Anthropology of an American Girl (50 page)

“But it was happy,” Manny concludes. “Maybe it needed a vacation. It’s gotta be tough, being a bird like that in a place like this.”

We drink Stolichnaya at Café Luxembourg, and we lament the decline of America. We blame groups. Blaming groups shows that you yourself are not involved but that you are intellectually connected, especially if the group you blame appeared in Sunday’s
New York Times
. When I say “we” I do not mean
me
, though I cannot exempt myself insofar as I am present. When a pack of wolves mangles a carcass, it doesn’t matter which one’s not eating
that much
.

“You and Mark are so cute!” Naomi exclaims in the bathroom. Everything happens in the bathroom. The clock stops. There is a kink in the spin of the world. She comes out of the stall sniffing, pinching her nostrils. “It must be wonderful to be in love.”

I don’t think I’m in love. I don’t know, maybe I am. I smile, sort of. I think I smile.

We return to the table, me behind her, her ravishing ass ticking like a metronome set high. She hits shoulders, practically, of men in chairs on the way. We sit side by side. Naomi is a model. Sitting next to Naomi is like sitting next to a Kleenex. When you ask a question, she tilts her head and flits her eyes and asks you to repeat yourself, which you don’t bother to do, because whatever you asked the first time was already so abridged for her benefit that it does not bear repeating. We order the same meals. That is to say, she copies mine.

“Yeah, that,” Naomi simpers on the heels of my order, handing back an unopened menu. It occurs to me that she cannot read.

Mark and Richard Spencer switch to Chivas Regal Royal Paisley, and they discuss supply-side economics, the $235 price of Hanson Citation ski boots, fluctuations in the index, and fishing in Argentina, which is
the
place to buy land. Richard is Mark’s boss; he is the one with the dent in his head that makes him appear cleavable. “Mia and I are going in September. Why don’t you join us?” Richard says of Argentina, adding discreetly, “Everyone there is
white
. It’s not what you’d think.”

Richard’s girlfriend Mia’s name is not pronounced
Mee-a
, but
My-a
. This you must know without being told. If you cannot intuit this, it confirms your lack of sophistication. Then you will be ostracized and Mark will never make partner at work.

Mia loves September. “All the new fashion!”

Mark looks at me, his eyes wide, his manner encouraging. I’m supposed to reply. His head makes miniature downward jerks as if he’s watching me struggle to tap out a dance he’s already perfected.

“Fashion—and—September,” I say. “Yes, I think so too.” This is a lie. To me September is watermelon rinds with panes of ants, monarch butterflies migrating to Mexico, chestnut leaves like shriveled stars fallen to the ground, luminescent dragonflies catching the sun off the cliffs in Montauk, cranberries on the bogs out in Napeague, sweet autumn clematis hanging over fences in Sag Harbor.

Brett snaps a match and lights a clove cigarette. Brett is Mark’s best friend. They met in kindergarten at Collegiate. Brett is sort of a 50-percent man—not 50-percent like left or right, but 50-percent like partial or deformed. Brett is into bonds; he says bonds are
the thing
. Naomi is Brett’s date. Brett dates only models. The men are talking, cataloging the ravages of nature—earthquakes, fires, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, mud slides, plagues, killer bees. I wonder, why do they expect the earth to remain passive as we pave it?

“Let’s head to Xenon after chow,” Brett brays like an old quarter horse.

A few tables down, a girl cries into her drink. I feel bad about that. I think I know how she feels.

——

At the curb I announce that I am not going. The curb is the place for such announcements, especially when everyone is half in a waiting cab. That way it’s too late for objections.

Mark’s grip on my elbow tightens. He turns to me; his brows are furrowed. “What is it?”

“I have some reading to do, you know, for school.” I wave lightly into the taxi, into the frosty aggregate of heads. “Good night.” They do not wave back.

Mark has Brett and Naomi hold the first cab, then hails me a second one. He pays in advance. It’s not that he doesn’t trust me with cash; it’s his way of controlling outcomes. If ever there are ways to control outcomes, Mark discovers them. “Things tend to happen to you,” he always says. “You’re like a magnet that way.”

“Drive safely,” Mark tells the driver.
“Very
safely. Keep the change.”

He adjusts the collar on his cashmere overcoat and kisses me, lingeringly. He wants to come, but it would not look right. It would seem like something it should not. You can always count on Mark to conform, which is good. A girl has to be able to count on something.

The cab pulls out, and I submerge myself into the duct-taped vinyl seat. It feels good to sink into a taxi seat after you’ve been drinking. It’s like settling into a steamy bath or removing tight shoes. I’m happy to be relieved of having to socialize, or more accurately, to appear, somewhat like a logo. There is that flowery smell in the cab, that peculiar taxi smell, lazy and reliable and without obvious origin—not aerosol, not incense, not those little hanging pine trees. Denny says the glass crowns on dashboards contain magic tinctures and essences—vanilla and vetiver and frankincense—but tonight there is no crown. I remind myself to call Denny. Tonight, I’ll call. Possibly tonight. Or maybe tomorrow.

The city snakes past—
very safely past
, and I pretend to fly. Sometimes in a taxi you can pretend you are flying. I blur my eyesight like I am swooping, skimming the surface of the planet.

When we turn off Tenth Avenue onto West Sixtieth Street, Carlo jogs out to the curb and waits. It’s like a relay race, and I am the baton passed palm to palm, Mark to Carlo. Carlo is the night doorman. I wonder
what he does with his days. His children are at school and his wife is at work at a blood lab on Lexington Avenue. Does he sleep past noon, eat cold pork chops, go to the barber or the bank? Sometimes I see him walking to work from the subway in a dress shirt and jacket. The toes of his good shoes are woven like kitchen chair caning. Invariably there is a storm of aftershave.

He grips the handle and assists me, steering me clear of the vehicle while closing the door and nodding professionally to the driver.

“Thank you, Carlo,” I say. The alcohol on my breath vines up about us. I wonder if he pities me. Sometimes you can’t help but pity the people you meet.

He whisks me through the entry and gestures to a hideaway by the mailboxes. “There’s cleaning.” He looks me over and reconsiders. “No problem. I wait for Mr. Ross.”

“It’s okay, Carlo. I’ll take it.” He hands it over, and I topple. “Wow,” I smile. “Heavy!” Mark sends everything out; even jeans get cleaned and pressed. Carlo tries to get the stuff back from me. There’s a minor tussle. “I’m fine,” I say, spinning the load behind me and involuntarily going half-around again to face the wall. I right myself. “I need something in here. A nightgown.”

He’s unconvinced but too circumspect to confront me on the subject of lingerie. Anyway, the Solomons are at the curb. He taps the elevator button and backs cautiously away. “You sure you’re okay, Evie?” I nod through the hangers, and he says, “Okay, then. Good night!”

Sandalwood candles line the black Lucite and chrome console that runs beneath the picture window in the bedroom. I light them. Sandalwood is an aphrodisiac, Mark says. Mark says some men wear it for potency. I don’t like the smell, but they’re the only candles in the apartment. Near the candles there is an antique mirror Mark bought for me, hand-beveled from Czechoslovakia with sterling corner clips. In it I see a reflection of a reflection, something cubist and delusory.

“You get more beautiful every day,” Mark often tells me.

I don’t know why he says that, why he bothers. He doesn’t have to work so hard; nothing matters to me. One night I saw myself in another woman, a redhead with dark eye circles and orchid lips. She seemed luckless
and afflicted, damaged and indifferent. I could see how a man would want to possess a woman like that. I wondered how she’d made it to that state—breakable with secrets. Did she start out in high school too—just a girl, like me?

I sleep, I wake. I toss, I turn, I brood and flip, and flip, concentrating just to breathe. The ultra-fine texture of my pillow, the detergent smell of the sheets, the genteel tangle of my nightgown. On the bedside table is a bouquet of drying tulips. Every time a petal falls, it cracks when it hits. I reach for my journal but I can’t think of what to write. I wonder how long Mark will stay out. Sometimes you depend upon the sight of yourself in someone else’s eyes. Babies bat at toys to confirm their existence; touch proves that they are. Mark is my proof. I play with the telephone, dialing, dialing, dropping it, dialing. The receiver is extra heavy when no one is listening.

Mrs. Ross arranges a job for me at Mary Boone Gallery, where she buys art. I work four days a week year-round, making ten dollars an hour. I never had so much money. I don’t really need it for living, so it sits in the bank. My mother went on welfare and worked as a waitress to put herself through night school, and my grandmother sent her children away when her husband died so she could work two full shifts a day. They each refused to remarry; they would not allow themselves to live off the beneficence of a man. There’s a difference, I think, between a woman who would do that and a woman who wouldn’t.

“Women must make themselves financially self-sufficient,” Mrs. Ross says one day at the Ross’s New York apartment. She rifles through her closet, handing her unwanted clothes to me. “It’s never too soon to start.”

“Mom, you don’t work,” Alicia flatly states. “You never have.”

“For
money,”
she says dismissively. “A
technicality.”
Mrs. Ross is a volunteer for the National Organization for Women. She is an ardent feminist, a soldier in the fight for the ERA, Title IX, and right-to-choose legislation, counting such women as Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Marilyn French, Marlo Thomas, and Frances Lear among her closest friends.

The art Mrs. Ross buys is experimental, but she claims it will be worth something someday, and she really does know art. She was an early collector of Andy Warhol’s and Robert Rauschenberg’s. In her latest
Hamptons collection there are canvases with broken plates and electronic readout signs and photographs of headless baby dolls. The entire house was painted white last summer to feature it all.

“It looks like a Yugoslavian burn ward,” Mr. Ross complained when he saw it.

In the New York apartment the art is much nicer, though there is no Goya in the living room. One of Mr. Ross’s clients has a Goya in the living room of a Fifth Avenue apartment where maids wear black-ruffle French uniforms with sheer aprons like in porno films. We went there once for an event. Those people must have felt very important to have purchased that painting, to possess something of such historic value, to control its destiny. There is a buzz, sort of, to mix your tiny fate with the great fate of antiquity. All around the city, all around the world, there is a buzz.

Mark held me the first time I saw the Goya and stood admiring it. “Someday we’ll have money like that. Someday soon.”

Rob contrives reasons to see me. He brings poorly folded newspaper clippings about things like the MoMA reopening and van Gogh at the Met and current events articles about artificial hearts and test-tube babies. He asks for help filling out Lotto slips, then he makes plans for the things we’re going to do with the winnings. He teaches me
creative accounting
—game theory and magic tricks and hand signals for cheating at cards. Also how to decipher market data and racing forms and the science behind the daily number and the sucker schemes behind the boardwalk games, like the wood blocks placed behind the cats—those stiff flip-down dolls you throw hardballs at. They don’t even look like cats.

“She’s quick,” Rob says approvingly to Mark.
“Very
quick. I think she’s ready for under/overs and
the vig.”

One day Rob came and talked excitedly about construction in Atlantic City, Harrah’s, and how great it was gonna be, and also all the action down at the Criterion. He talked about the Holmes-Cooney TKO the previous week, and when Mark said, “Let me tell you something, old-timers like Joe Louis and Jack Johnson could pummel today’s boxers,” Rob didn’t engage. He just glowered and said, “Fuck you, Mark.”

When Rob left that day, he seemed particularly torn. I walked him to
the door of the apartment, and he faced me squarely with his hands on my arms to say goodbye. The look on his face was aggrieved, like the look of a healthy person leaving a hospital patient alone with their terminal disease. He glanced up at Mark, as though he was considering grabbing me and making a break for it. He started to speak, but Mark interrupted.

“Hold on. Let’s ask the boss,” Mark was saying to someone on the other end of the phone, Brett probably. He set the receiver on his shoulder, asking, “Sushi, baby, or Thai?”

I turned back and Rob had gone. The door
ka-thunked
against the vacuum of the hallway. I touched myself, feeling for effects. There ought to have been effects. I searched for signs of him—the cup he’d used, the newspaper he’d carried. There was a football on the coffee table that he’d rolled in his hands. He’d been wearing a tank top, and he had a new tattoo—a cobra on his right shoulder. Every time the ball spun, the cobra flickered.

“Ev says sushi,” Mark reported falsely. “We’ll meet you at Japonica at eight.”

A kiss at the beach, salt on my lips. I open my eyes to see but the sky is slit by a streak of bobbing pentacles, a blinding row of asterisks that cascade from the sun to me. I wonder if the sun can blind me.

Mark says no. “It cannot.”

He met some Harvard graduate school friends by the lifeguard station, Lisa and Tim Connelly. The Connellys are architects “talking to the Hilton” in Atlanta. If you ask what is the meaning of that, of “talking to the Hilton,” you will be told,
negotiating a major contract
. If you ask, “Doesn’t Atlanta have its own architects?” you will be told of the Connellys, “They’re hot. They just did Avon.”