Текст книги "The Fuck-Up"

Автор книги: Arthur Nersesian

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

FOUR

I retreatedback across Twelfth and down Broadway intending to return to Helmsley’s with the heartening news. But as I passed by the NYU dormitories, specifically the one that housed Eunice, I thought about that olive man in the white suit. Instant anger and hurt eclipsed the jubilation of the new job. I realized that this was something that had to be resolved. I wondered if they’d be together now.

It was still the lighter side of twilight, so I decided to try to find her. A guard insisted on announcing me, so she was on guard when I got to her door. When the elevator stopped on her floor and the doors slid open, she was standing there, leaning against her door holding a can of Tab, which she was sucking through a straw. We entered the room.

How could she do that to me? I stood still and stared at that milky, silky soft skin, her shadowless face. At first, I tried to remember and then I tried to forget his filthy hands fumbling over her and then I tried not to imagine what might’ve followed.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” she asked after a patient interval.

“You probably heard I was fired.”

“I heard, but I couldn’t believe it….” She rambled on about what a shit Pepe was, and gave me some cinema updates. It sounded all so innocent; she didn’t realize that I saw her being felt up at the Ritz.

“I missed you dearly,” she soon concluded.

“How much?” I mumbled. I took a single step toward her and she took a couple of steps backwards until she was up against the small pullout sofa.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I know you didn’t go out West to visit the folks.”

“What do you mean?”

“I saw you at the Ritz the other night with that old guy, letting him kiss you and feel you up.”

“I don’t see how what I do is any business of yours.”

“It is when I spend two months dating you in the cold until I lose sensation in my fingers, and my girlfriend and job.”

“Wait a second. You can’t dump all that on me.”

“You knew what I wanted.”

“And you knew what I wanted.”

“Yeah, to make yourself feel pretty at someone else’s agony. Fuck you.” I slammed the door behind me and left.

When I arrived back at Helmsley’s, I told him that I had the job.

“Good, this can be a double celebration. What are you doing tonight?”

“Nothing, why?”

“Because there’s someone very special I want you to meet tonight.”

“I’d be honored, but to be honest I’m tired, starving, filthy, and broke. Tonight might not be the night of nights.” It was only around six. He suggested that I nap an hour or two, take a shower, and then maybe we would go out, his treat. “It’s important that you meet her tonight.”

Three hours later we were at a local restaurant where Helmsley ordered the most expensive dish in the pasta category.

“A fine meal can alter one’s entire perspective,” Helmsley quipped as I gobbled deeper and deeper into the high-sided plate. I felt like Godzilla as I tore through the many pasta roofs and cheese floors. To do any real damage to that tomato and garlic structure was a gluttonous task. All Helmsley did the entire time was pour from a select bottle of vino and snicker. Eventually, though, he attempted to start a sentence, an opening to something he didn’t seem to know how to close.

Finally, when I was full, I asked him what was going on.

“Well,” he replied, “it’s a little hard for me to say.”

“Is it concerning that special friend that you mentioned earlier?”

“Yes, in fact.” He smiled a bit. “I’m trying to give you an idea of what to expect.”

I could easily imagine her, a fair-skinned cutie who had probably graduated from an Ivy League and developed a shapely resume. “I’ve been in love, Helmsley. I know, you want to tell me that she’s different from any other girl you’ve ever met…”

“Yes, but there’s more…”

“There’s always more. You’re nervous, that’s all, just calm yourself.”

Helmsley, as far as love went, was just entering puberty. In this area I felt a bit like an older brother and was about to mention how beguiling love is and the disappointment that inevitably follows, but I caught myself. I wiped the oil and sauces off my face, he paid the bill, and we left.

We went to the nearby bar where the fateful rendezvous was set to occur. A sign outside said it was an American Legion Post. Once inside, I noticed a cool tension that I learned was due to the two types of patrons: the recently arrived yuppies, who’d found that quaint Cobble Hill was only minutes away from their beloved Wall Street, and the third generation Italians who resented the young professionals, probably for jacking up the neighborhood’s cost of living. Helmsley quickly brought two bottles and mugs over to a booth by the door. Once seated, I could feel poor Helmsley’s anxiety multiply.

“Calm down.”

“It’s just that, well, you know, I don’t have many women friends and I feel very different about this one …” He then launched into a poetic preamble about man’s profound and incurable loneliness and how the soul itself is a piston-shaped apparatus that creates a series of vast obliterating implosions which are the true motivations of all man’s actions. Nothing was simple. After the earlier session with Miguel, I couldn’t stomach any more.

I grabbed the beer mug, shoved it to his lips, and turned it bottoms up. He started guzzling as he struggled for the handle. When he finished it, he put the mug down and apologized.

The door suddenly whipped open with such a bang that Helmsley’s empty bottle fell over. A gang of young locals stormed in. The last of them broke from the rest and shoved into our booth. Pushing up against Helmsley was an older lady. She took Helmsley’s hair in her hands and gave him a hard unexpurgated kiss on the mouth. I couldn’t believe it.

Angela was a small, butchy mama who couldn’t have been any younger than forty-five. Her dark wrinkled skin sagged loosely away from all bones, and as she banded her arms around Helmsley, I battled a grin.

“So whatchu boys talkin’ ’bout?” All I could do was hold back that grin and look at him—so this was his salvation from ruin, the melter of his stalagmite.

“We were just waiting for you, dear,” Helmsley replied tenderly.

“Ain’t talkin’ dutty, eh?” The she-wolf grinned.

“No, hon, I was just mentioning you, in fact.”

“You tease,” she replied while yanking Helmsley downward so that his head was resting across her lap the same way Sarahs head had laid across that chunky punk’s lap in the teen-bar a couple of weeks before. As he struggled to rise, she splat her lips on his and the two of them tumbled underneath the table.

In time a hand reached up from under the table, and feeling around the table top it snatched my half-finished bottle of beer and disappeared with it back under the table. In a gulp’s time, an empty bottle was replaced on the table top. I looked around the bar uncomfortably. The table started rumbling and up popped her head. Extending her hand over the table, she hollered, “Heimslock told me a lot aboucha.”

“Dat’s swell,” I replied. When we shook hands, she squeezed my knuckles into a painful bundle. She laughed when I retrieved my injured hand and asked, “What’s a matter, not man enough?”

Helmsley slowly reappeared from under the table. His hair was tousled and he blushed as he straightened it with his fingers. Silently he rebuttoned his shirt.

“So yer friend ’ere ain’t man enough for a little handshake.”

“No,” I retorted. “I gots ta idmit it, Helmslock, the little lady’s gots da man’s grip.”

Helmsley replied with a swift kick from under the table. Out of respect for my friend, I took the back seat and watched as Angela ruled the evening with filthy remarks and vulgar jokes. He was almost as attractive as she was ugly. When Helmsley’s glasses were off, if his old pants and hair-style were updated, he could resemble a manly Mel Gibson. He was muscular and had dark, deep-set eyes. His appearance was as remarkable and singular as his character. Unfortunately one fork in this road to gorgeous was that while his intellect was unremitting, he usually froze when dealing with people whom he hadn’t known for a while. Subsequently he had no luck with small talk and usually came off as a nerd.

While stuck there soaring to new heights of boredom, I speculated on possible motives for Helmsley’s interest in her. Lately he had been involved in the study of early man. Perhaps he was immersing himself in a Neanderthal woman. Or perhaps this was the first girl he had ever met who just reached down into his pants and plucked out what she wanted; fuck the small talk. I could see how this normally crass feature would appear charming to a guy who had always been too shy to present himself.

But still, she seemed hideous at the time. Could love bridge the intellectual and cultural abyss between them? Could love amputate the fifteen or so years that tossed her ahead of him? Could love repair so much? If so, then for the first time in my life, sitting there, I realized how love was truly great. It had always been easy for me to fall head over heels for some bouncing blonde from Texarkana, Texas, to sip her like a dry martini and smash the crystal in the fireplace of fate. But it was only Budweiser that my dear pal Helmsley was guzzling, as he nestled his head into the folds of her belly and looked into her cavernous nostrils.

For different reasons, we had all downed what would have measured out to at least a half-keg of beer. Angela, who had drunk twice as much as Helmsley, was no drunker. Suddenly Angela jumped to her feet and, yanking Helmsley up, decided it was time to go. Before departing, though, she cut a profound fart. I was too drunk to mind, though; I knew I wouldn’t make it even as far as the door. I sat there and ordered another beer.

Alcohol corrodes one’s dexterity and sense of proportion, but it also heightens one’s emotions. Smelling that fart, I thought of Helmsley in love. Had I spent my whole life confusing love with a series of erections? Love to Helmsley must have been an utter necessity, whereas for me it was always just a luxurious distraction. I wished that I had the need to lust after some goiter-necked, tooth-decayed, leg-blistered old bag. If I could love like that it would be a pyramid of emotions, an Arc de Triomphe of affection.

When the time arrived for the bar to close, I had to be helped out. No sooner did I plop myself down on a neighboring stoop than my stomach reared up. Staring down at the pool of vomit that had fountained out of me, I made out the expensive Italian meal I had eaten earlier that evening. The regurgitated pasta and cheese were little islands in a vast sea of beer. I recall feeling through that drunken stupor a deep loss; it had been a magnificent meal.

If I could love it enough, I would be able to eat it up all over again. It probably would taste just as good, once I got over the disgusting appearance. I knelt in the slop and gazed into it with as much devotion as I could muster. Dogs eat their regurgitation, I prompted myself. Slowly stretching my fingers out, I stroked along the meaty lumps and cheesy threads, and then brought my fingertips to my lips. I tried, but for some reason I just couldn’t get beyond the bilious stench.

“Hey,” someone yelled, following it with a prodding kick to my ribs. A large guy with mountainous shoulders loomed above me.

“What da fuck you doin?”

A gang of teenagers behind him were looking down at me grimly. They knew when a good beating would be therapeutic As I scrambled to unsteady feet, I realized there was no chance of running away.

“Well, I was just eating, you know, a meatball hero, and I look at my hand here, and my high school graduation ring is gone, so I … uh, upchuck here, and I was just looking for it, you know, it had a diamond stone.”

“Diamond?” the most brilliant of them queried. “What public school has a diamond for a graduation stone?”

“Who said public?” I countered. “It was parochial.”

“Which one?” asked the guy with the twin tower shoulders.

“Maternal Lamentations. Over in Sheepshead Bay.”

“We just beat them in basketball,” one of the morons said, to my relief.

“Fuck it,” I said, looking wistfully at the vomit. I slowly walked away. After I had staggered away half a block, I looked back and saw the bastards kicking through my poor puddle of barf. As I turned away, I heard one of them yell to another, “Gypsies steal gems that way.”

Late afternoon the next day, I awoke with a punishing hangover. I arose slowly and remembered the previous night with disbelief. I peeked into the slightly opened door of Helmsley’s bedroom to see if he was sleeping alone. The room was empty and nothing had been altered since yesterday. He had been out all night. I went back to my couch and retreated back into sleep. When I awoke again, it was dark out and I was starving. I recalled the barf episode of the night before, and quickly brushed my teeth. It was only six PM. I took a shower and a couple of Tylenol and called Miguel to ask him when I could come in to start training. He instructed me to come in as soon as the energy was right. I dressed and got the F, then changed for the L to Third Avenue where I walked south to the theater. Upon my arrival, Miguel asked me, “Are you sure you’re in the right energy so soon?”

“I stopped in a nearby Radio Shack and checked on the meter. I’m ready.”

“All right,” he said, and we began with a tour of the theater.

“This is your theater,” he explained as we walked to the stage. “You must look at it as if it’s a part of your own body.” Sex was lurking all around us. It was crouched low in the darkened seats and projected high on the stage.

“This way” He led me to a staircase behind the stage and to a downstairs room. The place looked and sounded like a medieval dungeon, with dark stone walls, puddles of water, virtually no lighting, and the moans. There was constant moaning all around. A hand out of the darkness groped my thigh.

“Fuck off!” I yelled.

“Shhhh,” Miguel whispered back. “Occasionally someone might reach out; all you do is simply take their hand and push it away. Not rudely or quickly, everyone here is as human as you are.”

We went back up a staircase to the front of the theater. “Now look here.” He pointed to a burnt-out bulb. “Ow, see that? Ow ow, you should smart when you see that. A bulb is burnt-out and now the theater is in pain. Say ow.”

“Ow. Why?”

“You should be in pain until you replace the bulb. You’re both the nerve system and the lymph node system of the theater.”

“You mean the white blood cells,” I corrected his little metaphor.

“Why not the lymph node?”

“Well, isn’t the lymph node just sweat and pimple pus?”

“So?”

“Well, the white blood cells destroy foreign objects that enter the body Didn’t you see the movie Fantastic Voyage?”

“I thought the spleen does that.”

“No, the spleen stores blood, and I think the liver cleans it.”

“All right, enough. You’re the spleen, the liver, the white blood cells, the lymph nodes. You’re all of that and anything else you can think of.”

He gave other pointers as we walked back through the dark theater. Looking up at the beam of projected light, I saw something strange. As I walked down the aisle, I noticed the ray from the projection booth was parallel to the seats. Out of an architectural interest, I squatted to inspect the incline of the floor.

“You wouldn’t have a level, would you?”

“Very good,” he replied, and yanking me up to my feet, he quickly put his finger over my lips and murmured, “I’ll explain later.”

“Explain what?” I asked as soon as he closed the office door behind us.

“Did you notice the angle of the screen?”

“No, what’s wrong with it?”

“It’s slanted backward at the top. And all the seats are anchored at such an angle that everyone sitting has to apply a soft but constant thrust to sit back in the seat.

“Doesn’t anyone complain?”

“No”—he grinned—“they just leave. No one can bear it for more than a couple of hours.”

“You can probably get a team of carpenters to fix it,” I replied. “Who fucked up?”

“Fix it? That’s like fixing the Mona Lisa! It’s brilliant.”

“Brilliant?”

“Look, porn theaters aren’t like other theaters. People come to a porn theater and they stay forever. This way they either leave or they suffer.” It was an interesting theory, but who could guess how many patrons never returned because they didn’t care for the back strain?

“Who thought of it?”

“Only one man could come up with something so ingenious, Otto Waldet. Did you ever see the last scene of Lady from Shanghai?I Otto built that set for Welles. He was a set designer up until the early fifties, when he was blacklisted. By the early sixties, he started one of the first chains of gayporn theaters. He just died last year.”

“Is that why the projection booth is at that strange angle?”

“Oh no, that’s something entirely different. This theater was initially a nursery school. The projection booth was built between the second and the third floor.”

I was introduced to my staff: a middle-aged box office lady named Rosa and a Cambodian porter named Thi. Miguel finally led me back into his office and had me fill out a W-4 form and then we agreed on a mutually accommodating schedule.

“Why don’t you work with me the rest of this evening so we can get to know each other?”

The evening was almost over anyway, so I decided to stay for the remainder. Opening up a compact refrigerator hidden under the desk, Miguel took out a couple beers and a bag of banana chips. Then he pulled out a small television and we decided on a football game. It was a remarkably American evening for a neo-hippie in a gay porn theater.

As we watched the Forty-Niners beating the Jets, I remembered how in the past working had meant something far more physical, under the constant supervision of usually someone conspicuously dumber. I sputtered through a mouthful of chips, “I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do this.”

“This is really a pretty smooth operation and if nothings broken …”

“Sounds comfy.”

“It’s boring, that’s the real job.” And we didn’t talk much more until the end of the game. By the time the Jets had won, we were both pretty tired from the beer and the little room had gotten pretty humid, so we stepped out front and watched guys stray in and cars cruise by for corner whores. Miguel took out a cigarette.

“Aren’t those bad for your health?”

“They’re organic,” he replied, and lit up.

Suddenly when a long American car turned up Third toward us, Miguel snuffed his cigarette and spoke under his breath, “Quick, get into the theater.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Ox is here. He’s the district manager. I didn’t tell him I hired you yet, and he lives to yell. I’m sure he won’t pass up this opportunity. Just make like a patron until he passes.”

Out of a purple Cadillac that pulled up in front plopped a pudgy middle-aged man with a curly beard. He was wearing such a distinctly tasteless suit that it seemed to make a kind of agonizing fashion statement. His upper torso rocked solidly as if he were entering a boxing ring.

“You sure I shouldn’t meet him now?”

“Just disappear until he does.”

Hastening into the bathroom, I started to urinate but kept hearing the sounds of fumbling in the adjacent stall. I concentrated on a hand-lettered sign that Miguel must have written. It read, “Save water, New York is going through a drought.” Underneath it was all the predictable graffiti, “Fight Aids not Gays. Save Soviet Jews… Win Prizes. Ernie loves Tony loves Casper loves Ira loves Bozo…” The sounds in the stall got louder and louder. So I retreated into the theater, took a seat, and discreetly checked around me. Most of the guys were hunting around for someone. Three aisles in front of me, I caught the outline of a couple occupying the same seat in a contorted position. I watched the film awhile. Apparently a jogger named Mario had bumped into a handball player named Sheldon. It turned out that they had been noticing and admiring each other for some time. Their characters were left undeveloped, but they were both eager to advance on to the subsequent scenes. Neither of them had any other appointments, obligations, or occupation. Sheldon, it seemed, played handball and slept, and Mario jogged and slept. As the unlikely plot progressed, Mano invited Sheldon up to his house, which was conveniently near. There, they each made comments like, “Sa-a-ay, I’ll bet you’re pretty big with the ladies,” and, “You look good enough to eat,” and so on. Finally they stretched out on a sofa and started making out. Sheldon’s hand started moving down to Mario’s flimsy shorts.

Simultaneously I felt a liquid hand slide into my lap and I hopped up. It was Miguel, laughing.

“He’s gone.” I rose and followed him back into his office.

“Why does he come? Why couldn’t I meet him?”

“Well, I wanted to tell him I hired you before you met him because sometimes he acts like an animal. He usually comes by about twice a week just to make sure everything’s okay. He makes the rounds.”

“What rounds?”

“The rounds of the chain. Ottos family owns it and he does most of the administrative work for them.”

“He looks like an asshole.”

“He looks dumb; in fact everything about him is dumb. Only he ain’t dumb.”

“How do you know?”

“His actions are very calculated, almost predestined.”

Soon it was closing time. Miguel collected all the money together, wrapped a filled-out bank deposit slip around it together with a rubber band, shoved the bundle into the green deposit bag, zipped it up, and locked it. Together, we walked to the nearby bank, and he put the money into a night drop. Then we went back to the theater. Rosa, the listless box office lady, went home, and we went into the office. After Miguel filled out a variety of forms, which created the illusion that an authority was checking us, the projectionist buzzed down to warn that the film had come to an end. Miguel turned up all the lights in the theater and turned out all the outdoor lights. Together we inspected both the theater and the dungeon downstairs to clear out all malingerers. The place was empty. While checking the toilet, I asked Miguel if plunging the toilet was among our many duties.

“The last time the toilet got plugged up was sometime last October—anyway, I had to unplug it.”

“I used to do that all the time at the Saint Mark’s. Awful business, unplugging a toilet.”

“Oh,” he responded. A memory was apparently set in motion. “Last October when I started plunging, first blood started coming up, and then black feathers.”

“Christ.”

“Finally a small bird came up.”

“I once unplugged a piece of red meat at the Saint Mark’s, I think it was Kielbasy.”

“Well, I didn’t finish my story. The toilet still wouldn’t flush so I kept plunging and plunging and finally a filthy black pelt came out.”

“A what?”

“The pelt of a small animal. It looked like a gerbil. And I flushed again, but the toilet still flooded.”

“Still? I’d be on the phone to Roto-Rooter by then.”

“Well, I wish I did that,” Miguel replied, “’cause I finally sucked out what looked like a fingerless hand.”

“Christ!”

“It was just about this size”—he distanced two fingers a couple of inches apart—“like a child’s hand. But it wasn’t as awful as it sounds.”

“You found a baby’s hand and you weren’t worried?”

“Well, I had a pretty good idea whose hand it was.”

“Whose?”

“This nut that used to come by a lot. He got pissed once because I found him trying to stuff a … well he got mad at me, and later I heard that he worked with cadavers.”

“You should’ve called the police.”

“Let me warn you right now. Never, but never, call the police. They’ve been trying to close us down since the beginning. I just tossed the hand off the back of the roof. No one’ll ever find it.”

“But what do I do if something happens to me?”

“I’ll tell you exactly what Ox told me when I first started working here. If you can take them, beat them; if you can’t, run. There’s a bayonet and a baseball bat in the office. If you kill anyone, drag them into the office and Ox will get rid of the body for you.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“I think he was kidding, but listen, nothing serious ever happens. We’re open every day of the year here for twelve hours a day and since we’re in a low-income non-residential district, we’re subject to a lot of crazies. You can’t let them get to you.”

The evening was over, everybody had left, and the lights were out. But Miguel said he still had some tedious business requiring his attention.

“I’m wide awake. I might as well take it all in.” So he told me how much money the theater had made that day.

“Now the way we check this is …” And he showed me a little glass-enclosed dial above the desk, cemented into the wall. “Each time the turnstile spins, this number increases by one. We subtract the amount that the dial displayed at the beginning of the day from this figure, and the amount we’re left with is how many patrons came in today. We multiply that by four, which is the price of admission, and that’s how much money we should have. Understand?”

“In theory,” I replied, and began to ask a question, but interrupted myself with a yawn.

He smiled and said that we could do it again the next day when my energy level was maximum. He walked me to the door. Thi, the porter, had already started cleaning the theater. Miguel wished me good night. I started walking to the subway, but I decided that I didn’t want to be stranded in Brooklyn wide awake.