maternal curiosity about my job forces me into increasingly elaborate lies, and her questions about my social life leave me even more depressed.
In a couple of weeks I might have enough saved up for a social life. But for now it’s hot dogs and slices and nights spent alone. The drafty old hotel turns out to have a tough time holding on to heat, with the notable exception of my miniature room and its exposed hot-water plumbing. Nighttime temperatures often reach the nineties. I learn to use my window like a tub faucet in reverse, replenishing the room as needed with below-freezing air. It gives me something to do while I lie awake at night trying to remember why I thought living in this place would be better than home.
During the day, I mine my interactions with the customers for whatever fleeting nuggets of warmth I can find. The Upper East Side jogger gives up her name (“Liz”) after I compliment her eyes, then tears off like a woman with more important things to do.
Charlie, a kid about my age who works nights sweeping up an underground card game, is usually good for fifteen minutes of conversation before he dozes off into stoned slumber on whichever park bench in Union Square promises the most sun.
And Danny Carr.
Most people smoke pot to mellow out. Danny is not one of those people. The man is what my parents might call a “dynamo,” and the weed only stokes those fires. I’m more inclined to use the word “asshole,” but he’s more than doubling my take-home pay each week for the equivalent of a few prank phone calls, so I go along to get along.
Each workday I make two calls to the Pontiff’s toll-free customer line. At first, I use a different accent each time: Park Avenue, Puerto Rico, Staten Island, and one that starts Haitian but rapidly deteriorates into Diff’rent Strokes: “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Mister D.?” Luckily, Billy’s years of taking calls from the highly stoned means that it’s pretty much impossible to sound too weird. But I’m no Rich Little: Impersonations have never been my thing. I max out at six, maybe seven voices that sound remotely convincing. So I transform them into regular customers, requiring the purchase of a small black notebook at Duane Reade to keep track of my polyethnic cast of characters and their imaginary smoking habits. I don’t want to fuck up.
While I’m not exactly scamming the Pontiff — if anything, I’m generating more business — delivering two pounds to Danny each week certainly exposes me to risks outside the operation’s comfort zone, something Rico, during my audition, impressed upon me never to do.
Friday night, my third week of moonlighting for Danny, I return to my room at the hotel after making my last legitimate delivery. I load my shirt with the bags. “That’s quite a potbelly,” I say to the cracked mirror. I open the door before the mirror can reply, jogging down the stairs toward the subway and Danny’s office. Only this time I nearly steamroll K. as she’s walking into the elevator.
“Hey, you,” she says. She’s freshly showered, hasn’t bothered with makeup, and isn’t suffering for it in the slightest. My heart’s beating like a jackhammer, but I’ve never been more lucid. I finally have an honest answer to the question of why I chose to live at the Chelsea.
“I’ve been looking for you,” I say. “About that second date.”
She smiles. “It’s going to have to be a quickie.
I’ve got to get back to Nate. They’re flying to Chicago tonight and they’ll never make it to the airport without me.”
“I can work fast when I have to.”
“A fast worker, huh?”
“Don’t get me wrong. I prefer to take my time.”
“You know, I’m not that easy.”
“Me neither,” I fire back. “But I’m open to rehabilitation.”
She smiles again. Could my rap actually be working? Her eyes dart back and forth, signaling an internal debate. “I’ve got a show tomorrow night,” she finally says. “Versace.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you, thank you,” she says with a curtsy.
“But would you believe that I still get nervous up there? Lame, I know, but I could really use a rooting section and with Nate out of town …”
“I’m there!” I say, grinning a little too much.
“Don’t get any ideas: I’m a good girl. But I can’t say the same for all of my friends. A roomful of beautiful, insecure women of questionable character. A guy like you might do all right.”
“‘A guy like me’? I believe I’ve just been insulted.”
She gently slaps my cheek. “Poor baby. There’ll be a pass for you at the door, if you can get over the hurt. Ray’s going too. Maybe you guys can share a cab.” She struts past me into the elevator.
She’s smiling as the doors close shut.
“You shud write a pome abut hah,” Herman chimes in, having caught the scene from his perch behind the desk.
“I just might,” I reply, scurrying out into the street to avoid further interrogation. I let my momentum carry me to Seventh Avenue, where I catch the train downtown.
DESPITE K.’S SUGGESTION, WE DON’T need a cab — it’s only a ten-block walk to the show, a former slaughterhouse in the Meatpacking District that’s been reclaimed as an “art space.” Like a true Dixie gentleman, Ray brings along a flask of Southern Comfort to warm us along the way, leaving us nicely lacquered by the time we take our seats. We hoot and holler when K. struts out for the first time, decked in a fluo-rescent green smock I couldn’t imagine ever seeing on a civilian. Like the true professional she is, she ignores us completely.
A half hour later — about twenty-five minutes after the novelty of seeing so many imperious beauties march in, spin, and march out again has run its course — I wake to the sound of applause. The fashion designer rides a supermodel stampede to the stage.
“Lucky dude,” I say.
“Tell that to his boyfriend,” Ray replies. “Now let’s have some fun.”
Which is when I begin striking out, and Ray starts yawning. He’s all the way up to seven before K. appears, having completed her circuit of the industry types Ray calls Big Swinging Dicks:
“Especially the women!” She’s still made up but dressed for downtown, having shed the Day-Glo smock in favor of a one-piece black velvet minidress and her 18-eye Docs.
“Yow!” Ray howls at her, pulling his hand back as if he’s been scorched. “You owned it, lady!” K. accepts the compliment with a curtsy and a smile.
“But I don’t know what they were thinking putting you in that rig with the Mork from Ork suspenders,” he continues. “You need tits for that one.”
“You’re an asshole,” K. says, but she’s laughing.
She looks to me for my reaction, which right now is to smile like a moron. When I fail to reply within a socially acceptable time frame, she throws me a lifeline. “A few of us are headed down to the Western.”
“The Western Diner,” Ray says. “Most ironically named restaurant in the world.”
It doesn’t take long to figure out what he means.
I’d noticed the Western Diner during my transactions with Union Square Charlie and, having seen the place only in daylight, been fooled by the name. Nobody’s dining; in fact, most of the patrons — models, club kids, and a smattering of minor celebrities with rapidly swiveling heads — are poster children for eating disorders. We skip through the velvet ropes, our entrance blazed by K. and two femmes with the faces of angels but names too important to share with me, landing us in a coveted corner booth. The ladies order something called mojitos and excuse themselves to go to the bathroom. “Riding the rails,” Ray says as they leave. “At least they’ll be horny. Which one do you want?”
“I guess K.’s out of bounds,” I venture.
“Waste of time. Nate doesn’t deserve her, but he’s got the whole rock star thing working for him.”
Ray wiggles his fingers in the air. “Chick voodoo.
He’s got his teeth in her like fucking Dracula.”
