Shuck (2 page)

You're probably wondering why I can't get a real home, even with all the whore money I make. I can't understand it either. I'm staring at a crisp, hundred-dollar bill that's utterly useless.

Motel rooms, the scuzzy ones with bedbugs, start at seventy-five, but I can't afford the security deposit. They want me to pay for all the damage I
might
do, when the worst would be writing story notes on the bathroom wall while taking a shit.

Fold in half, right along Ben Franklin's nose.

Apartment landlords want three months up front, and family references.

Fold both sides kitty-corner into the middle.

Hostels won't let me in because they're suspicious of that new shoe smell I walk around with and can't wash off.

Bend back the wings.

And nevermind bribing doormen to sleep in building basements. Thing is, te nants tip them enough at Christmas to make sure that designer riff-raff like me can't use their zip code.

Crease little triangles at the tips.

Some places are free, like shelters, but show me one that's cleaner than a stock room. Show me one where I can lay my head on purses
of soft Italian leather. Show me one where I can walk barefoot on double-weave cotton suits with gold threading. Show me one where I can eat cereal out of a different high heel every day.

Tear a strip at the back for flight control.

Release.

One day, I might move to a city where hundred-dollar bills are more than just paper airplanes.

It's New Year's Eve, minutes away from spilling into 1999. All the screams and body-fucking. There's nothing I can do but squeeze closer to whatever's at the middle of this commotion.

Worm my way through the crowd that's distending Times Square twenty extra blocks. Blinking lights. Noise and hum stretching the top of my mind up, up, up. Starspin until I'm dizzy and deaf. This thrumming has no beginning or end, and will be here long after I'm gone.

Erase. Clear history. I could be deleted data, I could be stardust, and I could be nowhere in particular.

Some people have kids. Some people leave bullets inside other people. Some people tell jokes that get told and told. The point is that everyone leaves something, a little trace of themselves, behind.

I have writing. It's the proof I can give that there was something worth doing. You know what I mean. That not everything was for nothing. I know you're wondering what I'm so compelled to write about, but you'll eventually find out. Just to forewarn you, I write about things I find, so it's not always pretty or poetic.

The millennium's here. People are saying that it's all going to
break apart. Even atheists admit that there's some kind of reckoning coming.

So I think it would be good to get something published. As a matter of fact, I'm going to give myself until the end of 1999 to make it as a writer. And if that doesn't happen, I will very methodically kill the dream in front of your eyes, in such a graphic way that you will never believe in dreams again. Not because I'm mean, but because you shouldn't believe in things that are supposed to come true, but don't.

When I write at night, I turn into a superhero. There are superheroes all over the city, and they need darkness to hide how normal they really are.

Sometimes I abuse my powers. I steal the first newspaper delivered in the city, from the steps of City Hall at four a.m.

Mayor Giuliani can suck my wang.

Kurt Vonnegut has always tweaked it for me, so when he came to speak at the Barnes and Noble bookstore in Union Square, I didn't mind skipping out on a well-paying trick.

K.V.'s written all of my favorite novels, the ones I can handle because he wrote them in snippets.

His lectures were famous for magic tricks—bunny rabbits, hidden bouquets—yet that wasn't why I went.

I don't know what I was expecting. Maybe I thought he would
grab my notebook, read a few paragraphs to the crowd, and toast me as the next writing sensation. Maybe I thought his greatness would rub off on me, polish me around the edges.

A security guard filled the door frame just as I was about to walk in. He was wearing crappy loafers that looked like they were from Kmart, and I could see where the sole glue was coming undone.

“Sir, the bookstore is full. We cannot accommodate any more guests for Mr Vonnegut's appearance.”

From outside, I could see all kinds of room between bookshelves and behind display tables.

“I don't mind listening from the second floor. It doesn't matter where I am.”

“Then you won't mind listening from outside.”

I tried to squeeze past him but he pinned me against the molding and pushed me back outside. His radio crackled.

“It's nothing personal, but we can't let you in. I said we're full.”

I sniffed the armpits of my ski jacket to see if it was street stink that had turned him off or the smell of designer leather and treated snakeskin. Nothing. Smelled like winter. He started to close the door. I jammed my foot in the crack and he kicked it out.

“It's nothing personal.”

Of course it wasn't. He was just doing his job, making sure I understood that my place was on the outside of the glass, fogging it up.

My nostrils misted the window until I couldn't see anything. I had to imagine K.V.'s magic tricks, imagine them from scratch.

Not that I'd gone there for the tricks.

Why New York City is not America:

Because not everyone has a gun or thinks they need one, because the industrial smog that wafts over from New Jersey creates a sunset I want to lick off the sky, because people live in the subway, because some of the homeless live better than housed people in other cities.

Because people don't wish you “God bless,” because God would feel uncomfortable among the godless skyscrapers of Manhattan, because an old woman can keep her rent-controlled apartment for twenty-six dollars a month.

Because there are four daily papers that can spin a story four different ways, dividing the city into quadrants of people who can't, for obvious reasons, chat about the news.

Because people die when the power goes out.

I don't want to talk about how I got my eye busted open, because looking back is dangerous. You have to keep moving forward to stave off death. Thank God I'm not homeless, because I'd really be fucked if I didn't have a place to crash and recuperate between wounds.

Right about the time that I was debating whether or not to let the winter wind freeze-clot the blood, or maybe tamp it with some relatively unused Ray's Pizza napkins, somebody walked into my blur.

“Hey there.”

“What do you want.”

Sometimes when I ask a question, it doesn't sound like one.

“Nothing. Listen, why don't you let me take care of that eye for you. It could get infected if you don't do it right.”

He was a blond guy, twenty-seven or twenty-eight and kind of
preppy-looking. He was holding a bunch of flowers, and not the cheap ones, either. He was cute enough for me to forgive his inferior Pumas. It's not that Fiorucci has warped my outlook on the world or turned me into a snob, but you'll destroy your insteps if you wear anything else.

“Okay.”

“Cool.”

“Yes, it is.”

We smiled at each other. It had been a while since anyone had shown me their teeth in a nonaggressive manner.

I walked home with him, and he carried my duffel bag. I turned off my pager so we could be alone.

Derek was scrubbing Coast soap into a hand-puppet washcloth. I was slumped naked on the shower floor, twirling my pubic hair, watching the brown water swirl down the drain.

“How's it going there?”

“Whatever,” I said.

He started by washing my chest, then my back, then behind my ears, doting over me like I was going to melt away. I noticed a certain softness to Derek that afternoon, even though I was sure, at the time, that he was just a pervert with a knack for psychology. His head was getting soaked in the shower stream, and the tips of his matted bangs tickled my neck and gave me goose bumps.