away.
I HAVE NO INTEREST IN RETURNING to the coffin I call home and besides, I’m feeling pretty goddamn sorry for myself. At times like these, there’s really no substitute for getting good and drunk. Out of convenience, I choose the Mexican place next door.
I’m throwing back my first shot of tequila when I remember I’m still broke. I find a ten in my pocket, money I’ve budgeted for the weekend’s food. I work through the math — spacing out the left overs from Tana’s meal, I should survive through Monday. So now I’ve got three shots and a tip. Enough for a buzz, maybe, but not quite the obliteration I’d been hoping for.
By the time the third shot is blazing down my food pipe, I’m pouring my troubles out to the bartender. Ernesto from Nicaragua. Who is, right now, the wisest man in the world.
“So what can you tell me, Ernesto? That I’m an idiot? That love is impossible? That I’m a stupid gringo whose problems don’t amount to a hill of beans?”
“Ah.” Ernesto nods sagely. “Dios nos odia todos.”
“That’s pretty,” says a voice from behind me. It’s K. She looks like she’s been crying. “What does it mean?”
“I’m pretty sure he said that ‘God hates us all.’ But I flunked Spanish so who knows for sure. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she replies. “Just fine. Nate and I broke up.”
I’ve just broken my best friend’s heart. My mother is dying in the hospital while my father cheats on her with a bottle blonde. Yet the news from K. makes me bite my lip to keep from smiling. “Well, pull up a seat, lady. The lonely hearts club is in session.”
“Why?” asks K. “What’s going on with you?” I bring her up to speed about Tana and my mother, adding that I’m too broke to get drunk. “You poor baby,” she says. “Let me take care of you.”
We order another round of drinks from Ernesto, who frankly looks relieved to be done with me. I tell K. about the Christmas party and the hospital. She tells me about her breakup with Nate.
She’d been offered what she called an
“obscene” amount of money for two weeks of shoots in Southeast Asia. Victoria’s Secret was starting a new ad campaign there and K., as it turned out, still had a devoted following among redblooded Asian men. She’d intended to turn the job down — the money would be nice, but she didn’t need it, and did she really want to go back to the loneliness, even if it was only for two weeks? But when she told Nate about the offer, he freaked out.
Taking advantage of Scott the Drummer’s winter break, Venomous Iris planned to take up residence in the studio for as long as it took to finish the album. Nate insisted he needed her for emotional support. But after one day in the studio, she realized that her real job was to remind them to eat in the midst of a collective heroin binge and, when supplies ran low, to score some more.
“I mean, I’m not a fucking drug dealer,” she says.
“Thanks,” I reply with the appropriate sarcasm.
“You’re different,” she says. “Pot’s not a drug. It’s a survival tool. Anyway, he said that if I wouldn’t do it, he could find some other slut who would. And that maybe he’d finally get a decent blow job. Can you believe him?”
“What an asshole,” I say.
“What an asshole,” she says.
An hour later, K. and I are having sex in my room.
It’s drunk and sloppy and I’m not really sure that I’m not dreaming the whole thing until I wake up the next morning and she’s still there. Then she wakes up and we do it again, almost completely curing my hangover.
We walk glove-inmitten down the street to a French bistro. K. insists on paying for the eggs Benedict and Bloody Marys. “A hard-luck case” is how she describes me to the waiter, but the food’s restorative powers temper any injury to my masculine pride. We return to my room, where, this time, we get it right. The sex begins tenderly, the mystery of the new mixed with an intimacy that’s just starting to feel familiar, and ends athletically, our two bodies moving like pistons.
Now we’re holding hands on the elevator, our fingers intertwined. We ride to the fourteenth floor, where Roscoe Trune’s annual New Year’s Eve party is under way. There is no official ownership of rooms at the Chelsea, but the suite might as well belong to Roscoe, an openly gay poet from Savannah, Georgia, who’s resided there for almost as long as I’ve been alive. K., the invited guest, is greeted with kisses on each cheek; I’m treated cordially, but with the subtly raised eye-brows that benefit the arrival of a scandalous home-wrecker.
They’d expected to see Nate.
The exception is Ray, who eyes me with a newfound re-spect. “I’ve got to hand it to you,” he tells me. “I didn’t think anyone was breaking that ice.” The pupils of his eyes look like Oreo cookies.
I’ll later find out that he — along with most of the party — is on something called “Adam,” a psychedelic that by the time I get around to trying it, a few years later, is better known as “Ecstasy.” What I know now is that every conversation seems to wind up with someone rubbing my sleeves to feel the texture or offering a non sequitur commentary on the shine of my hair. Undue credit, I think, for a guy who simply hasn’t bothered to shower.
Later, while K. dances with a shirtless, muscled man who Ray reassures me is “one of Roscoe’s boy toys,” he proposes that I join him on a weekend trip to South Korea. “I’m going to see a goddess,” Ray says.
“You’re on drugs, Ray. Try to keep it on Earth for us in the cheap seats.”
“I shit you not, man. She’s a real live goddess.”
“Really? Does she ride a unicorn?”
“She’s a Kumari, man. A bodily incarnation of the goddess Taleju.”
“Tally who?”
“Taleju. It’s the Nepalese name for the goddess Durga. A total bad-ass. Like, she’s got ten arms and carries swords and shit. She rides a fucking tiger.”
“I’ll admit that the ten arms present some interesting possibilities, but take it from me: Women and sharp objects, they do not mix well.”
Ray claps his hands. “I’m not saying she is Durga. The point is that Devi — that’s her name, Devi — was chosen from like thousands of girls to be Durga’s earthly incarnation.”
“Kind of like the Miss Universe pageant,” I suggest.
“Exactly! Only a lot more hardcore. She had to have what they call ‘the Thirty-Two Perfections.’ A voice as soft and clear as a duck’s. A chest like a lion. A neck like a conch shell.”
“Every time I start to take you seriously, I remember you’re on drugs.”
“I am being totally serious, man. For ten years, her feet were not allowed to touch the ground.
Some dudes carried her everywhere in one of those, you know, canopy things. People lined up to touch them — her fucking feet! — for good luck. Even the king of Nepal, once a year he got down on his knees and kissed those hoofers.”
“And you think she’ll slum with a mortal like you?”
“That’s the best part. She’s not technically a goddess anymore. Taleju means ‘virgin.’ Once she, you know, bleeds, the gig is up — Durga’s got to find herself a new host. And Devi? One day she’s a goddess, the next she’s a woman with serious selfesteem issues. Or what I like to call my wheelhouse!”
“You’re kind of a fucked-up guy, Ray.”
“I know. But what can I do?” He grins evilly.
“How’d we get started on Devi?”
“You were going to Korea …”
“Korea!”
“… to see a goddess from Nepal who … Why is she in Korea again?”
“She’s a model. Vicky’s hired her for the same campaign as K. Which is why we’re going to Korea.
You can surprise her. Chicks love that shit. It overloads their brain so much that they can only think with their pussies.”
“As tempting as it might be to turn K. into a drooling sex zombie, I don’t exactly have the fundage for international jetsetting.”
