N returns: she orders a milkshake, sodas, buys cigarettes.
Poor R is going to join us for a cup of coffee: and someone
N has met on the street, A. He is not tall, not short, thin but
not noticeably, nice face but nothing special, intense big brown
eyes, Brazilian. He is street stuff, not the idle rich, but with
manners. There is polite conversation all around. Poor R considers this a formal date with N. A is there to meet me, to win my approval, because he is N ’s new friend, picked up on the
street but she likes him or I wouldn’t be meeting him now.
The walls are pink and dirty. The air conditioning is not
doing so good. The place is crowded. There is only money for
coffee: we have coffee: and coffee: and coffee. N and poor R
disappear, round the corner a block away to R ’s apartment: a
date. A and I talk. It is working out. He has a lot to say. I
don’t mind listening. It is a sad story. Something about how he
was a dancer and in love with a beautiful virgin in Brazil but
her parents oppose their marriage and so he goes on tour and
is in an accident and loses his hand and has punctures all over
his body. He only has one hand. Then about his months in the
hospital and how he couldn’t work anymore as a dancer and
how the girl left him because he was maimed and how he was
arrested for something he didn’t do and ran away from the
61
country altogether and became a fugitive because he couldn’t
make anyone believe him, it was a murder he was wanted for.
He was an artful storyteller because this story took nearly
four hours to tell. I cried. His accent was thick. He spoke
softly and deliberately. He didn’t live around here. He lived
around Times Square. Yeah he had some women out working
for him: old girlfriends but no one he was living with now: but
with N it was different. She comes back without poor R but
loaded with money: poor R got two-timed again: and we drink
coffee and eat and have more coffee and we talk there in the
pink coffeehouse, the jukebox gone quiet. Outside the streets
are emptying, it is nearly dawn. I go to the storefront alone,
thinking about pimps, nervous.*
A sits in the coffeehouse wearing a coat, as if cold. He hides
his arm. It is shrivelled at the elbow. He has tremendous poli-
tesse and dignity. He is not handsome and not not handsome.
He has some gentleness. He smokes like N, like me, cigarettes
one after another, but he holds them longer in his one hand.
He does things slowly: sits very still: slightly stooped: black
hair straight and framing his face in a kind of modified pageboy for boys. His lips are thick but not particularly sensual.
He has watery eyes. His skin is an ochre color. He wears dark
colors. He is intelligent, well-spoken: soft-spoken. When N
and poor R leave he doesn’t blink or flinch or react: he is
harmonious with how we do things: he imposes nothing: he
has a sense of courtesy not unlike N ’s: he seems removed from
