Anthropology of an American Girl (73 page)

When I lost Rourke, I shut down to chance. I risked nothing. I left the table. Once out, you do not get invited back. You have to charm your way, muscle your way.

I look like a whore. On the way downtown everyone stares at the way I’m dressed. At home I tried on several outfits, but no matter what I chose, I looked like a whore. The problem is, I don’t know how to be. I don’t know whether to be the girl I was, the one who came alive through his eyes, or the other one, the one I’ve become, proof of the mistake he made in leaving me. Anyway, I won’t go back to the girl. I’m afraid to go back. That’s why I look like a whore: dressing this way is a type of armor.

I take four concrete flights up to a loft north of Chinatown on Lafayette near Cleveland Place. A letter-board at the head of the stairs
lists classes and events. Fridays at four is NYPD combat Tai Chi.
Today’s guest is boxer and Olympic trainer Harrison Rourke
.

Twenty-five guys sit in a semicircle listening to a diminutive Chinese man in a canvas robe and loose pants—Mr. Xinwu. The Chinaman. The room is lined with trophies and banners with Chinese lettering. To my right there are framed quotes and photographs of famous Tai Chi masters—Yang Chengfu, Zheng Maqing, Ben Lo, Wang Shujin. There is a huge parchment paper document with a line by Lao-Tsu from the “Tao Te Ching.”

Right away I find Rourke, the way a magnet finds north. My throat tightens. His large back is there among all the other large backs, his cotton jacket taut across it, wrinkled at the arms same as the other wrinkled jackets; still, I would know his back anywhere.

“Body makes root in earth for
chi
power.” Mr. Xinwu explains as he demonstrates drills—silk-reeling, push hands, sparing gong. “Root prevents fighter from being thrown. A blade of grass does not attack wind or hide from wind. It
yields
to wind. It has
root
. Meaning of root is same as good woman—keeps man straight in unbalanced time.” Everyone laughs, then gravely he adds, “Root more lethal than gun.

“Special guest Mr. Harrison Rourke is Western boxer. Tai chi helps Mr. Rourke,” he continues. “Western boxer stands too much upright, a stand-up body go down. Body hitting ground is too painful!” Everyone laughs again; Mr. Xinwu laughs too. “Number one objective for boxer—
incorporation of pain
. Boxer has to stay standing when getting hit. Tai chi teaches Mr. Rourke to
yield
—like grass in wind.”

Mr. Xinwu nods to Rourke, and Rourke rises to join him. Rourke sets his feet shoulder-width apart, bending at the knees and tucking the hips. He breathes deeply, hollows his chest, and raises his back like the hood of a cobra. I try to imagine him preparing for a fight; I follow his actions as though witnessing a metamorphosis. I can almost see the leathering of the skin, the shoring up of the under-muscle, and beneath that, the organs
shrinking back; the pulse stopping up, the steadiness of his body dropping to the steadiness of the floor, dropping to the steady chill of the earth. It suddenly looks as if he is holding an invisible ball.

Mr. Xinwu refers to this empty space, calling it
peng. Peng
is protective energy, he says, that helps ward off attacks.

When Rourke turns in profile, he sees me. He does not look, or divert his gaze, and yet, I feel his attention attach. Something shoots through me, like a charge. Physically, there is desire, and shock—it’s been so long. Immediately after come things borne of the mind—the pity of wasted time, the injustice of lost access, the sick lie of myself, the way I am dressed. The idea of being alone with him is suddenly terrifying. I step back, thinking to leave, but I stumble. I step back once more and lean against the wall.

“Yield to overcome,” Xinwu admonishes, his eyes flickering in my direction. “Bend to be straight. Feel for your opponent, ask what is weak, what is strong? What is solid, what is empty?”

Xinwu readies himself. Rourke also readies. They incline their heads and chests ceremoniously. “When my friend was a small boy, he was making street fights,” Xinwu relates haltingly as they begin formally to spar. “When he came to me, he was big mess—very brave, very lacking skill.” Rourke snaps a kick, which Xinwu blocks with incredible economy of action. “I say, ‘Mr. Rourke, you think too much. Do too much. You act when you need to wait.’ I say, ‘You use
power
. You need to use
direction of power.’
”

They break, moving again, like sculptures painstakingly positioned and repositioned. They stop, they turn. They go lightning fast, then dead slow. It’s beautiful, really—Rourke towering over his friend, and yet he is no match. Xinwu anticipates every next move almost as if he can read the objective of Rourke’s muscles.

“Recently my friend returned—still very brave, now more skillful, still big mess. I say, ‘Mr. Rourke, first control emotion to control body. First find
silence
.’” Mr. Xinwu moves in and finishes to the body. Rourke’s body is hard, like brick; but anyway, it gives, folding in and down, going gracefully to the floor. I suppose there are tender points, like hinges. Even skyscrapers can collapse.

Rourke stands and everyone applauds. Mr. Xinwu nods, excusing him, and Rourke passes through to me.

We meet in the hall. His hands locate my waist like picking a flower at the exact right place on the stem. I snap off the floor as he lifts me. His face has changed over the past three years. There are infinitesimal lines and recesses in the muscles, like code writing only I can read.

“I thought I saw you earlier,” he says. “On Prince Street. But it wasn’t you.” He pulls me tighter, then he lowers me, stepping back.

“When did you get in?” I ask.

“A few hours ago.”

“You haven’t seen Rob yet?”

“No,” Rourke says. “I came here straight from the airport.”

“He’s meeting you later?” I want to know when they will talk, when Rob will tell him everything.

“Yeah, he’ll give me a ride to my house.”

Mr. Xinwu is talking about throwing an opponent’s balance without causing harm, about trying to feel love for those things one hopes to protect rather than hatred for the adversary.

“How is it out west?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Not much different than here. Ever been there?”

I nod, clumsily, clumsy to admit that I’ve been to his particular part of the world without him, to invoke Mark even by implication. Mark and I went skiing in Aspen twice.

Rourke’s eyes stir; his weight shifts. Though I say no more, I’ve lost him. I can read his intent before it is manifest. I am like Mr. Xinwu. A master.

Would it help Rourke to know that I looked for him everywhere—every restaurant, every bar, every street. I tried so hard to see him that sometimes I did see him, only it was not him. Didn’t he just say,
I thought I saw you. It wasn’t you
.

We turn awkwardly and stare into the main room, watching the cops drift into pairs. One of each set turns his back to the wall, and the other faces him. “Remember,” Xinwu is saying, “confrontation is inevitable. Those who resort to violence have not mastered nonviolence. Keep control. Neutralize pushes. The only separation between you and a man in jail is control. And for police, control is a special obligation.”

I try to think of something to say. I ask Rourke if this is what he taught at the prison that time.

“More or less,” he replies stiffly. “More respect. Less combat.”

“Do you still do it?”

“Go into prisons? Not too much. Xinwu does it regularly.”

“And boxing? How does boxing fit into this?”

“This teaches control,” Rourke replies. “Boxing takes control.”

“As opposed to street fighting.”

“With organized fights there’s shared weight or class; with street fights, it’s a match of intention. How much something means to you versus how much it means to your opponent. You could lose everything.”

Everything, yes. A wife, a son, your life.

“Well, I’d better head back in,” he says.

“I guess I—should—you know, get going too.”

The staircase is tight and fireproof gray. I start down, gripping the rail. He’s there, near me, leaning. Over the harp of bars we kiss.

“Goodbye,” he says courteously. “It was good to see you.”

I’ve never been the victim of his courtesy before. He hands it off like a bomb. His elbows are on the rail. He is bending and his jacket splits and I can see inside to where it is beautiful. I don’t simply see that it’s beautiful, I
feel
that it is beautiful. I
respond
to beauty. I can’t remember the last time I responded to anything. I have so much at stake. I have only seconds. I am about to say,
Rourke
. But he speaks first.

“Tell Mark I said congratulations,” Rourke says, stripping the towel from his neck, shaking it at his side, looping it back over his shoulders.

The GTO skids up as Mark and I exit the apartment building. It moves alongside us, plowing into the asphalt like a grounded meteor. My first thought is that I haven’t seen the car for so long. Seeing the car is different from seeing him. It’s as if there has been no car since, as if his car is the
only
car. It was the place where you kept your clothes and heard your music and ate and slept and had sex; it was a car when you needed to move. Since then there have been only vehicles. My second thought is that Rourke is angry. Rob must have told him everything on the drive down to the shore. I wonder if he saw his mother, if she’d told him of my visit.

Mark leans to the roof, and his foot slips off the curb. I’d never seen him slip before. “Harrison! What a surprise. What are you doing here?”

Rourke just says, “Get in.”

“Thanks, but my car’s right there.” Mark points to the garage.

“Mine’s right here.” Rourke leans to pop the door. “Get in.”

Mark bites his lip. “Let me tell the garage to repark it.” He jogs across the street—not fast, not slow, but calculated, like arithmetic. It kills him to leave me at the door of Rourke’s idling car, but he has to pretend at least to trust I’ll be there when he returns.

Rourke’s arm rests on the seat back: he stares down its length to where I stand. My body is conspicuous through my dress. A gust of wind hits my hips; I lean into it, the dress impressing deeply. With him there I feel like something soaring, something engaged in flight. I bend to pull the seat lever, knocking it forward with my knee. I climb in back and sink into the corner of the car, feeling secure. When Mark surfaces and cuts back over the street, Rourke simply observes him, his eyes like an assassin’s.

Mark shuts the door. “Cirillo told me you just got in from Colorado. How is it out there?”

“It’s all right,” Rourke says, shoving the stick into first.

“When did you land?” Mark asks.

“This morning.”

At the traffic light on the corner, Mark says, “Where to?”

Rourke turns south on Ninth Avenue. He replies, “Around.”

At Old Town Bar on East Eighteenth Street, we take a table—Mark and me with our backs to the wall and Rourke facing us. It’s like we’re at an interview. Rourke draws his chin into his neck and drops his head to the left, and a girl appears as if in response to a silent whistle. What an obligation to be him, to possess such formidable powers of seduction, such dread competence.

“I’ll take a Beck’s,” he says. “Bring one for her as well.”

“Do you even
want
a beer?” Mark asks me, laying his elbow on the table and pointing lazily to the waitress, to me, to the waitress. “Actually, she’ll have some white wine. What kinds do you have?”

“What kinds of what?” the waitress replies.

“Wine. What kinds of wine.”

She furrows her brow and says, “House!”

“House,”
Mark repeats. “Would that be something you people express in the basement? Why don’t you go check on the available vintages and come back with your findings?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say to her. “Whatever you have is okay.”

Rourke just sits, almost meditatively.

“Tell you what,” Mark snaps. “Bring the most expensive bottle you can find. And a Stoli. Double. Rocks.” As soon as she returns with the drinks, he tells her, “Gimme another Stoli.”

I check his glass. It’s true. It’s already empty.

Mark dumps vodka after vodka down his throat, and Patty keeps my wineglass filled. Her name is Patty; I know, because Rourke asked. He turned his head insinuatingly into the tonnage of his own shoulder, just as a boa caresses its own mass and mean, and as she bent to exchange glassware, he asked, “What’s your name?”

She reddened, fast and strange, like a flower infused with artificial color. Beneath her wispy black hair, she said shyly, “Patty.”

I’m jealous of the way Rourke admires her, the way she is pretty and hardworking and uncompromised. I used to be that way too, uncompromised at Heartbreak and prior to that, uncompromised at the Lobster Roll, and pretty when I paid my own way and possessed firmness of will. I too used to be modest. Now I am at liberty to be immodest and indecent and indiscreet. I belong to Mark—to his circle and legion—like a cadet belongs to the military. I am a recruit, a conscript, an instrument. I cannot be hurt; I have an army. I am anonymous and inaccessible. Like most disciples, I was chosen because my need exceeds my reason. I was chosen because, unlike Rourke, I am without character.

I wonder how many glasses I’ve had. Eleven, I think.

Rourke says not quite. “More like three.”

He hasn’t been drinking at all; Mark doesn’t even realize. Mark keeps ordering more rounds, and Rourke keeps exchanging full bottles of beer for new full ones. Him winking at Patty, her smiling back.

Mark jabs loosely at the air. “So. Who do you—plan to, you know.”

“Spar with?” Rourke says. “Whoever’s around. There’s a kid from Ghana who’s pretty good.”

“Well, you’d better figure it out. You only have—what do you have?”

“Eight days,” Rourke says.

“Eight days? And you’re out drinking beers? You’d better get serious. It’s been a long time for you. I hear Tommy Lydell’s chomping at the bit. What happened to the old guy—the one you used to train with?”