People in Trouble (25 page)

Trudy didn't drink anything but seltzer but she didn't mind being around the more indulgent.

"I like the smell of beer," she said.
 
"I'll never deny that."

The house was small and comfortable with a lot of plastic plus old-fashioned things.
 
There was a big old-time TV that sat in a wooden box with legs and on top was a rosary that was clearly in use.
 
There were two big Santeria candles and a photograph of Lolita Lebr6n.

"I've got all the angles covered," she said.

Daisy had shot drugs for a couple of years, quit for ten and then went back after a bad breakup.
 
It was only for a few months the second time around but she'd picked the wrong months.

When all the reports started coming into the library where she worked, Daisy ran out and got tested first thing, so she knew she was positive and started watching the symptoms appear.
 
Trudy had heard through some gay friends that doctors at a couple of hospitals were testing experimental drugs on AIDS patients.

Daisy was reading everything she could get her hands on and got interested in a drug called Ampligen which seemed to work as well as the AZT but didn't have the side effects.
 
It didn't make you nauseated and it didn't give you diarrhea.
 
But the hospital turned her down on a formality: she was a woman.

I"I demanded an explanation," she said, telling the story for the fourteen hundredth time.
 
"I went after the doctors.
 
I called them at work.
 
I called them at home.
 
I started going out and sitting on their front lawns in Great Neck.
 
Why weren't women allowed to take Ampligen?

Finally, one guy, maybe from Saint Luke's, got so sick of me that he shouted out of the window of the commuter train, `It's the company.

Blame the company."
 
So, -I started going after them.
 
As we say in Justice, What did I have to lose?"

Sam decided to go out for more beer, since she'd already heard that story once that day.
 
Each woman put two dollars into her white Stetson hat.

"By that time I'd found the other women who wanted to try Ampligen too.

But believe me, pharmaceutical companies are harder to get through to than doctors.
 
But I haven't been a librarian on the Lower East Side for fifteen years for nothing.
 
I know how to get information despite their iron bitch receptionists and their bosses with Aqua Velva accents who sound like T they're standing on a golf course no matter what lies they're spouting.
 
You can just picture the plaid slacks.
 
So, we got on -the Amtrak and went down to meet them in person."

Trudy got up to turn down the radio and then stood behind Daisy with her arms around her neck, pressing her breasts against -Daisy's back.

"The cops tried to haul us away of course, but fortunately Trudy was there with her rule book."
 
to Daisy reached out lovingly behind and brought Trudy's face "Finally we got the official explanation.
 
Birth defects.
 
They won't give dying women treatment because they're afraid of being brought to court on birth defects.
 
I mean, I understand protecting a fetus, I was raised Catholic after all, but a woman has to live too.
 
So, I told the guy that first of all, two of us were gay and secondly the other one had no intention of getting pregnant.
 
She has AIDS, for God's sake."

"What did he say?"
 
Molly asked, noticing Sam sliding back into the apartment with a six-pack in a brown bag and some kind of pint in a smaller one.

"He says, `Who's going to protect my company against lawsuits?
 
That's what I want to know."
 
So I got in touch with Justice.

James helped me set up a contact sheet of a hundred and fifty women with AIDS around the country who are interested in Ampligen and don't plan on getting pregnant, or who are willing to have an abortion in case they do get pregnant, which can happen, after all."

"So, are you taking Ampligen?"

Sam opened a beer for Daisy and Molly and one beer for herself and a seltzer for Trudy.
 
Then she took a taste out of a small bottle of Wild Turkey and left it open on the table for anyone else who desired.

"Not yet.
 
They claim they're going to start a protocol for women soon, but they say they're going to run it in Pittsburgh.

There are at least four thousand women with AIDS in this country and most of them are right here in New York City and most are too poor or too disorganized to get down to fucking Pittsburgh so there's still a lot of work to do on this, but we'll do it," she said.

Then Trudy turned up the radio.

"So, do you live in Oklahoma?"

"No, I live right here.
 
A few blocks over.
 
I was just in Oklahoma for vacation."

"I never really thought of it as a tourist spot," Molly said.

The street was wet because it had been raining, which meant that all the headlights reflected off the asphalt and there was a special sound from the tires on the water.

"Sometimes I need to go somewhere else," Sam said as they walked along.

"Sometimes it's desert or just flat."

At one point that evening, right after the last envelope had been stuffed and stamped, Molly and Trudy and Sam had gone -into the bathroom to smoke cigarettes because Daisy felt that a sick woman should not have to put up with cigarette smoke wafting through her apartment.
 
Normally Molly didn't smoke, but after all that beer, she just felt like it.
 
She just felt like being a normal New Yorker with no pretensions.
 
The lamp was busted though, so the three of them sat there in the dark; Trudy on the toilet and Sam and Molly on the bathtub's edge, passing the red ember back and forth, the way that girls like to take hits off the same cigarette.
 
It was quiet and delicious and made each one of them want to sit in the black bathroom longer than was socially acceptable.
 
Halfway to the filter Sam put her hand around Molly's waist and then held it there, steady.

When they returned to the lit room again Molly and Sam had a secret which they reinforced by never looking each other in the eye, as though there were absolutely nothing going on.

Molly realized that Sam was a good liar and a smooth operator and a real drinker with a few secrets.

So, they both left Daisy's at the same time and walked in the same direction.
 
Molly was a little drunk and couldn't understand everything Sam said but at one point she definitely heard "baby doll" and Sam was probably referring to her.
 
Finally ISam kissed her; she was all tongue.
 
Then she put her arm around Molly and protected her from men on the street who said stupid insulting things to them all the way to Sam's house.

Molly hadn't fully comprehended who this woman was until they got to her apartment.
 
It was a fifties dime-store novel about a pregentrification bohemia that no one could live in anymore because of high rents and lack of inclination.
 
Sam led her up rickety stairs past a front door with a busted lock, past the beatup mailboxes hanging open on mangled hinges.
 
Everyone in the building was Chinese.
 
The hallways were decorated with red hanging things left over from the New Year and all the apartment doors were open so they could see old-world grandmothers in quilted jackets and white T-shirts cooking rice on hot plates.

There were lots of beds in each room and walls papered with magazine covers, calendar pages and red fringe.
 
Tired men shuffled to bathrooms in the hall, barefoot on the torn linoleum.

It was one room.
 
It was spare.
 
There was no refrigerator.
 
Her beer was sitting on the windowsill trying to keep cool in the June rain.

There was a bulb from the ceiling, a bed she had built, a TV.

"Hungry?"

There were no chairs.
 
There was an ancient stove.
 
Some collector could make it info a planter for a small tree in a large space.
 
The window faced a wall, so there was no breeze and no light.
 
Sam pulled off the griddle and cooked over an open flame.

She cooked up something poor like millet and cabbage, standing there sweating in her T-shirt, muscles traveling under her skin, being quiet.

The TV was on.
 
Molly sat on the floor and watched the TV but on the side of her vision was this woman cooking it up.
 
There were probably a thousand stars they couldn't see and then Sam brought her a plateful.

It felt so good.

"No one ever cooks for me."' It was private.
 
There was no talking.

There was a sound from the TV but it was benign and there was a woman, moving, bringing her something hot.

Sam wore a T-shirt instead of a bra.
 
She had thighs of steel.

She pressed her thumbs inside Molly, not like those girls who think their hands are substitute penises.
 
She had technique.

When Molly ate her Sam leaned back on her knees as far as she -could go.
 
She knew how to accept pleasure.
 
Her clit swelled in Molly's hand like a huge, undulating sea urchin.
 
They lay on the floor.
 
Her hands were big and rough.
 
She was a Girl of the Golden West.
 
She was a memory from another time.

"I can fix anything," she said.
 
"I can drive any vehicle.
 
I can pick up any instrument.
 
I like to go out in the woods.
 
You see lines on the ground, but they are not lines.
 
They are shadows from the trees."

"You're so sexy to me," Molly said.
 
"You're a cowgirl."

Later Sam was very tender.
 
Molly could see the headlights moving against the wall outside the window as cars turned corners on their way to various places.

"Do you have a girlfriend?"
 
Sam asked.

"Yeah, but she's married."

"What's her husband like?"

"Large and blobby, like most big men when they get old.

Clean-cut, boring.
 
You could trust him for directions on the subway but wouldn't want to talk to him about anything beyond that.
 
If Peter and I were strangers at the same party, we would never get around to meeting each other."

"What's she like?"

"I love her."

"How do lesbians keep from giving each other AIDS?"
 
Sam asked, stroking everything.

"Don't eat her when she has her period if you're not sure.

That's all.
 
It's easy.
 
Do you think you might have AIDS?"

"No," Sam said.
 
"I used to live with someone who had it though."

"Did you have sex?"

-"Share needles?"

Sam nodded.

"Be careful then."

"I'd really like some coffee and pie," Sam said.

I"What's out there at three o'clock on Friday morning?"

They ran down the list.
 
There were chicken tostadas.
 
There were late after-hours places, Puerto Rican social clubs and blackleather rich artists' bars.
 
There were always twenty-four-hour -Korean markets but no coffee and pie this side of the Hudson River that time of night.

"What about the Kiev?"

"No, I want the real thing, not that canned filling stuff," Sam said.

"Let's just lie here and talk about pie."

Molly admired Sam's hands, which were cracked and swollen from working so hard in so many strange places.
 
She ignored the tracks.

"Well," Molly said.
 
"There's three-berry pie at Cafe' Yaffa.

There's Danish apple torte at Hiro's.
 
There's pear-cranberry at Orlin.
 
There's brandy walnut-" I"That's yuppie food," Sam said.
 
"I want strawberry-rhubarb.

The kind they sell in truck stops once you get out of Ohio.
 
The kind you can always order anywhere in America and know it's going to be good."

"Is it still like that out there in America?"
 
Molly asked.
 
"I haven't been in so long it's hard to know."

I"Somewhere out there is strawberry-rhubarb pie," Sam said.

"And I want a piece."

In the morning Sam made them both coffee and then she turned on the TV.