Wherever There Is Light (17 page)

“And he wouldn't have started his rooftop paintings if he didn't think I was fooling around with Sloanie. You know Sloanie? The painter John Sloan?”

“I love his work.
McSorley's Bar
,
Six O'Clock, Winter
—”

“And
Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair
. That roof's on Cornelia Street. Brig envied Sloanie. He was making money, and we were broke and fighting, and I said I'd bet Sloanie could really pound the feathers off the duck.”

“Pound the—”

“Talented in the boudoir. Brig accused me of being unfaithful. I told him I did nothing untoward, but I'd reached my conclusion by observing Sloanie's eyebrows. Ridiculous, right? But Brig believed me. For the next month, Brig starts shifting his eyebrows around like caterpillars doing the Charleston and making me watch. He drove me so batty I had to swear to him that eyebrows didn't count in bed.”

Kendall was giggling, and Christina continued, “But being jealous of Sloanie, Brig began his own rooftop series. And those paintings got him where he wanted to go.”

“The chain. Do—oh, never mind. I don't mean to pry.”

“If you want to paint, you'd better pry. Art isn't intended to improve the social graces. You want a cup of tea? Or to use the bathroom? Or a slice of Bundt cake? Don't be shy.”

“All three?”

“All three it is.”

Kendall felt as if she might start crying. “Christina?”

“Yes?”

“You're the first friend I've made in New York.”

L
ate one afternoon, Julian and Kendall drove out to the countryside in West Orange so Julian could inspect a parcel of land for sale that adjoined property he owned. As they walked through the overgrown grass and weeds, Kendall said, “What do you see?”

“Stores. Rows of stores. Room for parking. And I know the road behind us is on a bus line.”

“I see old, beautiful trees and a field of wildflowers and weeds.”

“That's because you're an artist, not a developer.”

They drove to Pals Cabin, a hot-dog stand that had matured into a restaurant. While they ate the best mushroom soup that Kendall had ever tasted, creamy and peppery and as thick as stew, she told Julian about the Brighams. Kendall had been hesitant to mention them because she knew that Julian would've preferred her to live with him, and she worried that bringing up anything positive about the Village would make him feel bad. She was also worried that he might try to talk her out of going and, since she was crazy in love with him, she'd give in.

His response surprised her. “We should take the Brighams to dinner. It can't hurt your career to make friends with an artist, and I want to try the Minetta Tavern. I used to go when it was a speakeasy. Siano and Eddie ate there last week and they say it's a decent red-sauce joint.”

“A red—”

“An Italian restaurant. Ask them, and if they can't make it, we'll go.”

Kendall felt sheepish for believing that Julian would try to stand in her way. She was suddenly terrified at the thought of exchanging the comforts he provided for the solitary discipline of art and a long shot at ever winning anything more than a membership in that pathetic club of failed artists who hung on in the Village because they had nowhere else to go.

This realization made Kendall want to smoke the two reefers Christina had rolled for her, but in her health course at Lovewood her professor—a wizened doctor of divinity who lectured students about the multitudinous paths to hell in a singsong voice—had shown them the documentary
Reefer Madness
, and Kendall wondered if marijuana could really make you a criminal or lunatic.

It wasn't until Sunday night that she asked Julian for his opinion on the matter. She was sitting on the covers in one of his shirts, and he was lying beside her in pajama bottoms.

Kendall slid the reefers from a pack of Marlboros. “Christina gave me these. Did you ever smoke one?”

“Hashish. In Berlin.”

“What's it do?”

“Makes your chest hairy.”

Kendall chuckled. “You lyin' like a no-legged dog. I want to smoke one.”

“Go on.”

“I'm scared.”

Taking one of the reefers from her and a matchbox from the night table, Julian lit up, inhaled, held his breath, and exhaled. He gave the reefer to Kendall. They smoked, and after Kendall took the last puff, she crushed the nub in the ashtray. Julian felt himself drift off, like on an August afternoon at Bradley Beach.

“It's not working,” Kendall said. “I'm going to light the other one.”

Julian heard Kendall strike a match, and her inhaling and exhaling.

“I'm thirsty,” Kendall said when she had finished. “I'm going to get a drink. Do you want something?”

“Unh-unh.”

According to the alarm clock, only twenty minutes had gone by when Julian went to find Kendall. She was in the kitchen, sitting with her legs splayed on the black-and-white checkerboard linoleum. Before her was a pint carton of butter pecan and a jar of hot fudge from Gruning's. She was excavating ice cream from the carton with a scooper, then sticking her fingers in the jar, decorating the lump of butter pecan with fudge, and eating her improvised sundae from the scooper.

Grinning, Kendall held up the pint carton and sang, “All gone!”

Julian put away the fudge. “How're you feeling?”

“Like I could clap my titties!”

Kendall dropped the carton in the garbage can under the sink and sat on the windowsill.

“You know what Christina told me?”

“Not a clue.”

“Christina told me on their first date Brig—that's what everyone calls him—Brig showed her where her clitoris was.”

“Guys can be helpful like that.”

“Can you find mine?”

“If you didn't move it.”

“Why would I move it? I like it right where it is.”

Julian agreed that it was in an optimal location and carried her to their room. Kendall felt as serene as a sleepy child when he lowered her onto the bed. She was aware of time passing, but she didn't know whether it was a minute or an hour. When she saw Julian's dark wavy hair between her thighs, her serenity vanished, and a mobile of images spun underneath her eyelids, images of Christina and Brig in their own bed, Christina on the bottom, her face contorted as Brig hammered away at her. Kendall was light-headed, as though watching the scene from a rooftop. She was afraid of heights—
acrophobia
was the technical term, memorized from her psych textbook in the hope that knowing the scientific name would help. It didn't. Intellectualizing was overrated, she thought, and laughed out loud and didn't quit laughing until Julian was inside her.

In Kendall's mind, Christina and Brig, bound by their chain, were really going at it, and Kendall couldn't recall if the
Reefer Madness
documentary claimed marijuana would turn you into a voyeur. Kendall imagined herself sitting beside Christina and—this shocked her—moving her mouth to her friend's breasts. Her guilt gave her pause, but Christina cooed that her intimate joys were her own affair, and the longer Kendall sucked on those breasts, the harder her own nipples became.

Kendall held Julian, feeling the rippling of his muscles in his back. Christina and Brig were gone, but Kendall could hear the dizzying jangle of their chain. Realizing that she was ensnared in a bondage that was hers alone, Kendall threw herself against Julian, trying to break free, the tension inside her terrifying because she didn't know if she were seeking freedom or oblivion or, most daunting of all, whether freeing herself was only possible if she let herself go and merged into this man. Her one solace was that she didn't feel a speck of guilt, not for the wantonness of her fantasies or her reality or that, clamping her hands on Julian's buttocks, she wanted to pull him so far inside her that he too would vanish.

Yet still he was there, she could hear him calling her name, and Kendall gave up, forgetting her terror and flinging herself from a rooftop, like Christina in Brig's painting, and plunged through an unfamiliar darkness, where she screamed—oh yes, screamed herself silly—screamed until her throat burned and she heard herself, in a raspy burble, tell Julian that she loved him.

Later, Kendall awoke and unwound herself from Julian. Replaying their lovemaking, she grew excited, but remembering the rattling chains made her shudder. Kendall was staring at the ceiling when the first fires of dawn pressed against the windows.

O
n Tuesday, as Kendall left class, she asked Dodd Brigham if he and Christina would like to have dinner with her and Julian.

“Kind of you to invite us,” he replied, “but Christina is under the weather, and I've a dinner with several of my patrons.”

Then Brig took off down Fifty-Seventh Street, while Kendall went downtown. She didn't have to meet Julian at the Minetta Tavern until six, and her new plan was to comb the Village for handwritten For Rent signs, reasoning that people who could afford to advertise in the classifieds wouldn't be as desperate for a tenant as those less fortunate souls who stuck homemade placards in their windows. She started at Washington Square and trudged as far as the Jewish cemetery by West Eleventh but didn't spot any signs. Frustrated, Kendall wandered across Fifth Avenue until she decided to visit Christina. Her mother would have chided her for dropping by someone's home without an invitation. But Kendall was lonely, and Christina wasn't feeling well. No doubt Garland, who disliked guests appearing empty-handed, would have approved of her daughter's next move, going into Veniero's and emerging with a bag of freshly baked butter cookies.

“Such a lovely surprise,” Christina said, when Kendall found her seated on the settee in the courtyard.

Christina, who had been reading a book Kendall had never heard of—
The Awakening
by Kate Chopin—didn't look sick. Her complexion was ruddy, and she was even wearing shoes and real clothes: beaded moccasins, beige wool slacks, and a pullover sweater the color of Chianti.

Kendall took a seat next to Christina. “I'm glad you're feeling better.”

“Brig claimed I was unwell?”

Kendall explained about Julian and the dinner invitation. Christina grimaced. “Brig and I had a tiff, and he's sulking.”

Kendall didn't know what to say.

“No prying, is that it?” Christina asked, smiling warmly. “You can hang on to your manners, but if you're not curious about people, how can you be curious about yourself? Curiosity is all an artist has.”

Kendall felt her face flush. “What did you and Brig fight about?”

“That wasn't so hard, was it?”

“Maybe—a little.”

“This morning, Brig showed me a new painting, and I told him it wasn't among his best. He got in a huff, and I say, ‘Do you want the truth or not?' He says, ‘Not today,' so I tell him it's marvelous. His face lights up like the Woolworth Building, and he says, ‘You think so?' and I answer, ‘No.' Then he shouts if I'd wear the chain more, he wouldn't be so distracted.”

“Distracted?”

“Distracted. Because if I'm not chained, I could scoot on him.” Christina laughed bitterly. “I am sick of his insecurities.”

Kendall couldn't imagine ever speaking about Julian with such bitterness. And she'd never wear a chain. Ever. “You could come to dinner with us.”

“No thank you. Then I'd have to have another fight about that with Brig when he got home.”

Kendall saw nothing for rent on Bleecker or MacDougal, and since it was too early to meet Julian, she turned onto Minetta Lane, which was steep and no wider than an alley. Christina must have been right about the Italians running off the Negroes, because Kendall heard opera blaring, and the music grew louder when, on her left, she came to Minetta Street. Halfway down the block, she discovered the source of the music. An old, slack-jawed man was sitting on the slate stoop of a townhouse with the first-floor window open and the horn of a gramophone aimed outside. He wore a grayish-brown striped suit with a lemon-lime necktie that was louder than the opera and a fedora with the brim flipped down like a lady's sunhat. Kendall did a double take when she saw a professionally printed For Rent sign taped to the stained glass inset of the front door. She smiled at the old man as if he were her long-lost uncle, and when the music ended, the man, who was missing most of his upper teeth, said, “
Aspetta un minuto
, you wait,
sì
?”

He shuffled inside. Kendall heard the window close and, given her dismal experience with Village landlords, she thought he'd ditched her.

The man reappeared. “You here for rent
l'appartamento
of Mr. Ciccolini?”

“Yes, sir. I am. Is Mr. Ciccolini home?”