As Emma walks back down the hallway, she looks at the return address and sees that the letter is from London, from Charles Davis’s British publisher. She stands still and listens and then knocks lightly. Silence. Then the door flies open.
“What do you want?” Charles Davis demands. His face looks pained, almost contorted.
“This Federal Express letter just arrived from your British publisher. I thought it might be important.”
“You thought it might be important?”
“Yes.”
Charles grabs the letter, tears it in two, and flings it in the trash. “I’m trying to write! I don’t care if Jesus Christ himself wants to meet me for lunch, I’m not available to the world until further notice. Is that so goddamn hard to understand?” After shooting her a look of pure condescension, he slams the door in her face.
Emma stands there, a sickening deadweight suddenly lodged in her stomach. The sensation begins as a purely physical one, but quickly moves up her body, until her mind implodes with dismay, dismay and an approaching panic. She feels herself start to sweat on her upper lip, her forehead, under her arms. She feels the first tingle of prickly heat. She knows what comes next-banishment. Out to the back landing at the top of the stairs in her thin cotton dress and her bare feet, the door slamming and then locking behind her, the hours passing, she forbidden to move, staring at the railing, at the grooves in the wood, dreading that she’ll be noticed by the family that lives across the way. There are six kids in the family-six rowdy, unwashed, laughing, loved kids-and when they see Emma they stare, too kind to laugh. Then they whisper and run away, as if her sorrow might be catching. And evening turns to night and Emma grows colder and wants to cry, but what’s the use? And the hunger grows so intense it finally disappears and at least when it’s dark no one can see her up there on the back landing at the top of the stairs at the end of the alley in her bare feet and thin cotton dress with nothing on underneath.
Emma stands in front of the door to Charles’s office. What should she do? Don’t panic. She stands stock-still, her breathing shallow. She clenches her fists and wills herself not to cry. She hears what sounds like Charles Davis falling to the floor, followed by loud breathing, as if he’s doing a series of push-ups. This is followed by pacing. Then silence.
“Emma?”
“Yes, Mr. Davis?” she answers through the closed door.
“For Christ’s sake, stop calling me Mr. Davis. And will you please come in here?”
Emma opens the door and takes a step into the inner office.
He’s sitting at his desk. “It’s Charles.”
Emma hesitates a moment before saying a soft “Charles.”
“That’s better.” He smiles. “Sit down.” Emma sits across from him in a wooden armchair. “When I’m writing, or trying to write… well, it’s a difficult process, agonizing, fucking hellish is what it is. I don’t understand it. It’s physical, like football, or combat even, only the enemy is some amorphous gorilla of the soul. Or some bullshit like that. Is this making any sense?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose my point is, I become keyed up, revved, I go a little crazy. Or a lot crazy. So if I scream and yell and pound the walls… well, it’s not you.”
Emma feels a surge of gratitude and reaches past it to grasp courage. “I know that,” she says.
“You do?”
“… Charles… I’ve read all your novels. I’ve read Irreparable Damage twice. I can’t even imagine what it must take to create like that.”
Charles doesn’t answer, but a little smile plays at the corners of his mouth.
“I’m not afraid of a little screaming and yelling,” Emma says.
“No?”
“Not if that’s what it takes.”
He leans toward her, across his desk. “I’m very glad to hear that, Emma.”
“Scream away,” she says with a smile of her own.
He nods. Emma stands up to go.
“And, Emma?” She turns and looks at him, into his eyes. “You’re doing a very good job.”
She nods and closes the door quietly behind her. When she settles into her desk she tries to get back to work, but can’t. She’s overwhelmed by a physical sensation that moves over her body like liquid, a warm want that she has never felt before. There’s no way this job will be over in six weeks-she’ll make sure of that.
12
“This is it,” he bored, harried young man in the inexpensive gray suit says with undisguised distaste, before lighting a Salem to recover from the four-story climb.
Emma takes one look at the semifurnished studio and says, “I’ll take it.”
She takes out her checkbook-her first ever checkbook-and slowly writes out a check for the first and last month’s rent plus the $200 key deposit the managing agent insists on.
The agent-who Emma notices has a smudge of hair dye on one ear-examines the check and slips it into his pocket. He hands her the keys, mumbles a cynical “Enjoy,” and leaves without closing the door behind him. Emma watches him go down the stairs. There’s a ball of greasy paper on the second-to-last step. She hopes he slips and breaks his neck.
Emma loves the sound the old lock makes when she turns it and the bolt slides into the wall. Then she turns and surveys the first home that she can call her own.
The apartment is just one long room with three windows along one wall and a kitchen built into the far end. It smells faintly of soy sauce and fried dumplings, courtesy of the Chinese restaurant on the ground floor. The walls are the color of tobacco spit. There’s a double bed, a laminate desk, an ornate white dresser making a sad stab at French Regency, its top notched with cigarette burns, a frameless mirror above the dresser. Emma loves the cigarette burns; she runs her finger over the blackened hollows and imagines a poet, a bad girl, a good cop, a lost junkie from the Midwest who was once somebody’s son-all the Manhattan stories this room has hosted. Or maybe just one sad fat old woman lived here for twenty years eating junk food and smoking Winstons until her heart gave out.
The Chinese restaurant has a red neon sign that snakes up the building and suffuses the room with a rosy glow, even in the afternoon light. Emma looks down at the street and sees an old Italian woman in widow’s blacks walking a just-groomed white poodle. She loves this shabby patch of the city where Chinatown, Little Italy, and the Lower East Side converge.
Continuing her inspection, Emma pushes open the door to the bathroom. She stops-the bathtub that bathtub.
“Time for your bath, Emma.” They both knew what those words meant, the cheerful singsong a cruel mockery of their true intent. Emma would scuttle under her bed, stare up at the rusty springs, her head throbbing with dread and fear. “Didn’t you hear me, honeybunch? I said it’s time for your splish-splash.” And then the high- heeled mules would appear in the doorway and approach the bed and Emma would scoot farther under, as far away as she could get. “Where’s my little Mouseketeer? We have got to get you clean if we want Daddy to come home. You want Daddy to come home, don’t you?” And then her mother’s skinny arm with its gaggle of Bakelite bracelets would reach down under the bed, the hand grabbing at the air like a blind woman’s, grasping the first thing it touched-an arm, a leg, a hank of hair-and pull Emma out across the slippery linoleum floor. “Oh, Emma, if you don’t watch out, that expression will freeze on your face forever. I’ll have to put you in a zoo with the other monkeys. Daddy won’t want a dirty monkey around the house.” And then that laugh, that throaty staccato laugh. “Come on, monkey.” She lift her up-Emma going as rigid as a stick-and carry her into the bathroom, set her down. “Can’t take a bath in a dirty little dress, said the owl to the pussycat!” She’d stand there watching Emma under the light of that burning naked bulb that dangled from the ceiling like a hanged man. Then she’d bang down the toilet seat and sit down casual as day, crossing her long legs, humming brightly, checking out her painted nails. Emma would hug herself and look down-then suddenly the slap would smash across her cheek and she swear she would die before her mother saw her tears. “Silly fiddle-faddle! I got all night to party.” Slowly, slowly, Emma would lift the thin dress
