Anthropology of an American Girl (59 page)

“Where’s your friend tonight?” Rob asked.

“Which friend is that?”

“Which
friend,” Rob repeated flatly. He spit into a paper cup, the tobacco juice shooting in a streak between his top and bottom teeth.

I stood to flip the album. I was incredibly high from tobacco. I felt like someone was tossing me sideways into the wall, only there was no someone and no tossing, just the wall. “He’s away. Somewhere.”

“Somewhere my ass. He’s golfing in Palm Beach with his parents. Tough life.”

“I don’t know. I don’t like Florida.”

“You’d change your tune fast enough. That family travels in style. Five stars all the way. For breakfast there’s oatmeal, fruit cups, trays of bacon, the papers, a swim. Then sun. Later it’s shopping, tennis, a massage, another swim. You pop a button off your slacks or spill hollandaise on your dinner jacket, and they got a Polish laundry lady and a tailor in the closet of your suite. Waiting, like elves. They come out when you’re gone and pick lint.”

I dropped back down to the floor, crashing shoulders. “I wouldn’t trade places with them.”

Rob looked at me and smiled. He slapped his thighs. “Right. Who needs margaritas and white sands when we’ve got everything right here—chewing tobacco, Richard Pryor, industrial carpet, and a couple cans of—what is this crap we’re drinking?” He hunted for his soda.

“Tab.” I’d taken it from Ellen’s refrigerator.

He shook his head. “Jesus.
Tab
. I’m happy as a clam.”

“Don’t forget the girl,” I reminded him.

“No,” he said. “Who could forget the girl.” This was followed by a hapless interlude. Rob kept looking around, nodding serially like one of those hard dogs in the rear windows of cars from the boroughs. “So,” he said, “who does this roommate think she is anyway, one of the Gabors?”

——

The main thing to do at Gulf Coast is drink jalapeño martinis. Rob ordered two and he removed his hooded gray sweatshirt. Underneath was a denim vest, and under that, a T-shirt:
Fantini Brothers Construction. If I had my way, I’d tear this fucking building down
.

The bartender said, “Seven bucks.”

Rob gave him a withering look, then paid. “I gotta get you to Pinky’s out in Brooklyn, in Williamsburg,” he proposed to me. “My cousin owns it, so I drink cheap. It’s worth the trip. None of this three-dollar-and-fifty-cent pepper water served by actors. When’s your birthday?”

“November.”

He shook his head. “Too far. What’s the next holiday?”

“Easter?”

“Nah, Easter passed.”
Easta
. “Tell you what, though, next year we’ll get a couple bunnies and go to Pinky’s. My mother makes up baskets for the Sunday School kids. I’ll get her to make you a basket. With that shredded crap, that nest crap. Girls like that. What do you call it?”

I shrugged. “Shredded nest crap.”

He eyed me. “You think I’m kiddin’.”

“I don’t,” I said, laughing.

“You’re gonna back out on me, aren’t you? I’ll be sittin’ there alone with a beer and a bunny basket, and I’ll be lucky to leave Pinky’s with my nose on straight.”

Denny was late as usual. We’d called him before leaving the dorm. He and Rob had not yet met, though they’d heard about each other. Just in case, I prepared them. I told Denny that Rob was not a bigot despite the fact that he might look like one, and I told Rob that Denny was
gay-ish
.

“What’s that mean,
gay-ish
?” Rob wanted to know. “Don’t he know by now?”

“It’s probably better if you don’t mention it.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah. Sure, I getcha.” Rob nodded and pointed. I wasn’t exactly sure what it was he got, and got so vividly, but I decided to let it go. Apparently Rob forgot his promise because the second Denny walked in, Rob said, “Hey’ya, kid, how’s curtain-making going?”

“Just fine, sweetheart,” Denny snapped back without missing a beat. “I’m knitting you a Speedo for summer.” He folded his new blue trench coat over a stool. It was the same coat John Lennon used to have. Denny was still in mourning from Lennon’s death. He kissed me and sized up Rob’s outfit. “What happened? Did you have to change a few tires on the way over?”

Denny gestured for a new round by snapping his fingers in the air then making a lasso with his left index finger. Denny was a lefty. Every now and then he would fly into a panic. “Lefties die sooner than righties. No wonder! It’s the stress!”

He acted slightly more gay since moving to New York, which may have been belated self-expression, or something more formulated and political, or just a time-saving transmission of preference. I was confused about whether to be glad for him because he was finally able to express himself, or concerned that he was losing his individuality and imitating others. He had a lot of new friends. “FIT is filthy with fags,” he’d say.

Rob couldn’t deal with the cost of drinks at Gulf Coast, and Denny couldn’t deal with the “film crew” atmosphere, so we walked west across Twelfth Street, then turned up Tenth Avenue to head to some dive in Chelsea called Stecky’s. On the way, Denny said he had started dating someone named Jeff. Denny wasn’t with John anymore, which was too bad because I liked John. They’d been together for two years.

“John gave me cooking lessons for Christmas,” Denny complained. “Can you believe it? How sexist is that?”

I shrugged. “Cooking’s okay.” I didn’t see anything wrong with cooking lessons. Denny was actually a lousy cook.

“I hope you used the lessons before you split up. That would be a tremendous waste,” Rob said.

At Stecky’s, we each grabbed a stool and pulled up to the bar. The minute we sat down, Rob started asking the bartender about his handlebar mustache.

“How long’s that thing?” Rob inquired. “You know, after a shower? Is it down to your chin, or what?” He flipped up his hands. “Just curious.”

Simultaneously Denny started in on the trivia question written in blue wax on the bar mirror—
“Who was the Triple Crown winner before Secretariat?”

“It’s a tough one,” the bartender said. His name was Billy. “It’s been up for a couple days.”

“Call your dad about the trivia question,” Denny suggested to me.

“That’s right. Get him on the horn,” Rob said. He asked Billy for a phone, then he nudged me. “You never mentioned parents. I figured you came from swans.”

“You mean storks,” I said as I began to dial.

“No, baby, I mean
swans.”

Dad picked up.

“Hi, Dad. It’s me.”

“Yeah, hi!” he called out excitedly. My father always calls out on the phone, like he’s talking into one of those candlestick jobs. It’s a wartime habit, like hoarding canned foods. The basement of the shop is full of canned foods. “What’s up?” he asked.

“I’m at a bar with Denny and Rob. What’s up with you?”

“We just got back from dinner with Ralph Russo. He’s got neck cancer.”

“Neck cancer?”

“That’s no name for a horse,” Rob said into my ear.

“First, he had polyps,” Dad was saying. “They biopsied them. Now he has to get that operation. You know, the hole and the battery-operated thing. The wand. Poor bastard.”

It didn’t feel right to mention the trivia question considering Ralph Russo’s condition, but the whole crowd at the bar was kind of hanging over the counter, watching.

Dad didn’t have to think. He just said, “Citation, 1948.”

I asked Billy, “Is it Citation?”

Billy said, “Bingo!”

Denny took the phone to say hello, then Rob took a turn, saying, “You’ve got one hell of a trap brain and one sweetheart of a daughter.” A few more people grabbed the receiver to ask Dad if he had any tips on tomorrow’s races. When I finally said goodbye, my father sounded cheerful. I was glad we’d called. “Bye, Dad. Say hi to Marilyn.”

“All right, then,” he shouted. “Have a good time.”

Billy gave us a round of highballs even though the prize was for one free drink. “Technically, soliciting recruits isn’t legal, but I’ll let you slide. I was just about to wipe the board anyway.”

When Johnny Mathis came on the jukebox and Denny heard the slow beginning notes of “Chances Are,” he grabbed me. “C’mon, honey, let’s go dance.”

Denny was big, but he wafted when he moved, and when he held me close, it was like flying—my feet hardly touched the ground. His Uncle Archer had taught us all the dances from
Saturday Night Fever
. We must have seen the movie about fifteen times.

“Seventeen,” Denny corrected, and we dipped. The bar and the liquor bottles drifted obliquely. “I still have the stubs.”

I’d forgotten how confusing it is to touch a body that is an attractive body to which you are not necessarily attracted, to be near your opposite but not your match. All the things that click on in your head have to click off. My breasts were bearing into his chest, my hands were holding his biceps, and I could feel his penis through his pants, which was a nice feeling and not intimidating, because his body was his own and not something he hoped to share with me. Denny finished up, singing sweetly through the end, then we kissed and bowed and the people at the bar applauded.

Rob whistled from his tilted-back chair, saying, “Man. I gotta get you down to the Criterion.”

Denny wiped his brow. “What’s that?”

“A club down in Jersey, for fighters. What are you, six-one?”

“Six-two.” He squeezed the skin around his wrist. “But I’m fat. I need to lose ten pounds.”

“Nah. You just need to make muscle. Somebody light on his feet like you would make good money as a sparring partner. A lot of guys are powerful, but they’re dead weight. Fighters need to practice moving. So long as you don’t cry or anything.”

“Denny wouldn’t cry,” I said.

“Let me tell you something, angel, they
all
cry,” Rob said. “Right at weigh-in. You’d be surprised what the thought of a ruptured spleen’ll do to a guy.”

It was about two in the morning when Denny decided to take off, which was a record for him. I’d never known him to stay in one place for so long. Before he left, he and Rob exchanged numbers. When Rob wrote, he hung over the table, parallel to it, focusing his might on the
task at hand. It was beautiful, his aliveness, his connectedness, his focus. Like he really wanted to make a friend. And Denny, looking on with a tender fascination, watching the careful letters take shape. I remember thinking, if anything ever happened to damage either one of them, it would destroy my faith in living. As I formed the thought, I realized that’s exactly how they felt for me.

At the Empire Diner, Rob and I sat at the counter.

“I was driving over tonight,” he said, “and I heard some crackpot on the radio saying how she broke her back and the doctors told her she wouldn’t walk for a year. She prayed to God to get well so she could pay the mortgage on her house. A couple weeks later, she’s walking. ‘God granted my wish,’ she says.” Rob shook his head. “When did everything get so literal? Where I come from, you pray for hard times to get better and they do, not because God pays the mortgage, but because your family and friends lend you money.”

He took a bite of cheeseburger, buckling the splayed wedge into his mouth. “When my mother prays, you can hardly hear. It’s like a slow leak in the faucet. She would never pray for anything specific. She asks for help becoming
a better person
—more compassionate, more patient, whatever. Every day she stops in church. The priest comes by the house—dinner, coffee, holidays. My grandmother makes him
pasta e fagioli
to take back to the rectory. If I go over to pick up the used Tupperware, he comes out with a shopping bag full to the top with containers. God isn’t supernatural—God is like, the street, the neighborhood, the way things are. If you’ve got pressing questions about it, you don’t go
talk
to the priest. You become one.”

The waitress collected our plates. She was pretty with bangs and short black braids. Rob stopped her, and picked the remainder of my tuna sandwich from the plate.

“Growing boy,” he explained with a wink, then he ordered coffee and cake for us.

The door opened and three guys walked in. Rob looked over his shoulder and shifted instinctively to block me. Lots of people say,
Over my dead body
, but with Rob, it was true. And unlike with Denny when we were
dancing, Rob
was
my opposite. I couldn’t help but wonder if my perfume distracted him as much as the way he chewed his ice distracted me.

He set his elbows on the counter. “You believe in God?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure.”

“When we were in college in L.A., we heard shit like,
I don’t believe in God, I believe in an all-powerful, all-loving being
. All-powerful, all-loving being? What is that? Same as God, only no rules!”

The waitress returned with dessert and coffee. The cake was circle-shaped and flat like a soggy disc.

Rob threw up his hands. “What happened?”

“Pineapple cheesecake,” she said. “It gets wilty.”

“It looks like you dropped it onto the saucer from midair.”

“It happens to be very popular. You guys got the last two pieces. I can take them back and resell them.”

“Nah. I’m just giving you a hard time because I like those braids.” But as soon as she turned, he stopped me from taking a bite. “Watch it with creams,” he warned under his breath, “They go rancid very easy.” He tested the cake and gave it his reluctant approval. “You remember my brother Joey?”

“The firefighter.”

“Yeah, right. The firefighter. He recently dragged a couple kids out of a fire. Dead.” Rob sucked back a sip of coffee and gestured to the side of his skull like he was screwing in something invisible. “He’s all fucked up now,” he said. “My father thinks he needs counseling.
Counseling
—I mean, you gotta know my father. Not exactly the therapy type. But Joey can’t sleep, can’t eat; he sits up all night staring at his sons. So tonight I’m listening to this lunatic on the radio, thinking of my brother running into a burning building. Where was God for those kids? Or for their parents? Or my brother? And—”

Rob glanced up and noticed the clock. It was almost 4:30 in the morning. “Shit!” He half-stood and polished off his coffee, going, “Shit, shit, shit.” He looked at the check, threw down some cash, and waved. “C’mon, c’mon. Gotta go see Uncle Tudi.”