40
With the shower off, I hear a bottle pop and voices.
“So, what’s up with Lorraine?”
“Same old shit.”
“Same old shit,” Mark repeats. “I mean, where is she?”
“She couldn’t make it,” Rob says.
“What do you mean, couldn’t make it? It’s a Friday night. Didn’t you say we have something to celebrate?”
“She had plans.”
“You didn’t even tell her about the engagement, you prick, did you? And why are you dressed like that? You look like a manager at the movies. I have clients coming tonight.”
Mark stops talking when I come out of the bathroom, and Rob stands. Rob looks great, actually. His vintage jacket is tan and black plaid, and his Western shirt is tan also, with snap buttons and a pearl-white collar with white stitching on the edge.
“Congratulations,” he says, kissing me spiritlessly. “Lorraine couldn’t make it. She has a virus.”
I try to think of what to say. I’m speechless. It never occurred to me that Mark would tell everyone so fast.
Rob helps me despite his disgust. He takes up my hand. “So where’s this rock I had to hear about?”
Area is the hot new club downtown. It has themes. Tonight the theme is night, so the place is practically black. I am left dancing with Dara while Mark and Rob step outside to argue. At least I think they stepped outside; I can’t see through the darkness.
Mark returns alone. He walks past me, going straight to the bar, where he orders a drink and confers with his clients, Miles, who works for the State Department, and Paige, a pharmaceutical heiress and an equestrian. Miles and Paige are up from their estate in Arlington to attend a reelection fund-raiser for Reagan. They are very high; they are frequently high, injection-high. If it’s hard to notice, it’s because they are professional about concealing. Miles has this way of locking down, of stiffening and leaning like plywood against a wall, only there is no wall. Except for an occasional Buddy Holly–type spasm of his left leg that comes so fast and hard you think his knee has buckled backward, you might believe him to be musing and meditative. Paige adjusts—constantly. She flicks her feathered rabbit-brown hair and reapplies lipstick and tweaks nonexistent particles from her shoulders and straightens her skirt even if she is wearing pants. When she takes up the fabric on the thigh of her pants to descend a flight of stairs, she is the picture of Southern refinement.
We don’t call them drug addicts, though Paige has been in rehab twice, and last month Miles drove his car through their garage door. We say, They like to party, even though the word party implies sharing euphoria, whereas they conceal it. They get giddy off stealth, as if what they crave is not the substance but the subversion.
At least Jack had cohesive ideas about the political significance of mind-expansion. It’s sad to think that the survival of people like Miles and Paige is more secure than the survival of someone like Jack. They’re chic; Jack is a junkie.
That winter I ran into Smokey Cologne at Canal Jeans. Smokey told me that he didn’t play drums for Jack anymore, that Jack had basically “blipped off the radar.” For a while Jack had been doing fine—they had a new band, Piss Pot, dates at CBGB’s and at Continental Divide, an album’s worth of recorded songs that were ready to be mixed—until all of a sudden Jack pulled out and hit the streets. I told Smokey to call me if he thought I could help. Smokey said sure, but he doubted I could.
I wait for Rob to come back; he never does. I excuse myself from Dara, leaving him to dance alone, and I approach Mark and Paige. I wait politely. Mark is concentrating on her face as if watching an ant farm. Even he has difficulty viewing her in her spasmodic entirety. It’s too nerve-racking; it’s like watching in dread as a speeding car veers between lanes on a highway. Mark wants to protect Paige’s interests, he says. Frankly, he’s worried about unscrupulous operators trying to get their hands on her trust fund and her pharmaceutical inheritance—especially now with the whole AIDS thing.
“Ever heard of churning?” he inquires, meaning the constant buying and selling by a broker from a client’s account in order to earn commissions.
Paige shimmies out of time to the music. “I’m doing it right now, honey,” she drawls.
I tap Mark on the arm. “I’m going to the bathroom,” I say.
“Fine,” he says. “Watch yourself with that ring.”
Rob is alone by the back bar, pounding Chivas. I can just make out the caramel color of the alcohol through the dim. An attractive girl in black is alongside him. She is catlike with liquid mascara, a body leotard, and lace-up leather boots. Rob doesn’t even notice her. I watch as he clears two tumblers and signals for a third, then pushes the hair off his forehead like he just received bad news. I like to see him this way; it speaks to the bond between us. We each admire in the other the tendency to travel great distances. Neither wants the other to be hurt, but covertly, we push; both of us long to behold true audacity, modern heroism. But it’s like watching a movie star cowboy. You forget sometimes that beneath the skin the blood is real.
Rob sees me coming. He stands straight, shoving his latest glass to the rear rim of the bar and rolling his head in its socket. “Shit,” he says, “you got some f*cking legs.”
“You okay?”
He pulls back to make eye contact. “Who, me?”
“You seem upset.”
“I’m fine. I’m not sleeping much,” he says. “That could be it. You know, my back.” He bends to pluck something off the floor—a five-dollar bill. “Look at this. Must be our lucky night.” He looks around and says, “C’mon, let’s split a beer.”
We walk a few blocks north to a photographer’s party in a loft on Varick Street, Mark and Miles and Paige and Dara, me and Rob. We pass Heartbreak on the way. There is a crowd lined up—all the people who’d been rejected at the door at Area. You can tell because they’re overdressed for Heartbreak. I see Phil the bouncer, but he’s busy and doesn’t see me. I wonder how Aureole is doing and D.J. Jim Jerome and Mike the bar-back. It’s been three years—maybe they don’t work there anymore. Maybe Aureole finally made it to L.A. Maybe Mike finally brought his family to Australia. I hope everybody got out to go pursue their dreams. That’s funny to think about, me having gotten out, me and my dreams.
The building we enter has morgue-like lighting and industrial halls, and a filthy cement smell, like behind the Sheetrock is wet concrete, like you can bite the air and eat mortar. We ride up the elevator with fabulous strangers, all of us brushing shoulders, someone giggling. The guy having the party is one of Dara’s investor clients; Mark says he shoots editorials for Vogue.
The music gets louder as we go up, like a temperature rising, and when the doors open, we’re hit by a wall of sound. The place is packed; there are hundreds of people. There are motorcycles parked on the dance floor. We follow Dara to the host’s bedroom; by the time we get there, Rob is gone. Miles and Paige pull out their alligator skin kit bag full of pills and foil and pipes and rocks of powder. That’s their community kit; there’s another that you never see.
Women immediately rush in, beautiful mannequin women with breasts like teacups and washboard abdomens and narrow hips. Brett and Mark’s boss, Richard, are behind them. Their fiancées are out of town, so they invited a few model friends along. The models are hardly friends, though it’s true that the guys often pay for their meals and car service, and do things at the girls’ apartments that they would never do at their own, such as kill mice or scare off stalkers or haul furniture up four flights of stairs. Richard’s fiancée, Mia, said she wouldn’t mind having the “girls” around as long as we start to use more appropriate descriptors for them, such as freeloaders, social climbers, or usurpers.
My dad once told me about a parasitic bird that air-drops its own egg into another bird’s egg-laden nest when the mother bird is out. The nest mother then returns to unwittingly hatch all the eggs. The invader chick emerges first, grows disproportionately, evicts the mother’s babies, and monopolizes her resources. In the end you have a tiny mother bird struggling to meet the demands of a gargantuan baby. Something about laying eggs in a nest already built, something about family work being largely done reminded me of women who prefer attached men. It is as if they can’t trust themselves to determine on their own the worthiness of a partner.
With all the commotion, Mark doesn’t notice me slip away. I pass through the loft, finding a hallway, a door, a staircase, the roof. There are other guests up here, dancing and playing children’s games.
“Mother says, ‘Take six wondrous city pigeon steps!’”
“Mother May I?”
“Yes! You may.”
Some of them are so f*cked up I’m concerned they might try to fly. When I was a kid, you always heard about dope fiends trying to fly. Nobody tries to fly anymore. There is something to that, I think.
I walk to the roof rail. I look to see if there are balconies or ledges, but it’s just a straight shot down. The cars in the street look like gribble, lonely like bugs in paths on rotting wood.
“Don’t go getting any crazy ideas,” a voice says from behind me.
Rob. His elbows line up next to mine on the rail, and for a while we just stand there, staring. It’s like we’re looking off a ship. The music from the loft below is like the pounding of the boat on the water, and our faces press into the night wind as if seeking relief from some indwelling nausea. Unlike our fellow passengers, we are disappointed with where the ship is headed, yet we assigned ourselves to its course long ago. No asylum ahead can approximate the one we once imagined reaching.
“I figured you were downstairs,” I say. “With the rest of them.”
“Me? Nah. You know I’ve been off blow for years, and I’d never touch smack. And forget about ecstasy. Look at those free-love lunatics.” He gestures to the people across the roof, skipping in pairs. “They were playing Duck, Duck, Goose before, very nice, then all of a sudden one of the ducks starts holding hands with a goose and that’s it—chaos.” Rob finds my eyes. “Listen.”
I look back down at the street. Whenever people start sentences with Listen, you know that no matter what comes next, it’s not going to be good.
“I’m heading out,” he says. “I don’t want to tell you what to do or anything—I know it’s not my place—but you should probably let me take you home.”
Rob asks if I understand. I do. He’s telling me that things downstairs are bad. But I know that. They were bad already at Area when Mark picked a fight with Rob, and then bad again when Miles and Paige arrived. Rob is saying that my commitment to Mark is for the present nullified—that Rob is under a prevailing obligation to see me safely home, that obligation being to me, and also to Rourke. I understand that by agreeing to honor forgoing loyalties, I betray Mark, and in turn condemn myself for my movable allegiance.
I say okay.
“Okay,” he repeats, okay. He is surprised and also relieved, not exactly happy, but lighter. “Let’s do this fast. What do you have downstairs, a pocketbook?”
“A sweater.”
He nods, calculating. “Fine. A sweater. I’ll wait by the elevator. I won’t leave alone unless you walk out and tell me you’re okay. But I’m warning you, you’re gonna have to be pretty f*cking convincing.” He takes my hand. “Let’s go.”
Going down the roof stairs and back into that party sickens me. Everyone in the loft is dancing, or rather, staggering like zombies. It’s like their knees won’t hold them. I recall the roof. If not for Rob, I think in fact I would try to fly.
Rob points over the tops of heads to the entrance. “I’ll be right there.”
The door to the bedroom where I left Mark and everyone is open about eighteen inches. Through the opening I see Mark, reclining on a chaise in the center of an encampment of people, king of a wax tribe. He shifts when I come. As I look around for my sweater, he says, “C’mon people. Let’s dance.”
Two of the girls flanking him lend him their arms and aid him to his feet, and he laughs, at himself, I suppose, at the way he imagines himself to be. He uses them like canes to right himself across the path to me, where he stops, shaking them off with a burst of manly animation. The girls saunter insolently past as if to imply that he slept with them while I was gone. Obviously they know nothing of his revulsion to disease, or of his obsessive fear of being cheated on by me in return. Or how Mark figures himself to be a man of ideals; he would not want a woman whose attraction to him is defiled by a lust for assets. Anyway, I feel no jealousy where Mark is concerned. There is simply an emptiness in the place where such emotions might reside.
The room has cleared; his friends have gone to the dance floor. He and I are alone. Mark comes closer. He smiles a false smile. His eyes are wild and unable to focus; they look off slightly to the side. The veneer of his skin is white as birch. His upper lip is a band of sweat, his nose is running, and his breath smells like steel getting cut, like when Dad and Tony cut steel with a chop saw for some sign they’re making. I wonder what he’s been doing, snorting coke or snorting heroin, or both. I’ve seen him do it before. The last time Miles and Paige were here. It’s not a big deal, Mark told me—strictly business, purely recreational. Probably I should have seen this coming. That’s my job, I think, to see things coming.
“I think we should go,” I say.
He pulls my sweater from my hands. “I think we should stay.”
I reach for the sweater. “I think I’m going.”
“I think you’re staying,” Mark snaps, and he flings my sweater across the bedroom. His body plows into mine and he pins me against the opened door. He yanks the fabric of my skirt toward my waist with his left hand, and he grabs my ass with his right, taking up the flesh and groping it, driving me back, writhing, worming.
“Mark!” I am able to lean far enough left to see across the dance floor. Rob is not in the appointed spot, which can mean just one thing: he’s on his way over. Within seconds, I see him; he is about ten feet away. Through the leather of his jacket, I can make out fists in the pockets. Mark casts a lethal gaze in Rob’s direction, then he turns me completely outward, exposing my bare back to the crowd. Mark pulls me into the bedroom and kicks the door shut. Rob’s foot and shoulder jam it. There is powerful shoving.
“Mark!” I shout again, thinking, Rob is going to end up in jail. Shit, Rob is going to end up in jail.
Immediately, people come out of the bathroom behind us, taking Mark and me by surprise. Dara and Brett emerge with two of the models, one of whom is swaying feverishly to the blaring music—“The Age of Aquarius.” It’s at the horn part, at its most hallucinatory and cultish.
Let the sun shine! Let the sun shine in! The sun shine in!
With Mark’s attention diverted, he loses his hold on the door and Rob smacks it open. Dara throws out his arms to protect the girls as Rob lurches at Mark and Mark lurches at Rob and Brett cuts over, forcing his way into the middle.
Dara yells, “Everyone freeze,” and they all comply, I guess because I’m so obviously caught in the mass. I don’t kid myself into thinking Dara cares. As far as he’s concerned, I’m Mark’s property, and under any other circumstances, it would be my place to acquiesce to Mark’s will. But Dara is looking at Rob, and he’s thinking, For all I know, that barbarian is carrying a gun. Furthermore, we are guests in Dara’s client’s apartment, and Mark’s clients have drugs. Everyone is equally compromised, which is somehow a sign of the times. Dara retrieves my sweater from the floor, then slides over. He extends his arm, helping me to disembark as though assisting me off a high-speed amusement ride. I try to withdraw but can’t. I don’t know who has my hand. Someone has it tightly. Oh, Rob—I can feel the leather cuff of his jacket.
As soon as I am extracted, Mark and Rob press back at each other, but Brett firmly holds the center, saying, “Break it up! Break it up!”
“Sorry your fiancée is unwell, Ross,” Dara states to Mark, loudly and clearly. “You are wise to send her home. Unless, of course,” he adds with contempt as he opens the bedroom door, “you have a little headache also?”
Mark does not reply. The three men stay immobilized, congealed into one dynamic solid, like one of Michelangelo’s unfinished sculptures of slaves breaking from rock.
“Let’s take a walk,” Dara insists, “together.” He takes the lead step, and we cross the central room as one. “Does the future Mrs. Ross have a car, or does she need a taxi?”
“Taxi,” I answer.
At the elevator bay, Mark reaches for his wallet. The force of his own hand entering into his breast pocket throws him off balance. He finds two twenties, pinches them ineptly, then thrusts them at me. I join Rob on the elevator, and everyone looks at one another like factions facing off. I press the button fast.
As the doors begin to creak closed, Mark tosses out an arm, blocking them, and Rob pushes me behind his back. Brett grabs Mark’s shoulders. There’s that irregular thucking that elevator doors do. Mark manages to break free just enough to dump the remaining contents of his wallet onto the elevator floor.
“Here,” Mark says to Rob. “Go buy yourself a matching outfit.”
Rob kicks it all back, rapid fire, cramming the toe of his shoe into each piece, not missing a single bill or coin. “Save it for psychotherapy, you sadistic motherf*cker.”
“I’d warn you to keep your hands off her,” Mark says, “but I won’t bother. You’ve always been too afraid to try.”
I look up Varick Street for a cab, but Rob snaps his head to one side. “C’mon, I got the Cougar.”
The ride home passes in withering silence. I consider telling Rob that what he saw was not typical, that Mark was not himself, but even if Mark were worthy of defense, I would not have insulted Rob by lying to him.
Rob glares through the windshield, head down, eyes up, as if checking for broken bulbs in the streetlamps. He chews furiously—a toothpick, I think. We take Sixth Avenue up past all the silver towers. I’d always been pure to Rob, from the beginning, a palace in his mind. He had erected me and tended to me. I wonder if we’ll ever recover, if we can ever find a way around disgrace.
At the entrance to my building, he hits the hazards and comes around to my door. He hands Carlo a five-dollar bill and tells him to keep an eye on the car. Rob takes me up to the apartment; he has to do something. Leaving me at the curb is not an option. In both our minds is the meaninglessness of his prudence. Mark has keys, just like me.
I will not say that Mark and I have sex when he eventually comes home. I will say that somehow he manages to ejaculate inside me despite the stubborn flaccidness of his penis, and right away he passes out and right away I bathe, allowing gravity and soap and near-boiling water to purge the tapioca clots of stinking debris he deposited in me. And men make fun of the way women taste and smell. If only women had voices.