Stabs at Happiness (24 page)

“Sure,” said Beverly, sitting down on a wooden chair, looking at Kim, who was wearing a red silk kimono with blue dragons over gold lamé panties and bra, her eyes telling Bev everything was cool…

It was powerful shit. Beverly got very stoned. She thought of the time she'd been smoking with Paulie and Jean-Luc, and Paulie had an asthma attack. It was funny how straight he could look until one heard and saw him speak. Paulie.

“Bev,” Kim said, eyes alight, glowing, “I want you and André to make it together. It'll be so good for you both.”

There was a conspiratorial element to everyone's pleasure from then on. Beverly's inhibitions were gradually overcome. She really got into it, losing her identity in the molten flow as André rocked her into several hard-won orgasms. She held Kim's hand throughout.

Then so Andre could cum he slowly entered her ass.

1. Line upper and lower lashes with Perfectly Kohl Color-Perfect Accent Stick; smudge; smudge lightly.
   
2. Apply Roses from Revenescence Eye Shadow Trio Champagne Roses & Caviar to entire lid, from lash line to brow.
   
3. Contour from inner corner along crease with Caviar shadow; deepen at outer corner.
   
4. Highlight center of lid with Champagne.
   
5. Thicken upper and lower lashes with several coats of Black Instant Lash Builder, for extra sensational lashes.
   

Now you have eyes as provocative as the night itself

Going to the Welfare Office was not the best way to get rid of a headache, but if she wanted to keep getting the food stamps Kim had to take the subway uptown to see her caseworker, who was an obese woman with glasses.

Kim always tried to wear weird makeup and go there stoned, so that she'd be both numb and sufficiently hard-core unemployed and unemployable to forestall any nonsense about why she hadn't gotten a job.

Kim had on blue fingernail polish and glittery eye shadow, silverblue, extending out past the orbits of her eyes. She could tell that Barbara kind of liked her, despite the problems that she posed. She gave Barbara a copy of
Valley of the Dolls.

“You'll really like it. Everybody in America should read this book. There's a singer who's like Judy Garland, you know, and an actress who's supposed to be either another Kim Novak or Marilyn Monroe, or maybe Jayne Mansfield, I'm not sure… shit, maybe it's Mamie Van Doren.”

“Mamie Van Doren?” said Barbara, and laughed her harsh thick laugh.

Another time Kimberly brought Barbara some flowers. It made for a break in a civil servant's day.

“I don't envy you. This must be the most thankless job in the world, having to deal with all the misfits and fuck-ups. Do you have to know Spanish to work here? I could never do a job like this. It's not that I'm so unreliable—but my references are all bad; no boss on earth would want to trust me with the combination to the safe…”

“What about getting another job as a waitress?”

Kim shrugged. “That's my ideal, but they're not hiring at any of the places I could ever work.”

She'd lost her job at Dojo's because she was late too often and called in sick too many times within a relatively short span. She had said it was her period but she'd lied. It wasn't something she was proud of. They had been nice to her there.

André said, “Yeah, well I admit, you know, that I was fucked up. I mean, I'm sorry about all that shit that I was coming down with. I was fucked up with a lot of foreign substances in my body, but none of that's any excuse for acting evil. I felt bad, baby, I felt real bad. I didn't like myself, you know? Kimberly, honey, I never stopped loving you. There's something between us, some kind of real connection. It's Fate.”

“Yeah, I know.”

You are rebellious, creative, and you seldom succeed by following the crowd. You are an individual to your fingertips, you have your own style and you have created your own blueprint for success. Scorpio, Aquarius persons play important roles in your life.

Beverly found some dirty pictures in the drawer along with the underwear Kimberly, from the bathroom, had asked her to fetch. The photographs were of Kim sucking someone's cock. Then, delving deeper, Bev found a magazine called
Cum in My Mouth
. Kimberly was featured—referred to here as Vanessa— giving a blowjob, ending up with semen all over her face. Ah, now Beverly understood: whoever bought this pornography would take Kim for a girl.

She found herself feeling disgusted, and wasn't sure why. Kim's weaknesses had begun to seem more like weaknesses and less like charming little quirks of an interesting and unique personality.

In the Spotlight Café, at three in the morning, wired, drinking coffee, Jean-Luc was talking a hundred miles a minute to Raymond Faye. “Do you remember those articles where Jack Smith talked about his concept of visual revelation, about the true meaning of Josef Von Sternberg's films with Marlene Dietrich?”

“Yes,” said Faye, looking tired and older than usual, unanimated, smoking a cigarette. “The plots have nothing to do with the message of the visuals; the plots are just made up out of some nonsense the studio needed to have, as a formality, on the soundtrack.”

“I love the idea,” said Jean-Luc, “of that Maria Montez movie Jack Smith edited down from ninety minutes to fifteen, making it fly past the retina, bringing out all the latent myth-patterns…”

“I think that was Ken Jacobs—he and Jack often worked together, it's true—but I think it was Kenny who did that one. Just before
Star Spangled to Death
.”

A junkie whore tried to bum some money for coffee. Jean-Luc looked around to make sure this wouldn't start a trend, and then gave her a dollar bill and some change. She thanked him, pathetically skinny and unattractive in her cheap fur, looking about sixteen years old. She realized they were queers and left them alone.

Raymond had not gone to Paris after all. He had passed the age or point at which he could still look good in drag, and he was only recently, painfully aware of this. It was a real bringdown.

Paul waited, and his lover didn't show. He could acutely hear the scraps of conversation, disarticulate words and phrases from the booths of the café, the clatter of silverware against silverware, coins into cash-register, coffee cups against saucers, and he was alone and afraid that he was going to start to cry in a public place.

Paulie understood love only as expressed through the body —asking the other to look at yesterday's cut, mysterious black and blue marks, little scratches, needing a lot of caresses and reassuring kisses and hugs.

Why wouldn't Lee show up? Why would he say he was going to if he didn't mean it? Paul had said, over the phone, that he just wanted to talk, he thought they needed to talk, and he'd said that if Lee didn't want to then he'd understand. So if it was such a drag, why did Lee say that he would come, and even pick out the specific time and place to meet?

It wasn't the first time Paulie had been dropped, but he wished that, for once, damn it, he'd seen it coming, and so could have managed to cut his losses.

He saw Jean-Luc and Raymond Faye, and could sense that they didn't want him to join them. They didn't think he was a serious person.