“Get out of here.” He smacked my sore nose with the flat of the cheap handgun.
“Ow!” The pain gave me an idea. “Hey, how much would it cost for you to shoot someone? I’ll give you ten thousand dollars.”
“Bring the money and we’ll talk.”
“Here.” I flashed three hundred dollars in his ratty face.
“Shit!” He grabbed at my money. I pulled away, he chased, I raced.
“Grab that little shit!”
One of the spotters cut me off and held my arms behind my back. The dealer went through my pockets and took out all my money, three hundred and twelve dollars and twenty-eight cents. He took the three hundred and put the twelve and change back in my shirt pocket.
“Now beat it.”
“Keep the cash but give me the gun, and I won’t call the police.”
“Okay,” he said complacently. “Here, I guess it’s better than killing you and going to jail for six years. And if you do call the police, I’ll have you arrested for having a concealed weapon.” Clever, he must have been a lawyer before dealing drugs.
As I walked over to 125th Street, I inspected the gun. It looked convincing, but there was only one way to tell. I pointed the weapon in the air and pulled the trigger. A screw fell out of the handle, but nothing fast came out of the front. I clicked the gun into the air repeatedly, and not entirely without results. A cabby, thinking I was hailing, came to a halt. I took it home. The ride was rough and circuitous. But like everyone else in this city, even with the gun, I was too afraid to give the maniac a punitively small tip.
PUT YOUR HAND IN SHIT AND
YOU’LL GET SHIT ON YOUR
HAND
“Amy,” I whispered into the fuzziness of the night, “where art thou?” Nothing answered articulately. I turned on all the TVs, all to MTV, but it did no good. The libido was not libiding while Amy was out there. Love was great and pure, and I could never love or even think of another woman.
Locating a small envelope of coke, I did a line and sleazebang! Ma’ams, madames, ms’, and misses. Lips thin or ample, barrels of kisses. Oodles and noodles of Chinese Chix! Gals, ladies, getting kicks. A sultan’s harem of sultry lasses. Girls with soft contacts, girls in glasses. Kittens and nymphs, hot sensations. Aproned matrons in tight formations. Parades, parodies, endless cavalcades. Brat packs in slacks, mistresses, maids. Anorectics, bulimics, and round pound rolleys. Thinking mamas like Cher or Jane Trudeau Pauley. Babes flowing, strutting, a wide-open faucet. Quiet gals, brainy, with skeletons in closet. Babs: Walters, Streisand; and Sue: Sommers, Saint James. Tall, small mall chicks, those with no names. Downtown-scene chicks, dirty and clean chicks, teens-injeans chicks, shallow and deep chicks, fiscal and leap…
But when the drug passed: Amy, amy, amyamyamy yam my amy may may am ama ma mama ay…. I fell asleep.
I woke up early the next day. I missed the breakfast special by six hours, so I got a jelly donut and coffee at the counter of a local diner. While walking toward my door, I became book-ended between two massive men.
“Thought I’d find you here,” said one. Looking up, I reconized that guy Wylie, who had served me the macaroni and cheese at Whitlock’s house. I tried to leap backward, but he already had his hand on my back. So did the other guy, some thug-for-hire.
“Do you remember me?” he inquired politely.
“Yeah, you’re the guy that talks to himself. If you’re going to beat me or kill me for the money, forget it. I spent it. But if you want, you can kill me anyway. Just let me see my old apartment one last time.” I was hoping to get hold of the cheap handgun and kill them.
“What? Hell no. I’m just sorry if I behaved strangely the first time we met.”
“Oh no, I’m amused by stream-of-consciousness types.”
“Well, this time I’m prepared to speak in the traditional, dialogical fashion. Whitlock would kill me if he knew I was here talking to you.”
“So do us both a favor and…”
“You’re having an important birthday soon, so you have to know!” Wylie shot back.
“What do you want? I have money!”
“Shut up, just listen a minute.” He paused for a moment and then launched, “Suppose…Suppose…Suppose…Help me, Herman!”
“How?” Herman asked.
“Suppose you heard about this poor guy…” Wylie began.
“Yeah, a guy…” Herman echoed.
“And he was the son of an old cow.”
“An old cow? You’re calling Mister…an old cow?” exclaimed Herman.
“I mean…a lion…” Wylie revised.
“A lion?” I asked.
“Yeah, he was a lion cub…but he was told he was a messy, skinny chicken.” When we arrived at my apartment, they indicated that I could take out my key and enter the front door.
“Yeah, a lion cub that’s a chicken,” uttered Herman as if it all made perfect sense.
“A guy is a lion cub, but he thinks he’s a chicken?” I asked.
“YES!” Wylie yelled impatiently.
“Fine.”
“Bear with us, Joey.” Wylie fell silent for a moment, searching for more components of this bizarre, bestial tale.
“Well?” Herman finally asked Wylie.
“Well,” Wylie said, “how would that little lion cub feel if he realized that all his life he was treated like a creepy little chicken?”