ROBERT SAT IN A CHAIR UNDER A BLACK-AND-WHITE Larry Rivers. He was really pale. I knelt down and took his hand. The morphine angel had said sometimes you could get a room at the Chelsea Hotel in exchange for art. It was my intention to offer our work. I believed the drawings I had done in Paris were strong and there was no question Robert’s work eclipsed anything hanging in the lobby. My first hurdle would be Stanley Bard, the hotel manager.
I sauntered into his office to pitch our virtues. He waved me right back out while continuing a seemingly endless phone conversation. I went and sat on the floor next to Robert, silently sizing up our situation.
Harry Smith suddenly materialized, as if he had disengaged from the wall. He had wild silver hair, a tangled beard, and peered at me with bright inquisitive eyes magnified by Buddy Holly glasses. He shot animated questions that overlapped my answers. “Who are you do you have money are you twins why are you wearing a ribbon around your wrist?”
He was waiting for his friend Peggy Biderman, hoping she would stand him a meal. Though preoccupied with his own plight, he seemed sympathetic to ours and immediately fretted over Robert, who could barely sit up.
He stood before us, slightly hunchbacked in a shabby tweed jacket, chinos, and desert boots, with his head cocked like a highly intelligent hound. Although barely forty-five, he was like an old man with ceaseless childlike enthusiasm. Harry was revered for his
“We Smiths are never rich,” I said. He seemed taken aback.
“Are you sure your name is really Smith?”
“Yes,” I said, “and even surer that we’re related.”
I got the go-ahead to reenter Mr. Bard’s office. I took the positive approach. I told him I was on my way to get an advance from my employer but would give him the opportunity to have work that was worth far more than rent. I sang Robert’s praises, offering our portfolios as collateral. Bard was skeptical but he gave me the benefit of the doubt. I don’t know if the prospect of seeing our work meant anything to him but he seemed impressed with my pledge of employment. We shook hands and I palmed the key. Room 1017. Fifty-five dollars a week to live in the Chelsea Hotel.
Peggy had arrived and they helped me get Robert upstairs. I unlocked the door. Room 1017 was famous for being the smallest in the hotel, a pale blue room with a white metal bed covered over with a cream-colored chenille spread. There was a sink and mirror, a small chest of drawers, and a portable black-and-white TV sitting on the center of a large faded doily. Robert and I had never owned a TV and it sat there, a futuristic yet obsolete talisman, with the plug dangling for our entire stay.
There was a doctor in the hotel and Peggy gave me his number. We had a clean room and a helping hand. Mostly it served as a place for Robert’s convalescence. We were home.
The doctor arrived and I waited outside the door. The room was too small for the three of us and I didn’t want to see Robert get a shot. The doctor gave Robert a heavy dose of tetracycline, wrote out some prescriptions, and urged me to get a test. Robert was malnourished with a high fever, trench mouth, impacted wisdom teeth, and gonorrhea. We would both have to get shots and register that we had a communicable disease. The doctor said I could pay him later.
I had bad feelings about the likelihood that I had contracted a social disease by way of a stranger. It was not jealousy; it was more that I felt unclean. All the Jean Genet I had read contained a sense of sainthood that did not include the clap. This was compounded by my needle phobia as the doctor alluded to a regimen of shots. But I had to set my misgivings aside. My first concern was for Robert’s well-being and he was far too ill for any emotional tirade.
I sat there next to him in silence. How different the light in the Chelsea Hotel seemed as it fell over our few possessions, it was not natural light, spreading from the lamp and the overhead bulb, intense and unforgiving, yet it seemed filled with unique energy. Robert lay comfortably and I told him not to worry, promising to come back soon. I had to stick by him. We had our vow.
It meant we were not alone.
I exited the hotel and stood before the plaque honoring the poet Dylan Thomas. Only that morning we had escaped the depressing aura of the Allerton and now we had a small but clean room in one of the most historic hotels in New York City. I scoped our immediate terrain. In 1969, Twenty-third Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues still had a postwar feel. I passed a fishing and tackle shop, a used record store with Parisian jazz discs barely perceptible through the dusty windows, a sizable Automat, and the Oasis Bar with a neon sign of a palm tree. Across the street was a branch of the public library next to a sprawling YMCA.
I headed east, turned on Fifth Avenue, and walked uptown to Scribner’s at Forty-eighth Street. Though I had taken a long leave of absence, I was confident they would take me back. I was returning a bit halfheartedly, but considering our situation, Scribner’s was a real salvation. My employers greeted me warmly and I went down to the basement, shared their coffee and cinnamon rolls, and entertained them with tales of Paris street life, accentuating the humorous aspects of our misadventures and ending with me getting my job back. As a bonus they staked me an advance for immediate expenses and a week’s rent, which was to impress Mr. Bard enormously. He hadn’t looked at our work but he kept the portfolios for future consideration, so there was still hope we could barter.
I brought Robert a little food. It was the first he had eaten since my return. I recounted my dealings with Scribner’s and Bard. We were amazed at how much had happened, retracing our small odyssey from calamitous to calm. Then he fell silent. I knew what he was thinking. He didn’t say he was sorry, but I knew he was. He wondered, as he rested his head on my shoulder, if I would have been better off if I hadn’t come back. But I did come back. In the end we were better off together.
I knew how to take care of him. I was good at tending the sick, bringing one out of fever, for I had learned that from my mother. I sat by his side as he drifted off to sleep. I was tired. My homecoming had taken a rough turn but things were working out and I wasn’t sorry at all. I was excited. I sat there listening to him breathe, the night- light spilling over his pillow. I felt the strength of community in the sleeping hotel. Two years before, he had rescued me, appearing out of the blue in Tompkins Square Park. Now I had rescued him. On that count we were even.
A few days later, I went to Clinton Street to settle up with Jimmy Washington, our former superintendent. I climbed the heavy stone steps one last time. I knew I was never coming back to Brooklyn. I stood outside his door for a moment getting ready to knock. I could hear “Devil in a Blue Dress” playing and Jimmy Washington talking to his lady. He opened the door slowly and was surprised to see me. He had packed up Robert’s things but it was obvious that he had taken a liking to most of mine. I had to laugh coming into his front room. My blue poker chips in their open inlay box, clipper ship with handmade sails, and garishly appointed plaster Infanta were carefully arranged on his mantel. My Mexican shawl was draped over the big wood desk chair I had laboriously sanded and painted over with white enamel. I called it my Jackson Pollock chair for it resembled a lawn chair I had seen in a photograph of the Pollock-Krasner farm in the Springs.
“I was keeping it all safe for you,” he said a bit sheepishly. “I couldn’t be sure you were coming back.” I just smiled. He fired up some coffee and we struck a bargain. I owed him three months’ rent: one hundred and eighty
