Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (14 page)

ELLA, I, AND THE GREATEST POET SINCE SHAKESPEARE HIT THE MEAN STREETS OF MANHATTAN

Hand in hand, Ella and I followed Stu Wolff, the Bard of Lower Manhattan, into the dark and treacherous night. My cape swirled behind me as we walked. Except for the garbage and traffic, it was like following Heathcliff out on the moors.

Ella squashed my fingers every time we crossed a street, as though we were about to fling ourselves over a cliff and into the cold embrace of the sea. This was slightly less distracting than the way she went rigid whenever anyone suddenly loomed out of the shadows.

“Will you please chill out?” I whispered. “We’re going to lose him if you keep slowing down like that.”

Ella was watching everything at once, but I was trying to keep my eyes on the tall, thin figure several yards ahead of us. The darkness and rain made him come and go like a ghost.

“I’d rather lose him than lose my life,” Ella muttered darkly.

Those were not idle words. Stu Wolff might not exactly be a man of the people at home – unless you mean the people who drive $50,000 cars – but let him loose in the wilds of the Lower West Side and he went straight for every blackened window with a Bud sign hanging in it.

Nonetheless, I barely heard her. My mind was leaping ahead to the moment when we finally caught up with Stu. Would he still be angry, or would the walk have cooled him off? Would he tell us what the argument was about? Would he ask for my advice? Maybe he’d take us for a coffee at one of his favourite cafés. I could see the three of us walking into a room filled with plants and mirrors and people wearing clothes with names (Gucci, Armani, Ralph Lauren…). Stu asked for his usual table. “Certainly, Mr Wolff,” cooed the waiter. A silence fell on the sophisticated New Yorkers as we passed among them. “Look who it is…” they whispered. “It’s Stu Wolff… But who are those girls with him?”

Ella moved even closer as we trudged across Sixth Avenue for the third time. I wasn’t sure if it was for warmth or protection.

“Where do you think he’s going?” she whispered nervously.

“God knows,” I whispered back. Which put God in the minority. Not only was it pretty obvious that Stu had no destination, it seemed pretty likely from the number of times we came back to the same places that he wasn’t always sure where he was.

I wasn’t always sure where we were, either. I’d recognized Chinatown (because of all the restaurants and Chinese people), the East Village (because we walked right past my dad’s building), and the West Village (because of all the out-of-towners), but not everywhere we went was on the tourist maps, or someplace where my parents used to take me to eat, or the street that was home to my father and his dog.

Stu lurched unexpectedly to the right.

“Let’s walk a little faster,” Ella whispered. “We don’t want to lose him.”

I couldn’t have agreed with her more. You wouldn’t think it was possible in a city that never sleeps, but once we left the bright lights and heavy traffic of Sixth Avenue behind, the streets were pretty bleak and desolate. Figures rustled in the shadows like rats. Every sudden noise sounded like a threat.

“We won’t lose him,” I reassured her – and me. “He can’t even walk straight.”

We turned the corner. And stopped.

“Where’s he gone?” whispered Ella.

I squinted into the darkness. There were cans and bags and boxes of garbage piled up along the curb and the wheel of a bicycle chained to a lamppost, but, aside from that, the narrow street of warehouses and lofts was empty. I wasn’t worried, though. It wasn’t the first time Stu had disappeared in front of our eyes.

“He must have gone in somewhere again,” I said. That was Stu’s trick, suddenly vanishing through a door.

Ella shook her head. “Where would he go? There aren’t any bars.”

“Well, maybe he didn’t go into a bar this time,” I said a little defensively. “Maybe he knows someone who lives here.”

When I used to imagine what the Greatest Poet Since Shakespeare did in his spare time, I always pictured him watching sunsets and gazing into the depthless sky, his mind filled with cosmic questions and universal truths, not fighting and drinking beer – but so far tonight he’d done nothing else.

Ella pressed her lips together. “Nobody lives here,” she said. “Not inside.” She looked over at me. “I’m really getting scared being out here alone, Lola.”

“But we’re not alone,” I reminded her. “We’re with an adult.”

“Aside from the fact that he isn’t actually with us,” said Ella. “Stu Wolff isn’t actually an adult, either; he’s a rock-and-roll star.”

As thunderstruck as I was by this unexpected display of disloyalty, I decided not to say anything. Later, when we were talking and laughing with Stu, I knew she’d regret those callous words.

“Well, whatever he is, we have to find him,” I said diplomatically.

We started walking again, cautiously, taking small, tentative steps as though tip-toeing through a minefield. There were no bars, no coffee shops, not even an alleyway Stu might have cut through.

We stopped when we reached the next corner. Ahead of us, in all directions, were more streets just like the one we were on.

Ella sighed. “We
have
lost him.” She didn’t sound as disappointed as you might think.

“It’s impossible,” I argued. “He was right in front of us.”

“Well, he’s not in front of us now,” said Ella. “All that’s in front of us is uncollected garbage.”

We were both so tired, so wet, so hungry – and at least one of us was so disappointed – that it might have turned into a real argument if we hadn’t been successfully diverted at that moment.

Someone – or something – groaned.

Ella practically jumped in my arms – which saved me the trouble of trying to jump into hers.

“What was that?” she hissed. I’d never seen her eyes that big. She looked really beautiful, if half drowned.

I had to get my own heart out of my mouth before I could speak. “I don’t know,” I whispered back. “Maybe it was a cat.” Or a rat.

Clutching each other, we looked up and down the street again. But there was still nothing to see.

“Umprrgh…” moaned the empty night.

Ella’s nails dug into my arm. “That’s not a cat.”

It didn’t sound much like a rat, either. I pointed across the road and back the way we’d come. “I think it came from over there,” I said into her ear.

The night moaned again. Painfully. Tragically. Without a shred of hope.

“It must be Stu!” I pulled on her arm. “Come on. It sounds like he’s hurt.”

Instead of moving forward, as I’d intended, I stayed where I was, much in the way I had stayed where I was when my heel got caught in the grate. Ella wasn’t budging.

“If he’s hurt, then someone hurt him,” said Ella in her Miss Totally Reasonable voice.

“Maybe
you
should be a detective when you grow up,” I suggested acidly.

Ella still wouldn’t move. “And maybe you should be a kamikaze pilot.”

A garbage can crashed to the ground, the sound echoing through the vacant streets. Both of us jumped, but Ella jumped higher.

“Look!” My voice was low but urgent. “I was right. It did come from over there.”

A head had appeared among the plastic bags and cans. A hand clawed the air. I was sure I heard a strangled cry for help.

Without another word – without any thought for my own safety – I let go of Ella and raced towards the hand.

“Lola!” screamed Ella, but she was already running after me over the cobbles.

We reached the fallen garbage can just in time to see the Greatest Poet Since Shakespeare throw up all over the sidewalk.

THE ADULT AMONG US

Ella and I stared at the huddled form of Stu Wolff as he crouched in the gutter like a Shakespearean king brought to his knees by the cruel twistings of Fate. I’d always suspected Stu Wolff was not just a genius, but a tragic hero of the stature of Hamlet or Lear, and here was my proof.

Stu was propped between the toppled garbage can and a mound of plastic bags. A couple of the bags had split open, and there were coloured strings and shredded paper clinging to him. The way he was sitting, he didn’t seem to have bones. Besides the vomit splattered down his shirt, and the strings, and the shredded paper, he was liberally decorated with organic waste. Either he’d been in the can when it fell, or he’d been under it.

“We have to get him inside,” I said. “So we can clean him up a little.”

“You mean sober him up, don’t you?” said Ella.

She was definitely getting better at saying what she meant.

The word “sober” must have triggered something in the part of Stu Wolff’s brain that wasn’t paralyzed by alcohol. His eyes focused on us for the first time.

“I need a drink,” he announced with remarkable clarity. Causing a small landslide of eggshells and fruit peels, he started to get to his feet. “I need a drink now.”

Watching Stu Wolff on stage is like watching the gods dance. His movements are quick, and graceful, and awesome in their sensuality. But he wasn’t on stage. He pitched forward, stumbling uncontrollably. He might really have hurt himself this time, but Ella and I were there to break his fall.

“Oomph!” the three of us gasped as one.

Ella pulled her head back, a stricken look on her face. “Oh, my God, his breath … he smells like a backed-up drain.”

I tilted my own head slightly out of range of Stu’s breathing. “How can you be so crass?” I demanded. “Can’t you recognize a man who’s haunted by demons when you see him? Can’t you tell he’s in cosmic pain?”

“What I can tell is that he’s drunk,” said Ella. To hear her, you’d think she was an expert on drunks. “And that he’s puked all over himself,” she added unkindly.

Stu managed a few shaky steps forward. “I’m going,” he announced. “I’m going to get a drink.”

“Hold on to him!” I ordered, grabbing hold of him myself. “Don’t let him get away!”

Stu Wolff struggled to free himself from our hands.

“A drink!” he roared. “My kingdom for a drink!” And then he suddenly stopped struggling, and started laughing. “My kingdom!” he choked out between hoots of laughter. “My effin kingdom!” He turned to me. To be totally honest, I’m not really sure that he actually saw me. “You want my effin kingdom? You want all the fame and money? You want the effin fans? You can have it. You can have the whole effin thing. Just get me a drink!”

I wasn’t too thrilled with hearing Ella and myself described as “effin fans”, but I was willing to make allowances for the evil effects of alcohol.

I took advantage of this sudden good mood to slip my arm through his. Without my having to tell her, Ella did the same.

“A coffee,” I shouted. “We’re going to get you a coffee!”

“A drink!” bellowed Stu. “I want a drink!”

“We’re going to get you a drink,” said Ella. Unlike Stu Wolff and me, Ella wasn’t screaming. She was speaking in the soft, coaxing voice of a mother reasoning with a little kid. “Just come with us, and we’ll get you a drink.”

To my surprise, Stu stopped screaming and laughing. “A drink,” he repeated, nodding compliantly. “We’re going to get a drink.”

Holding Stu up between us, Ella and I started to walk.

“Where are we going?” Stu demanded after a few yards. “Where are you taking me?”

“For a drink,” said Ella, her voice as soothing as the sound of the sea. “We’re taking you for a drink.”

Stu stopped so suddenly that the three of us knocked into a lamppost. It was an effort, you could see that, but this time he was definitely looking at us.

“Hey,” said Stu, his eyes darting back and forth between us. “Hey, did Steve send you? Are you friends of Steve?”

“Of course not.” I gave him a tug. “We’re
your
friends, not Steve’s.”

He tugged me back.

“You’re Steve’s friends,” he said. “Well, I’m not going back with you. I know your game. You tell Steve they’ll be selling ice-cream in hell before I go anywhere with him again.” He listed forward. He seemed to be trying to smile. “You tell him that.”

Ella patted his shoulder. “We’re not Steve’s friends, Stu,” she practically crooned. “We’re
your
friends. Remember?” Ever so gently, she pulled on his arm. “We’re
your
friends.”

“We’re
your
friends,” Stu repeated. He thought about this for a second. “You’re
my
friends?”

Ella nodded. “That’s right, we’re
your
friends. We’re going to take you for a drink.”

“
My
friends …
my
friends…” he chanted as we dragged him along. “
My
friends … we’re going for a drink…” And then he made one of his sudden stops. “Who are you?” He was shouting again. “You’re not my friends. I don’t have any friends.” He started laughing again. “Not unless they want something from me. What do you want?”

I was too traumatized by these mood swings to answer, but Ella seemed unfazed.

“We don’t want anything,” she assured him, coaxing him on. “We just want to buy you a drink.”

I adjusted my grip as we staggered down the street. “That’s Ella,” I explained to Stu. “And I’m Lola.”

He stopped again.

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” He smiled. More or less. “My name’s Stu.” He stuck out a hand.

It was the moment I’d been waiting for all my young life. Eat sand, Carla Santini. I was about to shake Stu Wolff’s hand. I let go of his left arm. Following my lead, Ella let go of his right.

Ella and I stood there, our hands outstretched, as Stu Wolff crumbled to the ground.

WHEN DREAMS COME TRUE

Given superhuman strength by Mother Necessity, Ella and I managed to half carry, half drag Stuart Harley Wolff through the unwelcoming streets of lower Manhattan in search of shelter from the storm-tossed night. Unfortunately, the only shelter that seemed to be open were bars. Ella didn’t think a bar was a good idea, even though most of them serve coffee.

“How do you know they serve coffee?” I asked. “When have you ever been in a bar?” Mr and Mrs Gerard were as likely to take Ella to a bar as they were to take her to Lima to live among the poor.

“I’ve seen it in movies,” said Ella. “Anyway, they’d throw us out because we’re too young, and he can’t be trusted to order coffee by himself.”

The more we walked, the more Stu talked. His conversation shifted from politics to music to family and friends without any awkward transitions. People owed him money. He owed people money. The tax man was after him. Several women were after him. His father wanted him to cut his hair. His mother wanted him to settle down. His agent was a thief. His manager was a liar. Steve Maya was a back-stabbing traitor. Everyone he knew was out for what they could get.

“It’s a crime,” Stu suddenly screamed, more or less apropos of nothing. “It’s a crime, and everybody knows it’s a crime, but no one will do anything about it.”

I’d been so busy trying to imprint every detail of what was happening in my memory that I’d lost track of what he was saying.

“Now what’s he talking about?” I asked Ella.

She grunted as Stu missed his footing and shoved her into a wall. “Nothing,” said Ella. “He’s just rambling incoherently. And, anyway, who cares? I just want to get inside before I drown.”

Perhaps hearing the staggering lack of concern for him in Ella’s voice, Stu straightened up. “Where are you taking me?” he demanded with disarming lucidity.

“We told you,” Ella told him again. “We’re taking you to get a drink. Remember? We’re taking you for a drink.”

Stu nodded. “A drink. Let’s get a drink.” He held up one hand. “But first I have to take a leak.”

I have to admit that I was a little flummoxed by this announcement, but once again Ella rose to the occasion with competence and calm.

She pointed to the alley on our left. “Go down there,” she ordered. “We’ll wait for you here.”

Out of respect for the privacy required by a genius – and because neither of us wanted to see more than we had to – we turned our backs while he shuffled into the dark.

I couldn’t speak. My heart was too full for mere words. I had my wish: I was with Stu Wolff. True, he was more in
my
arms than I was in his, but I was still with him. I was beyond being just ecstatically happy; I was sitting with the gods. I was sure that once we got some coffee in him, Stu would become the man of truth, passion, and unflagging courage that I knew him to be.

“What’s taking him so long?” whispered Ella, her eyes on the shadows swaying around us.

I glanced over my shoulder, just to make sure Stu was OK. He was sitting on the ground with his legs stretched in front of him and his chin on his chest.

“Oh, God…” I cried. “He’s passed out. Do you think he could have been hurt when he fell? Maybe he has concussion.”

“He’s going to wish he had concussion when he wakes up tomorrow,” said Ella as we marched down the alley to retrieve our charge. “He’s going to have the hangover from hell.”

Side by side, we bent over Stu. I was trying to make sure that his fine and noble heart was still beating, but Ella started slapping his face.

“Stu!” she called.
Slapslapslap.
“Stu, wake up. We’re going for a drink.”

I was really intrigued. I’d never seen this Four-star General side of Ella before.

“Where did you learn to do that?” I asked.

“Movies,” said Ella.

Stu opened his eyes, staring at us in an almost catatonic silence for a few seconds, much as a man might stare at angels.

“Who are you?” he demanded. “Where are you taking me?”

“You remember us,” said Ella. “It’s Ella and Lola. We’re your friends.” We hauled him to his feet. “We’re taking you for a drink.”

It felt as though we’d been walking through the hostile, darkling night for hours before we stumbled upon a place of refuge, safe from the ravages of the storm and the possibility of cold-blooded murder.

We found a café.

That is, it said it was a café. But if you, like I, think of a café as being small but elegant, French and atmospheric – the kind of place where one might as well write a poem as order an espresso – then the Purity Café was a diner. From the looks of it, it had probably been a diner for about fifty years.

I wiped a circle of dirt and steam from the window and peered inside. I could see booths, a Formica counter, a chrome-and-glass fridge, and, strung above the griddle, dulled red foil letters that spelled out
MERRY  MAS
.

I stepped back so Ella could see. “What do you think?”

Preparatory to taking him in among the people, Ella was wiping the vomit from Stu’s shirt with a tissue and didn’t bother to look.

“So long as there aren’t armed men inside holding everyone hostage, I think it’s great,” said Ella. “I just want to sit down.”

She was definitely surprising me, I have to admit it. The Ella I met when I first moved to Deadwood would have been in tears by now, running from corner to corner looking for a public phone that was working so she could call home collect.

“Come on,” said Stu, lurching to the door. “I really need a drink.”

The wall that ran along the booths was covered with mirrors. As we stepped into the steamy warmth of the Purity Café, I could see three figures staring back at us over the clutch of condiments that graced each table. Two teenage girls in bedraggled party gear and a drunken twenty-nine-year-old man with string and shredded paper clinging to him and vomit all over his boots. We looked like people routinely picked up by the cops.

The other customers of the Purity Café, glancing up from their drinks and food, saw what I saw. You could practically hear them praying that we wouldn’t sit near them.

“Get him into a booth,” ordered Ella as the waitress bore down on us. “Quick, before she sees his feet.”

We dragged Stu to the nearest booth. I got in first and pulled him after me.

As soon as he hit the fake leather seat, Stu started talking.

“Everybody wants something from me,” he informed us again. “Even people I don’t know. Everybody thinks they own me.”

The waitress stopped by our table, pad in hand. If this were Deadwood, the sight of us would have put her into cardiac arrest by now, but this wasn’t Deadwood, it was New York. She had the jaded, seen-it-all air of the waitress in a depressing play. She looked at Stu.

“What’ll it be?”

“You think I have any real friends?” Stu asked her. “None of my friends give two cents about me. If I lost everything tomorrow, I’d never see any of them again.”

Her eyes fell on his sodden silk shirt with the bits of vomit Ella hadn’t been able to get off and the tentacles of paper and string.

“You’re in luck then,” the waitress told him. “’Cause it looks like you have lost everything.”

“We’ll just have coffee,” said Ella politely.

“Not me,” said Stu. “I’ll have a boilermaker and a deluxe hamburger platter, with a large side of onion rings.”

Ella and I exchanged a look of panic. We didn’t have enough money for a deluxe hamburger platter and a large side of onion rings.

“This isn’t a bar,” said the waitress. “How do you want your patty?”

Ella leaned across the table and touched Stu’s hand. “You’re not really hungry, are you?” she inquired gently. “Why don’t you just have a coffee for now?” She smiled encouragingly. “Or mineral water. Mineral water would be better than coffee.”

Stu acted like he hadn’t heard her. “Rare,” he ordered. “Swiss cheese.”

Ella turned her smile on the waitress. “Just bring him a coffee,” she said sweetly. She winked. “He isn’t really up to a meal right now.”

Stu stood up. He’d heard her that time.

“I want a deluxe hamburger platter and onion rings!” he bellowed. “And I want it now!”

The waitress raised one eyebrow. “You two better keep him in line,” she warned. “The boss won’t stand for any nonsense.”

I looked over at the heavy-set man behind the counter. The one talking to the two cops who were eating doughnuts and drinking coffee. He seemed to be deeply engrossed in their conversation, but all the time he was glancing around the room. His eyes met mine for one very long second, and then he laughed.

“Don’t worry,” Ella promised. “He’s all right; he just had a little too much to drink.”

After the waitress shuffled off, Stu fell back in his seat and turned on Ella and me.

“What do you want?” he demanded. He seemed a little obsessed with this question. “Autographs? Money? A quick roll in the hay?”

A quick roll in the hay?

I stared at him, agog. Was this the poet whose words of light had lit my darkest days; the genius whose intuition and wisdom had so inspired me? I was shocked, I admit it. Shocked and disappointed. Stu Wolff is a spiritual being. He is supposed to be above things like rolling in the hay.

Ella’s treacherous words repeated themselves in my mind.
Stu Wolff’s not an adult, he’s a rock-and-roll star… Stu Wolff’s not an adult, he’s a rock-and-roll star…

“We don’t want anything,” I enunciated carefully into his ear. “We’re trying to help you.”

Stu laughed. It was a laugh of torment and pain.

“You don’t want
anything
? Well, that sets a new president, doesn’t it?”

“Precedent,” I automatically corrected.

Stu wasn’t listening. He was still talking.

“What are you two, aliens or something?” He listed to the left, knocking over the menu propped against the napkin holder. “Hey!” he shouted to the other customers. “Hey! These girls are from another planet!”

The waitress and the counter-man looked over. The two tired-looking workmen in the next booth looked over. The women at the back looked over. The cops looked over, too.

Ella leaned across the table again and put both her hands on Stu’s. “Shhhh…” Ella calmed him. “You have to be quiet or they’ll throw us out.”

Stu pulled roughly away. “Why? I don’t
have
to be anything. I have three gold records. I can do what I want.”

One of the cops looked over again.

Genetics is a complicated thing. As different as I am to Karen Kapok, when I opened my mouth I sounded just like my mother.

“No you can’t,” I told him firmly. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself.”

It didn’t work when my mother told me I was making a spectacle of myself, and it didn’t work with Stu, either.

“But I am a spectacle,” he announced to the Purity Café in a working-the-stadium roar. “You think I’m a regular guy? I’m not a regular guy.”

“Shhh!!” I hissed. I didn’t have Ella’s patience.

Stu didn’t
shhh.

“I’m a three-ring circus,” he boomed on. “You think anybody knows me? Nobody knows me!” He knocked the bowl of sugar packets off the table. “I don’t even know myself.”

I gave Ella a look. “Didn’t I tell you?” I whispered. “He’s a tortured soul.”

The waitress arrived with our coffees. “Food’s coming,” she muttered. The cop who was eating the powdered doughnut was watching her over his shoulder.

Ella squashed her mouth into a line. “Torture’s involved,” she agreed. She shook her head sadly. “But it makes you think, doesn’t it? I mean, why shouldn’t he be happy? He has everything he could possibly want…”

No, he didn’t.

“What’s this?” Stu spluttered as the waitress set a cup in front of him. “This isn’t a boilermaker.”

“It’s coffee,” said the waitress. “I told you before, this is a restaurant, not a bar.”

Before I could stop him, Stu was on his feet and pushing past the waitress. “I have to go to the john,” he announced loudly. “I expect that to be a boilermaker by the time I get back.”