cold: and she gives you something, money is best: and she is
just unhappy enough when she leaves. Her body still trembles
and she is as pale as death, washed out, delicate and desperate,
she has never done anything like this before, not wanting her
own life, wanting ours: which we hold for ransom. She can get
near it again, if we let her: if she has something we need. We
are tired of her and want her gone. We are both cold and
detached and ready for someone new.
*
The coffeehouse has a jukebox N likes. The music blares. She
knows how to turn them up. In any bar she can reach behind,
wink at the bartender, and turn up the music. In this
coffeehouse, all painted pink, there is no resistance. It is in the
Village, a dumpy one surrounded by plusher places for tourists
and rich hippies and old-time bohemians who have learned how
to make a living from art.
There is nightlife here, and money, and N and I hang out
for the air conditioning and to pick up men. It is easy pickings.
She roams around the room, a girl James Dean, toward the
jukebox, away from the jukebox, toward it, away from it, her
cigarette hanging out of her slightly dirty mouth, her hips tough
and lean, her legs bent at the knees, a little bowlegged, opened
up. She is dirty and her eyes have deep circles set in fragile,
high cheekbones. She spreads her arms out over the breadth
of the jukebox and spreads her legs with her knees slightly
bent outward and she moves back and forth, a slow, excruciating fuck. Jim Morrison and the Doors. Otis Redding.
Janis. Hey mister, she says in her deepest mumble, you gotta
cigarette. She gets courtly: I seem to be out, she says to him,
eyelids drooping. She smiles: I guess I must of left them somewhere. She hustles change for the jukebox. She hustles change for coffee. These are long, leisurely, air-conditioned nights. She
disappears. I disappear. She returns, orders cappuccino, it means
60
money, something easy with a boy. I return: we have sandwiches. She returns: with some grass. I return: we have dessert, chocolate cake, leisurely, cheesecake, passing it around. She
returns: drinks for tomorrow night. I return: speed for tomorrow. We are bankers, saving up, past our immediate needs.
She returns: some money toward the rent. She walks around
the room, her hips very, very tough. The cigarette dangles.
The music plays. Friends drop in and visit. She gets a glint in
her eye: disappears: comes back to buy a round of coffees,
some cake, some sandwiches.
Outside it is crowded, dark, hot, the sticky wet of the city
air. The streets are overrun with tourists. The tourist joints are
flowing over. They come to see this life.
Too hot to hang out on a stoop: so we go to the West
Village to a bright pink coffeehouse, especially on weekends,
rich tourists, rich hippie types, and then, at the end, when only
the scum is left hovering in doorways, just plain punks who
wanna fuck.
