The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (28 page)

And then, at the beginning of summer, Ginger told Patty that he and his company were going to California. “I just hate to leave, Sugar. But, Lord—the overhead these days! It’s just too steep for an artist. Here, don’t you look so sad now. Take a load off your feet for a minute.”

It was a slow night, and Patty let Ginger lift her onto his lap, where she nestled contemplatively against his papier-mâché breasts and admired the steely sheen of his arm, folded so gently around her. His arm was as smooth and hard as steel, too, as Patty’s finger, trailing idly along it, discovered, but its surface was as welcoming as satin. And this surface—which seemed more lovely to Patty than skin, less perishable, just as precious—raised on her own a velvety nap as she shifted, straining for some position of perfect rest.

“Oh, look,” Ginger said, while Patty let the back of her hand enjoy the delicious indentation from which the curve of Ginger’s shoulder flared. “Look how sweet! Look at those tiny pink nails, that little milky face. And freckles.” Patty closed her eyes to better appreciate Ginger playfully favoring one freckle, then another. “Long, long lashes.” Ginger brushed his cheek against Patty’s lashes, and when she opened her eyes again the eyes that gleamed back were feral and slanting. “Little flower mouth,” he said, and Patty’s mouth opened, too, as he arched, letting her glide it from his jeweled earlobe down his polished neck and along the sweep of his collarbone, but there was a quick explosion in her brain as “Waitress! Waitress!” someone called, and Patty scrambled trembling to her feet, scraping her shoulder against papier-mâché.

Patty had developed the habit of routinely clambering in with Stuart when she got home, for warmth and company, but that morning she prowled back and forth across the apartment. Stuart didn’t wake up, so eventually Patty poured herself a glass of cranberry juice and drew up a chair across from his bed, where he lay in a little humid wad, wheezing, appearing to become more and more exhausted as he slept, like a shipwreck victim unconscious on a seaborne plank. How painful a sight it was! How painful it was to be reminded that Stuart’s helplessness was something beyond a manipulative ruse! Patty and Stuart had laid to rest the question of sex (sex between the two of them, that is), and although Stuart raised it from time to time, he did so clearly in the spirit of commemorative iteration. It almost made Patty sad that he had come to be as uninterested, actually, in the prospect as she was herself. She sipped at her cranberry juice, watching him, thinking.

Her presence must have made itself felt, because Stuart wheezed mightily, thrashed, and flung himself into a sitting position. “Patty,” he said.

“Stuart,” she said, “what famous monarch gave forth a fatal dazzle?”

“Come here and give me a hug, Patty-Cake,” he said. He moved over to make room and politely turned his back to her.

“Come on,” she said. “Please guess what famous monarch gave forth a fatal dazzle.”

“Well…” He sighed. “O.K. Jupiter, then.”

“
Ju
piter,” she said. “That’s a stupid guess. Jupiter isn’t even a monarch.”

“Oh, yeah?” Stuart cleared his throat. “Well, listen to this, Miss Smarty:

When Stuart stopped, a spectral resonance hung in the room as if a cello had been playing.

“So?” Patty demanded, forcing back tears.

“So Jupiter’s the
monarch
of the sky,” Stuart said. “Get it? And he also fries Semele, which, in my opinion, is, like, an irrefutably fatal dazzle. Anyhow, what do you care?”

“It’s just a game,” Patty said miserably. “What Famous Monarch.”

“Oh,” Stuart said. “Trivial Pursuit for right-wing extremists. Anyhow, all monarchs give forth a fatal dazzle. Fatal dazzle is the sort of sine qua non of monarchy. The steady effulgence of enlightened self-government, for example—”

“Stuart,” Patty interrupted, “I don’t want to talk about this.” Morning had arrived in the airshaft; a thousand stars had dimmed. Mr. Nice Guy and his wife would be waking just above Marcia’s ceiling, and, above theirs, Mrs. Jorgenson. “I’m tired, Stuart. I’m lonely. I want a real boyfriend.”

“Well, Patty,” Stuart said softly. She could feel his laborious breathing behind the fragile arc of his rib cage. “I just can’t help you there.”

Customers generated themselves from air; where there had been one, now there were twenty. Patty rushed back and forth in terror, first for menus, then, thinking better of it, for knives and forks.

“Don’t fret, Sugar,” said a man, putting a calming arm around her. From the prodigality and exquisite subtlety of the painted designs that covered his body, Patty realized that this man was a chief.

“Take a load off your feet. We Brazilians tend to be hunting-and-gathering peoples.” And the band was indeed now plucking burgers and drinks and platters of ribs from under the tables, from out of the waitress stands and light fixtures.

“I never thought of looking there!” Patty said, astonished, but the chief was moving off with his band as they continued their hunt into the forests of the ever-expanding restaurant. “Wait,” she wheedled. “Please—I’ll get your bread and butter…” But the wonderful painted people who had paused so briefly in her sleep on their way off the face of the earth were disappearing through the trees. “Please don’t leave!” she cried loudly, waking herself up.

“I’m here for you, baby,” Stuart murmured from out of his own dream.

Baby!
Patty propped herself up on her elbow and stared at Stuart’s pale, knotted face. Who in God’s name could
Stuart
be calling
baby?

“Stuart,” she said that afternoon over coffee. “I think I’ve let myself get sidetracked somehow.”

“Hey, are you wearing some different kind of eye makeup these days?” Stuart asked.

“No,” Patty said. “Listen, Stuart. It’s time for me to start doing something interesting.”

“You are doing something interesting,” he said.

“That’s not what I mean, Stuart, as you know.”

“If you’re not careful,” he said, shaking a finger, “your wish will come true and you’ll wake up one morning shackled to some corporate cutthroat who cracks jokes about his interior designer.”

“Slurp slurp,” she said.

“Look, you’re too poorly informed to be familiar with the behavioral and attitudinal alternatives that are history’s legacy, but trust me, Patty. You’re at a crossroads here. We’re all soldiers in the battles between historical forces and you’d better look down at your uniform to see what side you’re fighting for before you do something you’ll be sorry about.”

“Stuart, are you telling me that I ought to be a waitress for the rest of my life?”

“It’s honest work,” he said.

“Honest!” Patty said. “It’s
funny.
TV and books and movies are full of
waitress
jokes. But it’s extremely
hard work
!”

“What do you think work is?” Stuart said. “What do you think people have been doing all these millennia? What do you think less privileged people do? Not less intelligent, not less attractive, not less deserving—less
privileged.
Just because history has tossed a bouquet to your weensy little culture, you think actual work is an ignominy, a degradation—”

“You know”—Patty was
not
going to let Stuart outtalk her—“considering how…how
entranced
you are by the sanctity of toil, it’s a wonder you never indulge in any yourself.”

“I’ve tried,” said Stuart, instantly in the right.

“I know.” Patty held up her hand. “I take it back.”

“I’ve tried waiting on tables, I’ve tried moving furniture…”

“I know,” she said. “I know I know I know I know, never
mind.
Yaargh.” He had tried. It was indisputable. He had tried waiting on tables, but, being Stuart, was confined to low-income jobs in dingy coffee shops or delis, where he was fired before his first shift was out, having kindled, to his own perplexity and the manager’s fury, little feuds that sprang up like brushfires at the tables and in the kitchen. He had tried moving furniture—for three days he’d gone off in the mornings with fear in his eyes and returned in the evenings looking shocked and broken. On the fourth day his body had refused to raise him from bed and reproached him with racking pains. He would have tried, gladly, to drive a taxi, except that he couldn’t drive and no instructor would let him learn, and when occasionally Patty had insisted that they travel by taxi, Stuart wedged himself back in his seat, peeking through his fingers and gasping in such a way as to provoke the driver into a murderous bumper-car rage. “But you know what, Stuart?” Patty bore down on her powers of expression. “It seems to me that if it’s a foregone conclusion you’re going to fail at a given undertaking you might examine your own motives to see whether there’s something hypocritical about them.”

“Hypocritical!” Stuart said furiously. “And you used to be
nice.
”

“
Caring
—a word that makes you throw up! I used to be caring.”

“Nice. You used to be pretty nice. Nice. A little, pretty nice glob of unformed humanity who couldn’t put two words together. Now, barely one year later, slimy sophistries drop from your lips like vipers and toads.”

“Wait!” Patty said, standing. Because the most incredible thing had just occurred to her. If she was going to get on with her life, it was not only she who had to get a job—Stuart would have to be gotten a job as well! As things stood, he couldn’t possibly afford an apartment of his own, and she couldn’t just put him out on the street to starve. Even Marcia, after all, had left him provided for, and now it was Patty who had to help him, whether he wanted help or not. “That’s not what I meant, Stuart,” she said ingratiatingly. “I expressed myself poorly. I only meant why should you wait on tables or move furniture when there are so many other, better, things you’re suited for?”

“‘Better.’” Stuart sniffed.

“Better paid, then, if you prefer.”

“Patty,” he said, “just what are all these things I’m so well suited for?”

“Well, I don’t know, Stuart. How should I know? Why couldn’t you…write copy, for example?”

“What is copy, actually?” Stuart said. “Is it anything like prose?”

“Or be a reviewer again, for some publication. Or get something done with some of your poems? After all, you’re an artist, really.”

“Yeah, and why don’t I rack up a bunch of grants while I’m at it, and have my picture taken for magazines? ‘
Artist
’—you know what you think an artist is, Patty? You think an artist is some great-looking big guy in a T-shirt, with a bottle in one hand and a paintbrush in the other, who has five hundred thousand dollars zooming around the stock market, and a car like a big shiny penis.”

“Stuart,” Patty said patiently as she tried to inhibit a telltale blush, “please don’t be revolting. The point is that I have complete respect for your convictions, no matter what they might be. It’s just that I worry.”

“Don’t worry,” he said.

“Well, I do worry. And I’ll tell you one thing I’m especially worried about right now. The Nice Guys. Yesterday Mr. Martinez told me they want a duplex. And you know what that means. That means they’re going to have to get someone out—either us or Mrs. Jorgenson. And Mrs. Jorgenson isn’t going to go without making trouble. We’re an illegal sublet, Stuart. We’re not supposed to be here. Especially you. We could get Marcia evicted!”

Stuart sighed. “I’m sorry, Patty. I know you want me to leave.”

“Oh, Stuart,” she said guiltily. “I just want you to find something that will make you
happy.
”

“But Patty.” He looked at her. “I
am
happy.”

Patty, however, had stumbled upon a decision lying in her path, and during the next few days she treated Stuart with the solicitude due to the condemned.

But when she called Donna, there was a bad moment. A minuscule silence preceded Donna’s first words. “Oh. Patty,” Donna said then. “Right.”

So Patty judged it best to come straight to the point: she wanted to talk to Fletcher at the magazine. She was aching for an outlet for her talents. She had developed a feverish interest even in layout, which he could surely exploit. If there was nothing open in that line at the moment, perhaps she could meet him, in case something were to open up in the future. Or in case there was anything. Anything at all.