“What do you mean?”
“That’s a famous line from Lincoln. We were watching a documentary on TV once and the announcer said in a very deep, impressive voice, ‘And then the rains came!’ Lincoln was four, I think. He turned to me and in as deep a voice as he could find, said very proudly, ‘Then the raisins came!’ He said so many great things like that when he was little. I wrote some of them down.
“Anyway, one fine day in March my father called to say Mom was dead and already buried. He hadn’t thought I’d want to make the trip down just for that. ‘Just for that’ was the exact phrase he used, the mean-spirited drunk. The truth was, he didn’t want to be bothered any more than he already had. That ended my relationship with my father. Never in a million years could I forgive him for doing that. I got there as soon as I could and stood at her grave apologizing for having let her down. I went back to the house and told my father he was a selfish, evil prick and the greatest last blessing Mom had had was to die from a disease that let her forget all the lousy things he’d done to her for thirty years.
“The upshot was he threw me out of the house and cut me off financially. My mother left some money but I didn’t get that till a long time later. But fine, I’d finish college on my own. Scared as I was, it pleased me tremendously to know I would never have to come and see him again. Know what my last words to him were? ‘When you’re old and dying, Dad, know there is not one single person on earth who loves you.’ And then I walked out.
“I left the old dumpy car he’d given me in the driveway and took a bus back to New York, feeling right and strong but so sad about Mom.
“I got to the Port Authority terminal, the bus stopped, and I had one of those unbearable panic attacks where you freeze in the middle of life without a fucking clue as to what to do. I sat on a bench for an hour and shook. The only thing that entered my mind was Bryce’s phone number. I thought that must mean something important; an omen or a sign through all my confusion. I staggered to a phone and called him. He sounded so happy to hear from me. Started off by saying I was completely right—all the old gang were a bunch of failed phonies and I’d been the first to see that. How perceptive of me. I told him what was happening and he told me to come right over.
“I’ve never been able to figure out whether he was so nice to me that next week because he saw how needy I was or because he was only setting me up again for one of his sucker punches. Whatever, he couldn’t have been kinder. We talked about what mattered to me and he said smart, helpful things. He took me to dinner and the movies. Didn’t touch me till one night I went to him and said please. He was my knight in shining armor and by the end of that week I was hooked on him again. Only now I had so little confidence, so much pain and confusion, that he could have told me to walk out the window and, if he’d been nice about it, I’d’ve done it. He said I should take it easy and do whatever I thought would help get me strong again.
“I didn’t do anything. Didn’t go to classes, didn’t go back to work at the restaurant, didn’t see anyone besides him. When I needed money, I took a job for a couple of weeks at Kentucky Fried Chicken or another quick-food place where they hire anybody off the street who doesn’t look like a total zombie.
“One evening my knight brought home some opium and we smoked it up. I was a goner. About the time I was supposed to graduate, Bryce said it was pretty expensive living these days, implying what with dope and food and all, I was a mighty stone around his neck. Which was total bullshit because I never took money from him and I paid for the groceries. He was also selling dope at a steady clip, which he failed to tell me, and had fat, fat pockets. But all those veiled complaints were only a smoke screen for what he had in mind for me.
“In view of all the nice, self-sacrificing things he’d done recently, would I do him a big favor? It was real simple. He had a friend coming into town for the weekend, but since he’d already committed to something else, would I be willing to go out with this guy and show him around?
“Max, we looked at each other, knowing exactly what he was asking me to do, and you know what? We smiled at each other. Smiled like sure, it’s only the last of my honor and dignity and probably my sanity but take it, babe. Sure, I’ll let your stranger fuck me.”
“Why didn’t you leave?”
“Because I was frightened. Of everything. I couldn’t go out the door of the apartment without checking my pocket three or four times to make sure I had the key. The key to that door was the most important thing in the world those days. It was my talisman. As long as I had it and could get back into that dark, musty place I could function. Walk out on the street, do some errands, maybe go to work and cook chicken for a few hours, just so long as the key was there and I could run my finger over it in my pocket and feel its hard outline. My world had shrunk down to a two-room apartment with kitchen, and even that was too big for me sometimes, too much to handle. I had no strength and no desire to think clearly about my situation or decide. Those things take real, serious energy but there was none. Plus I was thrown a real curve: the weekend came, this friend showed up, and surprise surprise—we hit it off like we’d been pals a hundred years. I had such fun! We went to dinner, took a Circle Line cruise around Manhattan, and ended up drinking champagne in bed in his room at the Biltmore Hotel. I felt like a queen and he treated me so sweetly. I’ll tell you, I can understand why some women like being call girls. Given the right kind of men, you’re treated well and with respect, and if you’re not particular about who you have sex with, there are worse ways to make money.”
“Lily, you’re very particular about who you have sex with.”
“Exactly. That’s why it left such a scar. I think I would have slept with this man anyway because I liked him so much, but when it happened, I didn’t know if I was doing it ‘cause I wanted to or because it’d been arranged and was expected of me.
“The next morning I left before he got up and thought okay, that’s that. I’ve learned something and it wasn’t so bad. But it was. In the pit of my stomach I knew it was.
“Luckily when I got back to Bryce’s he wasn’t there. I’ve never been a snoop, but for some reason that morning I felt this overpowering desire to go through our whole place top to bottom. I’m not sure why. Maybe telepathy. Or maybe it was a strange way of getting back at my roommate: due to him, someone had looked in all my private places last night, so it was fair I got to look in Bryce’s. In his shaving kit were twenty-two dime bags of heroin. He was dealing smack! If we had been busted, I would’ve been booked as an accessory, at least, and the son of a bitch never told me what he was doing. Heroin! Never gave me the chance to decide whether I wanted to live in a powder keg while he played Mr. Smooth Operator. And next it hit me: did that mean I’d slept with one of his customers last night? More than likely. He’d already used me like that once. I was fully aware of Bryce’s way of bartering for the things he wanted in life. But then again, I’d had such a nice time, why should it make a difference? Because it did. No matter how nice the guy had been, the only reason my old friend and protector had put us together was to offer me as mattress-meat bonus to one of his good customers.
“I walked around the apartment saying ‘Fuck you—fuck you—fuck you’ under my breath and snooping like a dog on a scent. Thank God for it, because way in the back of the closet, stuck in a pair of hiking boots he never used, was a jumbo wad of hundred-dollar bills. Without any hesitation whatsoever, I took ten of them, threw some things in a duffel bag, and left. I wanted out of there, out of that life, that city, tutti.
“I got on a subway and rode to one of the last stops in the Bronx, staring at the floor the whole way. One of the first things I saw climbing up the steps of the station was a used-car lot filled with the biggest automobiles I’d ever seen. Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs, Buick Rivieras. My memory is that they were all gold and purple and sea-foam green, like rides at an amusement park. Maybe I was totally out of it, but these cars seemed gigantic. I guess my perspective on things was so off-kilter… Anyway, I went over in wonder, just to have a look before setting out wherever I was going. But the moment I got there, this wonderful black man in a sharkskin suit and yellow tie came out of a little office to the side of the lot like a magical character. He said, ‘I know I got what you’re looking for!’ I put down my bag and said, ‘Maybe so, but what’ve you got for me under five hundred dollars?’ He clapped his hands together and looked at the sky like deliverance had arrived. ‘Lady, I’ll answer that question with a statement: I got cars here you could drive to, through, and back from World War Three in.’ I laughed and wanted to hug him and buy any car he had to sell. Instead, I said I’d been going through the worst period of my entire life and was at the end end end. If I bought a car now, I needed it to take me a million miles from New York and not break down, because I didn’t have any more to spend on it. He gestured for me to follow and we walked way to the back of the lot. Wedged behind all those big balloon cars like the runt of the litter was a tooth-colored Opel Kadett station wagon. He said he’d sell it to me for three hundred and fifty dollars even though it was worth twice that. He’d checked it out personally, and far as he could see, it was sound. I asked if that meant it was good and he said, ‘It’s tinny, but it’ll take you out of hell.’ There was no one left to trust and he’d made me smile when I needed it, so I pulled out my money and the deal was done in half an hour.