My pizza is called Earth Mother, and I take it to go. The girl with the red hair and her cage got out along the way. I was asleep on the edge of the roof longer than I thought. I have to piss. In the bathroom of Two Boots in the West Village, I put my shoes back on, check my teeth in the mirror and tense my abs. I hold my telephone over the toilet bowl, but then just turn it off. Grace and Lua are waiting outside with the pizza. We turn the corner onto Waverly Place, it looks like something out of an American film set in Paris. Small trees are growing out of the sidewalk, the street is a miniature boulevard, the garbage truck is blinking orange and collecting the black bags from the sidewalk in front of the cafés. Under a streetlight Grace stops and asks, my place or yours, and I ask, where do you live? Here, she says, and points to number seven, and I’m not wearing anything underneath. Grace puts down the pizza box, lifts her suede skirt and takes my hands. She really doesn’t have anything on. Grace kisses me, she bites my neck, she pushes me past the streetlight and against the glass door. I’m hungry, I say, the pizza’s getting cold, but as Grace breathes heavily in my ear I notice I’m getting hard. She breathes directly into my ear, makes soft squealing sounds and fumbles with my pants button. Lua is standing under a streetlight, the garbage men are watching us, I say. I just wanna fuck you right here, Grace says, and sounds like an actress. From an upstairs window comes “Downtown Train,” Tom Waits’s voice and the French scenery get mixed up, I take my hands off Grace’s naked ass under the suede skirt and her hands off me, let’s go upstairs, I say, and Grace jiggles the key in the lock.
In the hallway she briefly lifts her skirt again and looks me directly in the eyes, I have to decide and vacillate as quickly as possible between eyes and shaved patch, which is narrower than Tuuli’s. I come to rest on her mouth and kiss Grace against the elevator door, this time longer and deeper. My hand searches for her narrow butt, finds it and conforms to it. The elevator’s out of order, says Grace, her fingers above us clawing into the elevator grate. Okay, race you, I say, okay, carry me up, says Grace, and Grace is calling the shots here. She bites and then clings to my neck, until on the fourth floor I can no longer breathe. I put her down. Lua is already there, yawning. Grace points to a door and says, that’s where Moby lives. Who’s Moby? The singing vegetarian, she says. Does Moby want my cold pizza? I ask, and take the box from Grace’s hand, or does he only eat plankton? Plankton? Grace takes back the box, that’s the sort of thing you find funny, is it? Yup, I say, and pound the artichoke-shaped doorknocker against Moby’s door. Ist Moby dick? I ask, and bound up the stairs, Grace runs after me, but no one opens Moby’s door. Moby is on tour, says Grace, and tries to take off my T-shirt. Then we can listen to loud music, I say, opening the pizza box. In it there are a garlic shaker and a very small pair of orange underpants. I hold the underpants in the air. When did you take these off? I ask. Outside the pizzeria, says Grace. And no one saw? I unlock Grace’s door. Maybe, she says, there’s something to drink in the fridge.
When I enter the bedroom with a container of milk, Grace is standing in the middle of the room between her suede skirt and her white shirt. In the corner stands a giant porcelain greyhound, Lua is lying next to it and sleeping, Grace is posing like a ring card girl. I meant the vodka, she says. Milk is good for you, I say, and give her the container. She sits down on the bed and as she drinks the milk, her nipples get erect. She’s taller than Tuuli, I think, but just as thin. She sits cross-legged on the bed, her labia are unexpectedly dark, three stars are tattooed under Grace’s left breast, one red, one yellow, one green.
I stand with the pizza box in the room, and Grace says, get undressed, you idiot! She puts the milk on the floor and ties her hair back with a rubber band. Nice stars, I say, standing on one leg, and kick my pants over to her clothes. One for each love, says Grace. Where are they now? I ask. Not here, says Grace, pulling me onto the bed and between her legs. She does that much too soon, the pulling me between her legs, she kisses me, she almost devours me, she swallows me, she clings to my shoulder, and I can’t stop it or help it. I kiss back, but I don’t kiss big enough for her, things aren’t moving fast enough for her, fuck, let’s get this going, she says, pushes me off her and turns me on my back, she lets down her hair. Faster than I can think she has my cock in her mouth, her hair brushes against my belly. Grace, I say, putting my hand on her forehead to stop her brushing and breathing and squealing and her up and down, even though I’m not supposed to object to it, even though it should sound good. Grace, I say, but that doesn’t sound right either. Bullshit, says Grace with my cock in her mouth, and keeps going. Stop, I say, but she doesn’t stop until I take her head in both hands and stare into her eyes, maybe a bit too dramatically. My wet cock lies cold on my belly. The pizza, I say. I hear myself talking and don’t like what I hear. Grace ties her hair back again. You’re weird, she says. The pizza, I say, all words fail me except “pizza,” and so we share her slice, then Grace goes into the bathroom and gets an Advil. Want one too? she calls out, and once again she’s faster than I. She comes back, draws the curtains, turns around, and strokes herself between her legs, I’m still wet, she smiles. No, thanks, I say, meaning the headache pills, and Grace turns away and washes down her Advil with milk, before long she’s asleep, her mouth slightly open, her stars in the dawn.
I OPEN MY EYES and for a few seconds don’t know where I am. Grace turns her back to me, from the nape of her neck to her tailbone seventeen Chinese characters. Get out of here, I think, just get out, because I want to think this thought, and I take the milk and what’s left of the Earth Mother, take my T-shirt and shoes and run into the porcelain dog in the dark. I close the door softly and get dressed only once I’m in the stairwell. It says Grace Chan on the door of apartment 4F. I feel my pulse in my hand again, my ankle hurts, I have a headache. I walk along Waverly Place and want to hail a taxi, want to go home, but where is my home? I think. It should be with Tuuli and Felix, that’s what we said, but it’s not there anymore, and no taxis are stopping. Fucking cabbie bastards, I shout. That’s right, says a woman in high heels standing outside the pizzeria, and I walk uptown toward Chelsea.
In front of a French bakery a Chihuahua barks at me as if I were a bum. Someone has tied him to a streetlight. I talk to dogs now, I remember, and say politely, bonjour, Monsieur Dog, but the Chihuahua doesn’t reply, he just barks. Nothing is simple, I say, just look at all this shit: things can’t go on like this, you should have seen this woman, she takes off her panties in the pizzeria, and I make stupid jokes and forget Lua in her living room. I kneel down on the ground next to the Chihuahua, he looks at me and growls. You know, I say, Tuuli and Felix are fucking their brains out in my apartment, even though they’re expecting a child, and I’m accomplishing nothing here, nothing at all. The dog tilts his head, he’s wearing a green collar. Things can’t go on like this, can they? I ask, and feel my tears coming. Nice collar, by the way, I say to the Chihuahua, offering him some of the milk, he doesn’t drink. You know, I say, I want to get rid of this feeling, I want nothing more to do with the two of them, I don’t want to always remember them, I don’t want to think of Tuuli every fucking minute and of Felix every other one, I want, I want, oh, I have no idea. I’m kneeling in a blood-smeared T-shirt next to a streetlight in the West Village, talking to a Chihuahua and wiping away my tears when a little girl holding two baguettes comes out of the bakery and says, you talking to my dog, mister? and the ring of the bell when she opens the door feels like a slap in the face.