Two homeless men were asleep on picnic tables. I had become very good at not looking at unpleasant things. I could skip my eyes over any pool of vomit on the train platform, any broken junkie lurching toward the concrete, any woman who screamed at her crying baby, even the couples fighting at their tables at the restaurant, women crying into fettuccine, twirling their wedding bands—what being a fifty-one percenter had taught me was not to let any shock shake my composure. One of the homeless men, in the layers of colorless clothes, was faced away from me on his side. His pants were half down, a piece of shit-covered toilet paper sticking out of his ass crack like a surrender flag. One of his tennis shoes had fallen off and lay to the side of the table.
I looked at him until I couldn’t anymore. The sun seemed pensive about setting, and instead of the usual transcendental buzz I got from a change of light, I noticed that the rats were shifting within the rocks. I’m beginning to worry, I said to the river. I checked my phone and walked back home.
—
WHEN THE INVITATION CAME it was vague and I was cautious. I waited for her to follow up. But she meant it—she would love to host me for dinner, me and Jake, together. The three of us. I was to arrive at eight. When I looked through my books to see if there was something I could bring to surprise her, I pulled out the copy of Emily Dickinson she had lent me when I first went to her apartment. I had read it many times but holding it in my hand that whole afternoon tumbled back to me with a rush of embarrassment. Not at the memory, but at the ease with which whole afternoons were forgotten. The way thousands of wounds and triumphs were whittled down to only the sharpest moments, and even those failed to remain present. I had already forgotten about the men by the river. Already forgotten what the autumn felt like. My sadness that day when I left her—it only existed in that little book, and even there, it was just a relic.
So, I said to myself in the mirror as I circled my eyes in black liner, not only was I returning to Simone’s apartment, but I was going back for dinner, and not only was I going, but I was going with Jake. I wore a cable-knit black sweater, tall black boots, black pants glued to my legs. I smudged up my eyeliner and wrapped my oversized gray scarf around my neck. Surprises in every corner.
—
“AND THEN SHE DANCES herself to death. It’s the only way to pacify the gods. It’s extraordinary, I make a point to go whenever they put it on,” Simone said, pulling a roasted chicken out of the oven. I held a stack of books in my hands that I had cleared off the round table. There was nowhere to put them but the floor.
“Really? That sounds cool.”
“This one and her ‘cool,’?” Jake said, shaking his head. He was flipping through Meditations in an Emergency, watching us with a smile on his lips that made me feel gilded.
“I must have heard Stravinsky before,” I lied.
“Of course.”
“But I can’t quite recall it.”
“Well,” she said, taking off the oven mitts. “I would recommend the ballet—the music is moving, fine, but Nijinsky’s choreography, the brutality of it, that was what really antagonized the crowd in 1913. That was the scandal. Will you pull the Chenin out of the fridge?”
She was the artistic director of her apartment. When I came in Jake was already there, there were candles burning, Bessie Smith on the record player, and the fortuitous smell of rendered chicken fat and potatoes. She opened the front windows because the oven made the place steamy, and the mild noises crept in, a swaying spot marking our inclusion and exclusion. She poured me a glass of fino sherry as soon as I walked in the door, and had me sit at the table while she fussed around in the kitchen.
Olives and Marcona almonds sat in patterned dishes (“Tangier,” she said when I asked her where they came from) in the center of the table, but she hadn’t cleared anything away. Books, halves of grapefruits, swiped-out casings of avocados, pens, receipts, kaleidoscopes of candle wax stuck to the table. And there he was, stalking around like a delinquent in a museum, picking up objects, books, papers, and moving them. When I came in, I got an up-and-down scan that told me he noticed my ten extra minutes of makeup. He was at ease in her home in a way I had never seen him in his own.
“The story has pagan origins…but what’s always interested me is that the myth of its opening night mirrors the arc of the ballet, which is a descent into the brutal and the primitive. Her fervor creates the same fervor in the viewer. I mean, honestly, can you imagine a riot at the ballet?”
“Who’d you go with?”
“Hmm?” she sang out, distracted. An apron high on her hips, just like she was at work, but her hair was down, elegant, a white T-shirt tucked into washed-out baggy jeans—and I thought, How brave she is, cooking in a white T-shirt. Her face was bare except for her lipstick, which I wanted to think she had applied just for me.
“Who did you go to the ballet with?”
“A friend,” she said.
“Howard,” Jake said at the same time.
“I’d rather not talk about our coworkers,” she said to Jake.
“Not a coworker, boss, Simone.”
“All right, Jake, will you turn the record over or are you just expecting us to wait on you hand and foot? Your fantasy, right?”
“You and Howard went to the ballet?” I pulled out pewter-handled knives. “These are beautiful.”
“Well, I haven’t been able to make Jake go to the ballet since the millennium, so Howard is kind enough.”
“Was it a date?”
“What a silly question. Of course not.”
“They’re good friends,” said Jake, flipping an hourglass.
“We all have our good friends, don’t we, Jake?” she said swiftly. “Now, Tess, I need you to dress the salad, Jake can finish the table.”
He instead picked up a sterling silver jewelry box and opened it. He picked up a white pill. “The seven-fifties?”
“Yes, dearest,” she said without looking. He popped it in his mouth and took a gulp of his wine. He and Simone had moved onto a Chenin Blanc from the Loire. I couldn’t remember if I had ever seen him take a line or a pill, but it seemed so natural, so absolutely charming, that I wanted one too without knowing what it was.
“Are those treats?”
“It’s for my back,” he said. He picked up a small bust from her bookshelves. He put the face—blandly Grecian and aristocratic—on the counter next to me. “Simone thinks she’s going to die reading Aristotle, she had a dream about it once.”
“One of Jake’s better gifts. You’re welcome to a ‘treat’ as you call it,” she said, shifting a tray of root vegetables in the oven.
“It’s Simone’s perverted candy dish.”
“Be sweet,” she warned.
“I can’t,” I said, taking a sip of my sherry responsibly. “I won’t be able to drink if I do.” I used two forks to turn the leaves in the salad bowl, but they kept falling out onto the counter.
“Don’t be timid,” she demanded. “Use your hands.” She reached into the bowl and started to move the lettuce leaves into the vinaigrette, soothingly.
“Escarole?” I asked.
“Your favorite,” she said and I pulled a leaf out of the bowl and popped it in my mouth.
“True, but I like everything,” I said.
“That means you like nothing.” Jake dropped the silverware into a pile in the center of the table.
“Anchovies?” I asked, tasting the vinaigrette.
“Perhaps you didn’t develop a palate, little one,” Simone said. “Perhaps you recovered it.”
We moved the plates onto the table and Simone pulled the fourth chair, covered in scarves, books, junk mail, and old New Yorkers to the side. Jake put on a new record and propped the cover up—Charlie Parker’s sax ran into the room. Someone had told me that when he soloed he referred to the melody only by omission—he implied it. It sounded exactly like New York was supposed to sound.
“Tess.” Simone snapped with her fingers toward a bottle of wine on the counter. I had already been eyeing it, the Puffeney Arbois, an eccentric wine on our list, and one of her favorite recommendations for her more intellectually inclined guests. She said it was a wine that stuck in the mind.
“Jura!” I said. “I’ve been dying to try this!”
“He’s the pope of Arbois. That’s the Trousseau.”
“Moni, where did you find that?” Jake asked, skeptically, grabbing the bottle from me. Moni?
“I have a friend at Rosenthal,” she said.
“So many fucking friends!” he said and then to me, “This is delicious.”
“Have you been there, Simone? The Jura?”
“Of course.”